Footprints. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ use a cup and I’m sure Jenny would like another, as well.”

      Joey smiled. “Consider it done.”

      Annja watched him vanish into the woods to find the necessary ingredients. Annja looked back at Jenny. “All right, now what the hell is really going on here?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “What I mean is, you bring me out here to some camp in the middle of nowhere. I get here and instantly I’m faced with three mean dudes with guns. I have to shepherd your students back to town. Then I have a run-in with a wolf. It’s been pouring buckets and you almost die from exposure. I visit some old Native American man who surreptitiously teaches me how to do something called spirit tracking and we manage to find each other.” Annja took a breath. “You’re sure this is all about some set of tracks?”

      Jenny took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

      “That’s not much of an answer.”

      Joey emerged from the brush and started making the fire pit. “I take it you want this thing kept low profile?”

      Annja nodded. “The lower the better.”

      Joey nodded and within a few seconds had a small blaze started. Annja watched him fix several sticks together to make some sort of grill. On top of this, he placed a small container of water to boil. Where he’d managed to get the water, Annja had no idea. She wondered what else Joey had hidden away in the small pack he carried.

      She glanced back at Jenny who wasn’t looking nearly so happy. “Tell me about this contact of yours,” Annja said.

      “David? He’s just a friend I met through an online site for Sasquatch aficionados. We hit it off and started comparing notes. He mentioned he was out here and that he’d come across something he thought I might find interesting.”

      “The tracks.”

      “Yes.”

      “And he showed them to you?”

      “Via e-mail. He sent me a digital photo of them.”

      Joey sniffed. “Any fool with Photoshop can alter a picture and make it look like something else.”

      Jenny sighed. “Maybe I was naive.”

      “Have you seen this David guy since you’ve been out here?” Annja asked.

      Jenny frowned. “That’s the odd thing. He was supposed to meet up with me in town to discuss the search pattern we were going to run to find the creature.”

      “You actually thought you were going to find the Sasquatch?” Joey shook his head. “And they say kids are crazy.”

      “Make the tea, Joey,” Annja said. She turned back to Jenny. “You really thought you might catch one?”

      Jenny shook her head. “That’s a bad choice of words. By find I meant that we would get some type of evidence on film that the creatures exist. I didn’t mean that we were going to trap one and cart it off for study.”

      Joey sniffed again, but this time didn’t say anything.

      “What’s the background on David? Is he local? Would Joey know him?”

      Jenny shrugged. “I thought he was local. But I guess I don’t really know.”

      Annja sighed. “For someone as intelligent as you are, Jenny, you really dropped the ball on this one. How in the world did you ever convince the university to back this expedition?”

      Jenny smiled. “I used to date the head of the department of anthropology. He owed me a favor.”

      Annja took another breath. “So let me see if I’ve got this straight—you hook up with some guy on the Net. He sends you pictures. You agree to come out and meet with him and manage to convince people to give you money to do so.”

      “That’s about it, yes.”

      “You realize this sounds exactly like some type of exposé on the dangers the Internet poses to children, don’t you?”

      Joey stirred a handful of pine needles into the boiling water. “Tea will be ready soon, everyone.”

      Annja frowned. She wished she had some whiskey to go along with that tea. The thought that Jenny would be so reckless, not just with her own safety but with the safety of her students, really bothered her. Annja couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem like something Jenny would do, and yet here she was.

      She decided to change the subject. “David never showed up, huh?”

      “No.”

      “And just what did this guy look like?”

      Jenny shrugged. “He was sort of tall. Nice face. Clean shaven. Kind of that scholarly look—you know the one I like.”

      Jenny had always had a thing for bookish guys.

      “Yeah, I know what you like.” Annja glanced around. It didn’t seem as if this David had any connection to the angry gunmen. None of them fit that description. That was at least something in his favor. Still, Annja wanted to know more about this guy and why he hadn’t shown up when he said he would.

      “Did you have any established communication routine at all? Would he know how to get in touch with you?” she asked Jenny.

      “He had my cell-phone number.”

      “And did he call you at any point?”

      Jenny frowned. “No. He didn’t.”

      Joey handed Jenny a cup of the tea. “Drink this. It will make you feel better. I added a few extra touches to it.”

      Annja accepted tea from him, as well. She could feel the heat emanating from the cup and sniffed it. “Smells good.”

      “It is,” Joey said.

      “So does this David guy sound familiar to you? You seem like the type who would know anyone in town, and this guy sounds just different enough that he might stand out in your mind.”

      Joey shook his head and sipped his own cup of tea. “Sorry, no. I mean, every once in a while, we get some kooks through here who think they’re on the monster trail and all, but it’s happened often enough that we just get bored with them. They camp out for a week or so, don’t see anything and then pack it in. When the Sasquatch doesn’t come out of the brush and sit in their camp, they tend to lose patience and move on.”

      Annja nodded. “Looks as if David is a ghost, then. If he even existed at all.”

      Jenny sipped her tea. “But I spoke with him.”

      “Online,” Annja said. “There’s no guarantee that it wasn’t someone else on the other end feeding you a fake picture of who you thought David was.”

      “But why go through that trouble?”

      Annja СКАЧАТЬ