The Lonely Dead

'I'm fine,' Tom said.

The man leaned on the table and looked at him. 'You sure?'

Now that he was a little more awake, it was becoming clear to Tom that Connolly didn't seem to be in any hurry to be his friend. He was not treating him like someone who'd made a miraculous and welcome escape from a snowy wilderness.

'I'm sure,' he said, reaching for the voice he used in meetings, when a client needed convincing that the web design work they'd received was exactly what they wanted, despite its apparent lack of similarity to what had been discussed in the briefing. It felt a long time since he'd used this voice, but it was less than two weeks, and while rusty, it did come. 'Thank you for your concern.'

'Okay. So why don't you tell me your story?'

'Al, he's kind of been through that.' This was Phil, entering the room with two cups of coffee.

Connolly ignored his deputy, sat back in his chair, and kept looking at Tom.

'My name is Tom Kozelek,' the man in the chair said. 'I'm… on vacation. Three days ago, I guess it was, I went driving up into the mountains. I parked up at a trail head, I don't remember the name.'

'Howard's Point,' the policeman nodded. 'Your car was towed back from there yesterday afternoon. You turning up has solved that little mystery, at least.'

'Right. So I parked up there, and went for a hike.'

'A hike,' the man said, nodding to himself. 'What exactly did you take with you in the way of provisions?'

'I assume you know,' Tom muttered, coldly. 'I can see my bag out there on the table.'

'Yes. I know,' the cop said. 'Don't know whether you've had a chance to catch any TV while you've been here, but at this time of year there's an advertisement which runs every hour or so. It suggests that people stay the hell out of the mountains unless they know what they're doing and have the equipment to do it with. You not watch much television, Mr Kozelek?'

'I was in a confused state of mind.'

'Right.' The man nodded again. 'And so where have you been since?'

'Walking back here,' Tom said. 'I got lost. I had maps, but I left them in the car by mistake. I was a little drunk when I started out, and usually my sense of direction is pretty good but it snowed and I fell down a gully and to be honest I just got really, really lost. I tried to find my way back to the road but by then I'd gotten turned around and evidently I just kept heading away from it. Then I found something that looked like a trail and followed it, but it didn't seem to go anywhere and kept cutting in and out.'

'Old logging track, probably,' Phil said. 'Could even have been a bit of the old mountain road itself. Most of it you can only tell something used to be there because there's a line of trees that are a little thinner.'

Connolly turned his head slowly to look at him. The deputy shut up. The sheriff looked back at Tom.

'Look, what's your problem?' Tom said.

'Me? I don't have one. Please continue.'

Tom deliberately took a long time over a sip of coffee. The guy was really beginning to piss him off. They were all like this, in the end. Every one of them so full of their special status, pretending they'd never been in a difficult situation in their own lives.

'So I just walked,' he said. 'I don't know where I was. Then last night I finally found a road. I stood by it for a while, thinking surely someone must come along and give me a ride, but it was snowing and nobody came. So I walked. And I got here early this morning.'

'Quite a little adventure, Mr Kozelek,' Connolly said. 'You must be glad it's over, and looking forward to going back home.'

'Not just yet,' Tom said, shrugging off the top two blankets. Not only was he too hot now, but he sensed the 'little boy lost' look wasn't helping the sheriff take him seriously. 'There's things I have to do here first.'

'What could those possibly be?'

Tom looked him in the eye. 'I'm going back into the forest.' He took a deep breath, and prepared to say something he knew he was going to remember for the rest of his life. 'I saw something when I was in there. Something pretty amazing.' He paused again, savouring the moment.

'This would be Bigfoot, right?'

Tom stared at him, side-swiped. 'How did you know?'

Connolly smiled, gently. 'You mentioned it a couple of times to my deputy when you first got here. To the doctor too, I believe. Matter of fact, from what I hear, it was the very first word you said when you came staggering into town. Before you fell down.'

Tom's mouth felt dry, his face red. He didn't remember telling them about it. Shit.

'Okay,' he said. 'I knew that. But I saw it. I saw Bigfoot. It was standing right over me. I saw it.'

'What you saw was a bear, Mr Kozelek.'

'No it wasn't. I thought so at the time, but it wasn't. It didn't look like one. And what do bears smell like?'

'Can't say as I've ever been close enough to find out. They're picky like that.'

'This one smelt awful. Really, really bad. Not only that, but I also saw footprints.'

'Is that so?'

'Yes it fucking well is so. You want to pretend it was a bear I saw, fine. But I saw footprints. A line of them, leading away from where I'd been.'

'They weren't your own? From when you ran from the bear?'

'No. I was scrabbling all over the place. The shape would have been all messed up. And also, you could see the fucking toes. Five big round toes, at the front. Look, I saw this.'

'Sure you did.' Connolly turned to Phil. 'You want to get Mrs Anders in here now?'

Confused, Tom watched the younger policeman as he went out to fetch a woman he now saw was sitting on the other side of the main room. Connolly meanwhile drank his own coffee in one long, slow swallow, looking coolly at Tom.

Phil returned with the woman. She was in her mid sixties, grey hair gathered in a loose ponytail. One hand was thrust down into the pocket of a yellow all-weather coat worn over a thick fleece. The other was clutching a large plastic bag. She looked apologetic and embarrassed.

Tom began to have a sinking feeling.

'This here is Patrice Anders,' Connolly said. 'Patrice lives out a few miles past Howard's Point. Don't know if you noticed it from your maps, but there's a little subdivision around from there, up off the next highway over the mountains. Was going to be the next big thing. Present time, Mrs Anders remains the only occupant.'

'It's nice to meet you,' Tom said. 'But I don't understand what this is about.'

Connolly looked at the woman, and raised his brows.

'It was me, in the forest,' she said.

Tom stared at her. 'What do you mean?'

She shook her head. 'I'm so sorry about this. I go walking a great deal. I belong to a couple of national programmes that monitor wildlife, and I keep an informal tally of what's around at each time of year. I don't know whether it's of any real use in the long run, it's not very scientific, I don't suppose, but…' She shrugged. 'Anyway, it's what I do. And the other morning I was out there, quite early, and I saw something lying down by the gully. It's actually not too far from the edge of my land, as the crow flies. Well, it's a distance, you know. I like to walk. Anyway, I went down there, and I saw it was a backpack. I didn't know whether someone was coming back for it, so I just left it there.'

Tom looked at Connolly. 'Okay. So what?'

'The footprints you saw belonged to Mrs Anders.'

'Bullshit. Are you not listening to a word I say? These were huge.'

'Give the sun an hour and the edges will melt. They're going to look much bigger than they ought to be.'

For a second Tom thought he was going to throw himself over the desk and grab the man by the throat. He knew it would be a bad idea, and not just because he was the law. So instead he kept his voice very level. He had the clincher, after all.