Endangered Species by Nevada Barr Page A

bad shape."
    Anna quashed an urge to offer her room to the older woman .
    Giving in to generous impulses usually left her grouchy by day's end .
    And Alice Utterback looked like she was accustomed to fending for
    herself.
    " It'll be fine," Utterback said.
    "Do you want to settle in?  Freshen up?" Hull asked, old-world manners
    taking precedence over new-order political correctness.
    "I'm pretty darn fresh," Alice told him, and smiled for the first time.
    Her teeth were yellow and crooked but not displeasing.  They suited the
    weathered face ." Shorty and Wayne will let me know if I go beyond fresh
    and start getting ripe."
    " We try and stay downwind," Shorty said, and Alice laughed .
    "Let's get to it then," Hull suggested.
    Wreckage was strewn over two hundred yards; bits of the shattered
    Beechcraft marked the way like trail signs.  Rick was set to flagging
    the points of impact and the final resting place of the airplane much as
    he would have in a routine traffic accident investigation.  Measurements
    would be made, fixed points-landmarks the accident investigators hoped
    were permanent-established so that the crash could be plotted on paper
    for the report and, if need be, reconstructed later should questions
    arise.
    The fixed-wing expert, the man Alice called Shorty, took Chief Ranger
    Hull and a 35mm camera and began a detailed recording of all that Rick
    flagged and measured.
    Wayne, Alice's maintenance specialist, wandered around with a magnetic
    compass, and pencils stored absurdly in the thatch of his beard.  At
    least three had been poked into the tangled curls, as a woman might
    stick them in her bun.  It put Anna in mind of a half-remembered fairy
    tale about a man with birds nesting in his whiskers.
    Alice gave Anna the chore of secretary.  Clipboard in hand, she followed
    the older woman around jotting down notes.  There'd been a time when
    Anna was younger and easily offended that she would have taken umbrage
    at being cast in the traditional female role.  In the intervening years
    she'd lived through enough bureaucracy to know secretaries not only were
    the glue in the mix, holding the cumbersome aspects of government
    together, but frequently were the only ones in possession of all the
    facts.  In one form or anotherletter, fax, phone call, or gossip-all
    information passed over their desks.
    And, too, there wasn't much heavy lifting, so Anna was content to be
    Utterback's Girl Friday.
    Alice Utterback crawled beneath the remaining shreds of the blasted wing
    on the passenger side of the Beechcraft.  A black cord was around her
    neck, both ends disappearing into her shirt pocket .
    Pulling on the cord, she dragged out a small powerful Maglite and began
    tracing the beam methodically over the instrument panel.
    Clutching the clipboard to her chest, Anna frog-walked in as close as
    she could get and watched the proceedings.  The ghosts had been hauled
    off along with the corpses and she was glad.  Despite the macabre
    remnants of humanity-a burned button, what could have been blood or oil
    spattered beneath the instrument panel in the one unburned portion of
    the floorboards-the cockpit was cleansed of emotion.  Now it was just a
    puzzle and Anna was enjoying watching the chief investigator gather
    together the pieces.
    "Norman Hull said two killed," Alice remarked without stopping her work.
    "Yes, ma'am," Anna said.
    "Pilot was a private contractor?"
    "Slattery Hammond." Anna filled in the name.
    Alice clicked the Maglite off and rocked back on her heels.
    "Slattery Hammond.  Why am I not surprised?"
    Anna waited.  The question was rhetorical and with Alice Utterback
    somehow one wasn't tempted to pry.
    "I flew with him once or twice when I worked in Region Six-in Washington
    State," Utterback volunteered ." He was a hotshot.  Or thought he was.
    One of those fellas you've got to get to know quick because they aren't
    going to live all that long.  Too bad they usually manage to