Nevada Barr - Track Of The Cat

"Tim, hang on to it a while for me, would you?"

"Sure."

"How about the dirt I sent?" This time Anna was leaving no loose ends, no unchecked facts.

"Looked like dirt to me," Dayton replied.

Anna thanked him, promised a sordid recital of all the facts one day soon over a six-pack, and hung up. She drove home, made herself a pot of coffee, settled Piedmont across her knees, and went through her calendar, marking the days Karl's vehicle was seen in McKittrick after the canyon was closed. Both were Fridays, Karl's day off. The truck had been there all night. Even Karl wouldn't dare camp in McKittrick Canyon. The area was closed to camping. If he were caught, he would be fired, asked to leave the Guadalupe Mountains. For Karl that would be tantamount to being exiled from the Garden of Eden.

According to the backcountry permits she'd gone over with Manny the day before, he hadn't camped on McKittrick Ridge or at the Permian Ridge campground either. When off duty, park employees had to obtain permits to use the backcountry just as visitors did. Again, Anna doubted Karl would risk his job to flout a simple rule then leave his truck in plain sight.

The only alternatives were hiking up North McKittrick Canyon or the Permian Reef Trail and camping beyond the park's boundary in the Lincoln National Forest. No permits were needed there. The Permian Reef Trail was more likely. North McKittrick was rough going and it was a long way before one reached good campsites.

Leaning back, Anna stroked Piedmont's melted form spread across her knees. There was no way she could follow Karl, undetected, up the Permian Reef trail. It was too exposed: four miles of switchbacks up a rocky mountainside. She looked back to the calendar. Today was Thursday. She would hike up and camp, wait for him up in the trees where there was cover.

After packing her gear, Anna drove to the Administration building. She told Christina what she intended and asked if she would drop her off at McKittrick Canyon on her lunch hour. Looking pleased that Anna trusted her with her plans, she said she would.

Anna stopped briefly at the McKittrick Visitors Center and checked the closing log. Karl's truck was logged in the canyon half a dozen times over the past few months, always on a Friday. By two-thirty Anna had hiked up the mountain. The top of the ridge bridged McKittrick Canyon to the west and Big Canyon to the east. Big Canyon was over the line in the Lincoln. A trail joined the two tracts of public land, crossing through a revolving gate in the boundary fence separating them. A couple miles of forested land blanketed the ridge where it flattened out between the two canyons. It was a part of the relict forest that made the high country in Guadalupe so magical. Sotol and yucca held the desert's place on the edges of the escarpment.

If Karl followed his pattern he would hike up Friday. Still, Anna ate Thursday's supper at the edge of the reef where she could look down two thousand feet to the Visitors Center. Through binoculars, she watched the last visitors straggling out of the canyon, the cars drive away, then, just after six, the white one-ton pickup drive in. A tiny figure, probably Manny, checked the doors and windows of the building then got back into the truck and drove away. The canyon had been put to bed.

Anna watched the sun set and the stars come out, the half moon rise. Near ten-thirty she unrolled her sleeping bag in the hollow trough of the trail and slept. Around midnight a deer, confused but not alarmed by this obstacle, woke her with questioning snorts and irritated scufflings. Otherwise the night was restful. Morning put her back on the cliff's edge, binoculars in one hand, a mug of tea in the other, watching the miles of trail zigzagging below.

At nine-thirty a blue truck pulled into the parking lot. A man that could only be Karl Johnson-even at a distance he looked big-got out. He shouldered a red backpack and started up the trail toward the Permian Reef.

Anna put a bottle of water and her.357 on her belt, then stashed her pack deep in a rock crevice a good hundred feet off the trail. Satisfied it couldn't be seen, she continued her vigil.

It took Karl only ninety minutes to climb the four miles and two thousand feet. Following him would require more than stealth, it would take stamina. He was still below her on the exposed switchbacks. Soon she would need a new hiding place, one close to the trail where it ran through the trees on the ridgetop. From there she would fall into place behind him when he passed.

As soon as he disappeared from sight around the last bend in the trail before it leveled out in the trees on high ground, Anna left the edge of the escarpment.

Situated behind a dense stand of gray-leaf oak near a bend in the trail, she began again to wait. By holding down a branch, she could see almost to where the trail broke through the boulders on the edge of the escarpment. A quarter of a mile of trail was hidden from view. Unless Karl took off crosscountry at that point, she would have him in sight again within minutes.

Scarcely had she finished her thought when he appeared. Even half a mile away, he looked enormous. The battered, lumpy face was set, the wiry ogre head held low. He charged up the trail like a bull. For the first time since she'd started this pursuit, Anna felt afraid. Intent on planning, on hiding, reality had been pushed from her mind: she was stalking a man she believed may have murdered two people and tried, most brutally, to murder her. Despite the revolver she felt unpleasantly small and fragile, wrists and neck breakable as toothpicks.

Karl's long legs, swinging like tree trunks, ate up the trail. Stones crunched under his heavy boots. Feeling exposed, she held her breath as he approached, looked down as if the force of her eyes upon him would bring his gaze up and she would be discovered.

Without any change in rhythm, the footfalls passed. Anna opened her eyes. This small success calmed her. So might a lion sit atop a boulder, unseen, and watch its prey go by. This was natural, not supernatural. Karl would not feel her eyes. If she kept her wits about her she would be okay.

Sacrificing time for silence, she worked out of the scrub oak, then ran lightly down the trail. Having chosen tennis shoes over hiking boots, she made very little noise. Glimpses of Karl's red pack showed through the trees when she got close or when the trail curved back on itself sharply.

Three-quarters of a mile from the boundary between the park and the Lincoln, the trail broke free of the forest and followed a stony spine through low-growing shrubs and succulents.

As she hit the open stretch, Karl was less than fifty yards in front of her. Anna dropped down behind a rock and followed him with her ears. When she could no longer hear his grinding steps she peeked out. His wiry orange hair was just disappearing over the hogback and down a gentle slope.

He would be approaching the boundary fence. The forest began again there, thicker and denser in the moist hollow between the ridges of the two canyons.

Anna trotted slowly down the trail, aware that if Karl stopped to pee or take a drink or look at the view, she could come upon him more suddenly than she intended. She had a lie ready for such an event but she hoped not to have to use it. If Karl was the killer he probably wouldn't buy it. If he wasn't, she probably wouldn't need it.

Slowing, she came over the rise. Below her was the barbed wire fence and the rusting revolving gate. Beyond she could see about a mile of trail winding up a steep slope in the Lincoln. To the left North McKittrick Canyon dropped off in a sheer stone cliff. To the right, beyond the gate, the forest crowded up to the trail.

Karl was gone.

It crossed Anna's mind that he'd seen her, was waiting behind rock or tree and would reach out one great hairy arm like the ogre he so resembled. She stopped a moment, reassured herself he'd not seen her, and ran on. If he'd gone off trail anywhere before the fence she'd most likely be able to see him still. A hundred or so feet of scrub lay between the trail and the more heavily wooded area.