The Chimera Secret (11 page)

‘Because you didn’t kill your brothers,’ Ethan said.

A glimmer of hope appeared in Jesse’s eyes.

‘They don’ believe me,’ he said, glancing briefly at the sheriff.

‘It’s not an easy story to believe, son,’ Earl said.

Ethan slid into a seat at the table and looked at Jesse. ‘You ever heard of a giant oarfish?’ he asked. When Jesse shook his head, Ethan went on. ‘It’s about sixty feet
long and looks like a sea serpent, like one of those things that sailors used to swear attacked ships hundreds of years ago. People didn’t believe them, until they caught one. Now
there’s a skeleton of one hanging in a university in Chicago.’

Lopez sat down next to Ethan and leaned forward on the table. She took Jesse’s hand, her rough-edged persona melting as she smiled at the kid.

‘We need to know what happened, Jesse, what you saw up in those mountains. Whatever it is, we need to prove it exists before the state of Idaho decides that you’re insane and puts
you behind bars for the next fifty years.’

Jesse bit his lip, his attention fixed on Lopez’s disarming gaze.

‘I din’ kill my brothers, or that ranger. That . . .’ He struggled for words. ‘That
thing
got them.’

Ethan watched the kid closely. His hands clenched as he spoke of the animal that had killed his brother. A fingernail paled as it was crushed against the Formica surface of the table.

Ethan could see it wasn’t an act, the kid wasn’t lying. Most teenagers tended to be full of vigour and arrogance: they didn’t cry in front of others. Jesse MacCarthy had not
just been frightened beyond belief but had been psychologically transformed from a cocky, fearless youth who had spent an entire childhood out in the woods into a cowering child, afraid of his own
shadow.

Lopez squeezed Jesse’s hand gently.

‘Can you describe it? How did you find it?’

Jesse sucked in a trembling lungful of air.

‘Headed east out of Riggins and followed the animal trails into the mountains. We went up that way because the elk move to the valleys in the fall, and most all the hikers stay close to
the towns with the tour parties. We figured there was nobody out there to watch us. Cleet, he was the shooter, I was the back-up in case our mark bolted.’

‘Season was out though, right?’ Ethan said. ‘Why not wait?’

Jesse managed a brief, bitter chuckle, staring at the table top as he spoke.

‘Cleet hated the tourists. He was like our old man, reckoned that the forests were better without the people in them. Exceptin’ himself, of course.’

‘We found the ranger’s body out by Fox Creek,’ Earl Carpenter said. ‘Did he follow you all the way?’

Jesse shrugged.

‘Guess so. We tracked a big male elk out that way. Cleet wanted to take his shot at dusk, when we could get real close in the half-light and make sure of the kill.’ Jesse shivered.
‘I guess the creature that killed the ranger was thinking the same thing.’

Lopez’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘You think that it hunted you on purpose?’

Jesse nodded, his voice haunted as he spoke.

‘The ranger collared us before we could take our shot,’ he explained. ‘He asked us who was with us. When we told him it was just the two of us, he din’ believe it and
said that somebody was following us. Before we could figure out who the hell it was, we all smelled something.’

Ethan frowned. ‘You smelled something?’

‘Worst thing ever,’ Jesse confirmed. ‘Was like a soccer team’s used kit rubbed in crap then left in a steam room for a month. I nearly puked, it made my eyes water up, it
was so bad. Then . . .’ He trailed off. ‘Then it broke cover and went for the ranger.’

‘Describe it,’ Lopez encouraged him. ‘As if it was a person.’

Jesse swallowed thickly, his hand gripping Lopez’s tightly enough that his knuckles showed white beneath the harsh glare of the lights.

‘Big, way bigger than a man or even a bear. Russet-brown fur, and it walked on two legs the whole time except when it charged down the hillside after Cleet. God, it moved so fast, and it
screamed.’ Jesse stumbled over his words as fear poisoned his veins anew. ‘I’ve never heard a noise like it. It echoed down the valley and was so loud it hurt my ears.’

‘This thing was standing when it hit the ranger,’ Ethan said. ‘Can you tell us how tall it was?’

‘Nine feet,’ Jesse replied through his repressed sobs as he ran a wiry hand through his thick black hair, ‘maybe ten. Fucking hell, man, it was huge, made the ranger look like
a little kid. Then it hit him. His head came clean off and went into the creek and I freaked. I just froze and couldn’t move. Cleet tried to protect me and fired at it. Hit it straight in the
guts with a .308 slug from no more than fifteen yards – might as well have been at point-blank range.’ Jesse slowly shook his head. ‘If he’d have shot the elk that close it
would have been dead before it hit th’ground. Man, it just made the thing madder. It went after him, hurled him into the river and broke his neck.’

Jesse went abruptly silent as he realized perhaps for the first time that his brother was truly dead.

‘Then what did it do?’ Lopez asked softly.

‘Beat ’im up real bad,’ Jesse uttered. ‘Was shaking him about and breaking all his bones. Didn’t care that he was dead already. Then it came at me.’

Ethan leaned forward. ‘But you got away.’

Jesse shook his head, but his entire body was shaking just the same as he replied in staccato tones, his words broken by fear.

‘No, I ran but it caught me just as easy as if I’d stayed right where I was.’ He looked at Ethan in confusion. ‘Then it let me go. It had me, was standing right over me.
I must’ve passed out or something, and when I came around it was just walking away like I wasn’t worth the bother.’

Ethan leaned back and looked over at Earl Carpenter.

‘That sounds like a conscious decision,’ he said. ‘Not the kind of thing a bear would do.’

‘Bear probably wouldn’t kill more than once out of rage either,’ Earl admitted. ‘Sure, they take hikers from time to time and chew on them a bit, but this doesn’t
sound like a bear attack.’

‘It was no bear,’ Jesse snapped. ‘Cleet was a fine shot, one of the best. If it had been a bear he’d have killed it long before it reached us. All I can think is that he
was as scared straight as I was and didn’t make a clean shot.’

Ethan glanced across at Earl.

‘If there’s some dangerous animal out there in the mountains, wouldn’t the ranger’s office have posted warnings by now or sent teams out to track this thing down?
Technically, it’s a man-eater, right?’

‘So are bears,’ Earl replied. ‘This is big bear country, Mr. Warner, and those critters don’t have much issue with hunting humans, especially unwary tourists who dump
trash around their camp sites. It’s virtually a welcome sign for a hungry bear.’

‘They’ve been known to smash their way into cars,’ Lopez agreed, ‘because somebody’s left a window open and food on display inside.’

‘No way any ranger’s office could track all the bears at once, much less prevent them from crossing paths with people in the woods,’ Earl said.

Jesse MacCarthy looked at Ethan, his fists clenched and tears staining his cheeks.

‘Like I said, this weren’t no bear. It’s smarter, bigger and more dangerous, and it sure don’t like people.’ Jesse leaned in toward Lopez. ‘Whatever it is,
don’t be goin’ after it. Get the goddamned marines out there, they might stand a chance.’

‘Would you be willing to lead us out there, Jesse,’ Lopez asked, ‘maybe help us track this thing and—’

Jesse recoiled from her, the cuffs on his wrist snapping taut. ‘No way,’ he choked, ‘no fucking way. I’m not goin’ out there ever again.’ He looked up at
Earl, panic in his eyes. ‘Don’t make me.’

Earl unlocked Jesse’s cuffs and led him back toward the holding cells as Ethan and Lopez made their way out to the station’s lobby.

‘What do you think?’ Lopez asked him as they stepped outside.

The sun was out again, the soaring hills around the Salmon River looking like an idyllic haven for nature lovers, not the shadowy domain of some murderous beast.

‘Tough to know. We’ve still got one missing body, that of Cletus MacCarthy, but from what Jesse just said that could have been smashed to pieces and eaten by now.’

Earl Carpenter stepped out of the station office and joined them, pulling a Lucky from a packet in his shirt pocket and offering one to Ethan and Lopez. They both declined. Earl lit the
cigarette and puffed a billowing cloud of blue smoke into the air.

‘So, what you want to do now?’

‘I want to talk to Jesse’s mother,’ Ethan said. ‘There’s got to be something we can follow up on here. Two brothers die on the same night, one out in the woods and
one in his own garage. I don’t care if there’s a monster prowling the hills, it’s too much of a coincidence.’

‘You think you can connect the two killings?’ Earl asked in surprise. ‘With what?’

‘We’ll find out when we get there,’ Lopez said.

Her dark eyes brooked no argument, and Earl shrugged as he flicked the butt of his cigarette away into the parking lot and headed toward his truck.

‘You suit yourselves,’ he said. ‘Sally MacCarthy lives up off the main road. I’ll drop you there on my way through.’

Ethan stood in front of the lean-to garage and looked up at the heavy crossbeam from which Randy MacCarthy’s body had been hanged as Earl Carpenter drove away down the
dusty track toward the main road.

Lopez stood next to him and gestured up at the beam.

‘One person couldn’t sling a dead body over that beam unless they fashioned some kind of rig. If they’d hauled the body up and over, the rope would have scored the
beam.’

Ethan nodded.

‘We’re looking for more than one person but right now the mother’s going to be the prime suspect in the eyes of the law.’

‘Earl didn’t think so,’ Lopez pointed out, ‘and he knows the family better than us.’

‘That’s not evidence,’ Ethan said, ‘it’s bias. In the absence of any other known players I can’t see where else to take this.’

The voice that came from behind them was quiet.

‘I didn’t kill my boy.’

Ethan turned to his left, where a frail-looking woman watched them from behind the porch door, half in shadow as though she was afraid of the light.

Lopez took a pace toward her.

‘Mrs. MacCarthy? We’re here from the Sheriff’s Office on behalf of—’

‘I know who you are,’ Sally MacCarthy replied as she turned from the door and vanished into the house. ‘In a small town, word travels. Won’t you come in?’

Ethan followed Lopez into the house and pulled the porch door shut behind him.

Homes always had a feeling to them, that first impression: a mixture of sights, smells and instincts that flood the senses, and in an instant Ethan felt an odd mixture of warmth and tragedy.
Pictures of a family across a mantelpiece. The lounge, clean and uncluttered, well looked after. Warm colors on the walls. Soft carpet underfoot. A small, floppy-eared dog napped in a basket
beneath a stairway. Sunlight beamed through from the kitchen.

But the faces in the pictures were of Sally MacCarthy’s sons and deceased husband. The dog’s eyes were open and it was slumped listlessly. The house was silent, perhaps for the first
time in decades. Sally moved with weary steps that dragged her feet across the carpet, as though every step was now a labor that she would rather not undertake.

‘You from the government?’

Her voice called from the kitchen above the sound of a kettle, her tones a little brighter now. Ethan caught a knowing glance from Lopez. Denial was a difficult emotion that they had both
witnessed in the relatives of murder victims and those of tragedy. Sally’s movements suggested resignation to the fate that life had dealt her, while her voice was laden with the stubborn
defiance of a woman who has suffered and yet refuses to quit.

‘Contracted,’ Lopez replied as Sally returned from the kitchen with a pot of coffee and three ornate cups. ‘We’re trying to figure out what happened here.’

Sally set the cups down on a small table and sat down, Ethan and Lopez taking a seat opposite her on the couch.

‘So is everybody,’ Sally replied, and picked up her cup. ‘But they’re all one step forward and two steps back. Two of my boys are dead, one’s in a cell likely to be
charged with their murder and I’m here on my own wonderin’ how the hell this could have happened.’

Ethan saw the cup trembling in her hand, beads of coffee spilling from the rim.

‘You said that you found Randy in the garage and that he had already passed away,’ Ethan said as gently as he could. ‘Did you notice anything else out of place?’

Sally looked at him over the rim of her cup.

‘I was kinda focused on my boy, mister.’

‘We know,’ Lopez replied. ‘But we believe this may have been a homicide. Forensics haven’t turned anything up and there aren’t any other leads. We just want to know
if something has been missed, anything at all.’

Sally stared into the middle distance for a long beat before speaking.

‘I don’t know, it was just a—’

‘A what?’ Lopez pressed. ‘Anything could be helpful.’

‘It was just a feeling,’ Sally replied. ‘Right before I found Randy I came through here and it just felt like somebody had been here. I can’t explain it, nothing was out
of place and yet nothing seemed quite the way I’d left it. I felt sure that somebody had searched our home – that’s why I went straight out to the truck. I thought that maybe
somebody had stolen the keys.’

‘And there was nothing about Randy’s behavior that struck you as unusual in the days leading up to now?’

She sighed.

‘I’ve told the sheriff and the rangers everything. Randy was a complicated boy, always into everything. He din’ get out much, unlike his brothers. Last time he made wild claims
about government agents at work in Riggins he was locked up for forty-eight hours by the sheriff. But mostly he preferred to stay in on his computer.’

‘Could we see his room, please?’ asked Ethan.

Sally’s eyes closed for a moment and then she nodded and stood up. Ethan knew that the chances of her having set foot in that room since Randy had died would be minimal. The door would
have been kept closed, everything left as it had been. Perfect for an investigator – perfectly miserable for Sally MacCarthy, the room forever a shrine to her lost son.