Borderline

by Nevada Barr

  The headlights of Judith’s SUV slammed into her chest and face with the impact of a solid object and Anna turned away, Helena clutched to her shoulder.

  The water was cool but not cold and they sank into it until only their heads remained in the air. Tinier targets, she hoped, bits of oddly shaped driftwood lost in the darkness. The big engine roared with the anger of its driver and gravel rattled from beneath spinning tires. A tremendous splash followed and the headlights dimmed. Judith must have driven the vehicle into the river. Desperately wanting to look back, Anna kept her pale face away from the direction where Judith was still calling after them and let the river carry her gently downstream.

  “Judith! Judy! Are you okay?”

  Darden had arrived. Light as a bit of flotsam, Anna maneuvered herself and Helena toward the deep overhang of reeds. Helena’s diaper was filling with river water. Anna unstuck the tape and let it float away. As she watched the white bobbing against the dark water she realized she had finally done it, she had hit bottom. She was littering.

  There wasn’t a reply to Darden’s shout and, as Anna’s spirits were rising at the thought of Mayor Pierson with a broken nose or her head bashed in by the windshield, she heard the woman shouting high and screechy: “Stay away, Darden. I told Anna what you did. She knows you’re here to kill her. You get out of here.”

  “Judith, stop it!” Darden snapped, and there was silence.

  They stopped talking; the night was too still and Anna too close for it to be otherwise. Even whispers would have carried over the water. As long as they kept each other busy, she and Helena were traveling. Reeds pushed out over the water two to ten feet, their stalks thick and yellow, leaves long, spiky and dark green. Uncut and without any creatures who liked to eat them, they’d taken over the banks and grown thick and tangled. Perfect for what Anna needed. Silt piled up nearer the bank and her feet touched bottom. Shrinking under the reeds, she was enveloped in total darkness.

  Her invasion of these inky environs caused a stir. Around her she could hear the movements of those whose home she had invaded. A faint plop, a turtle sliding beneath the water, she thought. Skritching . Little birds awakened and scratched around for reasons held secret in their little bird brains. The unmistakable slithering rustle of a snake moving through dry grass.

  Rattlesnakes were common in Big Bend, as were tarantulas, scorpions, black widow spiders and all manner of other animals who lived by tooth or claw or toxin. Lots of them came to drink at the river at night. Many would choose the cover the reeds provided as Anna had. Blinded and surrounded by them, Anna felt safer than she did with most of her own species—especially the two who had brought her here in dueling SUVs.

  Resisting the temptation to put her hand over the baby’s nose and mouth lest she cry and give them away, Anna listened. Car doors were opening and closing and heavy objects being dragged. It sounded as if Judith was trying to salvage items from the backseat of the half-submerged Chevy. A weapon?

  “I don’t need you, Darden, and Anna won’t come out if you’re here. She knows what you are.” Judith’s voice cut abruptly through the sounds of rummaging and Anna realized how close she was. The reeds that had so kindly taken her and Helena in weren’t very far downstream from where the SUV had charged into the water. Judith must have gotten whatever it was she wanted from the back of the car; Anna heard her splashing into the water.

  Both Darden and Judith seemed to be playing that the other was the bad guy and they were the, if not good, then sane guy. Was it a game to keep Anna off balance? Were they both desirous of offing her and Helena but for different reasons? Even soaking wet, in the dark, hiding in the reeds with a baby in her arms, that seemed farfetched. Had Darden been in on the killings right up to but not including the murder of an infant and, by the way, a federal law enforcement officer?

  Feeling her way with her feet, one hand held loosely over Helena’s face to ward off spiders and sticks and sharp-edged leaves, Anna moved slowly downriver, the more distance she put between herself and them the better her chances. If she could make it to a bend in the river or a dry wash that cut down through the reeds, she could get out of the water. On a warm night in a cool river, she’d probably last a long time before hypothermia started shutting down her body. She had no idea how long it would take for a person as small and new as Helena to succumb.

  “I’ve come to help, Judy. You know that. When have I ever not been there when you hollered?” Darden shouted. “This is more my line of work than yours, pumpkin. Why don’t you go sit in the truck and dry off?”

  If there’d been a falling-out among thieves it sounded as if it was all over now. Given the choice, Anna would have preferred Darden do as Judith asked and go away. This was, indeed, more his line of work, and even though he was over sixty and overweight, Anna would not underestimate him.

  “You’re here to help me? Scout’s honor?” Judith sounded both the imperious mayor and the lonely little girl. The mix was eerie, as if a woman and a little girl were saying the same words at the same time but in two different voices.

  The concept of multiple personalities blossomed in Anna’s mind. There’d been a glut of stories about people housing between two and twenty differing personalities inside one body. Usually one or more of the personalities was homicidal, thus allowing the twist at the end of the plot. Judith sounded like a candidate but Anna was sure she’d heard that multiple personality disorder had been thoroughly debunked. Too bad, what with Mama Anna and Ranger Anna, she was thinking about signing on as soon as she got back to civilization.

  Civilization. Anna longed for it and the unnaturalness of the emotion registered even as she crept through reeds in shoulder-deep water trying to keep herself and her charge alive. For most of her life she had felt more at home, safer, saner, stronger and more able in the wilderness than she had in towns and houses.

  Babies changed that too. Since she’d taken over the care and feeding of one of the little buggers, Anna had wanted homes and diapers, stoves and sterilizers, warm, dry clothes and washer/dryers.

  “You’re a powerful little thing,” she said in the merest wisp of a whisper near Helena’s ear. “And you’re a good quiet girl,” she added, in case compliments would keep her quiet awhile longer.

  Suddenly Anna’s footing was gone. The current had scoured a deeper hole beneath the reeds where she walked. She and Helena were being carried farther into the bank. Anna fought to swim with one arm and keep the baby’s face out of the water. Reeds scraped at their faces and leaves and stalks, borne down beneath the water by their own weight, wrapped slick fingers around her shoulders as if the plants were eaters of flesh and, having snared their prey, were trying to drag it under and drown it.

  Shoving back panic, Anna struggled against the clutching fingers. Her feet hit bottom again and she nearly shouted with relief.

  Helena began to wail.

  THIRTY-NINE

  She’s there!” Judith cried exultantly. Then the night was ripped apart by gunfire. A blow struck Anna’s shoulder with such force she was slammed back and down. The black beneath the reeds flowed into her brain and she didn’t know if she was above the water or below it, if she still held Helena or had dropped her into the ink of the Rio Grande.

  Pain followed shock and Anna welcomed it; it brought her back to the world. Helena was still in her arms but quiet now. Either the noise had stunned her to silence or the bullet had passed through Anna’s shoulder and killed the tiny person she was trying to keep alive.

  Two more shots followed but both were wild. A flashlight beam raked through the reeds, clipping green from the darkness. Where it penetrated, Anna saw a natural nest; a creature of reeds and water had smashed down leaves so it might have a comfortable, safe place to rest.

  “Don’t die on me,” Anna whispered as she laid the naked baby in the reeds.

  “Don’t shoot!” Anna yelled. “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot.” Leaving Helena, Anna swam rather than walked as far downriver as s
he dared before pushing free of the overhang of plants. “Here!” she shouted. “I’m over here. I’m coming out. Don’t shoot.”

  Two more shots exploded the reeds next to her.

  “Damn it, stop!” she yelled. “I’m coming.” With that she waded through the waist-deep water into open air.

  Judith had swum the deeper channel in the middle of the river and was close to the bank where Anna was, water curling around her upper thighs in a dark vee. Anna looked for Darden. From the sound of his voice she’d thought he was with Judith but he’d gone the other way and was forty yards upstream, close to where the SUV was nose-deep in the water. He walked toward them, staying close to the far bank where it was shallower. It didn’t look as if he carried a gun, but in the surreal illumination of submerged headlights and faint desert glow, Anna couldn’t be sure.

  Judith did have a gun, a semiautomatic pistol. Anna hadn’t counted the shots that had been fired but the days of six shots and reload were long past.

  “Hands up!” Judith screamed, her voice at a shrieking pitch, the sound of an engine wound up so high the belts were carving into the metal.

  Anna tried to comply. Her left arm refused to move but the effort pulled a moan from deep in her gut. The pain was hot and everywhere, scorching her bones and searing her muscles. “I can’t. You shot me,” Anna said, and was surprised at the weariness in her voice.

  “Where’s the baby?” Judith screamed. The skin of her face, partially lit by the light from the SUV, was translucent, the skull showing through in dark eye sockets and teeth and sunken cheeks. A form of insanity had changed her into a brittle beast that had left much of its humanity behind. There would be no reasoning with what was left.

  “Where’s the baby!” Judith hissed.

  “I drowned it,” Anna said. “It was a pain in the butt.”

  Momentarily, Judith’s face blanked.

  “Judy!” Darden called. “Let me take over from here, honey. Don’t get your hands dirty with this.”

  Anna didn’t take her eyes off Judith. The woman held a gun in her right hand like she knew how to use it. In her left was a six-cell flashlight, the kind that easily doubles as a club.

  “Judith, I know how worried you are about Helena,” Anna said gently. “I’m so glad you’re looking after us. I don’t think we would have gotten away if you hadn’t picked us up. Shoot Darden, okay? That will make us safe, you and me. Then we can get Helena and go home.”

  Anna didn’t worry that she wasn’t making much sense; she doubted Judith’s brain was still processing information in a logical manner. Carefully, slowly, Anna began closing the distance between herself and the mayor. Three yards, two. The gun wavered then steadied, aimed point-blank at Anna’s chest. The flashlight beam shifted into her eyes. Anna held a hand up to block the glare.

  “Shoot Darden,” Anna whispered conspiratorially. “We don’t need him.”

  “Shut up, Anna,” Darden yelled. “Hang on, Judith, I’m coming.”

  The guy was keeping to the far side of the river and mincing around like he was afraid there were sharks in the shallows.

  “Shoot him,” Anna said gently. “Or, better yet, he’s right. The mayor of Houston should not get her hands dirty. Give me the gun and I’ll shoot him, then we—”

  Judith turned and fired three shots into the reeds.

  “No!” Anna yelled, and hurled herself at the other woman. Pain jammed her senses as she reached for Judith’s gun arm, but she caught hold of a wrist or an elbow and held on. Her feet went out from under her and she couldn’t get traction. Closing the fingers of her left hand brought down such a rapid-fire searing of nerves that Anna couldn’t grip. Judith was twisting out of her right hand, flipping Anna in the river like a landed fish.

  Water poured into Anna’s mouth and nose, blinded her, but she didn’t let go. Sinking her teeth into a part of the arm she clung to, she started working her hand down toward the gun. Judith shook her hard and Anna bit down harder. Liquid warmer than the Rio Grande flowed into her mouth and, absurdly, she wondered if one could suffer reverse rabies from biting a mad animal instead of being bitten by one.

  Her hand closed on metal. She found her feet. Spitting Judith out, Anna pushed her head and shoulders out of the river, choking on the mixture of blood and muddy water. Darden was shouting. Judith was screaming. Anna was blind with wet hair streaming over her face. The flashlight smashed into her injured shoulder and Anna joined the screaming. Flesh rebelled; she felt her grip go slack, her knees give in to the pull of the current.

  Judith tore free and began wading toward the dark fringe of reeds where Helena lay hidden.

  Anna pulled herself back from the dark fringes of her mind where the pain had shoved her and dove after her. The river had turned viscous as lava and she seemed to make little headway. Judith had almost reached the reeds.

  High, thin wailing stopped her for a heartbeat. Helena. Relief rushed into Anna that she was alive followed by the horror that she was found. Judith turned to the sound like a hound to the scent and began plowing through the thick curtain of leaves and stalks. In seconds the foliage closed around her and, but for the sporadic gleam of the flashlight, Anna would have lost her.

  Narrowing her concentration on the light and on moving, Anna shut out everything else: the pain in her shoulder, the pull of the water, the fear for Helena, the fear for herself.

  “Hello, baby.”

  The words cut cold into Anna and her breath stopped. Two more steps and she was in a claustrophobic cave of reeds and water. Judith had laid the flashlight down on the crushed leaves of the animal’s bed and picked up Helena. The tiny naked scrap of life was held against her shoulder with one hand the way a little girl might clutch a doll, an indestructible doll that has life only as it is imagined by its owner. In Judith’s other hand was the semiautomatic pistol, held against her chest, the barrel out of sight behind Helena’s little body.

  For what seemed a long time, neither woman moved. “You’re bleeding,” Judith said, sounding as if this revelation surprised and saddened her.

  Anna glanced down at her left arm. In the glare of the flashlight it was startlingly red, the color vivid and beautiful against the backdrop of tans and greens. “It doesn’t matter,” Anna said. “Why don’t you let me take the baby and we’ll let bygones be bygones.”

  “This isn’t your baby,” Judith snapped savagely. “This is Charles’s baby. This is my husband’s baby. Another little Pierson to carry on the family name.”

  “Helena—”

  “Shut up.” Judith pulled the barrel of the gun out from under Helena, and for a moment Anna dared hope she was going to point it at her. In such close quarters she might have a chance of getting it away from her before she got shot again. The barrel did not swing out; Judith rested it on Helena’s narrow shoulder, the bore of the pistol almost touching her ear, almost as big as her ear.

  Revulsion joined with the terror in Anna’s stomach and she was sick with it. Guns, she’d lived with most of her adult life. Babies were new. Putting them together was a truth she’d never seen spelled out with such graphic clarity: innocence and evil, life and death, power and purity. Rage ran as red as the blood from her shoulder and there was no place to put it, no action to take. Judith held a gun to Helena’s head.

  “My in-laws put such importance on the carrying on of their sacred bloodline that Charles and I are only trust holders for the grandchild. This,” and she looked at Helena with such loathing the child could have been a cockroach, “this spawn of Charles’s and his whore would get it all. It wants my husband. Like its mother did.”

  Leaving the flashlight in the nest of leaves and twigs, Judith began backing out of the reeds.

  Fighting to keep rage from blinding her, Anna followed, careful to make no sudden moves, to appear as docile as possible.

  Several times she opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. She was afraid words—the wrong words—would pull the trigger and Helena’s head w
ould explode into fragments. Should she beg or coax or threaten or cajole, should she reason or promise? Anna doubted there were any right words. Judith’s face was set in the death mask that her hatred had made of it. Judith would destroy Helena. Any words of Anna’s would only make it happen sooner.

  They cleared the reeds. Darden was still on the far side of the river but he’d waded in until the water reached mid-thigh. Held at his hip in an unconscious parody of Chuck Connors in The Rifleman was a long gun. Not the old wooden-stocked rifles Anna had grown up with, but a military weapon with its metal skeleton showing and a scope that took the sport out of hunting.

  He raised it to his shoulder.

  “Judy, honey, step away from Anna. You can relax, I’ve got it covered. Go ahead and lose the gun, Judy. Let me do this.”

  Judith Pierson half turned to look back at Darden. The death’s head was still upon her, skin pulled tight across her cheekbones and away from her teeth. “If you want something done right . . .” she began, her finger tightening on the trigger.

  Then half her throat disappeared in mist. In silence her body fell backward. Her arms opened and the gun fell from her hand. Anna snatched Helena as Judith went under the water.

  “Catch her,” Darden cried, but Anna did not give a damn about Judith.

  Darden dropped the high-powered rifle and walked into the river until it was too deep for his feet to touch bottom. Anna watched him flounder, trying to keep his head above water, and realized why he’d stayed on the far bank. The man couldn’t swim.

  He had saved her life, he had saved Helena’s life. Anna felt no compunction to save his. As he sputtered and gasped and flung his arms wildly, she supposed, had she two good arms and no baby to take care of, she’d probably fish him out just to keep her credit good. Things being what they were, she excused herself.