program. The dead bear’s collar identifies it as one of the initial group of five taken from the North Cascades in Washington State and resettled in Selway-Bitterroot earlier this month.
“Grizzly bears, like other bears, generally avoid humans,” spokesperson Grisi said in a prepared statement. “Attacks on human beings are extremely rare. Since 1970, they have averaged only one a year in the entire United States, mostly to hunters, and mostly nonfatal. We are assuming that this particular animal may have been maddened with pain as the result of a recently broken and infected leg, and also may have been starving due to this year’s extremely dry local conditions, which have virtually destroyed the area’s berry crop. The National Park Service offers its sincere condolences to the families and will do everything possible to ensure that no such incident occurs in the future.”
Villarreal, contacted at his home in Alaska, said that the incident was “unfortunate” and declined further comment.
TWO
Penzance, Cornwall, England Three Years Later: June 10, 2005
YOU’D have to go a long way to find another town with the historical appeal of Penzance. Not that there’s much to see that’s over a couple of hundred years old, but most of what there is, is to be found in its charming and atmospheric old inns and pubs. Julie and Gideon Oliver, being eager students of history and keen trenchermen as well, had spent a large and enjoyable portion of their day immersed in historical-culinary research. Fish-and-chips lunch at the tiny, crooked Turk’s Head on Chapel Street (“the oldest building in Penzance, circa 1231”); pre-dinner pints at the Union Hotel up the block (“Here was news of Admiral Nelson’s great victory at Trafalgar, and of his tragic death, first received in England”); and dinner down at the waterfront, at the salty old Dolphin Inn (“Where tobacco was smoked in England for the first time”).
They were in the Dolphin now, or rather outside it, at one of the wooden trestle tables in the front courtyard, overlooking the docks, where work-stained commercial fishing vessels bobbed side by side in the oily water, and rusting, mysterious machinery stood as if abandoned along the stone quay. Their meal of beef-and-mushroom pie had gone down well, and the after-dinner coffee was doing the same. Relaxed and full, getting sleepy in the slanting evening sunlight, Gideon was contentedly watching the ferry Scillonian II disgorge its load of tired foot passengers from the Isles of Scilly, forty miles off the coast. Tomorrow he and Julie would be taking the same ferry the other way, for a weeklong stay on St. Mary’s, the largest and most settled of the little-known archipelago.
Julie, in the meantime, was absently browsing in the International Herald Tribune, occasionally citing something that she thought might catch Gideon’s interest.
“Oh, look,” she said, “they found Edgar Villarreal.”
“Found him? He’s not dead after all?”
“No, he’s dead, all right,” she said, continuing to read. “I mean they finally found his remains. He—” She suddenly sat up straight. “Oh, my God, he was eaten by a grizzly bear! Can you believe that? Isn’t that bizarre?”
“Not much of a way to go.”
“No, I mean… a bear! Remember, when that couple was killed in Montana—”
“The Borbas.”
“And Edgar just… What did you say?”
“The Borbas. That was their name.”
“Amazing.” She lowered the paper. “Now why would you remember something like that? It was three years ago.”
“It’s a gift, I suppose. An infallible memory. Comes in handy in my line of work.”
“Yes, well, I wish your gift would kick in once in a while when I ask you stop for milk or veggies on your way home.”
“Well, you know, it comes and goes,” he said, smiling. “What were you saying about Villarreal?”
“Well, when those people, the Borbas, were killed, people pretty much blamed him for bringing the grizzlies back—didn’t one of the families sue him?—and he just shrugged it off.” She mimed a mock yawn. “C’est la vie, one of those things.”
“I remember, yes. It did seem a little cold-blooded.”
“A little! Brr. And now the same thing’s happened to him. It’s almost like… fate. Just desserts.”
“I see what you mean. And some people say there’s no such thing as poetic justice.”
“But it’s not only that, it’s just that fatal grizzly bear attacks are practically nonexistent these days. They just don’t happen anymore.”
Gideon nodded. Julie was a supervising park ranger at Olympic National Park, back home in Port Angeles, Washington, and she knew whereof she spoke. “I may be wrong,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure the last people killed by grizzlies in North America—outside of Alaska, anyway—were those same two people in Bitterroot. And maybe a couple of deaths in Alaska since then, no more. And now Edgar. It’s—I don’t know, it’s almost too much of a coincidence.”
“That is weird, all right,” Gideon agreed. “How do they know that’s what happened to him?”
“Well, there isn’t much here…” She folded the paper back and read aloud: “ ‘The remains of the American author and activist, who had not been seen since failing to return from his remote bear-research base camp ninety miles east of Anchorage in August 2003, were discovered in a bear den less than a mile from the camp. They were identified as human by Dr. Leslie Roach, consulting police surgeon for the Alaska State Police post at Talkeetna, who determined that the fragments were approximately two to three years old and had been through the digestive system of a bear.”“ She shuddered. ”Can you really tell that from the bones?“
“Oh, yes,” Gideon said, “if you know what you’re doing.”
She continued reading. “ ‘There is little doubt that they are the remains of Mr. Villarreal,” said state police sergeant Monte Franks. “There’s no one else it could conceivably be.” “
