Hard Truth- Pigeon 13 by Nevada Barr Page B

it, making sounds outside unnaturally loud. The clock's second-hand's lurching progress around the dial snicked, lopping off tiny increments of life.

The clock; looking at it Heath was surprised to see her nap had lasted over an hour. It was close to midnight.

"Little animals... ," Beth said, her toddler's voice back.

Heath waited. This time the silence wasn't true silence. Underneath were words, stories, revelations.

A low murmur of voices crept in around the doorframe. The shuffle of feet as a hushed wave of people came down the hall.

Heath closed her eyes the better to focus, if not in prayer, then in a fervent incantation for supernatural intervention. No, no, no. Bugger off. Not now.

It was now. The wave broke and the door to the room swung quietly open.

Heath looked first to Beth. The connection was broken. Big-eyed and slack-jawed, the child stared at the door. Heath couldn't tell if it was terror she saw, anticipation or bone-breaking weariness.

seven

Let's sit," Lorraine said. The lawyer and the psychologist had melted away, probably to homes and beds. Dr. Littleton had excused herself to check on Wiley. Anna and the chief ranger sat, each on her own low square sofa, the kind that ensures that those who wait also serve. The backs weren't high enough, the seats too deep, armrests lacking.

Perched at right angles, leaning forward, they talked.

"What gives?" Anna asked for starters.

"It's complicated."

Anna waited while Lorraine untangled the complication into a coher-ent narrative. The chief ranger had aged in the months since Anna had last seen her. They'd worked together on a case that bore certain similari-ties to the one Lorraine had walked smack into when she'd transferred to Rocky Mountain: young people lost, a search. Prolonged searches, partic-ularly where children were involved, were emotionally scarring. Two of them back-to-back had cost Lorraine.

"A couple of the girls turned up in one piece," Anna said. It wasn't her custom to barge into other people's brown studies without knocking. Maybe she hoped counting blessings would ease the harsh lines digging between the chief ranger's brows.

Maybe she was just being impatient.

"One still missing," Lorraine said.

The shepherd and the lost sheep; the parable fit Lorraine Knight to a T. Anna admired Knight for genuinely caring about each and every visitor that came to her parks. Admired but didn't emulate. Counseling herself to patience, she leaned back, giving her boss space to think.

"Okay," the chief ranger said finally. "These folks are religious. Real religious. Kids home-schooled. Social life, personal life-near as I can tell, everything-is centered around their church. They call themselves Reformed Saints.

"At one point they were Mormons but the sect broke away. The chief of police in Loveland said it was because Salt Lake City decided African Americans could hold church offices, but I have no idea if that part's true. From interacting with them during the search, I do know they think of Salt Lake City as a modern Sodom. They're a real conservative bunch. The sheriff-they don't live in Loveland proper but about twenty miles out of town in an enclave of sorts-has never had a problem with them. They're quiet. Keep to themselves.

"Sounds like every description of a serial killer," Anna said.

Lorraine laughed. "It kind of does, doesn't it? I didn't mean to paint such a sinister picture. For what it's worth, I don't think they had any-thing to do with the girls' disappearance. Everyone I was in contact with-one of the dads and two moms-seemed devastated by their loss. What was hard for those of us who aren't of a religious bent was that they refused to help with the search. They never walked trails, took calls, pursued family leads, put faces on milk cartons, never called the park or came up here to see how the search was going."

"They didn't do anything?" Anna was as appalled as she was amazed. Parents could usually be relied upon to, if