way. Not even for a week. I’m done there. You know how I feel about that.”
“But one week?”
“I love them, but I’m not living with them. My father’s look is . . . tragic. He can’t help himself. It’s like it happened to him. It’s like secondhand smoke or something.”
Fiona reached for the DVD’s remote control. Kira leaned forward and placed her hand onto Fiona’s.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know you’re trying to protect me. I know how awful you’d feel if anything happened. But nothing’s going to happen. I’m in charge of my life now. I have a life now. You made that happen. You, the Advocates, my parents, this whole valley. But I’m not running from some dude stealing soup cans. ‘Once a victim, never again a victim,’” she repeated.
“But there’s also, BS is BS. ‘Being smart is being safe.’”
“I’m staying,” Kira said. “Unless you’re kicking me out?”
“Yeah, right,” Fiona said. She touched the remote and the movie continued.
Kira settled back into the couch and pulled the bowl of popcorn into her lap. “I love it when they go to Paris,” she said.
But not Yellowstone, Fiona was about to say. She didn’t.
6
With Beatrice leading the way, Walt, Fiona, Tommy Brandon, and Guillermo Menquez followed a game path through a dark forest of fir, white pine, and aspen on a north-facing slope. Beatrice was not actually leading, but following a scent from a can of evaporated milk found by Fish and Game Deputy Ranger Menquez a hundred yards from the Berkholders’ stucco home. That the can carried a scent, and that that scent led them deeper into the woods, encouraged Walt that they were onto something.
“No bear tracks that I’ve seen,” Menquez said. He was a stocky man with a thick mustache and an oily face.
“No scat,” Walt said, agreeing. “No fur caught in the shrubs or on the stumps of old branches—”
“Show-off,” Fiona said.
Walt ignored it. “No evidence that any of the food in the kitchen had been consumed.” He expected Beatrice to lead them to a camper, a squatter, and Menquez, a bear expert, was along in case they encountered one—or, if Walt’s theory proved right, the “bear” required a translator. The Hispanic population had exploded in the valley over the past decade. Increasingly, his office and Fish and Game dealt with Mexicans squatting in the national forest while moving from one menial job to another. With the collapse of the economy had come whole settlements of twenty, forty, sixty day laborers in illegal campsites. Fiona was along to record whatever was found, and because for the past several days she’d come out of her cocoon to repeatedly badger Walt about finding and removing whatever—whoever—was living in the woods near the Engletons’.
Walt extended his arm, stopping the others, and dropped to one knee, focusing on the brown pine straw that covered the barely discernible trail.
“Brandon! A stick,” he said, reaching back with an open palm.
Tommy Brandon found a fallen limb, cracked off a dry branch, and delivered it to Walt like a nurse to a surgeon. Walt reduced it further.
“Photo, please.”
Fiona sneaked forward and made several pictures of the area in front of Walt. “It might help,” she said, “if I knew what I was photographing.”
“Right here,” he said, using the tip of the stick to gently lift the edge of a fallen leaf. He pushed the leaf away, pinched it, and tossed it behind him. “Another photo,” he said.
“What is that?” she asked. She zoomed in on the pine straw and for the first time saw through the lens that half a dozen of the brown needles were cracked and broken. “You couldn’t have seen that,” she mumbled.
“Here,” he said, using the stick to point out a small frown of discoloration. “It’s a toe impression,” he said. “A boot or Vibram sole—something stiff and inflexible. Not a running shoe.” He looked down at his own boot. “Size ten or eleven. We’re lucky it hasn’t rained in the past couple of weeks.” He looked up the trail and whistled for Beatrice to stop. Once the dog was looking at him, Walt made a hand gesture and she sat on the side of the trail. “We don’t want her disturbing things. It’s a man.” He looked behind him. Then he took hold of Fiona’s hiking boot and lifted it up and moved it. “He’s over a hundred and . . .” He sized up Fiona, “twenty pounds, and less than one-eighty.”
“Jesus,” she gasped, amazed he nailed her weight.
“Six