Monster (32 page)

Pete answered, his fingers curled around a coffee cup, “Hunters are back down for the night. They’ll regroup in the morning, go back to using bear stands and maybe some dogs. They found plenty of sign that something had been up there, but it’s gone now.”

Reed broke into a delirious grin and chuckled. “So they didn’t get their bear.” He chuckled some more, enjoying a demented laugh at a sorry situation. Pete stared into his coffee, and Sing sliced bread until he’d finished.

“I’m sorry, Reed,” said Pete. “I wish to God things could’ve turned out different.”

Reed gave him a curious look. “We don’t know how they turned out.”

Pete looked at Sing, who only looked down at the open sandwich.

Pete found words first. “Reed. You know I have the deepest respect for your feelings on this, but we’ve got to face it. Three violent deaths in a row don’t line up with Beck just tagging along with a bunch of creatures, alive and well and leaving footprints. Now that piece of her jacket,
that’s
consistent with what we’ve seen. That talks.”

“So you’re with Jimmy?”

Pete winced. “Oh, man, don’t put me in Jimmy’s camp . . .”

“He thought the Cryncovich footprints were a hoax. He thought Beck was dead a long time ago. Is that what you think?”

“We’ve been talking about that,” said Sing.

“We’ve been going around and around about it,” said Pete.

Sing still had a touch of fire in her eyes. “I’d like to know how those prints could be so accurately formed, and just what creatures were doing all that howling when Mills was killed.”

Reed focused on the tired tracker. “Do you have another explanation?”

Pete could only give a slight throw-up-his-hands gesture. “Like I was telling her, I don’t know, but what if Fleming Cryncovich is as nutty as he looks and just wants attention? He’s a Sasquatch fanatic; he would’ve known how to fake footprints. And as far as Beck’s boot prints, he could’ve found a size 6 boot with a matching sole. A boot is a boot.”

Sing jumped on that. “With the same tread pattern you noted at Lost Creek? You
did
sketch it all out on one of your blue cards, didn’t you?”

Reed added, “With the same wear pattern?”

“And what about the cell phone number scratched in the dirt?”

Pete countered, “I don’t have it all figured out. I’m just trying to see this thing from all sides, that’s all. Reed, isn’t it possible that Arlen Peak could have gotten your cell phone number?”

Reed saw his point. “Yeah.”

“And he’s a Bigfoot nut too, isn’t he? And he and Cryncovich are friends?”

Sing’s temper was starting to show. “You know what you’re saying about Arlen?”

Pete drilled her with his eyes. “Why’d you take his picture then?”

Sing got flustered. “Just . . . there’s this whole cover-up thing. We can’t rule out any possible suspect—”

“Well, there might be a cover-up and there might not be.”

Sing was ready to grapple on that one. “Allen Arnold was moved.”

“And Randy—was he moved?”

“Possibly.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“Not really.”

“And that’s my point.”

Reed asked, “So, what has Cap found out?”

Sing’s discouragement was obvious. “Nothing solid. It’s all conjecture.”

Pete let his hand come down forcefully on the table. “There! Thank you! That’s the word I’ve been looking for. Conjecture! I conject, then you conject, and that’s all Cap has is conjecture. Reed, we’ve been at this all afternoon, talking about whether Beck’s dead or alive, or somebody’s fooling us, or we’re just fooling ourselves, or whether there really are Sasquatches up there . . .”

Reed answered quietly, “And whether Sasquatches are killers, and whether it’s a bear like Jimmy says, and why in the world somebody would want to protect those monsters with a cover-up—if there really are monsters and there really is a cover-up.”

That gave them pause.

“I thought you were sleeping,” said Sing.

“I was until you two started in on each other. But I’ve been thinking too.”

“So help us out,” said Pete.

Reed lightly stroked the remains of Beck’s jacket as he spoke in a quiet, tired voice: “Considering how much we don’t know, it might be early to say how things turned out.”

Pete looked out the window to mull it over. Sing busied herself with lettuce, meat, pickles, and tomatoes.

“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it, how much this whole thing’s been about what people think they know: it’s a bear, it’s a Bigfoot; I’m a wife-killer, I’m a crazy victim; Beck’s dead, Beck’s alive; it was a cover-up, it was an accident.”

Sing finished making the sandwich, put it on a plate, and handed it to Reed. “Still want that soup?”

“That’d be great. Thanks.” He set the sandwich on the computer bench, truly hungry but needing to speak. “I just keep thinking of Beck and me climbing up that trail before this all started, and how much I thought I knew, and how much I really didn’t. Here I was, telling Beck her world was too small and if she didn’t get out and stretch a bit, she’d quit learning and growing, and all along, I didn’t know how small
my
world was. It’s been one tough lesson.”

He considered the tattered piece of leather in his lap, looking it over as he spoke, “Anyway, I guess it’s never a bad idea to let your world get stretched once in a while, to just humble down and admit there might be something right in front of you that you haven’t thought of before. So on the one hand, Pete, you’re right about Beck’s jacket. It talks.”

He held it up for them to see, tooth marks, bloodstain, and all. “This bloodstain is several days old, isn’t that right, Sing?”

Silently, she examined the stain, and then she nodded, knowing what it meant.

Reed spoke what the others realized: “It means Beck died several days ago, probably that very first night.” He folded the leather carefully, solemnly, and set it on the dining table in the midst of them. “There’s no way she could have made those footprints.”

Sing and Pete stared at that tattered remnant. It did speak, without words.

Sing finally said, “It still doesn’t answer everything.”

Pete tried to say it calmly. “It answers enough. The rest of it . . . Maybe we’ll never know.”

Reed replied, “So that’s one thing we can agree on, that we don’t really know.”

Pete and Sing silently checked with each other, then nodded.

“But on the other hand, maybe it’s okay to
believe
a little? Instead of just accepting the way things look, maybe there’s still room to stretch what we’re so sure of just one more inch.”

He leaned forward, confronting Pete eye to eye. “Pete, you ever had a feeling you couldn’t explain?”

Pete understood. He nodded.

Reed looked at Sing. “How about you?”

“All the time,” she said.

“When I was up there at the waypoint and I found this” —he nodded at the remnant on the table— “everything I saw told me that I’d finally gotten the answer, that I finally knew. But there was a part of me that
felt
something, like she was talking to me. I had every reason in the world to think—maybe even know—that she was dead, but still . . . There was some part of me that wouldn’t let go, that still believed.” He leaned back, eyeing the remnant on the table. “I could say I
know
Beck is dead, but I don’t, not really. And as long as we don’t know for sure, I can
believe
she’s still out there.” Then he added, “And I
believe
there’s one last thing we haven’t tried.”

“No, no, now listen, I said I didn’t want to get sucked into it!”

Nick Claybuckle was enjoying a relaxing jog around Manitow Park. He passed the big duck pond and the geometric rose gardens, pounded over the beautiful stone bridge and under the spreading maple trees—

Until he was overtaken by another jogger who could outrun him. “You heard me, kid! Pull over!”

“Doc, somebody’s gonna see us talking!”

“Not if you get off the road,” said Cap. He pointed. “How about in there? Nice benches, lots of hedges, nice and private.”

Nick was huffing and puffing anyway, carrying too much extra poundage to get away. He hung a right and they ducked into a pleasant grove, sending a brown squirrel darting up a tree. Nick collapsed onto an ornate concrete bench with a brass plaque commemorating the donor. He was soaked with sweat and his glasses were foggy.

Cap sat down next to him, not even breathing hard. “Nick, my needs are very simple,” Cap began. “We all know Burkhardt’s been shifting his operation off campus for years, and now he’s moved off campus altogether. I need to know where he went. I need to find him and his lab.”

Nick gasped a few breaths and then answered, “Dr. Capella, you’re one of the main reasons he moved!”

“Nick . . .”

“They’re going to know I told you!”

Cap nudged him. “You said your department’s having to cut back. Where’s the money going?”

“Now, how would I know that?”

Cap hooked a finger under Nick’s chin and forced him to meet his eyes. “Let me tell you about my ape. Remember him, the one who’s ticked off about something? He’s been killing people, Nick. He’s been breaking their necks.” Nick tried to look away. Cap used his whole hand to hold his attention. “He’s killed a trail guide, a logger, the Whitcomb County sheriff, and now . . .” Cap came closer, nose to nose. “He’s killed Beck Shelton, a close friend of mine—lots of bites, lots of blood, ripping, tearing, the whole nine yards. So, Nick, you have to understand, now
I
am ticked off. I am
not
a patient man!”

Nick’s face went white; he was paying attention now. Cap let him go. A question began to form—

Cap intercepted it. “Chimpanzees, Nick, maybe as many as four, spliced so full of human DNA they’re a patchwork quilt. Now, how do you suppose that happened?”

“The Judy Lab said it was contamination—”

“It was put there using viral transfers. That means human intervention, which means somebody’s responsible, which means somebody’s going to be in big trouble when the law sorts this all out. So who are you more afraid of?”

Nick stared, struggling to process it all.

“Where’s the money going? Is Merrill diverting funds?”

Nick thought it over one more second, then gave in, nodding yes. “I checked on it. The college budget’s gone up the last ten years, not down, but all the departments are being cut back, including the York Center. Merrill’s got some kind of pet project going.”

“With Burkhardt?” Nick hesitated and Cap nudged him again. “With Burkhardt?”

“That’s the talk on the inside. Merrill’s hoping for a big payoff to make it all legit. I mean, you wouldn’t believe the big people hovering around with grant money—”

“Like Euro-Atlantic Oil and the Carlisle Foundation.”

“Yeah. And Mort Fernan.”

Cap hadn’t seen that name in his research. “The guy who owns the Evolution Channel?”

“Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Whatever Burkhardt’s working on, Fernan wants first dibs to put it on TV.” He sniffed a bitter chuckle. “Must be pretty sexy stuff, a whole lot more exciting than inequity aversion in capuchins. But it’s a gamble. The investors are holding back until they see results.”

Cap nodded to himself.
Results.
There was that word again. “No results, no money.”

“And Merrill will have some explaining to do.”

“
Incorrect
results, no money,” Cap mused.

“Same thing.”

“So what about the chimpanzees being shipped off campus? Any truth to that?”

Nick nodded. “The York Center’s turning away research proposals— which means we’re turning away money—because we don’t have new chimps. We have the old standbys, but they’re getting too aggressive to be useful, and we’re short on younger males.”

“What about the females?”

“They’re getting old too, and we don’t have younger ones to replace them. The young ones get shipped out as soon as they’re old enough to breed. Orders from Merrill’s office.”

“Where do they go?”

“Somewhere in Idaho. A place called Three Rivers.”

That turned Cap’s head. “Say again?”

Sing kept raking, loosening up the sand by the creek bank, cleaning out rocks and twigs that could prevent a clear footprint. Reed brought a gunnysack into the center of the tilled area and began setting apples, pears, and bananas on a short, sun-bleached log. Pete remained outside the circle, studying a map in the ebbing light.

“It’s the right place,” Reed assured him.

“Only if they come here,” Pete answered, orienting the map to the surroundings. “They’ve got plenty of choices which way to go.”

“But the food is here,” said Reed, “alongside the same creek bed, and just a little farther south. If nothing else, Jimmy’s hunters will drive them this way.”

“We may have been driving them this way all along.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking. If they were living in the forest around Abney all this time, why else would they move?”

“Then again, if they were living around Abney all this time, why haven’t they attacked anyone before?”

Sing looked up from her raking. “I keep hearing the word ‘they.’”

Pete grabbed up a second rake and directed a buddy’s look at Reed. “It’ll be ‘they’ as long as Reed wants it to be.”

Sing smiled her gratitude at Pete.

“It won’t be very long,” said Reed, setting a few last items on the log. “I know this whole idea’s ridiculous, but it’s the only one I’ve got.”

“Maybe just half ridiculous,” Pete replied thoughtfully. “Look at it this way: Arlen and Fleming don’t even know we’re doing this, so if we get something this time . . .” He could only shake his head after that.

“It’s either this or give up,” said Sing. “So if you don’t go through with it, I will.”

“You write Beck a note?” Pete asked to make sure.

“I explained everything,” Reed answered, taking long strides out of the circle, leaving a minimum of footprints for Pete to rake out.

Pete raked them all out, and then they stood there, gazing across a small circle of clear, carefully raked sand at what Reed had designated the Last-Ditch Attempt. It would be dark before they could make it back to Pete’s truck, but they found it hard to leave.