Free A Superior Death by Nevada Barr

spent a more pleasant if less productive night on Belle Isle with two retired school-teachers from Duluth who visited the island every summer to watch birds.
    The next day Anna kayaked Pickerel Cove and Robin-son Bay. Backcountry patrol—days in the wilderness—those were the assignments Anna lived for, times it made her laugh aloud to think it was being called “work” and she was being paid to do it.
    An hour shy of midnight of the third day she finally slid the kayak up onto the shingle at Amygdaloid. The western sky was washed in pale green, enough light to see by. Overhead stars shone, looking premature, as if they’d grown impatient waiting for the sun to set and had crept out early.
    It was June 21, Anna realized. The longest day of the year. For a few minutes she sat in the kayak, steadying the little vessel by bracing her paddle against the gravel. Her muscles felt limp and warm. Her butt was numb and her legs were stiff from their long imprisonment. There was a good chance she would fall over when she tried to extricate herself from the boat she had worn like a body stocking for the last eight hours.
    “Need some help, eh?”
    A squat round-bodied man stood above her on the dock. He had a Canadian look. The closest Anna had come to describing it was “voyageur.” Many of the Canadian fishermen who frequented the island had the powerful, compact build of the voyageurs she had seen pictured in woodcuts from the trading days. More telling: he spoke with a distinct Canadian accent.
    “Couldn’t hurt,” Anna replied.
    Landing lightly as a cat, he jumped down the four feet from the pier to the shore. Anna untied the drawstring of the waterproof sleeve around her middle. He caught her under the arms, lifted her out of the kayak, and set her up on the dock as easily as she could have lifted the five-year-old Alison.
    “Thanks.” Rolling over, she pushed herself up on hands and knees, then eased herself to her feet.
    “I’m Jon. Are you the ranger here?” the Canadian asked. He had bounced back up onto the dock to stand next to her.
    “Just barely.” Anna hobbled up the dock like an old woman. “I will be tomorrow.”
    “Ranger station closed, eh?” Jon followed her off the dock and stood balanced on a rock, his hands in his pockets, watching as she pulled the kayak up onto dry land.
    “Yup. Opens at eight tomorrow morning.” Anna retrieved her pack and started up the slope toward a bed made with clean flannel sheets.
    The Canadian was right on her heels. “Is it too late to get a diving permit? We want to get an early start tomorrow.”
    Anna gave up. After all, he had plucked her out of her boat and saved her an ignomious end to a glorious paddle. “I’ll write you a permit. Give me a minute to unlock and put on some dry clothes.”
    He trotted happily down the dock to where a well-worn but clean little cabin cruiser nosed gently against her fenders. Her aft deck was piled with scuba gear: tanks and dry suits, flippers, masks, and fins.
    “Bobo!” the Canadian called into the cabin window.
    “She’ll do it.”
    Anna let herself into the ranger station. It was too late to build a fire to drive out the damp. She took half a bottle of Proprietor’s Reserve Red out of the refrigerator, poured a glass, and left it on the counter to warm while she changed and wrote the dive permit.
    The two men were waiting for her when she re-emerged into the office area. Anna lit a kerosene lamp. The station had Colemans but she didn’t plan to spend enough time with the Canadians to make the effort of lighting one worthwhile.
    Cold water divers were, of necessity, lovers of equipment. Anna noticed that “Bobo”—the taller of the two but just barely, his round face darkened by a well-trimmed beard—wore a watch that had everything in it but a micro fax machine.
    She got the forms from her desk. “Where do you want to dive?”
    “The Emperor .”
    Anna started her spiel on danger and difficulty, but the one