by Nevada Barr
Since the initial impulse to run, it was the first sign that the pilot knew she was there. Anna wondered if he thought this tardy compliance would appease her and she would just go away. Picking up her radio mike, she tuned it to the hailing frequency. “Gone Fishin‘, Gone Fishin’, this is the Belle Isle.” Three times she called and three times got no response.
Anna turned on the boat’s public address system. “Gone Fishin‘, this is the National Park Service patrol boat the Belle Isle. Please cut your engine. I’m coming alongside.” Ten seconds passed, fifteen. Anna refocused her light on the cabin. Two shadows glared back in the light, reflecting off the boat’s windscreen. Then one fell away, dropped like the falling of a veil, and there was only one.
It could have been a trick of the light, or it could have been someone ducking down, hiding. Anna picked up the pistol and stuck it into the waistband of her Levi’s. Again she took up the P.A. mike. Before she could repeat her command the Gone Fishin‘ slowed. Anna reduced power, pulled to the starboard side, and cut both throttles.
A fender plopped out of the cabin cruiser’s side window, reminding Anna to deploy hers. The, boats drifted gently forward eight or ten inches apart. Anna waited half a minute. The pilot did not show himself. “Captain of the Gone Fishin and any others aboard, please come out on deck,” Anna said into the mike. She kept the spotlight trained on the cabin, trying to see past the black ovals of Plexiglas in the rear windows.
The cabin door opened a crack, then closed, then opened again just wide enough to let a pale, slender man creep through. He held both hands over his eyes trying to block the glare of the searchlight.
Anna was aware of thin white arms, a stick of neck, too long and too white, long thin fingers crosshatched over a white face. She had that unpleasant sensation one gets when one turns over the wrong rock.
“What the hell is going on?” the nocturnal creature shouted. “Is that you, Anna?”
The white lattice of fingers dropped and Anna recognized Jim Tattinger. She left her.357 on the seat and walked back to the rear deck.
Jim had grabbed a gunwale and was holding the boats together. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He was angry and letting it show, letting it sharpen on the edge of his voice.
The best defense is a good offense, Anna thought. What could Tattinger be defending?
“Hi, Jim. Your running lights were out.” Anna walked over to the port gunwale and leaned close to him. She could smell no alcohol, none of the sweet cloying scent of marijuana. “I pegged you for a desperado on a midnight drug run.” She smiled into his eyes. They weren’t dilated or pinpointed-no narcotics or amphetamines. They were a little bloodshot but Tattinger’s eyes were usually red, as if in sympathy with his red-tipped ears and carroty hair.
“Whose boat?”
“I borrowed it,” Jim snapped. “Who authorized you to patrol out of uniform? I bet Lucas didn’t.”
Anna ignored that. “What brings you to this neck of the woods in the dead of night without running lights?” she asked conversationally.
“I don’t see that’s any business of yours.”
“What’s that?” She jerked her chin toward the cabin where four scuba tanks and a pair of fins were piled in an untidy heap. Jim twitched like a puppet on too tight a string. His eyes widened as if he-or more likely Anna-had just seen a ghost.
“Doing a little night diving?”
“Oh. The tanks. No,” he retorted and his irritability sounded mixed with relief. Anna wondered how she had let him off the hook-what the hook was. “What are you doing out here?” he demanded. “You can’t use NPS boats for personal stuff, you know.”
“We’ve had a report of a missing child. I was checking the usual spots on the north shore.”
“Oh gosh!” Tattinger puffed. He seemed genuinely concerned. It caught Anna off guard. “What happened?”
“Carrie Bittner didn’t make it home for supper. Patience is worried.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Jim’s anger was back, though Anna couldn’t see why.
“Patience is rechecking all the sites on the way back to Rock,” Anna told him. “If Carrie doesn’t turn up pretty quick, I’ll call in Lucas and get a search under way as soon as it’s light.”
“For Chr-” Tattinger began his refrain again, then stopped suddenly. “Wait. Bittner? That kid with the brown hair, always hanging around the lodge?”
Anna nodded.
Jim seemed relieved. “I saw her in Lane Cove when I was headed over here. There wasn’t any boat so she must’ve been going back overland on the trail.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know-not too long ago.”
“Was she alone?”
“Jesus! I got better things to do than look after some snot-nosed kid. You’re not Dick Tracy, Anna.” Jim curled his lip till the ruffle of pink showed garish in the searchlight. “Nobody authorized you to interfere with my work.”
The federal government had authorized Anna to interfere where probable cause could be proved, but she let it pass. “I’ll radio Patience,” she said, and: “Leave a running light on for me.”
Running lights on, the Gone Fishin‘ powered away at high speed.
It was after midnight when Anna got the radio message that Carrie had finally wandered home. Later that same day, Anna knew, she must dive the Kamloops. Finally she managed sleep but it was troubled with dreams: Denny holding her fast two hundred feet beneath the lake while air trickled from her tanks like the last stars from the night sky.
TWELVE
Never to see the sun again,“ Anna grumbled. Standing in sweats and mismatched wool socks, she drank her morning coffee, staring out the window above her kitchen sink. The day presented a bleak and dismal aspect. An overcast sky pressed down to the top of the cliff that backed Amygdaloid Ranger Station. Oily-looking raindrops crawled down the glass.
“Come on down,” Anna hollered. If the clouds settled into fog, obscured the lake, the Kamloops dive would be postponed. As it was, the day managed to be completely without sympathy: cold and damp and dark with perfectly adequate visibility.
Anna crossed to the yellow enameled bureau with its chipped edges and olive-green knobs. Amid the clutter of hairpins and badges was an oval box, the lid carved with monkeys frolicking in a jungle of leaves. The handles formed the graceful upward wings the Balinese put on their temples. Anna lifted off the lid. Inside was a handkerchief edged with lace. The creases were yellowed from being so long folded. In the middle of it was the dull gold of a wedding band.
After Zachary died Anna had taken it off and folded it in the “something old” her mother-in-law had given her. Her hand looked ugly without it, she’d never stopped believing that, but in the first years she’d been unable to answer the questions generated by a ring. “What does your husband do? I see you’re married-is your husband with you?”
At Molly’s suggestion she had taken it off. “It’s nobody’s damn business,” her sister had said.
“People will think I’ve stopped loving him,” Anna worried.
“Fuck ‘em,” had been the psychiatrist’s advice.
Anna thought about putting it back on; a comfort, a talisman for the dive. A thousand times over the years she’d thought of putting it back on. As always, she returned it to its linen nest. She still wasn’t ready to answer those questions.
“Three-oh-two, one-two-one.” Her radio cracked the solitude and Anna shot it a baleful look. “Three-oh-two, one-two-one.”
“Keep your pants on, Lucas.” She crossed through the open door into the ranger station and hit the mike button of the base radio. “Three-oh-two,” she responded.
“What kind of deck you got over there?”
It crossed Anna’s mind to say it was socked in, but she crushed the lie as unworthy-and too easy to detect. “I can see three or four hundred yards. The storm isn’t sitting on the water. Some rain. No wind.”
“The MAFOR promised more of the same.
Waves one to two meters.” The MAFOR was shorthand for the marine forecast. All the ranger stations posted the day’s MAFOR before they opened shop in the mornings. On busy days there’d be a line three or four boaters deep waiting to read it before the thumbtacks had even cooled.
“Officer Stanton, Ralph, Jim, Scotty, Jo, and I are about to head out.” Vega’s voice rattled the speaker. “We’ll be to Amygdaloid in thirty minutes or so.”
“I’ll be waiting with bells on,” Anna said.
“One-two-one clear.”
For whom the bell tolls, Anna thought. It tolls for thee. She laughed aloud, relieved by her sheer morbidity. “I’m wasted in the Park Service,” she addressed the mute radio. “Melodrama was my true calling.”
Half an hour later, when the Lorelei pulled up to the dock, Anna was waiting, surrounded by gear. Only one of the boats that had given the place such a festive air the night before still remained. Rain, slow and cold and with apparently no intention of stopping in the foreseeable future, had driven the fisherpeople back to the more protected amusements on the mainland.
The 3rd Sister would still be around somewhere. Hawk and Holly were indifferent to comfort. Only a clear and present danger kept them out of the water. When clients paid the 3rd Sister for an adventure it was not unlike making a contract with the devil. There was almost no way out.
The Lorelei glided up parallel with the dock, and Ralph, green from head to foot in foul-weather gear, came out on deck. Lucas didn’t shut down the engines.
“How time flies when you’d rather be in bed,” Anna said as she handed her air tanks over the gunwale.
Ralph gave her a life vest and she fumbled at the side lacings. ISRO had purchased all Large and Extra Large in the expectation of a future filled with nothing but brawny, strapping rangers. Even having cinched it as tightly as it would go, Anna knew it would probably pop off if she were ever thrown unconscious into the lake.
Lucas motored slowly away from the dock, scrupulous as ever not to create a wake where it could damage another vessel. A crew cut and long brown hair were about all Anna could see of Frederick the Fed and Jo. Scotty and Jim hovered behind the two benches. Ralph stayed out in the rain with Anna. Lightly, he touched her elbow. “How are you doing?”
His kindness irritated because it reminded her of her fear. “Never better,” she retorted.
Ralph laughed. “Anna Pigeon: heart of gold, body of iron, nerves of steel.”
“Oh pshaw!” Anna pronounced all the letters: “puh-shaw.” Next to “damn” it was her sister Molly’s favorite word. It took the place of “expletive deleted.”
Ralph just laughed.
Anna pulled the drawstrings of her Gore-Tex hood close around her face and backed up against the cabin out of the wind. She could put off meeting Officer Stanton a few minutes longer and she preferred the fresh air to the self-inflating chatter Scotty would suffocate the cabin with, given such a prestigious audience.
Besides, she hoped the cold would drive Ralph inside. The last thing she wanted was someone to call her bluff. Two terrors battled for dominance in Anna’s belly: that she would dive and that she wouldn’t. The latter was worse. She was afraid Pilcher would offer her a way out and she would take it.
He leaned against the cabin next to her, the bulk of his body cutting the wind that curled around the side. Boyish brown curls escaped his hood, contrasting oddly with the broken nose and unsettlingly old eyes. Ralph Pilcher wasn’t a handsome man, but Anna guessed it had never stood in his way and she felt a sudden stab of pity for his wife. In sympathy with the unknown woman, she moved a couple inches away from his sheltering warmth.
“A few things,” Ralph said as the Lorelei motored out of Amygdaloid Channel onto the vast gray bosom of Lake Superior. “The superwoman act works well for you, Anna. Good cover. But you don’t need it on a dive. It’ll kill you on a dive. This is a team sport. I’ll be looking after you. Lucas will watch me. We’ll all keep an eye on Jim.”
Anna laughed. She was feeling better. She took back her two inches. The hell with Mrs. Pilcher.
Ralph relaxed back against the cabin wall and for a moment they stood in companionable silence watching the wake fold in on itself and disappear.
“Ever do a body recovery?” Ralph asked after a while.
“A few. Always on dry ground.”
“In Superior they’re not too bad. No smell. Usually we’d take the mask off. If they were diving-breathing compressed air-the change in pressure makes fluids froth out the nose and mouth. The family doesn’t need to see that.”
Denny’s face would be clean when Jo saw him again. No mask. No tanks. No suit. Did Jo know that? Would she be surprised? Could she feign surprise if she was not? Jo had tremendous strength for so small a woman. Years of tramping through forests and swamps with her laboratory on her back had seen to that. She was-or had been-a diver, Anna thought, remembering the distinctive scars on her arms. And she was a determined woman. She had determined to marry Denny Castle and against all odds had finally succeeded. Was removing Donna Butkus a prerequisite for success? Murdering Denny the price of a long madness? Or killing them both revenge for a life squandered on an unrequited love?
The tenor of the engines changed as Lucas throttled down. They were nearing the Kamloops‘ marker buoy. Anna shook her head to clear it of the fog of unanswered questions. First she would dive, just dive.
The Lorelei glided gently up to the buoy and stopped. Anna took an instant away from fretting and dedicated it to admiration only slightly sullied by envy: Lucas Vega could sure drive a boat.
The first man out of the cabin was Frederick Stanton. The crew cut had been an optical illusion. His hair was cut close only in the back and over the ears. He wore the top long. When Anna was in seventh grade that configuration had indicated a fresh-and cheap-haircut. On Stanton it smacked of a mild punk rebellion in white socks and hard leather shoes.
Warmed by the possibility that she’d been wrong, that Frederick the Fed might have some redeeming social attributes after all, Anna started to smile.
“Fred Stanton.” Scotty, only his head poking out of the cabin, introduced the man from behind. Stanton shook, a sudden convulsion of the shoulders as if freeing himself from any proprietary claims Butkus was trying to stake.
“Frederick,” he said clearly and pulled off his glove to shake hands.
“This is Anna Pigeon,” Ralph said as she tried to balance her grip between insipid and faux machismo. “She’ll be on the wet end of the body recovery.”
“Better you than me,” Stanton said. His voice was light and gentle for a man. Pleasant and probably misleading, Anna thought. The FBI was a big stick and Stanton may have learned the value of walking softly.
“Excuse me.” Lucas was making his way past Scotty, who still hung in the narrow doorway. Butkus, muttering cowboy apologies, clomped to the stern. Vega’s eye followed his steps with a sour look, watching for black heel marks on the white deck.
Jim bumped out from the cabin and the Chief Ranger’s attention snapped back to the dive. “Ralph?” Raising a dark wing-shaped eyebrow, he officially turned the dive over to the District Ranger.
Quietly, efficiently, Ralph began directing traffic on the crowded deck, lending a hand where buckles needed buckling, rubber hoods straightening. He managed to suit up himself, keep Scotty’s great booted feet off the damageable goods, and exchange a few sentences with Jo.
With fingers that tingled, Anna pulled on the bulky suit with boots and hood. The anxiety that was robbing her fingers of feeling filled her throat with a bitter taste. The more she swallowed, the more nauseated she became. Her mind raced with cowardly alternatives: if she dropped a tank and broke her foot, she’d not have to dive; if she stumbled over a fin and rapped her head on the gunwale, she’d be excused with honor intact.
Still, she pulled and jerked and buckled and finally, without mishap, she was encased in gear. Humpbacked, orange-skinned, blue-flippered, they all looked like creatur
es from an unlikely lagoon.
“Okay,” Pilcher said. “Tasmanian cluster fuck.” From the corner of her eye, Anna saw a jolt of what could’ve been alarm or amusement electrify the FBI man’s dark eyes. Of the seven people on board, he alone had never before experienced Pilcher’s predive ritual. At another time, in another place, Lucas would have said a quiet word against the obscenity. But Pilcher was a first-rate dive leader. Vega was a manager first and a gentleman second: his District Ranger was free to establish trust and camaraderie any way that worked.
Anna, Ralph, Jim, Lucas, even Scotty and Jo closed ranks, forming a tight circle like a football huddle. Through the insulating layers, Anna could feel the bones of Jo Castle’s shoulder against hers. A fine mist beaded in her long straight hair, cloaking her in shifting silver. When Anna took her hand it felt clammy. Though it was probably due to the weather, Anna hoped Scotty would have enough sense to monitor Jo for shock.
Ralph’s hand closed over Anna’s, warm and dry. “Denny’s in the engine room,” he said, his voice somehow different without in any way being artificial. The pitch was slightly lower, the pace a little slower. Anna could almost feel everyone’s heartbeats slowing, respirations evening out.
Everyone except Jim Tattinger. His pale eyes, watery in their pink rims, wandered restlessly. Anna could see his limp fingers refusing to meet the pressure of Lucas’s hand on one side and Jo’s on the other. If Frederick Stanton was the noticing kind, being unaware this behavior pattern was Jim’s usual, he might find the actions suspicious.
Ralph was speaking. “We’ll go down pretty quick. I’ll lead, Anna will follow me, Jim follows Anna. Lucas, you bring up the rear. We keep each other in sight. Keep me in sight. I get lonely down there. We’ve plenty of time. We’ll be down an hour and twenty-nine minutes. Twenty-two minutes on the bottom’s all we got. And we all come up together. Lucas and I will go inside, photograph as best we can, look around a little, and bring Denny out. Jim, you and Anna will check the outside. Go no deeper than the engine room. Take pictures. Look. Stay together. Watch the time. We meet at the line twenty-two minutes exactly after we leave it. Dangers: You two”-he looked at Anna and Jim-“never deviate from the plan. Never lose sight of each other or the time.