by Nevada Barr
“Unfortunately, no. If Judith is being unfaithful or raiding the city’s coffers or hiring her girlfriends or firing her in-laws à la Ms. Palin, I haven’t been able to turn it up. She’s sharky and ruthless and has a lot of enemies, but no smoking guns. I did turn up a bit of interesting material on Darden White.”
“As it relates to creepy visits to orphans?”
“Maybe. During Darden’s first years with the Secret Service he worked details with the CIA in Nicaragua, Paraguay, Pakistan and Serbia. As I said, that was as much detail as I could get. Only public record stuff. But those places were hot spots—some still are—and I don’t think he was doing much running beside limos in parades or standing handsome and reassuring around White House parties. It is a good bet Darden White’s hands are far from clean. The last fifteen years of his service, he was in the States working security for presidential and vice presidential nominees on the campaign trail, ex-presidents and their wives, high-profile politicians’ kids—that sort of thing. I did get ahold of several of the people he’d worked with and the word they used most to describe him was loyal.”
“Loyal’s not a bad thing,” Anna said. “Is it?”
“It depends, I guess,” Gerry said slowly. “I got the impression from a couple of these contacts that ‘loyal’ meant loyal like an attack dog. Willing to do maybe questionable things to protect his clients.”
“So. Darden is besotted with Mayor Pierson for whatever reason. He’s also her head of security. A double dose of attack-dog loyalty there?”
“Once I got to asking around, it was pretty clear a lot of people were scared of Darden. People who decided to take the mayor down got bought off, scared off or left town. A photographer accidentally banged his camera into the mayor’s jaw and Darden broke the man’s arm before anybody knew he’d moved. A couple of years ago a college professor, of all people, was stalking the mayor. Darden got the police chief to throw him in jail on pretty flimsy grounds. The professor hung himself while in custody.”
“Maybe the professor was crazy,” Anna said.
“Probably,” Gerry admitted. “But, taken with several more stories along those same lines, it’s hard not to think Darden is happy to break bones and ruin lives to keep Judith in one piece and in whatever spotlight she sets her heart on.”
“And while the Houston politician is in Big Bend a woman is thrown in the river, presumably to die in what appears to be a tragic illegal border crossing—”
“Neatly underscoring the mayor’s big punch to get on the gubernatorial map,” Gerry finished Anna’s thought.
“Then the surviving baby is to be snatched . . . why? If the mayor was a man I’d think it was his illegitimate child. We’ve got the honorable John Edwards still holding the lead on that particular line of political suicide.”
“Maybe it’s her husband’s, Charles’s,” Gerry said. “I talked with the clerk at the lodge and a very pregnant woman showed up there asking for Charles the day before this woman was found in the river.”
Anna thought about that for a minute. If Helena was Charles Pierson’s baby it would be the John Edwards thing all over again. Only this time, instead of merely losing respect for a husband, Judith would be losing respect for a husband and losing the respect of a lot of her constituency. The public had a love/hate relationship with the women who stood by their men on the evening news. The more strident wanted the women to disown the bastards and strike out on their own. Most felt pity for the injured wife. Infidelity was bad. Fathering a child with the infidel was worse. Ridiculous as it seemed, the fathering of a child bespoke a greater depth of relationship than mere fornication to many people, though in reality it suggested only a lack of responsibility by the parties concerned.
Or entrapment.
“Do you think Darden chose to murder the woman and her fetus and make it look like an incident that would further Judith’s aims? That seems a bit draconian.”
“Politics, love and ambition are draconian,” Gerry said, and drained the last of her beer. “And that would certainly clean the slate.”
“Charles might have been behind it, covering up his indiscretion.”
“Maybe,” Gerry conceded. “But I don’t think so. Charles Pierson is the antithesis of violent action, a gentle soul or a coward, depending on how you frame it. The Piersons are also loaded. Old Texas money that keeps on pumping out of the ground. If Charles wanted to get rid of an inconvenient liaison there aren’t a lot of women he couldn’t buy off with those kinds of resources.”
“There are a few women who can’t be bought,” Anna said. “And there are those for whom the asking price is too high. Maybe she was blackmailing him for money even he couldn’t afford or marriage and a place in society. Harvard for the child and Paris fashion week for herself. Things mere money might not be able to buy an unwed mother.”
“True,” Gerry said. She tipped the bottle again, realized she had emptied it and set it back on the bench between them. “You probably want to buy the next round,” she said with a twinkle that penetrated through the heavily mascaraed lashes. “I don’t think it’s proper to take an innocent baby into a bar.”
“My pleasure,” Anna said. She stood and shook the kinks out of her legs. Until she took the time to sit still for a while, she’d been unaware of the bruising she’d experienced in the set-to with the beefy Danny. The parts of her that didn’t ache had stiffened and the parts of her that had stiffened were beginning to ache.
“You seem a little off your feed today,” Gerry said.
“Babysitting is a lot harder than high school girls make it look.”
“Beer?” Gerry prodded when Anna remained shaking and stretching in front of the bench they shared.
“I forgot my wallet,” Anna admitted.
“You are awfully pathetic for a heroine,” Gerry said, but she dug a twenty out of her purse and handed it over. “I’m going to count the change,” she hollered as Anna took the money down the long porch.
The inside of the bar carried through the rustic wood, old cowboy décor that the porch advertised. There weren’t any false notes because, though the ambience was intentional and exploited, the building really was that old, the boards had weathered where they stood and the floor was worn by the application of thousands of booted feet rather than sander and awl. Beer could be purchased by the bottle or the pack. A cooler was provided so the regulars could buy a pack and keep it cold while they downed it at their leisure.
Anna got two Lone Stars, uncapped them and carried them back out to the porch. The parking lot was beginning to fill up. Half a dozen tourists had joined the locals on the benches or leaned against the six-by-six posts that held up the roof. Only the most unobservant would confuse the two groups. Native Terlinguans—at least those on the porch—both male and female looked as if they dressed out of dumpsters and didn’t bother with dentists.
Old hippies, a lot of them. People who had dropped out in the sixties and seventies and drifted until they found a place that was, as Carmen had aspired to be, off the grid. As Anna walked, exchanging the occasional nod with someone who caught her eye, she remembered a scrap of information Cyril had shared when she’d visited their camp that morning. She’d only been half listening at the time but it came back to her now. The Starlight Theatre—now a restaurant—had been so named because when Terlingua’s dreams were younger and its inhabitants had less gray in their long hair and beards, they used to gather in the old building, roofless then, and play music under the stars of Texas. The starlight theatre.
Anna liked it. She would have liked to have sat in on the music then, to listen, not to stay. The fringes of the world where dreamers and misfits eventually washed up held no allure for her.
“Ah, you’re a dreamboat,” Gerry said as she took the beer from Anna’s outstretched hand. “Take the baby, will you?”
“Already?” Anna asked, and was annoyed at both the whine in her voice and the smile with which Gerry met it.
“You k
now what the Chinese say; you save somebody’s life, you are then responsible for that somebody until one of you dies. Here’s your somebody.”
Feeling it was wrong on some level to be seen holding a beer and a baby simultaneously, Anna set the Lone Star between her feet under the bench where it wouldn’t be so obvious.
“It would probably be a good idea to get her back where she can have a bed and a bottle of her own,” Gerry said.
“I guess,” Anna admitted reluctantly. She looked at her watch. It was well after six and neither Paul nor the kids had shown up. Anna was more annoyed than worried. Her worrying quotient had been used up by Helena.
“Would it be okay if I ate first?” she asked.
Gerry laughed. “You need my permission to eat?”
Anna felt a fool. In need of foisting responsibility off on another’s shoulders had rendered her childish.
“We’ll eat first,” she said firmly.
Gerry didn’t eat but kept her company and held Helena while Anna downed a most excellent chicken enchilada, refried beans, rice and enough guacamole and chips to keep a Super Bowl party going smoothly. Knowing she needed to keep her head but needing more to take the edge off one hell of a day, she washed it down with another beer.
At seven-thirty, she had run out of things to devour and she and Gerry had hashed over the Darden-dead-woman connection till they’d rendered it threadbare. It was time to go “home.” Lisa might have returned and Helena could have the comfort of breast milk and a real woman to hold her for a while.
Maybe Paul would be back as well. Anna craved his company and the strength of his personality the way she craved rest and food after a long, arduous hike.
“I guess we’d better go,” she admitted as the waiter took the last of the dishes away.
“I’ve got a date,” Gerry said. “And I believe mine has shown up.”
Anna looked to the door of the restaurant to see the chief ranger, in civilian clothes, waving at Gerry. “You work quickly,” she said.
“I have been called fast,” Gerry replied with a smile. “One must catch them between divorces.”
The chief ranger came to their table as Anna stood and took Helena, showing the world what a good quiet baby she was, from Gerry’s arms. “Is the body recovery team back yet?” Anna asked.
“Only just. I heard them on the radio as I was driving down. They had some complications retrieving the victim and had to re-rig. I’d have called and let you know when Paul was coming back but you don’t answer your phone. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,” Bernard said. “Health and Human Services out of El Paso—”
“Gerry told me.” Anna saved him the trouble of repeating the news. “What time will they be coming for Helena?”
“Midafternoon is my guess. Everything in Texas is a long drive,” Bernard said.
“She’ll be ready.” Relief at being relieved of responsibility, relief at the thought Helena would be safe and cared for, sudden startling pain at the thought of losing the little girl, fear of what sort of future awaited her smacked into Anna’s emotional center all at once. Instead of taking her leave, she stood rooted beside the chair she had just vacated.
“Do you want us to give you a lift back to the Martinez place?” Gerry asked.
“No.” Anna forced herself to come alive again. “It’s not far and I need the air. Tomorrow,” she said to Bernard.
“Turn your cell phone on,” the chief ranger called after her as she left the table.
The long desert evening was doing a slow fade into night. Light was still clear and blue but colors had gone from the hills and into the sky. With the cooling air the bracing perfume of the sere tufted grasses and creosote bushes was lifted on the slight breeze coming down from the mountains to the east. Breathing deeply, Anna cleared her head of the beer and the talk and the close confines of the restaurant. Helena, too, was rejuvenated and began to squirm and make small but not unhappy sounds.
The eerie “Slow, Children at Play” sign with the skeleton child was not as amusing without the full light of the sun on it and, feeling superstitious and silly, Anna hurried past it to cross the main road. She was halfway down the dirt track to the Martinez house when headlights raked green from the desert ahead of her.
Paul was her first thought and she felt her spirits rise. Turning, she shielded her eyes from the glare of the oncoming lights.
It wasn’t an NPS pickup truck or patrol car. The lights were on the front of an oversized, coal-black SUV.
THIRTY-SIX
Anna didn’t hesitate. She turned and ran perpendicular to the road. A hundred yards or less from the dirt lane was a hill, long and low and as unglamorous as a berm pushed up by a John Deere caterpillar but steep enough she doubted the city-bred four-wheel drive could climb it. What was on the other side, she hadn’t a clue.
Streaks of hard light slued across the rocky soil, igniting tufts of grass and sparking green and fuchsia from the barrel cacti. The beams aligned themselves with Anna and she could see her shadow running like ink in front of her nearly to the hill. The SUV was driving cross-country. This close to witnesses, Anna had hoped the driver wouldn’t have the nerve to leave the road.
Holding Helena close to her chest and praying to gods she hadn’t believed in thirty seconds before that she wouldn’t fall and crush the child before Darden got an opportunity to murder them both, Anna ran. Adrenaline and determination lifted her feet and she flew the first twenty yards. The second twenty, with the lights so hot behind her, she was blind to anything in her peripheral vision, and her thigh muscles began to liquefy, losing the ability to push as hard as they needed to. At fifty yards she had a cruel stitch in her side and could hear the smooth, unstoppable crunching of tires and engine murmur behind her. Darden wasn’t going to bother with hands-on havoc; he was simply going to run them down. She turned abruptly right and fled into the relative darkness.
The ground grabbed at her feet and cacti snatched bits of flesh from her calves. Ahead she could see faint yellow lights from the Martinezes’ kitchen window. Lisa would be home by now and, with her, Edgar. Maybe Freddy was back, as well, broad-shouldered, well-armed Freddy. Maybe he wasn’t. Anna couldn’t chance it. Turning once more she ran again toward the hill, now fifty yards and a million miles away.
White knives of light scraped across the desert, seeking her. In seconds they pinned onto her back and the engine roared as the driver pressed the accelerator pedal to the floorboards. There was no cover, no place to hide.
Anna stopped and turned to face the oncoming vehicle. Breath rasped so loud in her throat and ears she didn’t know if Helena was crying or not. Any normal infant would have been screaming her head off. Any normal woman would have been screaming her head off. Anna screamed loud and long and hoped it would raise help from somewhere. Headlights bounced, lancing over her. She readied herself to jump whichever way the fates decreed when the SUV came within striking distance.
Thirty feet from her and the baby, the SUV skidded to a halt in a gout of dust and the driver’s door flew open. “Anna, Anna, don’t run, it’s me, Mayor Pierson, Judith.” The small blond woman appeared from behind the black metal door and walked toward her, hands up as if Anna held a gun instead of a baby.
“God you’re fast,” Judith said, panting as if she had been chasing Anna on foot. “You’ve got to come. I know everything Darden has done. He’s coming for the baby.”
“Stay where you are,” Anna said, and Judith stopped. Moving out of the line of light until she could see the mayor but doubted the mayor had any kind of view of her, she asked: “What has Darden done?”
Judith Pierson didn’t say anything. She turned her head and looked to the east where the Chisos were silhouetted against a sky of the faintest sea green. Headlights caught her hair and Anna could see it had been washed and set since breakfast. The side of her face that was lit up had tear streaks in black where she’d cried off her mascara.
“I think Darden killed someb
ody,” Judith said quietly.
“Who?” Anna demanded. The woman caught in the river strainer was the expected answer but Anna had learned the expected isn’t what necessarily happens.
“The baby’s mother, the Mexican woman. At least I think he did—or had somebody do it.” Judith didn’t try to find Anna in the gloom outside the cone of light but kept her eyes on the distant horizon.
Having entered the place one came to in an investigation gone haywire where no one is to be trusted, Anna asked: “Why come here? Why not go to the rangers or your other two security guys?”
“Darden’s coming for the baby, Anna. I think he means to kill it.”
“All the better reason to call the rangers.”
Breathing was becoming easier. No longer gasping like a landed fish, Anna could hear Helena’s soft whimpering, the comfortable purr of the big car’s engine.
“I couldn’t,” Judith said simply, and tears dragged more sooty tracks down the cheek Anna could see. “I was afraid they would kill him. You can call them but I was hoping you’d go someplace safe so there won’t have to be any killing.”
“Why didn’t you just call me?”
“I did, damn you!” Judith yelled, anger breaking through. “You wouldn’t answer your damn phone.”
Anna couldn’t fault her there. Persons of authority and consequence had already attested to the fact that Anna was not answering.
Another pair of headlights cut across the landscape in an arc moving from west to east, flashing off the shiny fenders of the black car. Hoping it was Freddy and he’d come out to see who was traveling off road in his neighborhood, hoping it was Paul and he would sense with that bond said to connect lovers that she needed him, Anna watched the lights.
Judith was watching them too.
The lights were high and wide apart with the cold blue-white glare of halogen bulbs instead of the warm yellows on older vehicles.
“It’s him,” Judith said flatly. “It’s Darden. Get in!” She ran from the light and Anna heard the driver’s-side door slam shut.