by B J Bourg
Book Twelve:
BUT NOT FOREBODING
CHAPTER 1
Tuesday, June 4
It was a few minutes after five o’clock and I had just gotten off of work at my job as the chief of detectives for the Mechant Loup Police Department. I was still wearing my slacks, polo shirt, and boots, and my pistol was still in its holster. So, then, why was I lying in a supine position in my back yard staring up at the clear blue sky? The answer was simple—my daughter wanted me to.
At thirteen months of age, Grace was starting to talk a lot, but most of what she said wasn’t English. When I’d walked into the back yard earlier—where I found her sitting in the clovers with our German shepherds, Achilles and Coco—she had pulled herself to her feet and marched on over to me. After barking a string of orders up at me, she had grabbed my hand and led me wobbly to where our dogs were waiting patiently. I’d glanced over at my wife, Susan, and she’d only shrugged.
Now that she had me on the ground where she wanted me, she lifted her arms toward the heavens and then threw herself forward, landing solidly on my stomach. Thankfully, I’d been punched in the stomach on more than one occasion and I was ready for the blow. Grace started laughing hysterically, her soft red hair dancing in the wind and her hazel eyes sparkling. Although there was something else on my mind, I couldn’t help but join her in laughter.
“I guess you’re going to be her human trampoline for the next hour.” Susan is the chief of police for the Mechant Loup Police Department and she had gotten home earlier than I had. She now wore yellow shorts that accentuated her well-sculpted and tanned legs, and a T-shirt with a picture of a mountain that read, I’d rather be hiking the Smokies.
She noticed the expression on my face and asked what was wrong. I shook my head to dismiss the thought, but it lingered just under the surface. Jealousy, perhaps? But how could I be jealous of my own daughter?
“Bull potatoes,” Susan said, in her effort to refrain from using swear words in front of Grace. “Something’s bothering you, and I won’t stop until you tell me.”
I sighed. “It’s nothing, really. It’s petty.”
“Now I have to know!”
“Know!” Grace called out forcefully. “Know!”
Susan and I both laughed and Susan rose from her chair and stood looking down at me. “Yes, we all have to know.”
I was thoughtful. Ever since Grace had come into the world, there’d been a noticeable change in my male German shepherd, Achilles, and I didn’t know if I liked it. I also didn’t want to express it out loud, because I knew it would sound trivial.
“I’m going to count to three,” Susan said. “If you don’t—”
“Okay, okay.” I snatched Grace from the ground beside me and held her high in the air like an airplane. “You know how Achilles would always come running to the driveway when I’d come home from work?”
Susan nodded. “Yeah, he could hear your Tahoe from a mile away.”
“Well, ever since Gracie has come along, he doesn’t do it as much anymore.”
Susan burst out laughing, to the point that she bent over and tears started falling down her face. When she could speak again, she said, “Are you serious? You’re jealous because your dog loves your daughter more than you?”
My face burned red. “No, I’m not jealous. I just noticed a difference is all.”
Susan continued laughing while I continued steering Grace around like an airplane. Finally, Susan wiped her eyes and dropped to her knees beside me. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, you’re second in my life too, now that Gracie has come into the world.”
“Oh, I get it,” I acknowledged, “and I knew she would be first in all of our lives. I just didn’t think Achilles would completely abandon me for her. I mean, he could at least pop his head outside and say hello when I drive up.”
As though sensing we were talking about him, Achilles stood and stretched, then lumbered over to where I lay on my back. He dropped lazily beside me and nestled his nose against my neck, near my chin.
“Aw, you see, he still loves you,” Susan cooed.
That brought a smile to my face, but then Coco, who never liked to be far from Achilles, got up and moved closer, wriggling her body between his and mine.
Susan and I hadn’t seen each other much that day, because she’d been busy placing a woman and her two kids in the battered women’s shelter she ran at the back of our property. As I played with Grace, she gave me the rundown on the situation, and then I told her about my day. Thankfully, it had been pretty uneventful, much like the past three months. Since March, I’d been putting in my eight hours at work and then coming home to spend quality time with Susan, Grace, Achilles, and Coco. I hadn’t been called out a single time and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to work a night or a weekend. Working eight hours a day and being off every night and weekend was great. It must have started to spoil me, because I didn’t even react when my cell phone began ringing in my pocket. I just kept playing with Grace and talking about my day.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” Susan asked.
I suddenly realized it had to be work. Frowning, I handed Grace to Susan and sat up. Achilles shifted on the ground beside me, but I realized his eyes were on Grace. Grumbling to myself, I pulled out my phone. “Hi, it’s Clint. Please tell me this is just a drill.”
“I wish I could,” said Beth Gandy, our nighttime dispatcher, “but I can’t. It seems some kids have gone missing.”
I sighed. “Not again.”
“Well, it might be nothing. The call came in as overdue boaters, and the complainant is waiting at the boat launch for someone to meet him. I’ve got Melvin on the way, but he asked that I call you. He talked to the man on the phone and he just called to say he’s got a bad feeling about this one.”
“Did he say why?”
“No, he just said there was something about it he didn’t like.”
I thanked her and stood to my feet. Since I was already dressed, I had simply to kiss my wife and daughter, say goodbye to my dogs, and then head to my Tahoe. I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter to six now.
“So much for permanent eight to fives,” I grumbled, never really thinking it would last forever. I did hope the complaint would resolve itself before I arrived at the landing, though. Overdue boaters would mean a boat ride. Depending on where the boaters were supposed to be, that could be anywhere from a thirty-minute ride to a couple of hours. Hell, if we had to launch the boat at all, I would most likely be out all night.
CHAPTER 2
Two days earlier…
The sun was going down fast and the deep shadows of the swampy woodlands south of Mechant Loup were getting longer. Kaitlin Shelton cast a nervous glance at her three comrades. “We need to make a fire,” she said nervously, “and set up our tents.”
Her brother, Leroy, was wrestling on the ground with his girlfriend, Sarah, and didn’t seem bothered by the waning light.
“Come on, Leroy, help me gather some wood.” Kaitlin blew a tuft of brown hair out of her eyes and swatted at a mosquito. “I swear, if you don’t stop playing around, I’m leaving. We need to get busy.”
That got Leroy’s attention, but not in the way she had hoped. He paused with Sarah on top of him and glanced at his sister. “Leaving?” His voice was laced in exasperation. “Where in the hell will you go? And how will you get there? You can’t walk—unless you think you’re Jesus Christ.”
Kaitlin chewed on her lower lip. She knew they were hours away from the nearest boat landing and it wouldn’t be safe to travel those waters at night. Besides, there was only one boat, and it wasn’t like she would try to steal the boat and leave the others behind. Hell, she didn’t even know the first thing about driving a boat.
“I’ll help you get some firewood,” Elton Gatti said.
Elton was Leroy’s friend, and he and Leroy were the same age. This made them two years older than Kaitlin. Kaitlin had known Elton for about three
years, ever since her brother had brought him to the house one weekend. It had been one of Leroy’s rare visits from college. She couldn’t remember the exact reason her brother had gone home—Christmas, Thanksgiving, his birthday?—but she remembered very vividly brushing by Elton in the hallway one night and him taking her by the hand to stop her. She had looked up into his dark brown eyes and her heart had immediately begun pounding. There was something about the way he had looked down at her. There was a hunger in his eyes—an intense desire—and it excited her. Not knowing what to expect or what was about to happen, she had just stood there breathing heavily.
“Is it okay if I kiss you?” Elton had asked.
Kaitlin had been too dizzy to answer. She’d simply nodded her head and allowed her eyes to slide shut as their lips came together. She didn’t know how long they stood there—his strong arms wrapped around her and their lips interlocked—but a door had burst open and jolted them back to reality. They’d looked up to see a startled Leroy standing in the bathroom door, a towel wrapped around his waist and his hands dangling at his side. He had looked as stunned as they.
“If…if I weren’t dressed in a towel,” he stammered, his eyes boring into Elton, “I’d kick your ass.”
Embarrassed by her brother, Kaitlin had hurried past Leroy and down the stairs, heading straight for her room. She could hear Leroy threatening Elton long after she had closed her door and slipped into bed. How her parents didn’t hear all the yelling was anyone’s guess, but she certainly heard Leroy threaten to kill Elton if he ever touched his little sister again.
“I’m not little,” she’d muttered into her pillow that night, long after the sounds of Leroy’s voice had faded away. “I’m seventeen, and soon I’ll be eighteen. I’ll graduate next year and be an adult. Who are you calling little?”
Kaitlin never did get a boyfriend. Mostly because all the boys in high school were immature and goofy, and then when she went to college they were all assholes. She had thought about that kiss many times in the coming years, and she knew her face burned red every time she saw Elton, which wasn’t often. Leroy never spoke to her about that night, and she was grateful, but he never let Elton out of his sight when he was around his baby sister.
Kaitlin shot a glance at Leroy, but he didn’t seem to notice—or care—that Elton had offered to go with her. Was it because she was in college now herself? Had he been mad back then because his college friend was making out with his high school sister? It did sound bad to say it out loud, which was why she never did.
“Thanks,” Kaitlin said to Elton. “I appreciate the fact that there’s at least one gentleman on this little expedition.”
As she followed Elton through the thick trees, she wondered why she’d begged to come along. She stopped walking and considered that for a second. No, she knew why she’d begged Leroy to tag along, but now she was wondering if it had been such a smart idea.
“Is something wrong?” Elton stopped and turned to face her. He pushed his long bangs out of his face. “Did you see something?”
She hesitated. The question caused her to take a slow look around. The shadows were darker than they had been just minutes earlier and it would be completely dark soon. She shuddered. “Do you think they’re really out here?”
“I don’t know.” Elton shrugged. “Leroy thinks they are, but I don’t really know. I heard they were moving down from up north, but Wild Life and Fisheries keeps denying it.”
Kaitlin chewed on her lower lip. Leroy had found a video online that claimed a black bear had been sighted in these very swamps, and he had tried to recruit some of his friends to scout the area in search of the elusive creature, but only his girlfriend and best friend had volunteered. When Kaitlin had first overheard them talking about it, she was disinterested. But when she’d heard Elton say he was in, she’d hurriedly volunteered to go along. Leroy had eyed her suspiciously, but then gave the green light.
Now, here they were, darkness fast approaching and they hadn’t even built a fire yet. If there really were bears in these swamps, they would need a fire to keep it away from their camp—or that’s what Leroy had said anyway.
“I’m scared,” Kaitlin said softly, turning her eyes up to meet Elton’s. “I…I don’t know if we should’ve come out here. And it’s not just the bears. I’ve heard there are alligators as big as buses out here. And I know there are giant snakes that can swallow up a small baby—”
“Come, come,” Elton said, moving close and putting a hand on her shoulder. “I won’t let anything get you.”
She was wearing a sporty tank top and she shivered when his hand made contact with her bare flesh. Her voice momentarily gone, she stammered a bit and finally thanked him. He gave her a wink and told her to start gathering twigs for the fire. “Once we have a fire, everything will be fine. All wild things are afraid of fire.”
That was a comforting thought. She followed Elton and bent often to pick up twigs. She placed them in the crook of her left arm. Before long, they each had a handful and they began walking back toward the fire. They made small talk as they walked, but she was only half listening. Every part of her was still focused on where his hand had been on her shoulder. She could still feel the warmth of his touch and it excited her. Will he kiss me again? she wondered. Or had Leroy scared him so much the first time that he now considered her off limits?
“Stop!” Elton hissed. “Don’t move!”
Kaitlin froze in place, one foot on the ground and the other in mid-step. Had he seen a bear? Dear Lord, they didn’t even have a fire yet!
She wanted to ask if it was a bear, but he was focused so intently on something in the distance that she knew better than to disturb him. If it was a bear, she certainly didn’t want to attract its attention. After a long minute, Elton turned to face her. His complexion was normally bronze-colored, but his face was now as pale as a sheet of paper.
“I…I saw it!”
“A bear?” Kaitlin asked, moving closer to him. She turned in the direction he had been looking, but saw nothing but shadowy trees and bushes. “Did you see a bear?”
He licked his lips and shook his head slowly. “I…I saw Big Foot!”
CHAPTER 3
“I swear to God it was Big Foot!” Elton was saying to Leroy and Sarah. “I’ve never seen a humanlike person that was so big. It had to be him.”
Leroy glanced skeptically from Kaitlin to Elton, and then back to Kaitlin. “Sis, did you see it?”
She hesitated, then slowly shook her head. She wanted to support Elton, but she hadn’t seen anything thanks to the trees being too thick and the shadows too dark. “I looked where Elton was pointing, but…but I didn’t see anything because it was too dark. But I know he saw something. I could see it in his face.”
“It had to be a bear. It was probably standing on its hind legs.” Leroy reached for his backpack and shouldered it. “Let’s go. Show me where you saw it.”
Elton nodded and grabbed his own backpack. With flashlights in hand, they all back-tracked the route she and Elton had taken and didn’t stop until they were standing near a large cypress tree on the edge of a narrow canal. Elton pointed. “He was standing over there, right near that palmetto bush.”
Leroy walked toward the bush and began scanning the ground with his flashlight. Kaitlin fidgeted where she stood. Mosquitoes were swarming all about them and would stop often to stab at her flesh. She swatted at them and was about to ask Leroy if they could go back to the campsite and set up the tents when Sarah screeched.
“There’s a bear paw print!” she said excitedly. “A big one! You did it, Leroy! You discovered bears in the swamps!”
Kaitlin gasped when she saw the impression in the mud. Leroy had dropped to his knees beside it, but then leaned back suddenly, as though he were afraid. When he looked up, his eyes were wide and his mouth agape.
“This ain’t no bear paw!” Leroy announced. “This is a giant footprint. We…we just discovered Big Foot!”
Kaitlin was so nervous she almost vomited. “Let’s get out of here. Maybe we can make it back home before it gets completely dark. We can call the police. Please, let’s just leave and come back in the morning.”
Leroy didn’t answer. He placed his flashlight on the ground and pulled out his phone. “We’re going viral,” he said with glee, snapping pictures of the giant foot print in the soft mud. “We’re going to be famous.”
“What size do you think it is?” Elton asked, his voice betraying his own nervousness.
“Please, let’s get out of here.” Kaitlin was so scared she was about to pee her pants. “Let’s get in the boat and leave.”
Sarah had sidled up beside her and nodded her head in agreement. “I’m with Kaitlin,” she said. “I think we need to leave this place. It might be his territory. He might be mad that we’re here. I saw on television where he throws large rocks at people who trespass on his territory.”
“That’s a commercial,” Elton chided. “It’s not real.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Leroy announced with finality. Once he’d taken enough pictures, he stood and placed his boot next to the bare footprint. “I’m a size ten, and this foot is much bigger than my boot. I don’t think they even make shoes that big.”
“Maybe for Michael Jordon,” Elton mused.
Kaitlin shivered some more when she noticed the footprint was several inches longer and at least three inches wider than her brother’s boot.
“The creature I saw was tall, at least eight feet,” Elton said. He lifted his hand beside the palmetto bushes. “His head was about this high and he had long hair. He was wide, too. It’s got to be Big Foot. There’s no way there’s a human that big.”
While she was filled with dread, she had to admit they could be famous if they were right. There was no denying the giant footprint. And since she and Elton had found it first, she knew it wasn’t her brother trying to play a trick on them.