"Probably, but you know, there are unverified reports of people disappearing around here for fifty years."

"Yeah, sure, also unverified reports of the Abominable Snowman clumping around stealing sheep and scaring little kiddies."

His eyes on the pad, Lau smiled slightly. With slow, heavy strokes, he circled the last word he’d written. "Bigfoot," he said aloud. "You hit the nail on the head, sir. They’ve found some eighteen-inch, humanlike footprints nearby. They look like Bigfoot tracks, the locals say."

Fenster took off his glasses, finically disengaging the wire loops from one ear at a time. Silently he inserted the glasses into a case and snapped it shut with a sharp, terminal click. Then he rose. "I’m not going to be involved in this, Mr. Lau. I deal in real things, not fairy tales. I’ll look at your five baskets of bones this afternoon, and then I have a case waiting for me at headquarters. A hallux major ." He paused, looking at Lau as if he expected a challenge. "A woman," he said precisely, "has bitten the big toe off a would-be attacker. The toe has been recovered, and I mean to identify him from it. Now, that is the real world."

Lau barely repressed his grimace. Fenster took his jacket from the back of a chair and shrugged into it. "If you need more help than my poor abilities can provide, you have my sincere encouragement to bring in Gideon Oliver from Fantasyland University."

Chapter 2

John knew that Julie Tendler usually showed exactly what she felt, and now her black eyes sparkled with surprise as she put her ham and cheese sandwich back down on its waxed-paper wrapping. "You mean you know Gideon Oliver? Personally? "

"The doc? Sure, why not?" He was having a cup of coffee at her desk to keep her company. As chief park ranger, she had been out with the crew that had been digging up the new burials, and she’d missed lunch. "He’s an old pal."