Liberty Falling

by Nevada Barr

  After the welcome repast, this being a civilized park, Anna showered. As hot water poured over tired muscles, she tried to remember whether heat and soap spread or removed the oil from poison ivy.

  Food and cleanliness should have relaxed her into sleep, but both she and Joshua needed to talk, to debrief, to process what had gone by. Rejoining him in his office, she shared his coffee and they rehashed the night.

  There was no sense checking the crime scene until sunrise. They would only muddy the evidence—if the rescue efforts hadn’t already obliterated any signs of what had happened. Frustrated with the present, they wandered back to the past, to the day Corinne failed to show up for work. By the nightgown she wore, they assumed the incident had occurred after sundown. She must have been lying in that garden for about forty-eight hours.

  How she had come to be on Ellis after sunset, barefoot, in her nightclothes was a question Joshua speculated on far more than Anna. She was pretty sure she knew, and hoped, with daylight, to prove her theory before sharing it. Much time was spent speculating upon who might have assaulted the young actress. Anna told the snippets she had overheard Corinne’s coworkers drop regarding someone they called “Macho Bozo.” Anna surmised he was a boyfriend-gone-bad of the little blonde. Joshua was convinced he was the culprit until he remembered a story no one had yet related to Anna.

  The night policemen—the one on Liberty and the one on Ellis—being boatless, couldn’t back each other up, but they could and did talk on the phone nearly every night, exchanging news or just passing the time. The previous night Andrew had told Joshua of his own adventure. Around ten P.M.—half an hour, if Anna remembered correctly, before Mandy stumbled home looking like something the cat dragged in—a chunk of flotsam in the person of one Michael Underwood had washed ashore in a small motorboat. Andrew found him in the plaza in a torn undershirt, shrieking for his beloved. Since there were no auditions for A Streetcar Named Desire being held on Liberty Island, Andrew promptly arrested him and charged him with drunk and disorderly, entering a park after hours and assault on a federal officer. An assault that left Mr. Underwood the worse for wear and Andrew—according to Andrew—without a mark on him.

  Undermining Anna’s theory that Macho Bozo had attacked the actress was the fact that Mr. Underwood had been alternately screaming threats at or weeping piteously for “Corinne.” His storming the island had been the result of a good deal of Jack Daniel’s and the mistaken belief that Corinne was hiding or being held against her will on Liberty—Mr. Underwood was unclear on this point.

  If Anna and Joshua’s math was correct, when Michael Underwood landed on Liberty crying for his lady love, the lady herself had already been in the garden for twenty-four hours.

  Loath to let go of such an obvious suspect, Anna suggested he might merely have been establishing an elaborate alibi.

  “Pretty fancy for a guy nicknamed Macho Bozo,” Joshua pointed out. “Not to mention one that landed him in jail with what’s going to amount to a shitload of fines to pay and, since he swung at Andrew, maybe some time.”

  Anna had to give up at that. Taking her leave, she crept into Patsy’s office, saluted the woman as a Girl Scout when she found a blanket and pillow in the coat closet, and snuggled down on the carpet for a catnap.

  THE SUN WAS just stretching over the roof of Manhattan when Anna returned to the abandoned garden on Island III. Joshua was already there, waist-deep in ravaged greenery, a pad and pen in hand, 35mm camera slung around his neck.

  “Anything left?” Anna asked. She sat on the top of the steps leading into the enclosure.

  “Not much,” he admitted. “Tracks all over, yours, mine and ours. The leaf litter makes it impossible to sort it out. The stuff is half a foot deep.” Anna remembered it curling up in front of her knees like fecund seafoam as she’d crawled through it. “There’s a dab of what will probably turn out to be Corinne’s blood where her head was. I found this seven feet, six inches from the body. The woman,” he corrected himself. She hadn’t officially become a body yet. “Nearly at the wall.” He pointed to the ward that formed the west side of the garden. Not much brick showed, as it had been transformed into a living monument to the tenacious power of vines. He held up a neatly bagged and tagged pewter candlestick with a handle. Of old-fashioned design, it reminded Anna of the one Wee Willie Winkie carried on his nightly rounds. A candle stub, not more than an inch or so high, was firmly waxed in place.

  “It’s not like flashlights haven’t been invented. You couldn’t see diddly with this. What in the heck was she doing out here with a candle?”

  Corinne was an actress. It all fit together quite satisfactorily. Except for the attack.

  “One other thing is a little odd. Maybe. Come down and take a took,” Joshua invited. Anna scooched down the steps to look at the place he was indicating. To the left, where the undergrowth was thickest, in the corner between steps and wall, Joshua parted the leafy branches of a young tree. Underneath were imprints in the litter where heavy round objects had been.

  “Ah,” Anna said. “That explains it. She was struck down by a rogue elephant.”

  “They are the right size for elephant tracks, aren’t they? Do you remember any of us setting anything down here?”

  Anna didn’t. Nothing they’d carried was that shape or that hard-edged. “Whatever it was, it was here recently,” she observed. “In this climate and litter it wouldn’t take too long for the impression to fade. Maybe a day, a couple days at most.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Nothing,” she admitted. “You?”

  He shook his head. “I’m taking its picture and measuring it and recording. That’s as good as it gets for now.” He did all he said he’d do. Watching, Anna recalled seeing a cache of something under the stairs before they’d collapsed, recalled Trey insisting there was no cache there and taking the time to visit the wreck of the stairs on Island III to prove to her it wasn’t there. He was right, but there had been marks, round, like elephant tracks. A number of pointed thoughts jabbed at her: Why was Trey Claypool so anxious she see there wasn’t anything under the stairs? Had he put something there, heard her story of seeing it, moved it, then dragged her back to Island III to convince her she was nuts? Suspicion sharpened her memory. Just before the stairs fell she had heard a loud, solid crack. At the time, she’d been thinking of other things—like how not to get skewered in the dark—and had written the sound off to wood breaking. Why, all of a sudden, would an oak beam give way? That crack could easily have been the sound of a sturdy boot smashing into the timber supporting the top of the stairs. If that was true, someone meant her harm. If someone meant her harm, maybe the incident in the subway was not an accident either.

  “Are we about done here?” she asked, too restless to sit by and do nothing. Joshua finished up in short order, and she said, “Let’s go. I think I have something to show you.”

  “What?” he asked, falling in beside her to walk through the grassy field between Islands III and II.

  “Maybe nothing.”

  Joshua asked another couple of questions, but Anna was intent on retaining her mystery. Possibly because she was so sure she was right, it was going to be hard to cover her disappointment if she wasn’t.

  At the easternmost building on Island II, she led the way up the stairs she’d located the night before when darkness forbade her the quick and dirty climb she was accustomed to when seeking the solace of her balcony.

  Full-bore, the rising sun poured through every window and crevice. Even deep within the fourth-floor hallway it was easy to see. “Take it slow,” Anna said. “I’ve only been here in the dark since I noticed them.”

  “Them? Aliens? Grizzlies? What are we looking for?” Impatience didn’t hone his words. Joshua exhibited a rare and wonderful patience, the ability to let a story unfold to a timetable other than his own. Rare in a man, even rarer in a policeman. Anna wondered if it had anything to do with being Hmong or, perhaps, Minnesotan.
Whatever caused it, she admired it and took time to stop and smile at him.

  “Footprints,” she said. “Little bare footprints about a woman’s size six.”

  “Or a boy’s size five,” he added, and it gave her a jolt. She hadn’t considered a child. A little boy, brought here by one of the employees when day care failed them, and let loose to play where he oughtn’t to play, was more likely than the scenario she’d dreamed up.

  “Could be,” she had to admit. But it wasn’t. She was sure. Mostly sure.

  The only new, obvious tracks were her own, easily identifiable. Minnetonka driving moccasins, an addiction she’d picked up when she worked on Isle Royale, were soled in hard rubber pegs that made tracking a cinch. She made a mental note to keep that in mind next time she wanted to keep her travels to herself.

  Anna could not match Joshua’s patience. “The hell with this,” she said, after peering through murky light at the uneven floor for less than a minute. “Let’s just search every room. It’ll be quicker. You take the right. I’ll take the left.” It would be on the left, overlooking the meadow between II and III—that’s where Anna would have put it.

  “Search for what?” Joshua asked politely.

  “You’ll know it when you see it.” Anna realized she was being exasperatingly like Hercule Poirot in her refusal to divulge information and she wasn’t quite sure why. New York City, Columbia-Presbyterian, the islands, Molly, Frederick, Dr. Madison—something in the chemistry of all or any of these things had worked in such a way that she did not completely trust her own truths, her own observations. She was reminded of college when she and her friend Ted were doing a lot of drugs and reality was a nebulous commodity. At parties they would sidle up to each other periodically and inquire, “Confidentially, am I blowing it?”

  She entered the door to her left: an old operating theater with low central light and white tile on walls and floor. When this room was in use surgery had been a bloody business. Architects designed the space with an eye to cleanup. To one side were two small, windowless utility rooms fitted with unusual sinks. Nothing of interest. The next door down the hall led to a suite of rooms, possibly a doctor’s living quarters. Anna opened every cupboard. Nothing. Three more rooms. Nothing. Frenzy was taking over. She forced herself to stop and breathe. Searches could not be rushed. And if she was right, the plan would have been to fool at least the casual observer. Joshua came to the door of the room where she stood. His black spiky hair was frosted with plaster dust. Cobwebs traced fine lines from epaulette to badge. He was looking enormously pleased with himself.

  “You found it,” she declared.

  “Found it.”

  She followed him back one door to the right side of the hall facing the Registry Hall—there was no accounting for taste. Fallen plaster and mildew had grown up around the partly opened door, cementing it in place.

  Clever. Casual—or fat—observers would be discouraged.

  “After you,” Joshua said.

  Anna slipped through easily but the policeman, thick of shoulder and chest, gathered a few more cobwebs as he squeezed in a second time.

  Like the others, the room appeared empty and decaying.

  “It took me a minute,” Joshua said generously, then ruined it by adding: “And I’m a trained observer.”

  A shift in perspective and Anna saw it. The floor in the corner away from the windows was not a floor. A tarp, painted in the theatrical tradition of trompe l’oeil, had been spattered and speckled to match the mildew, moss and rubble of the real floor. “It’s well done,” she said.

  “Actors and guerrillas,” Josh said. “Masters of disguise.”

  Anna crossed the room and peeled back the canvas.

  “A squatter,” Joshua said unnecessarily.

  “It had to be,” Anna said. Underneath the canvas were the components of a comfortable camp: stove, sleeping pallet and bag, gas lantern, candles. Anna remembered the wax she’d found under the stairs on Island III, but those had been shavings, not drips. Corinne also had had a metal chest for food storage, even a battery-powered CD player. One of the actors had remarked that Billy’s paranormal phenomena were anachronistic. The Park Policeman had sworn he’d heard steel drums late at night. The Chieftains’ jewel case was in Corinne’s collection.

  “Corinne was living here,” Anna said, and told him of the gossip, how the actress came earlier and left later than the rest of the troupe. Corinne wasn’t coming and going at all, she was staying and lying.

  “Hiding out from the bad-ass boyfriend?” Joshua suggested.

  “That or the high rents in Manhattan.” Anna put the tarp back as she’d found it. This was the Park Police’s problem now.

  “That explains why she was on the island,” Joshua said, “but why was she in the infectious disease wards in her nightie with a candle?”

  “Waiting to scare the pants off Billy Bonham is my guess,” Anna replied. “Not much else to do nights for a creative type. Torturing Billy probably passed the time.”

  “Oh gosh.” Joshua came to a sudden realization. “The groaning he heard. Oh, Jesus. That was real, her in that garden. If she dies, Bonham as good as killed her.”

  “He gets second billing,” Anna said. “Whoever bashed her over the head killed her.” Then an ugly thought surfaced. It turned into pictures and they flickered behind her eyes like a silent film. Billy, making his rounds. Scared, strung tight from nights of seeing ghosts, hearing things. Corinne, waiting, trying not to laugh, planning her next performance. Billy passes in a dark hall. She steps out with the candle, wails in proper banshee fashion, and the boy, too scared to think, strikes her down with his baton. Bending over her, he realizes what he’s done, can’t face the music, tosses the girl in the garden and switches to day shifts.

  “Not good,” she echoed Joshua. “Not good at all.”

  20

  ANNA SLEPT MOST of the day. Because going to bed after sunrise was too much like being sick, she sacked out on the couch in Patsy’s living room.

  At length, voices intruded pleasantly into her dreams and she let herself wake into the comfortable security that can come from knowing one is not alone.

  “Bad juju,” Patsy was saying. “Corinne, Hatch. I feel like some new age woo-woo sneaking into a kiva to meet the spirits saying this, but I swear I sensed something the night Hatch died. You must have too. In the wee hours when I got up, you were rattling around.”

  “Everybody says that shit after the fact,” came a voice not nearly so welcome: Mandy. She shut Patsy down: “I didn’t hear you ‘sensing’ anything at the time.”

  “Who knows,” Patsy said, always the peacemaker. “Something’s out of whack, though. Maybe it’s just tourist season. Or maybe the monument slipped into a karmic warp. Sins of the past and all that.”

  “Sins is right,” Mandy said. Anna chose to feign sleep a tad longer. Before she faced Patsy’s roommate she needed to let her blood pressure creep back up to a consciousness-sustaining level. “‘Open the golden door.’ Fuck. A swarm. Come here and get on welfare.”

  That did it. Anna’s diastolic shot up.

  “Hey, look who’s awake,” Patsy said cheerfully. “Even the dead will rise someday.”

  Honeyed afternoon light flooded through the windows. Neither Patsy nor Mandy was in uniform. “What time is it?” Anna asked, feeling like Rip Van Winkle.

  “Five-fifteen. We’ve been home half an hour. You were out like a light,” Patsy told her.

  Elbows on knees, head between slumped shoulders, Anna let her body grasp this new semivertical reality.

  “We heard about your adventures,” Patsy said.

  Anna grunted. Of course they had. News travels faster than the speed of light in bureaucracies. If information were disseminated at a tenth the speed of gossip, government agencies would be models of efficiency. “Any word on Corinne? She dead yet?”

  “Miss Sensitivity,” Mandy sniped.

  The phrase “horse’s patootie” slid into
Anna’s mind from some bygone conversation.

  “Not dead,” Patsy said. “And maybe not going to be. Josh called the Chief Ranger and he and the Superintendent got to the hospital about ten minutes after Corinne.”

  “Photo op,” Mandy said.

  Anna didn’t argue. In general, the NPS was a more or less caring organization, but most of the brass did dearly love to see their names in the paper. Unless they were up to something the public would frown on—like killing burros or closing campgrounds.

  Patsy laughed. “No press. A girl gets mugged. This is big news in New York? Anyway, they talked to the doctors and Corinne’s in bad shape, but she’s alive. You saved the day, girl. Another few hours and she’d’ve died of thirst. And they say kids got no heroes anymore.”

  “If you ladies will excuse me,” Mandy said politely, and rose from her chair, “I’m going to go puke.”

  When Mandy had shut herself behind her bedroom door, Patsy asked, “What did you do to get so far on her bad side?”

  “Beats me. Looked at her funny, I guess.”

  “The kids had a puppy like you once. That puppy’d sit and look at our old dog in this one certain way and all of a sudden Tilly would go nuts and chase him all around the house clacking her teeth like an old lady with loose dentures. ‘Pest telepathy,’ the kids called it.”

  “Great. I get one sixth sense and it aggravates people.” Anna’s head was clearing. She began cracking finger joints to bring her body up to speed.

  “Ugh,” Patsy said. “One day you’ll fall down in a heap of bones and it will serve you right. Don’t feel too bad about Mandy. She’s going through something. She used to be okay—not the kind that fits in, but the kind that wants to. Tries too hard. A couple months ago she changed. She got kind of aggressive. A worm turned or something. Like she decided to hate everybody who didn’t like her instead of sucking up like she used to. My guess is some boy dumped her.”