"Les has a radio," Anna said.
"That's crossed my mind. You think Les told him? Some kind of conspiracy? Hired assassin?" Ruick laughed and Anna found herself laughing with him. Outside the confines of a movie theater the phrases sounded absurd. Lester Van Slyke from Seattle, Washington, hiring a con man with no history of doing hits for pay to murder his abusive wife in the Montana wilderness.
"People have their own twisted logic," Anna said, responding as much to her thoughts as Ruick's words. "There's too many ties for there not to be some kind of a connection." She leaned on the rail, elbow close to Ponce's nose. Occasionally she felt the flick of his tail on her backside and was content to let him keep the flies off the both of them. "Maybe we've been going at the connection from the wrong side," she said, the theory forming as she spoke. "Because it was Mrs. Van Slyke who was killed I've been trying to connect her with McCaskil as an enemy. McCaskil in the role of killer: come on purpose to kill her for his own reasons, a chance psychotic episode in which he kills her, or hired by the abused husband to do the deed. What if Mrs. Van Slyke and McCaskil were pals, in league for something more natural to a divorce lawyer and a fraud? She was wearing his coat when she was killed. Or at least a coat with his topographical map in the pocket. What if they were hatching some scheme that went sour? Mrs. Van Slyke dies. McCaskil stays in the park to finish his business? He sure doesn't fit the profile of a nature-lover and backwoodsman."
"Where does that leave our murderer?"
"I don't know. Maybe a falling out among thieves?"
"Or we're back to Les. If he weren't so…" Ruick glanced over his shoulder at the group on the hill behind them. "… so damned ineffectual, I'd have found some reason to arrest him by now."
Ruick squirted water into his mouth and swooshed it around more to entertain himself than to quench any real thirst. "What kind of fraud could a city-bred con man pull up here? Glacier's got nothing in the way of gold, silver, precious stones, gas, oil. One of the reasons it's been left alone is nobody ever figured out how to make any money out of it."
"Timber?"
Ruick looked at her. Not only was the terrain too rugged to log, cutting and stealing timber wasn't exactly a subtle crime. In a park where helicopter tours flew over on a daily basis, even a small-scale operation would be shut down less than twenty-four hours after it started.
"Right," Anna said. "Rare plants?"
Harry shook his head.
"Poaching?"
"Sure, some. But why bother? There are ranches just over the hill in British Columbia where you can legally shoot elk, bear, you name it. And since they're hand-raised, you can get ' em trophy-sized. They don't count that way, not with the big-league hunters. They insist the prey be 'wild.' But there's probably ways around that."
Ruick had pretty much shot down any ideas Anna had, so she said nothing. She couldn't figure out if this particular murder had too many clues and too many suspects, or too few. Why carve the face but not enough to confuse identification? What was easily obtained or carried into the backcountry that could deliver a blow powerful enough to sever the spinal cord yet soft enough not to crush or crack the skull? Why was the victim wearing a stranger's coat? Why didn't everybody leave right away? McCaskil, Lester, Rory-they had to know they were or could be suspects. If they'd done it, why stay? If they hadn'tdone it, why stay?
"We'll ask the s.o.b. when we find him," Ruick said philosophically.
Anna'd told him in greater detail about the macabre tree ornament she'd found near where Carolyn's body had been dumped. As she filled the chief ranger in on the details, she wished she'd never mentioned it over the radio. Too many listeners.
Ruick took possession of the ripped and bloody bags, forming the next link in the chain of evidence. He and his rangers had come to Flattop on horseback. One man would be sent back down to take Anna's find to the lab. The remaining three and Harry would track down McCaskil if they could.
Decisions to disturb the wilderness aspect of a national park were not made lightly. Helicopters, bulldozers, chainsaws, even tracking dogs were not brought in at the first whimpering of human discomfort. In Anna's years of watching park politics, some of the most courageous choices she'd seen upper management make were those made not to pour technology on a problem, not to bring in guns and dogs and fork-lifts and borate bombers, but to fight nature on nature's terms. Or, more courageous still, not to fight at all, to let the fire burn, the river change course, the historic crumble without replacement.
Often enough to make it an act of bravery, these administrators lost their careers. The public hated nature when she wasn't in their control. Ruick had chosen to hunt William McCaskil on foot and horseback. The body recovery of Carolyn Van Slyke had already invaded the sanctity of the park experience enough. If Ruick was wrong, if he didn't catch McCaskil and McCaskil turned out to be Van Slyke's killer and killed another visitor, Ruick would pay the price. He'd probably end his days as a chief ranger at some Civil War battlefield two acres across.
Anna respected him for it. Someday she'd have to tell him so. For today she had ground to cover. She was not to take part in the manhunt but to head above treeline to where the moths came to breed and die, where the stones were bleached, where the navy-blue stuff sack had traveled.
The night before, Joan had given Anna a crash course on the grizzly and the army cutworm moth. There were nine identified moth aggregation sites in Glacier that were known to be used by the bears. All were above twenty-one hundred meters in elevation, all on south- or west-facing slopes. The moths aggregated in glacial cirques on talus right below steeper headwalls.
Joan had ended the lesson with strongly voiced disapproval of Anna's venturing into any of the aggregation sites. As a researcher she did not like the impact on the bears that was inevitable when human beings- even one so small and light-footed as Anna-penetrated areas where the animals traditionally roamed undisturbed. As a good-hearted woman she was opposed to Anna's venturing into feeding grounds used predominantly by females with cubs and subadult bears during the peak of their use season.
"You're just making yourself an attractive nuisance," Joan summed up. "A recipe for disaster."
"No pun intended," Buck added, stone-faced.
"Ranger-on-a-stick," Rory said.
Warnings and disclaimers given, Joan had begrudgingly gone over the map, pointing out the sites closest to Flattop Mountain.
Anna took out the topo Joan had marked and showed it to Harry. Logic, a commodity to all appearances singularly lacking in the individual they pursued, suggested the aggregation site Joan had circled on the southern slope of Cathedral Peak. Cathedral, over seventy-six hundred feet high, was the only army cutworm moth site within easy- using the term loosely-commuting distance from Flattop, where the moth-dusted bag had been found. Given the amounts of both moth-wing powder and the grayish-green Joan guessed were traces of argillite remaining on the fabric, the bag had not traveled too far or too long between its dust collecting days and its incarnation as a receptacle for human flesh.
The country Anna was headed into was rugged and steep and dry. Too much for the shamble-footed Ponce. He would have the night off and Anna would walk. Much of the time she would be scrambling. There were no trails, no lakes, no creeks. Only seep springs, and that only if they still had water. Though the cirque she sought was not far in miles, it was a long way in time and energy. Probably she would need to spend the night on the mountain. There would be no trees in which to cache food and, if this aggregation site was being used, grizzlies, mostly females with cubs, would be in attendance. Toothpaste, insect repellent lip balm, and soap remained at Fifty Mountain. Anna ate as much food as she could and packed just enough for one more meal. There would be no breakfast the following morning. Because of the steepness of the terrain she traveled light: no tent, no stove, just camera, tarp, down vest, sleeping bag, water and filter. Even a seep spring could produce enough to refill canteens if one was patient. Or thirsty.