Page 21 of Sear
When he rose on four paws moments later, the world around him was transformed into a very different place.
Thanks to his cat’s excellent night vision, the nighttime landscape was bright as day. The faint light from the crescent moon and heavily jeweled vault of stars overhead lit up his surroundings.
But he didn’t have to rely entirely on his eyes. For his cat-half, the scents clinging to the vegetation and floating through the air spoke volumes, and the delicate brush of air against his whiskers informed him of the slightest movements from the hidden creatures all around him.
There was a skunk rooting through the underbrush nearby. Further off, gophers and rabbits were tempting prey, with the tantalizing scent of a buck clinging to the tall stalks of grass on either side of the deer’s passage.
The hunting would be good here tonight.
With an effort, Lucas yanked his cat’s attention to the circles of white light flashing among the trees in the distance.
Our prey is over there. The ones carrying flashlights.
He could hear them, too. They walked with thudding steps, carelessly breaking twigs underfoot and shoving aside branches with loud rustling.
Lucas’s cat was overjoyed to be hunting again at long last.
Silent and sure-footed, Lucas slipped from shadowed patch to shadowed patch, stalking the two men.
When he neared the bobbing lights, he caught the stink of stale beer and fresh cigarette smoke. He began to move even more cautiously. He took advantage of every bush, tree, and pool of shadows as he crept closer.
“…fucker came this way,” Bickham said, shining a painfully-bright beam of light at the ground just inside a perimeter of yellow crime scene tape. “Look at that trail. Clear as day.”
Lucas caught the scent of old, dried blood overlaid with the unmistakable odors of bear shifter. He stiffened. Was he about to overhear them admit that they’d shot Rob?
Yes, please!Keep talking, Bickham. I want to hear what you have to say for yourself.
“Why is this stuff here, Chef?” Silvers asked, pointing at the tape. “You think the cops have been sniffing around?”
“Nah.” Bickham sounded confident. “Why the hell would they come all the way out here? It’s probably some local yokel trying to stake a claim on those bushes. Ripe huckleberries sell for nearly forty bucks per gallon at the farmer’s markets in these parts.” He made a scoffing sound. “Hell, if we can’t track down where that fucking bear went, then maybe we should just come back here and pick berries.”
“You’re joking…right?” Silvers sounded uncertain.
“Of course I’m joking, you moron!” Bickham sounded annoyed. “I want that fucker. Its gallbladder alone is worth a couple hundred dollars.”
Lucas continued shadowing the two men as they blundered through the woods.
But as they followed Rob’s trail, cursing profusely as they stumbled over stones and fallen branches in the dark, neither of them actually admitted that they were the ones who had shot Rob.
Frustratingly, all of their remarks centered around what they were observing, and speculation about how badly the bear had been wounded and how far it had gone.
Lucas was now certain that Bickham and Silvers had shot Rob. But he didn’t have any hard proof yet. Or an actual confession.
No matter that he found it highly suspicious that these two would decide to casually stroll around in the dark, tracking wounded game at the exact location of the shooting.
Or that they were both carrying the right kind of rifles for the type of bullet used to shoot Rob.
Lots of hunters used .338 Winchester Magnum cartridges for big game like elk and deer.
Judge Barker would laugh at the request for a warrant unless Lucas actually witnessed the men conducting an illegal night hunt, or overheard them confessing to the shooting.
Right now, if he called Tringstad or anyone else to make the arrest, Bickham and Silvers could claim that they’d heard about a wounded bear through the hunters’ grapevine, and that they were just practicing their tracking skills.
Lucas stalked them for another hour as they wove an erratic path through the woods. They spent a considerable amount of time circling an enormous blackberry thicket, trying to pick up the wounded bear’s trail.
Bickham kept repeating variations of “There’s no fucking way a bear that size could’ve crawled into that tangle.”
Lucas eyed the dense mass of thorny canes and silently agreed.
