Waking the Wolf (Coup de Foudre)

by Amanda Sandton

  “Couldn’t she have lost her collar? Maybe it got caught on a bush and was ripped off,” she suggested.

  Jean-Luc looked at her, incredulity written on his face. “Feel that! Does that feel like a tear?” he asked, grabbing hold of her hand and running her fingers along the parting on the collar.

  Sylvie flinched and pulled her hand back. The edge was smooth and knife sharp; someone had cut the collar.

  “Oh, Jean-Luc, I’m so sorry this happened,” Sylvie said, as Lisa and Robert came up to them. “Someone cut her collar off,” she said. “See!”

  Robert shrugged and looked down at his friend. “Have you looked around for her body, Jean-Luc?”

  “Of course, I’ve made a quick search around here while I was waiting for you all to arrive, but whoever did this didn’t want us to find the body or they would have left her here with her collar on. I don’t know why they took her away. Who knows how the minds of these people work?”

  “Her body had to hold a clue to her killer, I think,” said Lisa. “They must have shot her and been afraid you could identify the gun. Poison wouldn’t point to the killer, would it?”

  Sylvie gave Jean-Luc’s shoulders a squeeze. “At least that would have been a quick death, Jean-Luc. Horrible as it is, it would have been better than dying slowly of poison or bleeding to death in a trap.”

  Jean-Luc gave a heavy sigh. “You must be right, Sylvie. They wouldn’t have been able to get near enough to stab her and poison would have taken too long. They would have had to follow her and wait for her to die, but they must have been reckless to shoot her here in the Park. If a park ranger had caught them with real bullets inside the Park, they would have been heavily fined. Here in the Park even shepherds are allowed to use only fake bullets to scare a wolf away if it gets too close to their flock.”

  “Viens, mon pote, there’s nothing more we can do here,” said Robert. “It’s almost dark and we have a four-hour trek back to the vehicle.

  He held out his hand and pulled Sylvie to her feet. Jean-Luc stood up, put the collar in his backpack and strode off down the path ahead of the others without looking back at them.

  Sylvie was about to run after him but Robert stayed her with his hand. “Let him go, Sylvie. He needs time to himself.”

  The three set off after him at a more reasonable pace, soon losing sight of him as the distance between them grew. It was becoming more difficult to see the path as dusk was drawing in. No one spoke. Everyone was tired and upset to have had Jean-Luc’s worst fears confirmed. The darkness drew on and they took out their powerful flashlights to light their way.

  After over two hours of steady progress, Sylvie needed a comfort break. She called out, “Robert, wait up,” and turned to asked Lisa if she wanted to stop, too.

  There was no one behind her; Lisa wasn’t there. Sylvie shone her flashlight back along the path and up the steep sides of the valley but there was no sign of her. She caught up with Robert and tugged his coat to get his attention.

  “Quoi?” he asked, mid-step.

  “Robert, stop!” Sylvie shouted. “Lisa’s missing. I don’t know when she stopped following me. I was watching the ground so closely, I didn’t notice when she dropped back and I didn’t hear her call out to me.”

  Robert turned round slowly, disbelief, annoyance and alarm registering on his face one after the other as Sylvie shone the flashlight on him. He scanned the path behind them.

  “We’ll have to retrace our steps; something must have happened to her,” he said. “Today just gets better and better.”

  7 : Unintentional Eavesdropping

  It began to rain, not a gentle drizzle but a cutting sheet of sleet, obscuring their visibility. They both put their hoods up but the slanting knife-edge of icy water found its way inside and trickled down their backs. It was miserable and Sylvie was worried about Lisa.

  They had been walking for half an hour back the way they had come before the path wound round the edge of a cliff and they saw a blur of light down the path ahead of them.

  “Thank goodness, we’ve found her but the light isn’t moving,” said Robert. “She must have fallen down or twisted her ankle.”

  They called out to Lisa as they neared her and she answered. Thank goodness, she wasn’t unconscious, thought Sylvie. When they came up to her, they found her lying bunched up on the path and the flashlight resting on a tussock of grass beside her.

  “What happened to you?” asked Robert.

  “Wait Robert, let me check her out,” said Sylvie, shrugging off her backpack and kneeling down beside her friend. Her vital signs were all right but when Sylvie tried to put her in the recovery position Lisa cried out in pain.

  “It’s my leg, Sylvie. I think I broke it when I fell.”

  “Let me see,” said Sylvie, running her hands down Lisa’s legs.

  Her examination told her that Lisa had a clean break in the tibia of her right leg. She asked Lisa a series of questions to determine whether there was any further damage. The situation was difficult. They were in the dark in a valley, inaccessible by road. The temperature was falling sharply and Lisa needed urgent medical attention.

  “Shouldn’t we call for help?” Sylvie asked Robert.

  Robert shook his head. “Cell phones won’t work here and Jean-Luc has the only sat-phone with him. This isn’t something that either of us foresaw when we set out today. Anyway, it’s unlikely that a helicopter would be prepared to try and land in this narrow valley in weather like this and with the light going so fast.”

  Sylvie was reasonably sure Lisa had suffered no spinal damage and she made her decision.

  “Right. I’m going to give you some painkillers from my first aid kit. If you can stand the pain, I’ll set your leg now and splint it. If not, we’ll have to make do with a rough splint until we can get you to hospital. Are you ready for this, Lisa?”

  “You know I trust you, Sylvie, and I’ll try and be brave but I’m cold and I’ve been lying here for ages,” and she burst into tears. “I was so afraid I was going to be here all night.”

  Robert knelt down behind her and wrapped his arms round her. “It’s all right, Lisa. We’ll look after you. We must do this quickly because we will have to carry you back and it’s already late.”

  Sylvie waited twenty minutes for the pills to take the edge of the pain and then she set Lisa’s leg. There was no wood around at the bottom of the valley; they took the frame out of Robert’s backpack and Robert wrenched pieces off to make splints.

  “I’ll have to do a fireman’s carry,” said Robert.

  “Be careful,” warned Sylvie. “It’s going to be tough going because you can’t swap sides. You’ll have to have Lisa on your left shoulder all the way so that you can hold her by her left leg.”

  “If we start off now, Jean-Luc will realize something has happened and he will come back along the trail looking for us and when we meet him, he can spell me.”

  Robert succeeded in hoisting Lisa up onto his shoulder with Sylvie helping to support the damaged leg until she was settled. They set off along the path towards their vehicle, making slow progress because Robert could not risk tripping up and dropping Lisa on the ground.

  As Robert had guessed, Jean-Luc had become anxious and had started back to find them. He was able to take over from Robert who was nearing the end of his strength. At last, they reached the vehicle and they could put Lisa down on the back seat.

  Sylvie shared the remaining coffee out and they looked at each other over the tops of their mugs. They were all exhausted and unkempt, Robert particularly so as Sylvie had used his shirt to tie on the splints.

  “Whew!” said Lisa. “I’m glad that’s over. Thanks, guys. I’m lucky to have you all as friends, especially since I did such a stupid thing.”

  “Oh, what did you do?” asked Sylvie. She and Robert had been too busy making their way back to find out what had happened to Lisa, and she had been woozy from the pills for most of the way.

  “I brok
e the rules in more ways than one. I’m so sorry. I’ll do anything to make up for the trouble I’ve caused.”

  “Tell us what happened,” said Jean-Luc. “How did you manage to break a leg on a level path?”

  “I was desperate to have a proper look at some of the rock drawings. We hadn’t had time to stop on the way in, and I could see you weren’t going to stop on the way out because it was getting dark. I saw a huge flat rock about twenty feet up the side of the slope and I just couldn’t resist. I climbed up to take a quick look, thinking I could catch you all up again, but I lost my footing on the way down and fell head over heels, landing on my leg, just as you found me.”

  Absolute silence greeted Lisa’s confession. Sylvie was annoyed with her friend for causing so much unnecessary trouble and for behaving in such a childish way. She saw Jean-Luc roll his eyes at Robert as if to say, “Et alors? What did I tell you?”

  The fact that she, Sylvie, had demonstrated her professional expertise and her ability to improvise - in the dark - counted for nothing compared with Lisa’s foolishness. Jean-Luc’s opinion was based on their joint behavior and Lisa had given him grounds for lowering it even further.

  It wasn’t until they were turning into the hospital that Sylvie realized with a jolt that not only had Lisa lost them what little respect Jean-Luc may have had for them, but now she would be unable to accompany them on their field trips and Sylvie would be left alone with him to deal with his antagonism.

  Sylvie slept late the next morning. To hell with Jean-Luc’s disapproval, she thought. She was exhausted and had earned the right to the morning in bed. The hospital was keeping Lisa in overnight in case she had suffered a concussion.

  When Sylvie finally went downstairs before lunch, Madame Bonjean came hurrying out of her office.

  “Your office phoned to say that they would not be expecting you in to work today and they told me what happened to your friend. You see, I told you not to go. I told you wolves are a bad business but you wouldn’t listen to me.”

  Sylvie was too tired to argue the point that Lisa’s accident was due to her own foolishness and had nothing whatsoever to do with the wolves. She brushed Madame Bonjean’s chatter aside as politely as possible and left the hotel. She walked round the corner to Le Chien Ivrogne for lunch where she passed the time of day with Henri and ordered an omlette with salad. She kept to herself because she didn’t know any of the other patrons and was still tired and shaken from the events of the day before.

  By two o’clock, the sky had brightened and a weak late autumn sun was attempting to burn off the cloud that had covered the area for the previous twenty-four hours. Although Madame Bonjean had told her she had been given the day off, she was anxious for news of the wolf team. She wondered what action they were going to take over the illegal killing of Kaya. She decided that she would walk to the office; she needed to stretch her legs after the morning in bed, and she wanted to loosen up the muscles that had tightened after the eight-hour hike the day before.

  The air was ozone fresh after the rain and it was a pleasure to saunter along looking in the boutiques, peering into the many cafés on the way down to the seafront and absorbing the marvelous Frenchness of her surroundings. Here a chocolatier with amazing creations in his small bow front window; there a pâtisserie filled to the brim with rack after rack of delicious looking meringues, gâteaux and large fruit-filled tarts. Ahead of her lay the business end of the port filled with fishing boats, their catches long ago landed and on their way to the markets of France. The only sour note in the picturesque scene was the shrieking of the gulls as they squabbled over scraps on the cobbled quayside.

  When Sylvie reached the end of the quay, it began to rain again, another heavy downpour, wiping out all color and leaving everything a gloomy gray. She quickened her step and turned back up into the town towards the veterinary clinic and the office. By the time she arrived, it was pelting down, pinging off the car roofs and gushing down the gutters. She unlocked the front door with her key and escaped out of the downpour as quickly as she could. Standing in the small vestibule to take off her dripping coat, she heard raised voices in the office; Jean-Luc and Robert were arguing. Not wanting to intrude, she waited quietly for them to finish. She heard her name mentioned and then Lisa’s. Remembering the old adage, she didn’t want to eavesdrop but nor did she want to brave the rain again.

  Robert was saying, “I grant they were a silly nuisance yesterday but they’re nice girls and I like them.”

  “A silly nuisance? They were more than that; they were totally irresponsible. They’re a liability and I do not want to work with them,” she heard Jean-Luc say.

  “What on earth are you suggesting?”

  “I think we should say that they are not suitable and have this arrangement canceled. The sooner they go back to the States and get out of our hair the better,” Jean-Luc answered, his tone turning brusque in emphasis of his determination.

  Robert’s voice took on a note of appeal. “That is ridiculous; we need the professional help they can give us. Everyone can make mistakes and Lisa’s was that she was overcome with professional enthusiasm. Try and be more tolerant. If you were an anthropologist, perhaps you would understand why she couldn’t wait to look at the drawings after traveling thousands of miles to a strange country to see them. Why don’t you give her a second chance?”

  “Well, her broken leg satisfactorily grounds her to office work; there’s no way she can go or is going on any more expeditions with me. If you want to squire her around to meet the professor and on anthropological trips, you do it at your own risk and in your time. Our wolf project is not to suffer. Anyway, there’s not much she can do before the spring; winter is well on its way now.”

  “Fair enough but what about Sylvie? I don’t know how you can call her irresponsible. I think she behaved impeccably. She treated Lisa as well as could be expected, stuck out there in the valley in the encroaching darkness. She knew just what to do and she did it, professionally. You have to respect her for that at least, Jean-Luc?”

  “Oh, yes, little Miss Perfect with all her American qualifications!”

  Oh no, it was David all over again. What was it with the men she fancied? Why did they feel threatened by her expertise? She was never domineering and, if anything, she downplayed her credentials.

  “Jean-Luc, we need a vet. We can’t lean on poor old Marcel Petit all the time; he has a business to run. You have to admit you are just a little bit envious. You dropped out of vet school because you got bored and couldn’t wait to take up conservation fieldwork. You can’t have it both ways. Moreover, she’s likeable and easy on the eye. Surely you can give her that?”

  Sylvie waited for his answer.

  “OK, she’s hot; I would be blind if I didn’t notice that, and she’s professional, but likeable? Not so sure about that and I’m the one who has to suffer her company on field trips, not you.”

  8 : Dr Petit’s Veterinary Clinic

  Suffer her company? Sylvie had heard enough. She opened the outer door and slammed it shut. There was silence in the office. When she walked in the two men were sitting in front of their computers, studying their screens. She pulled out a chair and put her purse down on the desk.

  Robert looked up first with a welcoming smile, “Salut, Sylvie! I thought you were taking the day off to recover from yesterday’s misadventure.”

  “Salut,” Sylvie smiled back at him but she addressed her reply to Jean-Luc who remained engrossed in his work. “It was kind of you to call and suggest I have an easy day of it, Jean-Luc, but I couldn’t keep away. I’m dying to know if you have found out anything else about what happened to Kaya.”

  Jean-Luc swiveled his chair round. She felt him scanning her from her toes to her face where his gaze lingered, as if he was trying to read her thoughts. Was he trying to guess whether she had overheard them or not, or was he seeking to gauge whether her interest was genuine or not? She couldn’t tell; all she was conscious of was the
intensity of his scrutiny. She felt like a startled deer, uncertain of how to react. At last, a faint smile broke through the sternness of his expression, a smile that reached to his eyes, crinkling the skin and softening their expression.

  “Salut, Sylvie! Please, pour us both a coffee and we’ll catch you up to date.”

  Sylvie walked across to the coffee maker, conscious of Jean-Luc’s eyes following her every movement. Was he assessing her professionally or personally? His apparent friendliness after what she had just overheard was puzzling. Maybe Robert’s warning had had more of an effect than she had thought possible. Anyway, she would take this new attitude over the old one; anything that went to improve their working relationship was welcome.

  She filled the cups and handed one to Jean-Luc who thanked her warmly and took a sip.

  Robert helped himself to a cup and spun his chair round to face Sylvie and Jean-Luc. All three drank their coffee in silence. Sylvie looked from one to the other and waited quietly for them to fill her in on the latest developments.

  Robert put his empty cup down. “We are no further along in finding out what happened to Kaya. There are no fingerprints on the collar and no reports have come in of anyone finding a dead wolf.”

  Jean-Luc looked up. “We have to assume that whoever killed her took the body home as a trophy or, as you and Lisa suggested, to destroy the forensic evidence. I am worried that this is the beginning of another spate of attacks on the wolves and I am anxious to check out all the locations of the wolf packs in the Park. We have to do that in person because they are not radio-collared, as you know.”

  “So we’ll be going into the Park again?” asked Sylvie.

  “The sooner the better. The forecast is for early snowfalls up in the heights. I’d like to visit as many dens as possible before the winter sets in. I’d like us to leave early tomorrow morning –”