Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 08 - Deep South

by Deep South (lit)

  She begged me to go," he mumbled. "Begged me, and I just blew her off.

  She told me she was going to go with her old boyfriend. I said fine. I mean, who cares? She wants to go to the fucking prom that bad, she can go. Then next day she turns up killed. Sometimes Danni was downright stupid, I mean a fucking idiot. She probably blabbed about her and me and he killed her. He fucking killed her." Tears were still flowing.

  Maybe they'd started out as grief or guilt, but they'd heated up. Now they were tears of anger.

  Wentworth was clenching and unclenching his hands. Anna could see the strength in them as the muscles bunched in his forearms. "Danni said she was coming to see you," she said coldly. "She met you and you smashed her skull so she wouldn't interfere with your journey to the Football Hall of Fame. Like a cracker like you would ever make it in the pros." Anna had no idea whether "cracker" was color specific. Maybe only whites could be crackers. Her aim was to rattle him. She succeeded.

  In a lightning move that must have wowed them on the field, he swung a roundhouse left and smashed his fist into the cast-iron railing with such force that the entire porch rang with the reverberations. He was on his feet, glaring down at Anna. Tears were gone. Anger turned cold and aged his face. Under the threat of his bulk and youth, Anna's neck felt as fragile as a flower stalk, her arms like matchsticks. Loosening her locked muscles, she prepared to move quickly. "You're dying to pin this on me, aren't you? Let that lily-white bastard waltz on up to Ole Miss. and pretend to play football so his daddy can brag at the Rotary. I didn't kill Danni. If she said she was meeting me, she was lying. I never went nowhere that night. Never met nobody." Barth was standing too, though Anna'd not seen him get up. "Easy, Lock," he said. "Nobody's pinning anything on anybody. just tell us where you were that night.

  That's all you gotta do."

  "I was in my dorm room at Alcorn," he said. The fire went out of him as quickly as it had flared up. He let Barth put a hand on his shoulder and ease him back down till he sat again on the step. "You got a roommate?" Barth asked. "Oh shit." Stark terror flitted across the football player's face, chased by what looked to be despair. "He wasn't there," he said dully. "He went home that weekend to go to his cousin's wedding." Stillness, deeper and richer for the agitated racket that had preceded it, settled around the three of them. Overhead, in the boughs of the pecans, squirrels scuffled. A car passed, bound for the metropolis of Hermanville. "You going to arrest me or what?" Lock was looking at Anna.

  Halfway through this interview, she'd been convinced Lockley committed the murder. Now she was more or less of the opinion that he didn't. What had changed her mind wasn't the tears, the anger or the protestations of love. It was the fear she'd seen when he realized his roommate hadn't been there, that there was no one to vouch for the fact that he'd been tucked up in his dorm room all night like he claimed. If Lock had murdered Danni, he would have known no one could alibi him, he would have been prepared for the question. The possibility that he was acting still existed, but Anna doubted this volatile young man was the Laurence Olivier of the gridiron. "We didn't come here to arrest you," she said, as if she hadn't just accused him of murder half a dozen times. "We just wanted to talk with you. You said Danni's ex-boyfriend killed her. Tell us about that." Wentworth made a few stabs at it, but it rapidly became clear that he had nothing to add to what they already knew. He just figured Deforest for the killer because he'd been Danni's date and because, though he wouldn't admit to it, the other boy was a rival.

  Anna asked if he knew anything against Deforest, the kind of cheating or violence that might be known in high school or sports circles but that wouldn't necessarily come to the attention of authority Lock wanted to say something against Deforest, but the only thing he could dredge up was that Danni'd said Deforest was a practical )oker and the jokes weren't always all that funny to the victims.

  Anna was impressed Lock didn't succumb to the temptation to make something up about the other boy. After the usual mutterings that boiled down to "Thanks for your time" and

  "Don't leave town anytime soon," Anna went back to the patrol car. Barth stayed behind, said he wanted a private word with young Wentworth.

  Anna'd almost given up on finding anything on the radio to listen to besides country or Christian when Barth rejoined her. "What was that about?" she asked as he buckled his large person into the passenger seat. "Nothing official. I just told him to clean up that mouth of his.

  There's no call for that kind of language in front of a lady. Or even a female ranger. And I told him if he doesn't get off the pity-pot and get back in school, then you're going to be right; he doesn't have what it takes to make it in the pros and he might as well just move on up into the Delta and get himself a job gutting catfish at the factory for all the good he is." Anna started the car and cranked up the air-conditioning. Summer was breathing down April's neck. "That kid's a briar patch of emotions," she said. "Guilt, fear, insecurity, pride, anger. I don't suppose you suggested he see a psychologist for a while?"

  "He doesn't need therapy," Barth said succinctly. "He needs to play ball."

  "Guilt is a cunning and powerful adversary," Anna said.

  "Maybe more powerful than pigskin." Barth, who'd been dragged out of whatever doldrums he'd sailed into by working with Lockley Wentworth, went into relapse. Anna could see him change as clearly as if the word "guilt" had opened a stopcock and the juice was draining out of him. In the few minutes it took to regain the Trace, he was looking lumpy, partially deflated, his hands between his knees and his strange gray-green eyes focused about ten inches in front of the windshield.

  Anna pushed her mind back to what they'd been talking about before the Wentworth interview. It seemed a very long time ago, though less than two hours had passed by the clock. Mississippi, with her soft air and scented breezes, unraveled time at night and melted it during the days.

  Had she been living among the magnolias, egrets, kudzu and possums, Anna felt she could have synchronized her body clock to that of Mother Nature. But since she'd rolled into Claiborne County, her time was divided between cars and talk, neither of which was conducive to getting in touch with the Earth's rhythms.

  Leo Fullerton, the Baptist preacher who'd suicided by VW engine, was Barth's pastor. That was the news that had knocked the stuffing out of her ranger. Guilt had come to Anna's mind before. It was back now. What the hell, she thought. He doesn't much like me anyway. "Why are you feeling guilty over Pastor Fullerton's suicide?" she asked bluntly.

  Barth looked at her, a new energy in his face. Dared she hope it was a spark of respect? Before he answered her-and she could have sworn he was going to-the spark was doused with distrust. Maybe he'd suddenly remembered she wasn't from around there. "You don't know what you 7re talking about," be said, and Anna knew she'd get nothing more out of him. At least not by being straightforward and aboveboard.

  T higpen's patrol car was parked in front of the ranger station. Anna felt her shoulders tensing and forced herself to relax. If he was going to wage a war of nerves, then she would be nerveless. Maybe she was overreacting. He had, after all, done nothing overt. And he'd responded quickly when she called regarding the alligator. It was possible the conspiracy to leave her in the lurch over the Posey/Doolittle car stop was a one-time thing.

  Unaware she did so, Anna snorted. Thigpen gave her that cringing, sly feeling incompetents in denial always engendered. In government service, she'd felt it enough times to trust her instincts.

  Randy was at his desk. The air was redolent with cigarette smoke.

  He was of immoderate good cheer. It made Anna wonder what he'd been up to. "Hey," be said, a grin growing out from beneath his brush of a mustache. "It's the Bobbsey Twins. You two are getting pretty cozy.

  "Hey, Randy," Anna said. Sexual innuendo was the cheapest--and unfortunately the most effective-weapon in the malcontent arsenal. Barth could field this one. He was the man with the wife and family. Anna glanced covertly his way as she passed
his desk, but he was still lumpy and deflated and had no interest in his officemate's chatter.

  Anna cut between Thigpen and the coffee machine to visit the ladies' room. Never before had a female worked in Port Gibson, not in maintenance, not as a ranger. There were no facilities. In deference to Anna's gender, half the men's room had been partitioned off. She had two sinks, three stalls and four urinals all to herself. She enjoyed the privacy of the ladies' room so much that though she'd sworn, in her exalted position as a GS- I I district ranger, she would maintain an open-door policy, when she slithered from the privacy of the loo to the privacy of her office, she shut the door.

  A moment was dedicated to thanking the Trace architect who'd deemed a private office for the Port Gibson ranger a necessity. Guadalupe Mountains and Mesa Verde had left the district ranger plunked down among the hol polloi.

  Breathing deeply of the serenity of her eigbt-foot-square solitude, she punched the button on the answering machine to see what the rest of the afternoon held in the way of entertainment.

  Sheriff Davidson called, said he'd had an interesting talk with Mike and Fred Posey. He'd fill her in later. Chief Ranger John Brown left a message asking her to call. His voice was clipped, empty, the sort of voice Sister Vionney used when she said: "Anna, Sister Mary Corine would like to see you in her office." Never a good omen.

  Anna had been on the Trace only a few days. She wondered what she could possibly have screwed up in so short a time.

  Putting off both calls for entirely different reasons, she radioed Frank, the maintenance man at Rocky. He'd agreed to check on Taco, and Anna'd left her door unlocked. If her hunch was right, the place had already been weighed and found wanting by local criminals. She doubted they would break in a second time. Unless it bad been her they'd come looking for.

  Taco was depressed, Frank said, the censure heavy in his voice. A woman's place was in the home, caring for her children, furred or unfurred.

  Anna thanked him and promised she'd be back to Rocky soon.

  "That cat's looking after him," Frank said, not letting her off so e ily. "Cat can't look after a dog." Anna signed off, feeling as if she'd asi I I left her three-year-old to take care of a heart patient and now everybody with a radio knew what a rotten mom she was.

  Fatigue settled like dust and with it an overwhelming urge to talk to her sister. It was five-thirty New York time. Maybe she would still catch her at the clinic. With a guilty glance at the door, she made a personal call on government time.

  Nancy, the woman who had been Molly's receptionist for thirteen years and still treated Anna like a stranger, put her on hold. Half a minute later, Molly picked up.

  Anna didn't even bother to ask any polite questions about the wedding, the weather or work. She wanted to talk. And she did. The sheriff, the football player, the suicide, the pornography at Clinton pullout, Barth's weirdness, Randy's hatefulness, Taco's gimpiness. It all poured out. She ended by telling how glad she'd been when Barth seemed to be coming around, how disappointed she felt over the big man's withdrawal.

  "I wasn't just glad he was maybe going to be my friend, I was pathetically glad. It's so warm here, so moist, so scented. I think my backbone has begun to soften, grow fungi." Molly said nothing for a moment, and Anna noted with satisfaction that the telltale shush of air-Molly sucking in a lungful of smoke wasn't there. Maybe her near-death experience the previous summer would really keep her off cigarettes. "Not enough estrogen," the psychiatrist said at last.

  "Without it bones get brittle, tissues shrivel, thinking processes grow sluggish." Anna let the diagnosis sink in. "Perimenopause?" she said, confused. "Surely I've got a few years left."

  "Not estrogen in your body, estrogen in your life. Where are the women down there?

  Barefoot and pregnant? No women rangers, maintenance, no secretaries, nurses, receptionists? The Trace sounds like a boys' club."

  "There are women," Anna said. "But they're all in Tupelo. In administration."

  "Where -are they in-what's it? Port Gimlet?"

  "Gibson. Probably in church."

  "You'd better find yourself a place in the pew," Molly laughed. "Without women to talk to, the mind begins to play tricks." Molly had to go. She was meeting Frederick at La Guardia. The FBI agent had established a regular commute between Chicago and New York to be with Anna's sister.

  Though Anna was unreservedly in favor of the relationship, she hung up feeling worse than when she'd called.

  Lonely. That was it. In the twelve-step meetings she'd long since abandoned, they preached HALT: Never let yourself become too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. Anna was all of the above, and sure as hell, she wanted a drink.

  Paul Davidson's message gave her the perfect excuse for calling him.

  Lonely. She was vulnerable. It would be akin to grocery shopping when she was starving. She dialed the chief ranger's number instead. "Hi, it's Anna, what's up?" she said when be came on the line.

  "I'm glad you called, Anna. I need to talk with you," Brown said in the measured tones of a man restating the obvious, not to buy time, but to lay the groundwork for some unpleasant revelation. Anna felt that clench in the pit of her stomach that is learned in childhood and never quite goes away. "Shoot," she said. "I got a complaint about you today. It was faxed to my office. One of your rangers is saying you are showing favoritism based on race and age."

  "It's either Barth or Randy," Anna said. "I've only got two rangers."

  "You know I can't divulge the name of the complainant in a whistleblowing situation," Brown said, and be sounded as tired as Anna felt.

  "Race and age?"

  "Race and age."

  "I've only been here a week, I must have been busier than I thought." Anna was being flippant. She knew it was juvenile and counterproductive.

  Humor had no place in bureaucracy, especially not when the terrifying specter of a lawsuit was raised. Brown breathed heavily into the phone, undoubtedly willing her not to make this any harder than it had to be.

  Momentarily she was tempted to apologize and treat the matter with the sincere concern it damn well did not deserve. This was Randy making a preemptive strike. Or just being a pain in the ass because he had too much time on his hands, his wife had left him or his hemorrhoids had flared up. "How is this racism and ageism said to manifest?" she asked.

  She made a modest effort to alter her tone so it wouldn't sound snippy or snotty, but the attempt failed.

  Brown, bless his mature and experienced heart, ignored it. "There's a few, but the major complaint is preferential scheduling. This individual claims that you have scheduled him to work less desirable shifts and that you have done this in a prejudicial manner because of this individual's age and skin color." Anna had seen the destruction lawsuits caused, the loss of health and money and jobs and promotions, not because the accused was guilty, but because the legal process was punitive. Innocence, even if proved, didn't change the lawyers' fees and the stain that was left on the minds of those who heard only the accusations, who believed where there was smoke there was fire. But Randy had chosen to attack her on the basis of scheduling. Relief softened her voice and she responded to the chief ranger like "I've been remiss on the scheduling," she said. "The mura grown-up. der has taken up so much of my time, I never got around to redoing the schedule. Both of my rangers are still working the schedule that Steve Stilwell had them on when he was acting district ranger."

  "Can you prove that?" Brown asked hopefully.

  Anna was relieved that he seemed to be on her side. "I can ask Steve," she said. "Do that. Document everything. This individual-and you've got a good idea who I'm talking about-has been a-" Anna thought he was going to say "pain" or "headache" or "thorn," but Brown was too well trained. "A problem in several areas. He wants an early retirement. He's tried to get a medical retirement, and this isn't the first complaint he's made. He's threatened suit seven times and sued twice over one thing and another." Anna felt as if she'd just been given an adder
for a bed mate.

  "Nightmare," she said. "Velvet gloves," Brown warned. "Velvet gloves and document everything." After hanging up, Anna went through the schedule.

  The only bit of time Randy bad put in that wasn't Steve's doing was a wildlife disturbance call that dispatch had sent him out on. He'd gone on duty two hours before he was scheduled. The assisting agency listed was Fisheries and Wildlife. Anna was on solid ground. Much good that would do her in a lawsuit.

  Fifteen minutes till quitting time. She decided to sit it out doing nothing, staring at the clock. It was all she felt up to. At five of five the phone rang. For three rings she watched it suspiciously. On the fourth, she answered.

  "Hey, it's Stilwell," came a light and breezy voice. The district ranger in Ridgeland: a nontoxic soul with good hair and kind eyes.

  "Just the man I needed to talk to," she said. "Want to do it over dinner? I can meet you in Clinton. I hear there's a four-star Taco Bell on the corner of 1-20 and Springridge Road." An errant thought, one that had been nagging at the edges of her mind, surfaced. "How about meeting me at the Clinton pullout," she countered. "Business before gorditas."