Mortal Fall by Christine Carbo

wasn’t the first time. That it had happened twice before. He was sick about it and said he’d fold the studies before he’d help the local trappers kill more of them.”
    “Just trying to score extra pelts?”
    Pritchard took a sip of his water. “Maybe some of them, but Wolfie thought the whole area was so fired up by some local rumors that ourwork was just going to be used to throw up state restrictions against trapping or snowmobiling or even mining. You name it. There’s a lot of fear around these parts. I’m sure you know with your job. Basically, Wolfie and the rest of us were coming to terms with the idea that once the glacier studies were over, the chances of being able to study an intact population in an undisturbed setting—unhunted, unlogged, unmined—ever again were unlikely.”
    I nodded. A waitress with short, bobbed hair came over and set Pritchard’s sandwich before him and he thanked her.
    “Had Wolfie begun removing the South Fork traps?”
    Pritchard nodded. “He had, but I’m not sure how many are left. Ward might know. Wolfie hated to give in like that, but he couldn’t bear basically helping the locals kill them. You have to understand that a lot of the wolverines around the park had come to trust our type of traps. They knew they never got hurt and often got a free meal from us. Without our specially constructed log traps, the trappers didn’t stand a very good chance of capturing them. The wolverines were too smart to go into steel jaws after bait unless it was cleverly disguised.”
    I remembered hearing from Bowman how fierce a wolverine in the mini log-cabin traps could be. Researchers basically had to rig a long pole with the needle attached on the end in order to poke them with the sedative. “What will happen to the studies now?”
    Pritchard lifted a shoulder. “I’d like to think we can continue. That Ward will take the reins, but I don’t know. I mean, I just help with the implants. The first time they tried to implant the GPS chip into a young wolverine they’d caught, he ended up dying because it was subzero temps and the pup’s body temperature dipped too low because they gave a little too much tranquilizer, a mixture of diazepam and midazolam.” Pritchard sighed. “Like I said, Wolfie was upset, he swore he’d never do an implant again without the help of an experienced vet. I use ketamine and Domitor. It seems to work well. Anyway, I do what I can,” he said humbly. “But I have a family and a practice. Sometimes he has to use Doc Kaufland if I’m not available.”
    I jotted Kaufland’s name down and looked at my notes. “You mentioned Phrimmer earlier? That he had a thing against Wolfie?”
    “Oh yeah, that. Well.” Pritchard half-smiled. “Small town, right. But, apparently Phrimmer’s wife, Kate, you know her?”
    “Sure, I’ve met her several times, here and there, but mostly when she came to headquarters to visit Rick.” I thought of the petite redhead, no more than five feet two. Freckled and feisty. I remembered seeing her all dolled up at some holiday party back in December. I went alone. Most coworkers knew Lara and I had split, but she hadn’t and she had asked me why she didn’t come. She looked sincerely upset that things were in such a state for us.
    “Well, then, do you know she used to date Wolfie years ago?”
    “I didn’t know that,” I said.
    “Yeah, I mean, who knows?” Pritchard rolled his eyes. “I don’t gossip much, but Wolfie said it himself, he was kind of laughing about it, but I don’t know, I sensed a seriousness there.”
    “Laughing about what?”
    “That he didn’t know if it was DC that really wanted the research to end, or whether Rick was simply sabotaging things, still carrying a grudge after all these years because he used to date Kate before he met Cathy, and apparently Kate always felt like Wolfie was the one that got away. Supposedly drives Phrimmer nuts.” Pritchard had barely taken two bites from