Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 11 - Flashback

by Flashback(Lit)

  For a while the three of them sat in comforting silence, Anna sipping her tea, Donna fiddling with the chunk of machinery, Patrice seemingly content doing nothing at all.

  They made a bit more desultory talk. Anna asked politely about the eviscerated motor on the table and was treated to a list of internal combustion symptoms that meant nothing to her. Finally Patrice took pity on her and summed it up.

  "Generator went ker-put."

  "Terminally ker-put?" Anna asked.

  "Over Donna's dead body."

  "I'll have it up and running by dark," Donna promised. "I think we got a mouse problem. They get to building nests in the moving parts of your machinery and it's a nightmare."

  It was on the tip of Anna's tongue to offer Piedmont's services as a mouser. He could rid an island of the size of Loggerhead Key of rodents in under a week. What stopped her was selfishness. She liked Piedmont at home.

  Unless Donna pulled off her usual miracle, Loggerhead Key would have to swelter in the dark. Anna was keeping her cat.

  She looked at her watch. Two forty-seven. Time to meet some men about a wreck. She made her goodbyes and walked away from the snug cottage and into the glare of white sand and a hard-looking sea. It occurred to her that she felt good for having had tea with Patrice and Donna. It also occurred to her that she had come with questions, and had given out a great deal of information and gotten little.

  Patrice must've been one hell of a cop.

  12

  My Dearest Peg, Five days have passed since I last sat down to write. To turn back the clock: the four of us waited in the casemate next to that shared by Dr. Mudd and a second of the conspirators.

  The cell was dim, as they all are once the opening arch onto the parade ground has been boarded up, and this one darker than most, having but a small opening on the sea side. My eyes had adjusted, however, and I could see with that misty clarity one experiences at twilight. Though the cell was stiflingly hot, the sweat prickling my skin had the quality of winter perspiration brought on by exercising in extreme cold.

  Joel was still and silent, the effort to be brave and charming during transport having taken what little strength he had. The soldier who was to remain with us as guard and chaperone stood to one side of the door leading to Dr. Mudd's cell, looking agitated and thunderous. Eyes big and mouth pinched, Tilly knelt beside Joel, watching the door where the soldier had rapped, summoning the devil upon whom we had pinned our slim hopes.

  The door opened. An urbane-looking man, hairline receding, a lush mustache covering his upper lip above a well-trimmed goatee, said: "May I help you?" for all the world as if he answered the door of his own home and under better circumstances.

  I don't know if it was the relief that he did not look like a slavering beast or the surprisingly kind eyes under thin, low brows, or the offer of precisely that which we had come seeking-help-but Tilly started to cry.

  "Are you Dr. Mudd?" she asked through tears that flowed prettily-when I cry, my face goes red and blotchy and my nose runs. Perhaps that's why my tears lost their efficacy with Joseph too many years ago to count.

  The most hard-hearted of men would have responded with chivalry to the picture of feminine distress Tilly presented.

  "I am," he told her and bowed slightly. He was elegant, even-or perhaps I should say especially-given the surroundings, and spoke with a whisper of a southern drawl that served to enhance the image. "How can I be of service?" All this was directed to Tilly, I suppose because it was she who first addressed him.

  Whatever the reason, I could see her becoming as grave and mature as befitted a woman addressed on matters of importance. This "honor," if indeed attentions from the likes of him constituted such, coupled with his offer of medical help for Joel Lane, completely won Tilly over. Our little sister and one of the men condemned for the most heinous and cowardly of murders were staunch allies before they'd exchanged a baker's dozen of words.

  I did not like it. I very much did not like it. Unfortunately my discomfort came only later. Joel's needs being foremost in my mind at the time, though not so swayed as Tilly, I was glad enough of the doctor's help.

  As she had established a rapport with the notorious doctor, Tilly became mistress of the situation. I was content to stand by the soldier against the back wall and act as an observer.

  She showed the doctor Joel and told him how he had conic to be injured. Dr. Mudd's expression didn't appear to change, but when mouth and chin are completely obscured by hair, the face was unreadable. I wouldn't doubt if a few of the union's famed stoics owe the compliment not to moral fortitude but a plenitude of facial hair. The doctor did not give in to the temptation to comment on the brutality of the union soldiers. He merely nodded, said: "Please?" and, when Tilly made room, knelt to determine the extent of Joel's injuries.

  I had been so caught up in Dr. Mudd's examination of Joel, the quick surety of his long fingers, the small helpful movements of Miss Tilly as though she'd spent years in a sickroom, that I forgot there was another soul incarcerated in these rooms until the soldier at my elbow moved suddenly.

  Samuel Bland Arnold. You of course remember the name from the trial and the accounts in the newspapers. Words cannot convey the impact that laying eyes on this man has.

  Mr. Arnold had taken Dr. Mudd's place in the door leading into their cell. He'd apparently started to enter the casemate where we were. That's what stirred the soldier assigned to Tilly and me. Arnold held both hands up, palms outward, to assure the soldier he would not try to cross the threshold again. This gesture is universal for surrender, acquiescence, yet in a manner I cannot put into words, when done by Mr. Arnold, it was mocking as well.

  He leaned against the lintel; ankles crossed, and lit a cheroot. Dark haired, mustache worn clipped above the lip and long at the corners of his mouth, brows level and thick over deep-set eyes, the man is just the sort with whom silly girls ruin their reputations.

  Mr. Arnold said nothing, nor did he interfere in any way, yet, to me at least, his presence was as disruptive as a soprano singing off-key. I turned my back on him yet remained so aware of his presence I believe I could have told you the instant it happened had he left that doorway.

  My peculiar suffering wasn't to last long. Dr. Mudd was in need of many things for the care of the patient he had taken on with such automatic grace. The guard could not leave either Tilly or me alone with the prisoners, and Tilly would have had to be dragged from Joel's side by a team of wild horses. It fell to me to fetch and carry. I found it a great relief to be freed of that close room with its absence of air and presence of prison smells and the disturbing emanations from Mr. Arnold.

  Dr. Caulley is a lean man, but his moon face, glistening summer and winter as if basted for roasting, gives the illusion he was meant to be corpulent but was too stingy to allow his body to attain its predestined shape. The fort's surgeon is unfailingly polite to me but manages by intricate manipulations of eyebrows and narrow mustache to semaphore the message that he doesn't like me and has a low opinion of my intellectual abilities.

  When Dr. Caulley found me acting as errand girl for the infamous Dr. Samuel Mudd, his eyebrows surpassed themselves in communicating that which his pursed and niggardly little mouth was too pious to say. With those two scanty lines of reddish hair, he managed to disparage Dr. Mudd's medical abilities, lineage and politics while his mouth murmured only, "Mister Mudd. I see."

  Joseph must have taken time to speak with him, because he granted my requests. It took several trips, but I brought Dr. Mudd everything he'd requested with the exception of morphine. Using hints and eyebrows, Dr. Caulley conveyed that the confederate doctor and conspirator in murder could not be trusted not to sell the morphine or use it himself. I was afraid Joel would be left to suffer. That he was in great pain was evident even to the untrained eye.

  When I'd brought what I'd been given and relayed the information about the morphine-sans the eyebrow signals-Dr. Mudd was silent for a moment, rocking back on h
is heels where he'd been kneeling by his patient.

  He finally stood and pulled what had once been a crease in his trousers straight. "Pain can kill a man," he said simply. "I saw it on the battlefield. The pain takes the strength that could otherwise be used for healing." Then he brushed his hands together, one against the other.

  Tilly read the gesture as clearly as I did. "No," she said, but not with the girlish tears she'd shown earlier. In the little time we had been in this (lark and sweltering room, Tilly had grown up. "Stay with him, Raffia," she said. "I won't be long."

  I was so stunned by the change in her that she'd swept by me and was gone before I had time to protest or even to ask what she intended.

  She wasn't gone more than twenty minutes, but it seemed a good deal longer. Tilly was the binding presence, I discovered, not Private Lane. When she left, none of us remaining could find anything to say to one another.

  By the time Tilly returned with Joseph, though I'd not spoken a single word to either Dr. Mudd or Mr. Arnold, I felt I had spent a short lifetime in their midst.

  From the moment Tilly stepped off the ship that brought her over from Key West she has had Joseph eating out of her hand. It delights me to see it and, I must confess, often makes me wonder if being barren is quite the blessing I believe it to be. He responds to her with gentleness I've seen him use only with horses and dogs. It reassures me the boy I fell in love with still dwells in the man I am married to.

  Dr. Mudd reemerged from his cell when he heard the ring of Joseph's boots on the brick. Joseph stayed in one doorway and Mudd, having displaced Arnold-who seemed not so much to leave but to vanish as a shadow will when exposed to light-stayed in the other. Between them Joel's "hospital" room was neutral ground. Across it I could feel the animosity from my husband and the rebound of it from the doctor.

  "Mudd," Joseph said curtly. "Morphine for the boy."

  Dr. Mudd started to cross the open space to retrieve it. Pointedly, Joseph handed it to me.

  "My wife will have the keeping of it. She will give you what you need for the boy and stay to watch until you have administered it."

  "Thank you-" Mudd began, but Joseph cut him off.

  "This is not a privilege and will get you no special treatment. Never test me."

  An arrogance I'd not seen-or not noticed-before came over Dr. Mudd, stiffening his back and hardening the muscles of his face. It made him a different man from the kindly doctor who tended to Joel. I could easily see how, if he wore this guise in court, he was condemned. This Mudd could possibly lie and kill and continue to feel righteous for having done so.

  "Sir," Dr. Mudd said icily. "Considering you are willing to imprison an innocent man, your rudeness does not surprise me."

  There was an awful moment after the doctor spoke. Joseph said nothing but let Dr. Mudd's words hang in the air. I don't think the doctor is aware of what a slender thread his continued well-being at Fort Jefferson depends on.

  "Please..." Tilly said to no one and everyone.

  "Do not test me," Joseph repeated in a tone I have come to respect. He turned to our soldier-escort. "Private Mason, as soon as the morphine is administered, see Mrs. Coleman and her sister back to the officers' quarters. On his way out he stopped beside Tilly and me. In less frightening but no less serious tones, he said: "Don't you two test me either."

  Tilly scarcely heard him, nor, I noted, did she thank him for getting the morphine. I could only hope she had the sense-and the grace-to do it before they had returned to the casemate. She was halfway across the cell, the morphine in her outstretched hand. "Dr. Mudd, I cannot thank you enough. Without you we would be so alone."

  Joseph looked back over his shoulder at Tilly clinging to Dr. Mudd's arm as they knelt by Joel. The expression on his face was alien to me; I could not read it, yet it made me afraid. For whom, I don't know. Maybe for myself.

  13

  Motoring into the harbor, things seemed peaceful enough. It was too early in the day for the shrimpers, and many other boats were out of the park fishing. Passing a sportfishing ban in Dry Tortugas National Park had caused an outcry heard all the way to Mississippi. Not killing animals in a national park was one thing, but fish? Surely it's every American boy's birthright to kill fish anywhere they are to be found.

  The superintendent of Dry Tortugas and Everglades had stuck to her guns and backed the unpopular ban. The results were much what the NPS had hoped they'd be. Not only were there more and bigger fish within the park boundaries, but significantly more and bigger fish were being caught outside the boundaries as well. By banning fishing in fifty thousand acres of sea, a nursery, a veritable cornucopia of fishes, had been created.

  None of this impressed the sportfishermen. Talk still turned ugly when the subject came up, and they still whined piteously over the inconvenience of having to go a mile or two farther from their favorite anchorages to legally drop their lines in the water.

  Anna was firmly on the side of the fishes. As far as she was concerned, a less populated harbor was a perk, not a consequence. She turned the Boston Whaler and backed deftly into her slot. Water and boating skills honed as a patrol ranger at Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior that she'd thought lost in the intervening years had come back with a week's practice, and she gloried in their return.

  Maintenance's boat, the Atlantic Ranger, was not at the dock. Anna was just as glad. She had a little time to grab a bite to eat, say "hi" to her cat and gather up her gear.

  Twenty minutes later, when she came down in suit and flip-flops, the many contusions left by her encounter with the coral complaining about being exposed to the direct rays of the sun, Daniel and Mack were sitting in the shade outside the shop waiting for her.

  "Number five up and running?" she asked as she neared them. Daniel shot her a peculiar look, and she wondered if he took it personally when the generators consigned to his care were on the fritz.

  "Right as rain," Mack said. He changed the subject as the two men fell into step with her. "What are we diving for?"

  "Identification, mostly," Anna replied. "I'm hoping the green boat has a registration number or, failing that, a serial number on the engine that's still readable. So far the Florida police haven't had any luck tracing our John Doe."

  "Juan Doe," Mack said. Anna didn't know if he was being racist or clever. She let it pass. Mack wore only orange trunks and sandals, and sneaking a look at his back, she found her guess had been correct. Striping the lean muscles and knotty spine were the same narrow whipping scars she'd noticed on his legs and upper arms.

  Dive tanks, buoyancy compensator vests, weights and regulators were kept in a small room behind the ladies' toilets on the visitors' dock. A few minutes were spent loading the heavy gear, then they were motoring out toward the wreck. It crossed Anna's mind that the NPS would want the Bay Ranger salvaged and possibly the Scarab brought up and disposed of. Old wrecks had charm. She wasn't so sure about the modern variety. Having no idea what went into salvage work, she made a mental note to call the chief ranger in Homestead at the next opportunity.

  The seas were by no means rough, but neither were they at the dead calm that had facilitated diving the day before. There was a stiffening wind out of the southeast and a definite chop to the water. The rangers' boats in the Dry Tortugas were graced with Global Positioning Systems, but Anna hadn't been a boat patrol ranger since the days of loran-long range navigation-and hadn't yet bothered to learn how to use them. Trusting in the old ways, she'd marked the wrecks with buoys. Despite the chop, they found them easily.

  It was decided she and Mack would dive the Scarab first to see if they could find any identifying marks, numbers or papers. Often boats kept important papers in waterproof containers so the idea was not that farfetched. That done, they'd scavenge Bob's boat and bring up anything useful or even detachable. Once the sport divers or snorkelers found the Bay Ranger, she would be picked clean by souvenir hunters. Regardless of laws forbidding the vandalizing of sunken artifacts
in protected waters, it was virtually impossible to overcome the allure of taking home a trophy pried from a genuine shipwreck.

  Ignoring the uproar from her abused flesh, Anna wriggled into an old dive skin-the nicer one shredded in the explosion-fins, vest, snorkel and mask. Mack, finished before she was, waited till she was ready, and together they rolled off the gunwale.

  The pristine clarity of the water was gone, as was the glassy surface above. Particulate matter clouded vision and leached colors from fish and coral. Visibility underwater was an ever-changing thing. Like the weather, it seemed to make its own unpredictable choices. One day clear, cloudy the next and often without the easy logic of groundswell or storm to explain the sudden fluctuations.

  Mack vanished in the murk, swimming expertly with an economy of motion. He wore neither dive suit nor skin. Underwater his body hair floated and sunlight refracted, making his scars startlingly apparent. Or perhaps Anna had speculated on them so long and so rudely with the lighthouse keepers she'd sensitized herself. Now they put her in mind, not of an abused child, but a tiger shark. Kicking hard, she caught up and swam beside Mack. The physical exertion was welcome. With the murky water and the fleeting thought of man-as-tiger-shark, she worried her mind might be taking that particular twist it had the night before. Moving, working, relegated the ghoulies and ghosties to a half-remembered dream state.