“Pretty much,” Geoffrey said. “My dad was Mr. Fetterman’s animal curator. They got Balthazar when he was really tiny and I was about ten. We grew up together and I helped Dad train him and we’d do shows together. People liked seeing us, a bear and a little boy. After Dad died, Mr. Fetterman kept me on. I lived in his wife’s old sewing room—Mrs. Fetterman had been dead a year or so before Dad went. I took over with Balthazar. He’s a trained bear but he’s not a pet,” he warned and Anna noted he shot her as severe a glance as he did Rory. “He’s a wild animal. They’ve got their own rules and you can’t go around breaking them. Balthazar can’t be scared or hurt or teased. He doesn’t understand it. That’s why he hates Mr. McCaskil so much. When he smells him he knows something bad is happening and he goes back to bear rules to save himself.”
“Fucking menace,” McCaskil growled.
Balthazar growled back and McCaskil shut up.
“How do you tell him what to do?” Rory asked.
“Lots of ways. He responds to a few verbal commands. He’ll sit down and play dead to whistles. Some tricks he taught himself and just does them for fun when he’s happy. He likes to juggle—kind of play catch really—with pinecones. Sometimes he just starts in to dance even when there’s no music.”
“I guess I’ll pay closer attention to bizarre bear management reports in the future,” Joan said, and Anna laughed.
Geoffrey went on, “For the show, Dad taught him to growl and stand tall and charge by different numbers of raps on pieces of wood. He picked the wood because the noise was natural and it would seem more real.”
“We found one of your clacking sticks,” Anna said. “After the night you and Balthazar tore up our camp.”
Geoffrey looked away, fixing his eyes on the flashlight between them. “I’m sorry about that. I just wanted you to leave. Balthazar got into some kind of trap thing. A tree with wire around. It took me fifteen minutes to get him to leave. He’d got hold of a little thing that smelled like cherry candy up in the little tree and wouldn’t stop playing with it. I figured it was one of those traps you’d told me about that day we met. I was afraid you’d find out somehow.”
“Ah,” Joan said. “And here I blamed the last team for hanging the love scent too low. Who could know?” She smiled.
Geoffrey continued with his story, “I was trying to teach Balthazar to dig lilies around there. We’d tried other places but there were other bears and they scared him. I thought if we did that—you know, to your camp—you’d be scared away.”
Joan reached out. She must have thought better of touching Geoffrey because her hand stopped partway. “You can’t scare away researchers by letting them know there’s a subject in the neighborhood,” she said.
“I didn’t know that then.”
Joan boiled more water. More hot drinks were made. Out of a sense of duty, Anna made a cup of cocoa for McCaskil. When they’d settled again, she said to Geoffrey Micou, “Why don’t you tell us about Balthazar killing that woman?”
Rory gasped audibly. McCaskil laughed. “They’re going to shoot that killer bear,” he said. “He’d’ve been better off with me. Maybe he’d’ve run off and lived.” Geoffrey covered his face with both hands, a gesture both theatrical and genuine.
“Anna!” Joan scolded her for insensitivity. To Rory she said, “Are you okay with this?”
Anna had forgotten the dead woman was Rory’s stepmother. Guilt nudged her but curiosity was stronger and she didn’t withdraw the request.
“I’m okay with it,” Rory said. Joan looked at him hard trying to see past strange shadows and high school bravado. Apparently she was satisfied.
“The woman who died was Rory’s stepmother,” she explained to Geoffrey.
The hands over the boy’s face crawled up into his hair to become fists, strands of brown spiking out between the fingers. Whatever Micou felt floated to the surface where it could be easily seen by anyone with eyes. Perhaps growing up brother to a bear had denied him humanity’s greatest defensive weapon: the lie.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The words squeezed out through a throat full of tears.
“It’s okay,” the older boy said. “I’ve got my dad.”
Fleetingly Anna wished Lester Van Slyke had been there to hear Rory say that. Not that Lester deserved it. Realistically it would probably not be long before he compromised his son’s respect with another self-assassinating relationship.
“Go on,” Anna said.
“Go ahead with your story,” Joan repeated, with more gentleness and better results.
“Balthazar and me had done your camp to scare you away. I knew you’d gone off,” he said to Rory. “When Balthazar smashed your tent it rolled like a tumbleweed and we knew you weren’t in it. That’s why I let him play with it. We wouldn’t have hurt anybody. Anyway, afterward we were both wired and shaky and ran back to the trail. I thought we should get a ways away before we hid out. We couldn’t be anywhere there were people when it got light. Hide out till you guys left and we could come back for the lilies.
“The lady was coming down the trail just as it was getting light and I dove for cover and started whistling for Balthazar but he was up tall and sniffing and growling like she was some big scary something. He’s used to people. I’ve only see him do that when—”
“When Mr. McCaskil is around?” Anna asked.
“That’s right. He’s scared of him.”
“This lady was wearing Bill McCaskil’s coat,” Anna said. “She took it from his tent before she started out that morning.”
“Stupid slut,” McCaskil said.
“Watch it,” Anna retorted.
“That’s it then.” Geoffrey turned to Balthazar. “I was worried about you,” he told the bear. To the people waiting he said, “This whole thing has been stressful for Balthazar. I mean, I’d never been out of Florida but Balthazar’s never been anywhere. The other bears scare him. Deer scare him. He almost ran off that cliff up by the army moth place. He’s never been in a world that had cliffs in its floor. I was afraid maybe it was too much for him He’d been off his feed and some of his hair fell out. I thought maybe when he saw that lady he had a nervous breakdown. You’re okay, pal,” he said to his friend. “She was just wearing Mr. McCaskil’s coat.”
Balthazar exonerated, he turned back to his human audience. “She started taking flash pictures, pop, pop, pop. He’s used to pictures but I think in the low light like that and him being already upset and all—I don’t know, maybe it blinded him or something. He started roaring and walking toward her on his hind legs. I know by now Balth isn’t himself and I’m out yelling and whistling like mad. This lady keeps popping and getting closer and I’m yelling for her to stop and Balth to stop and nobody’s listening to me. Then Balth gets almost on top of her and she pulls out a little can like that stuff you had.” Geoffrey nodded at Anna. “She squirted him and he just went nuts—he swung and her head snapped over. Way over. God.”
His hands came down out of his hair where they’d been pulling at it during the telling and covered his face again.
The riddle “What was soft enough not to cut but could be swung with enough force to sever a woman’s spinal cord” was answered.
“But her face was cut off—” Rory began.
Geoffrey started to cry, silently, the tears working their way through his fingers to paint pale tracks in the grime on the back of his hands.
Anna quieted Rory with a gesture. Joan patted him on the knee to let him know she didn’t mean to be so abrupt.
“Balthazar’s claws left marks on her face,” Anna said.
Geoffrey nodded. “You’d’ve come looking for a killer bear. You’d’ve found us.”
For a minute Anna sat sipping tea already grown cold. A fifteen-year-old boy dragging the body into hiding then cutting away the flesh, probably with his pocket knife, weeping as he wept now at the memory of it. She doubted Timmy would have gone half the distance for Lassie.
“You put the—ah—clawed pieces in a tree after.”
“I didn’t want anybody to see or you’d know but I was afraid if I buried it another bear might dig it up. You know, get a taste for it. Then get himself into trouble.”
Geoffrey recovered from the tears. Anna suspected his life at Fetterman’s Adventure Trails had had its share of life and death. He’d get over Carolyn’s. He scrubbed his face until the tears had been smeared around.
“You took her water bottle and the film,” Anna said. “I can understand the film, why the water?”
“I didn’t mean to. It had fallen out of her pack on the trail. I found it after. I didn’t want to—to go back. So I took it. Then when I saw him—you, Rory—and I knew you’d run off without anything. I left it by you to drink.”
“You took my sweatshirt,” Rory said, sounding more honored than offended.
“I’m sorry,” Geoffrey said. “My shirt had stuff on it. Blood. And I’d tore it up to make a rope so I could hang the bag with the . . . you know. I thought if hikers caught sight of me with no shirt they’d remember me.”
“You left me water, too,” Anna said. “Up on Cathedral Peak after Mr. McCaskil here tried to kill me.”
Geoffrey nodded. “I’d read a person can live a long time without food but not without water. I’m sorry about the bottle. Balthazar got to playing with it. We’ll buy you a new one.”
He looked across the upward beam of light at Anna, his clear hazel eyes as old as stone.
“What will happen to Balthazar now?” he asked.
“Nothing bad,” Anna promised.
“Hah.” McCaskil.
“Nothing bad,” she repeated. “I swear that on the worthless life our prisoner.”
24
Anna came to
look back on that night with the odd dreaming reality with which she remembered much of her childhood. A time when everything was new and hence nothing was strange. Miracles were commonplace and, so, unremarkable. The rules, not yet pounded into the fabric of the mind like great rusted nails, were easily suspended.
A circus of
arrest and rescue came to them the following morning, masterfully planned and efficiently ringmastered by Chief Ranger Harry Ruick. Buck was with him and Gary, both armed with Weatherby Magnum bolt-action rifles—enough “stopping power” for a bear the size of Balthazar. They’d need it if anything went haywire, Anna thought, because they’d have to shoot through the person of Geoffrey Micou before they got to the shaggy body of his brother. Anna turned over the thirty-ought-six McCaskil had donated. It wouldn’t stop a bear but would do a lot of damage.
The shortest route out was down McDonald Creek, the western half of a large loop trail that started and ended at Packers Roost. Though her knee was bothering her, she eschewed horseback and walked most of the way out. She wanted to be near Balthazar. She found unending delight in the play of sun and shadow over his fur, the lumbering grace of his walk, the sharp accents his long claws made on his tracks in the dust. Because of the potential for problems, Harry closed the trail to visitors, citing the uninteresting excuse of dead elk near it causing a potential bear hazard. Balthazar’s trailer and the pickup to pull it had been taken out of impound and would be waiting at the end of the trail.
At Packers Roost the bear and the boy were separated. Balthazar was taken to a holding pen loaned by a West Glacier entrepreneur who ran a Bear Country attraction where tourists could see black bears.
Bill McCaskil was taken to the county jail to be held until formal charges and setting bail were arranged for. With his list of aliases and a charge of kidnapping researchers and attempting to murder a federal law enforcement officer, he would probably await trial behind bars.
Rory agreed he had had enough of the DNA project and would be going home to Seattle with his dad. Joan promised to clear everything up with Earthwatch.
Geoffrey Micou proved a bit of a problem. He was just turned sixteen, a minor and an orphan. Mr. Fetterman had taken care of him after his father’s death but he hadn’t bothered to make the boy go to school. Geoffrey dropped out in the seventh grade. He was extremely bright and had taught himself a great deal but was officially truant. Montana Child and Family Services were brought in. Though Joan fought to keep him with her at least until his future was settled, he had been spirited away.
Anna was left with the promise she had made that nothing bad would happen.
For three days she and Joan and Harry contacted zoos and research facilities. Grown Alaskan grizzlies with Balthazar’s peculiar history were not in demand. No one wanted him. He could not survive on his own. Despite the goodwill surrounding the magnificent beast, Anna became afraid the only solution would be a Final Solution. Then the trust of a boy and a huge chunk of magic would be ripped out of a world already short on both.
Anna flew out of Kalispell headed for Dallas knowing she had failed. Solving a murder case, catching a felon—these things were necessary on some level but in essence mundane. The world was not bettered by the knowledge that Carolyn Van Slyke died by accident. Perhaps Florida’s finances were marginally safer by the removal of one con man from the premises, but there would be others to take his place. At his core, William McCaskil was not a violent man, Anna believed. He was a greedy immoral man pushed to violence by his own fears. The thirty-ought-six he’d said he bought for self-defense. Anna figured he meant to use it to threaten Geoffrey: ‘Do as I say or the bear gets it.’ Until Geoffrey put Balthazar back into the transport trailer for him, McCaskil had nothing. Whether or not, no longer panicked, he would have killed Geoffrey, Anna would never know. She didn’t think so. Geoffrey was no real threat to him without Balthazar.
Her failure had been in the most important element of the crime: saving the wonderful bear.
Back in Mississippi, she prayed to various gods known to have a soft spot for animals and felt a fool and a hypocrite for doing so. She was surly to her field rangers, avoided her boyfriend and was unmerciful to speeders.
On her fourth day back she received a Federal Express package from Joan. Anna had been praying to the wrong gods. Help had come in the form of Glacier’s former superintendent, now serving in Yosemite. The park service is a small town. Glacier’s old superintendent was friends with the superintendent of Canyonlands. Outside the park, near Moab, Utah, lived a man who trained most of the large and dangerous animals Hollywood used in its movies. He would take Balthazar. That was the good news. The great news was that he would take Geoffrey Micou as well, as an apprentice.