Page 106 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
“Making up for taking off early yesterday,” I say. “We’ve met a few of the camp’s security team, and even if they aren’t all that memorable individually, they do fit a type.”
“White, tall, physically fit. Like whoever took Max.”
I nod and pick up my phone. “I’m going to read you the description Max gave. Remember that he never got a good look, but he did catch snatches and impressions.”
“He’s a very clever child,” April says. “He pays attention.”
“He does. Tell me whether this matches any of the guards we’ve seen.” I lift the phone and read. “White male. Tall. Stocky build. Strong enough to carry Max for long distances. Gunnar said he saw the lower half of the bear-man’s face and it was furred, roughly the same color as the bearskin. That suggests a beard roughly grizzly-colored. Max said the bear had brown eyes.”
“So—” Dalton stops short. “Wait. Read that again.”
I do. Then I say, “Does it sound like any of the guards we’ve seen?”
“It sounds like someone. But not a guard.” He picks up my tablet and flips through to a photo. Then he looks at me. “That’s why you skipped these photos. So I wouldn’t be influenced. It’s also why you said ‘guard.’ Because we’ve only seen one miner.” He sets down the tablet, the screen filled with a picture of Sandy’s dead face, his eyes opened for the photograph.
Brown eyes. Medium-brown hair. Short beard, well trimmed as if recently cut shorter. White skin. On a tall and heavyset but muscular man.
“There’s one more thing,” I say. “When Max was being blindfolded, he didn’t see his captor’s hands. He still thought the man had bear claws. But Max did see a flash of skin on the underside of his captor’s arm. That made sense to him: if the creature was part bear, part human, it’d have less fur on the underside of his arms. His captor has the bear paws over his hands, tied at the wrist so he can use his fingers. He’s wearing a shirt that’s probably close to the color of fur. But the sleeve has ridden up, exposing pale skin. And on that skin, Max saw a black line. Like dirt, he said. A rough black line maybe an inch long, protruding from under the fur.”
I flip through the photos and stop at the tattoo of a Celtic cross on the underside of Sandy’s left forearm. I cover most of it with my finger. What sticks out above his wrist? The black line of the bottom bar.
“Our dead man is Max’s captor,” Dalton says. “Then who stabbed him? And who the hell chased Max and tried to kill him?”
* * *
The narrative had seemed so straightforward that I hadn’t questioned it. While working in the forest, Sandy encountered the bear-man, who lunged at him with a makeshift knife. When Sandy’s colleagues mocked him, Sandy took to sneaking into the forest to find evidence. He got too close to that shack—maybe he remembered seeing it on a walk—and the bear-man heard him, snuck out, and killed him.
But peel it back to the first step. Sandy reported encountering the bear-man in the forest, a crazed hermit in a bearskin who lunged at him with a makeshift knife. Sandy shouts, and the bear-man takes off before anyone arrives.
No one except Sandy saw the bear-man. Sandy, who plans to kidnap Max and is setting up his narrative—that of a crazed mountain man in a bearskin conducting shamanistic rituals.
After Sandy’s traumatic encounter, he’s given time off. I’ve gotten the impression he was a loner, so no one would be paying much attention to him. They know he’s leaving camp, but the guards ignore it. Just poor bullied Sandy looking for his Bigfoot.
Sandy uses that time to kidnap Max and put him in the shack. He returns to camp often enough to be seen at meals and such.
On the second night, he’s in the shack with Max when he hears a voice. Sandy goes to investigate and …
And here is where it gets complicated. Because Sandy isn’t “poor bullied Sandy looking for his Bigfoot, murdered by the crazed mountain man.” Sandy is Max’s captor, checking on a noise that suggests someone is too close to his captive.
And Sandy is murdered … by whoever had been out there in the night.
This means Max’s captor is dead, which is a relief. It’s also a relief that I can stop feeling bad about the poor miner murdered in the forest.
But after Sandy died, someone pursued Max. Someone tried to strangle him. Someone dressed in a bearskin. Someone who had taken that bearskin from Sandy.
Sandy went out in the night. He wouldn’t have cleaned up the shack first. He left in a hurry. But when we got there, the only traces of Max and Sandy were old blankets that had probably been there for years.
One thing that was clearly missing?
The bearskin.
Whoever took that bearskin tried to murder Max, and what comes back to haunt me is what his attacker said while strangling him.
Sorry, kid. I hate to do this, but you’re too big a risk to—
Too big a risk to leave alive.
* * *
