Part 5
The recorder’s red light held steady.
The room smelled of disinfectant and cold coffee. My wrists were wrapped, two ribs were cracked, and every breath reminded me that Clay Voss had known exactly how tight to pull the rope. Mara sat across from me in yesterday’s field clothes. A Park County investigator occupied the chair beside her, his notebook still closed.
“State your name and position for the record,” Mara said.
“Jonah Hale. Senior game warden, Wyoming Game and Fish.”
“Tell us only what you directly observed in Cedar Draw.”
That helped. I did not have to call it gratitude, memory, loyalty, or a miracle. I only had to say what happened.
I told them I regained consciousness secured to a pine with orange synthetic haul line. My radio, phone, service belt, and sidearm were gone. I had heard Clay and Ben before the blow that put me down, and I recognized both men when they returned. A grizzly approached me while I was restrained. It smelled my clothing and the blood near my ear, then bit and pulled at the stained line crossing my body. It released one section, circled the trunk, and tested another.
The county investigator finally opened his notebook. “You’re saying it was trying to free you.”
“I’m saying it pulled the rope instead of biting me.”
“Did it make contact with your body?”
“Its muzzle brushed my sleeve. Its claws did not touch me.”
“Did you command it?”
“No.” I looked at Mara. “I said a name. The bear reacted to my voice, but I can’t tell you what the reaction meant.”
Mara let the silence sit for a moment. “Tell us about the shot.”
I described Clay’s headlights, the rifle coming up, and the round cutting across the bear’s shoulder before entering the pine. I described Cinder turning toward the rifle and advancing far enough to force both men back. Ben knocked Clay’s second aim wide. The bear’s recoil broke the upper load-bearing wrap; later, one pull on a taut crossing gave me enough slack to work myself free.
“At any point,” Mara asked, “did the bear charge you, strike you, bite you, feed near you, or attempt to drag you?”
“No.”
“Did any of your injuries come from the bear?”
“No.”
She reached over and stopped the recorder. “Give me five minutes.”
The investigator started to object, but Mara was already in the hall with her phone. Through the closed door, I heard only pieces: no contact wounds, ballistic evidence, hold position, monitoring only. When she returned, she did not sit down immediately.
“The field team has been stood down from any lethal contingency,” she said. “They’ll document tracks and use existing cameras. No bait, no pursuit, no capture effort unless we see an injury that requires intervention or behavior that creates a public-safety concern.”
I let out a breath I had been holding since she showed me the incident form.
“That can change if the evidence changes,” she added.
“I understand.”
The evidence was changing, but not against Cinder. By noon, the scene team had photographed every section of rope before collecting it. The line across my chest showed broad crushing and tearing consistent with large molars; the fibers nearest my wrists carried my blood but no puncture pattern from teeth. The pine held one fresh bullet channel above shoulder height. In the split bark, technicians recovered metal fragments, dark guard hairs, and a small amount of the bear’s blood. There were no tracks showing a charge toward the tree. Cinder’s prints approached, circled, and remained concentrated beside the rope.
The memory card I had hidden behind the torn inner lining of my field pack survived because Ben had left the bag in the brush. Its images did not show the assault, but they showed Clay and Ben entering a closed drainage on three separate nights, moving antlers and sealed coolers through the same illegal camp. One frame caught Clay looking directly into the lens before he reached for the camera.
Deputies found my radio beneath the passenger seat of Clay’s truck. My service belt was under a tarp in the bed. The rifle recovered from the cab was the right caliber for the fragment in the tree, though Mara reminded me that a laboratory would have to do the comparison. Clay said I had attacked him. Ben said almost nothing. Their separate accounts disagreed about where they had last seen me, why they had my equipment, and whether either man had fired a shot.
We turned the recorder on again. Mara asked about the scar.
I gave her the old rehabilitation case number, not the name. Six years earlier, a male cub had been recovered from the same mountain range beside an illegally killed sow. His intake photographs showed a crescent-shaped wound below the left shoulder and a small notch in the right ear. The release file was restricted, as it should have been. Mara pulled it up on a secured agency tablet and set an intake image beside a magnified still from a trail camera near Cedar Draw.
“You’re certain?” she asked.
“As certain as I can be without handling him. Same sex, age range, coat, ear, and scar.”
She locked the screen. “Then his identity stays inside the response team.”
By late afternoon, the district attorney’s office was reviewing the card, the rope, the stolen equipment, and photographs from the tree. Search warrants were being prepared for Clay’s outfitting property and two leased storage sites. None of it felt fast from the chair where I sat, but the case was no longer my word against two men I had once trusted. Cedar Draw had kept a record of what they had done.
A deputy appeared at the door before Mara could end the interview. He handed the county investigator a folded message slip. “Ben Danner is asking to make a statement,” the investigator said. “He says he’ll talk if Hale is present.” Mara’s expression tightened. “Did he say why?” The investigator looked at the message again. “He said Jonah should ask Clay why he chose that particular tree…”
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