"That's natural enough," Anna said, remembering her sister's lectures when she'd turned angry at her husband, Zach, after he'd died. Abandonment was as universal a fear as fear of falling. Fear had a way of turning inward. In women it usually manifested itself as depression, in men, anger.
"Nah. Not like that," Harry said dismissively. "I'm no shrink but this felt different. There was an element of spite in it. Like old Lester might kick his wife's corpse a good one if he thought nobody was looking."
"Rory intimated his folks were not experiencing unremitting wedded bliss, but he declined to elaborate," Anna said.
"Les didn't say anything outright against the missus and, like I said, he managed a few tears. What set me off was the way he was ordering up the cremation of the corpse. Sort of slam-bang and take that."
"Do you think he killed he?"
"He's got no alibi, of course. Things happen in the wee hours, and unless you sleep with somebody, you're not going to have anybody to vouch for your whereabouts. He's got some real mixed feelings about her being dead, that's for sure. But no, I don't think he killed her. If he did he'd be playing the grief card a little harder. And he'd probably want to get the hell out of here, post haste."
"Unless there was something here that needed doing," Anna said slowly. "Maybe something Carolyn stood in the way of."
They mulled that over for a time but came up with nothing. What could an old man and a boy want in the Glacier wilderness? There was ho gold, no silver, no oil or natural gas, no buried Aztec treasure that anybody knew of. Glacier lilies had been dug up and spirited away but they were worthless, financially speaking.
Thinking of the lilies, Anna told Harry of Geoffrey Mickleson-Nicholson. Harry wrote down the name.
"No way to trace him without numbers," he said. "Social security, driver's license, date of birth-but I'll see if anybody with those names filed a backcountry permit."
"I don't know if he's even old enough to have a driver's license," Anna said. "But while you're at it, check for a Bill or William McCaskil. He was camped at Fifty Mountain when the Van Slykes were. He lied about how well he knew Carolyn."
Ruick wrote "McCaskil, William" on his legal pad. "What else?" he asked.
Anna couldn't think of anything.
Ruick stared out the window, tapping his pen absentmindedly, top then tip, like a tiny baton.
The clock on his desk said it was quarter till five. The day had slipped away. Indoors, cooped up with people, Anna had missed it. Afternoon light, strong and colorless, the sun high with summer, striped the parking lot with the shadows of the surrounding pines. A fantasy of a hammock and a good book teased up in Anna's brain. Unthinkingly, she yawned, her jaw cracking at maximum distention.
Harry looked at her and laughed. "Tomorrow is soon enough. I expect we've all earned an early night."
Chapter 10
The sound of claws came in the night. At first Anna thought she was camped in the high country and fought the claustrophobic blindness of an enclosed tent. Slowly it came to her that she was fighting the covers on the bed in Joan's guest room. The window to the left of the bed was open, only a thin screen between her and the out-of-doors.
Panic opened Anna's eyes and, by the faint light of the few street lamps that polluted the night in the housing area, she saw a great shaggy hulk. As she watched, it blanked the light, took it like a black hole, then perforated it with the shine of ragged teeth.
Open-mouthed, she couldn't scream. Not a sound came out. Her arms and legs lay heavy as deadwood on the mattress. The teeth slipped through the screen, a faint tearing noise, then a paw, clattering claws so long they struck the sill, came through the wire. Still Anna was paralyzed, a poison, a weight in her limbs.
With a tremendous effort she fought to move. The resulting jerk woke her, freed her from the nightmare. For half a minute she lay in the bed reassuring herself that now, really, this time, she was awake, not merely dreaming she was, safe from the black quicksand of her subconscious.
Then the sound of claws was repeated and the nightmare began again. This time Anna could move. Quick as a cat she was out of the bed, mother-naked, back against the wall beside the window. Her heart pounded and she felt half crazy but she knew she'd heard it: scratching.
Joan had inherited the house with curtains. She must have. Anna could not believe a member of the female gender would purposely choose those that hung to either side of the window.
Snaking her hand between the oversized geometricpatterned drapes and the wall, Anna eased the curtain out far enough to afford her an oblique view of the screen. Time passed, measured by the beat of her heart: a minute, two, maybe three. Nightmare cleared from her eyes and she noted the faint silver sheen of distant light reflecting off the fine mesh, the darker shadow from the overhanging eve. Across the street at an angle, she could see the garageof one house and the front entrance of another. All was still. No monsters.
Adrenaline subsided. Cold sank into her bare skin, worse where buttocks and shoulder blades touched the plaster of the wall, but she did not return to bed. Waiting was an art form. Seldom had she gone wrong with waiting, watching another minute. Another five minutes.
Scratch. Scratch. A claw, a single claw, the sere black forefinger of a crone, crept up from beneath the sill and raked at the screen.
Soundlessly, Anna backed away from the curtain. Crossing the bedroom in three strides, she snatched up shorts and shirt. In the hall she pulled them on. Her boots were by the front door near her day pack. She stepped into them and jerked the laces tight.
Joan lived like a pacifist. The only weapon that presented itself in the shadow-filled living room was a three-legged footstool beside the Barcalounger where Anna'd left her day pack. She tipped it clear of the remote control and a Reader's Digestand hefted it in her right hand. Heavy hardwood, well made; it would suffice.
Moving quickly, she let herself out the kitchen door at the back of the house and ran quietly around the garage, her boots nearly soundless on the lush summer grass. Bobbing like a duck for a June bug, she peeked around the corner then ducked back.
A shape was crouched beneath her bedroom window.
Given the real and imagined beasts that had haunted her nights, she forgot for a moment who took honors for the most dangerous species, and was comforted by its human contours.
Whoever scratched at her screen had his back to her. Carrying the stool up against her shoulder, ready for defensive or offensive use, Anna stepped from behind the corner of the garage and moved slowly across the concrete driveway.
Scratch. The crone's finger was a stick the croucher pushed up to scrape the wires. The croucher wore a dark coat but his pale hair caught the light. Anna moved up close behind him. Fear at bay, she was rather enjoying the game.
Leaning down, mouth near the intruder's ear, she whispered, "Rory, what are you doing?" The result was most satisfying. Rory Van Slyke clamped both hands over his mouth. His twig went flying and he collapsed in a heap, his back against the wall of the house, his eyes huge above his hands.
The only thing missing was noise. Rory had not made a sound. Not a squeak or a grunt. Somewhere along the line he'd learned not to cry out. Anna wondered why.
She swung down the stool she'd been brandishing and sat on it. "What are you doing?" she repeated, this time in a normal voice.
"Shh," Rory hushed her. "I was trying to get your attention," he whispered.
"Why didn't you knock on the door?" Anna whispered hack. Library rules: it's hard to speak normally when one's conversational partner is whispering.