Page 6 of Three-Inch Teeth

Joe stood up and breathed in. His heart beat fast. Death, he thought, must have been almost instantaneous. There was no blood on Clay Junior’s face or on the ground around him, so he hadn’t bled out in that location. His skull had been crushed by the tremendous force of closing jaws.

Drag marks and bear tracks in the mud leading from the river indicated the body had been pulled from the water and buried in an excavated pit. That would explain the wet clothing.

Joe had never heard of a bear attack taking place on a river and the body cached along the bank. Both were unusual circumstances. Was that what really happened?

If so, did that mean the bear was coming back to feed on the victim? Or at least hanging around?

Joe turned quickly and made his way back to Clay on the riverbank. As he skittered across the river rocks, he shot glances over his shoulders in every direction, looking for movement. Leaves rattled in the breeze and the river flowed with muscle. He felt incredibly vulnerable in the open.

He thrust his hand beneath Clay’s armpit and helped him to his feet. Joe pointedly didn’t look at the severed leg.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get to your vehicle. The bear might still be around here watching us.”

Dazed, the foreman reached down for the foot and Joe pulled on Clay to prevent it.

“Leave it, Clay. I know it’s tough, but I need to get you out of here.”

Clay stared at Joe with incomprehension. He was in shock.

“The bear cached the body for a reason,” Joe said. “Bears do that when they plan to come back. I don’t want you sitting here when he does.”

“I’ve got to kill that bear for what he did to my boy,” Clay said. “He’s my only son.”

“I know,” Joe said, pulling Clay toward the willows and the open gate beyond them. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“He served honorably for his country in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Clay said, as they wound through the brush. “He led men and he came back. How can he go through all that and get killed by a fucking bear here at home?” Clay’s voice cracked.

Joe had no answer for that.

“We’ll get the bear,” Joe said. “I’ve already called in backup. We’ll get the bear.”

“He was going to be your son-in-law,” Clay said.

*

JOE CONVINCED CLAY to go back to his house while he called the sheriff. They’d need armed backup, as well as the evidence tech and county coroner on the scene, if possible.

“I’ll have to tell Mrs. Wheatridge,” Clay said. “I’m not looking forward to that.”

Clay had been widowed for years and he had raised his son on the ranch with his full-time housekeeper, Mrs. Wheatridge. The woman not only shared Clay’s bed from time to time but she’d also been a surrogate mother to Clay Junior.

“She always said I’d get him killed somehow,” Clay said. “Now I gotta tell her she was right.”

“You didn’t get him killed.”

“She’ll say, ‘If you’d let him go and didn’t insist on him following in your footsteps, a bear wouldn’t have attacked him.’”

Joe had no response to that.

*

WHEN CLAY WAS gone, Joe leaned against the grille of his pickup with his cell phone in his hand. He’d placed his shotgun within reach across the hood. Inside the cab, Daisy stared at him with her head cocked to the side as if to ask what was going on out there.

He speed-dialed his wife, Marybeth, and she answered from her office in the back of the county library that she managed.

“I’ve got some very bad news,” Joe said.

“What happened?” she asked. It was far from the first time he’d called her with that message, nor the first time she’d asked for details.

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