Free Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr

through your daughter's pictures?" Anna asked finally.
    "I don't know," Mrs. Drury said. "They weren't any good."
    They finished the beers. Anna carried the cans into the kitchen, rinsed them, and crushed them into neat circles under her heavy boots. Beneath the sink, where she guessed it would be, was Sheila's recycle bag.
    "Might Sheila have taken photographs of something someone didn't want her to see?" Anna hunched down to look under the cups and across the Formica counter that separated the kitchen from the living area.
    Mrs. Drury was shaking her head. Her face sagged with confusion and fatigue. "I couldn't ever see why she took any of the pictures that she did. They weren't ever of anything. Just things you see every day. She might've, I suppose. Sheila took pictures of everything and she wasn't ever socially ept."
    Anna didn't know if Mrs. Drury meant socially apt or if she believed
    "ept" was the opposite of "inept." But Sheila did, from the looks of it, take pictures of everything. "Everything" might include something someone wanted to go unrecorded.
    By late afternoon they had finished sorting through the photos, collecting boxes from the two bedrooms and even the bath. They found nothing suspicious. No sinister types exchanging packages, no car license numbers, no middle-aged men in motel lobbies with blondes. Either they'd been found and removed or never existed.
    Mrs. Drury had a surprisingly little pile she'd chosen to keep. Mostly to be polite, Anna had selected three or four of Sheila to take home.
    Mrs. Drury made toasted cheese sandwiches for supper. They washed them down with a second beer. Mrs. Drury turned on the television and they listened to Channel 9 predict more hot and dry for West Texas and New Mexico. At least, tonight, there would be no lightning.
    After the news, Mrs. Drury left the set on to watch a rerun of an old Andy of Mayberry and Anna went out to the truck and brought in the backpack Sheila had been carrying the day she was killed.
    It smelled faintly of decay and there were specks of dark brown on it that Anna chose to think were mud. The police had wrapped a yellow
    "Police Line Do Not Cross" tape around it.
    Probably not the police, Anna thought. Probably the puffing deputy.
    Having lain the pack on the living room rug, she sliced through the tape with the blade of her Swiss army knife. "I need to go through Sheila's pack, if you don't mind, Mrs. Drury. Most of the gear is NPS stuff. There may be some personal effects, if you'd like to help me..."
    Mrs. Drury rose obediently from the table, her eyes on Andy Griffith's comforting face until her body had turned so far, her head finally had to follow. Sitting on the couch, she fixed her attention on the soiled pack.
    Anna took it as a signal she could begin. There wasn't much to see: freeze-dried food for one supper and one lunch, a first-aid kit, a change of clothes, a few toilet articles, a stove and cook kit. Anna separated out the items marked GUMO. As uneuphonious as it was, national parks often went by the name formed by the first two letters of the first two words in their title. Carlsbad Caverns was fated to be known as "CACA."
    When all the gear from the GUMO backcountry cache had been removed all that remained was a little pile of rumpled clothes. Anna pushed them toward Sheila's mother.

    Not much, Anna thought. Not enough. What was missing? Something wasn't there that she expected to see. It nagged like a forgotten name. "What's missing?" she demanded sharply.
    Too spent to take offense at the tone, Mrs. Drury concentrated on Anna's question. "Sheila's camera?" she ventured after a moment.
    "Must be," Anna said, surveying the contents spread out over the carpet.
    Pictures rifled, a camera missing: a puzzle was forming but one made not of pieces but of pieces missing, of holes.
    Anna stuffed the park's things into the pack and zipped it closed.
    "We may as well do the rest," Mrs. Drury said resignedly. "Then we can go home