Borderline

by Nevada Barr

  He was so damn big. In the living room, seated, in the soft light of the kitchen, Anna hadn’t noticed how big he was. Huge. He seemed to fill the bedroom, his shoulders brushing the ceiling. Though on some level she knew she was suffering the same phenomenon people did when looking down the bore of a gun or, undoubtedly, into the gaping mouth of an alligator, the size of him was brought home to her in a visceral way.

  The man would break her in two like a cheap chopstick.

  Lowering the knife, she took a step back. “You know, Lisa, the guy is right,” she said, and was relieved that her voice sounded fairly normal, aggrieved with a bit of whine Chrissie would have been proud of. “He doesn’t want Edgar; he only wants the little Mexican girl. I don’t see how it will help anybody if we get hurt over this.”

  Danny had that same wary squint she’d noticed when she’d first met him. As he listened to her it grew warier and squintier.

  “You aren’t going to hurt the baby, are you?” Anna asked. “I mean somebody just wants a kid of their own to raise and love, right?”

  “Right. That’s right.” Confusion infiltrated the wariness. A positive sign, Anna thought. A better sign would be if his face was being infiltrated with blood but one had to take what one could get.

  “Lisa, give the guy the river baby,” she said.

  “Anna! What are you doing?” Lisa wailed, and the betrayal in her voice singed Anna’s insides.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Anna said harshly. “It’s not your kid. God knows it’s not mine. You want to die over this? Orphan your kids for some foundling? Some Mexican drug lord’s by-blow?”

  “Anna!” Lisa cried again. The shock of Anna’s words was undoing her more than an unknown man kicking in her bedroom door.

  “I’ll get the damn thing,” Anna said to Danny, who was standing in a pool of indecision holding the striped blanket. Stalking around the end of the bed to where Lisa stood between the children in the closet and the world, she threw her words back at the thug. “Get that other blanket,” she ordered, and pointed vaguely in the direction of the headboard. “It’s softer and smaller, easier to carry.”

  Danny turned. Perhaps to get the baby blanket that wasn’t there, perhaps only because the cat fight had unsettled him to an extent he was obeying orders from Mom. Whatever the reason, for a second, his attention was not on Anna.

  Sudden as a snake striking, she spun, brought the knife up from where she’d let it lie forgotten along her thigh, and drove the blade into his center mass with all her strength. He fell to the bed and Anna fell onto him.

  “Get the babies out,” she yelled to Lisa and saw her jerk the closet door open and grab a laundry basket full of dirty clothes. The man beneath Anna bucked and roared and tried to rise. Slippery with blood, her fingers lost their grip on the knife and she had no idea where she’d hit him, if the blow was fatal or glancing.

  Danny had fallen with his legs twisted, his left side on the bed, feet on the floor. Anna was across his upper body; their heads too close for comfort. Before the waking giant could head butt or bite, Anna grabbed an ear and a handful of hair and shoved his face into the pillow. Ramming a knee in the small of his back, she scanned him desperately for the knife. Blood led her eyes to the haft, and the haft was all that was protruding. She’d stabbed through his forearm and buried the knife in his hip, pinning his arm to his side. She let go of his ear, grabbed the knife handle and yanked. It didn’t budge. The blade was jammed into bone. Danny screamed and rolled, trapping her underneath him.

  She wriggled and kicked and bit, clawed and pounded and shoved with not much more effect than Helena trying to resist a clean diaper. The pain in his arm and hip more intense than anything Anna could inflict with her feeble attacks, Danny didn’t seem to notice she was battering him. Roaring, he threw a punch over his shoulder with his free arm. Knuckles smashed into the side of Anna’s skull.

  The impact stunned her. An off button was pushed in her head and strength ceased pouring from whatever conscious source it pours from. Muscles went slack, vision blurred, thought faded. It wasn’t more than a second or two before she brought herself back but it was too long. Danny was off of her. He had a fistful of her hair before she could do more than note this disappointing turn of events. Lifting her by her hair, he flung her toward the far wall with the ease of a brat throwing his sister’s doll.

  The edge of the bed and Lisa’s penchant for strewing surfaces with colorful pillows broke Anna’s fall. In an instant she was on her feet. Raging like a wounded cougar, Danny moved between her and the door. Eyes crazy with pain and fury, he jerked the knife from his bone with a shriek and started toward her.

  A crash of metal on metal reverberated through the house. Both of them froze. An engine screamed, followed by another grinding crunch louder than the first.

  “What the hell is that?” Danny mumbled.

  “Your ride,” Anna said.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Little river otter, did you think I was going to throw you to the wolves to save my scaly old hide?” Helena, tucked in the crook of Anna’s arm, squeezed her eyes shut and pursed her lips. “I’ve never seen a baby this new with such a beautiful face,” Anna marveled. “Aren’t they traditionally red and wrinkled and pugdoggish?”

  Lisa laughed. “C-section,” she said. “That little girl didn’t have to fight to get squeezed into the world. You just went and got her.”

  “Did you hear that?” Anna said to the baby. “I’m the reason you’re gorgeous.” She was cooing and gurgling and generally making an ass of herself but she couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop. Being a fool for life felt so good.

  When Danny was made aware that the metallic crunching sounds were Nancy bashing her way through Anna’s Honda with the rented Chevy Malibu with every intention of leaving him behind, he’d had a moment of reflection. Deciding being stranded in Terlingua with a bad knife wound and a kidnapped baby would be worse than returning to whoever had sent him with the mission unaccomplished, he’d limped from the bedroom as fast as he could and joined his compatriot in the rampaging rental car. Lisa had only made it a few hundred yards out into the sage, headed for their nearest neighbor. When she saw them leave she came back to see if Anna had been hurt or killed.

  Terlingua and her sister city, Study Butte, had a permanent population of under three hundred souls. There was no police department. The county sheriff handled most complaints. Lisa called the park and the sheriff, and an all-points bulletin was issued for a smashed-up Mailbu.

  The Honda was totaled, Lisa’s car scraped down the passenger side, and the house a wreck of blood and thrown and broken domestic items. Lisa and Anna and Edgar and Helena sat at the table in the kitchen full of joy because they were all there and healthy. Nothing irreplaceable had been damaged.

  “Why would anybody want to steal a baby?” Lisa asked.

  There were the usual reasons but Anna knew she meant this baby, Helena—who would want to steal her badly enough to send thugs to do it?

  Anna had said something to Lisa when she was trying to distract their attacker. She’d said: “Some drug lord’s by-blow.” The words came back to her now. “It has to be because of who her mother was. If the mother was an important person, maybe the daughter of a member of a rich drug cartel, Helena could be wanted for ransom.”

  “Most bad guys kidnap good people’s kids,” Lisa said. “They’re not scared of the police. A drug lord, that’s something else.”

  “If Helena’s mom was running from kidnappers—or maybe from her father or husband—and her death in the river was an accident of sorts, mightn’t they want the child back? Maybe Helena’s got an inheritance floating around that unsavory types want to collect for her.”

  It crossed Anna’s mind that Freddy, who had a connection to the first woman drowned with her fetus, and an unusual interest in this case, Freddy, who was on the canyon rim where Anna and Paul had expected a shooter, had cavalierly ended his career with today’s speech. A new baby, a
boy in college—he would be in need of money. Freddy had been on both sides of the river his whole life. Everyone knew him. It was not only possible but probable that he knew drug dealers, smugglers and illegal aliens. Was it not also possible that he had engineered the kidnapping and it had gone sour, the woman and her unborn baby swept away by the river?

  Freddy knew every inch of the river, better than anyone in the park. Better than anyone in the world, most likely. The location where Chrissie found Helena’s mother troubled Anna. For her, at least, it negated the possibility that the woman was a Mexican national crossing to have her child on American soil. If Freddy had taken her and wanted to hide her where she wouldn’t be found until he collected ransom, taking her deep into the canyon might not be a bad idea. In her condition she couldn’t swim out. There was only the one place anyone could climb out and it was a hard climb. All Freddy would have to do would be to find a place she’d be neither heard nor stumbled upon by rafters and that was easy enough. She’d be where he, as the river ranger, had every excuse to be. Santa Elena and the Rio Grande would effectively hold her prisoner so there was no need to take the risk of bringing anyone else in on the deal.

  Maybe it wasn’t kindness that motivated Freddy to ask his wife to wet-nurse Helena, but a desire to keep the baby out of the hands of the authorities until he could figure out what to do next. Maybe he’d decided if thugs kidnapped the baby from his house, he’d be off the hook and have the baby to sell to whoever he was selling her to.

  Anna didn’t like the way that played out but, so far, it was the only plotline that made any sense.

  “Ready for some lunch, little one?” Lisa’s voice cut through Anna’s thoughts. She’d finished feeding Edgar and was waiting to trade babies with Anna so she could feed Helena. Anna took Edgar and, using a towel the way Lisa had shown her so she wouldn’t get baby spew down her back, she patted him and was startled at how well she’d learned to do it in such a short time. Not that patting a baby was such a complex task. Just weird.

  Lisa tucked Helena comfortably in her arms and the baby took the nipple as if it was meant for her all along. “She’s a good eater,” Lisa said, and Anna felt absurdly proud of her tiny protégé.

  Watching Lisa suckle the baby, Anna was as sure as she’d ever been about anything that, if Freddy was the one who started this mess, his wife knew nothing about it.

  “If people wanted Helena’s mother and, now, Helena, for ransom—drug lords or whatever like you were thinking—I can see why they would want to come over the border after they took Helena’s mother,” Lisa said, picking up where they had left off when Anna had mentally dragged her husband into the state penitentiary and given him a nice room on death row. “Not that those cartel people can’t or won’t kill Americans but they might have a harder time of it in the U.S.”

  “If that is what happened it explains a lot of things,” Anna said. She stood and paced with Edgar. It felt like the right thing to do with a baby from whom one was trying to induce burping. She told Lisa of the bikini wax, the hands, wrinkled from so long in the water but free of calluses, the painted toenails. “She was wearing a cheap dress,” Anna finished, “but everything else about her spoke of money.”

  Lisa thought about that for a while. Helena had had enough milk and Lisa put her on her shoulder and began patting her gently. Almost immediately she emitted a ladylike burp. Anna couldn’t but note that Helena was a superior belcher to Edgar, who had not yet given up his stomach bubbles.

  “She could have been made to put on a cheap dress,” Lisa suggested. “To make her feel bad. You know, like breaking somebody down so they won’t have the courage to fight back. The bad clothes could be part of something like that.”

  “Or maybe so the body wouldn’t be so easily identified. If they intended for the mother to die after giving birth, they might have dressed her accordingly,” Anna said.

  “Why would they want to kill the mama and keep the baby?”

  “An infant is a lot easier to hide and tote around than a grown woman.”

  “Yeah,” Lisa admitted. “But you got to feed babies, and when they are so tiny sometimes they don’t thrive on formula. I guess anybody evil enough to do the other things wouldn’t care much about a baby, though.”

  “We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Anna said, and hoped the bottom wouldn’t be where she’d find Freddy Martinez.

  Giving up on Edgar’s digestion, she gave him back to his mother and took the good baby, the Olympic-class belching child, from Lisa. “The chief ranger said Health and Human Services, the real Health and Human Services, is undermanned. They’re still dealing with the refugees from Hurricane Katrina who stayed in Houston. Since Helena is being cared for in a family situation, they said they would come out at the end of the week to take custody of her. That’s three days. Do you want Paul and me to take her somewhere else? Whoever is after her for whatever reason might decide it’s not worth it and go back to where they came from, but we can’t count on it.”

  Lisa didn’t answer right away, and Anna appreciated that this was no little thing. Had she been a good person, she would have insisted they decamp immediately to protect Lisa and her family. Helena was the reason she let Lisa make the choice for her. The little girl was doing so well with the breast milk and the love and the company of another child that Anna didn’t want to take her from this impromptu nest any sooner than she had to. Could she have removed the danger by removing herself and leaving Helena with Lisa, she would have done it. As it was, should Lisa be willing to keep Helena, she and Edgar would be safer with Anna and Paul around.

  The great hairy fly in the domestic ointment was Freddy. The picture of him as kidnapper and probable murderer Anna had painted in her mind was not indelible, but neither could it be dismissed. Snuggling down with victim and suspect under one roof could have its awkward moments.

  After this failed attempt, Freddy—if it was Freddy—might be less likely to have the baby taken from under his roof, afraid the connection would be too obvious. And, with Helena where he could control her disposition, he might be less desperate to take an action that might harm her.

  These were the rational—or pseudo rational—reasons Anna listed to herself. The overweening reason was that, try as she might to avoid it, she trusted Freddy. She had trusted him nearly from the moment at the top of the rockslide when she and Paul tied him up and took his gun. Freddy was a very likable guy. Like Ted Bundy? Even evoking the notorious serial killer didn’t put the fear of Freddy into her.

  There was an aura around Freddy Martinez that was familiar and comforting. Mrs. Gonzales, Anna remembered, her best friend Sylvia’s mother. Mrs. Gonzales worked as an operator for the phone company in the little town where Anna had grown up. Long after she and Sylvia had parted ways, Anna to a private Catholic boarding school and Sylvia to the local high school, whenever Anna called home the operator would say: “Anna? You haven’t called your parents for a while. They’ll be so happy to hear from you. Will you be home soon?” The sense of warmth and family she exuded always made Anna feel like she had someplace to go if ever she couldn’t go home.

  Anna’s instincts wanted her to accept the kindness Freddy radiated. Long ago she had learned not to go with her instincts. They were as much a mess as the rest of her intrinsic workings. She would go with Paul’s; if he thought they should go, they would go.

  “I wish Paul would get back,” Anna said, scarcely aware that she voiced her thought.

  “I wish Freddy would come home. I wish Freddy had never left home today.”

  “Do you think they fired him?” Anna asked.

  “No,” Lisa said. “He got called out before he got to Chisos Basin. The park got a call that there were nearly fifty head of horses on the American side and they were heading into the park. Freddy is their best horseman. They jumped on the chance to keep him busy somewhere else all day.”

  “The park got a call? From whom?”

  “She was anonymous,” Lisa said w
ith an impish smile.

  Anna laughed.

  “Freddy saves the world, I save Freddy—or at least his job. For now. Once Freddy gets the bit between his teeth about something, he goes all macho, Pancho Villa, man-of-the-house and makes me crazy.”

  Anna sat again and laid Helena on her lap. “Why would Freddy risk his job to talk against Judith Pierson?” she asked. “The closing of the border has been debated by everybody forever. Why make the big gesture now at what is, when you get right down to it, just a convention of academics?”

  “It’s not just academics. These people are big deals in Texas. They’re teachers and university types but there’s a lot of clout up here this week. But mostly it’s because Freddy knows about Judith Pierson. If you listen to him, she’s the anti-Christ. He says if she gets into the governor’s house we’re going to have to move out of Texas. That’s a serious threat from Freddy. He’s never lived anywhere but Texas—except Mexico, where it’s so close it might as well be Texas. His mother brought him up in Texas. The Alamo was her favorite movie. He said she’d gather all the kids and grandkids and in-laws around every time it came on TV and she’d say the lines along with John Wayne.”

  “I thought his mother was Mexican,” Anna said.

  Lisa laughed. “She was. She said the movie was made up and she could like it if she wanted to and it was good about Texas. Freddy wanted to get her a VCR and a tape so she could watch it whenever she wanted, but then his sister died and his mom never got over it really. She didn’t live all that long after. The doctors said it was a brain aneurism but Freddy and his dad think it was a broken heart.”

  “What happened to her?” Anna asked.

  Lisa started as if the question had woken her out of a dream and she suddenly realized where she was. “Oh!” she said, and, “Oh. Gosh. It was a long time ago now. She died in a car accident, I think.”

  As a liar Lisa was positively embarrassing.