"My little guy was talking about the elk dead?" Anna was aghast.
"As he pictured him on the wall of his den," Buck confirmed.
The creepiness that had been temporarily held at bay by the advent of real work returned. Even apparent innocents from the great state of Washington harbored deadly intentions.
It wasn't until they'd been back in camp for an hour or more and been revived by an internal application of hot drinks that she spoke again and then it was of the dark subjects that had been consuming her mind.
Summarily banishing Buck and Rory simply because she did not wish to feel the impact of a stranger in the first instance and an adolescent in the second, Anna fired up the hissing glare of a Coleman lantern, set it on the wide flat table of stone and spread out her gruesome evidence collection for Joan's scientific perusal.
"I don't know diddly about human forensic pathology," Joan warned her as they knelt like aging White Rock fairies on the edge of the stone.
"All evil is not human," Anna said apropos of nothing but the growing unease Glacier's backcountry had instilled in her.
"If not, it stems from humans," Joan said, either exposing a cynical streak Anna hadn't suspected or infected with Anna's pervasive sense of dislocation.
Anna didn't argue with her. "Look at the pieces left of the blue bag," she said. "See here where it's streaked with dust and this yellow pollen-like stuff? I can't remember seeing anything hereabouts that would leave residue like this. Not that I've been looking," she admitted.
Joan shoved her glasses up on her head the better to see close up and, fabric pinched delicately between gloved fingers and thumbs, she examined it in the cold and noisy light from the Coleman. After a minute of two of this she stopped, retrieved a large Sherlock-Holmes-style magnifying glass from her day pack, said, "I wish I had my microscope," and studied the torn fabric for several minutes more.
"In my book, dust is dust is dust," she said at last and returned the navy stuff bag to Anna. "This is fine, grayish green, could be from argillite-alpine talus. Up high. Way high. Like tops of mountains. Or it could have come from under the bookcase in my bedroom. Lab tests would tell you what it's made of and maybe what kind of rocks it came from but, contrary to public opinion, rocks are not stationary. They slide and tumble, fall, wash down creeks.
"The yellow dust is different. I can't be a hundred percent sure but I don't think it is pollen. It looks more like scales, the weensy feathery scales you'd find on the wings of moths or butterflies."
Anna wasn't completely flummoxed. On Isle Royale, just outside the screen doors of most of the lean-tos, she'd seen butterflies crowd together en masse. They came to get the salts left behind by sleepy campers who, rather than stumble through the dark to the pit toilet, merely stood on the shelter step to urinate.
"Something in the bag attracted butterflies? A lot of butterflies?" As she said it, Anna knew it made little sense. Even if they'd been drawn to the bag in great numbers, when they beat their tiny wings, the scales didn't fall off.
"Not exactly. Above treeline we have incredible blooms of army cutworm moths June through September. The moths lay their eggs on the Great Plains and the caterpillars mature there. Then they migrate to the Rockies to feed. In the fall they go back. Lay eggs and die. There're not so many as there once were. They spray crops in Iowa, we lose moths in Montana. An argument for global environmental policies local politicians won't hear. Putting that together with the white dust, I'm guessing your bag was set down or dragged around somewhere above treeline on Mount Stimpson or Mount Cleveland or, oh, shoot, I don't know, one of them. We get aggregations of the cutworm moths from about twenty-one hundred meters in elevation up to about twenty-eight hundred meters. They like south and southwest faces." Joan took in the dark jagged ring of mountains cutting into the night sky around Flattop.
Sick of man-made light and racket, Anna turned off the lantern. In the sudden and blessed balm of night's silence, the two of them sat without speaking, watching the mountain peaks from where the blue sack had purportedly traveled.
The moon was waning, but in the thin clear air over the Rockies, its light was strong. Trees inked black on the shoulders of the mountains. Above their reach slivers of glaciers and the pale, much shattered talus that spent a majority of its life beneath the snow, caught the moonlight. The longer Anna stared the brighter the peaks became until, in their glory, they kindled a healing awe within her. "I wouldn't think there'd be much in that part of the world to attract people."
Joan laughed. "You sound so wistful. There's not much. Hardly anybody goes up there. Mountain goats."
"Trails?" Anna asked.
"Not that high."
"Just goats? I thought the bears denned at the higher elevations."
"Higher. Not that high. They do go up there in summer, though. The moths are a major source of protein for the grizzlies. They tear up whole hillsides of alpine talus, turning over the rocks and licking up the moths. See? Global. Spray wheat in Minnesota, starve a grizzly in the Rockies. Who'd know?"
"They know now," Anna pointed out. Neither bothered to add, "Who'd care?" Just a small circle of friends, as the old song went.
"Our butcher went up there for some reason," Anna said after a while. "Since he apparently isn't in the park to enjoy nature-at least not as we like to think of it-he must have had a pressing reason to travel so far off the beaten path. Ponce will not be pleased when I tell him tomorrow's itinerary."
Anna's radio ended further speculation.
"Your hunch paid off," Ruick said after they'd exchanged the requisite call numbers. "The prints on the second topo found in the army coat match those Bill McCaskil put on file when he was arrested for fraud. Looks like the victim was wearing his coat when she was killed."
Chapter 16
Anna did not ride to Fifty Mountain at first light. She was under strict orders from Harry to delay until the cavalry arrived in the person of four law enforcement rangers from down in the valley. Camp in the ill-fated meadow with its altar rock was broken. Joan and Rory, alone by necessity and Joan's choice now that Buck and Anna were needed elsewhere, left to service the next hair trap on Joan's list. This one was on the far eastern edge of Flattop Mountain near the confluence of Mineral and Cattle King creeks. After they'd gone, Anna packed her gear on Ponce not knowing when she would be rejoining the bear DNA research project as a productive member.
Far from chafing at the delay, she was glad to saunter over with Buck around noon. Several broken bones and knife wounds ago she'd lost her taste for facing unsavory types on equal terms. No right-thinking law enforcement officer wanted a fair fight.
When they arrived, the chief ranger and four others whom Anna didn't recognize were sitting in the food preparation area with Lester Van Slyke, talking in low voices. Ruick came over to where Anna tethered Ponce to the hitching rail.
"Our bird has flown the coop," he said, leaning on the rail, a water bottle held easily in one hand. Ruick seemed at home, in control everywhere Anna had an opportunity to observe him. "Les said he was here last night, saw him go to the outhouse once. He didn't use the food prep area or speak to anybody as far as Les noticed. Then Les sees him all packed up and heading out in the dark."
"What time?" Anna asked.
"Around eight, eight-thirty." Their eyes met. Anna hadn't out-thought him. "He knew we were coming to have a word."