Nevada Barr - Winter Study

Huge paw prints in all the right places, never perfectly clear and always accompanied by moose prints, as if Bullwinkle had been adopted along with Romulus and Remus. A hard object shaped like the hoof of a moose and affixed to the bottom of snowshoes would work. Each step would leave the mark of the hoof; no sign of the human above it. Giant paw prints were easy enough, pawlike shapes on the end of ski poles. With the wind and the drifting snow, even an experienced tracker wouldn’t be able to tell they weren’t made by a genuine wolf.

Anna hadn’t been able to.

The marauding animal that had terrorized their camp up by Lake Desor had snuffled like a bear, pawed at the nylon walls like a dog and left no paw prints. When Katherine hadn’t been scared, Robin had snorted – almost a laugh. Because she had known the “wolf” wasn’t a wolf? It was Robin who sent Anna and Bob to the side of Intermediate Lake, where there were giant paw prints neatly laid in to lure the unwary trappers to the center of the weird ring in the ice where Anna had fallen through. Then Robin had apologized repeatedly. “I’m so sorry,” she’d said. “It shouldn’t have happened.”

Anna’s dream of the night before came back; her naked chest scraping over the serrated-ice edge. She remembered, as she’d slid under the lake, how the ice had been striated vertical marks of white against the gray of older ice, and she remembered grabbing Adam’s day pack before he ran for the supercub to leave Malone Bay with Jonah, how heavy it was.

“What’s in this?” she’d asked.

“Books,” Adam said.

Not books. A drill and spare battery packs and bits. The ring in the ice had been made by a drill, holes weakening the layer, water oozing up through them creating the ridge.

The trapline torn up by an animal so powerful, the metal of the foothold trap was bent; Robin had reported seeing that. She’d gone to check the line by herself and she hadn’t brought the trap back with her.

The wog was a hoax. The hoax had turned deadly. First Anna had gone through the ice, then Katherine had been killed.

As always, that was where Anna came to a wall: Katherine had not been killed by a human being; she’d been savaged by a pack of wolves.

“Damn,” Anna said and mentally set aside the researcher’s death.

Robin with her love of the island – what was it her boyfriend had said? The last hope for the soul of civilization? Ridley with the most to lose: vocation, avocation and summer cabin at one blow; Jonah, with his loyalty to Ridley; Adam, for whatever reason, maybe just the hell of it – were all of them in on it? Would one of them kill a wolf, a ranger and a researcher to make the island sufficiently interesting that the Park Service and the Michigan Tech would fight Homeland Security over the issue of opening it in the winter months? Anyone in Winter Study could have darted the wolf. The pack was on the ice for several days, and everyone was proficient with the use of tranquilizer guns.

Robin had been in the tent the night of the marauder, but Adam or Ridley or, possibly, Jonah could have followed them. Without the heavy packs that slowed the Malone Bay adventurers, it could have been done, round-trip, home by midnight.

If they were willing to kill, why didn’t they just kill Bob and be done with it? That’s what Anna would have done. With pleasure, she thought, remembering the pictures on the cell phone.

Maybe they had tried to kill Bob, but he had answered the call of nature, and Anna toddled out onto the ice alone. If so, they – whoever they were – were awfully cavalier about collateral damage.

If the point of the hoax was to make the study indispensable, killing Bob wasn’t the wisest course. There was nothing so easily replaced as a government flunky. Kill one and ten popped up in his place. And accidental death by drowning wouldn’t make Homeland Security any more likely to leave ISRO alone. Katherine had a personal reason to want Bob dead, but Anna couldn’t see how she could have seduced Adam – or anyone else – into drilling the ice in the short time she’d been with Winter Study.

“Move,” Anna told herself and began trudging toward the bunkhouse again.

The men – all men; the women were vanishing at an alarming rate – were seated around the table in the kitchen.

Over the years, Anna had arrested quite a few people, taken them in for everything from annoying chipmunks to kidnapping and murder. She had arrested men and women and, once, just to make a point, a child. There were a few gaps in her repertoire. She’d never arrested an Asian and, as far as she knew, she’d never arrested a Jew or a Quaker.

It had been her intention to arrest Bob Menechinn, but, as she took in the Breakfast Club, she couldn’t figure out how to go about it. There was no place to incarcerate him. Should he decide he didn’t wish to be arrested, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it without backup and Adam, Jonah and Ridley could not be trusted. One, some or all were perpetrating a fraud on the federal government – which she wasn’t sure was a bad thing – and were willing to kill innocent women and female park rangers to do it – which she was sure was a bad thing.

“Hey,” she said amiably as she banged the snow off her boots on the lintel. “Any coffee left?”

“Hey yourself,” Adam said. “On the counter. Good and hot.” No one else acknowledged her words or entrance.

Ridley bent over the stove, stirring the inevitable oatmeal, his shoulders rounded as a crone’s, his long fingers looking thinner than they had twenty-four hours before, the knuckles outsized, as if arthritis had taken him overnight. Jonah was droning on about disrobing “Mrs. Brown” as he took the cozy off the sugar bowl and began spooning brown sugar into an empty bowl. There was no ribaldry or playfulness in the Mrs. Brown story this morning. The old pilot spoke in a monotone, an actor who’s forgotten his character and lost his audience. Bob had taken his preferred chair in the corner against the wall. The first time Anna had seen him there, she’d thought of him as enthroned. Now “cornered” was a better description.

Adam was a stark contrast to his fellows. He burned again but with a new fever. Not rage, Anna decided as she poured herself a cup of coffee. Excitement. Adam couldn’t sit still; he positively bounced in his seat the way a little boy will when an adventure is in the offing. A wonderful adventure. Adam was having a problem keeping joy from busting out all over.

“What are you so happy about?” she asked as she took her place at the end of the table, the de facto “Mom” spot. “Are we going to find Robin?”

Ridley turned from the stove. “Does he know where Robin is?” he demanded sharply. “Adam, do you know where she is?”

“I just have a good feeling, is all,” Adam said. “We could do with a little optimism around here for a change. I, for one, would rather believe she’s alive somewhere than dead in a snowdrift.”

Anna cocked her head to one side, trying to hear through the tension that thrummed in the sinews of the room.

“Chipper,” she said. “Adam, you sound downright chipper. ”

Ridley stepped across the small space between the four-burner stove and the Formica-topped table where the rest of them sat over empty bowls like Goldilocks’s ursine victims. The thin, bony hands grabbed the front of Adam’s shirt and Ridley hauled him half out of his chair and held him suspended with wiry strength. “Do you know where Robin is?” he whispered, a hissing of steam from overheated pipes.

Anna lifted her coffee cup off the table to protect the precious liquid from the inevitable scuffle to follow. She needn’t have bothered. Adam didn’t rise to Ridley’s anger.