Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries)

by Barr, Nevada

  Clutching the knife hilt, she rose to her feet. Matching her steps to those of Jimmy—who made more noise than a herd of stampeding elk—she followed. Shadows had gone. Trees and bushes showed black in a colorless world barely illuminated by cold gray sky. Anna angled away from the camp on a trajectory that would intersect Jimmy’s racket. Within minutes she saw him.

  Bent over a fallen log, he was trying to tug off a rotting limb. His back was to her as he worked it back and forth. Knife in hand, she stepped from behind the screen of trees she’d kept between them and walked quickly toward where he huffed and struggled.

  “Damn,” he gasped and plunked his butt down on the log, wiping his forehead on the sleeve of his coat.

  Cloaked only by dusk, Anna was directly in his line of sight. The breath in her throat stopped. Her heart thudded. The rush of her breathing roared like a chain saw in her ears. A childish desire to close her eyes, and thus render herself more invisible, was strong. The need to keep watching was stronger.

  Jimmy sighed, turning his head to the left and right, his beard wagging over his chest. He was not expecting a human shape; his mind was on consumable fuels, and he was tired. Dark clothing and the black hood sufficed. His eyes passed over the shadow Anna had become and lit on a tangle of downed dry pine branches several yards farther into the woods.

  Motionless, she waited as he gathered sticks and twigs. When his arms were nearly full she began a slow creep toward him, timing her movements to his tugs and yanks. Her breath sighed out. Thought ceased. Movement became as fluid and natural as that of a snake through familiar grasses. Her heart resumed a steady beat. Her ears stopped roaring. Nothing but the ribs in his back over his heart and the stalking existed. The knife was not in her hand but of her hand.

  When she was scarcely more than a yard away, Jimmy’s pile of sticks began to slide. Trying to save his harvest, he spun to the left. Before he could face her, Anna sprang, the knife held over her head in the pose Anthony Perkins made famous in Psycho. Putting what strength she had behind it, she brought it down on the right side of Jimmy’s back, hoping to plunge through to his heart.

  The knife was big, but it wasn’t sharp. The weapon was cheap, probably worn more for effect than use. The blade cut through the heavy blanketing of the coat and sliced into the thug’s skinny back. Already slightly bent over, Jimmy toppled forward, dragging the knife with him. The hilt twisted in Anna’s hand as the blade scraped along his scapula, then jammed in a rib. As he fell, Jimmy turned to see his attacker. The hilt was wrenched from Anna’s fingers as he fell onto his back.

  Flinging her body on top of his, she drove him into the ground. He was squirming like a snake under a boot. “Die, goddammit,” Anna whispered.

  He opened his mouth to shout. Anna drove her elbow between his jaws and jammed down hard. Fists pounded at her face; fingers clawed at her hands. Beneath her, his body bucked like that of a man in the throes of passion. She rode him and cursed him in a steady whisper, and the knife worked its way farther into his body.

  His teeth ground ineffectually at the sleeve of her jacket. She rammed her elbow deeper until she heard him choking. The thrashing became more feeble. Finally it stilled. Anna lay atop him, a demon lover. She was gasping for breath. Sweat dripped from her face into the dead man’s beard.

  Until the last of the light had drained from the day, and she could no longer see the outline of his face, she did not move. When she finally rose from her kill, his teeth ripped the elbow of her jacket as pulled it free of his mouth. The fabric was wet with spittle and redolent of tobacco juice.

  She could not see the body. She couldn’t even see her own feet. She looked in the direction of the group. A fire blazed. Sean was shouting Jimmy’s name. Idly she wondered how long that had been going on. Time had folded in on itself and gone as black as the night.

  Then her head was back, mouth open. Howling poured from her throat as primeval as that of the first wolf. A second howl joined hers, Wily. Then, from a distance, the answering howls of a pack.

  When she’d done, her face was wet. Whether it was from sweat or tears, she didn’t know.

  In this strange, new, ancient, familiar world there seemed to be no difference between the two.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Heath’s insides felt fragile, as endangered as a china teacup in an avalanche. There was no part of her that didn’t hurt, but for her legs, and they complained with quivers, kicks, and that unsettling feeling that was almost pain. Rick Shaw, prison, tormenter, and, very nearly, executioner, was lying on its side like a child’s hastily discarded bicycle. Hours had passed since her near-drowning, yet Heath felt the pull of the cold river on her mind, a siren song urging her to give up, accept the inevitability that these men were going to take her life.

  There was a restful seduction in the idea of letting go, sliding into dark waters. Without Elizabeth, she might have given in. A child kept a woman anchored to life. A mother might not go down fighting for herself, but for her child …

  The fire helped Heath pretend she was whole and brave and good. Light in the darkness, the theme for so many books and songs, was a potent healer of damaged souls. Heath drew the heat in through her pores. Metaphorically, she dragged herself upright, shoulders squared, rifle at ready, eyes clear, nose to the grindstone, ear to the ground, and all the other nonsense people used to buoy themselves up.

  “Think of somebody worse off than you.” She heard her aunt’s voice in her mind. “Then help them. It always works for me.”

  Worse off than an aching, starving, thirsty para lost in the wilderness with four of the creepiest individuals ever to crawl out from under a rock?

  Heath’s eyes sought Leah where she and Katie sat cross-legged close to the fire. They neither touched nor talked. Katie had her thumb in her mouth. Heath hoped she was gnawing on it rather than sucking it, reverting to infantilism.

  Leah was worse off than she; Heath had the joy of Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth, hands held out to the fire, knelt between the Hendrickses. Exhaustion had quenched the rebel flame in her eyes. The lure of victimhood was working its wiles on the others as it was on Heath.

  “Up,” she commanded to the girls and Leah. “Up and to work. It’s going to be colder than a well digger’s hind pockets tonight. We need a bed of boughs between our butts and the freezing ground, and a back to catch the heat. Can we borrow your knife?” she asked Sean.

  Sean was propped against the trunk of an aspen. Denuded of leaves, in the firelight, the branches reached for the sky like skeletal arms. Sean had not moved since he’d lit the fire with Heath’s lighter. Freed from his shoes, his mangled feet poked toward the flames.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he said without opening his eyes. Heath winked at E and was rewarded with a slight dimpling, the precursor to a smile.

  Sean believed he’d lost his knife crossing the river.

  “Right,” Heath said, pushing her luck to stimulate herself and her friends. “Never mind. We’ll make do.” Quickly, before Sean could decide to get to his sore feet and come kill her, Heath addressed the women. “Just get what you can.”

  “One of you steps out of the light, one of you is shot,” the dude said.

  “Buddy system,” Elizabeth said, some of the punkiness back. “A new twist.”

  The dude didn’t respond.

  Leah and Elizabeth gleaned enough pine branches to pile up a hint of shelter at their backs, and enough leaves to make a soft bed. Without a word, Katie took the snuggest place in the middle. Leah slumped on the far edge, watching her daughter from the corners of her eyes. A good sign, Heath thought. At least there was acknowledgment of existence.

  Building their nest had not lifted the film of despair from any faces.

  “Hot drinks,” Heath said. “The wilderness panacea.” The others looked at her as if she’d gone mad. “Rocks, get me rocks small enough to put through the mouth of a water bottle.” Under the eyes of the gunmen and the urgings of Heath, Leah and E shook
off their lethargy and rose to do her bidding.

  “Katie?”

  Katie glanced up, still chewing on her thumb, and looked at her mother through the hair fallen around her face. “Come help me find small stones?” Leah’s tone was new to Heath. It was no longer quite so vague and dreamy. There was a note of pleading in it.

  Katie shook her head and returned her attention to her autocannibalism.

  Putting rocks in the fire, fishing them out, cleaning them as best they could, and dropping them into the bottle finally allowed them the illusion of control. Looking far more alive than they had, they curled up together in their relatively soft, warm nest and passed marginally hot water from one to the other.

  When the last of the warm water was gone, Katie and Elizabeth curled up between Leah and Heath. Elizabeth pillowed her head in Heath’s lap. Extra weight and lack of movement were going to wreak havoc on the flesh of Heath’s backside, but she didn’t care. Tonight she couldn’t drum up a lot of sympathy for a part of her anatomy that had gone AWOL. It wasn’t often a mother got to cradle her teenaged child.

  “Where’s Jimmy?” the dude asked suddenly. Though Jimmy had gone at dusk, and it was now full dark, he was just now realizing the little man was missing. So was Heath. Even Sean and Reg seemed not to have noticed that he’d never returned from gathering firewood.

  “Taking a piss,” Sean said indifferently.

  “Long piss,” the dude said.

  Reg flashed a look of alarm as he rose to his feet, the Walther coming out of his pouch like a faithful joey.

  “Jimmy!” Sean shouted halfheartedly. “Hey! Jimmy boy!”

  Into the listening silence came the howling of a wolf. The sound knifed into the camp cold as an arctic wind. Heath saw the men freeze as it touched them. Another howl followed. Heath knew that howl, or thought she did. Wily. The forest stopped breathing. Then, from far away, came an eerie answering wail that built from a single voice to a chorus.

  Heath yearned to howl with them: Anna and Wily and real wolves. Given twenty-four hours with the dude and his gang, even the real wolves seemed like guardian angels. Neither Katie nor Elizabeth woke.

  “Wolves. Jesus fuck,” Reg said. Holding his pistol in both hands, arms locked at the elbows, he turned a slow circle, trying to see into the darkness beyond the fire. “Jimmy ain’t comin’ back.” He shoved the barrel of the pistol into his waistband and began snatching down dead branches and throwing them on the fire.

  “Find him,” the dude said. Sean started putting on his shoes with a slowness that would have done a recalcitrant four-year-old proud.

  “Find him your own self,” Reg retorted. “I’m not leavin’ the fire for that little freak. It’s dark, Dude, in case you haven’t noticed. Even if he wasn’t dog meat, we’d never find him.”

  The dude took a burning brand from the fire and walked several steps into the dark beneath the surrounding trees.

  “Ain’t like them torches in Hollywood movies, is it?” Reg sneered, as the branch flamed out, embers dropping to the ground.

  “Reg’s right,” Sean said tentatively. “We aren’t going to find Jimmy. If he isn’t dead, he’ll come back. If he is dead…”

  The dude threw the smoldering wood back onto the fire. Tilting his head back, he stared skyward as if already awaiting the plane.

  “Hey, Jimmy!” Sean shouted again.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Reg snapped and sat down with his back to the fire, the Walther on his knee.

  The shouting awakened Katie and Elizabeth.

  “It’s okay,” Heath said. “Nothing bad has happened. At least not to us.”

  “It’s okay,” Leah echoed, her comment aimed between her daughter and Heath’s.

  Katie blinked with confusion, then lay down again.

  Jimmy did not return.

  “I’ll take first watch,” the dude said after a while. Sean laid down next to the fire, tucked his hands between his thighs, and slept. Reg did not.

  Through the distortion of the heat, Heath watched his head repeatedly droop as he nodded off, then jerk upright, the gun bobbing to attention and making a short arc covering the darkness. Every few minutes he threw more wood onto the fire.

  Heath enjoyed the heat, ignored her hunger, and willed her worthless legs not to hop about like demented frogs and disturb Elizabeth. For once, they did as she begged and were still. It took an even greater act of will to keep herself from stroking E’s hair, or otherwise pestering her. The love of a child turned out to be a much fiercer thing than Heath had expected when she’d adopted the girl. She would have felt guilty about not loving Wily as much, except, she suspected, Wily felt much the same as she did about Elizabeth.

  Leah, her black-framed glasses halfway down her nose, gazed at the fire with unfocused eyes. The flames lent color to her cheeks. Whether it was real or a trick of the light, Heath was relieved. Leah’s paleness worried her at the best of times. This last twenty-four hours she’d looked like a ghost.

  “Tired?” Heath asked, too worn out herself to care that the question was idiotic.

  “Not bad” was the surprising reply. “There’s two of us and only one of you,” she reminded Heath. “Three, if you count Katie.”

  “I count Katie,” Heath said, in case the child was only feigning sleep.

  “Things have been … So much has … I should have done more,” Leah said, sounding lost and angry.

  “More than just save my life a few times a day?” Heath asked.

  “How did the chair work from the inside?” Leah asked, showing her first true animation of the evening. Heath would have thought that would be the last question on her mind after fighting with the contraption all day.

  For a while they talked design and function. The normalcy was a balm. Leah’s murmuring voice was soothing. Heath felt herself relaxing to an extent. Just as she was thinking how nice it would be if only had something to eat, Leah whispered, “I picked some mushrooms.”

  Reaching into the pocket screened by her daughter’s sleeping form, Leah drew out three delicious-looking lobster mushrooms and several deer mushrooms. “I’ve been keeping an eye out.” The lenses of her glasses flashed as she shot a surreptitious look toward Sean, who was nearest, then the dude, who, back to the fire, continued to search the scrap of sky tangled in the tree branches. The man had an uncanny ability to make Heath feel he was watching even when his back was turned.

  Leah pinched a small white mushroom from the pocket of her shirt and set it on the ground near the other mushrooms but not touching any of them. “Amanita,” she whispered and looked meaningfully at the men. “Destroyer Angel.”

  For a moment, Heath’s fatigued brain couldn’t make sense of the word. Then she remembered the previous night, a million years ago, Leah lecturing on which mushrooms were food and which were poison. The Destroyer Angel was exceedingly deadly. A smile plucked up the corners of Heath’s lips, and was answered by a grim smile from Leah. Getting the mushroom from Leah’s pocket into a thug’s gullet would probably prove impossible. For this minute, though, it was enough to know they had a lethal weapon. The mushroom was like a lottery ticket. Odds were a billion to one a person would win, but it bought a day’s worth of dreams.

  The wind changed direction. Smoke blew into Heath’s eyes. When it cleared, she saw Sean was awake and staring at them. One toe stuck out of his worn socks like a great white grub. His leather jacket was unzipped. His belly pushed toward the flames, straining the fabric around his shirt buttons. In the apertures between the edges of the fabric, white flesh and dark stiff hairs showed. Letting her gaze pass over the place where he was, Heath tried to make it seem she had not met his eyes.

  Sean, like the boogeyman, or certain insane people, might become more dangerous if one made eye contact.

  She’d not been quick enough. Whatever the mental switch direct eye contact flipped, flipped in Sean’s brain. Laboriously, he rose to his stocking feet, then hobbled gingerly until he was between them and the fire,
blocking light and heat metaphorically and literally. Grunting, he lowered himself to the ground. He arranged his feet by picking up his legs and moving them, much in the same way Heath did. She hoped infection had set in and the pain was unbearable.

  A halo of orange fire surrounded his head, throwing his face into shadow. On his cheeks, wider than the back of his skull, gray bristles of a two-day-old beard shone like tiny satanic candles.

  “You ladies look all comfy-like,” he said.

  Heath had no idea what to say to that. Did he want to chat with his victims? Was he bored? Lonely? Did he think they would care? Or was his plan to evict them from the warmth of the nest they’d made and take it for his loathsome self?

  “All curled up like a bunch of puppies, nice and warm,” he said and grinned. His teeth should have been crooked and stained with brown, like the bad guys’ in cowboy movies. Instead, they were white and straight. If they hadn’t been so tiny, it would have been a Pepsodent smile. Heath imagined how it would look after being smashed in with a steel-toed boot.

  “What do you want?” she asked. She’d wanted to sound cold and imperious, the way Anna did when she suspected park visitors of killing her rattlesnakes or annoying her coyotes. What came out was the barest frightened whisper.

  By the greater exposure of the undersized Hollywood molars, she guessed Sean liked it very much. Had her throat not been so dry, she might have spit in his face. What could he do to her? Kidnap her? Cripple her? Send her to bed without supper?

  Elizabeth was what he could do to her.

  Heath’s throat grew even dryer. No longer sure she could manage even a whisper, she forced herself to hold his gaze. He didn’t like that. Smile shrank, eyes slitted.

  “How about I snuggle right in there between those two little bitches and get me warmed up? Puppies—bitches, get it? I’ll be the big dog.” He laughed.

  Heath did not. She was not averse to his snuggling in, if all he intended was to sleep, because it was a sleep from which he would never wake. The moment he’d said it, the lovely image of her two hands pulling a bootlace tightly around his neck and holding it until he was dead shined like a magic lantern on the walls of her mind.