Track of the Cat Read Online Free PDF Page B

all managed to live together in relative accord.
    "Okay," Paul said again, looking like a man getting his ducks all in a row. "You saw lion tracks."
    "Yes," Anna admitted. "By morning the rain had pretty much wiped them out in that silty mud, but they were there."
    "Claw marks, puncture wounds, no sign of any other form of trauma."
    "Right."

    "Then what are you suggesting?" Paul looked across the fingertips he'd used to tap out each one of his points. The pale blue eyes were so open, so willing to hear what she had to say, that Anna felt like an idiot.
    There wasn't much she could say. Like a three-year-old, she'd run to Paul Decker half-cocked, no hard facts. Just one anomaly and a gut feeling.
    "I'm not sure. Maybe she had a heart attack, or a stroke, or something and the lion came later. I don't know." Anna spoke slowly, feeling her way through her thoughts. "A lot of stuff's been bothering me. Little things: no saw grass cuts, the body not eviscerated, why she was there in the first place, her hair was down and loose-nobody hikes with their hair flying around in their face-little stuff."
    Anna petered out rather than stopped. Her eyes had been wandering around the room in a vague sort of way, now they came back to Paul's face just in time to catch the end of a smile slipping from his lips like the tail of a garter snake vanishing into high grass. Anna wished she'd not added the part about the hair. It was a joke that she never let her hair down.
    When she did at the rare social events she attended, she was met with a monotonous chorus of: "I didn't recognize you!"
    "You've made some good points, Anna." Paul glanced at his watch surreptitiously and suddenly it infuriated her that he was so damned nice, so unfailingly understanding. She knew from experience that he'd sit and listen to her "problem" as long as she felt the need to talk.
    "It's not my problem," she said with more vehemence than the situation called for and rose to her feet. "Just thoughts." Anna knew she was overreacting, unwelcome emotions sharpening her tongue and shortening her temper.
    "Sit down," Paul returned reasonably. "Obviously it's bothering you. That makes it important."
    Anna sat.
    "Maybe Sheila was hiking up from Pratt instead of down from Dog Canyon-on a day hike," Paul suggested.
    Pratt Cabin was an historic stone house built at the confluence of North McKittrick and McKittrick creeks about two and a half miles in from the Visitors Center. It was a favored stop of visitors to the park and a logical jumping off place for backcountry hikers.
    Anna shook her head. "Carrying a full pack? And that wouldn't change the fact that she had to pass through dense saw grass. No cuts." As she argued, she wondered what exactly it was that she was trying to prove.
    Paul looked a little pained. "I don't know why she didn't have any cuts, Anna. I wish I did."
    She believed him. He'd like to answer her questions, not because they were important or even particularly valid, but because she felt strongly about them and, to Paul, feelings needed to be dealt with.
    Shaking off his kindness with a shrugging motion, she tried another tack.
    "There've been no incidents of lions attacking humans in West Texas for the last one hundred years. Not one. Zilch. Nada."
    "Statistics," Paul said.
    Lies, damn lies, and statistics, Anna thought. She nodded, stood up feeling angry and defeated and heartily tired of both emotions. "Now Sheila Drury is a statistic."
    "Anna, this is a federal matter. There'll be an autopsy as a matter of course. If they're not satisfied, the FBI will follow it up."
    "Can I see the autopsy report?" Anna demanded.

    There was a silence. There'd never been a death-accidental or otherwise-in the park's twenty-year history. Nobody knew precisely what to do or who should do it. As crime in the parks had grown, law enforcement had become increasingly important. Enforcement rangers were sent to ten weeks of training, were fingerprinted, drug tested, and had