Nevada Barr - Winter Study

Bob either didn’t think his run-in with Katherine was important enough or, conversely, was too important to share.

Anna played tattletale.

“She was crying,” she finished. “She struck out at Bob, then ran. I don’t think she was in any shape mentally to plan an adventure.”

“Katherine was fine,” Bob said blandly.

“‘Fine’ is weeping and running off into a blizzard?” Anna asked.

“Snow was making her contacts go nuts, is all. She wanted to get back to the bunkhouse in a hurry, is my guess. You’ve been watching too much daytime television.” And he winked.

One day you’ll shoot your eye out with that thing, Anna thought.

They made a perimeter search of the housing compound, Anna and Ridley going to the left from the bunkhouse, Robin and Jonah to the right. Bob stayed by the radio.

And the fire. And the wine, Anna thought as she slogged through blind-black, bitter weather. A walk that should have taken ten minutes took twice that. The four met up at the bottom of the compound near the road down to the lake. Even with flashlights, they could scarcely see.

“We’re not finding anybody tonight,” Anna said. “We’re liable to lose ourselves.” She told them of her thought that Katherine was hiding, playing games.

“If she is, it’s the last game she’ll ever play,” Ridley said grimly.

“She’ll freeze to death.” He was shouting. They were all shouting to be heard above the wind. Their puny noise did little to dent the immensity of the night and the storm.

“There’s three places she could survive,” Robin said. “If she broke into permanent housing, she might find blankets. Or, if she took some, she could make it in a shelter for a few hours.”

“Good,” Anna said. “Ridley, you guys take the permanent housing. Robin and I will do the lean-tos. Then we’re done for the night.”

Ridley started to protest but Anna overrode him. He wasn’t versed in search and rescue. Anna was. “We can’t search in this. Period. It’s too risky. We wait till daylight.”

“Okay,” Ridley said. “You’re right. Come on, Jonah. You two be careful.” Ridley was one of those rare leaders who only choose to lead when they are in their area of strength. Maybe this once Anna’s first impression had been right, maybe he was a terrific man.

“Lead on,” Anna said to Robin and, feeling trollish and lumpsome, stumped down the road beside Robin’s fairy-stepping form. At the orange fuel tanks, they turned onto a smaller trail leading toward Washington Creek campground. The ugly monument to fossil fuels was invisible in dark and snow, but Anna could feel it being hideous all the same.

Lean-tos – screened-in sheds for campers – were scattered along the bank of Washington Creek above the harbor, about a ten-minute walk from the housing area.

“It’s hard to believe a rational woman would spend the night freezing in an open shed when her toasty bed is so close,” Anna shouted.

“Thermal wimp,” Robin accused good-naturedly.

They shined their lights into every shelter. As the cold, dusty emptiness of one lean-to after another whispered of summers dead and winters lasting forever, hope dimmed. Had the missing woman been Robin, Anna would have been more optimistic. Robin was acclimatized, winter was her friend and she was accustomed to physical hardship. Robin wouldn’t panic.

Katherine was none of these things.

Katherine was also not in any of the employee housing.

ANNA SLEPT FITFULLY, wriggling like an uneasy larva in her down cocoon. The single bed was adequate most nights, but this night she kept waking to find she’d squashed herself against the wall or was perilously close to falling off.

Robin didn’t sleep much better. Anna could hear her thrashing about. Once she leaped from her bed, dug through her rucksack – at least that’s what Anna assumed; the dark was impenetrable – clunked a found object down on the desk at the bed’s foot and squirmed back into her sleeping bag. Or maybe Anna only dreamed she did.

Her dreams were thick and convoluted, dragging images from unrelated drawers and cobbling them together into stories Harlan Ellison couldn’t unravel. She woke, thinking she heard the howling of coyotes on her mother’s ranch. The call of a loon dragged her from sleep. She woke again to wretched disappointment, finding she was not in Paul’s arms but curled up like a sow bug on a strange bed.

The sun didn’t so much rise as the snow, still falling but with less vehemence, grew gray. There would be no search from the air. Breakfast was quick. Each person would take a radio and a different trail. Ridley attempted to call in to dispatch in Houghton, Michigan, to alert them to the situation, but radio contact, always sketchy, had been obliterated by the storm and the phone lines allowed more static than language. He e-mailed.

As they were dividing up the trails for the search, Adam dragged in. He had the body type Anna associated with the cowboys where she’d grown up and, later, the die-hard wildland firefighters: long muscles and bones, big knuckles, wide shoulders and skinny legs. The kind of men that can just keep on working, keep on digging firebreaks or building fence or riding line as if their lanky bodies were made of sterner stuff than mere flesh and didn’t burn as much fuel as other humans.

Adam looked like he’d finally run out of gas. No longer held at bay by the strength of his personality, age dragged down his cheeks and made pouches beneath his eyes.

“You look like hell,” Ridley said without sympathy.

“Yeah, well, freezing your butt off all night, then hiking nine miles in deep snow before breakfast, will do that to a guy,” Adam snapped, and shrugged out of his coat.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Ridley warned.

“Katherine’s gone missing,” Anna told him.

Adam put his coat back on.

“Grab some food,” Ridley said, “then search the Hugginin Trail loop. That’ll free Jonah up to stay near the airplane in case the weather breaks.”

Bob announced he would stay at the bunkhouse near the radio. In case Jonah flew and they needed to coordinate, he said. Given the missing woman was his graduate student and, at least on her end, there seemed to be a proprietary interest, he didn’t seem overly anxious to help find her. “Recheck the permanent-employee housing and check the maintenance buildings at least,” Ridley said. He didn’t bother to disguise the scorn in his voice. “She might have broken into one of the equipment sheds if she was upset enough.”

Bob turned his face slightly away. Maybe Katherine’s going missing had hit him harder than Anna’d given him credit for. Before this, Bob might have goldbricked out of fear of wild beasts or plain old sloth, but he wouldn’t have bothered to look guilty about it.

“What did you and Katherine fight about last night?” Anna asked bluntly.

His shame, or whatever it was, vanished, replaced by the tucked-back smile of false bonhomie. “We didn’t fight. I don’t fight with women.”

He didn’t wink. Anna was making progress.

There, snow was deep enough for skiing. The best skier, Robin, was given the Minong. It was the roughest trail on the island, running as it did along the broken crest of glacial ridges. Anna had skied a little, she’d seen others – people who were good at it – ski, but she’d never seen anything like Robin. It was as if the snow conspired with the skis to carry her effortlessly like Winged Victory into battle.

Ridley would cover the Greenstone Trail. Because of the shortcut from the housing area to the head of the trail, if Katherine had found a trail and not just stumbled off into the bushes the Greenstone would be it. He pushed off. Ridley’s style was more prosaic than Robin’s, but the power in his legs and his familiarity with wintry things was apparent.