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of a fender if one didn't watch for them when making traffic stops. The numbers grew lesser as she traveled, and Anna deduced the Trace was marked south to north with mile marker number one in Natchez, where the parkway began.
    In Colorado, Anna had taken little notice of mile markers, only using them occasionally when she had to report the precise location of an accident. On the Trace, they were of significant interest. In the flatlands, down in the trees, there were no reliable landmarks.
    The endless, unchanging, bucolic splendor made one place very like the next. With familiarity would come differentiation, like moms learning to tell their twin offspring apart. Till then she'd have to do it by the numbers.
    Several miles south of Big Bayou Pierre and its diminutive neighbor, Little Bayou Pierre, an NPS patrol car was parked on the grass up under the shade of the trees. Coming from the high desert, where even the dirt was fragile, she knew seeing people drive and park on the grass was going to take some getting used to. In this fertile bit of the world, vegetation was one of the sturdiest and most easily regenerated of the natural resources.
    There were two possible occupants of the parked car: Randy Tbigpen or Bartholomew Dinkin, Anna's two field rangers. The men with Nvborn she would spend her days, whom she would rely on for assistance and, in a pinch, trust with her life. Thigpen had already made a successful attempt to lead her astray with bogus directions. Neither Tbigpen nor Dinkin had garnered rave reviews from Frank, the Rocky Springs maintenance man, and both had failed to respond to their radios when dispatch needed an alligator wrangler.
    The last thing Anna was in the mood for was to suck it up to make a managerial good first impression on either one of them. But to drive by the first day on the)'oh seemed downright unneighborly-or cowardlyand instinct warned her that to appear either could prove disastrous in the long run.
    Telling herself her new rangers were probably terrific guys and she was being unjust, condemning them on circumstance, hearsay and a misplaced practical joke, she pulled onto the grass and gunned the engine, enjoying a mild thrill as the powerful car whipped effortlessly up the bank. In classic law enforcement gossip formation, cars nose-totail, driver-side windows matched up, Anna put the Crown Vic in park.
    Though she didn't consider the day particularly hot, the windows of the other car were closed and the engine idling-probably running the air conditioner. Five or six seconds elapsed before the window lowered. Long enough to trigger suspicions. The possibilities were many- He could have been dozing, hiding something, zipping his fly, being rude. Anna would never know. But she noted the delay. "Good morning," she said. "I'm Anna Pigeon."
    "I heard you were coming tomorrow. Bout damn time. Barth and I've been running ragged for eight months." This, then, was Randy Thigpen. He didn't look like a man suffering from overwork. For one thing, he was immensely fat. Anna bad nothing against fat; some of her best friends were fat. It was fat on people who were expected to run, jump, fight, defend and protect she found to be a dereliction of duty. Other than that, Thigpen was a decent-looking man: late forties or early fifties, thinning hair a sandy gold-brown color, dark hazel eyes and a spectacular mustache that obliterated his upper lip and the line of his mouth.
    His voice was easy to listen to: deep with no classic drawl but a slight elongation of vowel sounds. "Met one of your locals," Anna said and told him of the alligator.
    Thigpen heard her unasked question: Where the hell were you when dispatch called? Rather than looking sheepish or defensive, Anna thought, he looked ever so slightly smug. "I got tied up with a motorist assist down by Mount Locust," Thigpen said. "I was on my way when I heard you call clear, so I pulled over to run a little stationary radar." Beyond him, on the seat,