Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [80]
“Ray said it was only found in one area.” Mac spoke up intently.
“Yes. Right outside the door. Let me get a map.” The botanist climbed out of her chair and rifled the bookshelf along the wall. Then, she proceeded to unfold the largest map Kimberly had ever seen. It was labeled Geologic Map of Shenandoah County, and it was filled with enough streaks of bright purple, deep fuchsia, and neon orange to hurt a person’s eyes.
“This is the geologic map which includes this section of the park. We are here.” Levine plopped the massive spread of paper on the jumbled surface of the desk, and promptly tapped a lime-green spot near the bottom of the page. “Now, gray birch grows thickest in the swampy plateau across from the Big Meadows camp, but can also be found here and there in this whole one-mile area. So basically, if you’re looking for the only gray birch in Virginia, you’re standing in the middle of it.”
“Wonderful,” Mac murmured. “Now if only we were sure we were looking for gray birch. How populated is this area this time of year?”
“You mean campers? We have thirty or so people signed in at the moment. Generally it would be more, but the heat has chased a lot away. Also we get a fair number of day hikers and the like. Of course, in this weather, we’re probably getting mostly drive-throughs—people coming to the park, but never leaving the air-conditioned comfort of their cars.”
“Do guests have to sign in?”
“No.”
“Do you have park rangers or any kind of monitors working the area?”
“We have enough personnel if trouble should come up, but we don’t go looking for it, if that’s what you mean.”
“So a person could come and go, and you’d never know he’d been here?”
“I would imagine most people come and go, and we never know they were here.”
“Damn.”
“You want to tell me what this is about?” Levine nodded toward Kimberly. “I can already tell she’s armed. You might as well fill in the rest.”
Mac seemed to consider it. He looked at Kimberly, but she didn’t know what to tell him. He might be out of his jurisdiction, but at least he was still a special agent. As of six A.M. this morning she had become no one at all.
“We’re working a case,” Mac told Levine tersely. “We have reason to believe this leaf may tie into the disappearance of a local girl. Find where the leaf came from, and we’ll find her.”
“You’re saying this girl may be somewhere in my park? Lost? In this kind of heat?”
“It’s a possibility.”
Levine crossed her arms over her chest while regarding both of them intently. “You know,” she said at last, “right about now, I think I’d like to see some ID.”
Mac reached into his back pocket and pulled out his credentials. Kimberly just stood there. She had nothing to show, nothing to say. For the first time, the enormity of what she had done struck her. For all of her life, she’d wanted to be one thing. And now?
She turned away from both of them. Through the windows, the bright sunlight burned her eyes. She closed them tightly, trying to focus on the feel of heat on her face. A girl was out there. A girl needed her.
And her mother was still dead and her sister was still dead. And Mac was right after all. Nothing she did would change anything, so what was she really trying to prove? That she could self-destruct as completely as Mandy?
Or that just once, she wanted to get something right. Just once, she wanted to find the girl, save the day. Because anything had to be better than this six-year ache.
“This says Georgia Bureau of Investigation,” Levine was saying to Mac.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“If my memory serves, we’re still in Virginia.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ray didn’t ask you nearly enough questions now, did he?”