Page 22 of Silent Bones (High Peaks Murder, Mystery and Crime Thrillers #7)
T he radio was playing something that sounded like a banjo having an identity crisis when the voiceover kicked in.
“Come one, come all to the Whitehall Sasquatch Festival! Pancakes, prizes, and maybe, just maybe, a glimpse of the beast himself. Bring your boots, bring your binoculars… and bring your belief!”
McKenzie reached for the dial but didn’t turn it off. “You think we’ll get free T-shirts if we pretend we saw something?”
“You already do pretend,” Noah said, eyes on the road. “Every time you talk about your high school basketball career.”
McKenzie held up a hand in mock offense. “I was bench MVP , thank you very much.”
“You’re from Scotland, they toss haggis not basketballs.”
“Not my school.”
Callie didn’t say anything from the back seat. She was staring out the window, arms crossed, her silence a kind of static in the car. Noah glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She didn’t meet his eyes. Was it embarrassment from the previous night? Or validation of what she felt deep inside?
He would have been lying to say that he hadn’t thought about it until he fell asleep or that he wouldn’t want to explore it further. But today he had to put it to one side and focus on the case. A task easier said than done.
The road curved, pine-lined and slick from the morning drizzle. Whitehall wasn’t far now. It was located a good two hours south of High Peaks and about forty minutes northeast of Lake George.
The festival had started as a joke a decade ago, but like all good folklore, it found a way to become real.
What used to be a bar bet and a few drunken howls in the woods had grown into a weekend event with sponsors, Sasquatch-shaped waffle makers, and three local breweries releasing limited-run ales with names like Hair of the Beast and Gone Squatchin’ IPA .
“Just so we’re clear,” Noah said, “we’re not here to eat pancakes and chase fairy tales.”
“No pancakes?” McKenzie groaned. “You take all the joy out of my job, Sutherland.”
“We’re here because Langley is the best primate trace analyst in the Northeast,” Noah continued. “And he’s already looked at other fur samples.”
McKenzie looked out the windshield as the town came into view. “God help us if he says it came from an actual Sasquatch.”
“I doubt that will be the case but we have to rule out the animal aspect.”
“We already did when we found Stephen zip-tied.”
“Sure, that’s one angle. One that is very credible. However, we don’t know for sure if Stephen was even at that campsite, as the others were dead and we don’t have a witness or cameras that place him there.”
“His name was down with the booking.”
“Right, but maybe he left to see someone. Maybe he had a change of mind and didn’t go.
Avery never went. Maybe he hooked up with the wrong person through a gay app.
That case of a guy killing gay men in Toronto is a prime example of what can happen when you place yourself in vulnerable situations.
” He took a breath. “So until we have a definitive answer, the public and state still want us to give our due diligence and rule out an animal attack.”
They passed under a sagging banner stretched across Main Street: WELCOME TO THE 6TH ANNUAL WHITEHALL SASQUATCH FESTIVAL.
Below it, booths had popped up like mushrooms after rain, lining the sidewalks with fake fur pelts, footprint casts, wood-burned signs reading I BELIEVE , and airbrushed T-shirts with red-eyed silhouettes peeking through trees.
A man in a full-body gorilla costume, cheap and glossy, stumbled by as they parked. His mask was sideways. A cigarette dangled from the mouth slit.
Callie finally spoke. “That one’s definitely endangered.”
They got out and joined the flow of foot traffic.
Booths pressed in on either side. One offered “certified sighting maps” with stars marking alleged encounters going back fifty years. Another sold jerky labeled 100% Authentic Cryptid Meat . It was probably cow, but no one was asking.
A girl offered them festival wristbands and handed McKenzie a temporary tattoo of a Sasquatch riding a snowmobile. He stuck it to his forearm without hesitation.
“You look like a twelve-year-old on Mountain Dew,” Callie muttered.
“Aye, lassie, there are depths to me you haven’t plumbed,” he said with a grin. “But you’re welcome to.”
They passed a tent where a man was giving a talk on “vocal mimicry in primates and the potential of Sasquatch speech.” Noah kept walking. McKenzie paused, tilted his head thoughtfully, then caught up.
They finally found the man they were looking for, a grizzled figure hunched over a collapsible table beneath a vinyl sign that read: Langley Institute of Primate Studies.
In front of him were several large cast footprints, three swatches of fur under plastic, a trail cam, several books he’d written, and what appeared to be a colorful map of the Adirondacks dotted with red pushpins.
Albert Langley didn’t look up when they approached.
He was adjusting the cam’s lens, his fingers were stained yellow with what looked like nicotine.
He had a slight stoop, sun-spotted skin, and wire-rimmed glasses that sat low on his nose.
He wore a short-brimmed canvas hat and a vest full of pockets.
“You Langley?” Noah asked.
“I’m whoever they need me to be,” the man said without looking up. “But yes. That’s the name they gave me.”
Langley glanced up, eyes sharp. “Wait. You’re the detective from State. Your department phoned and said you would be coming.”
Noah gave a small nod. “We have samples. Fur and markings from a crime scene.”
“I’ve already seen a couple of photos,” Langley said, gesturing toward the files on the table. “Courtesy of your tech analyst. Gupta, wasn’t it?”
“Rishi,” Callie said, stepping beside Noah.
Langley nodded like that confirmed something he already knew. “Smart kid. Doesn’t know his tracks from his tailpipe, but sharp with metadata.”
McKenzie picked up one of the footprint casts, holding it up to the light. “Ah, this looks… weird.”
Langley grunted. “That one’s real. From 1987. Picked up in the marsh east of here after a snowfall. Gait spacing was wrong for a hoax. Weight distribution said upright biped.”
“So you really believe this stuff?” Callie asked.
Langley shrugged. “I wouldn’t have written three books on the topic if I didn’t.
I believe in patterns. I believe in misdirection.
I believe people see what they want to see, and sometimes what they need to.
I also believe that as a species we aren’t as smart as we claim to be.
We certainly don’t know every inch of this planet or even what we are doing here.
But we like to assert we do. It helps us sleep at night.
Gives us a sense of control. And it stops us from losing our minds.
So I guess it’s understandable.” He tapped the table. “Let me see what you brought.”
Noah pulled out a sealed folder and placed it in front of him. Inside were enlarged photos, close-ups of the claw marks, tufts of fur from the tent flap, and a scale comparison against known animal samples.
Langley adjusted his glasses. His fingers traced the claw image without touching the surface.
He murmured, “Interesting.”
Noah crossed his arms. “Initial thoughts?”
Langley smiled faintly. “You didn’t find a monster, detective. You found someone pretending to be one.”
Langley studied the photograph of the claw marks like it was a cipher waiting to be cracked.
“See this spacing here?” he said, tracing an arc across the tent canvas image. “Too uniform. A natural predator strike like a bear, cougar, hell, even Bigfoot is chaotic. You don’t get symmetry like this unless someone wanted symmetry.”
Callie leaned closer. “So not an animal.”
“Not one I’ve ever dissected.” He reached for a second image. “Look here at the depth variation in the tears. The entry points are shallow at first, then deepen unnaturally. That’s someone dragging something across fabric with pressure, not an animal slashing in fury.”
“Claws?” McKenzie asked.
“Claws, sure. But I would assert they are manmade . Could be anything, welded steel, deer antlers, custom blades. I’ve seen hobbyists build rigs for Halloween that’d make your skin crawl.”
He picked up the fur swatch and gave a low grunt. “And this? Looks to me like a synthetic blend. You can tell by the texture, the way it reflects light. Natural fur diffuses; this catches.”
Noah crossed his arms. “You’re saying someone made it look like a cryptid attack.”
Langley nodded, still scanning. “They didn’t just want a body count. They wanted mythology. They wanted a spectacle.”
“But the damage to the bodies?”
“A steel baseball bat, a heavy log, many things can break bones.”
Noah’s voice lowered. “Why go through all that trouble?”
Langley glanced up. “Same reason people wear masks, detective. To hide something worse underneath.”
They stood in silence for a moment, the buzz of the festival pressing in from all sides. Laughter, shouts, the faint beat of bad cover music playing near the food tents. Somewhere behind them, someone blew a kazoo shaped like a foot.
Callie stepped aside, the wind tugging at her jacket. “So it’s a smokescreen.”
Langley nodded. “My guess? Your killer isn’t trying to convince anyone Bigfoot’s real. They’re just buying time. Giving people an excuse to chase shadows in the woods instead of the truth. A great example of that would be the Dyatlov pass incident.”
“The what?” Noah asked.
“Dyatlov Pass. Soviet Union. 1959. Nine hikers found dead under bizarre circumstances, crushed ribs, missing eyes, some nearly naked in the snow. Theories ranged from avalanche to secret weapons testing, even UFOs. But one of the earliest headlines claimed they were attacked by a yeti. The Russian version of Bigfoot. That idea spread like wildfire. Total misdirection.”