by B J Bourg
“Yeah, but I saw the footprints.”
“Where was Elton when you went inside your tent?”
“The last time I saw him, he was sitting on a log by the fire, and then he went to sleep right there on the ground.”
“And where was Kaitlin when you went into your tent?” I asked. “Had she already gone to bed?”
“Yeah, she was the first one to go to bed.”
“Did you get up at all during the night?”
“No, sir.”
“So, you can’t really say if Elton slept on the ground or if he went into your sister’s tent, correct?”
“No, I know for a fact that he didn’t go in the tent.”
“If you never left your tent, how can you be so sure he didn’t go into your sister’s tent?”
“Because he told me he didn’t and because he was still sleeping on the ground when I got out of my tent yesterday morning.”
“What’s the first thing you saw when you exited your tent yesterday morning?”
“Well, when I got out of the tent, I saw Elton getting up from his sleeping bag. The fire had burned out already. Um, I had to piss, so I walked behind a tree. When I came back, Sarah was just getting out of our tent. That’s when she noticed the other tent was unzipped. She called out for Kaitlin, but Kaitlin didn’t answer.” Leroy frowned. “I began joking with Elton saying that he forgot to zip up the tent when he got out, but he just laughed.”
“So, even you thought it was possible that he went into your sister’s tent, right?”
“No, not at all. I was just joking. I knew he would never go in her tent.”
I studied the boy and remembered how he had fidgeted when I asked about Elton flirting with Kaitlin. I knew it would be easy to get him to talk about whatever secret he thought he was keeping. I held up his phone. “Look, thanks to these pictures, I’m starting to see what happened here. However, I need you to be completely honest with me so I can eliminate any doubt I might have.”
“I mean, I’m telling you everything I know.”
“Not all of it.” I paused to let him think about that. “I need you to tell me about Elton and Kaitlin. Something was going on between them and I already know about it. I just need you to tell me so I know I can trust you.”
He fidgeted some more. “It was nothing, really.”
“Then go ahead and tell me.”
“They kissed once, but that was a long time ago. It was while Kaitlin was still in high school. Nothing else happened. She doesn’t even like him.”
“How’d you find out about the kiss?”
“I…um, I walked in on them.”
I concealed my interest and tried to act casual. “How’d that play out? I bet you scared the shit out of Elton.”
Leroy chuckled at the memory. “Yeah, I gave him an earful, that’s for sure. He never tried that again.”
“You said Kaitlin doesn’t like Elton, but how does Elton feel about your sister?”
Leroy hesitated. When he didn’t answer, I asked the question again, reminding him I needed to be able to trust him. “If you lie about anything—no matter how small—you will be discredited and no one will ever believe you saw Big Foot.”
He gulped. “Yes, sir, Elton liked Kaitlin, but I know he didn’t go in her tent.”
“Right.” I glanced back toward Elton. “Can you go have a seat on the ground near the boat? I want to have a word with Sarah.”
CHAPTER 11
“Tell me what happened to Kaitlin,” I said to Sarah Robichaux when she and I were standing alone near the edge of the lake.
“I don’t know. She was gone when we woke up yesterday morning.” Sarah wiped her eyes and I could tell she had been crying. “The only thing I can think of is that she left the camp site while we were all still sleeping and then Big Foot took her.”
I studied her for a moment, wanting to ask about Big Foot, but decided to wait a little. “Who went to bed first on Sunday night?”
“It was Kaitlin. She went into her tent and we all assumed she went to sleep. Not long after she went to bed, I was going to head off to the tent myself, but Leroy asked me if I wanted to go into the boys’ tent first. Elton told us it was okay and we…um…you know, we spent some time in there.” Sarah scrubbed at her eyes. “I shouldn’t have listened to him. I should’ve spent the night in the tent with Kaitlin, and this might never have happened.”
“No, Sarah, you can’t blame yourself for what happened—whatever it is.” I nodded for emphasis. “It’s no one’s fault.”
She pursed her lips, not convinced.
“Did you hear anything last night?” I asked.
“Well, I heard the zipper on her tent open sometime in the middle of the night and I figured Elton was going in there to hang out with her. They like each other.”
“Do they?” I stole a glance in Leroy’s direction, remembering what he had said. “How do you know this?”
“I see the way they look at each other and the way they act when they’re around each other.”
“So, you think Elton went into Kaitlin’s tent last night?” I tried to keep the suspicion from my voice.
“I mean, I think so. I heard the zipper opening.”
“Have they ever been intimate that you know about?”
“I know they kissed once, but I think that’s it.”
“Did you hear anything after hearing the zipper?” I asked. “Maybe whispers or other noises?”
“No, sir. I went back to sleep and didn’t hear anything else until the sun came up and I heard Leroy talking to Elton.” She went on to explain that she exited the tent and that’s when they saw the flap to the other tent open and realized Kaitlin was gone.
“Do you think she would’ve just wandered off?”
“Oh, no, not Kaitlin. She was afraid of the woods and of Big Foot. There’s no way she went running off on her own.”
“What do you think happened to her?”
“Big Foot took her.” She said it with such certainty that I had to catch myself, because I almost believed her.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well, we were the only ones in the woods—us and him. After Kaitlin disappeared, we searched the whole area. We never found her and we never saw him again. They both just disappeared into thin air.”
“Leroy said he was big,” I said slowly, watching as she nodded. “So, how did he sneak into the camp—right past where Elton was sleeping, no less—remove Kaitlin from her tent, and then drag her away without any of you hearing a peep?”
Even as I asked the question, I had a strange sense of déjà vu. I shook it off.
“I don’t know how he did it,” Sarah was saying. “I just know he’s the one who took her.”
“And how sure are you of this?”
“One hundred percent sure.”
I didn’t need a lie detector machine to tell me this girl believed every word of what she was saying. Of course, just because she believed it, it didn’t mean it was true. It couldn’t be true. Big Foot didn’t exist.
“Who was the first one in your group to suggest Big Foot took Kaitlin?”
Sarah put a dirty finger to her lips, and her brow furrowed. “Let me see…I’m pretty sure it was Elton.”
Of course it was Elton. I glanced in his direction again. Elton had some explaining to do. There’s no way a monster could have crept by him, snatched a grown person from a tent, and then dragged her away without him knowing something about it. If anything, he was Big Foot.
I thanked Sarah and told her she could go sit next to Leroy.
CHAPTER 12
“Elton,” I called, “can you come here for a second?”
Elton’s head jerked up, and it was then that I realized he had been sleeping. When he drew closer to me, I could see that his eyes were swollen and red. He had been crying, but was it because he was worried about Kaitlin or because he felt bad about what he’d done?
“How are you, son?” I asked, pretending
to care about him.
“Not good.” He rubbed his eyes and glanced around, as though looking for a place to sit. “I’m really worried about Kaitlin.”
“We’ll do everything we can to find her,” I promised. “But first, I need to know exactly what happened out here.”
“We don’t know. We just woke up and she was gone.”
“Let’s start with the Big Foot sighting.”
His eyes widened a little, as though just talking about the sighting scared him. “It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. We were out here looking for bears. I never in my wildest dreams thought we’d find Big Foot.” He shook his head. “I ain’t scared to fight, but I nearly shit my pants when I saw that thing.”
“Can you describe it for me?”
“He was tall—probably ten feet high—and he was huge. He must’ve weighed four hundred pounds, but he wasn’t fat.”
“What about his face? Did you see what he looked like?”
“He was hairy, like a monster.”
“Was it short and coarse, like an ape, or long and straight?”
“It was hard to tell. It was getting dark and he was standing in the thick trees, so I couldn’t really see what he looked like.”
I nodded and stayed quiet for a moment, as though doubting him. Sure enough, he began speaking again, trying to convince me of what he saw.
“The rest of his body was covered in some kind of thick clothes or fur. Like I said, it was very scary.” He took a breath. “I think he took Kaitlin.”
“Why would he do that?”
There was a blank expression on Elton’s face. “I mean, I have no idea—he just did.”
“Go on and tell me what happened after you saw this creature?”
“Well, me and Kaitlin ran back to where Leroy and Sarah were hanging around the campsite and we told them about it. We then went back to the area and that’s when we found the giant footprints. Leroy took pictures. We have proof.”
I nodded. “Yeah, he showed them to me.”
“Then you believe us?”
“Let’s just keep going. After you showed Leroy the spot where you saw the creature, what did y’all do?”
“Me and Kaitlin pitched the tents while Leroy set up some game cameras to try and get more proof. When we were done, we ate dinner and then Kaitlin went to sleep in the red tent—”
“The red tent?”
“Yes, sir, the red tent was for the girls and the blue tent was for the boys.” He sighed. “Of course, Leroy took Sarah into the blue tent, so I was forced to sleep outside on the ground in the mosquitoes.”
“Why didn’t you just sleep in the red tent with Kaitlin?”
“It’s…it’s not like that. We’re not like that.”
“I thought you liked her.”
“I do, but we’re not dating or anything. We’re just friends right now.”
I hesitated for a moment, studying the kid. He had referred to Kaitlin in the present tense, which gave me pause. If Kaitlin was dead and he was responsible, he would have referred to her in the past tense. This caused me some concern. While it was still too early to tell what had happened, Elton seemed the logical suspect but he wasn’t talking like someone who had killed Kaitlin. I suddenly caught a breath. What if she was still alive, but he had stashed her away somewhere and would go back to do unspeakable things to her? Or what if it was as simple as covering for Kaitlin because she had decided to run away? Or what if someone had dressed in a gorilla costume to perpetrate a Big Foot hoax? Hell, anything was better than believing Big Foot was real.
“What time did you go to sleep?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. I sat up by the fire for a while. I’m not gonna lie, I was thinking about knocking on Kaitlin’s tent to see if she wanted to hang out or something, but I decided it would be a bad idea.”
“Why’d you think it was a bad idea?”
Elton shifted his feet. “Well, I kissed Kaitlin a few years ago and Leroy caught us. He got pissed off bad. We didn’t talk for over a week and I thought I’d ruined our friendship. And then one day he called to see if I wanted to hang out. That was it. I met him at a rock climbing gym and we climbed for an hour, and things were back to normal.”
“Did he ever say anything about the incident—the kiss?”
“Not a word. He just acted like it never happened. I’ve seen Kaitlin a few times since then, but I never really had a chance to talk to her.” He frowned. “I have to admit, I was a little leery when I heard Kaitlin was coming, but it didn’t seem to bother Leroy at all. I guess he was too focused on Sarah to worry about what Kaitlin was doing.”
I felt like I was running out of time and I wanted to head to the tents to search for evidence. “Did you go into Kaitlin’s tent?”
“No.”
“Did you unzip it?”
He shook his head.
I decided to try and bait him. “If I process the zipper, will I find your DNA on it?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“So, are you saying you never went in the red tent?”
“That’s correct.”
“If I search it and find your hair inside, how would you explain that?”
“Mister, you can search that tent all you want, but you won’t find anything of mine in there. I’ve never been inside that tent.”
He seemed to be telling the truth, but…
I thought of another option. What if Kaitlin had unzipped the tent, gone outside to visit with Elton, and then he attacked her? Maybe he came on to her, she rejected him, and then things got out of hand. It was certainly more plausible than a Big Foot abduction.
“Elton,” I said slowly, “if Kaitlin left the tent to hang out with you, I need to know about it. If she’s the one who unzipped the tent, you need to tell me.”
“But I don’t know if she unzipped the tent. I went to sleep and when I woke up we saw the red tent open and Kaitlin was nowhere to be seen.”
“Then where’d she go?”
“I…I don’t know. That thing took her. The Big Foot we saw, it had to be him.”
“But how could it have snatched her from right under your nose? You were sleeping right outside the tent, weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then how could some big hairy creature waltz into your camp and drag your girlfriend away without you even knowing it?”
“She isn’t my girlfriend.”
There it is…present tense again, I thought, but I do detect a hint of guilt in his voice.
“Granted, but once again, how does a big hairy creature sneak into your camp and steal Kaitlin without you hearing it? He would’ve stepped right over you to get to the tent. So how could you sleep through that?”
“Look, mister, I feel bad enough that I wasn’t able to save her from whatever happened.” He wiped a stream of angry tears from his face. “I don’t like that you’re trying to blame me for doing something to her. I liked her and wanted to be her boyfriend—why would I want to make her disappear?”
He had a point and I was out of questions. If I was going to break him, I’d have to find some evidence that linked him to Kaitlin’s disappearance—if, indeed, it did exist. I had to consider the possibility that he might be telling the truth, although I seriously doubted it. There was no such thing as Big Foot. If there was, we would’ve found dead ones by now.
CHAPTER 13
Armed with a bright spotlight and a Benelli Super Nova 12 gauge shotgun—just in case—I picked my way through the thick trees, heading toward what was left of the dull campfire. Melvin and I had loaded Sarah, Leroy, and Elton into the boat with Gary, and we agreed that Melvin would keep an eye on them while I searched the campsite. If something was to go wrong and I couldn’t reach him by radio, I was to fire a single shot in the air and he would come running.
Mosquitoes swarmed all around me. The bug spray I’d used earlier did little to keep them away. I tried to i
gnore them and focus on the task at hand. I was getting closer to the campfire now. Not only could I see the faint glow better through the trees, but I could also smell it.
I was careful to stay off of the beaten path, taking to the thick underbrush instead, so as to avoid damaging any potential footprints that might be present. I used my light to scan the trail beside me as I walked, but I didn’t see anything that looked like evidence.
While I had been interviewing the trio earlier, Melvin had contacted Susan via his satellite phone and she was whipping together a group of sheriff’s deputies, police officers, and citizens to assist in a search of the area. While we didn’t know exactly what had happened out here yet, we couldn’t afford to waste time. We’d prefer to inconvenience a few people with an overreaction rather than underreact and put Kaitlin Shelton’s life in jeopardy. After all, the sooner we could get boots in the swamps, the sooner we might find some answers. Susan and her posse were set to leave the Mechant Loup Boat Landing at first light, so we should have people flooding the swamps very soon.
Very cautiously, I continued forward, easing one foot in front of the other as quietly as I could. When I reached the outer edge of the clearing wherein the tents were situated, I paused for a moment to study the area. As described by Leroy and the rest of the kids, there was a red tent and a light blue tent. They were both the dome-style tents and could probably sleep four people comfortably. The blue tent was on the opposite side of the campsite and to the left, while the red tent was on the opposite side to the right. The flap on the red tent was still open, and it fluttered in the gentle breeze that was blowing through the area.
I inspected the ground carefully as I crossed the clearing to approach the tents. I wanted to make sure I didn’t step on anything that might be evidence. While a thick bed of leaves covered most of the ground on my walk toward the camp, the campsite consisted mostly of packed dirt, some of it soft in places.
When I reached the fire, I grabbed a few logs from a nearby stack and placed them over the waning flames. They were dry and it wasn’t long before the fire was blazing again. It helped to light up the area and aided me in my efforts.