Harry felt for a carotid.

"We checked first thing," Gary said. "She'd been dead awhile, I'd guess. She was sort of cold. But that might have been the rain."

"Any ID?"

"None that we could find."

Ruick handed Anna his flashlight and she trained it along with hers on the corpse as he carefully turned it over.

As the body rolled onto its back, Gary looked away. He'd seen what was there and made the choice not to see it again. Anna looked from the seasonal ranger back to the body then wished she'd followed his lead, traded the sight of the woman's face for the scrap of sky Gary studied.

"We just kind of started to roll her-you know, see if she was-then figured we'd better leave well enough alone. Bear'd been feeding on her," Gary explained disjointedly, eyes still fixed on a place only the gods call home.

His words pattered meaninglessly. Anna and Harry were locked in their own horror show. Half of the woman's face was gone. From just above her left eyebrow down to her jaw was a red ragged mass. Cheekbone and teeth were exposed, bone and enamel crusted brown with dried blood. The eyeball was still in its socket, staring in cloudy malevolence, the flesh around it eaten away.

Eaten. Anna pushed closer, knelt beside Harry and shined both lights on the carnage. "Look at the edges of the wound. Here and here." She pointed to the cut on the forehead and the vertical slash that had taken out half the woman's nose. "Not eaten. This was done with a knife, a razor, an axe, something like that."

Ruick stayed where he was, squatting on his heels, till Anna's knees began to ache. Dutifully she held her post, keeping the lights steady.

"I'd rather it had been a bear," Ruick said at last. "I'd whole hell of a lot rather it had been a bear."

"A person killed her?" Gary said, and for the first time Anna heard outrage in his voice. A sentiment she shared. Working with wild animals one might never lose the sense of tragedy a deadly encounter brought down on both species, but it was a tragedy untainted by evil. Or at least that's how Anna had felt before the bizarre sense that had pervaded her the night before, the feeling the beast was not merely wild but somehow intentionally malicious. People killing people was a different story. Always there was evil. Sometimes it was several times removed, as when soldiers fought to the death for someone else's ideals. But it was always there.

"Looks that way," Harry said. "Did you check the rest of the body?"

"No, sir, just the face." Clearly that had been enough for Gary.

Ruick rocked back on his heels. In the spill of light from the flashlights, he studied first Gary then Anna and made a decision.

"Anna, hand Gary the lights and help me with this. Gary, keep us lit here. I don't suppose anybody's got a tape recorder? Pen and paper?" Anna did have that in the form of the small yellow pocket notebook with the ten standard firefighting orders printed on the inside cover. While Ruick rooted around in his pack, she and the seasonal waited, wishing they had more to do, some positive action to take. Having found what he sought, a 35-mm camera, Harry clicked off half a dozen pictures. The flash burned the photos into Anna's brain as they did into the film. Scene recorded, Ruick began his work on the dead woman.

Gary held the lights as best he could while keeping his eyes off the ruin of the corpse's face. Anna took notes. Ruick opened the army jacket. The dead woman was built along apple-on-a-stick lines. The bulk of her weight was carried between pubic bone and collar bone: big breasts, thick waist, meaty hips ending abruptly in skinny and shapely legs. There wasn't much to write about. Except for the butchered face, she appeared unharmed. Internal injuries would be determined by the autopsy. Trauma to the face suggested enough force to snap the neck, but there was surprisingly little blood; none of the flowing spillage one might expect had the cuts occurred while the heart was still beating. The carving had been done after the woman was dead.

Harry's check of the body was cursory. No defensive cuts on hands or arms. Nothing apparent under the nails. Given the lack of light it was impossible to ascertain much in the way of detail. The woman had no identification on her. The pockets of the army coat produced unused rolls of film, a three-by-five card, much battered, with measurements written on it, lip balm, three pennies and a topographical map of the park. The pockets of the victim's shorts were empty.

Ruick finished the search, then lacking anything with which to cover her, he rolled the body back on its side and the ruination of her face was lost in shadow. He and Anna reclaimed their flashlights and the three of them did a perfunctory search of the tiny clearing, using only light and eyes for fear extraneous movement would further contaminate a crime scene that had already been severely compromised.

"No pack," Anna said.

"No water bottle anywhere," Gary added.

"Film suggests she was carrying a camera. Could be the pack was stolen. Could be it just got left off if she was chased or killed someplace else," Ruick said.

He got on the radio and set the machinery in motion for the body recovery. With the weather clearing, a helicopter would be able to come at first light to airlift it out of the park.

While he talked, Anna was shutting down. Night, too much hiking, scrabbling and thinking, too little sleep, too little food: her brain was blanking. Though she moved the light around in a desultory fashion she knew she wasn't seeing what was there. Gary and the chief ranger were in slightly better shape. Their sleep had not been ravaged by a psychotic bear. Still, she doubted any of the three of them would be good for much till morning.

Finally Ruick put his radio away. For a long minute no one said anything. Anna knew she had fallen into a dangerous state. She was abdicating, turning over not only the problem of the dead woman but her own well-being to the solid, reassuring Harry Ruick. Snap out of it,she ordered herself and scrubbed her skull with her knuckles to wake up the gray matter. Abdicating in the backcountry was commonplace. It was also a coward's way and a fool's.

Nobody could guarantee another's safety in the wilderness.

Brain nominally in gear, she said, "We carry her out?"

"Can't see how to avoid it," Ruick replied. "Can't leave her here. We're between a rock and a hard place. We carry her out and trash what might remain of the crime scene or we leave her here and the scavengers do the job for us. They may anyway. The smell of blood is bound to attract some."

There was nothing in which to wrap the corpse. To facilitate carrying, they removed her arms from the sleeves of her jacket, zipped them inside and tied the sleeves over her chest. Anna secured her feet by the simple expedient of tying her bootlaces together.

Harry Ruick took the head, Gary Bradley the feet. Anna had the awkward but not difficult task of lighting their way back up the mountainside. The body had been located less than a hundred yards down from the trail and they traversed the distance in a grunting quarter of an hour.

During their absence Joan had not been idle. The other members of the team had convened on West Flattop Trail. It had been too late and too dark to return to Anna and Joan's camp for their personal things, but three tents had been brought up from where the bear team cached their own gear. Camp was being set up a quarter of a mile off trail where park visitors would not see it and so have their wilderness experience infringed upon. Joan herself waited on the log where they'd left her with Vic to lead them to the new camp.

Though they'd known each other little more than five days, Anna was inordinately glad to see her. Leaving the men to struggle on with their burden across the flat and level meadow that presaged the burn, Anna walked ahead with Joan.