A Question Of Time, Fred Saberhagen [best fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

demands. Kidnapping’s a federal offense, of course, and the feds did come here and look around. But they pretty quickly decided that the girl had most likely just walked off on her own, a deliberate runaway. And a fatal accident wouldn’t too be surprising, that kind of thing happens to someone in the Park practically every year. By all reports she’s a good hiker, or an energetic walker anyway, and in a few hours she could have gone all the way down to the river at the bottom of the canyon, and drowned. The Colorado’s deep and swift, and very cold. It wouldn’t be surprising if a body was never found.

      “Or she could have simply got off the trails, perhaps got herself lost, and fallen into a hole or off a cliff somewhere—you’ll see how very possible that is, once you get a close look at the terrain. Have either of you had a chance to do that, by the way?”

      Bill and Maria shook their heads. “Never been here before,” Bill said. “We tried today, but it was too foggy.”

      Maria said: “I presume none of the girl’s schoolmates are here at the Canyon now?”

      “No reason to think they are. I haven’t had the chance to talk to any of them yet, and it’s one of the things I want to do, of course, eventually.”

       Bill asked: “And the witness at the head of Bright Angel Trail? Who was that?”

      “Good question. A middle-aged lady schoolteacher, long since gone home to Ohio. No reason to doubt her story.”

      “How’d she happen to notice Cathy, among what I suppose was the usual throng of tourists?”

      “Cathy came up to her and asked her where it might be possible to get a map of the trails in the Canyon. The teacher remembered the girl who spoke to her, because she thought the youngster seemed worried or disturbed. Later she could describe what Cathy looked like, how she was dressed. I don’t doubt it was our girl.”

      Maria nodded, eyes gleaming faintly. “I wonder what disturbed her suddenly?”

      Strangeways gave her a sidelong glance of interest, but did not comment.

      Joe Keogh continued the briefing. “Some more information, possibly relevant. I get the feeling that young Cathy is likely to inherit old Aunt Sarah’s money one day—if Cathy is still alive. There seem to be no other close relatives, except Cathy’s father, of course. Old Sarah gives nephew Brainard a hard time, from what I’ve seen. And sometimes vice versa. They have a business relationship now but that’s about it. Whereas the old lady was—is—much attached to Cathy.”

      “A possible conflict of interest,” commented Strangeways, “between this Brainard and his adopted daughter.”

      Maria, in her ongoing effort to practice being observant, decided silently that this unexplained colleague had a commanding air about him, despite the fact that he seldom spoke. He might be thirty-five at the most, she thought. His dark hair and beard were full and short, and he wore a dark turtleneck shirt or sweater under a brown jacket that in the arrangement of its pockets suggested to her vaguely that it had been designed primarily for a hunter rather than a skier to wear. The more she looked at Strangeways the more certainly she felt him to be in some way truly out of the ordinary. It wasn’t easy, try as she might, to pin the feeling down any more specifically than that.

      “You think he made her vanish?” Joe Keogh asked him, somewhat deferentially.

      “Stranger things have happened, Joseph.”

      “That’s for damn sure.” Keogh sighed, ran fingers through his sandy hair, and looked as if he wanted to ask Strangeways another question or two. But perhaps the presence of his new recruits constrained him. Turning to them, he began questioning them on mundane matters. Maria and Bill quickly ran through their qualifications and experience.

      Apparently satisfied on that score, for the time being at least, Joe returned to the main business at hand. “There are reasons, reasons I’m not going into right now, to think this case is likely to have unusual aspects. And I want the people who work for me to be able to deal with the unusual in a level-headed way.” He stopped, waiting for a reaction from the recruits.

      “Unusual how?” Bill Burdon asked.

      “How would you react if I told you there could be—psychic factors, involved in this case?”

      Having asked that question, Keogh paused again, waiting for a reaction from his two loaners. “Neither of you look especially surprised,” he commented, as if that fact surprised him.

      “We’re not getting paid to be surprised,” Maria said.

      “Psychic?” asked Bill. “Meaning like in spiritualism? I don’t believe in that stuff.”

      “I’m not asking you to believe in anything,” said Keogh. “As long as you follow orders.”

      Bill shrugged. “That’s what I’m being paid for.”

      Maria agreed in a businesslike way. “A missing person is a missing person. Whether the causes are psychic or whatever. So our job is to get this girl back, or at least find out what happened to her.” She paused, then added: “Actually, my own grandmother was fleeced by a fake medium out in LA. I’d like to get my hands on one of those people.”

      “Yes, naturally.” Keogh sighed faintly. “Well, I doubt there’s any fake medium involved in this.”

      “What do you suspect?” Maria asked.

      “I don’t want to suspect anything, until I’ve talked to the client face to face. So far I’ve only spoken to her briefly, on the phone.” He looked toward Strangeways, as if in a silent appeal for help.

      “I concur,” said Mr. Strangeways, in a voice that despite its softness had nothing tentative or deferential about it. Maria, still trying to place him, suddenly wondered if he was supposed to be some kind of a medium or psychic. The trouble was he didn’t at all match her notion of what one of those people, genuine or fake, ought to look like.

* * *

      There were still a few items that needed to be carried in from Bill’s car, including some small two-way radios and some cameras he