Murder on High (17 page)

The other great unknown was the prankster’s choice of venue. If he chose to appear to one of the vision questers at the retreat center rather than to one of the campers at Chimney Pond, they would be out of luck. They were prepared to try again the next night on the theory that he would alternate between the two locations as he had in the past, but there was a limit to how long they could tie up the time of so many people.

All these thoughts went through Charlotte’s mind as they were driving through the tunnel of trees on the narrow perimeter road that led to the campground at Roaring Brook. Arriving at about one, they parked the car and then headed out on the trail. As they set forth, it struck Charlotte that any reasonable person would have experienced some degree of trepidation at the prospect of coming face to face with someone posing as an evil Indian god at a campground lean-to in the middle of the night. But that wasn’t a concern of hers, at least at the moment. Maybe that would come later. Right now she was worried about just getting to Chimney Pond. The campground was a two-and-a-half-hour hike from the base of the mountain. Charlotte was in good shape for a woman of her age as a result of the long walks she was fond of taking around Manhattan. But except for Murray Hill, and a few of the island’s other modest elevations, her walks were all on level ground. Nor was she accustomed to carrying a backpack; a Bloomingdale’s shopping bag was about as much as she ever toted around. But she was eager to test her mettle. If she made it, she fully expected to be obnoxiously proud of herself.

The Chimney Pond trail wasn’t steep, but it was all uphill, relentlessly uphill. Charlotte had probably stopped twenty times along the way to catch her breath, take off another layer of clothing, and give her neck and back a break from the weight of her backpack and her feet a break from her new hiking boots. New everything, in fact. Climbing mountains was not a sport she had been equipped for. With the exception of the camps on movie sets in various exotic locations, which were so luxurious as to hardly deserve the name, the last time she had camped out was in Girl Scouts. She was traveling light—a sleeping bag (good to zero degrees Centigrade), a foam rubber mat, a mess kit, a battery-operated lantern, a butane camp stove, a change of clothes, a few toiletries, and an assortment of freeze-dried foods—but the hike was a strain nonetheless. There had even been moments when she’d considered turning back. But the thought of Tracey waiting for her at Chimney Pond kept her going. He would be alarmed if she didn’t show up. Though they had planned to hike together, he had left her behind shortly after they had set out. She had urged him to go on ahead when it became obvious that she wasn’t going to be able to keep up.

Whatever doubts she may have entertained about the wisdom of her hiking venture were dispelled, however, about three-quarters of the way up. Following a side path marked by a “scenic view” sign, she emerged from the trees into a sandy, boulder-strewn clearing that gave her her first clear view of the spectacular scenery. Before her a sea of dark green evergreens stretched away to the mountain, at the foot of which lay the Great Basin, like a gigantic, terrible crater at the mountain’s heart. Clouds played over the vertical walls of dark gray granite, which were still streaked with white from the previous night’s snowfall. She could have been in Alaska, she thought as she took a seat on one of the boulders. After resting for a few minutes in this beautiful spot, she continued on. If anything, the trail got steeper as she went along, but she found it easier going, a feeling that she ascribed partly to the anticipation of the glorious scenery up ahead, partly to relief at being so close to the end, and partly to the fact that she’d become more accustomed to the pack. She had discovered that you had to carry your weight differently, leaning more forward than usual. She had also discovered that she had to be careful of her footing. God help her if she tripped; she’d be flat on her face in a second.

Four hours and fifteen hundred feet after setting out, she glimpsed a log cabin through the trees. She had made it! A moment later, she had arrived at the campground, which was as unique as the magnificent mountain at whose heart it lay. It was set in a grassy glade of birches and scrub spruce overlooking a pristine mountain tarn. All around, the perpendicular cliffs of the headwall soared into the clouds. The sight of the headwall reminded her of the slides at the hearing, and she searched in vain to pick out the ravine in which Iris’ body had been found. As her eyes scanned the rocky crags, she thought again of Pamola. This natural amphitheater was said to be the home of the evil spirit, and she could easily imagine him swooping down from the mountain’s fastnesses. Which brought her back to her reason for being here. Following the arrow on a sign, she headed down the path toward the ranger’s cabin.

Arriving at the cabin a few minutes later, she was greeted by Chris Sargent, the young ranger who’d accompanied Haverty to the meeting at Tracey’s office. He was a genial and fit-looking young man with a natural authority that was unusual for someone his age.

“Lieutenant Tracey wanted me to ask you something,” Sargent said after she had signed in at the hiker’s register (noting that she’d arrived a full hour after her traveling companion).

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Pamola has always appeared to older females and, with the exception of Mrs. Richards and Miss Ouellette, to older females camping alone. We have two other women who will be camping together, both of them park employees, but you’re going to be our only solitary female camper.”

Charlotte completed the thought for him: “And he wants me to be the decoy. Tell me,” she said, “did he just decide this, or is this something that he decided to keep from me until I got up here?” She had expected to be a decoy in the general sense, as were the other pseudo-campers, but she hadn’t expected to be the bait in the trap.

“He just decided,” Chris said, smiling. “He didn’t realize until he got here that Pamola had always appeared to female campers. He said he thought you’d be up for it. What do you say?”

What had she gotten herself into? But after making it up to Chimney Pond with a loaded backpack, she was ready for anything. “I guess it’s okay. I presume somebody’s going to be keeping an eye on me.”

“Lieutenant Tracey and Trooper Pyle will be staying in the next lean-to. Pyle arrived last night. We’ve had people arriving at various times, as if they were bona fide campers. You’ll be in number nine, which is the most isolated.”

“Is that the one that Iris was in?” she asked.

He nodded. “It’s just off the Saddle Trail, which we think is the way he gets here. Campers who’ve seen him have noticed that he heads off in that direction. But we have no idea where he goes from there.”

“What about my walkie-talkie?” she asked.

“I’ll give it to you now. C’mon inside,” he said; leading the way into the office. “In case he’s watching with binoculars.” Inside, he disappeared into a back room with a sleeping porch that looked out at the headwall.

“I like your digs,” said Charlotte when he returned.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do too. It’s a big improvement over the crew cabin, which is where I used to sleep.” He handed her the walkie-talkie. “Keep it out of sight, just in case he’s watching.”

Charlotte pushed the button on the side, and the walkie-talkie on Sargent’s belt emitted an electronic squawk.

“We’re connected,” he said with a smile. “The signal is five beeps, very fast.” He demonstrated with his own walkie-talkie. “Someone will get to you in two seconds. Everyone here will be one of us.”

“How many will there be?” she asked.

“Eighteen. There are still a few real campers here, but they’ll be gone by sundown.” Excusing himself, he went into the back again, and emerged a minute later with a revolver. “Tracey wanted you to have this too.”

She took the gun. It was a .38 Special service revolver.

“Do you know how to use it?”

“I think so,” she said, testing its heft in her hand. She had appeared in enough thrillers to have a pretty good idea of how it worked.

“Let’s see you aim at that,” he said, indicating a poster of a moose that hung on the far wall. “Don’t pull the trigger,” he warned her. “It’s loaded.”

Charlotte raised the gun and took aim at the moose.

“Very good. I don’t think you’ll need it. But if Pamola takes out a pistol crossbow, you have Tracey’s permission to let him have it.”

“I should hope so,” she said.

“I think there’s a pretty good chance we’ll see him tonight. The weather’s clear, and he hasn’t been here in a while. He usually appears between two and three, but don’t bother to wait up. Just go to sleep as you usually would.”

“That won’t be any problem. The hike up was a killer.”

“Carrying a loaded pack takes some getting used to,” Chris sympathized, then continued filling her in. “He announces himself with a rattle. He stands in front of the lean-to and shakes the rattle very quietly. It’s an eerie sound,” he added.

So far, Charlotte had taken a pretty whimsical attitude toward the whole affair, but she was beginning to get apprehensive. “Is Lieutenant Tracey at his lean-to now?” she asked. She suspected she’d feel more comfortable once she’d gone over the game plan with him.

“I would guess so. You’re supposed to be acting like real campers. There’s no problem with your talking to him, but you should make it look as if you just struck up an acquaintance. On the way to the latrines, or something.”

“Speaking of the latrines …” she said.

“I’ll show you where they are. Also, where to hang up your food so the bears can’t get at it. We’ve been fortunate in not having much of a bear problem at this campground, but it’s because we’ve been very careful.”

“Everything I have’s in foil bags,” she said.

“Which reminds me, the garbage gets packed out. We have a carry-in, carry-out policy. The water in the pond is only for drinking; there’s no washing up. You can throw your gray water out behind your lean-to. Any questions?”

Charlotte shook her head.

“Well, if you think of any, I’ll be here.”

The lean-to that Sargent showed her to stood near a brook on the west side of the campsite, just off the Saddle Trail. Of the nine lean-tos, it was the farthest from the ranger’s cabin. In front was a yard consisting of a patch of earth worn bare by the feet of previous campers and studded with boulders that served the function of stools. A twisting, rocky path led down to the pond. After unpacking, Charlotte went down to the pond to fill a pot with water for her dinner. Squatting at the water’s edge, she looked out at the view. The sun was going down behind the Saddle, and its rays tinted Pamola Peak an apricot yellow and bathed the headwall in a golden glow. By some quirk of the local wind patterns, the surface of the pond was unruffled despite a stiff breeze, and the changing patterns of the clouds and the colored shadows on the cliffs were reflected in it as clearly as if it were a mirror. On the opposite shore, the trunks of a grove of white birches gleamed like polished silver in the twilight. The water itself was a peculiar pearly-green, like an exquisite celadon glaze. Charlotte had noticed this same color at lakes in the Alps. Maybe it was caused by the lack of vegetation; her trail guide had said nothing grew in the pond because of the deep penetration of ice in winter. In any case, it was a perfect paradise: still and clear and quiet, except for the occasional warble of a songbird—and the eerie roar of the wind. The wind had come up quite suddenly shortly after Charlotte’s arrival, and blew unceasingly, sounding at one minute like a high-pitched hum and the next like the dull roar of distant surf.

Returning to her lean-to, she proceeded to set up her camp stove. Despite the somewhat complicated directions, this presented no difficulties, but getting it lighted did. She hadn’t counted on the wind when she’d packed only one box of matches. Every time she lit a match, the wind would blow it out. She tried to find a more sheltered spot, to no avail. She was just about through her box when Tracey came to her rescue with a cigarette lighter. Within minutes, the blue flame under her little kettle was burning merrily away.

After he had gotten the stove going, Tracey joined her on the raised sill of her lean-to to watch the colors on the headwall change from gold to pink to rose to purple as the sun withdrew over the western ridge of the mountain.

“Can I interest you in some chicken curry?” she asked once the water was boiling. She held up her foil packet. “It says it feeds two.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. I just had beef stroganoff, which also said it fed two, but I managed to polish it off quite nicely all by myself. I will take a cup of coffee, though. Once you’ve mixed up your dinner, that is.”

“Sure,” said Charlotte. “How about European-style cappuccino,” she said, holding up another packet. “I got a little carried away in the camping supply store,” she confessed. “I even have chocolate mousse for dessert.”

“Chocolate mousse?”

“Add water and stir. It’s my style of cooking. Want some?”

Tracey looked tentative. “I’ll give it a try.”

“What have you been doing?” asked Charlotte as she stirred the freeze-dried chicken curry into the boiling water.

Tracey tossed a peanut in the direction of a bold little chipmunk perched on a nearby rock. “Getting organized. Without being too obvious about it. There are four trails leading out of here, and we’ll have people on all of them. Though he may not use a trail.”

“If he’s smart, he won’t.”

“It’s pretty tough going if you don’t. There’s so much blow-down around that it’s next to impossible to get through. I also went over the hikers’ register for June ninth.”

“Find anything?”

Tracey shook his head. “Nothing that jumped out at me. We’ll go over it in more detail later; match the names up with the names on the entrance permits. At least there weren’t that many: only twenty-three.”

“That’s good,” Charlotte said. She poured some hot water into Tracey’s cup and then added the contents of the cappuccino packet. The enticing smell of mocha filled the cool air.

“The search and rescue team was out looking for the bolt on the headwall this morning,” Tracey continued. “They didn’t find anything.”