Страница 3 из 52
She belted the radio on and, looking only where she put her hands, began to climb. Daggers of agave, needle-sharp and thrusting knife-like up from the rocky soil, catclaw in a bushy haze of tangled branches and small hooked spines, and jagged-toothed sotol, the black sheep of the lily family, tore at her skin and clothing. These dragons of this tiny Eden were the reason it had yet to be trammeled by humanity in the form of coolers full of beer and sunbathers slathered with cocoa butter.
Forty or fifty yards above the canyon bottom, A
"Three-eleven," came Paul Decker's familiar voice.
Much to her surprise, A
"Paul, A
"The victim is…" Is what? A
An alarming silence followed. "Paul, do you copy?" she asked anxiously.
"Ten-four," came the automatic reply. Then: "A
A
At first light Paul would start out. In her mind's ear she could hear him digging his Search and Rescue kit out of the hall closet. Probably he would sleep as little as she did. He was that sort of man. Once, when alcohol and memories had kept her up late, she'd seen him creeping out of his house at three a.m. to count vehicles; making sure all his little seasonal employees had made it out of the high country and were safe in their beds.
A
Thunderclouds were begi
Red-gold fingers of light reached through the dry thunderheads, touching the desert with the illusion of living green-a green that would come with the monsoons.
"Seven-two-four Echo is ten-seven." The baby voice of the Carlsbad Caverns dispatcher startled A
Fortunately, there was still plenty of light to work her way down to the creekbed. She had no food for supper but something had spoiled her appetite anyway.
Down was worse than up. Gravity, eager to help, dragged at her every misstep. But she made it, stood solidly on the smooth limestone, water at her feet, a corpse in the saw grass. A
The woman had entered on duty in December the year before. In the seven months since she had caused quite a stir. There'd been a lot of repercussions when she had proposed building recreational vehicle sites at Dog, and she'd raised a lot of fuss and furor over a plan to reintroduce prairie dogs into the area.
Politics and gossip were all that A
Too late to get to know her now, A
She dug her headlamp from her pack and pulled it tight across her brow. CLUES: that's what the law enforcement specialists at FLETC, the school in Georgia, had taught her to look for. CLUES: bloody fingerprints, cars parked in strange places, white powder trickling out of trunks. In the more populous parks like Glen Canyon and Yosemite, or those close to urban areas as were Joshua Tree or Smokey Mountains, crime was more prevalent. In fleeing Manhattan and her memories, A
However nauseating.
2
ANNA fished two of the soggy lemon slices from her water bottle, mashed them to a pulp, and rubbed the pulp into her wet handkerchief. Tying it over her mouth and nose, she fervently hoped it would cut the stench of death down to a tolerable level.
Next she took the camera she'd been using on the lion transect and hung it around her neck. Switching on the headlamp, though it was not yet dark enough to do her much good, she waded into the saw grass.
The camera helped. It gave her distance. Through its lens she was able to see more clearly. Sheila Drury was parceled out into photographic units. As she clicked, A
Freaks of nature did happen now and then. A
A
The skin of the face and arms was clear, smooth, the tongue unswollen. The Dog Canyon Ranger had not died of hunger, thirst, or exposure. A
No obvious powder burns, bullet holes, or stabbing wounds. Evidently the woman had not been waylaid by drug ru