The Bear in a Muddy Tutu (14 page)

A cop car blew past Lennon Bagg’s Jeep
and
rocked it with turbulence, lights flashing and siren blaring. The si
ght
of the speeding black and white stirred something in Bagg, and he couldn’t help but feel a rush
of excitement
.

The radio calls from the police dispatcher had themselves piqued his interest. A
pparently, an enormous
black bear had attacked a pack of dogs, then smashed through a concessions building
door and went after a young woma
n.
By the grace of God, t
he woman had escaped with only minor injuries.

A black bear down in these parts
would have made
one heckuva long trek, Bagg thought. There was a good chance it
had
crossed the Delaware somewhere up in North Jersey, or maybe came all the way down from New York. Whatever the case, he’d never heard of a black bear breaking down a door or attacking dogs. Maybe if a dog cornered it
.
B
ut smashing through a door
… from
h
unger? Rabies?

Bagg began writing the first paragraphs of his story in his head
. G
lancing down,
he was
surprised to see
that
the speedometer had edged over eighty miles per hour. The back nine holes were now
zipping
along the left side of the two-lane highway, and Bagg backed off the gas pedal,
searching
for the stone archway entrance to the
Absecon Golf and Country Club
.
With no
pay increases
in the newsroom for the last couple years,
Bagg had grabbed a few freelance assignments from the sports department by
covering some Saturday gigs
. Most of the work had been high school football games, but he’d also written up a few high school golf matches at fifty bucks a pop. Writing
about
golf was much easier than football, where you had to log every damn play, and the weather was crappy every other game. Golf was a spring sport that
was
ca
ncelled if it rained hard
, and you could write your entire story from the 18
th
hole in about thirty minutes.

Bagg pulled in under the big AGCC sign and followed the narrow drive around past the clubhouse, continuing along a service road to where an ambulance and the cop car were parked. The concessions building was a low,
one
-
story structure, no more than twenty by thirty feet, with a covered patio and a half dozen round metal tables and chairs. Everything was painted a fresh coat of white and stood in stark contrast to the lush green fairways. Bagg was no golf fan and had never swung anything but a bright blue
-
or red
-
handled miniature golf club. But there was something special about the bucolic settings, the meticulous gardening
,
and
the
grounds keeping
that
went along with golfing. Golf courses reminded Bagg of Walt Disney World, with the topiaries and tulips and small signs
instructing
visitors to go this way and that. Bagg
wasn’t a golfer
, but he certainly envied the
ir
playground.

The Absecon police officer who had roared past Bagg’s Jeep was at the back door of the
ambulance
huddled
next to
a woman hold
ing an ice pack to her forehead. With them
were
an EMT
and two crisply dressed men in collared shirts and shiny leather golf shoes. Bagg cranked his emergency brake and shoved his reporter’s notebook into the tan Domke camera bag
that
carried his Canon T90 and short zoom lens. He untangled his press pass from his
stained
tie as he walked toward the group, while keeping an eye on what must be the bear-
occupied
snack shack.

“The back door is solid and is always kept locked,
”
one of the men in golf shoes was telling the young cop. Bagg knew a couple of the town cops, but this kid looked right out of high school.

“Is Fish and Game coming?
”
Bagg asked, joining the group in the shade of the
shiny
,
hulking ambulance. He flashed his dangling press pass and added, “
The
Beacon
.
”

“Ted Shamsky
.
”
One
of the golfers
stuck
out his hand and
showed
his bright and perfect set of teeth. “I’m the pro. S-H-A-M-S-K-Y
.
”

“William Montrose
.
”
The
other man
took
his turn shaking Bagg’s hand. “
Spelled just like it sounds. I own Carpet World,
in
case you’ve seen the commercials.
”

“Their ETA is an hour, may
be more
.
”
The
young officer
didn’t seem
the least bit
pleased to be interrupted
.
According to the gold nameplate over his shirt pocket, h
is name was Officer
G
ates. Skinny,
with big ears and
black frame,
military
-issue
eye glasses
,
he
looked
an awful lot
like
the
world’s richest computer nerd
with the same last name,
but d
idn’t seem
to be in any sort of mood to discuss the
coincidence
.

“We got the bear cornered in there
.
”
Officer
G
ates
lifted
his chin to indicate the snack shack
as he
scribbl
ed
notes on a pad much smaller than Bagg’s.

“So the bear attacked you?
”
Bagg asked the pretty young woman who was dressed in sharp white slacks and a light blue button
-
down top. Her name
tag said
“
Bonnie
,
”
and she sat on the top step of the ambulance. The EMT, whose blue shirt had
“
Jake
”
written
in script
over the left breast p
ocket, sat next to her,
saggy rubber gloves
dangling from his fingertips
. Jake
looked disappointed
that
the
victim had
no treatable injuries, which was probably
why he’d pulled out the ice pack.
“
When in doubt, grab an ice pack,
”
was a motto Bagg had heard at
countless
accident scenes
.
With nothing more to do unless the bear started mauling people, Jake
seemed to be concentrating on breathing in
the girl’s perfume
.

“Yeah, I just got the grill going and was coming back from the freezer when this huge bear appeared out of nowhere right there in the kitchen
.
”
Bonnie
was
talking too fast,
her voice genuinely shaking. “It stood up on its back legs, snarling, and its te
eth were like this long.
”
She took
the ice pack from her head to use both hands to show how big the bear’s teeth were.

As if to punctuate her demonstration, a metallic clanging rang out from deep inside the snack shack.

“
Holy shit
!
”
The cop unholstered
his
gun
and
pointed
it down at the brown divots of the tenth hole tee area where they stood. The snack shack was maybe a twenty yard chip over a deep oval bunker.

“It musta got rabies or is just plain crazy out of its mind
.
”
Bonnie
shook
her head, and each member of the group turned toward the dark place beyond the broken screen of the front door.

“How’d you get away?
”
Bagg
pulled
out his notebook and
flipped
to the first blank page.

“
Gosh,
I don’t really know
.
I just ran screaming. I thought it was following me. I could feel its awful breath on the back of my neck as I was pulling open that door
.
”
She pointed
. “I
t was like I knew
I was about to die.
”

The EMT took the opportunity to comfort the pretty
woman
, reaching one rubbery hand around to rest on her shoulder,
taking an obvious
peek
between buttons
at her lacy bra.

“I’m going in
.
”
Officer
Gates
apparently
recognized
this
as
his big chance
. 

Gates
stepped away from the group and keyed the microphone clipped to the
epaulet
on his left shoulder, the mi
c
cord curling
down to the radio hanging from his belt.

Officer
Gates
tilted his head toward the microphone
.
“Unit Sixteen to Dispatch
.
”

“Dispatch. Go ahead
,
Sixteen.
”

“I’m ten
seven to take a ten sixty-two. All other units code four
.
”
His voice was
hushed
.

“Ten
four, Sixteen,
”
said the dispatcher. “Let me know when you’re back in service.
”

“Code four?
”
Bagg understood
that
the cop was telling his dispatcher he was out of service to take a report from a citizen, but why code four? Code four cancelled all other responding units. And why the secrecy?
Why was the cop practically whispering this stuff?

The cop turned to the golf pro. “Take Mr. Montrose up to the clubhouse. Go back along the eight and nine holes and stop anybody from coming down here, okay?
”

“You bet, officer
!
”
The pro seemed
more than happy to
be given
a job away from the cornered bear.

“You three
…
i
nside the ambulance
!
”
Gates
was talking to
the EMT, Bonnie, and Bagg, but Bagg wasn’t budging. Instead, he fish
ed
the Canon out of his camera bag and load
ed
a fresh thirty-six exposure roll of Fuji film.

“I’ll come with you,
”
Bagg told Officer
Gates
, as the EMT helped the
sweet
-
smelling Bonnie to her feet and back
onto the single gurney
locked to the floor.

“Yeah, baby
!
”
J
ake the EMT mouthed at Bag
g
as he
turned away from the girl
. A
pparently things
were
looking up for him
.
He winked at Bagg and mouthed, “Nice tits.
”

Gates
eyed the
expensive
-
looking camera and also
seemed to
decide things were looking up
. P
erhaps
he was planning
how to pose
for
tomorrow’s front page newspaper photo.

“C’mon
.
”
The
cop h
eld
the
black
gun
out in front
with both hands. Bagg
let
his Canon lead
the way
,
as he followed the cop down into the sand trap and back up toward the snack building.