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"I just think there are many explanations you haven't considered.
You're too close to this. Too personally involved. To put it bluntly, you're out of line. It's time you went home."
A brief maelstrom of emotions ranging from acute humiliation to homicidal rage seethed. Because she was female, her body's natural response to the onslaught was tears, tears of anger that, had she allowed them to fall, surely would have burnt holes in the carpet like droplets of battery acid. Determinedly impassive, she waited for the storm to abate. She hadn't a leg to stand on. Everything George Laymon said was true. A Chinese aphorism came to mind: If you keep going the way you're going, eventually you'll get where you're headed. Where she was headed was out of town, if not tarred and feathered riding on a rail, then the modern-day equivalent.
Going home to Mesa Verde, her tower house, her cat, tempted A
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Laymon was relenting, though his eyes were still wary. A
Outside the building, she stood in the thin winter sunlight pretending she felt some heat from it. Sheltered from the wind, it was almost true. She turned her face to the light the way a sunflower will. The day was young. Laymon was a professional; he'd managed to rake her over the coals in less than a quarter of an hour. One thing was sure: she was officially on foot. CACA wouldn't be giving her a vehicle in the near future. Later she would consider bumming a ride into town and renting a car. Since 1994 when the NPS had bumped most of their law-enforcement rangers up to GS-9s, her poverty days were over. A
Zeddie's house was empty. She was working the Big Room down in Carlsbad Cavern till noon, then roving a section of trail in the twilight zone after lunch. Peter would be hanging about, within whispering distance. Where Schatz was, was anybody's guess. Solitude was a relief. Having alienated her hostess with accusations of murder, A
A quick forage through the bathroom cabinets produced an Ace bandage. Ankle taped, food and water in a purloined daypack, A
CACA's backcountry was rugged and not well traveled. The park was known for its cavern; visitors came to see the cave, not to hike. Little money was dedicated to the creation and upkeep of trails. A
The desert was not good country for finding sign. The earth was hard-baked and covered with stones, though recent rains had softened it somewhat. On that A
Two hours' careful traverse of sand and rock turned up little besides weathered litter and game trails. Cold drove the life of the desert underground, and she hadn't seen so much as a jack rabbit or a horned lizard. Three times she'd come across recently made footprints, and three times the trails turned away from her objective: shooting distance to Big Manhole. A
Wind, cutting in an endless blade across the exposed skin of her face, was an irritant, but she chose to use rather than fight it. This time of year it blew unwaveringly from the northwest. By keeping it first to one quarter, then, when she turned and began tracking in the opposite direction, to the other, she could stay on course without bothering to lift her eyes from the ground.
Two more hours passed without producing results. A
She retrieved Zeddie's field glasses. A cement truck, no doubt laying a well pad somewhere in the hills. She followed the trail of dust back to where the rutted dirt to Big Manhole forked off from the gravel, then traced it up to the bald hillock where she'd found Brent's Blazer. A cream-colored pickup was parked there. Because of its protective coloring she hadn't noticed it with the naked eye.
Interest rejuvenated, she moved the glasses slowly down the hill till she rested them on the entrance to the cave. Brent's blood, black now, stained the rock, but the body was gone. The sheriff would have taken care of that. Big Manhole was locked, or at least closed. The driver of the pickup was nowhere in sight.
A minute's watch, and he appeared. Walking up from the gully separating A
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