Winter Study (25 page)

“The
pluck,” Ridley said, the business of dismemberment apparently cleansing
him of residual heebie-jeebies from the initial wound discovery.
Reaching up under the ribs, he plucked out lungs and heart as a single
unit.

Other than the bite on the throat, they found no other cause of death.

They
completed the necropsy: salvaging bones, chopping off paws to preserve
the small tarsals and metatarsals, breaking the rib cage to wrestle it
free of the cavity. Bones would be macerated by boiling or, the
preferred method, because it didn’t dry the bones out, buried in soil
in screen envelopes for slow decomposition of tissue.

This
scientific butchering was grim work and Anna wasn’t accustomed to it.
Mated with the ambient weirdness of the throat wound, the oversized
tracks and, most nerve-racking of all, being forever in the company of
people in a small space, she found the necropsy depressing. And
unsettling. A knot formed in her chest, and she wanted little more than
to get away, get out into the woods. Caves and closets weren’t the only
threats for claustrophobes.

Ridley
excised the muscle mass with the puncture marks. “Usually we don’t need
to do this,” he said as he handed Anna the bloody chunk. “The wog bite
— or whatever — makes it interesting. The lab in Michigan might be able
to make something of it. My wife works there.” A hint of pride touched
his voice, warming it past the merely clinical. “She specializes in
animal forensics.”

Anna
hadn’t known such a discipline existed, but it made sense. There were
animal DNA labs — she’d used one in Oregon, when she was working a case
in Glacier.

“Bite patterns, tracks, fur — just like CSI,” Ridley said.

But without criminals.

However
vicious an animal attack, it was neither a sin nor a crime, to Anna’s
way of thinking. Even when done with malice, it was without evil. One
had to know what the taking of life meant before taking it could be
elevated to the status of true evil.

“A married man,” Bob said. “Any kids?”

“Not yet,” Ridley said.

“Maybe
when you stick closer to the den in winter she’ll pop out a litter
every spring. More fun than cutting up wolves.” Bob grinned and winked
at Anna. Having saved her life, he seemed to think he owned it. She
wondered what he would look like with a plastic bag tied tightly over
his head.

“Fuck!”
Ridley jerked his hands out of the wolf and held his left cupped in his
right, the knife trapped between them. The palm of his rubber glove was
filling with bright, new arterial blood.

“I’m
an EMT. Can I help?” Anna said, instantly forgetting Bob. Over the
years, she’d said it so many times it was as instantaneous as “God
bless you” after a sneeze.

Ridley kept his head down, his eyes on the blood welling in his glove.

Face
averted in the growing dimness, hidden behind beard and mustache, he
could have been thinking of anything from killing to Captain Kangaroo
and Anna wouldn’t have been able to see it. “Ridley, are you okay?”

He
nodded without looking up and held out his hand. The gesture put Anna
in mind of the pen-and-ink drawing in her childhood book of Androcles
and the lion, the great beast’s paw held up so that the thorn might be
removed.

Anna
handed the chunk of wolf neck to Katherine, peeled off the surgical
gloves and pulled on a clean pair, then bent to examine the damage to
Ridley’s hand. A squeak, a tiny sound like that of a newborn kitten
fighting for a nipple or the last sound of a mouse meeting a trap,
distracted her. Hands dripping gore in front of her like a zombie in a
B movie, Katherine looked the cliché of someone who’s seen a ghost: her
skin had paled and her lips gone slack. Behind the oversized lenses,
her gentle eyes were so wide that white showed beneath the irises.

Having
spent the afternoon elbow-deep in flesh and bone, Anna had a hard time
believing Katherine was going faint at the sight of a little fresh
blood. She wasn’t. She was looking past Ridley, his wound beginning to
drip human DNA into the carcass of the wolf, at Bob Menechinn. His
heavy face had gone from flab to granite.

Frozen meat,

Anna thought. The image jarred her.

Whatever
was communicated with that stare was over in a heartbeat. Bob was all
amiability again; Katherine’s head was bent industriously over her
collection equipment. Jonah started a long involved joke about the
Sisters of St. Regis’s Convent and House of Prostitution. Anna looked
down at Ridley’s hand in hers. An odd feeling of being once removed
from the world came over her, the way it did when she had a bad cold,
and, though she could hear perfectly well, she felt deaf; the way she
felt in dreams when she needed to cross a busy street and her legs were
lead.

“May
I?” she said and carefully took the German knife from Ridley’s hand.
Despite the wound, he’d not let it fall. Using it, she cut his glove
away. He’d gashed his palm, a bad cut, but blood had welled into the
gash and she couldn’t tell how bad; she couldn’t see clearly.

The way she felt when the optometrist put belladonna in her eyes.

The
room hadn’t filled with fog; it was four o’clock and the sun was almost
down. The white that had blinded the window when they arrived had
turned to gray. The work light over the table created more shadows than
illumination.

“We need to go inside,” she said. “I need more light.”

“We’re
about done anyway.” Ridley finally raised his head. His skin wasn’t
pale but flushed, and, rather than having the vague alarm of shock, his
eyes were so alive he looked feverish or half mad.

“Jonah,
would you help Katherine finish up?” he asked. The control in his voice
was so at odds with the heat in his eyes that Anna put a hand on the
back of his neck. It was not cold or diaphoretic; if anything, it was a
degree too warm.

“What are you doing!” he demanded as he pulled away from her.

“Checking your skin temp,” she said. “Ready to go?”

As
they left, they could hear Jonah: “Fakes an injury to get out of
mopping up the really disgusting parts. I thought I’d taught that boy
better…”

Anna
half filled one of the metal basins from the water on the woodstove and
washed and disinfected Ridley’s hand in the kitchen sink. “So what’s
with you and Bob?” she asked, since she held him captive. She’d cooled
the water from the stove with the drinking water in the second
bathroom. Using the dipper, she ladled it over the cut.

He flinched.

“Sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“Not too bad.”

The cut was deep but not long. “You don’t seem to much like Bob,” she prodded.

“He’s not a real likable guy,” Ridley said.

“Why
did you want him to do the study evaluation?” She closed the gash with
butterflies and patted his hand dry with paper towels.

Ridley took his hand back though she’d not yet bandaged it. “He came highly recommended,” he said curtly.

The
conversation was over but Anna’d found out a great deal. Aggressively
avoiding a topic broadcasts just how emotionally charged that topic is.
Why was a mystery, but if the snow kept up she was going to need
something to do to pass the time for the next five weeks. And it would
keep her mind off whatever it was with very big teeth and very big feet
that was stalking the island.

She
retrieved his hand and wrapped his palm with narrow gauze to keep it
clean, then released him into the wild, wondering if, like Androcles,
she’d made a friend. He went to his room and closed the door. Anna put
her coat back on and headed for the carpenter’s shed. The play being
enacted in the shop might have a plot closer to

Saw III

than

Hamlet,

but it was the only show in town.

It wasn’t the only soap opera, however.

Muffled
in the saber rattle of winter branches and the fierce drive of the
wind, and cloaked in the growing dusk, Anna was nearly on top of Bob
and his graduate student before she saw them. They didn’t see her. Anna
didn’t hide exactly or eavesdrop exactly; she just didn’t call
attention to herself.

Katherine was crying. “He was such a beautiful wolf.”

Anna
heard the words wailed on the wind, then the storm took the rest. After
hours of slicing and dicing, pickling and bagging, all of a sudden
Katherine was mourning her wolf. Bob said something, then Katherine hit
him. She didn’t slap or punch; she hit his well-padded, parka-clad
chest with her fists the way helpless heroines in old movies did.

Bob
had seen the movies too. He caught both of her wrists. He wore heavy
gloves; Katherine was bare-handed. Anna tensed, waiting to see if she
would have to intervene. Observing the escalation of violence was
drummed into park rangers. Katherine could hit Bob all she wanted — she
wasn’t doing him any damage — but should he, with his height and weight
advantage, strike back, he had to be taken down. Anna had no idea how
she would do that. It would be like taking down the Pillsbury Doughboy
on steroids.

Katherine jerked free and ran. In seconds, she was out of sight behind a curtain of snow and a scrim of trees.

The
little drama had been played out within ten yards of the kitchen door
against the glamorous backdrop of the outhouse. Bob didn’t chase after
Katherine; he turned and plowed toward the bunkhouse. Anna faded back
into the trees and turned her back. The parka she’d bought off the
Internet for this excursion was white, the ski pants black. Unless he
was looking hard, Bob wouldn’t see her.

Bob
closed the door behind him. Anna continued to the shop. Mopping up
blood and guts with a fistful of newspapers, Jonah was singing: “A
spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down, the medicine go down.”

The wind snatched the door from Anna and banged it open. “Is everyone on this island insane?” she asked.

“All
but for me and thee, and I have my doubts about thee,” Jonah replied.
He had small, even teeth, and when he smiled the hairs of his cropped
white beard bristled out like the whiskers of an interested cat. It was
hard not to smile back but Anna managed.