“I spent several years at homicide back home. You know that. As soon as the identity of the victim was confirmed the boys at headquarters ran everybody in the company with any sort of background like that through the computers and came up with a number. Then they matched them to where they were and my name came up, my being at that time somewhat drunk and disorderly as befits a vacation about three hours flying time from here. I’m not happy with this, either, Ross, but the buck got passed to me and I’m it.” He stopped and examined the foliage hanging overhead. “Anybody in your organization tall enough to break those limbs?”

Ross looked up and saw what the company man meant. The trail had been cut with a hand saw and was kept open the same way with weekly trims, but the area was otherwise overgrown and the trail had been cleared only to a height of eight or nine feet, the reach of the man with the saw. From all the signs, something a lot taller and wider than any man had come through here.

“If there ain’t no monster they sure as hell went all the way,” Red noted.

They reached the junction to the road, but MacDonald followed the signs even though the foliage was thinning and those signs were getting fewer and fewer and walked up towards the glen. The ground was hard there, with much exposed rock, and not well suited to footprints.

The glen, however, was a different story. Although the grass had begun to recover, the huge impressions in the ground of the clearing were still evident, even with a horde of security men running through. The men didn’t weigh two or three tons.

Ross sighed. “There aren’t any prints beyond the altar stone,” he told the other two resignedly. “We checked.”

MacDonald examined the massive stone carefully, checking all the points where it intersected the ground. He hadn’t paid much attention to the place in previous visits, but it was clear that if that stone was hinged or moved in any way it had been covered by experts beyond his ability to expose.