Page 110 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
“That’d be unlikely enough in any situation,” I say, “but out here, it’s even more unlikely—”
One of the guards comes running down the path. “Sir? Jay’s gone.”
“Gone how?” Rogers snaps. “He can barely walk.”
Ah, that would make Jay our G.I. Joe.
“Your wounded guard is gone?” I say.
The man nods. “Along with a bunch of his stuff. He must have packed a bag and ran.”
Bolted.
Jay packed a bag and bolted because he knew we’d eventually figure out something important. That just because he’d been slashed on the back of his leg didn’t mean he hadn’t been stabbed on the front, too.
* * *
Jay hadn’t wanted to drop his trousers and let me treat his leg. And as I think about it, I realize I made another critical error.
Whoever attacked Max the final time had lunged at him and fallen. His leg gave way, which made sense when Max had stabbed his leg the day before. But it made even more sense if he’d just been slashed. Max said he’d kicked the man in the spot where he’d been stabbed. Except Max never said where he stabbed the guy. He wouldn’t know—he’d just swung his penknife down.
From reenacting it, we know that wound would be in the front. But Max saw blood on the back of his attacker’s thigh. Blood through his trousers? Or through the bandage we’d just applied? He hadn’t specified.
He’d kicked the man where he saw blood presuming that was the wound he inflicted. It wasn’t. It was fresh.
But if Jay is the one who attacked Max, who stabbed Jay?
The answer could be that we do indeed have two culprits. The more likely one is that Jay cut himself.
We were out searching for Max. Jay had also been ordered to search. He heard Anders and me, and our conversation told him we were hot on Max’s trail. He staged the stabbing. Maybe he intended to do nothing more than a slash. Just enough to bleed and support his story of being attacked from the rear by the bear-man. He cut deeper than he intended, but it did the trick.
We helped Jay, and he joined us until we were getting close to Max. He faked stumbling and being in serious pain. We insisted he stop, mostly so he didn’t slow us down.
As soon as we were out of sight, he set off. The fact that he found Max first was pure luck. But he needed to get to Max before we did. That was the whole point of the self-inflicted injury. Get to Max and make sure we didn’t, because he was convinced Max saw something and knew he murdered Sandy.
There’s one other thing that I missed, one that came back to me before Jay bolted, already turning my mind in his direction.
When the guards brought Rogers to meet us here, he gave us shit for allowing a teenager in our town. That’s because the person who mentioned our missing resident was Jay.
Except yesterday, Jay had referred to Max as a child.
“We need clothing from Jay,” I say to Rogers when the initial uproar quiets. “For the dog to track. And we need to get close to your camp to find the trail.”
“We cannot—”
“We know where your goddamn camp is,” Dalton snaps. “We haven’t gotten close out of respect, but if we need to get there, we can, and if you want to wave guns at us, then I guess we’ll be waving guns at each other. We should demand to see Jay’s room and talk to his roommates. He tried to murder a child. But I’m going to respect your privacy as much as I can and trust you to conduct that search. You will do that, and you will take us close enough to your goddamn camp to find this guy before we really do have a serial killer living in the forest.” He meets Rogers’s gaze. “Understood?”
Rogers turns on his heel. “Follow me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
As we walk, I convey what I need to the guard. He takes off ahead to search Jay’s quarters. Jay had been sharing them with two other guards, both of whom Rogers tells him to bring back for questioning.
Rogers doesn’t take us to the camp. He just gets us close enough that we can hear distant voices.
“This is the most likely area Jay would have fled through,” Rogers says, his tone neutral. “There aren’t any paths here where he’s likely to bump into someone. There’s another spot around the other side, which we can check if your dog can’t find his trail.”
A guard delivers the scent marker. We give it to Storm. We walk back and forth until it’s actually Dalton who locates it. Hell, once I see it, I could have found it myself. There are enough broken branches and trampled undergrowth for a half dozen people.
