Winter Study

by Nevada Barr

  Fingerprints could be lifted from the jar. Several were apparent in the beam of the flashlight. Robin’s would be on it; Bob’s, probably. Maybe Adam’s. The only print that would be telling would be the print of the human version of the wog; someone on Isle Royale who shouldn’t be. Anna bagged it. At the rate she was collecting evidence of crimes that might or might not have been committed, the crawl space under the carpenter’s shop would soon fill up.

  Taking her time, she followed the yellow circle of light around the office. A few items had been left on the desktop when the island was closed to the public in October and the District Ranger went back to Houghton: a stapler, a plastic box with a magnetized opening half full of paper clips, an empty in-basket and a bright pink pad of Post-it notes. These were lined up neatly beside the many-buttoned phone.

  Robin hadn’t done the bulk of her drinking in this room. Not even a naturally graceful bi-athlete could get that totally pissed without disarranging a few things, spilling a few drops.

  The office chair was overturned; the five starfish legs, each with a wheel on the end, did their best to trip Anna as she moved around the desk. Chairs of that design weren’t easy to tip over. Robin must have collapsed into – or onto – it and carried it down when she went to the floor.

  Tracing the three points she’d found of interest, Anna moved the light from the wine box to the mason jar to the overturned chair.

  Robin had not been holding the merlot when she fell. Rectangles half full of liquid didn’t roll as far as the box was from the chair. The mason jar was a distance from both chair and wine box. Robin might have dropped them – jar, then box – then collapsed in the chair. Bob might have moved them.

  Anna crouched down and shined her light along the fuzzy tops of the close-cropped carpet. A flat, square package an inch or so on a side was beneath the desk. Lying on her belly, she fished it out. A condom, the package unopened. Unless District Rangers in other parks led far more exciting lives than they did in Rocky Mountain, or a couple of enterprising seasonals, waiting for the last boat off the island, managed to find a key and take advantage of the office with the view, this belonged either to Robin or Bob. Either way, it suggested a rendezvous had been planned. If the condom was Robin’s, Anna doubted Bob was slated to be the wearer.

  It was not beyond the possibility that, as Bob struggled to help Robin, a condom he’d not thought of in years but kept handy in his wallet at all times like an ever-optimistic high school jock tumbled out and was kicked beneath the desk, but it wasn’t a scenario Anna was going to put money on. Bob brought the condom because he knew Robin was drunk and an opportunity to take advantage might present itself. Or Robin had been intending to meet with a lover and Bob had spoiled it. Maybe Adam’s jar was on scene because Adam had been on scene.

  Anna shook her head as if an invisible jury watched from the hall. Adam had been on the couch all evening, front and center in the common room, as if he wanted it to be seen that he was in the bunkhouse.

  Anna sealed the package with its tidy ring in the center between two hot-pink Post-its and slipped it into her pocket. In movies, law enforcement fought dramatic, complex evils. In real life, that was seldom the case. Law enforcement was the endless slogging through the ooze and slime of run-of-the-mill evil, evil so ordinary, so interwoven with the threads of people’s lives, that to root it out tore the victim and the community apart while the monsters shrugged it off in true monstrous fashion. Molestation, wife beating, incest, date rape, statutory rape, gang bangs at frat parties – all the nasty, dirty crimes – damaged the victims again when “justice” was perpetrated.

  Anna had testified a number of times in her career and been to quite a few depositions. Defense lawyers were there to keep their client, innocent or guilty, out of jail. At any cost.

  Prosecutors were there to put the accused, innocent or guilty, in jail. At any cost. Defense attorneys routinely boasted over cocktails of getting rapists or murderers or child pornographers off. It was a testament to their abilities. The excuse they made for shelving their integrity was the law school cant: they were making the state toe the line, make its case.

  Most simply wanted to win.

  The sound of metal sliding into metal blasted her musings with the jarring force of a shotgun being racked. She switched off the flashlight and, trailing her fingers along the wall, moved rapidly to where the hall branched, leading into the Visitors Center’s main room.

  Stealth being impossible in full winter regalia, Anna turned on her light and swept the room before she crossed to the doors. Empty. No light came from outside, no person stood on the decking in front of the doors. Hitting the crash bar, she shoved, but the doors didn’t give. She grabbed the handles and rattled. The dead bolt was engaged. The only way to lock it was with a key from the outside.

  The only way to unlock it was with a key from the outside.

  Switching off her light, Anna stepped away from the doors lest she make a target of herself. The one other door to the outside was at the opposite end of the hall from the District Ranger’s office. Navigating mostly by memory and the occasional flick of her flashlight, she found it quickly. The bolt on it had been thrown as well, probably when the island was closed in mid-October.

  Putting her back against the door, she stared down the dark hallway. The V.C. was built in the modern style: the windows didn’t open. Climate was controlled even in the “wilderness,” the vagaries of weather and the human need for fresh air shut out by glass and technology. Minutes before, she’d wanted to be in the building. Now, because someone – not wog or weird but a human, someone with a key and opposable thumbs – decided to imprison her there, she wanted out.

  Bob Menechinn was her first thought. Ridley’s key had been missing. Bob or Robin could have lifted it from his desk and unlocked the Visitors Center. Robin was in no shape to creep back down and lock Anna in. She was also in no shape to defend herself from visitors in the night. Anna comforted herself with the thought that breaking down the bedroom door would rouse Ridley and Adam. The comfort was countered with the thought that Robin might open the door to whoever rapped on it.

  Flashlight on, stealth forgotten, Anna ran down the hall, checking offices, in hope that somewhere a window had been made that would open, that in a mental lapse the architect had overlooked one small portal to the real world. Otherwise she would be reduced to shattering glass.

  In the ladies’ bathroom above the sinks she found a window that could be louvered out from the bottom, creating an opening ten inches high and thirty-six long. She shucked off her parka and boots, and the cold bit into her with sharp teeth. Standing on a sink, she dropped the clothes and flashlight and followed them out of the window, eeling through headfirst. The drop was more than man-high, but snow had drifted against the building.

  Anna landed on her back in the drift. Pain would have been preferable to the blast of snow down her collar. Another minute was lost as she pawed through the snow in search of the flashlight and another while she pulled on boots and parka.

  Running felt good. Tired muscles and weary soul complained, but her body’s need for heat and her mind’s for speed soon quieted them and she plowed through the winter-quiet woods like a freight train, puffing and loud.

  The housing area was still, the bunkhouse dark. Slowing to a walk, she turned off her light and let her breath return to closer to normal. Entering by the side door to Katherine’s kitchen/lab, she stood a moment and listened. Peace prevailed.

  Dressing in the snowdrift, Anna hadn’t bothered with lacing her boots. She heeled out of the Sorels and slipped down the hall to the room she shared with Robin. The door was still locked.

  “Robin?” Anna called softly and put her ear against the wood. The door was colder than it should have been. Heat from the banked fire in the woodstove sufficed to keep the bunkhouse at a fairly comfortable temperature even through the night. Anna knocked again. “Robin?” She called a little louder this time and knocked with a purpose.<
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  Fear that she had let the biotech sleep before she should have took over and Anna shouted and pounded on the door to rouse her.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  It was Adam. At least somebody was responding.

  “Robin,” Anna answered succinctly and kicked hard beside the doorknob. No boots; the blow sent a stab of pain all the way up to her hip, but the door held.

  “Here, let me.” Adam was beside her, wearing boxer shorts and wool socks. He slammed his shoulder into the door and the lock gave way. A blast of cold air met them. Anna trained her light into the room.

  The window over Robin’s bed was wide open.

  Robin was gone.

  25

  Anna turned her light onto the floor. Robin’s parka, ski pants, socks – all her winter garments – were where she had let them fall when she undressed for bed. Anna spun, taking in a rush of the room. Closet door open, clothes as she remembered, Robin’s rucksack on the table at the foot of her bed, her house moccasins peeked from under the bed, her pillow crushed between bed and bureau.

  “Robin!” Anna shouted, crossed the room in two steps and leapt onto the bed. Cruel temperatures and black on black of forest and night met her like a wall. Her flashlight beam poked feebly into the scratch of branches, grabbing the white of snow and making shadows of it.

  “Robin!” Anna yelled.

  Ridley and Jonah crowded into the room, Jonah blinking behind wire-rimmed glasses and Ridley, hair loose and clad only in long-john bottoms. Both wore headlamps. They were so accustomed to the electric curfew, they donned them automatically. Anna suffered an unsettling sense of being trapped in a coal mine adventure with two of the seven dwarves.

  “Where’s Bob?” she demanded. Jonah and Ridley looked at each other in almost-comic confusion. “Adam, was Bob in his bed when you got up?” Anna insisted.

  “I fell asleep on the couch,” he replied. “But he should be. After the third time you told him to go away, he went to bed.”

  “Check and see if he’s there.”

  “I’m going to fire up the generator,” Jonah announced and disappeared into the darkness of the hall.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Ridley said vaguely.

  Anna echoed the thought if not the words. Fear of the dark had never been one of her neuroses, but she was thinking of adding it to the list. She was growing tired of peering down narrow beams of light like a virgin in a cheap horror flick.

  “Where’s Robin? What’s the deal?” Ridley asked. Anger focused his words and, Anna hoped, his brain.

  She gave him an overview of what she’d found in the V.C., up to and including the condom. She did not mention that she’d been incarcerated there. Instinct told her to save that revelation for another time.

  “And you think the condom was Bob’s,” Ridley said.

  “It wasn’t mine.”

  Lights came on, startling her so badly she dropped her flashlight. Adam was standing in the doorway, his headlamp turned off. Anna wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, but it didn’t matter. The information wasn’t a secret she’d intended to keep. Since she didn’t trust anybody, she had two choices: tell no one anything or tell everyone everything. She’d opted for the latter, so should anyone on the island besides herself turn out to be moderately sane and nonviolent he or she could help her watch the rest.

  “Bob was in his bed,” Adam said.

  “You hear the bit about the condom?” Ridley asked.

  “I heard. I doubt it was Bob’s. The guy’s not so bad when you get to know him.” This was delivered in a voice so totally devoid of emotion Anna flashed on a group of POWs in the Iraq war who’d been tortured, then filmed mouthing anti-American sentiments by their captors shortly before they were beheaded.

  “Get dressed,” Ridley told Adam. “Tell Bob to get up and get dressed. We’re going to need to get a jump on this… on whatever this is. Robin was stewed to the gills. She may have just gotten a sudden desire to go walkabout.”

  Anna hoped that was the case, but she doubted it. The men left, and she retrieved her flashlight. The window showed no signs of having been forced. Outside, near the bunkhouse, was a morass of tracks left by a moose that liked to scratch its back on the drainpipe from the gutters. No tracks left by bipeds; nothing that looked human.

  Closing the window, she remained standing on Robin’s bed. No track, no sign: that was not indicative of drunken meandering by a naked girl carrying a sleeping bag. Robin had not left; she had been taken, spirited away, vanished into the night. There would have been a sort of poetic satisfaction if Anna could have gotten one more shiver out of Algernon Blackwood – the windigo was known for swooping down and snatching its victims bodily from their tents – but she couldn’t quite picture the starved monster, lusting after human flesh, swiping a key and locking her in the V.C. so it might enjoy its midnight snack in peace.

  Ridley called, radioed and e-mailed the mainland, begging for help as soon as they could send it. The radio failed. The phone was almost unintelligible. E-mail got through. ISRO’s Superintendent promised Coast Guard, Forest Service, NPS search and rescue and law enforcement as soon as the weather allowed an invasion from the mainland.

  That done, he and Anna divided the public area into three sections. Ridley chose to go alone. Anna would go with Jonah. Adam volunteered to go with Bob Menechinn. Anna suspected it was so they wouldn’t have to go through the wretched moment when nobody picked Bob for their team.

  As had been the case when Katherine went missing, they found no track or sign to indicate which direction Robin had been taken. Again they searched the perimeter. Again they searched the permanent-employee housing area. Again they searched Washington Creek campground. Again they found nothing.

  Ridley radioed the order to return to the bunkhouse. Layers of cold-weather gear peeled off and dumped, they sat in the living room on the three sofas, like a family at a deathwatch.

  No one was anxious to go to bed.

  Leaning her elbows on her knees, Anna looked at the men with whom she’d been marooned.

  She couldn’t count the number of banal conversations she participated in where she was asked: “If you were marooned on a desert island, which book, man, song, tool would you want with you?” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Paul Davidson, “Amazing Grace” and a real sharp knife.

  Finally marooned and she had none of the above.

  Another opportunity squandered.

  Ridley and Jonah looked much as they had for the past few days, only more so. The pilot’s seamed face had lost its pixyish expression. Age dragged down his cheeks and dulled his eyes. Ridley was taking on the look of a lost soul. At each downward turn of events, he had stayed strong. Anna wasn’t sure he could do it this time. Only Adam showed signs of life and hope. His face was no more animated than the others, but there was a focus and intensity where before there’d been raw energy. Like a seasoned soldier, he seemed relieved to finally be going into battle rather than waiting for it.

  Bob Menechinn was the most changed. Robin’s disappearance seemed to have gotten to him as nothing else had: not Ridley’s hostility, not Katherine’s death, not the wog or the windigo, not Anna’s walking in on him – twice – being no better than he should be with a dead woman and a woman dead to the world.

  Menechinn was a bit of a sociopath, she guessed. In Bob’s mind, there was no Bob but Bob; other people were mere shadows, there to please him or be used by him or gotten around. An excellent government tool.

  Following this train of thought, Anna realized Robin’s disappearance, in and of itself, was not what was turning Bob’s skin pasty or thinning his breath. Something had happened in the past few hours that had caused him to believe he was threatened. Adam might have told him Anna found a condom. She rejected that idea; Bob would just deny it was his. Even fingerprints wouldn’t do it. There were a number of reasons he might have touched the package.

  As the night wore on, she quit worrying about Ridley�
�s ability to cope and began to worry about hers. Night closed tightly around the bunkhouse, the poor lighting in the common room inadequate to push it back past the mirror of the windows. Claustrophobia grew up through the cement suffocating her brain till she could picture herself running screaming into the night.

  “I was locked in the V.C.,” she announced suddenly and loudly.

  “Someone locked me in before kidnapping Robin.” Her bomb fizzled. The men looked at her, faces devoid of emotion. If one of them had thrown the dead bolt, Anna couldn’t have guessed it from their response – or lack of it.

  “Or some thing,” Adam said.

  Anna shot him a weary look. “Bullshit,” she said succinctly.

  He shrugged.

  Anna rose and began putting on parka and ski pants. If she didn’t take an action – any action – the concrete and claustrophobia were going to seal her tight in their cold, airless vault.

  “Where do you think you are going?” Bob demanded, rousing himself from his lethargy. He sounded angry.

  “Out. Want to come with me?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he snapped. He glanced at Adam and then away. Whatever had been communicated was lost on Anna.

  She stared at him long and hard. Bob was scared and it was making him mad.