“You think it might not be this Blake guy? Or that he’s not dead?”
I could lie. But that erodes trust, even if it would help me win this battle.
“No, it’s him and he’s dead. But I need to check something else.” I lean from the cave. “I’ll go right there, to that curve. If I even think the bear has seen or heard me, I’ll come straight back.”
Dalton grumbles but he knows he’s not “the boss” in the sense that he can order me to stand down. This is just two peers disagreeing over safety.
I walk slowly, listening and rolling my footfalls. It’s unlikely the bear will see me—they don’t have great eyesight. Also unlikely it will smell me unless the wind changes direction. The biggest danger is it hearing me. But I make it to that curve, and I can see it, almost up to our level now, completely engrossed in its task of getting Blake’s body to its den.
I lift the binoculars and focus on the body. I stay there long enough for Dalton to make a growl of his own behind me. Mylifted finger asks for one more minute. It’s not even the finger I might like to use.
When I’m sure my initial observation is correct, I retreat to the cave and slip inside, staying at the mouth where I can whisper to Dalton, while Anders can listen in.
“The bear didn’t kill him,” I say.
“What?” Dalton’s gaze shoots my way before turning back to watch.
“No signs of blood. The bear is scavenging.”
“Fuck.”
“Remind me how a grizzly kills again?” Anders says.
“Not bloodlessly,” Dalton mutters.
“Easiest kill would be to catch someone unawares,” I say. “They usually bite either the back of the neck or the head. That’s not necessarily fatal. You die from loss of blood when they, uh, start to eat you.”
“Remind me why I live out here again?”
“This bear isn’t eating him yet,” I say. “It found a whole body and is caching it before scavengers swoop in.”
“So there’s no sign of how the guy died?” Anders says. “From a fall maybe? That’s what supposedly happened with his ankle, right?”
“Yes, but now there are bruises around his neck.”
“Sure the bear didn’t do that?” Dalton drawls. “Put its big paws around his neck and squeeze. I hear grizzlies like to kill that way.”
That earns him a middle finger from Anders. “Okay, so not a fall. Not a bear kill. Possible strangulation. Possible murder.” He looks at Dalton. “And do not tell me that strangulation means murder. There are instances where it is intentional and not meant to kill or even hurt someone.”
“So I have been informed,” Dalton says. “I wasn’t going tosay anything. Possible murder is correct. Not only could the neck bruises be from consensual play but they could indicate self-defense gone wrong.”
I nod. “Someone puts their hands around your neck to stop you, and when you don’t stop, things go south. The point is that we have a likely murder victim in the jaws of a grizzly bear.”
“No problem,” Anders says. “You can just wait until it falls asleep, sneak in, and do your postmortem. We’ll grab April. She’ll be delighted to conduct an autopsy next to a sleeping grizzly.”
I look at Dalton. “I don’t know what our responsibility is here.”
He exhales. “Fuck.”
“If Blake was killed by a bear, we’d leave it,” I say. “Cruel but what else can we do? We’d tell his wife we saw him but couldn’t get to him. But it seems like murder. Technically, not our problem because he’s just a stranger passing through. Except…”
“Murder means a killer,” Anders says.
“Yes, which—statistically speaking—is probably his wife. We’d decided they really must be hikers, but this changes things. Is his wife a spy partner who turned on him? Did they come for someone in Haven’s Rock and that’s who killed him? Did they come for someone in the mining town who killed him? Even Lilith could have been the target. If the killer isn’t Gretchen, is she still alive? And in any of those scenarios, what danger does the killer pose to Haven’s Rock? Or to anyone walking around out here? If Gretchen is alive and not the killer, she’s still an exposure risk—running around looking for her missing husband.”
“Fuck.”
“We need to get that body away from a hungry grizzly, don’t we,” Anders says.
