CLAWS 2

by Stacey Cochran

  “This is Alexandra,” she said into the phone.

  She rose from the bed and stepped over to a glass double dooradjacent to the bedroom’s glowing fireplace, and she listened to the voice on the other end of the line. The landscape outside was white with fresh powder, and the nearly full moon broke free from the clouds. In the bed behind her, a man stirred in the shadows. He groaned and looked across the shadow-filled room at Alexandra’s back.

  “I see,” she said. “When did this happen?”

  The man on the bed had silver hair, but his features were indistinguishable in the darkness. Alexandra’s long red hair swept down to the small of her back. She held the phone to her right ear.

  “And there’s only one survivor?” she said. “Which hospital? . . . They’re sure it was a bear? . . . No, I agree . . . I’ll get back to you by—” she glanced at the clock atop the nightstand “—six A.M. We’ll want to move quickly . . . we’ll take care of her within twenty-four hours . . . Right.”

  She hung up the phone and gazed out at the snowy landscape.

  “What was that?” the man in the shadows said. He leaned forward rubbing his face, and then he looked at Alexandra. A ray of moonlight shone through the window illuminating his face.

  It was Abraham Foxwell.

  “We’ve got a situation in Durango.”

  “What situation?” Abraham said.

  “There’s been an attack,” she said. “Several teenagers are dead.”

  Abraham rose from bed and walked toward the bathroom. “That’s not good,” he said.

  “They’re saying it may have been a bear.”

  The sound of the sink came on. Abraham threw water on his face. Alexandra stared at him from across the room. He looked at his wetted face in the bathroom mirror, and he used a hand towel to dry himself off. She said nothing for a moment, waiting for him to respond. He tossed the towel into a whicker hamper and looked at her. She looked beautiful in the darkened room.

  “I’ll want to know the details,” he said.

  Alexandra looked into his blue eyes and nodded.

  Thirteen

  By the time Sheriff’s Deputy Jonas Frommer wheeled the patrol car into the Durango hospital parking lot, the day was beginning to break over the southern Rocky Mountains.

  Angie said, “The circus is rolling.”

  Jonas looked across the lot at the four news vans parked in the visitor’s lot. One of the reporters held a cup of coffee that steamed in the cold mountain air. Another reporter, a woman in a large wool coat, stood in front of a lighted camera holding a microphone and delivered her report.

  They parked the car and walked past the reporters. Angie heard the one delivering her report.

  “—bear attack that has left eight Fort Lewis College students dead and another in serious condition—”

  They continued on to the front door of the visitor’s area. The door opened mechanically, and Angie and Jonas stepped inside. Angie’s eyes widened.

  A crowd of thirty people stood in front of the desk for visitor check-in. It looked like several were reporters. Several looked like worried parents. There was a number of law enforcement officers, a park ranger, a couple suits that might have been local government. One woman stepped away from the pack and approached Angie and Jonas.

  Angie noticed the characteristic green pants and brown shirt of the state park ranger. She glanced at the woman’s gold name plate on her shirt pocket: Laura Matzenauer. Laura had a round face, big round eyeglasses over brown eyes, and her brownish-blonde hair was pulled pack in a ponytail. The yellow patch on her right shoulder said: Mancos State Park Superintendent.

  “They’re not letting anybody up to see the girl,” she said to Jonas. The woman glanced at Angie Rippard, but her eyes went back to Jonas. “How was the drive over?”

  “Laura Matzenauer, this is Angie Rippard,” Jonas said, introducing the two women. “Angie’s a wildlife expert, used to be a biologist at the University of Arizona.”

  “I know you,” Laura said. “Or I know your name. You were connected with the mountain lion story a few years back.”

  Angie nodded. “What’s the news?” she said.

  Laura said, “We have one girl who survived the attack. Her name’s Carson Richards. She hasn’t said much, but the original call indicated a bear attack.”

  “Bear attack?” Angie said.

  “That is correct,” she said. “We have unconfirmed reports that eight people are dead.”

  Angie said nothing.

  Laura continued, “They were swimming at a hot springs lake north of town called Marilyn’s Well.”

  “Any indication what kind of bear?” Jonas asked.

  Laura shook her head. “We only have one species of bear in these mountains,” she said. “Black bear.”

  Angie said, “No black bear would kill eight people.”

  “It might if it was rabid,” Laura said.

  “I’ve never heard of Ursus americanus attacking people like this,” Angie said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s the only species of bear we have in southwest Colorado, Angie. I’ve been superintendent at Mancos State Park for fifteen years—”

  “And have you ever heard of a black bear attacking people like this?”

  Laura shook her head. “Never. They’re mostly scavengers. They don’t hunt people. They eat berries, roots, that sort of thing.”

  Jonas said, “This may sound stupid, but a black bear’s just a smaller bear, right?”

  Laura said, “Smaller than what?”

  “Smaller than say, a grizzly?”

  Laura’s entire demeanor changed. Her neck became tense, and she shook her head vigorously. “We don’t have any grizzly bears in southwest Colorado,” she said. “They’re extinct.”

  Angie was struck with the vehemence with which Laura said this. Angie said, “The average weight of a black bear is about one thirty-five to three hundred and fifty pounds. Grizzly bears start about that.”

  “At three-fifty?”

  “And they range up to six hundred, seven hundred pounds.”

  Laura interjected, “Yes, but we don’t have grizzly bears in southwest Colorado. They’re extinct.”

  Again, Angie noticed that bluntness, as though the idea of having a grizzly bear in southwest Colorado was one with which she was familiar and one with which she was strongly against.

  “I thought they were larger than that,” Jonas said.

  “Occasionally, a male grizzly living in coastal regions can weigh upwards of fourteen hundred pounds,” Angie said.

  “Nearly three quarters a ton,” Jonas said.

  “Like the Kodiak grizzly,” Angie said, “but as Laura says, there aren’t any grizzly bears in southwest Colorado. The last grizzly bear in southwest Colorado was shot and killed by a bow hunter named Ed Wiseman in 1979.”

  “That is correct,” Laura said.

  “The grizzly and the brown bear are the same,” Jonas said.

  “Right,” Angie said. “It’s called ‘grizzly’ because of the grizzled, silvertip texture of its coat. Generally, the term grizzly is used to describe the inland brown bear, and ‘brown bear’ is used to describe the animal in coastal regions of Canada and Alaska. But they’re the same species, Ursus arctos.”

  Laura said, “I’m telling you what we probably have is a large male black bear. And if it attacked people like this, the only way that it would attack people like this, would be if it was rabid.”

  “Test results will determine that,” Jonas said.

  All during this discussion, several people had wandered over from the group in front of the visitor’s check-in desk. Angie was new and so didn’t recognize any of them. Laura and Jonas acted as though they knew a couple of the people. One or two looked like local newspaper reporters.

  One, a paunchy man with a receding hairline, said, “Just suppose that it was a grizzly bear, just for the sake of argument, Laura. What would that make it?”

 
Angie looked into his eyes. She didn’t understand his question. “How do you mean?”

  “I’m telling you,” Laura said. “There aren’t any grizzly bears in southwest Colorado. You might as well be talking about unicorns attacking these kids.”

  “But if there was a grizzly bear up there,” the fat man said, “would it not be an endangered species?”

  “Critically endangered,” Angie said. “It would be the most endangered subspecies in North America.”

  “What does that mean?” the fat man said. “‘Sub’-species?”

  “In taxonomy, there’s the genus and the species for classifying biological order,” Angie said. “It’s a hierarchy. The genus of the order is ‘Ursus’ which is Latin for ‘bear’ and that includes all the bears around the world: Ursus arctos, Ursus americanus, Ursus maritimus—”

  “What’s that one?” Jonas said. “Ursus maritimus?”

  “Polar bear,” Laura said.

  “So,” Angie said, “the first word is the genus and the second word is the species. A subspecies refers to an isolated group—”

  “Isolated how?” the fat man said.

  “Geographically isolated,” Angie said, “which causes the animal to develop unique characteristics adapted to its locale. Some biologists feel that if there is a remnant population of grizzly bears in the San Juan mountains, they would represent a unique subspecies. If this is the case, the San Juan grizzly would be the most endangered mammal in North America.”

  “If there are any,” Laura said. “If. We’d be talking less than ten, probably less than five.”

  The fat man said, “Which qualifies as endangered in my book.”

  Angie said, “It may be the most endangered subspecies on the planet.”

  “Well, how are we going to handle this?” the fat man said.

  “How do you mean?” Jonas said.

  “If it’s endangered,” he said, “you can’t just go up there and hunt it, even if it did attack and kill these kids. I mean, if you kill an animal of which there are thirty thousand like animals to replace it, that’s one thing. But if you kill a grizzly bear in southwest Colorado, you’d be killing one of less than five in the whole world. You kill one of those, they don’t come back. They’re gone forever.”

  Angie realized that he was right; if there was a grizzly bear in southwest Colorado, it would likely represent a subspecies whose numbers would be less than five—ten at the most. If they were going to exterminate a problem animal, which was protocol in attack situations, they could very well be eliminating a subspecies forever.

  “How long before we get the test results?” Jonas asked.

  “A few hours,” Laura said.

  Jonas looked from hers to Angie’s eyes. The newspaper reporter wrote a couple of notes on his notepad.

  Fourteen

  The man was dressed like a doctor. He wore a white lab jacket, a stethoscope around his neck, and rubber surgical gloves on both hands. He carried a palm pilot and appeared to be entering information into it as he walked up the hallway from the seventh floor’s fire escape exit. He minded his own business and walked swiftly, and so none of the nurses gave him a second look.

  Had Ernie Houseman still been alive and had he seen him, he would have recognized the man as one of two men who stood beside a jeep at Mineral Creek and told him not to go up to Clear Lake. Had Angie Rippard seen him without his Yoda mask just the night before, she would have recognized the man. But none of these things happened because the man was a professional.

  “Room seven-twelve,” he said merrily to himself, checking the information on his palm pilot against the number on the wall next to the closed door.

  Calmly, he opened the door and saw Carson Richards lying in a lone bed over near the window. She was sedated but awake, and the man closed the door behind him and then smiled at Carson.

  “How are we feeling?” he said.

  She nodded. “I’m okay,” she said, “a little thirsty.”

  At this, the man approached the overbed table and filled a paper cup with water from a pitcher. He handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” Carson said.

  She sipped the water. The man stepped over to the IV drip unit hanging near the right side of the bed.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Saline is low.”

  Carson handed him the paper cup.

  “Would you like another?” he said.

  She shook her head no, glanced back out the window to her right, saw the snow-covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains to the north, and said, “Will I be able to see my family soon?”

  The man had disconnected the IV drip bag. He glanced at his watch.

  “Visiting hours don’t start until nine A.M.,” he said. “That’s still a few hours away. You should try and rest.”

  “The last doctor who was in here said that as soon as my family arrives they’ll be allowed to come up.” She looked up at this man who looked like a doctor. He reached down and touched his fingers to her neck. Carson felt the rubber texture of his surgical gloves on her jugular.

  “Relax,” he said. He glanced at his watch and felt her pulse. Carson lay back and looked toward the window. A moment later, he entered the information into his palm pilot.

  He removed an IV drip bag from his jacket pocket and hooked it up to the IV stand. He thumped the connector and watched the new bag begin flowing.

  He looked warmly at Carson, who looked up at him. He said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He turned and stepped over toward the door. He looked back at her lying there in the bed.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?” he said.

  Her eyes went wide, her mouth dropping open.

  “I’ll check back on you in a few minutes, dear,” he said.

  He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. The alarms were sounding down at the nurses’ station, but the man walked quickly away from Carson’s door. He tapped one or two final items into his palm pilot, dropped it into his lab jacket, and then vanished around a corner at the end of the hall.

  Fifteen

  By eight A.M., they had full-scale chaos on their hands. The problem at Marilyn’s Well was classic jurisdictional warfare. Two representatives from the Colorado Division of Wildlife were at odds with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent about how best to proceed. The pond was on a privately owned ranch outside of the city limits, and so the Sheriff’s Department had roped off the initial crime scene.

  Complicating the matter, the paramedics removed the bodies before the sun was up, and so the lone homicide detective from Durango’s police department was trying to piece together what had happened based on second-hand reports. Adding to the problem was the reality that for every hour that passed, the likelihood of their tracking and finding the bear diminished. Caught in the middle of all this was a U.S. Forest Service Ranger who was friends with both the Department of Wildlife reps and the FWS agent.

  No one and everyone was in charge.

  Dan Gardner said, “This is a matter for the Department of Wildlife, and the Department is not going to endorse some sort of animal lynch mob to hunt and kill anything that moves.”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Mike Baker said. Baker had a crop top buzz cut, and he’d been with U.S. Fish and Wildlife for eight years. “There are hundreds of black bears up there. If we’ve got a problem animal, we need to have a helicopter up in the air as soon as possible.”

  “To pick it off from the skies,” Wendy Norton said. Wendy was the second rep with CDW.

  “Don’t make this a personal attack, Wendy,” Mike said, his lips curling into a little snarl.

  Dan Gardner reached two fingers across and firmly poked Mike’s chest, almost pushing him backwards. “The land north of this pond is National Forest Land, which brings it under U.S. Forest Service jurisdiction.” He looked at the U.S. Forest Service Ranger Jack Dante for confirmation.

  Jack said, “But this is an animal matter, not a Forest Service matter. And we
don’t know that the bear has retreated to National Forest Land.”

  “It’s a Forest Service issue if it’s on National Forest Service Land,” Wendy said.

  “But we don’t know that,” Mike said. “This animal could have headed towards town. We could have a rabid animal right this moment heading into Durango that has already killed eight people, and you want to stand up here and argue about who has the right to hunt this killer!”

  “Whoa!” Laura Matzenauer said. “You’ve become judge and jury and determined that the animal is a killer?”

  Mike turned and waved around the crime scene. The snow was still red. The pond steamed. The SUV looked totaled. The Durango homicide detective fought with two sheriff’s deputies over how they’d trampled through the snow around the SUV. Angie wandered over to the edge of the yellow police tape, but no one could ignore the argument brewing.

  It was on the verge of getting out of control.

  “U.S. Fish and Wildlife has jurisdiction here,” Mike said. “This is an animal matter, and I want to see that it’s resolved in a prudent, orderly way.”

  “By destroying the animal?” Dan Gardner said.

  “Nobody said anything about destroying,” Mike shouted. “You pansies at CDW aren’t prepared to handle the fallout that’s going to happen, when the public catches wind of the fact that you—” he actually pushed Dan Gardner in the chest “—want to let a killer bear walk right into town and maul our children!”

  “Who are you calling a pansy?” Wendy said.

  U.S. Forest Service Ranger Jack Dante got between Mike and Wendy and tried to separate the two. Dan thrust his finger over Wendy’s shoulder at Mike and shouted at him that he was a homicidal maniac.

  Laura helped Jack by trying to push Mike back away from the group, but then he swung around and Laura staggered for a moment and almost fell to the ground. Mike stormed off back towards his Lincoln Navigator.

  “Hey guys,” Angie Rippard said from the side of the Ford.