The sound of claws came in the night. At first Anna thought she was camped in the high country and fought the claustrophobic blindness of an enclosed tent. Slowly it came to her that she was fighting the covers on the bed in Joan's guest room. The window to the left of the bed was open, only a thin screen between her and the out-of-doors.
Panic opened Anna's eyes and, by the faint light of the few street lamps that polluted the night in the housing area, she saw a great shaggy hulk. As she watched, it blanked the light, took it like a black hole, then perforated it with the shine of ragged teeth.
Open-mouthed, she couldn't scream. Not a sound came out. Her arms and legs lay heavy as deadwood on the mattress. The teeth slipped through the screen, a faint tearing noise, then a paw, clattering claws so long they struck the sill, came through the wire. Still Anna was paralyzed, a poison, a weight in her limbs.
With a tremendous effort she fought to move. The resulting jerk woke her, freed her from the nightmare. For half a minute she lay in the bed reassuring herself that now, really, this time, she was awake, not merely dreaming she was, safe from the black quicksand of her subconscious.
Then the sound of claws was repeated and the nightmare began again. This time Anna could move. Quick as a cat she was out of the bed, mother-naked, back against the wall beside the window. Her heart pounded and she felt half crazy but she knew she'd heard it: scratching.
Joan had inherited the house with curtains. She must have. Anna could not believe a member of the female gender would purposely choose those that hung to either side of the window.
Snaking her hand between the oversized geometricpatterned drapes and the wall, Anna eased the curtain out far enough to afford her an oblique view of the screen. Time passed, measured by the beat of her heart: a minute, two, maybe three. Nightmare cleared from her eyes and she noted the faint silver sheen of distant light reflecting off the fine mesh, the darker shadow from the overhanging eve. Across the street at an angle, she could see the garageof one house and the front entrance of another. All was still. No monsters.
Adrenaline subsided. Cold sank into her bare skin, worse where buttocks and shoulder blades touched the plaster of the wall, but she did not return to bed. Waiting was an art form. Seldom had she gone wrong with waiting, watching another minute. Another five minutes.
Scratch. Scratch. A claw, a single claw, the sere black forefinger of a crone, crept up from beneath the sill and raked at the screen.
Soundlessly, Anna backed away from the curtain. Crossing the bedroom in three strides, she snatched up shorts and shirt. In the hall she pulled them on. Her boots were by the front door near her day pack. She stepped into them and jerked the laces tight.
Joan lived like a pacifist. The only weapon that presented itself in the shadow-filled living room was a three-legged footstool beside the Barcalounger where Anna'd left her day pack. She tipped it clear of the remote control and a Reader's Digestand hefted it in her right hand. Heavy hardwood, well made; it would suffice.
Moving quickly, she let herself out the kitchen door at the back of the house and ran quietly around the garage, her boots nearly soundless on the lush summer grass. Bobbing like a duck for a June bug, she peeked around the corner then ducked back.
A shape was crouched beneath her bedroom window.
Given the real and imagined beasts that had haunted her nights, she forgot for a moment who took honors for the most dangerous species, and was comforted by its human contours.
Whoever scratched at her screen had his back to her. Carrying the stool up against her shoulder, ready for defensive or offensive use, Anna stepped from behind the corner of the garage and moved slowly across the concrete driveway.
Scratch. The crone's finger was a stick the croucher pushed up to scrape the wires. The croucher wore a dark coat but his pale hair caught the light. Anna moved up close behind him. Fear at bay, she was rather enjoying the game.
Leaning down, mouth near the intruder's ear, she whispered, "Rory, what are you doing?" The result was most satisfying. Rory Van Slyke clamped both hands over his mouth. His twig went flying and he collapsed in a heap, his back against the wall of the house, his eyes huge above his hands.
The only thing missing was noise. Rory had not made a sound. Not a squeak or a grunt. Somewhere along the line he'd learned not to cry out. Anna wondered why.
She swung down the stool she'd been brandishing and sat on it. "What are you doing?" she repeated, this time in a normal voice.
"Shh," Rory hushed her. "I was trying to get your attention," he whispered.
"Why didn't you knock on the door?" Anna whispered hack. Library rules: it's hard to speak normally when one's conversational partner is whispering.
"I didn't want to wake Joan," Rory replied. He sat up. "Can we go someplace? For a walk maybe?"
Sleep had been pretty much ruined for an hour or so, at least till the adrenaline had time to be reabsorbed. "Sure," Anna said. "Let me get a jacket."
"No. Take mine," Rory said, slipping out of a dark fleece coat. "I don't want to wake Joan," he said again.
Anna took the coat. It was soft and oversized and already nicely warmed up. "Lead on, Macduff," she said. Rory looked blank. "Where do we go?"
"Oh. Just anywhere." Beneath the fleece he wore blue jeans and a sweatshirt with "Mariners" stenciled across the chest. Shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, he walked across the grass to the street. Anna fell in step beside him. Briefly, she wondered just how big a fool she was being, lured out alone at night by a young man who was on a short list of murder suspects. For reasons she was not quite sure of, her alarms weren't going off. Maybe Joan's goodness was wearing off on her. Maybe she was getting old and sloppy, losing her edge.
Whatever it was, Anna felt no fear for her physical self, and a burning curiosity to find out what was on the boy's mind. For the length of a city block, till they came to a fork in the road, Rory said nothing. The houses they passed were dark and sleeping. Anna liked being out at night. It had been awhile since she'd moved like a ghost among the living, thinking her thoughts while they dreamed theirs. In the Mississippi woods the nights were too dark for wandering.
At the fork, Rory stopped for a second as if the decision of which way to go momentarily overcame him, then went on again, straight, toward headquarters and the main road. Tall trees lined either side of the lane, drawing curtains of impenetrable black alongside. Overhead the night was clear. Stars and a quarter moon gave enough light to see by. Anna was pleased to walk without flashlights. In true darkness they were invaluable. In anything less they only served to narrow vision down to where it was a distraction instead of a guide.
"So what happens now?" Rory said after a while.
"How so?" There'd been a lot of blood under the bridge in the past few days. He could be asking about any number of things. A natural reticence made her not want to spout forth unnecessary information.
"About the… you know… the death," Rory said.
Anna looked at him in the weak light from the moon. If he'd shed any tears for this stepmother he'd done it in private. His eyes were dry but she noticed he did not say Carolyn's name or call her "my stepmom." Regardless of where his emotions lay, it was natural that he would want to distance himself from the incident.
"There will be an investigation," she said carefully. "Chief Ranger Ruick will be heading that up. He'll try and find out who did it and bring them to justice." She realized she sounded prim and simplistic, but at the moment, she wasn't sure what else to say, wasn't sure what it was Rory wanted.
"You got suspects already?" Rory asked. They'd reached the road that led past the headquarters parking lot toward the maintenance yard. Rory turned down it. Anna hesitated. This way took them toward the machine sheds, garages, storage barns and, if they went far enough, the resource management building. They were moving away from the housing area where a shout would be heard and, because this was a national park, responded to.
In the end, she followed him. Time enough to turn around. She wanted to know where he was heading metaphorically if not geographically. "Nobody special, if that's what you mean," Anna hedged. "This wasn't exactly your smoking-gun sort of situation."
"On television they always suspect the husband," he said. "Do you guys suspect Les?"
Rory seemed oblivious to the fact that he, too, might be a suspect. Maybe he thought being incommunicado for a day and a half in his bedroom slippers was an ironclad alibi. Or maybe he was more cunning than Anna gave him credit for. Maybe he wanted them to suspect Les and that's what this little nocturne was playing up to.
"He's a suspect," Anna said because Rory already knew it was true. "Why? Do you think your dad killed your stepmom, that Les killed Carolyn?" She purposely used titles and names, wanting to bring it home, make it personal, to see what Rory would do.
A twitch? Too dark to tell. "Maybe I did it. Ever think of that?" he asked.
"Those were my very thoughts not more than a minute ago. Did you?"
"Dad didn't."
They'd reached the maintenance yard. Rory stopped by the gasoline pumps and turned toward her. "I don't think you ought to go poking around. Dad's not healthy. Can't you see that? He's old and his heart's not good. He's got high blood pressure. He can't handle this kind of stuff. Leave him alone."
This, then, was the crux of the matter. Anna looked around at the deserted maintenance yard, the rows of blank garage doors facing in on a paved rectangle, the hulks of machinery dead with the night, and rather wished she'd insisted they turn back earlier. Rory, several feet away, was studying her as intently as she studied her surroundings. His sandy hair gleamed in the soft light but the rough cascade of bangs, in need of trimming, threw his eyes into deep shadow.
"It's cold," Anna said. "Let's keep walking." And talking. Though emotionally taxing and often spiritually dangerous, talking was not a physically damaging sport. Anna wanted to keep him right on doing it until they got back into a more populated locale.
"Let's not," he said. She started off anyway as if she hadn't heard him, setting a casual pace that would take them around a sharp corner past derelict-looking buildings toward the resource management office and another residential area.
After a brief hesitation, he walked with her. Anna allowed herself a small inward sigh of relief. Determined though he might be, Rory was not yet ready to lay hands on her to get what he wanted.
"Why don't you want your dad investigated?" she asked mildly.
"I told you," Rory snapped. "His health isn't good."
His wife's health was considerably worse, Anna thought, but didn't say so. She just walked and waited to see if whatever was under the surface of Rory's filial concern would boil out into words. It didn't, and that concerned her. Kids, normal kids with fair-to-middling parents, might bluster in their adolescent years about not trusting anyone over thirty, but beneath that bluster dwelt the child whose long habit had been to turn to adults when in need. Rory'd had that habit broken for him.
Anna kept on at the same easy pace. They reached the corner where the maintenance yard bent into an L-shape. This was the farthest they'd get from windows and ears, a walled canyon of buildings, machinery and trees between them and the scattered houses. Realizing she'd tensed, Anna relaxed her neck to keep herself alert and ready. Consciously, she monitored the speed of her steps.
"I don't have any say in this investigation," she said easily. "I'm just visiting from another park. I've done a few chores for Harry but that's it. If you want your dad left out of things, the person you need to talk to is the chief ranger. I'd suggest you do it during regular business hours. Creeping around in people's shrubbery could get a fellow shot."
"It's you I want to leave Dad alone," Rory said and this time he did lay hands on her. Strong brown fingers curled around her upper arm forcing her to stop.
The touch triggered fear in Anna. If she were going to fight or run, now was the time. For small people without the skills or scriptwriters of Jackie Chan, exploding like a cherry bomb then running like hell was the best bet.
The spurt of fear was not enough. They were still talking.
"Like I said-" Anna began.
"No," Rory cut her off. "You. You leave him alone." The fingers tightened on her arm. "You're different. You pry and pry and wriggle into people's heads. You don't just ask what they've done. You watch and you wait like some fast little snake that looks asleep. Then there's that little tongue flicking out because you smell something. You pry into stuff that's none of your affair. That has nothing to do with anything. Nothing to do with this."
Rory was being his own pep squad, letting his own oratory whip him up like a speaker inflaming a mob of one.
Anna decided to break into it before he worked himself into trouble. "That's enough," she said quietly. With another boy she might have yelled, a verbal slap to get his attention, but she'd seen Rory with Harry Ruick. The boy definitely had a problem with authority. "Let go of my arm," she said just as softly. "I bruise easily and it is swimsuit season."
Either the tone or the absurdity got through and he let go. She began walking, glad to be leaving the spectral machines of the maintenance yard.
"Time we headed back," she said. "I don't know about you, but it's way past my bedtime." No longer curious as to what Rory wanted from her, Anna firmly dropped the subject.
After fifty feet of consideration, Rory picked it up again. The heat his speech had lent his words was gone. The icy edge that replaced it was far more alarming. "If you don't lay off Les and just do the bear thing or whatever, you'll be sorry. Real sorry."
The clichéd threat should have sounded childish, empty, but it didn't. No hollow undertone spoke of desperation or grasping at straws. Rory had something concrete in mind. Anna felt it with every chilled ounce of marrow in her bones.
Rory had missed his opportunity to thrash her. They walked now between two rows of neat houses, petunias, a riot of color in the light of day, spilling black as tar from window boxes. What could a high school boy do to her? Slash her tires? Leave burning dog droppings on her doorstep? Spray-paint "fuck you" on her garage door? If Rory planned a physical threat all she need do was report him to Harry and he would be shipped out of the park immediately with a ranger escort to the airport. Any threat he made would end the same way. Anna was grown up, connected. He was a child. He must know that.
"What will you do if I don't stop investigating Les?" she asked, genuinely curious.
"I'll tell everybody you sexually harassed me," he said evenly.
Anna laughed.
"Pressured me," he went on. "That you used your position to coerce me into having sex. That you seduced me and made me do things I'm ashamed of."
Anna quit laughing. She quit walking. So did Rory. Together, face to face, they stood in the middle of the empty street. A horrible, gnawing anxiety began eating Anna from the inside. Rory had found the right threat. An accusation like that would get her, not him, shipped from the park. It wouldn't matter if it was true or not. It wouldn't matter if Harry Ruick believed it or not. The mere accusation would be enough. If Rory pressed charges, life as she knew and enjoyed it would dissolve into smirks, sneers, depositions, lawyers. Before it was over she'd be beggared emotionally and financially. The park service might back her, but they'd be running scared. Anxious to cut her loose and save themselves.
Even if they knew it wasn't true.
Rory's face changed and she realized she'd been fool enough to let her fear show on her face, writ so large a callow boy could read it by the meager light of a quarter moon.
"You're joking," she said, and, "It won't work." Both statements were untrue.
"When I was in junior high school this teacher got sent to prison for it," he said.
Anna remembered the case. It had created a feeding frenzy in the media. In the blink of her mind's eye, she saw herself with a hundred microphones shoved in her face. Bile rose in her throat. She gulped it back. Anger and fear mixed such a powerful potion in her blood she could feel the shaking from the inside out. Run, cry, smash the boy's face, rant, beg; the need to do these things simultaneously and at the top of her lungs held her as paralyzed as she'd been in the dream of the bear. This time her brain was paralyzed as well. She couldn't think.
Helpless. This was what it felt like, a squirming, raging fly-like frustration caught in the fingers of an evil, wing-pulling boy.
"You wouldn't actually do that," Anna said hopefully.
"I'm sorry," Rory said and the shred of hope vanished. Had he been mean or vindictive she might have had a chance. Rory believed what he did to be the regrettable but necessary means to some greater end.
"Shit," Anna murmured and hated herself for her transparency. She turned and walked because she could think of nothing more to say or do. Repetitive movement fed her mind just enough; it could race, and thoughts began clamoring, scratching, fighting to find a way out of this predicament.
The moment she reached the house she could call Harry Ruick, drag him out of bed and tell him of Rory's threat. Preemptive strike. Perhaps it would do a little to predispose the chief ranger to believe her, but not much. It would be too easy to believe Rory did threaten her but not with a lie, threatened her with exposure. And why was she out walking alone with an eighteen-year-old boy after midnight anyway?
Harry didn't know her well. They'd been acquainted only a few days and only in a professional capacity. What did he know of her personal quirks or kinks? Only that she was a widow and had been without a man for many years. Rory was a nice enough looking boy. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility. "Jesus," Anna heard herself whisper and closed her teeth against any further involuntary outbursts.
Ruick would call her boss, John Brown. But Brown didn't know her either. He'd call her field rangers in the Port Gibson district on the Natchez Trace. At least one of them, Anna knew, would like nothing better than to insinuate the worst. The case she'd recently finished on the Trace had been fraught with adolescent boys, several of whom she'd leaned on pretty hard. What might they be tempted to say to even up old scores? Regardless of the final scene, the play would be long, exhausting and she would not emerge unscathed. Right off, she would be slapped on the first plane back to Mississippi. Even if Ruick could believe Anna was blameless, he wouldn't dare keep her around; not on the case, not on the DNA project. Unlike Rory, she was not a minor, not a civilian. There would be no need to treat her with kid gloves. "Jesus," Anna whispered again, unable to help herself. "You're a fucking genius, Rory. You know that?"
"Sorry," he repeated sadly, and Anna wanted to strangle him.
He had seen her fear, heard it in muttered blasphemies. He knew he had won; she was on the defensive if not actually beaten outright.
Anna would go with that.
They had returned by a circuitous loop to the original fork in the road that led to Joan's house. As they turned down it, Anna let her steps falter and dragged her hand down over her face. "I don't feel so good," she said. It was no great stretch to make it sound believable.
"We're almost there."
Anna considered trying to squeeze out a few tears, but she was so long out of practice she didn't think she could pull it off. She comforted herself with the thought that it was too dark to get the full theatrical effect from them anyway.
Given Rory's staunch admiration for those who took no flack, Anna wasn't trying to win his pity or compassion. He was more likely to scorn her as weak, pathetic. That was just fine. All she needed to do was to keep him emotionally engaged a bit longer.
When they reached Joan's driveway, Anna allowed herself a weary sigh. "God, I'm thirsty," she whispered. "I've got to get a drink of water."
"You go," Rory said, hanging back. "I got to get to bed."
"No." Anna felt panic rise. "Please," she said. "I won't wake up Joan. We've got to talk. Just let me get a drink."
"You'll wake her," Rory said. "It won't do you any good."
"No, I won't," Anna promised. The last thing she wanted was to wake Joan Rand and force Rory to play his hand. "My day pack. It's just inside the door. I've got water in it. Just let me grab it. I won't be a second. I won't even go inside."
Indecision worked across Rory's face. Revulsion was there too, though whether for her or for himself, Anna couldn't be sure. "Please," she pleaded. "Please. We need to talk."
"I won't change my mind," Rory said.
Anna took that as permission and dashed lightly up the concrete steps. Careful not to vanish from Rory's line of sight, she opened the door and leaned in. Her pack was behind the Barcalounger where she'd dumped it. Having rummaged briefly through its innards she emerged again into the night, pack in one hand, water bottle in the other.
"Here," Anna said and led him to the garage door. "We can talk here. Joan's room is at the other end of the house. She won't hear us."
"What if somebody sees us?" Rory asked.
He was getting skittish. Anna had to work fast. "Wouldn't that suit your purposes to a T?" she asked acidly. The sudden change in the emotional weather put him off balance.
"I guess," he faltered.
"Sit down," Anna commanded, the pleases and the pleadings gone from her voice. "If you're to blackmail me you better damn well get the terms straight."
Rory didn't sit but he hunkered down on his heels. Close enough.
"I don't see the point-" he began.
"The point is you don't want me, personally, asking questions about Les, that right, Rory?"
"Yeah. That's right."
"And let me get this straight, you kind of caught me off guard back there. If I don't stop investigating your dad, you're going to accuse me of sexually harassing you? Even though I never laid a hand on you or spoke to you in a sexual way ever?"
"I'm sorry," Rory said for the third time.
"That's what you've threatened to do, isn't it?" Anna pressed. He was fidgeting, looking over his shoulder. Any second he would spring to his feet and she would have lost what might be her only chance.
"That's it," Rory said. "And I'll do it, too."
Anna almost breathed a sigh of relief but stopped herself in time. "Even though I never behaved toward you improperly in any way," she pushed for good measure.
"Even so. I'll do it," Rory declared firmly.
Anna had what she needed. She relaxed back against the garage door, the day pack tucked protectively under one arm and at long last took a drink of the water she'd made such a fuss about needing.
"What's your dad got to hide that you'd sell your immortal soul to the devil to keep me from finding?" she asked seriously.
Rory sensed that something had changed but he didn't know what. Pushing himself to his feet, he glanced around as if expecting the neatly trimmed shrubs to be suddenly bristling with policemen. Nothing stirred.
"You're not afraid I'll find out Les killed his wife are you?" Anna asked sharply. "Or not just that. What is it?"
"I've got to go," Rory said. "I'll do what I said I'd do. Leave it alone." With that he loped off into the street toward the dorm he shared with a couple of other boys.
Anna stayed where she was and watched until he ran around a corner and a house swallowed him from sight. After that, she listened. For half a minute she could hear footfalls as he ran, then that was gone and the eerie stillness of the Glacier summer night reclaimed the neighborhood. Opening the pack, she located her pocket-sized tape recorder by its red running light. Without taking it out of the protective canvas pack, she pressed Rewind for several seconds, then Play.
"Even so. I'll do it,"Rory's voice came out of the small machine. The batteries were okay.