Long legs jacked up against the seat back in front of him, Stan-ton cinched his seat belt down, then opened the envelope of computer printouts Spinks had given him: data on the Jackknife, maps of the area and background checks on the survivors and the two deceased still up on Banyon Ridge just east of Lassen Volcanic National Park.
He started with the report of the fire. Not because it held the greatest interest, but because it was going to be a long flight and he was saving the best for last. Last was Anna's background check, on the bottom of the pile. She wasn't a suspect, he was just being nosy. Law enforcement computer networks weren't the all-knowing, all-seeing, long, strong, electronic arm of the law that the various agencies would have the public believe, but they housed more dirt than a Hoover. A professional gossip's dream come true. Frederick had the highest regard for gossip. It showed people still cared what their kind did or did not do. It shored up the illusion of self-importance and morality that separated man from the monkeys he carved.
With a pleasant sense of anticipation that claimed him at the outset of most investigations, he began to read.
The Jackknife had been spotted on the twenty-seventh of September by a fire lookout in the Lassen National Forest. The burn had originated near Pinson Lake, California. Lightning, the cause of a majority of wildland fires, was not in evidence. The first victims, Joshua Short and his dog, were suspected of starting the blaze.
Frederick noted the plural and wondered what role the dog was thought to have played in arson. Maybe in the vein of Mrs. O'Leary's cow.
In eleven days the fire had grown to fourteen thousand acres of public land, thirteen thousand five hundred on National Forest land and five hundred acres in Lassen Volcanic National Park. An Incident Base camp of a thousand-plus firefighters had been established on the edge of the Caribou Wilderness east of the park and a spike camp within the wilderness area on Banyon Ridge. The fire had burned steadily but unremarkably until the cold front moved in over the Cascades. The blowup was a spectacular swan song, bringing the total acreage burned to over seventeen thousand.
Precipitation and cooler temperatures were thought to have stopped the fire. It was still being monitored and, though the crews were being demobilized, Gene Burwell, Incident Commander, would head the rescue effort to bring the stranded squad down off the mountain.
Chain of events, cause and effect, never ceased to fascinate Frederick. A cold front rolls over a mountain range; a brother is burned to death; a man named Nims is knifed in the back; Frederick notices he may be falling in something—"love" for lack of a better word; Joshua Short, alleged arsonist, sets a fire that overruns a spike camp where his sister has been dispatched. The world was a house of cards.
Stanton met Jennifer Short, a seasonal law enforcement ranger, when he worked a homicide with Anna in Mesa Verde National Park. Her steel-magnolia persona delighted him. He had a secret envy for those with colorful ethnic roots. Accents and cultural eccentricities provided good cover, a touch of mystery and romance. A middle-aged, middle-class, middle-western white boy had only his expected naiveté to fall back on when the emotional roads got rough. He hoped Jennifer's steel predominated over the magnolia for the duration. News of her brother's death, the trauma of the fire, might be enough to render her useless to Anna.
Through the musings and mental exercises it was never far from Frederick's mind that somewhere on the flank of a mountain, Anna was snuggled down with a murderer. It was so like her it made him smile.
Spreading out Timmy's maps, he noted with approval that the area of the fire and base and spike camps had been marked with colored pens. Somewhere in the circle of fluorescent orange was Anna. It wasn't hard to picture her in mud and trees and other uncivilized accoutrements. He'd never seen her anywhere else and wondered if he'd be disappointed should she ever turn up in Chicago in pantyhose, pumps and perfume; if the Calamity Jane aspect of the woman piqued a palate that had become slightly jaded.
Frederick had never been handsome enough to be vamped by cheerleaders, but he was single, straight and employed. It got him enough offers that he sat home nights by choice, not necessity. Danny, the monkeys and Tom Brokaw: not a bad life if one sent out for pizza.
He tried to picture Anna in his home and failed. Oddly, it disappointed him. He desisted and turned his attention to the background checks. The pages were run together on perforated computer paper. Stanton tore them neatly into sheets. Maybe the next generation wouldn't require the familiar comfort of rectangular white pages, read left to right, top to bottom, but Frederick found it helped organize his thoughts.
LeFleur, John Alvin, forty-five, white, male, five-foot-eleven, one hundred sixty pounds, brown hair, blue eyes. No wants. No warrants. Criminal history: felony draft evasion, 1971. Charges dropped. Possession for sale of Quaaludes in 1972. Two years' probation.
Timmy had tapped into personnel records and Frederick skimmed LeFleur's employment history: high school education, independent contractor, carpenter, bartender. Before signing on with the Bureau of Land Management it didn't look as if the man had ever held a job for longer than eighteen months running. Firefighting was the one constant: summer '81, '82 and '83 with the Forest Service in Colorado; '86, '87 and '89 on the Angeles in California; '91 and '93 with the National Park Service at Rocky Mountains. Since 1993 he'd been a permanent resource management technician with the BLM out of Farmington, New Mexico. A GS-5, Frederick noted. No money in that. If the man's tastes ran to anything grander than beans and rice he needed the fires to make ends meet.
Nims, Leonard Lynn, forty-three, white, male, five-foot-nine, one hundred fifty-eight pounds, gray hair, blue eyes. No wants. No warrants. No criminal history. Served in Vietnam in '71 and '72. Honorable discharge. Graduated with an AA in Forestry from Lassen Junior College in 1977. Worked for the Bureau of Land Management in Susanville, California, from '79 to '90. A GS-9.
Stanton pulled the map across his knees and looked up Susanville. On the edge of the desert sixty or seventy miles south of Lassen Volcanic National Park was a small town of that name. Lots of public lands surrounding it. Either a logging or mining town, Stanton guessed.
Since '93 Nims had worked on oil and gas leases for the BLM in Farmington, New Mexico. A GS-7's pay grade.
There was a story there. Frederick could smell it. Three years with no employment history, then another job halfway across the country at a lower pay scale. It could be as simple as moving home to care for an aging parent or a love affair that tore up roots. But something.
Nims was the man with the knife in his ribs, Frederick reminded himself, and he reread the file to cement it in memory. Unless Nims had been killed by a psychotic, something he had seen, done, said, been or tried for had gotten him killed. If the reason wasn't too obscure or too bizarre, Frederick would probably find it. Professionally, he only struck out about fourteen percent of the time. In baseball he'd have been a star. In law enforcement he was just a good cop, better than most, not as good as some.
But I'm not above asking for help, he thought with a smile that was only a little bit bitter. That's part of my charm.
Pepperdine, Hugh Clarence. Age twenty-three, white, male, six feet, two hundred fourteen pounds. No wants. No warrants. No criminal history. Graduated cum laude from New York University with a degree in Environmental Studies. New-hire law enforcement ranger out of Aztec National Monument near Farmington, New Mexico.
Frederick had been to Aztec sightseeing after the Mesa Verde assignment. An Indian ruin and a visitors' center on a small plot of land constituted the whole of it. Delightful as it was to visit, he didn't imagine Hugh got much hands-on law enforcement experience. Chipmunks in the garbage would constitute a crime wave at the sleepy little ruin. Unless there was something that didn't show up on his records, Pepperdine would probably be of little help to Anna.
Short, Jennifer Katherine. Stanton started to move her to the bottom of the pile because he knew and liked her. Law officers had an aversion to believing someone they thought well of could commit murder, wanting to believe that somewhere in their heart of hearts they would know a murderer when they met one. Gut instinct, training, intuition, insight—something would tip them off.
Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn't. In a former incarnation—one he was none too proud of—Frederick had invited a murderer to Thanksgiving dinner with his kids. Since then he'd learned to bake the turkey himself.
Shoving his reading glasses closer to the tip of his nose, he studied Short's file. No wants. No warrants. No criminal history. Graduated from Memphis State in accounting, 1985. From '85 to '94 she worked as a computer programmer for a local firm. Summer of '94, having completed a one-semester course in law enforcement at Memphis State, she was hired on as a seasonal law enforcement ranger at Mesa Verde.
Ran away with the Park Circus, Frederick thought, and envied her slightly. Should wild urges knock on his door, child support, alimony and tuition would see to it he sent them packing.
Black Elk, Howard Lawrence. Thirty-one, Native American, male, six-foot-one, two hundred ten pounds. No wants. No warrants. Criminal history: two driving under the influences and one drunk and disorderly in 1986. Nothing since. Undergraduate degree in archaeology from the University of New Mexico in 1989, master's degree in history from the same institution in 1991. Black Elk had worked in cultural resources for the Bureau of Land Management in Dove Creek, Colorado, until the present time.
Hayhurst, Joseph Charles. Thirty-three, Native American, male, five-foot-seven, one hundred fifty-two pounds. Black hair and eyes. No wants. No warrants. No criminal history. Bachelor of Arts from San Francisco State in Renaissance art history. Employment record: 1988—1990, high school art teacher in Los Gatos, California. Summers with the NPS in Yosemite. 1990 to the present, Interpreter, GS-7, for the National Park Service at El Malpais in New Mexico.
Gonzales, Lawrence David, Hispanic, male, twenty-two, five-foot-nine, one hundred sixty pounds, black hair, brown eyes, high school graduate, A.D. Durango. Frederick frowned in annoyance, then looked to the bottom of the page. Timmy, bless his thorough and ambitious little heart, had penned in an explanation. An A.D. was a direct hire, not through any agency, that was often used when fires were bad and extra personnel were called for.
Wants and warrants. Frederick started out of the lethargy into which the sound of engines and the small print of strangers' lives had lulled him. Gonzales was wanted in Washoe County, Nevada, for aggravated assault, assault on a federal officer and grand theft auto. According to the map, Reno was in Washoe County. Gonzales might be dangerously nervous finding himself so close to home. Frederick set the Gonzales file aside. Before he landed, he'd have Spinks do some more checking. That in mind, he eyed the flat plastic AT&T phone outlet pressed into the seat back in front of him. He'd never used one, never seen anyone else use one. He hoped he wouldn't make a fool of himself when the time came.
Lindstrom, Stephen Marshal. White, male, twenty-seven, six-foot-two, one hundred eighty-seven pounds. Criminal history: arrested 1989 for obstructing traffic, fined and put on six months' probation. BS in biology from Nevada State University, ski instructor at Tahoe winters 1989 to 1993, wilderness guide for Outward Bound summers '89 to '93. 1993 to the present dispatcher for the U.S. Forest Service out of Reno, Nevada.
The two other reports were slim. Neil Page wasn't on anybody's computer that Tim could find. He'd been hired on locally. He had no record. The woman, Paula Mary Boggins, had two previous arrests but since they'd been when she was a juvenile, the records were sealed.
Frederick leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes, collecting his thoughts. Newly acquired information was shuffled through his synapses like cards through the hands of a contract bridge player. Categories and cross references fell into place: LeFleur, Nims, Gonzales, Pepperdine, Short, Black Elk and Hayhurst were from the Four Corners area. Close enough they could have had contact before the fire.
Lindstrom, Nims, Gonzales, Hayhurst, Boggins and Page, and possibly Short because of her brother, had a connection to northern California.
Nims, Gonzales, Short and Hayhurst fell into both geographical categories. In a field where transience was a way of life—and many seasonals and firefighters led a nomadic existence—this was not in itself suspicious. It was just more information and Stanton filed it.
There were two questions about most murders: why was the victim killed and why was he killed when he was killed? Anna might have some thoughts on that.
Murder was such a good icebreaker.
He opened his eyes. Anna's file, the only one left, was on his knee. Had his legs been six inches shorter, he could have used his tray-table as a desk. With the new "efficient" seating in the 727s, he couldn't fold it all the way down without straddling the plastic tray.
Pigeon, Anna Louise, forty, white, female, five-foot-four, one hundred eighteen pounds, brown hair, hazel eyes. Frederick remembered her hair as more red than brown and, at a guess, would have said her eyes were blue. So much for the credibility of eyewitnesses. No wants. No warrants. No criminal history. He was relieved and laughed at himself, unsure of what he had expected. A Bachelor of Arts in communications from the University of California. Seven years with the National Park Service in Texas, Michigan and now Mesa Verde in southern Colorado. That was it: no secrets, no insights. Closing his eyes again, Stan-ton rested his hands on her file.
