Саманта Сильвер - A Grizzly Discovery

This was better than I could have ever expected! Not only had I just confirmed that Jeremy Wallace was, in fact, murdered, but there was a chance that Jeanie could even tell me something about the murderer!

“How well did you see the attacker?” I asked Jeanie, and she thought for a minute before shaking her head.

“Not very well, I must say. My eyesight is not what it used to be. When I was a cub, I could see far. Now, not as much.”

“Do you know if it was a man or a woman?” I tried, trying to hide my disappointment. I knew that any information I got from Jeanie obviously wouldn’t count as proof—I had no way of admitting to anyone that my witness was of the ursine variety—but if she could steer me in the right direction, that would be something.

“I do not, sorry,” Jeanie told me. “To be honest, you humans all look very alike to me. For instance, I am not certain if you are male or female. Do not take that to be an insult, it is simply that whenever I see humans I often try to leave as quickly as possible. You are the first human I have seen from so close.”

“I’m not insulted, don’t worry,” I told Jeanie. After all, how could I be? I knew 99 percent of the population wouldn’t be able to tell if a bear was male or female, and they didn’t even wear clothes to cover up their naughty bits like we did.

“I can tell you the attacker was wearing dark clothing. They were dressed in black, from head to toe.”

“Excellent, thank you.”

“I saw there were lights long into the night where the man was attacked. He is not going to be ok, is he?”

I shook my head sadly. “No, he’s not. He was killed.”

“Oh,” Jeanie said sadly. “That is too bad.”

“Hey, Jeanie?”

“Yes, human?”

“I would like you to spread the word around to the other bears to be careful over the next few weeks, ok?”

“Be careful? Why?”

“The humans who are in charge thought that the way the human was attacked looked like a bear had done it. They have announced that the man was not murdered, but killed by a bear. I’m worried that humans are going to be more afraid of bears than usual, and that some of them might try to come into the forest and kill you for their own protection.”

Jeanie looked sadly at the ground. “That is not good. We are a peaceful species. We do not wish harm on the humans.”

“I know,” I told her. “I promise you, I will do everything I can to prove it was a human who killed the man. I will do what I can to protect you. But please, make sure the other bears know to be more afraid of humans than usual for the next little while.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Jeanie told me. “I will spread the word. We will be discreet. I wish you the best of luck with what you are doing.”

I smiled at Jeanie and said goodbye, then headed back the way I came. I checked the time as I walked back toward the park, and home. It was just after four thirty. With any luck, I’d have enough time to have the hottest shower known to man before my date with Jason that night.

5

Just after six Jason and I were sitting in a booth at the local Italian restaurant. Giovanni’s was a relatively new addition to the Willow Bay restaurant scene, having only opened around five years ago. It had a cute, old-world feel to it, with traditional Italian music running softly through the restaurant, warm lighting from candles at each red-checkered-tablecloth covered table and framed pictures of the Tuscan country side adorning the walls.

“So,” I said to Jason as I picked up the menu when we finally settled ourselves into the comfortable booth. “I suppose you’ve been busy with Jeremy Wallace’s death?”

Jason was a journalist at the Willow Bay Whistler, the local weekly paper. I suppose he was the journalist, really. It wasn’t exactly a high circulation paper that warranted a large staff. Jason raised an eyebrow at my phrasing. He was over six feet tall, with gorgeous dark brown hair and cheekbones you could cut yourself on. When he smiled I felt little butterflies in my stomach, and while we initially didn’t exactly get along—it didn’t help that I had suspected him of committing a murder—we quickly found that we had a lot in common and had now been dating regularly for a few months.

“Does the fact that you already know his name mean Willow Bay’s own Nancy Drew is on the case?” he asked with a grin, and I found myself blushing slightly.

“No, no. Nothing like that. Well, maybe something like that. I meant to tell you, I actually got called out to the crime scene to give my advice. You know, what with being a vet and all.”

“Awww, and you didn’t think to sneak a picture of the body for me to run on the front page?” Jason asked, pretending to be hurt.

“Yes, I’m sure you wouldn’t get any complaints about that at all from the population here,” I laughed as the waitress came by. I stuck with the classic spaghetti carbonara, while Jason, being of Italian descent from New York, ordered the much fancier-sounding Bucatini all'Amatriciana, along with a bottle of white wine from Tuscany that he swore was the best wine he’d ever tasted.

“So you’re the one who told Chief Gary it was a bear attack?” Jason asked. “I was curious as to how you knew.”

I shrugged. “Actually, while I said the injuries were consistent with a bear attack, I also told Chief Gary I didn’t think that was what it was.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. I mean sure, being tossed into a tree and covered in scratches is consistent with a bear attack, but it’s not the only possibility. And honestly, I have really good intuition. And my intuition was telling me this wasn’t a bear.”

Jason considered my words. I felt a bit of a pang at not being able to tell him the true reason I knew it wasn’t a bear attack. Being a witch was such a major part of my identity, and yet I knew I wasn’t allowed to share it with Jason. Not until we were married, anyway. Those were the rules.

“So you don’t think it was a bear?”

“No. No, I really don’t.”

“But don’t bears, like, kill people for food?”

I laughed out loud. “Seriously? You know, sometimes I forget that you grew up in New York City and have no idea how nature works.”

Jason looked at me with a gaze that was half abashed, half curious.

“Bears will almost never attack humans, unless they feel threatened. Grizzly bears are the more aggressive type, but there aren’t any of them in Oregon at all. You’ll never run into one here. We just have black bears. Black bears are pretty badly named, to be honest. They can be all sorts of colors, from black, to brown, to cinnamon and even white, although those are pretty rare.”

“Oh, yeah, I saw a video on Facebook of a little white bear cub up in Canada, his mom was black,” Jason replied. “So they won’t attack you if they see you?”

“No. Not unless you act threateningly. That’s why it’s recommended that if you see a bear you look to the ground, speak calmly and back away slowly.”

“While I’ll keep that advice in mind, be aware that if I ever see a bear I will be much more likely to panic and run away screaming,” Jason told me, and I laughed.

“Well, that’s pretty much the worst thing to do, but on the bright side, you’re pretty unlikely to ever run into a bear. They avoid humans pretty well. All that is another reason why I don’t think this is a bear attack.”

Also I spoke to a bear who saw the whole thing happen, I thought to myself. It was starting to suck, not being able to share that part of my life with Jason. It felt wrong to keep that from him. But I knew I had no choice.

“So you think Jeremy Wallace was murdered?”