In Harm's Way Read Free Page B

extraordinary mess. The refrigerator hung partially open, with a slushy pile of leftovers, vegetables, and meats at its feet, as if it had vomited its contents onto the reclaimed barn wood flooring. The freezer oozed frozen lemonade, orange juice, and ice cream in a colorful creamy waterfall that caught each glass shelf.
    Walt was no stranger to bear raids. His father ridiculed him for his responding to them as part of his job.
    “Did you get the claw marks on—”
    “Yes!” Fiona snapped, still refusing to look directly at him. “On the cabinets and the butcher block, both.”
    “The spill beneath the fridge?”
    “Got it,” she answered.
    “Just for the record,” Walt said, “I lobbied her hard. I thought I’d made—”
    “Not hard enough,” Fiona said.
    Bewildered by the exchange, Brandon tried to slip away but Walt caught him.
    “Access?” Walt asked his deputy.
    Brandon led Walt down a short hallway to a four-car garage.
    “Musta been left open, though the owner claims otherwise. Looks like the thing checked out the dog door”—the frame of the dog door had imploded into the hallway—“and maybe the door came open in the process. We found it like this.”
    Walt studied the door jamb, especially its metal hardware, and then did the same on the broken dog door. He looked into the whistle-clean garage—about the size of the first floor of his house—and its ship-deck-gray paint. He descended the three steps and went down on one knee, getting the light right.
    “If she hasn’t done so already,” he said, “have Fiona get shots of the door hardware and some angles of the garage floor.”
    “Will do. But why does the insurance care about the garage floor?” Brandon asked.
    “You ever been to one of these before?” Walt said.
    “Sure.”
    “Open your eyes and use—”
    “Your head,” Brandon finished for him, quoting a Walt-ism.
    “Exactly.”
    Brandon studied the door hardware and didn’t have the courage to ask what he was supposed to be looking for.
    “Fur,” Walt said without looking back as he kept to the very edge of the garage floor. “Animal hair. A tight space like that dog door, we should have seen some caught in the screws or hinges.”
    He worked steadily toward the garage doors.
    “Yeah, okay . . .” He sounded confused.
    “When was the last time you saw a bear pass over strawberry jam, broken glass jar or not?”
    “Ah . . .”
    “And since when doesn’t a bear claw a door trying to get it open? It claws the cabinet—in the middle of the cabinet—but not the door?”
    “But there are claw marks,” Brandon protested.
    “Check out the size of them,” Walt said. “A bear that big doesn’t tiptoe through a door. And he doesn’t go through all the food and get back out without leaving tracks.” Walt indicated the clean garage floor. “A flying bear, maybe?”
    “Okay?” Brandon sounded unconvinced.
    “Let’s work the evidence,” Walt said. “Chances are this was a two-legged bear.”
    “A what ?”
    “And I’d like to know why he went to all this trouble.”

4
    W ith his suit jacket waiting for him on the back of a chair inside the house, and a Seattle Seahawks apron protecting his shirt and tie, Walt pulled the barbecued pork loin off the grill, Beatrice drooling at his feet. It had been a long, poisonously quiet week. He expected to see Fiona later that night.
    “I don’t want dead pig,” Emily said, her arms crossed, her eleven-year-old’s face locked in determination.
    “Don’t do this,” Walt said, collecting his wares onto the cutting board. “This is your dinner. You like bacon, don’t you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Bacon is pork, same as this.”
    “Then why can’t I have bacon?”
    “It’s the same thing ,” sister Nikki said.
    “Because this is what I cooked for dinner,” Walt answered. “I thought you’d like it. It’s your favorite.”
    “Is not.”
    “I like it,” Nikki said.
    “You don’t have to eat it, Em. But no ice