by Alan Russell
“That ties everything together,” said Martin. “That puts Grizzly and Tomcat together in Talkeetna.”
“I’ll be trying to convince AST of that.”
“How far is Talkeetna to Manley?”
Hamilton pointed out the two spots on the map. “They’re not close,” he said. “From the looks of it, I’d say they’re about one hundred and thirty miles apart, but that might have been Grizzly’s intent from the first. We know how he likes to be far away from any likely search area.”
“How far could Tomcat’s plane fly without refueling?”
“He was flying a Cessna 185, which has a range of about eight hundred miles, but Carter’s plane was equipped with an auxiliary fuel tank that had another twenty-three usable gallons. That means he could have flown close to a thousand miles without refueling. Since the flight from Anchorage to Talkeetna isn’t even a hundred miles, he would have had plenty of juice to fly just about anywhere.
“Now, I’m no mathematical whiz, and I don’t have a compass and pencil handy to figure out the radius of a circle, but I’m thinking the plane could have flown around four hundred nautical miles in any direction.”
With his finger he demonstrated his imaginary circle and then said, “See many villages or towns in that area? This whole space is almost totally uninhabited.”
“So what’s stopping the troopers from searching in the Manley area?”
“They’re not going to devote those kinds of resources on the basis of Tomcat’s ditty. We need more.”
Hamilton took a seat at his desk and then began rummaging through his in-box until he found what he was looking for. He handed the paper to Martin and said, “These are now being circulated.”
A drawing of a heavily bearded man with long, dark hair and hard eyes stared out from the page.
“Yeah, I know,” said Hamilton, reading Martin’s unenthusiastic expression. “It’s generic, but you never know. I talked to the head of Village Public Safety Officer Program, which is the branch of AST that sends troopers deep into the bush. I was promised that everyone associated with the program would get a copy of the drawing, along with a BOLO.”
“Someone will have seen something. No one can just disappear.”
“I wish I had your optimism,” said Hamilton. “But how is it that three women were imprisoned in Cleveland for ten years, with neighboring houses all around, and no one was aware of them being there? And think about what happened to Jaycee Dugard. She was held captive for eighteen years in California, and no one noticed. And let’s not forget how Elizabeth Smart was a captive in plain sight.
“Not one of those women was imprisoned in some remote location. They were imprisoned right on Main Street, USA, or close to it, but no one was aware of them.
“If our Grizzly is living off the grid or holed-up in some remote cabin, I wouldn’t count on prying eyes or on people asking questions or some witness coming forward.”
“So, how do we get someone to come forward?”
“I was thinking of putting alerts out on bush radio,” said Hamilton, “and on Trapline Chatter. I’ll offer up a description of Grizzly and say that he’s wanted for questioning in the disappearance of Tom Carter.”
“Why not mention Nina Granville as well?”
Hamilton shook his head. “That would muddy the waters. I want credible leads, not guesswork generated in the hopes of winning the lottery.”
“Excuse my ignorance, but what’s Trapline Chatter?”
“It’s a radio program that broadcasts from North Pole, Alaska. For some of the villages and those in the bush, it’s their primary outlet to the outside world. The news is almost like an old-fashioned party line, with everyone getting the skinny about births and marriages and birthday greetings, along with news specific to the bush.”
“I better enter it as one of my presets.”
“You do that.”
“Maybe Grizzly himself will be listening and we’ll flush him out. He can’t remain the invisible man forever.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“The water’s coming! Dig! Dig! Dig!”
Luke furiously scooped out sand to widen their moat. Their sand castle was being threatened by the tide.
The two of them had spent the last hour building their fortress and beautifying it with all the shells they’d collected that morning. Nina joined her brother in trying to save their castle. She flung the sand aside using her pink shovel. Luke was down on his knees moving sand between his legs like a dog.
“Let’s pack it up for the day, kids.”
“Nooooo,” Nina whined, trying to stave off both her father and the tide.
Her mother knew bribery trumped reason: “Let’s go for lobster rolls,” she said.
Luke stopped his digging. “I want an Italian sandwich,” he said.
“We can get both.”
Nina slowed her shoveling, but she wasn’t quite ready to give up. Or maybe she just wanted her mom to sweeten the bribe.
“Can we get some steamers, too?” she asked. She loved steamed clams dripping with butter and garlic.
“I don’t see why not,” her mother said. “We’re on vacation.”
In a place that was far away but much too close, she heard a loud grunt, and then felt a weight roll off of her. Nina tried to hold on to Ogunquit Beach. She didn’t want to leave, but she felt the Maine sun disappearing. She tried to hold its rays between her fingers, but it was like trying to hold onto seawater or granules of sand. Everything around her was dissolving.
Nina opened one eye. She was a long way from Kansas and from Maine and from Ogunquit Beach.
“When are you going to learn?” That’s what the monster had said while choking her until she passed out. She wondered if one of these times she wouldn’t awaken.
If she’d been able to answer him, she would have told him, “Never.” As she started coughing, she was glad there was no mirror in the cabin. Her neck had to be black and blue all over.
Elese had written about her own experiences in surviving the monster’s attacks and had advised Nina to disappear. It was something she was still working on.
Unless you’re pregnant, the monster will continue to force himself onto you. I fought him for months, but that only seemed to encourage him. While passive resistance doesn’t stop him, it diminishes his pleasure. He feeds on your terror and rage, so I have learned to withhold that by disappearing.
You probably are confused. How could I possibly disappear? It took me time to learn my disappearing act. At first I worked on disengaging. I pretended he wasn’t there. But it wasn’t enough to pretend. I had to find a way to vanish. I had to leave behind my body so that I gave the monster my shell and nothing more.
I disappeared, traveling through time. I didn’t travel back far, but then I didn’t have to. At first I tried to return to Greg, but that wasn’t enough of an anchor to keep me grounded. Denali was and is.
That is where I go time and again. To Denali. I hold him and look into his eyes. He’s my sanctuary, and we are together again.
I know you have a place like that, a place you can go where there are no monsters.
Nina was still getting used to finding her sanctuary. It meant a journey to the past and the happy memories of the vacations she’d spent with her family at Ogunquit Beach.
Across the room Baer was washing up. Nina didn’t have that luxury. She crawled back into her cell, took a rag, and wiped away his ejaculate.
Please, God, she prayed, don’t let me ever be pregnant by this monster.
Her mother had said it took almost two years of trying before Nina was conceived. Nina hoped her reproductive system would be just as picky as her mother’s.
Please, God, she added again.
She thought about disappearing to her childhood vacations at Ogunquit Beach. Why do I return to my family’s love, Nina wondered, and not the love of my fiancé? The answer was one she would have preferred to not think about, but in this cold place, it was yet another
cold truth.
Later she watched Baer getting ready to go out. He held not only a rifle, but a fishing pole. If not for Elese’s words, Nina would have gladly slept the day away, but she knew that kind of escape wouldn’t help her. If she hoped to escape this hellhole, she needed to familiarize herself with the surrounding area.
“I want to go fishing.”
Baer turned toward her. Nina could see his surprise: Usually she refused to speak.
“Do you even know how to fish?”
She and Luke had gone fishing with their father in some of Maine’s lakes. Nina had never liked putting the night crawlers on the hook; her father had always done that for her. Mostly she’d caught bluegills, but she remembered landing one bass. Of course, her father had also removed the hook from the fish’s mouth.
Nina nodded.
“You’re not crate-trained yet.”
She fought off the urge to scream, “I am not a fucking dog!” An outburst wouldn’t get her what she wanted.
“With me there we’ll catch twice the fish.”
Baer seemed to consider that. Nina turned her eyes from his, afraid of revealing what she was thinking.
“I never told you the story about the newlyweds, did I?” said Baer.
Nina shook her head.
“A couple got married after a whirlwind courtship,” he said. “On their honeymoon the two of them went out horseback riding. They hadn’t gone very far before the woman’s horse had a misstep and almost threw her from her saddle. Seeing that, the husband jumped to the ground and walked up to his wife’s horse. Staring into its eyes he said, ‘That’s one!’ And then he remounted, and the two of them continued their ride.
“A little while later, they approached a stream, and his wife’s horse came to a sudden stop, forcing her to grab the pommel to avoid being thrown. And so her husband did the same thing again. He jumped down from his saddle, went eyeball-to-eyeball with her horse, and with a shake of his finger he said, ‘That’s two!’
“After he remounted, the couple began riding again. Everything went fine for a while, but then something spooked the woman’s horse, and it started bucking, tossing her to the ground. So her husband dismounts and again approaches her horse. ‘That’s three!’ he yelled. Then he pulled out a gun, shot the horse in the head, and it fell over dead.
“The wife is horrified at what’s happened. She screams at her husband, ‘You murderer, you horrid beast, how could you do such a terrible thing?’
“And he looks at her and says, ‘That’s one.’”
It’s a joke, thought Nina. She hadn’t known Baer was capable of telling a joke. But it wasn’t a joke as much as it was a threat.
“Do you understand the moral of that story?”
With a voice she hoped was steady, Nina said, “I somehow missed it.”
“Bad behavior has consequences. You want to go fishing with me? I’m not sure if you’re ready for such an outing. It could be you have ulterior motives. Let’s say you try to act on those motives and I catch you trying to do something you shouldn’t. What you need to understand is that there are consequences for your behavior. And don’t expect a warning shot from me. You won’t hear me say, ‘That’s one.’”
“What consequences?”
“It depends on the crime. If you choose to not listen to me, you might lose an ear. Maybe I’ll tell you to go one way, and you’ll decide to try and run off in the opposite direction. That might cost you a toe. And what if you attempt to sneak off? I’d have to track you down. I’d have to use my eyes. And because of that, you might have to forfeit one of yours.”
His threats hung in the air.
“That’s one,” he said with a smile. And then, losing his smile, he asked, “Do you still want to go fishing?”
Nina carried both rods, along with the tackle box. Baer had a shotgun over his shoulder, along with his holstered handgun. They took one of the dogs with them. She had expected the sled dogs would look like huskies or malamutes, but the dog was smaller than either of those breeds. Baer called it an “Indian dog,” whatever that was. The dog was a medium-size black-and-white male; his coat was thick, but not wolflike. He was friendly and responded enthusiastically to Nina’s petting. Behind them the other dogs howled their disappointment from the fifty-five-gallon metal containers that served as their doghouses.
“You’re keeping him from his job,” said Baer, not approving of the affection she was doling out to the dog.
He made a clicking sound, and the dog left Nina’s side and ran ahead.
“What job is that?” asked Nina.
“He’s our bear alarm. It’s that time of year for bears to be fattening up for winter, and I prefer they don’t do that at my expense.”
Nina found herself looking around. She was a city girl and knew about two-legged predators, but this was different. In this place there were things that could kill her, that could make a meal out of her. The cold she felt wasn’t only from the frigid air, and she involuntarily shivered.
Still, it was good to be out of the cabin. How long had she been imprisoned? She did a mental count. It had been at least a dozen nights, she thought. She’d arrived during a cold snap, and then it had thawed. Since then the days had been getting colder. Frost had developed overnight, and in the early morning the thermometer hadn’t gone up much, if any. It felt as if it were in the low thirties, although you wouldn’t know it by Baer. He wore only a flannel shirt and looked comfortable.
Nina tried to mentally map their route, but within minutes she was hopelessly lost. It was all she could do to keep up with Baer. He moved with an assuredness that seemed to belie the terrain. The landscape couldn’t seem to make up its mind, quickly changing from rocky to boggy to frozen. They passed through a variety of microclimates, going through fog and mist into sun. There were ferns and sedge; stands of spruce and hardwood; and then bottomlands with willow, alders, and aspen. In some spots you could not see the forest for the trees. All of this, and more, was within a mile of their cabin.
Baer came to a stop at a riverbed. Although there was some ice along the banks, most of the river was clear. The far bank wasn’t more than a dozen yards away, with the water level ranging from a few inches to several feet.
“In a week or so, this stream will ice up,” said Baer, “and it will likely stay that way until May.”
May was more than seven months away. It was already cold enough, to Nina’s thinking; she couldn’t imagine that long of a deep freeze.
While Baer scanned the water, Nina tried inconspicuously to regain her breath. As a runner she prided herself on her conditioning, but it had taken fewer than two weeks in a cage to make her soft. Half an hour of walking had drained her. The physical toll of her captivity was apparent; she wondered about the mental toll.
I can’t let him exhaust my spirit, she thought. I have to stay strong. Her lips mouthed the words, “Rule number eight.” But in her head she could hear Baer saying, “That’s one.”
“You going to show me how to fish?”
Nina heard the taunt in his voice and saw it in his upturned lip. “I don’t even know what we’re fishing for,” she said.
“That shouldn’t stop a master fisherman like you. We’re going for grayling. They’re like trout, but less picky. They’ll take flies, spinners, spoons, or jigs.”
“I’ll watch you first.” I’ll watch your every move, she thought.
Baer walked over to a nearby willow and placed his shotgun in its crook. The handgun and holster stayed with him, worn low on his hip, his gun ready to grab. There was something about his swagger that reminded Nina of the gunslinger in every western movie.
After opening the tackle box, Baer pulled out what looked like a small white tassel. “White and black jigs usually work best this time of year. All you need to do is thread the jig onto a hook.”
In the time it took him to explain, he’d already threaded his jig.
“You want to work with the current,” he said. “Gray
lings like to hole up in pools. Sometimes there are five or six all in the same area.”
He pointed to an area twenty yards downstream. “My guess is they’re waiting in that calm area that’s just before the bend.”
Baer cast his line, and it was taken up by the current. “Let it run a bit before you start reeling. You don’t want to reel too fast. Just bring it back nice and easy.”
He stopped talking; the tight line did his telling. The pole bent slightly; Baer already had a fish on the line. With assured and measured movements, he brought his fish to shore. Then, with his large hand he cradled the belly of the fish to control its thrashing. Using the flat end of his large knife, he smashed the grayling’s head. It stopped struggling. With the same knife, he gutted the fish, then threw its entrails into the water. Then he gathered some moss and laid the fish atop it.
“When we catch more fish, we’ll string them up and tie them down in the shallows,” he said. “You can fish this spot while I head downstream.”
Without a backward glance, he took his rod and walked away. Nina divided her attention between where Baer was going and the threading of the jig. When the hook caught on her index finger, she shouldn’t have been surprised. She sucked the wound and watched as Baer settled on a spot and began casting.
Was this her opportunity? Baer was fast, but Nina knew she could get to the shotgun before he could. She’d never fired a shotgun, had never fired a gun of any sort, but she could pull a trigger. She knew next to nothing about guns, but she recalled they all had safeties. Had Baer put the safety on? And if he had, where was it located? She wished she’d thought about that during their walk. She should have been more watchful. She should have observed where the gun’s safety was. Made casual inquiries about what kind of shotgun it was.
She seemed to remember that some shotguns were designed for big game, and some were used to hunt birds. If only she knew the range of this particular shotgun. Baer was carrying a handgun. Who would be able to shoot the farthest? And how many shells was the shotgun holding? His gun had a magazine. It would certainly have more rounds.