Spencerville

and the trees.
    Keith and Billy walked along the road for a hundred yards, searching for an opening in the pine trees that was wide enough for a vehicle to pass though. Billy said softly, “Maybe we should just take a compass heading through the woods and get down to the lake and look around.”
    “That might be the thing to do. Let’s get our gear.”
    They walked back toward the truck, and Keith kept looking up at the utility poles. He stopped, tapped Billy on the shoulder, and pointed.
    Billy stared up at the dark sky. A squirrel was making its way along an electric wire that was nearly invisible among the dark shadows of the pine trees. The wire ran toward the lake. Under the wire was another one, probably the telephone line, Keith thought.
    Billy said, “That definitely goes to the lake, but they always run along a road, and I don’t see no road.”
    Keith stood near the utility pole, then walked into the woods and grasped an eight-foot-tall white pine by its trunk, shook it, then pulled it out of the ground.
    Billy looked at the base of the sawed-off trunk and said, “Jeez… this guy must be a gook.”
    Keith kicked another pine, and it tumbled. Someone, undoubtedly Cliff Baxter, had camouflaged the narrow dirt road that led to his lodge with cut pine trees, each about eight or ten feet high. There were about a dozen of them implanted into the dirt road, running back about twenty feet, giving the impression of a continuous forest. They were still green, Keith noticed, and would stay green for weeks, but they were slightly tilted and smaller than the surrounding pines.
    Keith also noticed that where the dirt road met the blacktop was strewn with deadwood and pine boughs to conceal the tire ruts leading into the hidden road. Not a great job, Keith thought, but good enough to keep a lost or curious driver from turning into the road that led to Baxter’s lodge.
    Keith looked around and found a signpost that had been chopped at the base and pushed over onto the ground. There was no sign on the post that said, “Big Chief Cliff’s Lodge,” but Keith was certain there had been.
    It was obvious, Keith thought, that Cliff Baxter wanted no visitors, casual or otherwise. And the same laboriously transplanted pine trees that kept people out kept Baxter from making occasional forays into the outside world. So there was no chance of staking out the road, waiting for Baxter to leave for a while, and rescuing Annie without putting her in danger of a fight. Apparently, Baxter had everything he needed for a long stay. The essential questions, of course, were, Did he also have Annie and was she alive? Keith was almost certain that he did have her, and she was alive, if not well. This was the whole point of Baxter’s flight to this remote lodge—to imprison his unfaithful wife and to take out his anger and rage on her without any interference from the outside world.
    It occurred to Keith that ultimately, regardless of Keith Landry—or someone like him—this was where the Baxters were destined to end up, sooner, if not later, though Annie may or may not have understood the psychological subtext of this hunting lodge and future retirement home. He recalled something she’d said.
The
few
times we went up there
alone, without the kids or without company, he was another
person. Not necessarily better, and not actually worse…
just another person… quiet, distant, as if he’s… I don’t
know… thinking of something. I don’t like to go up th
ere
with him alone, and I can usually get out of it.
    One could only imagine, Keith thought, what Cliff Baxter was thinking about. One could only hope that whatever he’d done to Annie in the last three days, to her mind and her body, was not permanent or scarring.
    Keith and Billy went back to the pickup and collected their gear, then returned to the place where the camouflaged road began. They both knew not to walk through the camouflage or on the open dirt road beyond it, and they entered the woods to the right of the road and began walking on a parallel course to it, keeping it in view when they could. They maintained their heading with the compass and an occasional sighting of the small utility poles that ran along the road.
    After about fifteen minutes of slow progress, Keith stopped and knelt down, listening to the forest. Billy knelt beside him and they stayed motionless for a full five minutes. Finally, Billy whispered, “Sounds okay, smells okay, feels