The Fourth Bear

Ashley consulted his list for a moment. “No. Not a single one. By the way,” he continued, “I’m still waiting for Bart-Mart to get back to me, and Goldy’s car hasn’t been reported abandoned or anything.”

“Thanks.”

“And Agatha Diesel dropped in to say hello while you were both out.”

“Did she?” said Jack, making a face. “What did she want?”

“It was most odd,” said Ashley thoughtfully. “She said she wanted to talk to you about a charity benefit in aid of distressed gentlefolk she was planning, but I think she just wants you to put your—” He stopped, looked at Mary, gave a shrug and then placed a single sucker digit on Jack’s forehead.

“Yes, you’re probably right,” agreed Jack after a moment, “and most graphically realized, too.” He pushed away Ashley’s digit, which detached with a faint pop. “And please, don’t do that mind- merging stuff on me, okay?”

“Sorry. Do you find it intrusive?”

“Not at all—it’s just that I can see what you’re thinking in the background.”

“Oops,” gulped Ashley, flicking a look toward Mary, who thankfully wasn’t paying much attention. “Right you are, then.”

The phone rang.

“Spratt, NCD…”

It was Briggs, so Jack just carried on talking.

“…isn’t in right now, but if you’d like to leave a message when you hear the tone, please do so…. Beeeeep.”

“That old pretending-to-be-an-answering-machine stuff doesn’t fool me, Spratt,” said Briggs angrily.

“Sorry, sir.”

“What are you doing in the office?”

“I was with the quack for my psychiatric evaluation, sir. I just popped in to brief Mary about the Rumpelstiltskin parole hearing.”

“Hmm. Well, put her on.”

He handed the phone to Mary, who listened for a moment and then said, “Yes, sir, I was very impressed you didn’t fall for the answering-machine gag.”

She looked up at Jack, who made a sign for her to call him and then crept out the door. Briggs had been known to walk around the building on a cell phone pretending he was in his office, and Jack had just about had his fill of threshold guardians for the day.

Jack walked down to his car and noticed that the door mirror had mended itself in his absence. He drove out of the garage, meaning to visit Dorian Gray and have a word with him in person. He’d called him several times, but had continued to get the “number disconnected” tone.

A few miles down the road, and after the brief annoyance of a military checkpoint looking for the Gingerbreadman, Jack’s cell phone rang.

“I’m going home to watch Columbo, sir,” he said without waiting to hear who it was. “Oh, sorry, Mary—what’s up?”

He slowed the car as he listened, then pulled into a lay-by.

“Excellent,” he said at last. “I’ll meet you at the northern entrance in twenty minutes.”

He tossed his phone onto the passenger seat, signaled and pulled out into the afternoon traffic, heading rapidly off in the direction of Andersen’s Wood. As he did so, he noticed for the first time that the odometer on the Allegro was going backward—and the fuel gauge was still on the three-quarters mark. He shrugged. Clearly a glitch of some sort.

15. Three Bears

Largest unmapped area in the United Kingdom: There are several areas of the UK that still defy any serious attempt at cartographic interpretation, but the largest by far is Andersen’s Wood, a six- thousand-acre tract of forest to the southwest of Reading, Berkshire. The heavy oak canopy defeats conventional aerial photography, and cartographic expeditions have known to become hopelessly lost, sometimes for weeks. A quick glance at the ordnance survey map of the area reveals only an irregular area of green with the legend, “Here be trees.”

The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition

Andersen’s Wood was remarkable not only for its mature hardwood but for its isolation. Apart from one narrow asphalt road running north to south there were no roads at all, just unmarked logging tracks meandering around the ancient woodland. It wasn’t unusual for people to become lost while walking through its leafy trails, and there were even rumors of a dilapidated and forgotten castle hidden somewhere within its heavy canopy, protected by an almost impenetrable wall of brambles.

Mary was waiting for Jack when he arrived outside the northern entrance to the wood, and she jumped into his car as soon as he pulled up.

“So what have we got?” he asked.

“Cell phone records,” she replied. “She had a ‘number blocked’ call at 6:04 A.M. on Saturday morning that she answered. There was another one at 9:56 that she didn’t, and several of the same all through the afternoon. Josh Hatchett’s home number calls her that evening and at regular intervals throughout the next five days. Seventy-six calls in total and about half with number withheld. None of them were answered.”

“Quite a few people withhold their numbers,” mused Jack,

“but her last answered call was the Saturday 6:04 one?”

“Yup. From there we can track her cell phone as it began to move a half hour later. It crossed eight coverage cells until it stopped in Andersen’s Wood at 7:32. The signal faded three days later, probably as a result of a dead battery.”

“That doesn’t really help us,” murmured Jack. “Towers are few and far between in the country, and cells can get pretty big—it will be like looking for the proverbial needle.”

“We got lucky,” said Mary. “In the three days Goldy’s phone was doing nothing but firing off the occasional ident, it switched to another cell and back again six times.”

“It was moved?”

“I don’t think so.”

She showed Jack a local map that had been faxed from Goldilocks’s phone company with two intersecting polygons sketched upon it.

“Goldy’s phone was at the boundary of a cell, and the ident was bounced back and forth between two masts; by looking at where the cells potentially share coverage, we can get a vague idea of where her phone is.”

She showed him the approximate overlap of the two irregular cells and pointed to an area less than eight hundred yards wide and about three hundred deep that fell in a sector on the western side of the wood.

“Let’s just hope,” said Jack, “she’s still got her phone with her.”

Jack started the car and drove slowly into the arboreal charm of the wood. He had often come here for picnics when a child, and its ancient splendor was one of Berkshire’s three jewels, along with the Sacred Gonga and Castle Spongg.

They drove slowly down the main road and then took a graveled logging track, with Mary navigating—or trying to. She got them lost at least twice before they turned a corner and Jack abruptly stopped the car.

“Bingo,” he breathed.

“Gotta love those cell-phone records,” replied Mary.

Sitting by the side of the road and dappled with the sunlight filtering through the trees was an immaculate Austin Somerset in all its 1950s curvy, pressed-steel glory. The color was green and the registration 226 DPX. It