Blood lure

Maybe because she feared her own tendency to want to kick the cringing dog, she opted for sweetness and light. To make it ring true she closed her eyes, pictured him not as a self-involved, self-pitying shell of a man but as an old tomcat, battered and beaten till it could barely move, a cat who'd been so misused, when approached by a human hand, it could no longer even hiss but only close its eyes, wait for the blow and hope, this time, it would kill him.

For animals, compassion came easy. Keeping the vision of the tomcat firmly in mind, she began to speak and was pleasantly surprised to hear her words sounding genuinely kind.

"I can see that you're tired, Les," she began. "Tired almost to death. And you're alone like you've been alone for a long time, but now it's somehow worse. Everything's worse. Before, you were alone and you were hurting but she was there. She kept things going, moving, like she'd got things moving after your wife died. She was hard and she was angry but she was alive. You were alive. At least a little. And now she's gone and you're tired. Too tired almost to breathe." Les had not moved since she'd begun speaking but tears filled his eyes. They spilled down over his cheeks, divided and divided again as they dripped into the creases time and worry had cut into his face. Bleak as it was, it was a sign of life, and A

"Without her, things have gotten in such a mess. You don't know how to make things right. You've never known how to make things right, not since your first wife died. At least Carolyn made things real. She made things happen, didn't she?" A

Les nodded. Satisfied, she went on, spi

"Now you're tired and you're scared. You're afraid of what you've done-"

Les's hands, till then hanging like dead leaves between his knees, twitched. A

"-you're afraid of what you've done to Rory," she amended. The twitch stopped. Rory then. A

The tears fell harder. Les nodded again and weak mewling noises made their way out from a deep well of emotion A

Desperately she rifled through her brain. For whatever sick reasons, Les let Carolyn beat on him. To live with himself he convinced himself he did it for his son. Now he'd convinced himself he was staying in Glacier because he was scared, not for himself, but for his son. Did that mean Les thought Rory killed Carolyn, and by remaining, Les might be able to "do something" along the lines of impeding the investigation or tampering with evidence? Or that he killed her himself and, by lousing up the investigation, could salvage himself-a dad-for Rory?

A

She came from another direction, feeling her way carefully. "You knew Carolyn was gone that night," A

"I knew," Les mumbled, "but I didn't think anything of it. She used to leave at night. She…"

"She'd go out," A

"She'd meet men," Les said.

The light dawned. "She met men," A

"She did it to hurt me," Les said. "I never let on, but it hurt. It hurt a lot." More tears.

"That's why you pretended you didn't know where the coat came from? You thought she'd been with Bill McCaskil? Had she known him before? Met him anywhere? An internet chatroom? A courtroom? A conference? Anything?"

"No. I don't think so."

"She just meets him around the campfire and hops in the sack with him?" A

"You didn't know her. It didn't take long. It didn't matter who. She'd go off with bellboys when we stayed at hotels. Or the bartender. When I was in the hospital she got to my orderly. A boy no older than Rory is now. I didn't want Rory to know. The coat and all. I didn't want Rory to know."

One mystery solved: why Carolyn had McCaskil's coat on and why Les was so peculiar on the subject. None of that factored into why Les stayed on, unless he wanted vengeance on McCaskil and, after the bellboys and bartenders and orderlies, why bother?

"You think Rory saw McCaskil and his stepmother together and killed her for it," A

Les jerked as if she'd slapped him then covered his face with both hands. "Yes," he managed.

"Well, that's a crock," A

"It is?" A thread of hope cut through the molasses of tears in Les's throat.

Maybe it wasn't. Scared by the bear, maybe Rory had run home to stepmomma, found her in the arms of the latest blunt instrument she'd chosen to beat her husband with, followed, chased or lured her a few miles from camp and killed her. It was the best scenario she'd come up with yet. It even explained why McCaskil would run. Even if he was i

A

"Rory's going to be okay," A

"Okay," Les said, docile, empty.

A

Tired as she was, A

The previous night's tears and sleep had revived Les Van Slyke. He was, if not quite his old self, at least mobile. They were on the trail before sunrise and, thanks to Lester's radio, there was a truck and horse trailer waiting for them at Packer's Roost when they hiked out around noon.

Harry Ruick was in meetings till three-thirty. A