Bear Witness

  Bear Witness

  AN ALASKA UNTAMED MYSTERY

  Lark O. Jensen

  This book is dedicated to Linda O. Johnston’s husband Fred, as she does with all her books. Hey, Lark O. Jensen likes the guy, too.

  Chapter One

  I felt my grin explode all over my face. Nothing unusual about that. The tour boat I was on had left the dock from Juneau, Alaska, hours ago on this Monday in May. We were now in the fjord called Tracy Arm, with snow- and ice-covered hills at our sides. And just ahead, in the distance, I could see strings of ice floes bobbing in the water, many with dark spots on them.

  Harbor seals. I could hardly wait till we were closer and I could point them out to the passengers—including any pregnant mother seals who happened to be there or, better yet, mamas plus babies. They appeared a lot this time of year.

  And I loved seeing them and introducing the tour boat’s customers to them.

  That’s who I am: Stacie Calder, wildlife lover and expert and new tour guide, here in Alaska where there are so many different kinds of wonderful animals to find and see and point out. I even bring my own dog with me—Sasha, a two-year-old husky, who’s far from wild. She’s been well trained by me, and she also loves to interact with the tourists I introduce, at a distance, to the area’s animals.

  But Sasha is all mine. My blue-eyed baby, my champion, my protector. In fact, though it’s not an uncommon name for people or pets, not everyone knows that Sasha means defender.

  Fortunately, my current employers understand what it means to love animals. When I asked, after introducing my dog and showing how sweet and obedient she was, the ClemTours bosses, parents Ingrid and Curt, immediately gave me permission to bring her along while I was on tour duty. That was late summer last year, when I learned what it meant to give these tours. And I just started doing so earlier in May, when tours started again after winter.

  I petted my mostly-gray-and-white pup on her furry head between her pointed ears now as I spoke into the microphone, and she wagged her shaggy tail. We were on the top deck of the three-deck tour boat, a mostly open level with chairs in the center, a roof overhead on poles, plus rails around the perimeter so passengers could sit or stand and see the water and the shore while viewing animals I pointed out.

  What I said was always broadcast on the deck where I stood at the time, but I could also set the system so I could be heard everywhere—which I almost never did. I talked up here, on the top deck, and kept the other decks silent so tourists could just watch without being bombarded by me if they chose.

  Now there were about twenty people up here with me, mostly standing around the edges of the deck, watching what was around us beneath the blue, cloudy sky. Only a few seats in the rows in the deck’s center were occupied, by a variety of guests, from seniors to the very young.

  Sasha and I stood at the front of the port side, and quite a few people were hanging out with us. I’d been talking almost since we left shore, so everyone knew my purpose on this boat: blabbing info that might interest them about our environment at that moment, especially about animals.

  I’d done an introduction at first, as we’d left, so the passengers would understand my references to forward and aft—front of the boat and rear—and port and starboard—left and right—among other important stuff, like being careful.

  “We’re getting closer, people, but watch those small sheets of ice in the water in front of us. Can you see who’s there?”

  A girl of about fifteen who’d been standing near me got even closer. She was wearing a parka with its hood hugging her face, though it wasn’t extremely cold today. But it wasn’t warm, either. The high temperatures in this area in May seldom go above the fifties.

  She patted Sasha after getting my okay, then pointed and asked, “Are those seals?”

  “You got it,” I said, catching the eye of a smiling woman behind her who was most likely her mom. I then asked the girl, “What’s your name?”

  “Allie,” she said.

  “Pretty,” I told her, then spoke into the microphone again. “I have Allie here with me, a very smart young lady who said that what we’re seeing, those spots on the ice that you’ll see better as we get closer, are seals. They’re harbor seals, and some might be new mamas and their pups.”

  I’d slung a red fabric bag over one shoulder before and now reached down into it, pulling out a white plastic cup with the name of this boat—ClemElk—etched into it in a gold color. “This is for you, Allie,” I said, handing it to her. “It’s your prize for helping me.”

  “Thank you!” she exclaimed, then dashed over to her mother, who also mouthed Thank you.

  I simply nodded and smiled.

  I was wearing a navy-blue zip-up hoodie that had a small ClemTours logo on the front over a long-sleeved T-shirt and wool slacks. No, I wasn’t cold, but this kind of thing was my uniform on these tours. Especially the hoodie, though I didn’t have the hood up right now. That let my dachshund-brown hair, pulled up into a clip at the top of my head but loose below that, blow free. Why dachshund brown? The dog I had as a child, Shorty, and I had matching hair color, although mine was always longer.

  I seldom wore gloves despite having them in my pockets, since I had to be able to maneuver my microphone, binoculars, and more.

  And the tourists? Their garb, and degree of warm clothing, varied. There were people of all ages on board.

  All appeared to be enjoying themselves. And my talk. Although we were finally reaching the area where I hoped to tell them the most about Alaska’s nearest wildlife.

  We were getting closer now to the seals on the ice. The tour boat had been rocking gently nearly the entire time we’d been on it—more when we’d left the Juneau area, since we were going faster. Now we’d slowed, but the water, though not too bad, wasn’t completely calm.

  I pulled my binoculars up from where they hung around my neck and looked at the nearest ice atop the water.

  A few floes had two or more seals on them—and of those, a couple of the additional seals were quite young, relative newborns.

  Fun to see, fun to point out.

  Around me, groups began congregating along the edges of the deck, sometimes getting close to Sasha, who knew just to step behind me and snuggle my legs. I was glad about the railings, especially when a couple of young men started taunting each other—in fun, it seemed, but they nevertheless got into a bit of a disagreement. “Easy there, guys,” I told them. “The seals don’t eat people meat, but I still don’t want you to end up in the water.”

  They both looked at me from beneath their tight beanies, appearing startled at first. And then they laughed.

  Before I started talking again, another guy came up to me. He’d joined me before on this tour as I’d spoken into my microphone. His jacket was of puffy pale-green vinyl, and he wore a black knit hat pulled way down on his head, almost to his brown eyes. He seemed quite interested in the area and my descriptions and was full of questions, which, fortunately, I was able to answer.

  But of course I’d been a wildlife lover all my life, had studied and worked with wild animals in a variety of ways.

  Smiling, I lifted my hand to gently silence him for the moment, and when I lowered my hand, I patted Sasha on the head.

  I spoke for a short while about harbor seals and their background in Alaska, particularly Tracy Arm. I’d done a bunch of research. Plus, when I was learning the basics for this job, I’d gone on a few other ClemTours boat trips, listening to and talking to some of the other tour guides. I’d become buddies with a couple of them already, and both were also out giving tours today—but not in Tracy Arm.

  For right now, this was my bailiwick. I loved going out on this boat usually five days a week—one tour each day, weather per
mitting—and telling our passengers all about the wildlife we saw.

  I explained that these seals had a bit of stiff fur on them. They could be distinguished from sea lions and other pinnipeds by the fact that they had no ear flaps, just holes. I described their size and some of what they ate.

  And then I stopped talking, since we were close enough for our passengers to actually see a bunch of them on different nearby ice floes.

  I turned to talk again to that guy who’d sought me out, but Lettie Amblex came up to me. She was my assistant on this boat, and she’d been hanging out on the lowest of the three decks, talking to people about the tour and the wildlife we were likely to see. “This is great,” she said as she leaned on the nearest railing and stared at the closest sea lions, another mother with a youngster. “I told everyone on the bottom deck that it would be good to come up here and look, since we can see better. But some are saying it’s cold, and others are enjoying a meal or drink or whatever at the galley. They’ll be sorry. Anyone who doesn’t come up here on these tours always regrets it.”

  She would know better than I. Even though she was in her early twenties, around ten years younger than me, she’d grown up in Juneau and had worked for the Clementoses since she was a teenager. But she didn’t have the broader knowledge about wildlife that I did thanks to my education and background.

  Me? I might be new here as a tour guide, but I’m a naturalist. I grew up in Los Angeles, fell in love with the LA Zoo.

  I eventually majored in wildlife conservation and management at the University of Arizona. I spent a while teaching kids about the animals at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park till I decided I wanted to see more actually in the wild. That’s when I headed to Alaska, a couple of years ago, after landing a job at Juneau Wildlife World. I still work there at times of the year when it’s too wintry to give boat tours.

  Lettie was taller than me, and I’m pretty much average height. Her black hair was in a pixie cut, though it was pulled back and didn’t frame her pretty, youthful face. Her black eyebrows seemed always to be raised in surprise, as they were now.

  “Well, you did your best,” I said. However, our jobs on board this boat included ensuring as much as possible that all the passengers loved their voyage.

  If they failed to see all the wildlife, some might feel slighted.

  I’d have to go to the deck below soon, where the bridge was located, to see what wildlife was visible there and also to encourage those stragglers there and on the deck below that to wend their ways up the steps to the top deck if they wanted to get the most out of this trip.

  “Yep,” Lettie agreed.

  “I like seeing all those seals,” said the man I’d put off talking to. “But what else are we likely to see? And will we be out here a lot longer? It’s really nice here. I hope this excursion’s a nice long one.”

  Interesting, I thought. Everyone who bought a ticket onshore was greeted by ClemTours personnel who gave them a verbal rundown of what to expect as well as the amount of time the tour was likely to take.

  “Well, you were probably told this was about a seven-hour-round-trip journey when you got on board,” I said. “It took more than a couple of hours to get to this area, and it’ll take the same to return. That means we’ll be here in Tracy Arm and some surrounding areas for around a couple of hours too.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  “And we’re going to see more fun animals out here,” Lettie added. At my glare, she said, “Or we usually do on these tours. Birds and bears and—well, we’ll see.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Fantastic,” the man said. “I would love to hear more about all the animals we’re likely to see and how you find them. And then how you can make sure the boat goes where you’re most likely to see the most wildlife—that does happen, doesn’t it?”

  “Of course,” I said, and briefly explained that in addition to my microphone, I had a system that could communicate directly with the captain on the bridge. “Although the captain and crew there are also always on the lookout for more wildlife and let me know about it too as they head in that direction. But now—”

  “But now—well, you can put the animals in danger here by getting too close or making too much noise, right?”

  His voice had risen in volume, and I saw others around us looking at him, then me. It was almost as if he wanted the other tourists to think about what this boat could do if handled inappropriately.

  “We could, yes—but you can be certain that we don’t. Our captain is well experienced in going slowly to keep our wake and noise down, and he is careful to steer far away from any animals in the water, like the seals.”

  “But what if—”

  “Believe me,” I said. “We are conscientious and do it right. I’m a wildlife advocate and care a lot about animals, and I wouldn’t allow anything else.”

  Before he could say more, I raised my hand to silence him and walked a few feet away, Sasha behind me. Even when our caution and care weren’t being questioned, I never spoke too long with any one passenger, not when I could show a lot of fun stuff to all of them—the more wildlife, the better. I turned away to scan the sea nearby as well as the land around us, hoping to make good on at least some of that right now.

  And fortunately the guy stayed silent.

  There! The timing was perfect. I was sure the mother bear who lumbered at the foot of a craggy, snow-dotted mountain nearby, cub keeping up behind, hadn’t heard anything we were saying on board. Or even if she had and had understood, she hadn’t cared, since she certainly looked happy and healthy, at least from this distance.

  But there they were, mama and baby bear. And of course I told all the passengers where to look now, and gave a brief dissertation on bears and their species in the area, which included both brown bears and black bears. These two, in the distance, were brown in color and appeared to be, in fact, brown bears—although brown bears could be black and black bears could be brown.

  And as I finished, I saw that I now had not only Lettie near me; the head of us all on the ClemElk, our captain, Palmer Clementos—one of the owners’ sons—was now walking up the stairs from the deck below. Good. I liked Palmer. Even pretended to flirt with him now and then.

  That pushy guy was still around too, but not particularly close, and he still remained quiet.

  I always watched the shoreline for wildlife and things I could talk about as a tour guide—but I additionally kept my eyes on what was happening on the boat everywhere I could see.

  I didn’t know if any of our passengers up here had noticed the captain, especially since, as far as I could tell, all of them were watching where my hand now pointed, to the shoreline and the wandering bears. The boat was sailing in the same direction as they walked—avoiding the seals on ice, of course—so the bears remained in our view.

  And now the captain was also in mine.

  The captain could leave the bridge sometimes, like now, when we were cruising slowly to see the wildlife. He had an assistant, Steph Porter, who hung out with him most of the time when he was in charge, and at times like this she remained on the bridge, running the boat.

  I’d met Palmer’s parents and siblings, who, like him, each captained a tour boat. There were four siblings: Gustavus—Gus—and Palmer, and Kate and Craig, all named after Alaskan towns, although Kate was named after the town of Kake. Their parents mostly captained a ClemTours boat together, but if they were busy enough, Ingrid and Curt each ran a separate one. There was a bit of family resemblance among all of them. Like Palmer, they were each of moderate height. Their hair tended to be shades of light brown, and Palmer’s was among the darkest. He wore it short, as most of the Clementos men did. Palmer kept his face shaved, although his male siblings seemed inclined to wear anything from fuzzy facial hair to beards—and the latter was what their dad did.

  As captain of this tour boat, Palmer wore their standard uniform of beige slacks and jacket. The large ClemTours logo on the back seemed to
show small ocean waves with a large eagle soaring over them.

  I loved that logo. It was the same as the small one on my pocket but a lot more visible that size.

  Anyway, right now, I was glad to see Palmer. As he did on some outings, he’d soon take the microphone from me and give his captain’s perspective on the tour, what we’d seen, what we were likely to see, and why we had to go slowly around here—so as not to make too much engine noise and scare the wildlife, as I had confirmed before when questioned. His saying so would prove it, and I loved his family’s perspective on wildlife protection too.

  “Hi, Stacie,” he greeted me, his voice a bit raspy as always. I assumed that was at least partly from his inhaling the wind and air at the bridge, which he kept mostly open. “How’s it going?” He turned slightly and gave Sasha a pat on the head.

  “Just fine,” I said. “Are you going to talk about what we’ll be seeing and how long we’ll be out here? That gentleman over there—”

  I started to gesture toward the guy who’d begun hanging out with me and asking his difficult questions, but he was edging away, head down. He didn’t get far, though, since there were so many people standing on the deck looking around. He seemed to be heading toward the steps, but they blocked him.

  “Hey,” Palmer said, and there was a sharpness to his voice that surprised me. He began edging his own way toward the guy. And then he reached him, moving around so he was the one to block him.

  Which made me curious.

  I spoke into the microphone again and told everyone to keep watching those bears, since they might disappear back from the shore and into a snow-surrounded hill.

  Then, Sasha beside me, I quickly joined Palmer and the passenger. They were now in the rows of seats in the middle of the deck, apparently to get a bit of privacy. None of the other passengers were there. Palmer was speaking very quietly but clearly angrily. Fortunately, the nearest passengers had done as I’d suggested and moved to the edge of the deck to watch the bears.