"Thing is the fire was contained, burning itself out. The crew the Glacier rangers were on was to be demobed. I expected them today or tomorrow at the latest. Yesterday, while I was on Flattop with the Van Slyke thing, Miranda blew up, jumped the lines and took in another eighty-five hundred acres." There was just a hint of self-condemnation in his tone that led Anna to suspect Ruick felt Miranda wouldn't have dared misbehave so grossly had his attention not been taken up elsewhere.
"Looks like they'll be out another week or ten days. The FBI hasn't got any interest in this murder-in-the-outback kind of thing when it's got no drugs or gun overtones. We'll keep it single jurisdiction. The long and short of it is, I'd like you to work with me on this. Sort of Girl Friday."
Girl Friday was a significant promotion from step-'n'-fetchit, but this time Anna was offended not by the word "girl," but the concept as a whole. She said nothing, giving him a slow count of ten in Spanish to save himself. She'd reached seiswhen he did.
Horror dawned as her silence brought home the inexcusably sexist remark he'd just made. A political and personal faux pasthat not only brought the blood burning to his face and neck but must have scared the bejesus out of him as well. In such opportunistic and paranoid times, a statement like that could get him dragged into court were it to fall into the wrong ears.
Anna waited for him to dig himself out. The hole was pretty deep. She rather looked forward to a circuitous round of creative half-excuses that, like air freshener, would alter but not eradicate the stink. She underestimated Harry.
He rubbed his face with both hands and for the first time she noticed how tired he looked. With his people gone to fight fire there was a good chance he'd been up late on a call-out chasing poachers or settling visitor disputes.
"Let me start with an apology. That comment surfaced from when I was a dinosaur and didn't know any better. That doesn't excuse it but-"
"Not a problem," Anna interrupted, sensing he'd merely been careless in his approach and was genuine in his remorse. Beside, there were those questions she wanted answered and it sounded like she was about to get carte blanche to ask them.
"I'm your girl," she said.
Ruick laughed. "Why do I doubt that?"
Chapter 9
The remainder of the morning was dedicated to working out the details. It had never seriously crossed the chief ranger's mind that Anna might say no. "No" was not a real option for district rangers. He'd called Anna's boss, John Brown, and made sure he was clear to borrow her. Should the murder investigation interfere with the DNA project, Anna's stay would be lengthened and she would enter into the next phase of paper-pushing instead of fieldwork and learn what she could.
Matters settled to his satisfaction, Harry filled Anna in on the plans of the relevant parties. After the autopsy was completed and Lester could attend to the business of disposing of his wife's body, he was hiking back into Fifty Mountain. Harry had argued against it. Les was frail, inexperienced and, one might assume, emotionally distraught. An ideal recipe for disaster. But legally he could not be stopped. Suicide was a crime, stupidity was not.
Rory would be allowed to continue working on the bear DNA project with Joan Rand. Anna was not pleased with this turn of events. Weak as the case might be, Rory was a murder suspect. Because she felt she'd be betraying a confidence, Anna didn't tell Harry of the Rory-Luke connection in Joan's mind, but she was afraid it would color the researcher's view of the boy. She would not be careful enough of Rory and would respond to him more as a surrogate son than a potentially dangerous man. Ruick listened respectfully to Anna's concerns but, as she couldn't come up with any concrete ideas to better run the show, he stuck to the status quo.
Nominally Anna would still be working with Joan. She would accompany her and Rory into the backcountry, but her first priority would be the murder of Carolyn Van Slyke.
"Today I want you to interview Rory. I'll take his dad," Harry said. "Something's not kosher with those two but damned if I can figure out what."
Both Van Slykes arrived shortly before three o'clock. Anna met them in the foyer, a plain, barely decorated area just inside the glass doors where the receptionist's desk sat. A much older looking Lester occupied the only chair. His son, hands thrust deeply in his pockets, stood before a black and white photo of the old headquarters building studying it as if its architecture was going to be on a test they were about to take.
Anna sent Les down the hall to the chief ranger's office. She took Rory to the conference room. Joan was gone and Anna missed her. She'd not consciously admitted that she wanted Joan there for the interview but she found she did.
"Mind if I tape this?" Anna asked and put a recorder on the table.
"Whatever."
Anna pushed the Record button.
"You want anything?" she asked as he slumped into Joan's vacated chair and began mindlessly spinning it in slow circles on its axis. "Coke or coffee or anything?"
"Nothing. I don't want anything."
Anna was relieved. She'd made the offer out of habit. She had no idea where these amenities were to be found in Glacier's headquarters. "Me neither," she said and sat down. For as long as a minute, an exceedingly long time for silence between two people not long acquainted, she watched him, waiting to see what he'd do, which way he'd break under pressure.
He stopped his spinning and occupied himself by staring out the window watching the maintenance vehicles going by the parking lot to the maintenance yard beyond. There was a stiffness to his neck and shoulders that suggested he could play this game till the metaphorical cows came home. Evidently, in his young life, he'd become accustomed to protecting his inner world from outside storms.
Anna let another thirty seconds crawl by to make sure. Looking at Rory, the deceptively fragile frame, the thick sandy hair, coarse and falling like hay across his unlined brow, the deep-set blue eyes, she didn't think he looked like a boy who'd kill his mom. But then what did a matricide look like? In the imagination they were sly, sinister, horned and hairy. In reality they were just people. Kids. Whatever was broken was deep inside, out of the public view. Children murdering their own parents was uncommon but by no means unheard of. Often it was the "good" boys who did it. With the possible exception of Lizzy Borden it was always boys, Anna noted. She could call to mind three incidents in the past two years. Sons murdering Mom and Dad. But never mutilating them.
"I'm real sorry about your stepmother," she said.
Reluctantly, Rory brought his gaze back into the room. It settled not on Anna, but on the table between them.
"Yeah… well… it happens."
Anna breathed out slowly. It happens? Jesus."How does it happen?" she asked neutrally.
"People die."
Anna could tell by histone he wasshooting for a matter-of-fact delivery. An underlying bitterness ruined the effect and she remembered his biological mother had died as well. This was a double trauma for Rory. The new coupled with the inevitable reliving of the old. Mentally, she readjusted. This upwelling of the severest of childhood wounds could account for any number of incongruent behaviors.
"Can't argue with that," she said and Rory's eyes met hers. In the blue depths she saw that spark kids get when adults surprise them by not being unutterably obtuse.
"Who'd want to kill your stepmother?" Anna made no attempt to soften the question.
If it jarred him, he didn't show it. His eyes strayed again to the parking lot, unseeing as he searched inside his skull for an answer. Anna thought she saw one briefly illuminate his eyes then fade. It appeared not to be so much rejected as hidden. Finally Rory said, "There's a few, but none of ' em here. I mean, who'd be here? Why not just run her over in a crosswalk at home in Seattle?"