Firestorm

by Nevada Barr

  Huge tears rolled down Jennifer’s face. Their size and clarity transfixed Anna. These were not shallow tears but flowed from a well of hurt so deep the pressures were nigh unto intolerable.

  “Will you be okay alone here for a minute? I’ll be as quick as I can,” Anna said.

  “Don’t you want to know what happened?” Jennifer’s voice was drowned in tears.

  “If you want to tell me.”

  “Len killed Josh,” she said. “He was supposed to scare him off but he hit him too hard and killed him. Then he set the fire. He killed Newt too, with the fire.” Tears filled her throat, choking off her words. Anna knew a better woman would take Jen in her arms and hold her. Anna wanted to do it but she didn’t know how so she held the broken foot tenderly and waited.

  Jennifer must have let Len into her shelter. When the firestorm was upon them he had told her and she’d killed him.

  Anna set Jen’s foot down gently. Not wanting to focus on Short’s grief-ravished face, her eyes came to rest on the big chocolate fingers digging into the snow under Jennifer’s leg. Len’s glove. It had fallen off his hand, Anna remembered. With some misplaced idea of propriety, she’d threaded it back on the dead fingers. A big glove for so small a hand.

  Abruptly Anna clapped her hands close to Jennifer’s face, startling her out of her tears.

  “Quick,” she demanded. “Ten seconds or less: why did you take Leonard’s left glove?”

  Jennifer just stared, her eyes panicked. Five seconds passed, ten, twenty.

  “I cut my hand,” she stammered at last. “My blood would be mixed with his.”

  Anna sighed and shook her head. “That’s what I thought.”

  “DNA tests would show that, wouldn’t they?” Jen challenged.

  “Yes,” Anna replied, and plucked the glove from beneath Jennifer by a finger. “They will.”

  Jennifer’s eyes flashed with sudden understanding. She grabbed at the glove but Anna whisked it out of her reach. “Sorry. Nice try. I’m going for help.” Anna heard Jennifer beginning to sob as she walked away but she didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-Seven

  BACK TO A sturdy snag, Anna stopped just out of sight of Jennifer’s probing light. Before she moved again she needed time to think. Wind was rising, slicing across her face like a razor. Her skin hurt with it, her hands and feet ached with cold. Jennifer’s cries found her but she ignored them, her mind churning through the night’s revelations.

  Len’s left glove—a large on his small hand. The right glove, the one not saturated with blood, had an “s” in ink on the wrist, size small. Under the chassis of the truck the first night, over badger, then again with the abrasion on his little finger: Stephen fussing with his left glove. Because it didn’t fit. Gloves were so necessary to firefighters that an ill-fitting one would be tolerated only briefly. The bloody left glove belonged to Stephen Lindstrom. It had become soaked with Len’s blood not during some awkward contortion of a man with a knife in his heart, but by the blood pouring from the wound beneath the murderer’s hand. Stephen had switched gloves, taken the unbloodied glove, but it was way too small.

  The rest of Jennifer’s story was probably true. Nims was Catholic—though there were cynics who would say, faced with death, we are all Catholics. Searching for absolution he’d chosen the wrong father confessor. Two things Anna hadn’t recognized as important at the time became clear. When she’d told Stephen Joshua Short had been killed he said he was a friend. And when Stephen had been arrested in 1989 for obstructing traffic, Josh was arrested that same date in a gay rights protest in San Francisco. Stephen either was or had been Joshua’s lover.

  For the murder Anna could forgive Lindstrom. Forgive wasn’t the right word, the trespass had not been against her. Understand then. The betrayal that she was having trouble accepting was Stephen allowing Jennifer to cover for him. Landing Joshua’s only and beloved sister in the slammer for murder jerked the rug out from under any sort of True Love Revenged defense he might be using to rationalize his act.

  Anna was furious at Stephen for not being the man she’d come to like and admire and furious at Jennifer for letting herself be used. The womanly virtue of self-sacrifice didn’t hold any allure for Anna. Teaching dogs to love their leash.

  She glanced over her shoulder in Short’s direction and was surprised because she could see. The jaws of night were being pried apart by the dawn. Fog had thinned. Scraping her head back against the charred wood, Anna looked up. One, two…seven; seven stars were visible through a rift in the ceiling that had held them down for so long.

  Tears welled up in her eyes. Stars. She’d not realized—or hadn’t let herself think—how much she had missed them. And the sun. If ever a girl had needed the sun it had been over the last forty-eight hours. She filled her lungs as if it was the first breath she’d drawn since they’d crawled out of their fire shelters.

  With oxygen came clarity and Anna knew what she must do. Nothing. The glove was safe in her pocket. It was Stephen’s work glove; DNA testing should find plenty to tie him to it and, since Jennifer lied about bleeding on it, nothing to tie her to the murder. She’d get help, carry Jen back to camp and wait. Rescue would reach them sooner than later if the clearing trend continued. Stanton could have the glove. Stanton could have Lindstrom.

  Hunching her shoulders, Anna pushed away from the snag. Jennifer had stopped crying or pursued the pastime quietly. Anna thought to check on her but didn’t want to start the waterworks again. Mostly she didn’t want to see Jennifer till she’d cooled off. She was afraid she would say something unkind. Later, when she’d rested and eaten, empathy might overcome anger. She’d call Molly. Molly would explain away weakness in blame-free psychological jargon. Anna would believe her. Posttraumatic stress disorder: Jennifer could certainly present a case for it.

  Feeling kinder already, Anna started back down the slope, following the light from her headlamp and taking courage from the hints of gray brought by the coming day.

  Another light joined hers at the same moment as a shout. “Jen! Is that you?”

  It was Stephen Lindstrom. There was a murmured exchange then another shout: “Jen!”

  Since Lindstrom wasn’t alone, Anna shouted back. “It’s Anna. Jen’s sprained or busted an ankle. Who’ve you got with you?”

  “Hugh” came with the sound of footsteps on the snow.

  Anna’s heart dropped, still Hugh was better than nothing, if only marginally.

  Even with Pepperdine’s irritating but less than murderous bulk to ease the situation, Anna was at a loss. If she sent Hugh for help, she and a crippled Jennifer would be left alone with Stephen. Should she go herself, she’d be leaving a cripple and an incompetent alone with him. If Stephen went, then he’d be out of her sight. Anna was reminded of a story problem in third-grade math involving a fox, a goose, a sack of corn and a rowboat.

  They’d all have to go together.

  “Think the two of you can carry Jennifer back without hurting her too much?” Anna asked.

  “Sounds like you’re not planning on doing any of the grunt work,” Stephen kidded her, a light punch landing on her arm.

  Anna wanted to punch him back hard for preying on Jennifer’s grief and love of Joshua but she managed only to flinch away from his touch. In the semidarkness it went unnoticed.

  “There are people for that,” she said calmly. “Large people with muscles all the way up between their ears.”

  “What were you guys doing way out here anyway?” Pepperdine asked aggressively. Still trying to make up for the incident with the Buck knife, Anna suspected. She ignored him.

  “Jen’s up the trail a ways.” She gestured up the hill and stepped aside to let them pass.

  “Stephen?” Jennifer called. She’d heard their voices.

  Anna held her breath. “Don’t, Jen, don’t do it,” she whispered to herself.

  “It be me,” Lindstrom called back cheerfully.

  “She
figured it out,” Short cried. “Anna knows.”

  Momentarily the four of them froze in a tableau: Anna, Hugh and Stephen strung out along the trail, Jennifer in her hollow of earth. Hugh broke it first, his head rocking back and forth in a parody of the dolls used to decorate the rear windows of cars. “What? Knows what? What’s going on here?” he demanded of all, and got explanations from none.

  Anna was concentrating on Lindstrom. With the dawning light, she could just make out his features. They had the closed desperate look of a cornered animal’s. Either he’d give up or he’d run. Should somebody try and stop him, he’d fight. Anna had no intention of getting in his way. There wasn’t a chance in hell she could stop him without getting badly hurt and probably not even then. Running would only buy him time and not much of that. Once onto his trail, helicopters would track him down before the day’s end.

  Stephen’s face set, his center of gravity dropped, he pivoted and sprang, lunging back down the trail the way they’d come. Anna leaped aside. Hugh wasn’t quick enough and got knocked on his butt.

  Stephen would head north and east, deeper into the Caribou Wilderness. Even with his strength and wilderness survival experience the helicopter would pick him up. Anna couldn’t but admire his courage.

  Pepperdine hauled himself to his feet. “Lindstrom killed Len?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Are you just going to let him go?” Hugh was trembling with relief or excitement. Anna couldn’t tell which. “Give me the knife, I’m going after him.”

  Anna looked at Hugh as if he’d lost his mind. She wasn’t altogether sure he hadn’t. “They’ll catch him later,” she said. “He won’t be able to get far in the snow without leaving a trail a blind man could follow.”

  “You’ll attack me but won’t chase down one of your little pals, is that it?” Hugh said.

  Anna let that pass. She wasn’t in a mood for setting any records straight. “Leave it alone, Hugh. Let’s go get John and the others and get Jennifer back to the shelter.”

  “Screw that.” Hugh wasn’t exactly frothing at the mouth but specks of saliva had formed at the meeting of his lips and he sprayed out spittle with his words. “You’ll go after him with John or Joseph but not with me. You don’t think I have the balls, do you?”

  “I have no interest in your balls or lack thereof,” Anna said.

  That was the wrong answer. Hugh exploded, one meaty fist slamming into the other. Barging down on her like an enraged rhino, he shot past, in hot pursuit of self-respect. And Stephen Lindstrom.

  “Damn it, Hugh, come back here,” Anna shouted. Either he didn’t hear or he didn’t care. Were Hugh unlucky enough to catch up with Lindstrom he was bound to get hurt. In the heat of the moment he might even get killed. Nims, a jury might excuse. Nims and Pepperdine, never.

  “Doggone it,” Anna growled. “I’ll be back,” she shouted to Jennifer.

  Lindstrom had cut back down to the wash, crossed it and headed off at an angle up the far slope. Above the bivouac the new trail pursuer and pursued blazed joined up with the path to the hot springs and the going got easier. Individual tracks became indecipherable and Anna tracked by what was not there; no fresh prints leading off the beaten trail.

  Around the thermal area much of the snow had melted and the rest would melt quickly. Stephen was hoping to lose his trail. He was a clever man, but Anna already knew that.

  At the top of the low ridge above where Lawrence had killed his badger in what seemed like the good old days, Anna heard yelling. Male and angry, it wafted over the rise separating her from the thermal lake. Evidently Hugh had cornered his quarry. What an idiot.

  Anna had been alternately walking and jogging, nursing a stitch in her side. Now she quelled the desire to sprint the last hundred yards. Exhausted, she’d be little use to anyone and a danger to herself. Forcing herself to relax and breathe, she walked through the vale and up onto the next ridge.

  Clear light was touching the last of the fog and each particle of moisture caught it. Steam roiling up from the lake, the mud pots, the fumaroles, glowed in opalescent plumes. Bright and shadowless and surreal, the lake muttered and fussed, eerie streams of color moving as if they had plans of their own.

  The yelling had stopped. No one was at the lower end of the lake where Lawrence and Anna had enjoyed their public bath. Quickly she scanned the periphery trying to penetrate the moving curtains of mist. Grunting aided her search. Eyes followed sound as a finger of wind plucked at the steam and exposed Hugh and Stephen on the top of the crumbling bluff that rose out of the boiling lake. For twenty feet beneath them gray-white earth, ridged and pitted, steam pouring from hidden vents and runnels of mud hardened over the years, fell in a ragged curtain down to the superheated water.

  Like two moose in rutting season, they were locked together, a headless beast that danced two steps forward and two steps back. Suddenly Anna felt desperately tired. She wished she had a cattle prod or a can of pepper spray. Supposedly the stuff worked on animals. This would be a good opportunity to test it out, she thought.

  Dropping into an easy jog, she took the long way around, following the ridge to where it joined with the bluff above the lake. Footing in thermal areas was too hazardous to risk unless one had to. Along the high ground trees were sparse so deadfall and stump holes weren’t much of a problem and Anna made good time.

  The shoving match was still in progress when she got there. From the look of the ground beneath the combatants’ feet, it had been going on for several minutes, a phenomenally long time to sustain a fight. The men’s breath came in gasps and grunts. Both were too engrossed to take note of her arrival.

  Standing back a relatively safe distance, Anna shouted. Neither looked up. Energy could not be spared. Locked in their grunting samba, they were working closer to the edge of the unstable bank.

  Annoyance turned to alarm and Anna eased closer. “Give it up, Hugh,” she shouted. “You’re too close to the edge.”

  Reason was a thing of the past. Stephen was probably the better fighter but Pepperdine had weight on his side and a score to settle, not with Stephen but with a world that called him Barney and wrote him off.

  Huffing like a steamroller, his boots digging up the soft soil, Pepperdine began dozing Lindstrom toward the drop.

  “Stop it!” Anna yelled.

  Pepperdine started to roar, a low rasping sound that built as he pushed. Stephen was losing ground. His boots scrabbled on the edge. Chunks of bank, riddled with holes from eons of steam percolating through, began to fall away.

  “No!” Anna shouted, running across the small clearing. “No, Hugh.” Grabbing his arm for leverage, she stomped down hard on the arch of his foot. Most of the blow was absorbed by his heavy boot but she got his attention. Pepperdine’s heavy face swung toward her. There was no lessening of hostility when his eyes met hers. Indeed, it was as if he’d been waiting for just such an opportunity. As his fist drew back Anna threw up an arm to protect herself, afraid to dodge lest she lose her footing. His knuckles glanced off her cheekbone. Falling back, hands groping for something to hold onto, she wished she’d been a little nicer to Hugh. Or killed him outright.

  Somebody shouted her name. Her right shoulder slammed down with such force the air was knocked from her lungs. Paralyzed, Anna slid downward headfirst. Sulphur fumes burned her eyes and penetrated her skin until she could taste the stuff. Breath returned in a rush and she sucked the stench of this local hell deep into her lungs.

  Slowly the sickening slide stopped. She didn’t dare move for fear of starting the process over again. Carefully, Anna opened her eyes. Head down, she was mired in mud. A dam of whitish slime had been pushed up by her shoulder and kept her from slipping down farther. Feet and legs were strung out above her. Without moving her head, she could see the tip of her knee. Their weight was trying to push her farther down; she could feel it press on her diaphragm and stomach. One arm was pinned beneath her. The mumble and pop of the lake was nearby, j
ust below where she lay. Ooze, not hot enough to burn but hot enough to remind her what waited below, soaked through the leg of her trouser.

  She shifted her arm free, hoping to drive it into the muck to stabilize her position. Even that small movement upset the equilibrium and she slid several more inches before again coming to a stop.

  “Anna?”

  It was Stephen.

  “I’m kind of busy right now. Where’s Hugh?”

  “He’s resting.”

  “Get me out of here.” For a moment she didn’t hear anything and a terrible fear that he’d simply walked away welled up in her. “Stephen!”

  “I’m here.”

  Anna couldn’t move to look up. “Get me out of here.”

  “You’ve got to listen, Anna.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Len killed Josh.”

  “So Jennifer said.”

  “Not like that. I didn’t tell her all of it. Josh wasn’t dead. Len knew it but he lit the fire anyway. He was afraid Josh would press charges. Anna, he heard him screaming but didn’t go back. That’s what he confessed.”

  “Yeah. Well. Whatever. We’ve all got our problems. Get a branch. Please. The blood’s going to my head. I’m going to pass out, Stephen.” Anna heard the note of pleading in her voice and changed the subject. “You set Jen up, Stephen. Josh’s little sister. That cancels out your defense.” Anna’d not meant to antagonize, she’d just needed to get the taste of begging out of her mouth. Triumph, if there was any, evaporated in the silence that followed. Fear took its place.

  “Stephen!” Anna shouted.

  “I never set Jen up,” Stephen said. Anna felt such a rush of gratitude that he was still there she could have cried had not every sphincter in her body been squeezed tight. “When we came up here to bathe yesterday I told her Len had killed Josh. I thought she had a right to know. Len being dead—I thought it would make her feel better somehow. If I’d known it was going to push her back into a funk I would’ve kept my mouth shut. I didn’t know she was going to try and get me off the hook or I’d’ve stopped her. I guess she needed to do something for Josh. I wouldn’t have let her, Anna, believe me.”