Winter Study (43 page)

“Bob was in his bed,” Adam said.

“You hear the bit about the condom?” Ridley asked.

“I
heard. I doubt it was Bob’s. The guy’s not so bad when you get to know
him.” This was delivered in a voice so totally devoid of emotion Anna
flashed on a group of POWs in the Iraq war who’d been tortured, then
filmed mouthing anti-American sentiments by their captors shortly
before they were beheaded.

“Get
dressed,” Ridley told Adam. “Tell Bob to get up and get dressed. We’re
going to need to get a jump on this… on whatever this is. Robin was
stewed to the gills. She may have just gotten a sudden desire to go
walkabout.”

Anna
hoped that was the case, but she doubted it. The men left, and she
retrieved her flashlight. The window showed no signs of having been
forced. Outside, near the bunkhouse, was a morass of tracks left by a
moose that liked to scratch its back on the drainpipe from the gutters.
No tracks left by bipeds; nothing that looked human.

Closing
the window, she remained standing on Robin’s bed. No track, no sign:
that was not indicative of drunken meandering by a naked girl carrying
a sleeping bag. Robin had not left; she had been taken, spirited away,
vanished into the night. There would have been a sort of poetic
satisfaction if Anna could have gotten one more shiver out of Algernon
Blackwood — the windigo was known for swooping down and snatching its
victims bodily from their tents — but she couldn’t quite picture the
starved monster, lusting after human flesh, swiping a key and locking
her in the V.C. so it might enjoy its midnight snack in peace.

Ridley
called, radioed and e-mailed the mainland, begging for help as soon as
they could send it. The radio failed. The phone was almost
unintelligible. E-mail got through. ISRO’s Superintendent promised
Coast Guard, Forest Service, NPS search and rescue and law enforcement
as soon as the weather allowed an invasion from the mainland.

That
done, he and Anna divided the public area into three sections. Ridley
chose to go alone. Anna would go with Jonah. Adam volunteered to go
with Bob Menechinn. Anna suspected it was so they wouldn’t have to go
through the wretched moment when nobody picked Bob for their team.

As
had been the case when Katherine went missing, they found no track or
sign to indicate which direction Robin had been taken. Again they
searched the perimeter. Again they searched the permanent-employee
housing area. Again they searched Washington Creek campground. Again
they found nothing.

Ridley
radioed the order to return to the bunkhouse. Layers of cold-weather
gear peeled off and dumped, they sat in the living room on the three
sofas, like a family at a deathwatch.

No one was anxious to go to bed.

Leaning her elbows on her knees, Anna looked at the men with whom she’d been marooned.

She
couldn’t count the number of banal conversations she participated in
where she was asked: “If you were marooned on a desert island, which
book, man, song, tool would you want with you?”

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare,

Paul Davidson, “Amazing Grace” and a real sharp knife.

Finally marooned and she had none of the above.

Another opportunity squandered.

Ridley
and Jonah looked much as they had for the past few days, only more so.
The pilot’s seamed face had lost its pixyish expression. Age dragged
down his cheeks and dulled his eyes. Ridley was taking on the look of a
lost soul. At each downward turn of events, he had stayed strong. Anna
wasn’t sure he could do it this time. Only Adam showed signs of life
and hope. His face was no more animated than the others, but there was
a focus and intensity where before there’d been raw energy. Like a
seasoned soldier, he seemed relieved to finally be going into battle
rather than waiting for it.

Bob
Menechinn was the most changed. Robin’s disappearance seemed to have
gotten to him as nothing else had: not Ridley’s hostility, not
Katherine’s death, not the wog or the windigo, not Anna’s walking in on
him — twice — being no better than he should be with a dead woman and a
woman dead to the world.

Menechinn
was a bit of a sociopath, she guessed. In Bob’s mind, there was no Bob
but Bob; other people were mere shadows, there to please him or be used
by him or gotten around. An excellent government tool.

Following
this train of thought, Anna realized Robin’s disappearance, in and of
itself, was not what was turning Bob’s skin pasty or thinning his
breath. Something had happened in the past few hours that had caused
him to believe he was threatened. Adam might have told him Anna found a
condom. She rejected that idea; Bob would just deny it was his. Even
fingerprints wouldn’t do it. There were a number of reasons he might
have touched the package.

As
the night wore on, she quit worrying about Ridley’s ability to cope and
began to worry about hers. Night closed tightly around the bunkhouse,
the poor lighting in the common room inadequate to push it back past
the mirror of the windows. Claustrophobia grew up through the cement
suffocating her brain till she could picture herself running screaming
into the night.

“I was locked in the V.C.,” she announced suddenly and loudly.

“Someone
locked me in before kidnapping Robin.” Her bomb fizzled. The men looked
at her, faces devoid of emotion. If one of them had thrown the dead
bolt, Anna couldn’t have guessed it from their response — or lack of it.

“Or some

thing,

” Adam said.

Anna shot him a weary look. “Bullshit,” she said succinctly.

He shrugged.

Anna
rose and began putting on parka and ski pants. If she didn’t take an
action — any action — the concrete and claustrophobia were going to
seal her tight in their cold, airless vault.

“Where do you think you are going?” Bob demanded, rousing himself from his lethargy. He sounded angry.

“Out. Want to come with me?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he snapped. He glanced at Adam and then away. Whatever had been communicated was lost on Anna.

She stared at him long and hard. Bob was scared and it was making him mad.

Scared of her? If he was, so much the better.

“I’ll go with you,” Jonah volunteered.

Anna
hadn’t particularly wanted company. On ISRO, there clearly wasn’t any
safety in numbers, but, of all of them, she distrusted the pilot the
least.

“Bring a flashlight,” she said.

“I’ll bring two.”

They went out the front door and down the deck stairs. At the bottom of the steps, Anna stopped.

“What?” Jonah’s head came up like a dog seeking scent.

“Nothing.”
Anna had stopped because she didn’t know where she was going or what
she intended to do when she got there. “Let’s just breathe,” she said,
and Jonah laughed. For several minutes, they stood quietly, flashlights
off, and drew clean air into their lungs. Woodstoves were charming and
functional but polluted the indoor air as surely as a band of
two-pack-a-day smokers.

“Do we have a clue?” Jonah asked, and she appreciated the wisp of humor.

“I
am clueless,” Anna admitted. “Start over, I guess.” She led the way
around the bunkhouse to the window that let into her and Robin’s
bedroom. Without the distraction of many big-footed men milling about,
Anna could see and think more clearly. Jonah stood back as she crouched
down several feet from the area directly beneath the window and shined
her flashlight beam across the snow, mimicking a setting sun.

“What’s with Adam and Bob?” she asked, remembering the pregnant glance.

“Beats
me,” Jonah said. “Adam’s a good guy. He’s worked Winter Study a couple
times before. Canucks tend to see the best in people. But Menechinn?
Sheesh.”

The
moose that liked to scratch its back against the drainpipe had churned
snow and earth into a mass of frozen clods and ice. With her light
streaming almost laterally across the tiny field, Anna thought maybe
she saw new prints. Maybe. Moose prints. She shined the light out in a
circle from where she crouched. “Adam’s Canadian?”

“I think he’s an American citizen. He grew up in Canada, got married there and came to the States after his wife died.”

“That was the wife who killed herself?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Robin.”

Nothing showed but the tracks they had made and several moose trails leading into the trees.

“Adam doesn’t talk about it much. Evidently his wife had a miscarriage and went into a depression.”

“Was Adam investigated for the death?”

“Like for murdering his wife? What are you thinking?”

“Nothing. Everything. Yeah, for murder, I guess.”

“Probably.
It’s always the husband first in a thing like that. Anyway, it is on
TV. So he must have been investigated, but it didn’t amount to much.
She’d left a note. She’d left a message on her therapist’s phone,
apologizing. She made a video, begging Adam to forgive her.”

“‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’” Anna said.

“‘Rage, rage,’” Jonah said, startling her, then shaming her, with her own snobbery.

“We’re done here,” she said. Her knees cracked like rifle shots as she rose to her feet.

“Hah!” Jonah said. “Getting old is a bitch, isn’t it?”

Her shame subsided.

Anna
moved slowly uphill, following moose prints. The tracks coming down
were shallower than those leading back up the rise. The moose had grown
significantly heavier while under the bedroom window.