The lab report had come back on the water bottle found in Rory's possession after his unplanned hike. The crime lab used by Glacier National Park was the Montana State Lab in Missoula.
It had been less than twenty-four hours since Harry had turned the thing over. Anna was impressed at the turnaround time. Harry Ruick obviously had clout.
The majority of the fingerprints on the bottle were Rory's, but four clear prints of thumb, index and middle finger had been lifted from the plastic. They belonged to Carolyn Van Slyke. To Anna's mind it was proof positive Rory had, if not killed his stepmother, at least been in close enough proximity to her the night he'd gone missing to obtain her water bottle. Though this was obvious enough to real people, Anna'd been around long enough to know it would mean little to a jury were Rory brought to trial. Any defense attorney would be able to argue that of course Mrs. Van Slyke's prints were on the bottle; she was Rory's mother. They could have been put there at any time before the boy'd taken the bottle camping with him. And could Anna swear, under oath, that he'd not had two bottles with him on the trip? No.
Had she not marked it when she took it into evidence, Anna would have had a tough time swearing that water bottle was thewater bottle he'd had when he'd been found and not the one he'd used prior to the bear attack. The bottles were identical.
Two other partial prints, belonging neither to Rory nor Carolyn Van Slyke, were also on the bottle. At a guess they belonged to Lester, but they could be from anyone to whom Carolyn had given a drink. The hikers that found Rory could have held it for him. Still they'd be run through the AFIS, the automatic fingerprint identification system, as a matter of course.
The next page ended Anna's waffling. Traces of blood had been found on the bottom of the water bottle. As of the date of this report, the lab was unsure whether there was enough for DNA testing.
The remainder of the pages were just inventory lists: contents of the pack they'd found wedged under the log and the belongings of the deceased. Anna started to put the borrowed pages away and noticed the inventory of Carolyn's belongings wasn't duplicated. There were two lists: items belonging to the deceased and items found on the body of the deceased. At first they appeared identical. Then Anna'd noted the "belongings" list was short one item.
"I see you've made yourself at home," Harry said acidly.
"Yeah." Anna was too absorbed to notice the intended reprimand. "So the army jacket Carolyn was wearing wasn't hers?"
Ruick shook his head disgustedly. Since Anna'd not been aware of his implied rebuke, she also missed its annoyed follow-up at her obtuseness and took the headshake as a negative about the jacket.
"Lester's?" she asked.
"Les doesn't know where she got it. Come on into my office. I'll let you in on any details you haven't already found on Maryanne's desk."
"Thanks," Anna said sincerely.
Ruick muttered something that sounded like "skin of a rhinoceros," but, accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of the brass, she politely pretended not to notice.
As it happened, there was no more to tell than she'd discovered through her snooping. No leads on to whom the jacket belonged or why Carolyn was wearing it. Les told Harry that his wife had a habit of appropriating anything belonging to nearby males for her own use and thinking nothing of it. Had she been cold when she'd left that night, she might have snagged some camper's coat off a tree or rock.
"Les was careful to point out that his wife would never steal," Harry said. "That she just 'borrowed without permission.' "
"If the jacket's owner hiked on, we'll never know whose it was. Shoot, he might not even be a hundred percent sure where he lost it," Anna said.
"Follow it up," Ruick ordered.
"Sure." Mentally Anna added another forty miles hard hiking to her list just to chase down this wild goose for the chief ranger.
Army jacket dispensed with, she settled into the task of telling Ruick of her interview with Rory concerning the spousal abuse. She'd not taped it because she'd been afraid of inhibiting the boy's narrative on such a sensitive issue. She taped her recounting of it now while it was fresh in her mind.
When she'd finished, Ruick didn't say anything. Rocking himself absently in his chair he stared into the parking lot. Lunch was over. Cars were coming in. Even in a national park on a beautiful summer's day most folks drove the half-mile to work. No wonder America was the fattest nation on earth.
"The marks on his arms and legs. Bruises, cuts in various stages of healing. I'd have spotted it on a kid in a second," he said finally.
Anna made no comment. She would have too. On a child it would have set off all the alarm bells. One didn't expect it on a grown man.
"I've heard of course of wives beating their husbands,"
Ruick said. "I've just never come across it before." Neither had Anna. She must remember to ask Molly just how rare the phenomenon was.
"It doesn't make sense," Ruick said. "Les is no Tarzan. I mean he is- was-what? Eighteen years older than his wife?"
"Eighteen," Anna confirmed from the birth dates on the notes she had with her.
"And in bad shape. Still he outweighed her by a good thirty pounds and is six or eight inches taller. What did he have to be afraid of if he fought back?"
"Being abandoned," Anna said with certainty. She remembered how it felt when Zach had died. What would she put up with not to feel that again? "It was like we'd been living in black and white and all of a sudden our world got colorized," Rory had said. Lester was scared to death to go back to that black-and-white world. Even black and blue must have seemed an improvement.
"Give me abandonment any day of the week," Harry said.
Anna guessed none of his wives had ever up and died on him. If he'd ever been married. She looked around his office past the ubiquitous NPS certificates and awards. No pictures of wives or kids.
"Are you married?" she asked apropos of nothing but her thoughts.
"Twenty-seven years. I played it safe. Eilene is a little bit of a thing who wouldn't hurt a fly. What do you say you and me go have another chat with Lester?"
Chapter 13
Lester was doing what depressed and grieving people traditionally do: everything wrong. The curtains of his second-floor motel room were drawn. The room was overwarm and stuffy. He'd not showered or shaved or dressed. In a plaid flannel bathrobe he'd probably had since before his son was born, he'd been sitting in an unmade bed watching television.
When he opened the door to Harry Ruick's knock Anna was taken aback at how much he'd deteriorated since she'd seen him last. The thinning gray hair stood out in bed-wrinkled strands and colorless stubble highlighted the crease and sag of his cheeks. Puffy eyes rimmed with red attested to the fact he'd spent much of the intervening time weeping. That or he suffered from allergies.
Eyes watering at the sudden exposure to light-or reality-he said absurdly, "May I help you?"
"We'd like to talk with you for aminute," Harry said. He pulled off his straw summer Stetson and held it in front of him like a steering wheel. Anna didn't know if he did it from respect or good manners. Either way she liked him for the gesture. Her Stetson was at home on a peg in the closet in Rocky Springs, along with her service weapon and other needful things. Today she wore the goofy-looking green NPS billed field cap. It crossed her mind to snatch it off in deference to age or grief but the rules regarding women, manners and the wearing of hats had become blurred. One never knew, anymore, what was proper.