Unbearably Deadly (Roger and Suzanne South American Mystery Series Book 9) Read online

According to my fancy GPS device on loan from the FBI, we’d come about fifteen miles as the crow flies from the Lodge in the two hours we’d been biking with Suzanne in the lead. She stopped abruptly to point to a large brownish looking area on the grassy ground as far off the trail to our right as we could see through the dense forest.

  “What’s that, Roger?”

  “I’m not sure at this distance,” I replied. “We can leave the bikes here and take a closer look. Let’s not leave the bikes out in plain sight, just in case someone comes along and thinks we left them here and headed back to the Lodge by hitching a ride with a passing jeep for some reason. If we just pull them a few yards into the woods on the other side of the road nobody will spot them and they’ll still be here when we get back.”

  “You’ve lived in Los Angeles for too long,” replied Suzanne. “Nobody’s going to steal a bike out here in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. But, if it makes you feel better, let’s do it.”

  We walked slowly and carefully toward the shape she’d seen. As we got closer it was obvious we had found a puddle of drying blood, with flies swarming all over it. There was a large area of flattened grass around the blood, and signs of something big and heavy having been dragged from the bloody site deeper into the woods. Deep tracks of ATV tires in the softer areas of grass and mud suggested whatever had been dragged through the grass must have been too heavy to lift and carry.

  We followed the trail of flattened grass and broken branches into the thick trees as quietly and cautiously as we could. A few yards deeper into the woods off the trail we found a pile of crudely stacked fresh leaves and brush covering a large, poorly defined, shape. As slowly and carefully as possible, I removed the leaves and brush from the big furry lump they covered.

  As I dug deeper and deeper into the pile it became obvious we’d found a bear in the woods. It lay on its left side with its back pointing toward us, completely still.

  “Do you think it’s asleep?” asked Suzanne, whispering so as not to risk waking it up.

  “No, I think it’s dead,” I replied in my normal tone of voice. “I don’t see or hear any signs that it’s breathing.” I kicked the huge, motionless bear in the ribs, ready to flee instantly if it moved. It didn’t.

  “Let’s get a closer look at this bear and see if we can figure out what killed it,” I said, grunting with the exertion while climbing over it to look at its front side.

  I looked over the dead bear’s body slowly and carefully, trying to find out what had caused the death of a healthy young animal in its prime of life. The bear was covered with reddish-orange fur and big, which made it a brown bear, subspecies grizzly. The clues were obvious. A small area of bloody, matted fur just behind the left shoulder looked like the entry wound of a killing shot to the heart from a high powered rifle. As I looked the bear over I could see a much larger area of bloody fur corresponding to the exit wound on its right side, in his chest directly in front of the other shoulder. Further down on the right side, towards the front of the bear, was an additional area of bloody, matted fur, this time looking more like a knife wound or a surgical incision than a bullet hole.

  As we rolled the huge carcass over to better see the bear’s back and front, the bloody bullet wound in his chest became more obvious. So did the large incision in the side indicating where the liver and gall bladder had been removed.

  Suzanne bent over to look more closely at the incision. “I’ve read about this kind of killing, Roger. I think it was the Weavers who talked about the illegal trade in bear bile in Southeast Asia and Australia when we met them in the Galapagos Islands a short time ago. The brown bear’s bile and gall bladder are highly valued in traditional Asian medicine. That one single gall bladder would be worth something like $5,000 in China, Japan, or Korea as a source of bear bile. I have no idea what the street value would be in San Francisco, Seattle, or Vancouver’s Chinatown, but it’s a lot of money. The bile is used as a sort of cure-all remedy to treat aches and pains like sore throats and bad backs, everything from hemorrhoids to hangovers, you name it. Somebody’s got a very lucrative and very illegal racket going on back here.”

  “Does it have to be a brown bear, or are other bears also valued that highly as gall bladder donors for medicinal value?” I asked.

  “In Asia, it has to be a black bear or a brown bear,” replied Suzanne. “But what I’m wondering is whether we might have stumbled over a motive for murder here. If we found a dead bear this close to the path, so could the Roberts. Or, worse yet, they may have stumbled over someone shooting a bear. At several thousand dollars a pop, the bear poacher might have reacted badly to being found out.”

  “I don’t know, Suzanne. The Roberts murders showed every sign of being premeditated, with a killer lying in wait for their victims. I wonder whether someone out in the woods shooting bears with a high-powered hunting rifle 15-20 miles from civilization is likely to also be carrying a fancy dart rifle to put his human prey to sleep. On the other hand, I wouldn’t completely ignore your theory at this stage of what we know, which is close to nothing. At this point I’d say discretion is the better part of valor and we should get out of here in case anyone with a rifle plans on coming back.”

  I quickly piled the brush and leaves we’d removed from the bear’s body back on its carcass as close to the way we’d found it as I could. Suddenly we could hear the noise of an approaching vehicle coming through the woods toward us and the dead bear from the opposite direction than the old fire road. In addition to the roar of a racing engine in low gear, we could hear the cracking sounds of limbs breaking off trees and being run over on the ground as the vehicle came towards us. I grabbed Suzanne’s hand and pulled her away from the bear carcass, over to an area of dirt, leaves, and heavy brush about 25 yards closer to the fire road and on our way back to where we’d hid our bikes.

  “We’re out of time. We’ll hide here! Lay as still as you can and try to see as much as possible,” I told Suzanne as quietly as I could. We both dove into the dirt and shrubbery, covering ourselves with leaves and branches to make ourselves invisible to someone standing beside the dead bear.

  “Well, you promised me we’d see all kinds of interesting things here in the forest, Roger,” Suzanne whispered bravely. “But I have to admit I’m scared!”

  “If we can see who that is coming over to the bear carcass we may be able to figure out what’s going on here.”

  The ATV engine coughed to a halt. A big man emerged, wearing the standard jeans and flannel shirt of a local woodsman, a large rifle with a telescopic sight slung over his shoulder. He looked around, apparently assuring himself that he was alone here in the woods with the dead animal. I got a good look at his face, which I didn’t recognize. But I was pretty sure I’d recognize it if I ever saw it again. He walked back to the ATV, which I could recognize by its top and a roll bar sticking up over the bushes between us. He unslung the rifle, which he leaned against a notch in a large tree in front of the vehicle. There seemed to be a low, large flat bed trailer type thing attached to the back of the ATV.

  Almost immediately we heard the sound of the engine, now a low purr. A moment later we heard the creaking and clanking of a winch playing out a long chain, the end of which the bear hunter carried back to the dead bear. He pulled the chain around the entire bear, grunting with the exertion as he pulled the chain across the ground under the inert body. With a deft move he pulled the chain around the bear, snug under the bear’s arms, and carried the end of the chain back to the winch, where he attached it with a large padlock to the main part of the chain where it came out of the roll attached to the ATV.

  A moment later he was back beside the winch, carefully pulling the slack in the now doubled up chain toward the ATV until it was firmly around the bear, held tightly to the bear by its huge shoulders. He shifted a gear on the winch to increase the torque on the chain, then stood and watched the huge carcass start to move toward the ATV, initially slowly then faster as the large body moved out
of the position it had been lying in and toward a metal ramp that ran from the trailer bed to the ground. Within another minute or two the bear’s carcass was on the trailer.

  The nameless hunter picked up a large leafy branch lying close to his vehicle, used it to brush the ground like a large broom, and successfully removed all of the obvious signs that a dead bear had been lying there until a few minutes ago. He discarded the branch, looked around to make sure he hadn’t been observed, and recovered his rifle. Mounting the ATV, he headed slowly and carefully in the direction he’d come from. From the noises the heavily loaded ATV made, he broke through the forest onto some sort of road within less than two minutes. The engine revved up as he picked up speed, then we couldn’t hear it any more as he drove off away from us.

  We stood up, brushed ourselves off, and started walking back to our bicycles. Suzanne said it first. “We got very lucky that time. Let’s hope the rewards outweigh the risk we took!”

  We walked over to where we’d left our bikes and pedaled as fast as we could over the rough wilderness roads back to the Lodge. After returning the bicycles, we walked the short distance to our cabin. Suzanne unlocked the door to let us in.

  A basic rule of undercover detecting assignments is to lay some subtle traps to allow you to determine whether or not your room has been searched while you’re out being a detective. Among other such traps, we’d put one of Suzanne’s hairs in the doorjamb a little bit above the lock; it wasn’t there anymore. Maybe it was maid service, but maybe not.

  We traveled light, but all of our clothes in the dresser and our toilet articles in the bathroom had been arranged in a very specific way before we went out. It was clear the room had been searched thoroughly by an expert. Everything was back in its original place. Well, sort of. If every item is almost, but very subtly not quite, perfectly symmetrical, I defy you to realign everything perfectly as it was after you’ve moved it.

  Human nature and habit encourages putting it back so it’s truly symmetrical.

  I put a finger to my lips to curtail discussion and carefully searched the room for bugs of the electronic variety. Either there weren’t any or they were hidden too well for me to find without some very fancy detection equipment I didn’t have with me. We used the facilities and walked over to dinner.

  “What do you think, Roger? Do you have any idea who searched our room?”

  “No, but it’s good to know we’re making somebody nervous. I think we may be on the right track here. Let’s get some food in us and join tonight’s party. Maybe we can encourage someone to say the wrong thing by telling them what we found today. You should feel free to tell anyone we talk to at the party about the dead bear.”

  We walked over to the Lodge for dinner.

  Chapter16. A party after the party

  After dinner, we relaxed for an hour before going out back to join the staff and guests at the nightly party, which was in full swing. We grabbed a couple of beers and stood off by ourselves waiting to see who might join us. It didn’t take long to find out. Exactly as he’d done the night before, Forrest Bednor walked over to the tub of iced beer to pull out a bottle and join Suzanne and me. “How are you folks doing tonight? Did you get a chance to see some more of the park?”

  He was looking at me, so I answered. “Yeah, we had an interesting day today out in the wilderness. We biked several miles out into the woods along a fire road we found behind the lodge. The scenery was spectacular. We were having a great time when we came across a freshly killed grizzly bear. He’d been shot with a high caliber bullet, so I assume with a rifle. It looked like whoever killed him removed the liver and left the rest of the carcass behind. That seems like a big waste of meat to me. Do you have any idea why someone would shoot a bear and leave the carcass behind? Is the liver considered a delicacy or something?”

  I paused to let this information sink in. Bednor would be a good poker player. His expression didn’t seem to change at all, so I continued, “I thought about reporting what we’d seen to the Park Rangers but decided not to, at least until I’d talked to someone who lives around here to get some idea of how big a deal bear poaching in the National Park actually is. I guess you’re it. What would you recommend we do?”

  Bednor thought about my question for a bit. I could see the wheels turning in his head. “I’d guess whoever shot the bear was on the way back with a 4-wheel drive jeep or a big ATV with a winch to carry the carcass out. You were probably very lucky not to meet him. That could have been pretty awkward for all concerned.”

  The guide continued, “There are a couple of realities you have to appreciate about Alaska. We don’t have a tradition of obedience to the law. This was, and in the rural parts still is, America’s frontier. People come here to get rich quick, whether with oil or gold, and don’t seem to worry too much about the legalities of what they have to do to find the money. And, a lot of the time nobody’s looking.

  “There’s a whole lot of empty space here in the wilderness with little or no law enforcement, so it’s easy to get away with things that aren’t altogether legal. Add in all the people who migrated here because they dropped out of the system, or don’t believe in the legal system, or are aging hippies, and there’s often an attitude of looking the other way when you see someone engaging in what is technically a criminal act, especially if it’s part of a victimless crime. If you didn’t report it to the Park Rangers you’d be doing what most people here would do.”

  “So you’re telling us if you saw Roger or me shoot a protected species for meat or its body parts you’d look the other way?” asked Suzanne.

  “Not exactly,” replied Bednor. I guess what I’m saying is if I saw a friend or a real Alaskan killing the animal I wouldn’t be in a hurry to report them. I don’t think I’d be quite so tolerant of a tourist killing a protected animal here in Denali National Park.“

  We stood around in companionable silence for a while before he asked me his next question.

  “Who pulled the strings to get you in here without a confirmed reservation?” “Who pulled the strings to get you in here without a confirmed reservation?”

  Those alarm bells going off in my head whenever we talked to Forrest Bednor were getting deafening. “What do you mean?” I asked to gain a bit of time to think.

  Bednor suddenly looked a lot less benign. “I checked with Steve Schuck. When I met you on the train coming up, you were just a couple of tourists here for a day or two staying in town. Now you jumped the line to get into Kantishna Lodge and didn’t even have to wait a year for a reservation to get here. What’s going on?”

  “None of your business, Forrest!” I replied.

  He looked silently at me for a moment or two. I saw a man used to getting things his way not getting them, and decidedly unhappy as a result. Then, without a word, he seemed to make a decision, turned on his heel, and walked away.

  “Let’s have another beer, talk to a guide or two, and head back to our room,” I suggested. We walked over to Joe Corti and one of the attractive female staff from the Lodge, Desiree, chatted aimlessly for a couple of minutes while I cooled off, then headed back to our cabin.

  There was a dim light shining over the cabin door, just enough to see the keyhole clearly enough to insert the key. One second I was watching Suzanne turning the key, the next I was flat on my stomach with two guys holding us down with guns pointed at our heads while a third man ratcheted a pair of handcuffs tightly onto my wrists behind my back. In less than a minute the third guy was putting a pair of handcuffs on Suzanne, who was lying on the ground in pretty much the same position I was.

  One of the three men handcuffing us, a large Park Ranger named Dallas Corddell we hadn’t officially met yet but who was dumb enough to be wearing his name badge on his uniform, indulged himself by landing a few random gratuitous kicks, one of which landed in Suzanne’s ribs, the others to my side and shoulder, to add to the ritual. Suzanne’s grunt of pain reinforced that the kick hadn’t been at all gentle.
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  I looked over at Suzanne, who looked just about as angry as I was. We both recognized Corddell immediately as the hunter we’d seen earlier in the afternoon hauling off the dead bear’s carcass. My gut was telling me these three men were poorly trained law enforcement types using excessive force on the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. Fortunately, neither of us had committed any crimes since we arrived in the Park, so this whole episode wasn’t scaring me. I just felt madder and madder about being kicked and handcuffed.

  A second Park Ranger dragged me through the open door of the cabin, plunking me down onto one of the chairs. Forrest Bednor, the guide, now wearing a Kevlar vest with the familiar ATF imprint of the federal agency responsible for enforcement of federal laws regarding alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, dragged Suzanne into the room behind us and dropped her into anther chair.

  Bednor kicked the door shut, plastered his most intimidating expression on his face, and snarled at me. “Where’d you get the gun? You know it’s a felony to have a gun in the Park, don’t you?”

  I guess we knew now who had searched our room the night before. I was about to disappoint yet another federal agent trying to scare the heck out of us. I haven’t the slightest idea where these clowns get the idea they’re above the law and all civilians are helpless. “You know it’s a felony to do a warrantless search, don’t you, Bednor, if that’s your real name? And all three of you just committed a couple of felonious assaults given you were armed when you kicked us.”