Linwood Barclay - Lone Wolf

“All set?” Bob Spooner asked. He was already in the boat, doing an inventory of the lures in his tackle box, when I walked out onto the dock.

“Ready,” I said. I untied the bow, got in, took the middle seat, and Bob unhooked the stern. He pushed the boat out with an oar, lowered the prop into the water, and started the motor. Shouting over it, he said, “I thought I’d take us where we went the other day.”

Rather than shout back, I gave him a thumbs-up. There was almost no breeze, no chop on the water, and hardly any other boats out. It was nearing the end of the season. It was an overcast day, but little chance of rain. The sound of water rushing against the metal hull was therapeutic.

We were in our spot in about five minutes, and Bob killed the outboard. He handed me a pole, to which he’d already attached a lure.

“You can pick something different if you want,” he said.

“No, that’s good,” I said. “Besides, it’s not about the fishing. It’s about being out here.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Bob said. “There’s no more beautiful spot on Earth.”

“Tell me again how long you’ve been coming up here?”

“Thirty-two years. Never missed a summer.”

I cast out between some weeds. “Amazing. And the lake, it’s as beautiful up here as it was when you first came up?”

“Pretty much. Just hope it stays that way as long as I’m coming up here.” Bob cast out, reeled in slowly, then repeated the process.

“At least,” I said, “we won’t be seeing a huge fishing resort going in. At least not from Leonard. But you never know, there may be another developer just around the corner.”

Bob nodded without looking at me. “Yeah, well, that’s true. But it was still an awful thing, what happened to Leonard. I’ll never forget it as long as I live, Zack, I’m tellin’ you.”

I reeled in, then cast out again. I asked the question I’d been wanting to ask since the night before.

“So, Bob,” I said, “what really happened when you and Leonard went on your hike?”

“Hmm?” he said, pretending not to hear, glancing down into his tackle box.

“When you were out with Leonard Colebert. I was wondering, maybe you could tell me what really happened.”

Bob stopped reeling in for a moment and looked at me. “What are you talking about, Zack? You know what happened. For Christ’s sake, you were out there. You saw what happened to him. Jesus.”

We were quiet for a moment, the only sound the lapping of the waves against the metal hull.

“There was no bear,” I said. “Certainly not where Morton Dewart was concerned. Timmy Wickens admitted that to me. But not with Leonard Colebert either.”

Bob Spooner, both hands on the pole, looked at me.

“I swear to God, Zack, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bob said.

“I guess the first thing was, why didn’t the bear eat him?” I asked.

“Christ, you want me to make excuses for a bear? Leonard was running away, he fell down the side of a hill, the bear must have decided it was too much work to go down there.”

“That’s possible,” I said. “And if that had been the only thing, I might have let it go.”

Bob waited.

“But then, Dad found bear spray in Leonard’s backpack. It was sitting right there, near the top.”

“Leonard must have dropped his backpack,” Bob said.

“It was found with his body,” I said. “Why didn’t he try to spray the bear? Why couldn’t he have slipped the backpack off, reached in while he was running? Even if he didn’t want to stop and face the bear, he could have sprayed wildly over his shoulder. That’s what I did last night, when Wendell was chasing me through the woods. I never got a good shot at him, but at least I tried.”

“All I can think,” Bob said, “is that he just never had a chance. The bear was closing in on him. That had to be the way it was.”

“I suppose,” I said, lifting the lure out of the water and casting out again. “Maybe, if it had just been the bear not eating him, and the bear spray in his backpack, maybe even then, I might have let it go.”

Bob’s eyes moved about. He had to be wondering what else I had.

“Remember,” I said, “when you came back, and you described the bear?”

Bob, slowly, said, “Sure, I guess.”

“You said the bear had one torn ear, like it was clipped off.”

“I think, I guess I remember that.”

“That day, when we first met Timmy Wickens, when everyone was trying to figure out whose body that was in the woods by the cabins, Wickens said Morton Dewart was looking for a bear, a bear that had an ear torn off. So when you told us about the bear that chased you and Leonard, the one that chased Leonard off the side of the cliff, and said it had an ear torn off, we all figured, hey, it had to be the same bear that killed Dewart.”

Bob started to say something, then stopped himself.

“But Timmy Wickens made up the bear story. Made it all up that a bear killed Dewart, made up the story that Dewart was going out to track down a bear. Even made up a description of the bear, because, as he told me last night, he’s never even seen a bear around here. There may be some, but he’s never actually laid eyes on one.”

Bob said, “I see.”

“So you pinned Leonard’s death on an animal that doesn’t exist. You built your lie upon another lie. When the first one fell apart, so did yours.”

“That’s how you see it,” Bob said.

“So my question is, what really happened out there?”

Bob took his right hand off the reel, holding the line in place with the thumb of his left hand, and rubbed his gray whiskers. He hadn’t shaved this morning. Who had?

“We had an argument,” Bob said.

“Okay.”

“We were hiking through there, and I’d been talking to him about his proposal, this stupid fishing resort, told him it was all wrong, that it would ruin the area, that he should forget about it, that bringing in hundreds of fishermen would clean this lake out of fish in a couple of years. Told him he was out of his fucking mind.”

“How did he like that?”

“He didn’t like it much. He said he had powerful lawyers, that they’d find a way to get the council to approve it. That Mayor Holland would have to agree or she’d have to spend millions to fight it.”

“Not good,” I said.

“We kept walking, arguing, and we got to the top of this ridge, the cliff, and he told me to come look, that this was part of the property he was going to develop, and that down at the bottom of the ridge, he was going to take down all those trees, mow everything down, and put in some huge whale for kids to play in.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And then he said I shouldn’t even worry about the fish being depleted, that he’d stock the lake, maybe bring in fish from other places. Starts talking about bringing in swordfish, for Christ’s sake. Those aren’t freshwater fish, I told him. You can’t put goddamn swordfish in a lake with muskie and pickerel. I asked him if he was out of his fucking mind, even suggesting something that stupid.”

“That’s pretty crazy,” I said.

Bob’s cheeks got red. “I swear to you! He was going to destroy this lake, that’s what he was going to do. This is God’s country, Zachary. Look around.” Bob’s eyes got misty. “This is paradise.”

It was hard for me, just yet, after the kind of night I’d put in, to think of this as paradise, but Bob was right. If there was a more beautiful part of the world, I hadn’t seen it yet.

“So,” Bob said, “I guess I said something I shouldn’t have.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“I called him a fucking idiot. Plain as that. I said, ‘Leonard, you are a complete, total fucking idiot.’ ”