Free The Rope: An Anna Pigeon Novel by Nevada Barr Page B

people dumped excrement and trash and spray-painted graffiti on the walls. If she could not get visitors to realize that the destruction of this paradise would destroy the soul of humanity, she was doomed to failure in the lesser Edens.
    Newer larger houseboats couldn’t negotiate Panther’s hairpin turns, so most of the traffic was limited to motorboats and Jet Skis. Like drive-by shooters, jet-skiers were hard to catch in the act. Usually she only found the poop they left behind. Chief Ranger Madden laughed when she’d asked if they could send it in for DNA testing and cross-check the results on the various law enforcement sites. She’d argued—futilely—that anyone who would defile the grotto had undoubtedly committed a slew of other crimes.
    Motorboaters were not so elusive. Often they camped for several nights. About suppertime, when they would be “at home.” Jenny would drop in and educate them. If, when she returned the next morning, they had not learned their lessons, she would come to dinner a second time with Jim Levitt in all his law enforcement regalia and packing ticket book and ballpoint pen.
    These were mere skirmishes. Party boats were where the battle line was drawn. Older smaller houseboats could access the grotto. Less expensive barges were often rented by the week by hordes of college kids out of Denver or Boulder, Salt Lake or Phoenix, and loaded with enough beer, drugs, and hormones to compromise the finest minds. These were barbarians sacking the city, infidels razing the mosque, heretics burning statues of Mary, Napoleon’s minions blowing the nose off the Sphinx.
    Yesterday a party boat had taken over the grotto; a disgruntled boater told Jenny this when she visited his inferior camping spot. She hoped it wasn’t the one she’d seen at Dangling Rope. That one had at least forty kids mashed into it. Arms and legs were practically sticking out the windows.
    One hairpin turn before the grotto, she throttled down to an idle and checked her watch: 10:00 A.M. Ten was the best time for contacts of this sort. Earlier and the students would be too close to comatose, later and they’d be popping beers. At 10:00 A.M. most of them were sleeping it off but, with the proper encouragement, could regain consciousness in time for a waste management class.
    Nosing the throttle open a tad, she eased the boat around the last elbow of sandstone. The party boat was moored at the near end of the beach, two lines running to tie-down bolts pounded deep into the sand. The stern rail was gaudy with beach towels, a Hawaiian shirt, three pairs of swim trunks, and a brassiere that had once been a confection of black lace and satin but now resembled a roadkill crow.
    Bodies were everywhere. The top deck of the houseboat was roasting them in the sun. Bare legs, feet, and a tangle of arms and heads were visible through the glass patio doors on the rear deck. Most of the fallen were on the beach. A naked couple lay curled back to back on an old square sleeping bag. A faded motif of cowboys spinning lariats telegraphed the loss of innocence. A boy in a Broncos T-shirt and tennis shoes without socks was spread-eagled on a red-and-white-checked tablecloth, shorts missing, shortcomings visible.
    Amid the carnage was a platoon of dead soldiers: beer bottles, wine bottles, and whiskey bottles. Paper cups, bits of cellophane, chip bags, cigarette butts, and other festive effluvia had been strewn across the sand like confetti. A plastic Gatorade bottle, an inch of creepy orange liquid inside, bobbed in the water near the shore.
    At the far end of the grotto, near the wall, was an area devoid of bodies or blankets. Wine bottles, shoved neck down several feet apart, marked off a space about twenty feet long and half that wide. Two poles were jabbed upright into the sand with a bedsheet draped over them.
    Jenny beached her boat a dozen yards from the barge and got out her anchor. Having heaved anchor and line over the bow, she jumped