Blood lure

Having done what they could, they hiked east toward Fifty Mountain Camp. Given the sinister goings-on since Van Slyke's disappearance, Harry felt it behooved him to speak to the lost boy's parents personally.

Three miles shy of Fifty Mountain they received news of Rory. Returned from hearse duty to search, the helicopter had flown over several times but it wasn't from that source that they finally had word. The call came from dispatch in the valley town of West Glacier. Hikers northbound on Flattop Trail, two miles south of where it intersected with West Flattop near Fifty Mountain Camp, had called park headquarters on their cell phone. They'd met a young man, naked from the waist up and wearing slippers. They said he was distraught. He knew his name, Rory Van Slyke, but otherwise seemed disoriented and claimed to be seeking help for two women who had been savaged by a giant bear. Except for a bad sunburn on his chest and shoulders, he appeared unhurt. The hikers would stay with him till a ranger arrived.

On receiving the news, Harry radioed the rest of the search party to stand down. After a night of bears, a day of rain, and a defiled corpse, A

Since he and A

Two law enforcement men in two million acres seemed to be giving the murderer adefinite edge, but there was little else to be done. A massive manhunt could be mounted if they had any idea who they were looking for. Till then it would only breed panic and ill will.

One of the great enduring joys of wilderness travel was that, in America at least, it did not require that one have one's papers in order. Campers were supposed to have backcountry permits, but hikers didn't need even that. When in the backcountry one could go to bed when tired, rise when rested and wander where the heart led, unidentified and untracked. Even had they pulled every backcountry permit issued, there was no way of knowing where the permittees might be at any given moment. No one wanted to admit it, but in a killing such as this, the murderer was likely to get away with it. If he or she-a woman could just as easily bone a chicken or filet a person as a man-was apprehended, it would have as much to do with dumb luck as good police work.

Their cross-country trek was short-lived, scarcely more than half a mile, but all of it uphill. They rejoined Flattop where it ran parallel to West Flattop. Back again on an improved surface, they made good time and reached the waiting threesome just after two o'clock; hardly more than an hour after dispatch radioed that Rory was found.

In the day A

The instant it came together in her mind, she jumped in to put the boy out of his misery. "Joan's fine," she said quickly, speaking overloud to penetrate the fog of trauma hovering around him. "Neither of us was hurt. Joan's gone to Fifty Mountain to tell your folks you're okay. Joan's fine," she repeated, making sure the salient fact soaked in.

"Hooray," he said. "Hooray, hooray, hooray." And he hugged himself, sunburned arms around a chest that was just begi

When he settled back to earth he began to chatter. "I thought you were dead. You and Joan. I heard that growling and I came back-honest to God I came back. But the bear was huge. I mean huge. Like a polar bear. So I-I knew I had to get help-"

"Easy, son, time for that later. You've had the whole park looking for you for nearly two days. A lot of people are going to be real glad to see you." Harry didn't sound like one of those glad individuals. He came across as brusque and crabby. A

Maybe Harry was a heartless s.o.b., but A

The less altruistic side of the NPS leadership mantle was the deep-clown belief that virtually every ranger harbored- only idiots and greenhorns got themselves lost. Purists even espoused the idea that the money and man-hours used to find them could be better spent. A

"A

"Yes."

"Do your thing." He nodded in Rory's direction. As she led the boy alittle way away from the others, she heard Ruick click into politician mode and begin to say the right things to the hikers. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when she would have quietly rolled her eyes and indulged in a small sniff of superiority. No more. Since she'd become a manager, she'd been made acutely aware of how important a part of the job being a good politician was. And what a joy it was to be a lowly flunky again for a few days.

She sat Rory on a stump, dug out the first-aid kit and, while he told his story, ran through a standard field check.

"I'd got out of my tent and gone into the woods just a little way behind that big rock. Something must've kind of upset my system or something and it wouldn't wait till morning… you know?"

He looked to A

"I know," she said agreeably.

"So I was out there awhile and I kept hearing things, getting real nervous like, you know? But I hadn't finished my, uh, my business. My insides-"

"What kind of things did you hear?" A

For a moment he didn't answer. He just watched her wrap the blood pressure cuff around his upper arm with an expression of contentment on his face. A