CHAPTER 11

The skies were leaden the next morning, and a steady drizzle had begun to fall, soaking the meadows and washing the trees free of the summer's dust. There was a new bite to the air, a dank cold that seemed to have plunged the Sugarloaf Valley into the coming fall virtually overnight.

"Why do we have to go to school today?" Logan complained in a last-ditch effort to put off his annual autumn agony for twenty-four more hours.

"Nobody's going to be there! It's pouring outside, and I bet the creek's going to flood, and-"

"Everybody's going, and you're going, too," MaryAnne told him. "Now, do you want to go with Joey and Alison, or do you want me to drive you?"

Logan's eyes widened at the threat of going through the humiliation of having his mother take him to school. Hurnedly, he shoved his arms into the sleeves of his worn jacket. "What if I freeze to death?" he asked, seeing no reason not to try a parting shot. "I should have gotten a new jacket yesterday. They had a really neat one! It's leather, and lined with fleece, and-"

"And you're not going to freeze to death," MaryAnne interrupted, cutting off Logan's monologue just as he was getting warmed up. "Now go, or you're going to miss the bus and have to walk all the way to town."

"I still bet nobody else is there," Logan muttered darkly, but he already knew that none of his arguments was going to work. He slouched to the back door, pulling the hood of his jacket over his head, then ran to catch up with Alison and Joey, who were already disappearing around the first curve in the driveway.

Fifty yards farther along, Joey veered off onto a path that led to the left.

:Where are you going?" Logan asked.

'It's a shortcut," Joey explained. "Come on."

Alison and Logan glanced at each other uneasily, the same thought in both their niinds. Yesterday, when the sun had been shining brightly, it had been fun walking through the forest- hearing the pine needles crunch under their feet and playing along the banks of the stream.

This morning, though, in the drizzle of rain, with the overcast sky cutting off the light, the forest seemed to have closed in on itself; trees that only yesterday had offered shade from the brilliant sun had now taken on an oddly threatening aspect, as if something dangerous might be lurking just out of sight.

"M-Maybe we better stay on the road," Alison suggested. "I mean, what if we get lost?"

Joey's lips twisted scornfully. "We're not going to get lost. I always go this way." His grin broadened. "You're not chicken, are you?"

Logan's eyes narrowed at the slur on his sister's courage.

He made up his mind. "I'm not," he declared, marching down the path that led into the woods. Under his feet the soggy pine needles squished damply, as large drops of rain splashed down onto the hood of his jacket from the dripping branches that spread over his head. "Come on, Alison,"

he pleaded. "It's neat."

But Alison still hesitated, wondering once more what the police cars had been doing up in the campground last night.

Though neither her mother nor Olivia Sherborne had told them anything, Alison had been almost certain the veterinarian had known something.

Something bad or why wouldn't she have told them about it? To her, the woods now looked sinister, and she stood her ground. "I think we should stay on the driveway," she insisted. "It's going to be all muddy in there."

"Chicken, chicken!" Logan sang out. "Alison's a chicken!"

Her brother's teasing washed away the trepidation Alison was feeling.

"All right, let's go," she challenged, striding off the driveway into the dripping forest.

The trees closed around them, the narrow path twisting and turning as they moved farther from the driveway, both Alison and Logan beginning to feel uneasy.

Strange sounds-sounds they hadn't heard before came at them from every direction, and though Joey insisted it was nothing more than water dripping off the trees and squirrels rustling through the underbrush in their constant search for food, Alison startled when she heard the sharp snap of a twig.

"What was that?" she demanded.

"Wh-What?" Logan asked, though he'd heard the sound himself, and it had set his heart pounding.

"It wasn't anything," Joey replied. "Probably just a deer."

"What if it was a bear?" Logan piped. "What if it was a grizzly?"

"I'm telling you, it wasn't anything like that," Joey insisted. "Will you guys come on?"

They started walking again, but now Logan stayed close to his sister, slipping his hand into hers. The rain eased, but the trees kept up their constant dripping. Alison thought she could hear the sound of something moving through the forest a few yards to their left. She stopped again, her hand tightening on Logan's.

"What is it?" Logan asked, his voice dropping to a whisper "Shh!" Alison hissed, holding her finger to her- lips.

"Listen!"

Now Joey, too, had stopped, frowning as he strained his ears for the sound that had caught Alison's attention.

It came again.

A sharp snap, as if a twig had broken under a shoe, Then another snapping twig, followed by a rustling in the brush up ahead and to the left.

The three children stared at the spot where they'd heard the sound. An aspen shook, though there was no wind, its leaves shimmering as a mist of water fell from them. They froze.

Then they heard the voice: "You're going to die, Joey Wilkenson."

Her heart racing, Alison pulled Logan closer to her, slipping her arms around him protectively as he pressed himself against her. Joey, though, glanced around, then stooped to pick up a rotting stick from the forest floor.

"I'm coming for you, Joey," the voice whispered. "I'm going to -get you.

- - ."

There was another rustling movement in the brush. The aspen trembled again as something shook its trunk.

Bringing his right arm back so quickly Alison hardly saw what he was doing, Joey hurled the stick in the direction from which the threat had come. It whirled into the underbrush, then struck something with a soft thunk. A voice cried out. "Jeez! You could have hurt me!"

"Come out here, and I'll beat the shit out of you!" Joey challenged, his voice trembling with fury.

Now there was a loud rustling in the bushes, and a moment later two children, a boy and girl about the same age as Alison and Joey, pushed their way through the brush and appeared on the trail. Both of them had pale blue eyes and blond hair, and both were clad in blue jeans and denim shirts under their open slickers. Alison recognized them from the funeral the previous week, where neither of them had done more than nod to Joey@ Nor had Joey been friendly to them. Now the boy was glaring angrily at Joey and rubbing his shoulder where the stick had struck him.

"You're really nuts, Joey!"

Joey's jaw set, his eyes glittering furiously. "If I'd wanted to hurt you, I would have," he declared. "And I wasn't scared of you, either."

The girl's eyes rolled heavenward in scorn. "You almost threw one of your fits, creep." Turning away from Joey, she cocked her head to gaze quizzically at Alison. "You're Alison Carpenter," she said. "And he's your brother."

Alison, her heart still pounding with the terror she'd felt when she heard the voice whispering out of the forest, managed to nod her head.

"I'm Andrea Stiffle, and this is my brother, Mike. We're twins. We live up that way." She gestured toward the north, but Alison could see nothing beyond the thick stand of aspens that surrounded them. "There's trails all over the place," Andrea explained, flashing a smile at Alison. "This one starts at your driveway, but most of it's on our property.

You can use it, though," she added, pointedly excluding Joey.

Alison remembered the group of kids who had blatantly snubbed Joey yesterday. Now, with Andrea and Michael Stiffle treating him with the same hostility, she wondered if she shouldn't just ignore both the girl and her brother. Before she could make up her mind, Logan piped up.

"How come you were trying to scare us?"

Andrea Stiffle's eyes mocked him. "'Cause we figured after what happened last night, it would be easy. And it worked, didn't it?"

"After what happened last night?" Alison asked, remembering the guarded looks her mother and Olivia Sherborne had exchanged while they were drinking cocoa the night before.

Andrea and Michael glanced at each other, then both of them started talking at once.

"Some guy got killed up at Coyote Creek-" Michael began.

"They had to fly the woman down to Boise," Andrea chimed in. Their voices tumbling over one another's, the two Stiffles repeated what they'd heard from their parents at breakfast that morning, while Logan Carpenter, his eyes wide as he pictured the dead man in the torn tent, pressed closer to his sister.

"But what was it?" Alison asked anxiously, the forest once more seeming to close in around her, and her curiosity overcoming her instant dislike of Andrea Stiffle. "What attacked them?"

Michael Stiffle shrugged. "No one knows. It might have been a bear." His voice dropped mysteriously and his eyes fixed on Logan. "Or it might have been something else."

"L-Like what?" Logan stammered, not sure he wanted to know, but unable to resist asking.

Michael Stiffle peered down at the little boy. "Maybe it was a Sasquatch," he whispered, raising his arms and drawing himself up so he loomed over Logan.

"What's a Sasquatch?" Logan quavered.

"No one's ever seen one up close," Andrea said, instantly picking up the story from her brother. "But they live up in the mountains, and they're seven feet tall."

Logan shuddered, his eyes darting to the thick underbrush as he imagined what might be lurking there. "That's not true," he said. Then, his voice small: "Is it?"

,it's just a story, Logan," Alison assured him, though the skin on the back of her own neck was starting to crawl as she, too, wondered what might be concealed in the tangle of vegetation that crowded the path on both sides.

"Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't," Michael teased. Then he called out to Joey, who had moved ahead, away from the little group. "Hey, Joey! Is that what got the people up at the campground? Was it a Sasquatch? Or was it you?"

Joey's face flushed scarlet, but he said nothing, only turned to shoot Michael Stiffle a dark glare. Michael snickered, and nudged his sister, who made a face at Joey's back.

Alison's mind whirled. What was Michael talking about?

Was he kidding? He had to be! And yet there had been something in his voice that almost sounded as if he was serious. But what had Joey ever done to them? Before she could figure out how to ask Andrea Stiffle why she didn't like Joey, they came to the road. The school bus was pulling up to the stop fifty yards farther on, and Michael and Andrea broke into a run, each wanting to be the first to tell whoever might already be on the bus about the gory events at the campground the night before. Alison and Logan fell in beside Joey, but none of them said anything until they, too, got onto the bus, and were greeted by a burst of laughter from a cluster of kids at the back.

Kids who were listening intently as Michael and Andrea Stiffle whispered to them.

Every one of them, Alison noticed, was staring at Joey.

Feeling suddenly protective of the boy, though she'd known him barely a week, Alison slipped her hand into Joey's.

He made no move to pull away from her. The smile that came over his face, and the slight pressure of his own fingers on hers, made her heart beat faster. For the rest of the ride down the valley, they sat close together, their hands entwined, both of them pretending they didn't hear the whispers drifting from the back of the bus.

Maybe I should have stayed home, MaryAnne thought. She was sitting in the front seat of Olivia Sherborne's pickup, her right hand clutching the armrest on the door to steady herself as the vehicle bounced up the rutted road to Coyote Creek Campground.

Maybe I should really go home-home to New Jersey.

Just pack up the kids and get out of here as fast as I can....

As Olivia maneuvered the truck up the track, MaryAnne's thoughts spun out of control.

A man had died horribly in the campground last night, and this morning the woman who had been with him was in intensive care in a hospital in Boise. And ever since Olivia had told her late last night what had transpired in the campground, MaryAnne had been unable to reject the suspicion that kept crawling into her mind-the nagging idea that the campground attacks were somehow connected to the deaths of Audrey and Ted. Over and over, as she lay sleeplessly, tossing in bed, she'd told herself they weren't, that her friends' deaths had been nothing more than freak accidents, unfortunate, even bizarre events, linked to one another-for had Ted not been kicked by the horse, Audrey would never have been on the cliff that night-but not linked to this ... this horror.

Yet the questions still gnawed. Something must have spooked Sheika, for in the week she'd been on the ranch, MaryAnne had gotten to know the gentle mare, and the horse had never so much as shied away from her, let alone shown any signs of aggression. Could whateverwhoever-attacked the campground last night have been in the barn as well?

How close had she come to being attacked herself the other night, when Joey was missing and something something that had snarled and lunged at the door-had been lurking inside the barn?

She'd finally given up the quest for sleep as the gray dawn had begun to break. By the time she pushed herself downstairs to the big kitchen, the rain had started, only adding to her sense of gloom. Then, when the children had finally left for school and Bill Sikes had gone about his chores, the emptiness of the house began to set her nerves on edge, and she found herself prowling through the rooms, hearing sounds she couldn't identify, imagining some presence skulking through the house, stalking her.

The idea of going back to New Jersey even to Alanhad begun to appeal to her.

When Olivia Sherborne arrived, slamming the door of her truck and darting up the front steps with her head ducked low against the rain, MaryAnne had felt a sense of relief far out of proportion to the mere appearance of her neighbor. Opening the front door, she'd made no attempt to cover her pleasure at seeing Olivia, but the veterinarian had shaken her head at MaryAnne's offer of coffee.

"I'm going up to the campground. I just thought I'd stop in and see how you're doing.'@ When MaryAnne registered surprise that the veterinarian would be going up to the scene of the murder, Olivia quickly explained.

"Rick asked me to meet him up there and help look for tracks. Believe it or not, I'm a pretty good tracker. Anyway, it struck me you might be feeling kind of weird here with no one around except Bill Sikes." She glanced toward the barn and the field, then turned back to MaryAnne.

"Sikes is still here, isn't he?"

MaryAnne nodded, remembering the few words the handyman had spoken that morning when he'd appeared briefly at the kitchen door before setting about his chores.

"Seems to me things are goin' from bad to worse around here," he'd said.

"You might be wantin' to think about getting' out."

Now, MaryAnne smiled thinly at Olivia. "Bill Sikes is here, but I'm not sure for how long. He came in this morning suggesting that I might want to 'get out,' as he put it."

Olivia's brows had risen a notch. "And is that what you're thinking?"

MaryAnne had sighed. "I wish I knew what I'm thinking." Of one fact she was certain: this morning she didn't want to be alone in the house.

"Look, why don't I go with you, and then maybe we can go into town for lunch. That is, if you have time."

While Olivia paused, considering, MaryAnne had grabbed a jacket from one of the hooks in the foyer, and started outside, leaving the house before Olivia could protest and before she'd really had a chance to think about what she was doing.

Now, the truck hit a deep pothole, causing Olivia to curse under her breath while MaryAnne braced herself against the dashboard. They had reached the campground.

There seemed to be men everywhere. Olivia shook her head as she watched the activity around the ruined tent, from which Glen Foster's body was just being removed. "I sure hope they took a lot of pictures before they started tramping around. There can't be much left in that mud hole by way of tracks."

The two women got out of the truck. Though Olivia immediately strode toward the clump of men gathered around the body, MaryAnne hung back, knowing that if she let herself look at the wounds the man had suffered, the image would remain etched in her mind for years. Wishing she hadn't come at all, she went to the picnic table, brushed a layer of moisture off the bench, and sat down, stretching her hands toward the sputtering flames of the fire the guard had kept burning all night.

"I've never seen anything like that before," she heard someone say.

"I've looked at a lot of bodies, but these wounds are new ones on me."

As MaryAnne turned away, trying not to hear the descriptions of Glen Foster's injuries, Olivia slipped into a space between Rick Martin and Whit Baker, who had been the county coroner for the last twenty years.

"No tooth marks," she observed, gazing down on the pale form that now lay on a gurney next to the county ambulance. The corpse lay facedown, its back deeply lacerated by what looked like claw marks. The throat, too, had been laid open, but it was instantly clear to Olivia that if a knife had been used, it had not been sharp, for the tears in the skin were rough and irregular, the muscles beneath the skin mangled.

"That's what's bothering me," Whit Baker agreed, nodding a greeting to the veterinarian. "I've never seen an animal attack where there weren't any signs of bites." He glanced up questioningly. "That's what animals do, isn't it?

When they attack, they use their teeth."

"As far as I've ever seen," Olivia replied. "Bears will use their claws as weapons, but once they've knocked down their prey, the first thing they do is go after it with their mouths. If they don't rip it apart, at least they drag it off somewhere." She bent closer, examining the lacerations that had ripped open Glen Foster's back from the shoulders all the way down to the waist. "You ever seen anything like this before, Rick?"

The deputy shook his head. "Sure looks like claws did it, but what kind?

Spacing's not right for a bear, but what else has something like this?"

"Cougar?" Whit Baker suggested.

"That might be possible," Olivia Sherborne said, her voice betraying her doubts. "It just doesn't look right, though. If it were a cougar, the lacerations would be deeper.

And look at this," she went on, leaning forward to touch a discoloration on the right shoulder. "Doesn't this look like a bruise?"

"Looks like it would have been, if he'd lived long enough," Whit Baker agreed. "It almost looks like someone squeezed his shoulder. But those cuts sure don't look like any fingernail scratches I've ever seen."

"What about the tent?" Olivia asked.

"Come and take a look," Rick Martin suggested, nodding to the two medics as the coroner and the vet straightened up. "Any reason not to get the body down to the morgue?"

As Whit Baker shook his head, the two aides slid the gurney into the ambulance. By the time the group had moved to the tent site, the vehicle was already turning around to start back down the road to the valley floor. With its departure, MaryAnne Carpenter finally trusted herself to join Olivia, Rick Martin, and the coroner.

"This is weird," she heard Rick say as she joined the group around the tent. "It's just like the tent that got torn up last week. It's as if someone ripped out the netting at the back window, then just tore the nylon open."

"So at least we know it was a man," Baker commented.

"An animal would just start tearing at it from anywhere. It wouldn't know to start at the window."

"Except that nylon's tough," Martin told him. "You don't just grab it and give it a rip. Even if you start by cutting through the seams around the netting, it's still too strong for me to rip. And look." He squatted down, pointing to the double thickness of nylon that had been folded over and seamed to strengthen the hole that had formed the back window.

"That's not cut," he said. "That's just torn apart.

You got any idea what kind of strength it would take to do that?"

"More than any man I've ever met has." Whit Baker shook his head. "So where are we? Are we looking for a man or an animal? What about tracks? Anything?"

"I want Olivia to take a look around, but given the rain, and the pine needles, I'm not counting on any." He stood up, slapping the coroner on the back. "Thanks for coming up, Whit. I thought you'd better see the scene as well as the body, 'cause I have a feeling it's going to be up to you to figure this one out."

"Me and a good crime lab, from what I've seen so far," Baker replied darkly. "If you don't need me up herer any longer, I'll be getting back to my office. You going to be interviewing the survivor any time soon?"

"This afternoon, if she's able to talk," Rick told him.

"I'll let you know."

As a crew began packing up the ruins of the tent, the bloody remnants of the sleeping bag, and anything else that could possibly be construed as evidence, Olivia Sherborne moved carefully around the perimeter of the campsite, searching for signs of tracks. But as Rick had suspected, the rain had obliterated anything she might have found. Then, when she was almost back to the point where she'd begun, directly behind the tent, she spotted something. Barely visible in a thicket of brush no more than ten feet away was what looked like the tail of a raccoon. "Rick?" she called.

The deputy, with MaryAnne Carpenter trailing behind him, came over to join her. "Did you see that?" she asked, pointing to the furry object protruding from the shrubbery. Martin moved closer, finally reaching out to touch it with his foot. When nothing happened, he squatted down, grasped it, and pulled it free from the brush. When he stood up, the body of a dead raccoon was dangling from his right hand.

Carrying it over to the picnic table, he laid it down, and Olivia Sherborne immediately began examining it.

"No wounds," she said at last. "None at all. I'd guess it's been dead maybe eight to twelve hours."

"What killed it?" Rick Martin asked.

"Its neck is broken," Olivia replied. "It's as if someone just picked it up, grabbed its head, and gave it a jerk. I think its spinal cord is severed, which would have killed it instantly. But no animal did this.

Whatever killed this was definitely human. Animals just don't kill this way."

MaryAnne Carpenter, her eyes fixing on the dead raccoon, suddenly saw a face flash in front of her eyes.

An indistinct face, surrounded by a wild mane of hair, flowing down over the shoulders of a powerfully built man.

A man powerful enough to have snapped the raccoon's neck with no more than a twist of his fingers.

"I saw someone," she heard herself saying.

Instantly, Rick Martin's and Olivia Sherborne's attention was fixed on her.

"You saw someone?" the deputy echoed. "What are you talking about?"

MaryAnne shook her head helplessly. "It doesn't make any sense," she said. "I don't even know why I thought of it. But at the funeral, I saw a man. He was standing way off to the side, near the fence, almost hidden in the trees."

Martin's brow furrowed. "What made you think of him now?"

"I'm not sure," MaryAnne replied. "It's just-he was so strange-looking, and so strong, that when I looked at that poor little raccoon, I thought of him. He was big, and looked terribly strong, and sort of-well, wild is the only word I can think of." She turned to Olivia. "Like one of those mountain men you were telling me about yesterday."

"A mountain man?" Rick Martin said doubtfully. "I know there used to be a lot of them living up here. Most of them were just harmless hermits, but I guess a few of them were pretty nuts. But I haven't even heard of any of them for years. Can you remember exactly what he looked like?"

MaryAnne did her best to describe the man she and Joey had seen at the funeral, but her glimpse of him had been so short, and he'd been so well hidden in the trees, that she could add little more than she'd already told him. "He was staring at Joey," she finished. "At least, Joey thought he was. Then he was gone, almost as if he'd never been there at all."

"Well, that puts a new twist on all this," Martin said.

"Assuming, of course, that there's a connection between whoever you saw and what's been going on up here."

MaryAnne felt a chill of fear move through her body.

Someone living up here in the mountains. Someone who attacked like a wild animal.

Where-and when-would the next attack occur?

Maybe I should leave now, she thought, not for the first time that morning. Maybe I should just grab the kids-all three of them-and take them back to New Jersey.

To what? she suddenly found herself thinking. How many people got murdered in New Jersey every day of the week? Would she really feel any safer there than she did here?

By the time she and Olivia were back in the truck and headed toward town, her spirits felt as deeply shrouded in gloom as the mountaintops were in the cloud cover that had settled into the valley. The temperature had dropped sharply and the dank mist felt to MaryAnne even colder than the chill of fear that had seized her in the campground.

"We'll find out who did this," Olivia said as they approached the village a few minutes later. "Just don't make up your mind to leave too quickly, okay?"

MaryAnne forced a weak smile. "Was it that obvious?"

"It was pretty clear," Olivia replied. "But what's been happening around here lately isn't the way things usually are. Give Rick and Tony a few days, and don't forget that you'll have more people watching out for you around here than you ever will back home."

"I know," MaryAnne sighed. "I know you're right. But I have to tell you, this has shaken me up pretty badly. What if-well, what if the man who was watching Joey really did have something to do with this?"

"And what if last night was connected to Ted and Audrey?" Olivia asked, voicing the question MaryAnne had not yet brought herself to utter.

MaryAnne nodded.

"Believe me," Olivia went on, "it doesn't make any sense. What happened to Ted and Audrey were accidents.

Horrible, yes, but still accidents."

"What if they weren't?" MaryAnne asked. "What if ...

what if someone killed them?"

To that question, Olivia Sherborne had no answer.

Rick Martin stepped into the room where Tamara Reynolds lay on her back, her upper torso and head wrapped in bandages. A needle in her arm was attached to an IV bottle by a plastic tube, and another plastic tube extended from her nose, snaked across the bed and up the wall, where it was attached to an oxygen outlet.

"Miss Reynolds?" Rick asked softly. Though the duty nurse had told him the woman was awake, he found himself wondering if it could really be possible. "Can you hear me?"

The woman's lips barely moved, and her breathy voice was all but inaudible.

"I can hear..

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"Don't know ... in the tent ... someone She fell silent. Her chest heaved as she tried to catch her breath.

"Just take it easy," Rick said soothingly, pulling a chair close to the bed and laying a gentle hand on hers. "I'm with the sheriff's office in Sugarloaf, and we're trying to find out what happened. I'd like to ask you some questions, and I'll try to keep them simple. All you have to do is answer yes or no. And if you get tired, it's all right. Okay?"

"Yes," the woman breathed, the word drifting from her lips as a quiet sigh.

"Good. Now, were you able to see anything? Anything at all?"

'Yes.

"Was it an animal?"

"Don't ... know .. ." The words came out with an effort, but before Rick could ask another question, Tamara Reynolds began speaking. "Big. Hairy.

Touched hair."

"Hair on the head?" Rick asked.

"Don't know," Tamara Reynolds replied. "Couldn't see."

Rick Martin frowned. "Could it have been a bear?" he asked, knowing he was leading her, but seeing no other way to conduct the interview.

"Not a bear," Tamara moaned. "Not big enough."

"But you did see it?" he pressed, excited. "At least a glimpse?"

The young woman nodded, then groaned at the pain the motion had caused.

Behind him, Rick heard the door open, then the nurse's voice: "Only another minute, please. She has to rest."

Very quickly, Rick Martin repeated the vague description of the man MaryAnne Carpenter had seen at the Wilkensons' funeral, but when he was finished, Tamara Reynolds only sighed helplessly. "Maybe," she whispered.

"Maybe not. Too dark."

Martin's heart sank, for he knew that without a detailed description from Tamara Reynolds, neither he nor anyone else would have any idea of what it was they were looking for.

All he knew was that it was probably as large as a man, very strong, and very dangerous.

Mortally dangerous.