Саманта Сильвер: A Grizzly Discovery

“Fine, well use your imagination just a little bit. Did you notice any tattoos or anything?”

“On his face?”

“Mike Tyson made that kind of a thing, didn’t he?”

“Uhhhh not so much, no. Hey, how about him?” I asked, pointing to the picture of a guy who looked to be in his mid-thirties. He was quite frankly a little bit too old to take pictures of himself showing off his abs in a mirror—did any dudes really still do that after they hit 23 or so?—but our dead guy definitely had a lot of muscle on him.

Sophie tapped on his profile, and fortunately, his whole profile had been set to public. I should have guessed; guys who show off their abs in their profile pictures aren’t usually worried about getting too much attention. Unfortunately, pictures of Jeremy’s abs seemed to make up about ninety percent of his profile.

“This guy sure loved himself, didn’t he?” Sophie muttered as we scrolled down the page.

“Find anything interesting?” Charlotte asked as she tossed some mushrooms and red peppers into the frying pan.

“Other than the fact that this guy probably single-handedly kept selfie stick companies in business?” Sophie asked. “Seriously. Why even bother keeping the shirt on if you’re going to lift it up to your chest to show off your abs all the time?”

“I’m a big fan of this one, where he’s not only showing off his abs, but doing it at the beach here in Willow Bay,” I laughed, pointing to a photo captioned “American beaches are pretty nice.”

“Oh, yeah, that is the beach here, isn’t it?” Sophie said, squinting to see better. “That’s taken next to that big tree at the end of the beach, right?”

“Exactly,” I said, nodding. “It looks like he was a tourist.” Old Oakie was one of the most famous trees in Willow Bay, overlooking the beach from the end of one of the hiking trails. I enjoyed taking that trail and hanging out by the tree, which gave a panoramic view of all Willow Bay. Kids loved to climb the tree in the summer; a hole in the middle of the trunk made it easy to climb up to the thick branches above. A part of me was surprised the guy hadn’t taken a picture of himself doing a pull-up off one of the branches to show off even more.

Sophie scrolled down further and we saw a few more pictures. One of them was captioned “Everything’s bigger in Texas” with a rather crude accompanying photo.

“Did this guy think he was in a frat, or something?” Sophie asked, rolling her eyes when she saw it. “He looks like he’s in his thirties. Like come on man, there’s a time to act sixteen years old, and it’s not when you’re over thirty.”

“You know what the worst part of this is?” I asked.

“The photos?” Sophie replied.

“No, the fact that he’s obviously a tourist. He’s been to Willow Bay, there’s a picture taken in LA, and another from Texas. The dude was obviously doing a US road trip. Which means that either someone from the UK followed him here, or he was killed by some random attacker.”

“Or someone that he traveled with,” Charlotte offered.

“If he was traveling with someone you’d think they would have taken his pictures for him,” I replied. “These were all selfies.”

“You’re also speaking as if he was murdered,” Charlotte said. “Doesn’t this make it even more likely that it actually was a bear attack?”

My shoulders slumped as I realized Charlotte had a very good point.

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll wait for what the police determine. If they decide it’s a murder, then we know that we’re looking for probably someone totally random, or another British person. If it’s a bear attack, well, then we’ll see.”

“You know who else is good at investigating, if they decide it’s a murder?” Charlotte asked pointedly. “ The police . Leave it to them,” she said, putting the omelette in front of me.

“Fine,” I said. “If the cops decide it’s a murder, you’re right. There’s no reason for us to get involved. But if they say it was a bear attack, well, I don’t think they’re right, and I’m going to get an answer one way or another.”

4

It didn’t take long for the answer to come. My third client of the morning the next day, a young couple whose energetic husky was prone to jumping off things that were too high for a dog to jump off, came in to have me X-ray his leg. Again.

“Did you hear Chief Gary announced that the person who was killed yesterday was mauled to death by a bear?” Irene asked me as I did a quick physical on Jojo, her blue eyes even bigger and rounder than usual.

I raised an eyebrow. “He’s already said that, has he?”

“Yes, there was a press conference at nine,” Irene’s boyfriend Kurt replied. “Some British tourist. It’s so sad; that’s going to impact the town. At least it’s late in the season. Hopefully, by the spring people will have forgotten about it.”

“Do you think we should get a gun?” Irene asked. “After all, our house backs up to the forest. I know Jojo here can handle himself pretty well, but if there’s a bear out there mauling people, well, I want to be able to protect myself.”

I sighed inwardly. This was exactly what I was afraid of.

“I don’t think you need to worry,” I told Irene. “I was there, and I saw the body. While it was consistent with a bear attack, I don’t think it was a bear that did it.”

“Well then what else could it be?” Kurt asked.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “It could have been a murder made to look like a bear attack. But black bears very, very rarely attack people. I’ve never heard of it happening here my whole life.”

“Yes, but if it’s happened now ,” Irene said. “It just takes once.”

“Well, I certainly won’t stop you from buying a gun,” I replied. “But I don’t think you need one. Certainly not to protect yourself from a bear. If you want to be safer, you should probably start wearing a helmet inside your car.”

“Well that’s just ridiculous!” Irene spouted.

“So is thinking you’re going to be killed in a bear attack. I know what Chief Gary said, but I also know what I saw, and I know a lot about bears. A lot more than the police do. I don’t think that man was killed by a bear.”

Irene shivered. “I’d almost rather a deadly bear be out there than a deadly human.”

Kurt looked troubled. “So what do you suggest we do?”

I shrugged. “Continue on with your lives. There’s no need to be afraid of bears. I promise, they’re not out to get us. This isn’t the start of some bad horror movie.”

Fifteen minutes later we had confirmation that Jojo had luckily not fractured his leg this time; I sent Kurt and Irene back home with some painkillers and instructions to keep his activity level to a minimum (as much as possible anyway) over the next week or so while the strain healed.

When I made my way back to the reception area, I found that Karen had gone and made an emergency trip to the bank, and we had gained a new addition to the office for the day.

A few months ago Bee had met Buster, an orange cat belonging to a retiree who had recently moved to Willow Bay. The two of them had immediately hit it off, spending all their time together sitting as high as they could and making snide remarks about all the people or animals who crossed their paths. It was actually kind of cute. Extremely annoying, especially when their snide comments were aimed in my direction, but also cute.

When it became obvious that Bee and Buster weren’t content with simply seeing each other once a year when Buster had a checkup, Gloria began dropping him off at the vet clinic some mornings. She would go out, do whatever old retirees spend their days doing, then come back in the afternoon to pick Buster back up. Today was evidently one of their play days.