Free Easy Death by Daniel Boyd

wheel that tight as we moved maybe fifteen miles an hour along the park road. The tracks of the getaway car had faded into the snow, but I told myself I didn’t need tracks now; there was only one way through the park and we were on it.
    “That’s okay.” You learn that you get a person talking, they’ll sooner or later get around to what you need to find out. So I tried not to clench my teeth when I said it. “Sounds like you’ve had an interesting time.”
    Well I’d got her to talking all right.
    Or maybe she just got lonely sometimes, working out in the woods like that. Whatever it was, in the last half-hour I’d heard all about the life and times of Calpurnia Nixon. How her dad owned umpty-ump acres of forest out west where she used to play. Then college at some place called Barnard, but they didn’t have the kind of courses she wanted, so she spent summers working at parks and lumber camps—I tried to figure what she’d be doing in a lumber camp, but nothing pretty came to mind. And then when the war came and able-bodied men were scarce, she’d got a hitch as a sure-enough Park Ranger.
    “That’s when I knew this was my life,” she said. “Those years living in the park and looking after the woods. It seemed as if I were supposed to be here.”
    She paused, like she was swallowing something hard. Or maybe just stopped to take a breath, then went on. “But after the war they didn’t see much need for women to be park rangers anymore.”
    “They fired you?”
    “Colonel Powell—he was my commanding officer at the time—was quite straightforward about it,” she said. “He said now the men were coming back for the jobs, well, I was taking a job away from a man who needed it and it was time I got married and raised a family.” She made that noise again, like she was swallowing something hard just thinking about it. “Well, I had no plans for anything like that and I told him as much, and I’m afraid I may have been a bit vituperative. At any rate, he insisted I had to go, and that’s when I found that having a cousin in politics wasn’t such a bad thing.”
    “Yeah, I guess not.” Funny, her voice was kind of pretty, and listening to her talk was almost restful. Just about took my mind off what was really going on here, and the way it was, driving in the snow and wind like this. Just listening to her helped ease the strain.
    But she still hadn’t got around to what I wanted to hear about.
    “So with my Cousin Richard’s help, I stayed in the National Parks,” she said, “but they have ways of getting back at one…” She stopped talking. Just trailed off like when you pull the plug on a record player. And I needed her talking.
    “Seems to me you done a pretty good job here.” I tried to sound like all those trees covered up in snow was something real special just to look at.
    “Well, it’s a work in progress,” she said.
    “What’s that mean?”
    “A park, a forest, is a work in progress. It keeps growing and changing—that is, if it’s managed properly—and it never stops. That’s the wonder of it.”
    “I think I see what you mean.”
    Actually, only thing I saw was more trees and more snow, but I figured now I’d got her relaxed, it was time to find out what it was she’d been shying away from saying since I’d met up with her. Time to use those careful, subtle questioning cop techniques you see in the movies.
    “What is it you’re not telling me?” I said.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “There’s something about this situation with your Captain out at the watchtower, and you’ve been dancing around it this last half-hour. Now, was there something you don’t want to say, that’s fine, but I get to thinking maybe we’re driving into something I ought to know about, and if there is, well…maybe you ought to come out with it.”
    “You’re probably correct.” The tone in her voice sounded like she really wanted to come out with it. “But first I wonder if you