Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 11 - Flashback

by Flashback(Lit)

  "Okay. I radioed in, then turned off my running lights and cruised toward the place on the water. With binoculars I could see it was a Scarab-one of those go-fast boats, like a cigarette boat but bigger and only a few years old. It was black or some dark color, moored in the middle of a coral bed, no lights. Two people onboard. Maybe three but at least two. Could see the lit ends of their cigarettes. Looked hinky.

  "About fifty yards out I turned my light on them and hailed. The boat was deep metallic green and rode low in the water like it was loaded to the gunwales. Not usual for a go-fast boat. They'd have heard my motor so my being there was no surprise, but as soon as they realized I was law enforcement, one guy ducks into the cabin and the other fires up the engine. He got panicked or something and didn't take time to turn on the fans to purge the bilge and engine compartment of gas fumes.

  "Must have been a spark, because it blew up. A piece of it hit my boat. I was thrown overboard. My boat sank, theirs burned a second then went down."

  Bob stopped and rubbed his eyes with both fists like a sleepy child. "God, it was fast," he said, sounding less like a Joe Friday and more like a real person. "Two boats afloat. Bang. Flash. Both boats gone like they never happened. I didn't know they could sink that fast. I might have a funny time sense. I was never out cold, but things were hazy after I went overboard. Just for a couple seconds," This last was to Teddy, who nodded as if she expected no less from him.

  "I could see one of the passengers on the other boat-I think the one that started the engine-was still alive but in a bad way. I got my PFD inflated and started to swim over to give him a hand. Till then I didn't know my leg had been hit-it didn't hurt, nothing. Once I knew, it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. Anyway I swam toward the guy but with my leg it was rough going and I had to drop my duty belt. I lost my sidearm."

  Bob looked at his wife, loath to admit this gross failing on his part.

  "Only a damn fool would have kept their gun given the circumstances. Anyway, Cliff found it for you," Anna said. "Go on."

  "I got to the guy. He was alive but hurting and not able to help himself. I towed him to East Key-and tried to get up a signal fire. I couldn't manage it. By the time the sun came up the guy was breathing bad. I tried to shade him. Then I don't remember anything till Teddy yelling, 'Bob.'" He smiled at his wife and Anna looked away, not to give them a moment's privacy but because their faces had blurred. She rubbed her eyes, wondering if she needed sleep or what. When she looked again they were back in focus.

  "The man you saved-"

  "He died."

  "Still counts," Anna said. "The man never said anything?"

  "Not much. He was never fully there, if you know what I mean. He was burned, and I think he'd been struck on the head. Pain and concussion or whatever had him scrambled."

  "What did he say?" Anna asked.

  "Let's see." Bob closed his eyes the better to recall. "He was scared, wanted to get to dry land. 'Feet on American soil,' he said once. Once he said, 'cold' and then I thought he was saying 'tree saw' but it made no sense. Nothing he said made sense."

  For a minute, or maybe more, Anna waited in case Bob should wish to add anything, but he didn't. "I'll let you rest," she said. "Your ride should be here in half an hour or so. I want to get a look at the man you saved before they haul him off to the knackers."

  As she closed the infirmary door it suddenly struck her that Bob had done it. When reality came knocking he'd been able to act out his fantasy. He'd swum over half a mile with a compound fracture dragging behind him a man he'd saved from the briny deep. He'd tried to build a signal fire and, when he felt himself blacking out, his last thought was to fall in such a way as to protect the other guy from the burning rays of the sun.

  That made him a genuine, bona-fide hero in Anna's book.

  Later there would be time to fete Bob, to wonder why the riders of the green go-fast boat were hovering off East Key, why they panicked sufficiently when they saw law enforcement to forget to clear the gasoline fumes, and why they carried extra fuel in their bow. Right now she had a corpse to examine. The helicopter from Key West would be at the fort in less than thirty minutes to whisk this bit of human jetsam away.

  It took her only a minute to fetch a camera and return to the researcher's dorm. Danny and Mack did their work well. All six generators must have been working overtime. The dorm was as cold as a morgue. And as dim. The long narrow room, packed floor-to-ceiling with bunk beds had but one window facing out on the parade ground, and that was dull with a cataract of mini-blinds.

  Having switched on the overhead lights, which seemed to alter the nature of the dimness rather than shed illumination, Anna walked back to the industrial-style kitchen. On the counter, stripped of the colorful towels and covered by a white sheet, was her objective.

  As she neared, the sheet, draped over what must have been the man's right hand, stirred; a minute flutter and lift as if plucked up then dropped by restless fingers. A horror movie thrill closed Anna's throat, and she stopped. For an instant the room's walls seemed to waver, start to close in. The sudden panic receded, but not the fear. For a minute or more she watched the shrouded form, but there were no more zombie-like manifestations.

  "Damn," Anna said aloud and was comforted by the sound of her own voice. The fort, lack of sleep, too much sun, too long underwater, something was playing tricks with her mind. "Okay, buddy," she continued, finding talking brought her out of whatever creepy place she'd glimpsed. "Let's see if you've got anything to tell me."

  Pinching the sheet delicately between thumbs and forefingers, she peeled it back. She always took care to respect the dead-an honor she would not necessarily extend were they still living. Dead, a person was evidence at best and the empty valise of someone's memory if nothing else. Anna hoped this dead man would prove a treasure trove of answers. Starting with who he was.

  Having taken the sheet off, she put her pocket notebook and pen on the counter by the corpse's right foot, pulled on latex gloves to protect herself as much as any trace evidence, and began. Hispanic-Cuban or Puerto Rican probably-in his late twenties to mid-thirties, black hair cut short and well, the kind of barbering a well-to-do businessman might get. Much of the left side of his face was covered in second-degree burns. The ear had been taken by a third-degree burn. All that remained was a hole surrounded by blackened flesh.

  Around his neck was a two-inch gold crucifix-not a cross, a crucifix with the crucified Christ executed in exquisite detail with skill and a joy in the macabre. The chain was fused into the flesh where the fire had hit.

  Shirt and pants were burned nearly off the left side of the body, while the right remained relatively intact. He'd been standing to the right of the blast, at the engine. It was probably he who'd triggered the first explosion. Anna checked the rest of him for possible identifying marks. His right pocket contained one hundred fifty-three dollars in a gold or gold-plated money clip with a dog's head engraved on it, a shepherd or wolf or coyote. Other than that he carried no identification. A bird of some kind, maybe an eagle, wings folded, was tattooed on the back of his calf. Possibly he'd been in the service at one time. Her knowledge of the military and its insignias fuzzy at best and gleaned from the movies, Anna couldn't remember which branch, if any, used a bird diving downward as its emblem.

  Dutifully, she photographed everything and touched nothing but his trouser pockets and the edge of a torn trouser leg. If there was to be any forensic investigation of the remains, she didn't want it said she'd fouled it up. Odds were good there wouldn't be. No crime they knew of had been committed. He'd killed himself and his buddy in an unnecessary but not terribly rare boating accident.

  Probably X-rays of his teeth would be taken for identification purposes and, if no one came forward with a missing-persons claim, the body would be held however many days Florida law decreed, then disposed of.

  If the man had grown up outside the United States, his dental work would be of little value. The boat might be a b
etter way to trace his identity. If it was his boat. If it had been purchased and/or licensed in the U.S.

  Anna clicked a couple shots of the tattoo just to prove she was doing her job, and suffered a moment of compassion for Florida law-enforcement officers of every stripe. Working where several cultures came together, many recent immigrants, many illegal, the twists and tangles in what in Kansas might be a routine investigation became an almost impossible task.

  Leaving the makeshift morgue with its sad John Doe, Anna could hear the chop and whuff of the medevac helicopter from Key West. Garden Key had a helipad on a slight rise between the campground and the sea on the old coaling dock used to refuel ships when the fort was a working part of America's first line of defense.

  She had no desire to be anywhere near the helipad when the helicopter set down. The mere thought of being sandblasted on top of flayed by live coral made the undamaged bits of her twitch.

  The Shaws and the corpse shipped out. The search and rescue had been a success: her ranger was not dead; her administrative officer was not widowed. Further diving was a bad idea-at least until tomorrow. Both Anna and Linda were too tired and beat-up to be safe, and Cliff had done more than his share. Though he would go again without complaint if Anna asked him to, she wouldn't. He was no longer a young man-he was no longer even a middle-aged man unless he intended to live to one hundred and forty. Besides, Anna wanted to see things firsthand. The weather was dead calm; the wreck would still be there tomorrow.

  The remainder of the day she spent alone in the office, enjoying the quiet and the protection of walls, cushioned chairs and air-conditioning. When she'd been a Yankee, she'd scoffed at the stale soulless world of processed air. Since becoming a southerner, she'd seen the light. With the top layer of her epidermis scraped away, she was more than content to hide in the safe and comfortable womb of the modern world.

  Another of the perks of modern science was instant gratification, this time in the form of a digital camera, the one fitted with an underwater container Anna, then Linda, then Cliff had used to photograph the wreck. Anna'd used it again to take her pictures of the corpse. After she'd written reports on the past twenty-four hours' adventures, she downloaded the photos to Teddy's computer. Anna had taken advantage of Teddy's absence to work at her desk rather than stay locked away in the claustrophobic confines of her own office.

  An advantage of the digital camera was that a photographer could take up to twelve hundred photographs before running out of space. The disadvantage was that a photographer could take up to twelve hundred photographs. Because film was not a factor, there was no need to be frugal.

  Cliff's photos, taken after the second explosion, were the most interesting. Anna compared before and after shots, but could come up with nothing better than Danny's original suggestion that the go-fast carried extra fuel, and fire from the first blast engendered the second.

  When she finally emerged from beneath the virtual sea, the office had grown gray with dusk She shut the computer down and tried to move, but she'd been turned to stone. An absurd picture of Teddy returning to find her hunched in her chair, back humped, hands shaped like claws, glazed eyes fixed on the screen tittered through Anna's brain.

  Groaning, she loosed the muscles and joints grown stiff. Even her skin had stiffened, or so it seemed, and felt as if it might rip were she to move too quickly.

  Getting outside helped. Though the sun had set, it was still close to ninety degrees. After so long in the AC, the heat's first embrace felt grand. Warm, dusk and no mosquitoes: a rare treat for a woman late of Mississippi. The Dry Tortugas were not always so blessed. Often after rains there would be an infestation of the bloodsuckers, particularly if there'd been an open container left out to hold standing water. With the recent drought, the vile creatures were blessedly absent.

  Rather than cut across the parade ground, Anna climbed the spiral staircase near the fort's gift shop and took the scenic route home. The stairs were dark enough she had to feel her way up, but the steps were wide-at least at the outer edges-and the handrails in good shape. On the second level she came out into the relative brightness of the open casemates.

  To her right, above what had once been the guardroom and was now the Visitors Center and gift shop, was the cell in which Dr. Mudd and one of the other Lincoln conspirators had been imprisoned. To her left was the northeast bastion. Anna turned left. With openings to the sea on one side and the parade ground on the other, the long rows of casemates collected light. On moonlit nights Anna often walked in them, enjoying the silence, the shadows and the sense of human history that mixed with the blood and mortar holding the bricks together. The bastions, with their cavernous rooms and complex system of arches, were her favorite haunts.

  Not this night. The northeast bastion's size and depth made it too dark. Usually the dark didn't bother her, but her nerves had been scraped along with her flesh, and the black corners set off internal alarms. Hugging the inner wall, she hurried through and came out into the long passage down the northern edge of the parade ground. Two perfect rows of arches, one small, made for the passage of men, one large for the housing of cannon, unrolled. The arches forced perspective, creating the illusion that the dimly lit vaults continued on to infinity.

  Soothed by the uniform light and the fussy mutterings of thousands of sooty terns nesting on nearby Bush Key, Anna drifted through the measured twilight.

  Halfway to her quarters she noticed she was not alone. The other's presence was not heralded by a shout or a footstep but by an unpleasant frisson along Anna's spine. At the end of the casemates where the last arch gaped black, leading into the one bastion without a gun port at it's end, the one called The Chapel because it was surmised it had been so intended by the fort's builders, stood a woman in white.

  Her dress was long, tight-waisted, the sleeves of her blouse oversized at the shoulder and snug from elbow to wrist. For a moment she was still, then she raised one hand and patted her upswept hair as if looking for loose pins to poke in more securely.

  "Hey!" Anna yelled. "You!" And she began to run. The woman looked up, then stepped back into the darkness, vanishing from sight. Running quickly and lightly, it was only seconds before Anna reached the place where the woman had stood. She searched The Chapel, the northwestern spiral stairs down to the lower level and the exposed part of the casemates in front of her apartment and that of Duncan and his family, but found nothing.

  Shaken, more scared than she ought to be, Anna sat on the picnic table outside her quarters. There were three possibilities: she'd seen a ghost, somebody was messing with her or she was going mad.

  6

  My Dearest Peggy-

  Sorry it has been so long since last I wrote. Things have been a bit mad. Or perhaps I should say a bit madder than usual. The fracas at the sally port turned out not to be the lynching of Private Lane but the arrival through the storm of the Lincoln conspirators. The entire fort was up in arms, our boys literally running about with weapons and anger at ready. The fort crackled with evil the rest of that night and for two days after. Joseph kept Tilly and I under house arrest for nearly forty-eight hours either in fear for our well-being or, more likely, because he forgot to tell our guards to go away and leave us alone. I do know they dearly wanted to be relieved of this most onerous duty.

  We did not see Joseph. I don't know where he slept or if he slept at all. I expect he was busy keeping the soldiers and prisoners from using the arrival of the conspirators as a rallying point to express their rage and frustration at the long hot summer with its dry storms and lack of fresh food and water.

  Tilly slept with me both nights. The unsettled state of the garrison, along with being under house arrest, had us both on edge. I cannot, however, say that I slept with Tilly. The girl kicks and tosses about just as she did when she was five years old. I don't know that I should have slept a great deal better had she gone to her own bed. The heat is oppressive and having a soldier escort one to the privy is not conducive
to the free and easy functioning of the body. Tilly is as out of sorts as I but for different reasons. Singing romantic duets with Private Lane, then holding his bloody head in her lap by lamplight, has unhinged our little sister. I do believe Tilly is in love with the boy or fancies herself so, which amounts to the same thing.

  By the afternoon we were released, she had worked herself into a frenzy of worry that Joel had died. My attempts to assure her that the fort's surgeon would have seen to the boy and he was probably resting comfortably in the hospital had little ameliorating effect. Possibly this was because I wasn't sure I believed it myself.

  We weren't so much released from our gentle, if humiliating, bondage as simply forgotten. Tilly and I were in my room, sewing a new blouse to replace the one Joel Lane had been so inconsiderate as to bleed all over, when Tilly-who'd done more sighing and fretting than sewing-got up to visit the privy. She returned in moments with the report that our warden had vanished and, the call of nature so urgent a minute before now forgotten, insisted we go in search of Joel.

  The storm passed without giving us a drop of rain to fill our cisterns, and the heat of summer, heavy with moisture we can neither drink nor wash in but are condemned to wear like a sweated sheet, filled the parade ground. Still I was glad to be out-or at least as "out" as life on a prison island allows.