Perhaps the plastic contained some dormant virus that came to life when pressed long enough against the warmth of human flesh.
Once revived it would be in a unique position to penetrate the brain orally or aurally, causing a chemical imbalance that brought on obsessive calls to empty houses, fights with sweethearts, and long silences costing more than ten cents a minute.
The clock over the door insisted it was just nine p.m. She would wait another half hour. If nobody was home by then she'd give it up as a lost cause.
Tilting back in Norman's chair, she cast about for something with which to amuse herself. Tidy men were not particularly entertaining, no flotsam or jetsam to fiddle about in. Normal men, men who didn't clean out their wallets but transferred the whole mess every few years when a new wallet appeared under the Christmas tree, carried their history in their back pockets.
Desks served the same purpose, if on a more businesslike plane.
Hills Dutton, Anna's district ranger in Mesa Verde, had a magnificent desk. His professional past could be read in geological strata as one worked down through the accumulated canyons of paper.
Hull was either indescribably tedious or had something to hide.
Anna clicked on the desk lamp. just passing the time, she jiggled the drawers. They'd been locked. A sense of challenge crept into her idle snooping. Rangers were the most trusting creatures on the planet. They habitually left wads of money, candy, hollow-point bullets, house keys, car keys, and confiscatedalcohol littered around the office. Amazingly enough, with the exception of the candy, none of it ever disappeared.
The only people Anna had known to lock their desks-all two of them- both turned out to be chronic litigators, always embroiled in one lawsuit or another against the NPS. Their secret-squirrel tendencies sprang from paranoia that the information they'd gathered was actually worth something. With a renewed sense of purpose, she searched all the standard key hiding places but came up eml)tyhanded.
A quick search of Renee's drawers proved more satisfying. A key tagged "Norman's Desk" lay prominently in the pencil tray. Like any task, once undertaken the search took on a life of its own, becoming important by the simple fact it had proven difficult. Anna carried the key back to the chief ranger's office with a pleasant feeling of accomplishment.
After all her suspicious surmisings and stealthy machinations, the prize wasn't worth the game. The desk's interior was as sterile as the surface. Files were carefully marked and each folder contained what it advertised. Stationery and envelopes filled wooden racks. In the center drawer, the one usually doomed to catch life's precious litter, there was precious little.
Anna flipped through Hull's desk calendar. On the day of the airplane crash he'd written, "Slattery, Stafford meadow-10 a.m., as if he'd intended to keep the appointment. The other entries were what might be found in any day planner, notes of meetings and times." Cheryl" was dotted here and there and "Ellen" made a number of appearances along with personal hieroglyphics-PU and PO, asterisks and underlinings. Cheryl and Ellen, Anna knew from the general scuttlebutt, were Hull's wife and daughter.
The only thing of interest was an envelope with a handwritten address and a Pennsylvania postmark. In for a penny, in for a pound, Anna thought, and shook out a single sheet of paper covered with the same loopy writing as on the envelope, and a snapshot.
" Dear Norm, I don't think the change has done Ellen-"
Anna refolded the paper and stuffed it back into the envelope unread. The letter was clearly personal and there were limits to the rules she would break without probable cause. Somehow looking at a picture was different. Pictures, by their nature, seemed in the public domain. The photograph was of a young girl. Anna would have guessed she was eighteen or nineteen but loopy letters in pencil read , Ellen on her 13th birthday." Norman's only daughter.
There was a family resemblance in the watery blue eyes and narrow, squared-off chin. Heavy makeup and what looked to be very expensive, if tasteless, teen-tart clothes hugged the chunky frame of a body not yet out of childhood.
Engrossed as she was in meddling, when the phone rang Anna reacted so violently she cracked her kneecap on the underside of the desk. The pain was intense but would be short-lived. Breathing deeply and counting backward from twenty, she glowered at the phone as if it had attacked once and might try it again. By the fourth ring she'd recovered and decided to answer it. There wasn't a chance in hell it was for her but at this time of night it was possibly urgent.
"Cumberland Island National Seashore," she said.
"Yeah. Hey. This is Charley Riggs. Who am I talking to?"
Anna was momentarily starstruck. Riggs was the Southeast's regional director. Silently she closed and locked the desk drawer lest he sense her transgressions." Anna Pigeon, presuppression, fire crew," she answered formally.
" Drought's pretty bad there, Anna?"
She recognized the use of her name for what it was-a politician's trick- but she didn't resent it. Government agencies were highly political. It was, if not good, at least expedient to have a politician in charge.
Dutifully she prattled on about what they'd been doing on Cumberland, until Riggs signaled her to stop with an indrawn breath.
"Well, hey, Anna, that's terrific-"
Anna rolled her eyes and wished she had another chocolate bar.
"Is Norm around? He said he might be working late tonight."
No, Anna told him, and could she take a message? Well, liey, Anna, she could.
"I just got out of a backcountry management retreat in Big Cypress and need to talk to him about the airplane wreck. Tell him to give me a call as soon as he gets in tomorrow, would you, Anlia?"
"Yes, sir." She wrote the message down on a notepad placed precisely two inches from the phone. A stray thought jarred her as she watched the regional director's words draining from her I)en.
"Hey, Charley, how long was that retreat?" Maybe in her next life she'd go into politics.
"Five days. No fax, no phone, no running water. We got a lot accomplished but I'm getting too old to sleep on the ground."
Anna laughed politely and hung up.
The thirty minutes she'd designated had passed. She had permission to try Molly and Frederick a am, but she didn't reach for the telephone.
For some reason Norman Hull had lied. He'd not been on the phone with the regional director when the ill-fated Beechcraft left the ground. Anna had little doubt that if she nosed around she'd find that Renee was under the impression Hull had received the lifesaving call on the mainland and the woman in St. Marys believed just the opposite. Two lies, each tailored to support the other. Deceit of that caliber usually sprang from a more than casual motivation.
She unlocked the chief ranger's desk. Having been handed probable cause on the proverbial silver platter, she took out the handwritten letter and read it through. It was family news. From the context, she gathered it was from a sister of Norman's. Ellen had been sent to Pennsylvania for a visit with the cousins, had proven to be a major pain in the butt, and was being put on the next bus back to Georgia. Anna refolded the letter carefully and placed it precisely where she'd found it. A man as anal-retentive as Norman Hull would notice any disruption.
Again she went through the files, this time with greater interest.
The bottom right-hand drawer held confidential personnel foldersthe record of each employee, including letters of commendation and censures, their personal information, and the numbers that Americans carry from cradle to grave.
Anna pulled Slattery Hammond's folder from the neat arrangement of hanging files. There wasn't much to it; he'd worked for the parks only sporadically, and as he was strictly seasonal, the service didn't much care how he made ends meet in the off months.
She looked through the sheets quickly. All of it was standardmemos, evaluations. When she reached the page containing his personal data, she stopped. Hammond's life insurance washandled by a company in Washington State. Dead He was worth $125,00
0.
Dead by accident on the job: $250,000. Double indemnity. Given what Slattery did for a living, that codicil wasn't surprising. Pilots tended to believe the fool killer would call them home long before they had a chance to die peacefully in bed; a romantic notion and most often wrong. The insurance companies bet on that. This time they lost. Anna scanned the rest of the document to see who had won. The beneficiary was Linda Hammond, a resident of Hope, Canada, wife of the deceased. Should she predecease him the moneys would be put in trust for his son, Dylan.
Hammond was married. Had Lynette known? Certainly no one else seemed aware of it. Would a self-professed Christian commit murder to revenge a broken heart and a damaged ego? Absolutely.
Human beings weren't linear creatures, cut from one piece of cloth.
They routinely harbored moral dichotomies that would short-circuit the most sophisticated robot. And most did it effortlessly. Maybe Lynette was not only Christian but Catholic. Fornication, murder, a quick confession, and she'd be back on the Lord's good side.
Nothing in Mitch Hanson's history called attention to itself and Anna went on to Lynette's. Her only claim to fame was having started out in the Park Service as a GS-I. Anna hadn't known that low a designation existed. The stamp on her pay envelopes MLIST have been worth nearly as much as the check itself.
There was no folder on Schlessinger. She was attached to the NPS but not of it. Turtle-research funding was obtained from other sources. Whoever was head of Resource Management kept the files on the marine biologist.
Renee, Norman's secretary, had held more jobs than looked good on a rdsumd and hadn't the sense to disguise that fact. She'd been with Cumberland Island National Seashore for fifteen months.
A personal best.
Dot and Mona were not represented. As VIPS, the chief ranger would not be in charge of them.
Todd Belfore's folder provided a couple of tidbits of information.
He had health insurance through the NPS but no life. After the baby was born they might have bought some. Now it was too late.
Of greater interest was the fact that he'd been a district ranger in North Cascades. He had transferred to Cumberland on a lateralno promotion, no raise in pay. Though Cumberland had undeniable charms, one could argue it was a step down in status. North Cascades was considerably bigger and had that certain cachet unique to the western wilderness parks.
Todd and Slattery had been in Washington, working for the NPS, at the same time. Within several months of one another, they'd moved clear across the continent, where they died together in a planned plane wreck. It was possible they'd had dealings in the past, that someone wanted both of them dead and found a way to kill two birds with a single actuator rod.
Meticulously, Anna replaced the files and double-checked to see all was as it should be. Having closed and locked the desk, she pulled the sleeve of her fire shirt down over her hand and polished her fingerprints from the drawers and the key. Not for a moment did she think Norman would have the desk dusted for prints. She was just killing time.
Ten o'clock rolled around and she tried her phone calls again.
Molly didn't answer. Frederick's machine in Chicago picked up and Anna left a message. No face lost-she wouldn't call again tonight.
From habit she rattled the doors and windows before she let herself out of the ranger station. At Mesa Verde it was what the late ranger did each night.
The moon was high, the air warm and sweet with the scent of mimosa and the tang of the sea. Tonight Anna wasn't drawn into the southern dream; tonight it felt cloying, unclean, as if the air clung to her skin, clogged her throat and mind. The sandblasting of lies and counterlies, drug addiction, clinical depression, heat, broken hearts, and ticks was beginning to get to her and she longed for the cool and mesa she'd come to think of as home.
And, she admitted reluctantly, she was lonely. Before Frederick, lonely was a state of mind she'd grown accustomed to, risen above, and finally, come to find peace in. Now there was a hollow place behind her breastbone when he didn't answer the phone.
Absurd, considering that two nights before, this very intimacy gave her the heebie-jeebies. When next she talked to Molly she'd ask her for a magic incantation, a rite where the word "codependent" figured prominently. Smiling at the idea of modern witchdoctoring, she felt better.
Tabby was still up when Anna got back to Plum Orchard, and the good feeling evaporated. Grief was wrapped around her, blurring her features. Color was gone from her skin and even her hair looked closer to gray than blond. She'd lost weight, the flesh melted from her face and bones showing through in a death mask. Thin and brittle- looking, her arms and legs poked out around her belly. She more closely resembled a refugee on the six o'clock news than a pregnant American.
Anna made a pot of hot tea-a concept she'd picked up from reading dead English authors-and arranged it prettily on a tray with two ornate teacups and a plate of eternally fresh Ho Hos.
Tabby was in the tiny living room sitting on one end of the sofa where Anna slept. Maternity fashions don't lend themselves well to mourning. The bright red and black horizontal stripes on Tabby's smock made her look even more ethereal in contrast. The lights were off but for a lamp on an end table. Its forty watts didn't make a dent in the darkness shrouding Tabby Belfore.
Near the entrance to the hall, scattered across the hardxvood floor between two cheap new area rugs, were brown pebbles the size of marbles: deer seat.
"Where are Dot and Mona?" Anna asked as she set the tray on the coffee table and began pouring. The VIPs had the evening shift, as they termed it, and had promised to sit with Tabby. This enforced lack of privacy would have driven Anna insane; the constant pressure of eyes on her skin, voices in her cars. With Tabby it had been deemed necessary, at least for a while.
Tabby sat immobile, her hands folded on what was left of her lap. If she heard Anna, she lacked the energy to respond. Anna repeated the question and forced a cup of Grandma's Tummy Mint into the woman's lax fingers.
"Gone home," Tabby replied in a monotone.
"When?"
Tabby shook her head. The question was too complex.
"Drink your tea," Anna ordered, and watched as the girl sipped mechanically. The bandages were torn from her forearm and the puncture wounds scratched open. Spots of blood had smeared but Anna could read the letters they formed: T 0 D and what was probably part of another D. Todd. Anna remembered girls in high school making crude tattoos of their boyfriends' initials with sewing needles and ink from fountain pens. Tabby seemed so painfully young. Compassion fought with irritation in Anna's breast.
Tabby Belfore was beyond the palliative effects of either, so Anna opted for shock therapy." You and Todd knew Slattery. You met him when you worked in North Cascades," she stated flatly.
"What was between Todd and Slattery?"
Tabby blinked several times, then focused on Anna's face. Her mouth opened, closed, and opened again but no words came. Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her drawn cheeks. Tabby put the teacup and saucer down on the table and pushed the tears into her hair with the heels of her hands. A string of pronouns dribbled brokenly from her lips: "I... He... We Her hands fell to her belly, clutching it protectively. More tears, unchecked this time, then she said in a whisper Anna had to strain to hear, "No.
No. No. I can't."
Anna was casting about for words of reassurance or a mild form of blackmail she might use to pry out the woman's secrets, when Tabby stood abruptly. With her altered center of gravity, the movement threatened to overbalance her and Anna sprang to her feet to steady her.
"Leave me alone!" Tabby choked on the words.
Anna let go and watched till she closed the bedroom door between them.
Sitting back down, she eyed the untouched Ho Hos suspiciously. Reat chocolate was never that shiny, that compliant. Sipping tea, she tried to let the frustrations of the day drift away and failed. Unable to reach anyone by phone or in person, her sense of isolati
on had grown more acute.
"Fuck you all"' she grumbled after a while, and crawled into her sleeping big. Lost Horizons was where she'd left it on the end table.
She couldn't remember how many times she'd read it, three or four.
Old stories were the best stories.
IRED AS SHE WAS, sleep wasn't going to happen. As with all linsomniacs, Anna's body refused to fit into the contours of her couch. On firelines she'd slept the sleep of the innocent on crude beds hacked from earth and stone. It was the mind-prodding that kept her awake. Constantly rearranging limbs and pillows was merely a distraction.
Perhaps she was getting too old to be a field ranger. On her next birthday she'd be forty-two. Maybe it was time to move into management. In the climate of equal opportunity that pervaded the NPS it shouldn't be too difficult. She was qualified and she was femaleworth a lot of points on somebody's register.
Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 05 - Endangered Species Page 16