Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

"The Tolt's our baby," Joe Webster said. "We have gravel moving one to two bars downstream. We'd like a look at those upper bars. That's all."

"The high-water mark for the Tolt reservoir should give us a fairly reliable benchmark for checking downstream erosion." She put the computer to work. Boldt felt some of the tension leave him. Finally, they were into it! On the left of the screen, she changed a date at the top of a table of numbers. The screen paused before redrawing. "I'm going to ask the computer to compare this projection with one a month prior. it will color-code areas of the most severe erosion, red to black, red being areas of greatest damage." As she described all this, various images appeared and vanished. An arrow raced back and forth across the screen under her direction. "You must keep in mind that this is all speculation. Without field reports we can't be sure of any of this. A fallen tree, a landslide, and we would have to start all over. This modeling is only as accurate as the data it's fed."

"The data is good," Joe Webster said defensively.

Boldt looked on as Becky Sumatara pinpointed some river bends that were bright red. "The computer takes soil composition into consideration," she explained, "which is one of the reasons it's of value to us in a situation like this. You or I could look at a map and circle the tightest switchbacks a river makes, but erosion is dependent on composition, and it's not uncommon for a stream to jump its banks on a straightaway where the soil is soft and relatively uniform. Stream beds generally make turns because the water encounters some form of natural obstacle, whether a rise in elevation, or a rock formation. A barrier.

You could run your search party from turn to turn and never find this grave. My guess is that with flows like this, we're going to see a stream bubble-out well away from the turns. Although Joe may be right about the upstream bars."

"I'd like to see those upstream bars, if we could. I'd like to start there," Joe said. "One thing to keep in mind," Boldt advised, "is road access. Our experience tells us that she would have been buried within a hundred yards of existing roads."

"That's a grisly thought."

Daphne fiddled with the ungainly topographic map. "There are logging roads in this area, even some old homesteads." Joe Webster said, "There were hiking trails until they closed them down. I remember all that a few years back."

Daphne indicated the logging trails, one eye straying to the screen anxiously. "This will help," Sumatara said, referencing the map and comparing it to the screen. She made several small adjustments. The screen redrew itself each time. Boldt caught himself holding his breath again. As if from a descending bird's-eye-view, the screen showed an increasingly magnified area with each new redraw. She pointed convincingly to the screen. "Here are the two upstream bars you're after, Joe." The upper curve of the river was a deep blue; the cutaway of the stream bank showed as a bright-almost neonred, clashing with her nail polish. "It's severely undercut." To Boldt she said, "That's why the search teams missed it." She became distracted then, as the screen seemed to call to her. Again she worked the mouse. Again the screen redrew several times. "You're lucky." "How's that?"

"These most recent rains haven't yet caused the Tolt to reach the high-water level marked last fall, which means there hasn't been any additional undercutting." Now her fingers flew through a volley of commands. Boldt looked over to see both Daphne and Joe Webster glued to the screen. "Uhoh," she added, punching keys furiously. "Becky?" Boldt asked, sensing from her sudden silence that they had problems. "You had better get someone out there quick," she said, pointing once again to the screen. "The projected flow for the Tolt will pass that mark in less than forty-eight hours." Daphne asked, "Would you mark the area for us, please?" But Becky didn't seem to hear, still consumed with working the computer. "And there's something else," she said, the screen changing colors once again. "You're wrong about the depth. About the grave being shallow." She switched to a lateral view that depicted an overhang of brown earth and the animated blue of the river water well below it. "According to this, the undercut is at least six feet below grade-below the surface. Those bones were buried deep."

"He knows what he's doing," mumbled Boldt. "It is a doctor," Daphne let slip, a look of horror on her face. "A doctor!" coughed Becky Sumatara. "You never heard that," instructed Boldt. He looked Sumatara in the eye, then Joe Webster. "In fact, if it's all the same to you for the time being … you never heard word one of this. We can't afford any rumors, any leaks."

Joe Webster nodded, suddenly a shade paler. Sumatara didn't seem to hear. "There's a doctor killing people?" gasped the woman, staring back into the glowing screen with its pulsing colors.

The red no longer appeared neon. To Boldt, it seemed the color of blood.

Sharon Shaffer had a hard time thinking through the drugs. It was like trying to write with her left hand-she knew the letters that were supposed to appear on the page, but they never came out looking right.

A car had arrived about an hour ago. It had left about forty minutes later. Forty minutes by her way of thinking.

The man was in the kennel pen next to her. He had two fresh bandages. Seeing this, she felt sick to her stomach. The Keeper was a butcher.

She didn't remember her neighbor having been returned, although there he was, and the collapsible wheelchair The Keeper used to move them was folded up and leaning against the wall. She must have fallen asleep again. She kept nodding out this way, which was one of the reasons it was so difficult to measure any passage of time.

She glanced to her right and literally jumped when she saw The Keeper in the pen next to hers. He had hold of her I.V. tube and was injecting a drug into the tube using a syringe. Separating the two of them was only the smallest amount of chain-link wire. Wire that would bite back if she so much as brushed against it. The intense look on The Keeper's face terrified her.

Felix, the biggest dog of the group, the alpha male, wandered freely in the center aisle. Pacing. Panting. Hungry and anxious. He was the sentry, the jail guard. He was there to prevent any chance of another intruder, any chance of escape.

The Keeper said softly to her, "I've canceled my morning appointments, but I'm in a bit of a hurry." With the muzzle, she had no chance to respond. She was thinking, "Morning appointments!?"

"When you awaken your right eye will hurt. it will be carefully bandaged. Under no circumstances are you to toy with this bandage. Do you hear me? Do you understand? Nod, if you understand. Good. Now you're crying. Why are you crying? Do I scare you.

She nodded, though somewhat reluctantly. "Me? You needn't be scared. Stop that crying. I'm a doctor." She couldn't. The more he said, the more terrified she was.

"Please," he said childishly.

She wrestled with her emotions and brought herself under control.

She was shaking now, the crying turned inside. She wanted to see him as insane, but she couldn't. He seemed so professional in everything he did. So calculating. It made the chance of escape seem all the more distant. "You will cause yourself an enormous amount of pain if you cry later. Hmm? The saline in the tears. You understand? You must not allow yourself to cry. You must apply no pressure to this bandage, none whatsoever, so be careful how you place your head when you sleep." He waited a moment and asked, "Are you listening?"

She managed to nod her head yes. "Because of you-because of your cornea-some poor soul will be able to see again. Hmm? You will be giving someone the gift of sight. Can you imagine such a thing? A miracle is what it is, and without you, none of it would be possible. Hmm? How does that make you feel?"