A single, lusciously plump, red-ripe strawberry.
Though riveting, such details rarely have anything to do with the crime.
The first order of business was to call in whatever help Scott Parris could muster from his understaffed department—which would require waking every officer who was not already on night duty. The harder part would be notifying the deceased’s nearest of kin.
Approaching an exit to the Air Force Academy, Andrew Turner could see the glow of Colorado Springs. He was about to place another call to the police station in Granite Creek when his cell phone vibrated in his hand. “Yes?”
“Andy, this is Scott Parris. GCPD.”
Astrid Spencer’s husband listened to a slight electronic buzz that hung over the dark silence. “What is it, Scott?”
“I’m awfully sorry to have to tell you this on the telephone, but I didn’t want you to show up and—” Parris cleared his throat, tried again: “I’m afraid it’s very bad news.” He inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry.”
“Then Astrid is…”
“Yes. Yes, sir. She is.”
Trailed by the pair of German shepherds, Beatrice was entering the mud room from the garage when she heard the telephone in the hallway ringing. The lady of the house picked it up, checked the caller ID. “Hello, Andy.” She listened to the monotonic voice. “I’m sorry you’ve been having trouble reaching us. Cassie must have her telephone turned off. I’ve been outside, exercising Ike and Spike.” She referred to the dogs.
Andrew Turner broke the bad news.
“Are you absolutely certain?”
He was.
Starting with her hands and feet, Beatrice felt a dull chill begin to creep over her entire body. “I’ll leave immediately for Yellow Pines, pick up Cassie on the way.” She hung up, looked at herself in the mirror. No, immediately was not an option. I’ll take a quick shower. Change clothes.
It was a blessing (which Scott Parris would later thank God for) that he and Charlie Moon had arrived before Beatrice and Cassandra—the surviving Spencer sisters.
When Parris saw the headlights approaching, he was in his unit, verifying that Clara Tavishuts had dispatched the requested uniformed officers and the county medical examiner. Almost as an afterthought, he asked her to notify the state police. Diplomacy was part of the job. Next time, the state cops might get the hot call, and the chief of the Granite Creek PD did not intend to provide the troopers any reason to leave his department out in the cold.
Beatrice steered her Mercedes around the sleek black-and-white, which once again pulsated with red and blue lights. The sisters seemed to hit the ground running.
Parris yelled, was ignored by the women, who were sprinting toward the house.
Charlie Moon had stationed himself on the brick walk that led to the porch. The recently conscripted deputy raised both hands, boomed, “Stop!”
They stopped.
Though Cassandra had a mouthful of questions, it was Beatrice who addressed this exceptionally tall, lean man they had occasionally seen on the streets of Granite Creek. “We’re Astrid’s sisters—what has happened?”
Moon’s voice was deep, somber. “I’m sorry.” And he meant it.
Beatrice heard herself say, “Get out of our way—we’re going inside.” And she meant it.
The Ute shook his head. “Nobody’s going in.”
“We most certainly are.” Beatrice took her older sister firmly by the hand. “And you are not going to prevent us.”
“Yes I am.” His words were like thunder on the mountain.
The presumably unstoppable sisters took a tentative, testing step toward the certainly immovable Ute.
He spoke oh-so-softly: “Don’t make me do it.”
Beatrice’s query carried a slight tremor: “Do what?”
Moon’s response was blunt: “Pick both of you up, one under each arm. Stuff you into the back of Chief Parris’s unit. Lock you inside.”
They knew he could. And would.
Beatrice’s voice regained some of its edge. “Tell us what has happened.”
Charlie Moon hesitated. “We’re not sure.”
“Hi, Bea. Cassie.” Scott Parris had materialized. “This is my friend Charlie Moon. He’s my deputy—whatever he says goes.” Having made his point, he took a deep breath. “Ladies, I’m awfully sorry, but you can’t do anything here but get in the way of an official police investigation. So the best thing is for you to go home. I’ll call you as soon as—”
“We are not leaving!” Beatrice stamped a spotless white slipper on the worn brick walk. “Not before you tell us what has happened to Astrid.”
“Okay.” The suddenly weary policeman pointed at the dwelling. “Here’s the deal. It looks like an intruder entered her bedroom through the French windows. Astrid is dead.” Dead. There, it’s been said. Now it was official.
These were not ordinary women. These were the Spencer sisters, who had been raised by parents only two generations removed from those hard-bitten pioneers who had arrived in wagons, on horseback, fought Apaches, Navajos, and Utes, endured sudden mid-May blizzards that froze small children who got caught in a far pasture, suffered through summers hot enough to fry eggs on black basalt boulders. There were no shrieks or wails. No wringing of hands. Only a cold, stony silence before Beatrice said, “You are absolutely certain that our sister is dead?”
“Yes.” I’m sure somebody’s dead. The chief of police, who had suffered through his minutes in the wrecked bedroom, waved his hand in a sweeping gesture. “Until further notice, the area will be treated as a crime scene. Aside from police and the ME, no one goes inside, or off the driveway. Soon as the sun comes up, the dwelling and grounds will be examined for evidence.” Like footprints. “We can’t afford to miss a thing—we’ve got to find out who’s responsible for what happened here.” A flash of white-hot sheet lightning split the sky asunder, then a heavy rumble of thunder. Parris cringed at the threat. Oh no, Not rain. Please don’t let it rain and wash any tracks away….
Big fat drops plop-plopped onto the brim of his hat.
More thunder.
And then the waters came. Oh, how it did rain.
Faced with the pair of determined men and a deluge that was soaking them to the skin, the sisters retreated to Bea’s automobile, where they would remain until Andrew Turner arrived.
By then, the place was crawling with lawmen of every stripe.
The loamy Yellow Pines soil was ankle-deep mud. The deluge was a great blessing to desperate farmers and ranchers. A serious piece of hard luck for lawmen who would have given a month’s pay for a single footprint.
As the cloud-filtered rays of a gunmetal-gray dawn announced the beginning of a new day, Chief of Police Scott Parris felt oddly alone in the crowd of cops. What he sensed was a certain emptiness. His deputy was nowhere to be seen. His eyes attempted to penetrate the morning mist. Ol’ Charlie’s out there somewhere…looking. I hope he gets lucky.
Charlie Moon had begun by walking an ever-widening spiral around the dead woman’s home. But, despite a hopeful search for a tuft of hair on a piñon branch, a deep paw print that the torrent of rain had not completely obliterated, luck was not walking with him. Now, within the fringed hem of Spencer Mountain’s forested skirt, he was particularly alert. The Ute sensed a presence.
It was as if all the feathered and furry creatures who lived here were—like the stilled breeze—holding their collective breaths. Aside from the slow drumming of his heart, not a sound. Nothing moved. Moon melted into the undergrowth, became one with his unseen companions. Indeed, the petrified man seemed caught in a single frame of time—every leaf of aspen or fern, every blade of grass, a still life painted on glass.
But something did not quite fit the picture. Which was why he noticed it. The thing near the toe of his boot might have been a red pebble. Or a crimson-tinted mushroom. It was neither. Charlie Moon picked it up. What he held in this palm was a large, plump strawberry. Now how’d this get here? The
answer, when it came, was obvious. Astrid Spencer not only ate strawberries in bed…the careless lady carried her favorite snacks on walks into the woods. Which would explain how bears had picked up the scent, followed it back to her bedroom, and—He looked up the mountainside. Again, the distinct sense that something was up there. A man-killing bear?
By instinct, the Ute’s right hand found the handle of his holstered revolver. The ghost of gun smoke returned to haunt his nostrils. And again, that absurd certainty that every cartridge was spent.
Atop a crumbling granite crag, cloaked by the morning’s misty gray shroud, lurked a hairy, foul-smelling creature. Blood representing a variety of species was caked on its swarthy, unwashed skin. A pair of hard, unblinking eyes looked down upon the Ute. What went through its mind is beyond knowing, and does not invite speculation. But the mouth, after a manner of speaking, said something—so softly that the Indian’s sharp ear did not hear: “Hhhnnngh.”
A brooding, bestial threat? Perhaps.
Or was it something quite different—an expression of affection…of endearment?
Five
The Public Servant
When District Attorney Bill “Pug” Bullett got the 9:00 A.M. telephone call from Beatrice, he immediately acquiesced to her semipolite “request” for a meeting. The subjects for discussion, she told him, were:
(A) The violent death of her sister.
(B) What was being done about it.
The DA said that he would invite the chief of police, the medical examiner, and—of course—the deceased woman’s husband.
Beatrice advised him not to trouble Andrew Turner. He was in seclusion. Accepting no invitations, taking no calls.
(The grieving widower was, at that very moment, relaxing with a favorite book—B. P. Lathi’s Linear Systems and Signals, chapter 7, “Continuous-Time Signal Analysis: The Fourier Transform.” A real page-turner. What is that old saying? Right. To each his own.)
Pug advised the lady that though he was busy with several pending cases, he had an opening in the middle of next week. Actually, “middle” was as far as he got.
“Today,” Beatrice informed him. Curtly. At precisely 11:10 A.M. Although she did not bother to explain it to this doltish graduate of a second-rate law school, after she enjoyed her midmorning honeyed tea and imported bisquitos, this schedule would allow her sufficient time for a leisurely drive into town, where she would pick up Cassie at her three-story nine-gabled Victorian mansion, which was, by general consensus, a major architectural blight on the corner of Copper and Second.
“Ah,” the bullied DA muttered, shuffling some papers on his desk. “I think I can fit that in. I’ll call Scott Parris and Walter Simpson and see if they can break away from whatever—” There was a sharp click in his ear.
Beatrice and Cassandra Spencer arrived at nine minutes and forty-five seconds past eleven, were courteously greeted by the district attorney’s smiling receptionist, who said, “Good morning, ladies. I believe he is ready to see you, so you may go right—”
They swept imperiously past the hapless gatekeeper, charged into the inner sanctum. What they saw was the district attorney getting up from behind his desk. Pug was flanked on either side (protectively, it seemed) by the broad-shouldered chief of police and the elfin medical examiner. As Pug offered a few hopeful homilies about how mild the weather was for March and how pleasant it was to see the ladies and how terribly sorry he was for their “recent loss,” the sisters responded with appropriate nods and murmurs, ignored the proffered seats.
Now that the polite little waltz was over and done with, Beatrice Spencer looked the DA straight in the eye. “Well?”
The bull-necked politician tugged at his starched collar, which had instantly shrunk by two sizes. He jerked his chin to indicate the cherubic little man with the halo of white hair. “Doc Simpson has kindly agreed to give us a summary of his examination of the—uh…” His ugly bulldog face grimaced. “The remains.”
The medical examiner seated himself in a padded armchair. His little feet dangled, barely touching the floor. The longtime friend of the Spencer family addressed the sisters in a stern, grandfatherly tone: “Sit down, girls.”
They sat.
Ignoring the THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING plaque on the DA’s wall, the elderly physician fished a slender black cigar from his coat pocket, bit off a plug, spat it in Pug’s wastebasket, lit it, took a puff. Exhaling, he said to the ladies, “Astrid was attacked by a carnivore. From a first look at the remains, could be a mountain lion, maybe even one of those wolves the government has turned loose. But during the process of a more careful examination, I discovered several animal hairs.” The medical sleuth added, with an air of satisfaction, “Probably left behind by a bear.”
Beatrice responded in a dull monotone: “That would seem to settle it, then.”
Cassie hugged herself, shuddered. “Poor Astrid—killed by a bear!”
The ME’s little face had a distinctly foxy look. “Well, not necessarily.”
The DA squinted at the aged physician. “What’s that mean?”
Doc Simpson revealed a choice piece of intelligence that he had been keeping to himself. “Back in nineteen seventy-eight, your father killed a black bear on Yellow Pines Ranch. The cheeky creature was practically in his backyard, stealing peaches from the orchard. Joe kept the pelt in a ground-floor bedroom.” He removed the cigar, pointed it at Beatrice. “The same bedroom where Astrid was attacked. As time passed, it got pretty tattered—and was shedding hair. Joe threw it out years ago.”
Beatrice glanced at her sister. “I had forgotten all about that old bearskin.”
Cassandra nodded. So had I.
“It does complicate matters.” The ME smiled at the Spencer beauties, who were preserved in his memory as disarmingly charming little cuties. “But I’ve sent some tissue samples to FBI forensics. I’ve no doubt they’ll find traces of saliva, which will contain a few mammalian cells. And those cells will identify the species of animal that killed your sister.”
Cassandra’s big eyes popped. “They can tell all that—just from some spit?”
Doc Simpson’s chuckle jiggled the cigar, popping off miniature smoke signals. “You bet your boots, Cassie—that and lots more. If we happen to get our hands on a suspect animal, the forensics techs can do a cross-check on the DNA and determine whether that specific bear or cougar or whatnot is responsible for the mauling.” Wolf was a long shot. Simpson had an afterthought. “It might’ve even been that vicious dog pack that’s been running wild, pulling down sheep and—” Seeing Beatrice pale, he clamped his mouth shut.
Cassandra sighed. “Poor Astrid. How horrible, to have a bloodthirsty animal break into your bedroom and—and…” Her eyes seemed to glaze over.
Doc Simpson was observing the elder sister with intense clinical interest. I hope she doesn’t have one of her seizures, right here in Pug’s office. “It happens more often than you might think, Cassie. The bear—if it was a bear—probably smelled something good to eat in the house. A bear’ll eat anything from roadkill to roast pheasant, but what really turns ’em on is something sweet. Like candy. Or fruit.”
Parris and the DA exchanged quick glances. The ME did not know that Charlie Moon had discovered a lone strawberry in Astrid Spencer’s bedroom, and another a mile away at the foot of Spencer Mountain. But every GCPD cop knew about it, plus the state police, so it was only a matter of time before that information appeared in the newspaper.
Beatrice seemed almost relieved by this tentative conclusion. “A hungry bear attracted by the scent of food.” A sniff. “Yes, I suppose that must have been what happened.”
Pleased at this convergence toward consensus, the DA chimed in, “Happens all the time with campers. Last year—it was on Labor Day weekend down at Raccoon Creek Campgrounds—there was an attack on some twelve-year-old scouts that had a stash of candy bars in their tent.” Dumb kids. “But all they got were some scratches and a bad scare.”
&n
bsp; Pointedly ignoring Pug, Beatrice smiled at Doc Simpson. “Cassie and I appreciate your lucid explanation of what you have determined so far.” A glance at the clock on the wall. “Now, we must be going.” As if they were coupled together by some invisible sister-mechanism, Beatrice and Cassandra simultaneously got up from their chairs.
The DA raised his palms in a gesture that suggested boundless generosity. “You have any more questions or concerns, ladies—feel free to call my office.”
Beatrice nodded at the assembly of solemn men. “Good day, then.” With this, the Spencer sisters departed.
District Attorney Bill “Pug” Bullett sighed to vent his pent-up anxieties, shot a scowl at Scott Parris. “Now, all we need to do is find that killer bear and destroy it.”
Walter Simpson got out of his chair, drew himself up to his full height of five feet three inches. “Let’s not go slaughtering any forest creatures before I get the forensics report back from the FBI.”
The DA cocked his head. “How long could that take?”
“At least six weeks. Probably a lot longer.” The ME took a long pull on his cigar. “They’ve got a huge backlog of work. And as you know, Pug”—as you ought to know—“when a citizen is mauled by a wild animal”—if it was a wild animal—“there’s no crime involved. So the Bureau won’t give a high priority to analyzing the samples I submitted.”
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