Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 05 - Endangered Species

by Endangered Species(lit)

  Since coming to the island she'd spent a good chunk of time stalking them. The animals were nearsighted and not terribly bright. Rick, who hailed from the Natchez'Frace Parkway in southern Mississippi and claimed to be an armadillo expert, told her if she could sneak up and touch one, catch it by surprise, it would spring straight up in the air a couple of feet. Anna didn't know if he was pulling her leg or not. She didn't much care. It was something to do.

  The office housing the telephone was on the inland waterway between the coast of Georgia and Cumberland Island. just to the south was a one-room museum and a covered bridge that led to the boat-docking area. One light shone like a star on the waters where the houseboat Mitch Hanson shared with his wife was docked.

  Trees had been cut away to protect the structures from wildfire and windfall. In this man-made meadow a herd of twenty or thirty small island deer grazed.

  Anna pulled into the dirt parking lot, switched off the ATV, and let the silence settle before she went to the door.

  Inside she took a Baby Ruth from the cupboard in the kitchenette and left fifty cents in a coffee cup set aside for that purpose.

  Blissful in solitude, she sat in the chief ranger's chair and put her feet on his desk, the better to savor her candy and her telephone call.

  OLLY I)ICKED UP on the second ring. At thesound of hersister's M gruff "Hello" Anna felt muscles relax that she hadn't known were tensed.

  " Am I interrupting anything?" she asked.

  "Nope. Letterman's a bust tonight." There was a sound of stretching at the tail end of Molly's sentence and Anna suspected she was reaching for an ashtray. The nicotine bone's connected to the phone bone, her sister had once told her and Anna wondered if her calls were cutting years off Molly's life.

  "Why do you do that?" she asked irritably.

  "Because it's politically incorrect, noxious, and potentially lethal," Molly replied, unperturbed." Are you still a castaway?"

  "Still. Three weeks is a lot longer when you're wearing fire boots."

  Molly cackled." Time and a haIP"

  "The big bucks," Anna said." Pays my phone bills."

  "You know, I would call you if you were ever anywhere real. Two nights in a row. To what do I owe the honor? I thought it was Frederick's turn."

  "I'm playing hard-to-get."

  " Hah."

  "I wanted to talk," Anna said seriously." And not have to be nice."

  "Or witty or charming," Molly added. She wasn't being sarcastic; she understood the burden of maintaining one's good behavior for any length of time.

  For the past year Anna had been carrying on a long-distance love affair with Frederick Stanton, an FBI agent she'd worked with on a couple of homicides. 'They'd fallen "in love"-for lack of a better phrase-over their third corpse.

  There had been an intoxicating night, an awkward breakfast, and a I) rcathlcss goodbye. 'Then letters, letters and phone calls, eleven months' worth. Soon, Anna knew, she would have to leave this comfortable limbo and det] with Frederic]( on a more flesh-andblood basis: shoes under the bed, dual vacations, Mutual friends.

  He was beginning to talk about the FU t are, urging her to come to Chicago.

  Anna wasn't sure she cared for that. Conversations about the future always seemed to pivot on how much one was willing to sacrifice in the here and now.

  When she'd married Zach-in what now seemed a past as distant and distorted as King Arthur's court or the Ice Age-life had been simple. She litid nothing. Zach had nothin. No home, no pets, o jobs. Merging was easy. 'They commingled their I)apcrback books, bought a I)rctty good mattress, borrowed money to make their security deposit, and started a future with all the forethought of a blue jay planting an acorn.

  For seven years it grew and flourished; then Zach had been killed. To look ahead became too lonely, and out of self-preservation Anna had started living each day as it came. Now it was habit.

  She carried his ashes from park to park, promising herself one day she would pour them-and the dreams of her early twenties to the four winds to scatter. The time had never seemed right. Before leaving Mesa Verde for Cumberland Island, she'd even gone so far as to take the ash tin from her underwear drawer and pry loose the lid. She'd gotten them no further than the coffee table.

  Now there was Frederick, and with him, baggage, his and hers: jobs, geography, his kids, Anna's cat, his bird, houses. After years of kicking around amid the mouse droppings and leaky faucets of National Park Service housing, Anna had finally landed a plum: a house of native stone with a tiny tower bedroom that overlooked the green mesas of southern Colorado. During the past year she'd noted an odd tingling sensation in the soles of her feet and thought perhaps she was beginning to put down a few tentative roots.

  Not a good time to be calling Atlas and breaking out the bubble wrap.

  "Come to think of it," Anna said, meaning Frederick, boys, and the conjugal life in general, "I don't even want to talk about it."

  Instead, she told Molly of the turtles and Marty Schlessinger. After ten minutes it dawned on her she was doing all the talking and she shut up, letting the line cool, waiting to see if Molly needed to talk.

  Nothing but the sucking sound of a Camel drawn straight into dying lungs came over the wire. Molly had been a psychiatrist for over twenty years. Listening had become a habit, as had keeping herself to herself. Born, Anna suspected, from knowing how easily one , s words, however carefully couched, could expose weakness.

  "What have you been up to?" she coaxed.

  Another second or two ticked by and Anna's antennae went up.

  Silence could mean nothing; aggravated silence was a clue. Psychiatry wasn't the only profession taught to listen for weakness.

  "What?" Anna demanded.

  " Another death threat." Molly laughed. Annoyance, edginess, defensiveness, and maybe a small thread of fear wove through the short patch of sound.

  Momentarily Anna was stunned as both ends of the statement smacked into her." Another," she said flatly, and was pleased that her voice lacked any trace of warmth. Molly sensed warmth as cannily as the Cumberland Island ticks. In seconds she could worm herself into it and evade the conversational thrust.

  "It's only the second , Molly defended herself. She was trying to shrug it off. Anna could see her as clearly as if she stood on the other side of the chief ranger's desk. This close to bedtime she would be wearing a sweat suit-the expensive embroidered kind never meant to be sweated in-probably in lavender, crimson, or pink. On her feet, big feet for so small a woman, would be fuzzy white ankle socks with tiger stripes on them. The day's mascara would have migrated down to form smudges beneath her lower lashes, and her short, thiel,, gray-streaked hair would be worked into a frenzy of curls from fingers being constantly thrust through it.

  Molly saw herself as piano wire: strong, sharp, unbreakable.

  When she was encased in Dior suits, high heels, and a wall full of formidable diplomas and awards, this probably wasn't too far off the mark. In downy pink Pjs and tiger paws, she looked tiny and vulnerable. Wet, she wouldn't weigh more than II 0 pounds.

  Anna closed her eyes and wished for a lass of Mondavi red, room temperature; a large glass with a sturdy stern filled too close to the top for polite society. Reluctantly she let the image go." You'd better tell me the whole story," she said." If you leave any parts out it'll give me bad dreams."

  "What about AI?" Molly had grown accustomed to Anna's phone- sharing dilemmas.

  " He lost the coin toss. You may begin."

  There was a pause, tense and poised, the kind divers make on the high board as the strategies of their controlled fall coalesce into their muscles.

  "Part of it is me being dramatic, no doubt. Believe it or not, death threats are fairly common-macroscopically speaking. We get our share: husbands whose wives decided to divorce them after getting therapy, patients who spent a ton of money and are still crazy as bedbugs. Mostly threats are like obscene phone calls-the kick is in the words and the shock. No
follow-up is called for." A long slow inhalation followed. Anna pictured the smoke trickling up through her sister's fingers as, cigarette in hand, she raked back her curls.

  For the first time she envied Molly her addiction. At least she still had her drug. Dirty and deadly as it was, nobody woke up facedown on a car seatwith no recollection of the last eight hours because they'd smoked one too many cigarettes.

  " What was different about this threat?" Anna asked.

  "For one, it was a woman. Very rare. Very. Not for women to scream, 'I'm going to kill you,' et cetera, but for a serious telephone death threat it's quite unusual. And two, it didn't sound as if she'd made any attempt to disguise her voice. She sounded stressed, repressed, and decidedly clear."

  " What did she say?"

  "Hang on." A series of clicks serrated the silence, then a sweet, low- pitched voice, almost a vibrato from underlying emotion, said: "You deserve to die. Not just your kind, you personally. It will be my pleasure to do the honors. My plate is rather full right now but rest assured I will pencil you in as soon as there's an opening."

  " Could you hear it?" Molly again.

  "You taped the threat?" Anna was impressed. Her sister was a cool customer.

  "No. She left it on my answering machine."

  Anna laughed in spite of herself." I'm surprised she didn't fax it.

  God. The consummate businesswoman. 'Pencil you in'?"

  Molly laughed with her and when the laughter wore out they were both scared.

  " Too weird," Anna said." A practical joke?"

  Molly shook her head. Anna could tell from the wavering shush of smoky breath blown across the receiver." I've listened to it umpteen times and can't make heads or tails of it. Do you think I should call the police?"

  Molly never asked for advice. Flattery and alarm vied for space in Anna's heart." Yes. By all means. If it turns out to be nothing, terrific."

  " Do you think they'd take me seriously?"

  "You're rich, white, pushing fifty, and well connected."

  "Of course." Again Molly laughed. flers was an evil-sounding chuckle that Anna loved. the sort of chortle Dorothy might have heard shortly before all hell broke loose in the land of Oz." For a moment there, I was ten years old again, freckled and redheaded and afraid of crying wolf. I'm a grown-up, by God!" Molly said.

  "Save the tape," Anna cautioned.

  "Done. Two copies. One in a safe-deposit."

  " What was the first threat like,"

  "A note came in the mail. It was on expensive stationery and written in calligritphy-the kind that was all the rage for fancy Earth Day party invitations a few years back. Kind of a walk-in-BroccoliForest feel to it. You're on hold again."

  A moment iater the phone clattered back to Molly's ear." Still there"'

  "Still here."

  "Okay-and for the comfort of your little cop mind I want you to know I'm holding this with sterile tweezers while I read it.

  "It's very formal, like the call. 'Dr. Pigeon: There is apparently no end to the damage you do. Stupidity? Greed? Or just old-fashioned evil? You need to be dead and I need to do it. Please reflect on this. I wish you to be as uncomfortable as is humanly possible, should you be, after all, human."'

  Holding the mouthpiece of the phone away from her face so as not to be munching the Baby Ruth in her sister's ear, Anna let the words soak in. The note was strangely dispassionate, hatred grown cold, held close in the mind till a warped but compelling logic grew up around it.

  "I suppose you've gone through your patient list to see if anybody might carry a grudge?"

  "More than once. Contrary to Hollywood's febrile depictions, a psychiatrist's life is not fraught with serial killers. Killers of any kind are rare. Killers who seek help are virtually nonexistent. Except for my prison work-and that's mostly drug rehab and depression-my patients are wealthy neurotics. I handle maybe fiftcen psychotics at any given time on hospital and prison rounds. Of the few that are not incarcerated, four are men and the other is a homeless person, a bag lady. She has trouble stringing sentences together and cats out of garbage cans. Hardly the type for fancy stationery."

  "The ones in lockup, they could call you or mail a letter, couldn't they?" Anna asked.

  "I suppose. It doesn't feel right but I'll give it some thought. It's possible. These people are crazy, not stupid."

  Muted voices distracted Anna." Just a sec , s he said, and held the phone to her chest the better to listen. The office building, like the crew quarters, was closed up tight to seal in the air-conditioning. Though grateful for a respite from the Georgia heat, Anna hated being cut off from the summer, the sounds of the night, frogs and crickets. Snuggling up in winter was different. Winter didn't sing to her the way summer did.

  Molly temporarily forgotten, she set the receiver on the desk and forced open the window. The voices became clearer: human distraught, tearful." Doggone it," she whispered to herself.

  " Molly?"

  "I'm here."

  "There's some kind of altercation outside. I'd shine it ormot my park and all that-but it sounds like a woman's crying. Probably nothing but you never know."

  "Go check." Relief permeated Molly's voice. She was relieved to have the spotlight off of her. The threats upset her. That, more than the fear of personal violence, was what was bothering her.

  God forbid the great psychiatrist should not be controlling some small aspect of life, Anna thought and smiled." I'm calling you back," she said.

  " Not tonight."

  "Tomorrow then."

  "Same time, same station." A click and the line went dead.

  "Goodbye" wasn't in Molly's vocabulary. Anna was unoffended, she'd grown used to it a lifetime ago. Molly had walked her to her first day of school in Mrs. White's first-grade class. Outside the door she handed Anna the paper sack with the lunch their mother had made, then sat her down on a low bench under a row of coat hooks.

  Anna was six, Molly fourteen.

  "Pay attention," Molly had said." I'm going to want details." She turned and walked away without a backward look. Anna hadn't felt abandoned; not then, not ever. She knew whatever happened, Molly would be back to hear the details.

  UCKING TVIE LAS-F of the Baby Ruth from her fillings, Anna Sstepped onto the concrete stoop at the office's back door. Weeping ebbed and flowed like the waves of an incoming tide, each sob breaking higher than the last.

  A fan of the night, Anna had made her phone call without switching on the lights. After the indoor dark, her night vision was keen, and moonlight washed gently over the landscape. Across the field, where the deer had stopped grazing to listen with more curiosity than alarm, a pickup truck idled, its headlights plowing yellowwhite furrows in the dust of the lane.

  Two figures stood beside the truck, one so close to the front bumper that her dress was caught by the headlight and showed bright red, the only scrap of true color in the nightscape. The other, a man Anna guessed from the timbre of his mutterings, was trying to grab the woman's shoulders and being batted away on each attempt.

  Fifty yards separated Anna from the couple. She walked quietly, keeping to the grass-covered berm between the wheel ruts. it didn't cross her mind to return to the office to call for backup or alert Cumberland's law enforcement ranger. Family squabbles in national parks were as ordinary as parking tickets, though considerably more volatile. As she closed the distance it occurred to her that she'd grown dangerously complacent and it would behoove her to cultivate a healthy sense of fear in the not too distant future.

  "You would leave me," the woman cried clearly, and lurched back into the glare of the headlight. It was then Anna saw the swollen belly and knew her for Tabby Belfore, the district ranger's wife.

  The man stepped forward, reaching for Tabby.

  "Hey, Todd!" Anna yelled, hoping if violence was in the offing to avert it." You guys need any help?"

  She was close enough now to see their faces. Annoyance mixed with sheepishness. Tabby blotted at her eyes w
ith her fingertips; a woman concerned about makeup damage. There were no signs of high drama, j L] St tile usual earmarks of a spat.

  Because of training and a natural distrust of people, Anna checked Tabby for any signs of' abuse." Having engine trouble?" she asked easily.

  Todd Belfore was a small man, five foot three or four and ilot more than 140 pounds, but muscular and self-assured." Nope. We were having a fight," he said with disarming candor." Tabby's smarter than me. I had to stop driving and concentrate if I had tiny hope of winning." -labby laughed. It didn't sound forced, so Anna joined her. Alter that there was nothing else to say and the Belfores stood looking l'oolish, both sets of eyes flitting everywhere to avoid making contact with Anna's.