Winter Study

In the night, the iris of the eye expanded to take in what available light it could to help clawless, blunt-toothed human beings live until morning. Perhaps in winter there was similar evolution, allowing the eyes to adjust to let in every scrap of color, so the fragile, neurotic creatures could stay sane to see another spring.

As A

Gutless, A

If Bob wanted her dead, Robin was dead. She wouldn’t have to be taken any distance at all. A couple yards from the bunkhouse would be sufficient. Dump her naked in the snow, cover the body with powder and branches. She would have been dead of cold before anyone noticed she’d been taken. Robin Adair had shyly crept into A

She shook it off.

She needed to test the blood; she needed evidence before arresting Bob. “Proof,” A

Holding on to what shards of peace the winter scene had given her, she turned from the window and stumped quickly across the hardwood floor, dynamic movement thwarted by the fat rubber boots and thick down.

In the back hall next to the DR’s office was law enforcement’s storage room: narrow, windowless and lined on both sides with adjustable metal shelves. Unlike many NPS storage rooms, it was neat and well organized. ISRO evidently had excellent seasonal rangers. On the top shelf were two briefcase-sized satchels, the standard field drug-testing kits used for years by police. They contained vials of various chemicals. Drugs were mixed with these liquids according to a key on the underside of the lid. The reaction gave the officer an idea of what she was dealing with. They were designed to find out what a drug was, not who was taking them, and were of no use to A

In the District Ranger’s office, where the light was best, she found what she needed, a gas chronometry-mass spectrum device, GC/ MS. Boxy and white, it looked vaguely like a blood pressure machine, the kind in grocery stores near the pharmacy. Before 9/11, there wasn’t a GC/MS in the entire Park Service. Now they were becoming almost commonplace, and they weren’t used to test criminals. Using hair, urine, saliva or blood, they drug-tested employees, particularly law enforcement.

Ketamine, “Vitamin K,” the cat tranquilizer, wasn’t on a standard tox screen, but that would change. Once used exclusively by veterinarians, it had made its way into the pantheon of club drugs because of its euphoric and hallucinogenic properties. Several years before, A

Ignorance stopped her in front of the GC/MS. She’d seen it operated exactly twice.

“Fuck!” she whispered. Then with more vehemence: “Fucking fool!”

None of it mattered: there was no electricity, no power. She couldn’t turn the machine on. A detail she’d overlooked in her mad dash down the hill.

Modern conveniences were as air: expected.

“Damn!”

She turned and ran from the office, down the hall and up the hill through the snow. By the time she reached the carpenter’s shop, she was puffing and sweating. Without waiting to catch her breath, she began pawing through the plastic-wrapped packages of wolf parts on the table. “Okay, Katherine,” she muttered to the corpse at her feet. “Give me a hand here. What was it set you off? I can’t test the blood. Maybe you could with your fancy PCR, but I can’t, I made a royal fool of myself in the V.C. If a tree falling in the forest can be a fool. So what was it? What did I hand you? You squeaked like a rat. Skull? No. Paws? No. Bigger.

“This.” A

“Hey, it’s all coming back to me,” A

Without waiting for a reply, she set the package on the counter beneath the window and began prying the stiff plastic away where it had frozen to the tissue sample underneath. “Okay,” she said when she’d peeled the cube of wolf and set it on the counter where the light was strongest. Like any frozen meat, the excised neck flesh had become featureless, pale, the folds and hollows settled while the meat was warm, then frozen in a chunk. “If the dead speak to the dead, do your stuff,” A

Neither Katherine nor the bit of deceased wolf spoke.

What A

“Got it,” A

“Darted it, then opened its throat and it bled out. The wounds made to look like a huge bite pattern,” A

“You thought Bob did it, didn’t you? Killed the wolf so the big game hunter could have the head and pelt for his wall. You knew Bob used ketamine; you knew because he’d used it on you.”