Snow Stalker

by M K Dymock

  “You think this is legit?” Sean demanded. “Should we use that plaster you brought to get a mold?”

  It wasn’t the sight of the print that freaked him out. Twenty years at this, he’d seen his share of Bigfoot prints. Not today, he thought. He didn’t want to see one today. Seeing that would prove he’d led Phil to his demise.

  “What do you think?” Sean asked, unaware of Ryan’s quagmire. “Could be proof something else was out here besides us.” He would want to believe anything besides a human had been responsible for this disaster.

  Ryan grabbed on to a nearby branch, using it to ground himself. “Let me look closer,” he said, taking a deep breath and forcing himself to return. If he was to blame, he’d own it. He squatted over the print.

  Right away, something seemed wrong. He pulled a magnifying glass out and leaned forward even more, analyzing the contours of the foot. He rolled onto his heels and stood. “It wasn’t Bigfoot. And it definitely wasn’t animal.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s a fake. Somebody wanted this to look like a Bigfoot attack.” Ryan fingered the camera in his pocket, wondering if he had their picture.

  “Why? It’s not like the sheriff would buy that and stop investigating.”

  Michael had worked hard to earn his money.

  43

  Who was Grayson Moore?

  Mina began the day at the office staring at his face on Twitter and searching for anyone who knew him. She’d called the magazine who published some of his articles, but their dealings with him had been through email, which they provided. She sent off a message asking him to contact her.

  A background check didn’t find any criminal history, but he did have a sister.

  A soft voice answered the phone. Mina told the sister the same story she’d told Cate: that Grayson had been in town the day of an “incident” and she wanted to speak to him, see if he witnessed anything.

  “I haven’t talked with him in a month,” the sister said. “We talked more when he lived in New York, but not as much since he went off the grid a few years or so ago.”

  “What do you mean, went off the grid?”

  “He was a financial reporter, freelancing with the Wall Street Journal and some others. Then one day, he got tired of it and become some sort of travel/adventure reporter. He’s been hard to keep track of ever since.” The sister called out to someone to be quiet, she was on the phone. “Why are you looking for him again?”

  “We’re investigating an incident at our ski resort. I found out he was there the same day. I thought with him being a reporter, he might’ve seen something others had missed.”

  “I get it. We once walked down 5th, and some guy was pickpocketing this woman. I didn’t notice; even she didn’t notice. But he saw it and stopped it. Nothing gets past him.”

  “I tried his phone, but it goes straight to voicemail,” Mina said. “His Twitter account said he’s in Africa, and I thought maybe you’d know a way to get a hold of him.” Silence filled the line. “Ma’am?”

  “No, that’s not right. He wasn’t going to Zimbabwe until June. The kids and I were going… Hold on.” The clicking of the laptop keys proved she was double-checking Mina’s answer. The voice that came back no longer held the tired frustration of a little sister. “He always calls at Christmas. I thought maybe he was a few days late. I’ve been worried…” Her voice quivered from far away. “Where did you say you were?”

  Mina needed a life jacket for this depth. “Hold on a second; I’ll get you the sheriff.” It would take all of two seconds to Google Lost Gorge and find out what “incident” had occurred a few weeks ago.

  She grabbed Sol in his office, gave him a very quick summary, and pressed the phone in his hand. Sol took the call in his office, and she waited outside.

  It took a second after Sol’s goodbye for him to call her in. He sat behind his desk covered with photos of Phil’s crime scene. “What have you been up to?” His voice was even, but he still gripped the phone.

  She told him about Adrienne. “I learned about him right before the call for Phil came in. I put it aside and then started calling around yesterday after looking up Phil’s past.”

  “Mina, you can’t go off on your own and not tell me.”

  “I didn’t go off; I made some phone calls ten feet away.” She was thirty-some years old and didn’t need her hand held.

  “This isn’t like your other jobs. You can’t do your own thing and check in now and then. I may have just told a woman her brother is dead, and I don’t know that and nor do you.”

  Her entire body clenched down to her toes. Maybe she should’ve said something sooner, but she was new at this. “You’re the one who wanted me to take this job.”

  “I wanted you because you’re smart and you will do anything to save someone. But you can’t do it by yourself.”

  Part of her wanted to walk. This wasn’t her idea; wasn’t she only doing this as a favor? But a growing part of her needed to see this through, needed to know she hadn’t completely failed the missing man. “Fine,” she said.

  Sol, never one to dwell once he said his piece, gestured to the photos of the crime scene on his desk. “Almost everyone’s tracks show up between the tent and the crime scene except Ryan’s—”

  “Could be because he went to bed so much earlier than the rest and was so out of it.” She regretted that quick and very biased response immediately. “Sorry, we should look at all options.”

  “I also need you to call Patrick to come in. I have some questions for him.”

  “About what?”

  Sol pulled out a single photo and handed it to her. “What do you see?”

  What she saw wasn’t in question. It’s why she saw it she had no answer for. Patrick’s boot print in blood.

  44

  Patrick sat across from Sol and Mina. In any other sheriff’s office, someone who didn’t know the suspects would do the investigating. With the second death happening on public land, they could call in the FBI. The FBI, however, was still pending cause of death and wasn’t in a hurry to jump into “animal attacks.”

  They’d pulled Patrick off the mountain mid-shift and sat him at Sol’s desk, still wearing his black ski pants with his coat thrown over the back. They didn’t have an interrogation room but probably wouldn’t use it if they did. Sol wanted to go at this at a friendly level, to start with.

  “Walk us through the night again.” Sol said to Patrick.

  Mina stared at the man she’d known for more than a few years and wondered if she knew him at all. She knew his family—everyone knew the O’Briens—but only in the way she knew everyone else in town. She knew his passions, but only because she shared them. She knew his dreams, but…no, she didn’t really.

  She wanted so much for there to be some innocent reason, but that realization made her recognize her own biases. In that moment, guilty or innocent, she knew she could never trust this man again.

  “You never left the tent?” Sol asked as Patrick finished his recitation, not that much had changed since his first one.

  “Not after 11 or so.” He bounced his foot on his knee. This was Mina’s first interrogation, and she hunted for some sign of lie or truth.

  Sol laid out the photo of the footprint in the blood. “That matches your print.”

  Patrick leaned over the photo. “Okay.” He sat back, his expression unchanged. “I imagine all of us walked through his blood at some point in the morning.”

  Mina wondered at his lack of emotion. Was it his training or something else that kept him so sedate?

  “Except this wasn’t by the tent. It was where someone attacked Phil.” Sol emphasized the word “someone.”

  Patrick’s foot dropped to the floor. “I never saw where it happened. Sean didn’t let any of us wander around.”

  “So how did your print end up in the blood?”

  “Where did you find it?” While Sol’s voice remained even, Patrick’s went up a notch or tw
o.

  Sol described the large tree, the small open area surrounded by high bushes.

  “Oh, that’s easy.” Relief washed through Patrick as he relaxed in the chair. “That’s where I peed the night before. I think all of us did. He must have bled into our footprints.”

  “He did on a few,” Sol said, nodding. “But here’s the thing: when your tracks walked away, they made a trail of blood.” He set out another photo. “You can see here the tracks get more faded as they go. You walked on his blood.”

  “That’s bull. I didn’t kill that man; I barely knew him.”

  “I didn’t say you killed him. I said we found traces of blood on your boots, Patrick. Tell me something that makes sense.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I went out to pee after he’d already returned to the tent.”

  “You just told me you never left your tent.”

  “Come on, I could’ve done that half asleep. Hell, I’ve pissed in the laundry hamper after having a few too many. Didn’t know I’d done it until the smell got to me.”

  Now the panic in his voice grew. Mina stared at her hands, the hands he’d once rubbed the cold out of one night snowshoeing under the moon.

  “Mina,” Patrick said, as if reading her thoughts. “You know I didn’t do this.”

  “We have to ask these questions,” she said in an almost whisper. She took a deep breath. “And you need better answers.” This came out louder.

  Patrick pushed to his feet, almost knocking over the chair as it teetered back down. “You arresting me?”

  “No,” Sol said, shoving his hat back. “You can leave, but we’ll have more questions.”

  Patrick left them sitting there. “There’s no motive,” Mina said after a minute as she moved from beside Sol to across from him.

  “Not that we know of, but we don’t know everything.”

  “Are you sure about the tracks?” Even as she asked, she knew it was a stupid question.

  “Those tracks were all over the scene, before and after Phil had been killed. If Patrick had gotten up to pee half asleep, he would’ve done it a lot closer to the tent and not wandered around.”

  “I just can’t wrap—”

  Outside the window, Patrick yelled something indiscernible and a few choice cuss words that weren’t. Mina jumped to her feet and went to the window. One glance and she ran to the door, yelling back at Sol. “He’s going to beat the crap out of him!”

  45

  Ryan and Sean drove straight from the trailhead to the sheriff’s office. Ryan had made a plaster mold of the footprint as proof.

  He stepped out of Sean’s truck and reached for the back door, where the mold sat. Something slammed into him from behind, smashing his head into the window. For a second, he had the crazy thought Bigfoot had finally got him.

  As he fell to the ground, he rolled over and put his hands up to deflect. The man from the campsite, Patrick, jumped on him with fists out. “You murdered that guy, you crazy effer. Tell them.”

  Height was about the only thing Ryan had going for him. He shot his hips up, pushing Patrick off-balance, and bent his legs to his head. He crossed them in front of his assailant and rolled forward, pushing him to the snow.

  Patrick scrambled out and pulled back his fist as Sean tackled him with the sheriff following. Mina pulled out a pair of handcuffs, but Patrick still flailed his hands in every which way. Ryan jumped up, without thinking, and ran to grab another arm before Mina could get hit.

  Within a minute, Patrick had been cuffed to the railing of the stairs. Anger still rolled through him as he cussed at Ryan and everyone else. “He did it!” he screamed. He turned to his uncle. “You know I didn’t do this.”

  “Then shut up!” Sean yelled back, his face the same shade of red as his nephew. “You’re looking capable of murder right now.”

  “He was alone in the tent next to a dying guy.” His voice went a few notes lower as he swallowed his rage. “I was with you and Dane the entire night; you know I didn’t do this.”

  “I know.”

  Did he know, or did Sean placate his nephew? As Ryan rubbed the goose egg on the back of his head, he didn’t feel sure about that. Sol dragged Patrick into the office and its holding cell, Sean following to see about bail. That left Mina and Ryan standing outside, staring at the breath coming out of their mouths in place of a conversation.

  “You can press charges,” she said after a long pause.

  His hand formed a fist to stop the incessant shaking. “You think I should?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know much anymore.”

  Ryan appreciated he wasn’t the only one. “Oh, I forgot the reason I came here.”

  A few minutes later they stood with the sheriff, looking over the mold of the footprint. Sean had gone home, thinking it would be wise to let Patrick stew for a night.

  “It’s a fake Bigfoot,” Ryan said as Mina hunched over it, examining its contours.

  “Never thought it was Bigfoot,” Sol said.

  “No, I mean somebody carved a fake foot out of wood, hauled it up there, and left a few indentations in the snow. That’s intent; that means—”

  “Somebody killed Phil, and it wasn’t an animal,” Sol finished.

  “And they did a pretty poor job of it.” Ryan looked to Sol, who took Mina’s place beside the foot. “Did you give it much of a look over?”

  “No, I was focused on the human side of things.” Sol pulled out his glasses and squinted for a better look. He rubbed his finger around the toes. “You can see the edge of the wood here. They didn’t even bother to smooth the curves.”

  “But why do it at both scenes?” Mina asked. “It’s not like we’d give up investigating and rule it a Bigfoot attack.”

  “Have you talked with Michael Jenkins? He’s got a million-dollar TV deal if he can show proof of Bigfoot.” Ryan pictured his friend lying in a tent with his insides spilled open and wondered what price that would bring in.

  “It’s not the same print as the first one.” Sol straightened up.

  Mina and Ryan turned to him. “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Because that print I did examine, at every angle and for several hours.” He walked back to their evidence drawers and pulled out a similar mold.

  Ryan pulled a small magnifying lens from his pocket. “You’re right.” Mina crept close to him, trying to see what he saw. He moved back so she could peer through. “Here, you can see the contours of the foot, the distribution of the weight.”

  “If it was the same person,” she said, “wouldn’t they get better with time, not worse?”

  “Yes,” Sol said. “It’s possible the second capitalized on the first.” He turned to Ryan. “Did you discover anything else up there?”

  Ryan slapped his forehead. “The camera.”

  “What camera?” Mina and Sol said in unison.

  Ryan pulled it out, and Mina grabbed a computer with an SID card portal. As soon as they plugged in the card, a folder opened with several photographs, time-stamped. “The camera is motion sensitive. Once movement triggers it, it takes a series of photos.”

  Mina double-clicked on the first bunch of photos with a time stamp of 11 p.m., all taken within a few minutes’ time. Michael had placed the camera high in the tree, but with all the tall bushes surrounding it, it didn’t shoot a lot of distance.

  She clicked through the photos until the edge of a face popped into view.

  “Dane,” Ryan said. “Probably peeing. Sorry,” he said with a glance toward Mina.

  “Women pee too,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Yeah, I just mean…let’s look at the next bunch.”

  “Why would he set up the camera where you guys designated a bathroom?”

  “Bigfoot can be a territorial animal. The scent could draw him in. That’s why we asked everyone to take their business outside the camp a bit.”

  “Let’s open the next bunch,” Sol interrupted.

  The next series show
ed a rodent, probably a squirrel, climbing up a branch. Its eyes glowed in the infrared light. They went through each series, finding nothing more interesting than a rodent until a burst of images from 4:10 a.m.

  The first image popped up on the computer screen, a hint of an ear on one side. The second one was barely more of a face, but by the fifth, they could make out Phil’s features.

  “Do you think he was he using the bathroom?” Mina asked.

  “No,” Sol said. “He’s looking up, not down.” They clicked on the next in the series.

  “He’s right,” Ryan said. “He’s looking for the camera. He had it fairly camouflaged in the branches.” Sure enough, a few photos later, Phil’s arm was extending to their viewpoint.

  The last of the photos opened. Phil had turned his head to face something behind him. His hand no longer reached for the camera.

  46

  They went through the photos several times, but they never saw what had caught Phil’s attention in the moments before he died.

  “Something lured him out of the tent,” Ryan said. “He wouldn’t have checked the camera in the middle of the night otherwise.”

  After going through all the photos again, Mina drove Ryan back to Phil’s cabin. Sean had been his ride. Barely evening and already the stars filled the night sky. Another time and she would’ve pulled over to appreciate them.

  “Mina,” Ryan said as she started the ignition. “I don’t know if Patrick did it or not or Michael, but there’s something I should tell you. Sean and Dane were talking that night at camp about Patrick being in love.”

  She laughed. “Patrick falls for a new woman every month. Don’t know if I’d call it love.”

  “That’s why Dane found it odd. Said he’d finally fallen hard and the girl had broken his heart the week or so before.”

  “No, he’s not the…” She thought about the way he’d been acting since the season started, avoiding her and then apologizing to her. Adrienne had mention Patrick had been living with someone but had broken up. “Did they say who?”