Jewel typed like a fury, stiffened tresses quivering with the impact of lacquered nails on the keyboard.

The office was cold and boring. Anna squirmed around, but comfort on a metal folding chair was elusive. "I thought it would be a group thing," she said, hoping Jewel would relent and amuse her.

"Nope." Jewel typed on.

There were no magazines to be seen. Anna's shoulder began to ache. She laid her injured limb along the edge of the secretary's desk.

"Do you happen to know where Sondra McCarty is? Peter McCarty's wife?" Anna asked.

"All nonessential personnel have been demobed."

For all the expression Jewel put into the practiced words, she could have been one of those dolls with a ring in its back one pulled to make it talk.

"She's a civilian. Peter asked me to check on her," Anna lied.

"Packed and gone."

A punch, a poke, and paper was sucked into the printer next to Jewel's elbow. Still she typed; she didn't miss a beat. Anna didn't think anyone outside the confines of the big city could type that fast. It was a talent best kept under wraps in the Park Service, or ham-handed rangers would endlessly be pestering one to type up their reports. Probably not an issue; Jewel looked pesterproof.

"Are you sure Sondra's gone?" Anna asked, testing the theory.

Flying fingers stopped midword and began a slow drum. Not pesterproof. Jewel screwed her chair around till she was facing her desk- not all the way around to face Anna, that would have constituted too great a commitment.

"Absolutely positive." She whipped a pile from her "out" basket and, dabbing the pad of her index finger into a little pot of waxy stuff, flipped through it quickly, keeping her fingers stiff so the acrylic of her nails would not be compromised.

"Packed and gone," she repeated with satisfaction, and shoved a list in Anna's direction. "She was given a ride down to the airport yesterday with some other guys. Guess she couldn't wait for her husband to come out."

A note of humanity crept into Jewel's voice, suggesting she would have waited for a husband until hell froze over.

"Good job, Brent, I mean that. Hang tough." The words wafted from Laymon's office as he pushed the door open to usher the geologist out.

Brent mumbled something. He looked bad. Pale and unshaven, the haggard eyes of a man who'd been sleeping badly. Anna guessed she didn't look so hot herself.

"Is Holden here yet?" Laymon asked Jewel. Anna could tell he'd seen her. Draped as she was over the end of his secretary's desk, it would have been impossible not to. He chose to pretend he didn't. A man who liked to deal with one thing at a time.

"He can't come in," Jewel told her boss. She didn't look at him, but turned back to the computer screen. Her fingers rested on the keys, but she was neither reading nor typing. The screen had gone blank. She either had lost her text or had touched a magic computer hide-it button.

Laymon wasn't in the mood to take no for an answer. "Did he call? I told you to interrupt me if he called."

"His wife, she tol' me he gotta go to the doctor's about his foot."

Jewel's articulation, her posture, her vocabulary, all were disintegrating under Laymon's disapproval. Anna wondered if it was personal or if the secretary habitually cowered in the glare of the opposite sex.

"I got Anna Pigeon," she said with the air of a shopkeeper offering inferior but available merchandise.

"Keep trying the Tillmans'," Laymon said. "Talk to the man himself, not his wife."

Only after this exchange had been completed and a nod of acquiescence wrung from Jewel's bowed neck did George Laymon officially "see" Anna.

"Good of you to come by," he said, managing to gather power unto himself by conferring obedience upon her.

"I just sort of wandered in," Anna said. "I wasn't aware there was a critical-"

"I appreciate your coming down so early," he said, and waved her into his office. Closing the door he winked conspiratorially and shook his head. "For a woman who types that fast, Jewel doesn't seem to get a whole lot done. How're you doing?"

Laymon's attention, a focused beacon, lighted and warmed. Despite a natural aversion to being wooed by politicians, Anna had to admit the effect was flattering. Laymon ushered her gallantly-but ever so correctly, without a hint of condescension or sexism-to the single chair in his office. Padded, the seat and back covered with nubbly brown fabric, the visitor's chair, though significantly less grand, matched his desk chair. The desk matched a computer credenza behind it, against the windowed wall. The carpet was new, the potted plant in the corner alive. George Laymon obviously rated. Anna had been in superintendents' offices that weren't so well appointed.

Laymon didn't retreat behind the pseudomahogany of his desk but perched on the side, one haunch on the wood, one booted foot swinging free. He actually must have paid attention in those management classes the NPS was always shipping the higher-ups off to. Putting me at my ease, Anna thought. She decided if he crouched down to her level the way one was taught to interact with children, she was going to leave.

Laymon was a spectacularly average individual. Height, weight, color of hair and eyes: everything fell in the neutral zone. Because true average is a mathematical concept and not a class, he didn't vanish into the woodwork. Graying hair, good build, and regular features made him a handsome man. Anna guessed he was fifty-five or sixty, and had little doubt he could still have been quite the ladies' man but for one thing: he wasn't interested.

She wasn't vain enough to think because a man wasn't flashing lights and sounding sirens the minute she walked into a room he was gay or asexual. Laymon's lack of interest was beyond the personal and had nothing to do with the expected photo of the lovely wife and two appropriately scrubbed kids framed on the desktop. Anna guessed it was something harder to come by than sex or affection that fueled his inner fires. Imposing order. Maybe knowledge. Attributes that could make him good at his job. Controlled zealots were just the people needed for the daunting task of saving what was left of the environment.

"Brent sure looks like shit," Anna said, making conversation.

"Brent's taking this hard," Laymon told Anna. "He's a sensitive man. One of the things that makes him the best in his business. Attention to detail and a straight answer no matter who it costs. But he takes a lot on himself. He feels somehow responsible for Miss Dierkz's death."

Anna understood. After all, she was the one who had killed Frieda. "We all do," she said.

"It's to be expected. How are you doing?"

Anna gave him the short answer to that and several more questions designed to show her he was a caring administrator. Then he got down to the meat of his inquiry. Laymon had no interest in critical stress debriefing-there were procedures for that and they did not fall within his job description. What he wanted from Anna was a detailed account of his resource, Lechuguilla Cavern.

"I'm from the 'Show Me' state," Laymon said. Exactly what had she seen? How far had she explored the Paddock? What had others told her of holes blowing, going leads? Who carried the survey and the sketches? How clear was Lake Rapunzel? How deep the slide? How unstable the Pigtail?

Anna told him she was not the best person to ask. As a neophyte, a claustrophobe, and a close friend of the deceased, her powers of observation had been at a low ebb. Claiming to understand her limitations, he was still keen to hear her views, so she answered the questions as best she could. He pressed her for detail on Tinker's, Rapunzel, and the Pigtail-parts of the cave to which he had never been. Anna struggled to remember as much as she could and, in a childish desire to please, came close to making up answers-a human trait that made eyewitnesses so unreliable. Time after time she drew blanks and he pushed harder.