A fender plopped out of the cabin cruiser’s side window, reminding Anna to deploy hers. The, boats drifted gently forward eight or ten inches apart. Anna waited half a minute. The pilot did not show himself. “Captain of the Gone Fishin and any others aboard, please come out on deck,” Anna said into the mike. She kept the spotlight trained on the cabin, trying to see past the black ovals of Plexiglas in the rear windows.

The cabin door opened a crack, then closed, then opened again just wide enough to let a pale, slender man creep through. He held both hands over his eyes trying to block the glare of the searchlight.

Anna was aware of thin white arms, a stick of neck, too long and too white, long thin fingers crosshatched over a white face. She had that unpleasant sensation one gets when one turns over the wrong rock.

“What the hell is going on?” the nocturnal creature shouted. “Is that you, Anna?”

The white lattice of fingers dropped and Anna recognized Jim Tattinger. She left her.357 on the seat and walked back to the rear deck.

Jim had grabbed a gunwale and was holding the boats together. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He was angry and letting it show, letting it sharpen on the edge of his voice.

The best defense is a good offense, Anna thought. What could Tattinger be defending?

“Hi, Jim. Your running lights were out.” Anna walked over to the port gunwale and leaned close to him. She could smell no alcohol, none of the sweet cloying scent of marijuana. “I pegged you for a desperado on a midnight drug run.” She smiled into his eyes. They weren’t dilated or pinpointed-no narcotics or amphetamines. They were a little bloodshot but Tattinger’s eyes were usually red, as if in sympathy with his red-tipped ears and carroty hair.

“Whose boat?”

“I borrowed it,” Jim snapped. “Who authorized you to patrol out of uniform? I bet Lucas didn’t.”

Anna ignored that. “What brings you to this neck of the woods in the dead of night without running lights?” she asked conversationally.

“I don’t see that’s any business of yours.”

“What’s that?” She jerked her chin toward the cabin where four scuba tanks and a pair of fins were piled in an untidy heap. Jim twitched like a puppet on too tight a string. His eyes widened as if he-or more likely Anna-had just seen a ghost.

“Doing a little night diving?”

“Oh. The tanks. No,” he retorted and his irritability sounded mixed with relief. Anna wondered how she had let him off the hook-what the hook was. “What are you doing out here?” he demanded. “You can’t use NPS boats for personal stuff, you know.”

“We’ve had a report of a missing child. I was checking the usual spots on the north shore.”

“Oh gosh!” Tattinger puffed. He seemed genuinely concerned. It caught Anna off guard. “What happened?”

“Carrie Bittner didn’t make it home for supper. Patience is worried.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Jim’s anger was back, though Anna couldn’t see why.

“Patience is rechecking all the sites on the way back to Rock,” Anna told him. “If Carrie doesn’t turn up pretty quick, I’ll call in Lucas and get a search under way as soon as it’s light.”

“For Chr-” Tattinger began his refrain again, then stopped suddenly. “Wait. Bittner? That kid with the brown hair, always hanging around the lodge?”

Anna nodded.

Jim seemed relieved. “I saw her in Lane Cove when I was headed over here. There wasn’t any boat so she must’ve been going back overland on the trail.”

“When was that?”

“I don’t know-not too long ago.”

“Was she alone?”

“Jesus! I got better things to do than look after some snot-nosed kid. You’re not Dick Tracy, Anna.” Jim curled his lip till the ruffle of pink showed garish in the searchlight. “Nobody authorized you to interfere with my work.”

The federal government had authorized Anna to interfere where probable cause could be proved, but she let it pass. “I’ll radio Patience,” she said, and: “Leave a running light on for me.”

Running lights on, the Gone Fishin‘ powered away at high speed.

It was after midnight when Anna got the radio message that Carrie had finally wandered home. Later that same day, Anna knew, she must dive the Kamloops. Finally she managed sleep but it was troubled with dreams: Denny holding her fast two hundred feet beneath the lake while air trickled from her tanks like the last stars from the night sky.

Never to see the sun again,“ Anna grumbled. Standing in sweats and mismatched wool socks, she drank her morning coffee, staring out the window above her kitchen sink. The day presented a bleak and dismal aspect. An overcast sky pressed down to the top of the cliff that backed Amygdaloid Ranger Station. Oily-looking raindrops crawled down the glass.

“Come on down,” Anna hollered. If the clouds settled into fog, obscured the lake, the Kamloops dive would be postponed. As it was, the day managed to be completely without sympathy: cold and damp and dark with perfectly adequate visibility.

Anna crossed to the yellow enameled bureau with its chipped edges and olive-green knobs. Amid the clutter of hairpins and badges was an oval box, the lid carved with monkeys frolicking in a jungle of leaves. The handles formed the graceful upward wings the Balinese put on their temples. Anna lifted off the lid. Inside was a handkerchief edged with lace. The creases were yellowed from being so long folded. In the middle of it was the dull gold of a wedding band.

After Zachary died Anna had taken it off and folded it in the “something old” her mother-in-law had given her. Her hand looked ugly without it, she’d never stopped believing that, but in the first years she’d been unable to answer the questions generated by a ring. “What does your husband do? I see you’re married-is your husband with you?”

At Molly’s suggestion she had taken it off. “It’s nobody’s damn business,” her sister had said.

“People will think I’ve stopped loving him,” Anna worried.

“Fuck ‘em,” had been the psychiatrist’s advice.

Anna thought about putting it back on; a comfort, a talisman for the dive. A thousand times over the years she’d thought of putting it back on. As always, she returned it to its linen nest. She still wasn’t ready to answer those questions.

“Three-oh-two, one-two-one.” Her radio cracked the solitude and Anna shot it a baleful look. “Three-oh-two, one-two-one.”

“Keep your pants on, Lucas.” She crossed through the open door into the ranger station and hit the mike button of the base radio. “Three-oh-two,” she responded.

“What kind of deck you got over there?”

It crossed Anna’s mind to say it was socked in, but she crushed the lie as unworthy-and too easy to detect. “I can see three or four hundred yards. The storm isn’t sitting on the water. Some rain. No wind.”

“The MAFOR promised more of the same. Waves one to two meters.” The MAFOR was shorthand for the marine forecast. All the ranger stations posted the day’s MAFOR before they opened shop in the mornings. On busy days there’d be a line three or four boaters deep waiting to read it before the thumbtacks had even cooled.

“Officer Stanton, Ralph, Jim, Scotty, Jo, and I are about to head out.” Vega’s voice rattled the speaker. “We’ll be to Amygdaloid in thirty minutes or so.”

“I’ll be waiting with bells on,” Anna said.

“One-two-one clear.”

For whom the bell tolls, Anna thought. It tolls for thee. She laughed aloud, relieved by her sheer morbidity. “I’m wasted in the Park Service,” she addressed the mute radio. “Melodrama was my true calling.”

Half an hour later, when the Lorelei pulled up to the dock, Anna was waiting, surrounded by gear. Only one of the boats that had given the place such a festive air the night before still remained. Rain, slow and cold and with apparently no intention of stopping in the foreseeable future, had driven the fisherpeople back to the more protected amusements on the mainland.