Though the morning proved quiet, memory of the boulder reminded her not to dawdle. Her guess was the roller of rocks and filleter of faces had moved on after using the time she’d cowered in her crevice to clean all trace of himself out of the cave. Still, he might return. To kill her, if for no better reason.
She sniffed again. Traces of human food, certainly, but something more. The odor was exceedingly familiar but she couldn’t place it; sweetish. Hay? Dustier, flatter. Anna gave up. Her eyes had adjusted. The cave was much as she’d expected it would be, shallow and uncomplicated, a shell-shaped cut in the mountain with no passages or rooms. At its maximum it was four feet from floor to ceiling. Using the half-light from outside she did a quick search. On one narrow ledge she found candle wax. That was all. The cave had not only been cleared, it had been swept. Looking back toward the crescent of pale light filtering in, she could see the marks of her own passage crossing a field swept into tiny ridges by a pine-needle broom.
Combing the tidy dirt on the floor she came up with half a peanut, a dime and a piece of what looked like dog biscuit. She sniffed it and found the source of the mysterious sweetish, haylike, dusty, flat odor. Anna was shocked and then laughed aloud and scared herself with her own noise. Why would she be appalled that a person who would commit murder would have the unmitigated gall to bring a dog into a National Park Service-designated Wilderness Area? If they ever caught him, in addition to “murder in the first degree,” she’d make sure Harry wrote him up for “dog off leash.”
Evidence bags had been stolen along with film, radio, water and notes. Anna carefully buttoned the peanut, the dime and the dog biscuit into her shirt pocket. She was determined not to return from Cathedral Peak with nothing to show for herself.
It took over
three hours to get back to Highline Trail. Knowing she had no water made Anna far thirstier than she would have been otherwise. Knowledge she was in no danger of actually dying before she got to Fifty Mountain Camp, where she would undoubtedly find at least one camper willing to lend her a filter pump, did nothing to alleviate her discomfort. So much for mind over matter.
On Highline she had the good luck to meet up with two women who’d hiked in from Going to the Sun Road. For the first time in her life, Anna wished she’d had children so she could trade her firstborn for a drink. The hikers didn’t drive quite so hard a bargain and were glad to have the privilege of rescuing a ranger.
“Drink as much as you like,” a hippy blond with wonderful eyes and badly sunburned cheeks said. “We’ll top off at the next creek.”
Anna took her up on the invitation and, thirst slaked, fell in with them as they hiked downhill toward Flattop. The women were good company. Both were from Oberlin, Ohio. Every year for seven years they backpacked together in a different national park. They collected stories, they told her, stories and pictures. On winter solstice they held a remembrance party and relived their adventures of past years.
“Now we’ve got you,” the blond said, and Anna had to submit with apparent good grace—they had given her water after all—to having her picture taken, the better to illustrate what would probably be entitled “The Idiot Lady Ranger” story.
“Two good stories today,” the other woman said. Emma or Ella—Anna had been too busy swallowing when introductions were made to hear properly. She was the older of the two, in her thirties, with inky black hair cut short like a man’s. One nostril was pierced and she wore a tiny diamond there that flashed in the sun when she talked. “A while ago we stopped for lunch. We like to get off trail. You know, not just a few feet but half a mile or so, so we can really
be
here,” she told Anna, the diamond winking conspiratorially. “We were pushing down through some brush to what looked like kind of a nice little clearing with a terrific view. We get there and there’s this boy. Just this boy all by himself out on this rocky ledge and he’s just sitting there crying his eyes out. Bawling. How weird.”
“There’s a story right there,” the blond said happily. “I mean, I’m sorry he was crying. He seemed like a sweet guy, but you’ve got to admit it’s got ‘story’ written all over it.”
“No picture though,” the possibly-Emma woman said.
“Maybe he was ashamed.” Anna was still feeling mildly humiliated at her own story potential.
“Oh, we didn’t shove the camera in his weepy little face like some demented newswomen,” the blond said. “We believe in leaving no trace, not even footprints.”
“Especially on people’s faces,” the other woman threw in and laughed, a boisterous, barroom laugh that tickled Anna. “He was really an unhappy citizen. We tried to talk with him but he wasn’t much for that. He dried up the minute we showed. Real sweet fella.”
“Till the camera came out. Then he became Mr. Freaky.”
The story was beginning to interest Anna. “What did he look like?” she asked.
“Around five-ten. Young, exceedingly young. Too young to be out without his momma. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, tops. What do the you think, Emma? Fifteen?”
“Thereabouts,” Emma concurred.
“Soft, soft brown hair. Some wave. Big old hazel eyes with lashes out to here.” The blond held a stubby forefinger adorned with chipped burgundy polish a couple of inches beyond her nose.
“Boxy jaw,” Emma said. “Square guy. Not fat, square. Looked strong.”
It was about the best description of a person Anna had ever gotten in her years as a law enforcement officer. These women were of that rare breed that saw what they were looking at.
She compared the description with her memory and decided they had seen the elusive Geoffrey Mickelson-Nicholson.
“Did he wear a length of chain wrapped around his waist and have a smile like St. Francis of Assisi?” Anna asked.
“I was getting to that,” Emma said, in the injured tone of a raconteur whose flow is interrupted.
“Do you know him?” the blond asked.
“I’ve met him,” Anna said.
“Do you know why he was crying? He wouldn’t tell us.”
Anna didn’t. It crossed her mind that his heart was broken because the boulder he’d rolled down the mountainside had failed to squash her, but she didn’t say so. The stories she collected weren’t the kind that made for good memories on a deep winter’s night.
“How long ago?” Anna asked.
“Maybe an hour,” Emma said.
Too much time had passed to follow him on foot. Anna needed film, a weapon, a horse, water and a much better plan. She continued on to Fifty Mountain Camp with the ladies from Ohio.
19
Fifty Mountain was
at peace, new campers not yet come, old campers either out exploring or lounging in the church-quiet of backcountry camp at midafternoon.
Anna went first to Ponce. He’d been fed by one of Ruick’s crew the night before, as they’d arranged if Anna spent the night out. The bay was utterly content to be doing nothing and gave her a big-hearted welcome that left horse snot down her right arm from shoulder to elbow. Given the sad shape of her uniform shirt, a smear of equine mucus was a mere drop in the bucket.
Beyond the hitching rail, the National Park Service had provided a tall pole firmly planted in the ground with metal hooks near the top. Propped against a nearby tree was another pole. This one was long and slender and tipped with a hook of its own. Taking up the slender pole, Anna used it to lift off the pack she’d left behind, cached high and safe. The NPS put these primitive instruments at the heavily used camps. Caching food in trees, done repeatedly and inexpertly, not only damaged the trees over time but, too frequently, resulted in the bears getting the goods anyway. Bears learned quickly, remembered and, rare among wild creatures, passed that knowledge on to their young. Bears were as good as rangers at spotting a cache that, with a little effort, could be had.
Food, a sponge bath, cleaner clothes, resting in a tent; Anna enjoyed the things that allowed people to maintain the thin veneer of civilization. Without a radio there was little else she could do but while away the time till she got word from Ruick. As was customary when one ranger went off alone in questionable pursuits, she’d been instructed to report in each evening. Since she’d failed to do so, Ruick would be looking for her. It behooved her to stay put so she could be found.
Renewed and rested, she ventured forth a little after five. She wandered by McCaskil’s campsite. A young couple were pitching their tent there, arguing companionably about which direction the slope went. McCaskil wouldn’t be back, not unless he was an idiot. He’d run. He had a radio, Anna was sure of it. Either that or he’d fortuitously overheard their conversation regarding him over Lester Van Slyke’s radio. Not impossible in a town built of cloth.
If he had any sense, he was long gone from the park by now. Unless he had unfinished business here, and Anna couldn’t imagine what it would be. Rolling rocks down on her? That made little sense. Anna couldn’t tie McCaskil in with the excavating for moths or digging glacier lilies and she knew it wasn’t he who’d dwelt in the den she’d found. He’d spent every night but one at Fifty Mountain.
She could connect McCaskil with Carolyn by way of the map and the coat. She could connect Carolyn and the blue stuff bag by way of blood and proximity. The mysterious Geoffrey Mickleson-Nicholson she connected to the blue stuff bag by way of the moths and the glacier lilies. So far she couldn’t connect Geoffrey with Carolyn except through the blue stuff sack. Who the hell was the boy with the chain around his waist who wept and dug and, Anna believed, denned up in the high country like an out-of-season bear?
Full of questions and needing to pester somebody, she climbed the gentle hill through the blackened campsites and dead trees till she reached the uppermost one, the one where the fire had simply stopped of its own volition, often in the middle of a tree leaving half charred and dying, the other half determinedly thrusting green needles out to catch the sun.
Lester was there. He sat on a rock, elbows on his knees, hands hanging down, doing nothing. So seldom do people actually do nothing that to see it creates an impression of deadness. That’s what Anna felt as she approached him. “Hey,” she said feeling a need to announce herself though scarcely six feet separated them.
Like a man in a trance, he swung his face slowly toward her. His eyes were vacant, as if he took up no space on the planet. “It’s Anna Pigeon,” she added and some small reassuring life returned to his face.
“Yes. I was waiting for you.”
For reasons she could not put her finger on, his words gave her a creepy feeling, much as the Grim Reaper’s might when he called her name. Les stirred himself and the feeling was gone. “Chief Ranger Ruick told me to wait here, and if you came back, tell you to call him.” He reached down and retrieved a radio propped against the stone at his feet.
Anna took it and radioed Ruick. Her first question was, “Is Buck back with Joan?” Ruick answered in the affirmative and her relief let her know how worried she’d been.
“Why didn’t you call last night?” he demanded.
“Lost my radio.” Silence fussed over the air as he waited for her to explain. She didn’t. Radios were not safe. “I need to talk with you in person,” she said instead.
Either Ruick understood her reluctance to chat or gave into it. He didn’t press her. “We’re no longer in the backcountry. Hiked out. Come down,” he ordered. “Call me on the phone when you get here.”
There were a couple of hours of daylight left. With Ponce for conveyance, Anna could have made it down the mountain by shortly after dark. Given her state of fatigue and the vagaries of recent nights, she did-n’t want to be alone on horseback that late. “First thing in the morning,” she promised, uncomfortable committing even that much of her itinerary to whoever might be listening. She longed to quiz Ruick on what, if anything, they’d found in their search for William McCaskil, but didn’t. If they’d found him, Harry would have said so. She could only assume they’d given up the search or it had led them out of the high country.
Radio chore completed, she sat on the ground near Lester Van Slyke. She kept the radio. If he cared about it one way or another, he didn’t let on. She guessed he didn’t. By the look of him, he didn’t care much about anything. If he’d appeared old and sick and gray when they’d met, he looked three days dead now. The sparse hair was greasy and stuck to his pate in dark strands. His skin hung loose, the sagging jowls rough with two days’ growth of beard. His pale blue eyes were rimmed in red and he blinked a lot as if he had trouble focusing.
“Why do you stay here?” Anna asked on impulse.
“I have to,” he said vaguely. “Maybe there’s something . . .” His voice trailed off. She waited. “Something I can do,” he finished finally.
“About what?”
A minute passed. The drop of life that had animated him when he gave her Harry’s message drained away.
“I can’t do anything,” he said so softly she barely heard him. He wasn’t talking to her but to himself, undoubtedly repeating the mantra of ineffectualness the second Mrs. Van Slyke had spent so many years literally and figuratively beating into him.
For a while Anna watched him grow grayer and smaller. Lester was very nearly catatonic. The man was deeply disturbed and had withdrawn to a potentially pathological extent. Molly would know what to do. Fervently Anna wished her sister were there, would take over, make things right as she’d so often done when Anna was little. But Molly would have wanted to take the tack that was best for the patient, for Mr. Van Slyke. Anna just wanted answers.
It was not that she was without compassion, at least she liked to think she wasn’t, but there was that about Les that brought out her anger. She could understand why his son hated him instead of the woman who tormented him. She could see how he would attract and incite abusers of every stripe. Les Van Slyke was the flesh and blood equivalent of the tar baby. He seemed to invite violence by his self-negation, acceptance of violence only enraging his attacker. Anna put the thoughts inside. They made her uncomfortable. Sweetness, comfort, safety, would that allow him to open up? Or was he so accustomed to responding to abuse from women that Anna would have to don the guise of his dearly departed wife to rouse him?