“Absolutely none,” Ms. Shockley said.
“Then why are you two discussing the beast…creature…as if it does?”
“Because I just saw it. Him. Definitely a him.” Ms. Shockley passed a trembling hand over her forehead. Now that she was done giving her account, she seemed to lose all the starch in her spine. “Once I get my new phone, I’m going to cancel my appointments. Before the kids get back from day camp, I’m going to pick up some sushi, go home and eat it with a glass of white wine, and take a nap. I’ve never given a police report before, and I sure as hell have never had a Bigfoot sighting before.”
“Then we shared an experience, because I’ve never taken a Bigfoot report before.” Dumas passed her his business card. “If you think of anything else, please call the Rockin Police Department or me personally.”
Ms. Shockley took the card and put it in her pocket, then retrieved her card case and handed one to him and one to Donatti. “Thank you. I’ll do that. I’m sure we’ll speak again soon, Chief Dumas.”
As they walked away, Donatti asked softly, “Chief, did she just ask you on a date?”
“Not at all. It’s a small town. We simply agreed we would speak again soon.”
Donatti nodded. “That’s what I thought. A date.”
CHAPTER FIVE
DUMAS CHECKED HIS WATCH. “Donatti, what do you think? Are you up for the drive out to the original Bigfoot sighting? We can hand this off to someone else and run you to the hospital to be disinfected and maybe get a stitch and a tetanus shot.”
“I’m up for the drive.” She grimaced at her bandage. “It’s not deep, just a scratch.” She looked up, saw the expression on his face and laughed. “It’s the thing girl officers say to boy officers to make them think we’re tough.”
“I remember hearing it in Louisiana, too.”
“Actually, it feels like I sliced off a hunk of flesh, but assuming Ms. Shockley is right, I don’t need stitches, so we might as well take the call. It’ll distract me.” She climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Right.” He took shotgun again. “How long will it take us to get wherever it is we’re going?”
“We’re headed north toward Denali State Park and ultimately Denali National Park. The ETA to the Magnussons’ is forty-five minutes to an hour, depending.”
He looked at his watch again. Nothing yet, but he was getting antsy. “Let’s shoot for forty-five.”
She flipped on the vehicle’s red-and-blues. “Can do.” In town, she kept it at a modest thirty-five miles per hour. As soon as they reached the city limits and the open highway, she put her foot down on the accelerator. The powerful vehicle cruised between the Talkeetna Mountains and the Alaska Range, and the peaks gleamed sharp and white against the blue sky.
“Every time I see those mountains with their heads poked out of the clouds, I am in awe. And when Denali deigns to uncover itself…” He trailed off, his gaze on his watch.
“Formerly Mount McKinley, Denali is the Native American name and means ‘high’ or ‘tall.’ At 20,310 feet, it’s the tallest mountain in North America. Denali State Park is 325,000 acres. Denali National Park is 4.7 million acres. The preserve is 1,334,118 acres, for a total of 6,075,030 acres. There are 124 permanent employees. Average number of miles patrolled by dogsled each winter is 3,000. The park is teeming with moose, wolves, caribou and, yes, bear.”
He looked up. “And Bigfoot.”
She agreed, “And Bigfoot.”
“You sound like a Wikipedia entry. Is there a reason for all this detail?”
“I was trying to keep you entertained so you wouldn’t keep looking at your watch. You’re making me nervous. What are you waiting for?”
No harm in telling this officer. “With me out of the office, I’ve got a little business I’m expecting to take shape.”
“Really?” She didn’t take her eyes off the road, which was a good thing considering the speed they were traveling. She didn’t say anything more, either, but he could tell she was thinking. After twenty minutes, she came to some conclusion because she nodded. “Okay.”
Dumas knew when he took the job of police chief that the easy part would be the big cleaning at the beginning. He’d fired West, Gerasimova and Nichols knowing full well the other rats would skitter back into the darkness and be harder to catch.
So he watched and wondered. What crimes would he catch his officers committing? There were many time-honored methods of supplementing a law enforcement officer’s usually meager salary. Would it be human trafficking? Selling drugs?
Of course, the protection racket was a good possibility. It almost always started innocently. While making his rounds, an officer drops by the restaurant that advertises free coffee and meals for police. That policy was smart on the part of a restaurant owner; when armed officers frequented a business, few thieves wanted to take the chance of robbing the place. But with some officers, free coffee and meals escalated to free gifts for his/her kids, free clothes and shoes, free service for the private car. Then…then all those freebies led to real trouble. Pay me to protect your business or you won’t be in business any longer.
Who was the business owner supposed to complain to? The police?
Back in his youth, when Dumas sought adventure in New Orleans, he’d helped break up a protection racket. He hadn’t really expected to find one in Rockin, but there you go. With the old police chief, corruption started at the top and dribbled down through the whole department.
Today, Dumas planned to bring down the Rockin protection racket and make a couple of his officers—Kittilia and one he’d been unable to detect—very, very sorry they’d ever disregarded the law.
He glanced at his watch. As happened in Alaska, they had moved beyond cell-tower range, so he observed, “You seem to know where we’re going.”
“I do.” Donatti slowed way, way down and made a left onto a smaller highway, then almost at once onto a gravel road. “These are my relatives, the ones I visited every summer, and I’m extremely surprised to hear they called in a Bigfoot sighting. Stunned, in fact.”
Interesting that she hadn’t mentioned the relationship sooner. Dumas poked at her a little. “They don’t believe in Bigfoot? Or Bigfoot sightings are such a common occurrence out here, they wouldn’t bother to call it in?”
“Something like that.” Which wasn’t an answer. “Shawn is a wildlife specialist. Theresa’s a homeopathic healer.”
Dumas perked up. “Voodoo?”
“Herbs.”
“Sounds like they’re an interesting combination.”
“They are.” Donatti steered around a sharp corner.
The trees parted. The sun struck the windshield of a blue SUV, the expanse of a lush green lawn and a small, old, well-tended home with a two-car garage. In the side yard, deer fencing surrounded an extensive garden, and behind that a tall shed painted a dark shade of red with a greenhouse was set off to the side.
Donatti parked.
They got out and looked around.
Dumas started up the steps to the porch.
But Donatti yelled “Auntie!” and ran toward the shed.
Dumas followed more slowly, observing his officer, the woman who stepped out of the shed to greet her, the shattered greenhouse glass on the ground, and the scattering of dirt, pots and plants on the outside tables.
The two women hugged, kissed cheeks and hugged again.
Dumas could see the family resemblance.
Donatti had gotten her height from a different side of the family; the middle-aged woman was about five foot five. Her skin was smooth and tanned, and when she pulled off her gardening hat, she revealed short white hair spiky with sweat. Gently she seized Donatti’s bandaged hand and asked an anxious question.
Donatti spoke in a low, reassuring tone.
Theresa gave her terse instructions.
/> While Donatti picked at the corner of her butterfly bandage, Dumas walked toward them, looking more closely at the door on the shed that had been ripped open, the broken greenhouse windows, and the pots that had been smashed and their contents scattered. Someone—Bigfoot?—had a bad attitude.
The older woman turned to observe him. She extended her hand, but her dark eyes judged him, and not favorably. “I’m Theresa Magnusson. Welcome to my home.”
Donatti jumped in with all her manners and an anxious charm she had never shown before. “Theresa, this is Police Chief Rodolphe Dumas. Sir, this is one of my dearest relatives in all of Alaska, Theresa Magnusson.”
“Mrs. Magnusson, it’s a pleasure.” He put his hand in hers.
The two of them shook briskly.
“Please call me Theresa.” She didn’t immediately release him; instead she added her left hand to the mix, cupping his fingers while the warmth of her seeped into him. He relaxed, and so did the woman, the hard core of hostility melting away. She answered a question he had not asked. “Yes. You’re right. This land is where you now belong.”
Maybe he had a few doubts. But he’d never said so aloud. “I’m thinking Bigfoot isn’t the only magic here.”
She let him go at once. “What? What about Bigfoot?”
“We got a Bigfoot report from this location.” Donatti sounded drily amused.
Theresa frowned. “From here? Who called it in?”
“An anonymous call from a burn phone.” Donatti painfully finished peeling off the bandage.
“I’ll bet it was anonymous.” This report had made Theresa angry, but she took Donatti’s hand and examined it, then pulled her toward the shed. Theresa disappeared inside and returned with a small corked ceramic pot. She opened it and smeared an herbaceous green paste on the cut.
Donatti yanked her hand back. “That stings!”
“It’s supposed to,” Mrs. Magnusson said. “It’s a disinfectant, and next time, you’ll think twice before you cut yourself in a filthy alley.”
Dumas pulled out his notebook and pencil. “Mrs. Magnusson, do you mind if I record this?”
Mrs. Magnusson shot him a withering look. “Yes, I mind!”
“I’ll take notes, then.” He held his pencil in readiness. “Where were you when the damage occurred?”
“Delivering Rose Tingelhoff’s baby.” Theresa spoke to Donatti. “A healthy boy. Mother and child are doing well, Rose is delighted at last to have her son, and George declared a moratorium on any more babies.”
Donatti’s indignation at being smeared with herbs softened, and she spoke to Dumas. “Auntie is the midwife for a lot of women who live out here.” She waved her good hand around at the encompassing wilderness.
“A wonderful skill and I know the women are grateful to have her.” He made note that Theresa Magnusson had been accounted for during the time of the destruction. “Theresa, you haven’t seen Bigfoot?”
“Every day and every night,” Theresa said tartly. “What do you think? I live in the middle of the woods, out of the mainstream of society, so I must be in constant communication with a giant hairy beast!”
“I’ll take that as a no.” Dumas wrote in his notebook. “You’ve been vandalized. If it’s not Bigfoot, who do you suppose it is?”
“Police Chief Rodolphe Dumas, I am a homeopathic healer.” She disappeared into the shed and came back with a mundane collection of gauze wraps and adhesive bandages. “I do good work. I heal people. I listen to their worries, and I make them feel better about themselves, their choices and their situations. Rumors claim I’m a psychic and a mind-reader. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, but what is true is that I frighten the ignorant, and they do not like to be frightened by what they don’t understand. Periodically they come, always when I’m gone. They break in, and they wreak havoc. Although…never this much damage.”
“The Rockin law enforcement is prepared to help at any moment.” Dumas kept eye contact.
Theresa scowled.
“Auntie,” Donatti chided in a soft voice.
Theresa took a breath. “Right.” To Dumas, she said, “Your predecessors were not concerned with problems beyond the city limits and most certainly not interested in crimes against the oddities as she—the former police chief—called us.”
Dumas jumped on that. “Us?”
“My family and me.” Theresa reached out and grasped Donatti’s uninjured hand. “My first thought when facing this kind of crisis is to clean up and move on. Thank you, Police Chief Dumas, for assuring me and my husband we are no longer alone.”
“I moved to Alaska to remind myself of the good people who live in this world. Through no fault of anyone but my own, I had lost sight of that while in Louisiana.” The divorce, the death of his son, another loss, of a different kind, of his daughter… Sometimes it seemed Alaska would give him his soul back. In the winter darkness, he might at last see the light.
Now Dumas glanced around. “You have security cameras located in strategic locations.”
“Yes.” Theresa pulled Donatti closer, and used gauze and tape to cover her wound and the green herbaceous paste. “These people who come—they usually appear from the woods with ski masks to hide their faces, spray paint the security camera lenses, then do their nasty work. The one today—he’s angry. Eager. I can smell it.”
Dumas started to ask about that. But no, not yet. “It would seem whoever vandalized you knew exactly how to gain the advantage.”
A profound moment of silence followed his pronouncement.
“Yes,” Theresa agreed. “It’s almost as if these people knew exactly what to do to create the most harm. The anonymous caller—what did they say?”
“This person said they had come up your drive and saw Bigfoot running away from your garden and shed. In fear, this valiant person fled… This person had a mechanical voice.” Donatti produced her phone and showed Theresa the video that had been delivered to the police station. “Have you seen footprints to match this monster?”
“I’ve seen no monster footprints.” Theresa spoke with teeth clenched.
A tall blond man wearing rugged gear and hiking boots jogged out of the surrounding forest.
“Except his.”
CHAPTER SIX
THERESA SMILED FONDLY as she watched the giant man come toward them. “Police Chief Dumas, my husband, Shawn Magnusson.” She caught Shawn’s sleeve as he stalked toward Dumas. “Shawn, Police Chief Dumas is a good man.”
Mr. Magnusson looked down at her.
Peace and calm passed from her to him.
The woman had a gift.
Mr. Magnusson removed his backpack and placed it against the wall of the shed. He extended his hand to Dumas and shook firmly. “It’s good to meet you, Police Chief Dumas.” He had an accent—Minnesotan, maybe, or the upper Michigan peninsula, that kind of singsong Scandinavian intonation that made Dumas want to drink lager and dance the polka.
Theresa was right. The guy must make monster-size footprints. He was easily six foot four, built like a body builder and Dumas’s hand was engulfed in his. “Good to meet you, sir.”
“Sir?” Startled, Magnusson grinned. “I don’t hear that very often. I’m Shawn. Call me that. First names—it’s an Alaska thing.” He released Dumas and opened his arms to Donatti. “Honey, give your ol’ uncle a hug.”
Donatti jumped at him and got crushed in his embrace. When he set her away, she was laughing.
So was he. But when he looked around at the damage, he quickly sobered. “What happened here?”
“Vandals. And a Bigfoot report,” Theresa said.
“Damn it to hell!” Shawn’s fair complexion changed to ruddy red in his cheeks and at the tip of his nose, and his blue eyes snapped. “What are you going to do about this?” he asked Dumas.
“In this particular instance of vandalism
, I’ll apprehend the culprit today,” Dumas said. “Or die trying.”
“What about when it happens again?”
“If—” Dumas emphasized the if, “—other instances occur, I will solve them, too. But you will have to call them in. And press charges.”
Donatti rubbed her palms together.
Dumas met Shawn’s angry gaze. “But for the moment, sir, may I ask where you’ve been while this damage occurred?”
Donatti grimaced.
“In the woods tracking a poacher. It’s my job.” Despite his wife’s interference, Shawn was definitely projecting antagonism.
“Alone?”
“Yes. Alone.”
“Did you catch a poacher?”
“I caught a man walking the woods with a hunting rifle, but he had all the necessary permits and was practicing for the season.”
Theresa and Donatti snorted.
Donatti explained, “That probably means the hunter had yet to make a kill, he’d already removed it, or he’d hidden it very well.”
Dumas nodded. “We have poachers in Louisiana.” He turned back to Shawn. “For the last several hours, no one can verify your whereabouts?”
“No.”
“Do you have a vehicle?”
“More than one. I have a dogsled. I have a snowmobile. And I have a 2015 Ram pickup.”
“Color?”
“Gray.”
“Granite,” Theresa corrected.
The two men’s eyes met, and for one second, they were united in silent exasperation.
Women and their colors.
But united or not, Dumas had a duty. “Shawn, may I ask if you have any injuries on your shoulders and chest?”
“Chief!” Donatti sounded appalled, and as if the idea had never occurred to her. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe only suspicious old police chiefs could connect the incident in town with this blond behemoth.
Shawn stared with forbidding hostility.
Dumas braced himself. If this guy wanted to kill him, Dumas was dead, and he was pretty sure Donatti would help her relatives bury the body.
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