Ethan frowned. ‘You smelled something?’
‘Worst thing ever,’ Jesse confirmed. ‘Was like a soccer team’s used kit rubbed in crap then left in a steam room for a month. I nearly puked, it made my eyes water up, it was so bad. Then…’ He trailed off. ‘Then it broke cover and went for the ranger.’
‘Describe it,’ Lopez encouraged him. ‘As if it was a person.’
Jesse swallowed thickly, his hand gripping Lopez’s tightly enough that his knuckles showed white beneath the harsh glare of the lights.
‘Big, way bigger than a man or even a bear. Russet-brown fur, and it walked on two legs the whole time except when it charged down the hillside after Cleet. God, it moved so fast, and it screamed.’ Jesse stumbled over his words as fear poisoned his veins anew. ‘I’ve never heard a noise like it. It echoed down the valley and was so loud it hurt my ears.’
‘This thing was standing when it hit the ranger,’ Ethan said. ‘Can you tell us how tall it was?’
‘Nine feet,’ Jesse replied through his repressed sobs as he ran a wiry hand through his thick black hair, ‘maybe ten. Fucking hell, man, it was huge, made the ranger look like a little kid. Then it hit him. His head came clean off and went into the creek and I freaked. I just froze and couldn’t move. Cleet tried to protect me and fired at it. Hit it straight in the guts with a .308 slug from no more than fifteen yards — might as well have been at point-blank range.’ Jesse slowly shook his head. ‘If he’d have shot the elk that close it would have been dead before it hit th’ground. Man, it just made the thing madder. It went after him, hurled him into the river and broke his neck.’
Jesse went abruptly silent as he realized perhaps for the first time that his brother was truly dead.
‘Then what did it do?’ Lopez asked softly.
‘Beat ’im up real bad,’ Jesse uttered. ‘Was shaking him about and breaking all his bones. Didn’t care that he was dead already. Then it came at me.’
Ethan leaned forward. ‘But you got away.’
Jesse shook his head, but his entire body was shaking just the same as he replied in staccato tones, his words broken by fear.
‘No, I ran but it caught me just as easy as if I’d stayed right where I was.’ He looked at Ethan in confusion. ‘Then it let me go. It had me, was standing right over me. I must’ve passed out or something, and when I came around it was just walking away like I wasn’t worth the bother.’
Ethan leaned back and looked over at Earl Carpenter.
‘That sounds like a conscious decision,’ he said. ‘Not the kind of thing a bear would do.’
‘Bear probably wouldn’t kill more than once out of rage either,’ Earl admitted. ‘Sure, they take hikers from time to time and chew on them a bit, but this doesn’t sound like a bear attack.’
‘It was no bear,’ Jesse snapped. ‘Cleet was a fine shot, one of the best. If it had been a bear he’d have killed it long before it reached us. All I can think is that he was as scared straight as I was and didn’t make a clean shot.’
Ethan glanced across at Earl.
‘If there’s some dangerous animal out there in the mountains, wouldn’t the ranger’s office have posted warnings by now or sent teams out to track this thing down? Technically, it’s a man-eater, right?’
‘So are bears,’ Earl replied. ‘This is big bear country, Mr. Warner, and those critters don’t have much issue with hunting humans, especially unwary tourists who dump trash around their camp sites. It’s virtually a welcome sign for a hungry bear.’
‘They’ve been known to smash their way into cars,’ Lopez agreed, ‘because somebody’s left a window open and food on display inside.’
‘No way any ranger’s office could track all the bears at once, much less prevent them from crossing paths with people in the woods,’ Earl said.
Jesse MacCarthy looked at Ethan, his fists clenched and tears staining his cheeks.
‘Like I said, this weren’t no bear. It’s smarter, bigger and more dangerous, and it sure don’t like people.’ Jesse leaned in toward Lopez. ‘Whatever it is, don’t be goin’ after it. Get the goddamned marines out there, they might stand a chance.’
‘Would you be willing to lead us out there, Jesse,’ Lopez asked, ‘maybe help us track this thing and—’
Jesse recoiled from her, the cuffs on his wrist snapping taut. ‘No way,’ he choked, ‘no fucking way. I’m not goin’ out there ever again.’ He looked up at Earl, panic in his eyes. ‘Don’t make me.’
Earl unlocked Jesse’s cuffs and led him back toward the holding cells as Ethan and Lopez made their way out to the station’s lobby.
‘What do you think?’ Lopez asked him as they stepped outside.
The sun was out again, the soaring hills around the Salmon River looking like an idyllic haven for nature lovers, not the shadowy domain of some murderous beast.
‘Tough to know. We’ve still got one missing body, that of Cletus MacCarthy, but from what Jesse just said that could have been smashed to pieces and eaten by now.’
Earl Carpenter stepped out of the station office and joined them, pulling a Lucky from a packet in his shirt pocket and offering one to Ethan and Lopez. They both declined. Earl lit the cigarette and puffed a billowing cloud of blue smoke into the air.
‘So, what you want to do now?’
‘I want to talk to Jesse’s mother,’ Ethan said. ‘There’s got to be something we can follow up on here. Two brothers die on the same night, one out in the woods and one in his own garage. I don’t care if there’s a monster prowling the hills, it’s too much of a coincidence.’
‘You think you can connect the two killings?’ Earl asked in surprise. ‘With what?’
‘We’ll find out when we get there,’ Lopez said.
Her dark eyes brooked no argument, and Earl shrugged as he flicked the butt of his cigarette away into the parking lot and headed toward his truck.
‘You suit yourselves,’ he said. ‘Sally MacCarthy lives up off the main road. I’ll drop you there on my way through.’
14
Ethan stood in front of the lean-to garage and looked up at the heavy crossbeam from which Randy MacCarthy’s body had been hanged as Earl Carpenter drove away down the dusty track toward the main road.
Lopez stood next to him and gestured up at the beam.
‘One person couldn’t sling a dead body over that beam unless they fashioned some kind of rig. If they’d hauled the body up and over, the rope would have scored the beam.’
Ethan nodded.
‘We’re looking for more than one person but right now the mother’s going to be the prime suspect in the eyes of the law.’
‘Earl didn’t think so,’ Lopez pointed out, ‘and he knows the family better than us.’
‘That’s not evidence,’ Ethan said, ‘it’s bias. In the absence of any other known players I can’t see where else to take this.’
The voice that came from behind them was quiet.
‘I didn’t kill my boy.’
Ethan turned to his left, where a frail-looking woman watched them from behind the porch door, half in shadow as though she was afraid of the light.
Lopez took a pace toward her.
‘Mrs. MacCarthy? We’re here from the Sheriff’s Office on behalf of—’
‘I know who you are,’ Sally MacCarthy replied as she turned from the door and vanished into the house. ‘In a small town, word travels. Won’t you come in?’
Ethan followed Lopez into the house and pulled the porch door shut behind him.
Homes always had a feeling to them, that first impression: a mixture of sights, smells and instincts that flood the senses, and in an instant Ethan felt an odd mixture of warmth and tragedy. Pictures of a family across a mantelpiece. The lounge, clean and uncluttered, well looked after. Warm colors on the walls. Soft carpet underfoot. A small, floppy-eared dog napped in a basket beneath a stairway. Sunlight beamed through from the kitchen.