Chapter 24
Anna came to look back on that night with the odd dreaming reality with which she remembered much of her childhood. A time when everything was new and hence nothing was strange. Miracles were commonplace and, so, unremarkable. The rules, not yet pounded into the fabric of the mind like great rusted nails, were easily suspended.
A circus of arrest and rescue came to them the following morning, masterfully planned and efficiently ringmastered by Chief Ranger Harry Ruick. Buck was with him and Gary, both armed with Weatherby Magnum bolt-action rifles-enough "stopping power" for a bear the size of Balthazar. They'd need it if anything went haywire, Anna thought, because they'd have to shoot through the person of Geoffrey Micou before they got to the shaggy body of his brother. Anna turned over the thirty-ought-six McCaskil had donated. It wouldn't stop a bear but would do a lot of damage.
The shortest route out was down McDonald Creek, the western half of a large loop trail that started and ended at Packers Roost. Though her knee was bothering her, she eschewed horseback and walked most of the way out. She wanted to be near Balthazar. She found unending delight in the play of sun and shadow over his fur, the lumbering grace of his walk, the sharp accents his long claws made on his tracks in the dust. Because of the potential for problems, Harry closed the trail to visitors, citing the uninteresting excuse of dead elk near it causing a potential bear hazard. Balthazar's trailer and the pickup to pull it had been taken out of impound and would be waiting at the end of the trail.
At Packers Roost the bear and the boy were separated. Balthazar was taken to a holding pen loaned by a West Glacier entrepreneur who ran a Bear Country attraction where tourists could see black bears.
Bill McCaskil was taken to the county jail to be held until formal charges and setting bail were arranged for. With his list of aliases and a charge of kidnapping researchers and attempting to murder a federal law enforcement officer, he would probably await trial behind bars.
Rory agreed he had had enough of the DNA project and would be going home to Seattle with his dad. Joan promised to clear everything up with Earthwatch.
Geoffrey Micou proved a bit of a problem. He was just turned sixteen, a minor and an orphan. Mr. Fetterman had taken care of him after his father's death but he hadn't bothered to make the boy go to school. Geoffrey dropped out in the seventh grade. He was extremely bright and had taught himself a great deal but was officially truant. Montana Child and Family Services were brought in. Though Joan fought to keep him with her at least until his future was settled, he had been spirited away.
Anna was left with the promise she had made that nothing bad would happen.
For three days she and Joan and Harry contacted zoos and research facilities. Grown Alaskan grizzlies with Balthazar's peculiar history were not in demand. No one wanted him. He could not survive on his own. Despite the goodwill surrounding the magnificent beast, Anna became afraid the only solution would be a Final Solution. Then the trust of a boy and ahuge chunk of magic would be ripped out of a world already short on both.
Anna flew out of Kalispell headed for Dallas knowing she had failed. Solving a murder case, catching a felon-these things were necessary on some level but in essence mundane. The world was not bettered by the knowledge that Carolyn Van Slyke died by accident. Perhaps Florida's finances were marginally safer by the removal of one con man from the premises, but there would be others to take his place. At his core, William McCaskil was not a violent man, Anna believed. He was a greedy immoral man pushed to violence by his own fears. The thirty-ought-six he'd said he bought for self-defense. Anna figured he meant to use it to threaten Geoffrey: 'Do as I say or the bear gets it.' Until Geoffrey put Balthazar back into the transport trailer for him, McCaskil had nothing. Whether or not, no longer panicked, he would have killed Geoffrey, Anna would never know. She didn't think so. Geoffrey was no real threat to him without Balthazar.
Her failure had been in the most important element of the crime: saving the wonderful bear.
Back in Mississippi, she prayed to various gods known to have a soft spot for animals and felt a fool and a hypocrite for doing so. She was surly to her field rangers, avoided her boyfriend and was unmerciful to speeders.
On her fourth day back she received a Federal Express package from Joan. Anna had been praying to the wrong gods. Help had come in the form of Glacier's former superintendent, now serving in Yosemite. The park service is a small town. Glacier's old superintendent was friends with the superintendent of Canyonlands. Outside the park, near Moab, Utah, lived a man who trained most of the large and dangerous animals Hollywood used in its movies. He would take Balthazar. That was the good news. The great news was that he would take Geoffrey Micou as well, as an apprentice.
"Hallelujah! "Anna said.
The package had come to the ranger station in Port Gibson, where she was stationed. Unable to wait, she'd ripped it open in the outer office and read it standing in the middle of the floor. Randy Thigpen, one of her field rangers with whom having a lady Yankee boss did not sit well, was at his desk. "What'd you get?" he demanded.
"The bear's going to be okay." Randy knew the story and Anna didn't elaborate.
"Whoop-ti-doo," he said.
Anna's good cheer was undaunted. "And I got a present." A small package wrapped in gold foil and marked "A souvenir of your trip. Love, Joan" had been stuffed into the bottom of the cardboard envelope. With childish impatience Anna tore it open. Inside was a glass vial filled with brown liquid and moss-like matter. "Balthazar" and the date were penned on the sticker pasted to the side.
"What is it?" Thigpen asked.
"Shit," Anna said happily.
"I guess just everybody loves you," Thigpen growled.
Joan had sent her a scat sample. After all, what were friends for?
Nevada Barr
Nevadawas born in the small western town of Yerington, Nevada and raised on a mountain airport in the Sierras. Both her parents were pilots and mechanics and her sister, Molly, continued the tradition by becoming a pilot for USAir.
Pushed out of the nest, Nevada fell into the theatre, receiving her BA in speech and drama and her MFA in Acting before making the pilgrimage to New York City, then Minneapolis, MN. For eighteen years she worked on stage, in commercials, industrial training films and did voice-overs for radio. During this time she became interested in the environmental movement and began working in the National Parks during the summers – Isle Royale in Michigan, Guadalupe Mountains in Texas, Mesa Verde in Colorado, and then on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi.
Woven throughout these seemingly disparate careers was the written word. Nevada wrote and presented campfire stories, taught storytelling and was a travel writer and restaurant critic. Her first novel, Bitterweet was published in 1983. The Anna Pigeon series, featuring a female park ranger as the protagonist, started when she married her love of writing with her love of the wilderness, the summer she worked in west Texas. The first book, Track of the Cat, was brought to light in 1993 and won both the Agatha and Anthony awards for best first mystery. The series was well received and A Superior Death, loosely based on Nevada's experiences as a boat patrol ranger on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, was published in 1994. In 1995 Ill Wind came out. It was set in Mesa Verde, Colorado where Nevada worked as a law enforcement ranger for two seasons.
