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cross-hatched with redwood beams, and the chandeliers fashioned from brass conning wheels. Other appropriately nautical bits of decor were scattered around, but boxy fifties construction spoiled the overall effect.
    Park people were clustered in one corner. Patience floated around like a golden butterfly, refilling glasses. Coffeepot in hand, an awkward-looking girl with dark hair cut in a Prince Valiant shuffled after her from table to table, eyes fixed on the tops of her shoes. Anna wondered if this was the Carrie who wrote letters to Lhasa Apsos. She appeared to be the right age for a daughter of Patience Bittner—twelve or thirteen.
    Tinker was there with Damien. They sat near the others but at a table for two. Their hands were clasped together on the white cloth and, instead of the glaring electric table lamps, they shared a candle-lantern which they obviously supplied themselves. Damien tried to catch Anna’s eye with a dark and pregnant look, but she pretended not to see him.
    Scotty Butkus was sitting at the head of the main table smoking a cigarette, two bottles of Mickey’s Big Mouth at his elbow. Scotty, like Anna, was a permanent law enforcement ranger, her counterpart in Rock Harbor. Butkus fancied himself an old cowboy who’d been a ranger when it was still a good job. To hear him talk, he’d helped clean up Dodge City. But he wasn’t more than fifty-nine or sixty at most, still a GS-7 making the same salary as Anna.
    A few of the younger people thought he was a semiromantic has-been. Anna suspected he was a never-was, drinking and talking to rectify a personal history that was a disappointment. He’d been busted down from somewhere and was starting over: new park, new job, new young wife. The new wife wasn’t in evidence.
    Next to Butkus was Jim Tattinger, the park’s Submerged Cultural Resources Specialist. Anna knew very little about him except that, according to the crew of the 3rd Sister, he spent all his time playing with computers and never dove any of the wrecks himself. Tattinger looked like a textbook nerd, right down to his skinny neck, thick glasses, and thinning red hair. Anna moved down the table so she wouldn’t have to sit opposite him. When he talked or smiled his thin lips stretched too far, turning a moist pink ruffle of nether lip out into the light of day. She didn’t want to know him that well.
    Between Pizza Dave, the four-hundred-and-fifty-pound maintenance man, and Anna’s boss, Ralph Pilcher, the District Ranger for Rock Harbor, she found an empty chair. Lucas Vega wasn’t there. One of the perks of being Chief Ranger was being spared some of the employee get-togethers.
    Holly and Hawk Bradshaw were conspicuous by their absence.
    The pooped-party feel did not surprise Anna. Living in such isolated places, NPS managers felt a responsibility to instill a sense of “family” into their employees and, accordingly, planned endless potlucks, Chrismooses, chocolate pigouts, and receptions. Usually these attempts at building an esprit de corps failed. People came because there was nothing else to do and left as early as good manners—or good politics—allowed.
    This get-together had a couple of things going for it. People wanted to see Denny’s new wife, and it was held in the lodge within hailing distance of a fully stocked bar.
    As Anna wriggled into her chair, Denny Castle and his wife entered the front door, triggering desultory applause. A handful of lodge guests joined in and the sound swelled to a respectable level.
    As the popping of hands thinned, and Butkus began another story of how it used to be, Patience took the bride’s arm with a natural hostess’s charm and walked her and Denny across toward the party.
    Denny’s wife was five five or six with narrow shoulders and disproportionately wide hips. Lusterless brown hair fell from the center part to below her waist. Her round face was expressionless behind oversized red-framed glasses. As she pulled out the chair