Liberty Falling

by Nevada Barr

  Confidential. Pending. Police business. The man had to plow through that while Anna was the soul of patience, smoothing his feathers and bolstering his ego, survival skills denigrated as “feminine wiles.” At length, to put her in her place, Brandon couldn’t resist divulging a piece of information. “Your MUD theory on the M and U being for Michael Underwood doesn’t hold water. Of course we checked him out first thing.” By the way he said “we,” Anna got the distinct impression Brandon never got anywhere near Underwood. “He’s got a rock-solid alibi.”

  Anna said nothing, gave him no satisfaction. She merely looked dubious and bided her time.

  He sweetened the pot: “He couldn’t have a better one if he’d known what was going down.”

  “Going down,” like “Let’s rock and roll,” was such a trite phrase Anna had to suppress a derogatory snort.

  Brandon leaned back in his chair and waited for her to ask what it was so he could have the pleasure of not telling her. Ugly, like stupid, is as it does. Brandon was getting uglier by the minute.

  “When does Joshua come on duty?” Anna asked, with such perfect politeness it left no doubt that she intended to go to a “real” policeman with her questions.

  It worked.

  “Underwood was in jail,” Brandon said smugly. “He got a DUI up in Westchester County the night that actress was whacked.”

  Whacked. Anna indulged in a tasteful snort. Why not? She’d gotten everything out of Brandon that she’d come for. Macho Bozo was cleared of all but being a drunk and a jerk. Unless creatures of that ilk were underfoot, she tended to ignore them. There wasn’t time enough in the world to deal with them all.

  “Have you got a date for the big bash tomorrow night?” Brandon asked as she stood to go.

  For an instant she thought he was asking her out, then realized he was trying to engage her in conversation to keep her there a little longer. It beat working.

  “No hot date,” she said, and shrugged into her pack. Her date with Dr. Madison was a day affair and, for reasons she couldn’t put her finger on, she was morally certain it wouldn’t carry over into the night. “I’m going with Patsy.”

  “Top brass was invited. The Super, the Chief, Trey Claypool—he won’t go, he’s too good for just about everything. But you weren’t invited. Patsy can’t invite you.” The eyebrows were up, a judgment was coming down. Anna realized she’d been set up. Of course she hadn’t been invited. She was nobody, and though she considered her thirty-six thousand a year rolling in dough, it wouldn’t buy a day’s worth of Post-it notes for a campaign such as Mrs. Weinstein was launching.

  “Not invited out loud, you might say,” Anna told him, and crossed to the door. “But we have got to be there. Can’t have a picnic without ants.” She left before he could begin a lecture on NPS policies regarding the sucking up of illicit hors d’oeuvres.

  Brandon had triggered an idea. She would like a date for the Liberty doings. Patsy was still out. Anna slipped into her office to make the call. A moment’s forage in her pack turned up her address book. He answered on the seventh ring: moving slow today.

  “Hey, Jim, it’s Anna. Got any plans for the Fourth?”

  He didn’t. Thirty-one years on the docks and he’d never been to Liberty Island. “I guess I’d like to see where Jimmy worked,” he said. Anna was glad he didn’t say “see where Jimmy died,” though he must have been thinking it. She hung up smiling; she really liked the old guy, looked forward to sparring with him over pilfered Scotch and an international array of canapés. Right amongst the crème de la crème, a broken-down old stevedore and a field ranger. Partners in reality.

  A good chunk of the day remained and Anna’s sense of hurry had not abated, but she was out of things to hurry and do. The bottom of the barrel had been scraped and she was no wiser than before. Islands II and III held no appeal. It was too hot and she had no desire to see Billy by accident or design. People broken in their own eyes were too great a drag on the soul to be faced when not feeling particularly Herculean oneself. Manhattan, Molly, Frederick required more energy than she had. Nervous energy she was rife with, but it didn’t provide emotional strength. Home would be good: a dry pine-scented wind, a cat, a view not chewed by buildings or dulled by smog.

  Options limited to hiding or whining, Anna chose the former, waited patiently for the two-thirty boat to Liberty, then sought out the Keeper of the Flame. A minuscule kindness would be good on this day of heat and self-pity. She hoped he’d appreciate the thought if not the gift.

  Charlie’s back was still bothering him. He sat in his “office,” a partially subterranean space beneath the ranger station, accessible from the alley between it and the maintenance sheds. Tucked between battered wooden storage cabinets and a wall covered in newspaper stories written over the years about him and his lady, he was sipping coffee and laboring over his pen.

  “Am I interrupting?” Anna asked, squashing in beside him.

  “I’m a poet,” he said simply. “Working on a new one.”

  “Ah.” Anna knew better than to ask to see a work in progress. “I got the pictures back. The ones of you turned out pretty good.” She took them out of her pack and spread them on the carpenter’s bench he used as a desk.

  “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Charlie said.

  Anna admitted she was.

  “I wish I could have gotten her all cleaned up for the ball,” he said wistfully.

  “Nobody’ll notice,” Anna said.

  “That’s the trouble. Nobody notices anymore.”

  Mortality was weighing heavily on the Keeper, and Anna didn’t know what to say. They sat staring at the pictures, thinking their own thoughts.

  “Is that the ’biner you were talking about?” Charlie asked, pointing to the snapshot of the carabiner that had been found on Hatch’s body.

  “That’s it.”

  Charlie picked up the photo and held it under the light of an old bed lamp with cowboys and cacti on the shade. “Not one of mine.” Anna didn’t doubt him. Climbers knew their own equipment.

  “Maybe fell out of somebody’s pocket. Tourists here are from all over. You know, come to America, hike, climb, see the sights.”

  “Must be what happened,” Anna agreed.

  Charlie graciously accepted the photos she’d taken of him, but it was clear he considered himself only an object that obscured a portion of his lady’s perfect form.

  Anna left him to his poetry, walked the short distance to Patsy’s house and took up residence on the couch with a battered copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and a bag of strawberry Twizzlers.

  Only once was she forced out of her cocoon of sugar and fantasy. Patsy’s phone rang. Anna ignored it, but when the machine came on and she heard David Madison’s voice she dragged it onto her chest and answered.

  “Hey, I got a real live person,” he said, sounding genuinely delighted.

  “You’re half right,” Anna said. “I’m real. I can’t swear to the ‘live’ part today. The couch got me. I’ve been clamped in its jaws half the day.”

  “Good. Save your strength for tomorrow. Are we still on for our date?”

  “I just need to know what to wear.”

  “Casual. We’re going kayaking.”

  Anna’s spirits underwent an unsettling rocket rise followed by a crash. Kayaking promised relief from the crush of a city that grew hotter and heavier each day. But travel would be required. Time. She would not cancel Jim Hatchett’s visit to Liberty.

  “Where?” she asked. “I’ve got to be back in town by seven at the latest.”

  “Back-to-back dates? You’re a popular girl.”

  Anna chose not to accept the invitation to explain herself. Madison took it with good grace and went on.

  “Not a problem in the least. We’re kayaking on the Hudson. New York has everything. There’s a sports complex on the West Side in the Twenties, Chelsea Piers. Full-service. They rent kayaks. I thought I’d bring a picnic lunch. You ca
n bring the expertise. We’ll paddle as long as you like and get you back to wherever you need to be with time to spare.”

  Details were worked out. They’d meet at Columbia-Presbyterian around two-thirty. That way Dr. Madison could do morning rounds and Anna could visit Molly. Arrangements made, they severed the connection.

  Kayaking; Anna loved it. When she worked on Isle Royale she’d kayaked nearly every day. Light and unmechanized, kayaks tied one to the water, and so to the world, in a way no other boat, with the exception of a canoe, could. Kayaks were silent, responsive. Thin hulls let the cold of the water seep into legs and butt. Low profiles put the kayaker in the bosom of the swells, a leaf flowing with wind and tide.

  But who wanted to be at one with the orange peels and floating condoms in the Hudson, enjoying the playful antics of the rats under the piers?

  “Stop it,” Anna ordered herself, but the jaded cynic within was not easy to silence.

  Wine had no flavor but she drank it anyway. Food had no appeal so she didn’t eat. By ten-thirty she’d wasted enough of God’s good humor and Patsy’s patience for one day and retired to her room. Since becoming a Park Ranger, she had spent much of her life camping out: in glorious country, on fire lines, in dormitories, on couches and floors. In comparison, Patsy’s cramped spare room was luxurious. Still, it wasn’t home. Mandy had become consistently and openly hostile. Anna’s continued presence was driving a wedge between the housemates. Turning out the light, she focused on the glitter of Manhattan through the open window at the foot of her bed. The fairy lights had lost their glamour.

  She promised herself she would book her flight home on July 6. Molly was on the mend. Frederick was beside her. Unflattering as it was, Anna was relieved not to be needed any longer. If she’d ever been needed at all.

  “You were. You are,” she said aloud to reassure herself. She fell asleep half believing it.

  23

  AS IT WAS Friday night, the eve of the Fourth of July weekend, party boats were barging a frenzy of revelers around the island. Music was so loud not only was Anna pried out of what had been a pretty good sleep, but she could make out the words of the lyrics: “Closer, closer, I gotta love you tonight.” Could be any of a thousand songs. Pulling shorts over her bare behind, she soaked in the trite message. A tank top and flip-flops completed her ensemble. Worst-case scenario—or best-case—the only one who might see her was Andrew. A tryst with such a handsome fellow would be soothing to a girl’s frayed nerves. Anna took a moment to run a comb through her hair and spritz herself with Patsy’s Pleasures perfume, hoping it would prove prophetic.

  Years had passed since she’d succumbed to the urge for sex with a casual acquaintance, presuming Andrew could be had. When she had worked on Isle Royale, she’d slid into available arms and after the brief moments of la petite mort, there had been tears. Hers. Not of shame or guilt—no one had been hurt, no one betrayed—but for the emptiness they had longed, and failed, to fill with each other.

  This time—again assuming the delectable policeman would be hers for the asking—would probably be no different. Knowing this, she still adjusted her top to a more alluring angle. Being a perennial stranger had left its mark. Moments of purely physical release coupled with strong arms to hold her didn’t look half bad.

  Out of doors the air was leaden with noise, dull bass punctuated with what sounded like rapid fire from cheap hand-guns. Across the chop of the harbor were sparks and sputters of light: firecrackers dragged out a day early. Undoubtedly they were illegal, but on the water the worst an offender would do was destroy his own boat. Harbor Patrol might have been fairly lenient.

  Night wrapped around, a warm wet blanket, as Anna wandered across the lawn Patsy and Mandy shared with the Assistant Superintendent. A waist-high chain-link fence separated the land from the short, sharp drop to the sea. Below, glittering in wavelets, rocks formed a natural jetty pointing toward the south shore of Ellis.

  A spark flickered in the nurses’ quarters of the infectious disease ward: fire. The instant Anna pictured the loss of the rambling derelict buildings of Islands II and III, she knew what a tragedy that would be. For many of those not native to America and not brought in chains on slave ships, Ellis and Liberty were the beginning. Every stone was soaked in family history, cultural mores, ethnic roots. America—new, robust, passionate—crammed two small islands with the stories of the nations of the world and the people who left them in hopes of a better life.

  Another flicker and Anna relaxed. A flashlight; Joshua making his rounds. Unlike Hatch’s, Joshua’s movements were unpredictable, his routines varied. Hooking her fingers through the wire mesh, she leaned back. Cyclone fences were miserable things. The one fence that did not make good neighbors. Patience Bitner, a woman she’d known on Isle Royale, swore that’s how she could tell if a neighborhood was going downhill: the proliferation of Cyclone fences.

  Unexpectedly, the staunch wire gave and Anna fell back six inches before it caught again. Startled but unhurt, she noted the cause: five or six yards to her right, near a thicket of head-high bushes, the fence was down, its posts evidently undermined by the sea. Killing time, hoping the temptation to seduce Andrew would pass, she followed the fence line to the break. A post had fallen over, its concrete base exposed, wire bent toward the water. Not merely sagging but bent. This breach in Liberty’s token line of defense had been exploited. More than once, by the look of the trampled wire. By the light of the moon and the faint leaks from the statue’s floodlights through the leaves, Anna saw a dark shape, less an object than an absence of reflections on the water. Hanging on to the wire to keep from slipping down the bank in her treacherous flip-flops, she leaned closer. A runabout with a motor too big for its frame was moored in the lee of the natural jetty.

  It was the perfect place for trespass. Claypool’s windows faced east and west and the overgrowth of bushes effectively screened the place from any other direction. Interlopers: weekend adventurers looking for a romantic spot, no doubt. The islands, jewels of isolation in the bustle of the harbor, would be prime targets. A pleasant thought tickled Anna’s mind. She had an excuse to seek out Andrew. The gods were placing too much in the way of temptation before her. Her dubious virtue was in glorious danger. Pushing through the interlaced branches, a shortcut to the mall leading to Lady Liberty, she laughed at herself. Deep within her was a seventeen-year-old girl who steadfastly refused to be tamed by the questionable wisdom of middle age.

  Stepping deeper into the brush, she watched her feet. If she waded into a copulating twosome it wouldn’t be the first time, but coitus interruptus was not her favorite pastime.

  Branches closed behind her. Leaves met overhead. In front, foliage blotted out the light. Locked in this miniature copse, suddenly, momentarily, she heard the party boats go quiet: CDs being changed, sound systems shut down in sync, whatever caused the odd hush that occasionally falls on a roomful of people when, for no explicable reason, all conversation stops at once. Overlaid on this palette of silence was the skritching of the runabout rubbing against the rocks, and a faint shush in the leaves near her.

  As she stood there clasped in darkness, no flashlight, no underpants, ridiculous shoes—reality slapped Anna between the shoulder blades with a cold fishy smack. Peculiar things had been happening, things that left a trail of dead and broken bodies. In lust and boredom, she’d forgotten the world was a dangerous place. As Hatch had forgotten a predictable pattern could prove fatal.

  The fog of preoccupation lifted and she stood stock-still, letting her senses sharpen. Thoughts of sex evaporated and she felt a chill despite the heat of the summer night. The racket of the party boats returned, robbing her of her sense of hearing, something she relied on when working without light.

  What had alerted her? Merely the blindness of the brush? A sixth sense? Or was it the anxiety that had circled her all afternoon coming to roost? Danger rose around her with the scent of crushed leaves. And a different odor, one out of place: the mingl
ed smell of garlic and stale sweat. Slowly, trying not to make a sound, she began backing out of the bushes. Her flip-flops scooped up leaf litter. One pulled off of her foot. She didn’t stop to retrieve it. There had been a sound; the boat on the rocks and the shush. A breath. When she walked into the black of the brush she’d heard breathing. Now it was as if she could feel it on her bare skin.

  A second step. A stick or thorn jabbed into the heel of her bare foot. She used the pain to help her stay centered. Maybe the leaves in front of her moved. Maybe they didn’t. Through the raucous music she couldn’t hear if someone moved with her. Two more steps and she would be clear of the copse, she could turn and run. Her left foot eased back, settling firmly. Now was not the time to emulate Japanese maidens being chased by monsters and fall down.

  Out on the water, a Roman candle ignited. Hot-pink light flooded over her shoulders, illuminating the ground in neon. A yard away were boots; army boots, worn and scarred. She turned to run and sensed rather than saw movement from above. She was to be clubbed down as Corinne had been.

  Protecting her head with her arms, she turned the meaty part of her shoulder to absorb the blow. It hit with such force that she staggered and went down on one knee. Before she could pull herself up, a flash of black, and the impact of a bootheel colliding with her temple flattened her. There followed a crushing weight that knocked the breath from her lungs and forced her face into the dirt.

  The man was in a hurry. Her death was not on his agenda. She lay without moving, taking courage from the fact that there were plenty of live possums in the world. Playing dead came easy. Without breath, her brain rocking from a kick in the head, she doubted she could have risen if she tried.