Close to the Truth by Shona Husk

Author:Shona Husk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Escape Publishing

Chapter 8

The ranger was a middle-aged man, who’d taken his hat off and rubbed his hair so many times it looked like he’d rubbed the front half of his hair off. Jasmine sipped her coffee. Living in Seattle, she’d become a bit of a coffee snob. She liked the expensive stuff, simply because she could afford it and she’d gone without for so long.

The best part of meeting the ranger was Simon wasn’t a local. He wasn’t bound up by generations of talk and local lore. ‘Do you have any photos of the deer kills?’

‘I can do better. I kept the deer.’

She almost dropped her coffee. ‘What?’

She’d been told it had been destroyed. Did the mayor know that the ranger had kept the deer and then lied to her? Or was Simon acting alone?

‘I knew you people were coming and I wanted you to see it. But this has to be off the show. You can’t tell anyone I have it because everyone wanted it gone. They like to pretend these things aren’t happening.’

‘Where is it?’ Hopefully in a freezer, but from the look on Simon’s face that wasn’t going to be the answer.

‘Out the back. It’s a bit ripe.’

It would be after sitting around for a few days. But she was okay with dead things and the bugs that liked to colonise them. ‘That’s okay. What will you do with it once I’ve had a look?’

She wished he’d spoken to her sooner, but maybe that would’ve looked suspicious and he was already wary, insisting nothing was recorded.

‘Bury it like I was supposed to. I had dug the hole and everything.’

She’d seen the pictures Gil had taken, but he hadn’t been taking them with a scientific eye. ‘Did it look like a bear attack to you?’

A bear was one of the theories that had been floated, even though the creature was called the River Man. Lumbering gait had come up a few times, and he was heavy set. Both of which matched up with what she remembered. She was keen to eliminate things from the list of possibilities. Posing logical suggestions and then discounting them made for good TV, it allowed people to think about it at home.

Simon shook his head. ‘I’ve seen bear attacks. This was no bear.’

The carcass was probably so contaminated it wouldn’t be worth getting samples. ‘You didn’t happen to take any swabs or tissue samples?’

Simon shook his head. ‘If they knew I had the carcass, they’d find a way to run me out of town.’

She didn’t doubt that at all. Conform or get out seemed to be the way they liked it in Bitterwood. ‘I appreciate what you’ve done.’

‘I’d appreciate it if you could find out who’s behind this.’

‘Who?’ Her eyebrows lifted. Simon seemed pretty sure that a human was behind the deaths. Part of her knew that made the most sense too, but she didn’t want to believe it. The hoax had been running for too long.

‘Don’t tell me you believe this River Man

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