Free Blood Lure by Nevada Barr

the two women stood by the rock, day packs full of food, water and first-aid supplies.
    “There.” Joan pointed southwest.
    “I see it.” Faint elongated depressions, which would vanish as soon as the sun’s heat reached the dew, formed an irregular line in the grass between the circle of trees and where they’d packed up the scrapped tents; the bear traveling through high grass.
    Moving slowly, one to either side of the ephemeral trail, they walked, eyes to the ground.
    “No scat,” Joan said.
    “Is that odd?”
    “Everything about this bear is odd. Pooping—” Anna found comfort in the silly nonscientific word. “—is one of the ways bears let you know they’ve staked a claim. Often at sights of severe maulings, especially if the bear has fed on the victim, you find a big pile of poop. We solved a bear murder case three years ago. Got DNA samples from the poop and, lo and behold, they matched up with hair samples we’d taken the year before from another bear/human interface. So we knew we had the right bears and weren’t just killing them to make the victim’s family happy.”
    “Bears plural?” Anna asked. Could there have been more than one bear in their campsite last night?
    “Mother and two two-year-old cubs. We had to kill them all. They had all partaken of the feast.” Joan seemed to remember that maybe this time Rory Van Slyke and not some nameless stranger was the main course. She shook her head as if ridding herself of bad thoughts. “Anyway, I thought our bear might have left a mark, is all.”
    Not conversant with how grizzlies left their calling cards, Anna said nothing.
    Items from Rory’s tent were dropped along the way as if flung aside by a spoiled child. “Flashlight,” Joan said, stooping to pluck the named item out of the grass. She held it up to the first rays of the rising sun. “Teethmarks.”
    “The bear took a flashlight?” Anna asked stupidly.
    “I doubt it.”
    A bear wouldn’t take it, wouldn’t carry it. Rory would. The bear would have taken it from Rory. Maybe as the boy batted at him with it. Anna took the plastic cylinder from Joan’s hands to see the marks for herself. “No blood,” she observed. “That’s good news, I guess.” The optimism was forced. There wouldn’t necessarily be blood. Not at first. She dropped the flashlight back in the grass. There’d be time to police the clearing later. As it fell, a tiny sound escaped Joan’s lips as if this tossing aside of Rory’s possession was in some way a slight to Rory himself.
    In the morning light the woods weren’t nearly as formidable as they had been the night before. At the higher elevations the undergrowth wasn’t as dense. Trees were tall and widely spaced, the ground between waist-deep in fern.
    Hope of tracking the bear or the boy was quickly laid to rest. No scat, no hair, no blood; the big animal had slipped invisibly into its element like Br’er Rabbit into his briar patch. Likewise had Rory Van Slyke disappeared, either carried in the bear’s jaws or of his own volition, the soft, slick soles of his Chinese slippers leaving no trace.
    Anna did find a peculiar bit of wood, a two-by-two of mahogany or cherry about ten inches long and polished until the edges were rounded. Because it showed no signs of weathering she knew it had come from Rory’s tent. No teethmarks scarred the surface, so it was a good guess the bear hadn’t carted it into the forest. What it was or why Rory needed to tote it with him on research treks or when fleeing from, or being abducted by, enormous omnivores, Anna hadn’t a clue.
    They spent two hours searching the woods around the camp. Calling Rory’s name repeatedly they hoped to scare off the bear if it was still nearby, or scare up a response from a lost or injured boy.
    Their homemade racket was assisted by the almost constant commentary from Joan’s radio. The usual business of the park went on: an illegally parked horse trailer on the north side, a