A Killing Season

by Jessica Speart

  Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I gave the critters credit for having more sense. As far as I was concerned, Bearhead had his priorities all screwy. There’d been no grizzly chasing after the girl. In addition, I didn’t believe that she’d fainted from a lack of food. A more likely probability was that Elizabeth had fallen prey to narcotics. I suspected it was drug dealers rather than bears that he should have been targeting.

  I kept my mouth shut until I got into Running’s pickup.

  “So, what’s the deal with Bearhead’s wife and brother? Do you also believe that they were eaten by big, bad bears?”

  Matthew gave one of his noncommittal shrugs. “Who knows? His wife vanished about a year ago. Some say she ran off with another man and that Bearhead just won’t admit it, preferring to believe that she’s dead. As for his brother, the stories run the gamut. Some say he was killed in a hunting accident, while others swear he committed suicide by sticking a gun in his mouth and eating a bullet. Then again, there’s always your phantom man-eating bear. Feel free to take your pick.”

  “The FBI seems to be awfully casual about all this.”

  “As I said before, they’re pretty busy.”

  “Well, there’s something that I haven’t yet told you yet.”

  Though Running’s head never moved, his almond-shaped eyes slid toward me like those of a wolf. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  I decided to play it “Indian style” and remained silent until I thought I would burst. “Hutchins drove by while I was out in the field with Elizabeth. I tried to flag him down, and he definitely saw us. But rather than stopping, he took off.”

  Matthew’s expression remained maddeningly inscrutable. “So what are you getting at?”

  Jeez! What did I have to do? Spell it out for the guy? “Elizabeth had just been to see him. Don’t you find that to be odd?”

  “Give yourself some credit. You look like a capable woman. Maybe he had to rush off on an emergency and figured you could handle a hungry twelve-year-old girl all by yourself.”

  “Oh, come on! Is that the best you can do?” I needled.

  “If you’re so smart, what’s your theory, Miss High-and-mighty federal agent?”

  I had to fight to keep the grin off my face. If he was trying to insult me, he’d have to do a whole lot better.

  “You said yourself that there’s a big drug problem here on the rez. Well, just think about it. Who has exceptionally easy access to narcotics?”

  This time, Matthew turned his head and stared at me before bursting into laughter. “Doc Hutchins as a drug peddler? You’ve got to be kidding! He’s scared of his own shadow. Just take a good look at the guy.”

  I bristled. “Okay. Then you tell me, why else he would run from the scene unless he were guilty of something?”

  Running quickly sobered up. “Sorry, Rachel, I don’t mean to poke fun. But you’re dead wrong on this one. I know it in my gut. It’s true that Doc Hutchins is a bit strange, but that doesn’t make him a drug dealer, a pedophile, or a serial rapist.”

  We rode the rest of the way in silence. By the time we reached Sally’s house, the moon had risen fat and round. I jumped out of the pickup and took the porch steps two at a time, only to abruptly stop, instinctively aware that Running wasn’t following behind. My heart dropped, and I slowly turned to look at the man. His eyes intently studied me from where he sat in the cab of his truck, as still as a ghost in the moonlight.

  An emotional cord had emerged, stretching tautly between us. It began to reel me in ever so slowly, and I allowed myself to be pulled back toward the pickup by its invisible force. I didn’t stop until my arms came to rest on the driver’s side window, where Matthew brought his face tantalizingly close to mine.

  “I’m going to take off now. Would you mind telling Sally that I decided to skip dinner? I think we should call it a night.”

  “Why?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

  “Because I need to take a step back in order to see things more clearly. To do that, I have to be alone for a while.”

  I wondered what he was talking about—Doc Hutchins, the grizzlies, or me?

  “All right.”

  I turned to walk inside, only to feel the touch of his hand on my arm. For a moment, I wasn’t quite certain what was going on. All I knew was that my heart began to race. Then he reached out and drew me toward him. Our lips touched, and everything came to a stop. Nothing else in the world mattered—until Santou invaded my thoughts.

  Only the sculpted bears bore silent witness to my indiscretion as I jerked away and raced up the steps. I don’t know what frightened me more—that I’d wanted it to happen, or that I had enjoyed his kiss even more than I could have imagined. All I knew was that I had to temporarily escape the spell of the moon, the stars, and, most of all, Matthew Running.

  Sally turned in surprise as I bolted inside and shut the door.

  “Is something wrong? And for heaven’s sake, where’s Matthew?”

  The blood raced to my face in blatant betrayal. Goddammit! Why did I have to be born a redhead?

  Sally had eyes as sharp as her hawks’, and a keen sense of cunning to match. Hal fully believed the woman to be psychic. I played with that thought as she continued to observe me. Who were we kidding? My Jewish sense of guilt was what made me so damn easy to read.

  Sally poured two large glasses of wine and led me over to the fireplace. We drank in silence for a while, kept company by her personal galaxy of stars. Only when the silence became nearly unbearable did she put down her glass and turn toward me.

  “Is it the fact that Matthew’s half Indian that bothers you?”

  “Of course not!” If anything, that was part of the attraction. I always found the lure of the unknown to be enticingly seductive.

  “All right then. What’s the problem?”

  I looked at the woman sitting next to me and knew I could tell her just about anything.

  “I’m already involved with someone else.”

  Sally threw back her head and a stream of laughter trilled from her lips. “Is that what’s bothering you?”

  “Well, yeah! Along with a few other piddling things like loyalty, honesty and trust,” I countered, playing the good defensive linebacker.

  Sally propped her elbows on her knees, rested her chin in her hands, and focused her baby blues on me. “If that’s the case, then tell me about this man of yours.”

  I took a deep breath and opened the floodgates.

  “His name is Jake Santou. He’s based in New Orleans, is involved in law enforcement, and does a lot of undercover work. That’s why we haven’t seen very much of each other lately.”

  “And?”

  “He drinks too much, smokes too much, and used to have a drug problem. We’ve had our share of trouble and the man can drive me absolutely nuts. But I love him.”

  “Mmm. Then what about Matthew?”

  Running’s image popped into my mind, along with those maddening eyes of his that could so easily see clear to my soul. “I’ve never met anyone quite like him.”

  “That’s because there’s no one else in the world who is. I told you that he served in Desert Storm, but I didn’t mention that he trained as part of an elite military team. Matt was second-in-command of a highly specialized unit sent deep behind enemy lines to gather intelligence. He’s someone who blends in so well, you don’t even know that he’s there. What makes Matt unique is that he possesses a special talent for reading people’s hearts and their thoughts.”

  “Was your son in the same unit?”

  Sally took a sip of wine and nodded. “He would have followed Matthew to hell and back. He began the journey with him. He just never made it home.”

  I wondered if she ever questioned why Running had survived in place of her son.

  “I spotted a miniature sandbox in Matthew’s office. It held two dog tags, a grizzly claw and a gold wedding band. Any idea why he has them in there?” Though I had every intention of remaining
true blue to Santou, I couldn’t help but be curious about the man.

  Sally gazed into the fireplace, her face as wrinkle-free as that of a teenager. “A few of those items mean something special to him. Others are obstacles in his life. The sandbox teaches you to work around them. Take the wedding band, for example. Matthew was divorced. He can cover the ring up with sand, but it won’t change the fact that it’s always going to be there. It’s part of who he is. You have to learn to accept your past and to rake around the hurts, the obstacles, and all the mistakes that you’ve made.”

  “I’d just remove the ring from the sandbox and throw it away.”

  Sally smiled sadly. “Wouldn’t it be nice if it were so easy to obliterate the past? You can’t control everything that happens to you, Rachel, no matter how hard you try. You get married and divorced. Loved ones die. People don’t live up to your expectations. Or perhaps you don’t live up to your own. The secret is to be brave enough to leave yourself open to the things in life that are truly important.”

  Sally studied me as if I were one of her critters to be rehabilitated. “I get the feeling that you’re afraid of losing your heart. It’s probably why you’ve been single for so long. You’ve never been fearless enough to let go.”

  She was beginning to hit a little too close to the mark. I polished off my glass of wine and stood up.

  “For all you know, I may have been married and divorced.”

  Sally lifted her chin and looked perceptively down her regal nose. “Uh-uh. I don’t think so. You’re too leery to commit to anyone.”

  Enough was enough. I decided to skip dinner and go to bed.

  “Just realize that you could be passing up something quite special with Matt. Don’t be so fast to close yourself off. There’s always a reason for the things that happen to us that are beyond our control.”

  Maybe so, but I had every intention of keeping a tight rein on this particular one. I was heading for the bedroom door when the phone rang. Sally answered it, and then held the receiver toward me.

  “It’s Matt,” she said, looking like the cat who’d just sliced, diced and eaten the canary.

  I waited until she’d walked into the kitchen and was out of sight.

  “Hello?” I answered apprehensively.

  “Sorry to be phoning so late, but I just got a call from Bearhead.”

  Damn! The man sounded perfectly normal. It was as though nothing unusual had occurred between us at all.

  “What’s up?” I asked, fluctuating between disappointment and relief.

  “It seems old Bearhead’s had a flash of conscience, probably because you helped out his daughter today. He phoned to tell me that he’d stumbled upon a dead grizzly while hunting for elk this morning.”

  Hmm. That sounded more than a tad suspicious.

  “He found it? Then why didn’t he tell us about it when we were at his house earlier?”

  “Why do you think? Remember, he blames them for the disappearance of his wife and brother. He probably was also afraid that we’d try to pin the deed on him.”

  “And what do you think?” I asked.

  “He swears he didn’t do it, and there’s no reason for me not to believe him. Besides, there’s more to it than that. The bear’s paws and gallbladder were missing.”

  Paws and gallbladder? Why would anyone…Paws and gallbladder?

  Oh dear God. Suddenly it all began to make perfect, horrible sense.

  Now I knew what we were up against. I was dealing with traditional Chinese medicine and its beliefs, which have been around nearly as long as Asia itself.

  Rooted in more than four thousand years of Chinese history, the trade in “medicinal” animal parts is widely practiced, with bears considered a primary staple for preventing and healing disease. Most highly prized are their gallbladders. Deemed Oriental Geritol, they’re touted to cure everything from tooth decay to hemorrhoids to cancer. Galls have even become a hot-ticket item in the frenetic search for youth and vitality. Hold the Viagra! Why down a pill when you can mix some bile in a health tonic and drink the “real” thing?

  Asia has decimated its own bruin population to supply a voracious three billion consumers. Only ten wild bears remain in all of South Korea. As a result, guess what country has been chosen to fill the slack? Bears in the U.S. are now viewed as walking bank accounts by poachers. And the rarer the species, the better. So grizzlies—creatures embodying strength, prowess and health—were now topping the charts.

  Valued by weight, at eighteen times the market price of gold, a grizzly gall will fetch up to five thousand dollars here in the States. However, prices soar once it reaches Asia, where a gall may go for fifteen thousand bucks—unless it’s from a particularly rare species of bear. Then it can garner a whopping sixty-four thousand dollars at auction. Not too shabby for a product that, when dried, looks like a fig.

  And the paws not only supposedly have beneficial properties, but are also considered a chi-chi culinary delight. However, be prepared to ante up plenty of moolah when placing your order: a bowl of bear paw soup in Taiwan will run you over a thousand bucks.

  “How about if I pick you up before daybreak and we head out to the site?” Matthew suggested.

  I quickly agreed and hung up. Climbing into bed, I looked out the window.

  An enormous poacher’s moon hung in the sky. It dangled big and bright, drenching the land in ghostly white. I blinked and a shape began to take form. It moved like a poltergeist, crawling along the ground to spill in through my window. From there it continued along the floor, slipping inside my toes and invading the marrow of my bones. My blood throbbed and I shivered with fear in the night.

  Meanwhile the sculpted metal bears continued to naïvely play, believing themselves safe under the moonlight.

  Eleven

  By the time dawn broke, I was already in Running’s pickup and on the road. We were headed back to the same general area where we’d been yesterday; I just hoped that mama and her cubs had decided it was time to head for their den after yesterday’s blanket of snow.

  The dismal morning didn’t help my frame of mind any. A dank frost replaced last night’s spectral chill, while a fine mist obscured the landscape, further dampening the mood.

  The atmosphere inside the truck wasn’t all that much better. Silence enveloped the cab like an itchy wool sweater. I took the plunge and shattered the uncomfortable stillness.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about last night.”

  Running might as well have been carved out of stone. “You mean you’re sorry that you disagreed with me about Doc Hutchins?”

  Damn! He wasn’t going to make this any easier.

  “No. I’m talking about my reaction to your kiss. It took me by surprise.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He turned to me with a wry smile. “Although I admit, you did bruise my ego a bit. I didn’t think I was all that bad a kisser.”

  I remembered the touch of his lips pressing against mine, and the frost in my bones began to melt. “You’re not.” Oh shit. “It’s just that I’m involved with someone.”

  A fleeting look of disappointment swept over his face. “Sorry. I hadn’t realized.” His eyes caught mine and I felt myself sink a little deeper. “Friends, then?”

  “Friends,” I glumly responded, and slapped on my best make-believe smile.

  What the hell was wrong with me? I’d obviously sent this guy mixed signals, so why did I feel so bad now that I’d set him straight?

  I wadded my conflicting emotions into a tight ball and stashed them away as we reached our destination. We parked in the same spot as before. After grabbing our gear, we began to hike in.

  Matthew once again moved in rhythm with the forest. His feet barely made a sound and left no sign of his passing. There was no need to ask where we were going; I felt sure Bearhead had supplied explicit directions. Soon we came upon a scene much as we’d witnessed yesterday.

  Claw marks tore wildly into nearby trees, and I stared in aw
e at the remaining bark. It looked like human skin that had been tattered and flayed. The adjacent ground resembled a lunar landscape, with the few pines left standing brutally whittled into tall matchsticks as if a twister had recently gone through.

  “Well, now I know why bears are being snared rather than simply killed,” Running remarked, his shoulders beginning to slump.

  “Why’s that?”

  “In order to make them enraged. Fear and anger enlarge their gallbladder.” Running rubbed his thumb and index finger together. “That means poachers get more money.”

  The mist was mischievously turning the snow into slush, eradicating all trace of whoever had been here before us. No sign of a carcass was in sight and, without a body, there was little to go on.

  “Terrific. We’ve got no bait pile, no bear, no nothing,” Running growled. “I’m beginning to think we’re dealing with some sort of phantom.”

  “Yeah, a phantom who leaves footprints behind.”

  I’d caught sight of the tracks partially hidden beneath a grove of pines. The low-hanging branches had possessively protected the prints embedded in the snow.

  We found two separate sets, each containing prints heading both toward the site and walking away. The boot tracks were identical, indicating that they’d been made by the same person.

  “The first set shows where the perp initially entered and exited the scene,” Running theorized. “The second pair must have been made when he returned for the bear. See where the snow has been flattened? The grizzly must have been pulled out by sled.”

  I studied the footprints more carefully. They displayed varying degrees of depth. It made sense that the suspect’s tracks would have been deeper as he hauled the bear out, due to the extra weight. However, a deep set of tracks also led into the torn-up circle. That meant he must have carried something in with him. But what? Gut instinct told me it had to be whatever was being used to attract grizzlies. I donned a pair of latex gloves, turned on the metal detector, and went to work.

  I’d covered almost every square inch of ground when the metal detector sprang to life. I reached beneath a stand of bushes to discover something far more intriguing than a bullet: a heavy band of double-layered leather that was a good three inches wide and a half inch thick. It was a Telonics radio collar that had been unbolted. Either this was the work of a poacher, or we were dealing with one hell of an ambidextrous bear. The transmitter was still encased in its waterproof fiberglass shell—but it had been smashed and broken.