Chimera (37 page)

“We’d even lend you a professional-looking camera, as long as you promise not to hit anyone with it,” Renwick offered.

“Sounds good to me,” Bulatt said with a shrug.
 
“Do we have a phone number for the house?”

“That we do,” Reston replied cheerfully.
 
“Here’s her address and phone numbers — residence and cell — and a map showing the way to her house.”
 
She handed Bulatt a brightly colored map from her printer, and a second typed page.
 
“Take I-Five to the Crater Lake Highway, and keep on heading north.
 
You ought to be able to make it in three and a half hours, max, if the roads are still clear.”

“Or we could probably get Woeshack to fly us up there,” Achara suggested.
 
“It might save some time.”

“Let’s not,” Bulatt said, “I try not to live quite that close to the edge.”

CHAPTER 34

Sam Fogarty’s Ranch, Bend, Oregon

The young woman who came to the door looked angry and frustrated and depressed; and quite possibly ready to hit someone with the hand-sewn leather quiver of arrows she held in her right hand.
 
To Bulatt and Achara’s surprise, she also appeared to be of Southeast Asian descent.

“Yes, may I help you?”
 
The young woman said curtly, her mind clearly elsewhere.

“Uh, my name is Achara, I’m here to meet with Carolyn Fogarty,” Achara said.
 
“I called ahead and she’s expecting us.”

The young woman blinked, first in confusion and then in surprise.
 
“Oh, right, you’re that outdoor writer.
 
You meant
today
?”
 
She shook her head as if to trying to dislodge some dark, hovering cloud from her mind.
 
“Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.
 
I’m just … upset today.”

“If this is an inconvenient time, we can certainly come back later,” Achara said soothingly.
 
“But I really do want to interview you for the article.
 
I think your interest in bow hunting is fascinating, and I’m sure my readers will feel that way also.
 
It’s not something you find many women hunters doing these days.
 
And now that I know you’re of Asian descent, I’m even more intrigued because I don’t think I’ve ever met an Asian women who bow-hunts.
 
Would you mind if I asked you where you were born?”

“I — no, I don’t mind, I just don’t know where I was born, or who my parents are,” Fogarty said hesitantly, acting as if she wanted to slam the door in Achara’s face; but, at the same time, wanted desperately to talk with someone.

“You look as if you might be Thai, like me,” Achara said, pressing cautiously.
 
“Were you an orphan?”

“Yes, I was adopted by Mr. Fogarty from an orphanage in southern Thailand.
 
Their records indicated that I’d been found on the beach after a severe storm, but nobody seemed to know where —”

Carolyn Fogarty shook her head again, looking more confused now than upset.
 
“I’m sorry, please come in, I didn’t mean to leave you standing out here.”
 
She stepped back inside the foyer and opened the door wider.

“Are you sure we’re not intruding,” Achara said as she quickly stepped into the doorway.

“No, not at all,” Fogarty said. “In fact, it would be helpful to talk with someone right now.”

“In that case, I will be happy to listen,” Achara said.
 
“Oh, and this is Gedimin, my photographer,” she added.
 
“I hope you won’t mind if he takes some photographs to illustrate my article.”

“Uh, no, of course not; he’s welcome to do so,” Fogarty said as she closed the door.
 
“Would either of you like something to drink?
 
Coffee?
 
Tea?
 
Hot chocolate?”

“Coffee, please,” Bulatt said as he took the strobe-mounted digital camera he’d borrowed from the lab out of its carrier bag and thumbed the power switch to the ON position.

“Yes, coffee would be wonderful,” Achara said as she and Bulatt followed Fogarty into the wide-windowed kitchen, and then stood at the window and looked down at the expanse of landscaped yard behind the house — a huge grassy area that butted up against a densely-forested area — while Carolyn Fogarty set the quiver aside and poured coffee into three earthen mugs.
 
Near the trees, a man was doing something with a mounted bulls-eye target; one of three that extended out at increasing distances from the back porch.

“Milk or cream?

“Black will be fine,” Achara said.
 
“What a beautiful place you have.”

“Spectacular,” Bulatt agreed as he accepted the steaming mug.
 
“I see you even have a set of distance-targets for your bow.
 
Do you think we could try to get a photograph of you from an over-your-shoulder view, with your bow drawn back, and the target in the distance hovering just over the arrowhead?”

“I’m certainly willing to try, but we’ll have to wait until my father gets finished with his practicing first,” she said with an audible edge to her voice.
 
“I don’t want to interfere with his … preparations.”

“That’s your father down there?” Bulatt asked.
 
“It looks like he’s throwing spears.”

“Apparently his new approach to hunting,” Fogarty said, the chill in her voice contrasting vividly with the fire in her eyes.

“Really?
 
That seems like an odd choice for a hunting weapon, unless you’re hunting boar,” Achara said.
 
“And even then —”

“More odd than you could possibly imagine.”
 
Fogarty nodded grimly.

“I’m sure he has his reasons, but I’m much more interested in learning about your choice of weapons,” Achara said hurriedly.
 
“Could we see your bow?”

“Yes, of course,” Fogarty said, the fire in her eyes starting to recede again, if only for the moment.

She picked up the quiver and led them into a spacious, rosewood paneled den that was filled with the trapping and paraphernalia of sports hunting.
 
On the left side wall, the heads of three mule deer with impressive racks were prominently displayed.
 
Below the trophy heads and to the left, a modern unstrung re-curved bow and a machine-sewn leather quiver filled with factory-made arrows hung from a set of wooden pegs.
 
To the right, a hand-carved single-curved bow hung from an identical set of pegs.

Fogarty started to hang the hand-sewn quiver of arrows next to the crude bow when Achara stepped up next to her.
 
“May I,” she asked, holding out her hand.

The young woman hesitated, and then handed Achara the quiver filled with what were now clearly hand-made arrows.
 
Achara drew one of the arrows out of the quiver and began to examine it closely.

“Did you make this?” she asked.

“Yes, out of turkey feathers and obsidian,” Fogarty said with an audible sense of pride.
 
“I scraped the shaft, and even flaked the heads myself — out of obsidian, just like the early Indians used to do.
 
It was one of my hobbies when I was younger.”

“And the bow?”

“Hand-carved from an Ash tree branch with an obsidian knife,” Fogarty said, smiling openly now.
 
“It took me almost a month to make it.
 
It’s nowhere near as powerful as a re-curved fiberglass bow, of course; and my arrows don’t fly as far or as straight as my aluminum broad heads.
 
But I can still put an arrow in the black at thirty feet, two out of three times.
 
Watch this.”

 
Working quickly, Fogarty strung the hand-made bow, pulled a home-made arrow out of the quiver, spun around and sent the arrow streaking across the room; the obsidian tip burying itself into the thick, wall-mounted target just inside the outer edge of the black bulls-eye.

“That is incredible,” Achara said as they watched the young woman stride across the room and yank the arrow out of the target.
 
“Do you actually hunt with them?” Achara asked.

“I was going to,” Fogarty said bitterly, the fire in her eyes suddenly back again.
 
“That was always
my
plan, but —”

“Those are beautiful specimens,” Bulatt said quickly, deliberately interrupting the conversation as he moved in closer and began taking close-up shots of each head.
 
“I can’t imagine taking an animal like that with a home-made bow.
 
Did you hunt them locally?”

“Around here?
 
Fat chance,” Fogarty snorted.
 
“You want to bow-hunt a deer like one of these guys, you’ve got to go to Idaho, Wyoming or Montana.”

“Let me guess, Idaho?” Bulatt offered.

“All three of them; Idaho bred and born, from just south of the Gospel Hump Wilderness Area,” Fogarty said with a fierce expression of pride on her face.
 
“The one on the far left was two seasons ago, the one in the middle last year, and the one on the right this year.
 
I’d like to see my father match that with one of his damned spears.”
 
She laughed harshly.

“You can see the progression,” Bulatt said.
 
“Each year, you’ve taken a bigger — and I can only assume a stronger — animal.
 
I think we’ve got the central theme for the article,” he said to Achara with a meaningful tone to his voice.

“I was told that you usually bow-hunt alone.
 
Do you ever go hunting with your father?” Achara asked, instinctively deciding to press the sensitive issue just a little bit more; and was startled to see Fogarty’s face redden from some inner fury that seemed barely under control.

 
“We used to go hunting together all the time,” she said bitterly, “but now he and his friends only care about themselves and their goddamned trophy rooms.
 
The biggest hunt of an era,” she snarled, “and he won’t even take me along to watch, much less take part in the hunt; something I’ve dreamed about doing since I was a kid.
 
Something
I think
I was destined to do.
 
Can you believe that?!”

“I’m sorry,” Achara said soothingly, “I didn’t mean —”

Some barrier in Fogarty’s mind suddenly seemed to rupture.

“Do you want to see what I have to compete against?
 
Come on, let me show you.”

Then, before Achara and Bulatt could do or say anything, Carolyn Fogarty moved over to the wall directly across from the doorway, reached up, turned two mounted lamps to a ninety-degree angle, and then stood back as the entire wall slid apart in two receding panels.

“Oh my god,” Achara whispered as she stared disbelievingly at the dozens of endangered species mounts displayed on the cavernous walls of the hidden room, only vague aware of the flash from Bulatt’s camera.

“That’s all he cares about any more,” Fogarty said, the tears now flowing down her face.
 
“And it’s only going to get worse if he actually manages to kill a —”

The door burst open behind the three figures, and Sam Fogarty charged into the room with an obsidian-tipped spear clenched in his right hand.

“What the hell are you two doing here?!” he demanded, his face almost purple with rage.

“I let them in here,
father
!” Carolyn Fogarty yelled back.
 
“I wanted them to see for themselves exactly what kind of man you really are!”

“You … you …” Fogarty looked as if he was going apoplectic.
 
“Get out of my house!” he finally managed to rasp at Achara.
 
“You have no right to be here!”

“Actually, we were invited into this house, and into this room, by your daughter, Mr. Fogarty,” Bulatt said, holding up his special agent badge-case in his left hand, and sweeping his jacket back with his right to expose his holstered Sig Sauer pistol.
 
“My name is Gedimin Bulatt.
 
I’m a special agent of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and because your daughter also invited us into this trophy room, willingly and of her own accord, I’m placing you — as the head of this household — under arrest for suspicion of numerous violations of the Endangered Species Act.
 
Put the spear down, right now.”

“SHE … WHAT?!” Fogarty screamed in furious disbelief.

“Put the spear down, Fogarty, now!” Bulatt ordered again, swiftly drawing his pistol, but keeping it pointed at the floor.

“Ha, so much for your goddamned ‘hunt of the era’,
father
,” Carolyn Fogarty sneered, her eyes glistening now with the fury of vengeance delivered.
 
“Let’s see you try to spear that baby mammoth from a prison cell!”

“You … you traitorous bitch!”
 
Fogarty started to bring the spear up, and then screamed in surprise and agony as an obsidian-tipped arrow streaked across the room and ripped into his right shoulder.
 
The spear clattered on the wooden floor.
 
Fogarty started to reach for it, and Bulatt was sighting on his center of mass — prepared to put a forty-caliber hollow-point bullet in the enraged man’s heart, and a second in his head — when he sensed a figure moving quickly to his right.
 
He spun around, saw Carolyn Fogarty pull another homemade arrow out of the quiver, and then watched her crumble to the floor under the savage impact of a spinning head-kick from Achara Kulawnit.

Sam Fogarty — dazed now from the combination of rage and searing pain — was still fumbling for the dropped spear when Bulatt’s right boot came down hard on the shaft; followed by his left boot that shoved Fogarty away from the ancient weapon and onto his back.