The ride had been three or four minutes. I tried to remember if he got the van out of second gear. It didn't seem like he had, but I couldn't be sure. If he hadn't, that meant he had stayed on logging roads, and we couldn't have gone more than two or three miles. Did we go south or north? North, I thought. It had felt like we had taken a lot of right turns.

A bramble raked my face. I reached out to grab it and the cable slapped me in the face. I flung it aside and started to run, flat out, plunging through small spruce and birches. Panic. I forced myself to slow down and conserve energy. Counted to ten. Took a deep breath. Gathered up the cable and trotted on.

And then stopped.

It was faint, but it was not my imagination. There, it shifted. Then again. A diesel motor. A truck that had to be on Route 120, on the highway.

I'd gambled and won.

I broke into a lope again, but the road was farther away than I'd hoped. When I pushed through a spruce thicket, there was always another. I couldn't hear the truck, but I kept going in that direction, running, walking, then running again. Then the last wall of spruce broke open and I fell into the ditch beside the road. I scrambled up the embankment and came on to the pavement on my hands and knees. On my feet, I ran along the pavement, my boots pounding. South was to the left, and I wanted to see if I could spot the tote road before it was completely dark.

Headlights appeared up ahead. I slid down into the ditch and lay with my face against the sand and ice until the car passed. A small car. Not a van. But I wasn't taking any chances.

I hit the turnoff in what felt like about ten minutes. It was the tire tracks that I remembered. The truck tracks, wide and deep, and the print of my Michelins in between. The truck had come out, but it didn't look like it had gone back in.

The woods were black. Every few steps I stopped and listened. I could hear the wind. Branches snapping from the cold. Nothing else. When my car came in sight, I felt in my pocket for my keys and clenched them in my fist in relief. With the car fifty feet away, I took out the keys and sprinted. Clattering up to the car, I found the driver's window smashed but the door open. I got in and jammed the key in the ignition and floored it, hitting the lights and second gear at the same time. The car slammed over the ruts all the way back to the highway, and then I raced all the way back to town, the cold air blasting me in the face and the cable coiled in my lap.

My first stop was Waldo Street.

There was a car parked in front of Cormier's building and the lights were on in his apartment. I took the stairs two at a time and saw him with two women on the couch as I flung open the storm door.

The inside door was locked. I took a step back and swung the cable. Glass shattered and there were screams. I yanked the cable back and swung again, taking out more glass. The women ran into the kitchen. I reached a bloody hand through the window and opened the door from the inside. Cormier was standing in front of the table with a beer bottle in his hand.

"You son of a bitch," I shouted. "You. Your goddamn friends did this. And now you're gonna pay for it. We're going to court big-time. Son of a bitch."

"Call the cops," a woman's voice shrieked. "Call the cops."

"Hey, you're crazy, man," Cormier said, backing up a step. "I didn't do nothing to you. I swear. I swear it, man. I don't know what you're talking about."

"From the driveway. Your little friend. Libby or whatever the hell his name was. He was there."

"I don't know-"

"Hey, I don't care. You're buddies. Gonna keep me out of court. So they smash up my car and put a goddamn bag over my head and tie me to a pipe and that's kidnapping, and that's a Class A felony, and you do time for that. Real time. And you'll go down with them. You think you got problems now, oh, baby, they're just starting."

I was shouting but I could feel the anger draining from me. A woman, young and blonde with black eye makeup, peeked out from the kitchen. She had a butcher knife in her hand.

"Get a wrench. Pliers," I told Cormier. "Get 'em now."

He stood there for a second, weaving on his feet with his bottle in his hand.

"You got it all wrong. I don't know what happened to you, but it didn't have nothing to do-"

"Get 'em."

He backed into the kitchen and I followed. I held the cable by both hands, down by my side.

"You friggin' nuts?" the blonde snarled.

"Could be," I said. "Fit right in around here."

Cormier dug in a toolbox on the floor and came up with a pair of pliers. I took them from him and worked on my left hand first, one eye on the woman with the knife. The other woman was crouched behind the table. I could see dark hair and black sneakers.

The pliers slipped with each turn but the nut finally dropped off. I pulled the clamp off and slid my hand out. The wrist was raw and black with dirt.

I did the other hand and when it came free, I kept the cable ready, doubled once. They watched me.

"The guy in the driveway. Spits a lot," I said.

"He's just a guy I know," Cormier said.

"He's just a guy you know who just got you in big trouble."

"I didn't tell Libby to do nothing. I didn't."

"We're going for a ride," I said. "You and me."

"Like hell."

"Or I go to the cops right now," I said.

Cormier looked too big for the Volvo. His knees were drawn up as he told me he hadn't told anybody to do anything to me, that they wouldn't have done anything like this anyway because it wasn't worth going to jail over. He kept saying it, but I told him what had happened, I told him what had been said, I told him about how his pal had enjoyed harassing me, and after a while he stopped saying it wasn't true.

We drove out Route 2 to the west, past McDonald's and the Androscoggin Shopping Center and a couple of tourist motels. I turned around in the parking lot of one of them, and came back toward town. By the time we went over the metal bridge, I had decided I believed him.

Cormier had no reason to rough me up. He had thought he was home-free, until now.

"'Don't suppose there's any way you'd forget it," he said. "I'll get your car fixed. Just tell me how much. I'll give you the money tonight."

I kept driving. He looked out the window. The trucks were lined up to unload at the pulp mill which was across the canal. Arthur's canal.

"I want the window fixed," I said. "But that's not all I want. I want information. And I want you to get it. You do that for me, maybe you'll stay out of this."

"What do I look like, friggin' Sherlock Holmes?"

"That's your problem. You don't want to do it, we can go right over to the police station and I'll file a complaint all right. I'll get some nice color pictures taken of my hands all bloody. See what a jury thinks about that."

Cormier looked at me, then looked out the window.

"Somebody is sending my girlfriend nasty pictures with nasty letters. They called her on the phone. I don't know who; do you?"

He was looking at me now. I watched his face. It was relaxed and blank, as if he didn't know what I was talking about. I relaxed, too, 95 percent sure that he didn't know anything about any of it.

"It could be somebody from the mill," I said. "You see if you can find out."

"How the hell am I gonna do that?"

"You know a lot of people. Ask around. Make it a joke. I don't know. Do whatever you want."

He looked at me as if I'd asked him to find a cure for cancer.

"Your buddies were told to do this tonight. You say it wasn't you. I want to know who it was, and I want to know who's hassling my girlfriend. You can find out."

"You want all this by tomorrow morning or what?" Cormier said.

"You want to do five years in prison?"

"You're pushing your friggin' luck, you know that?" Cormier said.

"That's just what I was gonna say about you."

I went past the pulp mill and turned around under the glare of the mill-yard lights.

"That's not all," I said, driving back toward town. "This guy Arthur Bertin. The guy who died. See what you hear on the street about it. The cops haven't done a thing on it. Like they don't want to get involved. It's weird. See what you hear."

"How the hell am I gonna do that?"

"You and your buddy, Libby. In the driveway, you acted like you had an in with the cops."

We crossed the downtown bridge, turned on to Front Street.

"So does he have an in with cops or what?" I asked.

"I don't know what you call an in. His sister is married to a cop, is all."

"What cop is that?"

"LeMaire. Jimmy LeMaire."

It all hit me after I dropped Cormier off at a variety store on Waldo Street. I felt sick to my stomach and broke out in a sweat. It was all I could do to shift the car and get home, and when I did, I stood in front of the toilet, head down, feeling like I was going to vomit. I didn't, and finally I ran hot water from the tap and washed my face and hands.

Using a soft wet towel, I dabbed at my wrists until most of the black came off and they were red, stinging raw. My face was chafed on one side and there was a lump on the top of my head that was tender to touch.

Great shape to put out the paper.

I wiped my face and brushed my teeth and dabbed at my hair with a hairbrush. With all that, I still looked like hell.

I went into the kitchen and thought about eating. Instead, I opened a can of beer and took two long swallows. Just like in the movies: Take this. It will calm your nerves.

Numb them was more like it. I stood against the counter and ate a few crackers as I finished the beer. I was numb. My mind was shut down. The only thing I really wanted to do was crawl in bed and go to sleep. Instead, I had to go down and deal with the real world and real problems and turn a pile of junk into a newspaper that people would buy and read. Oh, the bed was inviting, but I didn't accept. After a last cracker, I put on my now-dirty parka and went back to work.

Yes. I was true to my profession and true to the Androscoggin Review, and, when it came down to it, true to Cormier. I didn't go to the cops. But they came to me.

The cruiser was parked in front of the paper. I cursed and drove by and swung around the block, parking on Front Street, way down, so that they wouldn't see the car. Then I realized that would make them wonder more, me walking up on foot, all cut to hell, so I circled around onto Main Street again, but parked just around the corner from the office, away from the lights. When I walked up to the front door, Vigue was coming out. When Cindy and Marion saw me, they bustled out onto the sidewalk.

"What happened?" Cindy Melodrama said. "Are you all right? My God, we didn't know what happened. You didn't tell anybody where you were going, and when you were gone so long, on deadline day, I mean, we didn't know what to think."

What to think, I thought. Try how to think. But I fought off the urge to say it, too.

"I'm fine," I said slowly, even coming up with a little smile. "I went off the road, up near Roxbury Pond. Hit some ice and off she went. I cut my hands up a little, but nothing serious. Just took me a while to get the car out. No big deal. I'm fine. I would have called, but the nearest phone was right here."

Cindy looked at me, disappointed that I wasn't more severely maimed.

"Well, you don't look fine," she said.

"A little worse for wear," Vigue put in, eyeing me with that practiced cop's eye, listening with that cop's ear, that ear that can detect a lie intuitively.

Vern came out of the door and asked what happened, and I had to stand on the cold sidewalk, in the light showing from the front office, and give an abridged version of my already-abridged story.

"How's the car?" Vern said.

"Not too bad. Mostly the glass. I cut my hands on the window trying to get the damn door open. That's gonna be fun to replace. A driver's-side window for a sixty-four Volvo. How are you guys doing? Hope you didn't let my absence affect your production schedule. We've got a paper to get out."

It fell flat. They all looked at me like I was either crazy or, in Vigue's case, lying, and I got the feeling that I'd better not make these mishaps a habit, or I'd start to lose their respect. But everyone is entitled to one kidnapping and near-death from thugs and frostbite. Hell, in this town, maybe everybody was entitled to two.

A couple of people stopped-the guy from the florist's across the street, a retired guy who used to drive a truck for the town, and now had something to do with kids' football-so we started to go inside before we drew a real crowd. I was at the door when Vigue nodded toward the street.

"Got a sec?" he said.

I did, so we stood at the curb by his cruiser until the florist and the football guy moved on. Vigue touched his mike and said he'd be back on patrol, then lit a cigarette.

"Must have been a hell of a crash," he said. "What'd you do? Cut yourself out with your wrists?"

I rubbed my wrists and stuck my hands in my pockets. "Ah, not as bad as it looks. I just slid off the road. I said turn and the car said no. Road curved and I went straight. Going a little fast for the conditions, as they say. Car's fine, really."

Vigue looked at me, then looked away again.

"I know when somebody's bullshitting me, and you're bull-shitting me," he said. "A car accident don't cut your wrists like that. Unless you get real depressed about the whole thing and decide to do yourself in. You got anything to tell me, you can tell me now. Or you can keep it. I'm not gonna drag it out of you."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Shoot yourself," Vigue said.

He tossed the cigarette butt onto the street, where it scattered red sparks and then died.

"I think you're full of shit," he said.

"Isn't that state police territory up there?"

"Unless there's some connection to Androscoggin, chappie. And something tells me you weren't tangling with a bunch of upcountry hillbillies. Am I right?"

I looked down the street.

"I'm not too popular in town right now," I said. "People at St. Amand think I'm out to get the mill. And I think somebody ought to do something about Arthur getting killed, to be honest. People are calling my girlfriend. She's getting threatening letters. Then I was supposed to come in and file a complaint against Cormier, but I didn't. Stuff still happened."

"Change your mind?"

"He's leaving town anyway," I said. "Let him go."