Footprints to Murder

by Marcia Talley

  ‘How do you decide where to set up your camera, Jim?’ Leah wanted to know.

  ‘As Athena mentioned, there’ve been numerous Bigfoot sightings along the Metolius River, especially down near the rapids just below Flat Rock.’

  Bears, more than likely, I thought. Bears snagging salmon. But I kept my mouth shut.

  ‘Prairie Flower helped us pinpoint the location,’ he continued.

  Prairie Flower! My ears perked up. This must be the person the van driver, Scott, had cautioned us about. ‘She’s an expert, is she?’ I asked, assuming that no self-respecting ‘he’ would willingly choose to name himself after a flower.

  ‘She uses one of those … those …’ Jim searched for the correct word.

  ‘Wand pendulums,’ Athena supplied. ‘She dangles this crystal gizmo over a map on a string. That’s how Randall Frazier decided to take the expedition to Mount Saint Helens this summer.’

  Pendulums and magic crystals. Sounded more like a gypsy skill than one associated with Native Americans, but what did I know. I was thinking that I should hire Prairie Flower to help locate my grandson’s lost Elmo doll when Susan Lockley caught my eye, gesturing at me from the podium. I excused myself and joined her.

  Together we fiddled with the laptop and projection cables. Susan supplied me with a thumb drive that I plugged into the laptop’s USB port. A few minutes after firing up the PowerPoint software Martin Radcliffe’s presentation filled the screen.

  I jiggled with the focus then paged through the first few slides to make sure everything was working smoothly, including his video link to the iconic fifty-nine-second Patterson-Gimlin film of a female Bigfoot strolling along a stream bed in Willow Creek, California. Satisfied, I returned to the title slide and left it up. BIGFOOT ON FILM: FACT vs FICTION?, scrawled in a spooky font I recognized as Slasher was superimposed in red over the ‘look back’ image of the Bigfoot nicknamed ‘Patty’ taken from frame number 352 of the controversial 1967 film.

  ‘There’s Martin now,’ Susan whispered as a man strode purposely through the seated diners, making a beeline for the podium.

  Radcliffe was younger and thinner than he looked on TV. (OK, I confess to watching his silly show from time to time.) The thirty-five-year-old entertainer had fair skin and pale hair slicked straight back and trendy. He was dressed in chinos and a light blue, long-sleeve button-down Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Your typical college-prep look, with the exception of his athletic shoes, which were lime-green Reebok Crossfit trainers. Radcliffe was famous for them, according to the tabloids. Never wore anything else, they claimed, not even to weddings and funerals. ‘Thank you, ladies,’ Radcliffe said as he approached. ‘Looks good.’

  Susan shook the man’s hand and said, ‘It there’s anything you need, Martin, Hannah will get it for you.’

  ‘I’d like to keep the front row clear for the cameraman,’ Martin said, looking directly at me.

  ‘That shouldn’t be a problem.’

  Said cameraman, a jean-clad twenty-something with a shock of shaggy, jet-black hair, sat cross-legged on the carpet near a tower of black cases, installing what I assumed was a battery pack into a shoulder-mounted camcorder. ‘Brad’s filming the conference for a documentary. If it’s good enough I’ll feature it on my fall show,’ Martin explained.

  ‘When will the show air?’ I asked, just to be polite.

  ‘September. It takes a couple of months to put it together.’ He grinned. ‘A good show, anyway.’

  I cast my mind back to a sleepless night when I’d been channel surfing. ‘I caught your program on poltergeists,’ I confessed. ‘Couldn’t sleep a wink after that.’ Which was certainly true, although I suspected it had more to do with the high-test cappuccino I’d drunk that night at dinner than the acid-green, white-eyed creepiness of the images staring out of my television screen.

  While Martin Radcliffe rummaged through his briefcase looking for who knows what, Susan and I watched Brad fiddle with his equipment, his long legs folded stiffly beneath him. I couldn’t help but notice his boots. They were pock-marked, as if the cow they’d been harvested from had suffered some horrific disease.

  ‘You pay extra for that,’ Susan said when I pointed it out.

  I simply stared.

  ‘Ostrich,’ she informed me. ‘Those bumps are vacant quill follicles – where the feathers used to be.’

  ‘Ewww,’ I said.

  Brad shifted and a pant leg rode up, exposing more of the boot. Fancy multicolored stitching exploded over the front and sides in a pattern like angels’ wings. A square toe and a sensible, one-and-a-half-inch heel completed the look. Gen-you-wine, handmade in Texas, thank you very much, the look said.

  ‘I want me some of them,’ I whispered to Susan.

  She scowled. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Those?’

  ‘Well, not those exactly. Something a little less, um, exotic. Rattlesnake, maybe.’

  Susan rolled her eyes. ‘No more wine for you, Hannah Ives.’ And with a friendly pat to my shoulder, off she went.

  Radcliffe touched a button on his Apple Watch secured high on his wrist with a bright orange band, then looked at me. ‘I’ll start speaking in fifteen minutes, give or take. Do you know who’s introducing me?’

  ‘According to the program it’s Ron Murphy. I haven’t met him yet so I’m not sure if he’s here.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I know Ron. Good, good.’ And with a tip of an imaginary hat he went off to chat with his cameraman.

  My work here is done, I thought. I grabbed a brownie from the buffet then wandered back to the table and rejoined my dinner companions. Jim Davis was holding forth on night-vision wireless trail cams you could get on overnight delivery from Amazon. Athena looked on adoringly. Leah was openly taking notes.

  As I sat down, Jim said, ‘We’ll try to even up the odds a bit, though, Miss Solat.’ He leaned forward, both forearms resting on the table. ‘Do you know what you bait a Bigfoot trap with?’

  Leah raised an eyebrow, ballpoint pen poised. ‘No, tell me.’

  Jim tapped his temple with an index finger. ‘Tuna fish.’

  You learn something new every day.

  The next time I saw Nicole Baker she had abandoned her millionaire boyfriend and plopped herself down next to Martin Radcliffe who was sitting on a chair, his feet stretched out in front of him. He glanced up from the business at hand – shuffling through a large-font printout of his talk – and caught my eye, looking desperate.

  I sashayed over. ‘Just checking on the equipment, Mr Radcliffe. Is everything working properly?’

  He shot to his feet and laid the printout on the chair. ‘I’ll need some help with the microphone,’ he said, motioning for me to follow him up to the podium. ‘I usually use a lavalier mike so I can walk around while I talk.’ He pointed to the microphone attached to the stand on the podium. ‘Those are so restrictive.’

  Nicole, I noticed, had picked up Martin’s printout and was leafing through the pages.

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

  ‘Don’t thank me until I can locate a lavalier for you,’ I said with a grin.

  ‘Not for the mike.’ He nodded in Nicole’s direction. ‘For saving me from that.’

  ‘Was she talking your ear off?’

  Turning his back to the young woman, he said quietly, ‘She’s angling for a job on my show.’

  Remembering what he’d told us about Brad Johnson, I gestured toward the cameraman and said, ‘Isn’t everyone?’

  Radcliffe laughed but there was no mirth in it. ‘Brad’s got a chance. He’s got the talent. He gets it. Nicole Baker? Who’s ever heard of Nicole Baker? Community theater, a two-bit modeling career in Chicago, a cringe-worthy walk-on in Ted 2 and she thinks she’ll be the next Vanna White.’

  ‘Nobody turns letters on your show.’

  ‘She figures I have connections.’

  ‘Doesn’t Mr Gilchrist …?’ I paused.

/>   ‘Sure, but money doesn’t buy everything. To coin a phrase.’

  Martin’s talk took an Equal Opportunity jab at all manner of video fakery. Beginning with UFOs – pointing out the wires, shadows, reflections and even flying objects made out of Lego toys that were glaringly obvious once he directed our attention to them – he went on to consider the Loch Ness monster. Quickly eliminating the obvious bathtub toys, he zeroed in on the famous 1933 ‘Surgeon’s Photo’ of Nessie, revealed in 1994 as a hoax perpetrated by Christian Spurling using a toy submarine outfitted with a sea serpent head. ‘Besides,’ Martin said, ‘exercise your brains, people. There isn’t enough food in the lake to sustain a monster as big as Nessie.’

  A woman in the front row waved her hand, interrupting the presentation. ‘But,’ she said without waiting to be called on, ‘isn’t it possible that Nessie has died? Due to global warming?’

  Radcliffe gave her a withering look. ‘Please hold your questions until the end of my presentation, madam.’ And he forged on.

  One by one, he dissected historic Bigfoot videos from Russia, Poland, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island that most of the audience had seen multiple times on the Internet. Closer to home, videos from Washington, Colorado, California, Texas and Georgia were analyzed, dismantled and thoroughly debunked.

  The video clip shot in Maine by a twelve-year-old boy? An admitted hoax.

  The National Park Service’s webcam footage of a four-member Bigfoot family stalking buffalo at Old Faithful in Yellowstone? Cross-country skiers.

  The Pennsylvania trail cam? A young bear, with mange.

  ‘Now just a darn minute!’ someone shouted from behind me.

  All heads swiveled in that direction.

  Jim Davis was on his feet, waving a fist in the air. Athena, still seated, grabbed her husband’s arm and tried to pull him back into his chair but he shook her hand off. ‘I never claimed it was a Sasquatch!’ Davis yelled. ‘I said I’d been hunting in those woods for years and never seen anything like it. That it might be a Sasquatch.’

  When I glanced back at Radcliffe, he was smirking. ‘A bear,’ he repeated, ‘with mange.’ He stabbed a button on the controller, more viciously than was necessary, I thought, and pointed it at the projector. ‘For comparison,’ Radcliffe continued as the next slide clicked into place, ‘here is a picture of a mangy bear cub. Any idiot can see the resemblance.’

  Whispering, murmuring, hissing, a quiet boo.

  ‘That was harsh,’ someone sitting next to me said.

  A sudden hush. The clink of glassware from one of the bars.

  We all watched Jim stalk out of the room, his back rigid and shoulders straight. Athena scooped up her handbag from under her chair and hustled after him.

  ‘Moving on to the Pyrenees,’ Radcliffe oozed, clicking forward to the next slide, a photograph of a shaggy white figure that seemed to be strolling casually down a snow-covered mountain slope, ‘here we are at a ski resort in Formigal in northeast Spain, right on the border with France.’ He zoomed in on the mysterious figure. ‘Definitely a bear,’ Radcliffe declared with certainty, ‘or a hoaxster in a furry suit.’

  Several minutes later, when he came to the Patterson-Gimlin film of a Bigfoot nicknamed Patty shot in 1967 alongside Bluff Creek in California by two cowboys out for a ride, Radcliffe remained uncharacte‌ristically circumspect. ‘It’s been analyzed to death,’ he explained, paging through slide after slide. ‘If it’s a man in an ape suit, as I tend to believe, it’s an awfully good one. No one over the past forty years, not even the BBC with all their considerable resources, has been able to replicate the hoax, and heaven knows they’ve tried.

  ‘People want to believe that such creatures exist,’ he concluded. ‘Like Fox Mulder in the X-Files, they are convinced that “The Truth is Out There.”’

  As he spoke, The X-Files logo morphed into a giant question mark, expanding until it filled the screen. ‘But, remember this. It’s science, and pure science alone, that examines the proof and will finally give you the answers you seek.’

  FIVE

  Sacket’s Harbor, New York, August 30, 1818. ‘[I]n the vicinity of Ellisburgh, was seen on the 30th Ult. by a gentleman of unquestionable veracity, an animal resembling the Wild Man of the Woods … He is described as bending forward when running – hairy, and the heel of the foot narrow, spreading at the toes. Hundreds of persons have been in pursuit for several days, but nothing further is heard or seen of him … We wish not to impeach the veracity of this highly favored gentleman – yet, it is proper that such naturally improbable accounts should be established by the mouth of at least two direct eyewitnesses to entitle them.’

  The Exeter Watchman (Exeter, NY), September 6, 1818

  Still operating on east coast time, I awoke at five o’clock the following morning. I didn’t have to report for duty until eight-thirty, so after staring at the ceiling for fifteen minutes I got up, brewed a cup of coffee in the hotel room’s coffee maker, stirred in a packet of powdered cream with a plastic swizzle stick – ugh! – then took it out on the balcony to watch the sun rise. After sending a quick email to my husband to let him know I was still among the living, I showered, got dressed and went downstairs in search of a proper cup of coffee.

  I was so early it was just me and a woman wearing a name tag that said ‘Debbie’ in the hospitality suite. While hotel staff fussed with uncooperative coffee urns, I helped Debbie arrange boxes of donuts on the table next to a tent sign that said, ‘Donuts Compliments of Debbie’s Donut Dugout.’

  ‘Will twelve dozen be enough, you think?’ Debbie wondered.

  I took the liberty of sampling one of the glazed variety. I took a bite, closed my eyes and moaned.

  ‘Does Krispy Kreme know about these?’ I mumbled around a sweet, yeasty mouthful. While Debbie observed me silently, beaming, I polished off the donut in four bites then licked each of my fingers in turn, keen to make the goodness last. ‘One hundred dozen isn’t going to be enough,’ I told her.

  Debbie blushed, then grinned. ‘Try the chocolate.’

  I held up both hands defensively, palm out. ‘There’s only so much ecstasy I can take in a single day.’

  While I stood at the urn fixing myself a cup of coffee, Leah Solat breezed in looking fresh and fit in pink yoga pants and a pale yellow top, followed by Martin Radcliffe carrying an insulated travel mug. ‘If you’ve already been to the gym,’ I told Leah as she waited her turn at the urn, ‘I think I’m going to kill myself.’

  Leah laughed. ‘Just on my way out there now.’

  ‘The donuts are to die for,’ I said, feeling a bit wicked for even mentioning them. ‘You can work the calories off on the treadmill.’

  Holding her coffee, Leah wandered over to the table where Debbie stood guard over her luscious wares. ‘Do you have gluten-free?’

  To my surprise, Debbie reached under the table and withdrew another box, opened it and held it out. ‘I make them with chickpea flour, ma’am. My specialty.’

  The chickpea donut must have been every bit as delicious as the one I’d just demolished, because after Leah scarfed it down she snagged a second to take along to the gym with her.

  I had to laugh. Vegan and gluten-free. Conference meal planning could certainly be a challenge.

  ‘Good morning, Hannah.’ It was a familiar voice, so close to my ear that I could feel his warm breath on my neck.

  I stepped back then turned to face the speaker. ‘Good morning, Jake. I looked for you last night at dinner, but …’

  ‘Jet lag,’ he explained before I could finish the thought. ‘Air travel doesn’t always agree with old Harley here.’

  Harley, sitting patiently beside his master, looked fresh, bright-eyed and a match for any squirrel that might cross his path in the forest that day.

  ‘Besides,’ Jake continued, ‘I think I’ve heard everything that Martin Radcliffe has to say.’

  ‘You missed the fireworks,’ I said.

  ‘Oh?’

 
‘Radcliffe showed a video taken by Jim Davis a couple of years ago. When Davis objected to the way it was being presented, Radcliffe kinda called him an idiot.’

  Jake snorted. ‘Par for the course with Radcliffe.’

  ‘Otherwise,’ I said, ‘I found his talk intriguing. It didn’t seem to me that he had an axe to grind. What I mean is he wasn’t trying to convince the audience that all those videos had been faked.’ I paused. ‘Have you had coffee?’

  ‘Up in the room, thanks.’

  ‘Proper coffee,’ I said, indicating the urns.

  Jake closed his eyes for a moment and said wistfully, ‘Proper coffee, ah. That would be The Angry Catfish on 28th in Minneapolis. No frou-frou brew. A caffeine high so fine that the DEA should take notice.’

  ‘I don’t really believe in Bigfoot,’ I confessed, ‘but it was fascinating to hear about the lengths people go to in order to fake it. With all those fruitcakes out there crying wolf, it must make it harder for someone who has a legitimate sighting to make anyone believe them.’

  ‘We take every sighting very seriously,’ Jake said.

  ‘We?’

  ‘Bigfoot Field Research Organization. BFRO. Ever since I retired I’ve been volunteering as one of their investigators.’

  ‘Gosh, that must involve a lot of travel.’

  Jake shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. Mostly I interview witnesses over the phone who have posted sightings on our website. We apply the closest scrutiny to the A-rated sightings.’

  ‘A-rated? Are there B-, C- and D-rated sightings, too?’

  ‘No, just A to C. The Cs are so iffy that we don’t generally list them in the database, but the As, the clear sightings, are always investigated. Bs?’ He rocked a hand back and forth. ‘Poor visibility, footprints, sounds. Anyway …’ He paused to take a breath, then shrugged. ‘Keeps me off the streets and out of trouble.’

  After a moment, he asked, ‘Where are you from, Hannah?’

  ‘Maryland,’ I said, wondering why he wanted to know since it was clearly printed on my nametag. I looked down, clicked my tongue then flipped the tag over so the name side faced out and flapped it at him. ‘Annapolis. The sailing capital of the eastern seaboard.’