Page 18 of Three-Inch Teeth

“Not from what I could see. Like I wrote in the report, it appeared that he was attacked while wading in the river. I could see drag marks from the water to where the body was found. Plus, his clothes were still wet. There was no evidence that he made it to the bank before he was attacked. So I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t see a plausible scenario where he could have provoked a grizzly while standing in the river with a fly rod in his hand.”

“And no blood from what you could find?” she asked.

“Not that I could see. And I haven’t heard that the forensics tech found any, either.”

Gordon nodded. “I agree with you that the attack likely took place in the river, based on the death scene. When a human is attacked by a grizzly in the field, there is usually a lot of blood on the ground. But if it happened in water … Damn.”

“Meaning what?” Joe asked, although he guessed the answer.

“Meaning we may not be able to re-create the attack as it happened. It means both blood and DNA might have been washed away in the current.”

They turned off the highway onto an improved gravel road that took them beneath an arch for the Double D Ranch.

“From what you’ve told me,” she said, “it looks like we only have one choice here. We’ve got to find that grizzly bear and kill it.”

“That’s what I figured,” Joe said. “I don’t like killing bears.”

“None of us do,” she said. “But one thing I’ve learned about grizzly behavior is that the vast majority of bears know that they’re not supposed to attack a human. It’s hardwired into them to avoid that kind of scenario, and they’ll do anything they can to not have an interaction. But if a bear crosses that line and kills in a predatory nature, a behavioral switch can take place and it’s likely they’ll cross it again. So we have to kill them.”

As he drove, Joe felt a chill wash over him, thinking about what that bear had done to Clay Junior, and what it might do to somebody else.

*

ON THAT FIRST day after the body was found, the Predator Attack Team had formed an armed perimeter around Clay Junior’s remains while the body was exhumed by the county coroner’s team on the bank of the river and taken away. They did so, the team explained to the coroner, in case the bear was still lurking.

The day was still and cool, with barely a breeze in the canyon. The sky was cloudless.

Gordon approached the body bag on the gurney and unzipped it. Joe stayed well away.

“He’s got defensive wounds on his hands and arms,” she said as she examined the victim. “So he fought. But from what I can see, there are a half-dozen wounds on him that could have ended with death. The cranial wounds alone would have done it.”

Then she sealed up the bag and stepped away. She had asked that DNA samples be taken from the bite marks and sent separately to the Game and Fish Department forensics lab in Laramie to help identify the bear. She’d explained that it was possible the killer grizzly had been previously trapped, examined, or collared and could be found in the database of the interagency grizzly bear task force.

After the body was transported to town and the sheriff’s department personnel and town cops had left, Joe asked Gordon how likely it was that she could actually identify the killer bear.

“It’s possible,” she said.

“How many grizzlies have been assigned numbers?”

“Over eleven hundred since the 1970s.”

“That many?”

Gordon raised her eyebrows. “That many. Most people don’t realize that at the present time we have over a thousand grizzly bears in this state, maybe even eleven or twelve hundred. We’ve identified maybe a third of them to date, and at any given time we only have sixty to ninety bears marked with radio collars. A lot more have tattoos or ear tags, but we can’t keep track of them on a day-to-day basis.

“If we’re really lucky,” she said, “this bear was collared at some point and we can track it with radiotelemetry. Unfortunately, those collars only last a couple of years. But it’s possible the bear is marked with a lip tattoo and we’ll at least know where it came from and when it was trapped.”

“That means two-thirds of the bears have never been captured or marked,” Joe said.

“Yes,” Gordon said. “And maybe more.”

*

BEFORE PROCEEDING TO the river, Brody Cress had dug into his gear bag and handed Joe an armored vest.

“This is heavier than I’m used to,” Joe said as he pulled it on.

“It’s filled with ceramic plates. We all wear ’em.”

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