A Grizzly Discovery

2

Fifteen minutes later Sophie and I were standing at the trailhead just behind the gazebo in Railworkers Memorial Park. A police cordon had already been set up across the trail, but despite the fact that there was nothing visible from inside the park, it seemed half of Willow Bay had shown up to see what all the fuss was about.

“Do they know who it was yet?”

“I heard it was one of those high school kids smoking pot.”

“Are you joking? They wouldn’t cordon off the area if it was just kids.”

“No, I heard he was smoking pot and drowned in the pond.”

“Oh, well that sounds much more reasonable Gladys.”

“Well I don’t see you coming up with any ideas.”

“I already know, it was a woman who was hiking and got mauled by a cougar. I heard that from a very reliable source.”

“Oh yeah, who’s your source, Antonia?”

“Maybe.”

Sophie and I pushed past the crowds of speculators and made our way to the cordon. A young, very frazzled-looking police officer was guarding the yellow tape. He was looking anxiously past us, as though realizing that if this crowd really wanted to get past and see what all the fuss was about, there was no way only one officer who looked like he had just started shaving three weeks earlier was going to be the one to stop them.

“Hi, Chief Gary sent for us. Angela Martin and Sophie Mashito,” I told him.

“Oh. Uh, yeah, step on through,” the man said, lifting the yellow tape for us slightly. Sophie and I slipped under the tape and walked along the path until it became obvious that we were approaching the body.

Chief Gary was speaking with Taylor, Sophie’s boyfriend, but as soon as he caught a glimpse of us he waved and made his way over.

“Angela, Sophie. Thank you for coming,” he told us both. “Please, over here. I know it’s not the first dead body you’ve ever seen, but I should warn you, this one is a bit gruesome.”

Sophie and I glanced at each other as Chief Gary led us off the path slightly and into the woods. About ten yards off the trail we reached a tiny clearing where a man’s body lay.

He was facing upwards, his eyes staring into emptiness. He had been blond, and athletic looking. I had to admit, I was a little bit thankful that I didn’t recognize him. Willow Bay being as small as it was, I knew a good seventy percent of the people that lived here; probably more than that just by sight. I didn’t recognize him at all.

His face and body were scratched, his clothes torn. I crouched down next to him and inspected the marks, and Sophie knelt next to me.

“Well, I’m glad the cops didn’t find me like this back when I was a teenager,” she said.

“Yeah, it doesn’t look like a good way to go,” I replied.

“Now, I’m not the expert, but it looks like bear claws to me.”

“It does, doesn’t it,” I said uneasily. I moved to the other side of the body and saw that his head had been caved in; the wound was covered in dried blood. I looked up at the nearby pine trees: one of them had a matching blood stain about five feet up.

“The impact against the tree is the cause of death?” I asked Chief Gary, who nodded.

“Yeah. We think the bear attacked him, then pushed him and he hit his head, which was the death blow.”

I looked over at Sophie. “Do you recognize him?” I asked her quietly, so Chief Gary wouldn’t hear. She shook her head no.

“Weird for a body we don’t recognize to show up here like this, and someone we don’t know at that.”

“Well, if he was a tourist, maybe he ran into the bear and didn’t know what to do and was attacked.”

“If anything could have provoked a bear to kill someone I think it would be seeing you naked,” I joked, and earned a punch in the arm from Sophie for my trouble.

“Oh shut up. What do you think, anyway? You’re the vet.”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly, getting up from my hunched position. By all accounts, it did look like a bear attack. It was difficult to be exact, of course, and I certainly wasn’t trained in animal attacks, but the scratches were consistent with a large animal such as a bear. “I mean, it could be a bear.”

“What else could it be?” Chief Gary asked, and I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a cougar? I find it unlikely that a cougar would have attacked a man of this size though. But then, I also think it’s unlikely that a bear would attack.”

“But it is possible?”

“Yeah, it’s definitely possible. But something about this is bugging me. There’s something nagging at me, telling me this isn’t a bear attack.”

Chief Gary shrugged. “That’s fairly normal for civilians, I find. There’s an innate desire for something to be more than it is. I’ll tell the medical examiner that you think it could be a bear attack, and I’ll tell him about your nagging doubt, as well.”

“Trust me,” I said. “My intuition is really, really good.” I wasn’t about to mention the fact that it was literally magical. If my intuition was telling me something was wrong, I was sure I was missing something.

I saw Sophie glance at me when I mentioned my intuition, and a minute later she made her way toward Taylor, her boyfriend.

“I know, Angela. You always were a smart cookie,” Chief Gary told me. “I wouldn’t hold my breath though. The more information we gather, the more it looks like this really was a bear attack. I’ll have to wait for the medical examiner’s determination before we declare it for sure, though.”

“So basically what you’re telling me is that it’s almost certainly going to be labeled as being an attack from a bear,” I said dejectedly. I wasn’t stupid; I could read through the lines of what Chief Gary was telling me.

“Well, nothing’s been made official yet, but with what you’ve told me, that the marks on the body are consistent with a bear attack, I suspect that is what the final ruling from the medical examiner is going to be.”

“Great. Now everyone in Willow Bay is going to be calling for a bear cull,” I muttered, mostly to myself. I knew people tolerated bears, so long as they didn’t attack people. If someone was found dead, and the bears were found to be at fault, I knew there was going to be panic. This wasn’t good.

A couple of minutes later Sophie came back to stand next to me. Chief Gary thanked us for coming by, and made us promise not to tell anyone about what we’d seen. We promised—and I knew my journalist boyfriend Jason was totally going to make me break that promise later—and made our way back along the path. We didn’t speak until we got back into Sophie’s car.

“What did you go ask Taylor?” I asked when we were finally sitting there.

“Oh, you noticed that, did you? I was trying to be subtle.”

“We were practically born in the same hospital room; you can’t hide from me.”

Sophie laughed. “Fair enough. I actually just managed to sweet talk some information out of Taylor. If your witches’ intuition is telling you there’s something off about that scene, there’s something off.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “The more I think about it, the more I think that man was murdered.”

“And in that case, we’re the only people who are going to be willing to solve it.”

“Exactly.”

“So that’s why my information from Taylor is going to come in handy. The man was from England; he had a driver’s license on him with a London address and a UK passport. His name was Jeremy Wallace.”

“Well, that certainly explains why neither one of us recognized him. England isn’t exactly right next to Oregon. What was he doing here?”

Sophie shrugged. “Taylor had no idea. The only thing they have so far is his name.”

“Who on earth would want to kill a man so far from home? Unless it was totally random. Or someone followed him from England.”

“The list of people who want him dead and are in this country is probably pretty small,” Sophie agreed. “On the bright side, just think of it this way: it’s probably not going to be that hard to solve this murder case.”

Little did we know at the time just how wrong Sophie was.