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Then would come the demands that inevitably followed RV invasions: sewage dumps, water and electric hookups, and, finally, the cry of "Why can't we drive through the park? How are people supposed to see it?"
A
And then trying to kill her because she wouldn't leave Drury's demise well enough alone? Eastern couldn't have known she'd reached enough dead ends, was shaken enough from her fall to drop the investigation. Maybe he thought when she came back from Mexico she'd begin to dig again, with twice the energy now her life, too, had been threatened.
So he ran.
He'd left his pet snakes behind. Paul had noticed when he checked Craig's apartment. Snakes, though, could live for weeks without food. A
According to Paul, he'd not taken any clothes or books or anything, either. But then Craig was crazy. Maybe he'd run from everything-murder, snakes, laundry, phone bills.
A
Jarring bones and rattling teeth drowned out any thought for a while as she forced the truck over the broken rock of the rutted road. So bad was the surface, even ten miles an hour was too fast to maintain control. A
The heat grew oppressive. The plastic steering wheel burned her hands. Her feet, in their regulation boots, felt as if her socks had been dipped in kerosene and set on fire.
Mentally excusing herself to Rogelio's environmental purism, she rolled up the window and cranked up the air conditioner.
Eastern's Volvo was not at PX Well. While she was there, A
Close to four-thirty A
Climbing out of the air-conditioned cab, A
The others were already gathered around the conference table. Christina Walters had joined them. She smiled faintly when A
Paul sat across the table poring through a sheaf of forms. Looking busy, A
Cheryl was lost again in her finger-ends.
Shifting her revolver and radio so they didn't bite into her ribs quite so hard, A
Through the door co
A pointed look from Cori
As she resumed her seat, Harland Roberts came in from the hall. His dark hair was ruffled like a boy's, one lock falling over his forehead as if he had driven with his window rolled down.
Cori
No trace had been found of Craig's vehicle: no tracks, nothing. There were six gates in the fence around the boundary, most were the dead ends of rutted gravel roads leading into old wells and stock tanks left over from when the Guadalupes had been used for sheep and cattle grazing. The Volvo hadn't been found at any of them.
Next, Christina gave her report. There had been no official recognition of Eastern in the past seven days: no traffic violations, accidents, hospitalizations, arrests, or parking tickets concerning a Craig Eastern anywhere in a one-hundred-and-fifteen-mile radius of the park. Nor had any of the names and numbers she'd followed up from the University of Texas at El Paso proved fruitful.
A
"I followed up on the number you suggested, Harland," Christina replied carefully. A
"Nurse?" Cori
Christina looked uncomfortable. This was not her secret to tell. In truth, it wasn't Harland's either, but somehow it seemed he'd earned a right to it.
"Not a physical problem, Cori
The Chief Ranger waited, both of her small capable hands palm-down on the blond wood of the table.
A
Sure as death, the mouse panicked.
"It's a personal matter, Cori
"I understand your reticence to tell something you might have learned in confidence," Cori
Harland caved in. A
"I'm in a position to know that Craig has, in the past, suffered from a mental illness severe enough to get him institutionalized on more than one occasion."
A silence as deep as the one Cori
"Hunting Martians," Cori
Paul screwed himself around in his chair like a drill-bit emerging straight and true out of soft pine. "We don't know where Craig is, but we can infer from what information we do have that he may be in trouble. I'd like some air coverage. If we could borrow a helicopter from the Forest Service we could try and locate his camp. See if he left the backcountry."