Flat Lake in Winter Read online

  To the David Brucks of the world, the Andrea Lyons, the Judy Clarkes, the Kevin Doyles. They, far more than I, are the ones who continue to fight the battle. They are my heroes.

  If a man is not truly his self when he acts, shall he be said to be answerable before the Crown?

  Or is it not as though someone separate and apart from him has committed the offense?

  – Regina v. Hawkins

  SOME MURDER STORIES begin with noisy struggles, with blood-chilling screams in the night, with sirens wailing through the streets. But this story begins in a place called Flat Lake, a tiny smudge on the map in the middle of Ottawa County, buried deep in the heart of New York State’s Adirondack Mountains. And because folks up there tend to live somewhat far apart from one another, there are no streets to speak of. So there were no noisy struggles heard, no blood-chilling screams in the night to wake neighbors, and no sirens to come wailing.

  This story begins with a phone call.

  THE CALL CAME into the Flat Lake Police Headquarters at 5:13 the morning of August 31, 1997. The title Flat Lake Police Headquarters was something of a misnomer, actually. What was grandly termed “headquarters” was in reality little more than a telephone - an old-fashioned, black rotary one, at that - sitting atop a worn oak desk that was in turn shared with the Flat Lake Town Supervisor, the Flat Lake Chamber of Commerce, and the Flat Lake Fish and Game Warden.

  It being well before nine o’clock (not to mention the Sunday in the middle of Labor Day weekend), there was nobody at headquarters to hear the ringing of the telephone - not the part-time Chief of Police, nor his part-time deputy; not the Town Supervisor; not the head of the local Chamber of Commerce; and certainly not the Fish and Game Warden.

  But modern technology had come to Flat Lake earlier that year, discovering it hiding in the woods of northwest Ottawa County. By some feat of electronic wizardry explained only as “call forwarding” by the telephone sales representative, the phone now ceased to ring altogether at headquarters after the first two rings, and began instead to ring at the home of the Duty Officer On Call.

  Now there really was no duty officer, not in the sense of it being a real person, that is. The duty officer was more like a concept, a designation: It was simply whoever’s turn it was to be the “call forwardee” when the phone rang at headquarters and nobody was there to hear it or pick it up. Which was just about all the time.

  On this particular Sunday morning, it happened that both the Chief of Police, a round, amiable fellow named Jess Markham, and his deputy were up in Quebec, camping and fishing for great northern pike. While some would wonder about this arrangement in the days and weeks to follow - the notion of the entire police force taking the weekend off - none of the locals was surprised to hear about it. For one thing, the deputy was the chief’s wife, Sally; for another, they were both unpaid volunteers; and finally, most towns no longer even had police departments, having long since surrendered policing to the county folks. So even if Chief Markham had been around that weekend, it is highly unlikely that he would have played a significant role in the affair: He had virtually no experience with criminal investigations, and had never so much as seen a dead body, or worked a homicide case. Almost all of his duties - and those of his wife - were devoted to ceremonial matters and enforcing the town’s 35-miles-an-hour speed limit.

  The Town Supervisor, Walter Nash - a seventy-nine-year-old stick of a man who had held the job (also as an unpaid volunteer) for a shade under forty years - was spending the weekend visiting his sister in Tyler Falls, way down in Duchess County. Something about a big family picnic.

  As for the head of the Chamber of Commerce, there was none. Maude Terwilliger had served in that capacity ever since its inception eleven years earlier. But when a bad case of gallstones had forced Maude to retire the winter before, the position (once again a voluntary, unpaid one) had remained vacant. Not that anyone really noticed: Truth was, there really wasn’t any commerce in Flat Lake, except for a general store, a rod and gun shop, an outboard-engine and snowmobile dealership, a diner, a filling station, and a few women who rented out rooms on a bed-and-breakfast basis.

  Thus, by a simple process of elimination, Bass McClure, the equally unpaid volunteer Fish and Game Warden, had become the Duty Officer on Call for the weekend.

  It should be noted that McClure’s given name was not really Bass. He’d been born Brian Carlin McClure fifty-seven years earlier, right there in Flat Lake. Or at least over in Mercy Hospital, which was located in Cedar Falls, the county seat and the only town of consequence for fifty miles no matter which direction you drove. He’d taken up fishing and hunting and trapping as a youngster, pretty much to the exclusion of schoolwork, ignoring warnings from his parents and teachers that he’d never amount to anything but a “mountain man.” But in the prosperity of the 1980s, he’d found a living as a guide for hunters and sport fishermen who came up from Albany, or New York City, or even Long Island, in search of largemouth bass in summer, or deer, bear, and moose in winter. People had been calling him Bass for so long that almost nobody remembered his real name anymore. His driver’s license identified him as Bass M. McClure; even the plate on his old Jeep Renegade read BASS 1. Cost him an extra $18 every two years for that.

  As soon as he heard the phone ringing, McClure knew it had to be from headquarters, the way it rang two rings at a time, unlike an ordinary call. Ring, ring . . . ring, ring . . . ring, ring - He reached out in the darkness and picked it up after the third pair of rings, at the same time glancing at the red digital display of his clock radio. Five-thirteen. He shut his eyes as soon as he had the receiver in his hand, but he continued to see a red 5:13 burned into his retinas. He wondered if it would turn to 5:14 when it changed on the clock radio, or if it would stay frozen at 5:13.

  “McClure,” he said into the phone.

  For a moment, there was silence. Then a boy’s voice, or perhaps a young man’s. “Hello? Hello?” Urgency was McClure’s first impression. Urgency, and confusion.

  “Who’s this?” McClure asked, coming fully awake.

  “This is Jonathan Hamilton.”

  McClure recognized not only the name, but the voice. He’d known Jonathan almost since the boy’d been born. Knew how, ever since the death of his parents, he’d lived alone with his grandparents on the family estate, up on the north end of the lake. Even knew he’d been named after two uncles, John and Nathan.

  “Hello, Jonathan. This is Bass, Bass McClure.” He tried to say it in as soothing a voice as he could, sensing right away that there was something the matter, and wanting to calm the youngster.

  “Hel-hello, Bass.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “What’s the problem, Jonathan?”

  “Grandpa Carter,” he said. “And Grandma Mary Alice.”

  “What about them?” McClure found himself talking as he would to a child. Jonathan Hamilton was close to thirty years old, but he was widely known to be slow. At least that was the charitable way of putting it.

  “Th-th-they’re hurt?”

  McClure would remember later that it was a statement, all the way until the very end, when Jonathan’s voice had risen, turning it into a question.

  “Hurt bad?” McClure asked.

  “Bad.”

  “Real bad?”

  It took a moment before McClure got a response. When he did, it was an echo of his own words, but without the inflection, and without the question.

  “Real bad,” Jonathan said.

  IN THE INVESTIGATION that followed, Bass McClure would explain that the thought had occurred to him to call Mercy Hospital before heading over to the Hamilton place and suggest they have an ambulance meet him
there. He’d also thought about ringing up the state troopers at the barracks on Route 30. But he’d dismissed both ideas, and decided instead to go himself, without doing anything else other than slipping into his trousers and shoes, and grabbing a windbreaker. As for his car keys, they were already in the ignition of the Renegade. Flat Lake was that kind of place.

  When asked why he didn’t phone for backup, or at least try to raise somebody on his CB while driving, McClure could only stare back at the investigator.

  “Backup? I’m not a cop. I’m a fishin’ guide. What do I know about backup?”

  It is exactly 18.2 miles by road from Bass McClure’s home to the Hamilton estate. Most of the trip is by dirt road. Because there had been little in the way of rain over the last several weeks, the road was in pretty good shape, and McClure was able to push the Renegade, covering the distance in just over twenty-five minutes. He would recall later that it was already beginning to get light by the time he turned into the long driveway that led up to the main house. That would have made it right about six o’clock, working from reports of local weather observations obtained from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

  McClure had been on the Hamilton estate many times over the years. He’d grown up with Porter Hamilton, who was Jonathan’s father. He’d hunted and fished the land with Porter, and had been an occasional house guest of Porter and his wife, before the two of them had been asleep in separate wings of the house one night, when a fire had broken out, sending smoke pouring through the building. The carbon monoxide that had killed Porter and his wife had landed Jonathan in the hospital for a week, and left its mark on him thereafter, causing him to be even slower, as McClure put it, than before. Others weren’t always so kind; “strange,” “different,” and “retarded” were some of the adjectives he’d heard used from time to time.

  Porter’s parents - Jonathan’s grandparents - still allowed McClure the run of the property after the accident, but it had been some time since he’d taken them up on the invitation. Now, as he climbed out of the Renegade, he was struck again by the quiet beauty of the place, its stone walls and cedar buildings set back among the huge, old-growth evergreens - majestic spruce, pine, hemlock, and cedar - some of them upward of sixty feet tall.

  The first building McClure came to was the gatehouse, a small structure that had never been occupied so far as he knew, and which looked dark and empty from the outside that morning. Continuing past it, he headed up the gentle incline of a pathway. He knew from having taken it numerous times that it was made of flagstone, large slabs that had been hauled in by horse-drawn wagon from a local quarry during the construction of the place, almost 100 years ago. But the pine needles that covered the stones were by now so deep as to make the underfooting soft, and as he listened to the crunching of his steps McClure had the sensation that he was walking on bare earth, as it might have been centuries ago. This from a man born and raised in Flat Lake, who made his living off the land and knew the woods of Ottawa County as well as anyone.

  About 100 yards up, the pathway forked. To the left would be the modest guest cottage, in which Jonathan made his home; to the right the great house, the largest of the half-dozen buildings that dotted the estate. Pausing for a moment at the juncture to silence the crunching noise of his footsteps, McClure looked for some hint, and listened for some sound, that might direct him to wherever the problem lay.

  What he heard was a soft moaning sound, a keening that at first he thought had to be coming from a small animal. In years past, McClure had done some trapping. The sound he heard now reminded him more than anything else of the cry of a coyote with its leg caught in a snare. It was plaintive, but no longer urgent, as though the animal had been like that for some time - past the initial surprise and panic at its capture, it had settled down to a steady crying over the permanence of its predicament.

  McClure cocked his head back and forth, the way a deer might do, giving each ear a chance to locate the source of the sound, in order to get a fix on it. It was early enough that the wind wasn’t up yet, so there was no creaking of tree trunks or rustling of branches to throw him off. He became aware for the first time of the chirping of birds greeting the new daylight, but their sounds were high-pitched, different enough to filter out without difficulty.

  The moaning was definitely coming from his right, the direction of the main house. Walking rapidly - McClure was not a man who ran - he followed the right fork until it brought him out into the clearing that surrounded the house. The light was much better there, without the canopy of overhead branches that had blocked out the sky along the pathway. And there, sitting on the front steps, hunched over with his arms wrapped tightly around his rib cage, rocking forward and back almost imperceptibly, was Jonathan Hamilton. And though Jonathan’s mouth was closed and his lips didn’t appear to be moving, McClure could tell that the moaning sound was coming from somewhere deep inside him.

  Because Jonathan didn’t appear to notice McClure - and because McClure didn’t want to startle him - McClure spoke as he approached, from about twenty paces away. “Hello, Jonathan,” he said.

  Jonathan didn’t say anything at that point, McClure would later write in his report, but he did look up. His eyes had a “faraway look,” according to McClure, and he seemed to be in a state of shock or “unawareness.” Unsure that Jonathan had recognized him, McClure identified himself.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Bass.”

  Still, Jonathan gave no indication of real recognition, and continued to sit - and rock - even when McClure walked right up to him. At that point, McClure could see what looked like blood on Jonathan’s forehead.

  “What happened?” McClure asked him.

  Though Jonathan said nothing, he took his arms from around his upper body and, elbows bent, extended his hands in front of him in such a way that the palms were turned upward, as though to indicate that he didn’t know. McClure could see right away that there was blood - or what appeared to be blood - on both hands. Laboratory tests would later confirm that it was indeed human blood, as were stains under the arms of the flannel shirt he had on, apparently left there when Jonathan had wrapped his own arms around his body.

  “Stand up,” McClure said in a firm voice, trying to bring Jonathan out of his stupor.

  Jonathan did as he was told. McClure - himself a shade over six feet tall - was struck by Jonathan’s height: He found himself looking up into the other man’s eyes, which were a good three or four inches above the level of his own. And, as his report would later indicate, Jonathan was barefoot at the time.

  McClure nodded toward the inside of the house. “Show me,” he said.

  ROUTE 30 IS one of New York State’s longest roads, aside from the Thruway system itself. It begins in the south-central crook of the state, where the east branch of the Delaware River has created a trout fisherman’s haven on the New York and Pennsylvania line, amid towns given names like Fishs Eddy, Hale Eddy, Long Eddy, and East Branch. From there, it meanders northeast, before turning pretty much due north at Margaretville, following the east branch until it becomes the Schoharie, winding its way up past Grand Gorge, Cobleskill, Schenectady, Johnstown, and Gloversville. As though motivated by thirst, it continues up the west shore of Great Sacandaga Lake, finds Lake Pleasant, Indian Lake, Blue Lake, Long Lake, and Lake Eaton, before entering Ottawa County. As it continues ever northward, it will take the traveler to Tupper Lake, Raquette Pond, the Saranac Lakes, Meacham Lake, the Deer River Flow, and Lake Titus, before crossing the Salmon River at Malone, some 270 miles from where it began. As though bowing to some symmetry in nomenclature, it ends at the Canadian border almost as it began, at a fishing town called Trout River.

  Nowhere, however, does Route 30 cut through more spectacular country than it does in Ottawa County, simply because no part of New York - which can be an awesomely beautiful state - is more magnificent than the old-growth forests of Ottawa County, deep in the heart of the Adirondack range. The steep terrain, the harsh climat
e, and the sheer remoteness of the place have conspired to give it a pristine, almost primitive grace. Crystal-clear streams, lakes, and ponds are framed by ancient, towering conifers with hues that range from pale blue-gray, through ever-darkening shades of green, to almost black. Against them, the delicate lines of white birch offer stark contrast. And with no serious source of air pollution for hundreds of miles to the west, the sky can take on a blue that is nothing short of dazzling.

  Amid all this splendor, someone has decided to erect the barracks to house Troop J of the New York State Police, presumably selecting the location on Route 30 not so much for the beauty of the place, but for its proximity to the two main east-west highways that cut through the region, Route 3 to the north, and Route 28 to the south. Yet even the barracks fit into the surrounding landscape, constructed as they are from local stone and timber, and protected by natural stains, with a minimum of glass showing, so as to keep the cold at bay.

  The Sunday morning before Labor Day was traditionally a quiet time at the barracks, and there was every expectation that it would be that way this year. What traffic there was (and there was never very much to speak of) would be spread out over the three-day weekend, with the bulk of it coming on Monday, as vacationers pulled their tents or packed their trailers and headed back downstate. It was the end of summer: already too late for swimming and fishing, but still too early for the turning of leaves. And hunting season was two months away; not even the bow hunters were due for another six weeks.

  That particular Sunday morning found three officers at the barracks - two troopers and one investigator (a title the equivalent of that of detective). When the call came in at 0618 military time, one of the troopers, a young man named Edward Manning, was the only one of the three who was awake. He picked up the phone on the second ring.

  “Troop J, Manning,” he said.

  “This is Bass McClure,” the voice on the phone said. “I need to speak to the senior investigator on duty.”