Liberty Falling-pigeon 7 (40 page)

Shortly thereafter Frederick excused himself, pleading an errand Anna knew he didn't have. He kissed Molly tenderly on the forehead, gave Anna a pointed look and left. It was payback time.

"So. You want to marry him or what?" Anna asked after the door closed.

Molly laughed, a weak but wonderful sound. "Is it too late to pack you off to finishing school?"

"Sorry," Anna said. "The last few days I've been feeling rushed. No time. No time for niceties. No time for anything."

Using the wall, she crawled to a standing position and creaked over to the abandoned chair. The cool of the floor, so pleasurable when she first sat down, had chilled and stiffened her.

"Anxious?" Molly asked.

"Sort of. Impending doom. Just stress."

"Tell me about it."

Anna started to, the habit of a lifetime, then stopped. "You're not going to weasel out that easily. We are talking about you. So. What's the plan?"

Molly sighed and leaned back against the pillows. She closed her eyes and suddenly the rouge looked garish, her face old. "It's not that simple," she said wearily.

"Take a stab at it."

"Frederick ... If I ..." Without opening her eyes, Molly raised a translucent hand to her brow, pressed her temple with her fingertips. Anna stifled the urge to ask if she was okay, if she was getting a headache.

This was one conversation she didn't want to derail. "I've felt... When Frederick..."

Anna had never seen her lose her sharpness of intellect. Under other circumstances it would have scared her. At present she was sure Molly wasn't suffering a stroke or early-onset senile dementia. Molly was unable to say what she needed to without mentioning the unacceptable fact that she'd fallen in love with her little sister's boyfriend. With the meat of the conversation gutted, all she had left were paltry word scraps.

"Let me try," Anna said. "You were attracted to Frederick when you first met, but since he and I were an item, you banished him to the northward of your affections. There you left him, in exile, because you liked me best."

"I still like you best," Molly said with a faint, sweet smile.

Anna wanted to thank her, respond in kind, but couldn't. She forged ahead. "Even after Frederick and I split up you continued to ignore him."

"I didn't really think about him," Molly said. "It's not like I pined away. He was just... just one of those things. Ships in the night."

"I know you didn't. He was mine, therefore he was dead to you. Buried and forgotten." Anna stopped a moment. "I really appreciate that. It means a lot." Two short sentences containing heartfelt feelings. Why did she have to dig emotional truths out of her liver with a pickax, one nugget at a time? "Can I go on with my hypothesis?" she asked irritably.

"I wait with bated breath."

"You get sick. Frederick comes running. I come running. What's a sister to do? Then Frederick turns on the charm and, underneath that charm, you sense a deep and committed love for you. The old attraction returns, grows into something more. But you still like me best. And though I say to go ahead, your shrinky training tells you this is my ego talking, me being self-sacrificing, that deep down I am hurting. How am I doing so far?"

Tears leaked from under Molly's closed lids. "You missed your calling," she said. "You'd have made a hell of a psychiatrist."

"Here's the end of the story. This is not hypothesis. This is fact. Don't analyze it, just hear it."

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?"

"Right. This is a
major cigar. There is no deep down. I'm not hurting. Not only am I not hurting, I'm hoping. I want you to be happy. I want to know somebody is taking care of you--" Molly started to protest. "Not a word," Anna snapped. "I want to know somebody is taking care of you because I'm not good at it."

More slow tears. Anna felt her own eyes pricking and shoved the heels of her hands in the sockets to dam the flow. The attempt was foiled. She banged her cheekbone and water gushed from both eyes. "Damn," she muttered. Molly opened her eyes. "Hit my cheekbone," Anna said.

"Right." Molly closed her eyes again, smiling in a way that engendered in Anna a childish desire to pinch her. The second hand on the wall clock jerked its way around the numbers.

"You know why you've never been able to take care of me?" Molly asked.

"Because I'm a selfish twit?"

"Because I have never let you. I cheated you of that because I needed to feel strong, in control. When I got so sick, I wanted to go ahead and die. Not because life wasn't worth living but because I knew I couldn't fool myself I was in control. I was scared to death. I'm okay with it now."

"Psychiatrist, shrink thyself?"

Disappointment shadowed Molly's face. Anna was hiding behind cheap humor.

She tried to exonerate herself. "Thank you for telling me that," she managed.

Another spastic circuit of the second hand. In half an hour Anna had to leave to meet David. "Do you think you were able to retire the super-woman cape because Frederick was here?" Anna asked.

"And you were here."

The exchange had tired Molly. Anna could see weariness, the words sapping her strength. Time to drop the subject. One more question:

"What are you going to do?"

"I honestly don't know."

Anna left it at that. Frederick returned a quarter of an hour later looking so frightened, excited and expectant that Anna was sorry all she could give him was an I-did-my-best shrug. The two of them made desultory conversation about subjects neither was interested in, while Molly drifted in and out of a doze. At two-twenty Anna said, "I'd better go. Big date with the doctor."

When she didn't push herself out of the chair to leave, Frederick said, "You don't seem too thrilled with the prospect."

"I'm not. I should be."

"Tired from the night's fisticuffs?"

She shook her head. "General weirdness."

"What's the problem?"

"With me no doubt. He's a good guy. Too long in the city--I've come down with chronic heebie-jeebies."

Frederick drummed the backs of his long skinny legs against the linoleum. He'd taken Anna's customary place on the floor. "I wasn't going to say anything," he said. "It wasn't exactly good timing for me to be casting aspersions on your gentleman friends. Could be misconstrued, don'tcha know."

"But..." Anna prodded when he didn't continue.

"But nothing, really. You know how women can see things in other women men don't have a clue about? Like some gal's on the make, or lying about her face-lift? Men are no different. The takes-one-to-know-one thing. Madison sets off my alarms. My snake alarms."

"Nothing specific?"

"I should have kept my mouth shut. He saved Molly's life. He's probably a great guy."

"But the snake alarms."

"Buzzing."

Anna levered herself out of the chair. "It's all yours," she said. "I'd better be going."

"Anna?" She stopped at the door. "Check out the Persian Kittens web site if you get a minute."

"Sure," Anna promised, hoping there was nothing wrong with Rani.

Dr. Madison was late. Like cops and firemen and other emergency personnel, doctors' jobs started out making them late. Then late got to be a habit and the job an excuse as often as not. Anna rocked back and forth in his chair, feeling each and every bruise. Two forty-five. No David. Nothing on his desk amused her. She punched a computer key and the screen-saver, a dizzying array of ever-changing geometries, winked out, replaced by his menu. She had a minute, maybe more. Having clicked on his AOL, she went to "favorite places." Persian Kittens was still bookmarked. A scatter of clicks and computer fiddlings and she was at--or in, or on, she was never sure--the web site.

Not a kitten in sight, and near as she could tell, the rugs the "models" were posed on weren't real Persian. Cyberporn. She'd heard of it but never had had cause to give it much thought. Closing out the site, she processed what she'd seen. She had nothing against porn per se. Most of it was demeaning to women, but men liked to look at naked ladies. Politics, morality and ethics weren't going to change that. What bothered her was that Madison had been so quick to accept the accolades heaped on him when she'd mistakenly praised him for looking up kittens, going the extra mile for a patient.

Not really a big deal. Everybody took a freebie now and again. Besides, what was he going to do? Tell her, "Oh no, that was a hard-core porn site I like to visit when I'm supposed to be working"? Too much to expect of anybody human.

It was bizarre that it was in his office. The man lived alone. He could keep porn in his home without fear of discovery. That he had it in his place of business could mean a number of things. Maybe fear of discovery heightened the excitement. Discovery of the pom itself or of him doing what men traditionally do when viewing pornography? His chair was feeling less than pure all of a sudden. Keeping the porn at the office might also mean he'd developed enough of a craving for the stuff that he couldn't get through the day without it.

Or it could mean nothing. Curiosity. Porn site ad pops up on E-mail, gets opened, filed, never thought of again.

But Persian Kittens was on his "favorite places" menu. Frederick's snake alarm rattled in Anna's head. She jiggled the deep file drawer, the one where David Madison had surreptitiously deposited the folder. It was locked. Fingers quick from the practice of searching and frisking felt out the standard places keys were hidden. David's key, unimaginatively enough, was tucked under the blotter. In a second the drawer was open. The contents had nothing to do with Molly's treatment, the New York City morgue or the identity of Agnes Abigail Tucker. Printouts of nude women urinating, lactating, pregnant women. Magazines with such enticing titles as
Big Boob Orgy
and
Butt Rangers
were stacked a foot deep. A gym sock was near the bottom. Inside was evidence the doctor's hobby extended to amateur photography. What looked to be nearly a hundred snapshots of women were stuffed inside. A plain-faced woman on elbows and knees, her bare bottom in the air, her neck craned as she leered over her shoulder at the camera as if concerned any of her dubious charms would go unrecorded. Anna flipped over the snap. On the back was written: "Jewelly, Virgin Islands." A woman fifty-five or sixty, suffering from obesity, fat thighs spread, wearing nothing but what looked to be Mardi Gras beads: "Andrea, Louisiana." "Helen, Alabama." "Suzi, Little Rock." "Patty, MS." "The Blackstock sisters." "Anne, artist?" Anna had seen enough. She tucked the sock back between two videos,
Incest
and the promising title of
Horny Haitian Midgets.

Settling the collection back roughly the way she'd found it, Anna noticed a sheet of paper with a list of names. Each was numbered. Jewelly was there and Andrea. She skimmed down. Number 44 was Sonya. The name rang a bell. For a moment Anna racked her brain; then it came to her. The silver-haired nurse who had met them on the elevator that first day Dr. Madison walked her out. "Forty-five?" she'd said. Anna looked back at the list of names. Number 45 was Anna P, followed by a question mark.

Nauseated, she slipped the list back in the drawer, locked it and replaced the key under the blotter. So much for the date. It was five of three. She took up her pack and left, taking the stairs so she wouldn't run into the doctor. Later she would thank Frederick and tell Molly. At present she felt too much of a fool, ashamed, as if the slime of Madison's secret life had rubbed off on her. She wanted to hide and lick her wounds. At the hospital's entrance, she hailed a cab. Cabbies no longer struck her as the lowest life-form in New York.

Secure in Molly's apartment, she turned up the air-conditioning, captured Rani for fur therapy, then called Delta Airlines. Not a single seat was available on the sixth of July. On the seventh there were openings, but since she was booking so late, the one-way would cost $1,287.34. Anna grabbed it. Cheap at twice the price. Escape hatch open, she felt better. Molly would understand. Frederick would be glad to have her out from underfoot and Hills Dutton, her District Ranger at Mesa Verde, would be thrilled to have her back writing parking tickets and rescuing poodles from parked and locked cars. Summer, July, was Mesa Verde's peak season.

Clasping a compliant kitten to her chest, Anna lay carefully back on Molly's sofa. The cushions were soft but firm. Good for her back. She pulled the dead child's cap off and scratched her scalp where hair had sweated into a mat. Rani, a ball of fur with silver paws, batted at the hat. "You are a true Persian kitten," Anna told her. "Why would anybody want to look at ladies with no panties on when they could look at you?" Not yet interested in male sexuality, Rani jumped off Anna's chest and ran down the hall as if all the hounds of hell pursued her.

Anna turned the spud cap around and studied the logo. "Idaho potato," Madison had said. The words percolated in her brain. "Spud" and "Call Caroline" were two of the items on Hatch's laundry list. One of the Carolines worked at Craters of the Moon in Idaho. Was that the connection? Had Hatch guessed the cap, and therefore the kid, were from Idaho, and called the only law enforcement officer he knew there to follow up on the hunch? Or had he just thought to call an old friend to see what had happened with her poachers, Dick Head and Thomas Jefferson. No, Anna corrected herself. Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson Thomas.