Read Online Endangered Species by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online Page B

she recognized was Mitch Hanson.  His thinning gray hair
    was slicked over his forehead with sweat and hair spray .
    Bright blue eyes sparkled under sparse brows and he seemed of good
    cheer; a sweaty grubby Saint Nick only sporadically remembering to look
    somber as befitted the occasion.
    Everyone else talked in low voices, looked frequently into the
    nonexistent distance, and milled around purposefully.  The pattern was
    familiar; nobody wanted to take charge.  Anna took another long drink of
    water and closed her eyes.
    When she opened them again, order had been restored.  A glance at Al's
    watch told her she'd only dozed for a quarter of an hour but the
    difference was marked.  Norman Hull, Cumberland's chief ranger, had
    arrived on scene.  Hull was tall, long-legged and long-necked.  A
    receding hairline provided him with an impressive brow that ended in a
    frizz of graying brown curls.  Pale blue eyes blinked from behind thick
    lenses and his rubbery face was in constant motion as he directed the
    operation.
    Yellow police tape had gone up around the aircraft.  Photographs were
    being taken and every third person was talking on a cellular phone or a
    radio.
    An AfV arrived with a plump middle-aged man in madras shorts and a
    crushed fishing cap.  From the unhesitating beeline he made toward the
    corpses, Anna guessed he was the coroner.  He and Hull crouched on the
    far side of the aircraft, near the broken passenger door.
    All Anna could see of them was their feet beneath the remnants of the
    wing.  Death was certain; the coroner needed only to give a look and a
    signature to make it legal.  They were probably looking for
    identification on the second corpse.  She didn't envy them the task.
    Tired of floating around the edges of things, Dijon came back and
    flopped onto the ground ." They going to leave those guys or what?" he
    asked.
    "I doubt it," Anna said.  ,,They'll put them in body bags and take them
    to the morgue.  Since they didn't die under a doctor's care they've got
    to be autopsied.  Besides, if they left them here it wouldn't look good.
    Though the critters would get a good supper out of the deal."
    "Already cooked." Dijon licked his lips ." If you like your meat well
    done."
    Anna laughed at the sheer ghoulishness of it and because she could tell
    that with his macabre joke Dijon had shocked himself .
    The mental picture arrived half a second behind his words and he looked
    suddenly nauseated.
    Guy separated himself from a knot of men gathered around the nose of the
    airplane and walked back toward the crew ." Looks like they figured out
    who the second man was," he said as he dug through his yellow pack.
    Sweat glittered in beads on his bald pate .
    For an instant Anna thought they were blisters from second-degree burns
    and felt her stomach lurch.  Guy pulled a blue handkerchief from the
    pack and mopped his head and neck ." Face and hands were pretty much
    gone but the chief ranger found a brass belt buckle and what's left of a
    nine-millimeter handgun.  And he found the guy's badge.  Looks like he
    was a ranger.  They've radioed in the numbers on the back of the badge
    but nobody's waiting on pins and needles-they only got one law
    enforcement ranger on Cumberland."
    "Todd Belfore," AI said.
    Guy nodded.
    "That kinda takes the fun out of it," Rick said.
    Guy settled into the dirt and lay back, using his pack as a headrest. AI
    puffed absently on a dead pipe.  Dijon couldn't take the stillness and
    leaped up to join Rick gossiping with an extraneous maintenance worker.
    Dead strangers evoked a smorgasbord of the lesser emotions and served as
    marvelous educational tools, warnings, and veiled threats.  When an
    acquaintance was killed it was closer to home; one knew some of the
    threads that tied the deceased to a common humanity.  Without enough
    real connection to grieve, one was left in an uncomfortable place
    between curiosity and embarrassment.
    Chief Ranger Hull crossed