Endangered Species (26 page)

Renee, Norman's secretary, had held more jobs than looked good on a

rdsumd and hadn't the sense to disguise that fact.  She'd been with

Cumberland Island National Seashore for fifteen months .

A personal best.

Dot and Mona were not represented.  As VIPS, the chief ranger would not

be in charge of them.

Todd Belfore's folder provided a couple of tidbits of information .

He had health insurance through the NPS but no life.  After the baby was

born they might have bought some.  Now it was too late .

Of greater interest was the fact that he'd been a district ranger in

North Cascades.  He had transferred to Cumberland on a lateralno

promotion, no raise in pay.  Though Cumberland had undeniable charms,

one could argue it was a step down in status.  North Cascades was

considerably bigger and had that certain cachet unique to the western

wilderness parks.

Todd and Slattery had been in Washington, working for the NPS, at the

same time.  Within several months of one another, they'd moved clear

across the continent, where they died together in a planned plane wreck.

It was possible they'd had dealings in the past, that someone wanted

both of them dead and found a way to kill two birds with a single

actuator rod.

Meticulously, Anna replaced the files and double-checked to see all was

as it should be.  Having closed and locked the desk, she pulled the

sleeve of her fire shirt down over her hand and polished her

fingerprints from the drawers and the key.  Not for a moment did she

think Norman would have the desk dusted for prints.  She was just

killing time.

Ten o'clock rolled around and she tried her phone calls again .

Molly didn't answer.  Frederick's machine in Chicago picked up and Anna

left a message.  No face lost-she wouldn't call again tonight.

From habit she rattled the doors and windows before she let herself out

of the ranger station.  At Mesa Verde it was what the late ranger did

each night.

The moon was high, the air warm and sweet with the scent of mimosa and

the tang of the sea.  Tonight Anna wasn't drawn into the southern dream;

tonight it felt cloying, unclean, as if the air clung to her skin,

clogged her throat and mind.  The sandblasting of lies and counterlies,

drug addiction, clinical depression, heat, broken hearts, and ticks was

beginning to get to her and she longed for the cool and mesa she'd come

to think of as home.

And, she admitted reluctantly, she was lonely.  Before Frederick, lonely

was a state of mind she'd grown accustomed to, risen above, and finally,

come to find peace in.  Now there was a hollow place behind her

breastbone when he didn't answer the phone.

Absurd, considering that two nights before, this very intimacy gave her

the heebie-jeebies.  When next she talked to Molly she'd ask her for a

magic incantation, a rite where the word "codependent" figured

prominently.  Smiling at the idea of modern witchdoctoring, she felt

better.

Tabby was still up when Anna got back to Plum Orchard, and the good

feeling evaporated.  Grief was wrapped around her, blurring her

features.  Color was gone from her skin and even her hair looked closer

to gray than blond.  She'd lost weight, the flesh melted from her face

and bones showing through in a death mask.  Thin and brittle-looking,

her arms and legs poked out around her belly.  She more closely

resembled a refugee on the six o'clock news than a pregnant American.

Anna made a pot of hot tea-a concept she'd picked up from reading dead

English authors-and arranged it prettily on a tray with two ornate

teacups and a plate of eternally fresh Ho Hos.

Tabby was in the tiny living room sitting on one end of the sofa where

Anna slept.  Maternity fashions don't lend themselves well to mourning.

The bright red and black horizontal stripes on Tabby's smock made her

look even more ethereal in contrast.  The lights were off but for a lamp

on an end table.  Its forty watts didn't make a dent in the darkness

shrouding Tabby Belfore.

Near the entrance to the hall, scattered across the hardxvood floor

between two cheap new area rugs, were brown pebbles the size of marbles:

deer seat.

"Where are Dot and Mona?" Anna asked as she set the tray on the coffee

table and began pouring.  The VIPs had the evening shift, as they termed

it, and had promised to sit with Tabby.  This enforced lack of privacy

would have driven Anna insane; the constant pressure of eyes on her

skin, voices in her cars.  With Tabby it had been deemed necessary, at

least for a while.

Tabby sat immobile, her hands folded on what was left of her lap.  If

she heard Anna, she lacked the energy to respond.  Anna repeated the

question and forced a cup of Grandma's Tummy Mint into the woman's lax

fingers.

"Gone home," Tabby replied in a monotone.

"When?"

Tabby shook her head.  The question was too complex.

"Drink your tea," Anna ordered, and watched as the girl sipped

mechanically.  The bandages were torn from her forearm and the puncture

wounds scratched open.  Spots of blood had smeared but Anna could read

the letters they formed: T 0 D and what was probably part of another D.

Todd.  Anna remembered girls in high school making crude tattoos of

their boyfriends' initials with sewing needles and ink from fountain

pens.  Tabby seemed so painfully young.  Compassion fought with

irritation in Anna's breast.

Tabby Belfore was beyond the palliative effects of either, so Anna opted

for shock therapy ." You and Todd knew Slattery.  You met him when you

worked in North Cascades," she stated flatly .

"What was between Todd and Slattery?"

Tabby blinked several times, then focused on Anna's face.  Her mouth

opened, closed, and opened again but no words came.  Tears filled her

eyes and spilled down her drawn cheeks.  Tabby put the teacup and saucer

down on the table and pushed the tears into her hair with the heels of

her hands.  A string of pronouns dribbled brokenly from her lips: "I . .

.  He .  .  .  We Her hands fell to her belly, clutching it

protectively.  More tears, unchecked this time, then she said in a

whisper Anna had to strain to hear, "No.

No.  No.  I can't."

Anna was casting about for words of reassurance or a mild form of

blackmail she might use to pry out the woman's secrets, when Tabby stood

abruptly.  With her altered center of gravity, the movement threatened

to overbalance her and Anna sprang to her feet to steady her.

"Leave me alone!" Tabby choked on the words.

Anna let go and watched till she closed the bedroom door between them.

Sitting back down, she eyed the untouched Ho Hos suspiciously.  Reat

chocolate was never that shiny, that compliant.  Sipping tea, she tried

to let the frustrations of the day drift away and failed.  Unable to

reach anyone by phone or in person, her sense of isolation had grown

more acute.

"Fuck you all"' she grumbled after a while, and crawled into her

sleeping big.  Lost Horizons was where she'd left it on the end table .

She couldn't remember how many times she'd read it, three or four .

Old stories were the best stories.

IRED AS SHE WAS, sleep wasn't going to happen.  As with all linsomniacs,

Anna's body refused to fit into the contours of her couch.  On firelines

she'd slept the sleep of the innocent on crude beds hacked from earth

and stone.  It was the mind-prodding that kept her awake.  Constantly

rearranging limbs and pillows was merely a distraction.

Perhaps she was getting too old to be a field ranger.  On her next

birthday she'd be forty-two.  Maybe it was time to move into management.

In the climate of equal opportunity that pervaded the NPS it shouldn't

be too difficult.  She was qualified and she was femaleworth a lot of

points on somebody's register.

Theoretically, hiring was color- and gender-blind but managers were

evaluated on how many "minority" people they brought on board.  Once

Anna had confronted a personnel officer on this seeming dichotomy.  The

message was clear: There Were Ways.  Last names.  Voices on the phone.

Accents.  And if worse came to worst, word would filter down from higher

up disclosing a coveted "quality" of a certain applicant.

Anna had no compunction whatsoever about cashing in on this fortuitous

turn of events, she just didn't care for management.  She didn't like to

lead and she wasn't much of a follower.  Fieldwork suited her.  Till her

body betrayed her, she'd go on doing it.  It was the transience that was

beginning to weigh heavily.

Frederick Stanton came to mind-not cloaked in a fantasy of home and

hearth but surrounded by an ambiguity that brought with it a sense of

malaise.  Lately he'd pressed her to move to Chicago; make a

geographical if not an emotional commitment.  Anna was cynical enough to

wonder if love and hope spawned his desire or if he too felt a little

lost, in need of an anchor.  They'd known each other long enough that

heartthrobbing romance was no longer a factor.  That was the problem;

without the narcotic of being "in love" the pain of change was too

great.

Anna opened her eyes and let thoughts of Frederick go.  the top pane of

the window behind the sofa framed a moon, dime-sized and distorted.  In

Georgia even the moonlight was warm.

Striving for physical if not spiritual ease, she wriggled out of her

pajamas and dumped them on the floor.  When a guest, she tried to sleep

clothed lest she offend her host's delicate sensibilities, but it was

absurd, like suits for swimming, panty hose under trousers, and

underwear with dresses.

Rearranging her sleeping bag against the draft from the air conditioner,

she contemplated life on the island.  Though motorboats daily ferried

visitors to and from St.  Marys and cars traveled the inland lanes and

residents came and went by plane, the island fostered a sense of

separateness-a people different as the animals were different-altered by

the unique demands of the environment .

Like mountaintops and desert strongholds, human beings sought out

islands for a lot of reasons.  Some washed ashore, cast up by the storms

of their lives.  Some were running, some hiding, some chasing a dream.

And, on Cumberland, some were committing murder.

Rather generous of them, Anna thought.  It gave her something to do at

night besides count sheep.  An image of Tabby, widowed and scared in the

other room, flashed through her mind trailing a comet's tail of guilt.

She refused to grab on ." I didn't kill the guy, for Chrissake," she

whispered to the shadows lace and moonlight painted across her chest,

and began ruminating on possible murderers.

Todd Belfore and Slattery Hammond were dead, one or both targeted for

murder.  Todd and Slattery had known each other at North Cascades and

Tabby wouldn't-couldn't?say why.

Anna heard Tabby say Todd would leave her.  Slattery flew drug

interdiction, was suing Alice Utterback and wooing Lynette.  Lynette

thought Hammond loved her and wanted to marry her.  Hammond had a wife.