Part 4
“What did you say?” Ethan asked.
Ruth looked at Wade, not at the officer. “I said somebody’s setting cable where they shouldn’t.”
Wade gave a short laugh. “Cable? Up here? Could be old fence wire. You know how much junk is buried under snow in these hills?”
“I know what a snare looks like.”
“Do you?” Wade’s tone stayed mild, almost friendly. “No offense, Ruth, but grief makes folks see patterns. Sam saw them, too, near the end.”
Ethan’s attention sharpened. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing ugly,” Wade said. “Sam was a good man. But he got it in his head that everybody with a trap license was breaking the law.” He looked at Ruth with sympathy so polished it might have been bought by the yard. “Started writing things down, taking pictures, chasing ghosts in bad weather. We all worried about him.”
Ruth’s face heated despite the cold.
Wade knew exactly where to put the knife. Sam’s last year had been hard. He had slept badly, worked too much, and come home with a jaw clenched around things he would not say. Ruth had thought it was age and responsibility. Later, after the rescue that killed him, she had wondered if something else had been eating at him.
Ethan asked, “Did Sam file complaints?”
“Ask the old district office,” Wade said. “Half those records got boxed when they merged stations. I doubt anyone kept every scrap.” He turned back to Ruth. “If you found something dangerous, you should hand it over.”
“I didn’t say I found anything.”
“No,” Wade said. “You didn’t.”
The way he smiled then told her he knew she had.
Ethan noticed the smile, too. Ruth saw it in the small shift of his shoulders. But noticing was not proof, and proof was the only language men like Wade respected when kindness failed.
The conversation ended with nothing settled. Ethan told Ruth to call if she saw the lion again. Wade unloaded the firewood despite Ruth telling him not to, stacking it beside the porch with exaggerated care. When he left, his truck tires crushed the edge of Ghost’s tracks under a churn of dirty snow.
Ruth watched both vehicles disappear down the road.
Then she went inside and locked the door.
For the next hour she sat at the kitchen table with Sam’s old field notebooks spread in front of her. She had avoided them for years. There were twelve in all, each with dates on the cover and Sam’s neat block handwriting inside. Weather notes. Trail conditions. Rescue coordinates. Names of people he had brought home alive.
Reading them felt like opening a door she had bricked shut from the inside.
The first three notebooks gave her nothing but ache. Sam’s voice lived in them in plain sentences: north slope unstable after thaw, Doyle boy found near creek, calf kill likely wolves not lion, Ruth says repair porch rail before it kills me. She laughed once at that last note, and the sound startled her enough that she had to stop reading.
The fourth notebook was different.
It covered the winter before Sam died. The handwriting began neat, then grew tighter as the pages turned. There were entries about missing trail cameras, illegal bait piles, cable loops hidden under brush. No names at first. Then initials.
W.C.
Ruth sat back slowly.
She turned another page.
Devil’s Notch. Fresh anchor scar on lodgepole. Orange tape used as marker. Possible Coyle line? Need photos. Do not confront alone.
The date was eleven days before Sam’s final rescue.
Ruth read the line three times.
Do not confront alone.
Her hands began to shake, not from fever now. From the terrible, late-arriving understanding that Sam had not been chasing ghosts after all. He had been chasing a man.
A knock sounded at the door.
Ruth closed the notebook so hard the table jumped.
“Ruth?” Ethan called from outside. “It’s Officer Mercer. I need to talk to you.”
She did not move for several seconds. Then she gathered the notebooks, slid them into the drawer beneath the flour bin, and opened the door with the chain still on.
Ethan stood on the porch holding a folded sheet of paper. His expression had changed since morning. He looked less official and more troubled.
“What is it?” Ruth asked.
He glanced toward the woods. “Wade just filed a formal nuisance complaint. Says the lion killed two of his client dogs near his outfitter cabin and came within twenty yards of his nephew.”
“That happen?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t sound like you believe him.”
“I sound like a man who has to investigate a complaint whether he believes it or not.” Ethan unfolded the paper enough for Ruth to see the printed form, Wade’s signature dark at the bottom. “If the report checks out, the county can request lethal removal.”
Ruth kept her voice low. “How fast?”
“With an injured lion near homes?” Ethan looked ashamed of the answer before he gave it. “Fast.”
From somewhere up the ridge, a raven called once and lifted out of the trees. Ruth and Ethan both turned toward the sound. A moment later, from far beyond the cabin, came the sharp crack of a rifle…
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