"We'd better be getting on hotne"' Tabby said finally.
Todd got back into the truck so fast he cracked his head against the frame." No harm done. Hard as a rock." He laughed again, alone this time.
"Guess we better be going." Tabby backed away from Anna, heading toward the passenger side. She didn't seem afraid or anxious. Reassured, Anna watched them drive away to be swallowed up by the oak woods.
The district ranger and his wife lived in an upstairs apartment in the Plum Orchard mansion. At one time the mansion had been open for the public to tour but funds had failed and it was now closed to visitors. Tabby probably felt isolated. From their brief acquaintance she didn't strike Anna as a woman of great inner resources.
As she walked back to the ATV an old Doris Day movie she hadn't watched in years floated into her mind: Midnight Lace. Day played an heiress, married and rich. She shopped, she looked terrific, she mixed martinis and had them waiting when Rex Harrison returned fromhard day at the office. And she was compellingly, endearingly helpless in an era when the liciplessness of grown women was accepted, admired-at least in fiction.
Mrs. Belfore had some of Day's blond vulnerability. People found themselves wanting to look after her. In Midnight Lace there was an attraction even for Anna. It would be delicious to sink back into frailty and let the battles be fought around you.
As she fired up the ATV, she allowed herself a brief fantasy of giving in, giving up, giving over; absolute trust and, so, absolute dependence. Appealing, but only momentarily. To the victor go the spoils. It wasn't healthy to align oneself with the spoils.
Back in the air-conditioned sanctity of her upstairs bedroom, Anna stretched naked on her yellow fire-issue sleeping bag. A room and a bed of her own; a rare luxury on a fire assignment." God bless sexism," she said to the spirits above the raked ceiling. As crew boss, Guy had claimed one bedroom. He'd assigned her another as the only female. The remaining three crew members shared the third.
As in every crew since the first group of Cro-Magnons banded together to stomp out the first grass fire, there was a magnificent nose, a man who snored with the resonance of a dull chain saw cutting through hardwood. On this crew Rick did the honors.
Through two closed doors it was dulled to a comfortable rumble. A little imagination could mutate it into a purr and Anna liked to pretend Piedmont, her orange tiger cat, was curled up beside her.
Cats were such excellent soporifics.
Folding her hands behind her head, she stretched till her ankles cracked. She had a lot to think about. Besides, she was too lazy to go to sleep. It would mean getting up and crossing seven feet of hardwood floor to switch off the light.
How serious was the threat against her sister? she wondered.
For Molly to mention it at all indicated some concern. On a couple of occasions tlicre had been those who wished Anna ill. Oddly, before the fear and outrage set in, her feelings were hurt; a childish sense of, How could anyone dislike nte? Anna had felt that from Molly. For a healer it must be worse.
In law enforcement, emergency response, firefighting-the things rangers were involved with-a great deal of one's time was spent sitting around waiting for something bad to happen. When boredom set in, it was inevitable that one sort of hoped something bad would happen. No malice intended, just something interesting to do. A psychiatrist dedicated her life to ameliorating the impact of those bad happenings. It would hurt to be the object of deadly hatred even if you knew the polysyllabic name l'or the syndrome.
Molly would get over the insult-probably by morning. Despite her vocation, Anna's sister was remarkably sane. The threats were the tangible aspect of the greater evil of hatred and possibly madness. How real the actual danger was, Anna couldn't fathom. The note and the message were so pedestrian. There was a hollow bureaucratic ring to them. Impersonal to the point of cruelty. Anna remembered her fifth-grade teacher, Mr. White, telling her that hatred wasn't the worst of emotions. If one hated one still cared.
Indifference was the most inhuman.
Anna could picture the author of the threats calmly penciling "Kill Dr. Pigeon" on her calendar between "Meet with client rep" and "Get facial."
Tomorrow night she would test AI Magnum's patience. She'd call both Molly and Frederick. Surely sleeping with an FBI agent earned a girl some perks.
As had every day since Anna arrived on the island, Thursday dawned hot and humid, the overnight low scarcely dipping below eighty. Inland the heat was intensified by the clack of cicadas and the intermittent drone of the drug interdiction plane making its sweep of the woodlands. By nine a.m. it was ninety-three degrees.
On the shore a sea breeze made it livable. Anna and Rick patrolled the beach. AI and Dijon were condemned to the suffocating interior till they switched in midafternoon.
Shore duty pleased Anna because of the air and the everchanging patterns of water and shell and sand. Sky mosaics, painted by clouds, had yet to begin for the day. Cumberland sat beneath an inverted bowl of burnished and burning blue.
At intervals were solitary fishermen, their folding chairs plunked down where the last lick of surf could wash over their toes, cooler and fishing rod in serene attendance. Creels were set several yards from the main encampments, an island phenomenon that had been in place for many years. Legend had it the alligator they called Maggie-Mary would crawl down from the inland dunes, moving as quietly as a ghost for all her great and scaly length, and rob them of their catch. The creels were set apart lest she inadvertently rob them of a leg or a hand in the process.
Rick was happy with beach patrol because of the nude sunbathers. It never ceased to amaze Anna that in America naked was such a big deal. In parks all across the country naked sunbathers, skinnydippers, and topless hikers were warned and cited and occasionally arrested under any statute that was handy, from Disturbing the Peace to Disorderly Conduct.
The only ticket Anna thought fit this trumped-up crime was Interfering with Agency Functions. It certainly interfered with Rick's and Dijon's. Dijon, Anna forgave-maybe because she liked him, but mostly because he was twenty-two. Dogs bark, cats sharpen their claws, boys ogle and pant. Rick-in his mid-thirties, married, Baptist, and a born-again redneck transplanted from Massachusetts to southern Mississippi- Anna was less tolerant of. He condemned while he leered and it was hard to tell which activity gave him the greater thrill.
'This morning Anna was driving, Rick riding shotgun. For the I)ast twenty minutes he'd been working himself into a lather over abortion rights. Rusli LimbaLlgh and G. Gordon Liddy were his much quoted experts on the subject. Anna was attempting a Zenlike state and failing miserably. The heat, the boredom, and Rick were a combination that would have gotten Gandhi's loincloth in bundle.
She kept her equilibrium by a base but satisfying amusement.
Each time Rick raised his binoculars to inventory an unsuspecting sunbather's assets, Anna steered the truck toward the nearest hillock or water-cut in the beach. So far she'd scored two "Fucks" and one "Dnmit, Anna."
If I)people did harbor the inner child psychologists had brought into vogue, hers needed a good spanking, Anna thought, as she turned the wheel to take better advantage of a trench the retreating tide had left behind.
,'shit," Rick growled as the binoculars banged against the soft tissue around his eyes." You drive like a girl." He too was bored and hot, but if he'd hoped to get a rise out of Anna he was disappointed.
"Don't I though," she said as she adjusted her mental scoreboard: Anna 4, Rick 0.
"i'll (I rive , he said.
That suited her. Flocks of pelicans were skimming the ocean, flying between the chocolate-colored waves like bombers down narrow canyons. What seabirds lacked in color, they more than made up for in grace and complexity. Anna never tired of watching the many ways they interacted with the sea. Besides, torturing Rick was beginning to pall. He'd never caught on to the game: fish in a barrel, no challenge.
She let the truck roll to a stop and switched off the
ignition.
Rick was a big man, thick through the chest, shoulders, and head. His face was a perfect oval. Clustered in the center were a dark mustache, two close-set eyes, and a nondescript nose. The eyes had the puffy look of a perennial hangover, though as near as Anna could tell, he suffered more from allergies than alcoholism. His hair was almost black and clipped so short that the crown of his head, where he was baking, had a peculiar look of having been sanded.
Like every man Anna had ever known, Rick had to spend a minute or two performing some inscrutable ritual before he could get out of a parked vehicle. She slid from the seat and crouched in a scrap of shade afforded by the truck to watch the silt-laden waves break into buttery foam. She'd never spent much time by the sea.
Even the waters of Lake Superior had scared her. The Atlantic both scared and fascinated. In its own way the shore was as harsh an environment as the high deserts of Colorado and Texas. The constancy of the August heat, the sand and salt and wind-by day's end human strength was abraded away.
The crunch of boots let her know Rick had uprooted. Over the protest of creaking joints she pushed herself up. It was still early and the sun was at her back as she walked around the truck's tailgate. To the west the green foliage showed dark behind shimmering white dunes. Clouds were just beginning to build, as they did every day, making a promise of rain they never kept. One of the clouds drooped, an uncharacteristic gray. Anna cupped her hands around the brim of her ball cap to cut the glare.
"Hey, Rick." He walked up beside her and she pointed.
" Smoke?"
" Looks like it."
"Hallelujah! Hazard pay!" With a cowboy's "Yee-hah!" he leaped two yards and threw himself behind the wheel.
Anna was galvanized as well. Lethargy, heat, the myriad aches and pains of hours spent patrolling over rough ground in a truck with wasted shocks were banished.
Rick laughed as he cinched down his seat belt. Firefighters, like fire horses, stamped and snorted at the first sniff of smoke. Anna felt the excitement but hers was tempered with the tragic memories of the jackknife fire the summer before. Like the sea, fire was elemental. It would be many years before she would again underestimate its power. Or its indifference to human life.
C K D R 0 V E like a madman, dropping from gear to gear, revving Rthe tired engine as if more gas could give it a new lease on life.f Bouncing like a bean in a tin cup, Anna fought to buckle her seat belt. Between them, ricocheting from thigh to thigh across the vinyl, the portable radio crackled for attention. Finally secured, Anna caught it as it skittered toward the floor, and thumbed down the mike." This is Pigeon. Yes. We see it. We're about three quarters the way to the north end of the island due east of the smoke. Maybe two miles."
The truck nosed over a lip of water-sculpted sand and Anna's chin smacked into the King radio. Anna 4, Rick I, she thought as she grabbed at the armrest for stability. Over the airwaves Dijon added to the racket. He and AI were on the southernmost tip of the island near Dungeness, about ten miles from the smoke. They wouldn't reach the fire for at least twenty minutes. The frustration in Dijon's voice made Anna smile." Don't put it out till we get there," were his parting words.
Anna looked at the fanatic grin on Rick's face and laughed.
They would try their damnedest to kill it before the others arrived. It was part of the game, the competition, the testosterone follies. She loved it.
"Yee-hah!" she mimicked Rick, shouting over the engine." Are we having fun yet?"
Guarding the woodlands from the Atlantic was a rampart of dunes running the length of Cumberland. Near the tips of the island, where they were always being rearranged by the tides, the dunes were only four or five feet high. In the center they climbed to forty and fifty feet, great slow-moving waves of fine white earth.
In several places along the oceanfront weathered wooden boardwalks snaked out from the jungle and across the barrier of dunes providing access to the beach. For Anna, these, more than the crumbling mansions, symbolized the island's heyday, a time when it glittered with wealthy holidaymakers escaping the confines of the cities.
Vehicle access was less nostalgic. Roads had been hacked into the relatively dependable floor of the forest, but egress over the dunes was always chancy. Anna braced herself as Rick gunned the engine, building momentum to carry the heavy truck up through soft and sliding sand. Speed increased, the truck shuddered and screamed. Near the crest of the dune, when Anna thought surely Rick was going to roll the top-heavy pumper, he forced another few horses into the carburetor and they plowed through the peak of the shifting mountain.
"Well done!" Anna yelled as they fishtailed down the far side.
Rick had his shortcomings but timidity was not among them. More than once Anna had gotten hopelessly stuck by chickening out and letting off the gas too soon.
From the vantage point provided by forty-five feet of altitude, she concentrated on the smoke, the tag end of road protruding from the greenery, the sun. Once the trees swallowed them, all sense of direction would be gone. Until they were right on top of the fire they would be unable to see-or probably even smell-the smoke.
judging from the size of the gray smudge, the fire was still small, probably less than a tenth of an acre. The pumper truck carried two hundred gallons of water and a hundred feet of hard hose line.
There was virtually no wind. Barring unforeseen circumstances, she and Rick should be able to at least contain the blaze until the others arrived.
Cushioning her chin with her finger lest Rick score another point, Anna raised the King and put in a call to Guy Marshall. He was on the western edge of the island, six miles from the burn.
Though he was careful not to say, Anna guessed he was at Lynette's.
The interpreter had a cozy little cabin in the woods near the salt marshes that she shared with the fattest dog Anna had ever seen.
Lynette insisted the beast was a weimaraner, but Anna had never seen one wider than it was long. Personally, she suspected the dog's mother of mating with one of the island's feral pigs.
Oak leaves closed overhead, forming a tunnel of plant material.
What light penetrated had a green and dusty hue as if viewed through old bottle glass. Unlike in the northern forests Anna had known on Isle Royale, the colored light didn't lend a watery feel. On Cumberland, shade provided no respite from heat, crushing humidity no relief from drought.
Fifty yards ahead the white tongue of sandy soil marking the lane forked." Stay left," Anna ordered. Rick wrestled the truck over the berm between the tracks without slowing. If there was any oncoming traffic Anna hoped it weighed significantly less than they did.
Dividing her attention between the odoineter and the ceiling of trees, she counted off the seconds. Forest canopy refused even a glimpse of the sky. Only hope and habit kept her looking. When she estimated they had traveled about two and a half miles, she told Rick to stop. With no asphalt to screech his tires on, he made do with skidding on the washboarded road till the truck shuddered to a halt in a cloud of dust.
Anna started to say something rude but she could tell he was expecting it, so she forbore comment." This is my best guess," she said as residual quivers from the wild ride left her entrails." To the east of this road and a half-mile in either direction."
" Not much to go on," Rick said.
She couldn't argue with him. There was an illusion that fire was easy to find. Smoke, flames, crackling, popping, Bambi and Thumper fleeing in its path. This wasn't true with smaller fires burning in deep or heavy fuels. At Mesa Verde more than one fire crew had wandered around lost within fifty yards of a fire until the helicopter came and planted itself over the burn, hovering till they got there.
"I don't suppose that drug plane could help us out?" Anna wondered aloud.
" No ground-to-air," Rick said, tapping the radio.
She knew that. She was just wishing. She radioed Guy to say they'd arrived somewhere in the vicinity of the fire; then, with less than their for
mer enthusiasm, they climbed from the truck.
Anna rummaged behind the seat until she laid hands on a can of insect repellent. The stuff was almost pure DEET, guaranteed to rot the central nervous system if one was exposed to it over long periods of time. A primitive loathing of all bloodsucking creatures squelched environmental and health concerns, and she doused her boots and trouser cuffs. Rick took the can and repeated the exercise.
When they were both thoroughly toxic they stood absolutely still, heads tilted back, nostrils flaring like stallions scenting for danger.
Dust, DEET, and sweat were the only odors Anna could discern.
Rustling stirred the duff somewhere beneath the tangle of brush but there was no way of knowing whether it was fire, rattlesnake, or raccoon.
Both sides of the lane were shoulder-deep in undergrowth.
Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 05 - Endangered Species Page 4
