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Disclaimer: All characters and events in this story are fictitious, and any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintended by the author. "The Pretender" is a protected trademark of MTM Television and NBC and the characters of that series are used herein with no mean intent or desire for remuneration. It is, instead, a tribute to innovative television, that rare and welcome phenomenon.
The Third Highway Series Part 13
Ursa Major
Chapter 1
Witch1
Olson's Family Store & Feed
Yaak, Montana
She stomped the snow off her elegant, high-heeled boots on the ragged door mat and then brushed it off her shoulders brusquely as well. The pale, tired-looking woman leaning on the linoleum-covered counter across the store watched impassively as Sam entered behind her, followed by Sydney and Broots.
The store smelled of moldy bread and mice and the ancient wooden floor was warped and worn by generations of boot heels. Miss Parker took it all in: the dusty canned goods stacked in untidy masses, the wool hats, bulky, wool-lined boots, kitchen equipment, giant packages of toilet paper and cluttered shelves piled with tools. Shotguns were racked in a row behind the counter, boxes of ammo and an amazingly large selection of knives in the glass case under it. There were kerosene lamps hanging from the rafters, snowshoes, shovels and rakes, big, slowly leaking bags of sugar, rice and flour and jars filled with cheap, brightly colored candies. A smoky wood stove made from a fifty-five gallon oil drum even had a prominent place in the store's mid-section.
"Lovely," she muttered, "did they miss a single cliché?"
Sam held out the photo while she asked the obligatory question, by now a cliché of their own: "Do you recognize this man?"
The woman behind the counter looked at the photograph and snorted--a sort of amused laugh, Parker guessed. She doubted there was much reason for real laughter in the woman's dismal life.
"That's Jarod," she told them, "although I hardly recognize him looking like THAT!"
Parker frowned. There was nothing odd about the photo. "Why do you say that?" she asked.
"Well, I just didn't know he cleaned up so nice, is all," the woman answered rather cryptically.
Parker glanced at Sydney, but his face betrayed no emotion, as usual. And Broots was distracted, pawing at a display of heavy wool socks and gloves.
"What did he look like when he was here?" Parker asked.
"Well, you know--a regular guy. Dirty, stubble turning into a beard. Never saw him without a hat. Said he was studying bear. Bought some supplies--but real short on food, which I noticed right away--then he disappeared into the mountains for two weeks."
"'Two weeks'?" Parker wondered. "Living where: a cabin somewhere?"
"Hell, no, honey: Jarod had himself a tent," she snorted in laughter again, the idea of the tent evidently being very amusing. "He was packing in all he needed, he said. Said he was planning on living like a griz while he was in the high country."
"A 'griz'?" Parker queried.
"Sure, honey: grizzly bear. Jarod wanted to learn all about the griz and the black bear. Bought himself snow shoes, said he was hiking up the Koocanusa. This in December, honey: hell, we all thought he was griz chow. There's eighteen foot'a snow in the passes. Saying 'I'm hiking up the Koocanusa' this time of year is like saying, 'I'm going out back and shooting myself in the head'. It's suicide, pure and simply. So we wrote him off as another fool from back East wanting to get in touch with Mother Nature. Figured She'd 'touched' him, all right, 'touched him' damned good. Then he came waltzing out one fine day, like it was the most normal thing in the world. 'Course, two weeks living up there, eating berries and nuts and wild roots and he sure as hell looked--and smelled--just like a bear himself. He must of blended right in. I told him to get the hell out of my store until he'd had a bath. And that was the last I saw of him."
Parker sneered in distaste, wondering just how awful Jarod had smelled that he'd been ordered out of this dump. "That's just a bit more than I needed to know," she told the woman. "He didn't say where he was going, by any chance, did he?"
"Said if you asked, I should tell you: 'wherever you ain't. Said the bears were easier to get along with," she replied.
"Charming. Let's get out of here," she told Sydney, "that bush pilot said he couldn't get us back to Kalispell tonight unless we hurried. Looks like Dr. Doolittle is long gone--and hopefully he's had a bath since leaving."
"You'll want this, then," the woman told Parker, holding out a envelope marked with her name in Jarod's neat printing.
She tore it open: inside was one sheet of thin paper printed all over in what she guessed were Chinese characters, with one line of printing circled.
"Jarod said it was just what you needed," the woman added.
Parker swore softly, "I don't suppose there's a fax machine here in Hicksville, is there?"
The woman raised her eyebrows and smiled. "Not only do I have the only fax in Yaak, I'll give you a very special price, since you're such a nice girl: only thirty bucks."
Parker looked at her steadily. "How kind of you," she sneered. She motioned for Sam. "Fax this to the Centre. Tell them I want a translation of the circled part ASAP. And pay this . . . person, whatever she asks."
She was already half way out of the store when Broots interrupted her. "If you had warmer gloves, you'd be more comfortable on the flight to Kalispell," he said, hesitantly, holding up a heavy pair of knitted mittens.
"Spare me the concern," she said disdainfully. "Just thinking that Jarod may be being eaten by a bear--even as we speak--will keep me warm."
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Somewhere over Minnesota
Sam handed her the fax that had just arrived on the Centre's jet without comment.
It identified the document as the price list for a line of medicinal products made from animal parts. The line Jarod had circled read:
"Dried, powered bear spleen. Guarantied from wild bears. Cures either sexual frigidity or unnatural aggressiveness in females. Restores desired female sexual attitude. One hundred fifty dollars per one half ounce."
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The Canyon Inn
Ansonia, Tioga County, Pennsylvania
"Game Warden Myers?" Jarod asked, extending his hand to the burly man in a brown Pennsylvania Game Commission uniform. "Jarod Perkins. I believe you've been expecting me."
Myers looked Jarod up and down slowly, silently. "I'm off duty," he offered, finally, turning back to his beer.
"Yes," Jarod replied, taking the bar stool beside him, "yes, you are. But, here I am. I just came down out of the woods."
Myers studied Jarod again for a while. "You did, did you? Just now--at midnight?"
"Well, I got a ride into Little Marsh and walked back over the ridge--just to check out the situation."
Myers sipped his beer for a long moment without comment. "Walked?" he finally asked. "From Little Marsh? Over the tops, in a snowstorm? Why is it I think you're pulling my leg, Perkins?"
Jarod glanced surreptitiously at the other man's leg. He suspected that this was yet another idiom and wondered when, exactly, he'd come to the end of these conversational land mines. The spoken language seemed to be full of them. Just when he thought he'd heard them all, someone sprung a new one on him.
"I found three den sites," Jarod offered, side-stepping the entire leg-pulling situation.
"Good work, Nature Boy," Myers said sarcastically. "You're really something, aren't you? All those degrees, all those fancy credentials--and that nice, fat, Federal grant to come up here and study my bear. And don't you go right out in a fucking blizzard and walk--what--twelve miles as the crow flies, and then half that again, at least, up and over the mountain, and find yourself three bear dens to boot. Don't that just take the cake. My, my--I am just tickled pink by the whole deal, you bet I am."
Between the crow flying, someone taking the cake and Myers being 'tickled pink', Jarod was speechless. But the man's hostility--although perhaps exaggerated by alcohol--was very clear.
"What can I get you, mister?"
Jarod looked up: the bartender, against all expectations, was a sleek red head in a fuzzy, pink, low cut sweater. He stared.
"Lean over a little further, Darlene," Myers said cynically, "and Nature Boy here'll leave you one hell of a tip. Maybe I will, too. Go on, sugar: you kill two birds with one stone."
Jarod asked for Chivas and Darlene smiled even more widely.
"Fancy booze to go with your fancy theories," Myers said.
"'Theories'?" Jarod asked, "I really am not here to--"
"To hell you ain't, son!" Myers exclaimed. "I don't get a fax from the freaking main office asking me to show some bleeding heart liberal don't-shoot-it's-bambi animal rights son of a bitch of a wildlife biologist all over MY county without being able to see the forest for the trees! You can't pull the wool over MY eyes, son: I wasn't born yesterday!"
Jarod sipped his scotch, looked down Darlene's cleavage and tried to decode whatever it was Myers had just said.
"Lookie here!" Myers commanded, and grabbed Jarod by the arm, tugging him off his stool. "That look like some little pet puppy dog that needs you to protect it from the big, bad humans, huh?"
Jarod hadn't noticed it in the gloom, but there was a huge mounted black bear against the far wall, standing up on it's hind legs and lunging with mouth open at the bar.
"Ursus americanus," he said matter-of-factly, "but the pose is pure Ursus arctos."
"You telling me Tom the taxidermist don't know a black bear from a grizzly, son?" Ed Myers queried angrily. "A black bear'll get up on it's hind legs just like a griz--"
"But will rarely charge in that position," Jarod told the older man, "which that bear appears to be doing. Black bear tend to lope on all fours, cut off their prey's line of escape and attack from a more stable stance. For them, you're a food source, plain and simple. But grizzlies see humans as a threat to their territory, not food. They attack upright as a display of size and kill to defend their home ground."
Myers stood there studying the mounted bear for a bit. He then unexpectedly draped an arm across Jarod's shoulders. "Never noticed that before. Don't that beat all! Look, son--" Myers lead Jarod back to the bar--"don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to bust your balls. But I just don't want you barking up the wrong tree, is all. Yeah, some bozo is messing with the bear up here, and, yeah, it stinks and it's on my watch. So, maybe I'm a trifle testy about it. And, who knows, maybe two heads will be better than one. But no one likes being second-guessed by some smart ass hot shot. Hey, Darlene," he called, "bring my new buddy here another drink. On me."
Darlene giggled and blushed. "You got her motor running, son," Myers told him quietly. "Darlene's got the roundest heels in the county. Play your cards right and you'll be in like Flynn."
Jarod looked at Darlene and suddenly understood exactly what Ed meant.
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Jarod guessed it was well past closing time--and since he was the only person in the bar it hardly seemed worth staying open, even if it wasn't--but somehow, after Ed Myers had left, Darlene had started talking about her husband and she didn't seem to want to stop. And Jarod quickly realized Darlene knew every local--and everything they did--and would be an invaluable source of information for him as he researched his sting. Which is why he stayed.
Or, at least, that's what he told himself.
At some point Darlene had simply put the bottle on the bar between them and started matching him drink for drink, although she insisted on taking hers as shots: she had the cutest way of scrunching up her nose, gasping girlishly and flipping her hair back out of her face as she downed the scotch. Although it was a crime to treat Chivas that way, Jarod enjoyed watching her little performance immensely. And after each shot she had tugged the neckline of her sweater a notch lower and leaned further across the bar. The husband--named Al--had become a very real presence as she described him: Jarod felt he knew way more than he wanted to about his temper, his verbal and physical abuse, even his sexual kinks.
"He insists I dress up like a sex doll or something. You know--in those lacy things: teddies, crotchless panties, garter belts: that stuff," Darlene had told him. "Pretty kinky, huh? I bet you're shocked."
Jarod had pretended to be appalled. Which he hadn't needed to do later, when she showed him deep bruises on her arms--a memento of Al.
He had exited the men's room and was planning on finally leaving when she cornered him in the hallway.
She put one hand on the wall beside him, effectively trapping him, leaning in close and tossing her hair back. "You're really, really a nice guy," she told him, slurring the words just a bit.
Jarod was struggling, suddenly: he'd had a hugely strenuous day, coming after a very difficult two weeks in Montana: he was exhausted, border-line drunk and unsure if Al, the evil husband, wasn't lurking right around the corner somewhere. In spite of which, he was thinking about grabbing Darlene and getting that sweater all the way off her. He suddenly didn't feel like a very "nice" guy, at all.
"You just keep telling yourself that," he said.
"No," she insisted, "you're a real nice guy. Listening--you know--to all this shit. About Al. Why should you give a damn, you know?"
He tried gently to push by her, still planning a getaway, trying to leave before things got more complicated, but she grabbed his arm and moved in even closer. He was forced back against the wall. "Ah--Darlene . . . " he began weakly.
"You're a gentleman, that's what you are, and I don't know how to say 'thanks'," she told him seriously. "Well: first things first. How 'bout a blow job?"
"What?" he asked, startled. He was having trouble focusing--the hallway seemed to be tilting upward a bit. What he needed, he knew, was sleep. She was unbuckling his belt, he realized, and he felt her other hand on his crotch. He opened his mouth to say something else--to ask her to stop, to explain that he was falling asleep on his feet, to politely try to extricate himself from this bar, which was beginning to feel nightmarish--but she was already on her knees in front of him.
"I won't hurt you, sweetie" she explained rather unnecessarily, and before he could say another word she'd somehow gotten his pants unzipped and was licking the length of his penis: he looked directly down and watched, quite amazed to see he was hard--he honestly hadn't realized he was. Everything seemed to be happening in either slow motion or fast forward. He felt numb for an instant, watching as though it were happening to someone else, and then the sensations hit him with the force of a two-by-four and he moaned out loud--there was simply a time delay, he realized, due to the alcohol mixed with his exhaustion.
He gulped deeply--it was immediately evident Darlene had done this a few times before, "aren't you just the BIGGEST!" she'd said, and he'd known instantly it was an often-used and well-received line--and he was beginning to think it best to simply relax and enjoy when a male voice booming from the other room startled them both.
"Darlene, you stupid bitch--where the fuck are you, girl?" it said.
"Rain check, sweetie?" Darlene said brightly, and she was up and gone.
Jarod stood there for a long moment trying to catch his breath, wondering what the hell a 'rain check' was and how he was going to walk out of the bar in his present condition.
First things first, he thought, and gingerly zipped up his pants.
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Colton Point Lodge
Ansonia, Pennsylvania
The lodge was only a half mile down Route 6 from the bar and--since he'd left the beat-up, red, four wheel drive truck he'd bought for this pretend at the lodge--he'd walked back. The snow had nearly stopped--there were only scattered flakes, big and soft, still coming down--and the air was cold and crisp and lightly scented with wood smoke. It cleared his head and he breathed it in deeply as he walked along, trying to put what he had learned so far into perspective.
He hadn't eliminated Ed Myers as a suspect, and his conversation with Darlene hadn't helped him find any others. He'd seen little evidence on his hike across the ridge, either: if anyone else had visited the bear dens he'd found, they'd left no trace behind. One of the dens held a female with her two newborn cubs--black bear give birth inside their winter dens every other January, nursing the cubs through the winter while in a deep slumber that wasn't a true hibernation. All the bears--males as well as females--were at their most vulnerable during the winter, though, even if their rest period was not the profoundly deep sleep of an actual hibernation. It was during that period that the poacher he sought was killing them, then cutting off their paws and removing their spleens, leaving the rest of the animal to rot and any cubs to starve to death, their tiny paws being worthless. The body parts of the adults were hugely valuable for their alleged medicinal value in China, and that's where they were being sent.
As far as Jarod was concerned, the poacher was the worst sort of parasite, preying on the animals during their most defenseless time, motivated purely by greed, killing to satisfy a market demand based on the human assumption that all of nature had been provided merely to serve their whim, and that we could--indefinitely and without thought to the future--take and use what we wanted, as we wished, without restraint, without regard for the impact of our actions. It was an abuse of power as disgusting as any of the acts he had seen perpetrated upon people--the fact that the victims were "only" animals didn't change a thing, as far as he was concerned.
A few of the things Darlene had told him came back to him--in spite of the exhaustion and the scotch he HAD been paying attention--and he pondered them as he walked.
The slightly smoky hot air inside the lodge felt like the blast from a furnace when he walked inside. The big dining hall was empty, a fire still smoldering in the massive stone fireplace at the far end; the kitchen, beyond, silent and dark. He had the place to himself, anyway: deer season was over and the entire county deserted except for the handful of souls who eked out a living off the summer tourists and fall hunters. The lodge was run by an elderly couple--Jurgen and Inge--and he'd met them briefly that morning. In fact, they'd seemed thrilled to see him, and, no doubt, the unexpected extra income his stay represented. They'd made a huge breakfast for him and Jurgen had promised to have someone run an extra phone line into his room for his modem. As he climbed the stairs he was anticipating two things: email from Laura agreeing on a time to chat that night, and sleep.
He pulled off his heavy, felt-lined boots and began peeling off the outer layers of his clothing--it wasn't as warm upstairs as down in the dining hall, but it still felt stifling after his walk in the snow. By the time he'd gotten comfortable--down to only baggy long underwear--it was time, hopefully, to meet Laura online and, after his frustrating experience with Darlene outside the men's room and weeks away from even the release of cybersex, he was very much in the mood.
But, instead, she'd left email saying she'd be out that night, that she wanted to go dancing in Seattle and would try to be in touch the next night. Jarod cursed lightly--he suspected she was paying him back for having left without saying good-bye and then disappearing for several weeks. It constantly amazed him that she didn't understand that he would, eventually, be in touch. And that she wouldn't just come out and admit she was mad. Instead, she had started being inaccessible. It was driving him nuts.
He lay back on the bed, closed his eyes and thought about Darlene: about the smooth, rounded tops of her breasts, the way she pushed them together when she leaned across the bar on her elbows, the way her wavy red hair curled around the delicate curves of her ears, the pout of her lips pressed against the tip of his erection, the pink silkiness of her tongue exploring him . . . .
Normally, he would have taken care of his need in a nice, hot shower. But he was so tired he fell asleep in his clothes, stretched out sideways across the bed. And he dreamed of Laura, teasing him and pushing him away.
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The Centre
Blue Cove, Delaware
It was a big box, and heavy. From Jarod, of course, Miss Parker thought--another game--as she slit open the packing tape and opened it.
She pulled out the boots that were inside: they were big, ugly, rubber-bottomed snow boots, lined with thick wool felt and laced up high--her size, she saw. She tossed them disdainfully on her desk and checked the box for a note, for any sort of explanation.
It had been a month since she'd asked Laura to convey her message to Jarod: that she wanted to set up a meeting, alone--no guns, no goons--just the two of them, to try to work out some sort of deal. He had more information about both of her parents than he'd passed on to her, she knew, and she was willing to make some concessions to get it: she could back off a bit, delay her pursuit, even agree to miss if she got a clean shot at him. It was treason to the Centre, of course, but she had, increasingly, her own agenda. But she had heard nothing from Jarod.
She looked at the boots again and, after checking carefully to see if they hid a note, packed them thoughtfully back in the box. She had a feeling Jarod had a plan.
Ursa Major
Chapter 1
Witch1
Olson's Family Store & Feed
Yaak, Montana
She stomped the snow off her elegant, high-heeled boots on the ragged door mat and then brushed it off her shoulders brusquely as well. The pale, tired-looking woman leaning on the linoleum-covered counter across the store watched impassively as Sam entered behind her, followed by Sydney and Broots.
The store smelled of moldy bread and mice and the ancient wooden floor was warped and worn by generations of boot heels. Miss Parker took it all in: the dusty canned goods stacked in untidy masses, the wool hats, bulky, wool-lined boots, kitchen equipment, giant packages of toilet paper and cluttered shelves piled with tools. Shotguns were racked in a row behind the counter, boxes of ammo and an amazingly large selection of knives in the glass case under it. There were kerosene lamps hanging from the rafters, snowshoes, shovels and rakes, big, slowly leaking bags of sugar, rice and flour and jars filled with cheap, brightly colored candies. A smoky wood stove made from a fifty-five gallon oil drum even had a prominent place in the store's mid-section.
"Lovely," she muttered, "did they miss a single cliché?"
Sam held out the photo while she asked the obligatory question, by now a cliché of their own: "Do you recognize this man?"
The woman behind the counter looked at the photograph and snorted--a sort of amused laugh, Parker guessed. She doubted there was much reason for real laughter in the woman's dismal life.
"That's Jarod," she told them, "although I hardly recognize him looking like THAT!"
Parker frowned. There was nothing odd about the photo. "Why do you say that?" she asked.
"Well, I just didn't know he cleaned up so nice, is all," the woman answered rather cryptically.
Parker glanced at Sydney, but his face betrayed no emotion, as usual. And Broots was distracted, pawing at a display of heavy wool socks and gloves.
"What did he look like when he was here?" Parker asked.
"Well, you know--a regular guy. Dirty, stubble turning into a beard. Never saw him without a hat. Said he was studying bear. Bought some supplies--but real short on food, which I noticed right away--then he disappeared into the mountains for two weeks."
"'Two weeks'?" Parker wondered. "Living where: a cabin somewhere?"
"Hell, no, honey: Jarod had himself a tent," she snorted in laughter again, the idea of the tent evidently being very amusing. "He was packing in all he needed, he said. Said he was planning on living like a griz while he was in the high country."
"A 'griz'?" Parker queried.
"Sure, honey: grizzly bear. Jarod wanted to learn all about the griz and the black bear. Bought himself snow shoes, said he was hiking up the Koocanusa. This in December, honey: hell, we all thought he was griz chow. There's eighteen foot'a snow in the passes. Saying 'I'm hiking up the Koocanusa' this time of year is like saying, 'I'm going out back and shooting myself in the head'. It's suicide, pure and simply. So we wrote him off as another fool from back East wanting to get in touch with Mother Nature. Figured She'd 'touched' him, all right, 'touched him' damned good. Then he came waltzing out one fine day, like it was the most normal thing in the world. 'Course, two weeks living up there, eating berries and nuts and wild roots and he sure as hell looked--and smelled--just like a bear himself. He must of blended right in. I told him to get the hell out of my store until he'd had a bath. And that was the last I saw of him."
Parker sneered in distaste, wondering just how awful Jarod had smelled that he'd been ordered out of this dump. "That's just a bit more than I needed to know," she told the woman. "He didn't say where he was going, by any chance, did he?"
"Said if you asked, I should tell you: 'wherever you ain't. Said the bears were easier to get along with," she replied.
"Charming. Let's get out of here," she told Sydney, "that bush pilot said he couldn't get us back to Kalispell tonight unless we hurried. Looks like Dr. Doolittle is long gone--and hopefully he's had a bath since leaving."
"You'll want this, then," the woman told Parker, holding out a envelope marked with her name in Jarod's neat printing.
She tore it open: inside was one sheet of thin paper printed all over in what she guessed were Chinese characters, with one line of printing circled.
"Jarod said it was just what you needed," the woman added.
Parker swore softly, "I don't suppose there's a fax machine here in Hicksville, is there?"
The woman raised her eyebrows and smiled. "Not only do I have the only fax in Yaak, I'll give you a very special price, since you're such a nice girl: only thirty bucks."
Parker looked at her steadily. "How kind of you," she sneered. She motioned for Sam. "Fax this to the Centre. Tell them I want a translation of the circled part ASAP. And pay this . . . person, whatever she asks."
She was already half way out of the store when Broots interrupted her. "If you had warmer gloves, you'd be more comfortable on the flight to Kalispell," he said, hesitantly, holding up a heavy pair of knitted mittens.
"Spare me the concern," she said disdainfully. "Just thinking that Jarod may be being eaten by a bear--even as we speak--will keep me warm."
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Somewhere over Minnesota
Sam handed her the fax that had just arrived on the Centre's jet without comment.
It identified the document as the price list for a line of medicinal products made from animal parts. The line Jarod had circled read:
"Dried, powered bear spleen. Guarantied from wild bears. Cures either sexual frigidity or unnatural aggressiveness in females. Restores desired female sexual attitude. One hundred fifty dollars per one half ounce."
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The Canyon Inn
Ansonia, Tioga County, Pennsylvania
"Game Warden Myers?" Jarod asked, extending his hand to the burly man in a brown Pennsylvania Game Commission uniform. "Jarod Perkins. I believe you've been expecting me."
Myers looked Jarod up and down slowly, silently. "I'm off duty," he offered, finally, turning back to his beer.
"Yes," Jarod replied, taking the bar stool beside him, "yes, you are. But, here I am. I just came down out of the woods."
Myers studied Jarod again for a while. "You did, did you? Just now--at midnight?"
"Well, I got a ride into Little Marsh and walked back over the ridge--just to check out the situation."
Myers sipped his beer for a long moment without comment. "Walked?" he finally asked. "From Little Marsh? Over the tops, in a snowstorm? Why is it I think you're pulling my leg, Perkins?"
Jarod glanced surreptitiously at the other man's leg. He suspected that this was yet another idiom and wondered when, exactly, he'd come to the end of these conversational land mines. The spoken language seemed to be full of them. Just when he thought he'd heard them all, someone sprung a new one on him.
"I found three den sites," Jarod offered, side-stepping the entire leg-pulling situation.
"Good work, Nature Boy," Myers said sarcastically. "You're really something, aren't you? All those degrees, all those fancy credentials--and that nice, fat, Federal grant to come up here and study my bear. And don't you go right out in a fucking blizzard and walk--what--twelve miles as the crow flies, and then half that again, at least, up and over the mountain, and find yourself three bear dens to boot. Don't that just take the cake. My, my--I am just tickled pink by the whole deal, you bet I am."
Between the crow flying, someone taking the cake and Myers being 'tickled pink', Jarod was speechless. But the man's hostility--although perhaps exaggerated by alcohol--was very clear.
"What can I get you, mister?"
Jarod looked up: the bartender, against all expectations, was a sleek red head in a fuzzy, pink, low cut sweater. He stared.
"Lean over a little further, Darlene," Myers said cynically, "and Nature Boy here'll leave you one hell of a tip. Maybe I will, too. Go on, sugar: you kill two birds with one stone."
Jarod asked for Chivas and Darlene smiled even more widely.
"Fancy booze to go with your fancy theories," Myers said.
"'Theories'?" Jarod asked, "I really am not here to--"
"To hell you ain't, son!" Myers exclaimed. "I don't get a fax from the freaking main office asking me to show some bleeding heart liberal don't-shoot-it's-bambi animal rights son of a bitch of a wildlife biologist all over MY county without being able to see the forest for the trees! You can't pull the wool over MY eyes, son: I wasn't born yesterday!"
Jarod sipped his scotch, looked down Darlene's cleavage and tried to decode whatever it was Myers had just said.
"Lookie here!" Myers commanded, and grabbed Jarod by the arm, tugging him off his stool. "That look like some little pet puppy dog that needs you to protect it from the big, bad humans, huh?"
Jarod hadn't noticed it in the gloom, but there was a huge mounted black bear against the far wall, standing up on it's hind legs and lunging with mouth open at the bar.
"Ursus americanus," he said matter-of-factly, "but the pose is pure Ursus arctos."
"You telling me Tom the taxidermist don't know a black bear from a grizzly, son?" Ed Myers queried angrily. "A black bear'll get up on it's hind legs just like a griz--"
"But will rarely charge in that position," Jarod told the older man, "which that bear appears to be doing. Black bear tend to lope on all fours, cut off their prey's line of escape and attack from a more stable stance. For them, you're a food source, plain and simple. But grizzlies see humans as a threat to their territory, not food. They attack upright as a display of size and kill to defend their home ground."
Myers stood there studying the mounted bear for a bit. He then unexpectedly draped an arm across Jarod's shoulders. "Never noticed that before. Don't that beat all! Look, son--" Myers lead Jarod back to the bar--"don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to bust your balls. But I just don't want you barking up the wrong tree, is all. Yeah, some bozo is messing with the bear up here, and, yeah, it stinks and it's on my watch. So, maybe I'm a trifle testy about it. And, who knows, maybe two heads will be better than one. But no one likes being second-guessed by some smart ass hot shot. Hey, Darlene," he called, "bring my new buddy here another drink. On me."
Darlene giggled and blushed. "You got her motor running, son," Myers told him quietly. "Darlene's got the roundest heels in the county. Play your cards right and you'll be in like Flynn."
Jarod looked at Darlene and suddenly understood exactly what Ed meant.
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Jarod guessed it was well past closing time--and since he was the only person in the bar it hardly seemed worth staying open, even if it wasn't--but somehow, after Ed Myers had left, Darlene had started talking about her husband and she didn't seem to want to stop. And Jarod quickly realized Darlene knew every local--and everything they did--and would be an invaluable source of information for him as he researched his sting. Which is why he stayed.
Or, at least, that's what he told himself.
At some point Darlene had simply put the bottle on the bar between them and started matching him drink for drink, although she insisted on taking hers as shots: she had the cutest way of scrunching up her nose, gasping girlishly and flipping her hair back out of her face as she downed the scotch. Although it was a crime to treat Chivas that way, Jarod enjoyed watching her little performance immensely. And after each shot she had tugged the neckline of her sweater a notch lower and leaned further across the bar. The husband--named Al--had become a very real presence as she described him: Jarod felt he knew way more than he wanted to about his temper, his verbal and physical abuse, even his sexual kinks.
"He insists I dress up like a sex doll or something. You know--in those lacy things: teddies, crotchless panties, garter belts: that stuff," Darlene had told him. "Pretty kinky, huh? I bet you're shocked."
Jarod had pretended to be appalled. Which he hadn't needed to do later, when she showed him deep bruises on her arms--a memento of Al.
He had exited the men's room and was planning on finally leaving when she cornered him in the hallway.
She put one hand on the wall beside him, effectively trapping him, leaning in close and tossing her hair back. "You're really, really a nice guy," she told him, slurring the words just a bit.
Jarod was struggling, suddenly: he'd had a hugely strenuous day, coming after a very difficult two weeks in Montana: he was exhausted, border-line drunk and unsure if Al, the evil husband, wasn't lurking right around the corner somewhere. In spite of which, he was thinking about grabbing Darlene and getting that sweater all the way off her. He suddenly didn't feel like a very "nice" guy, at all.
"You just keep telling yourself that," he said.
"No," she insisted, "you're a real nice guy. Listening--you know--to all this shit. About Al. Why should you give a damn, you know?"
He tried gently to push by her, still planning a getaway, trying to leave before things got more complicated, but she grabbed his arm and moved in even closer. He was forced back against the wall. "Ah--Darlene . . . " he began weakly.
"You're a gentleman, that's what you are, and I don't know how to say 'thanks'," she told him seriously. "Well: first things first. How 'bout a blow job?"
"What?" he asked, startled. He was having trouble focusing--the hallway seemed to be tilting upward a bit. What he needed, he knew, was sleep. She was unbuckling his belt, he realized, and he felt her other hand on his crotch. He opened his mouth to say something else--to ask her to stop, to explain that he was falling asleep on his feet, to politely try to extricate himself from this bar, which was beginning to feel nightmarish--but she was already on her knees in front of him.
"I won't hurt you, sweetie" she explained rather unnecessarily, and before he could say another word she'd somehow gotten his pants unzipped and was licking the length of his penis: he looked directly down and watched, quite amazed to see he was hard--he honestly hadn't realized he was. Everything seemed to be happening in either slow motion or fast forward. He felt numb for an instant, watching as though it were happening to someone else, and then the sensations hit him with the force of a two-by-four and he moaned out loud--there was simply a time delay, he realized, due to the alcohol mixed with his exhaustion.
He gulped deeply--it was immediately evident Darlene had done this a few times before, "aren't you just the BIGGEST!" she'd said, and he'd known instantly it was an often-used and well-received line--and he was beginning to think it best to simply relax and enjoy when a male voice booming from the other room startled them both.
"Darlene, you stupid bitch--where the fuck are you, girl?" it said.
"Rain check, sweetie?" Darlene said brightly, and she was up and gone.
Jarod stood there for a long moment trying to catch his breath, wondering what the hell a 'rain check' was and how he was going to walk out of the bar in his present condition.
First things first, he thought, and gingerly zipped up his pants.
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Colton Point Lodge
Ansonia, Pennsylvania
The lodge was only a half mile down Route 6 from the bar and--since he'd left the beat-up, red, four wheel drive truck he'd bought for this pretend at the lodge--he'd walked back. The snow had nearly stopped--there were only scattered flakes, big and soft, still coming down--and the air was cold and crisp and lightly scented with wood smoke. It cleared his head and he breathed it in deeply as he walked along, trying to put what he had learned so far into perspective.
He hadn't eliminated Ed Myers as a suspect, and his conversation with Darlene hadn't helped him find any others. He'd seen little evidence on his hike across the ridge, either: if anyone else had visited the bear dens he'd found, they'd left no trace behind. One of the dens held a female with her two newborn cubs--black bear give birth inside their winter dens every other January, nursing the cubs through the winter while in a deep slumber that wasn't a true hibernation. All the bears--males as well as females--were at their most vulnerable during the winter, though, even if their rest period was not the profoundly deep sleep of an actual hibernation. It was during that period that the poacher he sought was killing them, then cutting off their paws and removing their spleens, leaving the rest of the animal to rot and any cubs to starve to death, their tiny paws being worthless. The body parts of the adults were hugely valuable for their alleged medicinal value in China, and that's where they were being sent.
As far as Jarod was concerned, the poacher was the worst sort of parasite, preying on the animals during their most defenseless time, motivated purely by greed, killing to satisfy a market demand based on the human assumption that all of nature had been provided merely to serve their whim, and that we could--indefinitely and without thought to the future--take and use what we wanted, as we wished, without restraint, without regard for the impact of our actions. It was an abuse of power as disgusting as any of the acts he had seen perpetrated upon people--the fact that the victims were "only" animals didn't change a thing, as far as he was concerned.
A few of the things Darlene had told him came back to him--in spite of the exhaustion and the scotch he HAD been paying attention--and he pondered them as he walked.
The slightly smoky hot air inside the lodge felt like the blast from a furnace when he walked inside. The big dining hall was empty, a fire still smoldering in the massive stone fireplace at the far end; the kitchen, beyond, silent and dark. He had the place to himself, anyway: deer season was over and the entire county deserted except for the handful of souls who eked out a living off the summer tourists and fall hunters. The lodge was run by an elderly couple--Jurgen and Inge--and he'd met them briefly that morning. In fact, they'd seemed thrilled to see him, and, no doubt, the unexpected extra income his stay represented. They'd made a huge breakfast for him and Jurgen had promised to have someone run an extra phone line into his room for his modem. As he climbed the stairs he was anticipating two things: email from Laura agreeing on a time to chat that night, and sleep.
He pulled off his heavy, felt-lined boots and began peeling off the outer layers of his clothing--it wasn't as warm upstairs as down in the dining hall, but it still felt stifling after his walk in the snow. By the time he'd gotten comfortable--down to only baggy long underwear--it was time, hopefully, to meet Laura online and, after his frustrating experience with Darlene outside the men's room and weeks away from even the release of cybersex, he was very much in the mood.
But, instead, she'd left email saying she'd be out that night, that she wanted to go dancing in Seattle and would try to be in touch the next night. Jarod cursed lightly--he suspected she was paying him back for having left without saying good-bye and then disappearing for several weeks. It constantly amazed him that she didn't understand that he would, eventually, be in touch. And that she wouldn't just come out and admit she was mad. Instead, she had started being inaccessible. It was driving him nuts.
He lay back on the bed, closed his eyes and thought about Darlene: about the smooth, rounded tops of her breasts, the way she pushed them together when she leaned across the bar on her elbows, the way her wavy red hair curled around the delicate curves of her ears, the pout of her lips pressed against the tip of his erection, the pink silkiness of her tongue exploring him . . . .
Normally, he would have taken care of his need in a nice, hot shower. But he was so tired he fell asleep in his clothes, stretched out sideways across the bed. And he dreamed of Laura, teasing him and pushing him away.
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The Centre
Blue Cove, Delaware
It was a big box, and heavy. From Jarod, of course, Miss Parker thought--another game--as she slit open the packing tape and opened it.
She pulled out the boots that were inside: they were big, ugly, rubber-bottomed snow boots, lined with thick wool felt and laced up high--her size, she saw. She tossed them disdainfully on her desk and checked the box for a note, for any sort of explanation.
It had been a month since she'd asked Laura to convey her message to Jarod: that she wanted to set up a meeting, alone--no guns, no goons--just the two of them, to try to work out some sort of deal. He had more information about both of her parents than he'd passed on to her, she knew, and she was willing to make some concessions to get it: she could back off a bit, delay her pursuit, even agree to miss if she got a clean shot at him. It was treason to the Centre, of course, but she had, increasingly, her own agenda. But she had heard nothing from Jarod.
She looked at the boots again and, after checking carefully to see if they hid a note, packed them thoughtfully back in the box. She had a feeling Jarod had a plan.
