by Raylan Kane
Jen looked to her left to the man with close cropped blond hair sprawled out and dead asleep on the other half of the bed. What the hell happened? The last thing she remembered was sneaking out of the apartment after midnight and heading for the Trunk, the local dive. Images flashed through her head. She sat at the bar and remembered Cain buying her a drink, or two. She sat in a booth, at one point she danced with some older ladies she didn’t know. She remembered slow dancing, kissing this handsome hunter with the nice arms. Ugh.
She grabbed her phone. 3 missed calls, all from Sheriff Lake. A serious feeling of dread washed over her. How to explain? She glanced at the time. 8:30.
“Shit!” She couldn’t stifle her anger. She was already late for work and she had the zoologist coming into town to check out the old service station. What am I gonna tell Tom? Where are my clothes?
She pulled the Sheriff’s Department up in her list of contacts and hit the call button.
She pulled a bedsheet around her to cover up and stepped over near the front door and did her best to speak quietly. “Tom? It’s me. I’m fine. I just - I need you to tell that scientist lady that I’m running a few minutes late. Has she arrived there yet? Okay, good. I know, I’m sorry, boss. My alarm didn’t go off. Okay, thank you. I’ll be in soon. Bye.”
She bit her lip out and turned back toward the bed. She jumped back to see Cain sitting up facing her. He smiled.
“Everything alright, darlin’?” He said.
“Yes. Uh huh. Good.” She pulled the sheet tighter around her.
“You can come back over here if you like,” he said. “Promise I won’t bite. This time.”
“No, I think I’m good here,” Jen said. “Do you know where my clothes are?”
“Well, officer, I believe they’re hangin’ in the bathroom,” he said. “You, uh, got a little messy when we got back here. You had a lot to drink.”
“Yeah, no kidding. Seems to be our M-O.”
“Not to worry though, I think I got most of the puke out of your jeans,” he said grinning.
“Thank you. Such a gentleman.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Jen awkwardly turned to keep facing him so as not to expose her backside as she shuffled past the bed to the bathroom. Once out of view she dropped the sheet and slipped on her damp pair of jeans. She put on her bra and checked herself in the mirror and pulled her brunette locks into a ponytail.
“I don’t see my shirt,” she said.
“Oh, sorry. Guess it’s out here.”
Jen walked out in her jeans and bra. The man couldn’t help but smile as he admired her beauty. Jen found her T-shirt on the floor and slipped it over her head. The man attempted to stand up from the bed and the bed sheet almost fell from his rippled abs and hips to expose something more.
“Whoa!” Jen held her hand over her eyes.
The man laughed. “Relax, Deputy, I caught it.”
She opened her eyes and the man held the sheet over his private parts. He extended his other hand out to her.
“Name’s Cain, by the way, in case you forgot.”
“Haha, you’re funny.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “But I do know that at one point you called me David.”
Dammit. Jen cursed to herself.
“I did?”
“You did, but how could I be offended?” he said. “Yours is the prettiest face I’ve seen since I got to this butthole state.”
Is that what you tell your housekeeper? Jen thought.
“I have to go,” Jen said.
“Who’s Tom?”
“My boss. My very pissed off boss. I’m sorry,” Jen said. “I really have to go.”
She grabbed her keys and her wallet from the top of the dresser and rushed to the door.
“Wait,” Cain said. “I’m gonna call you later on, sound good?”
“No. I mean, yes. Okay, sure.”
“You sure know how to confuse a fella.”
“Likewise.”
“What does that mean?”
“You and the housekeeper. What’s that about?”
Cain looked at Jen suspiciously. “How’d you know about?” A sly grin crept across his face. “You’re a helluva a cop aren’t you?”
“I might not be after today. Look, I really have to go. You wanna call me later? Call me.”
“Listen, that other girl-”
“Charlie Hill,” Jen said.
“Yes, her, she and I, we’re just having some fun. It’s not serious.”
“Good to know. No, wait, actually it’s none of my business.”
Cain stepped over to her. He put his hands on her arms and pulled her close. He looked her squarely in the eyes. She returned his gaze.
“It’s you that I want,” he said.
Jen’s guard fell immediately. She felt as though she’d melted on the spot into a puddle. Cain pressed his palm to her cheek and kissed her deeply. Jen’s knees weakened and her arms fell by her sides. Her phone vibrated and she was forced to break away.
“Sorry,” she said with a girlish smile. She slipped through the door to Cain’s room with a shy wave and held the phone up to her ear. “Yes, Sheriff, I’m on my way right now.”
She looked at a kerfuffle of noise to her right and saw the Action 5 News crew emerging from their motel room headed for their van. Great.
She walked to her truck in the lot, shuddering to think how her truck might’ve gotten there. As she opened the driver’s door to get in, David poked his head out of the door to his room to check on the source of the noise and saw Jen looking disheveled in civilian clothes step into her truck and drive away. He tried to rationalize why she might be leaving there at that time of day, or why she’d been there in the first place, but even the most optimistic of his thoughts led him to the same answer. He slowly closed the door and pulled his curtains tight, unsure if he wanted to leave his room for the rest of the day at all.
FOURTEEN
The old service station was inundated with people. Sheriff Lake held court on a patch of dirt between the building, two backhoes and a large crane as a reporter from Fairbanks local TV station asked him questions and a writer from a Fairbanks paper scribbled notes on her pad. Sherry Brown, the nosy town councilor chatted with locals out on the street. Two Sheriff’s Deputies chatted with a small gathering of townsfolk, two construction workers and the crane operator who stood at the edge of police tape that had been wrapped around the area. Jen stood inside the old service station near the top of the basement stairs while a young zoologist from Washington State along with two of her assistants worked to uncover the remains from the dirt floor below.
Each of the assistants had toolkits complete with brushes and sampling equipment. The Sheriff’s Department had set up crime scene lamps at both ends of the basement and at the top of the stairs. As the researchers cleared away nearly all of the dirt floor, the giant bone became the new flooring they could’ve stood on if they’d chosen to.
The head zoologist, Bridget Karlsson was perched on what small parcel of dirt floor remained, she held a piece of lab equipment just above the massive bone.
“What does the test say?” Jen said from the stairs above. “Is it real?”
“It’s real alright,” Bridget said. “This is one intact piece. Remarkable.”
“I can see it extends past the walls.”
“It appears so, yes.”
One of the assistants snapped pictures with a digital SLR camera.
“What would you suggest?” Jen said.
“We’ve done pretty much all we can do at this point,” Bridget said.
“Time to bring in the big guns?”
“Looks that way, yes.”
Tom had been on the phone with the County and the Mayor’s Office most of the morning seeking approval to tear down the old service station once and for all. After much hand-wringing all sides agreed to pull the thing down. The Sheriff finished speaking with reporters, when he noticed
the mayor’s car pull up to the site. Mayor Fred Hodges, a tall man with a full head of white hair wearing a plaid shirt and khakis got out of the car. He shook hands with Sherry Brown and then approached the Sheriff.
“Mr. Mayor.”
“Tom, how are you?”
“Great. We’ve drawn a lot of attention, looks like.”
“Might be able to drive some tourism out of this.”
“Maybe.”
Jen exited the station and walked to Tom and the Mayor.
“Pardon the interruption,” she said. “She says it looks like we’ve gotta take it down. Careful as we can. We still don’t know the extent of the size of the find.”
Tom nodded. The mayor looked at his shoes.
“You know, Tom, I’m still not sure about this,” Hodges said.
“What’s there not to be sure of? This place hasn’t been in business for 30 years. Not like there’s much else around it either.”
“I know, I know, but we’re bringing all this attention and tearing down this place and for what? This could be a hoax.”
“You said it yourself, Mayor, this could bring tourists to Branson.”
“Yes, well, so long as it’s not a big hoax. The embarrassment of it could set us back another 30 years.”
“You want us all to pull out of here and forget it, then that’s what we’ll do,” Tom said. “It’s your call.”
“I’m not saying that,” Hodges said. “I just want to be sure this is the right thing.”
“Nothing’s the right thing ‘til it is, Mr. Mayor.”
“Just remember you said that, Tom.”
Jen looked at her boss with some confusion. “What would you like me to do, boss. What do I tell the zoologist?”
“Tell her to get her and team outta there. We’re gonna bring the thing down and see if we can extract that bone you’ve found.”
Jen went and collected Bridget and her team. They, along with everyone else moved to edge of the street and watched from a distance as the construction workers attached hooks on chains to the building and had them fastened onto their heavy equipment. Each of the workers revved their backhoes and put them in gear. Black smoke billowed from each of the machines’ stacks, their engines grew loud and few among the crowd plugged their ears. Both backhoes, side-by-side, moved away from the building until the chains pulled tight. Slowly they pulled away from the service station. The old wooden walls snapped with a loud crack and the weight of the roof caused it to collapse. The walls crunched together and fell. The entire building folded in on itself and the backhoes dragged it like a huge grate across the dirt until it was well clear of its old footprint. All that left of the building was the square of wood for the main floor and the remnants of the front counter.
A mobile lunch truck arrived and people lined up to grab a snack while construction workers pulled up the old flooring. Jen munched on a sandwich and sipped from a cup of coffee as the last of the floor, the counter and the remnants of a door frame were carried away thrown into the buckets of the backhoes.
Tom, Fred, Jen and Bridget and her team walked to the edge of the open pit that was once the basement underneath the service station. Tom’s eyes widened as she saw the giant bone that spanned the width of the pit and disappeared beneath each black wall.
“My god,” he muttered.
“What the hell are we looking at here?” Hodges said.
“What do you think, Ms. Karlsson?” Jen said. “What kind of bone is this?”
“It’s a femur,” Bridget said.
“So, it’s a leg?” Hodges said. “What kind of creature has a leg that size?”
“It’s part of a leg,” Bridget said. “The largest part. I’ve never seen anything like this. There’s nothing like this of its kind, other than prehistoric animals previously discovered.”
“But you don’t think that’s what this is?”
“It’s too young and intact to be a dinosaur, or a mammoth for that matter. No, this is something else entirely. This is history.”
“Right here in Branson,” Hodges said. A smile slowly developed. “History is made in Branson.” He could practically see the television commercials and the tourism dollars flowing in.
“When will you know what we’re looking at here, what kind of animal, that kind of thing,” Tom said to Bridget.
“Soon as we can get that pulled out of there and see if there’s any more down there.”
The crane operator approached Bridget. The others walked back from the pit.
“How do you wanna do this,” the operator said.
“Yes, we need to be extra careful with this piece,” Bridget said. “Let’s go down there for a minute and I’ll show you the best place.”
Bridget and her assistants along with the crane operator and the other workers managed to figure out the best way to lift the bone out of the basement hopefully mitigating damage to the piece as much as possible. The workers did their best to take down the basement walls without causing the sides of the pit to collapse too much. All parties walked out of the pit and everyone watched from a distance as the crane operator fired up his machine and began to levitate the massive bone.
Everyone’s jaws dropped as the crane motor geared down and the huge object lifted free of the dirt and debris of the pit. The full scale of the thing came into focus as it floated overhead. Bridget signaled to the crane operator to hold the object in place, about twenty feet off the ground.
The members of the public snapped pictures with their phones and talked with their mouths moving a mile a minute. The newspaper and television reporters moved in on the mayor, Sheriff Lake, Bridget and Jen. Bridget stepped forward from the group and put a hand over her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun. Her mind raced as she gazed at the object, her eyes ran back and forth over it. Suddenly a flash of recognition snapped into focus in the back of her mind. She nearly jumped as she balled up a fist. Jen noticed the sudden change in Bridget’s body language from the corner of her eye, she looked over at the scientist.
“What is it, doctor?”
“By god,” Bridget uttered.
“You see it too?” One of Bridget’s assistants said.
“What?” Mayor Hodges said, “see what?”
“I don’t believe it,” Bridget said. “There’s no way. How could this be possible? It’s not. It’s simply not possible.”
“Would someone tell me what the hell we’re talking about here?” Tom said. “Just spit it out already.”
The reporters stood close by with rapt attention. Bridget turned and looked at the Sheriff.
“It’s Ursus arctos horribilis,” she said.
“Horribilis?” Mayor Hodge said, confused.
“Grizzly bear,” Bridget said, “the biggest damned grizzly bear the world’s ever seen.”
FIFTEEN
A few days of hot, sunny weather hit the region around Branson unexpectedly and the locals were all too happy to dig out their summer clothes and fire up their barbecues. For Deputy Marsh though, the warmer temperatures meant more people were heading out into the backcountry, and that likely meant more occurrences of people gone missing or in need of rescue. Fishing season had also just begun, so the influx of people hoping to land the big one in the various local rivers and streams surrounding Branson had also been on an upswing.
Another missing person’s case came across Jen’s desk the morning after the big discovery beneath the old service station. Don McNeese, a crusty old local, hadn’t returned home in a few days according to his wife. What he was doing out in the bush on his own, his wife hadn’t specified to Sheriff Lake, but she didn’t think he’d be more than two days out in the woods and it had now been five.
With the 4x4 out of the garage and ready to be deployed once again to the Alaskan wilds, Jen drove out to Hiller Woods Road, delighted to find that the unseasonably hot weather had dried up much of the swampy areas and pools of standing water that plagued her previous expedition. The road was pockmarked and rou
gh, but at least it was dry and Jen made better time getting out as far as she did last time, and she’d managed to reach the end of the road this time without incident.
Hiller Woods Road ends with a large circular turnaround spot with a set of picnic tables off to one side, as well as a sheltered fire pit and a pit toilet. The clearing had trails that sprawled away from the area in four different directions. Two led into Hiller Canyon, the other two branched north and west away from the canyon. McNeese’s wife believed her husband had journeyed into the Canyon, so that meant Jen would have to venture out that way if she had any hope of finding him.
After her run-in with the mountain lion, Jen decided to carry an additional long gun with her. She had a high-powered rifle slung over her shoulder as well as a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with slugs that she carried in her right hand. In addition she had her service pistol holstered, her folding knife, two cannisters of spray and she opted to wear her kevlar vest under her spring jacket. She spread bug spray over the back of her neck, around her ears and under her ball cap. The warm temperatures had kick-started the season for mosquitoes, and Jen knew they’d be out in force in the deep woods.
Jen opted for the more northerly of the two canyon trails, Johnston Blue Trail. The first mile of pathway was mostly downhill that led from the clearing where the truck was parked down over a sharp, rocky ridge then toward Tyson River, the largest river in the region.
Unbeknownst to the Sheriff’s Deputy, about four miles upstream from her on the Tyson, a group of four men were trying their luck at landing the big one.
Bill Redmond owned a sporting goods store in Fairbanks. He and his buddies, Sam, Clive and Arnold had come with him for a few days of camping and fishing on the river. They’d pitched two tents on the sandy riverbank, and were only about a hundred feet downstream in a grassy area, perfect for setting out a lawn chair and casting a line into the strong current. Bill sat closest to the water, he had a red and white cooler at his feet, ready to hold any fish the crew might be lucky enough to reel in. Bill slowly reeled in his line until the empty hook revealed itself above the water.