murder or anything related to it. Researchers were wonderful in their dedication. If it wasn't about bears, virtually no one in the great rambling building gave two hoots about it.
With Ruick's blessing, she had taken copies of every report generated, every piece of evidence gathered and any and all lab reports returned. Joan's office was devoid of clean flat surfaces. Every inch of space was covered in folders, papers, pamphlets, books and pieces of bears gathered over the years. Knowing this well- feathered nest was as Joan wished it to be, the sprawling form dictated by her professional needs, Anna chose to disturb nothing. The relics of her investigation she placed carefully on top of Joan's piles. She sat in the midst of them and opened her mind to let plans and patterns form if they might.
Carolyn Van Slyke's autopsy report was to the right of the computer on a half-consumed bag of gummi bears. Anna reread it, looking for any connection to McCaskil. Other than the coat, there was nothing. As a matter of course the body had been checked for sexual assault. None. If Carolyn had been involved with McCaskil, the sex had been consensual and a condom had been used.
Anna had only Lester Van Slyke's word that Carolyn had been adulterous. Though she believed him, there was a remote possibility he'd been inspired by the army jacket, seen the accusation as a way of casting suspicion on McCaskil, not realizing in doing so he was giving himself yet another motive for killing his own wife. Since Anna had no positive leads, she took the negative.
Having found Carolyn Van Slyke's work number and address in Seattle, Anna called her place of business. Francine Cuckor, Carolyn's assistant, was happy to answer questions. Whether divorce attorneys were more open than most about adultery or whether Francine just liked to talk, Anna would never know, but according to Ms. Cuckor's bawdy tales, a few of which sounded apocryphal and bordered on admiration, Carolyn not only had sex with a large number of men but was open about it. Francine did say that Carolyn was an ethical practitioner of the law. Her exact words were: 'She'd never fuck a client or a client's husband until the case was settled.' From the way Ms. Cuckor said it, Anna guessed she pretty much thought Carolyn a candidate for the Lawyer's Hall of Fame on grounds of self-control.
Francine went so far as to offer Anna the names and phone numbers of others who could confirm her stories. Anna declined. She was merely fact-checking, not gathering material for letters to Penthouse.
She hung up and filched a gummi bear to cleanse her palate. She was not a prude. She'd enjoyed her share of fornication. Still, she was old-fashioned enough to feel adultery should be done on the sly, in great secrecy, and that it behooved the adulterers to feel ashamed and guilty. The libertine sentiments of Ms. Cuckor and the late Mrs. Van Slyke left her with a sense of sleaze that was unsettling. Anna had never cheated on Zach. A cynic had once told her it was because he died before their marriage reached the philandering years. Anna chose to believe otherwise. If she married again she would bring to the new union that same Pollyanna belief in fidelity.
If she married again.Thinking that startled her. Several years earlier she'd finally extinguished the torch she carried for her first husband. It had never crossed her mind that she might marry again.
She ate another gummi bear and picked up the reports generated by a computer search on one William Adkins McCaskil, a.k.a. Bill McLellan, Bill Fetterman, and Will Skillman. It was a point in the man's favor that he had registered for a backcountry permit under his own name. That he'd registered for a permit at all suggested that either his pursuits were innocent or, given he was well versed in the ways of crime and law enforcement, he knew in obeying the minor rules one was far more apt to get away with the major infractions. A significant number of felons were rotting in the federal penitentiaries because they got pulled over for failing to signal on a right turn and then one thing led to another.
McCaskil had been born in Sarasota, Florida, on December 27, 1949, to Gerald and Suzanne McCaskil. At sixteen, he'd gotten his driver's license suspended in Tampa, Florida. At twenty-nine, he'd been convicted of mail fraud, selling low-cost life insurance policies through the mail to elderly people. He'd served six months. At forty-eight, he'd been convicted of real estate fraud, selling one-acre lots over the internet that belonged to the Florida fish and wildlife service. For that, he'd served eighteen months and gotten five years' probation. Because of the light sentences, Anna guessed large sums of money had not been involved. That or McCaskil had connections.
Connections. Anna stared at the report without really seeing it. There was something there that was jiggling a lever in her mind trying to turn a light on. Again she read the first paragraph: a.k.a. Bill McLellan, a.k.a. Bill Fetterman, a.k.a. Will Skillman. McLellan and Skillman were of a piece. People often chose the initials of, or aplay on, their given names when choosing an alias. Fetterman seemed out of place. Fetterman rang some distant bell.
Anna started with NCIC, the National Crime Information Center. Two Fettermans had wants or warrants, one was a twenty-two-year-old black male out of Philadelphia wanted on a burglary charge, the other was a thirty-one-year-old white male from Los Banos, California, wanted for grand theft auto. No tie-in that Anna could see with her a.k.a.
The obvious route petering out, she began a people search starting with the Fettermans of Sarasota, Florida. Fortunately, Fetterman was not a common name. Only three turned up: Dr. Peter Fetterman, A. Fetterman, and Fetterman Marine supplies.
A. Fetterman was Amanda Fetterman, the spinster daughter of the owner of Fetterman Marine. Anna told her she was from the Florida State Alumni Association trying to track down a William or Bill Fetterman for the class of '74's upcoming reunion.
Amanda knew no Bill or William. Anna tried McCaskil and McClellan out on her and struck out both times. Finally, too many questions made Amanda suspicious and she began asking questions of her own. Making a hasty retreat fueled with 'thank yous,' Anna disconnected. She called the marine supply store next and spoke with Papa Fetterman. Same story told in less time: he knew no Bill Fetterman, McCaskil or McClellan, no Skillman either and what the hell was this all about anyway?
Peter Fetterman was a doctor of marine biology. The number Anna'd gotten off the internet was apparently his home. Being an efficient man, his answering machine informed callers of a work number where he could be reached. Just because he sounded so sensible, when Anna reached him, she told him that she was doing background checks for three men who'd applied for law enforcement positions. The doctor knew no men by those names. The only Fetterman he knew of was a man in Tampa. Their paths had crossed over an incident regarding a shark poached illegally from a study area. He wouldn't tell Anna where, other than to say 'off the coast.' He seemed to suffer from the delusion that few people could resist the lure of frequenting shark-infested waters.
Tampa was where young Bill McCaskil had his first recorded brush with the law. Anna moved on. To have phoned three people and gotten hold of them on, if not the first, then the second try was a phenomenal bit of luck. It seemed the more electronic paraphernalia people purchased to remain in touch with an ever- scattering herd served only to separate them further. In the course of various investigations Anna had spent days of her life on pointless rounds from answering machines to pagers to voice mail, never once speaking to a real live human being.
Consequently it was no surprise that Lady Luck dumped her in Tampa. No Fetterman was listed, either as an individual or as a business. Anna taxed the phone company's much-touted, new-and-improved information system that promised to find numbers to places with forgotten names. Nowhere in or around Tampa was a place of business with the name Fetterman in the title. The telephone operator Anna had hooked up with was probably as close to a saint as the phone company had on its rosters. She was willing to keep on trying when Anna decided to throw in the towel.
'We could try recently disconnected numbers,' the operator suggested.
'You can do that?' Anna was amazed not at the technology but at the operator's access to those files, and her willingness to take the time.
'It'll take a second.'
Anna couldn't think what good a disconnected number could do, but she felt an obligation to wait. After all, the woman had worked so hard it seemed ungrateful somehow.
The strange quiet of telephone lines, not pushed full of Muzak, trickled into Anna's ear; faint hushing as of a distant sea, barely audible clicks and hums; the intercourse of the world kept at bay by a thin wall of rubber.
