The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)(64)

I hand it back. “I don’t think anyone would mistake the victim of this for a shark attack.”

“No. For the Hawaiians it was more symbolic. You’re talking something practical?” He returns the weapon to its box and the box to its shelf, then walks away. “Let’s go down a few rows.”

Seaver removes a long, curved knife from a drawer. “This is a karambit. It’s designed to resemble a claw. Fairly practical. You can find modern versions in most knife shops.”

He digs through another drawer and pulls out a metal handle with sharp nails. “This is the head of a zhua, a clawed staff used to pull men from horses and rip away shields.”

I examine the hooks at the end. This is close but wouldn’t leave the deep gouges I found in the victims.

We go over to another cabinet, and he sorts through some boxes until he finds the one he’s looking for. “Ever heard of a bagh naka? This one is from India, but there have been variations in other cultures. In the nineteenth century, the raja would have men fight each other with these until their skin peeled off.” He unfolds a piece of cloth and holds up a set of metal knuckles with four long blades sticking out.

I’m stunned. While I could imagine what kind of weapon the killer would use, I didn’t imagine that it was something that had ever been used widely.

“Here,” he says, extending it toward me. “Hold it. In the Great Calcutta Killings, Hindu girls were given these to protect themselves.”

I grip the weapon in my hand. The claws stick out an inch or so over my knuckles. I can easily imagine how a version of this with blades like the karambit could resemble an animal claw. If you cast the blades from an actual bear claw, the similarity would be even more pronounced.

As I hold the bagh naka up to the light, I get an image of the gashes across Chelsea’s body. I slide the weapon off my hand and set it down. I tell Seaver I want to get some photographs, but really I don’t want to touch it anymore.

“Have you ever heard of anyone using something like this to kill someone? Here? In the United States?” I ask.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if some martial arts nut went after a roommate with one, but no. To kill someone with this, you’d have to be strong.”

I think of the deep gouges in the girl’s bodies. “How strong?”

“I don’t know. But strong enough to hit an artery.”

I pick the weapon back up and use my phone to capture it from every angle.

“Thank you, Dr. Seaver. Just one more question. Have you ever heard of anyone mistaking a human attack for an animal attack?”

“There were reports of wolf attacks in France several hundred years ago that might have been the work of a man. That gave rise to werewolf legends in that region.”

“What about around here?”

“Like the wendigo?”

“I’ve heard the name. But I don’t know much about that.”

“It’s an Algonquin legend. A half-man creature that eats people. Indigenous people took them very seriously. But that’s more associated with cannibalism. Is that what you mean?”

“Not quite. But that’s worth looking into. I was just wondering if you had heard of any recent cases of people mistaking a person for an animal.”

“No. Not recent.”

“Well, thank you for your time.”

“Unless you consider the 1980s recent.”

“Pardon me?”

“The Cougar Creek Monster? It’s a kind of local story, but it made it into a few of those silly cable television documentaries.”

“Wait, what’s that?”

“I moved here after, but that was this area’s Mothman or Bigfoot for a while. Hikers near Red Hook said they spotted something lurking around their campsites at night. I think maybe even shots were fired. I don’t remember much else. Everyone was talking about it; then it just went away.”

“What did they say they saw?”

“A man walking on four legs. Like a big cat. Or the other way around. I’m sure you can look it up.”

“Did it ever attack anyone?”

Seaver shrugs. “Maybe? I think there was some account of a camper getting clawed across his chest.” He gestures with his hand, tracing a path across his body I’d seen too many times in the past few days.

“Thank you, Dr. Seaver.”

I leave him in his basement with his skulls and weapons of murder.





CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO


UNSOLVED

In June of 1983, a group of seventeen campers, most of them recently graduated from Chilton High School, took a trip to Beaverhead National Forest. The first and only night of the camping trip, something happened. The details vary among the accounts I’ve been able to find in the public library in nearby Red Hook, but the general story is fairly consistent.

The hikers spent several hours trekking through the woods to a remote spring. Along the way several of them thought they were being tracked by a large animal, possibly a bear or a mountain lion.

There had been other reports in the area of people spotting something in the woods watching them. This creature would stand on two legs to observe them and then slink off into the brush when noticed.

The Chilton High campers reported seeing something that was tall and lithe, too skinny to be a bear. Although they never saw it clearly, they reported the skin as being more light brown or tan in color than the black or brown of a bear.