the same time and the same place so they come there over and over.'
Anna and Joan thought about that for a while. 'You could,' Anna said slowly. 'But why?'
Between them they listed the obvious reasons: to shoot them, observe them, capture them, photograph them. All were possible, none practical. Glacier National Park was a place where bears were protected, monitored. Their numbers, habits and activities were scrutinized by rangers, researchers and an increasingly informed public. If a person wished to manipulate the bears in any of the suggested ways, there were thousands upon thousands of acres just to the north in British Columbia where, on private lands, it could be done either legally or with a much greater chance of remaining undetected.
'Boone and Crockett,' Anna said, remembering the Washington man evilly ogling the elk. 'A trophy-sized bear, one that could tempt a poacher?'
'Not in the lower forty-eight,' Joan said. 'Because of food, genetics, etcetera, our bears are on the small side. A big old male could weigh maybe five hundred pounds. Maybe. Four or four-fifty would be more like it. The trophy hunters do Canada up north, or Alaska.'
'An idiot?' Anna suggested. 'Wandering around like some demented Johnny Appleseed feeding bears?'
'There's always room for another idiot,' Joan admitted.
Anna had her own tent this time out and she found she missed Joan's company. Through the cloth walls she could hear the other woman snoring in an unladylike fashion and found the noise soothing. Sleep was eluding Anna and it was good to know someone was resting.
The nerves and hyperawareness that had poisoned her last night in the backcountry had passed. She was not lying awake waiting for the clack of sticks and the onslaught of toothy beasts. The man who had rolled a stone down at her and fired off a round didn't concern her much, either. He had not stalked her. It was she who'd sought him out. If he'd not already finished whatever he'd been up to and left the park, he was probably staying as far away from anybody in green and gray as he could.
Telling her story to Joan and Rory had loosed the scraps and facts she'd managed to tuck away. Now they blew about till the inside of her skull looked like Fifth Avenue after a ticker-tape parade. Joan and Rory; the conversation had triggered something. Anna lay comfortable in her bag, fingers locked behind her head, eyes on the perfect darkness beyond the screen of her front door, waiting for the scrap that would fit to sort itself out from the others. Feeding the bears, trophy bears floated by, Boone and Crockett. That was it. Boone and Crockett, the last word on what was and was not a trophy animal and where it fit in the hierarchy of biggest and best based on skull measurements-taken after death, naturally.
In the pocket of the surplus army jacket Carolyn Van Slyke was caught dead in, the jacket they were pretty sure belonged to William McCaskil, was a piece of note paper. 'B amp; C' was written at the top. Below was a list of numbers. Boone and Crockett and the measurements of a trophy animal, Anna was willing to bet. In the morning she would radio Ruick and get him to check it out.
What, if anything, it had to do with Van Slyke's murder, she couldn't fathom. Had Carolyn seen and photographed this animal and so been killed and mutilated, her film stolen? Glacier didn't have trophy-sized bears, but there were other creatures: moose, elk, mountain lion. That didn't account for the omnivore food. And who would kill and mutilate a photographer for taking a picture of the animal? How would one be caught in a compromising position with a trophy-sized animal? It was feasible the poacher could pack the kill out. They needn't take the whole animal. Just the head.
Now there was a grisly picture.
Anna shook her head in the dark. By dint of great mental strain, she'd solved one more small mystery: what the list in the army jacket meant. And nothing but nothing was cleared up.
'You asleep, Joan?' she whispered on impulse.
No answer from the neighboring tent.
'Goodnight then,' she said and resolutely shut her brain off for the night.
Work was good: hard, hot, deerflies biting. Wretched scrambles through cutting brush with a heavy pack on was what Anna was good at. Like fighting wildland fire, it was deliciously mindless in that just staying on one's feet and doing one's job took total concentration. Joan Rand was an added blessing. When Anna had a boss she trusted, she found enormous relief and contentment in just following orders.
Shortly after two p.m. they had the DNA hair trap assembled. Rory predicted the pickings from this site would be slim. He expressed the opinion that the North American grizzly was too intelligent to work as hard as they had just to roll in essence of rotted fish and eat a few huckleberries.
Rory was showing signs of being a kid and not the scared, suspicious shadow of an adult that Anna'd seen when they'd first met. She was beginning to enjoy his company. Joan always had, but then when it came to adolescent boys she saw through the eyes of a mother. Anna's were more akin to those of a parole officer.
The eighty feet of barbed wire stapled in a rough circle around a place that was only flat in Joan's imagination, they began the butt-and-heels slide down to the trail.
The next site to be disassembled was back the direction they'd camped. A luxury-since they'd be several nights there, they didn't have to carry all their gear on their backs during the day.
With a minimum of cursing and scratches, they regained the trail. As they caught their breath, the radio crackled out Joan's call number. It was the chief ranger asking for Anna.
'You got a fax,' Ruick said. 'From some gal at the Tampa tourism office. Looks like a brochure for Fetterman's Adventure Trails. Nothing on it clicked with me. I'm guessing the alias was a fluke.'
'Describe it for me.' Anna waited while Harry marshaled his thoughts.
'Nothing out of the ordinary. It's a fax. The resolution isn't all that great. Fetterman's looks like a lot of those tourist trap places. Fun for the whole family sort of thing. There's a picture of what's probably an alligator. Let's see. Animal shows. Souvenirs. Looks like a kind of swamp tour thing with nutria being fed to gators. Kind of a mom and pop operation. There's a group picture on the back. Faces are a blur. Underneath. Let's see… 'Looking forward to new friends, George and Suzanne Fetterman, Carl Micou, Geoffrey Micou, Arthur Gray and Tunis Chick.'
'The gal who sent it has written in the margin, Adventure Trails was closed down after George Fetterman's death earlier this summer.' '
'How old is the brochure?' Anna asked. 'Can you tell?'
'Hmm. Lemme see, lemme see. Here. Nineteen ninety-six. Old. I expect nothing much changed in Adventure Trails from year to year.'
Anna gave the radio back to Joan. Harry had just called as a courtesy. The brochure held little interest and less information. Neither she nor he had any desire to waste airtime playing twenty questions to figure out what if anything a derelict roadside attraction in Florida had to do with a dead and mutilated Seattle divorce lawyer in Montana.
In fact, Anna's mental gears had been sufficiently shifted over to the DNA project that they had hiked two miles down the trail before she figured it out.
'Joan! Stop!'
Joan and Rory turned to look back at her. Anna had stalled in the middle of the trail.
'Tell me about that boy you've been e-mailing. The one making the map,' she demanded of the researcher.
Chapter 22
Normally it would have been a hike of four hours or more from where they were to the tiny meadow where they had camped nearly a week before. They covered the ground in just over three, arriving an hour before sunset.
Having left tents, stoves, sleeping bags and the rest of their camping gear behind, they traveled light and moved quickly. Without the amenities the night would be uncomfortable but Anna had not wanted to lose the time it would have taken to return and strike camp then climb back up to the plateau on Flattop carrying
