It was working. Jennifer was looking and sounding alive again. Anna rubbed the corners of her mouth with a thumb and forefinger to pull out the smile she felt building there.
"I'm pretty sure Nims was carrying food instead of a fire shelter like he was required to. We know he was knifed during the firestorm, probably by someone who'd meant originally to save the guy's life. We know he was stabbed by his own knife and something was stolen from the corpse. Start with Neil Page. Go out and see if you can find whatever he was hiding out in the woods. Talk to him. We need to find out exactly where everybody deployed. The only person I actually saw crawl out of his shake 'n' bake was Howard."
"He could have killed Len, then got back into his own shelter," Jennifer said.
"I counted. Eight shelters. Nine people. There's no way of knowing whose is whose. By the time I figured it out all the shelters had been gathered and reused to make the bivouac."
"Okay. Howard's out," Jennifer conceded. "His hands are bad. I doubt he could've held a knife well enough anyway. He can't even close them."
"You do Page," Anna said. "I'll take John and see what I can find out. Be discreet. The last thing we want to do is stir up a hornet's nest."
"Might beat hunting badgers for breakfast."
Anna let the smile claim her mouth. Jennifer Short was coming around.
Chapter Sixteen
LINDSTROM MET ANNA and Jennifer halfway back to the bivouac. "Sorry to break up the party," he said with no trace of his usual humor. "It's Howard. He's taken a turn for the worse."
Helplessness and fatigue bore down on Anna. The bad news brought back some of the dead look to Jennifer's eyes. Morale had grown so fragile. "Jen, follow up on that stuff we were talking about," Anna said sharply. If the comment aroused Lindstrom's curiosity, he didn't have the energy to pursue it.
Black Elk was lying near the boulder, his breath rattling ominously in his chest. Under the soot his flesh was chalky and dry, the rims of his eyes red. Joseph and Lawrence stood nearby talking in the hushed tones people use around a deathbed. Neil had disappeared again. Hugh and John were gone as well. Paula huddled as far from the sick man as she could get and still remain within the enclosure. The atmosphere of optimism brought on by their unexpected meal had evaporated.
"Where's LeFleur?" Anna demanded as she stooped and pushed under the jury-rigged shelters. There was nothing the crew boss could do but it annoyed her that he'd jumped ship.
"He and Hugh went up on the ridge to radio Base," Joseph said.
Anna glanced at her watch. The badger incident had chased the call from her mind. Aggravation grew along with the absurd notion that calling Base, calling Frederick Stanton, was her exclusive domain.
"Makes sense," she said, and knelt near Black Elk. "Hey, Howard, how're you doing?" Picking up his wrist, she held her fingers over his radial pulse and watched the seconds flit by on her digital watch: one hundred and twenty beats per minute and thready.
"I'm good," Howard said. "I breathe better when I sit up some."
Lindstrom knelt at the man's other side. "I laid him down after he lost his lunch," he told Anna.
"Don't like badger?" Anna laid the back of her hand against Howard's neck.
"Guess not."
Black Elk's breathing was shallow and rapid, his skin cool to the touch.
"Joseph, get me the yellow packs," Anna said. He brought them from where they'd been cached at the far end of the boulder and Anna and Stephen stuffed them beneath the injured man till they'd made a pad that propped him in a semi-sitting position. No longer able to hide his pain, Howard moaned when they moved him.
The bandages on his arms and hands were damp. Anna pinched up the skin on the back of his arm where the flesh was intact. It remained tented for several seconds after she released pressure. He was losing too much fluid.
"Better, big fella?" Stephen asked when they'd settled him.
Howard nodded.
"I've always wanted somebody to call me that," Anna said. Howard smiled for her but it cost him.
"Where's my radio?" he asked. "If I had my radio I could listen for you guys. There might be something."
His mind was wandering and Anna felt a clammy tickle of fear. "It's right here, Howard." She took the radio off her belt and put it on his chest. He cradled it with his ruined arms and seemed comforted.
"I can listen," he said. "You never know."
Anna rocked back on her heels and looked around. Their helmets were of plastic. "Somebody had those old-fashioned metal hard hats," she said aloud. "Where are they?"
"John wears one," Jennifer volunteered, and: "Here it is." The other belonged to Black Elk. They found it half buried in the sand next to him. "Get me some embers," Anna told Joseph. "Fill both these hard hats. I want one at his feet and one close up. We need to keep him warm.
"Paula?"
Paula Boggins looked up through a tangle of filthy hair. Anna had paid little attention to the girl once her superficial burns had been dressed and warm clothes found for her. When a whimper or a word did catch Anna's attention, she had written Boggins off as weak but in no danger. Seeing the dark blue eyes through the haze of hair, Anna noticed something else. Much as she hated the overused term "survivor," she knew one when she saw one. She'd seen eyes like Paula's in old photographs from World War II, and on the six o'clock news. She'd seen them when she'd pulled injured climbers off rock faces. The eyes of the people who made it. They crawled, fought, ate their fellows; they did whatever they had to and they lived.
"Paula, could you do me a favor?" Anna asked with sudden respect.
The girl responded to the unaccustomed tone with a slight straightening of her shoulders. "What?" she asked warily.
"Howard's burns are weeping. He's losing heat and fluid. I'm going to get some snow melted and keep it warm. Could you help him drink a little every few minutes or so?"
Paula looked behind her as if there might be someone else Anna was addressing. "Sure," she said.
By the time Joseph came back with the coals, the water was warmed and Paula had curled up next to the big firefighter with something resembling concern registered on her dirty face.
"Ember mines are getting few and far between," Joseph said as Anna placed the hard hats close enough to warm Howard but not so close they'd burn and banked sand around them to hold them steady.
"Where'd Lawrence take off to?" Lindstrom asked.
"He went to get Anna's radio back from Barney," Joseph said neutrally.
"Jesus," Anna growled. "I'd better go run interference."
She followed the now well-beaten trail up toward the ridge. Fog lay over everything, damp and disheartening. Raw air sawed at her throat as her breath came faster. The temperature hung around thirty degrees, not fluctuating with day or night. White rime was beginning to form on the black carcasses of the trees. Cold soaked through the sweat to chill Anna's skin and she found herself lost in a fantasy of a hot bath and a glass of hearty burgundy.
For a long moment she wished she hadn't sworn off alcohol. It didn't seem fair to feel guilt simply for wanting something when there was no chance in hell of getting it. And she did want it: the bath, the booze. Every cell in her body set up a vibration of yearning that brought saliva to her mouth.
Needing a distraction, she took the same medicine she'd prescribed for Jennifer: murder.
With the exception of Black Elk, any one of them could have killed Len. To push a sharp blade between the ribs of an unsuspecting man didn't require a great deal of strength.
The firestorm had descended in fury and left in a pall of suffocating smoke. Anna remembered seeing several people when she first stumbled into the wash but with everyone dressed alike, masked with bandannas and seen through veils of blowing smoke and ash, she couldn't say who was who. Or where. Or when.
The number of suspects could be significantly reduced by the simple expedient of finding out who was actually seen getting into or out of their shelter. It was possible lies would be told but Anna doubted it. The San Juans got along well enough for the most part, but they weren't close-knit—not enough to lie for one another. Disparate ages, jobs, agencies, backgrounds kept them from forming the esprit de corps often found in hot shots, the elite initial attack crews who trained and worked together for the entire season.
Howard, Joseph and Lawrence seemed to have formed the fastest friendship but even that struck Anna as more a friendship of convenience than a real kinship of like souls. She doubted it would lead to an exchange of Christmas cards.
Neil Page and Paula Boggins had something going but Anna had no idea what. Page treated Boggins with a contempt that smacked more of familiarity than dislike. Paula didn't show an overabundance of respect on her part either but she put up with Page as if she was used to him. Since he'd hired her, Anna assumed they knew each other from before, their affiliation mutually gratifying on some level.
They might lie for each other, Anna thought, and wondered why. Just a gut reaction, she decided. Page oozed sleaze and back in spike camp, Paula had come across as... Anna stopped walking and tried to find the right words while she caught her breath. They came to her in the cutting voice of Patience Bittner, a sophisticated hosteler she'd known on Isle Royale. Paula had come across as "low rent, blue collar, waitressy." Never mind that Anna had delivered her share of hamburgers and worked with her hands. The description fit if taken in the truly mean-spirited sense it was meant.
Who would Lindstrom lie for? Maybe Jennifer; they had the dead Joshua in common.
Sounds of a struggle brought Anna out of her reverie and she broke into a run. Just below the ridge she blundered into a shoving match. Lawrence Gonzales had the Motorola radio in his hand and was fending off an enraged Hugh Pepperdine with it.
"Give it up, Barney," he was shouting.
Pepperdine, his face engorged with blood, flecks of spittle at the corners of his mouth, was grabbing at the smaller man in weighty but so far ineffectual lunges. His breath came in steaming gasps and he wasn't wasting any on words.
"Break it up!" John LeFleur ran down from the ridge. "Break it up!" he yelled again.
Gonzales heard and in the moment of his distraction, Hugh Pepperdine plowed into him. Both men went down.
Anna and John reached them at the same time and began pulling. Pepperdine's unpracticed fists were pummeling Gonzales's face and upper body. Lawrence wasn't fighting back but trying to protect himself from the blows with his forearms. "Get the son of a bitch off me," he yelled.
"Come on, Hugh. Let it go. Come on." Anna caught hold of one of Pepperdine's arms and tried to lever him off Gonzales. Hugh was out of shape and an inexperienced fighter but he was a big boy and she couldn't budge him.
"Break it up," LeFleur hollered a third time, grabbing Pepperdine by the collar and attempting to drag him backward.
A loose elbow clipped Anna on the chin. Her teeth cracked shut and light sparked behind her eyes. Letting go of Pepper-dine, she retreated a few yards, deciding the better part of valor was to let the two idiots kill each other if they were so inclined.
Lawrence continued in a defensive posture but Anna got the feeling of a coiled snake. Barney'd better not push his luck, she thought, as she rubbed the ache from her jaw and checked to see if any teeth had been loosened.
"I'm gonna kill him, John," Gonzales grunted. "Get him off me." LeFleur jerked on Pepperdine's shoulder but Hugh was beyond reason. Anna doubted he could even hear them. He'd gone into one of those berserker rages seldom seen off the playground. Had he been any good at dealing destruction, Lawrence, forty pounds lighter and several inches shorter, would have been a bloody pulp. This was probably the first fight Hugh had been in since third grade; hence the schoolyard tactics.
Recovered, Anna pulled herself together to give LeFleur a hand. Hugh, astride Gonzales now, pulled back a fist. Just as she caught it in both hers, Anna saw Lawrence's face change. Grimacing stopped, talk stopped, a cold professional look calmed even his dark eyes. In a move as quick and precise as a snake striking, two fingers shot out, hitting Pepperdine in the throat.
Hugh's eyes bulged, horror locked his lips back. Breath stopped with a wet choking sob. His hand jerked free of Anna's fists not to strike at Lawrence but to claw at his own throat as if he could pull out the dent in his pharynx.
Fumbling at his collar, Pepperdine collapsed sideways.
Gonzales scrambled to his feet. "Holy Mary Mother of God," he muttered. "Is he going to be okay?"
"You tell me," LeFleur growled. "Anna?"
She crawled over next to Hugh. "Take it easy," she told him in a voice intentionally laden with calm. "You're okay." She wondered if he was or if the blow had broken the cricoid cartilage. "Just lay back, breathe through your nose. Atta boy."
