The Rope: An Anna Pigeon Novel

by Nevada Barr

  There was nothing to say after that until the men reappeared walking five abreast. Their faces set and grim, the sheriff with his cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes.

  “The Earps,” Anna said.

  “The OK Corral,” Jenny said.

  If Anna remembered her film history correctly, that hadn’t ended well for anybody.

  Gluck carried the canteen Anna had become so familiar with during her time in the jar. Looped over one shoulder, Levitt carried the two boat ladders. Regis hugged a water bottle much as Anna was prone to do after suffering so much from thirst.

  “That canteen the sheriff is carrying was the one with the drugged water in it,” Anna commented with about as much emotion as she might have said, “That’s the T-shirt with the stripes on it.”

  Because she felt vulnerable and marginalized sitting in the front seat of the cab as the men approached, Anna reached for the door handle.

  “Wait?” Jenny cried, sounding alarmed. “Don’t go out there.”

  “Why not?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jenny admitted. “I just had a weird bad feeling.”

  “A lot of that going around,” Anna said and got out to stand on her own two feet. Regis saw her and waved and smiled.

  “Hey, Anna,” he said as he broke the line and moved rapidly toward her.

  It took all of Anna’s resolve to keep her face unreadable and resist the need to leap back into the truck and slam and lock the doors.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. For a moment it looked as if he intended to give her a hug. Anna held up one hand, the way the Indians in those same Westerns had done while bizarrely uttering, “How.”

  Regis stopped. “I was just so blown away. I forgot how scared you must have been when I climbed down. You went through far worse than anything I did. I’m sorry I took my own fear out on you, that’s all.”

  Anna said nothing. Bits of things she might have said skittered around in her skull, but making conversation was too pointless to bother dragging any one of them down to where her tongue could get around it. Lowering her hand was the best she could do. Unnerved, Regis looked over his shoulder at the other men. They had stopped several yards out from the truck and stood in a neat semicircle, a manly tableau against the canvas of the desert.

  “You’re lucky she didn’t kill you,” Steve said without a trace of humor. Broken by his words, the tableau came to life again.

  “Where’s Kay?” Anna asked Steve. He didn’t answer right away, and Anna was afraid there was no body, the body was gone or had never existed. “Did you find Kay?” she insisted, louder this time.

  “We just dug enough to assure ourselves she was there,” Steve said. He hadn’t wanted to speak, Anna realized, because he knew it would be hard for her to hear. She didn’t like him for the kindness. She didn’t like or dislike any of them. She didn’t care because they didn’t care, not in any way it mattered. Not in any way that would ever make anything right.

  “Frank’s going to have the county coroner out here. They’ll recover the body and take it back to Escalante. He’s going to work with us to identify her. If we’re lucky she’s been reported missing.”

  They didn’t know she was wearing nothing but underpants. Anna hadn’t told that part of the story. It was ugly and it was hers and she would keep it. For now at least.

  “We’ll take good care of her,” Sheriff Frank assured her.

  “She’s dead, and I didn’t know her,” Anna said, but she remembered how important it had been to her that Kay’s hair be combed from the sand, not yanked, and she remembered sacrificing the tempting panties so Kay could retain a scrap of dignity.

  Regis unscrewed the cap of his water bottle as the sheriff and Jim loaded the ladder and canteen into the bed of the pickup.

  “I’ll never take water for granted again,” Regis said, offering a tentative smile to Anna. “I nearly thirsted to death.”

  “There was a canteen of water,” she said.

  “Empty,” the sheriff told her as he dropped it onto the bed of the truck with a clang.

  Anna said nothing. It had been over half full when she hit Regis in the head with it, heavy enough to stun. He couldn’t have drunk it all. If he had, he’d be in a stupor. Instead he was hyperactive, the way a person is after a narrow escape. He could have dumped it, or, when it struck him, the cap might have come loose and the water drained out.

  Anna saw no value in voicing these thoughts. She saw no value in speaking anymore.

  Jenny and Jim were consigned to the bed of the pickup. Anna tried to follow. Steve cut her off and herded her back into the cab the way a good sheepdog would herd a stray lamb back to the fold.

  The sheriff slid behind the wheel. Chief Ranger Madden started to climb into the front passenger side.

  “Andrew, take the back again, if you wouldn’t mind,” Steve said. “Anna could probably use the air.” Steve Gluck jammed himself in beside Madden and put Regis behind the driver, as far from Anna as he could be in the truck’s cab. Anna didn’t like him for that, either. “Air” was not what she needed. She needed her own planet.

  With two people in the truck bed, the sheriff drove toward Hole-in-the-Rock Road more slowly than he had driven out. Regis couldn’t stop talking.

  An older man who wouldn’t give his name had hailed him on the dock at Dangling Rope Marina, he told them as the cab jounced and swayed. The old man stank of beer, Regis said, and was none too steady on his feet. The guy told him a bizarre tale about a girl trapped in a solution hole up around Hole-in-the-Rock Road. He said he’d heard some kids bragging about it like they’d caught a bear cub or a cougar and were keeping it a secret from their parents. He wasn’t clear as to how many kids there were, or how tall or short, and was pretty vague about where he had chanced to overhear the boasts.

  Regis said he figured the guy imagined it, or half heard something in a drunken stupor and, when he sobered up somewhat, thought it was real and reported it to the first person in uniform he’d laid his bleary eyes on.

  This had transpired around seven thirty or eight o’clock the evening before Anna attacked him, Regis said. Though he figured the guy was crazy, Regis had checked to see if anyone had gone missing. No one had but Anna. Since Anna’d packed up her things, he never thought it could be her, so he let it go.

  Then, in the middle of the night, he woke up worrying about it. What if a woman were trapped, suffering in some way, crying for help? He couldn’t stand it, he said, and got up and dressed and started up the unmaintained trail that scrambled and clawed up the escarpment behind the housing area, the only way he knew to get from the Rope to the area the drunk had mentioned.

  He’d wandered around until nearly dawn and was about to give it up when he heard a woman crying. He’d found the hole where the weeping came from. Beside it, half hidden under the overhang of a rock, were the boat ladders.

  All this poured out with no encouragement but the occasional grunt from law enforcement. As the sheriff turned the ignition off, the truck parked neatly parallel to the dirt track as if meter maids were watching, Regis finished his story.

  Anna had not been weeping the night he came to the solution hole. She had been lying under the sand, waiting, like a trapdoor spider.

  Anna said nothing.

  TWENTY-SIX

  There were two phones in Dangling Rope, one in the ranger station on the dock and the other in the small convenience store run by the park concessionaire. Since the Rope didn’t have its own district ranger, as the senior NPS employee, Jenny had the key to the ranger station. Jim thought he should keep it because he was law enforcement.

  When he grumbled about it Jenny had said sweetly, “Then next time you give Steve the blow job.”

  Anna had thought it funny. Gil, Dennis, Regis—the males—were not laughing. They were thinking maybe it was true. Jenny winked at Anna and rolled her eyes.

  That was Anna’s third or fourth day at the Rope. Cocooned in her grief, she hadn’t put
herself out to get to know her fellows, not even Jenny. That wink and eye roll surprised her. Jenny had seen her. Being unseen was one of Anna’s skills. During rehearsals, stage managers were visible. During the running of the show, they were not. Anna dressed in black, as did the crew, so if the audience accidentally caught a glimpse of her it would make little impression. She cultivated a soft low voice so backstage noise wouldn’t compete with the show onstage. She wore soft-soled shoes and moved quietly. She did not bump into things or set curtains moving as she passed through. She could see well in the dark.

  Before she lost Zach, Anna used this learned invisibility only professionally. Jenny’s wink let her know she had been trying to disappear during the light of day and it hadn’t worked, at least not on Jenny.

  That had been less than three weeks before. The jar had turned time on its end, and it seemed a story from when Anna was much younger.

  As soon as the dock settled down for the evening, Anna got the ranger station key from Jenny and went down the hill to the lake. She needed her psychiatrist. More than that, she needed her sister. Molly had been so present during her days in the jar that, as she inserted the key and let herself into the cramped office, she reminded herself Molly had been present only in her mind. Her tale would be a shock to her.

  Molly would go into one of her icy rages, the kind where her mind glittered like crystal and her eyes could slay at a glance. Anna needed that, too, needed someone to be furious for her, rage against the withering impotence of knowing life was very, very unfair, and there was not one goddamned thing you could do about it.

  Having locked the door behind her, she slipped into the padded swivel chair in front of the desk, a narrow built-in behind a half-wall that kept visitors from wandering into the working portion of the office.

  There was both an overhead light and a desk lamp. Anna left them dark. Not only did she feel at home without light, she didn’t want visitors trotting down to borrow a cup of sugar.

  Finally alone, the last rays of the day making the dust motes sparkle and dance in the dim office, Anna realized how tired she was. After Regis had been rescued from the solution hole, Steve ordered her to the Bullfrog clinic. The nurse practitioner—a competent woman named Beatrice—wanted her to go to the hospital in Wahweap or, failing that, stay overnight in Bullfrog for observation. Anna refused, arguing her injuries were old news. If the bang on the head and dislocation of her shoulder were going to kill her, she’d already be dead.

  Never again would she allow herself to be trapped and observed by strangers as she slept. After signing release forms, Beatrice let her go. The woman was so affronted by her refusal to see sense she’d actually said, “If you have problems with the concussion, let it be on your head.”

  By the time she’d gotten a boat ride back to Dangling Rope it had been after five. She had forgotten to eat. Now she was out of fuel, running on empty, and not running very fast. A few glasses of wine backed by a Xanax and sixteen hours in bed looked like her very own Eden. Still, she picked up the phone and dialed the many numbers needed to make a credit card call to New York.

  “It’s me, Anna,” she said when she heard Molly’s “hello.” At the sound of her sister’s voice, tears she had no idea were waiting gushed from her eyes. With an effort, Anna kept them from her voice.

  “Well, well,” her sister said. “Did you have to ride a yak to the nearest village where they had running water and AT&T?”

  As was Molly’s habit—both by training and inclination—she listened without interrupting while Anna told her tale of abduction, assault, and imprisonment. Trusting her sister absolutely, as she had done since she could remember and probably from the moment her mother brought her home from the hospital and laid her in six-year-old Molly’s arms, Anna left nothing out: the drugged water, the carving on her thigh, being stripped, her nude body posed—all of it. Twice she heard the familiar metallic rasp followed by a short sharp intake of breath as her sister lit and smoked two Camel unfiltered cigarettes.

  Anna was glad she could end the story with the odiferous heroics of Buddy. Neither she nor the little skunk knew the man in the dark was Regis Candor and not one of the young murderers and would-be rapists, so Buddy got full credit for saving her life.

  That he had saved her in other ways she didn’t bother to voice—not at twenty-five cents a minute. Molly would know. The healing power of friendship, the value of having someone to care for, to give and receive love, were things her sister often said she wished she could dole out in pill form.

  The only part of the story Anna kept back was that not only had Molly’s voice been with her in the jar, but it had pulled her back from the edge. Much as Anna loved and trusted her older sister, there was no sense giving her a big head. As a doctor and a New Yorker, Molly had sufficient arrogance to get her through the day.

  Finishing her story, Anna brought Molly to the present moment: sitting in a small dusty ranger station, sun relinquishing its light to the first stars, absolute quiet a palpable thing. Over the phone line, from three stories above Seventy-seventh, off Fifth Avenue, Anna listened to the ululations of sirens, the sound track of cities.

  For a long intake of breath Molly said nothing. Then she gave her professional summing up: “Yikes.” Another long breath came and went. The slow response to a story full of danger and drama didn’t offend Anna. This was how Molly designated levels of importance. Shallow thoughts brought quick rejoinders; serious matters deserved serious attention.

  “This Regis guy stinks to high heaven,” Molly said finally.

  “Even without Buddy’s ministrations,” Anna agreed.

  “But it was not he who struck the girl you unburied, or chased you and, presumably, knocked you unconscious, stripped you, and rolled you into the pit.”

  “Right,” Anna said. “As far as I know, Regis wasn’t within miles of me that afternoon.”

  “Easy enough to check,” Molly said.

  It was easy to check. Anna could find out. Until that moment, pursuing justice on her own behalf hadn’t crossed her mind. There were professionals for that. Vigilante justice had struck Anna as an oxymoron. Until now.

  “You’re right,” Anna said firmly.

  “What? No you don’t. I am most assuredly not right if you’re thinking two of my rights are your permission to do a big fat wrong. What are you thinking, Anna?” Molly demanded. “Your voice has that terrifying ‘fools rush in’ ring to it.”

  “It’s better than feeling helpless,” Anna countered.

  “It’s not better than feeling dead,” her sister snapped.

  “Living, knowing the monster is out there, might not be better than dead,” Anna said.

  “Don’t be such a melodramatic little ass,” Molly said. “There are always monsters out there. Many of them in high places and respected professions. Do you think I just listen to bored housewives and neurotic rich people forty hours a week? I see monsters every day: men who batter wives, women who are cruel to their children, grown-up little boys who were used by fathers and uncles and cousins, grown-up little girls who were raped by their dentist or pastor or Daddy’s best friend or Daddy himself. On Fridays, when I do pro bono work at Pelican Bay, I meet the batterers and child abusers and murderers. I know they are the tip of the iceberg, the small percentage that get caught and their lawyers don’t get them a deal and the judge doesn’t throw out their case on a technicality and the victim doesn’t withdraw her accusation and the witnesses actually show up in court.

  “Of course we’re scared sometimes. Of course we sometimes feel helpless. Of course we all live knowing the monster is out there.

  “You are not a monster hunter, Anna.” Molly ran down, the heat leaking out of her tirade. “Leave this to the cops,” she finished. “You are not John Wayne. You are just a stage manager.”

  Anna clenched the fingers of her left hand, making the tendons in her shoulder ache.

  “John Wayne wasn’t John Wayne,” she said. “He was just an act
or.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  By gray-green fingernails dusk hung on to the edge of a star-studded sky. Chain-smoking and thinking and trying not to think, Jenny sat with her back against the wall of the duplex, legs stretched out on the picnic table, waiting for Anna.

  Party boaters had defiled the grotto. She and Anna would need to sample the water there again, see if it was fit for human visitation. There was the beautiful little beach in Gunsight Bay, a prime spot for toilet paper blooms and graffiti, that she hadn’t visited in a while. Interpretive opportunities would abound in Gunsight. It would be a good place to get Anna started on the higher education aspects of her job.

  That was if Anna didn’t bolt. Jenny wouldn’t blame her if she did pack up her toiletries and head east on the first train, plane, or bus. Jenny hoped Anna would stay, figured she would run, and, in honesty, thought she probably should put as many miles between herself and the “jar,” as she called it, as possible. Ms. Pigeon was incredibly ignorant of reality not created on stages in the Big Apple.

  Too many questions about her abduction and imprisonment remained unanswered for her to feel safe anywhere near Lake Powell. Regis was not in jail. Anna wasn’t pressing charges. Eyewitness to her own attack, Anna knew he had not been one of the three boys who dumped her in the hole. For tonight, Steve had asked Regis to remain in Wahweap so Andrew could take his statement at headquarters. Tomorrow night, he would be back at the Rope, sitting a few yards from Anna’s bedroom window drinking beer.

  Regis’s intervention had rescued Anna from a very real hell. Anna didn’t dispute that, but Jenny saw how she’d watched him, chin up, eyes hooded. Jenny’d seen an owlet looking at a snake that way once, waiting for it to strike. Come to think of it, Jenny had seen Bethy Candor looking at Anna that way. That her husband had left her bed to find another woman wasn’t lost on Bethy. Before Anna disappeared, Regis’s attentions to Anna hadn’t been lost on anybody, with the exception, perhaps, of Anna herself.