by Jeff Strand
With Kutter clutched to his chest with both arms, Charlie ran for the hallway, the dogs right behind him. He raced down the hallway into the bathroom, spun around, and kicked the rottweiler once again. This time he got it good, giving him enough time to slam the bathroom door closed.
"Kutter...oh, God, Kutter..."
Tears streamed down Charlie's face as he looked down at his pet. Kutter had been savaged--most of his left ear was gone, and much of his fur was so soaked with blood that Charlie couldn't immediately tell how deep the lacerations were. More blood was flowing freely from several places.
There was no way Charlie could tend to these injuries the way he had the wounds when he first found the dog.
He needed his hands free, so he set Kutter on the floor. Kutter let out a whimper as his fur made contact with the tile. Outside, the dogs barked and growled and clawed at the bathroom door.
Charlie pulled out the gun that he never should have put away. Stupid. A terrible decision. He couldn't wait out the men and their dogs, not with Kutter dying on the floor, so he flicked off the safety and fired a shot through the door so they'd know he was serious.
He heard the men calling off the dogs, and the scraping stopped. Charlie almost fired another shot, then decided that he needed to conserve his bullets in case he didn't successfully scare the men off. He opened the door, then scooped up Kutter in his left arm and stepped out into the hallway.
The men were exiting through the front door. Charlie shot at them and the bullet didn't even come close, putting a hole in his wall instead. By the time he got outside, the men were sprinting down the sidewalk with their murderous dogs.
Charlie bolted to his car and opened the passenger side door. "I'm so sorry," he told Kutter as he set the dog on the seat.
Towels. He needed towels. Not to protect his car seat--he didn't care about that--but to wrap around Kutter and hopefully slow the bleeding enough that he wouldn't die before Charlie could get help. And he needed the car keys.
"I'll be right back," he promised Kutter as he ran back inside. He grabbed a stack of towels, got the car keys from where they rested on the kitchen table, and hurried back outside. He wrapped Kutter tightly. Blood immediately soaked through the first white towel, and he wrapped him in another.
He slammed the door and got in the driver's side. "Don't die, don't die, please don't die," he whispered as he started the car's engine and pulled out of his driveway.
Charlie realized that his arm really hurt where the dog had bitten it, but he had much more important things to worry about. As long as he didn't pass out from loss of blood before he could get help for Kutter, he'd be fine.
Kutter whimpered softly as Charlie sped down the road.
"You're going to be okay," Charlie promised. "They'll fix you up. They'll make you stop bleeding and they'll sew you up and we'll play Frisbee."
He wiped the tears from his eyes since they were blurring his vision, and then scratched Kutter's chin. The dog licked his fingers with a bloody tongue and whimpered again.
Charlie thought about his emergency cabin. If he started driving to it right now, he might gain enough of a lead on the police that they wouldn't know where he'd gone, wouldn't be able to find him. He'd live in relative discomfort, but it would be a hell of a lot better than prison or lethal injection.
The men would tell the police that he'd murdered the girl, and they'd connect him to the murders of twenty-one other girls. Even if they never found out about the others, even if they only got him for the one, he was screwed.
If he drove to the cabin, Kutter would die.
If he didn't, he was going to prison.
If he left him somewhere, even someplace that could fix him up, he'd never know if his dog lived or died.
There was only one possible choice here.
"Just a few more minutes," he assured Kutter. "Just a few and then I'll make everything okay."
* * *
Charlie burst into the hospital emergency room with Kutter in his arms. "I need help!" he cried out. "He's dying!"
Several people turned to stare at him, but Charlie didn't care. He rushed over to the receptionist's window and tapped on the glass. "Please, you need to save him."
The receptionist, a plump woman with too much eye makeup, slid open the window. "Sir, you're at the wrong--"
"I don't know any twenty-four hour veterinarians," said Charlie. "Saving a dog is easier than saving a person, right? Please."
"Sir, your arm--"
"I don't care about my arm. I care about my dog."
A man in blue scrubs pushed through a pair of swinging doors and looked startled as he saw Charlie and Kutter. "What's going on here?" he asked, walking over to them.
"Please save him," Charlie begged. "His name is Kutter and he loves Frisbee and this wasn't his fault."
The man in the scrubs looked at Kutter, then at Charlie, and nodded. "Give him here."
* * *
Charlie sat in the waiting room with his arm bandaged up. It had required eight stitches, but he wouldn't bleed to death.
Two cops sat next to him, one on each side. Charlie had promised to go peacefully if they let him wait until he knew what had happened to Kutter.
* * *
"Not my usual patient," the doctor said with a smile, as Kutter licked Charlie's palm. Kutter's entire torso was covered in bandages, as was what remained of his left ear, but his tail wagged happily. Charlie wished that there was more unbandaged fur available to pet, and settled for petting Kutter's legs.
"You're a good boy," Charlie said. "You're the best dog ever." He wiped some tears from his eyes--much happier ones than before--and turned to the doctor. "Thank you."
"Not a problem. It'll be a good story for parties."
"He'll be okay, right?"
"Yeah, he'll be fine. The vet should be here to pick him up any minute now. Don't worry about him."
Charlie spent a few more minutes with his dog, until the police told him it was time to leave.
* * *
"I could ease into this, or I could just get straight to the point," said the detective, leaning back in his chair in the interrogation room. "As you'll soon discover, Charlie, I'm a get-to-the-point kind of guy. Where are the bodies?"
"I can't tell you yet."
"The more you hold out on me, the worse things are going to be for you. I recommend that you come clean right now."
"I'm really stupid sometimes," said Charlie, "but I know enough to know that things can't get worse for me. I want to bargain."
"You have nothing to bargain with."
"I can save you a lot of time. I'll tell you everything you want to know."
The detective raised an eyebrow and took a sip from his cup of coffee. "What do you want?"
"I have a dog. He's hurt, but he's going to be okay."
"Yeah, I know about your dog."
"Kutter."
"Kutter, right."
"I want you to make sure he gets taken care of. His original owner is a good guy, he'll take him back, but I want to make sure that Kutter gets everything he wants. I've got some savings. I don't want to pay for a lawyer--I want that money to go to Kutter. I want him to have steaks and bacon treats and a nice dog bed and I don't want him going back to being named Duke and I want him to come visit me sometimes." Charlie wiped his eyes. "That's all I want."
The detective scratched his chin. "Hmmmm."
Charlie wondered what Alicia and his other co-workers were saying about him. They were probably totally freaked out. Liz was definitely freaking out. She'd had sex with a serial killer. He didn't think she'd ever come see him in prison, except maybe to yell at him, but he didn't care as long as they brought Kutter in every once in a while.
"I want it in writing," said Charlie.
The detective took another sip of his coffee. He set the mug down and smiled. "You've got yourself a deal, Charlie. If the original owner doesn't want him back, my daughter has been wanting a dog. He'll get a g
ood home. I promise you."
"Thank you."
Charlie took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then told the detective everything he wanted to know.
REMAINS
On May 21st, 2008, seven graduate students in Religious Studies set out from the University of Colorado in Boulder in search of God. Armed with only their faith and the scriptures, they rented a small cluster of cabins on the western side of the Continental Divide, twenty-eight miles northwest of the nearest town of Pine Springs. Their website allowed their friends and family to track their progress via daily video blog updates, the last of which was made on July 11th.
None of them were ever heard from again.
On July 14th, a forest ranger was dispatched to check on the students at the urging of their concerned families. He found the cabins abandoned, though all of their belongings remained, as though they had simply walked away and never returned. Forty-eight hours later a formal inquest was instigated. Rangers and volunteers combed the surrounding National Forest beneath the thunder of the Search & Rescue helicopter, while policemen tore apart the cabins looking for clues. After ten days, only the families remained to wander the woods in futility. A week later, even they were gone.
On July 11th, 2009, a ten-foot cross was erected on the summit of Mount Isolation. The bronze placard affixed to its base listed seven names above the inscription: Seek and ye shall find.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
—George Bernard Shaw
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
—Charles Baudelaire, The Generous Gambler
The great enemy of truth is often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
—John Fitzgerald Kennedy
October 29th, 2010
Saturday
Rand Armstrong had picked up the tracks in the fresh dusting of snow two miles east of the edge of his property on Rocky Mountain National Forest land. There had been no mistaking them: three-lobed heel pads; teardrop-shaped toes in uneven lines; no appreciable claw marks; and the feathery halos surrounding the prints from the fringe fur. No doubt this was the mountain lion he was after. Damn prints were nearly the size of a tiger’s. No way this wasn’t the bastard that had snuck over his fence and torn apart his huacaya alpacas. He’d already lost three in as many weeks, and he wasn’t about to risk losing any more. Breeding those fluffy llamas may have sounded like a pathetic way to eke out an existence, but he was pulling twenty grand a head. Even with that kind of income, he sure as hell wasn’t about to blow another ten thousand bucks electrifying nearly five miles of fencing like the Forest Service suggested. If they weren’t going to come out and relocate that blasted cat, then he was just going to have to take care of the problem himself.
He’d been hunting big game in these very hills his entire life, but he had to admit the mountain lion posed more of a challenge than his standard prey of deer and elk. The cougars were more like big horn sheep in the sense that rather than skirting rock formations and seeking the route of least resistance, they just as often went up and over. There were points where he lost the tracks entirely under the dense canopy of pines where the snow didn’t reach the ground and in the clusters of scrub oak where the lion could wriggle through and under the branches while he couldn’t, but it never took him very long to pick them back up again. Best he could figure, the prints were about two hours old, which put the mountain lion passing through here right about half an hour before sunrise. It would have been back in its den before first light, so he had to be getting close.
A steep embankment rose about a mile ahead. The Rockies beyond were all gray rock and snow above timberline, where only sporadic pines grew at severe angles from the slope.
Rand paused to rub the blood back into his stubbled cheeks and stomp some feeling into his toes. His Gore-Tex camouflaged jumpsuit may have helped him blend into the forest, but it was useless against the frigid wind, which knifed right through his skin and into his bones. He imagined how red his hands must have been inside his gloves. His trigger finger still worked just fine though. A pull from his hip flask and he was on the move again.
He slung the Remington Model 70, Sporter Deluxe .30-06 off his back and carried it across his chest.
Not much longer now.
One quick shot and the deed would be done. Dragging the carcass back down to the ranch would be a bitch, but he looked forward to incinerating that infernal cat for all the trouble it had caused him. Maybe he’d even cut a chop or two off its flank. It did butcher his alpacas after all. Turnabout was only fair.
He lightened his tread on the detritus and advanced at a crouch. Mountain lions weren’t as cumbersome as elk. They could distribute their weight on those fat paws to such a degree that they could practically float across the snow. He was going to need to hear everything he possibly could. And unlike a deer, if he cornered it without knowing, it could blindside him with a barrage of slashing claws and sharp teeth.
More likely than not, it was curled up in its den licking alpaca blood from between its toes, but he wasn’t about to take that for granted. The walk back was more than long enough to bleed to death.
A skeletal aspen tree bore the telltale gouges from the cat’s claws. Twenty feet up there was a smear of dried blood on the trunk to mark the passing of a squirrel.
The forest faded to the left as the valley wall rose to the right, growing steeper with each step. Large boulders had fallen from the lip above to line the base of the embankment, creating dark crevices and caves, any one of which would have proven a suitable temporary den. At least mountain lions were solitary creatures by nature and he didn’t have to worry about stumbling into a dozen of them. Besides, he only wanted the one.
He pulled back the bolt silently, chambered a round, and eased it back home. Seating the butt against his shoulder, he slowed his advance and scoured the hillside along the barrel of the rifle. The wind tapered and the world around him assumed an unnatural calm.
Movement drew his eye from up the rocks to the right. He knelt behind a boulder and made himself small. Nuzzling his cheek against the stock, he looked through the scope and traced the contours of the haphazardly assembled rock slope with the crosshairs.
A flash of white, and then it was gone.
Slowing his breathing, he steadied the scope on the spot where he had seen it.
His finger found the trigger and gently pressed it into the sweet spot. Even the slightest pressure now would do the job.
He saw the black triangle lining the ear first, and then the creature raised its head. Golden fur over the smooth crown of the skull, a cold black eye, white muzzle—
Crack!
A spray of crimson raced up the rocks behind the lion as it disappeared from view.
The report echoed through the valley over the tinny ringing in his ears.
Rand rose, chambered another bullet, and advanced cautiously. The scope never left his eye as he crawled up and over the obstacles in his way. He attuned his ears to even the slightest sound, but only heard his own tread. When he reached the boulder, he leaned over it and looked down. The cat was sprawled on its right side. Its left front paw carved at the ground in twitching movements. Blood drained down the rock behind it toward the crater where its left ear had once been. The better part of its cranium was gone, and its left eye and the surrounding fur were scorched.
It shivered and made a meek mewling sound, then became still.
Rand climbed over the rock and pressed the barrel of the rifle to the soft flesh behind its front leg for a quick heart shot if it even flinched. He kicked its rear haunches, but it made no effort to move. One more kick for good measure and he lowered the rifle.
He smiled and slung the gun back over his shoulder.
“Sixty thousand dollar cat,” he said. “Damn.”
He kicked it again…and again.
Momentarily satisfied,
he shoved his hand into his pocket and produced the big game strap he used to haul deer up by their hooves to be gutted. He looped it around the mountain lion’s back legs. It was nearly as large as a wolf, so he was going to have to drag it.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the mouth of a small cave barely large enough to accommodate a grown man in fetal position. There was a collection of broken bones near the opening, most likely from a rabbit. Beside them was another, much larger bone. He felt a surge of anger again at the thought of it belonging to one of his alpacas and stormed over to investigate.
He bent over to grab it and froze.
It wasn’t an alpaca bone.
Not even close.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered.
He was totally screwed now.
November 4th, 2010
Thursday
“Office hours don’t start for another twenty minutes,” Gabriel Hartnell said without looking up from the following day’s lesson plan. He was going to have to insert an image of staphylococcus aureus into the Power Point presentation as an introduction to those depicting MRSA if he expected his students to follow the lecture.
He heard the door close and again focused on the task at hand. There was only so much depth he could provide in a two hundred-level Intro to Pathology class, but he couldn’t glaze over the actual pathology portion. Maybe he simply wasn’t cut out for this teaching thing after—
An impatient sigh.
“I said come back in—,” Gabriel started, but his words died at the sight of the man, who waited just across the chipped oak desk from him. Rather than a timid undergrad with the fear of potential failure etched upon his face, he stared into the eyes of a man in his early thirties with thinning black hair and several days’ worth of stubble. He appeared so sleep-deprived he could have passed for a grad student. Gabriel hadn’t seen the man in more than a year, and honestly hadn’t expected to ever again. The man’s mere presence elicited a fresh wave of the pain Gabriel still struggled to hide, even from himself.
