Flashback

by Nevada Barr

  Joseph's condemnation of me as the author of this tragedy would cut me had not my own already cut to the quick. What possessed me to allow--no, not merely to allow, but to join in with--Tilly's fascination with these men? Pride? Did I see myself, as Tilly did in the beginning, as ministering angel? Christian saint? Saving the tormented boy from the evils of war and Sinapp?

  I am coming to question myself; in pretending to do a kindness was I merely seeking excitement or entertainment?

  And when Tilly began to lose interest in Joel (an interest that was obviously rekindled when I was not doing my duty and watching over her) and fall under the sway of the persuasive Dr. Mudd, why didn't I tell Joseph? Had he truly become unapproachable, changed? Or was it that I was changed, changed by, if not welcoming then certainly not rebuffing, the current of interest I sensed from Mr. Arnold?

  Peggy, two hours have passed since the above sentence was written. I return to this interminable letter because I've no other channel for the chaos that has become my thoughts and feelings. I took time out from that fruitless and indulgent self-castigation and did something unthinkable. Do you remember how deeply offended we were when we were girls and Molly would search through our things to make sure we were not involved in improper behavior? I swore then, should I have daughters, I would never submit them to this invasion. Molly was right. Young girls need guidance more than privacy.

  Today I searched Tilly's room in hopes of finding an indication of where she'd planned to go. To that end I was frustrated. What I did find has deepened the mystery of her elopement (at least we must hope it is an elopement and young Mr. Lane doesn't intend to ruin her). In a wooden cigar box beneath her underthings--why is it as girls we believe that is a viable hiding place?--I found several notes I can only presume were written by Dr. Mudd. Who delivered them I don't know. I suspect the doctor, with his gentle demeanor and air of injured innocence, managed to turn one of the soldiers to his purpose.

  Two were simple summons: "Please come alone, S." And: "Could you find time today? S." The third was rather more interesting. "I have found something. S." They weren't dated, so I have no way of knowing when they were sent, but it serves to ratify Tilly's practice of sneaking to their casemate without me attending her.

  Other than that, her room was as always: untidy and girlish. She'd carried Joseph's dictionary in and left it in a heap by the dressing table. I rescued it lest he discover its absence and the rude indignity with which it had been treated. A place was marked with a black feather. I doubt there's any significance to this. With the constant circling of magnificent frigate birds, we have an abundance of these. Before returning it to Joseph's desk I turned to the page she had marked.

  She'd underlined one of the words and put three exclamation marks next to it in the margin. The word was doppelganger. Whether it means anything as pertains to her elopement, I have no idea. There was nothing missing from her closet or dressing table that I noticed, and it was not till afterward, when I'd had time to think, this began to bother me.

  Till then I'd accepted the obvious; Tilly and Joel had run away together in the stolen skiff, the Merry Cay.

  I'd convinced myself Tilly's ardor for Joel Lane had rekindled during her solitary visits to his cell. Now it would seem those visits were instigated by Dr. Mudd. The last two times I visited, Joel was not behaving like a man who has regained his lady love but as a sulky and jealous boy. These things could be explained away easily enough by the gaps in my knowledge of what transpired in my absence. It's Tilly's wardrobe that is so wrong. I know our sister. She had run to this presumed assignation wearing the skirt, blouse and stockings she'd worn yesterday--the day she fled the soldiers and I found her in the powder room. She'd worn them again though they were dirty, dust-streaked and stained with sweat.

  Would a girl eloping with the man she loved intentionally wear such disreputable garments? Wouldn't she rather dress as if she would soon be standing before a minister? Especially Tilly, who is so fastidious about her appearance?

  I had not thought I could feel more frightened for her, but I do. If she did not elope, what then? Is she carrying Dr. Mudd's messages to the mainland? Were that the case, one would think she would wait till next we sailed to Key West to shop or visit and take it then. That would be the safer way both for her and for Dr. Mudd's supposed documents. Were Mudd foolish enough to wish this ill-conceived flight, would he not go himself? Joel Lane will be released in the next few months, perhaps even weeks. It is the Lincoln conspirators who must serve out their lives on Garden Key. Escape for them must be paramount, and for Joel absurd.

  This logic, if logic it is and not the imaginings of a febrile mind, applies to the elopement. Tilly, though passionate, has ever been a practical girl. Why risk possibly dying at sea to run away with a prisoner, when in a very short time he would be free and all she'd need do is book passage on one of the many ships that pass through here to meet him?

  If this is so, where are these children and what has become of the missing boat, the Merry Cay?

  23

  The enormity of the skies was as dark as the small square Anna'd watched through the office window. Wind blew hard from the south with gusts from the southwest. Swells were six to ten feet. She had boated in rougher water when she was a ranger on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. There the water had been deadly, the summer temperatures of the lake ranging between thirty-nine and forty-two degrees. Here wind, rain, water and preternatural darkness were all warm; a phenomenon Anna found hard to get used to despite her time in Mississippi.

  The warmth was comforting, offering a false promise of safety. Lake Superior had learned its cold treachery from the Atlantic Ocean; warm water would drown one as quickly as cold and without the anesthetic of numbing its victims first.

  She didn't bother with rain gear. In twisting wind and waves, she'd be soaked to the skin in minutes even if she pitched a tent on the deck of the Reef Ranger and piloted the little craft through its window. As the Boston Whaler's engine idled, she buckled on one of the standard-issue, full-sized, personal flotation devices, easing the bottom strap so the vest would fit over her sidearm and Kevlar vest. The days when one strove to keep one's powder dry were long gone. Modern weaponry would fire when wet. Chances were good the SIG Sauer would work on the bottom of the ocean, though Anna had no desire to conduct that experiment in the near future.

  Her handheld radio was another matter. Maybe it would work wet, maybe it would work over the disturbance of the storm, but not likely. Fortunately the boats were equipped with more powerful communications equipment. She could raise the mainland from the Reef Ranger's radio if she had to.

  Given her druthers, she would use neither. Before she'd come to the dock, she'd taken the precaution of asking Bob to stand by on the radio. She'd forgotten this was Bob Shaw she was talking to. Ensconced in pillows, a cat on his lap, iced tea and magazines within easy reach, he still had his radio at his elbow and turned on, monitoring his realm. With his leg in a cast from toe to mid-thigh there was little he could do physically, but he could alert Daniel or, should the need arise, the coast guard. Teddy was good with a boat as well, so there would be plenty of people to come fish her out if she was washed overboard.

  For the next little while, she wanted to stay off the airwaves. The bits and pieces of information she'd been poring over all day suggested Ranger Shaw wasn't the only one monitoring the National Park Service's law-enforcement frequency.

  Safe as she was going to get, Anna cast off the mooring lines and opened throttle, powering up quickly before the elements could smash her boat into the pilings.

  There was no danger of colliding with much else above the water. Not a single boat remained at the fort to weather the storm. The harbor was empty, as was what she could see of the ragged slate-colored sea.

  Pushing the throttle to full, she headed south, out of the harbor. There were no park visitors to rock with her wake and, in water this high, power was necessary to hold a course and keep the bo
w into the wind so a wave wouldn't broadside her and roll the boat.

  Out past the markers she noted not everyone had run for shore. Half a dozen shrimp boats, nets furled and rigging sticking out the sides like whiskers on an ungainly catfish, had fled for shelter in this harbor in the midst of the sea as commercial ships had since Cortez began sending gold back to Spain.

  Before she reached the shrimpers, Anna took advantage of a smooth high swell; riding to its crest then letting the wind help her spin the Reef Ranger shortly before it would have crashed into the trough. Her vulnerable side was exposed no more than a few seconds, then, wind at the stern, she was turned, heading north between Garden and Loggerhead.

  In alignment with wind and waves, boating was not so much dangerous as battering. Sailing around the world in a one-woman boat, never high on Anna's list, was dropped from adventures she would like to have before she died. The bow broke through the uppermost part of oncoming waves, then fell to the trough and again began to climb. Anna didn't sit, bent her knees and every other trick she could remember from years back. Still she was jarred to the marrow. She'd once met a ranger from St. John National Park in the Virgin Islands who'd broken vertebrae in his neck in just such water as this. The bones had cracked from the pressure of being jammed repeatedly.

  What with other matters clogging her mind, a piece of key information had gotten by her. Or she hadn't had a context in which it would show as important.

  Patrice had radioed. A red go-fast boat had passed Loggerhead heading east.

  East Key was Anna's bet.

  In the Dry Tortugas nothing that wasn't man-made stuck up much above sea level. Even the few trees tended to be stunted, low to the ground, evolved to withstand the hurricanes that blew each summer and autumn. East Key had no trees, just a courageous collection of salt scrub bushes circled between the dunes like a wagon train in Indian Territory. The waves were higher than the sand dunes on the tiny key, and Anna watched from the crest of each as she breached, looking for the small island. Possibly the key was underwater in storms. She'd not served at this posting long enough to know. The park was mostly shallow water. In rough weather, when the water was scraped into mountains and the valleys were bare, some of the coral reefs were too close to the surface to pass over in a boat.

  When she knew she was almost upon it, East Key chose to reveal itself. The Reef Ranger rose on a crest and ahead less than fifty yards was a wave of another color. Not awash, Anna noted and wondered if her hoped-for hurricane would have drowned it.

  Wind shifted from south to southeast. It was safer to land on the windward side in the natural sandy scoop of beach. Not only was the wind direction right but Anna had beached in this spot before. Today was not the day to learn new terrain. She waited for a lull, then powered the Boston Whaler in, letting the wave she'd ridden lift her onto the sand. Having pulled anchor and chain out of its nest in the bow, she threw it as far up on the sand as she could. Not far. Anchors were not made for small women to use as projectile weapons.

  When she jumped the few feet from the deck to the beach, she fell on hands and knees. The ride over had altered her perception of fixed. A part of her reptilian brain expected the beach to rush up to meet her as the deck had for the past twenty minutes. She dragged the anchor to high ground--high ground on East Key being about three feet above low ground--dug it deep into the sand and hoped for the best. What she needed to do wouldn't take long.

  Rain pelted her in dime-sized drops. Wind pushed and snatched at her till she felt as beleaguered as if a pack of children attacked her. The lee side of the key behind the largest dune, running the length of East Key--sixty or so feet--was the most likely place. That shore was almost on the park's boundary. Beyond it the bottom of the ocean fell away abruptly into the deeps of the Atlantic. Using hands and feet, a low profile to the prevailing wind, she scooted crablike over the ridge and slid down the other side where the courageous shrubs dwelt.

  There she began pawing about, a dog in a field of bones. It wasn't long before she found what she knew must be there. She wasn't exactly searching for a needle in a haystack.

  Bright blue fuel containers had been buried up under the dune. Not buried precisely, but shoved with a camouflage netting and sand thrown over them.

  East Key, then, was where the first go-fast boat, the Scarab piloted by Ramon Diego, had been headed when Bob had happened upon it. After it, along with its cargo, exploded, a new fuel cache had to be put in place. Fuel caches discovered on remote keys weren't unheard of. Smugglers using the fast boats with their powerful engines and tremendous fuel consumption would often leave diesel or gasoline to refuel after a run so they could get back to their homeport in Cuba, Mexico or Central America, where the coast guard couldn't reach them.

  East Key, though not often visited, could in no way be considered abandoned. In the summer the pleasure boats frequenting the park occasionally beached there to picnic and swim. At least once every couple of days a ranger came by on patrol. Unless they noticed something untoward, she and Bob never landed. There was no need. The entire key could be seen from the deck of the boats. A fuel cache would probably be safe enough for a few days or a week. By the hasty and slipshod nature of the sand-and-camo hiding place, Anna guessed the people who put it there planned on using it soon. The amount of fuel suggested a much bigger operation than Anna had envisioned from the piecemeal information she'd waded through.

  Rocking back on her heels, she turned her face into the wind, hoping the rain would clear her vision. Bad idea. There was simply too much water in the world. Anna wished she had swim goggles or a wide-brimmed hat.

  Weather permitting, Mack was due back to the fort on the morning ferry. The fuel cache, Theresa, Lanny's mental collapse, fort personnel in conference in Homestead, Mack's timely departure and return: the event was probably planned for tonight or tomorrow night. Tonight the weather would be on their side.

  For once crime in the park was not Anna's problem. This fell under the coast guard's jurisdiction first. Immigration and Naturalization was the second line of defense. Anna's only job was to holler for help.

  She scrambled back up the side of the dune. "Shit," she whispered and flung herself backward, landing hard on the wet sand. Air flew from her lungs and she suffered that horrific moment when it feels as if they will never remember how to breathe again. Breath returned. She rolled onto her belly and crept back up to peek over the low crest.

  Beached beside the Reef Ranger was a sleek torpedo of a machine, the red go-fast boat Donna had seen; the one that brought and cached the fuel.

  There were two men onboard. Two more stood on the beach, their backs to her. Mack was on the Reef Ranger. For a moment the men shouted at each other, trying to be heard over the wind. Then the two on the beach turned. Anna slipped down but not before she saw that both carried automatic weapons. Uzis, maybe. Something small and evil looking.

  They'd killed Theresa. God knew why. Maybe love had turned her and she'd threatened to tell Lanny. Men who carried automatic weapons weren't famous for their mercy. Chances are they'd chosen a less violent alternative with Lanny because a dead ranger would cause an investigation. A crazy one wouldn't.

  Me they'll kill, Anna thought and wondered what the hell she was going to do about it. Rain pounded her face and chest making it hard to see, to think. The sand spit had no cover, no hiding places. For an instant she considered burying herself but knew there wasn't time.

  A shoot-out was doomed from the start. She would probably kill the two walking in her direction. As satisfying as it might be at the moment, it would only add to the death toll. The other three, undoubtedly armed as well, would kill her sure as hell.

  As if to ratify her worst fears, the rattle of automatic weapons fire raked the dune just above her, the force exploding sand out and down. Shouting followed. Ears ringing and blood pounding, Anna couldn't make out the words. She chose not to hang around and try.

  Belly down on the sand, she crawled for the sea.
What she would do there wasn't clear in her mind. Only that it's warm embrace and the company of sharks was suddenly the lesser of evils.

  The surf met her in a smothering crash. She pushed on, her vest and gear keeping her belly to the sandy bottom, waves breaking over her back. Shouting followed but not gunfire. Taking a last breath she dove under. The water was but two or three feet deep. Blind with sandstorm winds churned into the water, she swam till her lungs felt close to bursting. When she could stand it no longer, she came up. The water was still no more than three feet deep. Poking her head out, she let the air explode from her lungs, sucked in fresh breath laced with salt water and fought not to cough. No way could she survive in the open sea unless she dumped her gear. Using all her strength and an aching lungful of air, she'd traveled less than the length of a standard gym pool.

  The two men with the automatic weapons had followed. One was on shore, the other, waist-deep in the waves, was less than forty feet away. His face was turned from her, searching the place where she'd gone under.

  "There." The man on the beach had spotted her.

  He raised his weapon but didn't shoot; afraid he'd hit his companion as well as his prey. The Uzi--or whatever it was--he held at his hip like a movie gangster. Evidently he'd never learned to aim but only to spray bullets. Anna took little comfort in that. Close as she was, even in an undifferentiated hail of bullets, one or two would probably hit her.

  Anger so hot it surprised her the ocean didn't begin to boil and so intense it burned away fear rose from the depths of her soul. For a year after her husband Zach was killed, Anna had wanted to die. For a time after that she'd chosen to live only to keep Molly happy. Then she'd chosen to stay alive out of sheer spite. Now, when she'd finally realized she didn't want to die because life was so damn good, some son-of-a-bitch was going to shoot her.