At first Anna didn't think she was going to reply, then she said, "A snap, I think." Her voice was little, as childish as her movements had been.
"Not good," Anna said. "You may have busted it. I'll go get some of the guys and we'll carry you back to camp and cut the boot off there. May as well leave it on for now. It'll keep your foot warmer and act as a kind of a splint."
Huge tears rolled down Jennifer's face. Their size and clarity transfixed Anna. These were not shallow tears but flowed from a well of hurt so deep the pressures were nigh unto intolerable.
"Will you be okay alone here for a minute? I'll be as quick as I can," Anna said.
"Don't you want to know what happened?" Jennifer's voice was drowned in tears.
"If you want to tell me."
"Len killed Josh," she said. "He was supposed to scare him off but he hit him too hard and killed him. Then he set the fire. He killed Newt too, with the fire." Tears filled her throat, choking off her words. Anna knew a better woman would take Jen in her arms and hold her. Anna wanted to do it but she didn't know how so she held the broken foot tenderly and waited.
Jennifer must have let Len into her shelter. When the firestorm was upon them he had told her and she'd killed him.
Anna set Jen's foot down gently. Not wanting to focus on Short's grief-ravished face, her eyes came to rest on the big chocolate fingers digging into the snow under Jennifer's leg. Len's glove. It had fallen off his hand, Anna remembered. With some misplaced idea of propriety, she'd threaded it back on the dead fingers. A big glove for so small a hand.
Abruptly Anna clapped her hands close to Jennifer's face, startling her out of her tears.
"Quick," she demanded. "Ten seconds or less: why did you take Leonard's left glove?"
Jennifer just stared, her eyes panicked. Five seconds passed, ten, twenty.
"I cut my hand," she stammered at last. "My blood would be mixed with his."
Anna sighed and shook her head. "That's what I thought."
"DNA tests would show that, wouldn't they?" Jen challenged.
"Yes," Anna replied, and plucked the glove from beneath Jennifer by a finger. "They will."
Jennifer's eyes flashed with sudden understanding. She grabbed at the glove but Anna whisked it out of her reach. "Sorry. Nice try. I'm going for help." Anna heard Jennifer beginning to sob as she walked away but she didn't look back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
BACK TO A sturdy snag, Anna stopped just out of sight of Jennifer's probing light. Before she moved again she needed time to think. Wind was rising, slicing across her face like a razor. Her skin hurt with it, her hands and feet ached with cold. Jennifer's cries found her but she ignored them, her mind churning through the night's revelations.
Len's left glove—a large on his small hand. The right glove, the one not saturated with blood, had an "s" in ink on the wrist, size small. Under the chassis of the truck the first night, over badger, then again with the abrasion on his little finger: Stephen fussing with his left glove. Because it didn't fit. Gloves were so necessary to firefighters that an ill-fitting one would be tolerated only briefly. The bloody left glove belonged to Stephen Lindstrom. It had become soaked with Len's blood not during some awkward contortion of a man with a knife in his heart, but by the blood pouring from the wound beneath the murderer's hand. Stephen had switched gloves, taken the unbloodied glove, but it was way too small.
The rest of Jennifer's story was probably true. Nims was Catholic—though there were cynics who would say, faced with death, we are all Catholics. Searching for absolution he'd chosen the wrong father confessor. Two things Anna hadn't recognized as important at the time became clear. When she'd told Stephen Joshua Short had been killed he said he was a friend. And when Stephen had been arrested in 1989 for obstructing traffic, Josh was arrested that same date in a gay rights protest in San Francisco. Stephen either was or had been Joshua's lover.
For the murder Anna could forgive Lindstrom. Forgive wasn't the right word, the trespass had not been against her. Understand then. The betrayal that she was having trouble accepting was Stephen allowing Jennifer to cover for him. Landing Joshua's only and beloved sister in the slammer for murder jerked the rug out from under any sort of True Love Revenged defense he might be using to rationalize his act.
Anna was furious at Stephen for not being the man she'd come to like and admire and furious at Jennifer for letting herself be used. The womanly virtue of self-sacrifice didn't hold any allure for Anna. Teaching dogs to love their leash.
She glanced over her shoulder in Short's direction and was surprised because she could see. The jaws of night were being pried apart by the dawn. Fog had thinned. Scraping her head back against the charred wood, Anna looked up. One, two... seven; seven stars were visible through a rift in the ceiling that had held them down for so long.
Tears welled up in her eyes. Stars. She'd not realized—or hadn't let herself think—how much she had missed them. And the sun. If ever a girl had needed the sun it had been over the last forty-eight hours. She filled her lungs as if it was the first breath she'd drawn since they'd crawled out of their fire shelters.
With oxygen came clarity and Anna knew what she must do. Nothing. The glove was safe in her pocket. It was Stephen's work glove; DNA testing should find plenty to tie him to it and, since Jennifer lied about bleeding on it, nothing to tie her to the murder. She'd get help, carry Jen back to camp and wait. Rescue would reach them sooner than later if the clearing trend continued. Stanton could have the glove. Stanton could have Lindstrom.
Hunching her shoulders, Anna pushed away from the snag. Jennifer had stopped crying or pursued the pastime quietly. Anna thought to check on her but didn't want to start the waterworks again. Mostly she didn't want to see Jennifer till she'd cooled off. She was afraid she would say something unkind. Later, when she'd rested and eaten, empathy might overcome anger. She'd call Molly. Molly would explain away weakness in blame-free psychological jargon. Anna would believe her. Post-traumatic stress disorder: Jennifer could certainly present a case for it.
Feeling kinder already, Anna started back down the slope, following the light from her headlamp and taking courage from the hints of gray brought by the coming day.
Another light joined hers at the same moment as a shout. "Jen! Is that you?"
It was Stephen Lindstrom. There was a murmured exchange then another shout: "Jen!"
Since Lindstrom wasn't alone, Anna shouted back. "It's Anna. Jen's sprained or busted an ankle. Who've you got with you?"
"Hugh" came with the sound of footsteps on the snow.
Anna's heart dropped, still Hugh was better than nothing, if only marginally.
Even with Pepperdine's irritating but less than murderous bulk to ease the situation, Anna was at a loss. If she sent Hugh for help, she and a crippled Jennifer would be left alone with Stephen. Should she go herself, she'd be leaving a cripple and an incompetent alone with him. If Stephen went, then he'd be out of her sight. Anna was reminded of a story problem in third-grade math involving a fox, a goose, a sack of corn and a rowboat.
They'd all have to go together.
"Think the two of you can carry Jennifer back without hurting her too much?" Anna asked.
"Sounds like you're not planning on doing any of the grunt work," Stephen kidded her, a light punch landing on her arm.
Anna wanted to punch him back hard for preying on Jennifer's grief and love of Joshua but she managed only to flinch away from his touch. In the semidarkness it went unnoticed.
"There are people for that," she said calmly. "Large people with muscles all the way up between their ears."
"What were you guys doing way out here anyway?" Pepper-dine asked aggressively. Still trying to make up for the incident with the Buck knife, Anna suspected. She ignored him.
"Jen's up the trail a ways." She gestured up the hill and stepped aside to let them pass.
"Stephen?" Jennifer called. She'd heard their voices.
Anna held her breath. "Don't, Jen, don't do it," she whispered to herself.
"It be me," Lindstrom called back cheerfully.
"She figured it out," Short cried. "Anna knows."
Momentarily the four of them froze in a tableau: Anna, Hugh and Stephen strung out along the trail, Jennifer in her hollow of earth. Hugh broke it first, his head rocking back and forth in a parody of the dolls used to decorate the rear windows of cars. "What? Knows what? What's going on here?" he demanded of all, and got explanations from none.
Anna was concentrating on Lindstrom. With the dawning light, she could just make out his features. They had the closed desperate look of a cornered animal's. Either he'd give up or he'd run. Should somebody try and stop him, he'd fight. Anna had no intention of getting in his way. There wasn't a chance in hell she could stop him without getting badly hurt and probably not even then. Running would only buy him time and not much of that. Once onto his trail, helicopters would track him down before the day's end.
Stephen's face set, his center of gravity dropped, he pivoted and sprang, lunging back down the trail the way they'd come. Anna leaped aside. Hugh wasn't quick enough and got knocked on his butt.
Stephen would head north and east, deeper into the Caribou Wilderness. Even with his strength and wilderness survival experience the helicopter would pick him up. Anna couldn't but admire his courage.
Pepperdine hauled himself to his feet. "Lindstrom killed Len?"
"Looks that way."
"Are you just going to let him go?" Hugh was trembling with relief or excitement. Anna couldn't tell which. "Give me the knife, I'm going after him."
Anna looked at Hugh as if he'd lost his mind. She wasn't altogether sure he hadn't. "They'll catch him later," she said. "He won't be able to get far in the snow without leaving a trail a blind man could follow."
"You'll attack me but won't chase down one of your little pals, is that it?" Hugh said.
Anna let that pass. She wasn't in a mood for setting any records straight. "Leave it alone, Hugh. Let's go get John and the others and get Jennifer back to the shelter."
"Screw that." Hugh wasn't exactly frothing at the mouth but specks of saliva had formed at the meeting of his lips and he sprayed out spittle with his words. "You'll go after him with John or Joseph but not with me. You don't think I have the balls, do you?"
"I have no interest in your balls or lack thereof," Anna said.
That was the wrong answer. Hugh exploded, one meaty fist slamming into the other. Barging down on her like an enraged rhino, he shot past, in hot pursuit of self-respect. And Stephen Lindstrom.
"Damn it, Hugh, come back here," Anna shouted. Either he didn't hear or he didn't care. Were Hugh unlucky enough to catch up with Lindstrom he was bound to get hurt. In the heat of the moment he might even get killed. Nims, a jury might excuse. Nims and Pepperdine, never.
"Doggone it," Anna growled. "I'll be back," she shouted to Jennifer.
Lindstrom had cut back down to the wash, crossed it and headed off at an angle up the far slope. Above the bivouac the new trail pursuer and pursued blazed joined up with the path to the hot springs and the going got easier. Individual tracks became indecipherable and Anna tracked by what was not there; no fresh prints leading off the beaten trail.
Around the thermal area much of the snow had melted and the rest would melt quickly. Stephen was hoping to lose his trail. He was a clever man, but Anna already knew that.
At the top of the low ridge above where Lawrence had killed his badger in what seemed like the good old days, Anna heard yelling. Male and angry, it wafted over the rise separating her from the thermal lake. Evidently Hugh had cornered his quarry. What an idiot.
Anna had been alternately walking and jogging, nursing a stitch in her side. Now she quelled the desire to sprint the last hundred yards. Exhausted, she'd be little use to anyone and a danger to herself. Forcing herself to relax and breathe, she walked through the vale and up onto the next ridge.
Clear light was touching the last of the fog and each particle of moisture caught it. Steam roiling up from the lake, the mud pots, the fumaroles, glowed in opalescent plumes. Bright and shadowless and surreal, the lake muttered and fussed, eerie streams of color moving as if they had plans of their own.
The yelling had stopped. No one was at the lower end of the lake where Lawrence and Anna had enjoyed their public bath. Quickly she scanned the periphery trying to penetrate the moving curtains of mist. Grunting aided her search. Eyes followed sound as a finger of wind plucked at the steam and exposed Hugh and Stephen on the top of the crumbling bluff that rose out of the boiling lake. For twenty feet beneath them gray-white earth, ridged and pitted, steam pouring from hidden vents and runnels of mud hardened over the years, fell in a ragged curtain down to the superheated water.
