by Nevada Barr
The green mark on the radar grew larger. Reaching across Damien and his wife, curled together again like sweethearts, Anna banged open the side window. Cold air burst in and with it came a sound that was not made by the Bertram’s powerful engines.
“Can either of you drive a boat?” Anna demanded. She thought of the aluminum runabout and amended her question: “A real boat?”
“Damien can,” Tinker replied. At another time Anna might have found the pride in her voice touching. As it was, it only served to deepen her natural skepticism.
“Mmm,” she returned noncommittally, but she had no choices. “When I tell you, take the helm-the wheel,” she told Damien, who had crowded out past Tinker to stand near the pilot’s bench. “Do nothing till I’m clear of the deck. Then pull these back. Both of them. At the same time. All the way.” Anna laid her hands on the twin throttles. “Shove these two levers down halfway. That’s neutral.” Anna put her left hand on the gear levers. “Then just wait. Don’t drive anywhere. If you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes or so, start calling for help on the radio. Eventually, somebody’ll come get you. Got it?”
“Got it,” Damien replied, with such boyish earnestness that Anna’s misgivings increased substantially.
On some level she knew she should let Patience escape, knew she worked without backup, endangered Tinker and Damien, knew, at best, she was courting a tort claim against the National Park Service by enlisting the aid of noncommissioned employees, SCAs-scarcely more professional by legal standards than tourists. But Anna’s joints were aching as if they’d been bent backward to just short of snapping and her vision had narrowed till, unless she concentrated, it was as if she viewed the world through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. The bends. The truly bent could sometimes never get straight.
And Patience Bittner was not going to get away with it.
The green blip lost focus. Half a dozen yards ahead the Belle Isle’s spotlight illuminated the ghostly outlines of a boat’s stern. In the soft green tones of folding money, the name Venture was blazoned across it.
Anna held the Belle Isle back a little longer. The instant Patience recognized it she would run. The Belle couldn’t outrun her and Anna hadn’t the firepower to stop her. Wouldn’t use it if she had. Carrie would be with her mother. Risking a child’s life-however unpleasant the child-didn’t fall under the direction to Protect and Preserve.
“Here.” Anna traded places with Damien but kept her hands on the wheel and throttles as she would have with a student driver in a hazardous situation. “I’ll pull alongside. You hold it there till I’ve cleared the Belle Isle and am aboard the Venture. Then what?”
“Pull back the throttles, put her in neutral, and wait,” Damien repeated dutifully.
“Hand,” Anna demanded. He raised his right hand. She moved hers from the throttle and he laid palm and fingers over the handles as if he’d been doing it all his life. A flicker of hope, not bright enough to be called optimism but welcome anyway, sparked in Anna’s breast.
She placed her hand over his and opened the throttle all the way. The Belle Isle surged ahead, came alongside the Chris-Craft, her port gunwale less than a yard from the smaller boat’s starboard side.
Trading action for thought, Anna snatched up her.357 and ran from the cabin back to the Belle Isle’s deck. The ribbon of water between the two moving boats boiled black, reminding her of the cold and lightless death she had cheated and was, perhaps, still waiting for her. “Because I could not stop for Death,” she whispered, “he kindly…”
Using the seven feet of deck to get a running start, she threw herself across the widening gap between the boats. Through fog, all visible surfaces moving at differing speeds, through dark and fleeting arms of white light, she had an uncanny sense of flying as one flies in a dream.
The dream came to an abrupt end when the toe of one foot caught the Belle’s gunwale. The rushing black water came up. Throwing her arms forward, Anna grasped the Venture’s gunwale but her lower body was sucked down into the lake. The dry suit kept the cold from her.
The ache in her shoulder pried between the bones, letting what strength had returned after the exhaustion of the swim leak away. The lake was reclaiming her. The drag of the water, the pull of the Venture cutting through it, was ripping Anna in two, pulling her arms from their sockets.
Slowly, she loosed her grip, let the water and momentum pull her back along the gunwale toward the boat’s stern. The jets of water where the wake turned under made a last try for her, but Anna had one foot up on the waterline diving deck. A foot, a knee, another knee, and the lake had to relinquish its claim. Anna tumbled over the stern rail onto the deck.
She landed on Patience’s cast-off dive suit and fins. Damage and noise were somewhat alleviated. But the revolver was gone, dropped in the channel.
“Shit,” Anna muttered.
For a moment she stayed where she’d fallen, watching the twin Plexiglas windows in the rear of the cabin. No alarmed face appeared, no concerned head peeked out of the cabin door. Either the noise of her arrival had been masked by the roaring of the engines, or Patience had assumed the thump was due to the flapping of unstowed fenders or a sideswipe by the Belle Isle.
Anna pushed herself up far enough to look back. The Venture’s wake curled in two tight lines of pale water on the black lake. The sudden appearance of another boat had put Patience into high gear. The Belle Isle, engines silent, was already losing herself in the fog. Only the red and green glow on her bow gave away her whereabouts. Damien had done his part admirably.
Now Anna must do hers.
No gun, no way off the boat: it was not a good corner to have painted oneself into. Surprise was on Anna’s side, height, weight, and training. Maybe training, she amended as she eased herself noiselessly to her feet. Patience could drive a boat, could dive like a pro, and could choose the right wine to go with the fish. If there’d been aikido or tae kwan do mixed in with the ballet and cooking classes, Anna might be in for a more entertaining evening than she’d bargained for.
And the thought of facing even a tiny murderer without a revolver was nearly as daunting as the thought of all the government forms she would have to fill out explaining how she lost it.
Perhaps Patience would give up without a struggle, bend to the will of the law as personified by Ranger Pigeon. It could happen. “Yeah,” Anna said and looked around the crowded deck for something she could use as a weapon.
In addition to Patience’s dive gear, the pockets along the gunwales just above deck level had the usual maritime paraphernalia. There were several hundred yards of line, scrub brushes, a fish gaff on a long wooden handle, and cleaning supplies: detergent and something blue in a plastic bottle with a metal spray-pump top.
Anna lowered herself gingerly onto her aching knee and unscrewed the top from the spray bottle. Closed in her fist, it might pass muster if she maximized her shock value- people never saw much when they were frightened.
It crossed Anna’s mind to kick down the door like John Wayne in McQ, uttering only a terse dry “Knock, knock” as the wood splintered. But doors, even cabin doors on boats, were a good deal tougher than one might think. There was the possibility she’d only break a few bones in her foot and alert Patience to her presence.
The engine slowed. The Venture was nearing the end of the channel and would head out into open water at the marker buoys in Middle Islands Passage. The upcoming interview was not one Anna cared to conduct any farther from land than she had to.
The customized Evinrude engine that propelled the small boat was housed in an engine box to the rear of the stern deck. Anna turned the butterfly nuts and lifted back the cover. Though it was of higher caliber and horsepower, the engine was much the same as the twin engines on the Bertram. Black spark plug wires popped up to meet her grasp. With a jerk, she pulled them loose and dropped them overboard.
The engine coughed once and died. In the ensuing silence Anna felt naked, exposed. At any
moment Patience would come out on deck to see why the engine had failed.
Bent double to avoid the windows, Anna stepped across the narrow deck. Bracing one shoulder against the cabin wall on the port side where the opening door would help shield her, she waited with the aluminum spray nozzle held in what she sincerely hoped was a sufficiently fierce and businesslike grip to discourage close inspection.
Surrounded by an insulating blanket of fog, the sounds from the cabin were at the same time very clear and quite unreal, as if they were happening inside Anna’s skull. Muffled clicks: Patience trying the key. Muttered words as there was no answering surge from the engine. Dull thumps: Patience closing the choke, shutting down the throttle, turning off the ignition in preparation for coming to check the engine. More murmurings: probably instructions to Carrie Ann.
Anna tensed, then forced herself to relax, to clear her mind. A shadow across the window, then the cabin door opened with a bang. Looking neither right nor left, Patience made a beeline for the engine.
Anna reached out, caught the door, and quietly closed it. Moving her body to block it, she wedged one rubber heel against the wood.
“Stop where you are,” she said softly.
Throwing up her hands and collapsing to her knees like an old-time revivalist, Patience screamed: “My Lord!” She pressed her hands theatrically over her heart, but such was the shock registered on her face, Anna guessed the gesture was unplanned.
“Stay on your knees and turn around,” Anna said evenly. “Face the stern.” She held the spray nozzle in two hands, her arms extended from her body, elbows locked. “Do it.”
Patience turned all but her head. Chin on shoulder, she continued to stare back at Anna. The initial shock was wearing off. Anna could see thought and sense rushing back behind her eyes, unlocking the stony set of her facial muscles. “Face away,” Anna commanded. “Eyes on the engine box. Do it.”
Patience faced away.
“Lie down slowly on your stomach,” Anna ordered.
“Mom!”
The door hit Anna’s back and she wedged her heel more firmly against it to keep it closed.
“Mom!”
The distraction was giving Patience courage. Anna could see it in the restless twitch of her arms and legs. “Don’t even think about it, Patience. What with one thing and another, my nerves have been pretty much shot to hell today. Killing you is a real possibility.
“Carrie Ann,” Anna called without taking her eyes off where Patience Bittner sprawled. “Carrie Ann, this is Anna Pigeon. Stay away from the door. Stay quiet.”
“Mom!” Carrie hollered again and rattled the door.
“Sit down and shut up!” Anna barked. Silence from within except for a snuffling sound that could have been either shuffling feet or adenoidal aggrievement.
“Face down,” Anna reminded Patience.
There was nothing with which to secure her prisoner but the dive line stowed near Patience’s right hand. In close quarters Anna didn’t care to wade into the midst of the other woman to retrieve it.
“Reach out with your right hand, Patience. Do it slowly. Good. Take hold of the dive line and pull it slowly into the middle of your back.”
With a short growl that telegraphed her intentions, Patience’s fist closed round the coiled line. Twisting like a stepped-on snake, she rolled and flung the line at Anna’s face.
Instinct and training held Anna steady. Her finger squeezed the trigger. A trickle of foam dripped from the nozzle. Her own playacting had caught her up. The instant was enough. Patience pulled the fish gaff free of its clamps and sprang to her feet.
“Jump, Anna,” she said. “Jump. Maybe you’ll make it. I hope you’ll make it. Jump.” Slashing at Anna with a power born of desperation and adrenaline, she lunged.
There was nowhere to go but back into the black water, and Anna held her ground. The gaff was sharp. Anna felt it cutting through the dive suit, catching the flesh of her breasts, ripping. She saw it come free on the other side.
There was no time to wonder if she’d been badly hurt. Her hand shot after the shaft before Patience could make another swing. Fingers closing around the wood, Anna jerked hard but Patience kept her footing, kept her hold on the gaff. Blond hair fell wild around her face and her jaw was set like a bulldog’s.
“Mexican standoff,” Anna said reasonably, holding tight to her end of the long staff. “Eight or ten hours and it will be light. Somebody will come along. The ranger always gets to win. Why don’t we stop now? Save ourselves a miserable night?”
Patience was not lulled, convinced, or amused. “You won’t last till daylight, Anna. I will. You’re hurt. I hurt you. You’re sick. The bends. Maybe an embolism. I can see it in your face. Your lungs are filling up with blood. Blood is pouring from where the boat hook got you. You’ll be dead long before the sun comes up and I’ll still be here.”
“Okay,” Anna agreed. “Then I haven’t got all night.” Hand over hand she began working her way down the wooden handle. “How about this then: I’m taller, stronger, outweigh you by ten pounds and am really pissed off?”
Anna’s hand reached Patience’s. The other woman gripped the haft of the fish gaff more tightly but the battle for that was over. Laying one hand across Patience’s wrist, Anna began to peel her thumb off the wood in what must have seemed a childish gesture until the pain set in. By the time Patience realized what was happening agony had become paralysis. Pain has a way of taking the place of thought. Finally, like the animals humans pretend to be above, people will do anything to get away from it.
“Down,” Anna suggested, pushing Patience’s thumb back toward her wrist. “Lie down.”
Patience complied.
“Stay still. Soon it will be over. Stay still.” Anna looped the dive line around Patience’s slender wrists and pulled the plastic rope tight. The rope would bite deep, perhaps cut off the blood to her prisoner’s hands. To cripple the graceful little woman would be a shame.
“Not a crying shame,” Anna said aloud. The meaningless words scared her. Her mind was not in top working order, her vision was fogged. Knowing her condition was worsening, she tied Patience’s slim ankles together and anchored the woman to both the stern and midship cleats so she couldn’t wriggle around the deck.
“Carrie Ann!” Patience yelled. “Come out, honey.”
“Stay put,” Anna ordered.
No sound came from within the cabin.
“Smash the radio,” Patience screamed.
“Jesus!” Anna jerked at the door.
“I’ll get you your own phone,” Patience cried. Immediately there followed the sound of electronic equipment being pulverized. Patience laughed. “It’s an unnatural mother who does not know her own offspring.”
Dizziness took Anna then. She put her back against the cabin door and allowed herself to slide down till her butt met the deck. For an instant she thought her clarity of vision was returning but realized it was the fog, the real fog, the fog outside her brain. It was lifting.
“You’re dying,” Patience said. “Drowning in your own blood. You’re dizzy, aren’t you? Eyes playing tricks?”
Anna shook her head but the motion made the deck spin and she stopped.
“Your joints hurt, don’t they? This is only the beginning.”
“Quiet,” Anna said wearily and let her head rest against the cabin door. Overhead, through moving tendrils of fog, she thought she saw a star, but as she watched, it vanished.
“Bleeding inside and out,” Patience continued. “Lungs and chest. The gaff got you. Soon you will faint. Carrie will come out then. Trust me. A mother’s plea and all that. I’ll throw you to the fishes, Anna. Untie me now and I’ll put you ashore somewhere close, where they can find you and get you to treatment. I can do it. You’re too far gone to be any danger to me. Untie me, Anna. I don’t want you to die.”
Another star. Then it, too, was gone. “Did you want Denny to die?” Anna asked in an effort to keep her mind from wand
ering, consciousness from dripping away.
“God!” Patience exploded. Thrashing sounds forced Anna to turn her head. Bittner was fighting but the rope held secure.
“Did you?” Anna pressed.
“Denny was a fool.”
“He grabbed an oversized single with a Y valve out of the Third Sister and followed you in the Blackduck,” Anna prompted.
“Denny was a diver. He’d dived all over the world. Australia. Mexico. He’d dived caves. He knew how I’d gotten into the captain’s cabin. He took off his tank, fed it through the porthole.”
Two stars now. Anna could feel herself losing touch and she tried to focus her eyes on the distant points of light. “While you were inside the cabin?” she pursued.
“I was inside. What did he think I’d do? He’d jerk his thumb and I’d follow him docilely up to prison? A fool. I grabbed the tank, pulled it through, yanked the regulator out of his mouth and slammed the port. Two seconds, three at most.”
In her mind’s eyes, Anna saw Denny scrabbling at the porthole with his dive knife. The movements growing jerky as his lungs began to burst. The gush of bubbles, the frantic breath that filled him with water. Drowning. Dead.
“I’d‘ve bolted for the surface,” Anna said. “So would Denny. So would anybody.”
“Denny got the porthole open.”
Anna forced her eyes open. Patience was looking at her, one cheek pressed against the deck, hair falling in strands across her eyes. She looked like a caged animal. “I grabbed his arm when he reached in, cranked it up against the bulkhead and braced my feet on either side till he stopped struggling.” Patience spoke with deliberation. The threat in her words was unmistakable.
Fear stirred Anna’s torpor. Patience was telling her of Denny’s death. That meant Patience thought Anna was going to die. She tried to pull herself up straighter, look alive, formidable. “Then you put the tanks back on his body, surfaced, and cut the Blackduck adrift.” Anna tried to take back control of the conversation.