I’m lying. He might even realize it—I can never tell with Gunnar, though I suspect he’s a lot quicker than he acts.
“You said something about a fast ATV ride back?” He leans against a tree. “If the guy’s dead, there wouldn’t be a hurry.”
I exhale. “There was a bear. I just didn’t want to say it in front of Max.”
Gunnar’s brows rise. “Grizzly?”
“Yep.”
“Chased you in the ATV?”
“Yep.”
“Damn. I’ve heard they’re fast.”
“Very fast.”
He seems to be considering this, putting together what I have said with what I’m not saying, and that’s when the ATV arrives. Anders parks about twenty feet from the clinic, and we meet them there.
“I brought help,” I say, “and I handed Storm over to Max. Rory is with Kenny.”
Gunnar stares at the tarps. “That’s not two very small hikers, is it.”
“Nope.”
“This have something to do with why the bear was chasing you? You stole its dinner?”
“Yep.” I adjust the tarps so nothing falls out. “But the bear didn’t kill him. It was scavenging.”
“That’s what bears do mostly, right? Max told me that. From…” He nods toward Dalton. “They scavenge more than they kill. What’s the term? Opportunistic carnivores.”
“They are, and that’s what we have here.”
“Yeah, good call on not telling the kid.” He peers at the tarps. “I’m just helping carry them inside, right? I don’t need to see what’s under there?”
“We won’t open them until you’re gone.”
“Thanks.”
Once the body is inside, Gunnar leaves, but not before I apologize if even that part wasn’t something he’d have chosen to do. He brushes it off with a joke and only asks whether there’s any concern about the grizzly tracking its dinner back to town. I explain that we lost it before taking a long route in, but I also ask him to speak to Kendra. I’d like her on patrol, as our best shot in the militia and the one who grew up in the Yukon.
Dalton and Anders leave next. They need to go to the mining camp and speak to Rogers. The longer we delay, the more suspicious he’ll become. We also need to talk to Lilith, but we’ve agreed to do that this evening. So much to do, with the constant pluck at the back of my mind, reminding me that my daughter also needs me.
I ask April to hold off on doing more than an external examination while I look after Rory. Kenny heads down to help her. I warn him about what he’ll see. He goes a little green but shrugs it off and says he’ll be fine.
Kenny arrived in Rockton before me. Down south, he’d been a high-school math teacher. In Rockton… well, the joke was that what happened in Rockton stayed in Rockton. It was like visiting Vegas under a false name. No one there knew you. No one would ever see you again.
Haven’s Rock is the same. You can be who you want. For some, it’s a license to be a shitty person. For others, it’s a chance to explore a new persona. The high-school math teacher took up bodybuilding and leaned into his carpentry hobby, becoming the town carpenter and lead militia. Then a bullet to the lower back meant he’s walking with braces… and lucky tobewalking. He’s still our carpenter, though, and still head of the militia. These days, he’s also resurrected those rusty teaching skills with math lessons for Max and Carson.
So, forensic medicine—or any experience with mutilated bodies—isn’t part of Kenny’s skill set. But if my sister needs him, he’ll be there, and I know better than to argue. Kenny has mellowed from the false machismo of our early days in Rockton, but he still has his pride, and he will not appreciate me suggesting he skip this.
After Kenny heads downstairs, I pause a moment to put all that aside. Then I go in to where Rory is playing quietly in her portable crib.
I spend time with Rory, feeding her, changing her, and then just being with her until she falls into a milk coma. When she’s out, I put her back into her crib, slip downstairs, and ask Kenny if he’d mind keeping an eye on her.
“So my options are watching a sleeping baby or watching anautopsy on a bisected and half-eaten body?” he says. “Babysitting duty, here I come. Let me know if you need anything.”
April has reconstructed the body on the exam table, setting the two halves together. Actually, no, on second thought, Kenny would have done that. April wouldn’t have seen the point. The body’s owner was long gone. Therefore, there was no reason to “pretend” the corpse was whole, and it might even be easier to work on it in pieces. Kenny would realize everyone else who worked on that body would be more comfortable seeing the pieces where they should be.
