To find a place suitable to camp, they hiked another couple of miles descending into the forest proper. So far north, with so much moisture to draw on, it came close to a forest primeval in Anna's eyes. The trees were huge, great piney boughs obscured the sky. Beneath, ferns grew tall, well overhead. There was a deep hush of needles and leaves underfoot. A crashing and a glimpse of brown through the green-cast shadows announced that they'd invaded the domain of a moose cow. Probably there was water nearby.

Anna laughed and pointed as if the others could have missed the cow's noisy departure. Anna liked moose. She'd fallen in love with them when she worked on Isle Royale in Michigan. The Bullwinkle Syndrome: though moose were immense, potentially dangerous, wild animals, their bulbous noses and shambling disjointed stride always made her want to play with them. Good sense and respect for their dignity had kept her in check.

"Moose," she said idiotically.

"There're a lot in this part of the park," Joan said.

"Cool," Rory put in.

Cool indeed.

Camp was deliciously sylvan. Doused with DEET, the mosquitoes were tolerable. The quiet was so deep it was tangible, a force that cradled the brain in soft folds. Civilized quiet of the same intensity made the ears ring. Here it made the soul expand. Anna breathed it in. The gentle chitchat of camp did nothing to injure the silence but dropped onto its surface like petals on a pond. Anna listened to Joan joking with her young protege, hearing the voices in pleasant counterpoint to the forest's peace.

"Story time," Joan said when supper had been eaten and the dishes- plastic sacks into which hot water was poured to reconstitute various carbohydrate substances- were cleared away and cached in a tree for the night. "What's been happening all these three days while we've been working for a living?"

In the hours since she'd realigned her brain and enjoyed the rejuvenating effects of Joan Rand and the wilderness, the murder investigation had retreated so far as to seem ancient history. Anna brought it to the fore without rancor, a puzzle only, valuable as entertainment around a single candle Joan always burned, her own private "campfire."

A look at Rory let Anna know the tale, though of his stepmother, held no real horrors for him. Early on, Anna knew he'd suspected his dad. It had been that, more than Carolyn's demise, that had tortured him. Anna guessed between pouring fish guts and blood and nailing barbed wire to trees, he'd had a significant amount of therapeutic conversation with Joan.

Leaning on her sleeping bag and pack, Anna told them about her phone calls, the name of Fetterman, the unclear connection between the truck and trailer abandoned on the northeast corner of the park and McCaskil's aliases. The only phone conversation she omitted was the one she'd had with Francine out of Carolyn's office. Maybe Rory'd not been as close to his stepmother as had first appeared but he didn't need to have her memory trashed.

No competition in the way of TV, radio, the Internet or floor shows, Anna had a good audience and found herself rambling on more than she intended. She told them about the night she spent hiding in the rocks on the shoulder of Cathedral Peak, how she'd dreamt of a bear padding around and woke to find her water bottle punctured by what could have been teeth, how she'd searched the den, finding it swept clean but for the peanut, the dime and the part of a biscuit.

"We're nothing if not thorough," Anna finished. "Harry even had the biscuit analyzed."

"Flour and water?" Rory ventured.

"Protein, fat, fiber, ash and a few other things," Anna told him. "Dog food was our guess."

Joan sat up, the look of passive interest sparked by something deeper. "How big was it?" she asked. "About the size of a charcoal briquette?"

"It was broken," Anna said. "But about that. Why?"

"Do you remember exactly what it was made of?"

Anna squeezed her eyes shut, trying to picture the sheet of paper. "No percentages. What I said maybe, plus calcium. The bulk, I remember, was dry matter. Sounded sinister to me."

"Omnivore food," Joan said.

Anna opened her eyes. "Omnivore food?"

"It's what we feed bears in captivity. A normal-sized bear will eat about six pounds of omnivore food and about that much in fruits and vegetables every day."

"Somebody's feeding the bears?" Rory said. "I mean, feeding them bear food?"

Anna laughed. Feeding bears intentionally or otherwise in the national parks was an ongoing problem, but Rory was right. Nobody fed them bear food. "Why would anybody do that?" she asked. "To lure the bears?"

"Bears eat it," Joan said. "Bears aren't finicky. But it's no great lure. We spent years developing lures. Omnivore chow isn't even in the top one hundred. The stuff hasn't got much of an odor. The scent not only doesn't broadcast, it's not all that alluring. You might feed bears with it but I doubt you could use it to attract them."

"You could habituate them," Rory said unexpectedly. "You know, always have food for them at the same time and the same place so they come there over and over."

Anna and Joan thought about that for a while. "You could," Anna said slowly. "But why?"

Between them they listed the obvious reasons: to shoot them, observe them, capture them, photograph them. All were possible, none practical. Glacier National Park was a place where bears were protected, monitored. Their numbers, habits and activities were scrutinized by rangers, researchers and an increasingly informed public. If a person wished to manipulate the bears in any of the suggested ways, there were thousands upon thousands of acres just to the north in British Columbia where, on private lands, it could be done either legally or with a much greater chance of remaining undetected.

"Boone and Crockett," Anna said, remembering the Washington man evilly ogling the elk. "A trophy-sized bear, one that could tempt a poacher?"

"Not in the lower forty-eight," Joan said. "Because of food, genetics, etcetera, our bears are on the small side. A big old male could weigh maybe five hundred pounds. Maybe. Four or four-fifty would be more like it. The trophy hunters do Canada up north, or Alaska."

"An idiot?" Anna suggested. "Wandering around like some demented Johnny Appleseed feeding bears?"

"There's always room for another idiot," Joan admitted.

Anna had her own tent this time out and she found she missed Joan's company. Through the cloth walls she could hear the other woman snoring in an unladylike fashion and found the noise soothing. Sleep was eluding Anna and it was good to know someone was resting.

The nerves and hyperawareness that had poisoned her last night in the backcountry had passed. She was not lying awake waiting for the clack of sticks and the onslaught of toothy beasts. The man who had rolled a stone down at her and fired off a round didn't concern her much, either. He had not stalked her. It was she who'd sought him out. If he'd not already finished whatever he'd been up to and left the park, he was probably staying as far away from anybody in green and gray as he could.

Telling her story to Joan and Rory had loosed the scraps and facts she'd managed to tuck away. Now they blew about till the inside of her skull looked like Fifth Avenue after a ticker-tape parade. Joan and Rory; the conversation had triggered something. Anna lay comfortable in her bag, fingers locked behind her head, eyes on the perfect darkness beyond the screen of her front door, waiting for the scrap that would fit to sort itself out from the others. Feeding the bears, trophy bears floated by, Boone and Crockett. That was it. Boone and Crockett, the last word on what was and was not a trophy animal and where it fit in the hierarchy of biggest and best based on skull measurements-taken after death, naturally.