Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(60)
We were driving now through a majestic stand of old-growth pines. Very often the old lumber camps were surrounded by groves of massive trees like these. The loggers kept the big evergreens standing for scenery around their bunkhouses and kitchens, while they cut the surrounding forest down to the nub.
“How does Foss even make money?” I asked.
“The man cuts a shitload of wood.”
“How? I couldn’t even find a phone number for him.”
“He doesn’t need to advertise his services. The big developers know how to get ahold of him. Foss always comes in as the low bidder when a developer needs land cleared to build ski condos or whatever. It’s one of the advantages to having ex-con employees who can’t get a job anywhere. He can pay them pennies on the dollar and then turn right around and get his money back charging them room and board.”
“It sounds like a sweet deal if you don’t mind treating your workers like plantation slaves.”
“Maybe in his mind he’s helping them,” Pulsifer said.
“What do you think?”
He raised an eyebrow to tell me how stupid my question was. “I think the guy’s a genius.”
Snow was dropping in clumps from the evergreens where the sun was shining, but it clung tightly to the trees that remained in shadow.
After a few minutes, we came to the first building. It was a generator station in a clearing, with a big solar panel on the roof and wires leading off through the tree limbs. I could feel the vibration of the machine in my fillings.
The next structure was a trailer, no different from those used at construction sites, with a satellite dish mounted on the roof. Two state vehicles, a Franklin County Sheriff’s Department cruiser and a late-model Chevy sedan with state-government plates, were parked out front. I recognized the former as the car Clegg had been driving the night before. I figured the latter must belong to Adam’s probation officer.
Pulsifer unfastened his seat belt. “Have you ever met Shaylene Hawken?”
“Not in person, but we had a pleasant chat on the phone the other day.”
“Isn’t she a charmer?”
As I stepped out of the vehicle, I heard a fast-paced chittering overhead and saw a mixed flock of birds swoop and settle into the cone-laden branches of a pine. They were Red and White-winged Crossbills. Those bird-watchers Pulsifer had chased out of the road would have paid money to get such a good look at those elusive winter finches.
Pulsifer took no notice. He made his way to the door and rapped on it three times.
No answer.
When he glanced back at me, I pointed to the snowy ground outside the door. There were boot prints all over, as you would expect, but three distinct sets of fresh tracks led farther down the road. I set off in that direction while Gary hurried to catch up.
Pulsifer didn’t strike me as a poor woodsman, exactly. He just seemed to be wearing blinders all the time. He was so focused on the job at hand that he failed to notice disturbances in the landscape around him. The more time I spent with him in the field, the more I understood how my poacher father had managed to outwit him for so many years.
23
Up ahead was a complex of buildings: garages, a dining hall, a bunkhouse, and assorted sheds. The usual construction equipment, too: skidders, crew vans, pickups, a bulldozer, and a flatbed truck for hauling logs. In short, Pariahville resembled just about any other logging operation you might find in the forest.
Pulsifer and I approached the dining hall. A single voice was issuing from inside the building. Loud, resonant, and commanding—it belonged unmistakably to Don Foss. Pulsifer didn’t bother knocking.
When he opened the door, the room went quiet. Nine or ten men seated at picnic tables turned to see who had let in the sudden blast of arctic air. Beyond them, on a raised stage at the end of the hall, stood Don Foss, flanked on either side by Jim Clegg and Shaylene Hawken.
Foss was wearing an outfit that Paul Bunyan himself might have bought off the rack, and in the same size, too. The big man turned to Clegg. “What’s going on here? Who are these men?”
“The wardens are here at my request,” said the detective.
Clegg had on his brown-and-khaki uniform and was holding his drill sergeant’s hat at crotch level, as if to protect his privates from the imaginations of the assembled sex offenders.
Shaylene Hawken appeared strong enough to wrestle a moose calf to the ground. She had a hard red face that looked as if she scrubbed her skin with steel wool, and gray-brown hair that she had probably cut herself. She was dressed in civilian clothes appropriate for tromping around the woods but was wearing a ballistic vest with a badge pinned to the fabric. A semiautomatic pistol rested in a holster on her hip.
“Should we expect additional visitors?” asked Foss.
The men at the tables had contorted themselves to look at us. Most of them had faces that were young and bearded; they were the same age, more or less, as Adam. The older ones among them look prematurely aged by bad habits and more recent exposure to the elements. Almost without exception, they looked dead-tired.
“Please continue, Don,” said the detective.
Foss’s natural tone of voice seemed to be a bellow. “Detective Clegg and Officer Hawken will be speaking with each of you privately in the bunkhouse. I have their assurance your conversations will be confidential unless—” He turned and looked down again at the detective at his side. “I fail to see how this concerns the Warden Service.”