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Probably not the police, A
Having lain the pack on the living room rug, she sliced through the tape with the blade of her Swiss army knife. "I need to go through Sheila's pack, if you don't mind, Mrs. Drury. Most of the gear is NPS stuff. There may be some personal effects, if you'd like to help me…"
Mrs. Drury rose obediently from the table, her eyes on Andy Griffith's comforting face until her body had turned so far, her head finally had to follow. Sitting on the couch, she fixed her attention on the soiled pack.
A
Not much, A
Too spent to take offense at the tone, Mrs. Drury concentrated on A
"Must be," A
A
"We may as well do the rest," Mrs. Drury said resignedly. "Then we can go home tomorrow and forget about the whole thing."
The phrase jarred A
Collecting Sheila Drury's belongings took very little time. She didn't have much, and half of that was still sealed with tape in moving boxes she'd never gotten around to unpacking. As Mrs. Drury packed the kitchen utensils into a lidless plastic foam cooler, A
A gray canvas daypack was dumped in the corner of the closet. A
A noise made A
"I found it," A
"Those little cameras are worth a lot of money," Mrs. Drury said and A
"Not the camera," she said evenly. "Just the film. Maybe it will tell me something."
Mrs. Drury nodded. She'd lost interest. Flicking the dish towel in the direction of the uniforms, she said: "You can have that book-bag thing, too, and her park outfits. I'd just throw them out." Without saying what she had come for, she left and it crossed A
All of Ranger Drury's worldly goods fitted easily in the back of Paul's patrol vehicle, a fact Mrs. Drury remarked upon unfavorably more than once. She seemed to think a person should leave a bigger pile of consumer goods behind when they died.
A
It was after ten p.m. when A
The old woman-for now she looked older than her years- nodded. "I'll sleep in the little room," she told A
A
When Mrs. Drury finally went to bed, A
It felt like a reprieve to go into the bedroom and close the door. A
Having unrolled Sheila's sleeping bag-a new North Face from the cache-she lay down on the double bed. Her muscles twitched she was so tired but she was hardly sleepy at all. Staring up at the acoustical tile ceiling, she let her mind wander.
Somebody was looking for pictures. Somebody had either found them, not found them, or somebody was a figment of her imagination.
If the pictures were dangerous, Sheila would have hidden them. Everything she owned had been dismantled, packed into boxes, and removed from the trailer. There were no alarming photographs found.
Where, A
Even with the windows open, the trailer was hot. A
"Pretty damn mysterious," she said to herself and laughed. "No shit, Sherlock. Go to sleep." Clicking off the lamp, she closed her eyes.
When she was in college, she remembered trying to hide her stash from the fabled Narcs. Every place she put it would suddenly seem glaringly obvious and, in a fit of paranoia, she'd move it.
Some enterprising authors had described the phenomenon perfectly. A
Shower rod.
The clothes rod.
A
Careful not to tear anything, A
These were the pictures that had been sought. A naked woman laughing, her hair soft around her shoulders, posed on the slickrock in Middle McKittrick about a mile downstream from where the body had been found.
Christina Walters, her white breasts full and round, catching the sun, her knees coyly together, invitingly apart.
Sheila had set the timer for the last three: she and Christina making love, the tight brown wire of Ranger Drury's body close against the soft cream of the other woman's.