Ill Wind

by Nevada Barr

  “Yes. Too much liability otherwise. Why?”

  “Just wondering.” Even if Stacy had been the sugar-slinging chain swinger, his ecotage had been aborted. Had he succeeded, all Greeley would have suffered was a fat check from the insurance company—not even much in the way of inconvenience or delay. Greeley killing Meyers to avenge the Caterpillar was absurd.

  Tom Silva was sullen and scared or angry—Anna couldn’t tell which. Beavens was lying to somebody, either to her or to Jamie about his veil sighting. His report of leaving before the other interpreters had yet to be checked out. Jamie was claiming a closer kinship with the deceased than Anna believed existed and riding the revenge of the Anasazi theory pretty hard. She had even filed a backcountry permit to hold a vigil all night in the fatal kiva. The request had been denied.

  How any of that tied in with seven evacuations from Cliff, all cardiopulmonary or central nervous system problems, all early in the day on a Tuesday, Anna couldn’t fathom.

  An unpleasant thought wandered through her tired mind. “No,” she breathed as she dragged a calendar from the middle of a pile. On it she marked all the days of the evacuations with a tiny, faint “X” in pencil. Forgetting her gun and radio, she took the calendar over to the museum.

  Jamie Burke was working at the front desk. Several visitors clustered around a single brochure arguing over the drawing of Mesa Verde’s road system. Jamie stood behind the counter, her elbows resting on the glass, reading Louis L’Amour’s Haunted Mesa.

  “Got a minute?” Anna asked.

  Jamie raised her head with a practiced look of long-suffering patience. When she saw it was Anna, she relaxed. “I’m stuck here till five-thirty.”

  Anna pushed the calendar over the glass. “Could you mark the veil sightings for me, if you remember when they were?”

  Jamie studied the calendar for a minute, then borrowed Anna’s pen. “April the eleventh, May twenty-third, the thirteenth of June, and, no matter what he says now, Claude saw one on the twenty-first.” As she counted each day she made a big black check mark on the page.

  “Thanks.” Anna gathered up the calendar without looking at it and tucked her pen back in her shirt pocket.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what this is all about?” Jamie asked.

  “When it gels,” Anna lied easily.

  Back at her desk in the CRO, she took out the calendar and studied it. All alleged veil sightings were on Monday nights before the Tuesday morning medical evacuations.

  “Damn.”

  “What?” Frieda hollered.

  “I said I’m calling it a day, giving up the ghost, so to speak.”

  Chindi.

  “Pshaw!” Anna used her sister’s word for “expletive deleted.”

  FIFTEEN

  “ YOU SHOW ME YOURS, I’LL SHOW YOU MINE,” STANTON said.

  “No dice. Yours first.”

  Stanton hummed the first few bars of “Getting to Know You” from The King and I and Anna laughed. There’d been too many times on Isle Royale when he’d gotten her to share more than she intended, then failed to return the favor.

  “I got the marks on the shoes analyzed,” he said. “You know what amazed me the most?”

  Anna waited.

  “That the NPS actually makes you wear them. They’re symptomatic of a severe fashion disorder.”

  “The marks . . .” Anna prompted.

  “Yes. The marks. They were spaced right for fingerprints.” She and Stanton were sitting on the ledge above the Cliff Palace ruin, a wide chunk of sandstone tucked up in the shadows under the trees. In front of them stone fanned out in an apron to the cliff ’s edge, then there was darkness; the gulf of Cliff Canyon. Beyond the black was another pale ribbon where the far side of the canyon cut down through reservation lands. Even without a moon the sandstone picked up illumination from the night sky, reflecting back the dim glow of starlight. The soft down-canyon wind brought on by cooling air settling had died and the air was absolutely still.

  Stanton scrunched his legs up more tightly, hugging his knees to his chest, and sucked air through an architecturally generous nose.

  “Sitting on a cold rock in the dark is so much more fun than crawling into bed after a long day. Wish I’d thought of this years ago.”

  “You were showing me yours.”

  “You’ve no romance in your soul, Anna. Too many years hobnobbing with Mother Nature. Too pragmatic a lady for my money. In south Chicago we know what moonlight’s all about.”

  “Moon’s not up.”

  “In Chicago we have glorious streetlights and we can turn them on whenever we want. But have it your way. Showing you mine.” He dropped a long arm down and snatched off his shoe without untying it. The white sock was pulled partway off and dangled trunklike over the rock. “The marks were here, here, and here on the right shoe.” He placed his thumb and two fingers so the thumb was on the inside of the shoe and the index and middle fingers on the outside, his palm cupping the heel, as if the shoe walked on his hand.

  “They weren’t smudges so much as burns. Something reacted with the leather and caused the discolorations.”

  “Funny I never noticed them till the other day,” Anna said.

  “They may not have shown up right away.”

  “Any idea what made them?”

  “Acid—what kind he didn’t know.” Stanton studied the shoe. “But looky.” He held it up at eye level, still grasping it with his palm beneath the heel. “We can figure Meyers didn’t pull it off himself. It wouldn’t be impossible to take your own shoe off with your hand in this position, but highly unlikely.”

  “So something with caustic digits removed his shoes after he was dead?” Anna teased.

  “That seems to about sum it up.”

  “That fits hand in glove with what I’ve come up with.”

  “Goody.” He stretched his legs out in front of him and waggled his feet. His bare shins gleamed in the starlight. “Now do I get to find out why I’m sitting on a rock in the middle of the night instead of curled snug in my little bed?”

  “We’re on chindi patrol.”

  Stanton groaned.

  “I’m getting overtime,” Anna added helpfully.

  “I’m exempt.”

  “Too bad. This promises to be a long one.” Anna told him her story of carry-outs and spirit veil sightings, Monday nights and Tuesday mornings, and left him to flounder with cause and effect.

  He continued wagging his feet as if transfixed by the metronomic motion. “Ms. Burke lying?” he suggested after a minute or two. “Putting her paranormal next to the normal to lend it credence?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her, but I didn’t tell her when the medicals were or why I wanted the sighting dates.”

  “Could she have gotten the dates of the medicals out of the files?”

  “I suppose. She doesn’t have a key to the CRO and it would cause comment if she came in and looked through the files. They’re no guarded secret or anything, interps just never look at them, so it’d be something to gossip about when who’s sleeping with whom grew thin.”

  “Could she get into the office at night, when no gossips were about?”

  “Sure. Somebody’d probably let her in if she asked. Security—except for the administration building—is pretty lax. It seems a stretch though. Why bother? She never bothers to substantiate any of her other stories. Anyway, at least one Monday night I heard her talking about the veil and then the next day we had that medical. There’s no way she could’ve planned to have all the cardiopulmonary and central nervous system problems occur on Tuesday morning.”

  “Was she on duty each time there was a carry-out?”

  Anna thought about it. Near as she could remember, she was.

  “Jamie Burke, Medicine Woman.” Stanton bounced his eyebrows suggestively. Light and shadow dappled his fair skin, and Anna realized the moon had risen.

  “Wouldn’t Jamie love that,” she said. “She’s an opportunistic a
ctor. Takes every chance to dash out on stage. But I doubt she has the tenacity to write the script to that extent.”

  “If she didn’t set it up and she’s not lying, then we really are out here waiting for the dead to walk.”

  “When you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever’s left . . .”

  They sat awhile without speaking. Anna was enjoying herself. A smear of lights over Farmington, fifty miles distant, was the only flaw in a perfect sky. Deep in the canyon an owl called and was answered.

  “So write me your autobiography and we’ll get this lifelong friendship rolling,” Stanton dropped into the stillness.

  Anna would have laughed but, remembering how sound carried in these natural amphitheaters, settled for a smile.

  “Aw, come on,” Stanton pleaded. “Since we can’t have cheeseburgers and coffee out of paper cups, that’s the next best thing for making this feel like a real stakeout.”

  If an expectant stare indicated anything, he was serious. Suddenly Anna felt shy.

  “Just start any old where,” he encouraged.

  “Well, I was born naked—”

  “Not the ishy parts! I don’t want to know you that well.”

  “I thought you should know the worst if we’re to be lifelong friends.”

  “Okay then. Ever married?”

  “You consider that the worst?”

  “My ex-wives did.”

  It was Anna’s turn for raised eyebrows, metaphorically if not literally. “Wives?”

  “Two.”

  “Children?”

  “Several.”

  “Ages?”

  “Oooh, that’s a toughie. Thirteen going on fourteen—second marriage. Nineteen and twenty-three—introductory marriage. Girl, girl, boy, respectively.”

  Anna revised her estimate of Stanton’s age from late thirties to mid forties. She didn’t ask what had happened. Once or twice in the past, when she was feeling excessively polite or nosy, she’d asked that question. Nothing new happened under the sun and certainly not before the altar.

  “You ever married?” Stanton asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “Died?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “A lady who finds corpses on sunken ships and in kivas wouldn’t be so bourgeois as to be divorced. No glamour, no drama.”

  A pang of embarrassment let Anna know he was right. Like other widows, especially young widows, she was prone to wearing her weeds like a badge of honor. Widowhood conferred a mystery and status divorce lacked. The difference between returning World War II and Vietnam veterans. Both had been through a war, but a judgmental public conferred glory only on those who had been victimized in a socially acceptable manner. In divorce, as in a police action, nobody truly won and everybody got wounded.

  “You know the only reason Romeo and Juliet didn’t get a divorce is because they died first,” Stanton said.

  A rustling stirred the pine needles behind them. “Are there snakes?” he demanded abruptly.

  “Snakes don’t tend to be nocturnal. They’re too cold-blooded.”

  “Most of the cold-blooded creatures in Chicago are exclusively nocturnal.”

  “Our tarantulas come out at night,” Anna offered.

  “Stop that!” He pulled his legs up again. “Don’t tell me that. You’re such a bully.”

  “So tell me about the dead guy,” he said after he’d gotten himself arranged in a defensive posture.

  “I already told you all that I know and then some.”

  “Not the kiva dead guy, the dead guy you’re married to.”

  Anna noticed he didn’t use the past tense and wondered if he’d tapped into her idiosyncrasies. “Neurosis,” she heard her sister’s voice in her mind. “Spade for spade.” All at once she felt terribly tired. A middle-aged lady up past her bedtime sitting on a rock in the dark.

  Stanton was still looking at her, his face open and interested. Briefly, Anna thought of what she might tell him, wondered if it would have the cathartic effect of confession. Or if she’d merely paint the old pattern of the perfect marriage. Romeo and Juliet Go To New York.

  “Nothing’s perfect,” she said finally. “It was a long time ago.”

  Stanton laid a hand on her arm. At first she resented his pity, then realized that wasn’t inherent in the gesture. He was shutting her up, pointing to the west where a quarter mile distant the walls of an ancient ruin appeared in a flicker of light then vanished again into darkness. The effect was unsettling, as if, like Brigadoon, the pueblo had appeared momentarily in the twentieth century.

  “Headlights,” Anna shattered the illusion. “That’s Sun Temple. It’s on another part of the mesa but your headlights rake across it when you come around the bend before the Cliff Palace parking lot.”

  “The last ranger sweeping out leftover tourists?” Stanton ventured.

  Anna shook her head. “Too late. Jennifer went out of service at midnight.” She squeezed the tiny button on the left side of her watch and squinted at the barely illuminated numbers. “It’s after one. Probably interps. Maybe Jennifer gave them the key. They may be out for the same reason we are.” Levering herself up, she stomped some blood back into her feet. “Might as well go after them. We’re legal; they’re not: in a closed area without permit.”

  “A firing offense?”

  “Definitely a calling-on-the-carpet offense.”

  The roar of an engine followed after the lights. “Sounds like a truck.” Following the deer trail they’d taken to the mesa’s edge, Anna began threading her way quickly through the junipers.

  “You must have eyes like a cat,” Stanton complained.

  She stopped, took the mag light off her duty belt, and shone it back down the trail for him. He wasn’t far behind. When he chose he could move quietly.

  The sound of an engine being gunned stopped them both. “Saw the patrol car,” Anna said. She began to run and heard Stanton follow. In less than three minutes they reached the parking lot but the truck was gone. “Rats.”

  “No lights and sirens?” he asked as she backed the patrol car out.

  “They have no place to go,” Anna reminded him. “We’ll catch them at the gate unless they left it open.” Still, she drove as fast as the winding road permitted. Partly to catch the offending vehicle and partly for the sheer fun of it.

  “Whee!” Stanton said, and pulled his lap belt tighter.

  “Three-one-two, three-zero-one.” The radio commanded their attention.

  “That’s you,” Stanton said. “Boy, you’ve got an exciting job. Wish I were a park ranger.”

  “Stick with me. You may get to see a dog off leash.” Anna picked up the mike and responded with her call number. Three-zero-one was Frieda’s personal number.

  “Are you still on duty, Anna?”

  “Yes. I’m on Cliff Palace loop with Agent Stanton. We’ve a vehicle in a closed area.”

  “You may have to leave it. There’s a disturbance at Patsy Silva’s residence. It sounds serious. Al called. She said she’s heard shouting and what she thinks might be gunshots.”

  “I’m headed that direction. See if you can’t get somebody else out of bed to lend me moral support.”

  “Ten-four. Three-zero-one, zero-one-thirty-four.”

  Anna made an educated guess that the instigator of this particular melee was Tom Silva and refreshed Stanton on the Silvas’ post-matrimonial relationship.

  “Bet you’re glad I’m along,” he said smugly.

  “And why would that be?”

  “You’ll need somebody to calm the hysterical wife while you’re disarming and subduing the enraged husband.”

  Anna laughed. “You’ve got the more dangerous of the two jobs.”

  “I wish you were kidding.”

  She took the turn at the Three-Way too fast and scared herself into taking her foot out of the carburetor. By the time they reached the four-way intersection she’d slowed to a safer speed.

  The gate wa
s closed and the chain in place.

  “We couldn’t have been far behind. Where’s the truck?” Stanton demanded.

  “They hid out somewhere along the way. Looped back around or ducked up a fire road. We won’t catch them tonight.”

  In the headlights she could see the padlock’s arm was through the chain links but not clicked closed. “The gate is false-locked,” she told Stanton. “Get it for me, would you?”

  Stanton complied, relocking the chain behind him. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, lock ’em in.”

  Anna’s thoughts had moved ahead to the upcoming festivities. Shortly before reaching the tower house, she told Frieda she had arrived on the scene, then opened the car window and turned off the headlights. Moonlight was enough to see by.

  “Stealth ranger?” Stanton whispered as the car crept up the short drive.

  “The dark is my friend,” Anna quoted a self-defense instructor from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.

  The Silvas’ residence was dark and, at the moment, quiet. Anna grabbed her flashlight from the recharger and pushed open the car door. Stanton folded himself out his side. “This is the creepy part,” he whispered.

  For a moment they stood in silence not softened even by the hum of night insects or the rustling of predators and prey. Just when they’d come to count on it, the stillness was destroyed by the sound of shattering glass and shouting. “Goddamn you, Pats! Let me in. Jesus, Mary, an’ Joseph, listen to me, for Crissake!” Fierce pounding followed.

  “Ahh. Better,” Stanton said. “Now we know where he is and his church of choice.”

  “It’s Tom.” Quietly, Anna led the way up the flagstone walk curling around the building. Behind the jut of the square kitchen, set into the curved wall of the tower, was the front and only door. It and the small porch protecting it were wooden. The rest of the dwelling was stone.

  “You’re a dead woman if you don’t let me in!” came a cry so slurred it hardly sounded like Silva.

  Anna switched on the flashlight. In her peripheral vision she saw Stanton melt out of the moonlight into the shadows as the beam spotlighted the man on the doorstep.

  Looking like a refugee from the movie set of Bus Stop, Tom Silva, in Levi’s, boots, an open white shirt, and battered straw cowboy hat, leaned on the front door. Both arms were raised, fists balled, propping him up. He rested his forehead against the wood. The hat was pushed to the back of his head.