Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 13 - Hard Truth

by Hard Truth(lit)

  Lest she lose her again, Anna waited till Rita had removed her pack before she, too, set hers aside and sat down with her back to a tree, her binoculars in her lap.

  Rita's destination was a small clearing several hundred yards above Loomis Lake. Another trail, far easier than the cross-country route they had followed, ran from Fern Lake to Loomis' eastern shore. Rita hadn't wanted to be seen, hadn't wanted anyone to know where she was headed. That was reassuring. Anna hated to think she'd pushed her aching body over hill and dale to observe her seasonal law enforcement ranger bird-watching or sketching the wonders of nature.

  The clearing where Rita had stopped was rich in one of the park's most abundant resources: rocks. Boulders formed a truncated Stonehenge, a natural wall on three sides. The fourth Anna couldn't see but surmised was open by the fact Perry appeared and disappeared as if she entered and exited a small box canyon. This bizarre exercise was repeated six times. Each time Rita brought in something she'd had cached in the trees out of sight from Anna's binoculars. Twice the young ranger went down to the lake and returned with a bucket of water. The bucket was presumably stored with whatever else she had hidden away beneath the evergreens. Occasionally Perry's lips moved as if she spoke or sang to whatever it was she tended in the corral of granite.

  After these six trips, her work, whatever the hell it was, evidently done, Rita sat down with her pack and a paperback book and ate lunch.

  Curious what Christian prison wardens read in the backcountry, Anna trained her binoculars on the book in Rita's hands. John Sanford's Evil: The Shadow Side of Reality.

  Out of a sense of duty to the body that had served her so well-if not without complaint-Anna tried to eat but excitement robbed her of her appetite. That Rita watered and spoke to whatever was incarcerated in the rocks suggested it was alive.

  Candace Watson.

  Unbidden, half a dozen Dean Koontz novels flittered piecemeal through Anna's brain. Mr. Koontz's unique and terrifying visions com-bined with no respect to publication dates. The one that could not be eradicated by bites of peanut butter and cloudberry jelly or washed awav by draughts of water was from a novel where the villain created grim and intricate sculptures from murdered victims whom he carefully arranged in his gallery beneath an abandoned amusement park.

  The mice.

  The Abert.

  Perhaps Rita didn't need her victims alive to feed, water and converse with them.

  twenty

  Thunderheads formed. Temperature dropped. Sudden hectic breezes ruffled the tops of the pines. Anna waited and she watched. Rita fin-ished her lunch, set aside her book on the rock she used as a table, talked to the enclosure of stones, fetched another bucket of water. When nearly two hours of this had passed, the lanky ranger finally hefted her pack and started back up toward Anna's hiding place. She passed within twenty feet of where Anna sat but never looked right or left. Her eyes were fixed on the tops of her boots, her mind god knew where. Most people walked through life seeing only the movies they played in their head. A majority of the reels Anna had accumulated over half a lifetime weren't the sort she wished to view a second time. This outward focus allowed her to see without being seen more times than she could remember. She listened without moving until she could no longer hear the crin-kling thump of Rita's boots on the needle-strewn earth. When the living silence of the high country returned, a silence made deeper by the grumble of thunder and the rare call of a bird, Anna waited another ten minutes just to be sure. Then, with an adolescent mix of dread and excited anticipation, shouldered her daypack and started down to the ring of boul-ders in the clearing. From habit and caution she walked quietly. There was no guarantee that whatever Rita held captive would be glad to see her.

  The rocks were more than head-high. The cluster appeared to have grown there, no nearby escarpment to give a clue from whence they had fallen. As Anna reached this tumble of granite, she stopped and listened. The first drops of cold rain had begun to fall and the stamp of tiny wet feet on pine needles and stone masked any sounds from within. If any-thing was alive in this natural enclosure to make sounds.

  After half a minute her patience was rewarded. A thin whine, like that of a small creature enraged, cut through the dull patter of the wind-driven rain.

  "Shit," Anna whispered and, with visions of lacerated children danc-ing in her head, she walked around to the lakeside of the rocks, the side on which Rita had lunched and talked and delivered water. There the boulders almost completed their ring. An opening two feet wide at most had been closed off with a waist-high gate made of pine branches lashed together with twine. The gate was not sturdy enough to keep anything in or out that was not already in a crippled or weakened state.

  The stick gate was held in place by two rocks the size of bowling balls. The whine came again, sharper this time. Anna moved the rocks, lifted the gate away and squeezed between the boulders. Within the rough circle, the granite chunks leaned together, nearly meeting at the top, forming dark alcoves beneath. The area they protected wasn't more than six by eight feet. With the overcast sky, light was at a premium. What Anna could see appeared to be empty. The air was tainted with the smell of rotting flesh.

  Movement, faint and furtive, from the dark crevice to her left caught her eye. Then a whine and the flash of eyes. Anna crouched and shined her Mag-Lite under the overhang of rock.

  Puppies.

  "What in hell..." She held out her hand and was rewarded by a fierce growl from a beast slightly bigger than a breadbox. She couldn't but ad-mire its courage.

  Seasonals were not allowed pets and anyone who lived inside the park wasn't allowed pets that went outside of a fenced yard. During her years in the parks Anna had had to deal with the occasional unauthorized cat or dog. As handmaiden to a cat-now two cats-and a three-legged dog, she understood the need to have one's companions near. This was the first time she'd known someone to go to such absurd lengths to make it so.

  She lay down on her belly the better to study Rita's little family. There were four of them: one nearly black, two silvery gray and, the littlest one. gray with tawny ears.

  Wolves.

  Rita had wolf puppies. A snippet of a ranger report Anna had read came back to her. A wolf bitch had been shot by a rancher near Jackson. Wyoming. The local vet said it appeared she'd recently had a litter of pups. The pups were never found, they'd said.

  If Anna remembered correctly, Rita coached high school girl's basket-ball in Jackson. She must have found the pups and brought them to Rocky, where there was an overabundance of elk for them to feast upon when they grew up. It wouldn't be the first time park policy was given a wee boost from an enterprising ranger.

  Much as she wanted to, Anna didn't try to lure the pups out, pet them or play with them. Though Rita conversed with the little wolves, she'd very rightly not tried to domesticate them. It was even bad form for Anna to remain in the pen. A wolf desensitized to human beings is destined to have a very short life span.

  "Don't touch them," came a voice above and behind her.

  Rita had come back and Anna, so recently proud of her powers of observation and stealth, was so engrossed in the delight of wolf pups that she'd heard and sensed nothing. It took all of her self-control not to squawk.

  "I'm not," she said calmly. "But it's not easy."

  Regretfully she shoved herself to her knees, her back still denying her her usual grace and ease of movement. Part of the problem was she was tensed up, waiting for a blow or a kick. Instead Rita crouched down beside her.

  "I know." She-was gazing intently at the hostile little faces beneath the rock. The rain was coming down harder now but neither woman seemed to notice. "I've had them since they were two weeks old."

  "The wolf bitch that was in the news?"

  "The same," Rita said. "It took me nearly forty hours searching but I found the den. The poor little guys were half starved. I guess when they're so young it doesn't take all that long. A good thing really. It's not like they can count on
Health and Human Services finding foster homes for them when Mom is murdered."

  "You bottle-fed them?" Anna asked. She wasn't quite successful in keeping the envy out of her voice. Rita heard it and smiled.

  "For as short a time as possible. I was afraid of making pets out of them. Soon as I could, I got them on meat. I haven't touched them since and I throw the meat in."

  "You feed them elk meat," Anna said, the bloody truth of the back-pack dawning on her.

  "The resource manager, Ellen, told me they should be habituated to their natural food source. Ellen knows nothing about this," Rita added quickly. "She thought we were just talking 'what ifs.'"

  "Road-kill elk," Anna said, remembering the vanished elk carcass on Bear Lake Road and the bloodied bit of carpet she'd excised from the trunk of Rita's patrol vehicle.

  Rita nodded. "I froze what I could fit in our weensy freezer and packed it in."

  "Robert Proffit was carrying food for the pups when he knocked me off the rock."

  "It was an accident." Rita rose.

  For a long moment they stood there in the rain staring at the rock overhang that hid the little wolves from view.

  "What's going to happen to the pups?" Rita asked finally.

  That was the question Anna was pondering. Rocky Mountain was in dire need of an effective predator to keep the elk herd healthy. Though these four carnivores might not live, might not find any way to reproduce, might never form a viable and sustaining pack, they were a start. Once it was established that wolves had returned to these mountains of their own volition-Rita's abducting and reintroducing them remaining a secret- the endangered species protections would kick in. A wolf program would be instituted, maybe animals from another pack introduced, a mating program begun.

  Maybe.

  If.

  Possibly.

  Too many stumbling blocks. But it could happen and the idea thrilled Anna. Suddenly she laughed.

  "What?" Rita said.

  "The night I spent in Tourmaline Gorge I thought I heard wolves howling."

  "They do howl," Rita said. "Puppy howls. I love it. I'm surprised you could hear it on the other side of the gorge."

  "Sound does funny things in the mountains," Anna said. "It was a still night and, Lord knows, I wasn't sleeping all that soundly."

  "It was an accident."

  "Yeah."

  "Come on," Rita said. "I usually don't come into the pen. I don't want them associating people with lunch."

  Anna looked at her watch. "More like high tea," she said.

  Rita disappeared through the narrow entrance to the pen. The pups, seeming to sense that these intruders were departing, began to scuffle and growl happy little puppy growls. Knowing she'd probably only see them again in cages, Anna squatted down for a last look at these pred-ators in the making.

  The little guys were in a three-way tug-of-war over what must have been a particularly tasty morsel. The fourth pup, the smallest one, sat at the edge of the fray watching intently. An opening presented itself and the runt was in quick as a cat and out again with the prize. So intent were the wolves on the hunt, they had forgotten Anna's existence.

  In a tumble of downy soft fur-or so Anna imagined, she dared not move lest they remember her and end their game-they rolled out from beneath the lip of granite, tiny teeth clamped on stubby tails, cushion-fat cars laid back. The runt was rolled by a tremendous pounce from a fatter sibling and the coveted morsel fell from its jaws half a yard from Anna's knee. Most of the flesh was eaten away but Anna knew that ingenious articulated arrangement of bones existed nowhere in the body of an elk.

  It was a finger. A small human finger.

  Venison wasn't the only thing Rita and Robert Proffit had been feed-ing their little friends.

  t w e n ty - o n e

  Mrs. Sheppard-Mrs. Sharon Sheppard, as opposed to her pregnant fourteen-year-old sister, Mrs. Alexis Sheppard, and the dumpy middle-aged Mrs. Dwayne Sheppard-had left Heath's RV home in a panicked fluster of "I've got to get back. He'll wonder where..." eighteen hours before. During those hours Heath had not been idle. Nor had she been noticeably productive, though that was not for want of trying. She'd made a dozen calls to Idaho, starting with Lewiston, in an attempt to track down Alexis and Sharon's father, Rupert Evan Dennis. The closest she'd gotten was a vague suggestion from a Robert Dennis-no relation, or admitting to none-that he thought there were some Dennises in Pocatello.

  Several times Heath had called Anna's cell phone number and cursed the ranger each time the message beep answered. Cell phones had done a good deal of damage not only to the viability of the callee's excuses but the patience of the caller. In a few short years it was as if it had become de rigueur for everyone to be instantly available to everyone else.

  Anna Pigeon was unavailable to most people whether she answered her phone or not, Heath guessed. Still, it pissed her off. Weren't park rangers public servants? So give me some fucking service, Heath thought uncharitably.

  The only two calls that had proved satisfactory were those she'd placed to her Aunt Gwen. Having been in the business of caring for women and children for nearly fifty years, Dr. Littleton knew most everybody in Col-orado similarly engaged. She'd promised to find what could be done for the three Dennis sisters in the way of services and inalienable rights.

  Gwen cautioned Heath not to be overly optimistic, particularly for Beth. Because Mrs. Dwayne was the oldest of Sheppard's known "wives," it was a possibility that she was legally wed to Mr. Sheppard. Short of proving abuse-which wasn't easy to do in a community as closed as that of New Canaan, even when one knew for a fact it was occurring-there was no reason the daughter could be removed.

  Indeed, Heath didn't know if Beth wished to be removed. Perhaps Mr. Sheppard drew the line at incest-or incest with blood relations.

  Alexis was a good bet for proving abuse because she was carrying proof that Sheppard had had sexual intercourse with a minor. Even if neither she nor her elder sister would testify to that to a legal system they'd been brought up to demonize, the threat of it might be enough to twist Shep-pard's arm into letting them make their own choice whether to stay or go. A choice Heath wasn't convinced they had the strength to make. Both had been trained to helplessness before their God and their hus-band who, like as not, they were encouraged to regard as two parts of the same being.

  If only I weren't trapped in this goddamn chair, Heath thought, and not for the first time. This time a second thought followed on the heels of the much-used lament. If she were again a functioning biped, what could she do that she wasn't already doing? Storm New Canaan commando-style and abduct the Dennis sisters and Beth? Arm wrestle Mr. Sheppard for dominance over their minds and hearts? There was nothing. Most of life's battles in the modern world weren't fought with legs and feet, muscle and sinew, but with the mind. Since she'd lost the ability to climb, Heath had been forced to refocus. In the past she'd used her considerable intellect to find climbs, prepare for climbs, strategize climbs, remember and discuss and critique climbs, boast and hobnob about climbs old and prospective.

  Now she concentrated on finding that easy chute, that safe traverse for a woman and three girls who needed to get off a ledge on which cir-cumstances had marooned them. In a sudden insight that was as unpleas-ant as it was unsettling, she felt the absolute self-centeredness of her former pursuit and, other than the joy and athleticism, the ultimate futil-ity of scaling peaks where there was nothing to be had at the top but a fleeting sense of glory and a self-serving memory.

  In truth, had she been free of her chair, she wouldn't have made time for Beth and the Dennis girls. She wouldn't have had the patience to pur-sue the tedious business of tracking down people by phone, of waiting in a tacky RV park for a communication from Sharon.

  Before the woman had skittered away like a terrified creature who knows it inhabits a low link on the food chain, she had promised Heath she'd e-mail the following day. Phoning was out of the question. New Canaan had service, several l
ines in fact, but the only telephone proper resided in Mr. Sheppard's office, the door to which was kept locked when he wasn't in.

  The internet was nearly as rigidly controlled but Sharon was one of the community's several clerks. She had been sent to a training course at a junior college when she was eighteen so she might be of greater service to the commune. Mr. Sheppard would have been appalled had he known how much she had built on this rudimentary training in computer skills. Both she and Alexis had e-mail to keep in touch with friends in Canada.

  Eighteen hours and seven minutes and Heath had yet to hear from her. She glared at the laptop on the kitchen counter. Computers had never captured her imagination. As a consequence she used them when necessary but had never become fast friends with the things. The cell phone and laptop set up in the RV struck her as the ultimate in Buck Rogers, George Jetson magic but she knew it worked. She and her aunt e-mailed several times each day.