Nevada Barr - Winter Study

They had stolen scent lure from a team of martin researchers to effect the wolves’ movements. The props, the black silhouette of the gigantic wolf, the moose and wolf prosthetics to make prints in the snow, had been created by Gavin. The alien DNA was procured by Robin. A friend and fellow researcher in Canada had mailed her a box of wolf scat. Robin simply bagged it up with the ISRO samples and delivered it to Katherine.

The simplicity of the plan impressed Anna. It would have worked, created a tidy little mystery, had Adam not joined the conspiracy. He’d discovered what they were up to on a trip past Feldtmann in late summer and was mildly amused. It was only when, at his urging, Ridley had requested Bob Menechinn for the evaluation that he had taken an active part.

Ridley had known nothing of the plot, a fact Anna could tell both annoyed and embarrassed him. He’d not even suspected until he and Jonah had gone to Feldtmann tower and noticed fresh tracks and turned off their radios, the better to sneak up on whoever was within.

ANNA WAS LYING on the sofa closest to the stove, enjoying being warm and relatively pain free. Jonah had expertly reduced the dislocated shoulder. Forty years of flying hunters into the Alaskan wilderness had made him a de facto combat medic. Her ankle was elevated, but she’d refused to put ice on it. Enough was, occasionally, enough. She was fairly certain it wasn’t broken, the bone merely chipped and bruised. The result was the same: it hurt and she couldn’t walk on it.

The bodies had been recovered by Robin, Gavin and Ridley and lay in the carpenter’s shop with Katherine’s. There’d been no more body bags and they were wrapped in cheery blue tarps.

Three dead, not counting the wolf. The surviving five members of the Winter Study team shared the warm darkness of the common room, the sun long gone, the only light from the fire in the woodstove. Jonah had turned on the generator, but no one, it seemed, wished to see clearly and the lights had been left off.

Those who remained alive on ISRO were all in the room. No one was talking. Anna was glad for the silence, for the heat, for the companionship and for the life that coursed through her veins. Never in her career has she been so close to dying and never before had she such magnificent reasons to resent it: Paul, a wonderful job, her sister, Paul.

The hopeless tangle of human relationships would have depressed her had she not been in a mood of gratitude. Menechinn had destroyed Cynthia and, in the process, Adam. Menechinn had destroyed Katherine and, Anna didn’t doubt, her mother.

Robin and Gavin, in their heroic desire to save the wolf/moose study, might very well have ruined their lives and those of their families. Despite the ruination on her mind, Anna found herself smiling in the dark. The mental picture of them stomping about with moose hooves strapped to their boots, sprinkling trails of stink to manipulate the movements of the wolves, cutting out and placing decoys to be seen from the air, planting alien scat and generally sewing the seeds of a wonderful mystery delighted her.

She would love telling the story to Paul. Soon, a week at most, she would be with him, sitting in front of a fire, snuggled close, her life in front of her. A life she was determined not to lose to any fool that happened by with a penchant for evil and the will to carry it through. Soon Ridley would be back with his Honey, eating hot dish and preparing class lectures. Jonah would be up north, hauling wood and waiting for the next round of hunters. Life would go on. What happened at ISRO would become a legend to amuse visitors around the campfire.

Blue skies would be there again.

Except for Robin and Gavin.

The thought dimmed some of the glow of her gratitude.

“How bad is it?” Gavin asked, as if reading her mind.

“Bad,” Ridley said. “I’ve told the NPS as little as possible, but, when the weather clears tomorrow or the next day, the island will be swarming with law enforcement.”

“Could we go to jail?” Robin asked.

“Tampering with research would get you a slap on the hand,” Anna said. “But your tampering contributed to the death of Katherine Huff. That could get you jail time.”

The fire crackled. Jonah slid down in his chair like a teenager, almost horizontal, chin on his chest. Anna and Jonah were not innocents. Ridley, though young, was touched with world-weariness. Robin and Gavin had not considered jail, that what they were doing was a federal crime, that people could be hurt. Anna watched them from half-closed eyes. The two of them sat close but not touching on the couch opposite hers. The light of the fire painted their faces in translucent oranges and yellows, erasing what faint lines of age and worry recent events had carved there. They looked like children in a storm, lost and lovely.

Gavin lifted his chin and the look was gone, replaced by the clear courage of a man born to carry his weight in the world. “I will make a full confession to whoever hears these things. Robin helped me but the plan was mine, the execution was mostly done by myself and Adam, and Katherine’s death is my sole responsibility.”

Robin opened her mouth, no doubt to try and take the blame from Gavin onto her own shoulders.

“Go for a walk,” Jonah said abruptly.

There was a moment’s startled silence, then Robin said: “It’s night.”

“Go to your room, then,” Jonah said.

Anna laughed and he gave her a dirty look. “Sorry,” she said, though she didn’t know what she was apologizing for.

“Go to our room?” Gavin said, confused.

“Yeah,” Jonah returned. “Just go away and let us talk.”

“Let the grown-ups talk,” Gavin said evenly.

Ridley jumped in before Jonah said anything else. “Would you mind, Gav? You and Robin are… too deeply involved as…”

“Criminals,” Robin finished for him.

Ridley smiled sadly. “Exactly. Would you guys mind?”

Gavin said nothing, but he followed Robin as she left the common room. They went into the bedroom Katherine had occupied and shut the door.

“What is it, Jonah?” Ridley asked.

“We’ve got three dead bodies. The NPS, Homeland Security and probably the state of Michigan are going to come down on us like a ton of bricks.”

“Adam was a suicide and Katherine was an accident,” Anna said.

“I killed whatshisname. Maybe it won’t be so bad after the first excitement dies down.”

It would be bad; she just said it in hopes it would be true.

“Katherine’s death wasn’t an accident,” Jonah said. “Gavin could have helped her get her foot free and hauled her out of there.”

“He thought rescue was coming,” Anna said reasonably. “It was farther back to Feldtmann tower than it was from here to the cedar swamp. Gavin said when he got there Katherine was expecting us at any minute. He couldn’t have known we weren’t coming, that good old Bob turned over and went back to sleep.”

“Gavin could have radioed,” Jonah said.

“Katherine had phoned. Why would he radio?” Anna asked.

“Would you have?”

Jonah grunted.

“Me neither,” Ridley said. “You don’t expect people like Bob. That’s why they win.”

“Bob didn’t win,” Anna said.

“No,” Ridley agreed. “No he didn’t. You did what you had to. I hope you won’t lose any sleep over it.”

“Not a wink.”

“Gavin and Robin might’ve torpedoed your career,” Jonah said to Ridley.

“I don’t think so,” Ridley said.

“We’re going to have to explain. There’s too much. E-mails about the big tracks, the DNA. It’s not going under the rug,” Jonah said.

“When it comes out, our little perpetrators are going to get slammed from every direction.”