by Nevada Barr
An ugly man, tubular and tight and pointy-headed, the seasonal began waving the minute they appeared on the trail. Both hands waved a welcome ratified by an accompanying shout. Given this gay greeting Anna began to think things weren't as bad as they had feared.
Then they got close enough so that she could see him clearly. It wasn't welcome that animated his tin-woodsman form but relief. He trotted up the trail babbling about times and distances and rockfalls, only half of which they could understand. Ignoring Anna and Joan, he stopped in front of the chief ranger. Though he hadn't run more than twenty feet, he was panting, his long face with its tight little features had a grayish cast and he was sweating profusely. Anna could smell the unmistakable reek of vomit boiling off him with his body heat.
"Take it easy . . . Vic." Ruick read the man's name off the brass plate over his left front pocket. Harry Ruick had reached that rarified stratum of management where the names of the little people ran together.
The chief ranger might not know his seasonals' names, but he knew his job. Keeping his voice light and confident, he said, "Anybody going to die in the next five minutes?"
"No," Vic admitted, "but—"
"Then let's slow down. I don't know about these two," he jerked his chin at Anna and Joan, "but I need to catch my breath." The trail where Vic met them ran along the northern edge of the burn. To the south, sinking into an oblivion of inky darkness with the going of the sun, was charred land, burnt spikes of trees snagging the skyline. Tiring of its grim aspect, Anna looked north to where the mountain fell away in green and stone, tumbling steeply into the canyon cut by Kootnai Creek. In mist and blue velvet the Rockies rushed like water frozen in time across the Waterton Valley toward Canada. For the first time she had the sense she was on top of a mountain. Fragments of the rainstorm had settled beneath Flattop, clouds clinging to the sides of the far mountains. Sun-touched tops were pink, bottoms gray, leaching night up from the canyons.
Transfixed by this glimpse of paradise, she found herself standing alone. Harry had led Vic to a log, where he sat between the chief ranger and Joan, seeming to take comfort from the authority of the one and the mere presence of the other. Anna had nothing to offer so she remained where she was, acutely aware that the pleasure she took in this asymmetry of perfection would soon be blotted out by whatever nasty sorrow humans had brought upon themselves with their meddling.
That in Rory's case she was one of the prime meddlers was not lost upon her. She would feel no guilt at the boy's death, but she would not escape a heavy sense of wrongness, of not having fit seamlessly enough into the fabric of nature.
Ruick got up and came to where she stood. "Vic's going to stay here with Joan. We won't be doing much tonight. He's pretty shook. You come with me."
The bear team had marked where they were to leave West Flattop Trail with orange surveyor's tape. According to the two scraps of tape, the path led down a scree-and-alder-choked side of a ravine cut through the rock of the mountain's flank. Anna hoped Harry didn't want her to come with him too far. She'd managed to trick her tired body into moving along at a respectable clip, but if she had to climb the hill she was now skidding down for any great distance, she was going to begin to show a definite strain. If Harry wanted her to carry any dead weight, she would be in trouble.
"The boys found a body." Ruick talked as they went, sliding and clinging to spiny alders, his words flashing back with the whip of released branches. "From what Vic says, it's torn up bad. Face pretty much gone."
People live behind their faces. When rescuers had to deal with victims whose faces had been destroyed, it was immeasurably harder than dealing with severed or mangled limbs. Unfair as it was, facial mutilation turned the victim into a monster of the most unsettling kind: one to be feared and pitied at the same time.
Anna was glad Joan had been left behind to look after the seasonal ranger. Unless she was a whole lot harder than Anna took her for, she'd superimpose her son Luke under the mangled features and give herself nightmares for a year. Another terrific reason for not having children: it was so disturbing when animals ate them.
"Have you located Rory's folks yet?" Anna asked, her mind running along parental lines.
"This is not our boy."
They slid further into the night. Into dense brush, the kind favored by predators. Anna's mind closed itself off so she would not think of the roars that had ripped them from the false sense of civilization they had enjoyed the night before. She concentrated on keeping her footing and keeping the tangle of low-growing branches from raking the flesh from her face.
"Bear! Hey, bear!" jerked Anna out of survival mode. A jolt of fear so strong she twitched with it brought her to a stop.
"It's us, Gary," the chief ranger called.
"Thank God," came an answering voice.
"Thank God," Anna echoed.
Moments later they broke through the brush into a clearing no bigger than a living room rug. Like a character in a horror movie, Gary Bradley stood over a body, his flashlight held in front of him.
The last of the light had retreated to the west. Anna fumbled her own flashlight from her pack and for a moment the three of them blinded each other, needing to reassure themselves that the faces ringed around the corpse were more or less human.
Gary was pale under the beard, his lips bloodless in the harsh light of the flash. At the sight of Harry Ruick, Anna could see the young man re-gathering his wits. Being alone in the creeping dusk with nothing for company but a dead body and whatever killed it would unnerve anyone. Bradley was glad not to be alone and gladder still to be able to hand over the reins of leadership.
"We were covering West Flattop," he said. "Vic saw what looked to be drag marks going off the trail up there where he met you. We followed them down and found this. Her."
Anna was standing back five or six feet from the crumpled form at Bradley's feet, waiting for instructions. Ruick squatted down and she moved slightly, training her flashlight on the body to give him more light to see by.
The dead woman was lying on her side, knees drawn up as if she slept. Her right arm was thrown up, obscuring her face. Blond hair, shoulder-length, permed and dyed, frothed out from under a red-billed cap with the Coca-Cola logo on it. She wore an oversized man's army jacket. Her legs were bare between the bottom of flared rayon skirt-like shorts and the tops of her hiking boots. Anna didn't see much blood. What there was would have soaked into the ground.
Ruick settled into deep calm, his manner deliberate, his words measured. Anna had seen it a hundred times, done it herself at least that many, still she found comfort in it. Things were under control. Help had arrived.
Harry felt for a carotid.
"We checked first thing," Gary said. "She'd been dead awhile, I'd guess. She was sort of cold. But that might have been the rain."
"Any ID?"
"None that we could find."
Ruick handed Anna his flashlight and she trained it along with hers on the corpse as he carefully turned it over.
As the body rolled onto its back, Gary looked away. He'd seen what was there and made the choice not to see it again. Anna looked from the seasonal ranger back to the body then wished she'd followed his lead, traded the sight of the woman's face for the scrap of sky Gary studied.
"We just kind of started to roll her—you know, see if she was—then figured we'd better leave well enough alone. Bear'd been feeding on her," Gary explained disjointedly, eyes still fixed on a place only the gods call home.
His words pattered meaninglessly. Anna and Harry were locked in their own horror show. Half of the woman's face was gone. From just above her left eyebrow down to her jaw was a red ragged mass. Cheekbone and teeth were exposed, bone and enamel crusted brown with dried blood. The eyeball was still in its socket, staring in cloudy malevolence, the flesh around it eaten away.
Eaten. Anna pushed closer, knelt beside Harry and shined both lights on the carnage. "Look at the edges of the wound. Here and here." She po
inted to the cut on the forehead and the vertical slash that had taken out half the woman's nose. "Not eaten. This was done with a knife, a razor, an axe, something like that."
Ruick stayed where he was, squatting on his heels, till Anna's knees began to ache. Dutifully she held her post, keeping the lights steady.
"I'd rather it had been a bear," Ruick said at last. "I'd whole hell of a lot rather it had been a bear."
"A person killed her?" Gary said, and for the first time Anna heard outrage in his voice. A sentiment she shared. Working with wild animals one might never lose the sense of tragedy a deadly encounter brought down on both species, but it was a tragedy untainted by evil. Or at least that's how Anna had felt before the bizarre sense that had pervaded her the night before, the feeling the beast was not merely wild but somehow intentionally malicious. People killing people was a different story. Always there was evil. Sometimes it was several times removed, as when soldiers fought to the death for someone else's ideals. But it was always there.
"Looks that way," Harry said. "Did you check the rest of the body?"
"No, sir, just the face." Clearly that had been enough for Gary.
Ruick rocked back on his heels. In the spill of light from the flashlights, he studied first Gary then Anna and made a decision.
"Anna, hand Gary the lights and help me with this. Gary, keep us lit here. I don't suppose anybody's got a tape recorder? Pen and paper?" Anna did have that in the form of the small yellow pocket notebook with the ten standard firefighting orders printed on the inside cover. While Ruick rooted around in his pack, she and the seasonal waited, wishing they had more to do, some positive action to take. Having found what he sought, a 35-mm camera, Harry clicked off half a dozen pictures. The flash burned the photos into Anna's brain as they did into the film. Scene recorded, Ruick began his work on the dead woman.
Gary held the lights as best he could while keeping his eyes off the ruin of the corpse's face. Anna took notes. Ruick opened the army jacket. The dead woman was built along apple-on-a-stick lines. The bulk of her weight was carried between pubic bone and collar bone: big breasts, thick waist, meaty hips ending abruptly in skinny and shapely legs. There wasn't much to write about. Except for the butchered face, she appeared unharmed. Internal injuries would be determined by the autopsy. Trauma to the face suggested enough force to snap the neck, but there was surprisingly little blood; none of the flowing spillage one might expect had the cuts occurred while the heart was still beating. The carving had been done after the woman was dead.
Harry's check of the body was cursory. No defensive cuts on hands or arms. Nothing apparent under the nails. Given the lack of light it was impossible to ascertain much in the way of detail. The woman had no identification on her. The pockets of the army coat produced unused rolls of film, a three-by-five card, much battered, with measurements written on it, lip balm, three pennies and a topographical map of the park. The pockets of the victim's shorts were empty.
Ruick finished the search, then lacking anything with which to cover her, he rolled the body back on its side and the ruination of her face was lost in shadow. He and Anna reclaimed their flashlights and the three of them did a perfunctory search of the tiny clearing, using only light and eyes for fear extraneous movement would further contaminate a crime scene that had already been severely compromised.
"No pack," Anna said.
"No water bottle anywhere," Gary added.
"Film suggests she was carrying a camera. Could be the pack was stolen. Could be it just got left off if she was chased or killed someplace else," Ruick said.
He got on the radio and set the machinery in motion for the body recovery. With the weather clearing, a helicopter would be able to come at first light to airlift it out of the park.
While he talked, Anna was shutting down. Night, too much hiking, scrabbling and thinking, too little sleep, too little food: her brain was blanking. Though she moved the light around in a desultory fashion she knew she wasn't seeing what was there. Gary and the chief ranger were in slightly better shape. Their sleep had not been ravaged by a psychotic bear. Still, she doubted any of the three of them would be good for much till morning.
Finally Ruick put his radio away. For a long minute no one said anything. Anna knew she had fallen into a dangerous state. She was abdicating, turning over not only the problem of the dead woman but her own well-being to the solid, reassuring Harry Ruick. Snap out of it, she ordered herself and scrubbed her skull with her knuckles to wake up the gray matter. Abdicating in the backcountry was commonplace. It was also a coward's way and a fool's. Nobody could guarantee another's safety in the wilderness.
Brain nominally in gear, she said, "We carry her out?"
"Can't see how to avoid it," Ruick replied. "Can't leave her here. We're between a rock and a hard place. We carry her out and trash what might remain of the crime scene or we leave her here and the scavengers do the job for us. They may anyway. The smell of blood is bound to attract some."
There was nothing in which to wrap the corpse. To facilitate carrying, they removed her arms from the sleeves of her jacket, zipped them inside and tied the sleeves over her chest. Anna secured her feet by the simple expedient of tying her bootlaces together.
Harry Ruick took the head, Gary Bradley the feet. Anna had the awkward but not difficult task of lighting their way back up the mountainside. The body had been located less than a hundred yards down from the trail and they traversed the distance in a grunting quarter of an hour.
During their absence Joan had not been idle. The other members of the team had convened on West Flattop Trail. It had been too late and too dark to return to Anna and Joan's camp for their personal things, but three tents had been brought up from where the bear team cached their own gear. Camp was being set up a quarter of a mile off trail where park visitors would not see it and so have their wilderness experience infringed upon. Joan herself waited on the log where they'd left her with Vic to lead them to the new camp.
Though they'd known each other little more than five days, Anna was inordinately glad to see her. Leaving the men to struggle on with their burden across the flat and level meadow that presaged the burn, Anna walked ahead with Joan.
"So it was a woman," Joan said.
Anna heard the threadbare weariness in her voice and knew she was probably running on nerve; muscle and bone were exhausted. Joan Rand was in fairly good shape, but she carried an extra twenty pounds. Most of that, Anna guessed, was heart. Joan was carrying the pain, Anna only the work and a few ounces of the horror. Either she'd been born heartless or over the years had grown inured to the tragedies of others.
"A woman," she confirmed.
"Do we know who she was?"
"Not yet."
As if admitting a failing on her part, Joan said, "You know, I was so glad it wasn't Rory I didn't even bother to ask Vic who she was."
Rory Van Slyke. Anna hadn't given him a moment's consideration since the chief ranger had said of the corpse, "This is not our boy." If Rory's trail had been picked up by the backcountry ranger or the other members of the team, they would have heard. He was still out there lost or hurt or dead.
"At least we know our bear—presuming this was done by the same bear—has moved on," Joan said. "If it had taken Rory, cached him, it would have made a nest nearby and stayed there to feed." The logic of bear behavior was cheering her considerably. Anna was about to put an end to that. It wasn't that she was in a foul mood herself and so wanted to spread the wretchedness around. It was that she respected Joan enough to know she'd want to know the facts and liked her enough to guess she'd rather be told under cover of darkness by another woman than back in camp under the glare of Coleman lanterns and men's eyes.
"This lady wasn't killed by our bear or any bear. She was hacked up by an edged weapon. A human being killed her. Or something with opposable thumbs masquerading as a human being."
Ahead was the camp. Lanterns had been set up, and four men and one woma
n bustled purposefully about. Three tents had been pitched and Anna heard the familiar hiss of a gas stove. Environmentalist that she was, it would still have given her hope and courage had there been a great roaring fire to welcome them, warm their bones and keep the monsters of the dark away. In this group of conservationists, she wouldn't dare to so much as voice her primitive longings.
"This is it," Joan said, stopping. Ruick and Bradley carried the corpse past them into camp like hunters returning with the day's kill.
"Did you hear me?" Anna asked when Joan didn't fall into step behind them.
"I did," Joan answered quietly. "I just couldn't think of anything to say."
They stayed a moment in silence on the edge of the circle of light carved out of the night.
"Hot drinks?" Anna said finally.
"Hot drinks," Joan agreed.
Between Anna and Harry they had thirty-one years of law enforcement in America's national parks, yet the body of the murder victim created a dilemma neither of them had faced before. Because of Glacier's active grizzly bear population the remains were not only evidence but meat, carrion. Trails in the park were routinely closed by the bear management team if a dead deer or elk was found on or near them. A carcass attracted bears. What they'd so laboriously carried out of the ravine might be a corpse tomorrow in a morgue. Tonight it was a carcass, just beginning to get ripe and alluring.
Faced with a problem pertaining to Ursus horribilis, Joan regained her equilibrium and took charge. The body was wrapped in plastic garbage bags—not because it would keep the smell from the keen noses of any bears in the neighborhood but to shield the delicate sensibilities of the humans—and hung up in a tree thirty yards from camp along with the other edibles.
That more than anything seemed to bring a bleakness of mood over everyone. Though several people made a weak joke or two and nobody stared at the ghoulish tree decoration outright, Anna was sure everyone was as acutely aware as she that it was hanging there, high in the branches, just beyond the reach of light, like a Windigo in the north woods.