Lone Wolf (18 page)

21

B
EFORE ANY OF US COULD ASK BOB
anything else, or suggest he not drive in his excited state, he’d turned his truck around and was racing back up the drive. Dad and I got into Lawrence’s Jaguar while Orville and his two pals piled into his cruiser. Orville was talking on his radio at the same time as he was turning the car around, calling for an ambulance to meet them up the highway.

Bob’s truck jerked forward as it hit the highway, the wheels hitting pavement after spinning on gravel.

“Bob shouldn’t be driving,” Dad said. “He looked like he was in shock or something. Why didn’t he take some bear spray? I thought we had another can of the stuff. What the hell was he thinking?”

The Jaguar’s engine hummed as Lawrence pushed down on the accelerator.

“You know what I bet he was thinking?” Dad said, answering his own question. “I bet he was thinking there was no bear. And you know why he’d be thinking something like that?”

Dad was sitting in the back, so I didn’t have to look at him.

“Because of all your crazy talk, that’s why.”

“My crazy talk? You’ve been thinking something different? After our dinner at the Wickenses? You mean to tell me you haven’t been thinking the same thing I’ve been thinking?”

“I’m just saying.”

“And besides,” I said, “I don’t think I’ve ever even told Bob my theories about what happened. It’s one thing to involve you and Orville in conjecture, but it’s quite another burdening your guests with all this shit.”

“So,” Lawrence said, his eyes darting back and forth between Bob’s truck and Orville’s police car in the rear-view mirror. “It sure is beautiful up here.”

Dad said, “My son tells me you’re homosexual.” Lawrence took a long breath. “You don’t look homosexual,” Dad said. “Of course, that might be because you’re black. Most of the homosexuals you see on TV are white. Isn’t that right, Zack?”

Orville had put the siren on. I glanced back and saw that he had the flashing red light going, too. I had a pretty good feeling that he was going to be insufferable very soon. And I had a pretty good feeling I was going to have to endure it.

Ahead, Bob’s brake lights came on and the truck skittered over to the shoulder. The truck was barely stopped before he had the door open and was running back to us, pointing into the forest.

“I think it was here!” he shouted as Lawrence pulled the Jag over. Bob was an older guy, and he was looking winded.

Lawrence and I got out. Dad, who’d hopped into the car and come on this adventure without crutches, opened his door but made no move to get out.

“Bob,” I said, as calmly as possible. “You have to slow down. You’re going to have a heart attack.”

He put his hands on the Jag hood to steady himself. Lawrence glanced down at the bloody smudges being left on his sheet metal.

Bob took a couple of breaths. “We might,” he said, gasping for air, “already be too late.”

Orville and company bolted from the police car like it was rigged to explode, running forward, rifles held across their chests. “Which way?” Orville asked.

Bob pointed again toward the forest. “I’m gonna have to lead you in, show you where I last saw him. Jesus, I don’t believe this.”

I put an arm around Bob’s shoulder. “First of all, how badly hurt are you?” Bob’s face was cluttered with several cuts and scrapes and smudges of dirt. The skin was scraped in several places on his hands.

“I fell,” he said. “Couple of times, I think. I was running fast as I could. I didn’t want him to get me. Jesus, he was huge.”

“Okay, but you haven’t broken anything, right?”

“I, I don’t think so, no.”

“Okay.” I looked into the back of the Jag. “Dad, you can’t walk anyway, so you watch for the ambulance, all right?”

Dad gave me a thumbs-up as Orville brushed up next to me. “I’m in charge here,” he said. “And you’ve got a lot to answer for.”

We all started following Bob through the high grass at the edge of the road and into the woods. Orville had taken a position next to Bob.

“Mr. Spooner, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What happened exactly?”

“Um, Leonard and I, we were hiking through here, this is the land where he wants to build his fishing resort, you know? He was showing me around, and we heard this rustling behind us, and we turned around, and there it was.”

“The bear.”

“Fucking right, the bear. He was standing on his back legs, kind of rearing up, you know, and he roared, Jesus, I never heard anything like it in my life.”

“Did he attack you? Did he go after you and Leonard?”

“We must have been in shock for a second, I guess we must have just stood there. And I noticed, I saw that one of the bear’s ears was clipped, like it was sort of torn off.”

I thought back to what Timmy Wickens had said. That the bear they’d seen, the one Morton Dewart had supposedly gone after, had a torn ear.

Orville picked up on that, too, glanced back at me and shook his head.

“Then what happened?”

“We both turned and started to run. I went one way, Leonard started off in another. I shouted to him, I said, ‘Come on! The road’s this way!’ But then I wondered, maybe he was right, maybe the road was the other way. All I could think to do was keep running, and hope to Christ I was heading for the road, and not deeper into the woods. I glanced back once, tripped over something and scraped myself up a bit, figured the bear would be right on me, because they say you can’t outrun a bear, but you can’t think of anything else to do, you know?”

“Sure,” said Orville, nodding, lots of sympathy. His two buddies, their rifles drawn, were scanning the woods. One caught his rifle on a tree branch and stumbled back. “Was the bear right behind you?”

“No. So I figured it must have gone after Leonard, and I started calling out for him, going back the way I’d come. I was screaming till I nearly lost my voice, but I didn’t see any sign of him, or the bear. Jesus, this is terrible.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Spooner. Did you ever find him?”

“No, no, I never did. I found my way back to the highway, maybe a quarter mile down from where I’d left my truck, ran down to it and went back to the camp, figuring I could get more help, that we could come back and find Leonard.” Impulsively, he shouted, “Leonaaard!”

Then we all started doing it. “Leonard!” I shouted. The two hunters called out, even Lawrence cupped his hands around his mouth and called. We were all shouting at once, and then, as if on cue, we all stopped.

No one answered.

This was, I was pretty sure, the same part of the woods Leonard had led me into when he wanted to show me where he was going to build his dream.

“He got him,” Bob said, shaking his head. “The bastard must have got him.”

He stopped, looked around. “I’m pretty sure it was around here where we encountered him,” Bob said. He pointed to the right, raising his arm halfway, as if he wasn’t totally sure. “I think I went this way, and Leonard”—he pointed in the other direction—“went thataway. We should probably look over there.”

We all kept fairly close together, the six of us, maybe twenty to thirty feet apart, looking down and up and from side to side. Up by the highway, we could hear the wail of an ambulance.

Lawrence moved in close to me, whispered, “I thought you said on the phone there was no bear. That that other guy was killed by dogs, you thought. That that Wickens guy had the dogs kill him for some reason.”

“Yeah, well, that was kind of one of the theories I was tossing around.”

“So now it looks like you dragged my ass up here to go after a real bear. I have to tell you, that’s really not my area. You want Grizzly Adams.”

“I thought he liked bears.”

“Fuck, I don’t know.”

“Listen, there’s more to what’s going on up here besides the bear,” I said, pointing my finger into the air in front of me. “Even if Dewart was killed by a bear, it doesn’t change all the other stuff.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure you’ll bring me up to speed later.” Lawrence ducked under a pine branch. “Your dad, he’s fun.”

“I think he was hoping you’d be a bit swishier.”

“Maybe later I’ll do some show tunes.”

Bob and Orville had pulled farther ahead, then stopped. Bob was looking around, seemingly bewildered. I was thinking maybe, once that ambulance arrived, they should have a look at him while we kept looking for Leonard. Bob might have suffered injuries he wasn’t even aware of.

“Hello?” From the road.

My heart stopped. Leonard?

We all looked back, and saw an ambulance attendant in the distance. “We haven’t found him yet!” Orville called back. “Soon as we know, we’ll give you a shout!”

Lawrence and I had wandered a bit off to the right of everyone else, where the ground gradually sloped up through the trees. I remembered this climb. It led up to the cliff, which overlooked the area where Leonard had talked about putting in a fake whale for kids to play in.

When we got to the top, Lawrence said, “Whoa.”

It was a sharp dropoff down onto jagged rocks and then more forest below. Lawrence nudged me in the shoulder and pointed.

Down at the bottom, off to the left, was the twisted body of a man.

“Oh shit,” I said. “Hey!” I shouted. “Over here! Over here!”

Everyone came running, Orville in the lead. When he reached the edge, he reeled back a bit, like he thought he was going to fall over. Lawrence pointed.

“We have to find a way down there,” Orville said.

I looked off to the right, where the ground appeared to slope down less precariously. “That way,” I said.

Orville shouted back toward the highway. “Back here!” In the distance, a muffled “Coming!”

Lawrence was well ahead of everyone else, hopping over fallen limbs, skittering down the edge of the hill, his arms out for support. He got to Leonard Colebert about ten seconds ahead of the rest of us and was kneeling over him when Orville rushed up.

“Don’t touch him!” he said.

Leonard Colebert’s body lay flat, on its back, on the forest floor, but his head was twisted nearly 180 degrees, like he was looking over his shoulder when he hit the ground, and his neck stayed that way. His eyes were open and blank. The fall had torn his down-filled jacket, and his pants had slipped partway down his butt.

It seemed apparent to everyone that he was dead, but he still looked in a lot better shape than Morton Dewart did when he was found.

“Oh my God,” Bob said. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

No one said anything, but everyone was nodding.

“Why isn’t he, I mean, he doesn’t look like the bear got to him, does it?” Bob said.

Orville was shaking his head, looking back up the hill. “My guess is, he was running, looking behind him to see if the bear was gaining, went right off the cliff before he even knew it was there.” Orville paused. “All things considered, it was probably a lot better way to go.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

One of the two hunters with Orville pointed to Leonard Colebert’s partially dropped pants. “Look,” he said. “The guy was wearing a fucking diaper.”

His friend giggled and said, “I guess, if I ran into a bear in the woods, I’d wanna be wearing one of those, too.”

22

S
OMEONE PUT IN A CALL
to the local general practitioner/coroner, my good friend Dr. Heath, and being the oldest of all of us out there, even if Dad had been with us and not stuck back up there on the highway, he was offered some assistance navigating his way down the steep hill to examine Leonard Colebert and declare him officially dead. I offered my arm, but when the doctor saw who it was attached to, he pulled back and clung to someone else, a gesture Lawrence Jones didn’t fail to pick up on.

Lawrence said, under his breath, “How many days you been up here? And how many people have you already managed to piss off?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.

The ambulance attendants didn’t mind accepting my help, and that of others, getting Leonard’s body, once it was on the gurney, back out to the ambulance. It took a good ten minutes to carry him up the hill and through the woods to the road. Dad was out of the car, leaning against it without his crutches, watching the action.

“What happened?” he asked when I walked up onto the shoulder of the highway. I brought him up to speed, including Orville’s theory, which, it pained me to realize, seemed to make a lot of sense. Leonard had been looking for what was behind him, instead of what was in front of him, and taken a header over the edge. The bear must have decided it was too much trouble to go down there and make a meal of him, and maybe had gone looking for Bob instead.

One of the ambulance attendants came up to us, a backpack hanging from one hand, and said, “This was Mr. Colebert’s.”

I reached out to take it as Dad said, “We can take that back and put it with his other stuff. I don’t know what family he has, but I guess they’ll be coming up to claim his things.”

The attendant said, “We think Mr. Spooner should come to the hospital to have those cuts and scrapes looked at, but we don’t want to make him ride in the ambulance with the deceased. Would one of you be able to take him in? We don’t think he should drive his truck.”

I offered to take Bob, in his own pickup, into Braynor. I made this proposal to him as he stood at the back of the ambulance, watching them load Leonard. He still appeared to be in a mild state of shock.

“I think I’m okay,” he said, looking numbly at the palms of his hands.

“You should go have those cuts checked,” I said. “You might get an infection if they don’t treat them. Why don’t you get in the truck.”

Chief Orville Thorne strode up to me, his finger pointing. “Not so fast with the smart remarks now, are you?”

I said nothing.

“You come up here from the city, bring along your fancy smart friends”—he nodded in Lawrence’s direction—“because we don’t know anything, we’re just a bunch of hicks, right? You think Dr. Heath and me don’t know what we’re doing, you have the nerve to cast doubt on his conclusions, suggesting he didn’t know a bear attack when he saw it. You tell me how to do my job. You really take the cake, you know that? You have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused? You probably got this man killed, telling him there really was no bear. Maybe, if he hadn’t listened to you, he’d still be alive.”

“I never told him anything,” I said.

“Yeah, well, whatever,” Orville said.

I said, “I’m going to drive Bob into town. Nice talking to you, Orville.”

I got Bob into the passenger seat and got myself back in behind the wheel. The keys were still in the ignition. The steering wheel was smeared with blood, and I tried to wipe most of it off with a tissue from my pocket. Once we were on the road and heading into Braynor, Bob said to me, “What was he talking about?”

“Nothing,” I said. “He just thinks I’m an asshole.”

“What did he mean, that you questioned the findings of the coroner, Dr. Heath? That he was wrong thinking it was a bear that killed that man at the camp?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, Bob. It’s just, I always had my doubts, because of those damn dogs. And how weird the Wickenses are, and what Betty had to say.”

“Betty? What did Betty have to say?”

“She used to be a nurse, and she saw Morton Dewart’s body, and she just didn’t think he looked like he’d been torn apart by a bear. She thought it looked more like the work of those pit bulls. And then, the other night, Dad and I went up there for dinner.”

“Up where?”

“The Wickenses.”

“You had dinner with them?”

“Yeah, well, we didn’t have seconds, I can tell you that. But yeah, we did, and everyone went out of their way to tell us how Dewart had seen this bear, and decided to go after it, and how he must have had a run-in with it. It just all seemed a bit rehearsed, you know? Like they were putting on a show for us.”

I glanced in my rear-view mirror, saw Lawrence’s blue Jag following us. Bob stared straight ahead. “So what do you think now?”

“I guess there’s a bear in the woods, Bob. I still don’t know for sure that one killed Dewart, but I’m not going to get anyone to listen to my suspicions, certainly not Orville, who doesn’t give a shit what I say anyway. And the fact is, your description of the bear, with the torn ear, matches the description the Wickenses gave of the bear that Dewart went after.”

Bob nodded tiredly. “I feel kind of sick,” he said.

“You’ve been through a traumatic incident, Bob. We need to get you looked after, and then get you back to the camp.”

“I need to lie down,” he said.

“Just hang in till we get to the hospital. They’ll get you patched up and then you can come back, sack out in the cabin. We’ll have you back out on the lake in no time.”

“The lake,” Bob said dreamily.

“Yeah. Maybe you can take me out with you.”

“Did Leonard, did he have a wife, a family?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Bob put his head back against the headrest and kept his eyes closed until we pulled into the driveway of the emergency ward.

I left Bob with the nurse at reception and went out to talk to Lawrence and Dad, who now was in the front seat. Dad hit the power window. “How is he?”

“Shook up, but he’ll be okay. I better hang in to drive him back. Once they bandage his hands it may be hard for him to steer.”

Dad said he’d have some lunch ready for when I got back, and Lawrence’s Jag pulled away. By the time I walked back into the ER, Bob was already with a doctor. This wasn’t exactly like going to a big-city hospital, where they kept you waiting for hours.

“Hey, Mr. Walker.”

I whirled around. It was Tracy, pen and notepad in hand.

“You’re everywhere,” I said. “I guess you heard about what happened.”

“The bear got another one.”

“Well, yes and no. Looks like Leonard Colebert died trying to get away from him. But you should talk to the chief. This is his thing. I’m out of it.”

“Is there some kind of trouble between you two?” Tracy asked.

I shrugged, not eager to get into it. Tracy presented me with a brown business envelope. “Could you give this to your wife, Mr. Walker? It’s a resumé? My work experience, some clippings?”

“Why don’t you fax it to her directly,” I said. “I may still be up here for a few days.”

“And I heard a rumor the mayor’s getting death threats. Is that true? Is that why you were up talking to her?”

“I’m out of this, Tracy. Talk to the chief.”

I felt I really was out of it. What did my suspicions amount to, really? Betty could be wrong in her assessment of how Morton Dewart died. Tiff, at the co-op, could have been killed for any number of reasons. And all that fertilizer could have been stolen by a farmer looking to save a few bucks.

And the Wickenses might have a framed picture of Timothy McVeigh on their wall because they were nuts. Simple as that. It didn’t mean they were up to anything particularly sinister.

And Alice Holland’s refusal to kick a gay rights group out of the fall fair parade could be expected to produce some nasty crank calls. People were always tough when they were anonymous. It didn’t have to mean the mayor was in any real danger.

With any luck, Dad’s ankle was nearly healed. Maybe, by the next day, or the day after that, he’d be well enough to get back to running the camp on his own.

I was ready to go home.

I grabbed a seat in the waiting room and was glancing through a hunting magazine that I cared nothing about when Bob reappeared. His hands were wrapped in gauze, and he had a couple of small bandages on his cheeks, and a third on his forehead.

“Ready?” I said.

“Ready,” Bob said.

He said nothing the whole way home, and once we were back at the camp, he said a simple “Thanks” as he got out of the truck and walked over to his cabin.

“You want to come over, have a drink, something to eat?” I asked.

Bob shook his head no and went inside.

There were tuna sandwiches on the table when I walked into Dad’s cabin. “I didn’t do a thing,” Dad said. “Lawrence here made lunch.”

I suddenly realized I was starving, and sat at the table and practically inhaled the sandwich.

Lawrence said, “Your father’s kinda been filling me in. The stuff you already told me, plus some other stuff.”

“I don’t know whether there’s anything here for you to do or not,” I said. “I’m sorry if I dragged you up here for nothing.”

“Well, from the sounds of it, these folks renting the farmhouse from your dad are bad news, no matter how you look at it. I think we start by trying to find out more about them.”

I shrugged. I just didn’t know anymore.

“I do know one thing that hasn’t changed,” I said. “And that’s May Wickens, and her boy, Jeffrey. They still need to get away from her father, Timmy. No boy should be growing up, getting indoctrinated in the kind of hate that’s preached up there by that man.”

“So this Timmy, he hates fags and niggers and Jews and probably the New York Philharmonic as well,” Lawrence Jones said thoughtfully.

“Yeah. And he decides what lessons his daughter should teach his grandson.”

He pursed his lips, nodded. “Doesn’t sound to me like a very enlightened curriculum.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked him, taking another bite of my sandwich and feeling a bit apprehensive.

“We’ll see,” Lawrence said.

When I finished my lunch, I went into Dad’s study to see whether Sarah had gotten back to me.

I signed on to the mail program. Bingo.

Sarah wrote:

When are you coming home? Angie and Paul are starting to drive me crazy. No, I take that back. They’ve always driven me crazy, but when you’re home, at least you can take some of the brunt of it. I’ve spent $60 on taxis just so I won’t have to referee all these fights over the car. I don’t want to give you something else to worry about, but the dishwasher is making a really weird noise, it goes chugga-chugga halfway through the cycle, sounds like there’s a cat in there. The dishes are coming out dirty, which means they have to be done by hand, which means I have to ask Paul or Angie to do them in the sink, which sets off World War Three because they each think it’s the other person’s turn. And while I’m on the subject of cats (see dishwasher, above), both the kids are talking about getting a dog. Where did that come from? I don’t want any part of it.

They’re making some noises around the offices about when you’re coming back. There’s a
Star Trek
convention in town this week and the features editor figured you’d be the perfect guy to cover it, which I happen to disagree with. I say you send someone who DOESN’T know the first thing about
Star Trek
, and can take a look at these sci-fi nuts, no offense intended, and offer an unbiased perspective, but what the hell do I know.

Now, your requests. I made some calls about women’s shelters. A place where this woman and her kid could go. I’ve got a contact at Kelly’s Place, the one that was named in honor of that woman whose husband killed her with a crossbow. They’ve got a spot, if you think she’s interested.

And on the other thing, the picture you sent me, of Orville Thorne, the police chief. Nice fish, by the way. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this guy before, but if you’re wondering why he looks so familiar, maybe you should go stand in front of a mirror. The guy looks just like you. You could be brothers, for crying out loud.

All for now. Love, Sarah.

I stared out the window, and into the woods, for a good five minutes.