Track of the Cat (11 page)

"Wait!" Gideon stopped, looked back over his shoulder. "That doesn't work. Anybody in the park would have known I was on lion transect down Middle McKittrick on the seventeenth. In Guadalupe's eighty thousand acres it would be any thinking villain's last choice as a place to hide the body." Unless someone wanted the body found; wanted her to find it on a lion transect. That was where people assume the lions were. In reality, lion transects were simply places chosen to look for lion sign to find out, often, where the lions were not. If someone wanted the body to be found and wanted it to be found on a lion transect it followed that they wanted it to appear that a lion had done the killing.

Which meant the lion scratches, the strange tracks, were not a coincidence made after the fact by an opportunistic cougar. They had been put there for her to find.

Anna pulled the death scene into her mind. The paw prints-could they have been made by plaster casts or rubber, like children used to make paw prints in the Touch and See Museums? If so, they were the finest casts she'd ever seen. But it was not beyond the realm of possibility.

And the scratches and bites? Could they have been dug into Ranger Drury's flesh with something other than a feline claw? Knife? Ice pick? Fondue skewer?

Gideon, showing sudden energy, trotted down the dry bank of the creek that cut through Pine Canyon. Already, half a mile away from Guadalupe Peak, they could hear shouting. For the moment, Anna shelved the subject of murder. She clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Come on, Gideon, let's go find us some Pentecostals."

People of all ages were swarming up Guadalupe Peak. Overweight men, women and girls in dresses, nobody in hiking boots, very few carrying food, many carrying no water at all or a quart to be shared by a family of four when every man, woman, and child would need at least a half gallon to make it comfortably-and safely-the ten miles and 3,000 feet to the top of the mountain and back.

"Half gallon," Anna said time and again. Time and again a smiling face nodded, a hand held up a pittance of water. "We have plenty, sister, praise the Lord."

The opiate of the people was fueling the righteous.

By noon, after she had given nearly all her water away to feverish-looking children dragged along in the religious fervor, Anna found herself hoping for an Old Testament God to visit the peak with one of His famous scourges: a lightning storm that would blast the rock clean of cloying humanity.

Near three o'clock, as she led Gideon down the trail, a thirteen-year-old girl with a sprained ankle rigid in the saddle, as pale as if she rode on the back of Lucifer himself, Anna gave the last of her water to a red-faced woman, obviously pregnant and obviously over-heated.

"Praise the Lord," the girl said.

"Go down," Anna returned. "Forget the peak. Remember that baby. Turn around now. Go down."

"If we suffer, we'll offer it up. Christ suffered on the cross for us,"

her husband said. He looked to be all of nineteen or twenty.

Anna stood for a moment, Gideon nuzzling her hand where it held the halter rope, and marveled at the beatific stupidity that radiated from the two flushed faces.

"There's no safe way for you to get past this horse," Anna said finally.

"He's got a thing about anybody crowding him on the trail. Turn around and go down."

"Honey..." The girl laid a hand on her husband's arm. Anna could tell she was glad their pilgrimage was to be cut short.

The boy looked up from his wife's face.

"No way," Anna lied. "Hooves like sledgehammers. Scares me even to think about it."

"Next year," the boy promised.

"Next year," Anna repeated.

With a truly beautiful smile, he handed her back the empty water bottle.

"Thank you for the water, sister."

"You're welcome," Anna said mechanically. She was suddenly transfixed by the squared, white, one-quart, government-issue water bottle in its canvas holster. They were ubiquitous at GUMO: in fire packs, pickups, on saddles, on belts, car seats. But not in Sheila Drury's backpack. It wasn't the missing camera that had set off the alarms in Anna's head. It was the simple fact Sheila had been carrying no water.

In June, in the desert, no one, least of all an experienced hiker, carried a heavy pack eight miles without water. It couldn't be done. Not in June. Not with the heat and the wind. Anna had drunk three-quarters of a gallon that day.

Sheila had not been lured down Middle McKittrick. She had been forced. Or carried. Probably on short notice. The pack was just a prop-like a stage prop-to make it look as though she'd gone on her own.

"Holy smoke!" Anna breathed.

"What's wrong? What's happening?" the girl squeaked from Gideon's back and Anna was sorry she had frightened her.

"Nothing, Mary. You're okay. I just remembered something I need to do."

Anna turned and smiled reassuringly. "Another twenty minutes and we'll be down. Hang in there."

"That's an interesting theory, Anna," Paul was saying. Anna had delivered the girl into the hands of her church group leader, and given Gideon four carrots and a quarter-cup of horse vitamins he was particularly fond of.

Now she sat in Paul's cool cluttered office in the old Frijole ranch house. "For the sake of argument, let's say you're right on all counts.

Who do you think forced Sheila to hike up out of Dog Canyon and down Middle McKittrick?"

It had been on the tip of Anna's tongue to tell him: Karl. Karl wanted the Dog Canyon District Ranger position, he resented Sheila for getting it. He had the strength. He knew the park better than anyone. But Paul was looking at her shrewdly. Not unlike a psychiatrist testing the waters to see just exactly what kind of crazy the patient was. Under that gentle, blue gaze she said only: "In a closed area, without water, strange paw prints, no saw grass cuts. I think we should get our hands on the autopsy report ASAP."

"The FBI-" Paul began.

"Fuck the FBI!" Anna snapped. "They've no idea what lions do or don't do.

Unless there are bags of cocaine on the corpse they don't give a damn."

Paul said nothing.

"Sorry," Anna said. She almost meant it.

"I know you're wound up over this thing, Anna. It's not going to get any better. You may as well know some of the ranchers are lobbying for the right to hunt lions in certain areas of the park that border their lands."

Anna didn't know what it was she was going to say but Paul stopped the words with an upraised hand before they gusted out of her.

"I don't think that's going to happen, Anna. It's just talk by a few people. There's no precedent for it in this park. Corinne and I have talked it over and we're of the opinion it will all blow over. These things usually do.

"Much as I admire your concern, I don't think your pursuing this is going to help, Anna. I think you might even end up doing more harm than good."

Anna waited a moment, trying to let her anger pass. It didn't. It backed up in her throat till it felt like her chest was going to explode.

"Did Corinne decide that?" she asked finally.

"We both did, Anna. This time, I think Corinne's right."

"What if-"

"What if," Paul cut her off, his famous patience finally exhausted, "I get you the autopsy report. If it says lion kill, no poisons, no signs of other violence, then you let go of this thing and get back to the business of being a park ranger?" The phone rang and he snatched it up.

"Frijole," he barked.

Anna guessed she was dismissed. Determined not to look contrite, she slid out of her chair and left the room, back straight.

Small triumph, she thought as she stopped outside under the pecan trees, listened to the soothing chatter of a spring that had whispered the incomprehensible secrets of the desert for a thousand years. She was becoming a thorn in Paul Decker's side. A boil on his neck. A pain in his butt. Not a good way to beef up one's year-end evaluation.

A gopher, pushing two fistfuls of soil, poked his little brown head out of a new-made hole among the roots of a pecan. "Hi guy," Anna greeted him. With a look of alarm, the little face vanished. "Et tu," she muttered.

From the barn came the sounds of metal on metal. Karl pitchforking manure into the wheelbarrow.

Why not? Anna thought. I've already alienated everyone else. May as well go for broke.

Karl had an audience. Pesky and Gideon looked on adoringly as the big man mucked out their shelter. Pesky kept nudging Karl's behind. Anna supposed he sometimes carried sugar or carrots in his hip pockets for the animals.

The mules were not so easily won. They stood back by the manger, wary of Pesky's hooves, waiting for some serious food.

Under his breath, Karl was whistling, "We'll be quiet as a mouse and build a lovely little house for Wendy," from Peter Pan.

Anna watched for half a minute. She figured she'd like Karl even if he did kill a ranger every now and again. "Gideon's hoof is looking a little better," she said for openers.

"You been putting hoof-flex on it," Karl returned. "That's good. Nobody else bothers."

"You bother," Anna replied.

"It's no bother," Karl said.

Anna couldn't help but wonder what Karl's mind looked like inside. She pictured an attic full of well-used, well-cared-for toys where the sun always streamed in through gabled windows.

"I thought you'd be off today."

"Tomorrow and Saturday."

Anna knew Karl's lieu days but she'd wanted to hear him say it. Sheila had died on a Friday night thirteen days before. "What're you going to do on your days off?"

"Nothing," Karl said. "Maybe I'll go to town. Go to the show."

"Not much playing. I went weekend before last. Saw the new Schwarzenegger film. Did you see that?" Anna was fishing. Karl looked up from his manure. There was no telling whether she'd gotten a nibble or not. Maybe he was alarmed or wary or annoyed or maybe just thinking in his effortful way.

"Weekend before last I went home to Van Horn," he said. Van Horn was a little town an hour south on Highway 54. "My mom wanted me to lift things down from the shelf in the garage. She's got a garage." Karl started to whistle again, lifting the handles of the full wheelbarrow easily and wheeling it toward the gate.

Pesky butted his head against Anna, rubbing the flies from his face.

Absently, she scratched his forehead with her knuckles.

ALIBIS.

They came right after CLUES.

9

TIME to have another "beer" with Christina Walters. Anna fervently hoped she had spent all that deadly Friday with at least seven nuns who never slept. Or, better yet, in jail.

Rubberbands clamped in her teeth, she rebraided her hair. "Stalling?" she asked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. "Or primping?" For the fourteenth time she glanced at the clock: 6:17. When did one drop in on a mother-and-child? When did four-year-olds eat supper? Anna didn't feel up to interrogating Christina while her little girl looked on, round-eyed, over her bowl of SpaghettiOs. Not that Christina seemed a SpaghettiOs type of mother.

Not like me, Anna thought. Christina would be a four-major-food-groups kind of mother.

6:21.

Anna combed the braids out with her fingers, left her hair loose and crimped. Annoyed at herself for caring, she purposely-or spitefully-pulled on ragged jeans and a faded sweatshirt Rogelio had salvaged from some good-will box in El Paso because it had Mickey Mouse on it. Still and all, she was wearing perfume-"Heartsong" from the Tucson Coop-and she carried a nice Pinot Noir she'd been saving.

Christina and Alison lived in one of the two-bedroom-with-garage houses sprinkled down the curving roadway from where the seasonals, Anna, and two bachelor maintenance men were housed. Housing was always at a premium in the parks and usually sub-standard. Anna was lucky: she didn't much care. The Walters lived in what Anna referred to as the "real" houses: houses with washers and dryers and telephones and televisions and families.

The unmistakable racket of plastic wheels on pavement let Anna know supper was either over or not yet called. Alison was riding her pink tricycle in tight circles on the smooth cement pad in front of the garage.

"Hi," Anna said. "Is your mother home?"

It was a stupid question. Alison probably knew it but, being a well-brought-up child, chose to overlook it. "Momma's in the back," she announced. "I'm not to go on the black."

Anna stared a second before she realized what Alison meant. She was not to ride her tricycle off the white cement slab onto the black asphalt and into the road and traffic. Hence the tight circles. "Good idea," Anna said and: "The backyard?"

Alison nodded, starting up her trike again with burring engine noise blown out through pursed lips.

Christina, wearing white painter's overalls and a pale yellow tank top, knelt near the chainlink fence weeding a flower bed rich with the colors of marigolds and snapdragons.

"Exotics," Anna said, "take a lot of water to maintain in the desert."

"Good evening," Christina returned, mocking Anna gently. "Did you just drop by to abuse me?" As she stood, she smiled and held open the gate.

"More or less," Anna replied truthfully. "But I brought an anesthetic."

Christina nodded appreciatively as she read the label on the wine bottle.

"I like reds better than whites. Even in summer I like the warmth."

Anna laughed for the sheer pleasure of hearing one of her pet thoughts voiced by someone else.

"It'll be better aged an hour or so." Christina set the wine just inside the porch door. "Ally and I were going to come by and abduct you this evening. We need your expert advice.

"Honey? Ready to go?" she called, shooing Anna out the garden gate as the tricycle clattered down the walk beside the house to meet them. In mild but not unpleasant confusion, Anna waited as Christina supervised the putting away of the trike.

"Do you want to tell Ranger Pigeon where we're going?" Christina asked as the three of them walked out the drive and turned up past the seasonal housing.

"Anna," Anna said.

Alison bounded away ahead of them, then walked backward several yards in front. "Dottie's neighbor's cat had kittens. Momma said I could have one and that you knew how to pick the best one because you had an orange cat."