about it being a 'challenge.' When I found out a bull elk had an intelligence level equivalent to that of an eighteen- month-old toddler, I kind of lost my taste for it.'
Anna smiled. Then remembered. 'How's the hunt for the lion going?' she asked.
'No luck. We'll go up again today. I called old Jerimiah D. and he said he will lend us his dogs.'
'Jerimiah D.?'
'Paulsen,' Harland said. 'He keeps hunting dogs.'
'I bet,' Anna said bitterly. 'What does he get? The head? The pelt? Or just to be in on the kill?' Paulsen owned twenty-five thousand acres that bordered the park's northern boundary. He'd fought against every environmental issue in New Mexico and North Texas for thirty years. Usually he won.
'The animal will be salvaged for the display in the new Visitors Center,' Harland said, overlooking her rudeness. 'They can freeze-dry them so they look life-like now. They're going to use it in an educational display. Corinne was glad to get it, in a way. That VC's her baby. If people are better informed, maybe this won't happen next time.'
Anna doubted they could freeze-dry a 'specimen' that large but she didn't say so. Instead, wanting suddenly to escape Harland and the conversation, she excused herself: 'I better leave you to it.'
'Wait.' Harland laid a hand on her arm. 'You didn't hear the big news.' He was smiling, a boyish smile with a lot of charm. Making amends for her churlishness, it seemed. Letting her know there were no hard feelings.
Anna waited.
'We've got exotics on the West Side.'
Resource Management spent countless hours and dollars eradicating exotic plant species that endangered native vegetation. 'What?' Anna asked. 'It's awful dry over there for tamarisk.'
'Worse than tamarisk,' Harland said, a twinkle in his gray eyes. 'Martians. Tell her, Manny.'
Manny looked their way a moment, the thin, pockmarked face showing a trace of humor but no inclination to join in the conversation. 'You tell her, Harland.'
'Craig Eastern was camped over there a couple nights back working on his snake studies and he saw a UFO. A greenish halo that danced over the ground and made noise like cosmic footsteps. A
'Craig is a strange man,' Anna said.
Harland moved slightly so he was between her and Manny. When he spoke, his voice was low, pitched for her ears only. 'Craig Eastern is crazy,' he said. 'Seriously. He's mentally ill. This is not for public consumption. You're out alone a lot. You take care of yourself.'
Before Anna could respond one way or another, he had turned away, was calling to Manny, giving up the hunt for the fawn.
As they climbed into his truck, Roberts looked back over his shoulder. 'I like the hair, Anna.'
Anna spent the next twenty miles thinking about Harland Roberts.
He had a talent for knocking her a little off balance. Talking with him she felt younger, more vulnerable, less sure of herself. Harland was of an age where men seldom looked at women as peers, co-workers. Always, however well concealed behind training or good manners, was the pervasive concept of women as the Weaker Sex.
The damned thing of it was, Anna thought, it made her behave like a 'flawed vessel.' She wasn't sure if it was knee-jerk, a nerve touched from early socialization or-and this was the creepy thought-because she liked it.
'Not bloody likely!' Anna said aloud and moved her thoughts on to other things.
Roberts had said Craig Eastern was crazy. Everybody said Eastern was crazy, but Harland meant it. 'He's mentally ill.' He'd used those words. And: 'Take care of yourself.'
Anna knew Craig was fanatic about keeping the park undeveloped. It was more than just the inescapable animosity one felt when forced to see what the human race was doing to the planet. With Craig it was personal, a betrayal of him as well as Texas and the world.
Craig had been one of the most outspoken opponents of Drury's proposal to develop recreational vehicle sites in Dog Canyon. In a way, his very vehemence undermined his cause. His rhetoric was so heated that none of the brass wanted to align themselves with him.
'You're out alone a lot. Take care of yourself.'
Did Harland Roberts think Craig was crazy enough to hurt somebody? To hurt her? Craig talked a lot about shooting visitors. But all naturalists talked about shooting visitors. It was a way of letting off steam.
Was it different with Eastern? Looking at his nervous rantings through the curtain of suspicion Harland had dropped he did seem a little insane.
Anna's mind jumped to the nearest conclusion: Sheila Drury was dead. If the lion didn't do it…
It was absurd. She was clutching at straws, and melodramatic straws at that.
The autopsy would show something: congenital heart failure, brain aneurysm. Something that would prove Sheila was dead before the lion tasted her. But by the time the report came-if it ever did and wasn't simply lost in some FBI file- it would be too late. Not many days would pass before Paulsen's dogs would tree a cougar. It would be dubbed, after the required five minutes of deliberation, to be
'Damn! Damn! Damn!' Anna pounded the Rambler's steering wheel with the flat of her hand. The car swerved into the oncoming lane and a subcompact with Ohio plates honked, the driver mouthing obscenities.
'Think of something else, it's your day off,' Anna ordered herself.
For twelve hours she managed to school her mind. Distract it, was more accurate: a Schwarzenegger movie, a couple of Tecates, a 'new' Patsy Cline tape.
Near nine p.m., as she drove back to Guadalupe, Patsy singing 'Too Many Secrets,' Anna began again to worry at the edges of the Drury Lion Kill.
Beside her on the seat, atop an accumulated pile of rubble, were the slides she'd taken on the lion transect and of the Dog Canyon Ranger's corpse. Anna had taken them to Wal-Mart's one hour photo service and paid for the developing out of her own pocket.
Technically she should have turned the roll in to the clerk, filled out a form for funding, and waited the requisite eternity for the machinery to grind out one small task.
Patience was not Anna's strong suit.
Contemplating the envelope she had assiduously ignored all day, she wondered what it was she was so anxious to see. Sheila Drury's intestines festooning the front of her uniform like macabre confetti?
Most definitely, she wanted to see the blood again. If she remembered correctly, there'd been very little. Surely that indicated the lion had clawed Ranger Drury sometime after she had achieved corpse-hood.
That might be an argument that would quicken some kind of interest in Paul. Then he would stop the hunt. If he could. Corinne Mathers wasn't known for her willingness to listen to her District Rangers. Mathers acted like a woman with a political itinerary. Guadalupe was a stop along the way.
'Be fair,' Anna chided herself, but this time she expected she was being fair. Maybe even generous. Corinne was a woman on her way up.
Mankins was in the Cholla Chateau with Cheryl Light, watching television when Anna pulled in. She could see the blue-gray light through the windows. Manny would be three sheets to the wind by this time of night. Fleetingly, Anna wondered if his wife, Yolanda, cared that he drank so much beer. Guadalupe, like so many parks, was isolated, the employees living in rented government housing miles from anywhere. It became its own small, sometimes incestuous, society. Loneliness, boredom, and booze were occupational hazards.
The light in Craig's apartment was out. There was only the eerie purple glow of his snake aquarium light through the white curtain. Either he'd already gone to bed or he was camping on the West Side despite the invasion of the space aliens.
Anna smiled at the thought. Then she remembered Harland's warning. Feeling a fool, she locked her door behind her after she'd brought in the groceries.
The slides were tossed into the bag with the onions and the chocolate pudding. Leaving the frozen goods to hold their own for a few minutes more, Anna took them out and carried them over to the desk. The little slide viewer was in the top drawer with pens and.357 cartridges.
