Free The Chimera Secret by Dean Crawford Page A

lost in dense wreaths of gray cloud and the fields below sodden and damp.
    A light drizzle had enveloped the airplane all the way up from Friedman Memorial Airport, the thick clouds obscuring Ethan’s view of the mountainous and forested terrain as the pilot
guided them over tumultuous bumps in the air. The mountains caused violent updrafts and downdrafts that tossed the little aircraft about as though it were a leaf in a gale.
    Ethan knew that Idaho was not a densely populated state, but even so the vast tracts of wilderness that had stretched into the gloomy distance beneath them had seemed so immense that he could
not imagine how one might begin systematically searching it for any creature unknown to science, much less one that had made these lonely forests its home for untold millennia.
    ‘We’re digging ourselves a hole with this one,’ Lopez said, peering out of her window as the aircraft taxied off the runway and bumped along a track. ‘A big, damp, cold
hole.’
    ‘Sheriff’s picking us up from here,’ Ethan replied as he unbuckled from his seat. ‘Maybe there have been more developments since we left Chicago.’
    The pilot shut down the aircraft’s engines, and as Ethan clambered out of the airplane he saw a portly sheriff ambling his way across the rutted, rain-sodden soil toward them.
    ‘Earl Carpenter,’ he introduced himself, ‘Riggins Sheriff’s Department. Welcome to Idaho.’
    He said it with a cheery smile and a twinkling eye, and Ethan wondered whether the drizzle and cold was something folk just got used to up here. The sheriff proved himself a helpful soul,
carrying their bags to his patrol car before they climbed in and set off north on the U-95.
    ‘Riggins is about thirty-five miles out,’ Earl informed them as he drove away from the airport. ‘Say, where did you guys come from? All I got told was that you were working for
the government or something?’
    ‘Private contractors,’ Ethan replied by way of an explanation, ‘the FBI don’t have the manpower to dedicate a team to this investigation, so we help fill in for
them.’
    Earl Carpenter frowned as he glanced in his mirror at Lopez.
    ‘You qualified for this kind of work, ma’am?’
    ‘Worked homicide as a detective in DC for six years,’ Lopez replied without bridling. ‘Ethan here is ex-marines, recon.’
    Earl raised an eyebrow and smiled apologetically at them. ‘I guess that’s good enough for me.’
    ‘What’s the story so far?’ Ethan asked. ‘You’ve got two dead bodies, another supposed dead but still missing and a kid who swears that his brother was killed by an
animal, right?’
    ‘To cut it short,’ Earl agreed, ‘but there’s a whole lot about this that doesn’t fit right.’
    ‘Tell us,’ Lopez said.
    Earl puffed his cheeks and blew the air out as he drove.
    ‘Hard to know where to start. I get me a call about a local lady whose son’s been found hanging in the garage.’
    ‘Randy MacCarthy,’ Ethan said.
    ‘So I goes down there,’ Earl went on, ‘and I check out the scene before the county coroner gets called in. Sure enough, Randy’s swinging in the wind. There’s a
stool underneath him and he’d been dead for a few hours.’
    ‘How did you know?’ Lopez asked.
    ‘Body was cold,’ Earl replied. ‘His neck weren’t broken, so he died on the rope.’
    ‘Any history of prior convictions?’ Ethan asked. ‘Anything that might motivate this kid to take his own life?’
    ‘He’d been busted a couple of times for possession but nothing serious, got held by the local police department for forty-eight hours but no charges were filed as he wasn’t
dealing,’ Earl replied. ‘Made a lot of claims about conspiracies and said that he had evidence of government agents working in and around Riggins. Watched too many TV shows, you ask me.
But there’s no evidence of foul play. I took some photographs before forensics moved in, and Randy’s post-mortem confirmed death by