I nodded, and Caroline bustled off. I studied her laptop screen. She hadn’t been kidding about the hundreds of photos. The screen showed that she was copying 1,164 files from the flash drive to her laptop, and was 93 percent finished.
Being careful not to do anything that would interrupt the copying process, I clicked around until I found the folder in which Caroline had stored the photos. Clearly Thor was an avid cell phone photographer. Some of the shots were fuzzy or off center, but a surprising number were reasonably sharp and well composed. I clicked with the thumb of my injured hand while eating with the other hand, and the sight of the emus helped dispel my cranky mood.
Still, one emu looked remarkably like another. After the first few dozen shots, I began to click more rapidly—the computer equivalent of fast forwarding. This was actually kind of fun, because Thor sometimes took fifteen or twenty photos in short succession, so clicking rapidly through them looked like watching a slightly jerky movie.
And then Miss Annabel’s face popped up on the screen. I stopped clicking and stared. She was standing face-to-face with one of the emus, And was it my imagination or was there a certain resemblance between them? A certain angular haughtiness.
And if Thor had managed to catch a shot of Miss Annabel, might Cordelia also show up in his photos? After all, I gathered Miss Annabel was only an occasional participant in their emu-feeding expeditions while Miss Cordelia was a regular. I fast-clicked through with new enthusiasm, seeing one or two others with Miss Annabel, but no Cordelia.
Then another familiar face popped up. Jim Williams. He wasn’t front and center in the photo—he was off to the side and in profile, but clearly visible behind the emu who occupied the foreground. In the background I saw a faded picket fence—was it the fence around the ranch house up at Biscuit Mountain? I’d taken pictures of that with my own phone. I pulled out my phone and compared the picket fence in the background of the photos of Williams with the one in the shots I’d taken up at the ranch. If it wasn’t the same fence it was a dead ringer.
I wondered for a moment if the picture of Williams had been taken over the last couple of days. But no, in it the trees were bare and brown, and yellow leaves had drifted up against the fence. My photo showed nothing but green. I looked at the date of the photo file. Thor’s photo had been taken on December 3rd of last year, only a week before Cordelia’s death.
I clicked through the rest of the photos. Williams wasn’t in any of the other shots. But he was most definitely in this one. Here in Riverton, months before we learned that Cordelia lived here and planned the expedition.
Of course, Miss Annabel and Cordelia had been trying to publicize the plight of the emus for some time. I hadn’t heard about it, but maybe someone more actively involved in animal welfare issues would have.
Still …
And we’d made him one of Grandfather’s bodyguards.
I looked up from the computer screen. Chief Heedles was back at her seat at the table at the far end of the tent, talking to Clarence. I picked up the laptop and went to stand by their table.
“Sorry to interrupt you,” I said. “But may I show you something?”
I tilted the laptop so I could show Heedles the picture. And then I let her see the file date.
She frowned.
“Would you excuse us for a moment?” she said to Clarence.
“I’ll be at the emu pen.” Clarence stood up and strode off.
“Where did you get this?” the chief asked.
“Thor Larsen.” I explained the notion of using the GPS data to locate the emus.
“Is there any chance Dr. Blake sent Mr. Williams down as a sort of advance scout?”
“No idea,” I said. “You’d have to ask Grandfather.”
“How far in advance would his volunteer network have known about his plans for the expedition?”
“He only decided to come here the day before we showed up here, actually,” I said. “He probably won’t admit that, especially in front of the locals. He’ll probably claim he’s been intending to come down here for a while. But I’m pretty sure he just decided Tuesday over dinner.”
“He pulled this together overnight?” Heedles sounded incredulous.
“His staff did,” I said. “He’s impulsive, and they’re used to it. You should see what they come up with if he gives them a few days’ notice. And actually, I think his staff were already planning another expedition, so all they had to do was change destinations. And even though the expedition was last minute, he got the request to rescue the emus months ago. From Miss Annabel. I suppose it’s possible that he sent someone down here back in December and just didn’t act on the information until this week.”