Full Curl

by Dave Butler

  “Son of a bitch,” she whispered, “someone chopped the friggin’ antlers off him.”

  She continued to stand there, staring at the bloodied carcass. There was no doubt in her mind that this was Old 737, a veteran bull elk that she and her warden colleagues had named and watched gather and successfully defend a large harem of cow elk in successive ruts. Through September and early October, she’d seen him aggressively chase off rivals, at the same time adding new females to his group. On evening patrols, Willson heard his bugles fill the valley, the high-pitched whistles bouncing off the cliffs. All wardens recognized and respected the big bull because his rack was so large and impressive, his will to dominate and procreate so strong and inspiring. And now his time as king of the meadow was done.

  Emotions pushed aside, Willson again let her eyes wander, searching for evidence. She noticed an obvious trail in the snow leading away from the elk to the Moose Meadow pullout up the road from where she’d parked. She walked forward a few steps to examine the trail, seeing three distinct sets of human footprints. Certain that this was her first case of wildlife poaching in Banff, her mind boiled again with anger.

  “Banff Warden Office, three-five-eight,” said Willson, after keying her shoulder-mounted microphone.

  She was relieved to hear Bateman respond quickly. “Go ahead, three-five-eight, Warden Office.”

  Willson retraced her steps across the meadow toward her truck. She occasionally looked over her shoulder, wary that a bear might still see her as a rival for the carcass.

  “Uh … Banff Warden Office, three-five-eight, is two kilometres north of Johnston Canyon at Moose Meadow,” said Willson in as calm a voice as she could muster. “I have a ten-ninety-one at this location and need you to call Bill Forsyth to assist. I’ll stand by until he arrives.” In the ten-code system used since Parks Canada began to take law enforcement seriously, Willson used the ten-ninety-one code to tell Bateman that she’d discovered a possible poaching. “I may also need Larry Westerly’s assistance. Can you please ask him to head over to the park abattoir? I may have something for him to look at.”

  “Roger that, three-five-eight,” said Bateman crisply, “Three-six-one, do you copy three-five-eight’s message?”

  Willson heard Forsyth’s voice over the radio, crackly as if coming through an old cross-oceanic phone line. “Banff, this is three-six-one. Yeah, I heard you. On my way.”

  To confirm that she’d heard Forsyth’s response, Bateman called Willson again. “Three-five-eight, Warden Office. I have three-six-one responding to your location as requested.”

  Willson imagined Bateman on the edge of her seat, waiting for a response. “Warden Office, three-five-eight. Ten-four on that. I’m back at my vehicle and standing by. And, Marilyn … thanks.”

  While she waited for Forsyth, Willson tried to put herself in the mind of the person, or persons, who’d done this, who’d murdered one of the park’s biggest bull elk. Was it a sudden, last-minute decision with no planning or forethought? A hasty impulse? Was it a carload of guys who did it for a lark, on a dare? No.

  Everything she saw pointed to premeditation, to calculation, to knowing where to find a big elk in late October, to assuming the chances were slim that a warden would be out in this remote place, in the middle of the night. And with blood still fresh in the snow and most of the carcass still at the scene, she knew that this had happened the night before or early that morning. Whoever was responsible, Willson was certain they had come into the park with a rifle and tools to remove the rack, knowing what they were going to do before they did it. She understood that this was no spur-of-the-moment choice by someone passing by. It was far more sinister than that. It was planned. Whoever did this had done so with purpose. And that meant that other animals in the park weren’t safe.

  Leaning against the truck, legs crossed, eyes on the distant carcass, Willson thought about the why. Why would someone take only the rack? She knew that elk antlers, when still covered by the hairy, blood-vessel-filled skin known as velvet, were sold as medicine by commercial elk ranchers in the United Stated and Canada. It was pain relief for people with osteoarthritis. Pets received it for the same reason. But she also knew that the antlers on this bull would’ve been past the velvet stage and so would have had no medicinal value. Aside from someone taking them to make furniture or a gaudy chandelier, only one obvious motive remained. The antlers had been taken by a trophy hunter. Coming from an elk of this size and age, they’d be mounted on their own or added to an already mounted elk head to make it look bigger, more impressive. In a moment of clarity, Willson understood that the perpetrators knew what they were doing and why they were doing it, and that they had purposefully come here, to her park, to do it.

  Now that she fully comprehended what she was dealing with, she felt the hairs rise on her arms. Her heart beat faster. It was at times like this that she heard her father’s voice reminding her that a Willson never backed down from a challenge. Her resolve strengthened. She was at the start of something very serious, and she was ready for it. In fact, this was why she was here: to protect the park.

  Chapter 3

  The red and blue lights on Bill Forsyth’s truck were flashing needlessly when he arrived at the scene twenty minutes later. Willson saw the lanky seasonal warden step down to the pavement after wrestling with his seat belt. As always, he had his cellphone in his hand and he was in motion. She took a deep breath, girding herself for what was to come, knowing that her young associate talked more than listened.

  Forsyth hadn’t been her first choice, but he’d been hired, anyway. Now she was stuck with him for the next nine months. From his first day, Willson recognized him as a classic example of a recent college graduate. He was tech savvy, more sure of himself than he had a right to be, and wanted to be the chief warden by the end of his first week. Willson knew that he was a work in progress, but she also recognized that when it came to people’s feelings, her capacity for empathy and patience was limited.

  Before Forsyth could tell her what he thought they should do, before he marched over to the carcass, Willson took control. She stood in his path and put her left hand on his chest to stop him.

  “Okay, Bill,” she said. “This is serious. I know you’ve never handled a poaching investigation. I want you to listen carefully and do exactly — and only — what I say. You’re assisting me. Got that?”

  “We talked lots about poaching in college,” he said, “so I’ve got a good idea what we need to do here. Let’s get started.” He moved to go around Willson, but she kept her hand on his chest.

  “Bill,” she said, more firmly this time, “stop and listen to me.”

  Forsyth looked down at his phone as though some piece of wisdom would magically appear there. “What?” he said.

  “When you first come upon a scene like this, there are two things you should do.” Willson held up two fingers on her right hand to make her point, nearly poking him in the eyes. “The first is to slow down. Spend time looking and listening and even smelling. Build a mental picture of the place. What are the key pieces to the scene? What’s out of place? You need to get an initial sense of what’s happened and why before you blunder in.”

  Willson saw Forsyth again shift his eyes down to his phone, so she grabbed it from his hand. With a quick underhand motion, she tossed it into the bed of his truck. “Listen to me.”

  “Hey! You don’t have to go psycho on me.”

  “I need you to pay attention and forget the fucking phone. This is one of the most serious things you’re ever going to deal with as a law-enforcement warden. Now, how many things did I say you needed to do when you get to a crime scene like this?”

  Willson saw Forsyth look at her like she was asking a trick question.

  “Three?” he asked, obviously confused and em­­-barrassed.

  Willson jabbed him in the chest twice. “Two. The first is to stop, look, l
isten, and smell. The second is to ask me what I already know because I arrived on the scene before you did.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.” She handed Forsyth a clipboard and pen. “You’re the official note-taker today. I want you to record everything. And I mean everything.”

  She went on to explain what she’d discovered and then the two of them processed the site where she’d found the elk. As a highly trained investigator, she treated the case no differently than a homicide detective in a major city would a murder. She forced them to move slowly, to pay attention to the smallest of details. She continually reminded Forsyth to keep detailed notes of each step, each observation, each piece of evidence.

  They first draped yellow crime-scene tape around the meadow and out to the highway pullout. They marked entries to and exits from the meadow to keep the evidence undisturbed. They photographed the elk carcass, blood patterns, footprints, and tire tracks frozen in the snow. They searched for hairs, fibres, cartridges. They measured, sketched, and mapped. And they bagged samples of the elk’s flesh for DNA analysis.

  When they were almost done, Willson pulled the clipboard from Forsyth’s hands, checked his notes, and then pointed to the bloody internal organs that lay in a messy pile beside the elk.

  “We need to bag those,” she said.

  “Why the hell do we need to do that?” Forsyth asked, looking both incredulous and disgusted.

  “Because they might contain evidence … a bullet … a bullet fragment … something like that.” Willson knew this was unlikely, but it was a unique opportunity to teach both investigative diligence and humility to the youngster.

  While Forsyth pulled on rubber gloves and began piling the organs into a plastic evidence bag, gagging repeatedly, Willson kept her eyes on the edge of the trees, her pistol’s holster open. She still wasn’t sure if a bear was lurking out there, waiting to take possession of the carcass. She took no chances.

  Once the pair of them had gathered all the information they could, Willson showed Forsyth how to use a cable extension on his truck winch to drag the elk carcass across the field, the cable end looped around its back legs and the carcass leaving a red-striped furrow in the meadow. As they worked, the ravens, obviously displeased about losing their smorgasbord, sat in an old snag, nagging like black-draped grandmothers.

  After lifting the carcass into Forsyth’s truck using the bed-mounted crane, inadvertently crushing his phone in the process, Willson and Forsyth faced each other on the side of the highway.

  “Sucks about your phone,” said Willson, “but at least I’ve got your full attention. So … based on what you saw so far, what have we got?”

  “It seems clear to me,” said Forsyth, “that we had a truck stop along the 1A there.” He pointed to the interpretive pullout.

  “Why do you say a truck?” Willson asked, even though she’d already worked out the most obvious scenario.

  Forsyth was sure of his answer, too sure for Willson’s liking. “Looking at the size of the wheelbase and the size and nature of marks made by the tire treads,” he said, “I’m sure it was a pickup truck.”

  “Could it be a larger sport utility like a full-size Blazer, Yukon, Expedition, or Durango?”

  “Uh … well, yes … I guess it could be.”

  “Good. It’s okay to have a mental picture, but don’t make the picture too specific until you’re certain. Now, when did it happen?”

  She saw Forsyth pause for a moment. “Maybe within the last twenty-four hours,” he said. “The tire tracks were frozen in the snow, which meant the shooters drove here after it stopped snowing, just as the temperature was dropping. The tracks haven’t melted at all. So I’m guessing between ten o’clock last night and four to six this morning.”

  Willson saw him search her face for signs of disagreement. Seeing none, Forsyth continued. “I’m thinking that one of the people shot the elk, probably from the road. While it’s hard to tell, it looks like a single bullet, which means he was a decent shot, especially if it was in the dark.”

  “Why do you say ‘people’?”

  “Because there are three distinct sets of footprints,” Forsyth replied. “It looks like two were wearing cowboy boots … or something like that … with smooth soles. One was large, probably a size twelve or more, while the other was small. I guess it could’ve been a woman. The third person was wearing a boot with an aggressive tread, maybe a mountaineering boot or a serious winter boot of some kind.”

  “You said he was a decent shot. Could the shooter be a woman?”

  “I guess so. I never thought of that.”

  Willson sighed. Now she could add male chauvinist to Forsyth’s list of character flaws. Edgy, anxious to move things along, she finished the sequence for him, even though he was making progress. “After the shooting, the trio walked to the body across the meadow,” she said, “and they chopped the rack off the animal.”

  Forsyth nodded in agreement.

  “How do you think they got the rack off the elk?” she asked.

  Forsyth was again quick to respond. “They used both a saw and an axe. I could see the tool marks in the skull.”

  Willson would confirm his assessment with the crime lab later, but she had no doubt that Forsyth was right. She paused, watching the young warden. She saw his eyes meet hers, only for an instant, and then shift to the bed of his truck. She was sure he was thinking about his mutilated phone. “What steps do you take next?” she asked.

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “Now the correct answer is three.” Willson held three fingers in front of his face, like a Boy Scout salute, even though the technique hadn’t worked the last time.

  “First, I need you to drive the elk to the park abattoir. You and Larry Westerly are going to do an autopsy on the carcass. He’ll be waiting there for you. He’s an experienced hunter who will show you how to do it properly. If you find a bullet or bullet fragments, I want you to immediately take them to the RCMP crime lab in Calgary. I need to know make and calibre.” She pointed to the clipboard. “Write that down.”

  “But I’m supposed to be finished work at four o’clock today. If I have to go in to Calgary and back, I’m won’t get home until late tonight.”

  “Welcome to the world of criminal investigations, Bill, where time doesn’t matter.”

  “Do I get extra time off?”

  “We’ll worry about that later. And then tomorrow, after you’re back from Calgary, what are you going to do first thing in the morning?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe talk to the RCMP in Banff, Lake Louise, and Canmore and see if they stopped any suspicious vehicles in or near the park in the last couple of days? If they did, maybe get licence numbers and any other information they have available?”

  “Excellent,” said Willson. Maybe there was a glimmer of potential here, after all. “And what else?”

  “I have no idea,” he said, erasing the glimmer. Willson sighed.

  “I want you to contact all park wardens,” she said, “to see if any of them shot pictures of bull elk in this area this fall. Or maybe they talked to wildlife photographers who were here doing the same. Because if anyone has clear images of this particular bull, we can use those to show other wardens, the Mounties, and conservation officers on both sides of the border what the rack of the murdered bull looks like.” She raised her eyebrows. “And why?” She paused, then, “Because if we get lucky and find the rack, the pictures will be useful in court.”

  Willson paused again. Forsyth took the hint and again wrote notes on the clipboard. “So that’s your three things,” she said. “And what do you think I’m going to do first while you’re doing that?”

  She watched him look at his notes and then look up. “I don’t know …”

  “The first and most important task for me is to contact cons
ervation officers on both sides of the park — in British Columbia and Alberta — to ask them to watch for the Banff elk rack. I’ll do that as soon as I get back to the office. Because we’re still in hunting season in both provinces, those officers regularly speak to dozens of hunters each day. If they run into someone with a big rack that’s suspicious or out of place, such as one that’s not attached to the rest of the animal, they can let us know. As I said, that’s where a picture will be of huge value. Make sense?”

  “I was going to suggest that,” said Forsyth, in an apparent attempt to reclaim lost dignity and confidence.

  Willson gave him a sharp jab in the shoulder. “You were? Well, then, good job, rookie.”

  She saw that Forsyth was eager to get moving, perhaps to buy a new phone before he drove to Calgary. “I think we’ve got enough to work with for now. Let’s get moving. And don’t forget your plastic bag of Halloween goodies,” she said, pointing to the bag of internal organs.

  Willson watched Forsyth walk to his truck and cast a longing glance in the back before driving away.

  Willson waited for the sound of Forsyth’s truck to fade into the distance. She turned, staring back at the scene where the bull elk had been killed and robbed of its massive set of antlers, its source of power and prestige during the rut. For a moment, her rage and sadness returned. She vowed to personally put someone’s nuts in the wringer over the crime. She would make sure the experience was slow and painful and that they understood it was National Park Warden Jenny Willson who was responsible for their discomfort.

  She studied the irritated ravens as they swooped down from their perches, looking for meager leftovers in the bloody, trampled snow.

  “Slim pickings, eh, boys? Just like my case.”

  In her truck again, she grabbed the dash microphone. “Banff Warden Office, three-five-eight. I’m ten-eight and clear of Moose Meadow, heading to the office.”

  “Roger that, three-five-eight,” Bateman said in response.