Liberty Falling

by Nevada Barr

  Her daypack her pillow, she stretched out on the stone floor of the balcony and fell into sleep.

  When she awoke it was full dark. For an instant she thought she was back in the high country and someone had stolen all but a handful of stars. Memory returned. She dug through her pack for her wristwatch, a Timex that lit up. It must have been designed with the aging eyes of baby boomers in mind. One could actually read it in the dark. Ten past nine. She had napped for over three hours.

  Allowing consciousness to bloom fully in its own time, she stayed supine on her night balcony. Cloaked in darkness, the world was utterly changed. A supreme gentleness personified eastern summer nights that, living so long in the West, she’d forgotten. A kindly, dreamlike quality that the sharp dry air of Colorado could not emulate. Two floating sparks caught her attention and she laughed in delight. Ellis Island had fireflies. Fireflies put her in mind of Tinkerbell and she wanted to clap because she believed.

  At length, fully alert and wonderfully refreshed, she rose, stretched out the kinks to the accompaniment of the cracking of ankle and knee joints. The older one got, the more difficult it became to move stealthily. Old bones had a litany of their own, reciting past injuries to any who would listen.

  Having been caught by nightfall on Ellis once before, Anna had taken to carrying a Mag-Lite in her daypack. Now she congratulated herself on her foresight. There was no hurry. In fact, she had all night; the last boat to Liberty had left some time ago. Island commuting was not designed for someone who had come to view time much as the Navajo. The prospect of a sleepover on Ellis was not daunting. There was a Park Policeman, probably Joshua, on duty. He would have the keys to the kingdom: drinking fountains, flush toilets, carpeted floors to sleep on. But she wasn’t feeling the least tired or in need of company.

  Enjoying the luxury of time, she sat in the window, her back to the out-of-doors, letting her eyes adjust. She played her light over the floor where she’d seen the footprint in the moss. The faintest of signs remained. There were no new tracks.

  Tired of that small amusement, she walked into the pitch-dark innards of the crumbling hospital. Not daunting but certainly challenging was egress from her fourth-floor aerie. The ruined stairwell was not something she would tackle in the inky darkness of the building’s gullet. Island II was immense, the buildings linked by hallways, wide tunnels running nearly a quarter of a mile, one on each floor and one in the basement. There would be other stairways in better repair.

  As she stepped into the central hall of the fourth floor, darkness flowed around her. Not too long ago she would have found this black absolute, but last winter she’d been in one of the deepest caves in the world, Lechuguilla in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Caves were a world so utterly without light that dark was a palpable thing pressing on eardrums and eyelids. Here, when Anna clicked off her Mag-Lite and waited, light did appear: a faint spark through a skylight, the pastel glow from a window facing the city; not the elemental dark of the underground.

  At one time the vast hall had been rectangular. Nature, abhorring a straight line, had muted the angles, distorted the planes. Plaster crumbled and dust from brick and mortar settled till drifts formed between wall and floor. Paper peeled from walls, lending a ragged, leafy effect. A ruined light fixture, a globe in a ball of filigreed metal, hung from a cord. Doors, some closed, some open, some cemented halfway by the residue of decay, molded the line of the walls into a landscape Escher would have loved.

  Anna’s feeble light did not reveal this all at once but showed her irregular slices cut into ribbons of illumination. Without the cheery sun and tourist buzz, the hospital looked as dangerous as it was, but in time, all things were possible. Due consideration could be given each step and in an hour, probably less, she would emerge from one of the ground-floor rooms none the worse for wear. She headed east. Her balcony was nearest that end of the complex.

  Billy Bonham and his ghosts crossed her mind, but either they were not in attendance in this part of the hospital or she was not in the mood. Regardless of the cause, there was no pricking of the thumbs and she moved easily down the rotting passage, feeling changes in firmness underfoot, noting odors as she drifted by, listening for the secret whisper of aging stone.

  After thirty carefully traveled feet, a narrow stair, deliciously black and gothic, opened to her left. Up it, she knew, was an attic lit only by two hexagonal windows, one of which perfectly framed the southernmost turret of the registry building. She was tempted to climb the stairs to see the effect of that turret illuminated by night and New York City.

  Good sense overcame temptation. The floor of the attic was not to be trusted in the light of day, and a twinge from her torn thigh reminded her she had no wish to re-create the drama of the stairs on Island III.

  The end of the passage brought her to an intersection, wide healthy-looking stairs to her left and a large, windowed ward room with a view of Manhattan to her right. Feeling virtuous, she eschewed the windowed room and, staying next to the wall though the stairs seemed to be in good repair, walked uneventfully down four flights to find herself at a door leading out to a stoop.

  There she stopped a moment and took in the view she had denied herself earlier. A three-quarter moon hung fat and subdued over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Manhattan was made of light and New Jersey glowed as if radioactive. Boats cruised the harbor. The urban jungle beat of nuevo disco—elevator music on crystal meth—polluted the air. Natives were restless, party boats out in force.

  Across the inlet, where the Circle Line docked, was the registry building, bright and civilized next to the untamed parts of Ellis brooding magnificently in uncertain light. Raw and mysterious, history, not yet sanitized by the National Park Service.

  Anna deliberated which world to visit. Joshua, if he was the policeman on duty, would probably be in the registry building doing paperwork. His company would be welcome. Especially if he had an extra sandwich or two. But not yet. Anna felt the spirit of the cat stirring. She wanted to prowl the dark leafy edges of the rotting monolith, listen to the lap of waves on the breakwater and the rustle of night things in the undergrowth.

  Slipping the Mag-Lite in her pocket, she sauntered along a path worn deep in the grass between the buildings and the harbor. To amuse herself she searched the high windows for ghostly manifestations or floating candle flames. Imagination managed to create a pleasant frisson of the creeps, but she saw nothing but the occasional firefly, the moon reflected from a roosting pigeon’s wing.

  On the island’s southeastern corner, where the infectious disease wards thrust out nearly to the water’s edge, she was treated to a look at Miss Liberty, flooded with light as if awaiting with open arms the next wave of immigrants.

  Having absorbed as much grandeur as she could on an empty stomach, she was contemplating going begging to the night security person or, failing that, the candy machine, when Billy Bonham’s paranormal paranoia reached out and touched her with icy fingers. In a lull in the pounding of boat music came a faint creak, a groan as ephemeral as an old board stepped on in the hours before dawn.

  She turned from the statue’s enduring vision of freedom and faced the bulk of masonry and wood behind her. She was near where the stairs had collapsed, where she’d felt as much as heard the rustling footsteps of the past.

  Shaking herself as a dog just in out of the rain might, she cleared her mind of bogeys and listened: boats, the ubiquitous purr of Manhattan, the licking of water at her heels. Breathing evenly, completely relaxed, she shut down her thoughts and opened wide her senses, ready to wait till sunup if need be. Ten minutes passed and fifteen and twenty. Mosquitoes were dining on her ankles, and her stomach, un-Zen-like, began to add dispirited growls to the night’s concert.

  Half an hour slipped softly by before it came again. A groan, directionless and spine-chilling. No wonder Billy, already half scared to death, had asked for day shift. Silently, Anna crossed the grassy strip and walked up the stairs to the entrance of th
e old nurses’ quarters, the last room on the infectious disease wing of the hospital. The door was wedged partway open, stuck there in the debris. Sideways, pack in hand, she slipped through. On the twilit edge of internal darkness, she again stilled her breathing and waited. Thick walls deadened the sound of the richness of life without. She began to feel the cold pressure of the lives lost in this mausoleum before it too began to be reclaimed by the earth.

  Unsettling thoughts fluttered through her mind, tensing muscles and distracting her, but she held her ground. Curiosity was a greater force in the Pigeon sisters than fear. If an opportunity presented itself to see a bona fide ghost and she didn’t take it, Anna would never forgive herself.

  Next time the sound came it was fainter. The apparition was either moving away or running low on ectoplasm. Even as she held on to her mockery, the sound was frightening, containing as it did the hopelessness and pain of the years. Anna followed it deeper into the building, then out into one of the glassed-in walkways that connected the nurses’ quarters with the corridor to the other wards. The moon was high. Enough light came through the leaves that she did not need her flashlight. What glass remained was dulled with pollution, salt and dust. The moon shining through this filter created the illusion of fog lying along the floors, pouring over broken sills.

  Graveyard fog, an evil voice murmured in her mind. She ignored it. She waited. The shivers passed. Moonlight turned back into moonlight. If not peace, then a truce with the building and the night was reestablished.

  This time the wait was so long the soles of her feet grew numb from standing in one place.

  Finally, a third moan crept through the corridors. Head held to the side the better to follow the haunting noise, Anna moved quickly down the walkway. At the intersection with the main corridor and the spur that cut around what had once been the Commissioner’s garden and was now a black and silver jungle, she lost the sound.

  Three moans. That was enough. If it was a ghost, let it show itself. If it was a game, she was done playing. “It’s me, Anna Pigeon. I’m a park ranger,” she called. “Answer me. Talk to me.” She held her breath and it came: a tiny quavering cry. Near as she could tell, it originated from the overgrown mass choking the derelict garden.

  At the door at the top of the steps leading into the tangle of vine and brush, she stopped again. Overhead the sky was nearly obscured by trees and vines that had intermarried, creating a canopy.

  Clicking on her light, Anna poked the narrow beam into the crush of greenery. “I’m here,” she said. “Can you talk?” There was no answer this time, not even the ethereal whimper she’d been following, but she could hear something breathing—uneven, rattling breaths. Cheyne-Stokes: the breath of the dying. Squashing an impulse to turn tail and run, she forced her way down the steps, pushing at the branches reaching out to stop her. “Hang on,” she said, as much to herself as to whomever—or whatever.

  The last step was broken. Her foot fell into nothing and she toppled forward. Bushes broke her fall, leaving her more seared than hurt. The stumble did a good turn: she’d managed to hang on to her flashlight and, on elbows and knees, there was space to belly-crawl beneath the more forbidding shrubs.

  Light from the Mag formed a tunnel of shocking green through the black of the surrounding foliage. “Hello?” She prodded the leaves and sticks with her light, inching toward the painful snoring. Ten seconds’ crawling revealed a white spider the size of a hand and she shrieked. Eyes refocused. It was, indeed, a hand. A dead body wasn’t nearly as alarming as a spider of uncivilized dimensions. And she didn’t think the body belonging to this hand was dead. Yet. Something still breathed. Stretching on her stomach, Anna wormed her arm through what was probably poison ivy and closed her fingers around the wrist: a pulse, thin and thready.

  She plowed ahead. Peripherally she was aware of branches scratching at face and arms, but it was of too little import to register. Holding back the talons of a feral azalea, she knelt over the island’s ghost. Barefoot, clad in a long pale blue nightgown, blond hair loose, skin bloodless, Corinne did look otherworldly.

  Anna did a lightning assessment, found no gushing blood. Corinne was breathing on her own. Nothing could be done for her but to get her to medical care as quickly as possible. “You keep right on breathing, Corinne. You’re a good strong woman. I’m going to get help. I promise you, five minutes and I’m back. Breathe for five minutes and you’ll hear me coming. Got to go. Breathe.”

  More than five minutes elapsed before Anna made it back to the garden, but not much more. With her she brought the park’s oxygen kit and the EMTs’ red jump kit filled with advanced first aid supplies. What she didn’t have was any way to cut through the brush. In this era of specialization, NPS maintenance didn’t dabble in law enforcement and law enforcement couldn’t lay hands on a pair of loppers or pruning shears to save their souls.

  Joshua had given her a six-cell flashlight to replace her Mag-Lite. With its powerful assistance, she had no need to crawl through the shrubbery. Holding the oxygen kit to her chest, the red pack on her back, she waded to where Corinne was and tore open the shroud of greenery enclosing her.

  The actress was dangerously dehydrated. When pinched, her skin stayed tented till Anna pushed it flat. Another day and thirst would have killed her. She had also suffered severe blunt trauma to the head. Anna felt the wound. Dried blood caked Corinne’s hair. She had been struck or had fallen and injured the back of her skull to the right of center. Only one of the classic signs of brain injury was extant: raccoon eyes, dark circles around the eye sockets. No cerebral spinal fluid leaked from nose or ears, though it may have done over the past days and the traces evaporated. No battle sign—dark bruiselike marks—showed behind the ears.

  The garden was too soft, too choked with plant life for an accident of this type to have occurred within its walls. The concrete steps and the brick side of the ward were the two exceptions. A wound of this magnitude could hardly have been engendered by any casual slip of the foot. Tremendous force was indicated. Either a fall from a considerable height, or a blow delivered with power. Two choices presented themselves: Corinne had fallen elsewhere and, in confusion, staggered into the garden. Or she had been struck down, either in the garden or elsewhere, and then tossed into the garden to die. Anna favored the latter. If not for the groans, the corpse might never have been found. The smell of rotting flesh might even go unnoticed. Stray cats, gulls, unlucky pigeons and careless squirrels frequently added their postmortem perfume to the atmosphere. Who would fight through brush and poison ivy to view that? Here, on a small island visited by thousands of people, were some of the most isolated places Anna had ever found.

  Though probably too late to save any little gray cells, Anna intubated Corinne and put her on full-flow oxygen for the head injury. For the dehydration, she started her on an IV drip of normal saline. She had no luck propping the six-cell anywhere that worked, and reverted to her tiny flash when both hands were required. Given Corinne’s advanced state of dehydration, finding a vein took a while. Anna added a number of punctures to the crosshatching of scratches on the actress’s left arm. By the time the needle was taped in place, Anna’s chin and the end of the flashlight were covered in drool. The glamour never stops, she thought, and put the used needle in the sharps box. Because a blow as forceful as the one Corinne had sustained could have cracked or broken vertebrae, Anna stabilized her neck.

  Joshua arrived with lights and noise and a promise of more help on the way. He’d found gardening tools and he’d brought a backboard. Between the two of them they cut enough space in the brush so they could get the board near Corinne. Before they finished packaging her—less than seventeen minutes by Anna’s watch—the sound of rotor blades was heard and Joshua left them to guide the helicopter down and lead the paramedics to Corinne’s secret garden.

  Anna finished strapping Corinne to the backboard and immobilizing her head and neck between orange foam cubes designed for the purpose. A perfecti
onist when it came to emergency care, she hefted the big flashlight and methodically checked Corinne’s packaging: oxygen, backboard straps snug but not too tight, neck stable, IV in place. In the powerful beam of the Park Policeman’s flashlight the scratches on Corinne’s arm, though smudged with dirt, ceased being a meaningless crisscross of accidental injuries. Gently, Anna rolled her patient’s arm till the wrist and inner elbow were fully exposed. Corinne’s assailant had carved her up. Not deep enough to bleed much or scar, but clear and intentional marks made by a knife tip, a pin or needle, something small and sharp. The scratches were almost bloodless, as fit with the depleted fluid level of the woman’s body. Remembering that under certain conditions fingerprints could be lifted from human skin, Anna resisted the urge to clean away the dirt. Painstakingly, she pieced together the pattern of the scratches. Words. A message had been scraped into the flesh.

  STOPMUDP4J

  “Well, that sure as hell clears things up,” Anna muttered.

  19

  JOSHUA AND THREE uniformed paramedics appeared with a clatter. The backboard, with its featherweight occupant, was whisked away. Start to finish, white spider to gone, had been less than an hour.

  Walking back to the registry building beside Joshua, in the now unnatural silence of early morning, Anna was left with only a whirling impression of greenery, white skin and the efficiency of New York’s emergency medical response personnel.

  Joshua gallantly shared his sandwiches with her, bologna and Kraft American cheese on white bread with lots of mayonnaise. Because it echoed box lunches from childhood, Anna found the meal comforting. She devoured even the bologna. Over the years her vegetarian ethic had softened—or weakened, depending on how one chose to view it—like many other staunchly held rules she’d embraced in her younger years. If she was hungry and somebody offered her meat, she ate it. Otherwise she preferred not to eat her little friends.