had: not Ridley’s hostility, not Katherine’s death, not the wog or the windigo, not Anna’s walking in on him – twice – being no better than he should be with a dead woman and a woman dead to the world.
Menechinn was a bit of a sociopath, she guessed. In Bob’s mind, there was no Bob but Bob; other people were mere shadows, there to please him or be used by him or gotten around. An excellent government tool.
Following this train of thought, Anna realized Robin’s disappearance, in and of itself, was not what was turning Bob’s skin pasty or thinning his breath. Something had happened in the past few hours that had caused him to believe he was threatened. Adam might have told him Anna found a condom. She rejected that idea; Bob would just deny it was his. Even fingerprints wouldn’t do it. There were a number of reasons he might have touched the package.
As the night wore on, she quit worrying about Ridley’s ability to cope and began to worry about hers. Night closed tightly around the bunkhouse, the poor lighting in the common room inadequate to push it back past the mirror of the windows. Claustrophobia grew up through the cement suffocating her brain till she could picture herself running screaming into the night.
“I was locked in the V.C.,” she announced suddenly and loudly.
“Someone locked me in before kidnapping Robin.” Her bomb fizzled. The men looked at her, faces devoid of emotion. If one of them had thrown the dead bolt, Anna couldn’t have guessed it from their response – or lack of it.
“Or some
Anna shot him a weary look. “Bullshit,” she said succinctly.
He shrugged.
Anna rose and began putting on parka and ski pants. If she didn’t take an action – any action – the concrete and claustrophobia were going to seal her tight in their cold, airless vault.
“Where do you think you are going?” Bob demanded, rousing himself from his lethargy. He sounded angry.
“Out. Want to come with me?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he snapped. He glanced at Adam and then away. Whatever had been communicated was lost on Anna.
She stared at him long and hard. Bob was scared and it was making him mad.
Scared of her? If he was, so much the better.
“I’ll go with you,” Jonah volunteered.
Anna hadn’t particularly wanted company. On ISRO, there clearly wasn’t any safety in numbers, but, of all of them, she distrusted the pilot the least.
“Bring a flashlight,” she said.
“I’ll bring two.”
They went out the front door and down the deck stairs. At the bottom of the steps, Anna stopped.
“What?” Jonah’s head came up like a dog seeking scent.
“Nothing.” Anna had stopped because she didn’t know where she was going or what she intended to do when she got there. “Let’s just breathe,” she said, and Jonah laughed. For several minutes, they stood quietly, flashlights off, and drew clean air into their lungs. Woodstoves were charming and functional but polluted the indoor air as surely as a band of two-pack-a-day smokers.
“Do we have a clue?” Jonah asked, and she appreciated the wisp of humor.
“I am clueless,” Anna admitted. “Start over, I guess.” She led the way around the bunkhouse to the window that let into her and Robin’s bedroom. Without the distraction of many big-footed men milling about, Anna could see and think more clearly. Jonah stood back as she crouched down several feet from the area directly beneath the window and shined her flashlight beam across the snow, mimicking a setting sun.
“What’s with Adam and Bob?” she asked, remembering the pregnant glance.
“Beats me,” Jonah said. “Adam’s a good guy. He’s worked Winter Study a couple times before. Canucks tend to see the best in people. But Menechinn? Sheesh.”
The moose that liked to scratch its back against the drainpipe had churned snow and earth into a mass of frozen clods and ice. With her light streaming almost laterally across the tiny field, Anna thought maybe she saw new prints. Maybe. Moose prints. She shined the light out in a circle from where she crouched. “Adam’s Canadian?”
“I think he’s an American citizen. He grew up in Canada, got married there and came to the States after his wife died.”
“That was the wife who killed herself?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Robin.”
Nothing showed but the tracks they had made and several moose trails leading into the trees.
“Adam doesn’t talk about it much. Evidently his wife had a miscarriage and went into a depression.”
“Was Adam investigated for the death?”
“Like for murdering his wife? What are you thinking?”
“Nothing. Everything. Yeah, for murder, I guess.”
“Probably. It’s always the husband first in a thing like that. Anyway, it is on TV. So he must have been investigated, but it didn’t amount to much. She’d left a note. She’d left a message on her therapist’s phone, apologizing. She made a video, begging Adam to forgive her.”
“‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’” Anna said.
“‘Rage, rage,’” Jonah said, startling her, then shaming her, with her own snobbery.
“We’re done here,” she said. Her knees cracked like rifle shots as she rose to her feet.
“Hah!” Jonah said. “Getting old is a bitch, isn’t it?”
Her shame subsided.
Anna moved slowly uphill, following moose prints. The tracks coming down were shallower than those leading back up the rise. The moose had grown significantly heavier while under the bedroom window.
“You see that?” Anna asked and pointed out the disparity. “What could account for that?”
“Maybe the moose ate Robin.”
Anna snorted, not a good idea when the air is below zero and the nose is chronically running.
“She could have ridden it,” Jonah suggested. He didn’t seem to be too concerned either way.
“What do you know?” Anna demanded, shining her light in his face.
“Cut that out, Dick Tracy,” he complained.
“What?” Anna kept the light where it was. The lenses of Jonah’s glasses flashed and the white of his beard glittered.
“I don’t know anything,” he said after a moment. “But you’ve got to figure Robin didn’t go hop-hop-hopping away in her sleeping bag like a kid in a sack race. And there’s more ways to make moose tracks than to be a moose.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Did you happen to notice if the wog prints were always accompanied by moose prints?”
“Nope.”
“Me neither. What do you want to bet?”
“I’m not a betting man.”
“Me neither.”
It was after midnight when Anna went to bed. She wanted to drag her sleeping bag into Katherine’s room and close and lock the door, but she stayed in the room she’d shared with Robin. Like Mrs. Darling, she wanted to be there if Peter Pan returned the children he’d stolen, but she doubted Robin had gone with an immortal boy. And she doubted she was anywhere as magical as Never-Never Land.
26
Adam was asleep on the sofa, or appeared to be. Bob had long since retired to his room and Ridley and Jonah to theirs. Sleeping was usually something Anna was good at under stress, that and eating. Years hiking trails in the
