pocket-sized tape recorder by its red running light. Without taking it out of the protective canvas pack, she pressed Rewind for several seconds, then Play.
'Even so. I'll do it,'Rory's voice came out of the small machine. The batteries were okay.
Chapter 11
The night had been 'early,' as the chief ranger suggested, but way too short, the middle bitten out of it by Rory Van Slyke's blackmail plans. Anna'd slept the remainder of it with the cassette beneath her pillow, stowed in a plastic box taped shut. It was all she had to protect herself against untold mental cruelty. She would have no peace until she'd made several copies and cached them in safe places.
Between the fragmented naps that passed for sleep and, more productively, during the long hot shower she took before Joan woke up, Anna pondered what to do with her blackmailer. It hurt her to admit it, but on a very basic level she did not trust the National Park Service. This was nothing personal; she didn't trust any operation that was run by committee and few that were not.
Despite the fact that she had a tape with what amounted to a confession on it, she didn't want to go to Ruick with her story of Rory's threatened accusation. The tenor of the country was that of growing paranoia. Americans were happily forfeiting their freedom of choice for imagined increases in security. Mandatory sentencing hobbled judges, taking the intelligence and humanity from their jobs. Zero-tolerance policies for weapons in schools was forcing teachers to suspend children of seven, eight and nine for bringing butter knives to spread their lunchtime peanut butter. Taking away parole and time off for good behavior undermined the incentive system in prisons.
People as individuals were giving up their decision-making power because they did not want the responsibility. Society as a whole chose to believe one-size-fit all so they would not be troubled by the inexact science of justice.
The park service was no exception. The merest hint of litigation sent the brass scurrying. The threat of a sexual harassment suit rendered them virtually impotent. Even the discovery of a plot to make an unfounded accusation would land Anna in a prison of red tape and hushed conversations.
Before she subjected herself to that particular form of slow torture, she had two options: to find out whatever Rory wanted to keep hidden before he knew what she was up to and made good on his threat, or to use the tape for counter-blackmail.
She intended to do both.
Once Rory's secret-or more precisely, Lester's secret- was brought to light and broadcast, there would be little reason for Rory to carry out his plan. Revenge was the only one Anna could think of, and he didn't strike her as a vengeful person. Presenting him with the truth in one hand and the tape in the other would, she hoped, end the matter.
Setting out for the resource management office she crossed her fingers as she'd done when she was a girl and hoped Rory Van Slyke, like most adolescents, would sleep past noon.
Anna had been loaned a vacant desk and computer in the main room of the resource management office. Like most buildings of similar vintage it was painted green inside and out. Within the draping, needle-laden branches of the gracious old pines that surrounded it, Anna had a pleasant sensation of being hidden away in a forest bower.
Settling down in front of the computer, she studied the bulletin board above. It was full of eight-by-ten glossy color photographs of Ursus horribilislooking not in the least horribilis. A hidden camera on a motion sensor had caught the great bears in the act of frolicking. In photo after photo their magnificent play was frozen: bears rolling in the blood lure, tossing the scent-soaked wood high in the air, lying on their backs hugging their treasures like sea otters hugging abalone.
She forced herself away from this delightful display to the dreary gray and black of the monitor and took a deep breath. The ineffable odor of government saturated the air: an indefinable smell containing years of burnt coffee, spilled copy fluid and antique cigarette smoke, with a unique overlay of dusty file folders.
If the park service ever got rich and replaced these old offices with wall-to-wall carpeted off- white cubicles, Anna would have to resign.
Time mattered. She put aside the urge to dive into Lester Van Slyke immediately. Whatever secret his son was so dedicated to keeping she was sure it related back, however tangentially, to the death of his wife. Before she began rooting around in Lester's life she needed to build a frame of reference. Failing to do so might mean that when the secret appeared, should she be so lucky as to stumble across it, it would slide past her unrecognized.
Putting Rory, the threat, the tape and the previous night from her mind, she concentrated on the task at hand.
As a matter of course, she had collected the vital information on the people she'd interviewed. She had names, addresses, and numbers on Bill McCaskil, the Van Slykes and Mr. and Mrs. Roger Heidleman of Detroit, Michigan. They were the couple who'd told her McCaskil spent a considerable amount of time in the company of the murder victim.
Despite these easier paths, Anna chose to start with Geoffrey Mickleson-Nicholson. Ruick showed little interest in him and Joan felt positively benevolent toward this mysterious lone boy. Anna wanted to know who he was. Feminine intuition, or years in law enforcement, made her think he was somehow connected with the strange goings-on. Using a variety of spellings for each name, she ran him under both Mickleson and Nicholson.
Unsurprisingly there was no one by that name on the backcountry permits list. No one by that name had received a ticket for a moving violation in the State of Montana in the last three years, though lacking any numerical data, the search was not as complete as it could be. She found no felony arrest warrants or convictions for either Geoffrey Mickleson or Geoffrey Nicholson.
Moving on, she was reassured to find the midwest as solid as ever. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Heidleman had done everything right. Their backcountry permit was in order. From that she got the plate number of their car and ran it to get Roger's driver's license number and date of birth-the keys to the kingdom as far as data was concerned. Other than a speeding ticket in 1998, fifty-three in a forty-mile-per-hour zone, Heidleman was clean. The missus didn't even have a traffic citation against her record.
Bill McCaskil had also filled out a backcountry permit. He'd filed for the full two weeks allowed at Fifty Mountain Camp. That struck an off chord with Anna. Two weeks is a hell of a long time to camp, especially in one place. The burden of necessary food would be enough to stagger a seasoned hiker. McCaskil looked to be a greenhorn, unhappy and uncomfortable in the natural world.
Using the license plate number on his backcountry permit, she followed the same route along the information highway that she had with the Heidlemans. The results were considerably more interesting. McCaskil was not a pillar of the community. He'd been indicted for fraud three times, convicted and served eighteen months in a Florida state prison. The first indictment was for credit card fraud. The one he'd served time for was a real estate scam. The third was for selling bogus fishing permits for protected marine areas. His prison record took some time but Anna was able to access it. McCaskil had spent five weeks in the prison psychiatric unit for 'stress- related antisocial behavior.' Given he was in jail, the phrase could mean anything. Other than the psych ward, he was an unexceptional convict, serving his time quietly.
McCaskil was not a good citizen, but other than the vague 'antisocial' label, he was apparently nonviolent. Crooks dedicated to paper crimes-check kiting, insider trading, fraud-were usually no more likely to turn to murder than an average citizen, unless put under undue pressure. However, their chosen profession was more likely to bring them to that point by way of blackmail or fear of exposure than that of a welder or the checker at the neighborhood Albertson's. McCaskil's antisocial behavior was linked to stress. Crime was a stressful business.
Anna sat back. The computer screen had drawn her in till she'd been sitting hunched over with her head at an uncomfortable angle and her eyes too close to the screen. Twisting in her chair, she cracked her back in a satisfying rattle of bones. While she'd been lost in cyberspace, the office had come alive. There was the smell of fresh coffee and the hum of humanity at work.
