Bearskin

by James A. McLaughlin

  Early fall had arrived cool and clear after the thunderstorms, a few scattered maples and oaks wetly red high on the mountains, the forest pale green in the lower elevations. When he was close enough to Blakely to pick up the public station on the truck radio, he heard another report on Hurricane Julia, now a tropical storm, and the potential for an official end to the summer’s drought. Rice had never been in a hurricane, and he found it hard to imagine, especially on a bluebird autumn morning. Julia must have sucked away all the moisture from this part of the world, leaving blue skies and dry, gentle breezes.

  In Lowe’s, his facial cuts and contusions got some looks from the shy, heavyset checkout girl, who must’ve assumed he was another bar-brawling construction guy. At the rental place he picked up the table saw and floor sander.

  Saving the grocery store for last, he filled a shopping cart with his usual supplies: beer, bread, peanut butter, oatmeal, cereal, canned tuna, coffee, milk. A big block of white cheddar on sale. A dozen bags of various frozen vegetables, fresh local apples, bananas. He’d lost at least fifteen pounds, and he needed to regain his strength. A hungry man in the grocery could be dangerous even under normal conditions, but after his weeks alone in the forest, Rice felt like a hunter-gatherer tumbled into a bizarre cornucopian paradise. Where had all this food come from?

  At the meat counter he ordered five pounds of ground turkey. While the guy wrapped the meat, Rice stared through the glass at the neat cuts of bloody beef, the pale chicken breasts, suddenly remembering for the first time the animals he’d killed. Squirrels, rabbits, grouse. Every hunt came back to him in detail. He saw deer glide past, unaware of his hunger, his hankering for venison. He recalled he’d spent a day trying to make a bow and arrows, a childish effort that failed miserably, the bow twisting when he drew it, imperfect arrows flying out on random vectors. His problem was he had no elders to teach him, and now he resolved to look on the Internet and figure it out. He’d been a good shot with a bow and arrow as a teenager. He would make his own tools and kill a couple of does during the archery season before the local deer hunters arrived for the nuisance hunt. He wouldn’t have to buy meat again.

  All that would come later. Now he was in the store, where the pickings were easy. Possessed by gluttony and a little vertigo, he foraged under the fluorescent lights, filling his cart and jostling politely with extra-large matrons hollering emphatic local dialect into their cell phones. Stocking up before the storm, they piled milk gallons and diapers and juice boxes and bags of frozen tater tots into their own groaning carts and ignored Rice altogether.

  He drove west out of town, taking the long way home through a series of pastoral valleys, eventually turning onto a gravel road that followed the south bank of the Dutch River. The road wound around tiny deserted hamlets on the higher ground, in and out of long narrow hayfields in the floodplain, through small woodlots where old trees reached their branches out over the road. The air gusting through the open windows of his truck was cool and smelled of wet leaves, dry grass, and gravel dust. The sun seemed to be drifting away, exhausted. Overhead, a flock of migrating grackles moved in a coordinated cloud, the inky iridescent feathers and fierce yellow eyes invisible at this distance. A broad-winged hawk rose up out of the river bottom and the grackle flock veered toward it in a point, harassing it downstream like a cartoon bee swarm. He’d been out of CERESO now for longer than he’d been inside, but even a short incarceration could change the way a person sees the world, and almost a year after his release, the pleasure and novelty of driving alone through open country had not abated.

  When he pulled into the entrance to the preserve, the gate was shut but the padlock was open on the chain. For a moment the old panic flashed through him, but clearly it was someone with a key. Not Sara—she felt the same way Rice did about keeping the gate locked—which left the fire department and law enforcement.

  He ran through the possibilities on the way up the driveway. The game warden might have heard about the poaching and stopped by. There could be a fire at the lodge or on the mountain—maybe the poacher had retaliated—but he hadn’t seen any smoke on his way out from town. The poacher might’ve complained to the sheriff about being attacked on the preserve by some psycho in a ghillie suit. Of course, then he would have to admit he’d been trespassing, on his way to stock his illegal bait station, and that he’d stabbed Rice with an arrow, poisoned or otherwise. That kind of escalation to deadly force would at least raise eyebrows in the sheriff’s office. Who else? Maybe the Stillers were making trouble.

  Topping the final rise, he found two vehicles parked in front of the cabin, a dark blue Ford Expedition with Sheriff’s Department in white on the driver’s door, and beside it a big Chevy pickup towing a trailer with two ATVs chained down side by side. He reached down and made sure the .45 was tucked all the way into its hiding place in the seat. If they’d somehow got a warrant and searched the lodge, what would they have found? Nothing. He didn’t own anything illegal or incriminating other than his pistol. A couple thousand dollars cash in the fireproof box in the attic wouldn’t look good, but these folks weren’t revenuers. He didn’t think they’d climb up there on a routine search anyway. You had to know where the trapdoor was, and get up on a chair to pull the short cord, duck the ladder that came sliding down at your head.

  Two men and a woman leaned against the end of the trailer, one of the men in a brown uniform, clearly the sheriff, trim, not a big guy, with close-cropped gray hair, maybe in his late sixties. He was older than Rice had expected, though STP had said he’d been sheriff forever. The other two were both short and stocky, strong-looking, could’ve been brother and sister. All three carried Glocks on their hips in black plastic holsters. The woman was talking into a handheld radio. She turned away from the breeze coming off the meadow, listening to the radio. She had a long dark ponytail hanging down her back over her bright green jacket. On the rear window of the pickup cab was a sticker, the black silhouette of an M4 military carbine.

  He parked beside the sheriff’s vehicle. When he got out, the sheriff walked up and stuck out his hand. “Mr. Morton, I’m Sheriff Mark Walker. Sorry to barge in on you like this, but we’re looking for a missing person up on your mountain.”

  Rice swallowed, returning the man’s handshake. Walker had a firm grip—Rice’s hand still hurt like hell and he had to fight not to wince—and he hung on for an extra beat, watching Rice’s eyes. Rice had seen law enforcement folks who were so stupid you couldn’t believe their spouses let them leave the house alone, never mind carry a firearm and the power of the state. Others were as smart as anyone he’d ever encountered. This Sheriff Walker had a smart look to him. He’d obviously noticed the stitched cut on Rice’s jaw and he was studying him without seeming to.

  “Nobody’s seen this fella for three days. Couple witnesses say he was driving around with a dirt bike in his truck either Friday or Saturday. This morning search-and-rescue found his truck parked at the end of a Forest Service access road over the other side of Serrett Mountain, somebody’d vandalized it, smashed the windows, slashed the tires. No bike, but they saw what might’ve been tracks going east. Course after the rain there wasn’t much left. Some of the search-and-rescue folks—I’m sorry, these are my deputies, Bayard Stimson and Janie Broad.”

  Rice nodded, they nodded back.

  “The search-and-rescue folks have been riding around on the logging roads with dogs, working east from the truck, but they haven’t found anything, no more tracks, no bike, no missing person. We were wondering if you might’ve seen anyone?” That last sentence was a question, gentler than a declaration, eyebrows up, his face still holding an official, apologetic smile. Like the sheriff was still giving this Rick Morton out-of-towner the benefit of the doubt. Though he might’ve heard about his scrape with the Stillers, and that he was an eco-Nazi hermit who lived up here all alone, and hell who knew what else, and here Rick was, looking freshly beat up from yet another scrape, and there was this truck vandalism,
this person gone missing on or near the Turk Mountain Preserve.

  Thinking all this, Rice hesitated. It was only for an instant but in that instant he saw the sheriff’s eyes change. They sharpened, and his body shifted, a subtle tensing, and just like that Rice was a person of interest. Walker’s smile never wavered. Rice had seen this before. Without another word spoken, the air had changed, roles had been assumed, and in the face of that kind of suspicion, the truth—or as much of it as possible—was the only thing that was going to work.

  “I saw a guy on a motorbike, an old trail bike with a souped-up muffler, to make it quiet. He was way up in the woods, in that big gorge on the other side of the mountain. It was Saturday night, or maybe Sunday morning early.”

  “And—”

  “We’ve had some poaching, dead bears left in the woods.”

  “I’ve heard of that. They sell the gallbladders.”

  “That’s right. I found where someone had been killing bears over bait, at night, and I was up there watching. A guy rode down on his bike, he had a crossbow with a night-vision scope. I accosted him”—he flinched inside at the euphemism—“and he went crazy, tried to kill me with an arrow from his crossbow.” Rice cocked up his chin to show the cut on his jaw. “I got away, and I guess he took off.”

  Rice held the sheriff’s now one hundred percent skeptical law enforcement gaze, but in the long pause he could see he’d thrown him with his story. It was shit you wouldn’t make up. You wouldn’t want to, under the circumstances. You’d make up something less incriminating. In his peripheral vision, the deputies gave each other a look.

  “How come you didn’t call our office about this? If he attacked you like you say. An assault with a weapon like that is something most people would report.”

  “I’m all right. And I was more worried about the bear poaching anyway. I thought about calling the game warden, but there wasn’t much he could do. I figure the poacher fellow knows I’m onto him now, and maybe he won’t come back.”

  The sheriff just looked at him, poker-faced as hell. “Why’s that?”

  “I might’ve spooked him some. It was night and all. I think that’s why he attacked me.”

  “So you don’t blame him for trying to stab you with a arrow.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that. But what was I going to tell the police—you all, your office—about it anyway? He was long gone. It was night . . . I didn’t get a good look at his face.” Rice pictured the chiseled face in the red headlamp. He reached up and grasped his own chin with thumb and forefinger. “He had a beard, a short beard. He sure never told me his name.”

  “And now he’s gone missing. And somebody messed up his truck.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Uh-huh.” Walker turned and nodded to the other two and they jumped up and started unfastening the ATVs, moving them down from the trailer. “You mind showing us where all this happened?”

  Thirty-Five

  The four of them rode the ATVs up the fire road, Rice on the extended seat behind Bayard, and Sheriff Walker riding behind Janie Broad. Rice had suggested the others start up the mountain without him while he put away groceries in the freezer and fridge. He could leave the heavy sander and table saw in the truck for now but he couldn’t afford to let all that food spoil. Walker had given him a quizzical look and said they’d wait. Like Rice might try to escape in his truck, or maybe he couldn’t catch the ATVs on foot. Now they were steering the unwieldy vehicles through the pine saplings grown up in the road, barely beating his walking pace, but he didn’t think hopping off and jogging ahead would impress the Sheriff’s Department. His knee had swollen some during his morning in town anyway, so he told himself to relax and appreciate the ride.

  Bayard had introduced himself with “Call me Stoner,” not a friendly gesture but, Rice surmised, a declaration that no one but the sheriff was allowed to call him by his real name. He was a muscular, energetic guy with a buzz cut, smelled of cologne and clean sweat. Rice wondered about the nickname. Maybe it was ironic. The guy was wound up and squared away, either ex-military or wished he were. Before they’d mounted the ATV, Stoner had drawn his Glock from its holster and locked it in a small plastic vault underneath the handlebars. Rice had grinned at this and Stoner, smiling back, had said, “It was up to me you’d be in handcuffs.” He offered no more conversation on the way up the mountain. He seemed to have decided the missing motorbike rider had stumbled upon Rice’s meth lab, and Rice had offed him and buried the body on the mountain.

  In fact, Rice was acutely aware of the fact that he didn’t remember not killing the poacher. The truck vandalism didn’t sound at all familiar, but who could say? There had definitely been a fight—his wounds were real, and his recurring visions of the guy stabbing him were too vivid to be imagined. It was at least plausible that Rice had won the fight after all, that he’d injured or killed the poacher before wandering off in an amnesiac rage to beat on the guy’s pickup truck. He considered leading the search party to a completely different part of the gorge and then coming back later by himself to scout the real scene, just in case. But he’d already mentioned the bait station, the bear carcasses, and they were going to want to see that. And if he had killed someone, he knew from experience he would feel something in his bones no matter how hard he tried to forget it, and right now he just didn’t.

  They parked the ATVs on the fire road at the spot where Rice usually turned off to drop into the gorge. Janie had been talking the other searchers in on the radio, and soon four more ATVs with five searchers and three dogs motored into sight, coming down the fire road from higher on the mountain. Rice had repaired the fence next to the Forest Service gate where the Stillers had come through, so these folks must have the fire department’s key to the padlocks. He thought about asking how they’d got past the wasp nest, but everyone was acting uptight, eyeing him with open hostility.

  Two of the searchers’ dogs were Labradors, one yellow and one black, both wiggly, happy-looking females, trotting ahead of the vehicles. The third was a big male German shepherd riding on a platform like the Stillers’ bear dogs, his collar clipped to a thick leather leash held by a tall woman riding behind one of the drivers. The drivers were shutting down their engines when the shepherd noticed Rice and charged, yanking the leash from the woman’s hand. She and the guy driving her ATV started yelling, “Derek, no!” but Rice crouched, his knee firing with pain, and held out his hands, palms down, thinking who names a dog Derek? The dog skidded to a halt and sniffed his fingers, swept his big tail back and forth in a graceful arc. The tall woman walked slowly toward them, speaking in a calm, low voice, saying things like whoa there and just hold real still mister and hey Derek big buddy. Two ATV motors were still going but their drivers just sat there, frozen. Everyone else stood where they were and watched Rice and the dog.

  The sheriff’s voice, quiet but firm: “Get your dog, Sue Ann.”

  “Hello, Derek,” Rice said. “Everything’s fine.” He thought these people were overreacting just a little bit. The dog looked him in the eyes, stepped forward and began licking his chin, working his way over to the cut on his jaw and licking more insistently there. Derek’s breath was hot, humid. Smelled of dirt and dog kibble.

  The woman stood in the fire road, her hands loose at her sides. She stopped trying to coax the dog and stared.

  “Shit,” someone said.

  Rice reached up and scratched the lush hair behind Derek’s stiff ears. This was the biggest shepherd he’d ever seen, nearly as tall as Bilton Stiller’s yellow bear dog, and he could fit Rice’s whole head in his jaws if he wanted. After a few seconds it felt like Derek’s tongue was starting to rip the stitches from his flesh, but when Rice tried to gently push him away, Derek braced his feet and kept licking. Rice pushed harder but Derek was immovable, so he gave up and endured the dog’s attentions, hoping dog slobber was somehow therapeutic.

  “That dog has put four perps in the hospital, Mr. Morton.�
�� This was Stoner speaking. “You’re a lucky mo.”

  “I like dogs. They can tell.” Rice rose, wincing again at his knee, and handed Sue Ann the end of Derek’s leash. He turned to face Stoner. “And I’m not a perp.”

  He led the way through the rhododendron and laurel thicket and down the steep forested slope toward the bait station, keeping the pace slow. Everyone in the group had trouble keeping their feet, slipping in the wet leaves, hanging on to saplings, sliding down on their butts. Derek wanted to walk up front with Rice and the other dogs, and his handler was glad to hand back the leash. Apparently the two labs were “air scent dogs” and worked off-leash, while Derek was more of a trailing dog.

  Rice could tell the searchers were warming up to him—Derek must be known as a good judge of character—and now they all seemed to trust him as their guide, descending into the gorge. The two labs looked to him for direction now, and he held the leash of the trailing dog. If he led the group straight to the body, he was going to look like the stupidest murderer in history.

  Thirty-Six

  The walk down to the bait station took nearly an hour, and by the time they got there the sky in the canopy opening had a greenish cast, milky with high clouds, and the treetops were beginning to shift in a fitful breeze. These folks were slower than Sara had been, less sure-footed. Most of them, anyway. The big woman who handled Derek seemed to be having less trouble, and Stoner was half-killing himself to make sure he kept up with Rice. The group was quiet, probably thinking of the climb back up to the vehicles.

  At the bait station, Rice showed them the hanging cow’s head, the scattered and desiccated remains of the bear carcasses, and the scars in the oak where the poacher had used climbing spikes. From there they quartered another half mile up the south slope, and after a short search Rice found the big rhododendron where he had waited as the poacher rode past him.