The Bear

by Dustin Stevens

  Not needing to even glance over at the options, The Bear replied, “Yes, ma’am. I’d like two brisket platters, both with hushpuppies, beans, and slaw, please.”

  “Okay,” came the reply, “and would you like the dry or moist brisket?”

  “Moist,” The Bear said, dry being barely a step up from what he fed the pair of cats that patrolled his barns, keeping them free of mice.

  “Would you like sauce with that?”

  “Please,” The Bear replied. “Spicy.”

  “Alright,” the woman replied, the sound of a cash register figuring things up audible in the background. “Your total comes to $16.81. Please pull ahead to the window.”

  Grunting softly, The Bear eased up on the brake, allowing his truck to idle forward. Falling in behind a Toyota Corolla in line before him, he took the phone up again, his focus down on the screen.

  The process was one that had been honed many times over the years, each time revealing something new, helping to shape it into a more exact science. A constant balance of give and take, it was a dance he loved to perform, inflicting his will to assert dominance, offering kindness to ensure loyalty.

  In essence, a perverse take on exactly what Molly had done to him so long before.

  Verbally abuse him. Tell him he was worthless, that he’d never amount to anything, that he wasn’t even a man, a slave to his parents, unable to provide her with the lifestyle she deserved.

  Go out on him. Find someone else for a night or a week or a few months.

  Always return and confess. Tell him how sorry she was, how wonderful a person she found him, how she adored his family, that she was just confused and needed his help.

  If he would only trust her, stand by her, she could do better.

  That she loved him, and always would.

  Back and forth, up and down. The words and the beats always changing, but never far removed from the same basic premise.

  Assert dominance, maintain loyalty. Just as he was now doing.

  The brand that morning had been the culmination of the opening act. The girl had been snatched. She’d been smacked around a bit. She’d had his mark placed on her.

  Now, he needed to ease up. He needed to express remorse, offer her a bit of latitude. Help her heal from her injuries, provide her special gifts.

  Lure her in, so that the next time he raised his hand to her, the impact was especially profound.

  “Hello,” a high-school-aged girl with a headset said as The Bear pulled to the window. Using the same cheerful tone she’d used over the speaker, she asked, “How are you today?”

  “Perfect,” The Bear replied, a smile coming to his face as he pulled his gaze up from the phone in his lap. “Absolutely perfect.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Reed made no effort to move as Todd Wyatt stepped out of the SUV. Remaining in the front seat, he watched as the man climbed into his Ranger and pulled away, never once glancing back as he did so.

  Reed knew the feeling, having been through the same thing himself just a month before.

  Waiting until the driveway was clear, until he was left with just his partner again, Reed glanced into the rearview mirror.

  “You ready?” he whispered, Billie’s ears twitching slightly as she met his gaze, eyes shining in the semi-shadows of the back seat.

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  Pulling his phone over from the middle console, Reed balanced it across his thigh. Using his thumb, he pulled up his recent call menu, scrolling through until he found the number he wanted and hitting send.

  A moment later, the sound of ringing echoed through the car twice before being answered.

  “Hey, man,” Deke said, his voice a bit detached. “One second.”

  Saying nothing, Reed sat and waited, staring out through the front windshield.

  Before him, a stack of flattened boxes had materialized in the garage, taking up the space where the SUV would normally be parked. Sitting beside his father’s Ford F150, it was at least several inches tall, more than a dozen in total lying on their side.

  Clearly, his parents had been hard at work in his time away.

  A twinge of guilt passed through Reed as he stared at them, unable to shake the fact that his reason for being there was to help them do just that.

  Thus far, all he’d managed to accomplish was giving the front hedge a bad haircut and potentially drawing the ire of the local chief of police to them.

  “Soon,” he muttered, his voice just barely audible. “Hopefully.”

  “Alright,” Deke said, his tone much clearer this time. “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” Reed replied, pushing the boxes from his mind, pulling his focus to the phone. “I was calling because I’ve got something new I could use a hand with, if you have time.”

  “Good,” Deke said. “’Cause I’ve actually got something for you, too. Hit me.”

  Leaning forward an inch, Reed adjusted himself in his seat, pulling himself up higher. The last time they’d spoken, Deke had said he was going to start looking into other possible disappearances in the area.

  A small sensation rose through his chest, heat rising to his face and the small of his back. Reaching over, he cracked open the door, allowing the cooler air to flood in.

  “You first,” Reed said. “I’m willing to bet what I’ve got you’ve already found.”

  In the background, a clatter of computer keys could be heard. “Alright,” Deke replied, making no effort to push back. “After we talked this morning, I had to crash out for a while. I’d been working on something when you first called, and then with your thing, I was going on about thirty-six hours at that point.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Reed said, raising a hand and waving it off. “You’re doing me a favor here, which I promise you will be paid for.”

  A comment they both knew had nothing to do with money, the payment part of a system that had been in place going all the way back to Riley.

  Thus far, Reed had found that the man was partial to Johnnie Walker Blue, though he wouldn’t say no to Jim Beam Honey.

  “Anyway,” Deke said, skipping ahead, “I started checking into disappearances in the area, which wasn’t that easy. Turns out, there were way more than I anticipated.”

  Reed felt his stomach draw in tight, seizing on the chicken tenders he’d eaten a short time before. More heat rose to his face, his mind focusing on the emphasis Deke had put onto the word way.

  “How many we talking?” Reed asked.

  “More than twenty.”

  Feeling his eyes bulge, Reed stared down at the phone. Behind him, Billie pushed her head forward between the seats, her jaw resting against his triceps.

  “Twenty? Going back how far?”

  “Five years. That I’ve checked so far.”

  Falling silent, Reed allowed his eyes to glaze, thinking on what had just been shared. A few minutes prior, he’d thought they were looking at three incidents, with the possibility for a few more. A pattern to be sure, and certainly horrific, but twenty or more was on a different level.

  That would have to be the work of a syndicate. A single person would never be able to pull off something that extreme without being noticed.

  Or, more likely, the actions of various different players, making any hope of establishing patterns or working backward to Serena Gipson impossible.

  “Holy shit,” Reed muttered, feeling Billie press tighter against his arm.

  “That’s what I thought,” Deke said.

  All air slid from Reed’s lungs as he tried to wrap his mind around the enormity of the figure. His lips parted as he stared straight ahead, pushing the number into place.

  “All the same age?”

  “All between twenty-two and twenty-eight,” Deke replied.

  Considering it a moment, Reed nodded. That gave them three years on either side of Serena Gipson and Darcy Thornton. Any more or less would be easily differentiated, throwing off the pattern.r />
  “Same look?” Reed asked.

  “Sort of,” Deke said. “I haven’t been able to find images for all of them yet, though my initial parameters were for dark hair and eyes.”

  Again, Reed nodded. Those two things alone left a great deal of latitude, though it was a good place to start. Especially for running a general inquiry.

  His eyes narrowing slightly, Reed continued to process what he was being told. “How big a search field?”

  “Square grid, hundred miles on either edge,” Deke said. “I put Warner in the dead center and went out fifty in all four directions from there.”

  Shifting the phone back to the middle console, Reed leaned across the front seat. His right elbow pressed into the spot Wyatt had just been sitting in, his left hand shot across and unlatched the glove compartment.

  Rifling down through the owner’s manual and a few loose items, he found what he was looking for, extracting what he guessed was one of the last remaining paper maps of Oklahoma. Tugging it back across, he unfurled it in front of him, spreading it across the steering wheel.

  “You still with me?” Deke asked, his voice slightly distorted by the phone standing on end in the console.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sounds like you’re unwrapping presents or something over there.”

  “Checking the map,” Reed said, finding the portion of the state he wanted and folding the rest behind it. “Lucky for us, my parents hate most modern technology.”

  On the other end, he heard Deke make a non-committal sound as he placed his index finger down on Warner. Moving out three inches to the right, he pushed it due north, tracing the grid that had been used in the search.

  When he’d gone the same distance in the new direction, he began to move west, the area already encompassing more than a half-dozen small towns and burgs.

  “Tell me,” Reed said, his finger pausing as he reached the northwest corner of the square, “of those twenty, how many were on the reservation?”

  More clatter on the other end, Deke refining the search, before responding. “Twenty-one total,” he corrected. “Fifteen on, six off it.”

  The conversation he’d had with Wyatt returned to mind as Reed stared down at the map. Looking at the area Deke had been scouring, that meant more than seventy percent of the cases that fit were confined to the western half of the grid.

  All in a place where it bore to reason that dark hair and eyes would be most common.

  “Six plus Serena Gipson?”

  “Uh,” Deke said, drawing the sound out several seconds as he checked, “yes. For some reason, she’s still not coming up in the search.”

  Nor would she, not until Ecklund allowed there to be an official report filed. An action that, if today’s meeting was any indicator, wasn’t likely to ever occur.

  “And of those six, are two of them Darcy Thornton and Suzanne Bonham?” Reed asked.

  Another moment as Deke consulted his findings.

  “They are.”

  In quick order, Reed checked over the map. He again found Warner in the center, Muskogee north of it, Wyatt’s directions to Longtown putting it to the southwest.

  All in a much tighter cluster, not having a clear center point, but still outside the confines of the Muscogee Reservation.

  “Listen, can you send me over the others you have?” Reed asked. “Don’t need the full workup you did for Gipson, just the particulars of when and where. A picture if you’ve got it.”

  “I can,” Deke replied. “You want me to go back any further?”

  His focus still on the map, Reed said, “If you can, but don’t worry about going so wide. Maybe cut your zone down to twenty or twenty-five miles out from Warner. That doable?”

  “You got it,” Deke replied. “Anything else?”

  Lifting his attention from the map, Reed drew in a deep breath. The information was a solid start, could potentially give them a defined geographic span, but they needed more than that. They needed to know what was tying these girls together, making them targets.

  Having the same look and living semi-close was one thing, but there had to be some reason they were ending up on the radar to begin with. Somewhere the abductor was spotting them.

  “Yeah, see if there is anything at all you can find that these women have in common. A gym they went to, a restaurant they like. Hell, even if they all pumped gas at the same Shell station one time. Anything.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  The map was spread on the table beside the computer in the den of Reed’s parents’ new home. Folded down to the relevant portion of the eastern third of the state, the rest was tucked behind it, taking up no more than a square foot in total.

  On it was already a trio of red circles, one each around Warner, Muskogee, and Longtown.

  With the Sharpie, which had made the markings, behind his ear, Reed sat at the computer, right leg bouncing up and down as he waited for the internet to load. By his side, Billie remained on all fours, standing with her gaze aimed at the screen, her front shoulder tight against his thigh.

  “Come on,” he whispered, watching as the same program he’d used that morning slowly came to life. “Come on, come on, come on.”

  The instant the email server became fully active, Reed clicked into the newest entry. Void of any title or message at all, he clicked on the attachment, enlarging it so it covered the entire screen.

  A simple Word document, it listed each of the six in order, all clumped into a few brief lines of text separated by a patch of white before the next began. Once it was in place, Reed stood, sending the chair rolling a few inches behind him, Billie backing off just a half-pace to make room.

  Sliding the marker from behind his ear, he read off the first name in order. “Wanda Davison, McClain.”

  Closing in on the map, Reed pressed both of his palms into the table. Bending at the waist, he peered down, gaze passing over the various small towns, before landing on a dot between Warner and Muskogee.

  Using the marker, he made the fourth circle, one more in a tight cluster.

  “Sara Cannon, Oktaha.”

  Scanning the area east of the Muscogee Reservation, Reed found what he was looking for not far above Checotah. Adding one more circle, he shifted back to the list Deke had sent him.

  In short order, he added additional markings for Porum, Summit, and Texanna, a half-dozen red circles standing out against the white background. Bent over them, one palm pressed against the table, Reed pushed himself upright, his gaze still aimed downward, inspecting what had emerged.

  In total, the markings covered a land area that stretched roughly thirty-five miles north-to-south and roughly half that east-to-west. Situated in the center-east was Warner, the total group forming a rough rectangle standing on end.

  “Son of a bitch,” Reed muttered, twisting the cap back on the marker. Dropping it to the desk beside the map, he crossed his arms, staring down at his findings.

  “Who’s a son of a bitch?” his mother asked, stepping into the room behind him. The floor creaked as she crossed the empty expanse, entering his periphery.

  “Whoever’s doing that,” Reed answered, gesturing with his chin toward the map, each passing moment making the circles more pronounced, angry markings standing out against a muted background.

  Glancing his way, Cheryl leaned forward to peer downat the folded map before them.

  “Are those...?” she began, her voice trailing away as she raised a hand to her throat. Standing frozen a moment, she turned to look at Reed, her mouth agape, her eyes glassy. “Are those all...?”

  In truth, they were nowhere near the total sum. Just minutes before, he and Deke had set aside more than a dozen other cases, and that was just in the last five years.

  Once more, he recalled the previous conversation with Wyatt, the man stating that disappearances in Indian country had reached a level that was almost pandemic.

  But he wasn’t about to tell his mother that.

  “We think
so,” Reed said.

  Her mouth sagging a bit wider, she shifted back to the map. “So many.”

  A statement Reed couldn’t begin to argue.

  It was. Too many, in fact. Too many for the small towns of eastern Oklahoma to have experienced. Far, far too many for someone like Carver Ecklund to still be refusing to acknowledge the latest disappearance.

  Before he could say anything to that effect, his phone lying beside the keyboard began to vibrate. Pronounced in the quiet of the room, the sound caused his mother to jump, Billie swinging her head toward it, her body rigid for a moment before relaxing.

  Leaning forward a few inches, Reed checked the name splashed across the screen, what he saw doing nothing for the clench already residing firmly in his midsection.

  “Officer Wyatt?” his mother asked.

  Reed felt more warmth rise the length of his body. Dread flooded in immediately after, no part of him wanting to accept the call.

  Even if there was no way he could possibly ignore it.

  “Captain Grimes,” he whispered.

  Letting it buzz twice more, every reason not to pick it up passing through his mind, Reed reached out. Taking up the phone, he glanced to his mother, adding, “I should take this.”

  It took a moment for the comment to register, for his mother to get past the lingering shock of the map before them. Closing her mouth twice in silence, she attempted to find the right words before merely nodding. Resting a hand on his arm, she paced back out the same way she had entered, closing the door behind her.

  Only then did Reed accept the call, opting against speakerphone and pressing the phone to his ear.

  Something told him this was going to be a conversation he didn’t want to be overheard.

  “Captain,” Reed said.

  “Mattox,” Grimes replied, his voice somehow even deeper than the previous time they spoke.

  “I’m guessing you just got a call.”

  Scoffing slightly, Grimes replied, “You could say that. Sounds like your new friend out there has really been burning up the phone lines today.”