Nevada Barr: Track Of The Cat

He slipped in, knelt by the tub with a childish grace. His hands dipped under the water, rested cool on her waist.

"No trouble this time. Just a lot of talking and drinking cerveza," he said. "The Border Patrol hardly stopped me. They must be getting used to my old bug."

"They don't have much of a problem with middle-class white men with Illinois plates sneaking into Texas," Anna said. The El Paso Border station was more concerned with illegal aliens than drugs. And something in his proud assumption of wickedness made her want to deflate him now and again. Eco-defenders had altogether too much fun fighting the good fight. They looked in the mirror and a little too often to overly impress Anna. "And the beer and the talk, that's the best part, isn't it?" Still, she was smiling and she'd moved her hands to cover his.

"Not the best part," Rogelio said, his voice liquid. "You are the best part."

The Clark tape came to an end and the player automatically clicked over to the second cassette. The Chenille Sisters singing, "I Wanna Be Seduced." Anna laughed.

She did.

Anna did some of her best thinking after making love, curled warm and satisfied in the curve of Zach's shoulder. Of Rogelio's shoulder, she corrected herself without pity. The mind is clearer when the body is quiet.

"Rogelio, are you still awake?"

"Depends," came a slow answer and she felt the warmth of his hand at her breast.

She caught it and held it somewhere near the floating ribs- less distracting real estate. "I keep thinking about the Drury Lion Kill." Already, in self-defense-or natural callousness, Anna was not sure-she'd dubbed the death of the woman from Dog Canyon the "Drury Lion Kill." Though something about the phrase bothered her. "I wonder why she was messing around up there. She wasn't on transect. Middle McKittrick is closed."

"That's what rangers do," Rogelio replied and his smile warmed the darkness. "Go all the good places us mere mortals are shut out of. Everybody knows that."

"Seriously. Who in their right mind would drag a full pack down that canyon on a contraband lark?" Rogelio's hand was trying to wriggle free, his lips brushed her neck.

"Mmmm," he purred, "you're doing it to me again. God but I'm crazy for you, Ana."

Anna tried to fix her mind on the saw grass, the vultures.

"One of your pet kitty cats ate a ranger," Rogelio said and his hand slid down to her thighs. "Lions do that, querida. They're meat eaters."

"Seriously-" Anna said and again caught his hands.

"Seriously," Rogelio replied and pulled her to him.

Even as she responded, she ached for Zachary, for some good, old-fashioned conversation.

First thing in the morning she would call Molly. First thing.

"Reality check," Anna said. She pressed her mouth close to the phone.

"I've only got seven minutes till Mrs. Claremont."

"I found a dead body."

"What's that sound in the background? Where are you?"

"At the pay phone by the washer and dryer in the Cholla Chateau in the Rec. Hall. That's the dryer. It squeaks," Anna explained. Molly knew where she was. She was just being difficult.

"Get a phone. A real phone."

"I promise."

"Okay. A body. Human or otherwise?"

"A woman. I found her up Middle McKittrick Canyon yesterday on my lion transect."

There was a moment's silence. Anna waited through it. Molly was lighting a cigarette. Not for the first time, Anna was amazed that Molly's patients stood it. One hundred and fifty dollars an hour and they had to breathe tobacco smoke. "Middle McKittrick," Molly said. "That's one of those bloody awful washes you've got down there, isn't it?"

"That's right." Anna glanced at her pocket watch. "Four minutes till Mrs. Claremont."

"Mrs. Claremont will still be neurotic in fifteen. Tell me."

Anna told Molly everything as she had since she was five and her sister was eleven. She told her of the vultures, the tears, the saw grass, the ghosts, the paw prints, the claw marks. Occasionally Molly interrupted with a question, clarifying, Anna knew, the very precise picture she was putting together in her mind.

Mrs. Claremont had been cooling her heels in the Park View Clinic's opulent waiting room for ten minutes by the time Anna had finished.

Another brief silence. Anna waited for the summation. Already, just from talking to Molly, she felt better.

"Okay," Molly said finally. "You didn't give a damn one way or another about this Sheila Drury. Right so far?"

"Right," Anna admitted. She wished Molly would sugarcoat things now and again, but she never would.

"Death, darkness, vultures munching, brought back the bad old days after Zach was killed. That's pretty straightforward. But what I'm hearing through it all is an outraged sense of injustice. Am I close?"

Anna felt around inside her brain, probed down her esophagus, took a left at her sternum, and peered into her heart. "I guess that's right." The surprise sounded in her voice and she heard Molly's foreshortened chuckle, almost the "heh heh heh" of the cartoons.

"Because some of the wrong people die?" Molly was fishing.

"Ah… Nope."

"That you weren't hailed a hero for finding her?"

"Nope."

"Because you had to be the one to find a stinking corpse?"

Anna thought about that for a second but it wasn't it, either. Horrible as it was, she loved a good adventure. "Nope."

"I give up," Molly said. "Gotta go. Call me when you hit on it."

There was a click and Molly was gone. Ushering in Mrs. Claremont without apology, Anna didn't doubt.

Craig Eastern came in with a blue plastic basket full of uniforms and white Fruit of the Loom underpants. He didn't look at Anna as he loaded the washer and put two quarters in the slot. Maybe he figured it would make less of an intrusion that way.

Anna realized she was still holding the receiver to her ear and replaced it in its cradle. "I'm done," she announced and Craig cranked in the quarters, starting the noise of the washer.

Outraged injustice.

Anna pondered it as she walked back to her residence. Molly had put her finger right on it. That was the feeling. Anna had mixed it with other emotions, not really even recognized it. Outraged injustice. It was an emotion for the young, for those who still believed in some pure, shining vision of absolute Justice, a virgin to be outraged. Anna had felt the outrage for years when she'd been simpler, blessed enough to see the world in clear crisp black and white.

Over the years she'd been introduced to "mitigating circumstances." Everything had softened, muted into the more interesting but less dramatic shades of gray.

Why outraged injustice now? Anna rubbed the fine scratches on her arms. They were beginning to itch with healing.

Then it was clear, classic: the innocent wrongly accused.

The lion didn't do it.

"ANNA, you saying The lion didn't do it' is like Jimmy Hoffa saying the Teamsters didn't do it."

"Paul, there were no saw grass cuts on Sheila. None. Lions wrestle their prey around, drag it. Even if it just chased her into the saw grass and killed her clean, she'd've had to get cut up some."

Paul sighed-a small one, barely audible. The sound of a patient man summoning up his reserves. Tilting back in his chair, he steepled his fingers. "Okay, let's go over this."

Anna felt irritation boiling up inside of her and took a couple of deep breaths to try to dilute it. Paul was about to manage her. Anna loathed being managed. She leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers in conscious mimicry.

They were in the Ranger Division's headquarters, the old Frijole ranch house. It was a two-story home built near a spring just after the turn of the century. Even in the heat of June it was cool. The native stone walls were nearly two feet thick and pecan trees, brought from St. Louis in tins and carefully tended, were now fifty feet high. The shaded oasis was a haven for snakes, scorpions, mice, and rangers. But for an ongoing battle between the District Ranger and the mice, they all managed to live together in relative accord.