Impasse (23 page)

Blake didn't congratulate him. Instead he handed Stu his hunting knife. “You caught it, you clean it.”

The blade was bright and well honed, but the handle was a worn hunk of wood, obviously a heavily used homemade replacement for the original.

Stu hesitated. “Since this is our dinner, wouldn't it be best if you did it? I don't want to screw up the meat.”

“You won't.”

“Do you have gloves?”

“I don't want to get my leathers all bloody.”

“But my hands—”

“You can
wash
your hands.” Blake pointed to a nearby stream.

The incision was made laterally around the midsection, the impossibly sharp knife sliding through fur and flesh without any sawing back and forth. Then, at Blake's insistence, Stu took hold of either side of the parted skin and pulled forward and back. The forward fur came loose more easily than Stu could have imagined, and he peeled it away from the muscle and meat with one smooth motion. It felt eerily like pulling a small dress up over its head. The haunches were tougher, but the same principle applied, and soon he had a reasonable facsimile of a meat counter display with an apron of fur hanging from each end. He severed the feet and head along with the fur using the hatchet, and when it looked more like a skinny chicken ready for roasting than a murdered mammal he felt much more comfortable.

Gutting the thing was the worst. Stu had to pull out its steaming organs, entrails, and even waste pellets with his bare hands. As the warmth of the rabbit's life poured across his palms and fingers, he had to fight the urge to gag.

Pussy move. Don't do it.
Stu discovered that rinsing the carcass in the stream while he removed the guts made the process less messy. They floated away as he dug them out. Although he still had the stomach-wrenching task of ripping them free. Blake was watching him, as if waiting to see if he would chuck. But Stu kept the rising bile under control. He felt good about it; they had a week on the trail ahead of them, and he was already gutting prey while keeping his lunch down.

“Did you know you can eat the eyeballs for water?” Blake said.

And up it came.

*   *   *

They pressed on day after day at a pace Stu thought unreasonable for a recently ill attorney who could have stood to lose a few. And he wondered if Blake would have stopped at all had they not spotted something even Stu knew was very strange.

“What is that?” Stu said.

“New one on me,” Blake grunted.

Stu squinted to see from their perch atop one of the field's small hills. Below, two narrow rivers slammed together at a right angle and, fifty yards downstream, the water poured over a wide four-foot drop. On the bank just below their merger lay a one-man mini-tractor of some sort, tilted onto its side like a neglected child's toy. It had two tracks, but no blade or bucket, and the cab was completely enclosed in an awkward square of Plexiglas.

“River restoration project?” Stu guessed.

“Don't need no restoration way out here. Everything's as natural as it gets.”

“Someone building a cabin?”

“By a river with a meandering bed. Doubt it.”

“What's a meandering bed?”

“The course of the river changes year to year, depending on runoff. Next year this river might be clear on the other side of the field.”

“Well, whoever it is, it's someone who might be able to call home. Anyone who can get a tractor out here probably has communication with the outside world. Let's get down there.”

“Fools rush in.”

“We don't have to rush. We can walk.”

“I'm still trying to figure out what it is.”

“And the solution, it occurs to me, would be to go down there and see.”

“It's not normal for me to run into someone way out here. Let alone twice. A lot of people come north so they
don't
have to run into other people.”

“You thinking pot growers?”

“Don't know what I'm thinking, but when I think it, you'll be the first person I tell.”

Stu held up the .30-06 to get a closer look, then remembered he was wearing a mesh hat. He pulled the netting up, put his eye to the scope, and scanned the riverbank.

Blake snorted. “Hope you're not gonna shoot, because if you hold a gun loose against your shoulder like that, the kick will leave you a bruise to remember.”

“I'm just looking,” Stu said. “But thanks.”

“Here, let me have a gander.”

Blake took the gun. Stu noticed that the big man snugged it up tight against his shoulder, and he felt a little stupid.

“What do you see?”

“A Kubota KC 250,” he said without hesitation.

“Wow. How did you know that?”

“It's painted on the side.” He kept his eye in the scope. “The tracks are filled in with dried mud, so it's been sittin' there a few days.”

“What do you think?”

“Nice piece of equipment. Probably cost as much as a new car. Nobody would leave it out here tipped over in the mud beside an unpredictable river with winter coming. And this ain't the right place for growing weed, unless they're building a greenhouse. And there ain't been any fill or grade work done along this stretch of water that I can see.”

Blake rose and handed the gun back to Stu. “Keep that handy, but point it up or down so you don't shoot me.”

He strode down the hill, leaving Stu to catch up. They approached the scene cautiously. Stu noticed dark fluid leaking from the underside of the tractor. Something brightly colored littered the ground on the far side.

“This place feels bad,” Blake said as they drew near.

“What do you mean?”

“Just my nose telling me something's wrong. People button up their camps and projects when fall comes. This is … unbuttoned.”

They swung around in front of the Kubota. The scattered colors littering the ground were cloth.

“What are those, rags?” Stu asked.

“Look, the door is broken.”

The Plexiglas panel that served as the entry to the cab hung askew on its hinges. The gun wouldn't be necessary, Stu thought; the cab was empty. Blake leaned inside, then he backed out, grim-faced.

“What?”

Blake jerked his thumb at the cab and stepped away. “Better see for yourself.”

Stu inched forward and peeked inside. More dark fluid was smeared across the floor of the cab, though it had dried after a couple of days' exposure to the air. And a video camera was mounted on the dash. The camera was switched on but dead, its battery clearly drained. Stu wasn't sure what he was seeing, but the bad feeling Blake sensed was beginning to creep up on him, too. From the evidence at hand, it was clear the machine had been abandoned suddenly. But it wasn't until he spotted the red handprint on the seat that his heart leaped into his throat.

“Oh God…”

He yanked his head out and stumbled backward. Blake caught him. Stu shook him off but continued to stare at the ruined Kubota. As he did, other clues came into focus. There were long scratches on the Plexiglas door he hadn't noticed before. The devastation wrought upon the hardware store hinges was mighty; they were twisted almost beyond recognition, with one galvanized metal bolt torn completely from its guides.

“Th-there was a man inside,” Stu stammered.

“There
was
…” Blake picked up a piece of cloth that Stu now saw was a scrap of clothing, its material not much different from that of the Great Beyond jacket he wore himself. Blake circled the Kubota, shaking his head, and finally pointed to a huge but vague imprint in a drier patch of earth. “Grizzly.”

“A bear?”

“Maybe more than one.”

Stu shuddered. “It broke through the safety cage?”

“It broke through a homemade door on a box full of stupid. Probably no tougher than you or me cracking open a walnut to get at the meat. My question is: Where the hell was his gun?”

Stu tentatively pushed the door wider and risked another look in the cab. There was no rifle or pistol. It was possible the driver had shot the bear and fled, but it was unlikely that it was the bear's blood inside the Kubota.

“What the hell was he doing?”

Blake joined Stu at the door and pointed. “I think the answers to all our questions might be right there.” He pointed at the dash cam.

A pouch inside the cab contained spare batteries. Blake popped out the dead one and snapped a fresh one into the camera. Stu paced, watching the field, the .30-06 held at his hip. Blake stopped and turned to calmly push the barrel down toward the ground, then he hit play.

The screen was small, and the audio was tinny. They had to crowd together to watch as it played raw footage. The camera panned left and right across the field, then up and down the Y-shaped river. Stu winced as the male voice began to narrate. The camera swung to show a healthy-looking middle-aged man with a big smile.
Middle-aged,
Stu thought.
My age.
The man proudly described the modifications he'd made to his Kubota, “just as a precaution.” He explained that the Plexiglas was a half-inch thick, and the roll bars were steel. The doomed hinges went unmentioned.

“Obviously not a handyman,” Blake grunted. “Probably in school his whole life.”

As if on cue, the narrator introduced himself as a researcher with a doctorate in environmental studies. His first name was Thomas, his last something Irish that Stu didn't want to remember. The shallow falls were an area frequented by bears, he said. The excitement in his voice when the first bear appeared was heartbreaking.

“They're here!” he cried happily. “Aren't they magnificent creatures?”

But food was thin this year, he explained. Not a lot to satisfy hungry bears fattening themselves up for hibernation. He babbled on about fat percentages in their diet, and when the big female came sniffing toward the Kubota, he greeted her, describing her investigative behavior with glee and remarking on how fantastic the footage would be. “What a stroke of luck!”

His concern began to show when she put her paws on the glass and snuffled his scent at the air hole. But it was the dramatized concern of a reality TV actor. He wasn't really scared. Not yet. Then she started pushing, and the Kubota began to rock. The shaking of the camera testified to the violence with which she was soon rattling the vehicle, but Thomas's voice didn't crack until she found the seam in the door and slid her heavy claws into it. “She's testing the door,” the Irishman said. Those were his last narrative words before Stu heard the hinges squeal and snap. The remainder of the sounds Thomas made were involuntary expressions of surprise and terror. And, finally, screams.

By the time Blake switched it off, Stu found that he was sweating.

“Are we in danger here?”

“If you live among predators for long, they will eventually eat you. But even you respected nature enough to bring a gun. We'll be all right. But we should move along; at least one bear in the area has a taste for human flesh now.”

“Shouldn't we find the body?”

“Naw. They ate him. Might have buried the leftovers around here, but I don't wanna arm-wrestle them for 'em.”

“What about the video?”

“Might be worth something. Them reality TV shows aren't above broadcasting some poor sap's demise. They'd probably put this on one of those nature programs—
America's Most Ferocious
or some such.”

Stu frowned, then cocked the camera to his ear and flung it into the river. “No, they won't.”

Blake nodded respectfully.

They found Thomas's camp. To Stu's disappointment, there was no communications equipment. Blake salvaged the food, which Stu found ghoulish, but he left the money in a fat wallet they found inside the tent, along with Thomas's identification and other minor valuables. Stu wondered aloud if someone might be coming to get the Irishman; the Kubota was obviously dropped in by helicopter. Blake told him he could stay if he wanted.

“You can stay in that flimsy, expensive-looking tent right there by the feeding grounds.”

They left soon after that and hiked in silence for a time. Blake still seemed intent on putting in his ten miles, despite the interruption. It was Stu who finally spoke. “Damned tragedy,” he whispered reverently, as though something needed to be said.

“No one forced him to come here,” Blake mumbled.

“He came to study them.”

“Bears are dangerous animals. One of the few things on the planet that thinks of us as food. You plop yourself down in the middle of 'em, you're not studying; you're testing yourself. Man against fucking nature.”

 

CHAPTER 27

It had taken two days to declare Stu missing. It took two weeks to declare the search over. And it had been two more trying months for Katherine since then. Clay explained that it could take up to seven years to declare a missing spouse legally dead, but she wasn't required to sit around waiting to settle his affairs.

“In fact, you shouldn't. It's unhealthy. Besides, you don't have seven years. You'll be in your mid-forties if you wait it out, and that's a bit old to start over.”

The odds Stu was alive were almost zero. She had come to grips with that reality. The Yukon Tours pilot had even volunteered to make another trip out after the official search ended. He'd come back with nothing, and his final flight served as the last nail in hope's coffin for her.

Clay tried to take responsibility for Stu's disappearance—the trip had been his idea—and it was tempting to place blame. But Katherine pardoned him. Clay would have gone along too if they hadn't lured Dugan into a rushed meeting, and she could as easily blame herself for that. Besides, if she alienated Clay, she'd have to put her life back together entirely alone.

Katherine wandered through the house, packing up photos and emptying Stu's closets. As the spaces opened up, the rooms looked different, and, without evidence of a man in the house, she wasn't sure who she was. For two months she'd been a ghost, just drifting aimlessly, sleeping, eating, exercising, sleeping again. But that needed to end. She needed direction and purpose, an identity. Before, she'd always been Stu Stark's wife. Now she would be …