Black Mountain

SIX

‘Young lady’s name is Amanda Jordan — big Brad Jordan’s wife. I know him — he’s a good fella.’ Officer Markenson nodded towards the woman on the hospital bed. ‘She’s busted up pretty bad. But the real problem seems to be more inside her head. The doc says she’s catatonic, won’t say a word, and I don’t think she’s even blinked once since we pulled her off the slope.’

Markenson waved his hand in front of the woman’s face, then made a throwing motion at her staring eyes. She didn’t flinch.

‘Stop that.’ Chief Logan frowned at his officer, then looked at the cuts, abrasions and plaster cast on the young woman’s arm, before turning back to Markenson. ‘Whatta we know? Where’s her husband now?’

Markenson shrugged. ‘Still up there. Looks like they decided to trek to the top of the mountain — we think the weather gave them an early taste of winter, and I guess they either got caught in an avalanche or had a fall. Or maybe they had an argument that turned ugly — there was blood on one of her gloves.’

Chief Logan grunted. ‘Can’t rule anything out until we find him, or she speaks. What about her effects — anything?’

‘The blood traces on her glove are being analysed now. We know from Brad Jordan’s driver’s licence that he is type A. Medical Examiner’s office is gonna give me a call when they’re done. There was also a camera around her neck — case was busted, but we think the memory chip inside can still be read. Johnson was going to try and download it back at base.’ Markenson shrugged again. ‘And that’s about it, Chief.’

Logan stepped back from the bed. ‘Okay, give Harley a heads-up — we might need his dogs for a ground search.’ Logan frowned. ‘Not even winter yet — way too early for people to start falling off the mountain. Call me if something interesting turns up on the camera or with the blood trace.’

‘You got it, Chief… And Chief…?’

Logan paused.

Markenson waved his hand in front of the woman’s blank face again. ‘It’s goddamn freaky though, ain’t it?’

Logan rolled his eyes. ‘Just have the ME and Johnson send me the information ASAP.’

Arriving at the station, Chief Logan eased in behind his desk, making room for a stomach that had seen way too much fast food and cold beer. He pulled the bagel from its bag and laid it gently on the brown paper, then took the lid from his coffee and savoured the aroma for a few seconds. He sighed contentedly: his morning ritual — bagel, coffee and the newspaper; a small pool of calm in a sea of chaos. He was in early this morning, even with his stop-off at the hospital, planning to coordinate several searches and investigative cases that ranged from the trivial to the bizarre. That was in addition to slogging through his usual mountain of paperwork. He lifted the bagel and took a bite, then unfolded the stiff newspaper — and stopped chewing.

‘Oh fuck, no.’

He closed his eyes briefly and swallowed the dry lump of dough. He opened them and looked at the headline again — he’d read it right the first time: Lion on the Loose — Two Missing.

The story, from an unnamed source, mentioned the Wilson girl and Brad Jordan in the first paragraph. Then it had some wonderfully sarcastic quotes from Jason Van Hortenson about his damned missing Lakenvelder cows, and if that wasn’t enough, the type was all crowded around a grainy photograph of Amanda Jordan sitting up zombie-like in bed. The picture caption: Big cat got her tongue?

Logan’s first thought was to track down whoever had breached the hospital’s security to take the photograph, but then he realised that it didn’t matter — the information was in the open and already travelling like a shockwave out from the town.

You read a headline that says Joe Citizen Missing on the Mountain, you shrug and move to the sports page. But you see Lion on the Loose, and Joe Citizen Missing and you’re damn well gonna read the whole story… and then tell all your friends, who’ll tell all their friends.

Logan looked at his bagel, but his appetite had deserted him.

As if on cue, the phone rang. He sucked in a long breath and said to the phone without lifting the receiver, ‘Good morning, Mayor; what kept you?’

This was going to get ugly.

He lifted the handset. ‘Good morning, Mayor…’

Logan threw the report onto his already overcrowded desk and sat down heavily, swivelling his chair to face his computer. He flipped the folder open with one hand and used the other to open his email. Immediately, his inbox filled with messages. His eyes moved from the report to the messages and then back again as he tried to manage the two things at once. He felt a sense of pressure and urgency… and the morning was still young.

After the call from the mayor, he’d been straight on to Markenson, taking a big bite out of him for not keeping him in the loop about the lion’s escape. Now he was in a race to read the facts report, knowing full well he’d already promised the mayor he’d have things under control in twenty-four hours. And pigs might fly. He snorted and shook his head; the damned mayor had been better briefed than he was. He made a note on his pad — Never talk to the mayor. He’d make sure that was on his list of items for the next departmental briefing.

He read the email messages with quick darting eyes, deleting most as he went, until he came to the last two. One was from the Asheville Medical Examiner, and the other was from Johnson, with attachments. The man had managed to extract the Jordan woman’s photographs from the busted camera.

‘Good man,’ Logan said over his cold coffee.

There were fifty-five shots — Logan pasted them up on his screen in rows and moved quickly through the timeline of Brad and Amanda’s last hours together. There was the smiling couple loading the car, stopping for a sandwich and soda on the way to the mountain, with several shots of the side of Brad’s huge jug-eared head as he was driving. Logan flipped through them quickly — there was no sign of any tension, both the young man and woman looked happy and relaxed with each other.

He slowed his review — they had arrived. A shot of Brad pointing up at the Black Dome peak. If nothing else, it gave Logan a place to start, and he should at least be able to identify the path they took.

He stopped at a surprising view out over the other mountains. It was a good shot, and they were high up. White specks told him that the snow had been falling quite heavily. He played around with the image for a while — enlarging, removing shading and brightness, focusing in on certain quadrants. It didn’t do any good; he couldn’t determine where they were. He’d spent plenty of time up on the mountain and he didn’t know anywhere at that height that was so opened up from the trees. Basically, there just shouldn’t have been a view like the one in the photograph.

‘Must’ve found a new spot,’ he said to the screen.

He tagged the image, moved it to the side of his screen, and stopped again at the next shot — a block of carved stone. The next image was the same, just at a slightly different angle. He shook his head; the symbols meant nothing to him. He tagged the shots and continued.

The next shot made the chief frown and lean forward — there was something on a pathway at the edge of the cliff. He didn’t recognise the path or what he was seeing. Was it a figure? Didn’t look right. He couldn’t work out the scale as there were no trees, and it was hard to make out the content as the snow looked heavier in this shot. It also didn’t help that Brad’s parka was obscuring half the shot; looked like Amanda had been standing behind him.

Logan finished his coffee while staring at the image, and grimaced at the cold metallic taste. He shrugged and dropped the cup into his wastebasket, moved the photo to the side and went on. The first shot reappeared — so, that was it.

He took down some notes: Climb towards Dome? New lookout and new path opened up on mountainside — high (6000+ feet) — possible slip? Stone artifact — valuable? Fight because it was valuable? Figure on pathway — man, bear, tree, unknown?

He looked at his notes — not much to go on. Better than nothing, he thought, and reached back to the keyboard to open the message from the ME. His brow furrowed as he read the clinical diagnostic results of the blood analysis from Amanda Jordan’s glove.

There was another line in a different font, telling Logan that the Medical Examiner had added the note:

It finished with a smiley face.

‘Well, that’s an even bigger pile of no help, you smartass,’ Logan said, sitting back in his chair.

He thought for a moment, then leaned forward to flick through Markenson’s report. After a few seconds he folded his arms, smiling.

‘More closely resembling that of the great apes — and whatta you know, the circus is in town. Priority one, find that fucking lion.’

He pushed back his chair, then paused to look at one of the pictures he’d pasted at the side of his screen, that of the figure standing in falling snow. He frowned. He hoped the disappearances weren’t the result of a lion on the loose, but at the same time a small part of him hoped they were.