Track Of The Cat

18

AT ten past nine in the morning Pacific Daylight time, Anna called the California DMV. They reaffirmed what she'd already guessed: E. Wheelan was legitimate; an Ernest Wheelan from San Anselmo, California. She then called Brown and Coldwell in San Francisco. Dianne, Mr. Walters's secretary, was glad to check a date for a Gunnison Oil secretary. No, no trouble. She'd loused up a few times in her career. Secretaries had to stick together. No need for the boss to know every little glitch.

Mr. Walters had been in a board meeting from three p.m. till nearly eight on July 2. Yes, she was certain. She'd been kept running the whole time fetching coffee and sandwiches and Xerox copies, then had to take the bus home at eight-thirty at night because Brown and Coldwell wouldn't spring for cab fare.

Anna hung up, leaned her head on her hands and stared out the dirty attic window of the Frijole ranger station. The attic was hot and fly-specked but it housed the only phone in the park where one could be relatively assured of privacy. The escarpment showed nearly white in the early sun, evergreens at the top fine and black as a fringe of silk. Anna found it difficult to believe there was more than one murderer stalking the backcountry of Guadalupe Mountains National Park. If that were true, then alibis for the time of her or Craig's attacks would imply innocence in the Drury lion kill. Unless one of the "accidents" were really an accident. Unlikely but far from impossible.

For the moment she would put Erik and Christina into the "Innocent" category. She looked down at her list.

Karl Johnson was next.

In front of her on the desk was a yellow slip of paper: the phone message Marta had pressed on her when she'd first returned from Mexico. Anna had forgotten it. Then at five p.m. the previous evening, when she'd finally gotten around to doing her laundry, she'd found it crushed in the pocket of her Levis. It was from Tim Dayton at the Roswell lab where she had sent the samples from Karl's truck. The note said only that he called and to call back. Nothing urgent.

She dialed the number. Tim was in. From the faint swallowing sounds that came through the wire as she waited, Anna guessed the man who answered had laid the receiver down by a Bunsen burner with something boiling on it. She preferred it to Muzak.

After several minutes, Tim came on the line.

"Thanks for the blood test," Anna said. "Your assistant told me the samples were animal blood."

"Yes," Tim replied. He was older than Anna but, to his eternal annoyance, he sounded like a little kid over the phone. "Tessie said. Since you didn't call back, I figured it was no big deal, but I wanted to check with you before I threw out that hypo you sent-the one with the ketimine."

"Ketimine?"

"Yeah. It's pretty common. Vets use it to anesthetize animals. It puts them under more safely than the depressants they used to use."

Anna knew Roads and Trails sometimes sedated a problem animal so the Resource Management team could relocate it. It seemed odd that the stuff was in Karl's truck, but no one had been anesthetized. Not yet, anyhow. "Thanks, Tim. Go ahead and toss it."

"Sure you don't want it back?" His voice took on a teasing edge. "Used on people, the stuff is one hell of a hallucinogen. One more time for auld lang syne?"

"LSD!" Anna exclaimed, remembering Drury's autopsy. "My God."

"Not exactly, but it'll get you there."

"Tim, hang on to it a while for me, would you?"

"Sure."

"How about the dirt I sent?" This time Anna was leaving no loose ends, no unchecked facts.

"Looked like dirt to me," Dayton replied.

Anna thanked him, promised a sordid recital of all the facts one day soon over a six-pack, and hung up. She drove home, made herself a pot of coffee, settled Piedmont across her knees, and went through her calendar, marking the days Karl's vehicle was seen in McKittrick after the canyon was closed. Both were Fridays, Karl's day off. The truck had been there all night. Even Karl wouldn't dare camp in McKittrick Canyon. The area was closed to camping. If he were caught, he would be fired, asked to leave the Guadalupe Mountains. For Karl that would be tantamount to being exiled from the Garden of Eden.

According to the backcountry permits she'd gone over with Manny the day before, he hadn't camped on McKittrick Ridge or at the Permian Ridge campground either. When off duty, park employees had to obtain permits to use the backcountry just as visitors did. Again, Anna doubted Karl would risk his job to flout a simple rule then leave his truck in plain sight.

The only alternatives were hiking up North McKittrick Canyon or the Permian Reef Trail and camping beyond the park's boundary in the Lincoln National Forest. No permits were needed there. The Permian Reef Trail was more likely. North McKittrick was rough going and it was a long way before one reached good campsites.

Leaning back, Anna stroked Piedmont's melted form spread across her knees. There was no way she could follow Karl, undetected, up the Permian Reef trail. It was too exposed: four miles of switchbacks up a rocky mountainside. She looked back to the calendar. Today was Thursday. She would hike up and camp, wait for him up in the trees where there was cover.

After packing her gear, Anna drove to the Administration building. She told Christina what she intended and asked if she would drop her off at McKittrick Canyon on her lunch hour. Looking pleased that Anna trusted her with her plans, she said she would.

Anna stopped briefly at the McKittrick Visitors Center and checked the closing log. Karl's truck was logged in the canyon half a dozen times over the past few months, always on a Friday. By two-thirty Anna had hiked up the mountain. The top of the ridge bridged McKittrick Canyon to the west and Big Canyon to the east. Big Canyon was over the line in the Lincoln. A trail joined the two tracts of public land, crossing through a revolving gate in the boundary fence separating them. A couple miles of forested land blanketed the ridge where it flattened out between the two canyons. It was a part of the relict forest that made the high country in Guadalupe so magical. Sotol and yucca held the desert's place on the edges of the escarpment.

If Karl followed his pattern he would hike up Friday. Still, Anna ate Thursday's supper at the edge of the reef where she could look down two thousand feet to the Visitors Center. Through binoculars, she watched the last visitors straggling out of the canyon, the cars drive away, then, just after six, the white one-ton pickup drive in. A tiny figure, probably Manny, checked the doors and windows of the building then got back into the truck and drove away. The canyon had been put to bed.

Anna watched the sun set and the stars come out, the half moon rise. Near ten-thirty she unrolled her sleeping bag in the hollow trough of the trail and slept. Around midnight a deer, confused but not alarmed by this obstacle, woke her with questioning snorts and irritated scufflings. Otherwise the night was restful. Morning put her back on the cliff's edge, binoculars in one hand, a mug of tea in the other, watching the miles of trail zigzagging below.

At nine-thirty a blue truck pulled into the parking lot. A man that could only be Karl Johnson-even at a distance he looked big-got out. He shouldered a red backpack and started up the trail toward the Permian Reef.

Anna put a bottle of water and her.357 on her belt, then stashed her pack deep in a rock crevice a good hundred feet off the trail. Satisfied it couldn't be seen, she continued her vigil.

It took Karl only ninety minutes to climb the four miles and two thousand feet. Following him would require more than stealth, it would take stamina. He was still below her on the exposed switchbacks. Soon she would need a new hiding place, one close to the trail where it ran through the trees on the ridgetop. From there she would fall into place behind him when he passed.

As soon as he disappeared from sight around the last bend in the trail before it leveled out in the trees on high ground, Anna left the edge of the escarpment.

Situated behind a dense stand of gray-leaf oak near a bend in the trail, she began again to wait. By holding down a branch, she could see almost to where the trail broke through the boulders on the edge of the escarpment. A quarter of a mile of trail was hidden from view. Unless Karl took off crosscountry at that point, she would have him in sight again within minutes.

Scarcely had she finished her thought when he appeared. Even half a mile away, he looked enormous. The battered, lumpy face was set, the wiry ogre head held low. He charged up the trail like a bull. For the first time since she'd started this pursuit, Anna felt afraid. Intent on planning, on hiding, reality had been pushed from her mind: she was stalking a man she believed may have murdered two people and tried, most brutally, to murder her. Despite the revolver she felt unpleasantly small and fragile, wrists and neck breakable as toothpicks.

Karl's long legs, swinging like tree trunks, ate up the trail. Stones crunched under his heavy boots. Feeling exposed, she held her breath as he approached, looked down as if the force of her eyes upon him would bring his gaze up and she would be discovered.

Without any change in rhythm, the footfalls passed. Anna opened her eyes. This small success calmed her. So might a lion sit atop a boulder, unseen, and watch its prey go by. This was natural, not supernatural. Karl would not feel her eyes. If she kept her wits about her she would be okay.

Sacrificing time for silence, she worked out of the scrub oak, then ran lightly down the trail. Having chosen tennis shoes over hiking boots, she made very little noise. Glimpses of Karl's red pack showed through the trees when she got close or when the trail curved back on itself sharply.

Three-quarters of a mile from the boundary between the park and the Lincoln, the trail broke free of the forest and followed a stony spine through low-growing shrubs and succulents.

As she hit the open stretch, Karl was less than fifty yards in front of her. Anna dropped down behind a rock and followed him with her ears. When she could no longer hear his grinding steps she peeked out. His wiry orange hair was just disappearing over the hogback and down a gentle slope.

He would be approaching the boundary fence. The forest began again there, thicker and denser in the moist hollow between the ridges of the two canyons.

Anna trotted slowly down the trail, aware that if Karl stopped to pee or take a drink or look at the view, she could come upon him more suddenly than she intended. She had a lie ready for such an event but she hoped not to have to use it. If Karl was the killer he probably wouldn't buy it. If he wasn't, she probably wouldn't need it.

Slowing, she came over the rise. Below her was the barbed wire fence and the rusting revolving gate. Beyond she could see about a mile of trail winding up a steep slope in the Lincoln. To the left North McKittrick Canyon dropped off in a sheer stone cliff. To the right, beyond the gate, the forest crowded up to the trail.

Karl was gone.

It crossed Anna's mind that he'd seen her, was waiting behind rock or tree and would reach out one great hairy arm like the ogre he so resembled. She stopped a moment, reassured herself he'd not seen her, and ran on. If he'd gone off trail anywhere before the fence she'd most likely be able to see him still. A hundred or so feet of scrub lay between the trail and the more heavily wooded area.

At the revolving gate she slowed to a creep, her eyes on the ground. The trail was bone dry and packed hard. A bad surface for tracking. It was also seldom used and Karl was a heavy man. A toe print, the familiar star and waffle horseshoe pattern of NPS boots, was imprinted in the dust. Four feet or so away, a scuffed mark: whitish sand and stone scraped away exposing the darker soil beneath. Anna measured off another yard and a third and looked. In the normal course of events, a foot must have fallen there.

If there was a sign of Karl's passing, she could not find it. Another four feet were marked off. Nothing. She went back to where she'd found the scuff and studied the side of the trail. A line, very faint, probably an animal track, led off into the trees. Several feet down it a pinecone had been crushed absolutely flat. Not clipped or partially broken as by a hoof, but flattened entirely.

Anna ran down the faint track. Indians, she'd read time and again, had run through the forest silently. Not the Lincoln, she decided. Careful as she was, her soft-soled sneakers made a distinct rustling in the dry grass and needles. Even the tiniest of snakes would be heard slithering through this high desert woodland.

Red, a fragment no bigger than a songbird, flickered ahead. Karl was in front of her. She could see his right shoulder and arm through the trees and underbrush. He stopped. A long second later Anna's command to her feet took effect and she, too, was still.

Karl's arm made no move. He didn't pull off his pack or reach for his water bottle. He hadn't stopped for a rest or a drink.

Karl was listening.

Anna was afraid to breathe and afraid to hold her breath. She'd run so far she knew if she tried, her lungs would rebel and she'd gasp aloud. The pounding of her heart, resounding through the woods like a jungle drum, seemed enough to give her away.

The shoulder moved. Karl was turning. If she could see a scrap of red, what would he see? Blessing her foresight in wearing olive trousers and a khaki shirt, she slowly put her hands behind her, lowered her head till her face was pointing toward the ground, and willed herself utterly still. Her heartbeat slowed, she felt or imagined her energy slowing. Playing a mind-game with herself, Anna rooted, became as a tree.

Rustling, the crack of a twig: Karl was moving on. If he had seen her, he had chosen to lead her deeper into the woods.

Anna gambled he had not. Placing each foot with care, she followed. Trailing through the forest was easier than on the trail in the sense that she had ample cover. But walking quietly was proving difficult. Matching him step for step, she hoped the sound of his own passage would mask hers.

The animal track faded out. Karl walked on like a man sure of his way. Down a dry ravine, the narrow bottom littered with stones, Anna followed. It emptied out into a slightly wider drainage. Downstream it would end in a fall down into Big Canyon. Karl turned upstream.

Trees had been scoured out by boulders rolled on summer floods. Rocks twenty feet high and that many across were jumbled together forming caves and hallways. From boulder to boulder Anna crept, trusting more to the fact that there wasn't any direction to go but up the creekbed than to sight or sound in keeping on Karl's trail. To have kept him in view would've been impossible without the risk of being seen.

Sun reflected off rock and the heat in the airless confines of the wash became intense. Having soaked her handkerchief in water, Anna tied it around her head. It was one-fifteen. She had been following Karl for over two hours. Never once had he let up on the pace he had set down on the groomed trail leading across the canyon from the McKittrick Visitors Center. Anna breathed deeply, filling her lungs to aching. There would be time to rest when Karl did. If he did.

The perfect murder, she thought. He will keep going till I drop dead from exhaustion.

Karl had been nowhere in sight for nearly twenty minutes when Anna came to the end of the ravine. The drainage was a small box canyon, its head a hallway of stone ending in a rock wall fifty feet high. Karl was not there.

The ogre theory seemed more and more plausible and images of hidden doors, caves under spells of invisibility, stones that rotated to reveal underground passages flickered through Anna's head. She sat down in the shade of a courageous little pine tree that clung to a crevice and took a pull at her canteen.

The ravine rose steeply on three sides. No trail, not even places to scramble up, presented themselves. All was sheer stone wall or crumbling rock embedded with catclaw and lechugilla. The dead end of the box was scarcely five feet wide and in deep shadow. Wary of falling stones and tiger traps, Anna made her way into the slot.

No magic doors. No invisible caves. A prosaic solution in use since the Anasazi had built cliff dwellings: hand and toe holds had been chipped into the rock. From the distance they were apart, Anna guessed Karl had made them to fit his own long reach. She had to stretch precariously to reach from one to another. Twenty feet up she remembered reading that the Anasazi had often planned their stone "ladders" so an enemy, starting out on the wrong foot, would find himself halfway up without a grip, unable to ascend or descend.

She hoped Karl hadn't read that far.

The muscles in her arms and legs were quivering by the time she pulled herself over the top. There wasn't any way she could do it safely or discreetly but merely hauled herself over the lip of stone and sprawled gasping on a natural landing fifteen or twenty feet wide.

Her shoulder throbbed. Cracks took nearly as long to heal as breaks. Climbing fifty feet probably wasn't included under the prescription of "taking it easy." Breath and caution recovered, she sat up.

The climb had landed her at the mouth of a small hanging valley not more than half a mile deep and about that wide. Met by an unyielding horseshoe-shaped escarpment of hard stone, the rains had carved, instead of the usual steep-sided ravine, a shallow flat-bottomed canyon. Soil, washed down the many tiny runoffs from the high country, had filled the little valley with rich fertile earth.

Hidden from above by steep tree-covered slopes and from below by the ragged ravine-cut land dropping into Big Canyon, the valley had a mysterious quality. Like all magical lands, it was protected by a cloak of invisibility.

Anna got to her feet and walked quietly across the stone landing and stepped into the trees. Delicate music reached her and she paused mid-step. Whistling, faint and clear: "Never Never Land." Karl was in the valley. Anna hadn't doubted that; the whistling reassured her that he believed himself alone. Unless she had severely underestimated him and it was part of a well-laid trap.

A path formed beneath her feet. More than just a narrow animal track, this trail had been trod by heavy boots many times. She guessed Karl approached his little kingdom from a number of different routes to avoid leaving a trail others might be tempted to follow. Here he felt safe enough to take the easiest way.

Karl's whistle kept him placed in Anna's ear as she moved quickly up the trail. With the sweet scent of pine, the towering walls, soft dirt instead of unforgiving stone underfoot, it was hard to retain the adrenaline level that had given her strength on the forced march Karl had led.

A tearing sound in the trees to her left brought her back to nervous reality. Two does tore placidly at the dry grass less than fifteen feet from the trail. Both looked at her with mild interest then went back to their lunch. One of them had an eight-inch scar on the left side of her neck. The other was missing her right rear hoof. The leg ended just below the ankle. Both showed a complete lack of fear.

Curiouser and curiouser, Anna thought.

The whistling stopped and she proceeded with more caution. Twenty feet beyond the grazing animals, she came to a small clearing. What looked at first glance to be a child's fort was built against a venerable old ponderosa growing between two boulders.

The shack was at most eight feet square and not quite that high. Walls and roof were made of sticks and small branches held together with nails, twine, and baling wire. Tar paper served as weather-proofing. A blackened length of stovepipe held up by wire affixed to the pine tree poked up from the roof. A faded horse blanket curtained off the doorway.

Keeping to the cover of the trees, Anna skirted the clearing till she stood under the pine next to the stick and paper hut. There she listened until she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Nothing moved within. From up the valley came again the notes of a whistled song.

She slipped around the cabin and pulled the horse blanket aside. The room was uninhabited. Stepping inside she then steadied the blanket lest its movement give her away.

After the glare of the afternoon it took her eyes a minute to adjust to the gloom. Light trickled in from gaps around the stovepipe and tears in the tar paper. Karl's red backpack lay on the earthen floor as if he'd thought better of leaning its considerable weight against the walls. A stove, fashioned from half of a fifty-gallon drum, took up most of one wall. Evidently unused in summer, the stove was all but hidden by eight five-gallon plastic cubitainers the park used to haul and store water. Six were full. There were no shelves. Rude benches crafted of stones and branches lined two of the walls. Both were littered with bottles and cans, boxes and tools.

A short search disclosed several lengths of rope, some chain, two scalpels, surgical tape, syringes, needles, a bottle of chloroform, cotton wool, a ten-pound bag of Purina Dog Chow, and a bottle of ketimine partially empty.

Sunlight flashed as the blanket covering the door was jerked aside.