Nevada Barr - Winter Study

Then Cynthia committed suicide.

Adam never recovered from her death.

Adam told Ridley to recommend Bob for the Homeland Security review.

Adam had been excited at breakfast, happy.

“Holy shit!” Anna said. Adam was going to kill Bob. He was going to do it today.

Without skis, she’d never catch them. She took the snowmobile. Hammering up the Greenstone, icy wind lashing her cheeks and scraping her skin, Anna more than once considered turning around, letting Adam do mankind a favor. A world without the Bobs was a tempting idea. Rehabilitation didn’t work with guys like Menechinn. What he did wasn’t just a crime; it was a character flaw, a rottenness within.

Still, she didn’t leave Adam to his work. For one thing, she liked to think of herself as a half-decent human being. Not to mention if the two killed each other, she might never find out what happened to Robin.

The Greenstone climbed gently at first, then rose precipitously with switchbacks that threatened to push the snowmobile into the trees to a rocky escarpment thrusting above the tree line. The slope on the western side of the island was forested. On the east, the ridge fell away precipitously, a sheer sixty-foot drop, to a flat narrow boulder field skirting the edge of a meadow.

Forcing the snowmobile to its limit, she built up sufficient speed that when she reached the ridge the machine leapt a foot into the air, banged down in a spume of snow and rushed toward the drop. Squawking, she jerked to the left. The front of the snowmobile jackknifed. The machine rose up on one ski in alarmingly slow motion, toppled over and shuddered to a stop as the engine died.

Ahead of her, through the veil of falling snow, stood two shrouded figures. Skis and poles were jammed into the snow like battlefield grave markers. This was where Menechinn was to meet with the fatal accident that had been awaiting him since he’d been brought to the island.

“Adam!” Anna yelled. “Adam, wait!”

“Go back,” Adam called.

Anna wriggled off the machine, rose and stumbled a few steps as her numbed legs refused to carry her. Blood began to flow and she stomped her feet, but she didn’t go any nearer to the men at the edge of the fall.

“Go back,” Adam said again. Without the roar of the small engine, his words were clear, ringing in her ears like the tolling of a bell.

“Lord knows, I want to,” Anna called back. “But I can’t. You come with me, Adam. Bob can make his own way home. We’ve got to talk. You need to help me find Robin.”

“Robin’s better off where she is,” Adam said. “Bob made sure of that.”

In his uniquely dreadful winter gear, goose down poking out and the duct tape taking up more area than the nylon, Adam looked like Robinson Crusoe: The Northern Saga. He also looked crazy as a loon.

Anna moved closer. Menechinn was a yard or two from Adam, saying nothing and standing in a heap of clothes and flesh as if his bones had softened and could barely keep him upright. Hoods and balaclava hid his face.

“Bob!” Anna said sharply. He raised his head with the slow swaying of a bull too old and too blind to know where danger is coming from.

“Bob,” he echoed, and his pulled-back grin creased his face above the folds of his neck scarf. With a hand the size of a club, he pawed off his hood, baring his head to the elements. His face was the color of new brick.

“What’s wrong with him?” Anna asked.

“Tasting his own medicine,” Adam said. “Go back. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Ketamine?”

“His drug of choice,” Adam said.

“You are doing this for Cynthia?”

“Cynthia is dead,” Adam said. “This is just for me.”

“For revenge?” Anna asked. “To even the scales? To get some of your own back? Like you said, Adam, Cynthia is dead. She’s going to stay dead. Give me one good reason to go through with this.”

“For fun.” There was no expression on his face. It was as blank as if the executioner’s hood was already drawn over his features.

“Okay,” Anna admitted. “That is as good a reason for doing it as any, I guess.”

“Doing what? What are we doing?” Bob asked, alarm creeping into the smear of happiness Lady K had put on his mouth.

“As much a fan as I am of fun, it’s short-lived for the most part,” Anna said. “With a first-degree murder rap, prison lasts forever.”

“Go back,” Adam said.

“Let me arrest him,” Anna said.

“And then what? Cynthia can’t testify. Robin can’t. Katherine can’t.”

Adam’s words were heavy, falling in flat chunks through the snowy air. Anna wanted to argue, tout the fierce and powerful justice of the law, but he was right. Bob would get off. Robin’s blood would prove positive for ketamine if Anna could get it to a lab in time and if its freezing hadn’t changed the chemical properties, but who was to say Robin hadn’t taken it herself? The pictures on Katherine’s cell phone were damning only to Katherine. They could be traced to Bob, but who was to say it wasn’t consensual? Rape was hard to prove at the most obvious of times.

Institutions hated rape charges. This would be swept under the table by three powerful bodies: Homeland Security, the National Park Service and American University; well-meaning people wanting to keep the mud off their organization, wanting to keep their positions.

“Arresting him would be fun,” Anna said finally, and a smile ghosted across his face.

“You drilled the ice,” she said to keep his attention.

“I drilled the ice,” Adam said.

“I nearly died.”

“I know. Bob here always has to strut out front. I thought he’d be first on the ice. It’s hard to grasp how complete a coward he is.” Adam’s attention left Anna and focused like a laser on Bob Menechinn.

“Go, Anna.” He took Bob’s arm. Menechinn tried to jerk away, but his movements were slow and clumsy. The drug had made him forget where his arms and legs were. He overbalanced and fell. He lay moving feebly, making a fat snow angel.

Anna took a deep breath and was immediately sorry as the cold burned her lungs. “You’ll spend the next forty years of your life in a penitentiary. You’ll get up when you’re told and go to bed and eat and see the sun when you’re told,” she said. “You’ve lived your whole life out of doors, Adam. Let me take Bob back.”

Adam’s face didn’t change. “I’ve spent the last ten years in prison,” he said, watching Bob paddle at the snow. “Get up,” he said to Menechinn.

Anna needed him to connect with her sufficiently so he could hear past his pain. “You said Katherine would never testify. You knew about Katherine?”

“I’d seen the look before. On the face of my wife before she died. The wolves saved Katherine the trouble of killing herself.”

“Or you did.”

“I had nothing to do with her death. Not one damn thing. I don’t kill women.”

“How about wolves?”

“The giant bite marks?” He smiled. “People will believe what they want to believe. I just helped it along.”

“So you darted the wolf and stabbed it to death,” Anna said coldly.

“An animal. The pound puts thousands to death every year. Fluffy and Bootsie and Socks. Don’t get onto me about an animal.”

Adam straddled Bob, took hold of his wrists and pulled him to a sitting position.

“You drugged me,” Bob said without bitterness, a sense of wonder in his voice.

“How do you like it?” Adam asked, standing over him, hands still clamped around the bigger man’s wrists.

“I don’t…” Bob rolled his head over and squinted to bring Anna into focus. “Ranger Danger,” he said and smiled. “You were going to kill me and now we’ll kill you.”