Internal injuries would be determined by the autopsy. Trauma to the face suggested enough force to snap the neck, but there was surprisingly little blood; none of the flowing spillage one might expect had the cuts occurred while the heart was still beating. The carving had been done after the woman was dead.
Harry's check of the body was cursory. No defensive cuts on hands or arms. Nothing apparent under the nails. Given the lack of light it was impossible to ascertain much in the way of detail. The woman had no identification on her. The pockets of the army coat produced unused rolls of film, a three-by-five card, much battered, with measurements written on it, lip balm, three pennies and a topographical map of the park. The pockets of the victim's shorts were empty.
Ruick finished the search, then lacking anything with which to cover her, he rolled the body back on its side and the ruination of her face was lost in shadow. He and Anna reclaimed their flashlights and the three of them did a perfunctory search of the tiny clearing, using only light and eyes for fear extraneous movement would further contaminate a crime scene that had already been severely compromised.
'No pack,' Anna said.
'No water bottle anywhere,' Gary added.
'Film suggests she was carrying a camera. Could be the pack was stolen. Could be it just got left off if she was chased or killed someplace else,' Ruick said.
He got on the radio and set the machinery in motion for the body recovery. With the weather clearing, a helicopter would be able to come at first light to airlift it out of the park.
While he talked, Anna was shutting down. Night, too much hiking, scrabbling and thinking, too little sleep, too little food: her brain was blanking. Though she moved the light around in a desultory fashion she knew she wasn't seeing what was there. Gary and the chief ranger were in slightly better shape. Their sleep had not been ravaged by a psychotic bear. Still, she doubted any of the three of them would be good for much till morning.
Finally Ruick put his radio away. For a long minute no one said anything. Anna knew she had fallen into a dangerous state. She was abdicating, turning over not only the problem of the dead woman but her own well-being to the solid, reassuring Harry Ruick. Snap out of it,she ordered herself and scrubbed her skull with her knuckles to wake up the gray matter. Abdicating in the backcountry was commonplace. It was also a coward's way and a fool's.
Nobody could guarantee another's safety in the wilderness.
Brain nominally in gear, she said, 'We carry her out?'
'Can't see how to avoid it,' Ruick replied. 'Can't leave her here. We're between a rock and a hard place. We carry her out and trash what might remain of the crime scene or we leave her here and the scavengers do the job for us. They may anyway. The smell of blood is bound to attract some.'
There was nothing in which to wrap the corpse. To facilitate carrying, they removed her arms from the sleeves of her jacket, zipped them inside and tied the sleeves over her chest. Anna secured her feet by the simple expedient of tying her bootlaces together.
Harry Ruick took the head, Gary Bradley the feet. Anna had the awkward but not difficult task of lighting their way back up the mountainside. The body had been located less than a hundred yards down from the trail and they traversed the distance in a grunting quarter of an hour.
During their absence Joan had not been idle. The other members of the team had convened on West Flattop Trail. It had been too late and too dark to return to Anna and Joan's camp for their personal things, but three tents had been brought up from where the bear team cached their own gear. Camp was being set up a quarter of a mile off trail where park visitors would not see it and so have their wilderness experience infringed upon. Joan herself waited on the log where they'd left her with Vic to lead them to the new camp.
Though they'd known each other little more than five days, Anna was inordinately glad to see her. Leaving the men to struggle on with their burden across the flat and level meadow that presaged the burn, Anna walked ahead with Joan.
'So it was a woman,' Joan said.
Anna heard the threadbare weariness in her voice and knew she was probably running on nerve; muscle and bone were exhausted. Joan Rand was in fairly good shape, but she carried an extra twenty pounds. Most of that, Anna guessed, was heart. Joan was carrying the pain, Anna only the work and a few ounces of the horror. Either she'd been born heartless or over the years had grown inured to the tragedies of others.
'A woman,' she confirmed.
'Do we know who she was?'
'Not yet.'
As if admitting a failing on her part, Joan said, 'You know, I was so glad it wasn't Rory I didn't even bother to ask Vic who she was.'
Rory Van Slyke. Anna hadn't given him a moment's consideration since the chief ranger had said of the corpse, 'This is not our boy.' If Rory's trail had been picked up by the backcountry ranger or the other members of the team, they would have heard. He was still out there lost or hurt or dead.
'At least we know our bear-presuming this was done by the same bear-has moved on,' Joan said. 'If it had taken Rory, cached him, it would have made a nest nearby and stayed there to feed.' The logic of bear behavior was cheering her considerably. Anna was about to put an end to that. It wasn't that she was in a foul mood herself and so wanted to spread the wretchedness around. It was that she respected Joan enough to know she'd want to know the facts and liked her enough to guess she'd rather be told under cover of darkness by another woman than back in camp under the glare of Coleman lanterns and men's eyes.
'This lady wasn't killed by our bear or any bear. She was hacked up by an edged weapon. A human being killed her. Or something with opposable thumbs masquerading as a human being.'
Ahead was the camp. Lanterns had been set up, and four men and one woman bustled purposefully about. Three tents had been pitched and Anna heard the familiar hiss of a gas stove. Environmentalist that she was, it would still have given her hope and courage had there been a great roaring fire to welcome them, warm their bones and keep the monsters of the dark away. In this group of conservationists, she wouldn't dare to so much as voice her primitive longings.
'This is it,' Joan said, stopping. Ruick and Bradley carried the corpse past them into camp like hunters returning with the day's kill.
'Did you hear me?' Anna asked when Joan didn't fall into step behind them.
'I did,' Joan answered quietly. 'I just couldn't think of anything to say.'
They stayed a moment in silence on the edge of the circle of light carved out of the night.
'Hot drinks?' Anna said finally.
'Hot drinks,' Joan agreed.
Between Anna and Harry they had thirty-one years of law enforcement in America 's national parks, yet the body of the murder victim created a dilemma neither of them had faced before. Because of Glacier's active grizzly bear population the remains were not only evidence but meat, carrion. Trails in the park were routinely closed by the bear management team if a dead deer or elk was found on or near them. A carcass attracted bears. What they'd so laboriously carried out of the ravine might be a corpse tomorrow in a morgue. Tonight it was a carcass, just beginning to get ripe and alluring.
Faced with a problem pertaining to Ursus horribilis,Joan regained her equilibrium and took charge. The body was wrapped in plastic garbage bags-not because it would keep the smell from the keen noses of any bears in the neighborhood but to shield the delicate sensibilities of the humans-and hung up in a tree thirty yards from camp along with the other edibles.
That more than anything seemed to bring a bleakness of mood over everyone. Though several people made a weak joke or two and nobody stared at the ghoulish tree decoration outright, Anna was sure everyone was as acutely aware as she that it was hanging there, high in the branches, just beyond the reach of light, like a Windigo in the north woods.
They ate in silence and crawled into the tents. There were six bear-team members, plus Harry, Anna and Joan. Though as strays, Anna and Joan were invited to make a third in somebody's tent, Anna opted to sleep in the open.
Better to face down the devil than blindly hear him circling.
