Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 13 - Hard Truth

by Hard Truth(lit)

  "How long has he been staying with you?" Anna amended.

  "Only a few days. He's a friend. He needed someplace to go. He was determined to find out what happened to Candace Watson. The obvious place to start was back to the beginning, the area around Odessa Lake."

  "Okay," Anna said. "Not informing me Robert was in the park when vou knew I wanted to talk to him might have been rude, inconsiderate, stupid or even dangerous, but it wasn't illegal and it wasn't against NFS regulations. While I might not like it, I won't make you suffer for your decision. Now Robert Proffit is wanted for questioning. He's a suspect in the kidnap of the girls, the possible kidnap/murder of Candace Watson, and knocking me off a rock. You help him again and you are aiding and abetting a fugitive. I will come down on you with both feet. Is that understood?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  A few years before, Anna might have been impressed by the "ma'am" but Mississippi had spoiled her. Everybody called her "ma'am" except the very little kids and they called her "Miss Anna," which delighted her no end.

  "You are a federal law enforcement officer. Your responsibility goes deeper than that of an ordinary citizen. If Proffit calls you, you tell me. If he comes by for his stuff, you tell me. If he writes, sends e-mail or smoke signals, you tell me."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Good." Anna relaxed the hard-nosed boss persona and let the crackle of anger drain from the room. The discovery that Proffit had been living twenty yards from where she parked her patrol car every morning irked her more than she cared to admit. Nobody liked being made a fool of.

  When her rattled nerves settled and Rita Perry recovered from the lecture, Anna began again.

  Rita stuck to her story. Robert hadn't seen her. He'd left a note. The note said only to tell Anna it was an accident and that he was leaving. No, she didn't still have the note; she'd thrown it in the trash. Yes, the trash had been taken to the dump.

  Asked the same questions for the second time, Rita acted more affronted than guilty until Anna brought up the bloody backpack.

  Again Anna was struck by the lengths Rita went not to tell an outright lie. Sexual misconduct was evidently the only transgression she felt heinous enough to warrant true dissembling.

  'All I can tell you is that I love this park. I've worked here every year since college. This is my park. I wait tables and coach girls' basketball in Jackson the six months I'm not here, just marking time till my season starts again. I would never ever do anything that might hurt the park. And I would do anything-almost anything-for the park's welfare."

  Not an answer to Anna's question but a good enough little speech, delivered with just the right touch of fanaticism. The environment needed zealots. Anna's concern was that what Rita might deem to be in the park's best interest and what truly was might be entirely different things. Maybe Rita thought finding the sliced and diced remains of a local teenager within NFS boundaries would reflect badly on the park and had decided to keep it her little secret.

  Rita was right, of course. It would look bad. Anna sighed. "Think about it. We'll talk again." She pushed herself to her feet, careful not to wince or groan lest it elicit another outpouring of debilitating kindness.

  "By the way, do you have Robert's e-mail address?" she asked.

  "Yeah. Goodnews dot something-not one of the biggies. Not AOL or Yahoo! Slip or slippery. I can get it for you." Rita was anxious to be of help now that she had been so assiduously of no help for the past hour.

  "Tomorrow's soon enough."

  Anna entered her house calling, "Here, kitty, kitty." Guilt over having for-gotten about her new ward when she'd come home the first time, coupled with the need to feel warmth and hear purring, made her anxious to see Hecuba.

  The kitten wasn't downstairs. Her food and water bowls were still full. Bedroom and bath were on the second floor and the bath was calling her nearly as forcefully as the need to reconnect with feline kind. Nearly. Shucking clothes as she went upstairs, Anna talked kitty-cat nonsense to lure the little beast out from wherever she'd hidden. Entering the bed-room, she switched on the overhead light.

  Her bed was a charnel house. Burns and blood and bile were smeared over half the coverlet. In the middle of the mess were the charred remains of a kitten-sized corpse, bits of black fur in pathetic patches between burns so deep, bone showed through.

  Sorrow so heavy she could not stand under the weight of it settled on Anna. Keeping her back to the carnage, she sat on the corner of the bed and buried her face in her hands. She didn't cry. The misery of knowing anyone could destroy so perfect a life was too great for the release of tears. A part of her knew she should be afraid. This taker of beauty and lives might still be in the house. Fear did not move her. Surely cruelty that great would leave a palpable miasma of evil behind.

  She might have stayed paralyzed on the edge of the defiled coverlet for some time had not something reached out from beneath the bed and grabbed her ankle.

  eighteen

  Gwen wasn't happy, Heath could tell, but her aunt had steeled herself to say nothing, and she appreciated it. Gwen had wanted her to find a new interest in life. She simply hadn't bargained on that interest being a damaged child who brought with her ghosts with sharp sticks and a com-mune lorded over by a patriarch who was far from reassuring.

  Though retired, Dr. Littleton still delivered babies for a chosen few Many of the babies she'd delivered were now having babies of their own and wanted no one but her to preside over their introduction to the world. She'd been called back to Boulder to attend just such an event and she had to go.

  Heath had to stay. She'd dropped her aunt off at her condominium in the center of the small booming city and driven the RV back to the glamorous outpost of Rollin' Roost.

  When she'd told Gwen she planned to stay on at the RV park for a while, her aunt had asked her what good she thought she could do. Heath hadn't been able to articulate an answer. She just had to be here. Rather like her grandfather, who attended all weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs and ball games, she believed in the value of showing up, of being there, being seen to support, to celebrate, to participate in the events of other peoples' lives. Heath had chosen to show up. The limpet knew she was here. For the moment that was good enough.

  But for bits and scraps of time, Heath hadn't been alone since she'd fallen. Always there were nurses, therapists, her aunt-someone within call who would be coming by to prod, poke or check on her. Sitting outside the RV, beside the scarred picnic table, watching the light fade over the eastern plains, no help, hindrance, company or annoyance near but for Wiley, who was more entranced by the possibility of a crepuscular jack-rabbit than the needs of his mistress, she wasn't sure how she felt about it.

  Good, she decided. Good, and good and scared.

  Sitting outside alone had taken an act of courage. The frightened woman who'd come to replace the valiant climber when Heath lost the use of her legs, urged her to cower indoors behind locks. Anger rather than courage lent her the impetus to come out. She was damned if she would let one visitation by voices armed with rocks and sticks rob her of this peculiar joy.

  Sticks and stones. She better than most knew they might break bones.

  Like a badly cut film, the memory of the night she'd been attacked played through her mind. The fire. The crawling on her belly like a reptile. Hiding under the RV Smashing Ranger Pigeon's foot with a rock.

  The last image made her laugh out loud. Despite herself, Anna Pigeon was growing on her. Pigeon was a flinty sort, not given to warm fuzzies. Heath wasn't used to that; she had grown up with a mother and an aunt from the South. Still and all, she had come to rather like the fact that Anna treated her without deference. Around the feisty ranger, Heath had come to feel like a perfectly good specimen of humanity who happened to travel by chair rather than a vague embarrassment to the belegged and ambulatory race of bipeds.

  The sound of tires leaving the hum of the pavement for the crunch of gravel brought her out of her musings. Wiley went on
alert, rabbits forgotten in the promise of bigger game. The car, lights blinding Heath to make and model, drove past the one other occupant of the scabrous camp and came toward her site. Wiley took up his position at her right knee.

  "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 material-ized out of the gloom and dust.

  "Please can we go inside?" were her first words.

  Heath was glad to comply. If it was somebody 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 smartass.

  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 vas 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 rebel-liousness, 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 had 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 com-bination. 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 babv 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 bodv 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 a
nd 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 moth-ers 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.