Pride mixed with exhaustion in Burwell's voice as he told her two and a half miles of road had been cleared of deadfall. Anna was impressed. She'd cut and swamped enough timber to know in their efforts to reach the San Juans they had managed something close to a miracle. Girding up the loins, she culled every bit of weariness and disappointment from her voice and heaped on the well-deserved praise.
"God willing and the river don't rise, we'll get to you sometime late tomorrow," Burwell promised.
"We'll be here with bells on." Anna's radio was indulging in the staccato static of a dying battery. John's was in no better shape and the one Howard used for a security blanket was dead as the proverbial doornail. "My radio's going," she said. "Anything else?" She knew she sounded abrupt and she knew Bur-well wouldn't hold it against her.
"Yes. I'll make it quick. You've got a message from Frederick Stanton."
Anna's heart lurched like a girl with her first valentine. "Shoot," she said evenly.
Burwell related the findings of the arson investigation. When he'd finished, Anna said: "I'm going to save what juice I can. I won't call unless something comes up. Are you okay with that?"
"I guess I'll have to be," Burwell said, and: "Hang in there."
In its wake, the conversation left a silence so deep Anna's ears rang with it. Seldom in wilderness did one experience dead quiet.
Life in all its minute rustlings, pipings and exhalations created a cushion of sound as comforting as the murmuring of a brook. Dead quiet was reserved for abandoned buildings, alleys, vacant lots. Without light, total absence of sound was disorienting. Time and space became as relative as the physicists always insisted they were.
For a second Anna felt as if she were falling and her finger twitched near the headlamp's power switch. Then the soaking cold and a nagging ache in the small of her back reassured her she was still in the world. Rescued by life's ubiquitous slings and arrows, she left the headlamp dark.
This suffocating night lacked the comforting touches of many backcounty nights she'd enjoyed but Anna knew there was safety in its squid-ink cloaking. No one could find her, not without giving their own location away. After being spied on by Pepperdine, her natural wariness had blossomed into healthy paranoia. Hugh was a tenderfoot, an oaf, yet she'd not heard him tracking her to the hot-springs lake. Somebody with more guts and experience could have killed her at any time.
If Burwell was correct in his estimate, within twenty-four hours rescue would reach them; rescue with all its modern technology and color of law. Anna'd been nosing around, asking questions. No one knew how much or how little she knew, how much or how little she'd shared with Frederick Stanton. She couldn't avoid the possibility that whoever had killed Nims and possibly Jennifer's brother wouldn't want her to be among those carried off the mountain.
Joshua Short murdered. Anna thought about that awhile. The news had come as a shock. Usually she was quick to suspect accidental deaths but the Jackknife had proved such an indiscriminate adversary she'd accepted that first life taken as had everyone else. Nature was a killer that had always been with mankind. Her choices went unquestioned, acts of God.
Josh's murder cast a new light on Nims's death without illuminating anything. The murders could be unrelated. Of those with no alibi for the time of Nims's death—John, Jennifer and Joseph—Anna could think of no one who would want Joshua Short dead. Clearly not Jennifer. She'd loved her brother. Besides, she and Anna worked together at Mesa Verde; Anna knew Jen had been nowhere near California at the time Joshua had died. Joseph and John she couldn't vouch for but she had no reason to believe either one of them had even been acquainted with Josh.
Joseph Hayhurst was an activist, if not for the environment, then for the rights of Native Americans to preserve their cultural heritage. It was not inconceivable Josh and Joseph's paths had crossed before. The information Frederick had unearthed about Hayhurst fighting the oil leases provided a motive for Nims's murder. Much as she didn't like it, so far Joseph was the only one who filled all three requirements for a self-respecting murderer: means, motive and opportunity.
Light marred the soupy darkness on the far side of the ridge and Anna tensed. The yellowing beam of a headlamp moved across the snow.
"Anna!"
The shout came in Joseph Hayhurst's voice. Speak of the devil, Anna thought, considering whether or not to answer. The loneliness of the place was suddenly threatening.
"Anna, where are you?" The beam poked here and there, a dirty finger trying to scrape her from hiding.
"By the truck," she said, and flashed her light once. Joseph might be a murderer but at least, this way, Anna would know where he was during the long walk back to camp.
Footsteps crunched over the snow as she got to her feet, reassured herself she still carried Howard's Buck knife and could get to it easily if she had to.
"Got your radio off?" Joseph asked as his headlamp picked a path to her.
"Battery," Anna said.
"John's is almost dead." He was beside her now and Anna rocked on the balls of her feet, waiting to see what came next.
"The crowds got to me. All of us packed in like sardines, that shelter's beginning to smell like a locker room. John sent me up the hill to see what Base had to say."
Anna couldn't see his face but his voice was relaxed, conversational. Her defenses dropped a notch, the clutch in her belly loosened.
"Good news. Tomorrow—late but still tomorrow—they should get to us. They cleared over two miles of road today."
"It could be better," Joseph said. "We could be sitting in front of a fireplace somewhere entertaining our friends with tales of our harrowing adventure, but I'll take it. This has been a long couple of days."
For a minute neither of them spoke. Fatigue was pooling in Anna's joints, filling her lungs like poison.
Joseph laughed suddenly and it scared her. "What?" she demanded.
"Everybody is flipping out," he said. "Neil's reliving his glory days in high school football, Lawrence is waxing erotic over his mother's enchiladas, and John's ready to kill for a cigarette."
And Paula was ready to kill for a roll of toilet paper. A hot bath might motivate Anna to murder, if not today then tomorrow. People said they'd kill for one thing or another all the time. Mostly it was just a figure of speech but now and then a child was beaten to death for his sneakers, a baby smothered because it cried, a man killed for an empty wallet.
Society maintained the illusion that human life was of great value but more often than not it was taken cheap; a matter of convenience or whim. Len or Josh could have been killed for toilet paper or cigarettes. Digging for deeper reasons and complex motives was a sign of respect for one's fellow man, elevating even a murderer to a plane where life was too precious to snuff out casually.
Suddenly it took all of Anna's strength just to keep on standing. She must have sighed or, worse, whimpered, because Joseph said: "Worn out?"
"Plumb tuckered. You?" she asked, to return the favor. If he said anything but yes she wouldn't believe him.
"Fresh as a daisy. Shall we head down?"
Anna slipped the elastic band of her headlamp around her forehead where it was designed to be worn so her hands would be free. "You go first. My lamp's burned out," she lied. She didn't relish the idea of him walking behind her. He led off and she followed at a discreet distance. She was so tired she was stumbling. Christmas Eve, she thought. They only had to hold things together one more day then Santa was coming with the cavalry.
When they'd passed the heli-spot, gotten close enough to camp Anna calculated if she screamed she'd be heard, she brought up the subject of murder. Or of oil leases. In her mind and possibly Joseph's the two were linked.
Under better circumstances, with plenty of food and rest shoring her up, Anna might have found the energy to employ a little tact. As it was she chose the Bigger Hammer method of investigation.
"The FBI agent down at Incident Base ran a background check on you," she said bluntly. "You were working with the Navajo nation to stop the BLM from granting an oil lease near the Bisti. There're just a handful of us up here. Pretty nearly everybody's got an alibi but you. Once Forensics gets up here it won't take long to sort out who killed Nims." That was not precisely true but Anna thought it sounded convincing. "If you did it to stop that lease, tell me now. I can't promise anything but I'll tell the district attorney what a swell guy you are. It might make the difference between life without parole and life with at least a shot at an early out." She'd said her piece in one breath and found herself faint and shaken at the end of it. She needed food.
Joseph stopped and turned, shining the light in her eyes. Anna sidestepped the beam but she'd already been blinded. "Get the light off me," she barked.
"Sorry." He moved the lamp to the ground at her feet.
"All the way off," Anna said. He clicked it off. The darkness was so absolute even without being night-blind Joseph had thrown away his advantage.
The Buck knife was in Anna's pocket. She eased it from its sheath and let her arm fall to her side.
"You're asking if I killed Mr. Nims?"
Disembodied, Joseph's voice had a sinister ring though there was nothing in his tone to warrant it. That was the problem: there was nothing in his tone, not incredulity, outrage, curiosity, malice, shock, amusement. He spoke almost in a monotone. Because it gave nothing away, it made Anna nervous.
Her hand strayed toward her headlamp but she didn't switch it on. Light would be of little value and it would pinpoint her whereabouts. One step at a time, she eased carefully back up the trail. On the packed snow her boots made little noise. "Leonard Nims was the one who would say yea or nay to the lease application," she said to cover any sound she made.
"No," Joseph replied. "Nims was the one who would say yes to the lease." Color returned to his voice, bitterness from the sound of it.
"It was a done deal?" Anna asked. Frederick had assured her it was pending. She was fishing for a lie. Lies, when one knew they were lies, could reveal more than the truth.
"In a sense," he replied. "Len was taking bribes from the oil and gas companies. In return he marked the Environmental Impact Statements 'No Significant Impact,' letting them drill wherever they wanted to."
Anna waited for the rest of the story but Joseph had done talking. Silence stretched, thickened. Anna's nerves stretched, grew thin. Finally she could stand it no longer. She reached up and turned on her headlamp and screamed.
Joseph Hayhurst had moved soundlessly up the trail and stood less than two feet from her.
"Old Indian trick," he said. "I learned it in Boy Scouts."
Anna stepped back and pulled the radio from her belt. "John, come up toward the heli-spot. Now."
"John's radio's off. Saving batteries, remember?"
Anna remembered. She was hoping he hadn't. "Okay," she said reasonably. "We're alone, no radio contact, I'm accusing you of murder and you're sneaking around scaring the pants off me. Before I start screaming my head off just to get some company up here, do you want to level with me?"
"Isn't this where they say 'I'm not talking without my lawyer'?"
"No. They say that in warm comfortable interrogation rooms." Anna began walking backward, careful not to trip. "I'm putting distance between us. It's all I've got—"
"Besides Howard's knife."
"—besides Howard's knife. Respect it please. I'm too tired and this is all too creepy for you to play any more games with me."
"No more games," Joseph said. "Someone could get hurt. Maybe even me." He smiled his Mona Lisa smile.
Anna didn't smile back. She was remembering his quickness and his strength. She kept her light trained on his face. He stood perfectly still and made no attempt to dodge the glare. Apparently he'd grasped the fact that her fear made her dangerous despite the fact that he was younger and stronger than she.
"If Len was taking kickbacks, why didn't you report him?"
Joseph laughed without humor. "You don't think the BLM had figured it out? Why do you think Nims got bumped out of his last job? Kickbacks for timber leases. The government had no proof and, if you ask me, no white-hot desire to find any. Scandal, don't you know. A lot of career bureaucrats might look the fool, land on the wrong side of the party line. Our guess was they intended to handle the oil lease problem in the tried and true method. John might wonder why they were so anxious to promote Len into that fire management slot but I don't. They want him out of temptation's way."
"You knifed him to stop the lease," Anna said.
"Au contraire. I wish Len was alive and well. True, the lease will be on hold briefly, but then a new cog will be put in the machinery and we'll have to start all over. Find out if he can be bought and by whom, if he's ambitious, if he has any sense of responsibility toward the land. By the time that's untangled some antsy supervisor will have knuckled under to the considerable public pressure to okay the lease and the drills will roll in.
