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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Yarak, Inc.

J OE FOUND N ATE in a shed next to the falcon mews on the Yarak, Inc. property, an assemblage of buildings located in the center of a vast sagebrush bowl several miles off the highway. Nate was dismembering dead jackrabbits with his hands to prepare for the nightly feeding. The small dark shed smelled of blood and the musty odor of exposed viscera. Nate had replaced his shoulder holster with an over-the-shoulder falconry bag that contained thick gloves, leather jesses, and whistles used in training.

“Is Clay sleeping it off somewhere?” Nate asked over his shoulder. Joe was flummoxed, as he always was, by his friend’s intuitive ability to know who was approaching without actually looking up.

“County jail,” Joe said. “They said they’d call me when he finally wakes up. That poor guy is a mess.” Then: “The Mama Bears are hightailing it back to Jackson with a couple of citations in their pockets. I suspect that they’re not real pleased about that.”

“They’re lucky to be alive,” Nate said. “I hung around the cliff until I was sure you had that situation handled.”

“Thank you.”

Joe cleared his throat and said, “Dulcie Schalk was attacked and killed on her family’s ranch outside of Laramie. Marybeth is absolutely gutted by the news, of course. They were tight. But this might be our bear.”

Nate went still for half a minute.

“Repeat that,” he said, and Joe did, adding, “Jennie Gordon is on her way to the scene. We should know more when she gets there.”

“Dulcie?” Nate asked.

Marybeth had once confided to Joe that she suspected Nate had feelings for the county prosecutor, although to her knowledge he’d never acted on them in any way. That was before he’d married Liv. Nate’s reaction to the news, Joe thought, confirmed that his wife had been prescient once again.

“What happened?” Nate asked.

“We don’t have all the details yet, but apparently she was on a walk on her ranch when she was attacked and killed. Her dad found her and said she had a handgun and a canister of bear spray on her that hadn’t been deployed. It must have happened quickly.”

“Did the dad actually see the bear?”

“No. He just saw the result.”

“Damn.”

“Yup.”

“Help me feed my birds,” Nate said. “Then we’ll go inside. Like I told you earlier, I have some thoughts to run by you.”

Joe dug a pair of thin black nitrile disposable gloves out of a box of them and pulled them on. “Lead the way,” he said.

*

W HILE L IV WAS in the family room reading children’s stories to Kestrel, Nate and Joe sat at the kitchen table. Nate had poured them each a quarter tumbler of Wyoming Whiskey on ice and placed the bottle on the surface next to a yellow legal pad.

“As I mentioned, I have some thoughts on the matter at hand,” Nate said as he sat down. He flipped open the first blank page of the pad to reveal scrawled columns of dates, locations, and numbers that at first glance made no sense to Joe.

“Peregrine falcons are the apex predator of the skies,” Nate said without preamble. “Some falconers might argue that it should be a goshawk or a golden eagle, but they’re just wrong. Peregrines are the fastest and most efficient killers in existence. When they’re in a state of yarak , when they are at their peak in conditioning and frame of mind, I’d say they’re the most ruthless species on earth.

“By the same token,” he added, “grizzly bears are the apex predator on the ground in our part of the planet. No other creature can go toe-to-toe with them. Instead of the state of yarak , grizzlies can experience hyperphagia, where they’re more active and gluttonous leading up to hibernation. For a grizzly in hyperphagia, his entire focus is on feeding and much of his natural wariness gets pushed aside.

“Those two conditions might not be exactly the same, but it helps me get a better understanding of our grizzly if I think of them as similar. Two species, kings of their own domains, at the absolute top of their abilities.”

Joe nodded, wondering where this was going. Wondering what was on the pad that Nate was covering with his forearm.

“I once saw a peregrine in full yarak take on an entire lek of sage grouse,” Nate said. “Maybe eighteen to twenty birds. If you’ve never seen them do it, sage grouse protect themselves from falcons by flipping over on their backs and windmilling their big feet into the air. It’s like a buzz saw. Their talons are razor-sharp and they can slice the hell out of much larger predators who try to eat them. I’ve seen them send foxes and coyotes packing with their tails between their legs and their muzzles cut to ribbons.

“But in this instance, as I watched, that lone peregrine took out a dozen of those sage grouse, one by one. The falcon went at them so hard and fast you could barely see what was happening. The scene was a bloody mess, and when it was all over, the peregrine sat on one of the dead sage grouse and ate it all, feathers and bones included. He left the others for posterity.”

“Does this story have a point?” Joe asked.

“It does,” Nate said. “If that peregrine just wanted to eat, it would have stopped attacking after it killed the first grouse. But it didn’t just want to eat. It wanted to kill and to punish that group of sage grouse.

“I know you know this, Joe,” he said, “but people think animals in nature only kill what they can eat, or in self-defense. But in some instances, like this peregrine, they kill for no good reason. Something in them compels them to do it. You said Clay Junior didn’t provoke the bear in any way that you know, right?”

“Right,” Joe said.

“And as far as we know, neither did the prison guard in Rawlins. I read about that and it sounds like an ambush. And I can’t see Dulcie making a mistake that would provoke a grizzly bear. She’s too smart for that and she grew up in the country.”

“Okay …”

“I think our grizzly is operating under a similar condition to that peregrine I saw. Our bear is compelled to kill.”

Joe sighed. “Nate, I get it. But I don’t think this is news, and it really doesn’t help us get any closer to getting that bear.”

Nate glared at Joe. It was the glare he reserved for times when he thought that Joe was being obtuse and not getting it.

But instead of speaking, Nate quickly added a few more lines to the bottom of the pad. When he was through, he turned it around so Joe could finally read it.

Nate tapped his index finger on the first entry. “October 14, Clay Junior gets it in the middle of the Twelve Sleep River, right?”

“Yes.”

He tapped the next line. “October 16, Brodbeck gets hit in roughly the same place. The attack isn’t more than a hundred yards from where the first one occurred. You guys chase it and shoot at it, but you can’t find it. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“So between October 14 and 16, that grizzly bear hung around here.”

“It did.”

“Then on October 23, seven days later, a CO from the prison gets hit outside of Rawlins.”

“Yes.”

“That’s two hundred and fifty miles away from here, Joe. That means our bear bolted out of here and covered an average of thirty-six miles a day on a line. Our grizzly passed through ranches, towns, and across highways and rivers. He probably boogied right past hunters in the field, ranchers moving cattle, and schoolkids playing outside for recess. All to go straight to Rawlins and take out this poor guy.”

Nate jabbed at the last entry. “Then, on October 25, two days after the last attack, he goes after Dulcie on her ranch, right?”

Joe sat up straight. His throat was suddenly dry and he sipped on the bourbon.

“Two days from Rawlins to outside Laramie,” Nate said. “A hundred miles over the top of the Snowy Range that’s not only steep and high, but probably covered with tourists, hunters, and hikers. But for whatever reason, he lets them all go. And he’s increased his pace, because now he’s covering fifty miles a day.”

“What are you saying?” Joe asked.

Nate sat back in his chair. He looked around the kitchen as if checking to see if anyone was lurking and trying to eavesdrop.

“Either this grizzly has superpowers way beyond a state of yarak or hyperphagia,” he said, “or you’ve got two or maybe three different bears attacking humans hundreds of miles apart from each other. And they’re doing it in places that are not known grizzly habitats.”

Joe shook his head. It was incomprehensible.

“Or maybe you’ve got something else entirely going on,” Nate said.

“But what?”

“I don’t know, obviously. But something about this string of incidents doesn’t set well with me. I know about predators—I’ve studied them all my life. Hell, I’ve been accused of being one,” Nate said with a cold smile. “Predators have certain traits and patterns, even if we can’t figure them out at first.

“Clay Junior was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Brodbeck got hit because he was a threat to the bear, and the grizzly probably thought the man was encroaching on his new territory. There’s a kind of logical explanation to that.

“But,” Nate said, “to boogie two hundred and fifty miles to the next kill? Then a hundred more miles to get Dulcie? That’s where the logic breaks down. No, those last two kills seem targeted.”

“Targeted? Then what’s the link between them?”

Nate raised his eyebrows. “Beats me, game warden. Maybe you and your Predator Attack Team need to start thinking outside the box.”

*

W HEN L IV AND Kestrel joined Nate in the kitchen so they could start preparing dinner, Joe stepped away from the table and went outside to the covered porch, where he speed-dialed Jennie Gordon. She was out of breath when she answered her phone.

“Please tell me you’ve got some good news,” she said as a greeting. “I really need some good news for a change.”

“Not really,” he said. “I sent the Mama Bears packing and Clay Hutmacher is in custody for chasing them down. Not that he’s been charged with anything yet.”

Gordon said she was with Brody Cress and Tom Hoaglin and that they were at the crime scene at the Schalk Ranch outside of Laramie, along with local law enforcement and an ambulance waiting to take Dulcie’s body to the medical examiner in Laramie.

“It’s a bad scene,” she said. “Unfortunately, it’s one we’ve experienced before.”

Joe asked, “So you’d definitively say it was our grizzly bear?”

“It’s too early to make that call with absolute certainty,” Gordon said. “But from the MO and the wounds, I’d give it a ninety-nine-point-five percent chance that we’re dealing with the same bear.”

“Not a different bear?” Joe asked. “You’re sure?”

Gordon paused a beat. When she replied, her tone was professionally defensive. “Like I said, we still have to do a lot of work with the body and the crime scene to declare it’s the same bear. But at first glance, the attack is similar to the first three. It appears unprovoked, for one. Second, the fatal wounds are very similar: severe punctures in the facial and cranial area, deep claw marks on her arms, shoulders, and abdomen. Third, the body wasn’t fed on at the scene or cached. Fourth, the bear moved on after the attack.

“Joe, why are you asking me these questions?”

Joe outlined Nate’s thesis to her and Gordon listened patiently.

He said, “I agree with all your points. They make sense to me. But when you look at all the attacks from thirty thousand feet, the most dissimilar encounter is the first one: Clay Junior. He was hit in the river and his body was cached on the riverbank. Also, the grizzly hung around long enough to attack Bill Brodbeck two days later. It was in no hurry to cover hundreds of miles after the killing.”

When he was through, she said, “Maybe our bear is learning and adapting. Maybe it realized that immediately after it attacks someone, a whole lot of people with guns show up on the scene.”

“Maybe,” Joe replied.

“But I do understand that a lot of this doesn’t make sense. We’ve never had a bear behave this way before, so it’s impossible to anticipate where it’s going next and what it might do. But targeting the victims? How is that even conceivable?”

“I don’t have the answer to that,” Joe said. “Neither does Nate. Tell me: you said the fatal wounds are similar. I know there’s no way to determine if the claw marks are similar because they’re probably random and they happened during a frenzy. But are the bite marks on all four of our victims a match?”

“I’m judging the bite pattern based on my own field observations,” she said, her voice dropping in register when she spoke. Joe assumed someone had come near her whom she didn’t want to overhear her end of the conversation. “I’ve got photos, of course, but I haven’t measured or analyzed the wounds and determined that they’re an exact match. They look the same, I’d say. But I’m not a forensic pathologist, Joe, and no one on my team has that qualification. We’re bear hunters, and a lot of what we do is based on experience and knowledge of the species. Are you suggesting that grizzly bears across this state have suddenly decided to collude? That’s insane.”

“It is insane when you put it that way,” Joe conceded.

“Given that,” she said, “I’m going to take some time tonight at the hotel to pull up all the crime scene photos I’ve got on my laptop. I’ll get Brody and Tom to help me, and we’ll look much closer at the bite patterns and measure them to see if they’re consistent. We might even go to the medical examiner’s office so we can take a close-up look at Schalk’s wounds.”

“It can’t hurt,” Joe said.

“But don’t get your hopes up,” she said. “‘Bite mark’ evidence has been pretty much debunked in court as junk science when it comes to humans. I don’t know if it’s any more reliable when it comes to bears.”

“Ah.”

“Nevertheless, I can reach out to some scientists I know to see if we can figure out something either way. And maybe we’ll involve the state crime lab in Cheyenne. I hate the idea that bears are rising up on their own,” she said. “It’s important to knock that theory down before it starts to catch on. People are already getting panicky.”

“You don’t have to tell me about that,” Joe said. “We’ve seen black bears and cattle killed up here recently.”

She moaned. “Like I don’t have anything else to do, with four victims and that bear still out on the loose.”

“We’ll find him,” Joe said, knowing how hollow the words sounded even to himself. “We have to.”

“But what if we don’t?” she asked. “What if this bear just keeps killing people?”

*

J OE LOWERED THE phone after they’d disconnected. He’d had no answer to Gordon’s last question.

“What’d she say?” Nate asked as he pushed through the screen door.

“She said it looks like the same bear, but she’s going to dig deeper into the facts surrounding all the attacks. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Good,” Nate said. Then: “Want to stay for dinner?”

“Thank you, but I need to get home. Marybeth will be back from work soon and I promised I’d grill.”

“Give her my best,” Nate said.

“Have you heard from Sheridan?” Joe asked.

“Liv’s talking with her tonight, I guess. The job is a doozy, but she’s pretty sure she can handle it. I am, too, because she’s a good hand. But I guess the folks who hired us down there are a little … odd.”