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

by Barr, Nevada

  People who held up the Bible and proclaimed their belief in God, then denied Lucifer and his demons, were cherry picking. God didn’t work like that. Charles had always known he couldn’t take only the good parts of anything. Without darkness, light was meaningless. Without Satan, God was nothing but a schizophrenic with a cruel streak. Fools asked why God let bad things happen to good people. That was a slap in the face of God. God didn’t let bad things happen; the devil made them happen. The only other choice was that God was a monster. Anyone who believed that might as well stick his head in the oven and turn on the gas.

  There were angels, and there were monsters. Since Michael died, Charles had known he was fated to be one of the latter. Monsters were depicted as loving evil, craving it. It wasn’t true. Insane men—or lowlifes like Sean—loved and craved evil. For those fated to it, evil was just the job they got when the time came for them to work for a living. For those who were good at their work, life could be pleasant, joyful even. This was important to realize, because the next part was true as well. Those like him would burn in hell. That was the deal. That was what they signed on for, whether they admitted it or not.

  Charles was at peace with that. He was not at peace with the idea of demons loose in the woods.

  “Dude, we gotta look for Jimmy.” Sean was awake.

  Speaking of demons, Charles thought as he turned to look at him. Sean was an ugly man. Ugly in face, in body, and in mind. Myopic, overweight, shorter than average: He’d been born either to serve Satan as a half-assed monster, or the Lord as a court jester. “So look for Jimmy,” Charles said. “As soon as the plane shows us the way, we go, with or without you.”

  Sean didn’t leap up to search. Reg didn’t move at all. Sean put on his pointy-toed boots, then stepped a foot or two from where he’d spent the night to pee against a tree.

  “Ain’t no plane comin’,” Reg said darkly.

  The plane was coming; Charles had no doubt about that. Bernie would hire the entire Canadian air force if he had to. Bernie needed not only what was in Mrs. Hendricks’s wallet but what was in her brain.

  The cripple was shaking her daughter. When she didn’t wake up, the cripple began to panic, shaking her harder. Judging by the girl’s face, she’d been beaten within an inch of her life. Charles was good at that. If he’d wanted her dead or badly injured, he wouldn’t have used his fists. Even pulling his punches, and striking where there was lots of flesh to bruise and swell, his knuckles were sore. Females were more terrified by the appearance of a thing than the thing itself. It would be interesting to see if, without a mirror around to let the girl know how bad she looked, she would react differently.

  “Sorry,” the cripple said after she’d frightened the girl out of a sound sleep. “The airplane will be coming. We have to be ready to move.” Too bad about the legs, Charles thought; there was nothing wrong with her mind. She harbored no illusions about what would happen if she lagged behind.

  Charles scrutinized the sky as the hostages executed the screen-and-pee dance, relieving themselves. Sean wasn’t evincing his earlier avidity, but he wasn’t looking away either. The cripple, Charles noticed, didn’t join the festivities. After yesterday, she might not have the strength for the process. Maybe she’d get lucky and they’d cross another small river. This time she could urinate before she drowned.

  The faint buzzing of a small-engine aircraft caught his ear. Minutes later the plane flew over, low and slow, the nose wheel barely clearing the treetops. It was a single engine, a Cessna 182, high-winged, white, with a red stripe down the fuselage. Its wheels were shielded by sleek metal covers that came to a point in the back as if blown by the wind. The number painted on its side was Z552IF. The pilot wagged the wings. The nose was pointed at a right angle from the brightness that was the rising sun in the east. Charles’s back was to the sun; the pilot was leading them north.

  Reg and Sean were leaping, waving their arms, and shouting like maniacs.

  The cripple’s daughter fetched the one-wheeled contraption from where it had fallen the night before. As she bent, she winced. Charles had cracked her right third and fourth ribs.

  With Hendricks helping, they began loading the cripple. They were moving more slowly than on the first morning. Charles would have to drive them harder. He had no interest in another night playing Boy Scout leader with this bunch.

  The Hendricks child rose from where she’d been sitting, arms around her shins, face hidden on her knees. She walked between the rifle and Elizabeth. Stopping at her mother’s side, she asked, “What can I do to help?”

  That was a new slant. Charles had assumed this one had been born for the dark side. He’d give her to Sean tonight, he decided. No sense in letting her grow a spine—or a conscience—on his watch.

  Again the plane flew over, pointing its nose in the same direction.

  “We move,” Charles said and walked into the trees, listening to the scratching and cursing as Sean and Reg hurried the hostages to catch up.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Insulated by Jimmy’s coat and hat, Anna and Wily slept comparatively well. The coat was roomy enough that Anna could button it around Wily’s bony shanks as he lay on her chest, his head on her shoulder, his broken leg supported by her arm. They woke before dawn, refilled their water bottle at the little river, then, muscles warmed by movement, headed toward the camp, where they could watch the others. Wily had grown accustomed to the splint and navigating on three legs. He was walking fairly well but tired easily.

  Anna didn’t. She should have, she realized as she scooped him up and tucked him under her arm. He struggled briefly to prove he was as strong as ever and didn’t need to be carried like a puppy. It was all for show. Anna knew he was glad of the lift.

  Ten yards from the fire, Anna found a hollow where she and Wily could lie unseen. By raising her head and moving a low fir bough, she could keep an eye on the kidnappers. A camp of Neanderthals must have looked much like that of the thugs. Neanderthals probably did a better job of it, though, with mastodon steak for breakfast and a hide or two to keep the cold off.

  The long-awaited plane flew over, filling the clearing with noise and metal, then vanishing, the roar of the engine drifting behind it.

  Zulu five five two Ivan Frank: Anna committed the plane’s number to memory. The number on an airplane was more telling even than the license plate number on an automobile, and less easily changed or disguised.

  “We move,” the dude said and pointed in the direction the plane had disappeared.

  North by northwest, as near as Anna could tell.

  Reg mouthed off.

  “Stay or go,” the dude said.

  From where Anna lay in hiding, the dude’s irises looked like steel ball bearings.

  Reg chose to go.

  Sean limped a few yards into the woods and shouted, “Jimmy! Jimmy boy!” Evidently that was all his conscience required, as he limped back without any serious attempt to find his comrade. Anna’s efforts to hide the body had been wasted. Even bordering on the feral state herself, it hadn’t occurred to her that not even a rudimentary search would be attempted.

  Heath was in the rickshaw. The plastic of the seat was scratched all to hell, the canoe paddles looked like they’d been used as sharpening posts by lion cubs, and the spokes of the wheels were prickly with sticks and grass, but it was still in operating condition. Anna was impressed by its durability.

  Sean shoved the barrel of Jimmy’s rifle between Heath’s shoulder blades for no other reason than congenital cussedness. Elizabeth and Leah began pulling the rig. Trees swallowed hostages and thugs alike; their din faded. The distant song of the rushing rivulet insinuated itself through the still branches.

  Giving them time to get well ahead, Anna lay on her back beside Wily and studied the tree canopy. Less than thirty-six hours ago, she had been on a pastoral junket with friends, floating on the Fox River, stargazing. The sky had been clear, the autumn colors rich and ripe. There was food to be
eaten, wine to be drunk, and three idyllic days of peace and camaraderie to look forward to.

  Staring into dull pewter, scraped by winter-black aspen branches, it was hard to get her mind around time and space. In the cold light, fragments of leaf color on the maples were faded and sad-looking, spruce boughs more black than green. In the faces of battered and desperately fragile hostages, who existed at the whim and pleasure of a psychopath and his acolytes, Anna could scarcely recognize the merry canoeists she held in memory.

  For thirty years Americans had been waist-deep in fictional psychopaths, bizarrely creative serial killers with motives as labyrinthine as any Greek minotaur could wish. The dude appeared devoid of creativity. The dude was as direct as a rabid skunk, single minded and single purposed, interested only in that which concerned him directly. From the outside, he seemed no more malicious than a hammerhead shark. A primeval life-form, designed to feed, a form that would die if it stopped moving forward.

  The dude was taking Leah and the others to a place where they would be met by a plane. The thugs were only the hired help. Who planned the kidnapping, and intended to reap the greater benefits? Leah was so very filthily rich, money alone could be motive. Still, from among many exceedingly wealthy individuals, she had been targeted.

  Kidnapping for ransom was not an American pastime. It was rare enough that the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby was still spoken of. Of all crimes, kidnapping was one of the most abhorrent to Americans. Kidnapping a rich, white, respected, female engineer would bring the law howling down on the perpetrators. Therefore the payoff had to be very tempting indeed.

  Perhaps a payoff greater than money?

  Lying in the fragrant damp of Minnesota’s woods, dressed in a coat stiffened with the blood of a dead man, Anna found money an alien concept. In the real world a hot bath, an apple, a cup of tea: Those things were real. Money was as meaningless as hula hoops and nose rings. Few lived in a real world anymore. They’d made a new world where symbols were more valuable than the things they stood for.

  The airplane buzzed over again, lining up with the dude and the hostages to keep pointing the way. Anna lay perfectly still. Red-and-black squares weren’t protective coloration anywhere outside a checkers tournament. If the pilot saw her, he might assume she was just a thug who liked alone time for meditation and spiritual rejuvenation. Since there was no phone or radio contact between air and ground, it would be a while before he could give her away.

  Wily plopped his head on her shoulder and whuffed a great sigh into her ear. They lay in comfortable companionship until the third passage of the plane.

  “Ready?” Anna asked. Wily sat up, his hindquarters moving stiffly. Anna followed suit. Without waiting for him to ask, she lifted him out of the hollow so he wouldn’t have to fight his way up the dirt hill with only one operative hind leg. They worked their way toward the camp, each seeking information in his or her own way.

  Dog nose paid off before human eye.

  Anna went to where he sniffed with such interest. Half buried in the needles and leaves was the cell phone. “Good boy,” Anna said automatically. She’d forgotten the black kidnapper had snatched and thrown the dude’s cell phone. She slipped it into her pocket with the .22 rounds. Farther along, higher up, in a different place, there might well be a signal. 911. Lovely numbers, Anna thought.

  The thugs hadn’t bothered to put out the fire. Squatting near it to enjoy the heat, she scanned the area. Wily leaned against a tree. The posture was dictated by his desire to take strain off his broken leg. That didn’t change the fact that he looked like a canine version of Frank Sinatra at his insouciant Rat Pack best.

  “What a fine party it’s been,” Anna said.

  Wily thought his own thoughts.

  Grass was trampled in a short straight line where the dude had paced. The earth had been torn up by Reg’s forages for burnable fuel. Nothing had been left behind. No gifts from the girls. The thugs hadn’t had anything with them but guns. How much ammunition, Anna wondered? Reg had gone through at least a clip.

  Turning before the fire like a roasting pig, she considered making it bigger. It was too damp, she decided. The cloud cover too low for the smoke to be visible. Even if she managed to get a good show of smoke, with recent rains the fire wouldn’t spread. The U.S. Forest Service would let it burn itself out.

  “Nothing for it but to follow the scent, good little doggies,” Anna said to Wily. He cocked an ear and eased away from the tree.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The plane flew over seven more times. On the final two passes, they didn’t see it, only heard it above the thickening clouds. The terrain they traversed was no different than it had been the previous day. Heath worried about Elizabeth. The pain in her ribs was evident. Bruising and a split lip made internal damage seem too possible. Leah, and occasionally Katie, tried to take up the slack, but Katie was not strong and was unused to work. Leah was worn nearly transparent. Half blind with fatigue, Heath bulled through, running on the bare bones of willpower.

  The only thing she was thankful for was Sean. Sean and his rotten feet slowed the party more than Rick Shaw.

  Reaching the dude’s destination was bound to be bad. If evil persons wanted to move the victims from point A to point B, it was because point B was better for them and worse for the victims. Villains seldom transported their prey to more public spaces with better lighting.

  Still, old habits died hard. Heath was pleased that she was no longer the one holding up progress, the weakest link. Her days of being the leader in physical trials had not ended when she’d abruptly hit the ground. In rehab she competed with other people, competed with herself, competed for fun and respect. Things that had been important when she was fully able were important now. All that changed was the arena.

  Losing use of her legs, though a major alteration in her life, strangely enough wasn’t as big a change—or as daunting a challenge—as having a child. Losing a child was unthinkable. Heath had tried groveling to no avail. Next time—should there be a next time—what? There was no trying the dude’s patience; he had none. No appealing to his better nature or humanity. Those did not exist either.

  The only appeal he’d responded to was when Jimmy, believing they were redeemable for cash, begged him to take Heath and E. Heath suspected it was nothing as normal as greed that drove him. More likely he needed to keep his fellow felons cohesive and submissive. Heath doubted they’d survive another hour once they outlived their usefulness.

  Thirty more minutes passed. An eternity of striving.

  The plane did not return.

  The forest around them ended. Ahead lay a black-and-gray mausoleum of what had once been an ecosystem. Inches of gray ash covered the ground. Tree trunks were black and scored like coal. Quiescent, and sinister as alligators, logs lay beneath a sea of ash. Teeth of stone, black with soot, poked from gray gums of hills.

  As the seven of them traversed this T. S. Eliot world, their feet churned up eddies of featherlike ash that coated the inside of the nose and clung on the back of the throat.

  Twenty more minutes slogged past without the airplane returning to show them the way. The dude’s pace slowed to a crawl. Sean, lamed by blisters, swore and groaned at every step. E was white-faced except where the dude’s fist had left its mark. Her right eye was black, the lashes glued together with dried seepage. The angry red-purple faded as it flowed down her cheek in a rash of blood-clot freckles. Her split lip had opened. Blood made a single cinematic trail down her chin.

  The left side of E’s face was relatively whole, but made horrific by the cut on her forehead. Blood had streamed over brow and cheek nearly to her throat. Long since dried and crusted, flakes had fallen away until the stain took on the appearance of an old rotting abrasion. Ashes clung in tatters to hair, skin, and clothes.

  They all looked like zombies in a postapocalyptic horror movie.

  Thin drizzle began leaking from the sullen sky. Wet, burned lichen peeled from boulders in
a parody of skin peeling from a body. Drizzle turned to rain. Great oily drops fell, thick and slow as treacle, leaving scabrous-looking spots on charred wood and scarred stone.

  Heath realized they must be trekking through part of the burn that had ruined the campground they’d planned on using. They were somewhere in the thousands of acres of burned area that ended at the Fox River.

  The moon, the mall, Disney World: Where they were was irrelevant as long as they were under the control of the dude.

  He stopped. They stopped. All listened for the plane. Sean took the opportunity to sit, dropping to the ground with all the grace of a puppet whose strings have been cut. Leah and Elizabeth stood in what would have been the traces had they been mules.

  Heath reached out to tug herself another half a foot forward with the aid of a burned black claw of a limb. Realizing she did it because she was afraid if she stopped she could never get going again, she forced herself to drop her arm.

  “We wait here,” the dude said.

  “This is fucking nowhere, man,” Reg growled. “It’s got nothin’. No water, nothin’. We got nothin’ to make a fire with. It’s all burned. I say we keep going.”

  “The plane isn’t coming back today,” the dude said. “The clouds are too low. The pilot can’t see to fly. It’ll lift tomorrow, and we’ll go on.”

  “We got a couple hours’ light. Let’s go on now,” Reg insisted.

  Heath hoped the dude would punch him a few times as he had Elizabeth. He didn’t.

  “Mom, want out of that thing?” Elizabeth asked.

  “God, yes,” Heath said. The exhaustion she had been holding at bay flooded her words. E’s face screwed up the way it had when she was a little thing and trying not to cry. “I mean, why thank you, E. I confess I am growing weary of sitting in Mr. Shaw’s lap.” She made her voice light and mocking. The effort was akin to lifting a compact car.

  To a certain extent the act was a success. Elizabeth’s face unscrewed. Heath could tell it was taking her daughter as much willpower not to cry as it was Heath not to sound like she was about to pass out. At present, reality was a bitch. They were pretending to be stronger and braver than they were.