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Sick of man-made light and racket, A
The moon was waning, but in the thin clear air over the Rockies, its light was strong. Trees inked black on the shoulders of the mountains. Above their reach slivers of glaciers and the pale, much shattered talus that spent a majority of its life beneath the snow, caught the moonlight. The longer A
Joan laughed. "You sound so wistful. There's not much. Hardly anybody goes up there. Mountain goats."
"Trails?" A
"Not that high."
"Just goats? I thought the bears de
"Higher. Not that high. They do go up there in summer, though. The moths are a major source of protein for the grizzlies. They tear up whole hillsides of alpine talus, turning over the rocks and licking up the moths. See? Global. Spray wheat in Mi
"They know now," A
"Our butcher went up there for some reason," A
A
"Your hunch paid off," Ruick said after they'd exchanged the requisite call numbers. "The prints on the second topo found in the army coat match those Bill McCaskil put on file when he was arrested for fraud. Looks like the victim was wearing his coat when she was killed."
Chapter 16
A
Far from chafing at the delay, she was glad to saunter over with Buck around noon. Several broken bones and knife wounds ago she'd lost her taste for facing unsavory types on equal terms. No right-thinking law enforcement officer wanted a fair fight.
When they arrived, the chief ranger and four others whom A
"Our bird has flown the coop," he said, leaning on the rail, a water bottle held easily in one hand. Ruick seemed at home, in control everywhere A
"What time?" A
"Around eight, eight-thirty." Their eyes met. A
"Les has a radio," A
"That's crossed my mind. You think Les told him? Some kind of conspiracy? Hired assassin?" Ruick laughed and A
"People have their own twisted logic," A
"Where does that leave our murderer?"
"I don't know. Maybe a falling out among thieves?"
"Or we're back to Les. If he weren't so…" Ruick glanced over his shoulder at the group on the hill behind them. "… so damned ineffectual, I'd have found some reason to arrest him by now."
Ruick squirted water into his mouth and swooshed it around more to entertain himself than to quench any real thirst. "What kind of fraud could a city-bred con man pull up here? Glacier's got nothing in the way of gold, silver, precious stones, gas, oil. One of the reasons it's been left alone is nobody ever figured out how to make any money out of it."
"Timber?"
Ruick looked at her. Not only was the terrain too rugged to log, cutting and stealing timber wasn't exactly a subtle crime. In a park where helicopter tours flew over on a daily basis, even a small-scale operation would be shut down less than twenty-four hours after it started.
"Right," A
Harry shook his head.
"Poaching?"
"Sure, some. But why bother? There are ranches just over the hill in British Columbia where you can legally shoot elk, bear, you name it. And since they're hand-raised, you can get ' em trophy-sized. They don't count that way, not with the big-league hunters. They insist the prey be 'wild.' But there's probably ways around that."
Ruick had pretty much shot down any ideas A
"We'll ask the s.o.b. when we find him," Ruick said philosophically.
A
Ruick took possession of the ripped and bloody bags, forming the next link in the chain of evidence. He and his rangers had come to Flattop on horseback. One man would be sent back down to take A