'When Mr. McCaskil is around?' Anna asked.
'That's right. He's scared of him.'
'This lady was wearing Bill McCaskil's coat,' Anna said. 'She took it from his tent before she started out that morning.'
'Stupid slut,' McCaskil said.
'Watch it,' Anna retorted.
'That's it then.' Geoffrey turned to Balthazar. 'I was worried about you,' he told the bear. To the people waiting he said, 'This whole thing has been stressful for Balthazar. I mean, I'd never been out of Florida but Balthazar's never been anywhere. The other bears scare him. Deer scare him. He almost ran off that cliff up by the army moth place. He's never been in a world that had cliffs in its floor. I was afraid maybe it was too much for him He'd been off his feed and some of his hair fell out. I thought maybe when he saw that lady he had a nervous breakdown. You're okay, pal,' he said to his friend. 'She was just wearing Mr. McCaskil's coat.'
Balthazar exonerated, he turned back to his human audience. 'She started taking flash pictures, pop, pop, pop. He's used to pictures but I think in the low light like that and him being already upset and all-I don't know, maybe it blinded him or something. He started roaring and walking toward her on his hind legs. I know by now Balth isn't himself and I'm out yelling and whistling like mad. This lady keeps popping and getting closer and I'm yelling for her to stop and Balth to stop and nobody's listening to me. Then Balth gets almost on top of her and she pulls out a little can like that stuff you had.' Geoffrey nodded at Anna. 'She squirted him and he just went nuts-he swung and her head snapped over. Way over. God.'
His hands came down out of his hair where they'd been pulling at it during the telling and covered his face again.
The riddle 'What was soft enough not to cut but could he swung with enough force to sever a woman's spinal cord' was answered.
'But her face was cut off-' Rory began.
Geoffrey started to cry, silently, the tears working their way through his fingers to paint pale tracks in the grime on the back of his hands.
Anna quieted Rory with a gesture. Joan patted him on the knee to let him know she didn't mean to be so abrupt.
'Balthazar's claws left marks on her face,' Anna said.
Geoffrey nodded. 'You'd've come looking for a killer bear. You'd've found us.'
For a minute Anna sat sipping tea already grown cold. A fifteen-year-old boy dragging the body into hiding then cutting away the flesh, probably with his pocket knife, weeping as he wept now at the memory of it. She doubted Timmy would have gone half the distance for Lassie.
'You put the-ah-clawed pieces in a tree after.'
'I didn't want anybody to see or you'd know but I was afraid if I buried it another bear might dig it up. You know, get a taste for it. Then get himself into trouble.'
Geoffrey recovered from the tears. Anna suspected his life at Fetterman's Adventure Trails had had its share of life and death. He'd get over Carolyn's. He scrubbed his face until the tears had been smeared around.
'You took her water bottle and the film,' Anna said. 'I can understand the film, why the water?'
'I didn't mean to. It had fallen out of her pack on the trail. I found it after. I didn't want to-to go back. So I took it. Then when I saw him- you, Rory-and I knew you'd run off without anything. I left it by you to drink.'
'You took my sweatshirt,' Rory said, sounding more honored than offended.
'I'm sorry,' Geoffrey said. 'My shirt had stuff on it. Blood. And I'd tore it up to make a rope so I could hang the bag with the… you know. I thought if hikers caught sight of me with no shirt they'd remember me.'
'You left me water, too,' Anna said. 'Up on Cathedral Peak after Mr. McCaskil here tried to kill me.'
Geoffrey nodded. 'I'd read a person can live a long time without food but not without water. I'm sorry about the bottle. Balthazar got to playing with it. We'll buy you a new one.'
He looked across the upward beam of light at Anna, his clear hazel eyes as old as stone.
'What will happen to Balthazar now?' he asked.
'Nothing bad,' Anna promised.
'Hah.' McCaskil.
'Nothing bad,' she repeated. 'I swear that on the worthless life our prisoner.'
Chapter 24
Anna came to look back on that night with the odd dreaming reality with which she remembered much of her childhood. A time when everything was new and hence nothing was strange. Miracles were commonplace and, so, unremarkable. The rules, not yet pounded into the fabric of the mind like great rusted nails, were easily suspended.
A circus of arrest and rescue came to them the following morning, masterfully planned and efficiently ringmastered by Chief Ranger Harry Ruick. Buck was with him and Gary, both armed with Weatherby Magnum bolt-action rifles-enough 'stopping power' for a bear the size of Balthazar. They'd need it if anything went haywire, Anna thought, because they'd have to shoot through the person of Geoffrey Micou before they got to the shaggy body of his brother. Anna turned over the thirty-ought-six McCaskil had donated. It wouldn't stop a bear but would do a lot of damage.
The shortest route out was down McDonald Creek, the western half of a large loop trail that started and ended at Packers Roost. Though her knee was bothering her, she eschewed horseback and walked most of the way out. She wanted to be near Balthazar. She found unending delight in the play of sun and shadow over his fur, the lumbering grace of his walk, the sharp accents his long claws made on his tracks in the dust. Because of the potential for problems, Harry closed the trail to visitors, citing the uninteresting excuse of dead elk near it causing a potential bear hazard. Balthazar's trailer and the pickup to pull it had been taken out of impound and would be waiting at the end of the trail.
At Packers Roost the bear and the boy were separated. Balthazar was taken to a holding pen loaned by a West Glacier entrepreneur who ran a Bear Country attraction where tourists could see black bears.
Bill McCaskil was taken to the county jail to be held until formal charges and setting bail were arranged for. With his list of aliases and a charge of kidnapping researchers and attempting to murder a federal law enforcement officer, he would probably await trial behind bars.
Rory agreed he had had enough of the DNA project and would be going home to Seattle with his dad. Joan promised to clear everything up with Earthwatch.
Geoffrey Micou proved a bit of a problem. He was just turned sixteen, a minor and an orphan. Mr. Fetterman had taken care of him after his father's death but he hadn't bothered to make the boy go to school. Geoffrey dropped out in the seventh grade. He was extremely bright and had taught himself a great deal but was officially truant. Montana Child and Family Services were brought in. Though Joan fought to keep him with her at least until his future was settled, he had been spirited away.
Anna was left with the promise she had made that nothing bad would happen.
For three days she and Joan and Harry contacted zoos and research facilities. Grown Alaskan grizzlies with Balthazar's peculiar history were not in demand. No one wanted him. He could not survive on his own. Despite the goodwill surrounding the magnificent beast, Anna became afraid the only solution would be a Final Solution. Then the trust of a boy and ahuge chunk of magic would be ripped out of a world already short on both.
Anna flew out of Kalispell headed for Dallas knowing she had failed. Solving a murder case,
