The trail seems to come from the south, which is odd. We’d walked west from Haven’s Rock to get to the campsite. From there, the hikers’ trail continued at least a mile west. Then we circled back east, past the campsite. If the body was brought from the south, how far was it dragged? Not a mile, I’m sure. Did Blake double back east and was killed south of here? But we’d been at their camp early enough that I can’t imagine he walked a mile west and then circled back. Unless we’d been following only Gretchen’s trail and…
“Shit,” I say aloud.
I’ve made a critical error here. Okay, we all did, since no one else caught it, but I’ll still take the blame.
We set Storm on Gretchen and Blake’s trail, which headed west. Except what’s another thing Storm can’t do? Tell a recent trail from a brand-new one. We don’t know which direction the couple came from yesterday.
They might have—
The roar of a distant engine has Storm perking up. I turn. Out here, we really do try to be quiet, but there are cases where convenience outweighs the risk of exposure. The ATV is one of those exceptions. Oh, it’s been retrofitted with everything possible to decrease the noise, but once it’s close enough, I can easily hear it.
I jog back to the cave, with Storm alongside me. We reach it just as Anders is preparing to call me on the sat phone.
“Anything from the boss?” he says as I walk over.
I shake my head. “Storm and I didn’t go far. We’d have still heard him. Listen, I just realized something that screws up a major assumption…”
I tell him my theory.
He curses and shakes his head. “I never thought of that.”
“Neither did I.”
“We don’t know that our hikers actually headed west today. They might have come that way yesterday, laying the trail Storm tracked. Then they rise early, possibly because you told them where to camp.”
“I didn’t think of that either,” I say. “I suggested the spot, so they clear out before we can check on them. From there, they head east along another trail. At some point, Blake is killed.”
“Could it have been at the campsite?”
“Good question.” I mentally map it out. “That’s about five hundred feet from here. Not easy if you’re dragging a body, but doable. We should—”
A whistle cuts through the air. Another comes in quick succession, which was the signal we’ve been waiting for.
“The bear has left the building,” Anders says. “Now the only question is—”
One whistle, a different bird call.
Anders exhales. “Whew. Okay, the bear is headed north, meaning we are clear to ride over.”
The next tricky part is getting to that den… while making sure the bear doesn’t return. Dalton takes up watch again, this time on the hillside, with Storm, the rifle, and the binoculars. The ATV is parked right at the base, keys in the ignition, vehicle pointed out toward open ground, in case we need to make a quick getaway.
Anders and I climb the foothill. Fortunately, given that the den is home to an eight-hundred-pound bear, it’s not too difficult to get to. A critter that size isn’t going to edge along a narrow path every day. However, I still give the bear credit for some unexpected agility, because even I slip getting up to its den.
The den itself has been excavated by the bear, using its long claws to dig a suitable hole in the hillside. When we reach the mouth, we signal Dalton, about fifty feet down. Then Anders stays at the den mouth with his gun out. It’s a backup plan, on the very unlikely chance the bear returns without Dalton noticing.
I crouch and step into the den, and the coppery smell of blood hits me. Yet even that is almost overlaid by the stink of bear. The musk is overwhelming enough that my eyes water,and I stand just inside the cave mouth, blinking. Then I lift my flashlight and shine the beam around.
Grizzlies often line their dens with grasses and boughs. This one hasn’t done much of that—at least not yet. It isn’t ready for hibernation, and it seems mostly to be using this as a base camp while it bulks up.
Blake’s body is pushed toward the back of the den. And it’s… I am not unaware of what we have allowed to happen here. Logically, it’s nothing more than an indignity to a dead body. That’s what April would see. Blake is dead. He no longer cares what happens to his physical form. But our cultural abhorrence of man-eating—be it by predators or other humans—goes deep, and I am very uncomfortable with what we let happen. However, I would have been more uncomfortable with killing the bear.
As Dalton predicted, the bear went for the stomach. Everything between the rib cage and pelvic bone is gone, with the bear also eating what it could easily pull from both ends. It also took one bite of Blake’s thigh, but seemed to decide that was enough for now.
At this point, I should examine the body. And I would… in any case where we did not need to worry about a grizzly coming back and finding Detective Goldilocks in its home, stealing its dinner.
I take the tarp from the kit Anders grabbed in town. Then I lay it out beside the body. As I do, I make mental notes while working as quickly as I can. Once the tarp is laid out, I call Anders in.
“It’s bad,” I say before he enters, bent nearly in half to fit.
