stomach was full of complaining gummi bears and the light was going from Joan's window.
Anna went 'home.' Home for so many years had been wherever she fed the cat. Walking through a rapidly cooling twilight enlivened by mosquitoes bent on fueling reproduction with her blood, Anna found herself terribly lonely for her critters, Piedmont's comforting purr and even Taco's three-legged bounding, leaping, licking, declaration of welcome that she'd come to expect whenever she opened the front door. Sheriff Davidson, Paul, the new man in her life, she missed as well but not with the same childish want. Davidson hadn't seen her cry like Piedmont had, hadn't saved her life like Taco had.
The next morning Anna slept in, then typed up the scraps and snippets of information she'd gleaned in a day's calling and turned them in to Harry. He read them through carefully and, in the end, could find nothing more enlightening than she had.
'We'll follow up on this Fetterman thing,' he said. 'I'll call Tampa and see if we can't get the local police to make a few inquiries for us.'
He didn't sound overly enthused. Anna didn't blame him. If they could connect the name of Fetterman to Van Slyke, which they'd failed to do, it might be of some interest but probably wouldn't go far toward solving their murder.
'We got the lab reports back,' Ruick said. 'Rush job because I hinted it was part of the murder investigation but I think what you stumbled across on Cathedral Peak was an amateur entomologist with a dog off leash.' He pushed the folder across the desk and Anna read it without picking it up. The peanut was, near as they could tell, a peanut. The crust of biscuit she'd found was broken down: twenty-three percent protein, four percent fat, ten percent fiber, seven percent ash, a little calcium and a dash of phosphorus. The rest was dry matter and moisture.
'Dog food.' Being a responsible pet owner she'd read the backs of dog food bags to make sure Taco got a balanced diet.
They sat for a bit. Maryanne stuck her head in the office and reminded Harry that the fire management officer from Waterton was due in a few minutes.
'Well,' Harry said, 'I hate to keep you tied up when there's no point in it. Not to mention when I borrowed you, Glacier started paying your salary.' He smiled to let Anna know it was a joke. Anna smiled back politely, pretending she believed him. Budgets were counted out by nickels and dimes. Money was always tight. 'You can either pack it in and go back to the Trace or go on up. Joan's got another four days before this round of traps is completed. You can probably pick up enough about DNA testing to convince John Brown we didn't waste your time completely.'
'I'll give him a call,' Anna said. 'See what he wants me to do.' The interview was over. She pushed up out of the chair.
'I'll see an official letter of thanks gets into your personnel file,' Ruick said. He stood and shook hands with her. He was warm and friendly, but she could tell she was already sinking out of his sight. Chances were he'd barely remember her name when next they met. The chief ranger was moving on to the next crisis to threaten his park. Or his career.
'You can leave your gear with the receptionist any time today,' Maryanne told her as she left. A nice way of reminding her the radio needed to be checked in ASAP. Ponce had already gone back to the comfort of his paddock.
'Will do,' Anna said, feeling mildly miffed. In her mind she heard her ti ny, m e an, l o ng-d ead gra n d m other cac k ling: 'Think you're so important? Put your finger in a bucket of water, pull it out and see how big a hole it leaves.'
Chapter 21
John Brown, Anna's chief ranger on the Natchez Trace Parkway, was I markedly grumpy about the disruption of her learning project, somewhat mollified by having had her off the payroll for over a week, and amenable to allowing her to remain four more days to finish up, or attempt to, her training on the use of DNA research in the management of park wildlife.
Dispatch notified Joan of Anna's return. Rather than try to give detailed directions that draggled off trail through rugged country, she kindly agreed to meet Anna at Fifty Mountain so she could walk with them to the next trap site. Buck had been cut loose from the project and was hiking out as Anna hiked in, though by a different trail. He had a girlfriend in Waterton, Canada.
Civilization, much as she'd looked forward to it, had proved a disappointment. The sense of order, safety and rationality she had fantasized 21 about had not been forthcoming. In place of safety she'd found dullness and isolation. Order and rationality had consisted of scribbling the crazy parts down on report forms and filing them, imposing not order, but an appearance of order. People so desperately needed an illusion of control to give them courage to get up in the morning.
Anna's illusion of control had been smashed years before with the sudden, meaningless death of her husband. In the years since, she'd made an effort not to give in to the need to put the pieces back together, but to see and know and accept with some degree of grace that life is meaningless. There is no Grand Plan. Everything doesn't happen for the best. One can knock till one's knuckles are bloody and the door may not be opened. Those who didn't know her well construed this to mean she was cynical or even bitter. Anna felt it allowed her to see past expectations to what was and freed her from the need to figure out what it meant.
Unfortunately, this cultivated mind-set was only half useful. It was good to see what was. But it was her job to figure out what it meant. She had failed at her job. That others had failed too was of little comfort.
Heading into the wilderness with thoughts such as these muting her senses, she found she was disappointed in the out-of-doors as well. The realization was so alarming she stopped walking and stood in the heat of the sun. She'd grown disenchanted with the natural world because it had been behaving in what seemed an unnatural manner, and disappointed with the world of people because it behaved precisely as she'd come to expect it would.
This way madness lies,she thought and took some time to realign her brain. For twenty minutes she stood sweating in the heat of the switchback noting only the breezes, the color of thimbleberry, the feather-light scratch of needles against the sky. Finally, having found her way back into her own skin, she walked on with a lighter load. Expectations abandoned, now whatever occurred, however strange, would be as nature intended. Everything would make sense. That she could not see the pattern was a fault within herself, not an aberration within the natural world.
Joan and Rory were waiting for her at Fifty Mountain Camp. They looked and smelled as if they'd been in the bush for three days and Anna was delighted. Joan's nose and forehead were sunburned and she had a scratch on one cheek from battling the shrubbery. Rory had grown brown and, to Anna's eye, taller, stronger and clearer since the death of his stepmother. Not being a Christian soul, Anna believed there were those who belonged on the Better Off Dead list. She didn't doubt that the toxic Carolyn Van Slyke was such a person. Next time she saw Lester, Anna would be disappointed if he, too, had not begun to flourish now that the influence of his violent wife was removed. Disappointed, not surprised. There was that about Lester that Anna suspected craved the violence, that he might seek out another wife who, if not actually prone to physical violence, would at least verbally and psychologically abuse him.
'Are you going to college, Rory?' she asked abruptly in the midst of their reunion.
'What? Yes, next year,' he replied as the questions soaked in.
'University of Washington in Seattle?' she demanded.
'No. I'm going to school in Spokane. I got the grades to get in.'
Anna was satisfied. He wouldn't be living at home. Lester Van Slyke would never be convicted of anything in a court of law. Lester was a victim and, as such, Anna supposed deserving of pity and understanding. That was fine on the surface but now and then victims, people who chose to be or to remain victims, did as much damage to the offspring of the union as the abusers did. Politically incorrect as the theory was, Anna'd kicked around long enough to know it was true.
