Snow Stalker

by M K Dymock

  The mention of his family was enough to settle him. “Only Phillip.”

  “You said he only died an hour ago, but how’s that when the attack happened at night?”

  “He held on.” His voice broke. “For six hours, he kept hanging on. I knew the second I saw him we couldn’t save him, but he kept breathing, so I kept hoping. Thought maybe if we could get a helicopter…”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No. He was too far gone.”

  Mina thought about the kids he’d mentioned, coming in to spend the holiday with their only parent. “Was it an animal? Any tracks?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  Only Sol rivaled Sean in his ability to track, and he knew these woods better than anyone. “You don’t know?”

  “Everyone trampled the area around his tent, freaking out and trying to help. We found him still tucked in his sleeping bag. Thing is, his tent wasn’t damaged and the sleeping bag wasn’t ripped up at all.”

  “Wait, he was attacked in bed?”

  “I don’t know. Everything happened all at once. We heard a scream.” He stopped, his eyes squeezed shut as if remembering. “The scream wasn’t him—he would’ve been too hurt to make a sound—but something…something ungodly was in those woods.”

  Mina could discount everyone else’s story, but Sean made it a lot tougher. “Was he alone in the tent?”

  Sean hesitated. “No, but I don’t think…”

  “Who was with him?”

  “Ryan, his buddy. Nobody else.”

  Mina paused with one boot in the air before continuing their interminable walk. “Where’s the body now?”

  “Still in the tent. I knew there was no way he’d live if we moved him. We just did our best to keep him comfortable. After he passed, I had everyone leave his tent and told them to give it a wide berth. Figured you people would want to search it. Didn’t want to risk messing anything up.”

  “But you saw the injuries.”

  “Yep, and I’ve never seen anything like them, and I hope to God I never do again.”

  “What did Ryan have to say?”

  “Says he was asleep the entire time.”

  32

  The four other men stood at Mina and Sean’s approach, not out of respect or chivalry but out of obvious relief that somebody was here to do something.

  Only problem was, she wasn’t sure what she could do.

  Working Search and Rescue was so much more straightforward. Somebody didn’t come home, she worked to bring them home. Mostly they came home alive, and if they didn’t, she knew why. All she felt capable of doing was sit on things until the people who knew something showed up.

  Ryan didn’t meet her eyes, but she ignored that for the time being. “Where’s Phil?”

  “I’ll show you.” Sean led her away from the fire, where she could feel the eyes of everyone following her. She tried to straighten up.

  “Stay in the previous tracks,” she commanded. “I don’t want to disturb the site more than it is.” Several items from the tent—a backpack, small cooler, and a sleeping pad—littered the ground around. She assumed this was to make way for the other men as they’d tended to an injured Phil.

  Sean didn’t argue. He stopped at the tent door and took a deep breath. “We did what we could.”

  She understood his guilt and wished she had a way to alleviate it, but she carried her own. “This isn’t on you.”

  “When people hire me, it’s my responsibility to bring them home safe.”

  “Let’s do what we can to bring him home.”

  He unzipped the door of the canvas tent and pulled the flap back. Phil lay on the tent floor—rigor mortis had set in and frozen his face in his last gasp. Mina had stopped counting how many bodies she’d help recover. Not because there were so many, but because it added up to an unbearable sum. She wanted to close Phil’s eyes and mouth to make him look more peaceful, but that would interfere with the investigation to come. She took off her mittens and replaced them with a thinner set of gloves.

  With a moment’s hesitation and an unspoken apology to Phil, she pulled back the sleeping bag. Had the discovery of the previous body not prepared her, she probably would’ve ended up in the bushes puking. As it was, she closed her eyes and gave the nausea a moment to pass. Sean stood outside; she didn’t blame him for not following her in. With the cold, the smell hadn’t the chance to entrench the air around.

  Whatever killed this man had shown no mercy or hesitation.

  Mina left the tent to the comfort and fresh air of the forest. At the warmth of the fire, she pulled out her own GPS unit and synced it to her cell phone. It took a few minutes and a couple of tries until she had a signal.

  We need crime scene analysis. I don’t know what we have. The body is like before, although not as in bad of shape.

  About ten minutes later, she received a reply.

  Ten-four. Lock down scene and interview witnesses. Don’t let them leave. Try to get a statement while it’s still fresh.

  Mina jumped to her feet. Dane was already getting a group together to head down before dark. “I need everybody to hold up for just a few minutes.”

  Groans bounced off the trees.

  “It won’t be long.” She glanced around. “Where’s Patrick?”

  The other men glanced around at each other. “He already went down,” Dane finally offered. “Not long after you got here. Said you would take care of things, and he wanted to get word out.” That left her alone to handle things, which she did not feel too prepared to do.

  Michael, the documentary guy, paced the campsite, half muttering. Hard to believe she ever found him attractive.

  “You, I talk to first,” she said to Michael, wanting him away from the scene and her as quickly as possible.

  Ryan stood at the edge of the fire, watching and waiting. She would talk to him last. It would be helpful to hear the others’ stories first and see how well his lined up, and she wasn’t prepared for that conversation.

  She and Michael walked a way out from camp to sit on a couple of fallen trees, still uncovered and protected from the storms. Mina sat; Michael didn’t.

  “You sure we should be out here alone?” he asked, his gaze jumping from tree to tree to find that unseen attacker.

  “I thought you’d be more excited to be this close to Bigfoot.”

  “Sasquatch,” he said automatically. Realization seemed to dawn at what she said. “Of course. This will definitely feature in my documentary. I need to get my camera and get the scene with everyone’s first impressions.” He leapt to his feet.

  Mina jumped in front of him. “No cameras. If I see one, I take it into evidence and you won’t get it back until after the investigation.”

  He stopped and eyed her up, as if to weigh her seriousness. “Fine. But if I’m going to talk, I need access to the site and interviews.”

  Mina had no authority to offer any of those things, which meant it didn’t matter what she promised this guy. “Sure, as long you tell the truth. What happened last night?”

  What happened to Michael hadn’t been much. He’d struggled to get to sleep and was half awake when he heard the scream. “I would’ve, of course, ran out to render aid, but the O’Briens ordered me to stay behind.”

  “You just stayed in the tent, didn’t help at all?” Mina tried and failed to keep the judgment out of her voice.

  “Help how? Tell me what I was supposed to do. Couldn’t call 911, couldn’t run for help, couldn’t fold all of his guts back in and sew him up.”

  Maybe he had done the most sensible thing. “Tell me about before the scream. You said you couldn’t sleep. Did you hear anything before that?”

  “I heard everything. I’ve been to Comic-Cons quieter. One time, I swear an animal or something rubbed against the tent. I could feel it push against the canvas.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Woke up Patrick, but he said to go back to sleep, that it was proba
bly a coyote or something.” His stare at Mina held no question what he thought of that advice. “A coyote isn’t nothing.”

  “How long was that before you heard the scream?”

  “I don’t know. The night went on forever.”

  “What about during the evening? Everyone getting along?”

  “I guess.”

  “So, you just had dinner and crashed?” That had been Sean’s description of the evening when they’d walked in together. He said it was too cold for much else.

  “Yeah.” He cocked his head. “Except for the night cameras.”

  “What cameras?”

  “I always place a game camera with motion sensors. Phil helped me set it up; he was considering buying some and wanted to see how they worked.”

  Nobody had bothered to mention cameras. “Where?” Michael hesitated. Mina knew he wouldn’t want to relinquish the footage. “If you want us to share with you, you need to share everything with us.”

  “I’ll show you where.”

  33

  Ryan was used to people thinking he was crazy. What he wasn’t used to was believing he might very well be on the slippery path to insanity.

  He’d woken up next to a dying friend. They tried to stop the bleeding, but they knew all they could do was watch him die. For hours, he’d sat next to Phil as he bled out. He’d washed Phil’s blood off his hands and face with snow melted over the fire, but like Lady Macbeth, the damn spot wouldn’t leave him.

  Would the sheriff allow him to call Phil’s kids? He’d met them once when a family camp trip coincided with a sighting in Washington. They’d good-naturedly teased their father when Ryan had picked him up for a day of hunting. The kids, one boy and a girl, had booked a guided river rafting tour. Apparently, Phillip wasn’t too fond of water, and they accused him of making up the sighting to get out of it.

  What Phil was fond of, however, was those kids. He’d asked three times if they were sure it was okay if he didn’t join them. As long as he bought beers and steaks at the end of the day, they said, all would be forgiven and forgotten. This day would never be forgotten.

  Ryan kept his gaze on the coffee mug he held in his hand. Every time he looked up, he caught the stares of the others staring back at him, wondering.

  At the sight of Mina following behind Michael, Ryan stood. She stopped short of him. Her dark eyes peered right at him as if warning him that no lie would be believed or tolerated.

  “Let’s talk,” she said.

  They walked out from camp to sit on a couple of fallen trees. Going by the tracks, this had been where the others had their interview.

  “What happened?” she asked. Her tone brokered no familiarity. All the trust he’d earned had vanished.

  Ryan wished she started with an easier question. “I don’t know.” She didn’t respond, not accepting his attempt. The silence grew unbearable. “My feet were burning after the hike in, and I took a couple of Percocet. I fell asleep, and when I woke up…”

  He tried again. “When I woke up…” There weren’t words that could describe the smell, the sounds of his friend dying a few feet beside him. “Sean was yelling, asking if we were okay. I turned on the lantern, and Phil…he’d almost stop breathing. He’d gasp and then nothing for like a minute. Each breath grew farther apart.”

  Mina reached out a hand to touch his knee but retracted it a few inches short. “Who opened the tent door, you or Sean?”

  “Sean. I was focused on Phil.”

  “Did he unzip the tent door?”

  Ryan thought for a minute before shaking his head. “I’m not sure, but Phil’s sleeping bag was over him; I had to throw it off him. That’s when I realized how bad it was.”

  “The sleeping bag wasn’t zipped?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re sure he was under it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ryan, how did you not—?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, shoving himself up. “I don’t know how my friend lay dying next to me and I didn’t hear. I only took a half a pain pill before, never two. It must’ve hit me hard.”

  “You woke up when Sean yelled, right? Do you think you would’ve heard anything if he’d been attacked in the tent?”

  The tent where his friend lay was barely visible through the trees. “I only know what I saw when I woke up.”

  “What about the camera?”

  “What camera?”

  “Michael said he and Phil put out a motion sensor camera around the campsite just in case.”

  “He didn’t last night.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I told him not to bother.” Ryan had sat at the fire the previous night, wondering how much of a fool he’d been to trek through the forest with frostbitten toes. “He wanted me to help them. I told him Bigfoot never comes close to camp the first night. It takes a few evenings for their curiosity to get the better of them. Told him it was too cold and too dark, and we’d do it in the morning.”

  “And he agreed?”

  Ryan clenched his eyes shut and pictured his friend asking him for help. “Said so. Then I drugged myself and didn’t help my friend.”

  If he’d expected Mina to offer platitudes about this not being his fault, he would’ve been disappointed. She didn’t, and he wasn’t; platitudes wouldn’t ease his guilty conscience. “How did you not wake up?”

  That question again. When he was a kid, they’d asked him the same questions over and over—first the camp counselors, then the police, and finally his parents. He finally realized the questions wouldn’t stop until they got an answer they liked, and the truth would never be that. Ryan had stopped talking then, and that seemed like a good strategy now. “That’s all I know.”

  She gave him a long look, and she couldn’t have called him a liar better in actual words.

  34

  After finishing her conversation with Ryan, Mina followed Michael’s directions to where the camera had been set up. Sean accompanied her, but they left Michael back at the site to keep him from interfering.

  The camera lay on its side, knocked off its tripod.

  Had Ryan lied to her about there not being a camera, hoping Michael would forget or not want to mention it? Or had he really believed he’d talked them out of it? But why would he? The entire point in the trip was to find Bigfoot.

  “What do you want to do?” Sean asked.

  His asking her settled on her like a heavy sleeping bag. Like it or not, qualified or not, she was in charge of an investigation, at least for a few more hours. “Bring me a clean plastic bag if you got it.”

  “I’ll see what I can find.”

  She’d believed Ryan about the pills, believed him about sleeping through it. The pain in his eyes and guilt felt far too real. But the camera changed everything.

  “Here.” Sean had slipped through the trees and handed her a plastic grocery store bag. Not ideal, but it was what they had. With her gloves still on, she slipped the camera into the bag, leaving the tripod to mark the spot. She’d taken several pictures of the site with her dying cell phone.

  “I know that model. People use it for hunting,” Sean said. “It has an SD card or a cord to plug it in. You won’t be able to access the photos until you get to a device.”

  “How does it work?”

  “It takes a series of pictures when it senses motion. Color shots during daylight and black and white at night.”

  “I didn’t see any prints around here other than Michael’s and Phil’s original set.” She tied the handles together on the bag. It was an outdoor camera and would hopefully survive the cold and wet. She didn’t have much hope this would’ve caught the crime, as they were a ways out from the tent.

  “I’ve tried to keep everyone as close to the campsite as possible. I didn’t want anyone ruining tracks before Sol could get here. Figured if there’s something to find, he’ll find it.”

  To know Sol was to have complete trust in him, at least when it came
to tracking. That reminded her, however, of something she needed before anyone left.

  Mina lacked paper or ink, but she had snow and sticks. In an area she cordoned off with a few logs, she had each man step into the snow and leave a print. With a small stick, she carved their first initial above each print. They would have to repeat it back at the station, but at least when Sol arrived they could map out who had gone where, except for Patrick.

  Michael’s cooperation ended, and he demanded to be taken down or he’d walk out. Nobody took his threats seriously, but Dane wanted to be rid of the man. Mina couldn’t force them to stay beyond an arrest.

  “Take him down,” she told Dane, “but have some of your family keep an eye on him. I don’t want him leaving town without us knowing.” The freckled-face O’Brien blood ran through much of Lost Gorge.

  Sean and Dane returned to the snowmobiles—Dane to head down and Sean to make sure they got off all right. That left Ryan and Mina in the woods alone with a body.

  They stood by the campfire as she pulled out some cookies and held them out to Ryan. “You want some?”

  He stared at her a long moment before taking one out. “I didn’t hurt my friend.”

  “Something did. You think it was Bigfoot?” She asked without irony, not because she believed but because he did.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mina looked down the darkening trail for about the thousandth time that day. The sun wouldn’t last more than an hour, and she needed Sol to be here to pull her out of the deep end.

  Movement broke through the thick pines, and unlike the previous 999 times, Sol walked through the trees, Sean leading the way. Both men had hiked in with small sleds and supplies. “Where?” Sol asked by way of hello, and she pointed to the tent.

  Sean pulled off a pack and sank to a camp chair by the fire. “What a cluster this day is turning out to be.” He noticed Ryan lingering by the fire. “Like it or not, we’ll all be spending the night. I’m not risking being on those trails in the dark. This day has seen a high enough death toll.”