Page 107 of Three-Inch Teeth

The fact that Joe’s estranged birth mother, Katherine Pickett/Cotton, was identified as the murder victim left on the side of his county road was baffling. Had she literally followed Sheridan back to Wyoming? Why? Was her purpose to try to reconcile? The thought of that both confused and chilled him.

The disappearance of Axel Soledad and the discovery of his mother’s body in around the same location was more than a coincidence.

The story, whatever it was, was bound to be continued.

*

THEY FOUND THE dead grizzly bear wedged between two large boulders in the center of the outcropping. A weathered telemetry collar was around its neck, the battery long ago depleted. The grizzly was splayed out as if sleeping, its rear paw pads facing up and legs stretched out.

“It’s over,” Cress said as he shouldered his rifle. “It sure looks like the bear we saw in the river.”

“She never left the area,” Gordon said with quiet awe. “We chased her all over the state and she never really left.”

Joe arched his eyebrows. “She?”

“It’s a female,” Gordon said. “That kind of surprises me.”

“Are we sure it’s the same bear?” Joe asked.

“We’ll do some forensic testing, but I’d guess the odds to be ninety-nine-point-nine percent it’s the same bear that attacked Clay Junior and Brodbeck.

“See here,” Gordon said, bending back a tuft of thick long hair on the far left thigh of the animal to reveal a scabbed-over bullet wound. “One of us hit her like we thought. Maybe that’s why she didn’t go very far. She must have hunkered down in the woods until she felt good enough to move again.”

“That poor old girl got blamed for a lot of bad acts,” Cress said. “I kind of feel sorry for her. Almost.”

“Now for the moment of truth,” Gordon said as she bent down next to the bear’s massive head.

Joe was confused for a moment until he saw Gordon pull on a pair of nitrile gloves and reach down to the grizzly’s snout and peel back the thick upper lip.

There, on the pink underside of her lip, he could clearly see the numbers 4-1-3 stenciled in dark ink.

“Oh, no,” Gordon sighed. “Oh, no.”

“Tisiphone,” Joe said. “The Mama Bears were right.”

Gordon looked up at Joe and implored him with her eyes to never speak of this again. She did the same to Cress, who nodded his agreement.

“Let me get my knife,” Cress said. “We need to get rid of that tattoo.”

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