Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr Read Free Book Online Page A

asked.
    "It's awful dry over there for tamarisk."
    "Worse than tamarisk," Harland said, a twinkle in his gray eyes.
    "Martians. Tell her, Manny."
    Manny looked their way a moment, the thin, pockmarked face showing a trace of humor but no inclination to join in the conversation. "You tell her, Harland."
    "Craig Eastern was camped over there a couple nights back working on his snake studies and he saw a UFO. A greenish halo that danced over the ground and made noise like cosmic footsteps. A putt-putt. Sort of a celestial Model T. Manny said he was all shook up. Thought they'd come to take him home, I guess."
    "Craig is a strange man," Anna said.
    Harland moved slightly so he was between her and Manny. When he spoke, his voice was low, pitched for her ears only. "Craig Eastern is crazy,"
    he said. "Seriously. He's mentally ill. This is not for public consumption. You're out alone a lot. You take care of yourself."
    Before Anna could respond one way or another, he had turned away, was calling to Manny, giving up the hunt for the fawn.
    As they climbed into his truck, Roberts looked back over his shoulder. "I like the hair, Anna."

    Anna spent the next twenty miles thinking about Harland Roberts.
    He had a talent for knocking her a little off balance. Talking with him she felt younger, more vulnerable, less sure of herself. Harland was of an age where men seldom looked at women as peers, co-workers. Always, however well concealed behind training or good manners, was the pervasive concept of women as the Weaker Sex.
    The damned thing of it was, Anna thought, it made her behave like a
    "flawed vessel." She wasn't sure if it was knee-jerk, a nerve touched from early socialization or-and this was the creepy thought-because she liked it.
    "Not bloody likely!" Anna said aloud and moved her thoughts on to other things.
    Roberts had said Craig Eastern was crazy. Everybody said Eastern was crazy, but Harland meant it. "He's mentally ill." He'd used those words.
    And: "Take care of yourself."
    Anna knew Craig was fanatic about keeping the park undeveloped. It was more than just the inescapable animosity one felt when forced to see what the human race was doing to the planet. With Craig it was personal, a betrayal of him as well as Texas and the world.
    Craig had been one of the most outspoken opponents of Drury's proposal to develop recreational vehicle sites in Dog Canyon. In a way, his very vehemence undermined his cause. His rhetoric was so heated that none of the brass wanted to align themselves with him.

    "You're out alone a lot. Take care of yourself."
    Did Harland Roberts think Craig was crazy enough to hurt somebody? To hurt her? Craig talked a lot about shooting visitors. But all naturalists talked about shooting visitors. It was a way of letting off steam.
    Was it different with Eastern? Looking at his nervous rantings through the curtain of suspicion Harland had dropped he did seem a little insane.
    Anna's mind jumped to the nearest conclusion: Sheila Drury was dead. If the lion didn't do it ...
    It was absurd. She was clutching at straws, and melodramatic straws at that.
    The autopsy would show something: congenital heart failure, brain aneurysm. Something that would prove Sheila was dead before the lion tasted her. But by the time the report came-if it ever did and wasn't simply lost in some FBI file- it would be too late. Not many days would pass before Paulsen's dogs would tree a cougar. It would be dubbed, after the required five minutes of deliberation, to be the cougar, and it would be shot.
    "Damn! Damn! Damn!" Anna pounded the Rambler's steering wheel with the flat of her hand. The car swerved into the oncoming lane and a subcompact with Ohio plates honked, the driver mouthing obscenities.
    "Think of something else, it's your day off," Anna ordered herself.

    For twelve hours she managed to school her mind. Distract it, was more accurate: a Schwarzenegger movie, a couple of Tecates, a "new" Patsy Cline tape.
    Near nine