The Upright Man

by Michael Marshall

  He was also hoping that the painkillers the doctor had left would start to kick in any minute. His head was making his eyes go funny. He was still hanging on to the idea that at some point he was going to stand up, go walking out into town, and find the ancient fucker who hadn’t mentioned the bears, but just at this moment the plan didn’t feel realistic. It seemed all too likely the old geezer could beat him up.

  Just then, Tom suddenly smiled.

  Of course bears weren’t actually the issue. Not anymore. One of the reasons he wanted to feel better very soon was that he had something interesting to tell people. Something very interesting indeed. A piece of information that had kept him alive, that had hauled his body out of the wilderness. He’d kept quiet about it so far, biding his time. But when the moment came . . .

  Then, just as suddenly, his smile dropped. He had new information, yes. A life-saving datum. That didn’t make it a life-changing one, however, big enough to blot out the dark light from what had come before. He was still compromised. Once you’ve done the thing, you’ve done it. Even if people don’t know. The only difference was he now perhaps had something big enough to make it worth his while taking the risk it would never be found out.

  He watched blearily through the glass as the Sheffer sheriff’s department (in the person of Phil, whom Tom increasingly thought he vaguely recognized from before His Time Away) went about its duties. Phil was young and slightly built for a cop: most city police seemed to spend their whole time in the gym, making sure their arms bulged nicely in those short-sleeve shirts. Basically, Phil was sometimes in the room, and then sometimes he went outside. That was about it. Presumably, apart from dealing with car wrecks and people skipping their tab in bars and the occasional recreational domestic in the long winter nights, this was about as frenetic as it got: until someone came back out of the woods with a strange story to tell.

  The deputy would come to check on him again soon, and then maybe he’d get into it. In the meantime, he sipped a little more soup. It had cooled, and could do with a little salt, but otherwise was very good. It was making him feel better.

  His vision slowly went white.

  THE VOICE CAME FROM BEHIND HIM.

  “Sir?”

  Tom shook his head, knowing that he wasn’t going to be able to get away from this. But still, he shook his head. There was red on him. There was crunching underfoot. He finally turned, and he already knew what the news was going to be, but he did not know how it was going to fit in his head.

  “Sir?”

  Then everything was different. He jerked his head up woozily and saw he was still sitting in his chair in a police station, a very long way from L.A. It was bright, and he was swaddled in blankets and there was a small heater set on the floor about a yard away, shoving a thin stream of warm air at him. That’s new, he thought. Don’t remember that.

  New too was the man standing on the other side of the table. Tom blinked at him. “What time is it?”

  “It’s a little after three, sir,” the man said. He was much older than the one called Phil. He was taller, and broader. He was bigger in every way. He sat in one of the chairs opposite.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Connelly,” the man said. “I work here.”

  “Okay.” Tom’s voice came out a little petulant, and he suddenly yawned massively. “I’m actually kind of hot, now.”

  “My deputy says the doctor said to keep you warm. So that’s what we’re going to do. That is, unless maybe you think it would be better for you to spend the night over in the hospital. Seems to me there’s at least a couple reasons why that might be the case.”

  “I’m fine,” Tom said.

  The man leaned on the table and looked at him. “You sure?”

  Now that he was a little more awake, it was becoming clear to Tom that Connelly didn’t seem to be in any hurry to be his friend. He was not treating him like someone who’d made a miraculous and welcome escape from a snowy wilderness.

  “I’m sure,” he said, reaching for the voice he used in meetings, when a client needed convincing that the web design work they’d received was exactly what they wanted, despite its apparent lack of similarity to what had been discussed in the briefing. It felt a long time since he’d used this voice, but it was less than two weeks, and, while rusty, it did come. “Thank you for your concern.”

  “Okay. So why don’t you tell me your story.”

  “Al, he’s kind of been through that.” This was Phil, entering the room with two cups of coffee.

  Connelly ignored his deputy, sat back in his chair, and kept looking at Tom.

  “My name is Tom Kozelek,” the man in the chair said. “I’m . . . on vacation. Three days ago, I guess it was, I went driving up into the mountains. I parked up at a trailhead, I don’t remember the name.”

  “Howard’s Point,” the policeman nodded. “Your car was towed back from there yesterday afternoon. You turning up has solved that little mystery, at least.”

  “Right. So I parked up there, and went for a hike.”

  “A hike,” the man said, nodding to himself. “What exactly did you take with you in the way of provisions?”

  “I assume you know,” Tom muttered, coldly. “I can see my bag out there on the table.”

  “Yes. I know,” the cop said. “Don’t know whether you’ve had a chance to catch any TV while you’ve been here, but at this time of year there’s an advertisement that runs every hour or so. It suggests that people stay the hell out of the mountains unless they know what they’re doing and have the equipment to do it with. You not watch much television, Mr. Kozelek?”

  “I was in a confused state of mind.”

  “Right.” The man nodded again. “And so where have you been, since?”

  “Walking back here,” Tom said. “I got lost. I had maps, but I left them in the car by mistake. I was a little drunk when I started out, and usually my sense of direction is pretty good but it snowed and I fell down a gully and to be honest I just got really, really lost. I tried to find my way back to the road but by then I’d gotten turned around and evidently I just kept heading away from it. Then I found something that looked like a trail and followed it, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere and kept cutting in and out.”

  “Old logging track, probably,” Phil said. “Could even have been a bit of the old mountain road itself. Most of it you can only tell something used to be there because there’s a line of trees that are a little thinner.”

  Connelly turned his head slowly to look at him. The deputy shut up. The sheriff looked back at Tom.

  “Look, what’s your problem?” Tom said.

  “Me? I don’t have one. Please continue.”

  Tom deliberately took a long time over a sip of coffee. The guy was really beginning to piss him off. They were all like this, in the end. Every one of them so full of their special status, pretending they’d never been in a difficult situation in their own lives.

  “So I just walked,” he said. “I don’t know where I was. Then last night I finally found a road. I stood by it for a while, thinking surely someone must come along and give me a ride, but it was snowing and nobody came. So I walked. And I got here early this morning.”

  “Quite a little adventure, Mr. Kozelek,” Connelly said. “You must be glad it’s over, and looking forward to going back home.”

  “Not just yet,” Tom said, shrugging off the top two blankets. Not only was he too hot now, but he sensed the “little boy lost” look wasn’t helping the sheriff take him seriously. “There’s things I have to do here first.”

  “What could those possibly be?”

  Tom looked him in the eye. “I’m going back into the forest.” He took a deep breath, and prepared to say something he knew he was going to remember for the rest of his life. “I saw something when I was in there. Something pretty amazing.” He paused again, savoring the moment.

  “This would be Bigfoot, right?”

  Tom stared at him,
sideswiped. “How did you know?”

  Connelly smiled, gently. “You mentioned it a couple of times to my deputy when you first got here. To the doctor too, I believe. Matter of fact, from what I hear, it was the very first word you said when you came staggering into town. Before you fell down.”

  Tom’s mouth felt dry, his face red. He didn’t remember telling them about it. Shit.

  “Okay,” he said. “I knew that. But I saw it. I saw Bigfoot. It was standing right over me. I saw it.”

  “What you saw was a bear, Mr. Kozelek.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I thought so at the time, but it wasn’t. It didn’t look like one. And what do bears smell like?”

  “Can’t say as I’ve ever been close enough to find out. They’re picky like that.”

  “This one smelled awful. Really, really bad. Not only that, but I also saw footprints.”

  “Is that so.”

  “Yes, it fucking well is so. You want to pretend it was a bear I saw, fine. But I saw footprints. A line of them, leading away from where I’d been.”

  “They weren’t your own? From when you ran from the bear?”

  “No. I was scrabbling all over the place. The shape would have been all messed up. And also, you could see the fucking toes. Five big round toes, at the front. Look, I saw this.”

  “Sure you did.” Connelly turned to Phil. “You want to get Mrs. Anders in here now?”

  Confused, Tom watched the younger policeman as he went out to fetch a woman he now saw was sitting on the other side of the main room. Connelly meanwhile drank his own coffee in one long, slow swallow, looking coolly at Tom.

  Phil returned with the woman behind. She was in her mid sixties and had gray hair gathered in a loose ponytail. One hand was thrust down into the pocket of a yellow all-weather coat, worn over a thick fleece. The other was clutching a large plastic bag. She looked apologetic and embarrassed.

  Tom began to have a sinking feeling.

  “This here is Patrice Anders,” Connelly said. “Patrice lives out a few miles past Howard’s Point. Don’t know if you noticed it from your maps, but there’s a little subdivision around from there, up off the next highway over the mountains. Was going to be the next big thing. Present time, Mrs. Anders remains the only occupant.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Tom said, “but I don’t understand what this is about.”

  Connelly looked at the woman, and raised his brows.

  “It was me, in the forest,” she said.

  Tom stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head. “I’m so sorry about this. I go walking a great deal. I belong to a couple of national programs that monitor wildlife, and I keep an informal tally of what’s around at each time of year. I don’t know whether it’s of any real use in the long run, it’s not very scientific, I don’t suppose, but . . .” She shrugged. “Anyway, it’s what I do. And the other morning I was out there, quite early, and I saw something lying down by the gully. It’s actually not too far from the edge of my land, as the crow flies. Well, it’s a distance, you know. I like to walk. Anyway, I went down there, and I saw it was a backpack. I didn’t know whether someone was coming back for it, so I just left it there.”

  Tom looked at Connelly. “Okay. So what?”

  “The footprints you saw belonged to Mrs. Anders.”

  “Bullshit. Are you not listening to a word I say? These were huge.”

  “Give the sun an hour and the edges will melt. They’re going to look much bigger than they ought to be.”

  For a second Tom thought he was going to throw himself over the desk and grab the man by the throat. He knew it would be a bad idea, and not just because he was the law. So instead he kept his voice very level. He had the clincher, after all.

  “Right. And the sun will also make footprints look like they’ve got five big toes, correct? Weird sun you’ve got around here, if so.”

  There was quiet for a moment, and then a rustling. The woman called Patrice pulled something out of her bag.

  For a moment Tom couldn’t make out what he was seeing. Then the back of his neck started to buzz.

  “You can buy them over in Cle Elum,” she said. “Kind of stupid, I know. But, you know, kind of fun too. My husband bought me them for a joke.”

  Tom kept staring at the pair of novelty boots, with their furry top halves, and their brown plastic feet, complete with five big toes.

  PHIL TOOK THE WOMAN AWAY. IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN his imagination, but Tom thought he sensed that the deputy was feeling a little bad for him. He hoped so, anyway. There weren’t going to be any other candidates for sympathy within driving distance.

  Connelly glanced up at the clock on the wall. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes, and lit up.

  “Strange old day,” he said. “More excitement than I was bargaining on when I got up, that’s for damned sure.” He tapped a little ash onto the desk. “Not a huge amount happens around here, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. Bet you’ve worked out I like it that way, too.”

  Tom shook his head. “I still know what I saw.”

  “You saw jack shit, Mr. Kozelek.” The policeman’s gray eyes were cold. “You went out into the woods with a bad purpose in mind, and I’m not even going to talk about how irresponsible that is when it’s other men’s jobs to come out and find you regardless of why you went. You got yourself screwed up with booze and pills and you either saw a bear or you hallucinated one or what the hell else.”

  Tom just shook his head.

  Connelly ground the cigarette out. “Suit yourself. I’m not going to tell you to ship out tonight, because you’ve had a rough couple days and despite what you might think, I’m a reasonable person. You look like shit and you need to eat and get some sleep. So why don’t you go do those things, and then maybe tomorrow morning think about sampling some of the other nice little towns we’ve got around here. Snohomish, for example, the antiques capital of the Northwest. Or maybe even Seattle. They have an airport there.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yeah, you are.” Connelly stood up, stretched. Bones cracked. “Soon. You want my advice?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Just be grateful you got away with it. Be happy you didn’t get attacked by that big ole bear, and that you didn’t die out there on the mountain. Leave it at that. Because here’s something else.”

  He glanced out through the glass, and saw his deputy was putting his coat on at the door, ready, as instructed, to help Kozelek find somewhere in town to stay for one night only. Still, he lowered his voice a fraction. “On my way back here, I checked up on you.”

  Tom stared at the man’s back, suddenly realizing that while His Time Away might have changed him, it had made no difference to the outside world. There’d been no midseason culling of the parts of his life he didn’t like. Out here, the dreary, long-running series he lived was still going strong, despite the fact its primary audience—himself—believed it majorly sucked.

  Connelly looked back at him. “I know what you did.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A PACKAGE FROM NINA WAS WAITING AT THE DESK first thing. I told the restaurant to round up all the coffee they had and send it to my room, and headed back upstairs. I didn’t have a lot of optimism that I’d be able to do anything for her—both LAPD and the FBI would have grown-ups on the case—but it was something to do while waiting for John Zandt.

  I laid my gear out on the table and got to it. When I opened the package I found a small, shiny, semitransparent plastic bag designed to combat static, which is the main way of screwing up delicate electronic equipment. Other than dropping it, of course. Inside was a small hard disk. Stuck to it was a note from Nina.

  Be very, very careful with this, it read. It’s the original. Find something on it for me, then get it the hell back.

  Before I did anything else, I rang Nina’s cell. She sounded hassled and distracted. “I’m glad it
arrived,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s going to lead anywhere. LAPD just got done tracing the history. They found the guy who bought the original laptop, some movie industry bottom-feeder called Nic Golson, but he has a receipt proving he sold it to a secondhand store in Burbank in July of last year. He thought he was going to get some big script job but then didn’t so he couldn’t afford to keep the machine. After that, someone bought it cash, then stripped this part and dumped the rest somewhere we’ll never find it. The store’s employees are being interviewed right now, but this killer strikes me as brighter than that.”

  “So how come I’ve got the original disk?”

  “I used my feminine wiles.”

  “You have wiles?”

  “You’d be surprised. Actually, so would I. Probably just rank.” She admitted she’d leaned on an LAPD lab rat after I’d made it clear a copy was only that. The guy was willing to cover for her, not least because they’d done everything they could with it. It had already been fingerprinted, so touching it was no problem. But . . .

  I said I’d take good care of it.

  Then I put the phone down, and looked at something I now knew had spent a while inside a dead woman’s face. It was hard to work out whether it was that, or the risk Nina had taken, that was the more unnerving.

  Coffee arrived. I drank some with a cigarette. This had the usual result of making the world’s challenges seem more feasible. I pulled out a cable I owned that had a Firewire plug on one end and an Oxford bridge on the other. I carefully inserted the disk’s connectors into the latter and the plug into the back of Bobby’s laptop. The disk appeared on the desktop.