CHAPTER 29

Late that afternoon, in his office in Boise, Hank Henry gazed disbelievingly at the coroner's report that had just arrived on his desk. As he stared at the fax, his mind rejected the words the doctor up in Challis had written.

The cause of death of Shane Slater, who had been positively identified through a fingerprint check within an hour of the body's arrival in the Custer County morgue, had been simple and straightforward: a twelve-gauge shotgun wound had lacerated his abdomen, wounding his kidney, liver, stomach, and intestines. Even without the puncture wound in the center of his forehead, which had killed him instantly, he would have died within a matter of minutes, perhaps even seconds. By the time MaryAnne Carpenter had swung the poker-which, along with the shotgun, had been delivered to the sheriff's office at the same time the body had been flown up to the coroner-Slater had already been dying. indeed, the wounds he'd suffered from the two shotgun shells should have made his grasping of Alison Carpenter's arm@is last act before he'd died-impossible.

And yet there was a great deal about Shane Slater that seemed to be impossible.

The description of the body alone made no sense.

The coroner had made many notes, and as Hank Henry studied them disbelief grew in his mind.

Fingernails like claws, twice as thick as those of a normal human being, but much narrower.

Canine @ teeth were developed far beyond those in a normal human mouth, much longer than the teeth that flanked them, and ending in sharp points.

Points ideally suited to tearing meat.

Slater's jaw, too, was different, the chin protruding forward, the normal pattern of the denw arch distorted into an oddly wedge-and formed.

And there were anomalies about Slater's eyes and ears, neither of which conformed to the human norms.

The contents of his stomach showed that his diet had consisted, at least in part, of raw meat.

The blood content of his body was exceedingly low, and his muscles were in a far better state of development than seemed warranted for a man of his age, though that, at least, Hank Herny could dismiss. The man had been living alone in the mountains for years-his muscles damned well should have been well-developed.

What confounded him were the samples of hair and blood that had been flown down to Boise along with the preliminary report of the autopsy.

Hair samples that the coroner up in Challis had described as "body hair inconsistent with available human samples," and blood that he had described as "unresponsive to testing by the lab."

It had taken Henry no time at all to find a match for the hair sample.

He had simply sent it downstairs to his lab, where it had instantly been matched to one of the samples scraped from the fingernails of Tamara Reynolds.

At least he now had proof of who had killed Glen Foster, and he suspected that when the evidence gathered from the site of Bill Sikes's death was analyzed, that link would be established as well.

But what the hell did it mean? "Body hair inconsistent with available human samples"? Blood that was "unresponsive to testing by local lab"?

As far as he could tell, the coroner's report was nothing more than a coy bureaucratic method of saying they didn't think Slater had been human at all, but weren't about to comniit their thoughts to paper, where they might be held responsible for them.

Not that he could blame them-after all, he had bucked the hair samples his own lab had been unable to identify up to the feds within minutes of reading the report. And he could still hear the scorn in Rick Manin's voice when the deputy in Sugarloaf had called him to discuss his own report. What must he be saying about the coroner's report?

Sighing, he turned to his computer and typed in the information that would bring up Shane Slater's criminal record, then waited as the program went to work, culling through the combined records from several data banks in various parts of the country. A few seconds later the report came up, and Hank Henry began reading it.

Nothing major-the man was arrested nearly twenty years ago on charges that had been nearly a decade old even then. He'd been involved in various antiwar movements during the early days of Vietnam, and finally a warrant had been issued after he'd taken part in the blowing up of a Selective Service office. No one had been injured, but the office had been destroyed. Standard campus radical stuff that had gotten out of hand. Slater had disappeared, but after living underground for a few years, he'd finally turned himself in, apparently tired of being a fugitive.

Sentenced to fifteen years, he'd been a model prisoner, but then something strange had happened.

According to the record on Hank Henry's computer screen, he killed two nurses during an escape from a prison hospital, and had been a fugitive ever since.

Henry frowned, then picked up the telephone and called the federal prison where Slater had been held until his escape fourteen years earlier. After being transferred three times, he finally found himself talking to the warden.

Hank Henry identified himself, then announced the reason for his call.

"I've got a body up here that I've identified as being a former prisoner of yours. His name's Slater.

Shane Slater."

The warden was silent for a moment. When he finally replied, his voice was guarded. "I'm not sure the name rings a bell. We've had a lot of people over the years

"How many that were model prisoners, until they went into the hospital, killed two nurses, and escaped?" Henry interrupted.

"You've been doing your homework," the warden commented.

"My question is this-. Why was Slater in the hospital?

What was wrong with him?"

The warden's tone hardened. "I'm I can't tell you that. All the public information on Slater is in the report I assume you're looking at right now. Everything else is classified."

Hank Henry's mind instantly translated the warden's words: the government was up to something, and they didn't want anyone to know what.

His translation was confirmed a moment later when the computer screen suddenly went blank. When he tried to recall the record he'd been looking at only seconds earlier, a single line came up on the screen: All Data searched no records found.

Shane Slater had just disappeared from the files of the United States government.

What's going to happen to the horses?

The thought came into MaryAnne Carpenter's mind Out of nowhere. She and Alison were ready to leave the house, the few meager belongings they'd brought with them barely two weeks ago already packed into their suitcases.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and all day long the house had been filled with people, some of whom she knew, most of whom she didn't.

Charley Hawkins had pulled up shortly after the snowplow had opened the road, following on the heels of the hearse and ambulance that arrived to take away the bodies of Logan and Olivia Sherborne. Shane Slater's corpse had been removed in the helicopter, flown immediately to ballis for the autopsy.

Men had appeared out of nowhere, swarming over the house and yard, photographing everything, taking samples of blood from the floor of the den and living room, even packing away the broken fragments of the smashed window through which Slater had entered the house.

Even Storm's carcass had @ been dug out of the snow and packed into a plastic bag.

MaryAnne had watched none of it, unable to bring her self even to go out to the barn when they'd moved Logan out of the stall where she'd left him in order to put him into the hearse.

"I can't do it," she'd told Margaret Stiffle, who had arrived a few minutes after Charley Hawkins. "I know how it must look, but I just can't do it!"

,,It doesn't look like anything at all," Margaret had insisted. "If it were me, I wouldn't be able to go out there, either. After what you've been through, I'm just amazed you can function at all!"

But she wasn't functioning. All she was doing was hanging on, going through the motions of dealing with whatever came to hand, certain that if she stopped moving and let herself think, her mind would finally shatter.

At ten that morning, the phone had finally come back on, and she could no longer postpone the inevitable.

She'd called Alan, and done her best to explain what had happened.

"He's dead , she'd whispered. "Logan's dead!"

There was a short silence at the other end of the line, and then Alan's voice had come through, any grief he might be feeling concealed by fury.

"How the hell could you have let that happen?" he demanded. "I'm coming out there on the first flight and taking my daughter home!"

Stunned, MaryAnne wasn't certain for a moment that she'd heard him correctly, but then she realized that his reaction was exactly what she should have expected:

Whatever was wrong-whatever had happened-it had to be her fault. The last of the feelings she still had for him dissolved away.

"Never mind," she sighed, her mind clearing for the first time that day.

"We won't be here, Alan. Alison and I are going away." Unwilling to listen to him further, knowing that he would only hurl accusations at her, MaryAnne quietly hung up the phone.

She'd started packing then, not really certain where she was going yet, but knowing that she'd told Alan the truth.

By this evening she and Alison would be gone from the ranch, and after the funeral for Logan, they would be gone from Sugarloaf as well.

Gone forever.

She trudged upstairs, pulled her suitcases out of the closet, and began folding her clothes, finishing the job in far less time than she would have imagined possible. Yet she'd brought so little with her, why had she expected that the simple act of repacking a suitcase would take more than a few minutes?

She'd gone to Logan's room next, intent on packing his things, too, but hadn't even been able to bring herself to open his door, let alone look at his clothes.

"I'll arrange to have his things sent to you," Charley Hawkins had told her, finding her standing outside the door to her son's room, her whole body trembling.

MaryAnne had nodded, but said nothing as she struggled with her emotions. It wasn't until she was back downstairs, trying to eat a bowl of the soup Margaret Stiffle had made, that she finally told the lawyer not to send Logan's things. "I won't even be able to open the box," she said. "And there must be someone here who can use them. Just-2' Her voice faltered again, but Charley nodded.

'ADon't worry about a thing. I'll take care of it." He'd hesitated, then spoken again. "I've already gotten you and Alison a suite at the lodge.

I told them I didn't know how long you'd want it, but you can stay as long as you need to."

She'd looked up at him blankly. "I can't stay in Sugarloaf," she said.

"I just can't."

The lawyer smiled understandingly; "Of course not. But I assume you'll want to be at Olivia's funeral. I thought we'd have a service for Bill Sikes at the same time."

"And Logan," MaryAnne heard herself saying. "I'd like Logan's funeral to be part of it, too." Though she had no idea why she'd spoken the words, she knew even as she uttered them that it was the right thing to do.

Though he'd barely arrived here, Logan had already fallen in love with the ranch, and she realized that although most of his life had been spent in Canaan, New Jersey, this was where he belonged.

Now, finally, she was ready to leave. The suitcases were in the back of the Range Rover, and she and Alison stood on the porch.

She turned back to Charley Hawkins and Margaret Stiffle, who had accompanied her out of the house. "We're going to have to arrange for someone to look after the horses," she told Hawkins. "Is there someone you can think of who could come up and feed them and muck out the stalls? Maybe someone who could be a caretakers'

"Michael can do it." Margaret Stiffle told her. "We're just down the road, and he loves horses."

"Do you think he would?" MaryAnne asked anxiously.

"After what happened .. ." Her voice trailed off, and she felt a shudder pass over her.

"He'll be fine," Margaret assured her.

"Of course I'll pay him," MaryAnne began, but Margaret held up her hand in a gesture of protest.

"You'll do no such thing! Just let him ride them, and he'd pay you for the privilege! My goodness, what are neighbors for if they can't lend a hand?"

Still MaryAnne hesitated, something in the back of her mind telling her to refuse Margaret's offer, to insist on having Charley Hawkins find someone to move into Bill Sikes's cabin, or even the main house. And yet who would want to live here, after the carnage this house had witnessed?

"All right," she sighed at last, following the path of least resistance.

"Tell him he can ride them whenever he wants, and to call Mr. Hawkins if he needs anything. And I'm sure it won't be for long, anyway." She glanced at the house, which only a couple of weeks ago had appeared so warm and welcoming. Now, it had taken on a foreboding look. "I think we'll probably be selling the ranch as soon as we can, won't we, Charley?"

"I think we'll talk about it later on," the lawyer said.

This was not the time to tell MaryAnne that for the momen@ at least, nothing at all could be done, for the ranch was not hers to sell.

It was in trust for Joey, and unless either Joey or his body was found, nothing could be disposed of at all for the next seven years.

Seven years, after which Joey Wilkenson could be declared legally dead.

"We can sort it all out after things have settled down a bit," he went on. "You're sure you don't want me to drive you into town?"

MaryAnne shook her head. "I can do it. And I @ Alison and I need to be alone for a while."

She got into the Range Rover, and Alison climbed into the passenger seat next to her. The car was already warmed up, and she put it in gear, turning it around to start down the narrow driveway, certain that she would never return again.

As they left the house forever, neither she nor Alison even glanced back at it, wanting only to forget the terrible things that had happened there.

Rick Martin stared out at the sling dangling from the winch fastened to the outside of the helicopter. Did they really exPect him to climb out of the cabin, fasten himself into that sling, and be lowered to the ground fifty feet below? They must be nuts! He glanced over at the pilot, who was grinning wickedly, then heard his voice coming through the headset clamped over his ears. "It looks a hell of a lot worse than it is! Try it-you'll like it!"

"Did you ever try it?" Rick yelled into the microphone suspended in front of his mouth.

"Hell, no!" the pilot cracked. "I'm scared shitless of heights!"

Glaring darkly at the pilot, Rick un . fastened his seat belt, took off the headset, and pulled on a thick knitted cap, then finally slid the door open. Instantly, a gale of freezing wind, driven by the rotor above him, slashed through the cabin.

All his instincts told him to slam the door shut again and have the pilot take him back down to the valley, where at least they could set the chopper down on solid ground. But if they did that, it would only mean that he and the two men in the back of the helicopter would have to set out on foot, and after the snowfall of the night before, the trek up the Mountainside to Shane Slater's cabin would take most of the day, assuming they could make it at all. Resigning himself to the inevitable, he took a deep breath, then reached out and grabbed the sling, pulling it in next to the seat and carefully transferring himself into it, securing the harness. He let himself swing outward, and the pilot began lowering him to the ground. A few seconds later, as his legs sank into the soft snow and his feet touched solid ground, he realized that the pilot had been right-the anticipation of the drop had been a lot worse than the reality.

Releasing himself from the sling, he gave the pilot a thumbs,up, then waded through the snow toward the cabin, twenty yards away.

By the time the two deputies from Challis joined him, he had already begun his search of the cabin. Joey Wilkenson had been here. He had left tracks through the snow when he'd abandoned it.

They had been clearly visible from the air. The pilot followed them as far as he could, until they'd neared the crest of the mountains and begun to feel the effects of the wind that was blowing in from the west.

As the chopper began to bounce around in the wind, the tracks in the snow had also begun to peter out.

"Snow's blowing down there," the pilot had called over the headset. "No point in trying to follow those tracks any farther, and if we go any higher, I'm not going to guarantee we'll get back down again!" A moment later they swung around, returning to hover in the air above the structure in which Rick Martin now stood.

Once again he marveled that anyone could have survived a winter in the shack, yet it was obvious that Shane -Slater had. Though the fire had all but burned out, the stove was still warm, and a few embers still glowed inside, embers that Rick fanned back to life, adding wood until the fire blazed up once again. Not that it would do much good even if he closed the shutters and door, which he wasn't about to do, given that they were his only source of light.

"Jesus, Christ," Tom Singlefeather breathed as he stepped through the door. "This looks like something the feds would give us for the reservation! Why the hell would anyone live up here?"

"That's exactly what we're going to find out," Martin told him. He glanced around the cabin. He'd searched it only twenty-four hours ago, but this time he was determined to find something-anything that he might have missed before. "If we have to, we'll tear this place apart. There's got to be something here that will tell us what the feds won't!"

He pulled the suitcase he'd found yesterday out from under the wooden bed, opened it, and began going through the contents one more time.

"Damn it," he muttered as he realized there was nothing there he hadn't seen the day before, "there's got to be something!"

"What about this?" Tom Singlefeather asked. He was kneeling on the floor, prying up a loose floorboard.

A floorboard Rick Martin had missed completely yesterday. The board came up, and Singlefeather reached down into the hole it had exposed and felt around the space beneath the house. A moment later he pulled out a brown metal box, its paint peeling and the underlying steel rusting.

It looked like a small filing box, and there was a wire handle on top, by which it could be carried. The clasp on the front was locked, but Martin pried it open easily with a bent knife that Singlefeather found on the counter that had served as Slater's kitchen.

Inside, Rick found a small book, its leather cover worn, its pages beginning to mold from the years in the box beneath the house. The book, he realized as he carefully opened the crumbling cover, was Shane Slater's diary.

He needed only to scan the first page before he knew that he'd found what he was looking for, for the first words told it all: I've made a deal There's a new medical program being tested in the hospital, and they're looking for volunteers.

It has to be dangerous, because they're promising early release to any of us they can sucker in, and they're making us suckers sign the kind of waivers they only use if they figure we might sue them. But what the hell-at best, Ifind out what the government is up to, and at the worst, I die. So no big deal Anyway, I'm going to write it all down, just in case.

Rick Martin carefully @ turned to the last page of the book.

Shane Slater's handwriting had changed. No longer the easily legible script of the first entry, it was now a barely readable scrawl: I keep changing, keep getting worse. It's not just my body that's changing now it's my mind, too. I'm ready to die-I want to die, some days-but I can't. Not yet. I have to warn Joey. Have to tell him what's going to happen to him. I have to tell him I'm sorry. Why did they do this to me? Why would they do it to anybody? And why did I let myself fall in love with Audrey? But it's too late. Can't change any of it, and I know I won't be able to kill Joey, even though I know I should. I think I could kill anyone now, except him. I can't stop myself anymore.

I'm no longer a human being. When the night comes, and the instincts take over, I have to hunt. Hunt like a wolf. Kill my prey like a wolf. I suppose I'll die like a wolf, too. Some day, someone will hunt me down and then it will finally be over Over for me, anyway- But what about Joey? What will happen to my son?

At the very bottom of the metal box, there was one more envelope, containing a copy of the release Shane Slater had signed more than fifteen years earlier when he'd agreed to take part in the test in the prison hospital.

It had authorized the injection into his system of a serum containing the DNA of "a nonhuman species," DNA that would hopefully merge with his own, strengthening -his system to certain kinds of disease.

But it also might possibly the release italicized the word possibly permanently alter @ structure of his own genes.

The "nonhuman species" specified for Shane Slater was Canis lmpus.

The Timber wolf.