Blood lure

It appeared as if the bear had simply come to this minuscule clearing, quietly relieved himself and went on. No law against that. A

Too much coincidence, though. Bears, grizzly and otherwise, were high-profile inhabitants of Glacier National Park, but given the park's forty-one hundred square kilometers, there weren't all that many of them. According to Resource Management statistics, less than three hundred. One of the things the DNA study would do was give a more accurate count. Wishing she'd thought to pack one of Joan's handy scat sample bottles, A

She was glad to leave the pine clearing, scared to reenter the thick of the brush. It was an act of will to move up the side of the mountain through the obscuring undergrowth at a sensible pace. The urge to claw her way frantically out of the shrubbery didn't abate till she was not only in the open su

For no reason more logical than a bad case of the willies, A

A peanut butter and honey sandwich under her belt, she was better able to concentrate on her find. Do

The blue sack was slightly more forthcoming. Gray-green dust and a pale yellow residue of a delicate almost glittering nature, like pollen but more reflective, streaked the fabric. Whatever the substance was, it had been scuffed onto the sack recently. Perhaps the lab could use it to tell where in the park the bag had been before it was shanghaied into service as a ditty bag for the deceased. In a civilized environment, that information might lead to the killer. Here, time was a deciding factor. The days it would take to get the bag down to West Glacier, then to the lab and back, would be too long. The killer would no longer be "living" in the same place.

Having returned the evidence to storage and divested herself of the surgical gloves, she unwrapped her second sandwich. Her fingers smelled of the talc used in the gloves and tainted her enjoyment of the peanut butter. Ignoring that and the busy ticklings of flies, she leaned against the log where Ponce was tied and listened to the reassuring tearing sounds as he went on with his picnic.

The killer was still in the park. Either that or A

Though the most obvious, the wilderness wasn't the only thing she was at odds with. With the possible exception of Joan Rand, A

She thought of Sheriff Paul Davidson, her-her what? Her boyfriend? Her sweetheart? Or merely her lover? Paul was a good man and once, a long, long time ago in mind, two weeks ago by the calendar, she'd fancied herself falling in love with him. Since her adventures began in Glacier he'd scarcely crossed her mind. She'd not even called Molly though she'd told herself she would. There was something about this case that was causing her to isolate.

A

Humans were tribal creatures. Isolation was a form of punishment so extreme even in prisons it was only used for serious breaches of conduct. Those who isolated themselves usually suffered as a consequence. A

Shifting position, her back to the trail so her ever-vigilant eyes could keep watch on the woods, she considered her slow withdrawal. The unseen scratchings of a small woodland beast sent her pulse rate up and she realized what it was. She had been dispossessed, made homeless. Not removed from her house and cat and dog in Mississippi-the park housing she enjoyed on the Natchez Trace Parkway was simply one in a chain of way stations. Her home, where she felt safe and centered, had always been the wild country. Towns, streets, houses, dumpsters, PTA meetings- that was where evil lurked. In the backcountry was only the often pitiless but never malicious work of the gods.

In Glacier that amoral purity was gone. A wrongness stalked. Had it been only the warped and hostile actions of people, A

No wonder she'd bonded so completely with Joan Rand, A

The next hour was spent riding back to Fifty Mountain in hopes Bill McCaskil would have returned. But for a brief interlude with two visitors from Washington State, an incredibly chirpy middle-aged man hiking with a serene and homely woman A

Bill McCaskil had gone the way of the elk. His campsite was empty, pack gone from the tree in front of his tent. What A