Ethan turned to see a small man with a wizened face and short gray hair smiling at him from behind half-moon spectacles. Professor Middleton stepped into the laboratory, taking off his spectacles and polishing the lenses on his shirt as he examined the monstrosity looming above them.
‘It’s a Regalecus glesne, otherwise known as the giant oarfish,’ he explained. ‘This one was caught in the nets of a trawler off the coast of California in 1996 and acquired by me for the university. They can grow twice as large, although none that size have been captured. Yet.’
Jarvis introduced Middleton to Ethan and Lopez. The professor was a world-recognized expert in the subject of cryptozoology.
‘I thought that cryptozoology wasn’t considered a valid scientific discipline,’ Ethan said. ‘Pseudo-science, I think biologists call it.’
Middleton smiled ruefully as he replaced his spectacles and pointed up at the enormous oarfish above them.
‘Do you think that’s pseudo-science?’ he challenged, but his blue eyes were bright with delight. ‘Mr. Warner, throughout history people have recorded sightings of creatures so bizarre that the witnesses were dismissed as hoaxers or drunks. It has become common discipline to dismiss anything considered too out of the ordinary by science. Solid, incontrovertible evidence is required before any self-respecting researcher will even begin to consider the existence of a new species that defies conventional description.’
Jarvis took up Middleton’s line.
‘Over the past couple of decades there have been some studies conducted into the existence of creatures that used to be the stuff of myth. The reason that the scientific community has begun to embrace the possibility of these animals being real is the ubiquity of video cameras on cellphones. For the first time in history, people can actually prove that what they said they saw was real.’
‘Or not,’ Middleton cautioned. ‘Many honest people have been genuinely fooled by natural phenomena or misidentification of ordinary creatures under unusual lighting conditions or at great distance. That said, sometimes what they see is truly terrifying even when it’s not a new species.’
‘Such as?’ Lopez asked, intrigued.
‘Well,’ Middleton shrugged, ‘a few years back somebody claimed to have footage of a giant black beast running across the wilderness in Dartmoor, England. The footage was analyzed by experts and was confirmed to be a rare black lion, an adult male and a big one at that. Obviously it’s not a species native to that island, but you’re still talking about a four-hundred-pound killing machine running wild out there. You can understand where the legends of a beast roaming the moors came from. It’s not hard to imagine people being hunted down and killed by a giant African cat.’
‘But how could it have gotten there?’ Ethan asked.
‘The Kings of England often kept big cats in the Tower of London as spectator attractions and symbols of wealth and power,’ Jarvis said. ‘Many of them escaped over the years. There was also a craze in the seventies for keeping exotic big cats as pets. When the government there changed the laws to prevent people owning dangerous animals, the owners turned their animals loose into the wild. Of course there weren’t enough of them to maintain a true breeding population else they’d have been documented by now. But individual animals within huge tracts of wilderness and with an ample food supply could survive for years.’
Ethan glanced uncertainly at Jarvis. ‘Why are you telling us about this?’
‘You’re being sent to Idaho to interview a man named Jesse MacCarthy, who is currently being held by the Sheriff’s Department on suspicion of homicide.’
‘Who did he kill?’ Lopez asked.
‘Well, that’s the question: did he actually kill anyone?’ Jarvis said. ‘Jesse MacCarthy’s case was picked up by the FBI because Jesse claimed his brother Cletus had been killed in the forests outside of Riggins, Idaho, along with a Ranger by the name of Coltz. Because Riggins sits near the border of Oregon, Montana and Washington State, and Jesse was so incoherent when he was found, the sheriff couldn’t figure out for sure where Cletus was when he died. They had to assume the case might have crossed borders so they called the Bureau in.’
‘Which is where you come in, right?’ Lopez suggested.
‘The DIA picked up the case after the FBI rejected it. Turns out that not only did Cletus MacCarthy die in the woods, but a third brother, Randy, was found hanged in his garage the following morning. The Bureau’s agents on site decided that Jesse must have killed both of his brothers in some catastrophic mental breakdown. Apparently he was suffering panic attacks for about twenty-four hours after he was found, so the mental instability figures.’
‘Why would the FBI drop it so quickly?’ Ethan puzzled. ‘Two deaths in twenty-four hours in the same family is suspicious, but I take it there’s no smoking gun tying Jesse to the killings otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Not exactly a smoking gun,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Jesse has claimed repeatedly to local law enforcement and the Bureau that he knew nothing of Randy’s death. But he also insisted that his other brother, Cletus, whose body has not yet been found, was killed by a monster in the forests.’
The room remained silent for a moment.
‘A monster,’ Lopez echoed flatly.
‘His exact words,’ Jarvis confirmed.
Ethan thought for a moment. ‘There’s got to be more to it than that.’
‘Not for the Bureau,’ Jarvis said. ‘But when I got the case I took a better look at it. There are several things that don’t add up. Randy’s estimated time of death is stated as being the same time that Jesse was supposedly out in the forests. Of course he could have lied about where he was, killing both brothers in the same time frame, except that when he was found his clothes were torn to shreds and he was on the verge of cardiac arrest. The doctors who treated him diagnosed extreme dehydration and exhaustion, which backed up his story.’
‘Which was?’
‘That Cletus was killed somewhere near a place called Fox Creek in the mountains to the east of Riggins. It’s almost twenty miles away from the town through severe terrain, and Jesse swears his brother was killed the previous evening.’
Ethan got it immediately.
‘He ran twenty miles, at night, through the mountains?’
‘Non-stop,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘Whatever he saw, it scared him enough to flee so far and so fast that it almost killed him.’
8
In his time with the United States Marines, Ethan had been put through some severe physical challenges that had tested the limits of his endurance. That was just part of a soldier’s life, accepted by all who served. But for a civilian with no prior history of extreme physical endurance to run for twelve hours across wild ground was an almost superhuman feat.
‘So Jesse gets back to civilization,’ Ethan said, ‘finds somebody and tells them a monster killed his brother.’
Jarvis nodded.
‘He’s taken to hospital, but after a few hours the Sheriff’s Office arrests him in connection with his brother’s death. No motive had been found but Jesse won’t shift from his story, which has been digging him further into trouble.’
‘You want us to go in and figure it out,’ Lopez guessed. ‘You really sure this guy’s worth all the trouble? What’s that scientific rule — Occam’s Razor? You don’t introduce one mystery to explain another. It’s more likely that Jesse killed his brothers and concocted a crazy story to throw the police off the scent.’
Ethan’s gaze drifted up to the writhing skeletal coils above his head.
‘True,’ he agreed, ‘but Idaho is big bear country. Why invent a story about a monster when he could just have said a bear got his brother? And if Jesse did murder them both then why come back at all? Why not stay out in the woods a while, then come back as if nothing’s happened?’