"You can tell your boyfriend he doesn't need to track down how Paula makes her living. She's a whore. A hooker. She's been working the camp. Everybody knew it. Everybody but you. A trained observer—you should get into another line of work."
Anna had guessed but she'd been so slow on the uptake she didn't feel like defending herself.
"You're Mr. FLETC, why didn't you report it?" Anna returned, but she knew the answer. He wanted to be one of the guys.
Hugh turned his back on her and she keyed the mike.
"Anna here."
"Jeeminie! Don't you ever do that to me again," Frederick exploded over the airwaves. "What's going on up there?"
"It was nothing. Snow falling or something." Anna's back ached from wrestling with Pepperdine and she was in a foul mood. "Forget about Boggins. Just follow up on the Joshua Short thing for me."
"I will. And you call me at eight. You. Call me. Got that?"
"No problem."
"We're going to get you down off that ridge."
"I know you are. I'm turning my radio off now."
"Ten-four. Eight o'clock, Anna. Don't leave me standing at the altar."
Anna laughed. "Eight o'clock." She turned off the radio and leaned her elbows on the truck in an attempt to ease her back.
Black Elk, Lindstrom, Gonzales, Page and Pepperdine were off the hook. That left only LeFleur, who hated Nims and wanted him out of the way professionally; Joseph Hayhurst, removing Nims to stop the oil lease; and Boggins. Paula was hooking. Black Elk's words now made sense: Nims should have paid like everybody else. Len had "messed" with Paula. Since injured virtue wasn't an issue, attempted rape or blackmail very possibly was. Getting thrown out of camp would cost Paula a bundle in unearned revenues. And she would be blackballed from any fire camp in the future.
LeFleur, Hayhurst, Boggins.
And Short. The time for trusting her fellow men—if there ever had been a time—was gone. No one had seen Jennifer leave her shelter. Blood stained her left glove. Anna knew of no motive, no previous connection between Short and Nims, but it was turning out there were a whole hell of a lot of things she didn't know.
Chapter Twenty-Two
STANTON HELD THE portable radio between his knees. Anna hadn't told him the truth, he knew it. While he'd been helplessly "standing by" something had happened. He was worried and hurt, he admitted. Getting to know Anna Pigeon wasn't going to be easy. She'd been alone too many years; come to rely on herself too much. Life was a team sport.
Aloneness, loneliness, had knocked on Frederick's door like the proverbial wolf more than once in the dozen years since his last divorce, but his children—Candice mostly—had kept the wolf at bay. She needed him and, therefore, he needed her. The littles of his life could make her laugh, understand; they could comfort and sometimes even educate. So he told them.
Candice, as yet, had no fear of intimacy and she shared her stories with him: boyfriends, classes, concerts. In turn he was amused, comforted, educated.
Anna had had a husband, Frederick knew. He'd died. Dead was not good. Dead was a tough act to follow. Women got addicted to widow's weeds. Anna guarded her loneliness like a treasure she hoarded as a gift for dead what's-his-name. Frederick doubted he could compete and he was wondering if he wanted to.
He looked at the knot of white pine he'd found and the pattern came clear. The monkeys were not tied together by telephone line. They weren't tied together by anything. They were seated back to back, each oblivious to his companion, anxiously scanning the horizon for some sign of the other. Frederick fixed the image in his mind though he knew he needn't bother. Every time he looked at the wood he would see it in the grain.
He put the radio back in its charger and pulled the notebook with his lists close enough he could read it.
"Boggins/Livelihood" was crossed out, "Josh/Arson" underlined. Duncan Foley, the retired BLM timber coordinator from Susanville, had returned his call regarding Nims. Foley hadn't been too specific. It sounded as if senility rather than reticence slowed his tongue, but Frederick had been left with the impression Anna's suspicions were correct: Nims had some shady deal with the lumber barons that couldn't be proven and it had been deemed in everyone's best interests that he move on quietly.
Frederick had yet to reach anyone at Aztec, Pepperdine's home park.
Putting his hands over his eyes, he began constructing a mental chart that would be the basis of his investigation into the arson and the subsequent death of Joshua Short.
The known: The Jackknife fire had been started near Pinson Lake in the immediate vicinity of Mr. Short's camp. Mr. Short and his dog had perished in the blaze. Mr. Short was camping at Pinson Lake preparatory to staging some kind of protest against a local lumber company to stop cutting in what was believed by some to be an environmentally sensitive area. Mr. Short was an experienced outdoorsman and an environmental activist.
Frederick had seen no official paperwork on the incident but the accepted explanation seemed to be that Short had either set the fire intentionally or had inadvertently let his campfire burn out of control.
Other than that, Stanton hadn't a clue. He needed to see the coroner's report, review the records in the case, talk with the Forest Service's arson investigator and visit the scene of the deaths. This last might prove of little value. Fire, snow and other investigators would have destroyed what physical evidence there was.
Working as a private citizen Frederick had already pushed the limits of not only ethics but legality. His first phone call was to his boss's home on the outskirts of Chicago.
"Jack's laying down," Mrs. McGinnis said disapprovingly. Frederick had met Jack McGinnis's wife several times on social occasions and knew her to be a friendly, charming woman. The disapproval stemmed from thirty years of having her husband's leisure time co-opted by the Bureau.
"I'm awful sorry, Mrs. McGinnis, but this is important."
"It's always important," she said tardy. The phone receiver clattered against wood and Frederick knew she was going to wake Jack.
"Yeah. Stanton. What's up?" Jack McGinnis had the gravel voice of a man who has abused whiskey and cigarettes most of his life and the jowly face to match but as far as Frederick knew he was a teetotaler with no vices except working too hard and drinking too much coffee.
Frederick explained the situation on the Jackknife with the murder and the suspected arson. "Both crimes were committed on federal lands," he said. "We've got jurisdiction."
"I don't recall the Forest Service clamoring for our invaluable assistance," Jack said dryly.
Frederick kept quiet. Jack McGinnis was seldom talked into anything. He was a crusty, dissipated-looking computer. Facts were fed in. He processed them and produced a result. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred he was right. Or closer to right than anyone else.
"I got somebody I can call and lean on. I'll see if they'll invite you to the party. You're on the clock but no overtime. Don't even put in for it. And no travel. Where are you at?"
Frederick gave him the number and listened as he read it back. "Hang on," McGinnis said. "I'll get back to you."
Less than ten minutes later the phone rang. "You're official," Jack said. "The forest supervisor said to call Chris Landis. He's the law enforcement officer for the Forest Service in Chester. He'll bring you up to speed." Jack hung up without saying goodbye but Frederick was unoffended. Over his years in the Bureau he'd come to value time saved above just about anything but life saved. Both were irreplaceable.
Frederick dialed the number he'd been given and within twenty minutes he was on the road to Chester in a borrowed government pickup truck. The Jackknife was news and, as he threaded his way through the press vans and camera setups on his way out of camp, he blessed Burwell for placing the Communications tent out of bounds.
CHRIS LANDIS WAS in his early fifties, a square-headed block of a man with thinning hair combed and sprayed till a moderately believable hair hat had been constructed over his bald pate. A pipe, evidently a permanent fixture, smoked in his right hand.
"The case isn't closed," he said, and Frederick noticed traces of a Maine accent. "You're welcome to what we've got." He pushed a file folder across the blotter of his battered wooden desk. Frederick picked it up but didn't open it. "Find yourself a comfortable spot and give it a read," Landis said. "Then, if you like, we'll take a wander up to Pinson Lake. Snow'll cover up most of it but you can get the lay of the land."
"Thanks a heap." Frederick smiled engagingly in hopes of dissipating any sting FBI interference may have caused. The folder clamped under his arm, he left Landis to his pipe and sought out a quiet corner.
Happily ensconced in a storage closet pressed into service as an employee break room, Frederick sipped instant cocoa and perused the official history of Joshua Paul Short's life and death.
Thirty-three years old, Short was employed part-time as a computer programmer for Harrah's Club in Reno, Nevada. He'd moved to the west from Memphis, Tennessee, four years prior to his death. Short had been arrested three times, all misdemeanor charges, 1991 and 1993 for trespassing and interfering with agency functions in Plumas and Lassen counties in northern California, and in 1989 in San Francisco. The charges boiled down to civil disobedience. The Plumas and Lassen arrests occurred in protest activities to save the spotted owl. The San Francisco arrest was during a gay rights march. Short had never served jail time.
According to the information in the file, for two weeks prior to his death, Short had been camped at Pinson Lake in an ongoing wrestling match with the Timberlake Lumber Company. The Forest Service had leased them that tract of timber for harvest and the company intended to log the area.
An Environmental Impact Statement from the Forest Service was included, either in the interest of justice or in a CYA—cover your ass—capacity, stating that there was no hard evidence of spotted owl activity in that tract of forest land.
On September eighteenth, four days after the Jackknife had been midwifed, the corpses were discovered in the ashes of the burn. On September twenty-eighth the bodies were identified as Joshua Short and dog. As Short had not died under a doctor's care, an autopsy had been performed.
The immediate area of the camp was covered in flash fuels. From past conversations with Burwell, Frederick knew flash fuels were light, dry, tindery materials such as twigs and grasses that burned fast and hot. Due to the nature of the fuels, Short's body had not been completely consumed but his face, hands, chest, belly and the front of both legs were badly burned. Although much of the remaining flesh had been eaten away by scavengers, enough of the internal organs remained intact to reveal in the autopsy that Short had not died of smoke inhalation, as was common in fires, hut had burned to death. The only other indication of injury was a hairline basal fracture behind his right ear.
Frederick thumbed through the Environmental Impact Statement with little interest and moved on to the report written by the first ranger on the scene. The burn had originated from the fire ring in Joshua Short's camp. Best guess, working backward from the time the fire was spotted by the lookout, was that it had been ignited between one and five p.m. on September fourteenth. A mangled Peak I camping stove was found near the fire ring and there were traces of kerosene on the stones surrounding the shallow pit as well as on an unburned portion of Short's left hiking boot.
Stringing together the evidence, the ranger had drawn up a possible sequence of events:
While in use, the camping stove had either fallen into the campfire or malfunctioned. The resultant explosion splattered kerosene on nearby grass and needles. Burned or blinded by the explosion, Joshua Short had fallen, struck his head and lost consciousness. Dry fuels ignited quickly and burned at high temperatures. Before Short regained consciousness, the flames killed him.
Never having been camping, Frederick had no experience with portable stoves, but the sketch seemed plausible enough.
He removed an envelope of photographs taken at the scene. Fire had left the site clean. Ash, swept smooth by the wind, coated the earth, the fire pit, the remnants of the stove, Joshua's pack and the tent he'd been staying in. A few feet from the fire pit a four-legged corpse marked the last moments of the dog's life. About thirty feet away, in the direction the fire had taken, was the body of Joshua Short. Animals had tracked up the ground around the carcasses and, judging from the photos, dined rather well. Other than that, there were no marks in the ash. A refreshingly untainted scene. Whoever had found them was to be commended for resisting the urge to charge in and flail about.
Frederick laid the photographs out in a cross that resembled the pattern used by readers of tarot cards. The table in the tiny break room was round and less than three feet across. Photos used up all available space. Knees pinched together in a maidenly manner, Stanton held the folder in his lap while he stared down at the grisly collection.
