I have never experienced anything like the relief I felt when Donner answered the phone at the police station.
“One of the girls is missing,” I said before could finish his greeting.
A brief pause was followed by “Beth?”
“Yes, yes, it’s me. Listen, Donner. I’m in Brayn. Annie, one of Tex’s girls, is missing. The best I can understand is that she and Mary were outside playing when their grandmother came over. She told them to come inside and then went back into the front room to answer the phone. Tex was calling to tell her that he’d made it to Benedict. She heard the back door open and then footsteps up to the girls’ room, so she thought both of them had come inside. But Annie hadn’t. Mary has now communicated with her grandmother, and the best we can understand is that someone with a bearskin coat or something like that took Annie. The girl might have gone willingly. Mary wasn’t too upset until we were upset, so I sense it wasn’t anything violent. It’s not possible for me to understand her sign language, but I know Annie is gone. We looked everywhere around here for her. We’ve called the tribal representatives, too, but no one is here yet. You and Gril and Tex need to get here. Tex’s house.”
“We are on our way,” Donner said without further hesitation or question.
Mary was falling apart now. Grettl and I hadn’t considered how she might respond to our panic, but it couldn’t be helped; we were distraught and having a hard time hiding it. Mary and her grandmother communicated with sign language, and they were both so upset that I couldn’t separate anger from fear from confusion.
I tried to get Grettl to tell me what Mary was saying, why the child thought it was okay for Annie to go with “the bear.” But Grettl only said that Mary thought the bear seemed nice.
These were not toddlers. They were young girls, but eight-year-olds would know not to go with strangers, if that’s what they’d been taught. I couldn’t know for sure, but that seemed like something Tex would teach them. Maybe it wasn’t an important lesson so deep in the Alaskan wilderness.
After the long wait for Gril, Donner, Tex, and the tribal representatives, I became convinced that the girls must have known the person wearing the bear coat. Maybe Mary could explain it all better to Tex.
With the force of a hurricane, he came through the front door. Overflowing with fear and anger, he kept it well contained—better than Grettl and I had—his fiery eyes the only things giving him away. Behind him, Gril, Donner, Viola, and a man I assumed had been acting as Tex’s tribal representative followed.
“Mom, what happened?” he said as he gathered Mary into his arms and held her tight.
Grettl relayed the story to Tex, but now she was so upset I wondered if we should call Dr. Powder, too.
“Mom, relax,” Tex said, though he wasn’t relaxed at all. “We will find her. You need to calm down.” He put his daughter down and crouched to her level. He put his hands on her arms and looked her in the eye. “Sweetheart, tell me everything. It’s going to be okay, but I need to know what happened.”
They spoke in sign language, but Tex also translated the words aloud.
“The bear” came for Annie. The girls had been talking to the bear for a week or so now. It was the bear who guided them over to Benedict after the recent mudslide. They knew the bear. They liked the bear. The bear gave them treats, played with them.
“Mary,” Tex said, righting his features after cringing over Annie and Mary’s seeming ease of going with the stranger. “It’s not a real bear, is it? It’s okay. It’s a person in a bearskin coat, right?”
For whatever reason, perhaps because a magical bear would be more believable than a person, Mary hesitated. But then she nodded.
“Good, that’s good,” Tex said. “Do you know the person under the coat?”
Without hesitation, Mary shook her head. No.
“A man or a woman?” he said.
Now Mary hesitated, but I could tell she was going to answer. We waited in breathless anticipation. I realized I hadn’t been fully breathing the whole time they’d been talking.
Mary signed. Tex spoke, “A woman. A momma.” Tex looked back over his shoulder at the rest of us. “Let’s go find them.”
Grettl, Viola, and the tribal representative stayed with Mary. Tex told his mother she would need to make sure Mary remained calm. Giving Grettl that task, or maybe trusting her with it, helped her focus. Viola was there to take care of all of them. They’d be fine. For all their sakes, though, I hoped we’d find Annie, alive and well, but if we didn’t … No, it wouldn’t do anyone any good to dwell on ifs.
Gril, Donner, Tex, and I headed out the way Tex had gone to track his daughters a few days earlier. Tex’s still-wild eyes scanned the world around us. I knew he saw things I didn’t, things I’d never see, even though I saw things differently than most people, too. When I first heard he’d tracked his girls to Benedict, it had sounded as mysterious as magic to me. As I watched him today, it still seemed unreal. In the remains of the fallen snow, he didn’t hesitate, seemed confident in the way he chose to go.
I had to work hard to keep up with him, Gril, and Donner, but I managed okay, as I remained silent. I had many questions, but Gril and Donner were quiet, letting Tex do what he needed to do with full concentration, so I followed suit.
I glanced at the time after we crossed the river and as we came upon Lane’s house. It had only taken us twenty minutes to walk to the place that would have taken ten minutes to drive to this way and at least thirty minutes to drive around the other way. The shortcut was real.
“Hey,” I said breathlessly as the back of Lane’s house loomed ahead. They all stopped and looked at me. “Gril and I have seen the man who lives here in a bearskin coat. I also thought I heard someone leaving out the back door earlier when I was here. Do you know if a woman lives here? Is Lane, by chance, married?”
“When we brought him in for questioning, he said he wasn’t,” Gril said. “He told us his wife died about six and a half years ago, in the woods. Her leg got caught in a trap and he didn’t find her until too late. She had been mauled by a bear. Her remains are buried up by the shed. He didn’t tell anyone at the time.”
I nodded, not taking the time again to ponder the gore or how, once again, the proper authorities weren’t always notified out here. “I saw the grave—but there seemed to be more than one. Did he talk about a child?”
“No,” Gril said. “I asked. I saw the gravesites, too, Beth. Lane claimed there are no children buried there, but … Jesus.” Gril raked his hand back through his hair. “Lane said their dreams of having a child were buried there. If the body we found in the shed had been hers, we would have arrested him, I would have pushed him more, but I was convinced he didn’t know the dead woman.”
“If someone is living here with him, who would it be?” I asked.
“It might just be someone else who wants to remain off the grid,” Tex said.
“Let me talk to him. Come on,” Gril said.
As we approached the back of the house and the room that still hadn’t haunted my dreams but was bound to at some point, Gril called out.
“Lane! It’s Police Chief Samuels and three others.”
Even with smoke curling up from the chimney, I thought the house might be empty, but Lane did open the door a minute or so later. Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, he would be cold quickly if he stayed outside for long.
“Chief? What’s going on?” he said. His eyes moved suspiciously over Donner, Tex, and me.
“I need to ask you a couple questions,” Gril said. “Can we come in?”
Lane didn’t want to invite us in, but his better judgment won out. “All right. Come in.”
We followed him through the back door and into the work room. Thankfully, there were no animals in there. Once in the front room, Lane stood next to one of the chairs and stuffed his hands into his pockets.
The warmth inside was too much, and I took off my hat and gloves. I caught Tex’s eyes as they moved over my scar.
“Lane, have you seen a young girl walking through your property, maybe with an adult?” Gril asked.
“No,” Lane said. “Is someone lost?”
“Yes,” Gril said. He moved himself so he was in between Lane and Tex. No one could stop Tex from doing anything he wanted to do, but Gril could slow him down. I could see restraint in Tex’s eyes and the set of his shoulders. Whoever had taken his child wasn’t going to fare well. Gril knew that, too.
“A lost little girl. I’m sorry. How can I help?” Lane sounded sincere.
“I need to know something and it’s very important, Lane. We are looking for a woman who might be wearing bearskin. Do you have any knowledge of such a woman?”
At first he was going to lie, as if he’d practiced doing it. He looked at Gril. This wasn’t me, a nosy neighbor asking questions—this was the Benedict police. That still might not have been enough to get Lane to answer honestly, but there was a missing child. “Shit.” He swiped his hand through his hair. “I’ve made a promise to keep it a secret and I’m sure she has nothing to do with a missing child … I don’t live with anyone, but … yes, I believe I know who you are talking about. Chief, I would never suspect her of taking a child. Never.”
“What’s her name? Who is she?” Gril asked.
Lane shrugged. “I only know her as … Woman. She never gave me a name. She’s a white woman. I don’t know much about her, and I’m not sure who she is or was. She’s kind, gentle, not someone who would take a child,” he repeated.
“Give me more here, Lane. How do you know her?” Gril said.
“When she first came to my house about five or six years ago, she was in bad shape, upset, and her face was burned on one side—not a recent burn; it had mostly healed. She wouldn’t tell me what had happened, but asked for shelter. She stayed a few nights, then left. She came back—comes back—I don’t know how many times. There’s never been a set schedule. I don’t know where she stays when she’s not here, but she does not live here.”
“You didn’t let the police know?” Gril said.
“No,” he said as if the idea hadn’t even crossed his mind.
Gril sighed. “Woman? That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“We think she took the girl,” Gril said. “I know you don’t think so, but you gotta help us. I need to know where she might have taken her. Give me your best guess, at least.”
“I don’t know,” Lane said. “I don’t have any idea where she goes when she’s not here. She doesn’t want me to know.”
None of us had a vehicle. We’d walked from Brayn. Lane walked everywhere. I couldn’t imagine his life, even as it was right there in front of my eyes.
“What did she tell you back when you first met her?” Gril asked.
“Nothing about her past. She wouldn’t tell me where she was from. Nothing. She wanted to learn how to trap, so I taught her. And then we … we became friends, I guess.” He looked pointedly at Gril. “There’s never been anything more than a friendship, like a partnership. I help her with her traps, she helps me with mine. We eat meals together sometimes. We’ve never talked much.”
“You aren’t a couple?” Gril asked.
“No, but she was at my house earlier today, and yesterday, too. I’ve seen a lot of her over this last week.” He looked at me. “You have, too. I was just trying to protect her privacy.”
“You mean her secrecy?” I said.
Lane sighed and his mouth made a straight line. “I guess so.”
“Do you think she had anything to do with the body in your shed?” Gril asked.
“I don’t,” Lane said quickly. “At first, I wondered, but when I told her a woman’s body had been found, she said she knew nothing about it. I have no doubt she was telling me the truth.”
Gril rubbed his hands over his beard. “Can you think back to three months ago? How was she then? How did she behave?”
Lane was quiet a long moment.
“Lane?” Gril said.
“Three months ago, I found her in my work room. I came home and she was cleaning blood off her hands, but there were no animals in the room. She said she got hurt releasing a wolf back into the wild, but she wouldn’t show me her injuries.”
“That could happen,” Gril said.
“Dangerous, though,” Tex added.
“You’re coming with us,” Gril said to Lane. “We’re walking back toward Benedict. I want you to help us find her, bring her out. I’m sure she’ll be watching. Somehow.”
“Of course.” Lane quickly grabbed and donned his gear. He led us out of the house. Once we were back outside, both he and Tex looked around with identical intensity; they were both trackers and trappers.
“Did you ever ask her more questions?” Gril asked as we approached the land with the collapsed shed and gravestones.
“No, Chief, that’s not how we communicate. We leave each other alone for the most part.”
“Did you have a daughter?” I interjected.
Lane’s eyes shot to me. The pain there was hot and not diluted. “I had a daughter and a wife. They died in the wild.”
“You told me about your wife. When did your daughter die?” Gril asked.
“The same time as my wife. My daughter was two years old.”
“Shit,” Gril muttered. “Lane, you weren’t straight with me when I asked you about a child. That’s not smart.”
“I know,” Lane said, no apology to his voice.
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight, Donner. Lane’s family died six and a half years ago. We had a house fire about the same time and a strange woman with a burn on her face showed up at Lane’s a few months later. Sound about right?”
“Yes, Chief,” Donner said. He’d been quiet, but apparently, he and Gril had been working through the timeline, working the case or cases.
They were good cops. I was impressed.
“You buried both of them?” Gril looked at Lane.
“I buried my wife. My daughter’s body was … gone.”
“You never saw her body?” Gril said.
“No, but she had gone out with my wife and I found her doll with my wife’s body. The bear took her away.”
“Shit,” Gril said. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss, Lane, but goddammit, you should have told someone.”
“I don’t tell the police anything,” Lane said. “I took care of it. I tried to find my daughter’s body, but it was gone. I buried my wife and, with her, my daughter’s spirit. I know the woods, Chief. There was no sign of her. There was so much … blood.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Gril said.
Of course, he was thinking the same things I was, the same thing Tex probably was. Somehow, Lane’s child had lived and Tex had raised her. But there were two children.
“Was your wife Tlingit?” I asked.
“She was. I am, too, but I haven’t been a part of a tribe for years. I … there were issues.”
“I need to know the issues right this minute,” Gril said. “No time to waste.”
Lane nodded. “My father was abusive. I ran away when I was twelve. My father is dead, Chief. I’m sure that has nothing to do with what’s going on now.”
“Your missing daughter might,” Gril said, with more anger than compassion.
“I don’t know what to think about that. I’m afraid to hope. But I will do whatever you want me to do. I was … so upset, and then the woman came. We were both hurting, but she never told me the reasons for her pain. I’m … sorry.”
“Tex, when did you adopt your girls? Six years ago, right?”
“They came to Brayn in July, six or so years ago. I adopted them shortly thereafter, but there are no official state records of the adoption.”
“Gril, why did you take Tex back to Benedict to be questioned?” I asked, hoping he would tell.
“We found one of his traps in the cave.”
“With the purse and wallet?” I said.
“Yes.”
“How did you know it was his?”
“His name had been etched into it.”
“I have no idea how it got there, but it was a trap I haven’t seen for years, and I didn’t put it in the cave. I’m happy to keep answering those questions, but right now, I need to find my daughter.”
“Look.” Lane pointed.
We all looked up the road at the same time. Ahead, black smoke filled the sky.
“Son of a…” Gril was the first to take off in a run, but the rest of us followed behind quickly.