Footprints to Murder

by Marcia Talley

  While Jake went off to fill a water bowl for Harley, I wandered out to the patio and located the buffet tables, loaded with an obscene amount of food: eggs, bacon, sausage, creamed beef and hash browns – compact little squares, not grated. There was fresh fruit, yogurt and hot oatmeal with all the trimmings. What’s not to like? A few minutes before, my teeth had been set for scrambled eggs, but once I spotted the Belgian waffles I was a goner. I joined the line.

  Instrumental renditions of Beatles tunes played softly in the background as we grazed. I hummed along with Hey Jude while decorating my waffle with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Holding my plate, I looked around.

  Before I could find a table two children streaked past, screaming like banshees. Another, around ten years old, lunged in front of me, grabbed a blueberry muffin and raced off after them. I wondered where the camp counselors had gotten to when I noticed another kid bouncing, fully clothed, on the end of the diving board.

  This trick did not escape the attention of his eagle-eyed mother. ‘Jason! You get off that board right this minute! You hear me?’ I recognized Carla, the young woman I’d met at lunch the day before. Kylie’s mom. Once Jason had removed himself from the danger zone, I asked, ‘Did Kylie ever find a plastic fork?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She managed to tick off all the boxes.’ She indicated my plate, which was tipping dangerously to starboard. ‘Please, join us.’

  I smiled, sat down and dug in.

  I’d eaten half my waffle when Carla excused herself to retrieve her son from some other escapade. She frog-marched him back to the table and sat him down, firmly, next to me, where he fussed and fidgeted, tearing the edges of the paper tablecloth into tiny strips then laying them out individually on his grubby palm and blowing them away.

  I wiped whipped cream off my lips with my napkin, crumpled it next to my plate and went into full grandmother mode.

  I reached into my bag and rooted around for my iPhone, thinking Jason might settle down if I distracted him with a game of Minecraft or The Sims.

  I’d forgotten until I dredged it up, heavy in my hand, that the instrument was still encased in the FLIR. Even better! Before long Jason had mastered the Zombie Vision app and was turning us all into red-eyed monsters.

  From the look his mother gave me, I was her new best friend.

  ‘Is this seat taken or can anyone join?’

  ‘Hi, Jake.’ I introduced him to Carla, whose last name I learned was Malone.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ Carla asked him.

  ‘I will in a minute,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ Then he turned to me. ‘I was looking for Susan Lockley. Have you seen her?’

  ‘She’s off coordinating some last-minute changes to the airport shuttle. If you need to make a change now she’s going to kill you.’

  ‘Just want to make sure they save room for Harley,’ he said, reaching down to pat the dog who, in spite of all the cheerful chaos going on around him, sat passively at Jake’s heels, his ears twitching with interest.

  Cecelia Cloughly drifted past heading in the direction of the meditation garden, carrying her horn. I called out to her and she came over. ‘Surely you have that piece down pat by now,’ I teased, indicating the case containing the horn.

  She leaned in and spoke quietly. ‘Frankly, crowds like this make me a little bit crazy.’ She hefted the case. ‘Meet my excuse to get away.’

  I cheerfully waved her off.

  When she was several feet away, she turned. ‘Don’t worry,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I brought my mute.’

  Five minutes later, Brunhilde was tooting farewell to Siegfried once again but softly, barely audible under the orchestral version of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ wafting out of the outdoor speakers.

  ‘She shouldn’t do that,’ Jake commented as he joined us with a plate piled high with food.

  ‘Do what?’ Carla wanted to know.

  ‘Play music. Sasquatch are attracted to music.’

  I jabbed him with my elbow. ‘Stop it!’

  ‘It’s true. In Muir Woods, back in 2003, some flower child was leaning against a redwood playing “Kumbayah” on a recorder when she was attacked by a Bigfoot.’

  Thinking about poor Martin, I said, ‘Yikes. Was she killed?’

  ‘Nope.’ Jake chuckled. ‘Bigfoot grabbed her recorder and snapped it in two. Or so she claimed. Since she was stoned at the time nobody paid much attention to her story.’ He paused and sipped at his coffee. ‘So much for the theory that music has charms to soothe the savage beast.’

  ‘Breast,’ I corrected.

  ‘Whatever,’ Jake said. ‘From what I’ve seen on television and Martin Radcliffe’s show in particular, professional hog callers would have better luck attracting a Sasquatch than a horn player.’

  ‘How about those guys speaking Squatch?’

  ‘Them, too,’ he said.

  Although folks were still visiting the buffet – some for seconds or thirds, I noticed – the crowd had noticeably thinned.

  ‘Mom!’ Jason crowed. ‘You are a zombie! Look!’

  Carla was giving Jason and her zombie portrait her undivided attention when somebody started to scream, a staccato, ‘Eek! Eek! Eek!’ that silenced everyone.

  I became aware of several things at once.

  Jake shot to his feet. ‘Was is los?’ he said, putting Harley on alert.

  Kylie was running toward us, arms outstretched and waving wildly. ‘Mommy, mommy, Bigfoot!’

  Kylie had it right. About fifty yards away, at the edge of the forest, caught like a deer in the headlights, stood a Sasquatch.

  ‘Jake! Hurry!’ I snatched my iPhone out of the hands of an astonished Jason and dashed off after the creature, determined to unmask the imposter the old-fashioned way by tearing the disguise off his face.

  ‘Hannah! No!’ Jake was seconds behind me. ‘Leave him to me.’

  Squatch had darted through a gap in the trees and I shot through, too. Ahead, over the sound of my own heavy breathing, I could hear thrashing and twigs crackling.

  The forest closed in around me, growing darker. I chanced a look behind me, fully expecting to see Jake but, surprisingly, I was alone. I paused to listen for him but the woods surrounding me were unnaturally quiet.

  I stood still, clutching my iPhone in a death grip, hearing my husband’s voice in my head: ‘Hannah, what are we going to do with you? Are you out of your mind?’

  Probably. But I thought Jake was right behind me! My heart thudded and seemed to turn over. Where the hell was he?

  I brought the phone up to my face, surprised that it was so heavy, forgetting for a moment that it was still encased in the FLIR.

  ‘C’mon baby,’ I whispered as I swiped the phone to life. I used the app to scan the forest around me. Nothing but cool colors – navy, purple and blue. Was the damn thing even working?

  I aimed at my hand – a warm, golden yellow. It was working fine.

  Holding the phone in front of me, I moved cautiously forward, scanning as I went. Through gaps in the trees – dark blue foliage, the trunks outlined in neon green – I plunged deeper into the woods, praying I was heading in the right direction. Then I stopped, hardly daring to breathe. Something warm was just ahead, a reddish-purple shape, crouching near the roots of a tree.

  ‘I see you,’ I said.

  Nobody answered. The shape didn’t move.

  I suppressed the crazy impulse to shout at the creature in Bigfootese. RAM HO BÄ RÜ kept running wildly through my mind like a mantra.

  I tried an old cowboy trick. ‘We have you surrounded.’

  All remained quiet.

  ‘The police are on their way.’

  Silence.

  ‘I see you,’ I tried again, my voice quavering. I reached into my pocket, wrapping my fingers around the aerosol can of Bear Shot that I’d bought from Marty in the dealers’ room, feeling reassured by his guarantee that the specially formulated pepper spray would ‘stop a charging grizzly in its tracks.’ Aft
er what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a few minutes, I said, ‘Screw it!’ and turned on the phone’s flashlight, moving in for a closer look.

  At the base of the tree lay a pile of rags.

  I moved closer, stooped and picked one up. It consisted of shaggy strips of burlap and pieces of string, like an old-fashioned mop, attached to coarse webbing.

  I hadn’t spent almost all my life hanging around military bases, first as a navy brat and then as the wife of a Naval Academy professor, not to know what I held in my hand, still warm from the body of whomever had been wearing it. A ghillie suit.

  Great. I was stuck out in the middle of the Deschutes National Forest and whoever had been disguised with this foliage camouflage outfit was long gone.

  At least my battery was fully charged and I had the Google GPS app to guide me out of there, wherever ‘there’ was.

  I raised the phone to switch it over to the GPS app when something on the screen grabbed my attention, shaking me to the core. A man’s face, clearly a man’s – all purple head and ears with bright yellow eyes – peered out from behind a tree. When I lowered the phone he was completely invisible, blending in to the surrounding shrubbery.

  If I couldn’t see him without the device, maybe he couldn’t see me?

  I took a cautious step forward. Something snapped under my foot. I swore, not caring if he heard.

  Whoever it was took off, crashing through the underbrush, grunting as he ran, with me hot on his tail.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted. Branches slapped at my face and tore at my hair. Somewhere along the way I had lost my scarf but I wasn’t about to stop and go looking for it, even though it had been a birthday gift from Paul.

  Suddenly I was aware of slats of daylight between the trunks of the trees up ahead. I thought I had been running in the direction of the river but as I burst out of the woods I was astonished to find myself not on the banks of the Metolius but in the lodge’s meditation garden, just behind what I’d come to think of as Cecelia Cloughly’s bench.

  Her bench was deserted. I grabbed the back of it, steadying myself as I gasped for breath.

  ‘Hannah?’

  I looked up. Professor Cloughly stood on the lawn nearby, her foot resting on a shape I couldn’t immediately identify. ‘He came charging at me from out of nowhere,’ she explained. ‘So I hit him with my horn.’

  I eased closer. A man lay face down on the grass under Cecelia’s foot, both arms wrapped protectively over his head. He still wore the bottoms of the ghillie suit, like a pair of furry pajamas.

  ‘Damn. Dented it, too,’ she said, stroking the bell of her instrument. ‘Luckily I left my concert horn at home. Got this one on eBay for three hundred and fifty dollars.’

  I prodded the fellow with the tip of my shoe. ‘Who are you?’

  He moaned. ‘Tell her not to hit me.’

  I turned to the professor. ‘Don’t hit him again, he says.’

  Cloughly seemed unmoved. ‘You ought to be ashamed. Scaring everyone like that. There are children here!’

  I kicked him again, a tiny bit harder. ‘Turn over.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ he whimpered.

  ‘Then get up on your feet and talk to us about it,’ I said.

  The guy had just begun to stir when Harley bounded through the gap in the trees where I’d been minutes before, followed by Jake Cummings, who looked relieved. What appeared to be the other half of the ghillie suit was rolled up under his arm. Harley stationed himself at our captive’s feet, still on full alert. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ I asked, speaking to the dog and ignoring his master. My knight in shining armor had arrived a day late and a dollar short. I scowled at Jake. ‘I thought you were right behind me.’

  ‘I tripped over Jason. Stupid kid ran right in front of me. We both went flying.’ He rubbed his knee then winced. ‘Damn. We lost you in there, Hannah.’ He held up my scarf. ‘If you hadn’t dropped this we might never have found you.’

  ‘I have GPS,’ I reminded him, holding up my iPhone. ‘It’s a good thing you have Harley.’

  ‘Call off your dog!’ the guy on the ground pleaded. ‘Please! I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Pass auf,’ Jake commanded, putting Harley on guard.

  Seemingly reassured he wasn’t about to be eaten alive by a slavering canine, the guy lowered his arms. Several seconds later he turned over.

  ‘Good Lord!’ I said.

  ‘You see?’ Cecelia said. ‘Scared me spitless.’

  ‘Shit,’ Jake hissed, turning it into a two-syllable word.

  Only Harley seemed unperturbed by the stranger.

  Except for the T-shirt that declared our captive belonged to the ‘Sasquatch Research Team,’ we were looking into the face of an ape.

  The ape reached up and rubbed his temple, massaging the spot where Cloughly had conked him. His hand came away covered with dark gray paint.

  I squinted, struggling to identify the person hiding under the skillful paint job. No wonder we’d been fooled. Even close up, the guy looked like a gorilla: the lowered hairline, the unibrow, the flattened nose, the full, cracked lips.

  ‘Shannon’s quite the artist,’ I said as the penny dropped.

  ‘Who?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Shannon. One of the camp counselors. This is a prime example of her skill as a face painter. And, unless I’m mistaken, once this guy takes a washcloth to his face we’ll be looking at Shannon’s partner in crime, Colin. The other kiddy counselor.’

  Colin pulled up the hem of his T-shirt and began wiping his face with it, grotesquely smearing Shannon’s beautifully executed design. ‘We didn’t do anything wrong, honest. It was all Brad’s idea. Fire everyone up, create a little excitement.’

  ‘Too bad somebody ended up dead,’ Jake said.

  ‘That had nothing to do with me. I was just doing a job. Dress up in the ghillie suit, walk out of the woods, make some footprints, let the camera get a look at me but not too close, then split.’

  Jake helped Colin to his feet none too gently, marched him over to the bench and sat him down. ‘When you made your debut the other day, were you aware that Martin Radcliffe was lying dead just a few yards away?’

  Colin’s red-rimmed eyes grew wide. ‘God, no. Do you think I would have gone through with the prank if I had known that?’

  ‘So what’s your excuse for this encore performance?’

  ‘Brad said it was for his film – the documentary he’s making for TV. He missed filming me the first time, down by the river. He needed to capture it on film.’

  Something wasn’t right. If Brad had arranged for the prank, as Colin claimed, why hadn’t he been down at the river bank, camera shouldered, filming away on Friday? Why did he need a retake? And, more importantly, why hadn’t he discovered Martin’s body?’

  I looked at Jake. ‘Where is Brad, anyway? Last time I saw him he was interviewing people at brunch.’

  Jake’s face registered alarm. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He was supposed to meet me in the parking lot,’ Colin said with a wide-eyed look that said he was just trying to be helpful. ‘He owes me another two hundred dollars.’

  ‘Are you some sort of idiot?’ Jake bellowed. ‘You dress up in a ghille suit, a guy gets murdered then Brad talks you into doing it again?’ He turned to me and Cecelia. ‘Sign this guy up for the Darwin Award.’

  Beneath the smeared grease paint, Colin’s face sagged. ‘I had nothing to do with Martin Radcliffe’s murder! I already told you. I didn’t see anything down by the river. Just walked to the water and back, like he paid me to.’

  Knowing what Jake had told me about the timing of Radcliffe’s death, I believed him. Still, I thought Colin had a lot of explaining to do.

  Apparently Jake thought so, too.

  ‘Here,’ he said, thrusting the rolled-up ghillie suit into my hands. He seized the young man’s upper arm in what looked like a death grip, gave Harley a sign and the three of them marched down the
path that led back to the lodge.

  ‘Well, that was fun,’ Cecelia said as she packed her horn back into its case.

  I juggled the suit so that it fit more comfortably under my arm. ‘This thing is heavy.’

  ‘You dropped something,’ Cecelia said, pointing.

  A flesh-colored object lay on the manicured lawn near the spot that had been torn up by the tussle with Colin. I bent down and picked it up. ‘For heaven’s sake!’

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Cecelia said, moving a step closer and adjusting her eyeglasses.

  I held up a molded piece of latex the size and shape of a large boot. It had five sausage-shaped toes and was tufted all over with curly, brown hair. When I managed to stop laughing, I said, ‘It’s a hobbit foot. Flexible midtarsals and all.’

  Jake Cumming’s ‘Cinderella’ was Bilbo Baggins.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Red Bank, Northesk, New Brunswick, Canada, 1881. ‘Quite a sensation was caused last week … by the appearance of a strange and terrifying animal, which those who have seen it describe as a gorilla … It is … about seven feet long with arms and legs, but running on all fours. The head is a dark color and the face has features resembling those of a human being. The body is of lighter color and covered with hair … It was observed that the creature had no tail, a fact which gives color to the supposition that it is an animal of the gorilla family. Prof. Grote, describing the gorilla, says it has no more tail than a professor, while the knowledge that monkeys have tails, and the idea that these external appendages are a badge of general monkeyhood are deeply rooted in the popular mind. But the apes are as tailless as man and no more so.’

  The Daily Patriot (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada), June 28, 1881

  Jake’s 911 call, we learned, had reached Detective Lieutenant Barbara Cook at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church just before the closing hymn. She skipped the benediction and arrived at Flat Rock Lodge around eleven-thirty, taking Colin immediately in hand for questioning. When she finished grilling him, Shannon got the full treatment, too. I ran into the pair of counselors in the coffee shop afterwards, drinking cappuccinos and looking sober.