Darknight(83)
“I can’t guarantee it’ll be bear-free,” Connor said. “I mean, it’s the wilderness. But if I were a bear, someplace that gets visited by that many tourists is probably the last place I’d want to hang out.”
“What about all those pic-a-nic baskets?” I inquired with a grin.
“It’s Oak Creek, not Jellystone. I think we’ll be okay.”
I had to agree with that. Still, though, my spidey-sense kept tingling…and not in a good way.
* * *
Two days later I was sitting at the same café where I’d met Mason and Carla the previous week. Connor had gone to meet with Eli Michaels at his gallery in Sedona, a business meeting I obviously hadn’t been invited to. Not that I minded too much; I didn’t want Connor to think we had to be joined at the hip twenty-four/seven. And it probably was a good thing for me to get out on my own every once in a while, although going approximately four doors down from our apartment couldn’t really be classified as being adventurous.
Someone had left a copy of that morning’s newspaper lying on one of the chairs at the table I’d selected. I picked up the paper, figuring I’d give it a quick glance-through. Connor and I had bought an iPad Mini the previous week during a splurge at Best Buy, but I didn’t feel like digging it out of my purse.
I set down my coffee, then picked up the newspaper and smoothed it out before me. The top part of the front page was dedicated to bond issues and street improvements — necessary, I supposed, but not the sort of thing I really wanted to waste my time reading. But then I saw another, smaller headline in the lower right-hand corner of the page: “Coroner Determines Cause of Student’s Death.”
It had been a few days since that first report on the TV, and I hadn’t seen any follow-up to it. Then again, Connor and I didn’t watch much news, or anything else on broadcast television. If we wanted to relax in the evening, we watched Netflix or HBO or something. Not that I’d been dwelling on it, but the report of the girl’s death had felt like a hanging thread, something that needed closure.
Picking up my coffee and blowing on it gently, I scanned the article.
According to the preliminary coroner’s report, Theresa Irene Ivey, age 20, died of blood loss caused by extreme trauma in the form of wild animal bites to the jugular.
I shivered. In other words, something tore her throat out.
Analysis of the bite marks shows that the animal in question appears to be a gray wolf. Fish and game officials are puzzled, as gray wolves are not native to the area. “We’re attempting to save the Mexican wolf from extinction,” Harold Willis, a wildlife expert explained, “but those wolves roam a small area in the Blue Range, hundreds of miles from Flagstaff. They are not a threat, and in any case, it was not a Mexican wolf involved in the recent attack.”
Authorities speculate that perhaps someone in the area was illegally keeping a gray wolf as a pet, and it escaped and attacked Ms. Ivey. However, no one has come forward to report a missing wolf, and inquiries have turned up no leads. The investigation is ongoing, and people are urged to be cautious but not worried. The animal that attacked Ms. Ivey did not have rabies, and authorities are unsure as to why she was the victim, as the attack occurred near her apartment, in a populated area.
Anyone who sees a wolf is encouraged to dial 9-1-1. Under no circumstances is anyone to approach the animal.
There was also a small photo of the victim. When my gaze shifted to study it, I sucked in a breath, cold descending on me, even though the café was actually almost too warm.
Theresa Ivey looked like me.
All right, not exactly. Her chin was more pointed than mine, her features actually not all that similar, once you began to study them one by one, but still, she had long wavy dark hair and fair skin and eyes that could have been blue or green or gray — the black and white photo obviously couldn’t show that level of detail. But if you were looking from a distance, or out of the corner of your eye, well, then, you could say we looked a lot alike.
Just a coincidence, I tried to tell myself. After all, Flagstaff wasn’t tiny Jerome. In a population of more than 60,000 people, there were bound to be a good number of college-age women who were more or less my same physical type.
For some reason, that didn’t make me feel all that much better.
Although my stomach was roiling enough that drinking a cup of coffee suddenly didn’t sound like such a great idea, I made myself take a few more sips just so I wouldn’t be entirely wasteful. Then I folded up the newspaper and tucked it under my arm. I wanted Connor to see this.
* * *