Monster (10 page)

The body of trackers inched forward again.

This one was more visible, a roundish impression in some humus. To Reed it looked as though someone had knelt there and left a knee print.

Pete went on his belly again, eyeing the print carefully, then measuring it. He straightened up, still on one knee. He was troubled, eyeing the area between the two prints. “Where are the
front
feet?”

“We’ve missed something,” Don agreed as he flagged the print.

“Well, we’ll find ’em,” said Pete. He stretched out his tracking stick to measure the distance between the two tracks, but it wouldn’t reach. He chuckled. “Either that, or this bear has one heck of a stride.”

They moved ahead, this time according to the length they’d found between the first two tracks. The third one, nothing more than a scuff on a rotting log, was where it should have been, the same distance from the second as the second was from the first. They had a pattern.

Sing crouched in the doorway of the sorrowful old cabin and took one last shot of the destruction inside. She was amazed. In her line of work, she’d photographed and reconstructed crime scenes involving hoodlums and vandals, domestic spats, drug-related murders, and meth lab explosions, but they were nothing like this. For one thing, the beast that made this mess was far, far outside the human category. Certainly, human scum could show this kind of disregard for property, but to snap support posts like toothpicks and tear whole walls open required an inestimable strength she had never encountered. For another thing—and this still felt a little odd to her—according to the rules out here, this wasn’t even a crime scene but made perfect sense: bear gets hungry, bear finds food, bear does what is necessary to get it. Tearing the windows out of a building, smashing cots and shelves, and splintering a door were shocking, destructive acts to civilized perceptions, but to a bear’s way of thinking, no different from clawing the termites out of an old stump.

It was frightening and fascinating, and not hard to understand.

If it was a bear.

“How’s it going?” Jimmy, the conservation officer, called from the bridge.

He was obviously impatient, and she couldn’t blame him. Agnes the dog handler had arrived with Caesar, and Jimmy and the hunters were ready to move, so the only thing holding them up was Sing’s directive from Sheriff Mills. She’d photographed Reed and Beck’s campsite, their food stash, the log bridge, and the littered area around the cabin. She’d paced off distances and made notes. Everything that was directly knowable she’d recorded on several pages. She’d worked expeditiously, but the process took precious time. Jimmy had somehow managed to defer to the sheriff on this one, but she could feel him breathing down her neck with each passing minute.

With great relief she called back, “I’m through,” and stowed her camera and notebook in her backpack.

Jimmy immediately turned his attention to Agnes. “All right. Let’s get a scent and track that baby!” The hunting party, with sniffing Caesar in the lead, nearly stampeded off the bridge and down the trail.

They jostled past Sing as if she were an obstacle. She hurried up the trail, relieved with every step that put distance between them.

The other team members were now covering the surrounding area in widening quadrants. She could hear them calling to each other, maintaining voice contact as they worked their way among the trees like fleas in a hairbrush. At certain moments she spotted some of them, but she hadn’t caught sight of Sheriff Mills to fill him in on—

“Sing! Up here!”

Ah. He was waving to her from the hillside above the trail. She selected a route up the embankment with sufficient footholds and branches to grab, and worked her way to him. At the top, Mills and Deputy Saunders were waiting for her. They were examining the campsite, two sleeping bags on a ground cloth, cloistered in a tight pocket among some trees. It wasn’t an instant find; as Reed had warned, it was hard to see from the trail.

“Find anything unusual down there?” Mills asked her.

“Besides everything?” She looked down into the draw where Jimmy and his hunting party lurked near the cabin, waiting for Caesar to show them the way. “That bear was very hungry or very angry at being so hungry, or . . . Well, let’s just say he was highly motivated.”

“But no sign of Randy?”

She hated to tell him, “No sir.”

Mills’s expression was troubled as he scanned the forest in wide arcs, his eyes landing on the searchers below. “We need to find a body, Sing.”

The deputy suggested, “Why don’t we get Reed over here so he can show us where he saw it?”

“He won’t leave the search for Beck,” Sing cautioned.

Mills gazed at the rough map Reed had drawn. “We’ve located the campsite and the stash of food containers between the two trees . . . but this tree right here, the big cedar tree where the body is supposed to be . . . Well, maybe it’s the right tree, maybe it isn’t, but there’s no body.”

Then Jimmy cursed so loudly it startled them.

Agnes started hollering, “Caesar! Caesar, come, boy! Come, Caesar!”

Of course they had to watch. From up here the view was quite good.

Caesar was trying to run up the trail away from the cabin, and Agnes was hot on his heels, leash in hand. The dog stopped at her command, shied away again, answered her command again, then fidgeted, obviously wanting nothing but to get out of there. When Agnes finally snapped the leash onto his collar, he tugged at it, jerking in little circles, trembling and dribbling urine.

“What’s his problem?” Jimmy demanded, rifle in hand but with nothing to shoot. “I said,
what’s his problem
?”

“I don’t know!” the handler shouted back. “I’m about to retire him! He’s just never acted this way!” Her legs were getting snarled in the leash.

“Well, does he track bears or doesn’t he?” Jimmy asked.

“He tracks bears! Black bears, grizzly bears, any kind of bears!”

“Well, he’s not doing us much good now, is he?” Jimmy turned toward the marksman behind him. “What did you say?”

The marksman was not the kind to be intimidated. “I said, ‘Maybe this ain’t a bear.’”

Now Jimmy was simmering at a temperature even Sing could feel from the hill. He pointed his finger at the man. “Excuse me, Janson! If you’re going to be on this team, you’re going to handle yourself and your mouth with professionalism, you got that?”

“Yes sir, I got that.”

Now Jimmy addressed all three people in a voice suitable for a hundred: “This is a rogue bear we’re after. It’s serious business. We’re going to keep our minds clear and straight ahead so we get the job done without anyone getting hurt, is that understood?”

Janson nodded, the other hunter said yes, and Agnes just petted Caesar.

Jimmy leaned in on her. “Agnes, we need a dog that’ll track this bear, and if your dog can’t do that, we need another dog. Are we clear on that?”

“Clear enough.” Agnes steamed a moment, then led Caesar back up the trail toward Abney. “C’mon, boy. We don’t need any more of this!”

Caesar led her, only too eager to go.

Jimmy watched her go, then stomped around a bit, then conferred with his hunters, saying something about bait and bear stands.

The show was over. Sheriff Mills turned back to Sing and Deputy Saunders. “We’ll give the searchers a few more minutes, and then we’ll have to get Reed and Pete over here.”

Sing thought it wise to remind him, “Sheriff, every other aspect of Reed’s account holds up.”

Sheriff Mills regarded the cabin below. “So you don’t think one man could do that kind of damage to the cabin?”

She almost laughed. “Not even remotely. And if you’ll remember, Reed’s camera recorded pictures of the demolished cabin before it recorded pictures of Beck, alive and well.”

Mills nodded but asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve spotted any bear prints anywhere?”

She felt the strange sensation of thin ice under her feet—and maybe Reed’s. “Well, it is loose ground around here, lots of rock, lots of humus and pine needles that don’t register a print, at least to someone who isn’t a tracker.”

“We’ll see what Pete says.”

“Sure. We’ll see what Pete says. But, sir . . .” She felt nervous. “Reed never said anything about a bear. He provided no bear scenario. If there was foul play, if he had planned this—”

Mills held up his hand. “You don’t have to sell me.”

“I’m glad to hear it, sir.”

Mills only responded, “But we’d better pray they find Beck.”

Pete’s team was picking up some speed now that they knew what to look for. They’d worked their way up the hill another hundred feet while two trackers, accompanied by the marksman named Thorne, started crisscrossing their path a shouting distance ahead of them, hoping to encounter signs farther up.

For Reed, it was all too tedious. Beck could die in the dirt somewhere long before they would ever find her. Cap must’ve sensed his mood, because he kept whispering, “Easy, now, we’re moving okay; we’ll find her. Got to do it right.”

“What’d this thing do, have its claws cut?” Pete muttered.

Then came a shout from one of the trackers far up the hill. “We’ve got something!”

Pete told Reed and Cap, “Better stay here.” He and his men went on ahead.

Time stretched into an eternity, but Reed had no hurry left in him. He could only stand there and take frightened, furtive glances as Pete and his men disappeared into the forest. For a long time—such a long time—Reed heard them pushing through the limbs and brush as they spoke in hushed, clipped phrases and moved in a wide arc. When they finally came into sight again, they were far away, their outlines broken by a jittery web of branches and limbs. He could just barely see them approaching the other team members and whatever the object was.

Pete circled the object, then called out, “Come on up, Reed.”

Reed drew a deep breath and wiped his eyes clear.

“C’mon,” said Cap, touching his arm.

They pressed through the pines and firs, approximating the path the others had taken. When they finally emerged from the insistent, aggravating, view-blocking fingers of the forest, Reed could see the others gathered in a wide circle in front of a huge fallen log, the two marksmen warily standing guard. In the center of the circle was a blue backpack, not set there but dropped. It was dirty and the frame was bent—as if it had fallen over a waterfall. Every eye focused on Reed, waiting for the verdict.

five

Reed’s voice quavered though he tried to control it. “It’s hers. She picked out the color.”

“Don’t touch it,” said Pete, looking around the area and at his two flankers, visibly bothered about something. He asked Reed, “Do you know if there’s any food in there?”

“We packed some granola bars, and she may have had some of her lunch left over.”

Pete went down on all fours for a closer look, studying the pack on all sides. “If I were a camp-raiding kind of bear, I’d be interested in that. This one wasn’t. This pack doesn’t have a mark on it.” Then he pulled out his tweezers again and probed at one of the flaps. “Got some more of that hair here, tangled up in the Velcro. Tyler? Let’s get those medics up here with one of those . . . you know, those bags. We need to bag the whole thing up.”

Body bags,
Reed thought. Pete wasn’t very clever at talking in code.

Tyler got on his radio.

“May I see the hairs?” Cap asked, leaning over the pack. Pete pointed them out and Cap looked at them closely. He even sniffed them, then sniffed the pack.

“Any thoughts?” Reed asked.

Cap backed away as if caught in an illegal act. “Oh no, no, no thoughts. Just curious.”

“Got a pretty good toe print here,” Don reported from near the log.

“We’re on him now,” said Pete, showing a hint of excitement despite himself.

Cap went to have a look, hands clasped behind his back, unobtrusive.

“Check that log,” Pete told his guys. “See if he went over it.” Then he sniffed the pack himself and made a face. “Reed? Come smell this.”

Reed approached carefully, dropping to his knees, then all fours, crouching down to get his nose close enough to the blue fabric.

It was a defining moment he hadn’t expected: a reassuring horror, a dreadful relief, an encouraging fear. He knew this odor; for him, it was the stench of Beck’s abduction, the reek of the creature that had chased them and taken her. It had filled the air the previous night and become a suppressed and forgotten ingredient in what he’d taken for madness, a crazed illusion he’d come to doubt. But that was then. Now, among friends and objective observers in broad daylight, it was real—horribly, reassuringly real! “This is what we smelled last night. The smell was everywhere!”

“No wonder Caesar had a problem,” Pete mused.

The flank men had reached the other side of the log and were checking the ground. “Got a heel print over here, deep compression,” Don reported.

Tyler checked the top of the log, his head low, eyeing the aged, crumbling grain.

“What do you see, Tyler?” Pete urged.

Tyler looked at the heel print again, then at the top of the log again. “Looks like he jumped over.”