Track Of The Cat

by Nevada Barr

  "What if-"

  "What if," Paul cut her off, his famous patience finally exhausted, "I get you the autopsy report. If it says lion kill, no poisons, no signs of other violence, then you let go of this thing and get back to the business of being a park ranger?" The phone rang and he snatched it up. "Frijole," he barked.

  Anna guessed she was dismissed. Determined not to look contrite, she slid out of her chair and left the room, back straight.

  Small triumph, she thought as she stopped outside under the pecan trees, listened to the soothing chatter of a spring that had whispered the incomprehensible secrets of the desert for a thousand years. She was becoming a thorn in Paul Decker's side. A boil on his neck. A pain in his butt. Not a good way to beef up one's year-end evaluation.

  A gopher, pushing two fistfuls of soil, poked his little brown head out of a new-made hole among the roots of a pecan. "Hi guy," Anna greeted him. With a look of alarm, the little face vanished. "Et tu," she muttered.

  From the barn came the sounds of metal on metal. Karl pitchforking manure into the wheelbarrow.

  Why not? Anna thought. I've already alienated everyone else. May as well go for broke.

  Karl had an audience. Pesky and Gideon looked on adoringly as the big man mucked out their shelter. Pesky kept nudging Karl's behind. Anna supposed he sometimes carried sugar or carrots in his hip pockets for the animals. The mules were not so easily won. They stood back by the manger, wary of Pesky's hooves, waiting for some serious food.

  Under his breath, Karl was whistling, "We'll be quiet as a mouse and build a lovely little house for Wendy," from Peter Pan.

  Anna watched for half a minute. She figured she'd like Karl even if he did kill a ranger every now and again. "Gideon's hoof is looking a little better," she said for openers.

  "You been putting hoof-flex on it," Karl returned. "That's good. Nobody else bothers."

  "You bother," Anna replied.

  "It's no bother," Karl said.

  Anna couldn't help but wonder what Karl's mind looked like inside. She pictured an attic full of well-used, well-cared-for toys where the sun always streamed in through gabled windows.

  "I thought you'd be off today."

  "Tomorrow and Saturday."

  Anna knew Karl's lieu days but she'd wanted to hear him say it. Sheila had died on a Friday night thirteen days before. "What're you going to do on your days off?"

  "Nothing," Karl said. "Maybe I'll go to town. Go to the show."

  "Not much playing. I went weekend before last. Saw the new Schwarzenegger film. Did you see that?" Anna was fishing. Karl looked up from his manure. There was no telling whether she'd gotten a nibble or not. Maybe he was alarmed or wary or annoyed or maybe just thinking in his effortful way.

  "Weekend before last I went home to Van Horn," he said. Van Horn was a little town an hour south on Highway 54. "My mom wanted me to lift things down from the shelf in the garage. She's got a garage." Karl started to whistle again, lifting the handles of the full wheelbarrow easily and wheeling it toward the gate.

  Pesky butted his head against Anna, rubbing the flies from his face. Absently, she scratched his forehead with her knuckles.

  ALIBIS.

  They came right after CLUES.

  9

  TIME to have another "beer" with Christina Walters. Anna fervently hoped she had spent all that deadly Friday with at least seven nuns who never slept. Or, better yet, in jail.

  Rubberbands clamped in her teeth, she rebraided her hair. "Stalling?" she asked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. "Or primping?" For the fourteenth time she glanced at the clock: 6:17. When did one drop in on a mother-and-child? When did four-year-olds eat supper? Anna didn't feel up to interrogating Christina while her little girl looked on, round-eyed, over her bowl of SpaghettiOs. Not that Christina seemed a SpaghettiOs type of mother.

  Not like me, Anna thought. Christina would be a four-major-food-groups kind of mother.

  6:21.

  Anna combed the braids out with her fingers, left her hair loose and crimped. Annoyed at herself for caring, she purposely-or spitefully-pulled on ragged jeans and a faded sweatshirt Rogelio had salvaged from some good-will box in El Paso because it had Mickey Mouse on it. Still and all, she was wearing perfume-"Heartsong" from the Tucson Coop-and she carried a nice Pinot Noir she'd been saving.

  Christina and Alison lived in one of the two-bedroom-with-garage houses sprinkled down the curving roadway from where the seasonals, Anna, and two bachelor maintenance men were housed. Housing was always at a premium in the parks and usually sub-standard. Anna was lucky: she didn't much care. The Walters lived in what Anna referred to as the "real" houses: houses with washers and dryers and telephones and televisions and families.

  The unmistakable racket of plastic wheels on pavement let Anna know supper was either over or not yet called. Alison was riding her pink tricycle in tight circles on the smooth cement pad in front of the garage.

  "Hi," Anna said. "Is your mother home?"

  It was a stupid question. Alison probably knew it but, being a well-brought-up child, chose to overlook it. "Momma's in the back," she announced. "I'm not to go on the black."

  Anna stared a second before she realized what Alison meant. She was not to ride her tricycle off the white cement slab onto the black asphalt and into the road and traffic. Hence the tight circles. "Good idea," Anna said and: "The backyard?"

  Alison nodded, starting up her trike again with burring engine noise blown out through pursed lips.

  Christina, wearing white painter's overalls and a pale yellow tank top, knelt near the chainlink fence weeding a flower bed rich with the colors of marigolds and snapdragons.

  "Exotics," Anna said, "take a lot of water to maintain in the desert."

  "Good evening," Christina returned, mocking Anna gently. "Did you just drop by to abuse me?" As she stood, she smiled and held open the gate.

  "More or less," Anna replied truthfully. "But I brought an anesthetic."

  Christina nodded appreciatively as she read the label on the wine bottle. "I like reds better than whites. Even in summer I like the warmth."

  Anna laughed for the sheer pleasure of hearing one of her pet thoughts voiced by someone else.

  "It'll be better aged an hour or so." Christina set the wine just inside the porch door. "Ally and I were going to come by and abduct you this evening. We need your expert advice.

  "Honey? Ready to go?" she called, shooing Anna out the garden gate as the tricycle clattered down the walk beside the house to meet them. In mild but not unpleasant confusion, Anna waited as Christina supervised the putting away of the trike.

  "Do you want to tell Ranger Pigeon where we're going?" Christina asked as the three of them walked out the drive and turned up past the seasonal housing.

  "Anna," Anna said.

  Alison bounded away ahead of them, then walked backward several yards in front. "Dottie's neighbor's cat had kittens. Momma said I could have one and that you knew how to pick the best one because you had an orange cat."

  "Dottie Bernard lives up at the highway camp," Christina explained. "She sits with Alison week days."

  Anna was flattered-all out of proportion to the event, she told herself-but still, she enjoyed the feeling. Maybe Molly was right. Maybe it had been too long since she'd had a friend. Too many years spent looking at other human beings as merely creatures the wildlands needed to be protected from.

  In the end Christina may have been sorry she asked Anna along. To Alison's great delight, Anna's expert advice was two kittens, so they could play together when she was away at the sitter's all day.

  " Piedmont doesn't have anyone to play with," Christina said half accusingly.

  " Piedmont was an only child," Anna returned.

  "Like Ally." Christina looked sad for an instant then banished it with a smile. "Two kittens," she said.

  Alison picked out two black kittens, one with a white mustache, one with two white front paws. They carried them h
ome in a cardboard VCR box. Under Anna's supervision it was converted into a litter box and food and warm milk set out to make the kittens feel at home.

  "You mustn't play with them too much," Anna warned, echoing words she remembered her mother saying over the furry heads of the many kittens she and Molly had dragged home over the years. "Or they'll get sick. And you must be especially gentle with them for a few days because they'll miss their momma."

  When they'd all three been settled in front of the TV, Alison watching Cheers and the kittens curled together asleep on her lap, Christina made microwave popcorn and opened the Pinot Noir.

  "My hair is so mousey!" she said with an implied snort of disgust. "I'm thinking of getting it permed or streaked or something. What do you think?"

  Girl-talk. God! how Anna had missed it without ever knowing she was. Much-maligned girl-talk: sweethearts and hair, new clothes and getting your colors done, movies and books and music and gossip. But not the backbiting and undercutting that stung like a canker through all levels of the Park Service. Real gossip; gossip about why people did the bizarre things they did, said the outrageous things they said, believed the improbable things they believed. Gossip to ferret out what people must be thinking, what made them tick. So much more satisfying than the mannish "I told the so-and-so, I said by God" variety that had buffeted Anna's ears for so long.

  They talked through two television shows, through putting Alison to bed, through the last of the wine. Anna forgot the reason she'd needed to talk with Christina in the first place.

  Cups of decaf in their hands, they had moved out onto the back porch and were sitting in darkness watching the heat lightning flicker on the horizon over Van Horn sixty miles to the south when she remembered.

  Then she only wanted to forget it again, for all time, but she knew she couldn't. Rightly or wrongly, she felt she'd come to know Christina too well to creep around about it.

  "I've been thinking a lot about Sheila's death," she said without preamble. "Some new things have come up that make me think she was murdered, then the murder was covered up by somebody wanting it to look like a lion killed her."

  There was a long silence, deepened by the distant sound of thunder. Anna wished she could see Christina's face but the darkness under the porch roof was too deep.

  "Oh my Lord. To kill her… That can't be right. It takes such hate. Watching the life go from someone… Forcing it out. No, Anna, that can't be right. Why would anyone kill Sheila?"

  All Anna's answers froze on her tongue. So long had she been contemplating this murder, she had forgotten it would be a shock to Chris, would ruin her sleep and haunt her when she was awake. Unless she had done it. Especially if she had done it.

  The wordless darkness began to feel empty, accusing.

  "The pictures. You think I killed her." The words dropped into the silence like stones into deep water. Christina's voice was so devoid of emotion, Anna knew she was angry or hurt or both.

  "Not really," Anna said lamely. "I'm just covering all the bases. Filling in squares. Checking alibis."

  "Alibis! Oh for Heaven's sake!" Christina laughed but it was not a pleasant sound. "How could you possibly think so poorly of me? How could you sit here drinking coffee and watching the sky with me thinking I might be a murderess?"

  Anna thought about that one. It was a question she would've asked herself sooner or later. "Just because you might've had reason to kill someone doesn't mean you're not a nice person," she said at last.

  "I'd better check on Alison," Christina said abruptly and Anna was left alone on the dark porch. With the first faint stirring of fear, it occurred to her that Christina had gone to fetch a gun, a hypodermic needle, a rolling pin-some implement of destruction.

  The soft darkness seemed to harden, become menacing. "Damn," she whispered, lamenting the death of the camaraderie.

  A pitiful mew sounded from the unlighted living room. Picturing Christina lurking Anthony Perkins-like behind the china cabinet or inside the hall closet, axe poised, Anna decided to stay where she was. She moved her chair so her back was not to the inside of the house.

  Again the plaintive, unconvincing mewing. Nothing else: no lullabies, no footsteps in the hall, no "nighty-nights."

  "Damn," Anna whispered a second time. With her eyes, she measured the distance to the porch door. Eight feet. If she bolted from her chair she could be through it and clear of the garden in four seconds, halfway home in ten, and safe in less than a minute. Of course, if she were wrong, she would look a complete ass in that same amount of time. Foolish or dead? Which did the average human being fear the most?

  A needle pricked into the back of her calf. Half swallowing a yelp, she jerked clear, slid to the floor and, pivoting on one knee, came to her feet, the chair she'd been sitting in held between her and her attacker.

  The overhead light glared on. Momentarily, Anna was blinded.

  "Playing at lion tamer?" Christina stood in the sliding glass door that divided the porch from the house. Between her and Anna, held at bay by the four legs of the chair, was the tiny black kitten with two white paws. It had tried to climb Anna's leg.

  Relief and absurdity rolled out on laughter. Fear, the ultimate magician, the perfect puppet-master, had made for her a monster. Anna set the chair back in its proper place, sat down, and picked up the kitten.

  Christina still stood framed by the aluminum doorway.

  "I have no intention of explaining that little scene, if that's what you're waiting for," Anna said, suppressing a giggle as the tableau of her and the chair and the infinitesimal lion flashed through her mind.

  Christina shrugged. She sat in the rocker she'd occupied before. The light was left on, harsh, throwing shadows, aging her face. "Alibis," she said. "That's 'where were you on the night of January twenty-fifth at seven p.m.' stuff, isn't it?"

  Anna just nodded. The night had grown significantly cooler.

  "But you want Friday night the seventeenth of June, the night Sheila died, don't you?" Christina laughed, a bark of sound. "Oops. How did I know she died Friday night and not Saturday morning? UNLESS I KILLED HER!

  "Drumroll there-or whatever it is they are using these days. Friday was a guess, that's all. For what it's worth, I was doing the inventory for the books and so forth at the McKittrick Canyon Visitors Center. I worked late. I was there by myself from five p.m. till nearly ten. Manny saw me at six when he came to close the canyon. He brought me Paul's key to let myself out."

  "Did you return it to Paul that night?"

  "No. The next day."

  McKittrick Canyon access road ran four miles out from the canyon mouth to Highway 62/180. Every night at six somebody drove in, made sure all the visitors were out of the canyon, then padlocked the gate at the highway.

  "Karl may have seen me. The Roads and Trails truck he drives was parked there when I arrived. He may have seen me through the window… No." She looked disappointed. "It was still there when I left. He wouldn't've seen me, I guess."

  "Did you see anyone else? Was anyone else in the canyon that night?"

  "No. Nobody."

  "At least we know for sure Sheila didn't come in from this end. Manny ran the Visitors Center that Friday till five and he said Sheila'd not been by. That means she had to come over from the Dog Canyon side." For a minute neither woman spoke. Anna was lost in her own thoughts.

  "Why so glum?" Christina asked.

  Anna looked into the clear brown eyes. So innocent. Studiedly so? "Karl said he'd gone home to Van Horn that weekend."

  Christina rubbed her fingertips on her eyelids. "It's getting late."

  "Time I was going home." Anna rose, gave the kitten to Christina. She wanted to say something more. To say: "I don't think you did it." But sometimes she did. "I'll check out Karl's truck before I go into the backcountry tomorrow."

  "You do that," Christina returned and, though she sounded more weary than angry, Anna figured the friendship was over before it had truly begun.

 
People tended to take it personally when they were accused of murdering their lovers.

  10

  USUALLY Anna's morning walk from the housing area to the Maintenance Yard where the NPS vehicles were kept was a pleasant part of her day. The air was clear and cool. The desert's perfume, released by the morning dew, was at its most heady. Cottontails, mule deer, and, if she were lucky, a coyote, flickered through the gray branches of the rabbit brush.

  This morning all those ingredients, save the coyote, were in place but her mind was so filled with the rubble of human emotions, she never saw them.

  Life changed the moment one began to stalk one's fellow man. Apparently in much the same way it would if one were to take up a life of crime. Perhaps because that, too, was a form of stalking. Someone had stalked and killed Sheila Drury. Now Anna stalked them, dug through their secrets. Murder required so many secrets and secrets were isolating things.

  How lonely a life of crime must be, how tempting to tell someone-anyone-just to break the icy silence. How one might find oneself hinting at the possibilities, talking in What-Ifs and hypothetical questions. The world was designed for people who had no secrets, nothing to hide. One would go through life paying cash, telling lies, and twitching every time the doorbell rang. And, surely, feeling as transparent as glass.

  Anna marveled that anyone would choose to be so vulnerable, so nervous. Then it crossed her mind that perhaps it came about not by choice, but simply by failing to say "no" to each sweet and terrifying betrayal till finally there'd be no turning back. Always wanting a little more and a little more till the deed was done, the Rubicon crossed, the die cast.

  After a while the crime would take on a life of its own, grow, form partnerships, expectations, financial dependencies until, even should one want out, the sheer inertia would carry them on.

  And Anna knew there was a breed of men-and women- who craved the challenge, the adrenaline rush of night actions. The way Rogelio loved ecotage: partly fighting the good fight, partly playing at commandos. There was a breed of criminal who got high on the smell of fear, the warm wet touch of blood.