Liberty Falling

by Nevada Barr

  Anna eased down on the sofa and put her feet up on a coffee table that looked as if it had been custom-made for George Jetson, a sixties version of the future. The gash on her thigh had clotted and the torn flesh was pulling tight. Each place she’d banged in her fall was reasserting its need for sympathy. She took another pull on her beer. “Why? What happened?” If nobody else heard the kid saying Hatch had pushed the girl, Anna wasn’t going to volunteer the information without talking with him first. He didn’t strike her as the type who went around chucking strange children off parapets.

  “This is all second- and third-hand,” Patsy said. “But according to Hatch, this kid had been acting strange. Somebody’d reported her or something. Hatch got to watching her and thought maybe she was picking pockets. We get our share of that. Tourists. Crowds. The pickings can be pretty good. For the price of one ticket a thief can work the boats and monuments all day. She—Hatch thought it was a boy too—evidently started acting really peculiar on the top of the pedestal where you can go outside. Hatch thought she was stuffing things in her backpack. He was going to talk to her and—again according to him—she just took off out the doors. He ran after her. The way he tells it, he was trying to catch hold of her to stop her from jumping, was a second too late—and splat.

  “Hi, Mandy, we’re talking about Hatch.” Patsy broke off as her housemate came in. Mandy was young and round of face, eyes and tummy—everywhere but where a woman might choose to be round. Her hair was baby-fine and cut in a bowl shape, like most depictions of Joan of Arc. Anna had found no call to either like or dislike her. But she was about to.

  “Hatch should be fired,” Mandy said, as if what she thought mattered. “This Keystone Kop routine. Chasing a kid! This is an island, for chrissake. Where did he think she was going to go?” The condemnation was delivered with scathing finality.

  Anna was tired, and somewhere between 1975 and the present, she’d ceased caring what the Mandys of the world thought, but out of loyalty to Hatch and the brotherhood, she roused herself. “You’ve got to chase ’em,” she said. “You don’t know why they’re running. Maybe they’ll hurt somebody. Hurt themselves. You let ’em go, it turns out you knew, you’d been told they were acting fishy. You tried to talk to them. They ran and you just said, ‘Oh well, win some lose some,’ then they pull out a forty-five and start shooting visitors—or worse, damage the resource. Try explaining that to the Chief Ranger. Not to mention John Q. Public. That’s the luxury of not being in law enforcement. You don’t have to engage. Hatch did. He had point two seconds to figure out what to do.”

  “Okay. Sure. Whatever.” Mandy looked around the room, vaguely peeved, then pushed her stubby bangs off her forehead with the edge of her hand. “Anybody want the bathroom? I’m going to have a soak.” Finding no takers, she stumped off down the hall.

  “My junior year in college I took third place in the state finals for persuasive speaking,” Anna said. “Evidently I’ve lost my touch.”

  “Mandy suffers from arrested development,” Patsy whispered after checking to see that the bathroom door had closed. “She views the world from a training bra.”

  Patsy’s own form was a fifties wet dream, movie stars before anorexia and gym memberships became fashionable. Anna laughed. “Another beer?” Patsy offered, further endearing herself.

  “There was no backpack,” Anna remembered suddenly as Patsy came back with two more Bud Lights. “Hatch said she was stuffing something in her backpack? When I checked the boy—the girl—after she fell, she didn’t have a pack, not a purse, nothing.”

  “Maybe one of the EMTs picked it up for her.”

  “I was there before the EMTs.” They sipped their insipid brew in silence for a moment.

  “God,” Patsy said. “Somebody stole it? Can you believe somebody would steal a backpack off a broken little kid like that?”

  Having a fairly dismal view of her fellow humans, Anna found it easy to believe. Certainly easier than believing Hatch had made up a nonsensical lie about picking pockets, then purposely pursued a child through a hundred witnesses for the sole purpose of shoving him—her—to her death. Even evil had to conform to some twisted sense of logic.

  “Who was she?” Anna asked.

  “Who knows. A kid. No ID. Nobody has claimed her as far as I know. Maybe she was a runaway.”

  “Her picture will go out,” Anna said. “Somebody will recognize her. The world’s not that big anymore.”

  Patsy went to bed. Anna poured the last of her beer down the sink. If she drank enough to drop the veil over her mind she’d be up all night running to the bathroom. Without sufficient alcohol to slow the spinning of her thoughts, sleep would be a while in coming. A hot bath might have been the next best thing, but Mandy had drained the tank dry and, given the age of the equipment, it would take it longer to recover than Anna cared to wait.

  Pulling on her Levi’s jacket against the breeze off the ocean, she let herself out. A walk around the island to clear her mind; then she would read herself to sleep with something familiar. Knowing Molly might be in the hospital some time, Anna had packed several comfort books: Great Expectations, The Moonstone, The Small House at Allington. Stories she’d read before and would read again, finding reassurance in the formal language and happy endings.

  For reasons of professional interest or a natural morbidity, she made her way to the base of the pedestal where the girl had fallen, jumped or been pushed to her death. Bright scraps of pink littered the granite. Azalea blossoms had been scattered, a tribute to the dead. Squatting on the unnaturally clean stone—scrubbed by an NPS that didn’t like blood shed any later than the Civil War to become part of the attraction at their historic monuments—Anna closed her eyes and conjured up what memories she had of the incident.

  The child’s face and her injuries were paramount, coming into focus with unpleasant clarity. Anna let them sit, waiting for them to lose their shock value. It was not brain and bone she hoped to recall. Gore, like loud noise and bright light, had a way of blinding one to pertinent detail. Inexperienced EMTs had been known to lose patients because they wasted precious time dealing with a spectacular but non-life-threatening injury while the patient quietly ceased breathing from an unrelated problem.

  Graphic images faded. Bits of the child came clear. The ball cap hiding her hair had a funky decoration on it, a football or a rock. Her skin was good—no acne—and pale, as if she spent little time in the sun. Some of her teeth had been broken in the fall, but Anna could see the bottom row. They were crooked but white and without fillings. She wore a white T-shirt and green trousers. Army fatigues maybe; they were a couple sizes too large and frayed at the cuffs where they dragged on the ground. New, expensive sneakers—Reeboks. If the child was a runaway, she’d either bolted recently or done well by herself.

  Without opening her eyes, Anna tilted her head back, looking around at an imaginary crowd. Backpacks: there was nothing on the ground near the dead child. Her mind’s eye saw only shoes, feet and shins. From the knees down people were a tacky lot, Anna thought, as the grubby, hirsute parade passed through her mind: running shoes that looked as if they’d been used as third base for a season, hammer toes, army boots under unhemmed Levi’s, ridged and yellowed nails poking from strappy sandals.

  Mentally, she raised her sights. Backpacks: the people she could recall pushing closest had all been carrying something. A minute’s concentration brought out a camera, two waist packs—one in purple, one in green—and two backpacks. The boy nearest—the one in the huge shorts—had carried one. Behind him she’d seen a part of another, as if someone held it by a single strap.

  She opened her eyes. It was no use. She couldn’t recall anyone’s face clearly. She was unsure of the color of the packs or who, precisely, carried them. Even in cities packs were ubiquitous, and there was no reason to believe the person who stole it would have hung around. From her conversation with Patsy, Anna got the idea that the missing pack had only been missed later, a
fter the crowd had dispersed. Not too great a loss from an interviewer’s point of view. When people ran in herds their senses became dulled. One good witness in twenty was a small miracle.

  The happy growl of a small motorboat caught her attention. It was the Liberty IV making its last trip back from Manhattan. Any Liberty Islander who missed the ten-fifteen boat was marooned in the city for the night. The roar of the diesel engine reminded Anna she had a question for Dwight. When she tried to get to her feet, the cut on her thigh raised such a fuss that she had to push off the stone with both hands.

  At a limping trot she managed to reach the end of the pier just as Cal was reeling the Liberty IV dockside. Ever the gentleman, he handed her on board with a grace and dignity rare in modern times.

  “Hey, Dwight,” she called up the narrow steps to the bridge. “Got a minute?”

  “One,” he returned.

  It was the end of his shift. Dwight was a family man and not one to dawdle when his working day was done. Pulling herself up in a vain attempt to spare her leg, Anna was annoyed to find she was breathing hard. Physical stamina after forty wasn’t a given, it had to be earned.

  “What time did you see me on Island Three and radio it in?” she asked.

  “You’re not mad, are you?” he asked with surprise.

  “Nope. Just curious.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe eight or so.”

  “Where was I?”

  Dwight laughed nervously. “This an IQ test?”

  Anna waited.

  “Sort of in the trees there between the buildings.”

  “Earlier you said something to Patsy about my being a middle-aged mutant ninja ranger. What was that about?”

  Dwight looked pained. “No offense meant,” he said.

  “No, no,” she reassured him. “None taken. Just curious about the image.”

  Dwight was still uncertain whether or not he was being taken to task in some arcane manner. “You know those turtle things from a while back? That’s all.”

  “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?” Anna asked.

  “Yeah. Just trying to be funny. We got any comers, Cal?” he hollered out the window to let Anna know it was time to leave. The dock was obviously deserted.

  “The rhythm. I get it,” Anna said hurriedly. “Teenage/ middle-aged, turtle/ranger. What put the picture in your head?”

  Dwight was suddenly absorbed in fiddling with his radar.

  “Other than me being middle-aged?”

  “You said it, not me.” Then: “You know, just those ninja men all dressed in black. Got a stowaway, Cal,” he called to the deckhand in hopes of getting rid of Anna.

  “That’s it?” she asked. “The person you saw was dressed in black?”

  “That’s it,” Dwight said.

  “Terrific.” Anna backed down the stairs. “Thanks a heap. Regards to Digby. Good night.” Cal handed her off the boat and for another brief moment she was allowed to feel like a lady.

  Around eight o’clock, Dwight said. She’d been inside the wards from five-thirty till she’d stumbled out to be caught by Billy Bonham. Black, Dwight had said, a ninja. She’d been dressed in khaki shorts and a red shirt. Whoever Dwight saw, it wasn’t her. Whoever he saw hadn’t been authorized to be there. And whoever it was had been leaving the area immediately after the stairs fell from under her.

  It had to be coincidence. Surely even she couldn’t make a mortal enemy in only three days.

  7

  ANNA CAUGHT AN early boat for Manhattan, the Liberty IV captained this morning by Kevin. He wasn’t alone on the bridge. A slender, handsome man of indeterminate age sat in Anna’s spot drinking coffee from a fat-bottomed plastic mug. Trey Claypool. Anna remembered a hurried introduction in the hall when she’d first come to Ellis. Claypool was the Assistant Superintendent, an often thankless job. Not unlike vice president but without the entertainment factor of going to galas. Assistant Superintendent was a way station for the upwardly mobile or a parking place for burnouts and black sheep that the Park Service couldn’t get rid of and never intended to grant the power of a superintendency. Anna had no idea whether Claypool was on the fast track or had been shunted off onto a siding. There was something off-putting about the man. Lack of facial expression: either he was brain-dead or so adept at hiding his emotions that not so much as a twinkle showed through. Eyes like a carp, Anna thought as she backed unseen down the stairs from the bridge.

  In the open area on the stern Billy Bonham, riding home after the night shift on Ellis, stood under the Stars and Stripes gazing back at Lady Liberty. Both of them looked fine in the morning sun: healthy, vibrant and forever young. Pleased with the picture, Anna joined the policeman.

  “Good morning,” she said, just to watch him smile. She was disappointed. Billy looked at her and his face was drawn, pale under the beginnings of a summer tan. His thick honey-colored hair was greasy, as if he’d been running his hands through it. There was no smile to alleviate his gray cast, just a pained expression tinged with doubt and sadness.

  “You look like shit,” Anna said kindly. Maybe it was the wind off the water, but she could have sworn his eyes teared up in the moment before he turned away. It seemed rude to just run off and leave him but that was her plan. Who knew what to do with weepy men? He was too young to sleep with and too old to hold on her lap. “Looks like it’s going to be another nice day,” she murmured, preparatory to sidling away and scuttling to the far end of the boat.

  “I’ve got to find another line of work,” Billy said, aborting her escape. His voice was heavy with the unself-conscious melodrama of youth.

  “There’s lots of things to do,” Anna said, not yet giving up hope of retaining her God-given right to indifference.

  “I’ve never wanted to be anything else. Never will,” Bonham said stubbornly.

  Anna capitulated, leaning both elbows on the rail beside him. “A drag,” she agreed.

  “Do you ever see things?” he asked suddenly.

  Anna had braced herself for a tale of star-crossed love or boss-crossed ambition. The question caught her off guard and she answered truthfully: “Sometimes.” Immediately she wished she hadn’t. Public servants entrusted with deadly weapons were strongly discouraged from admitting symptoms of mental instability.

  “What sort of things?” Billy pressed.

  “Why?”

  The policeman hadn’t faced her since his eyes filled with tears, and he didn’t now, but let his words blow over the stern to be carried away on the wake of the Liberty IV. “I need to know.”

  Anna watched him, the profile still rounded from his teens, a square forehead free of lines and cheeks more suited to down than whiskers. He really did seem to need to know. Hoping she wasn’t opening the door to some unwelcome and eminently reportable revelation, she told him.

  “Cats, mostly. When I’m tired or distracted I sometimes see cats out of the corner of my eye. Then they aren’t there. It used to scare me,” she said, in case that was what he was worried about, that he was going nuts. “Now I’m used to it. They keep down the hallucinatory mice.”

  “Cats? Is that it?” He sounded so disappointed she half wished she had a more impressive delusion to relate.

  “Just cats,” she admitted, feeling she’d let him down. He slid back into morose silence. “Why?” she asked again. “What do you see?”

  “Who said I see anything?” Abruptly, he left her with the cracking of the flag. Through the windows of the passenger cabin she saw him slide onto a bench and slump against the wall as if instantly asleep.

  Set up, then snubbed, Anna chose to spend the rest of the short trip without the dubious pleasure of human companionship.

  FREDERICK WAS ALREADY at the hospital. “Your sister’s beau has been here since the cock crowed,” she was informed by a plump and kindly woman in white pants and tunic as she made her way down the all too familiar hallway in the ICU.

  Creepy butterflies stirred in the region of her duodenum. Anna stopped
at the water fountain to examine the infestation of lepidoptera before exposing herself to the FBI guy and the shadow of her only sibling.

  Was she still in love with Frederick? That one was easy. She’d never been in love with him; not like she’d loved Zach, not like she knew love could be. A memory of love that, on the Romeo and Juliet Principle, grew more perfect with the untimely demise of one of the participants. And, Molly had told her more than once, a memory that tolled the death knell for any relationship she might attempt with a man not perfect enough to be dead.

  Possessiveness then: Frederick had been hers. Now he was “her sister’s beau.” Though Molly was too ill to take note of the fact. Closer, Anna thought, and pinned one of her inner butterflies to the corkboard. Hers. That was the key. Not that Frederick Stanton was in any way hers. That illusion had died with nary a whimper two years before. Molly was hers. Hers to rescue, to bring back to life, to repay, to save, to be a hero for.

  And Frederick was the usurper.

  “Do you load up camel-like and then go without drinking for weeks in the desert?” A voice so low it came to her almost as a thought murmured behind her.

  “Dr. Madison,” Anna said.

  “David.”

  A tiny qualm twisted amongst Anna’s butterfly collection. “Can I call you Doctor?” she asked, knowing she sounded mildly pathetic. “A doctor is better than a David, given the givens.”

  “Feel free to call me Captain America if it helps.” He smiled and, despite the graying beard, bifocals and balding bead, looked boyish. “Can I get you a canteen or anything?”

  Anna realized she still had her thumb on the button, letting the stream sparkle by. “Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking.”

  “What about?” Pushing his glasses up on his head and holding his stethoscope back the way a woman would her hair, he bent over the drinking fountain. Beside him it looked too small, like the chairs in a nursery school.

  “I was thinking about Molly,” Anna said, wondering what chemical imbalance rendered her so honest and forthcoming this morning. “I want to do whatever she needs. Even if it’s not me.”