by Barr, Nevada
“Yes,” Anna said.
“Silly-looking demon,” he muttered and closed his eyes.
“Is he dead?” It was Elizabeth; she’d come most of the way from the trees to the battleground.
“Getting there,” Anna said. “Don’t go near him. Dibs on his pants. E, check Katie for a pulse. Her carotid. You know how to do it.”
Elizabeth knelt by Katie’s head. She put two fingers on her trachea, then slid them down to the carotid. “Alive,” she reported.
“Thank God,” Leah said simply. “Heath…?” Leah let the question trail off. What did one ask? Did you find your mom’s body?
“Alive,” Anna said. “Shot in the leg.”
Relief so intense it brought tears to her eyes startled Leah. She hadn’t known she cared so much. “Will you untie us now?” she asked Anna.
“I can’t,” Anna admitted. “Can you do it, E?”
From Leah’s viewpoint at ground level, Anna leaned as badly as the tower in Pisa. “Why don’t you sit down?” she asked.
“Can’t,” Anna said.
Elizabeth sawed through the fabric that tied Leah’s hands together with the sharp edge of the piece of metal she’d salvaged. “Get Katie?” Leah asked. “I can work on my ankles. Why can’t you sit down?”
“Won’t be able to get up,” Anna said. Now the tower was leaning in the opposite direction. “Got to go back for Heath. Need to eat something. Have to—”
“Momma?”
“Katie’s come around,” Elizabeth said unnecessarily. Leah believed she would have heard that beautiful word ringing like a steeple bell if Katie had whispered it into the wind on the backside of Saturn.
“I’m here, Katie-did.” She crawled quickly to her daughter’s side. “Here I am.” Katie’s eyes were open.
“Check the pupils,” Anna said in a wispy voice. “See if they’re the same size.”
Leah held Katie’s chin in her hand and, without moving the child’s neck, looked into her eyes. “They are!” She was as proud as if she’d invented pupils, as if her child were the first child in the universe to have two of the same size.
“Hands are free,” Elizabeth announced. “I have to go back and check on Mom. You can keep my scrap to do her feet.” Rising, she dropped the triangle of aluminum beside Leah and trotted off. Trotted, Leah noticed. She wondered if she’d be able to get up more than an old-lady shuffle.
“I’m going behind you,” Leah said to Katie. “I’ll be right here behind you. I’m going to cut your hands loose, okay?”
“Mom, I’m not five years old, you know,” Katie said.
She was going to be all right, Leah thought.
A loud thump brought her eyes up from her work on Katie’s bonds.
Anna had pitched forward onto the ground. The gun was still clutched in her hand.
FIFTY-FOUR
Anna was in ecstasy. Leah and the girls had moved both her and Heath to the warmth of the thugs’ camp. There was food. Using a plastic spoon to prove she was civilized, she shoveled cold Wolf chili with beans into her mouth from a can held between her thighs. Aptly named and delicious: Anna promised she would find out who the chef was and see if Leah could get him canonized while she was bribing the Catholic Church for the release of the dude’s brother’s soul.
Not only was she eating, there was coffee, real coffee. Elizabeth had a pot brewing on a Coleman stove so old, Anna hadn’t seen its like in twenty years. Food and coffee, and trousers: Anna was wearing pants. True, they were too long and too big and belonged to a dead man, but then, she was getting used to wearing dead men’s clothes. Heath had argued against stripping the corpse, saying it was too gruesome a task for Elizabeth, Katie, or even Leah to be made to do. Once it became clear Anna would have the dude’s pants or she’d claim her own back, Heath decided it wouldn’t scar them too deeply.
Elizabeth and Katie were still young enough to retain some of the love of the macabre natural to most kids. They didn’t seem to mind a bit. At any rate, doing it hadn’t damaged Elizabeth’s appetite any. She’d polished off a bag of Doritos and was rifling through the box in search of tasty morsels. Leah and Katie, who had eaten breakfast, were out scouring the field around the body trying to find the cell phone the dude had kicked from under Katie’s nose. Wily lay near the food box, trusting E to share whatever she found.
Heath was eating a deli sandwich. Her color was better, the leg wasn’t bleeding, and she was wrapped from the chest down in the coats of criminals. Warmth, food, and blood flow to the heart.
The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and everybody was alive who should be. Anna thought she couldn’t get any happier when Katie called, “Found it!”
“Do it, Katie!” Leah called from twenty yards away, where she’d been picking through the matted grass and weeds.
Katie dialed a one with her nose and they all cheered. Autumn was glorious, but it should have been spring, Anna thought, hunting Easter eggs, rebirth, the return of the sun, baskets of candy and flowers. Katie handed the phone to her mom, and as Leah talked, the two of them walked back to the camp. Neither gave the dude’s corpse a glance.
Anna knew that the time for nightmares would come. That she would press her face into Paul’s shoulder and speak of the unspeakable things she had done, that she’d be put on paid leave, her badge and gun taken until the incident had been investigated, that Katie would wake up screaming, imagining Sean’s hands on her body, his brains splattered on her face. Heath would have health complications for a long time from what her body had suffered. She would shudder at the sight of swift rivers. A scar would mark her cheekbone, and another her arm where the dude had burned her. Elizabeth, whom Anna had most feared for because she had suffered a similar trauma as a child, seemed best able to handle what had transpired. This time she wasn’t a little girl; this time she had fought and won. Elizabeth would be made stronger.
Leah, too, had been made stronger, Anna believed. Before, she seemed oddly out of focus. Anna felt as if she viewed Leah through gauze, as if her colors were unsaturated. Walking over the weeds, her daughter beside her, she was in living color, hair black as a crow’s wing, white skin, livid red and purple bruises, the lenses of her glasses catching and reflecting the green of the field. No one would get off scot-free, but none of them would be destroyed by the experience either.
“The cavalry is on the way,” Leah announced as they arrived.
“What did you tell them?” Anna asked, talking with her mouth full because she could.
“Just that we had been kidnapped, had gotten free, and needed emergency medical attention for trauma and gunshot wounds, that you were shot in the arm, Heath in the leg, and that Heath was a para.”
“Nothing about all the dead guys?” Elizabeth asked.
“I lost them before I got to that part,” Leah said.
“Good,” Anna said. “Some stories are too long to tell on the phone.”
“You lost them?” Heath sounded alarmed.
“They know where we are. That was first. Then, as I was telling them about the injuries, the battery went dead. When the dude—Charlie—kicked it, he broke the case. That may or may not have anything to do with anything,” Leah said as she collapsed by the smoldering fire.
“He was messing with the phone all night,” Katie said. “Probably surfing for porn. Will we all be arrested for murder?” she asked Anna.
“You sound like you’d relish the experience,” E commented.
“It would be something to talk about in homeroom,” Katie said.
“There will be a huge investigation,” Anna said. “FBI, the whole dog and pony show. Kidnapping is a federal crime. Then we have murder—dude murders Reg, attempted murder about a zillion times, assault, battery—”
“Ruining the word ‘fuck’ forever,” Katie added.
“Theft,” Elizabeth said. “Anna’s wearing the evidence.”
“All that,” Anna said. “Our injuries testify in our favor. Sean was killed while tryi
ng to commit a felony, the dude was killed in self-defense—there are witnesses to all that. The only iffy one is Jimmy. Cold blood.”
“You have the burning-bed defense. Did you see that movie?” Elizabeth asked.
“I will plead extenuating circumstances and hope for the best,” Anna said.
“Temporary insanity,” Heath suggested.
“That, too,” Anna agreed.
“Can’t you just say Jimmy attacked you?” Katie asked. “Nobody saw.”
“Wily saw,” Anna said.
“He’s just a dog.”
Anna looked at Wily, lounging by the food box in his filthy dented splint, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. “Just a dog,” Anna said. Slowly—deliberately, she was sure—one eyelid dropped. Wily had winked at her. She hadn’t been crazy.
“Yeah, just a dog,” Anna said and returned the wink. “Lying to the law doesn’t work as well as people think. Like my mother used to tell us, ‘one little lie gets lonely.’ You always have to tell others to bolster the first. Before you know it, you’ve hung yourself.”
“Can’t you shoot anybody you want? You’re a federal law enforcement officer,” Elizabeth said. “You’re a park ranger. “
“That should get me a nice place in the lunch line at the penitentiary,” Anna said.
“You won’t really go to jail, will you?” Elizabeth asked.
“I don’t think so,” Anna reassured her. “I expect, when the FBI starts digging, it’s going to turn out that our pals were not nice men even before we met them.”
“Listen!” Heath said suddenly.
Anna stopped chewing and listened. Faint and far away was the pesky buzz of a small plane’s engine.
“Hooray!” Katie shouted. “We’re going home!”
“Not yet,” Anna said. “Too soon.”
“It’s the plane the dude called for last night,” Leah said. “They’ve come to get us.”
FIFTY-FIVE
The engine’s purr paralyzed them. Katie shook it off first. “We could all run and hide in the woods until the Forest Service or whoever comes and rescues us,” she said.
“Good thought,” Anna commended her, “but I doubt Heath and I are running anywhere anytime soon.”
“How many men do you think will come?” Heath asked.
“One,” Anna said. “Maybe two. Unless the dude told them different, the kidnappers think they are hauling out four women. Big planes can’t land on a field this short. My guess is it’s another small plane. No more than six seats.”
“Girls, run and hide with Leah,” Heath said. “Anna and I will stay here with the guns.”
“No,” Elizabeth said, with such finality neither her mother nor Anna argued with her.
“No,” Leah said. “You go, Katie. It is a good idea.”
“Oh, right,” Katie said. “Like I’m going to hide under a rock now.”
Whoever was in that plane would be armed; Anna would bet on it. Whoever was in the plane would be on guard, but not against the hostages. Against the dude. Leah had told them the dude had asked Mr. Big for his share of the cash and told him he wasn’t going north. It wouldn’t take a criminal mastermind to suspect the dude had plans he wasn’t sharing.
“Get the dude,” Anna ordered. “Bring him here, drag him, carry him, cut him into pieces and bring them one at a time, but get him here quick.”
“What—” Katie began, but her mother and Elizabeth were running for the corpse. She ran after them, calling, “Wait for me!”
“Make sure he’s really dead,” Anna hollered after them. “Stomp on his trachea.”
“Don’t you dare,” Heath yelled to her daughter. “Anna, what’s the plan? Is there a plan?”
“Sort of,” Anna admitted. “Did you ever read Beau Geste?”
“You’re thinking of the part where the Legionnaires hold the fort by propping up dead men with rifles on the walls so the enemy will think there’s a bigger defense force than there really is?”
“Almost hold the fort,” Anna corrected. “Eventually they all die but Beau.”
“That’s a cheery thought,” Heath said.
“It’s a better plan than tying yourself naked to a tree,” Anna said.
“That was a great plan. He just rabbitted before you got your clubbing act together.”
“Look at them,” Anna said, marveling at the sight of the younger woman and the girls, bruised, dressed in rags, hair tangled, each grabbing a limb and beginning to drag the corpse of the dude over the grass. After so much, it didn’t even strike Anna as gruesome. They were young and strong and alive. The dude who had spent so much time trying to kill them was going to save them. “If we had enough like them, we could run the world,” she said to Heath.
“They probably wouldn’t let us run the world,” Heath replied.
“Maybe not,” Anna said.
The moment they were within speaking distance, Anna began directing the show. “Prop him up across from me. His face will be away from the plane that way.”
It took all three of them to get him into a sitting position.
“Big dude,” Katie said. For some reason all of them laughed and it felt good.
When he was seated, his back braced against the opposite wall, Leah and the girls stepped away and the five of them surveyed the results. The growl of the airplane was distinctly louder. There was little time remaining.
“Something over his lap,” Heath said. “He’s in his underpants.”
“Tighty whities,” Katie said. This, too, made them laugh, but with an edge Anna didn’t like. Hysteria was burbling up from the depths. Elizabeth took the checked hunting coat from Heath and spread it over his legs.
“Better,” Heath said.
“His head won’t stay up,” Elizabeth said. “He looks like he’s asleep.”
“Prop his head up. Here.” Anna tossed Leah a plastic fork. “Put the tines under his chin and the handle in his chest.”
“Good,” Anna said. The effect wasn’t too bad if you couldn’t see that his eyes were closed—or that he wasn’t breathing. He looked like a man relaxing by the fire after a hard day’s felony kidnapping. “E, give your mom the dude’s Colt. It’s over with the empty bags. Leah, you take the rifle.”
“I have never touched a gun,” Leah said.
“Elizabeth?”
“Point and click?”
“You got the idea. I’ll keep the Walther. Everybody sit. Hands in laps like they were tied. E, Heath, hide the guns under something.”
Heath put both her hands and the Colt beneath the pilot’s flying jacket that lay across her lap. Elizabeth laid the rifle along her leg where it couldn’t be seen from the front of the three-walled enclosure.
“What do I do?” asked Katie.
“Sit beside the dude. Make his hands move once in a while so he looks alive,” Anna said.
“Anna, don’t you think that’s a little over the top?” Heath asked.
“I’ll do it!” Katie said and scrambled to her puppeteer place beside the dead man.
The engine noise swelled. They all looked up as a sleek, white, low-winged airplane flew over. Down its side was a red swoosh the same shape as the Nike swoosh.
“It doesn’t have any wheels,” Katie said.
“They retract,” Leah said.
“Duh,” Katie said. “I knew that.”
“No numbers,” Anna said. “The guy must fly out of a private strip only. The FAA is picky about the numbers thing.”
The plane circled neatly around the old camp, flew over again, skimming the treetops, then lined up with the clearing and landed on the grass. The ruin of the first plane effectively ended the ersatz runway. A ways before the wreck of the Cessna, the new airplane turned around and taxied back toward where Anna and the others waited.
It was a Beechcraft, a new one, very clean and shiny. Anna watched the single propeller chopping the air into pieces as it ate its way up the field, and felt nothing. Leah was staring at the plane as if
it were a stalking lion, and she a hapless gazelle. Heath was bunching and unbunching her fist beneath the pilot’s leather jacket as though, in her mind, she practiced a quick-draw on the Colt.
Elizabeth leaned forward, a bowstring drawn tight. Katie chewed on the edge of her thumb. “Hands in laps,” Anna said. Katie put her hand in her lap. Elizabeth lifted hers from the rifle along her thigh and did the same.
The airplane taxied up until it was no more than thirty feet from the fire. The engine was shut off. There was only one man in the airplane. Anna’s numbness was stirred by a slight feeling of relief. She waited for fear or anger to follow. Nothing did. She and the dude sat opposite one another, bookends of the dead.
The door opened. “Dude, where are the men?” the pilot shouted. Nerves tightened his voice, giving it a shrill edge.
“Not a sound,” Anna whispered, going on with her lunch as if the plane did not exist. She imagined the pilot peering all around, trying to find where the dude had positioned his snipers.
“Dude, it’s Mr. Big. I came like you asked. No middleman. Dude?”
Anna nodded fractionally at Katie over the rim of her chili can. Katie, her small hands nearly invisible in the folds of the dude’s shirt, her tiny body completely hidden behind his, raised his right arm. The hand came up in a wave like that of the Queen Mother. Katie was poking the dead man’s palm with a stick to get the effect.
“Talk about Weekend at Bernie’s,” Anna murmured to Wily. “Don’t tell me. You haven’t seen that either.”
A brown-wrapped package was pushed out onto the wing.
“Dude, bring the hostages. Here’s your money.”
The dude waved, this time with definite flippancy. Anna glared at Katie lest she get too carried away with the performance.
“I’m coming out,” the pilot called after a minute. “Don’t shoot. I’m stepping out of the airplane. I’m unarmed. Nobody shoot.”
A hand appeared on top of the gleaming white frame. On the wing appeared a foot clad in a black calfskin loafer with a silver buckle where the penny was in the old days. No socks. Anna experienced an emotion she couldn’t put a name to, a sort of internal sneer, the sense that this guy deserved to be treated as less than human. She didn’t like feeling as if harming this man would be a good thing, fun even.