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  Austin didn’t want a repeat of what happened just after the start of the new year when significant seismic activity had shaken things up in the area. The ground tremors had been large enough to loosen quite a bit of the snowpack along the pass, and several large avalanches of snow and rock came tumbling down as a result. It had kept the seven thousand residents of Lawless and its visiting tourists isolated for several days while Austin and crew dug them out from one side of the pass while provincial work crews cleared the other.

  Fortunately, after the quake struck, it had been bitterly cold with minimal new snow, allowing for a quicker cleanup. Just seeing the blue sky around Lawless was a rare treat after the seemingly incessant fog they’d had for such a long stretch. The attitude of everyone in town had improved for the better for a while, no doubt thanks to the added vitamin D they’d been absorbing from the sun after such a long absence from its rays.

  That changed just after the middle of January when a warm front, affectionately called a ‘pineapple express’, blew in from the coast. A fresh load of heavy, wet snow dumped on top of the hard cold-pack still in the mountains. The fog returned for another extended visit soon after, creating more issues for Austin. It severely limited the visibility when he needed to assess the avalanche risk, varying anywhere between slightly crappy to really shitty on a daily basis. So, for the past week, he’d been hoping for some clearing to assess the avalanche risk.

  This morning, Trip Williams was coming with him to the valley’s fire lookout tower. Trip was his assistant, right-hand man and longtime compadre. They planned to assess the avalanche risk from the tower’s lofty heights, and hoped to have a clear view of the mountain tops above the thick valley cloud in order to make a determination. If it were a go, they would come back for the howitzer later. But as of right now, things didn’t seem too promising, and it looked like a repeat of yesterday -- another grey, featureless day in limbo.

  Carefully placing the shell casing back into the storage locker and locking it up, Austin flicked off the shop lights and walked through to the offices at the front of the building. First stop in his search for Trip was the lunchroom, since today was doughnut day, or Wednesday to the rest of the world. Knowing his longtime friend’s routine, Austin was fairly sure that’s where he’d find him.

  Clara Carleton, the office manager, brought in a dozen doughnuts and coffee from Tim Hortons on hump day each week. She liked to treat her boys, as she called Austin, Trip and Larry on nightshift, to a weekly treat. So it was almost a given that Trip would be in the lunchroom right now with his arms wrapped protectively around the box of artery-clogging sweetness, picking out the ‘good ones’ for himself. The ‘good ones’ were the honey-glazed crullers. Clara always ordered at least a half-dozen of them just for Trip. She knew he’d be a Mr. Cranky-pants all day long without his morning sugar fix, so she ordered accordingly.

  Entering the lunchroom, Austin was pleased to see that his prognosticative abilities were still up to snuff, as there sat Trip, working his way through a honey cruller. “Morning, Trip! Which one are you on now?”

  Trip chewed for a moment before responding around a mouthful of doughnut, saying, “Mumber free.” A cavalcade of crumbs tumbled from Trip’s mouth onto his bushy white beard as he spoke.

  Austin gave a thumbs up, saying, “You’re doing great today, buddy! Only three left to go! I’ll catch up with you at the front door when you’re done; I’m just going to check-in with Clara first.”

  Trip was in the middle of washing down his progress with a huge gulp from his prerequisite, extra-large triple-cream, triple-sugar coffee. He set the cup down with his left hand, giving a big thumbs up in return. In his right hand, a fresh cruller sat poised for imminent consumption, its thick glaze sparkling like ice in the fluorescent lights overhead. Austin thought he might have detected a slight smile as well, but with Trip’s thick, white beard, it was sometimes tough to tell. Shaking his head, a grin on his face, he turned and walked through to the front offices to greet Clara.

  The City of Lawless didn’t have the largest municipal maintenance department by any means. Apart from Austin and Trip, there were only two other employees that worked at the public works yard: Clara, who had been sitting behind her desk since time immemorial, and Larry, the snowplow/sander/grader driver. Larry was most likely already heading home for some much-deserved sleep after a long night of keeping the roads plowed, sanded and safe -- after grabbing his two chocolate long johns, of course. Although, Austin suspected that the only thing Larry had moved around the night before with his plow blade was more of the nebulous, grey mist.

  Walking by the kennel, he saw the small, caged room was thankfully empty today. Due to the need to consolidate offices in such a small town, the Public Works Office also just happened to be the office in charge of animal control for the City of Lawless. With a smile, Austin thought someday he might just want to add ‘Chief Cook & Bottle-washer’ to his business card as well.

  “Morning, Clara,” Austin said, pushing through the glass door into the inner office.

  “Good morning, Austin!” Clara beamed. “How’s the newest addition to our little family doing today?”

  “Sorry?” He said, puzzlement showing in his hazel eyes.

  “I mean your new baby, that olive drab bundle of joy sitting in your shop, of course!”

  “Ah, yes,” he laughed. “It’s looking good! Baby should be ready to go boom-boom as soon as the fog lifts. Speaking of which, any word on that? I haven’t checked the weather.”

  “Well, according to the latest from the weather office, we’re in for a few more days of this depressing crap before we get some relief.” She shook her head sadly.

  “That’s just lovely.”

  “Yes, indeed. And by the way, you’ve got a clean up in aisle four.” Clara smiled sweetly as she spoke the phrase, using their inter-office nickname for fresh roadkill on the highway.

  Austin said with a tired grin, “Okay, I’m game. Which part? Fresh fruit or frozen foods?”

  “Frozen foods, just about five klicks before the turn-off to the resort.”

  “Messy?”

  “Ray Chance called it in on his way to the casino this morning. He told me he hit something with his SUV and caved in the whole hood. According to him, he wasn’t sure what he’d hit at first, but once he got out and looked at the damage, he said, and I quote, ‘It was one of the biggest, butt-ugliest, goddamned raccoons I’ve ever seen in my life! And now it’s all over the goddamned road and my Land Rover!’” Clara smiled lovingly as she recalled the conversation. “I thanked him graciously for the call and told him I’d let you know about it as soon as you came through the door this morning, of course.”

  “Thank you for your efficiency, as always, Clara. It certainly sounds like that man has seen his fair share of homely raccoons over his lifetime,” Austin said with a slight smile.

  Clara smiled ruefully in return, cautioning, “You know how he is, Austin, he’ll be calling me every hour to checking to see if you’ve done it yet, caterwauling that it’ll be scaring the tourists away having a dead raccoon spread across the highway.”

  “No doubt,” Austin said, shaking his head. “We wouldn’t want to affect business at the casino!”

  “Lord, no! So, could you and Trip be a couple of sweeties and swing by and scrape it off the asphalt on your way to do the avalanche assessment this morning?” Clara smiled broadly, concluding. “When Chance called it in, Larry was already heading home, eating his long-johns.”

  “I figured as much. That shouldn’t be a problem, Clara.” Austin wasn’t surprised Ray Chance would have a bird over something like that. As the general manager and part-owner of the casino, Chance also sat on the town council and was one of the wealthiest men in the area. Austin knew as well as Clara did, that as soon as there was something that might affect the almighty tourist dollar at the Golden Nugget Casino and Resort Mr. Ray Chance would be on the phone to the other half of the resort's ownership, the
Mayor of Lawless, Bob Nichols. Chance would complain vociferously, making sure that whatever the problem was, it got looked after. Heaven forbid anybody turned around and left Lawless with a couple of dollars remaining in their pocket.

  “What’s not a problem?” Trip asked, coming through from the lunchroom. He brushed doughnut crumbs from his beard as he spoke, then looked down at his stomach and frowned. Though successful in removing the crumbs from his beard, he’d only managed to move them to a lower berth and now had to go to work brushing them off of his more than ample belly. Trip’s six doughnut breakfasts had caught up with him over the past few years, of that, there was no doubt, Austin noted sadly. When Trip first started working at the public works yard about a dozen years before, he had been a much slimmer man. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised to get a phone call from Alvin down at the fire hall someday in the near future regarding Trip. That would be the call where the Fire Chief tells him they had to cut Trip free from a piece of City Works equipment with the jaws of life due to his ample mid-section getting him trapped behind the wheel.

  Clara chirped brightly to Trip, “We’ve got a scratch and sniff five klicks out on highway number four. And it sounds like you might want to bring a shovel and big bucket, big fella.”

  Trip sighed, “It couldn’t have been on Larry’s shift, could it? All right, I’ll throw them in the back of the truck and see you in the front yard, Boss.” He stomped back through into the darkened shop, brushing at crumbs stuck to the front of his tan Carhartt coveralls.

  “Sounds good, Trip.” Turing back to his office manager, Austin said, “Okay, you have yourself a fun-filled day m’dear.” He zipped up his parka, preparing to leave. He started to push the front door open when Clara said, “Oh, yes! There’s one more thing I just remembered!” She seemed very excited about her news.

  “What is it, Clara?” This must be very big news indeed — he didn’t remember the last time he’d seen her so animated.

  “Well, it sounds like Ray Chance called everyone he could think of this morning,” she said with a small grin.

  “What do you mean?” Austin’s brow knitted together.

  “During his second call of the morning, Ray told me he also called the new conservation officer to help deal with the mess. And then, the new conservation officer contacted me right after I hung up with Chance! "

  “That is good news!” Austin interjected. They’d been without a conservation officer in the valley since Carl’s recent disappearance.

  “Absolutely! The officer said they should be out at the scene by the time someone from Public Works got there,” Clara finished, a twinkle dancing in the corners of her eyes.

  “Sounds good, what’s their name?” Austin noted Clara’s playfulness and wondered what she wasn’t telling him.

  “Chris Moon.”

  “All right, now I’ll have a name to put to the face. Thanks, Clara.”

  Austin stepped through the door and as the pneumatic closer pulled it slowly shut, Clara called out behind him, “Make sure you don’t miss any bits and pieces!”

  The green and white Lawless Publics Works Chevy Silverado pulled up to the front of the building, stopping in front of Austin. The bucket and shovel looked primed and ready to go, strapped in between the two snowmobiles on the pickup’s steel deck.

  Austin climbed into the passenger side, saying, “Take me to the Moon, amigo!”

  “Huh?” Trip looked to his friend, with a ‘what the hell is he talking about now’ expression on his face.

  “Never mind, it’s time for our roadkill roundup! Let’s load ‘em up and move ‘em out!”

  “Rawhide! Yee-haw, you got it, Boss!” Trip enthused with a grin, quite possibly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Crouching down, Christine Moon gently probed the animal’s remains with the end of her collapsible shovel. The collision with Ray Chance’s SUV had scattered the ‘raccoon’ across both sides of the highway in numerous wet, bloody chunks. She had to stop and turn her head to catch a quick breath of fresh air every few seconds as the carcass was exceedingly pungent.

  She stood to get a better look at the accident scene, but the fog wasn’t helping things as it swirled past her, continually obscuring her view. From the markings the more intact parts of the creature, it did indeed look like a raccoon. But from the amount of blood and gore spattered around, it appeared to have been from more than one animal — perhaps it was a family of them? If it were only one raccoon, it must have been the size of a black bear, which was crazy! Most of the raccoons Christine had ever encountered were not much bigger than a medium-sized poodle, and the largest one on record wasn’t more than thirty kilograms.

  A green and white Chevy Silverado appeared out of the fog across the highway, and she paused her probing for a moment. The pickup turned on its rack of amber emergency lights and pulled a u-turn, parking behind her Dodge Ram.

  Christine glanced surreptitiously from beneath the brim of her hat, pretending to be engrossed in examining the roadkill. Two men emerged from the truck. The taller one, sporting a neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard, approached her through the swirling mist. He was rather handsome. His salt and pepper beard casting a striking contrast to the dark, somewhat shaggy brown hair which sprouted from beneath his green Lawless City Works baseball cap. The second man was still back at the truck, rummaging around in the back.

  Glancing into the fog and trying to watch his step amongst the carnage strewn across the road, tbe tall man’s attention wasn’t on Christine until he arrived onto her side of the highway. Christine stood to face him. He stuck out his right hand to introduce himself and looked up for the first time. “Hi there, I’m Austin Murphy from Lawless City Works, and you are… a woman!”

  “And I see you are a very observant man!” Christine shot back. She shook his hand, a smile dancing across the corners of her lips.

  Still apparently caught off guard, the man said, “Sorry, but when Clara back at the office told me I’d be meeting the new conservation officer for the area today, she didn’t mention you were a woman.”

  “Yes, and I have been for quite some time now. I hope that’s okay?” Her smile continued its hypnotic display for a moment longer before diminishing to a more business-like expression.

  “Absolutely! It was just a bit of a surprise, that’s all. Your predecessor, Carl, was much taller, hairier and a lot crustier than you are.”

  With a trace of smile, Christine said, “Well, thanks for the heads up! I’ll try to keep the hairiness and crustiness to a minimum, but I can’t do anything about the height!”

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” Austin smiled back, thinking she was also a heck of a lot better looking than Carl had ever been. And the only hair he currently saw was long, blonde and spilling out from beneath the back of her ranger hat in a loosely-tied pony-tail.

  “I’m Christine Moon, by the way, but you can call me Chris.” Her hypnotic smile returned as her ice-blue eyes drilled into his.

  “Sorry! Pleased to meet you, Chris.” Austin Murphy grinned again, his cheeks glowing slightly, perhaps from embarrassment.

  Ambling out of the fog, the other man arrived onto the scene, his attention on the gristle and gore scattered across the road as he approached as well. Clasped in his work glove covered hands was a large, metal bucket and long-handled shovel. He was much shorter than Austin and almost bald except for one hell of a bushy white beard. His flushed cheeks seemed redder than Okanagan cherries in spring. Surveying the mess near their feet, he intoned, sombrely, “I think we’re gonna need a bigger bucket.”

  Austin turned to his co-worker, saying, “Trip Williams, I’d like you to meet the newest conservation officer for the area, Chris Moon!”

  Placing the bucket on the ground, the man looked up from the gore, extending his hand as he did. His eyes widened for a brief moment when they locked onto Christine's face, and he said in astonishment, “You’re a girl!”

  “Yes, I am! Thanks!" Christine replied
, taking the man's proffered hand.

  Appearing to grin slightly, he said, "Caught me off guard, sorry. Pleased to meet you." As he pumped her hand vigorously up and down, she thought he might have possibly grinned again, then blushed even harder but his beard made it hard to tell.

  Christine bathed the man in her smile’s radiance. "Pleased to meet you, Trip Williams." The shorter man’s grip was firm but slightly sticky — with what, she didn’t really want to know. “Say, fellas, I was wondering since you’re doing so well with your gender identification today, maybe you could put some of those powers of observation to work and help me figure out what the heck this thing all over the road was?”

  “Absolutely,” Austin said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Trip agreed.

  “Awesome! Thanks, guys!” Christine said, clapping her hands and rubbing them together. She pointed several metres away into the fog, toward the road’s shoulder where a white chunk of skull gleamed. “Well, first of all, If you look over there at that large cranial fragment you'll see there isn’t another piece like that anywhere around that appears to be from a different animal.”