by Nevada Barr
She drove the mile to the Visitors Center and, with Manny's help, went back through the backcountry permits issued for July 2, the night before she fell; June 17, the night Drury was killed; and July 16, the night Craig died.
Both Sheila and Craig had been found miles from any of the designated camping areas in the park and there had been no special permits issued. It was unlikely the killer would fill out a permit for any area that was not regularly patrolled- the odds of getting caught would not outweigh the exposure of getting a permit. July 2 had a possible: an E. Wheelan driving a white Toyota with California plates had been permitted to camp at the McKittrick Ridge campground.
Anna would talk with the Walters. She no longer believed Christina would kill-at least not her. But if she knew something about the accidents, Anna wasn't sure whether she would have the courage to report it. Especially if she were afraid of the perpetrator.
Erik Walters's Toyota was burgundy with black upholstery. The plate number didn't match that of E. Wheelan. Otherwise Christina's ex-husband was, to Anna's mind, everything a murderer should be. He was suave and self-assured. He dressed too well for his surroundings. His teeth were too white, too straight. Cat hair didn't adhere to his trousers and the wind didn't ruffle his hair. He looked the type able to strangle his CEO at the eleventh hole and still come in under par.
Christina, though clearly uncomfortable around him, fetched and carried, hovered and scraped like a Total Woman. Anna picked at the dinner she'd invited herself over to eat and wondered what she would ask Mr. Walters when she got the chance. Wilderness murder didn't seem to fit with his ultra-urban demeanor. Neither did profitless murder. Revenge wouldn't go to the bank. And why Craig? Trying to fit Erik into the picture created more questions than answers.
Anna looked at him over the candles Christina had lit. Glossy head bowed, he was listening attentively to a long plotless story Alison had been relating for several minutes. Christina, her face drawn up like a spaniel hoping for approval, appeared to be suspended two inches above the seat of her chair, ready to spring up to do her master's bidding.
Sit! Anna wanted to order in her best Woodward School voice. But she kept silent. She would ask Erik about Christina, she decided. She would hit every nerve she could. He'd been dumped, left with his "weak specimen" in his hand, while his wife ran off with another woman. Anna was betting, given the chance, poison would leak through that polished facade like manure through the tines of a pitchfork.
Nine o'clock: an hour past Alison's bedtime. Finally Christina left the table to tuck her daughter in. Alison's pajamas were laid out on Christina's bed. Erik's one suitcase was in the child's room. All of the dolls, moved to the dresser, stared glassy-eyed at the bed the intruder had deprived them of. Anna knew this because she'd checked on her way to the bathroom before dinner. The arrangement suited her. Did it suit Erik?
"Chrissy tells me you're a ranger," Erik said in his pleasant educated voice.
"Law Enforcement," Anna said, unsure of what she was trying to prove. The "Chrissy" had irritated her.
"Is your husband a ranger as well?"
"I'm a widow," Anna said.
"I'm sorry."
Some repressed emotion had shown in his light-colored eyes just before he lowered them to his coffee cup. Disappointment? Anna wondered if he were fishing, hoping to catch some whiff of indiscretion, something he could use to drag Christina into another custody battle.
"What brings you to this part of the country?" she asked.
"Business. Brown and Coldwell has a prospective client in El Paso-Gunnison Oil. And I wanted to see my little girl."
"Do you have any other children?" Anna was pleased to see his mouth harden at the corners.
"I plan to," he said a little too determinedly.
"I know adoption is all the rage," Anna said. "But I think I'd want my own. I'd want to see myself, my mother, my dad-reflections, anyway. These days with drugs and AIDS and whatever, if it wasn't really yours, you'd never know." She laughed. It was genuine. She was enjoying herself. "You know what they say: if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself."
"Do you have children?" The question was abrupt, aggressive. Erik was beginning to twitch under her lash.
"No," Anna replied. She let his look of self-satisfaction settle for a couple seconds. Then she added. "I wish I did now Zach is gone. He wanted to wait. We were so broke. Both times I got pregnant-well, abortion seemed the right choice at the time."
"Abortion!"
Anna had him. "We used birth control but…" She allowed herself a small secret-sad smile. "Zach was exceedingly virile… Anyway, I doubt I'll have kids now. But maybe I'll be an honorary aunt. I know Christina plans to have another child." Anna sipped her coffee, hoping she hadn't laid it on too thick. Maybe he'd clam up, leave the room or something.
"That'd be a shame," he said quietly after nearly a minute had elapsed.
Anna waited, egging him on with silence.
"Criminals ought to be sterilized," he said with sudden vehemence. "Thieves and perverts breed thieves and perverts."
Perverts held no interest for Anna. It was clear to her which of the two had perverted love to their own ends and it wasn't Christina. "Thieves?"
Erik laughed. "I see Chrissy didn't tell you. Good old Mommy is a crook. She wrote nearly ten thousand dollars in bad checks signed in my name. That phony Madonna-and-Child act she does so well is all that kept her out of jail. Linda-" he made the name sound like an adjective describing something vile. "Linda, it seems, required recompense for her services."
Christina walked into the ensuing silence. The apologetic half-smile that she wore constantly in Erik's company flickered unsteadily at the hostility in the room.
"Is the coffee okay, Erik?" she asked anxiously.
"It's fine, Chrissy," he said. His tone implied: "for the best effort of a fool."
Christina took his cup away.
Anna wished Chris had written a hundred thousand dollars worth of bad checks.
"Ally asked if you would read her a bedtime story," Christina said while she busied herself at the sink. "Could you?"
Without a word, Erik got up and walked into the dark hallway toward the bedrooms.
There was a sharp crack, the sound of broken glass falling. Christina had smashed his coffee cup against the side of the stainless-steel sink.
"Walk me home?" Anna said.
Clouds obscured the stars to the west and lightning flickered formlessly, too distant to be more than a vague and sudden glow. Christina sucked air noisily into her lungs. "God! Erik seems to take up all the oxygen in a room, doesn't he?"
"I can see why you left him. He sucks the life out of you."
"I suppose he told you about the checks?" Christina said.
It saddened Anna to hear herself addressed in the same anxious apologetic tone Christina used with Erik. "He told me."
"He did try to get Ally on the lesbian angle, too. I just left out the forgery part. I didn't mean to lie to you."
"I know," Anna replied. "It was easier."
As they approached Anna's door both women slowed. Neither had much reason to go home and the night was warm, the stars deep overhead. In common unspoken agreement they sat side by side on the curb fifteen feet from Anna's apartment.
"What happened to Zach?" Christina asked. Then quickly added: "You needn't tell me, if you don't want to."
"I don't mind," Anna said. "We were having a special supper, celebrating the fact that it was Thursday and there were no other holidays declared to infringe on ours. Zach was broiling steak on a little hibachi out on the fire escape. I wanted A-l sauce. He was sprinting across Ninth Avenue to Goodman's to get it. A cab hit him. The cabby drove off. Nobody got the license number. Zach died. That's about it."
Christina was quiet for a while but she shifted closer and Anna felt comforted by the warmth of her shoulder in the darkness. "Such a sad thing," she said. "Is that why you are a vegetarian?"
"No. Maybe it's why I drink."
"A little wine is good for the soul."
"A lot is better."
18
AT ten past nine in the morning Pacific Daylight time, Anna called the California DMV. They reaffirmed what she'd already guessed: E. Wheelan was legitimate; an Ernest Wheelan from San Anselmo, California. She then called Brown and Coldwell in San Francisco. Dianne, Mr. Walters's secretary, was glad to check a date for a Gunnison Oil secretary. No, no trouble. She'd loused up a few times in her career. Secretaries had to stick together. No need for the boss to know every little glitch.
Mr. Walters had been in a board meeting from three p.m. till nearly eight on July 2. Yes, she was certain. She'd been kept running the whole time fetching coffee and sandwiches and Xerox copies, then had to take the bus home at eight-thirty at night because Brown and Coldwell wouldn't spring for cab fare.
Anna hung up, leaned her head on her hands and stared out the dirty attic window of the Frijole ranger station. The attic was hot and fly-specked but it housed the only phone in the park where one could be relatively assured of privacy. The escarpment showed nearly white in the early sun, evergreens at the top fine and black as a fringe of silk. Anna found it difficult to believe there was more than one murderer stalking the backcountry of Guadalupe Mountains National Park. If that were true, then alibis for the time of her or Craig's attacks would imply innocence in the Drury lion kill. Unless one of the "accidents" were really an accident. Unlikely but far from impossible.
For the moment she would put Erik and Christina into the "Innocent" category. She looked down at her list.
Karl Johnson was next.
In front of her on the desk was a yellow slip of paper: the phone message Marta had pressed on her when she'd first returned from Mexico. Anna had forgotten it. Then at five p.m. the previous evening, when she'd finally gotten around to doing her laundry, she'd found it crushed in the pocket of her Levis. It was from Tim Dayton at the Roswell lab where she had sent the samples from Karl's truck. The note said only that he called and to call back. Nothing urgent.
She dialed the number. Tim was in. From the faint swallowing sounds that came through the wire as she waited, Anna guessed the man who answered had laid the receiver down by a Bunsen burner with something boiling on it. She preferred it to Muzak.
After several minutes, Tim came on the line.
"Thanks for the blood test," Anna said. "Your assistant told me the samples were animal blood."
"Yes," Tim replied. He was older than Anna but, to his eternal annoyance, he sounded like a little kid over the phone. "Tessie said. Since you didn't call back, I figured it was no big deal, but I wanted to check with you before I threw out that hypo you sent-the one with the ketimine."
"Ketimine?"
"Yeah. It's pretty common. Vets use it to anesthetize animals. It puts them under more safely than the depressants they used to use."
Anna knew Roads and Trails sometimes sedated a problem animal so the Resource Management team could relocate it. It seemed odd that the stuff was in Karl's truck, but no one had been anesthetized. Not yet, anyhow. "Thanks, Tim. Go ahead and toss it."
"Sure you don't want it back?" His voice took on a teasing edge. "Used on people, the stuff is one hell of a hallucinogen. One more time for auld lang syne?"
"LSD!" Anna exclaimed, remembering Drury's autopsy. "My God."
"Not exactly, but it'll get you there."
"Tim, hang on to it a while for me, would you?"
"Sure."
"How about the dirt I sent?" This time Anna was leaving no loose ends, no unchecked facts.
"Looked like dirt to me," Dayton replied.
Anna thanked him, promised a sordid recital of all the facts one day soon over a six-pack, and hung up. She drove home, made herself a pot of coffee, settled Piedmont across her knees, and went through her calendar, marking the days Karl's vehicle was seen in McKittrick after the canyon was closed. Both were Fridays, Karl's day off. The truck had been there all night. Even Karl wouldn't dare camp in McKittrick Canyon. The area was closed to camping. If he were caught, he would be fired, asked to leave the Guadalupe Mountains. For Karl that would be tantamount to being exiled from the Garden of Eden.
According to the backcountry permits she'd gone over with Manny the day before, he hadn't camped on McKittrick Ridge or at the Permian Ridge campground either. When off duty, park employees had to obtain permits to use the backcountry just as visitors did. Again, Anna doubted Karl would risk his job to flout a simple rule then leave his truck in plain sight.
The only alternatives were hiking up North McKittrick Canyon or the Permian Reef Trail and camping beyond the park's boundary in the Lincoln National Forest. No permits were needed there. The Permian Reef Trail was more likely. North McKittrick was rough going and it was a long way before one reached good campsites.
Leaning back, Anna stroked Piedmont's melted form spread across her knees. There was no way she could follow Karl, undetected, up the Permian Reef trail. It was too exposed: four miles of switchbacks up a rocky mountainside. She looked back to the calendar. Today was Thursday. She would hike up and camp, wait for him up in the trees where there was cover.
After packing her gear, Anna drove to the Administration building. She told Christina what she intended and asked if she would drop her off at McKittrick Canyon on her lunch hour. Looking pleased that Anna trusted her with her plans, she said she would.
Anna stopped briefly at the McKittrick Visitors Center and checked the closing log. Karl's truck was logged in the canyon half a dozen times over the past few months, always on a Friday. By two-thirty Anna had hiked up the mountain. The top of the ridge bridged McKittrick Canyon to the west and Big Canyon to the east. Big Canyon was over the line in the Lincoln. A trail joined the two tracts of public land, crossing through a revolving gate in the boundary fence separating them. A couple miles of forested land blanketed the ridge where it flattened out between the two canyons. It was a part of the relict forest that made the high country in Guadalupe so magical. Sotol and yucca held the desert's place on the edges of the escarpment.
If Karl followed his pattern he would hike up Friday. Still, Anna ate Thursday's supper at the edge of the reef where she could look down two thousand feet to the Visitors Center. Through binoculars, she watched the last visitors straggling out of the canyon, the cars drive away, then, just after six, the white one-ton pickup drive in. A tiny figure, probably Manny, checked the doors and windows of the building then got back into the truck and drove away. The canyon had been put to bed.
Anna watched the sun set and the stars come out, the half moon rise. Near ten-thirty she unrolled her sleeping bag in the hollow trough of the trail and slept. Around midnight a deer, confused but not alarmed by this obstacle, woke her with questioning snorts and irritated scufflings. Otherwise the night was restful. Morning put her back on the cliff's edge, binoculars in one hand, a mug of tea in the other, watching the miles of trail zigzagging below.
At nine-thirty a blue truck pulled into the parking lot. A man that could only be Karl Johnson-even at a distance he looked big-got out. He shouldered a red backpack and started up the trail toward the Permian Reef.
Anna put a bottle of water and her.357 on her belt, then stashed her pack deep in a rock crevice a good hundred feet off the trail. Satisfied it couldn't be seen, she continued her vigil.
It took Karl only ninety minutes to climb the four miles and two thousand feet. Following him would require more than stealth, it would take stamina. He was still below her on the exposed switchbacks. Soon she would need a new hiding place, one close to the trail where it ran through the trees on the ridgetop. From there she would fall into place behind him when he passed.
As soon as he disappeared from sight around the last bend in the trail before it leveled out in the trees on high ground, Anna left the edge of the escarpment.
Situated behind a dense stand of gray-leaf oak near a bend in the trail, she began aga
in to wait. By holding down a branch, she could see almost to where the trail broke through the boulders on the edge of the escarpment. A quarter of a mile of trail was hidden from view. Unless Karl took off crosscountry at that point, she would have him in sight again within minutes.
Scarcely had she finished her thought when he appeared. Even half a mile away, he looked enormous. The battered, lumpy face was set, the wiry ogre head held low. He charged up the trail like a bull. For the first time since she'd started this pursuit, Anna felt afraid. Intent on planning, on hiding, reality had been pushed from her mind: she was stalking a man she believed may have murdered two people and tried, most brutally, to murder her. Despite the revolver she felt unpleasantly small and fragile, wrists and neck breakable as toothpicks.
Karl's long legs, swinging like tree trunks, ate up the trail. Stones crunched under his heavy boots. Feeling exposed, she held her breath as he approached, looked down as if the force of her eyes upon him would bring his gaze up and she would be discovered.
Without any change in rhythm, the footfalls passed. Anna opened her eyes. This small success calmed her. So might a lion sit atop a boulder, unseen, and watch its prey go by. This was natural, not supernatural. Karl would not feel her eyes. If she kept her wits about her she would be okay.
Sacrificing time for silence, she worked out of the scrub oak, then ran lightly down the trail. Having chosen tennis shoes over hiking boots, she made very little noise. Glimpses of Karl's red pack showed through the trees when she got close or when the trail curved back on itself sharply.
Three-quarters of a mile from the boundary between the park and the Lincoln, the trail broke free of the forest and followed a stony spine through low-growing shrubs and succulents.