by Andrew Mayne
“You’re serious?”
“Serious enough to run my mouth so you’d kick my ass instead of me getting kicked out of the state and not being able to finish what I started.”
He shakes his head. “I knew you were trying to piss me off.”
“And I’m here instead of in jail.”
“You still could be.”
I point to my damaged face. “You could have said I was resisting arrest and maybe got away with it. But not now. You were my get-out-of-jail-free card.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He stands up. “I brought some of your things by. Your backpack is in the closet.”
“Is this where you tell me to get out of town?”
“I don’t give a fuck what you do. Just stay clear of me. There’s something off about you.”
No shit.
After he leaves, I muster the energy to get out of bed. While my strength is there, the pain medicine has my balance a little off. I think I’ll skip the next round of pills and see how I manage.
I take my pack out of the closet to get my laptop. When I unzip the top, there’s a plastic evidence bag sitting on top of my clothes.
Inside are the samples I took from Chelsea’s body.
He left them for me.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
ACADEMIC
I close my eyes and ease my mouth open wide enough for the forkful of cherry pie. The back of my jaw feels like a metal grinder is attacking my nerve endings, but I endure long enough to get it into my mouth, then quickly retract the fork.
The crumb crust hits my tongue first, followed by the tart cherries, and then an avalanche of sweet whipped cream topples over everything as I swirl it around. The pain fades to a dull background roar as I focus on the taste.
When I open my eyes, Jillian has slid into the booth next to Gus. They’re both giving me the same odd look.
“Would you like me to put that in a blender for you?” she asks.
“Maybe you’d prefer to be alone with that pie?” says Gus.
“Sorry. First solid food in days.” I scoop up another piece. “It’s delicious, Jillian.”
“But it hurts to eat it.”
“Only when I open my mouth. It’s well worth it.”
She reaches out and pats the back of my hand. “Then keep shoveling it in.”
I notice her fingertips linger on my knuckles for a moment, then slide away, caressing the spaces between my fingers. I don’t know if it was intentional, but it was certainly sensual while it lasted.
She takes a long look at my face. “I can’t believe they haven’t caught the animals that did that to you.”
I’m extremely uncomfortable lying to her and Gus, but I don’t want to start anything that’s already over. “I’m sure it was a case of mistaken identity.”
“Too bad you didn’t get a good look at them.”
“Yeah. Too bad.”
I catch Gus taking a quick glance at Jillian, then turning back to me. “So, Dr. Cray, will we be seeing more of you at this table in the future?”
“I’m supposed to be back at school on Monday. Classes are starting.”
“I bet you can’t wait to get back,” says Jillian.
“Yeah . . .” I use my fork to trace the cherry filling across my plate. It resembles the gashes I saw in Chelsea’s body, and I no longer have my appetite. “But I’ve been thinking I shouldn’t jump right back in just yet.” I point to my swollen face. “I’m not sure if my students need to see this on their first day.”
“Can you take time off like that?”
“Sure. It’s just a freshman course. There are plenty of adjuncts that can handle that kind of thing.”
This is far from the truth. I might be able to get my department head to sign off on an absence of a day or two if I get someone to cover it, but more than a week at the start of the semester is asking for a dismissal.
I’d been trying to figure out what I was going to do and my mouth just told me, more or less. Maybe it was the way Jillian asked. Maybe it’s the image of Chelsea’s corpse and the thought that Juniper’s killer is still out there.
I’m going to have to notify the school I won’t be there at the start of the semester. I catch a glimpse of my face in the reflection off the napkin holder and realize that Officer Gunther may have done me another favor.
Dr. Bacall, my boss at the college, is a big-city elitist who thinks the rest of the world is filled with backwoods, knuckle-dragging cavemen. All I have to do is drop her an e-mail explaining that I was attacked by some hillbilly out here and send her one of the photos I took in the hospital bed.
“So, Gus, do you think I might be able to rent that room out from you for another week or so?”
“We can work something out. I might have a discounted rate if you help me with a few things.”
I catch a faint smile on Jillian’s face. “Well. I’ve got some tables to check on. Glad to see you might stick around a little.”
Gus watches her leave, then turns to me. “What are your plans for that situation?”
“Situation?”
“Do you need a microscope for everything? The girl likes you.”
“Oh. She’s great. But I’m not going to be around for that long.”
He stares up at the ceiling and shakes his head. “You’re the dumbest smart person I’ve ever met. That’s part of why she likes you. You’re a fling. Not a long-term romance. A happy convergence that lasts just long enough.”
I look nervously over my shoulder to make sure she’s not within earshot. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Suit yourself. So why are you here?”
“To find out who killed Juniper and Chelsea.”
“Is that all? A thousand law enforcement officers in this state and you’re the one that’s going to find the killer?”
“A thousand law enforcement officers in this state and not one of them even believes there’s a killer. I’m starting to think maybe the murderer is not that hard to find once you know where to look.”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“You find this killer. Then what happens? Do you arrest him? Do you go to the newspapers? Do you kill him?”
“Jesus. I’m not Batman. I . . . I don’t know. I tell the police.”
“The same police that think you’re crazy and there’s a killer-bear epidemic?”
“I don’t know.”
Gus stares at me, making me feel like a child. “This isn’t a research paper. This doesn’t end with a summary conclusion and a graph. You’re talking about finding a killer and telling the world who that is. Along the way, you’re going to be turning over some rocks that don’t want to be moved. Look at your face.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking—”
“Whatever. One of Chelsea’s boyfriends come for you? Somebody get antsy when you told them you found the body?”
“What are you saying?”
“I told you that this place is a festering wound. You’ve had your ass kicked twice just for asking questions. What happens when you get closer?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s the problem, Theo. You only see what you’re paying attention to. You’re likely to trail bear tracks all the way back to the bear. Then what?”
“I’ll just have to be careful.”
“You’ve been piss-poor at that. You want my advice? You go flirt with Jillian. Take her to dinner tomorrow and a movie. You give her a deep kiss if she can bear to look at your swollen mug, remind her that she’s an attractive woman, then you head back to school and go be a professor on Monday morning. Maybe one day you write up how you found Chelsea’s body. End of story.”
“I can’t let it go,” I shoot back. “First Juniper. Now Chelsea. Who else is out there? What kind of man would I be if I just left?”
“A living man.”
“I’ve been passive for too long.”
“If you stay, the professor has to go.”
&nbs
p; “What does that even mean?”
Gus points his finger directly at my face. “You’re a fucking victim. A slow-motion accident waiting to happen. To be honest, I don’t doubt that you are capable of finding this killer. That’s what scares me. I’m afraid you’re going to go off hunting down some clue and that’s the last we ever hear of you. If you’re right about what or who did this, then there won’t be a body. There won’t be a crime scene. You’ll just be a statistic.” He nods toward Jillian’s direction. “And every night she and I will be sitting here looking out this window thinking about what happened to you, knowing that you’re dead in some shallow grave in the middle of nowhere.”
“You said if I stay, the professor has to go. What does that mean?”
“This is no place for an academic. If you decide to stick around, you need to think like a hunter. You’re no longer an observer.”
“And how do I do this?”
“I’ll give you my shotgun, for starters. You also need to start carrying a pistol. We’ll do some target practice to make sure you don’t kill yourself. And I’ll wake you up tomorrow morning and spar with you a bit. I’m rusty, but I think I can teach a broken mess like you how to do a better job of blocking a punch than you’ve been doing.”
“I appreciate that.”
Gus shakes his head. “It won’t be enough, though. The only way to stop being a victim is to think like a killer. And I don’t think you have that in you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
BAYESIAN CASUALTIES
Five days later the sun is dipping into the valley to the west, carving long shadows out of the fading orange light as I stick my shovel into the ground and start on my fifth hole, telling myself that I’ll call it a day after this.
Two years ago a missing-persons report was filed for a nineteen-year-old girl named Summer Osbourne. She lived in the town of Silver Rock, three miles down the road from Hudson Creek. My program singled this area out as a high probability for the killer.
While Summer didn’t appear to have fallen as far down the social ladder as Chelsea, her disappearance is all the more suspicious because of that.
I went out of my way to see if Chelsea was just a fluke or if MAAT is really on to something. Deep down, I know it’s not a fluke, but the scientist in me tells me to check my own hypothesis.
When MAAT put a big red flag here, I decided to check up and see if there were any missing-persons reports that fit the profile. There were six in the last ten years. Summer was the most recent.
My other reason is that Chelsea’s case isn’t going anywhere. There’s a complete lack of urgency. They’ve issued a preliminary report of a possible mountain lion or bear attack and sent her body to Bozeman for more analysis.
I’m done being the crazy guy showing up in police stations with a wild story about a killer who makes his crimes look like animal attacks.
My goal is just to gather as much evidence as I can. Right now, that means finding another body.
I take a break from the shoveling and look at the woods around me. I’m only two hundred feet from the highway, but it feels like I’m a thousand miles away.
Gus’s shotgun is sitting in my duffel bag within reach, and I have his pistol tucked into my waistband. It didn’t take much convincing to get me to carry them.
For my own sake, I used up a box of ammo making certain I still knew how to handle a gun. While I’m sure I’ll be able to point the pistol away from me, I’m not too sure if I’ll be quick enough or psychologically prepared to use it if I have to. But some protection is better than nothing. My usual can of bear spray probably won’t be enough if I meet the killer out here.
Of course, the odds of me randomly running into him in the woods are astronomical. Randomly . . .
I scrape away another layer of dirt and reveal a dirty piece of purple fabric.
Everything drains from my body. There’s no thrill of being right. It’s just an overwhelming sense of dread.
I drop the shovel and slip on a pair of latex gloves to dig with my hand.
As I carefully remove the dirt from the surrounding area, the outline of a head begins to emerge. The fabric is a T-shirt. When I pull it back, a ghastly white face is looking up at me with milky, azure eyes that match the morning sky. Strands of blonde hair lie across her face—almost as if they are waiting for her to brush them away.
I uncover the torso, revealing a naked chest with dark, dirt-clogged gashes across her small breasts.
Summer’s abdomen is split open, with her stomach, a fetid, stinking mass of swollen intestines, sticking out.
I need to get samples, but I have to take a break. The eyes are too much for me. They should be more decomposed, but the T-shirt and surrounding soil chemistry somehow preserved them. It’s as if she’s still seeing the last thing she ever saw.
I step back and lean against a tree, catching my breath, trying to hold it in.
Be a scientist, Theo. She doesn’t need someone to mourn her right now. She needs someone to find out who did this.
I turn back and kneel down to continue excavating around her.
As I brush the dirt from her arms, I think about when Summer was a child and her mother bathed her and scrubbed her. If her mother had any idea what fate the world had in store for her little girl, would she have ever let her go?
The arms are predictably stiff. I raise the right one high enough to take a photo of the gashes and get a tissue sample. For a moment, it obscures her powerful eyes. But when I set it back down she’s still staring up—almost as if she’s looking to God for an answer.
Nobody is home, darling. And if he is, he doesn’t care.
My ear twitches, and I get the feeling that I’m being watched. In the moment I try to analyze the sensation—it’s like a tickle across my back.
First I just move my eyes slowly across the surrounding trees. When all I observe is forest, I turn my head slightly.
Forty feet away, up on the hill, are three sets of glowing eyes catching the setting sun.
Wolves.
Large ones.
They probably smelled her corpse long before I reached the shirt. Attracted by the scent, they gathered to watch and wait.
I can’t leave her here. I buried Chelsea because nothing was around that would dig her up.
The moment I leave Summer, no matter how deep or what I cover her with, the wolves will come for her. They know she’s here.
I have to take her with me.
The sun has set by the time I fully unbury her. I placed my flashlight on the edge of the hole, facing the wolves, but they vanished when I wasn’t looking.
As I gently lift her body and move her to the plastic tarp I’ve laid down, I spot silvery eyes watching me from much closer.
They’ve walked around my cone of light and are just a few yards away.
Wolves are supposed to be people-shy, and attacks are exceptionally rare. I’m not sure what the data set looks like for humans all alone in the forest next to a decomposing corpse.
I lay Summer in the middle of my blue tarp. Her knees are slightly bent, with white flesh showing through tears in her black leggings. As I try to bundle her up, drops of my sweat hit her face and slide down her dirty cheek like tears.
The snarling sound of one of my watchers snaps me back to the present.
Summer’s muscles have degraded long past the effect of rigor mortis, making her body flexible enough to bend over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
I place my duffel bag over my other shoulder and use the flashlight to guide my way back down to my car.
My gray shadows follow me in the dark, making futile growls, hoping I’ll drop the body.
But I don’t. Nor do I ever reach for my gun or the shotgun—even to fire a warning shot.
These creatures are opportunistic cowards, afraid to take on something larger than them. Perhaps not unlike the man who killed Summer.
I hope.
I pray.
CHAPTER FO
RTY-EIGHT
INERTIA
Police Chief Shaw is standing near the tailgate of my Explorer with his flashlight aimed at Summer’s face. Dressed in a T-shirt, parka jacket, and track pants struggling to contain his expanding stomach, the light is the only thing about him that resembles law enforcement.
“Who is this girl, again?” he asks.
“Summer Osbourne,” says the lean deputy with receding auburn hair. He was the only one at the station when I arrived. It took him all of two seconds to call his boss down to the station after I showed him photos of the body in the back of my Explorer.
“Osbourne?” replies Shaw. “I don’t recall anybody by that name.”
“I think you might have known her daddy. He goes by MacDonald,” the deputy explains.
“They live out by Finley stables? That big house? Daddy owns an irrigation pipe company?”
“That’s them.”
“What were there, six of them MacDonald kids?”
“Five including Summer. She was a stepdaughter.”
“Summer MacDonald?” Shaw shakes his head. “She ran off with that fella from Wyoming.” He turns to me. “You say her name was Summer Osbourne?”
“That’s the name on the missing-persons report.”
“Well, there’s your problem. They never get around to updating them. Some kid runs away for a few days, and their parents come down here and make us go through the hassle of making a report, then don’t bother to tell us when they come home.”
I get frustrated at the backwoods-genealogy quiz. “Chief, this girl ain’t goddamn ever a-comin’ home.”
He spins the light around and shines it in my face. “You watch your mouth, son. You show up here in the middle of the night with a half-naked dead girl in your trunk. That is suspicious.” He turns to his deputy. “Didn’t some fella show up with a body in Hudson Creek?”
“The second bear attack,” replies the deputy.
“Jesus Christ,” I groan. “First, it wasn’t a bear attack. Second, I was the guy that found that body.”
Chief Shaw’s squinty eyes stare at me for a moment; then he comes to life, using the flashlight to gesture at Summer. “You’re telling me you found another girl just like this one?”
