Winter Study (42 page)

The
office chair was overturned; the five starfish legs, each with a wheel
on the end, did their best to trip Anna as she moved around the desk.
Chairs of that design weren’t easy to tip over. Robin must have
collapsed into — or onto — it and carried it down when she went to the
floor.

Tracing
the three points she’d found of interest, Anna moved the light from the
wine box to the mason jar to the overturned chair.

Robin
had not been holding the merlot when she fell. Rectangles half full of
liquid didn’t roll as far as the box was from the chair. The mason jar
was a distance from both chair and wine box. Robin might have dropped
them — jar, then box — then collapsed in the chair. Bob might have
moved them.

Anna
crouched down and shined her light along the fuzzy tops of the
close-cropped carpet. A flat, square package an inch or so on a side
was beneath the desk. Lying on her belly, she fished it out. A condom,
the package unopened. Unless District Rangers in other parks led far
more exciting lives than they did in Rocky Mountain, or a couple of
enterprising seasonals, waiting for the last boat off the island,
managed to find a key and take advantage of the office with the view,
this belonged either to Robin or Bob. Either way, it suggested a
rendezvous had been planned. If the condom was Robin’s, Anna doubted
Bob was slated to be the wearer.

It
was not beyond the possibility that, as Bob struggled to help Robin, a
condom he’d not thought of in years but kept handy in his wallet at all
times like an ever-optimistic high school jock tumbled out and was
kicked beneath the desk, but it wasn’t a scenario Anna was going to put
money on. Bob brought the condom because he knew Robin was drunk and an
opportunity to take advantage might present itself. Or Robin had been
intending to meet with a lover and Bob had spoiled it. Maybe Adam’s jar
was on scene because Adam had been on scene.

Anna
shook her head as if an invisible jury watched from the hall. Adam had
been on the couch all evening, front and center in the common room, as
if he wanted it to be seen that he was in the bunkhouse.

Anna
sealed the package with its tidy ring in the center between two
hot-pink Post-its and slipped it into her pocket. In movies, law
enforcement fought dramatic, complex evils. In real life, that was
seldom the case. Law enforcement was the endless slogging through the
ooze and slime of run-of-the-mill evil, evil so ordinary, so interwoven
with the threads of people’s lives, that to root it out tore the victim
and the community apart while the monsters shrugged it off in true
monstrous fashion. Molestation, wife beating, incest, date rape,
statutory rape, gang bangs at frat parties — all the nasty, dirty
crimes — damaged the victims again when “justice” was perpetrated.

Anna
had testified a number of times in her career and been to quite a few
depositions. Defense lawyers were there to keep their client, innocent
or guilty, out of jail. At any cost.

Prosecutors
were there to put the accused, innocent or guilty, in jail. At any
cost. Defense attorneys routinely boasted over cocktails of getting
rapists or murderers or child pornographers off. It was a testament to
their abilities. The excuse they made for shelving their integrity was
the law school cant: they were making the state toe the line, make its
case.

Most simply wanted to win.

The
sound of metal sliding into metal blasted her musings with the jarring
force of a shotgun being racked. She switched off the flashlight and,
trailing her fingers along the wall, moved rapidly to where the hall
branched, leading into the Visitors Center’s main room.

Stealth
being impossible in full winter regalia, Anna turned on her light and
swept the room before she crossed to the doors. Empty. No light came
from outside, no person stood on the decking in front of the doors.
Hitting the crash bar, she shoved, but the doors didn’t give. She
grabbed the handles and rattled. The dead bolt was engaged. The only
way to lock it was with a key from the outside.

The only way to unlock it was with a key from the outside.

Switching
off her light, Anna stepped away from the doors lest she make a target
of herself. The one other door to the outside was at the opposite end
of the hall from the District Ranger’s office. Navigating mostly by
memory and the occasional flick of her flashlight, she found it
quickly. The bolt on it had been thrown as well, probably when the
island was closed in mid-October.

Putting
her back against the door, she stared down the dark hallway. The V.C.
was built in the modern style: the windows didn’t open. Climate was
controlled even in the “wilderness,” the vagaries of weather and the
human need for fresh air shut out by glass and technology. Minutes
before, she’d wanted to be in the building. Now, because someone — not
wog or weird but a human, someone with a key and opposable thumbs —
decided to imprison her there, she wanted out.

Bob
Menechinn was her first thought. Ridley’s key had been missing. Bob or
Robin could have lifted it from his desk and unlocked the Visitors
Center. Robin was in no shape to creep back down and lock Anna in. She
was also in no shape to defend herself from visitors in the night. Anna
comforted herself with the thought that breaking down the bedroom door
would rouse Ridley and Adam. The comfort was countered with the thought
that Robin might open the door to whoever rapped on it.

Flashlight
on, stealth forgotten, Anna ran down the hall, checking offices, in
hope that somewhere a window had been made that would open, that in a
mental lapse the architect had overlooked one small portal to the real
world. Otherwise she would be reduced to shattering glass.

In
the ladies’ bathroom above the sinks she found a window that could be
louvered out from the bottom, creating an opening ten inches high and
thirty-six long. She shucked off her parka and boots, and the cold bit
into her with sharp teeth. Standing on a sink, she dropped the clothes
and flashlight and followed them out of the window, eeling through
headfirst. The drop was more than man-high, but snow had drifted
against the building.

Anna
landed on her back in the drift. Pain would have been preferable to the
blast of snow down her collar. Another minute was lost as she pawed
through the snow in search of the flashlight and another while she
pulled on boots and parka.

Running
felt good. Tired muscles and weary soul complained, but her body’s need
for heat and her mind’s for speed soon quieted them and she plowed
through the winter-quiet woods like a freight train, puffing and loud.

The
housing area was still, the bunkhouse dark. Slowing to a walk, she
turned off her light and let her breath return to closer to normal.
Entering by the side door to Katherine’s kitchen/lab, she stood a
moment and listened. Peace prevailed.

Dressing
in the snowdrift, Anna hadn’t bothered with lacing her boots. She
heeled out of the Sorels and slipped down the hall to the room she
shared with Robin. The door was still locked.

“Robin?”
Anna called softly and put her ear against the wood. The door was
colder than it should have been. Heat from the banked fire in the
woodstove sufficed to keep the bunkhouse at a fairly comfortable
temperature even through the night. Anna knocked again. “Robin?” She
called a little louder this time and knocked with a purpose.

Fear that she had let the biotech sleep before she should have took over and Anna shouted and pounded on the door to rouse her.

“What the hell is going on?”

It was Adam. At least somebody was responding.

“Robin,”
Anna answered succinctly and kicked hard beside the doorknob. No boots;
the blow sent a stab of pain all the way up to her hip, but the door
held.

“Here,
let me.” Adam was beside her, wearing boxer shorts and wool socks. He
slammed his shoulder into the door and the lock gave way. A blast of
cold air met them. Anna trained her light into the room.

The window over Robin’s bed was wide open.

Robin was gone.

25

Anna
turned her light onto the floor. Robin’s parka, ski pants, socks — all
her winter garments — were where she had let them fall when she
undressed for bed. Anna spun, taking in a rush of the room. Closet door
open, clothes as she remembered, Robin’s rucksack on the table at the
foot of her bed, her house moccasins peeked from under the bed, her
pillow crushed between bed and bureau.

“Robin!”
Anna shouted, crossed the room in two steps and leapt onto the bed.
Cruel temperatures and black on black of forest and night met her like
a wall. Her flashlight beam poked feebly into the scratch of branches,
grabbing the white of snow and making shadows of it.

“Robin!” Anna yelled.

Ridley
and Jonah crowded into the room, Jonah blinking behind wire-rimmed
glasses and Ridley, hair loose and clad only in long-john bottoms. Both
wore headlamps. They were so accustomed to the electric curfew, they
donned them automatically. Anna suffered an unsettling sense of being
trapped in a coal mine adventure with two of the seven dwarves.

“Where’s
Bob?” she demanded. Jonah and Ridley looked at each other in
almost-comic confusion. “Adam, was Bob in his bed when you got up?”
Anna insisted.

“I fell asleep on the couch,” he replied. “But he should be. After the third time you told him to go away, he went to bed.”

“Check and see if he’s there.”

“I’m going to fire up the generator,” Jonah announced and disappeared into the darkness of the hall.

“Yeah, thanks,” Ridley said vaguely.

Anna
echoed the thought if not the words. Fear of the dark had never been
one of her neuroses, but she was thinking of adding it to the list. She
was growing tired of peering down narrow beams of light like a virgin
in a cheap horror flick.

“Where’s Robin? What’s the deal?” Ridley asked. Anger focused his words and, Anna hoped, his brain.

She
gave him an overview of what she’d found in the V.C., up to and
including the condom. She did not mention that she’d been incarcerated
there. Instinct told her to save that revelation for another time.

“And you think the condom was Bob’s,” Ridley said.

“It wasn’t mine.”

Lights
came on, startling her so badly she dropped her flashlight. Adam was
standing in the doorway, his headlamp turned off. Anna wasn’t sure how
long he’d been there, but it didn’t matter. The information wasn’t a
secret she’d intended to keep. Since she didn’t trust anybody, she had
two choices: tell no one anything or tell everyone everything. She’d
opted for the latter, so should anyone on the island besides herself
turn out to be moderately sane and nonviolent he or she could help her
watch the rest.