Track of the Cat

Track of the Cat is the first novel in the Anna Pigeon mystery series. Set in Guadalupe Mountains National Park in West Texas, it follows Anna Pigeon, a 39-year-old Law Enforcement ranger and widow, as she investigates the suspicious death of a fellow ranger that authorities dismiss as a mountain lion attack.

Anna is hiking a survey transect through Middle McKittrick Canyon when circling vultures draw her off course. In a dense thicket of saw grass, a razor-edged plant lining the banks of an emerald pool, she discovers the body of Sheila Drury, the Dog Canyon District Ranger. Drury lies in her National Park Service (NPS) uniform with a full backpack, partially consumed by vultures. Claw marks, puncture wounds, and paw prints all point to a lion kill. A sheriff from El Paso rules the death accidental, and the park superintendent orders a hunt to destroy the offending animal.

Back home, Anna calls her sister Molly, a psychiatrist in Manhattan. Molly identifies the emotion behind Anna's distress: outraged injustice. The insight triggers a realization. Sheila's body bore no saw grass cuts, though she lay surrounded by serrated vegetation. A lion dragging prey through that grass would have cut the victim's skin. The lion did not kill Drury. Anna presents her concerns to Paul Decker, the Frijole District Ranger, who remains unconvinced. A nursing lioness is shot on Permian Ridge, and the park declares the case closed.

Anna develops her transect slides and discovers that both the front and hind paw prints behind Drury's body are identical forepaw impressions, a physical impossibility for a living lion. The prints were faked. She brings this evidence to Chief Ranger Corinne Mathers, who dismisses it. Anna accompanies Drury's mother to Dog Canyon to collect Sheila's belongings and notices the trailer has been searched. That night, she finds 12 intimate photographs of Sheila and Christina Walters, the park's clerk-typist, hidden inside a hollow clothes rod. Christina visits Anna and admits she broke into the trailer to destroy the photos, fearing her ex-husband Erik Walters would use them to take custody of their four-year-old daughter Alison. Christina burns the photographs. When Anna calls Molly that night, Molly advises focusing on "how" the murder was committed rather than "why."

Anna investigates methodically. In the government truck of Karl Johnson, a long-serving employee passed over for the position Drury received, she finds a hypodermic syringe and a reddish-brown stain, and mails samples to a lab in Roswell, New Mexico. Harland Roberts, the charming Roads and Trails foreman, warns her that Craig Eastern, a seasonal herpetologist, has been institutionalized twice for paranoid delusions and violent episodes. On the trail, Craig erupts in a tirade against Drury. Days later, Anna realizes what was missing from Drury's pack: water. No experienced ranger would hike eight miles through the desert in June without it. Sheila was forced or carried to Middle McKittrick, and the full pack was a prop.

Before the autopsy arrives, Anna nearly dies. Descending McKittrick Ridge Trail, she steps into empty air where solid trail should be. Her pack throws her over the edge and she slides toward a 200-foot drop, catching a ledge with her fingertips and dislocating her shoulder. A rock strikes her behind the ear and she loses consciousness. She awakens on a narrow lip of stone, her belt snagged on a protrusion, and chimney-climbs back to the trail with a cracked collarbone.

In the hospital, Anna reads the autopsy: Drury died from perforation of the spinal cord, with a tooth fragment from a large carnivore in the deepest wound and a trace of a hallucinogen, possibly LSD, in her blood. The report confirms accidental death by lion. Her visitors include Rogelio, Anna's eco-activist boyfriend who works frequently in Mexico; he gently chides her for never asking about his life. Christina and Alison braid her hair, and Harland arrives with yellow roses.

After 10 days healing at Rogelio's home in Arizona, during which he proposes marriage, Anna recognizes she has never truly paid attention to his life and knows it is time to leave. She returns to find Craig Eastern missing. His body is discovered in the remote Patterson Hills, surrounded by seven rattlesnakes from his overturned specimen buckets, bitten seven times. The coroner rules it accidental, but rattlesnakes do not attack in frenzies.

Anna returns to the site of her fall and uncovers a deliberate trap: a trough carved into the trail, covered with a camouflaged mat designed to collapse underfoot. The lab identifies the substance from Karl's syringe as ketamine, a veterinary anesthetic that produces hallucinations similar to LSD in humans. Anna connects this to the hallucinogen in Drury's autopsy. She follows Karl into the backcountry and discovers a hidden valley where he rehabilitates injured wildlife, including orphaned cougar kittens and a full-grown cougar wearing a radio collar. Karl reveals he was tending animals the night Drury died. Anna clears him.

She visits Jerimiah D. Paulsen, a powerful rancher whose property borders the park. His den displays mounted game heads, including a mountain lion with severed trophy claws and jaws, and an ornate Sako rifle. Anna understands how Drury was killed: The murderer used severed lion claws and jaws to inflict wounds mimicking a lion attack. She connects Paulsen to Harland through the nickname "Jerimiah D.," which Harland had used casually and which Paulsen says only old friends use. She leaves without confrontation, recognizing she cannot outmaneuver him on his own ground.

Anna stakes out the Patterson Hills during the next full moon. After midnight, a helicopter lands without lights. Paulsen and Harland unload crates containing a sedated, radio-collared lion, hunting rifles including Paulsen's Sako, and a radio receiver tuned to the collar frequency. Paulsen flies away to retrieve paying hunters.

Anna frees the lion and removes its collar. When Harland returns, she holds him at gunpoint. He confirms the operation: 19 lions killed over 19 full moons, wealthy hunters paying $7,500 each. Drury witnessed the operation and was murdered for it. Harland sedated her with ketamine eyedrops, then killed her with trophy claws and jaws. He built the trail trap for Anna. She accuses him of killing Craig by injecting rattlesnake venom; Harland smiles but does not confirm the method.

The sedated lion stirs, and Anna lunges for the rifle. They struggle; the Sako fires twice, one bullet passing through Harland's shoulder. He grabs the unconscious lion as a shield, pointing the rifle at Anna from behind the animal. Unable to shoot through the lion, Anna drops her revolver. Harland seizes her and bites into her throat. She strikes a signal flare and drives it inside his shirt against his neck. Screaming, he releases her. He charges blindly, and she sidesteps; he tumbles into the ravine.

When Paulsen's helicopter returns, Anna fires four rounds from the Sako, shattering its spotlight and driving it off. She wipes her prints from the rifle but leaves Paulsen's, tying him to the scene. From the ravine, Harland begs her not to leave him in the waterless desert. Anna tells him a fence crew might find what remains of him in a couple of months, then calls softly into the darkness for the freed lion. She walks across the moonlit desert toward home, considering whether to ride back with water the next day, but notes her horse Gideon's hoof is not healing well and decides to give him the day off.