Chapter One
A nine-year old boy had been missing for over four hours when Will Buchanan stopped to check his pack at the Direttissima trailhead at Pinkham Notch. He glanced up and caught his rookie partner Toby Winston staring at him. "What's the matter?"

Toby started. "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Buchanan. I was just looking at your pin."

Will self-consciously fingered the enamel pin he had fastened on a leather patch to a lanyard he wore around his neck. It was circular, a gold compass rose with the heavy points of a Red Cross sticking out behind. In the center was the profile of the Old Man of the Mountain, and in the foreground, a raised hand holding an ice ax.

The pin identified Will as a member of an elite volunteer search and rescue team. "And I guess you want one of these," Will said.

"Yes, sir. That's what I'm working for."

Toby, a part-time carpenter from Colorado and the new kid on the block, was an inveterate back country skier and rescuer-in-training, reputed to be an expert in avalanche work.

Will hooked his thumbs through his pack straps. The wind suddenly picked up, the air heavy with moisture. "Looks like we're going to get some weather."

"Thunderstorms. Sometime this afternoon."

"Then I guess we better get going to find this kid. Ever been on this trail?"

"No, sir."

"Look, Toby. Before we get started, you have to stop calling me 'sir.' Call me 'Will.' "

Toby looked askance at Will, like he wasn't sure. "Okay."

"The Direttissima is kind of rolling." Will moved his arm, simulating a ripple effect, "and we don't start really climbing until we reach the Glen Boulder Trail."

"Gotcha."

Will chuckled, thinking of two other searchers who had drawn the task of circling the opposite way. "You should feel lucky you're not with Levesque and Hatcher," he said. "That Huntington Ravine Trail is a real ball buster."

"I know. I've been on it."

At a shade over 6,200 feet, Mount Washington is the highest peak in the northeastern United States and boasts some of the worst weather in the world. Elevation and weather aside, Will understood that it was also the unique topography leading to the peaks of Washington and the rest of the Presidentials, the numerous ravines, technically called glacial cirques-Huntington, Tuckerman, the Great Gulf-that also posed danger. And now that kid was most likely off trail somewhere, moon-eyed tired, scared shitless.

Will established a quick pace. His legs felt stiff, and as he set his rhythm he reviewed what Lieutenant Randall Cody, Fish and Game incident commander, had told them about the lost boy. Part of a church group. Last seen at Hermit Lake Shelter. Reported missing around 9:00. Maybe wearing Air Jordans. This last piece of information was most valuable, and before setting out Will had consulted "the book," a compendium of pictures of nothing but the soles of shoes.

As Will walked, his eyes shifted to the ground. The trail was littered with numerous fresh prints, but so far he hadn't picked up anything that looked like the tread he had committed to memory, wedges of small nubs spoked out in a pattern of circles.

They hiked for fifteen minutes when Will suddenly stopped. He placed his hands on his hips and looked up and around, like a bear scenting the air.

"What is it?" Toby asked.

"Nothing. This is where we found that murdered woman about a month ago."

"Oh."

"I won't get her out of my mind for a while."

"Someone stabbed her, right?"

"Several times." Will let out some air and let his head drop. "It must have been a terrible death. She had obviously been running from the guy who did it and put up a good fight. There were defensive wounds on her arms."

"You know it's a guy?"

"Or a very strong woman."

Will lifted his ball cap, took it off, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He scanned the area again. "I just don't understand why the killer would pick a spot so out in the open, so near a trailhead. With the traffic this trail gets, it just doesn't make sense."

"So, they never found who did it?"

Will shook his head no. "And probably won't. There's just not that much to go on." He slapped his cap against his leg and put it back on his head. "Let's get out of here. This place give me the creeps."

They passed several day hikers on the trail, most of them probably making their way back to Pinkham after cavorting around Glen Ellis Falls. Will and Toby exchanged hellos as they passed without giving away any hint of their mission.

When they reached the junction of trails, Will called in their location to headquarters. According to Cody, the kid was still missing. Seven others of search and rescue had showed up, the team now totaling eighteen, and a pair were working in behind Will and Toby. Will signed off.

"What channel are you on?" Toby asked.

Will told him the number. "AMC has its own UHF frequency with 216 channels," he added. "They're all filled up."

Toby shook his head. "You know, that's something I'm still not sure about. You've got your AMC, your Fish and Game, your USFS. I mean, who's in charge?"

Will winked at him. "Ah, you're obviously not aware of the MOU."

Toby rolled his eyes. "All right. What's an MOU?"

"Memorandum of Understanding. You're in acronym heaven around here. People like to think in short hand."

"Obviously. So what is it?"

"An agreement that says Fish and Game is in charge of anything that happens in the woods except for the Cutler River Drainage -Tuckerman, Huntington and Gulf of Slides-from December 1 to May 1 when Snow Rangers from the USFS take over."

"I see."

"I know this because I memorized what I just told you," Will said. "It can be confusing, but the organizations generally get along."

"They need to."

"Good point."

Back Country Search and Rescue represented the volunteer wing in the Whites. Dr. Thomas Singleton, head of a local school for wilderness medicine, had succeeded in organizing under one banner what had been several "vigilante" groups of rescuers that had sometimes squabbled over jurisdiction. Singleton had tapped Will for his tracking skills. "We need you and your savvy out there," Singleton had told him.

As they hiked up the Boulder Ridge Trail, Will concentrated on the terrain. He kept his eye to the ground but stopped every now and again to check for logical places the kid might have gone off trail and entered the woods. They headed past a birch stand and into a mixed grove of hardwoods, mostly poplar and maple.

The sky was an angry gray. Turbid clouds puffed and skirted over their heads. Will could taste the rain coming in.

For a long time neither said anything. Will glanced at his watch. Almost 3:00. He figured at most they had three hours of light left.

About halfway between Glen Boulder and the Avalanche Brook Ski Trail Will and Toby took a break. They sat on rocks on the side of the trail and shared apples and a bag of GORP.

"Have you done your three nights on Washington yet?" Will asked.

"Nope. As soon as the snow flies. I've completed everything else, though."

To join Back Country Search and Rescue, you had not only to spend three nights alone on Mt. Washington in winter, but run a mile and a half under twelve minutes and lift a percentage of your body weight according to age as well as so many pushups per minute. Will had puffed through the mile and a half in eleven minutes and change.

"You should get your pin some time next spring, then."

Toby suddenly turned serious. "I don't know what they're going to do, though."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, are they going to keep the Old Man's face on the pin now that he's gone?"

Will smiled. Toby was referring to the recent loss of the New Hampshire icon. The Old Man had literally lost face, the granite chin and nose tumbling to the talus floor. Folks around here talked about the event as if they had lost a relative. "That's what mountains do. They fall down."

"Yeah, but…"

"I don't think you have to worry. The pin is just a symbol, anyway."

"So was the Old Man."

Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by the footsteps of another hiker coming down trail. Will immediately recognized him as Elwood Reese. Cody had told Will he'd be heading down from the weather station.

Elwood was a spry sixty-something with bandy chicken legs that stuck out of his shorts. He wore a sweat-stained cowboy hat, the brim pulled down over his forehead, and he was poking the ground with a single ski pole. "Well, I thought I'd run into you fellas soon." He wrung Will's hand.

"How's the weather above tree line?" Will asked.

He winked. "Blowing like Monica." He pulled at his wind shirt. "A little moist, too."

Elwood was not an official member of search and rescue, but he had been involved with the AMC since Will could remember. He was one of those odd ducks who couldn't get enough of the mountain and knew the trails in his sleep. He spent most of his time now working as a sign cutter.

Will introduced Toby.

"Good to meet you, young fella."

Will motioned with his head toward the trail. "Probably doesn't make sense to go up farther."

"I don't know," Elwood said. "My eyesight's not so good. I might have missed the little bugger."

"I doubt it." Will called back headquarters and told Cody that he had met up with Elwood. He was informed that other searchers were sweeping where Elwood had been, making it unnecessary for Will and Toby to continue up ridge.

"You know," Will said, map in hand, to Cody on the radio, "I'm wondering if we should head back to Pinkham along the Avalanche Brook Ski Trail. If the boy came down this way, it's possible he might have thought it was the Boulder Ridge Trail."

Cody agreed.

Will signed off. He had never been on the ski trail, but the map showed it running parallel to the Direttissima. The kid could very easily have gotten off course. Or maybe he saw them coming and took off down the ski trail to hide from them. It wasn't the first time Will had heard of such a thing, and, as Cody had mentioned earlier, the boy had been teased by a bully in the group before his disappearance. He might be hiding out for spite.

Will, Toby, and Elwood worked their way down the path and in another ten minutes reached where the ski trail crossed the Boulder Ridge.

The ski trail was less defined, grown over with grass and stumps cut close to the ground. While Will wouldn't be able to easily pick up sole prints in this terrain, he could at least tell if someone had been down this way by the bent over grass.

His spirits rose as he tracked, for the grass told him that there had been recent traffic. They trudged across a small ridge, then eventually came to an open area. Here, it looked as if there had been some trail work, and not too long ago. The air smelled of fresh cut spruce and the ground was muddied up.

"Wait a minute," Elwood said. "I need a break." He sat down on a log, his hands resting on his knees.

Will knelt and examined a boot print. Lug sole.

"I'm getting too old for this shit," Elwood said, wiping his forehead with a paisley blue handkerchief.

Will turned his head, still kneeling. "You okay?" he asked. "You're not going to crap out on me are you?"

Elwood exhaled loudly. He shook his head no. "I'm too ornery."

"What happens when it gets dark?" Toby asked.

"What do you mean, what happens?" Will said.

"Well, do we keep looking?"

Will stood. "Wouldn't do much good. Cody'll probably work with the dogs. I can guarantee you he's already planning Day Two."

Toby looked down at his shoes, then back to Will. "What happens if they don't have anything, you know, any clothing, with the kid's scent?"

Elwood jumped in. "Oh, these dogs don't discriminate. You just run them up trail and station them at the head of ravines. Ravines are like chimneys, you see. The air blows right up them. These dogs just pick up human scent."

"And if they don't smell anything," Will added, "then tomorrow we'll probably be in those ravines poking around. That's usually the course of things, a quick search of the trails, then the ravines, then a line search, you know, you've seen it on TV. Whole bunch of searchers moving in a line, GPS at both ends."

"Doesn't sound like fun," Toby said.

Just then the two-way squelched. Will keyed the mike and copied. Cody's voice announced that the kid had been found.

State Police had picked up the boy hitching on Route 16 heading south. He had come down from the shelter right behind the group, hid in the bathroom of the main lodge all morning, got scared when he realized the commotion was about him, and tried to make it all disappear by running away.

"Thanks, Cody. We're coming in."

"Son of a bitch," Elwood said. "That kid's in deep shit."

"Well, at least he isn't deep shit dead," Toby said.

Will didn't say anything . He just stared at the radio. He was pleased that the kid had been found, but the sense of anticlimax left him deflated. Toby was right, though, at least the kid wasn't dead.

The wind gusted hard and the trees wooshed above their heads. In the distance, the rumble of thunder.

"Looks like it's time to move," Will said. He checked the dotted line on the map where the ski trail angled down and almost touched the Direttissima before emptying out at the base lodge. He did a quick guesstimate using the first joint of his little finger as a measuring device against the scale, then walked it along the dotted line. "We'll be out of here in about an hour," he said.

Will let Elwood set the pace along the ski trail, and he and Toby followed in behind. As Will walked, he reviewed what had just happened. The day actually hadn't turned out too bad. He'd be home before supper, and afterwards, perhaps he'd stop in and see what Laurie was up to.

They weren't living together, now. A consentual hiatus. The time out didn't mean they were to avoid each other, though. In fact, the sex had been terrific since they decided to live separately, something Will had scratched his head about.

Then he thought about school and the labs he had planned to set up before the rescue call had interrupted his schedule. It was the third Saturday in September, three weeks into the fall term. The labs would just have to wait until tomorrow.

They had been hiking for less than a half hour. The wind was blowing steady now. Lightning flashed behind them. With luck, they just might make it back before the storm really let loose.

A strong gust pushed at Will's back, and his eye picked up something red, fluttering off trail. He stopped. Elwood and Toby kept walking. Will scanned the edge of the woods beyond a small meadow. The wind howled and the red flashed again. It stood out in sharp relief against the green and brown foliage.

Up ahead, Toby stopped, turned, and yelled, "What's wrong?"

"Just wait up a minute!" Will stepped off trail and into dense ground cover. As he approached, he could see a piece of red fabric that had caught on a tree. A few more strides and he was standing eye-level with what he reasoned might be a piece of shirt. As he reached for it, his foot knocked against something that he first thought was a stick.

He looked down casually, then drew back. Had he seen right? He stooped and carefully pulled aside some brush.

It was a human hand, the flesh partially decomposed, attached to a severed arm, still wrapped in the shredded sleeve of a red shirt.