Endangered Species

by Barr, Nevada

  “Or a pixie.”

  “A little old man is more like it.” Anna riffled the short hairs on her left temple. All were white, standing out in a fan against the darker reddish brown over her ear. “My neck looks chickeny.” Lynette didn’t chime in with the expected compliment and Anna was mildly offended. “I like it,” she said at last. “I like it a lot.”

  THIRD MUG OF tea in hand, sipping this time, satiation lending her a veneer of civilization, Anna sat out on the porch. Bare legs propped up on an overturned bucket, trousers hung over the rail, she waited for the dots of clear nail polish to dry. Southern wisdom—or a sinister bent toward practical jokes—had inspired Lynette to daub the lacquer on each and every chigger bite. The theory behind the practice was that, deprived of oxgen, the bugs would suffocate. Anna hoped it would be a slow and hideous death.

  Lynette was curled in a hanging basket chair suspended over the dog. “Why would Mitch and Louise burn Norman’s share of the crop—if it was Norman’s?” she asked.

  “Spite? Malice? Revenge?” Anna suggested. “Maybe they were gunning for Hull and got Todd by mistake.”

  “Norm might have asked them to burn it. You know, saw the light and wanted out of the business,” said the kinder Lynette.

  “Wouldn’t the Hansons just say, ‘Goody, more for us,’ and keep the lot?”

  “Too much work for the two of them?”

  “The area getting too hot to wait for a second crop to mature?”

  Both tired of the guessing game and relapsed into silence. Strains of “Be Careful of the Stones That You Throw” sounded from the stereo inside. “Good stuff,” Anna said of the music. “Incredibly rich.”

  “Staple Singers. Black gospel.”

  “No white gospel?”

  “We try,” Lynette said, and Anna laughed at the disappointment and resignation in her voice. “I guess when for generations the Lord and music were the only outlets allowed for self-expression, you get really good at both.”

  Light was beginning to raise the night to the east. “I’m dry,” Anna said, and stood to pull on her trousers.

  “Are you straight?”

  “As an arrow,” Anna lied.

  “What will you do now?”

  “Go after the Hansons. See how involved Norman Hull is, then call in the cavalry.”

  “If you need any help, let me know. I’ll pray for you or whatever you need.”

  “Praise God and pass the ammunition?”

  Lynette’s blue eyes twinkled mischievously. “ ‘An armed society is a polite society.’ ”

  Anna couldn’t but admire a woman who could quote Jesus and Al Capone.

  CHAPTER Twenty-four

  “WHAT THE HELL happened to you? You look like you got run over by a bush hog.”

  “I think it makes me look kind of like Audrey Hep-burn.”

  “Yeah,” Dijon agreed. “She’s been dead awhile.”

  “What’s put you in such a good mood?”

  “Ask me where everybody is,” Dijon said. “They took the boat to St. Marys for groceries.”

  “Ahh.” Fire crew’s island sojourn was two-thirds through. The one big outing, one usually involving fast food and an opportunity to walk on honest-to-God pavement, was the shopping trip to the mainland for supplies. “Left holding the bag?” Anna asked unsympathetically.

  “Pun intended?” Dijon grumbled as he arranged himself on the seat of the truck beside her.

  Engine idling, Anna sat for a moment trying to remember what it was she needed to do. “Food,” she announced at last, and clicked off the key. “I’ve got to make lunch. I’ve run out of the stuff I took to Tabby’s.”

  “Now you tell me.” Dijon groaned as if buckling and unbuckling his seat belt were the most onerous of tasks.

  “You do need airing off.”

  “You’re telling me. I’m getting sand on the brain on this rock.”

  For some reason, one she herself did not understand, Anna didn’t tell Dijon of her night, or the Hansons. Several times, as she made her sandwiches, she started to, but something—caution, confusion, or simply mental fatigue—stopped her. With tendrils of dope smoke curling through the recesses of her brain, she felt a need to clarify a few things before she went public; opened herself up to the communal, and therefore picayune, scrutiny of the bureaucracy. Like any other government agency, the National Park Service lacked a bottom line. The buck stopped nowhere. Too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

  “Too many cooks spoil the stew.” Anna concluded her litany of aphorisms out loud. Dijon’s look warned her to be more guarded in her actions, at least for a while.

  Dijon drove, Anna rode shotgun, happy to be quiet, to gaze at the scenery unfurling beyond the windshield, and let time pass. They took the pumper north along the beach, following the same path she’d driven twelve hours before. In daylight the oceanfront lost much of its magic, flowing away as open and harmless as a Coppertone ad.

  At the northern tip of Cumberland, Dijon stopped and Anna indulged in the voyeuristic pleasure of watching him break the law. As he dropped bits of Ritz crackers on the muddy bank, a flotilla of Maggie-Mary’s offspring formed up in the pond they called home. A dozen or more sets of eyes, barely above the level of the murky waters, were propelled toward his feet by the flick of banded tails. Still no sign of Mama. Anna was not disappointed.

  Though it was not yet ten in the morning she ate her peanut butter and honey sandwich and a banana. Soon she would be herself again. Normalcy was folding around her like an old bathrobe. The effect was enervating. As reality encroached, her experience of the previous night seemed the more unreal by contrast. Almost as if she had dreamed or hallucinated the entire incident. Such vagaries of thought did little to motivate her. Being thrown into the machinery of a law enforcement investigation inspired only by her drugged recollections was an unattractive notion. In a bit, she promised herself, she’d make those calls.

  They reached Plum Orchard just after one o’clock. While they topped off the two water tanks on the expanse of lawn, Anna told Dijon what she knew and suspected, omitting only that she’d been trapped breathing marijuana smoke for four hours. She wasn’t up for the jokes that was bound to generate—all with her as the butt.

  “You’ve been keeping this a secret all morning?” Dijon asked accusingly.

  “I needed to think,” Anna defended herself.

  “Yeah. Like that’s something you do well all by yourself.”

  “I’ve got to think about that,” Anna said, and Dijon sniffed.

  TABBY WAS OUT and the apartment in disarray. Books were scattered across the floor and half a dozen cardboard boxes of papers and files covered the coffee table and one of the chairs. As from another life, Anna recalled that the clutter had been there that morning, she’d just been too distracted to take note of it.

  Using the phone in Tabby’s bedroom, she dialed the St. Marys Police Department and asked to speak with dispatch. “This is Beth Cuvelier in probation,” she lied when a female voice came on the line. “I’m working on that juvenile case—Ellen Hull. I need the exact arrest times for my report.” Deceit required more energy than the direct route but, out of her jurisdiction, trying to get information on a juvenile arrest, it struck Anna as the most efficacious approach.

  “Oh, yeah,” the woman said. “I got that. Hang on a sec.”

  Anna allowed herself a small sigh of relief. Her creative powers were at a low ebb. Having to elaborate would have taxed them.

  “Okay,” the woman said, to the accompanying sound of papers being shuffled. “Here we go. Thursday, at oh-nine-hundred-and-seven, Miss Ellen Rachelle Hull was taken into custody. Do you need the names of the arresting officers?”

  “Give me what you’ve got,” Anna said, and poised her pen over a scrap of envelope she’d salvaged for the purpose of taking notes.

  “Officers Mangino and King arrested her a block from the school where she attends seventh grade. They booked her on Possession with Inte
nt to Sell. Twelve ounces of a substance that field-tested as marijuana were confiscated from her book bag.”

  “What time were her parents notified?”

  “I wasn’t on duty but Janice has got it down here. Officer Mangino knew the girl. He asked Janice to notify her parents while still on scene. Jan’s got a ‘no answer’ at the residence at nine-thirteen and the call to Norman Hull at his office on Cumberland Island down at nine-fifteen. I guess she caught him just as he was going out for an airplane ride. Too bad. A day in jail would be good for little Miss Ellen.”

  “Probably. You say Officer Mangino knows Ellen or her folks?” Anna left the question as open as she could, hoping some useful information might be forthcoming.

  “Oh, yeah,” the woman said. “We all know Ellen. She’s been in and out of here since she was eleven years old. No one can figure out where a kid that age gets the stuff in quantity. Her folks are at their wits’ end. Norman’s been hoping that Citadel case will work out so he can ship the little twit off to military school.” A suspicious silence followed; then the dispatcher’s voice came back over the wires. “Your office should have all this,” she said warily. “Isn’t Felicity handling the Hull girl anymore?”

  “I’m just helping out,” Anna said. “I’m a temp. Thanks.” And she got off the line. Taking the envelope with her into the living room, she slumped down onto the sofa. Chewing on a granola bar he’d liberated from Tabby’s kitchen, Dijon sat cross-legged on the floor looking through the books.

  “Ellen was arrested shortly after nine a.m. the morning Hammond and Belfore were killed. The police dispatcher called Norman on the island at nine-fifteen. That matches up with your pudgy inamorata’s saying he arrived at St. Marys around nine-thirty. Up till then he was apparently planning on being on that plane with Slattery.” She sat for a moment tapping the corner of the envelope against her front teeth and listening to Dijon crunch granola.

  “Do you think he made up that bullshit about getting a call from the regional director so he wouldn’t have to tell anybody his baby girl was a drug dealer?” Dijon asked.

  It made sense to Anna. As often as it happened, whenever a law enforcement officer’s child ran afoul of the law it was embarrassing. The public viewed it as proof of something rotten in the family. Worse, those who had more empathy subjected the parents to their pity.

  “If this kid has been at it since she was eleven and the Hulls are talking military school, it doesn’t sound as if Daddy is her supplier,” Dijon said.

  “Nope. Surely a chief ranger would do a whole lot better job of covering his tracks.”

  “And not use his own kid.”

  “That too. Louise Hanson,” Anna said after a minute. “She wass Ellen’s ‘special friend.’ I remember Norman’s secretary telling me that. She said they shared an interest in gardening. Didn’t they just. What do you bet Louise is the one who got the girl involved?”

  Dijon looked shocked. “Old Mrs. Hanson?” He shook his head. “No. You’ve got to be kidding. You’re not kidding. No,” he said, and shook again as if ridding himself of the idea. “Mrs. Claus filling the kiddies’ stockings with dope? I don’t believe it.”

  Anna reminded herself to call Alice Utterback and sign up for her crime ring. They’d make a killing. “Let’s go by the office,” she said, pushing herself out of the couch’s embrace. Till she sat down, let herself relax, she’d not realized how bone weary she was. “It’s time to bump this upstairs and get back to our own work.”

  “Tick watch,” Dijon said, but he scrambled to his feet fast enough.

  THE CHIEF RANGER was not pleased with Anna. For over an hour she sat in his office, confined to the single straight-backed chair, enduring withering disapproval, while he made the necessary telephone calls.

  Acting alone was not the Park Service way. There was the chain of command to be adhered to. That one link was dead and the other a suspect did not let Anna off Hull’s hook. First, that he was the suspect did not endear her to him in the least, and second, she could have called somebody. Anybody , was the implication. That she, a lowly GS-9 field ranger, not even in her home park, had taken it upon herself to do something was, in Hull’s view, untenable. A strong letter would be written to her supervisors. Had she been possessed of sword or stripes, Hull left no doubt in her mind, they would have been broken, thrown ceremoniously in the dust and she herself driven from the fort in ignominy.

  Anna made a few feeble attempts to explain that her brainstorm to track down the Hansons’ drug plot had come late at night, that she was merely going to take a peek, and that the impetus to go solo derived less from John Wayne than from Greta Garbo: she wanted to be alone. Each word only served as a little shovel, digging her deeper.

  Regarding the delay in reporting that morning, the chief was even less understanding. In his fussy, gentlemanly way, he raked her over every coal he could find. More than once it occurred to Anna to tell him she’d failed to report in a timely manner because she was stoned out of her mind, but she had a feeling it would not improve her professional image.

  While she sat in the nonlethal equivalent of the electric chair, he went on with his strategy making. He only spoke to Anna for the purpose of reprimand, but from his phone conversations she learned that it was Hanson’s Friday. Their houseboat had been in its slip near the ranger station on Cumberland that morning at seven when maintenance came on duty. Unless he’d dumped the marijuana between four a.m. and seven, it was still on board. As usual on his weekends, he and Louise would be docking in St. Marys. After Anna assured Hull for the umpteenth time that neither Mitch nor his wife knew they’d been found out, he arranged for the Park Service and the Coast Guard to stake out Hanson’s mainland berth in hopes they could find who his connection was.

  The chief ranger informed whoever was on the other end of the line that the Hansons were also wanted on suspicion of murder; they were to be considered armed and dangerous.

  As a result of Todd Belfore’s death, Hull was short-handed. He would take three members of fire crew, all commissioned law enforcement rangers, along on the bust. Part of Anna’s punishment was that she would not be included in this elite. Under normal circumstances, the snub would have rankled more than it did. As it was, she was relieved to be given the night off.

  Throughout the grilling, she’d been careful not to say anything about Dijon’s involvement. The tactic worked and the young ranger was invited along on the stakeout. Rick would be left on the island with Anna to mind the store. Dijon was gleeful. Anna hoped she wouldn’t be around when the news was broken to Rick.

  Day drifted into night. The cloud of disfavor hanging over her grew darker with each passing hour. Guy was offended she hadn’t come to him with her suspicions. Rick and Al sided with the crew boss. All of them were more or less pissed off because they’d missed out on the excitement, and covering it with overstated concerns for her personal safety. Guy and Al were mollified by their inclusion on the stakeout. Rick was not to be borne. To hear him tell it, he was the only one capable, trained, qualified, and spiritually prepared to make a major drug bust. Leaving him behind was tantamount to shackling Superman with kryptonite just as the busload of schoolchildren plummeted off the cliff.

  The whole performance made Anna tired. Her head throbbed with defenses she never bothered to put into words. The Hansons would be caught; Anna wasn’t going to get fired. Theoretically all’s well that ends well. She chose to leave it at that. Near nine she was finally able to slink away. The men, clustered happily on the dock playing with bulletproof vests and personal flotation devices, didn’t even notice her departure.

  For them the case was closed. For Anna it was merely over. Too many questions remained unanswered. Who had knocked her out with the butt of the shotgun and why? Who had slashed the truck seat?

  Hanson could have done both. Maybe there’d been something in Slattery’s house that incriminated him and he didn’t want to be caught in the act of retrieving it. If he’d not found tha
t something, he may have searched Anna’s truck on the chance that she’d made away with it after she recovered from the knock to the head. That was a possible explanation for two of the questions but others remained for which she could devise no solution.

  The Hansons’ involvement in the marijuana cultivation was fairly straightforward; it tied Mitch solidly to the booby trap that lamed the Austrian, though no one would ever be able to prove it. Louise’s connection with the crop was equally well established, as was her connection with Ellen Hull. From what Anna had heard of the girl, a combination of threats and bribes would probably be sufficient to get her to squeal on her special friend.

  Damning as these bits and pieces were, they didn’t prove either of the Hansons removed the actuator bolt and sabotaged the Beechcraft. Mitch very possibly was cold-blooded enough to do it. Anna always suspected overly jolly people of hiding black hearts. When she was a child, clowns had made her nervous. There was something sinister in the exaggeration of their features and in their unholy need to make short people laugh at them.

  Burning the dope struck her as incongruous. Anyone with the greed and determination to take lives to further the business wouldn’t be the type to cheerfully kiss off plants worth potentially a hundred grand or more. The assumption the plants had belonged to Hull had provided a weak rationale for torching them. Now even that was gone.

  If Slattery was blackmailing the Hansons, and that was the motive for killing him, why burn the profits saved by hard-earned homicide?

  Not her case, she reminded herself, not her park, and obviously, not her day. It was with relief she saw it drawing to a close. Two nights with little or no sleep were catching up to her. Her vision tunneled until all she could see beyond the battered olive green of the truck’s hood was her sofa in the cool quiet of the Belfores’ living room.