KnockOut

nearly gnawed through as—what? As the bear pulled and jerked his body down. Ethan heard Big Louie still whimpering heard a soothing voice. He continued to breathe lightly into the handkerchief. He said aloud, “Look at his feet. Why would a bear do that?”
    The four voices were silent.
    Chip said, “We found pieces of his boots. They were ripped off his feet and chewed to bits, covered with blood.”
    Ethan nodded, then leaned down to gently remove the threads of the rope beneath the man’s wrist.
    “What’s that?” Chip asked, staring down at that frayed rope, wet and black with blood.
    Ethan showed him. He rose to look up into the thick branches of the willow tree. It didn’t take him long to find the branch someone had tied the man up to. The branch was hanging low, nearly broken off, because the body that had hung from it had been pulled and jerked down. He could picture it happening. Someone tying his wrists together, throwing the rope over a low branch, and hauling the body up, but not too high up, no, only high enough so a bear would have to stretch himself to grab at his feet and ankles, to pull him down.
    This was what the killer wanted to happen, what Blessed intended to happen.
    Chip said, “The bear must have jerked and pulled until the rope tying his wrists gave way. See, the bear pulled him nearly to the water’s edge, about ten feet from the tree.”
    “A bear doesn’t feed like this,” said Primo, a ranger from Montana who’d been at Titus Hitch six months. “Animals eat what they kill. If the bear wasn’t ready to eat him, he wouldn’t have mauled him like that. He’d have just come back later. The sheriff’s right, this doesn’t make sense.”
    Chip was shaking his head. He said, “What doesn’t make sense is why anyone would do this to another human being. I mean, what’s the point? Only a monster—”
    Chip broke off as he studied Ethan’s face. “You think Blessed Back-man did this, don’t you? He went to all this trouble to kill this man and set him up for the bear to obliterate him?”
    Ethan stood up. He still held the rope. “Oh, yes, Blessed did this.” He looked at each of the rangers. “Have any of you ever seen an animal wreak this kind of damage on a human being”—he forced out the words—”without some sort of encouragement?”
    Paulie Burdett had been in the Park Service for twenty-four years, and was usually unflappable. But not now. Now he was mad. “In the Serengeti I remember a guide was savaged like this, but he’d been reduced to bones. I’ve never seen animals who went to the party but didn’t eat the cake.”
    No one laughed.
    “Thanks for that image, Paulie,” Chip said.
    Ethan checked the man’s pockets. No ID.
    Ranger Junie Morgan said, “We’ll have to check the camps, see if he was out hiking, whatever. So far we haven’t had a report of anyone missing. Listen, Sheriff, if you don’t need all of us, I’d sure like to get started tracking that bear.”
    “He had to be dead, didn’t he?” Chip asked all of them and no one. “I mean, no one would haul a guy up and tie him to a branch, then eviscerate him so the animals would come and finish the job... No, I can’t believe that.”
    Ethan said, “There’s so much devastation, I can’t even guess the cause of death. The ME will have to tell us that.”
    Ethan got the man covered, called his deputies to the crime scene called the county ME. Then he pulled out his cell and called the Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. He was surprised when he was put right through to Special Agent Dillon Savich. He’d expected— what? To be told to leave another voice mail, since the big man was too busy?
    A man’s deep voice said, “Savich.”
    “Dillon Savich?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m Sheriff Ethan Merriweather from Titusville, Virginia, and I’ve got myself a huge problem here.”
    “Hello, Sheriff. I gather you’ve already spoken to Autumn this morning?”

30
    ETHAN STARED AT HIS cell phone, felt his flesh ripple. “Ah, no, I got called out early. I haven’t seen her yet this morning. I was out of the house before she and her mom were even awake. I, ah, gather you’ve met her?”
    “Let’s just say we spoke. She told me what’s going on out there. She even told me about Big Louie, Mackie, and Lula. What’s happened, Sheriff?”
    No, he couldn’t accept this, he couldn’t, but Autumn’s ability was staring him right in the face. “Well, what’s going on right this