Hard Truth

by Nevada Barr

  “Good boy,” Heath whispered. And swallowed the urge to roll quickly to the RV and, raising the hydraulic lift behind her like a drawbridge, hide within.

  The car stopped. Heath exhaled, realizing a part of her had expected to be run down. Fear was insidious. Once it settled into the soul, even the most preposterous threats seemed real and imminent.

  Headlights switched off. A car door creaked open, slammed shut. Heath squinted through the thick dusk trying to ascertain whether her caller was a Bible salesman or the Grim Reaper.

  It was neither. The slightly ethereal form of Mrs. Sheppard materialized out of the gloom and dust.

  “Please can we go inside?” were her first words.

  Heath was glad to comply. If it was somebody’s else’s idea, she could retreat with dignity.

  Mrs. Sheppard sat on the couch without waiting to be asked. Heath was unoffended. Now that she was perpetually seated, she preferred that to having people loom about. The woman was distraught. The times Heath had seen her before, she’d been . . . not aloof, aloof was a choice . . . she seemed distanced, disconnected, as if there was a part of her she held safe—or prisoner—in a place others could not go.

  Mrs. Sheppard was dressed in her usual denim jumper and cheap, flat shoes. Sitting with her feet together, knees clamped tightly, she smoothed the fabric over her thighs again and again, palms pressing out invisible wrinkles.

  “I feel like a fool coming to you,” she said without looking up. “But we’re not from here and there is nobody else.”

  “I’m flattered,” Heath said dryly, then immediately felt guilty for being a smart-ass.

  She got a bye. Sharon Sheppard was so caught up in her own misery, if she heard the remark, it didn’t register. “Alexis is pregnant,” she said abruptly.

  Beth had told her as much, but since it was privileged information she was not supposed to know, Heath said, “Ah,” for lack of anything more insightful. Then: “How far along is she?”

  “Three months. Or four.”

  That took Heath aback. She’d assumed the pregnancy was a result of whatever had transpired while the girls were missing. Maybe Proffit, if he was the perpetrator, had gotten to the girls before their disappearance. Obviously somebody had.

  “Does she know who the father is?”

  Mrs. Sheppard looked up for the first time. “Of course!” she snapped and Heath realized her question might have suggested Alexis was a tramp.

  “I just thought it might have happened while she was gone. A stranger,” Heath explained.

  “Oh.” Eyes down, Mrs. Sheppard went back to her smoothing. “No. We know. The father is her husband, Mr. Sheppard. Alexis is my little sister.”

  “Man, that’s gotta suck,” Heath blurted out.

  Without a smile Mrs. Sheppard said, “If ‘sucks’ means what it sounds like, that’s just what it does. Suck. Suck.”

  Heath thought the woman would start crying, but she didn’t. She just sat there pressing and pressing her skirt over her knees. It put Heath in mind of the rocking she’d seen people in the hospital do, people who didn’t want to—or couldn’t—think. On impulse she reached out and took Sharon Sheppard’s hands in hers. For reasons of obstinacy or rebelliousness, Heath hadn’t fastened her seat belt. The sudden movement shifted her new center of gravity and she half fell into the younger woman’s lap.

  “Oh my goodness. Are you okay?” Sharon was holding, helping, making those maternal mutterings that usually brought on a fit of foul language from Heath. Instead, she found herself laughing at her clumsiness. It was grand not to mind toppling. That thought made her laugh harder.

  Sharon did not join her but neither did she return to her infernal pressing and she managed a smile, albeit a shaky one.

  When Heath was done enjoying the miracle of finding her physical faux pas funny, she said, “What do you need me to do?”

  At this unlikely juncture Sharon Sheppard did start crying. “You’ve been so good to Beth—both girls. I thought maybe you would help. Thought it but didn’t believe it. Now I believe. Oh Lord. I have been . . .”

  Sharon laughed. There was a hysterical edge to it but it was a sign of life and strength in what Heath had hitherto thought was a Stepford wife.

  “I was hoping you could take us somewhere, somewhere we might stay till we can get home.”

  “Back to the commune in Canada?” Heath was remembering Mrs. Dwayne’s drunken diatribe. Surely that would be jumping out of the frying pan and into an old familiar fire.

  “No. We wouldn’t be welcome there. We’d just be made to come back. Or maybe given to somebody else as wives. I’m old but Alexis is of an age to be sought after.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty. Twenty-one in November.”

  For a moment Heath said nothing. Sharon easily looked fifteen years older than she was. “How long have you been ‘married’ to Mr. Sheppard?” Being married to Dwayne Sheppard would be like dog years, aging a woman seven for one.

  “Since I was fifteen.”

  “And Alexis?”

  “Six months for her.”

  “Why do you want to go now? I mean, after all these years and after Alexis has been . . . is pregnant?”

  “Because there are three of us. Patty is nine and it’s already starting.”

  “Fucking goat,” Heath muttered.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. Go on. If not Canada, where?”

  “Our dad—our real dad—used to live in Lewiston, Idaho. Momma left him years ago and took us girls with her. Maybe he’s still there. Maybe he’d take us.”

  “You haven’t seen him in all that time?”

  “It wasn’t allowed.”

  “What Mr. Sheppard is doing is massively illegal,” Heath said. “Why don’t you go to the police?” As soon as the question was out, she was sorry she’d asked. Sharon looked both frightened and scornful, a bizarre combination. She’d evidently been raised to think anything to do with the government—federal, state or local—was both evil and stupid. The authorities were the last people she would turn to for help. Sharon bestirred herself as if to make a dash for the door.

  There was no way Heath could undo a lifetime’s indoctrination in an evening. “I see your point,” she said quickly, though Sharon hadn’t made one.

  Sharon settled back. Heath tried to come up with a reassuring thought or word. If the three girls could get away, she supposed she could drive them to Lewiston. The trip would tax her physically. The damage to her back was new, outraged nerves and tissues had yet to settle into their final mode. And maybe the father was no longer there. Momma splits, taking the kids. Maybe Poppa Whatever had run from bad memories.

  “What’s your dad’s name?” Heath could at least make a few calls, find out whether the guy was still around, still alive.

  “Rupert Evan Dennis,” Sharon replied in a measured voice that made Heath think she’d said her father’s name many times, repeated it over and over like a mantra.

  nineteen

  After the initial jolt of terror, when her heart had started beating once again, Anna was down on all fours, eyes near floor level and filled with tears of joy, relief and other emotions she couldn’t begin to name.

  She’d been raised with cats. Lots of cats. When she was a baby there’d been little money and a tarpaper shack that had been impossible to keep warm on bitter winter nights. Cats had been allowed—encouraged—to sleep in her crib to keep her warm. Like a little duckling, she’d been imprinted. Enough cat fur and dander had made its way into her body that she would not have been surprised to find she had feline DNA floating about her chromosomes. Anna knew a cat’s paw when she felt it grab her ankle.

  Hecuba, the little scaredy cat, had learned survival skills under the rough tutelage of wicked boys. She had hidden under the bed and probably saved herself from a painful death. A bit of coaxing and the kitten came out. Dropping tears and kisses indiscriminately on the little creature’s head,
Anna carried her down to the kitchen and a belated supper out of a can that promised chicken, vegetables and a healthy urinary tract.

  Like a lot of kittens, especially those snatched away from their mothers too soon, this little cat purred while she ate. Anna sat on the floor, her back against the cupboard doors, and listened to her favorite music. Why, with all the trauma that had been visited, and continued to be visited, on her new duty station, the life and well-being of one little black-and-white cat should give her such comfort, she didn’t know but she recognized a gift horse when it crawled out from beneath her bed. For a time, she was content to enjoy it without even a temptation to look in its mouth.

  After Hecuba had gobbled and rattled her dinner down and curled up to sleep, Anna made her a bed of dish towels and nestled her warm, soft body into it. Past the knee-weakening first wave of relief and fortified by exposure to one exquisite fur-coated life, she felt able to climb the stairs to the abattoir a psychopath had made of her bedroom.

  The carnage was no less horrifying for being expected. Knowing her cat to be safe, Anna was better able to see it in all its ghastly glory. Touching nothing, she examined the animal remains. The burning went deep but she could tell it had been a squirrel, an Abert she assumed from the bits of black fur remaining. The Aberts were particular favorites of hers. She’d never seen them anywhere but the middle West, from Grand Canyon to Rocky. These squirrels were coal black with exceedingly long white-tufted ears. While glad it wasn’t Hecuba, Anna grieved for the loss of the small life and, because of the wanton cruelty of it, suffered a cold desire to surgically remove the perpetrator from the land of the living.

  Through the sharp odors of burned flesh, fur and scorched fabric, she could smell an accelerant. Most of it had been consumed but several drops had fallen on the down comforter. Lighter fluid was her guess: cheap, efficient, easy to come by. Also to detect, but this crime was committed with detection in mind. The squirrel had been soaked but not the coverlet. The intent was not arson but terror, terror painted in blood and bone, choreographed, as if the perpetrator fancied himself an artist of cruelty.

  Or herself.

  A woman could as easily ignite a caged squirrel as a man, though Anna had significantly more trouble picturing it. Women could be as brutal as their male counterparts, as unfeeling and possibly even more vicious. Women were also more practical. Evil was done to get, avoid or control. This was done partly to frighten Anna but, from the care taken to stage it, she guessed it had been done mostly for fun.

  What remained of the squirrel was beginning to stiffen. The incident had happened several hours earlier, between noon and four or five. Plenty of time for Robert Proffit—or a long-legged woman—to hike out and arrange this nasty surprise. But time to plan it? Aberts weren’t common—not rare, but not common. The animal had to be trapped and transported before it was sacrificed. Did the doer of the deed know Anna had adopted a black-and-white kitten? Proffit knew. Maybe. They hadn’t found him at the enclave but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been around, or returned and heard the story from Alexis or Beth. Anna doubted the plan had been that intricate. Had that been the case it would be logical that the wretch—whoever he or she might be—wouldn’t have brought the squirrel at all but would have expected to find and kill Hecuba. All the better to terrorize you, my dear . . .

  Anna tried to picture the handsome, competent Miss Perry in the act of insane evil that had resulted in the ruin of her bedroom, the Abert and her peace of mind. Rita didn’t give off those vibes but then neither, it was said, did Ted Bundy. Rita had proven alarmingly unconcerned over Anna’s report of the blood-dripping backpack. With her passion for an as yet undiscovered greater good, Rita could probably bring herself to slaughter a squirrel for the cause, whatever it was. Slaughter maybe, but Anna could not see her torturing it or nailing thirteen living mice to an outhouse wall.

  The individual she could easily picture tormenting small, helpless creatures was Mr. Sheppard. What he might hope to gain from such a theatrical display of wanton cruelty wasn’t readily apparent. The crime, though aimed at frightening Anna, was anonymous. There wasn’t much that was more personal than butchering an animal in one’s bed; anyone who’d seen The Godfather knew that. She was being warned away. Away from what was unspecified. Given the only case she’d been in Rocky long enough to be associated with was the kidnap of the girls, she had to make certain assumptions.

  Had Sheppard, for reasons of his own, spirited the girls away? Was that why Alexis and Beth were less than anxious to be reunited with their families when they’d finally reappeared? Why they would not say where they had been, where Candace still was? Had Candace been killed or had she chosen to stay gone, taken a bus or hitchhiked out of the clutches of Sheppard?

  Speculation was giving Anna a headache, or, rather, adding to the ache that locked back, shoulder and neck in an unkind embrace. The hot bath, like the Holy Grail, seemed a chimera leading her onward, yet never letting her get any closer.

  With a sense of doing her duty, yet without much hope that duty would pay off, she called the chief ranger to report the breaking and entering. In truth no actual breakage had occurred. Anna hadn’t bothered to lock her doors, a situation that would change until this butcher of squirrels, abductor of teenage girls and disembodied taunter of disabled rock climbers was behind bars.

  While she waited for Lorraine and whomever else she deemed necessary to arrive, Anna photographed the grisly bedspread and Abert remains with her 35 mm camera. One day the NPS would graduate to digital. Maybe after patrol rangers were issued cell phones.

  The rangers came. Rita Perry wasn’t with them. Due to the renewed search for Candace Watson, ranger schedules had been scrambled. Rita was on six ten-hour days, off four. She still had two lieu days coming this rotation.

  The crime scene investigation was carried out with diligence, if not optimism. Nothing so delicious as a dusty footprint on the hardwood floors or a hair follicle with DNA was found. The furnishings in Anna’s room had been used in Mississippi, packed by broad-shouldered strangers, moved by the kind auspices of half a dozen park employees. Fingerprinting and trace evidence was a complex nightmare that there wasn’t time, money or expertise to unravel. The incident, after all, was merely a gruesome prank involving only the death of a squirrel.

  Possible motives were bandied about: resentment of Anna as the first female district ranger hired, hostility from family members of the former owners of the house who’d taken umbrage when their widowed mother sold out to the NPS to rent to government employees and moved to Florida with a man half her age. The search. Mr. Sheppard. Robert Proffit.

  Anna didn’t bring up Rita Perry’s name. She had too little to go on and the new kid on the block wasn’t going to earn any points accusing a beloved seasonal who was both younger and prettier than she was.

  After an excessively long interval during which the rangers surmised, speculated and fumed, Anna resisted the urge to scream and throw herself on the floor in a tantrum of fatigue and muscle rebellion. Finally the party broke up. Anna gathered the four corners of her comforter together and deposited the ruined Abert in his oversized goose-down shroud in the garbage can outside.

  Having locked every door, checked the closets, even those too small to harbor a criminal over the age of six, and carried Hecuba up the stairs for company, she at long last lowered her stinking raging body into a bath so hot it stung the skin. Her deep groan of relief brought an answering chirp from the kitten, who sat on the edge of the tub, the better to witness this disgusting immersion ritual.

  Hecuba was still young enough her brain wasn’t yet aware her tail was part of the same cat. She allowed it to fall over the edge, the last two inches in the water. Anna smiled. Smiling was about the only movement that didn’t hurt. She wished she had not blown off Rita’s offer of Valium. Not that she’d feel particularly comfortable at the moment ingesting any drug provided by her frontcountry ranger.

  It crossed her mind to drag Moll
y or Paul into the tub with her by way of the cell phone. Fearing the sound of a loving voice would be the undoing of her, she settled into the heat with only the cat for company. As she slid down in the niggardly prefab tub, sacrificing her knees to the chill air that she might soak both spine and skull in the hot water, she set about ordering this unconscionably long week in her mind.

  Mice. Unkempt campsites. Bleeding pack. Twenty-four hours on the manzanita. The note from Proffit. Rita’s lying about it. Proffit’s voice luring children. Alexis pregnant. Candace and the other girls, unseen but laughing, prodding at Heath under the RV. Proffit bunking at Rita’s, a stone’s throw from the Thompson River District ranger station. The butchered Abert.

  Working at Rocky Mountain National Park was way more exciting than Anna had bargained for. The days just flew by when others were having fun at one’s expense.

  Hoping the hot water heater was a big one, she nudged the left knob with her big toe. Her fragmented thoughts floated on the sound of the running water. She didn’t examine them too closely, just allowed them to brush by each other, seeing if any connections could be made.

  Two things formed out of the mental mist. One that was there too often, and one conspicuous by its absence. Nowhere could she detect money or personal gain. The cases she’d worked in the parks—other than those of spontaneous combustion: a fistfight over a campsight, domestic violence—were fueled by greed. Lust for money, power, prestige. Mostly money. Money could buy the other two. Lesser crimes had been fomented by lesser demons: jealousy, revenge, spite.

  In Rocky’s mess of mice and squirrels, battered girls and bloody Christians, there didn’t seem to be anything to gain. At least nothing a sane person would find alluring.

  That brought Anna to the other thing, the thing that appeared too often. The through line, the consistent theme. Murder of the mice was psychotic. Burning the squirrel: psychotic. Disembodied voices, poking at a paraplegic with pointy sticks: psychotic. Battered girls in panties. Psychotic. Stuffing bleeding flesh into backpacks. Major psychotic. A sudden chill took her, despite the steaming water. The winter before, in the high country of Yosemite National Park, she’d dealt with an individual she felt to be genuinely evil, the kind of evil that suffers such a cold indifference to the wants and needs—the very lives—of those around it that to kill a busload of rabbis on their way to temple, simply to obtain an olive for one’s martini, wouldn’t give the monster pause.