Nevada Barr - Winter Study

Then the “find” was in front of her. A body.

Parts of a body.

The reason Jonah had been able to spot anything from the air was due to small creatures, probably foxes, which had worried and dug until they’d uncovered the arm. Not Katherine’s body, just her arm, still in the sleeve of her parka, her ungloved hand a stump of chewed fingers. At least Anna assumed the arm was Katherine’s; it was wearing her coat.

The sleeve of the parka wasn’t the only color in the naturally black-and-white landscape. There was no blood on the ground – or, if there was, the snow had covered it – but on the trunks of the trees leading away from the severed arm was iridescent orange paint applied with a spatter brush. The neon color was so screamingly out of place, Anna had a moment of pure confusion as her brain tried desperately to make sense of the phenomenon, flashing through traffic cones, construction sawhorses, vandalism, police tape, confetti, graffiti, trail blazes.

A macabre vision of the severed arm blazing a trail to the body it was snatched from played through her mind. She shook it off, the way a dog shakes off a bath, and skirted the area where the arm lay, palm to the sky, fingers gnawed to the knuckle bones. At the first of the orange-daubed trees, she stopped. The neon dots were crystalline. She pulled off her glove and pinched a bit of the stuff up, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. Body heat melted it, leaving a trace of red on her skin.

She didn’t sniff it or taste it. Blood was said to smell metallic, but she could never smell anything unless there was a lot of it and it was getting ripe. Still, she was sure it was blood. The spatter patterns formed when Katherine had fought whatever had taken off her arm. For some reason, the interaction of blood with the intense cold turned it Halloween orange.

White cedar trunks, bright Pollock-like paintings in blood orange, black of the branches overhead sketching a white sky: the scene was stunningly beautiful.

Until she saw Katherine.

The body was facedown, head shoved partly under a log as if Katherine had tried to burrow away from her attackers. The back of her parka was torn, tufts of down leaking out rents that ran shoulder to hip where claws had dug to get at the chewy center. Strands of light brown hair mixed with the tatters of cloth and goose feathers. The fur that ringed the hood of her coat was ripped away, as was half the hood. Blood, not orange but black as tar, glued the mess together. From the waist down, she was clad only in Levi’s. Her ski pants had been shucked off of her, as a man might shuck an ear of corn, and for the same reason. The light down trousers had then been torn to pieces, played with until there was little recognizable as clothing but the suspender buckles. The Levi’s were surprisingly intact but for the bottom of the left leg. That had been chewed to a mess of string and blood. The foot was gone.

Anna had to fight a bizarre urge to run. Mostly she liked the dead: they were quiet, undemanding and never complained if they were dropped on a carryout. Because the teeth of hungry little creatures had busily uncoiled the mortal coil had never bothered her. Human bodies were as dried leaves, acorn husks, snake skins: a thing of no import any longer left behind.

Katherine bothered her.

She concentrated on breathing in and breathing out and making excuses: The light was unsettling – dim and slanting and yellow-gray – cold carped on the bones, undermined body and spirit, the natural world behaving unnaturally, claustrophobic living conditions, discord in the human pack. The list of reasons did little to stop liquid fear coursing through her veins because reason wasn’t the root of it. Ghosts, yetis, skin walkers, vampires, zombies, gremlins, wogs and windigos – six million years of campfire stories – were undermining the rationale of everyone on the island.

“Get a grip,” she growled and looked around the rest of the clearing. Focusing past the mutilated arm, she began to see other disturbances in the snow. Over an area about five feet in diameter, animals had been digging. Where they’d dug were bright orange stains. She saw the foot, boot torn off and bones showing where the flesh had been eaten away. In another depression in the snow was a hank of light brown hair clotted with black. Mostly whatever had stained the snow – fingers, flesh, a toe – had been carted off and eaten elsewhere.

Little guys, foxes and ravens and rodents, had feasted. But the little guys had not torn a full-sized woman to pieces.

“Anna!”

She twitched so hard it hurt her neck. Being startled pissed her off and being pissed off was a lot better than being tired and scared.

“It’s about damn time you got here,” she hollered. “Where the hell have you been? What in God’s name could have held you up on this godforsaken island?”

Ridley, following her blasphemies, came through the tangle of downed trees with more grace than she had managed. Behind him was Robin and, beside her, Bob. That was what had held them up. Anna realized she was about to get out of line and scaled back her anger.

She thought to warn them, to say: “It’s bad” or “Pretty grim scene” or “Take the women and kids back to the house,” but instead she just waited till Robin and Ridley noticed the digging, the arm. Then, like a tour guide from hell, she pointed out the various pieces.

Bob waded in and started brushing snow away from the arm. “Leave it,” Anna snapped. “I don’t want the scene compromised.”

“Wolves killed her,” Bob said. He started in with the brushing again, and it bothered her that he was uncovering the arm.

The arm, for chrissake. It was cut off. It was hamburger. Anybody who wasn’t Bob would have brushed the snow from Katherine’s face.

“Wolves may have torn her apart,” Anna said in a tone she considered reasonable. “We don’t know what killed her. I need you to stop that.”

He looked up at her desperate or dangerous or scared. Anna didn’t think it was grief.

He was digging up her arm. Her fucking arm. Anna was having trouble getting past that.

“Another front is coming in,” Ridley said. “We’re going to lose the light in an hour or so.”

Another dark and stormy night. Anna was getting that clock-striking-midnight-as-the-power-goes-out feeling again. “Whatever we miss won’t be here tomorrow,” she said. “It’ll be somebody’s dinner.”

Robin took up photographic duties. The constant flash became a freakish punctuation to the finds, the pieces of what had once been a young woman.

A young woman murdered by her first love, the wolf; when the snow was swept from the body, it became clear she had been killed by a wolf or wolves. Her throat was torn out, her head connected to her body only by her spine. The damage was fierce but incomplete. The body had not been eviscerated, the face was intact, the coat, though badly torn, was not stripped from the meat.

“Odd,” Anna said, and: “Wolf.”

“Wog,” Ridley said.

“It was a pack of wolves,” Bob said, his voice as plummy and certain as if he were reporting the six o’clock news.

“If it was wolves – natural wolves, pure wolves – it’s the first time in recorded history it’s happened in America,” Ridley said. “What’s your take on this, Menechinn? If it was wolves, do you get to open the island year-round so Homeland Security can arm all the parkies and, between creel checks and wake-in-no-wake-zone citations, Ranger Rick can save us from the Canadians?”

Ridley asked as if it were a real question, as if he cared about Bob’s answer.

“Homeland Security can shut down your little pissant operation anytime,” Bob replied with the same big tucked-in smile he bestowed on everything, and Anna wondered if he liked making Ridley miserable or was simply incapable of empathy.