Firestorm

by Nevada Barr

  “Jen!” Anna said more loudly.

  Finally the younger woman looked up. Her eyes were as dull and opaque as the waters of the thermal spring.

  “You look like shit,” Anna said kindly. “You’ve caved in somehow. What were you guys doing up there?”

  “Nothing. Washing. Like that.” Jennifer lowered her eyes again and pushed her shaking hands nearer the makeshift brazier. “Coals are near dead.”

  “We’ll find more,” Anna said, though she was far from certain they would. The Jackknife had consumed all the fuel for miles. All they had left were her leavings.

  “What did you get out of Paula?” she asked, hoping to engage Jennifer’s mind.

  Short just shook her head. “She saw Neil get out of his shelter. That’s about it.” That minimal exchange seemed to exhaust her and she hung her head, staring sightlessly at dead embers.

  Anna sat up straight and looked Jennifer hard in the face. “Something happened up at the lake. You’ve folded up on me like a cheap umbrella.”

  Jennifer sighed so deeply the air caught in her damaged lungs and came out on a dry whispering cough. “Josh…Stephen said…” She ran out of air and sat for a moment without speaking. With an effort she sucked in a lungful and began again, the words coming quickly. “Stephen said everybody thinks Josh lit the fire—this fire—on purpose.” She looked up at Anna, waiting for her to say it wasn’t true.

  Anna floundered around for a serviceable lie but she was tired and didn’t come up with one quickly enough.

  Jennifer crumpled, resembling a rag doll whose stuffing has all leaked away. “Being he’s gone they can say anything. Pin it on him. Like it doesn’t matter. Like he won’t care that what he’ll be remembered for won’t be any of the good things he did but for burning down California.” No tears stood in her eyes, they were dry and rimmed with red, but her voice was choked with them and for a minute she was unable to go on.

  Anna cast about for something comforting to say. “Not everybody says arson,” she tried. “Some figure he just let the campfire get away from him—”

  “That’s crap!” Jennifer snapped, and Anna was silenced. “Josh wasn’t stupid and he knew all that Woodsy Owl shit. Jesus! People think a gay man can’t rub two sticks together and make a fire. Give me a break.” Anger gusted and was gone, leaving Jennifer once again empty. “Josh didn’t let his fire get away. That’s crap,” she finished softly.

  To Anna it seemed a little thing, but in grief people latched onto minutia. At least it was graspable and, with luck or hard work, sometimes even reparable. Time and again she’d seen people who’d lost a child or spouse to accident or disease dedicate the remainder of their lives to a crusade against whatever had taken them.

  It was something to do, Anna supposed. It provided direction and a reason to get out of bed mornings. Maybe it made them feel closer to those they’d lost.

  “If he didn’t do it, maybe somebody else did,” Anna suggested. “When we get out of here, I’ll talk to the Forest Service; see if we can go over the arson investigation reports.”

  “Don’t. It’s crap.”

  For the moment Anna let it go. Her bag of tricks was empty. “So.” She leaned back against the boulder and pounded her heels gently in the sand to work some blood back into her posterior. “Paula said she saw Neil get out of his shelter after the fire?”

  Jennifer nodded.

  “Neil said the same thing so I guess we’ll call it true. What the hell, I’m feeling magnanimous.”

  Jennifer didn’t so much as smile.

  “I saw Howard, so did John. That’s two down.”

  “Three,” Jennifer said. “I was there when Stephen unwrapped himself.”

  Anna felt a mild sense of relief. “Good. Neil, Howard, Stephen. Anybody see you?” she asked hopefully.

  “Nobody.” Though she had to know why Anna was asking, Jennifer didn’t seem to care.

  Conversation stopped as Paula Boggins pulled aside the shelter serving as a partial doorway and crept in. Her movements were stiff and careful. The second-degree burns would be hurting her. Probably worse than Howard’s were hurting him.

  Ignoring the other women, she crawled over by Black Elk and felt of his brow and cheeks. “He’s hot,” she said accusingly, and Anna felt she’d failed in her duties. “Maybe I should put some wet cloths on him, cool him down like you do little kids?”

  Anna wished she knew more of medicine. Conserving heat was important but the man was feverish. Either way Black Elk’s energies were being spent and he needed all the strength he could get. “Not cold,” Anna suggested. “Dip a cloth in warmish water and wring it out good before you wipe his face. Watch him close. See if it seems to be helping any.”

  Paula turned to the task with the grace of a natural-born nurse.

  “You’re good at that,” Anna said. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I got a kid,” Paula said as if that was an answer. Maybe it was.

  “No job?”

  Paula gave Anna a dirty look and for a minute Anna thought she wasn’t going to get any more out of her but Boggins wasn’t the type to suffer in silence.

  “You think everybody’s got to get all got up in some kind of uniform and march around like a man or they ain’t working? You got your head up your ass, lady.”

  Anna whistled to prove it wasn’t so and it amused Paula. Anger dissipated. Grudgingly, she said: “I work out of my home.”

  The phrase sounded rehearsed, the words not those Paula would have strung together herself.

  “What do you do?” Anna pressed.

  “Different things.” Paula wrung black water from a black neckerchief then tenderly wiped it across Black Elk’s face. “Mostly I sell my pictures. I’m an artist, you know.” She tossed her matted hair and Anna knew she was lying but it was a lie she was in love with and Anna knew better than to challenge it.

  “Cool,” she said, and busied herself stirring the dying coals in the fire pit. “Paula, why did you scratch Leonard Nims’s face?” she demanded suddenly.

  Paula twitched as if Anna had struck her and for a moment it looked as if she would bolt, but she held her ground. Sullenness settled over her features, robbing her of years till she looked no more than sixteen. “He was messing with me,” she said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Anna’d figured that but she wanted Paula to say it in so many words. “Did he get fresh?”

  Paula smirked and Anna realized how naive and old-fashioned “fresh” must sound to the young woman.

  “Fresh as milk straight from the cow,” Paula said, the smirk still in place.

  “There was more to it than that,” Anna said. “You can talk to me about it now or the incident commander when we get out of here.” For an instant it looked as if the threat was going to bear fruit, then Paula’s sense of self-preservation kicked in.

  “I don’t gotta talk to nobody,” she said. “I know my rights.” She dipped the filthy rag again and bathed Howard’s temples.

  She was right. Anna had no leverage, nothing to barter with or hold over her. “I’ve got to go up to the ridge to call Base,” she said. “Coming, Jen?”

  Jennifer shook her head.

  “Come on,” Anna urged. “I need you there.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  Anna had lost her. The tentative hold she’d had on Jennifer’s attention had been broken and Short was slipping away again.

  “The weather will break soon,” Anna said. “It’s got to.”

  Neither of the women replied.

  Steeped as it was in pain and hopelessness, the interior of the tent suddenly became intolerable. The gestalt of suffering threatened to topple Anna’s carefully maintained defenses and she had to escape. Pushing herself to her feet, she stumbled out with what she knew was unseemly haste. Once in the open, she gulped down air like a woman nearly suffocated.

  Jennifer’s relapse had shaken her more than she could have predicted. Until then she’d
not known how lonely this ridge was, how isolated she was from her fellows. In times of disaster people bonded, took comfort from one another, drew strength. Len’s murderer had robbed them of that. Warranted or not, Anna had put her trust in Jennifer and in return she’d found courage. Without trust very little that was good in humans could survive.

  People were bizarre, she thought, remembering how when monsters rustled in the closet she and Molly would find each other and so the courage to face any imagined villains. As if two little girls were significantly more daunting to your average axe murderer than one.

  Safety in numbers was imprinted on the genetic code. With adulthood and its attendant disillusionment, Anna thought she’d eschewed that particular maxim. Evidently not.

  “Jen, come with me,” she hollered back toward the boulder. Silence was her answer and she turned away.

  Shapes were shifting. Blackened snags were being eaten away by encroaching hoarfrost. Snow was patterned by booted feet. Only the sky remained unchanged and unchanging: still, breathless, dead gray-white—the color of fish bellies.

  Anna stood in the ice-fog trying to remember what it was she was doing, where she’d been going when she’d exited the tent so precipitously. Frederick Stanton, she thought, and was immoderately cheered.

  In all of Len’s horrid little life Anna’d yet to find one worthwhile thing he’d accomplished. In his sordid little death she’d been given a reason to call Stanton every three hours. For that she was grateful to the deceased. “Moderately Useful Dead” picturing that on Nims’s tombstone cheered her further and she attacked the climb to the ridge with something approximating enthusiasm.

  Just below the heli-spot she met with John and Hugh. Pepperdine was doing the talking. About what, Anna couldn’t hear, but he moved his lips earnestly and shook a finger in the air just often enough one wanted to snap it off. LeFleur had the look of a man not listening but to whom the effort did not come cheap.

  “They haven’t done anything,” Hugh called down before Anna had a chance to ask what the news was from Base.

  LeFleur tried to silence him with a look but Pepperdine was immune to subtlety.

  “Not a mother-frigging thing.”

  Apparently after the “dude” episode Hugh’d lost his nerve for colorful language. Anna looked to John. He pawed his pocket. Still no smokes.

  “They’re working on it,” he said wearily. “Six sawyers and a D-8 Cat. It’s a bitch of a job. Treadwell says they’ve cleared over three-quarters of a mile. Given they’ve only been at it six hours, that’s damn good.”

  The speech was to educate Pepperdine. If it registered, he didn’t show it. “We could be here a couple more days,” he said. “That’s bullshit. This is the 1990s.”

  “The weather’ll break,” John and Anna said almost in unison. Even in stereo it sounded hollow.

  “They won’t risk a chopper after dark,” John said. “Unless this stuff lifts in the next hour or so, we’ll be here at least one more night.”

  To Anna, to all of them, that seemed a long time. Black Elk very possibly would not survive it. Jennifer would have to be watched, made to drink, to stay warm, to eat if any more food presented itself. Paula, surprisingly, was doing well. Maybe she could pull Howard through. There was enough fight in her to withstand nearly anything, Anna guessed.

  At heart Jennifer Short had that kind of strength. Anna had seen it. Joshua was her Achilles’ heel. Everybody had one. It was just bad luck Jennifer’s had been hit at this point in time.

  “Where are you headed?” John asked. “Up to the ridge for secret squirrel stuff?”

  “Calling Stanton.” Anna felt self-conscious admitting it on two counts: the investigation with its surrounding secrecy that further alienated her from the group and each from the other, and because she was afraid her personal agenda stuck out like a sore thumb.

  “He the boyfriend?” John asked.

  Trust your paranoia, Anna thought. A quick denial leapt to the tip of her tongue but she shook it off. “More or less,” she said shyly. Better they think her a fool than a threat.

  “Sir Lawrencelot’s going to be jealous,” Hugh said.

  Anna stared, started to count, then gave it up as a lost cause. “If you get a minute later, John, could you kill Hugh for me?”

  “Sure thing. Give the Feds my best.” LeFleur started down the hill. Anna didn’t envy him the news he carried. Though the others knew what to expect, hope—and so disappointment—springeth eternal.

  She took half a dozen steps up the trail. Hugh followed. She stopped and turned.

  “I’m going with you to make the call,” he said before she’d had time to challenge him. “I’m law enforcement. You’re working without backup. That’s against policy.”

  Anna eyed him. Hugh’s arms were folded across his chest, his jaw set in what, on his peevish countenance, passed for determination. She’d never been adept at reading body language but Pepperdine’s was loud and clear. If he’d had four legs he would have been a mule.

  Rational argument was jettisoned. “I’m calling my boyfriend. Don’t bother me.”

  “That’s a crock.”

  “Either I’m a murder investigator or a prick tease,” Anna growled. “You can’t have it both ways.”

  “Females can though?”

  Anna gave up. “Go away.” She took two steps more. He took two. She stopped. He stopped. This could easily degenerate into a “did-too-did-not, your-mother-wears-army-boots,” childish squabble. Anna’d never been good with children. Except for Alison and Bella, the daughters of women at Isle Royale and Mesa Verde, she didn’t even know any. And Ally and Bella were more close personal friends than children.

  Going back to basics, Anna decided telling Mom was the best course. “If you don’t quit I’m going to call John and have him drag you kicking and screaming back down the hill.”

  Pepperdine took a belligerent stance, his hand on the stolen knife. Seconds ticked by. Anna was betting he didn’t have the nerve to face John LeFleur. She won.

  “I wouldn’t dream of interfering with your love life,” Pepperdine sneered, and turned toward camp. Anna watched until he was out of sight below the brow of the hill.

  “FREDERICK,” ANNA SAID. His voice mellowed her and she snuggled back against the truck with a feeling akin to comfort.

  “How are you doing, Anna?”

  He sounded so genuinely concerned she felt that weak and weepy sensation building up. “Howard’s going downhill,” she said to get the subject on neutral ground. “But the rest of us are holding up fairly well. I don’t suppose you’ve got any good news for me?”

  “These guys are moving mountains down here but they’ve got more to move. No good news. The front is moving slowly. It’ll probably clear before we get the road open if that makes you feel any better.”

  It didn’t, but to keep her credit good, Anna said she was glad to hear it.

  Crunching caught her ear and she stopped breathing. “Stand by,” she whispered into the mike, her attention on listening.

  Snow falling off a branch. Except there were few branches left and the snow had been cemented on by the lingering frost. Silence reassured her.

  “I’ve got some homework for you if you’re ready to copy,” she said.

  “Go ahead.”

  Anna could picture Frederick surrounded by lists, pen in hand, his dark head bent, the stick-straight hair falling over his forehead. The picture brought a smile to her lips. She told him of Lawrence Gonzales’s accusation. “Check out Len’s reputation in Susanville,” she said. “And Paula Boggins’s run-in with Nims as well as her invisible income.” Anna outlined her suspicions briefly.

  Then she told him of Jennifer Short’s tumble back into depression. “If you could dig up something that cleared Josh of the arson charge, it might help. Even if it only seemed to,” Anna added, giving him tacit permission to, if not lie, then put the most favorable twist on the facts.

  Frederick responded to this
last assignment with a warmth that at first pleased Anna, then became irksome. Had an inquisitor put her in thumbscrews she would have been forced to admit that Stanton’s obvious concern for Jennifer was making her a wee bit jealous. Since there wasn’t a thumbscrew for a thousand miles, she shrugged it off.

  “Can I get anything else for you?” Stanton asked when she’d finished.

  “A large pepperoni, extra cheese, extra onions.”

  Behind her, hidden from view by the truck, Anna heard the same sound that had alarmed her earlier. It was closer.

  Quietly she pushed herself to her knees and looked over the hood. Black-and-white landscape camouflaged hummocks, piled snags, hollows. Hiding would be easy. A rustling so tiny it seemed only a tickle in her inner ear held her attention.

  “John?” she tried her radio. No answer. LeFleur had his radio off, conserving the battery. Base was helpless to interfere, still she needed to let someone know what was going on. “Frederick?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I’ve got company, please monitor.”

  “Anna?” Stanton sounded worried and it pleased her.

  “Stand by,” she said, and switched the Motorola off.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-One

  SENSES HONED TO an uncomfortable edge by the furtive sounds, Anna listened. From her stomach she heard the badger growl for company; breath rasped in her ears—the body clamoring for the necessities of life. Consciously she slowed her breathing, forced air deep into her lungs.

  With oxygen came a semblance of calm. The ridge was bathed in a silence so deep as to be unnatural. From her years in the backcountry, Anna knew she could settle into that silence, wait it out. Few people could, and it put time on her side. Leaning against the remaining fender, she made herself comfortable and focused on seeing, hearing, breathing, staying alert and in the moment.

  The wait wasn’t prolonged. Humanity hates a silence the way nature abhors a vacuum. To her left she heard movement. Ice had made the snow as brittle as ground glass. Every footstep reverberated.