Winter Study (12 page)

This
last was the most probable. Wolves’ reputation as cold-blooded killers
of little girls in red capes was unearned. No one around the breakfast
table could think of a single recorded incident in their lifetimes or
that of their parents. In 2005, a presumed wolf/ human killing had been
reported, but the attack animal turned out to be a bear.

What
there had been were attacks on people by wolf/dog hybrids, kept and
bred by dog owners. Like any animal that cannot be fully domesticated,
these breeds were volatile. The owners weren’t any better. Most
obtained wolf/dog hybrids because they wanted a big, scary, mean dog
or, worse — illegal but available in all fifty states — a fighting dog.
Brutal attacks by these animals had stirred up public opinion to the
point that, in many urban areas, it was illegal to own or keep a
wolf/dog hybrid.

Jonah tired of saying “wolf/dog hybrid” first and dubbed the speculative animal a “wog.”

A
wog could have been dumped on the island at any time, but most likely
in the last six or seven months. Had the creature been in the park the
previous winter, Ridley believed there would have been sign of it, a
sighting or scat or the outsized paw prints Robin had reported.

Most
domesticated — or even partially domesticated — animals couldn’t
survive in the wilderness for long, but if the wog was as big as the
tracks Robin found suggested, and trained to kill, it might have joined
— or taken over — a pack. This could explain why the pack had
apparently lost its fear of humans and sauntered through the bunkhouse
area. If the wog were big enough and fierce enough, it could have
killed the wolf now decomposing in the kitchen, dispatched it so
quickly there were no signs of a fight.

“Any alien wolf or

wolf/dog hybrid,

” Bob declared, pointedly refusing to use Jonah’s word, “would be killed by any pack that came across it.”

“What if it was big, really big?” Katherine said.

“It’s
not one-on-one in a fair fight, Kathy,” Bob said with a smile that
pushed his cheeks up till his eyes were crescent moons. The smile
notwithstanding, the “Kathy” was a clear rebuke. “The pack would kill
it.”

“Maybe not,” Ridley said. “If there was a breeding slot open, the wolf might be assimilated.”

Bob snorted. “Pretty hard to arrange,” he said.

“It
could happen by chance,” Ridley said. Anna wasn’t sure whether he
believed it or was just baiting the other man. “Chance is the only
reason we have wolves here at all. A big enough, aggressive enough wog
might pull it off.”

The
breakfast club finally broke up: Ridley to his laptop to work on
reports, Jonah to wander the bunkhouse looking for somebody to pester
and Bob to the chair closest to the woodstove to read through the daily
log, a thick, three-ring binder full of the forms provided for record
keeping. The park service was full of such information-gathering tools.
For the most part, they were a tedium of pages hurriedly filled in by
the lowest-ranking member of any team. On the island, the biotech did
it each day. Temperature at sunrise, at sunset, snowfall, comments;
office closets were full of these binders, detailing one study or
another. As far as Anna knew, Bob was the first person to actually look
at one.

For
a while, she amused herself in the DNA lab kitchen, watching Katherine
pore over her alien sample, running and rerunning it only to get the
same answer. When that palled and looking at the wolf, who was
beginning to smell, lost its edge, Anna began drifting back toward the
common room.

“Anna?”

It
was the first time Katherine had spoken in a quarter of an hour and her
voice was so low Anna barely caught it. She looked back. The researcher
was still bent over her PCR, her back to the room.

“I’m here,” Anna said. She, too, whispered though she’d not meant to.

“Tell
Robin to stay away from Bob,” Katherine said quietly and without
turning. Anna waited for further illumination on the subject, but it
was not forthcoming.

“Sure,” she said. Then, in hopes it would ease Katherine’s mind: “She’s got a boyfriend.”

Katherine
acted as if she’d not heard. After a moment, Anna left the kitchen and
wandered into the common room. Standing between the door and the stove,
she stared at Bob, trying to figure out why anybody would defend that
particular chunk of turf.

“Looks like a Christmas card, doesn’t it?” he said genially.

She
looked out the picture widow. The bunkhouse had a wide deck with a
railing. She remembered potluck suppers there the summer she’d worked
boat patrol. Now it was three-quarters covered with wood cut by the NPS
and stacked there for the use of the Winter Study. The sky was lost in
the falling flakes, birch and spruce trees surrounding the cleared area
veiled in drifting snow, a muted study in black and white.

Anna
pulled on a sweater, stepped into her clogs and went outside. In Rocky
Mountain, even in the backcountry, there was sound: a jet high
overhead, birds singing, water running, wind through the pine trees,
squirrels scuffling in the duff. In Mississippi, life buzzed and
chirped year-round. Even Texas wasn’t silent; when all else failed, the
wind howled and whispered and suggested angry things.

Here,
in the thick fall of snow, the silence was absolute. In an indefinable
way, even silence was muffled by the slow white flakes.

Anna
hated to think of these winters being peopled by lodges, snowmobiles
and skiers and beer. Though she’d never come to the island in January
again if she could help it, she wanted to know there was a place where
silence lived.

Opening
the park in winter would effectively shut the study down. The noise and
humanity attendant on a winter resort destination would disrupt the
wolves to the point the study would no longer be viable.

There
was no reason for Homeland Security to send one of their own to
evaluate it. The NPS had debated every salient point regarding the
study, first with David Mech, then Rolf Peterson and now Ridley Murray.
The research was prestigious, high-profile and cheap. People loved the
wolves, loved knowing they were around. At every campfire talk,
regardless of the subject, the first question was always, “How many
wolves are there?”

Pursuing
its mandate to keep America’s borders safe, Homeland Security needed to
plug up corridors used by unsavory aliens. Big Bend in Texas bordered
on Mexico, as did Organ Pipe. Glacier, Isle Royale and Voyageurs
national parks shared a border with Canada. Many national parks had
stretches of seacoast within their boundaries. If Anna squinted and
tilted her head, she could vaguely see the logic of souping up security
in these areas, but the border parks were a drop in the bucket when one
looked at the landmass of the USA. That which was cynical in her
suggested the war on terror had gone after the parks because they were
high-profile. “Protecting Our Parks” made a much better headline than
“Taking Away Your Civil Rights.”

But
why bring in anybody? And why Bob Menechinn? He was more interested in
collecting trophy heads than doing science. Unless he was here to
rubber-stamp what Homeland Security wanted stamped. Yet when the agency
contacted the park and Winter Study team with a list of possible
evaluators, Ridley recommended Menechinn. Was it because Menechinn
could be bought? Bought with what money? Professors weren’t exactly
overpaid. The NPS wouldn’t touch a deal like that. Maybe Michigan Tech.
Maybe an angel who loved the park had ponied up.

ROBIN
RETURNED EARLY. Adam wasn’t with her. So dull was the day, Robin’s
return was heralded with great excitement. She had pictures of the
track of the gigantic hound. The camera was plugged into Ridley’s
laptop, and they gathered around to see if the paw prints were all
they’d been advertised to be.

Robin
had traveled fast, but there’d been at least a half an inch of snowfall
before she’d reached her destination. The light was lousy for
photographing tracks, directionless and muted. Tracking was best in the
morning and at sundown, when the light was low enough it caught the
minute contours of the prints. She’d used a pen for scale — the proper
tool was a small ruler, but a pen or a dime was often as good as it got.

Shouldering Jonah aside, Anna leaned in for a better view.

The
paw prints did appear significantly larger than those of the other
wolves, but, in the diffuse light and with the snow obliterating the
edges, it was hard to be sure they had actually been made by as large
an animal as they suggested.

“They
could have been made when a normal-sized wolf was running. Or this one
here.” Robin leaned in, and her long hair fell across Ridley’s
shoulder. He didn’t seem aware of it. For all Bob’s covert flirting and
Jonah’s overt silliness, Ridley, the young alpha of this pack, had
evidently mated for life. Robin put the tip of a well-shaped finger
with cracked skin and a broken nail on the screen. “It could even have
been made by a second wolf stepping almost but not exactly in the first
one’s track. It seemed clearer before, but now I don’t know.”

“Anna saw something,” Jonah said.

Anna’d been thinking the same thing but didn’t want to commit herself. “

Thought

being
the key word,” she said, but all eyes were on her. “On the way back
from Siskiwit, I saw what looked like a huge wolf curled under the
branches of a tree. It could have been anything, but it looked like a
wolf.”

“Huge?” Ridley questioned the word.

“Half to twice the size of a normal alpha.”

“Wolves here run seventy to eighty-five pounds. Are you talking a hundred-and-sixty-pound wolf?” Ridley asked skeptically.

“Like I said,

thought

is the key word.”

“And
you thought you saw huge tracks.” This was to Robin, and Anna couldn’t
tell if Ridley believed them or not. He’d donned his scientist’s mien
and she couldn’t read past it.

“I saw them,” Robin said firmly, abandoning her earlier wavering.

“Okay,” Ridley said, and: “Okay.” The second

okay

was more to himself than the others, and Anna wondered what he was giving himself permission to do.

7

“Good
morning, campers!” Ridley said as they settled down to their oatmeal
the following morning. Anna got a bad feeling and shoveled more of the
thick porridge into her mouth.