The Fourth Bear

“Next one, I thought.”

“Are you sure? I recognize that broken branch.”

“Did you? What about the fertilizer bag?”

“Probably blew away.”

Mary stopped and backed up, ignored Jack’s advice and bumped down a forestry track. They found the three bears’ turning after about half a mile and drove up the grassy track. The cottage was exactly as they had last seen it, except for the absence of any smoke from the chimney. They stopped the car and got out.

“Wait!” said Jack in a soft voice.

Mary paused. “What?”

“Hear that?”

Mary strained, but no sound could be heard.

“No.”

“Exactly,” murmured Jack, and moved on. The forest was deathly quiet. Mr. Bruin had told Jack that the forest could speak, and Jack realized now what he meant. A drum beating is ominous, but ominous changes to threatening when it stops. A sense of foreboding closed over both of them, a feeling of danger that seemed to roll in from the forest like a wave.

“Shall I call for backup?” whispered Mary.

“Not yet. They might just be out.”

Jack knocked at the front door as Mary went around the back. There was no answer, so he lifted the wrought-iron latch and pushed on the door. The sun came out as the door swung open, and a shaft of light illuminated the large room through the front windows. Amid the mess of what looked like a flagrant act of vandalism—smashed chairs and emptied drawers—Ed was lying in a heap beside the fireplace, a mountain of brown fur. A lake of dark blood had formed next to him and was still moving slowly outward. By the piano was another mound of fur, this one dressed in a pretty floral dress. It was Ursula. Jack quickly unlocked the back door and let Mary in.

“Oh, my God!” she murmured. Jack ran back to Ed’s bulk and pressed his hand into the thick fur at his neck. He’d never felt a bear’s fur before; it would have been unthinkably rude to do so uninvited. It felt warm, but coarser than he had imagined.

“I can feel a faint pulse. Call the Bob Southey Medical Center and get a trauma team out here immediately.”

Mary flipped open her cell phone and dialed a number as Jack looked at Ursula. Her eyes were open, and she was breathing in short gasps. He patted her paw and told her it would be okay, but she made no sign that she’d heard.

“Who’d want to kill the Bruins?” asked Mary, waiting for the phone to connect.

“Look over there,” said Jack grimly.

He pointed to the wall above the fireplace. In red aerosol someone had written:

Bears are for hunting

“Ursists!” said Mary angrily.

“Get onto control and have roadblocks set up on all roads leading out of the forest. We didn’t pass a car on the way in, and this crime is less than ten minutes old.”

Jack found the entrance wound on Ed’s lower back. It was large-caliber—a hunting rifle. He was still alive, but Jack didn’t rate his chances. Illegal hunters and bile tappers: the scum of the earth.

“This is DS Mary of the NCD,” said Mary into the phone.

“We’ve got two bears shot and wounded in Andersen’s Wood….”

Jack was about to feel for Ed’s pulse again when he noticed something. Ed hadn’t lost consciousness immediately, and Jack peered closer. Next to his right claw were some letters traced with his own blood on the scrubbed flagstone floor. It didn’t read very well, but the meaning was clear:

SOB dnt trst

“Backup will be here in twenty, always supposing they can find the place,” said Mary as she flipped her phone shut, “and the Bob Southey is dispatching a trauma team. What have you found?”

Jack pointed.

“‘SOB don’t trust’?” Who’s SOB?”

“‘Son of a bitch’ to our friends across the Atlantic. Ed’s a grizzly. They’re North American, aren’t they?”

“I’m not really an expert on—” Mary stopped midspeech as Jack raised a finger to his lips.

She mouthed What? to him, and he pointed at the ceiling. A thin trail of dust was falling from between the floorboards of the room upstairs. The wood creaked as something upstairs shifted its weight.

“Baby bear?” whispered Mary.

It seemed likely, and Jack was about to call out to him when there was the delicate metallic ring of a spent cartridge falling on the floor upstairs. If it was the baby bear, he was armed—and dangerous.

“What weren’t you an expert on?” asked Jack, trying to pretend all was normal but still staring at the ceiling.

“Bears,” she replied, pointing at the door to the upstairs.

“Who do you think did this?”

“I don’t know,” returned Jack as he moved across to the sturdy wooden door, which he discovered, to his relief, could be secured by a peg.

“We had better leave the crime scene,” said Mary as she noticed that the thin trail of dust was now falling from an area closer to the door. There was also the sound of a footfall and the unmistakable clack of a breech being surreptitiously locked. They couldn’t do any more for the bears, so a retreat to safety seemed the best and only course of action. Jack ran the last two strides to the door, slammed it shut and dropped the peg into the hasp. There was an enraged cry from upstairs, and they both headed for the car—and escape. They heard two muffled gunshots in quick succession as the door exploded into splinters. They reached the car, threw themselves in and started it up. There wasn’t time to turn around, so Jack slammed the Allegro into reverse and backed down the lane as fast he could.

A tall, mahogany-toned figure stepped nonchalantly from the door of the cottage, then jumped from the veranda to the cabbage patch with a single leap. He watched as they backed hurriedly out of the clearing, and Mary shuddered. He looked dangerous enough on his own, with the cruel licorice mouth and his piercing cherry eyes, but what made him look even more dangerous was the massive Holland & Holland heavy-game sporting rifle he was cradling in his arms. He had sawn the barrels short and wielded it as though it were a handgun. Mary knew from experience that it weighed at least thirty pounds, could stop a rhinoceros and had a kick like a cart horse.

The Gingerbreadman, laconic as usual, was in no hurry. He eyed the car reversing down the grassy track away from him, smiled to himself and broke the gun, which ejected two steaming brass cartridges that landed in the asparagus bed behind him. With slow deliberation he withdrew two more shiny rounds from a belt slung over his shoulder and closed the gun with a deft flick of his wrist. He raised the weapon as though it weighed almost nothing, then aimed and fired in one smooth movement. The Allegro swerved as it hit a dip in the road, and the shot went wide, shattering the trunk of a silver birch next to them as they sped past, the felled tree dropping into the road behind the rapidly receding car.

“Blast!” said the Gingerbreadman. Surprised by his own poor marksmanship, he took aim again.

“What was that?” asked Jack above the scream of the engine, the tachometer needle edging into the red but the car not wanting to go much faster than fifteen or twenty miles an hour. He hadn’t seen the figure; his attention was dominated by keeping the car on a straight course down the track.

“Gingerbreadman!” shouted Mary. “Keep going!”

The Gingerbreadman decided that they were too far away and started to run toward them in long, measured strides. He held the Holland & Holland with one hand as he strode after them, the Allegro bouncing in and out of the bumpy track as Jack floored the accelerator.

“Faster!” cried Mary as the Gingerbreadman started to gain, his long strides swiftly eating up the distance between them. He fired at them as he ran, a slug the size of a king-size marble passing through the windshield