Rory was nothing if not pragmatic about homicide.
"A few?" Anna pressed.
"Carolyn was a divorce lawyer," Rory said.
"Oh. Right. Anybody specific?"
"Maybe her ex-sister-in-law. Barbara something. She hated Mom."
"Mom" and "Carolyn" were running neck and neck. Some unresolved conflicts there. Anna dearly wished Molly were at hand. Rory's world was definitely psychiatrist country.
"I guess somebody could have followed her here." Rory sounded hopeful, and why not? He wasn't stupid. He'd know they'd be looking hard at both himself and his dad. Television had done a thorough job of destroying naivete and replacing it, often as not, with misinformation.
"Could be," Anna said, but didn't believe it. Too intricate. Too much trouble. Rory was right, a crosswalk in a city would be a lot more likely.
Anna changed direction. "Tell me what she was like."
Rory flashed her a look of alarm that Anna didn't understand, then settled into a careful recitation of facts: height, weight, color of hair, occupation, educational background. Not the usual stuff a kid would choose to describe what a deceased parent was like. Anna didn't think he'd misunderstood the question. He was avoiding it.
"How'd she get on with your dad?" Rory's face hardened slightly. "You'd have to ask him."
Anna let that lie between them for a while. Then she said, "So. You going to tell me where you got that water bottle?"
A blank look from Rory did more to convince her he'd not snatched it from the dying hands of his stepmother than a mountain of protestations would have done. The look cleared as memory returned. The transition was too natural and held too many shades of awakening to be feigned. "The one I had when you guys found me after the bear tore up our camp?"
"That very one. Where'd you get it?"
"I don't know," Rory said.
As improbable as that was, Anna found herself inclined to believe him. "Where'd you get it?" she repeated anyway.
"I can't tell you." He was beginning to sound desperate.
"Try."
"I didn't have it I don't think-no, I know I didn't because I got thirsty-real thirsty-by the time the rain started."
Anna thought back. That would have been just after sunup when she and Joan were gathering their wits and what was left of their bear-ravaged camp.
"So you were thirsty," she prompted.
"I was hot. I'd been running," he admitted. "I'd taken off my shirt. I lay down for a minute. The rain woke me up and the sweatshirt was gone and the water bottle was just there. After a while I guess I got to thinking I must have brought it from camp, but I didn't. Not really."
Anna could understand that. The brain's job was to make sense of the world. When the world refused to fall into line, the brain was perfectly capable of rearranging memories until at least the appearance of order was restored.
"Let me get this straight," Anna said. "While you were napping in the woods at dawn, lost to friends and family, someone or something stole your dirty sweatshirt and left you a bottle of much-needed water in its place. And all this without waking you up, asking if you were alive or dead."
"That's it," Rory said, the stiff neck returning. "My sweatshirt wasn't all that dirty."
"A kind of good fairy or guardian angel?" Anna asked, just to see if anger would shake anything more loose from the boy.
Rory stared at the table, his lips pressed shut, undoubtedly to keep language unsuited for adults in authority shut behind his teeth. Danger past, he unlocked his jaws. "Maybe it was exactly that. A guardian angel. I needed water pretty bad, and all that day and the next I never came across any. Maybe I'd've died without that happening."
Anna'd learned not to argue with magic. In her years of law enforcement, whenever a wizard had been pointed out she'd always been able to find the little man behind the curtain pulling levers. She suspected there'd be a mortal with feet of clay behind Rory's miracles as well. Maybe Rory's own size tens.
"I must have had two water bottles with me," Rory said suddenly, clearly pleased with the idea. "And I brought one out of the tent with me. I just don't remember doing it."
Anna's eyes narrowed. "You just said an angel gave it to you."
"Yeah. Well. That's stupid. I must've had it with me before." Rory's voice turned sullen and mulish. "I took it with me when I left camp. I'd just forgot. There was the bear and all and I didn't feel so hot."
Anna decided to let the matter go. For now.
She turned off the tape recorder, dragged out a map and for the next twenty minutes nudged, badgered and cajoled Rory into approximating as closely as he could his journey during his thirty-six-hour hiatus. Every attempt ended the same. Rory knew where he'd started and he knew where he'd ended up. The hours and miles in between were a kaleidoscope turning timelessly through forest and scrub and burn. When it became evident he could not or would not be more specific, Anna backed off. If he wouldn't tell her, there was no way to force him. If he really couldn't tell her and she kept pushing, eventually he'd make something up to get her off his back.
Convinced she'd gotten all she was going to at this juncture, she declared the interview at an end. Back in Harry's office she and Rory rejoined the chief ranger and Lester Van Slyke. A brief consultation convinced Anna and Ruick that an interview with Van Slyke, father and son, would not be a productive use of time. There'd been ample opportunity to watch the two of them interact when emotions were raw. By now defenses would be in place. They were excused with proper words of thanks and Anna was alone with Harry.
Civilization diminished him. In the backcountry with a life and death situation to put his back into, he'd appeared younger and stronger than he did behind his desk, awards and diplomas arrayed around him.
Anna caught a glimpse of herself reflected in his window. She was no great shakes either. Her short hair had more gray in it than she remembered noticing in the mirror and her age was beginning to tell its ever lengthening story in the marks under her eyes and in the softening at her jawline.
"For the family of the dearly departed these boys are behaving in a decidedly strange manner," Ruick said. "Les is still determined to go on with his damned camping trip and he said Rory's still dead-set on finishing up the DNA project."
"Rory talked to him?"
"Called him last night at the hotel."
Not having spent much time with Rory, Harry wouldn't know how peculiar that was. Maybe the death of Mrs. Van Slyke was bringing father and son together.
"No sense letting a little thing like murder spoil your vacation plans," Ruick said cynically.
The Van Slykes' decision to remain in Glacier had its upside from a law enforcement point of view. Though they might have their suspicions, there was no evidence on which to hold Les or his son. In park crimes, there was always the added difficulty of perpetrators and witnesses dispersing to faraway places before the investigation could be completed.
"What do they mean us to do with the body?" Anna asked. "Leave it at the morgue in Flathead County till it's time to go home?"
"Sort of. Les has that all worked out. Soon as the autopsy's done he wants it cremated locally. He'll pick up the ashes after his camping trip."
"No funeral, memorial service, nothing?"
"Apparently not. He seemed to be genuinely grieving for his wife. He teared up a few times, if that means anything. More than that, though, he seemed angry at her."