Endangered Species (11 page)

the dress adhere to her skin and Anna could see a pulsing movement as if

a tiny hand or foot pounded the ceiling for quiet.

"Oh my God," Tabby said ." Oh my dear God." She didn't cease to weep but

the tears came silently, mixing with the water Anna had thrown, dripping

off'her jaws and down the bodice of her dress.

Anna pulled up a second chair and sat knee to knee with Tabby, ready to

catch her if she fell.

They were still sitting like that when the helicopter came.

NAKED ANNA STOOD on the shore.  Warm wavelets licked at her Nbare toes

like friendly puppies.  There was just enough breeze so she could feel

the air moving across her skin.  Dusk had come and gone and the cloak of

night gave her privacy for this ultimate freedom.  She marveled at how

different life was without clothes on; better-at least until it grew

cold or buggy.  For modern Victoriansa culture that kept nudity in

darkened movie theaters linked always with sex and more often than not

with violence-to be outdoors and naked was exhilarating, wild,

dangerous.

Particularly for a woman alone.

Anna pushed that thought aside.  It was media-borne and not usually

true.  Fear sold ad space and so television and the newsplipers

mainlined it.

For a long ways out the ocean was shallow, and she walked sixty yards

before the water came to her waist.  Stars overhead, stars on the water,

she sank down and let the sea lift her.  The rubber bands that held her

braids had been cut and the insistent pulse of the ocean unraveled her

smoke-matted hair.  Something, seaweed maybe, slunk past her left leg,

touching the back of her knee.  She added sharks to the list of things

she refused to think about.  Fear was a burglar, breaking into one's

mind, stealing away peace.  Mentally she bolted her doors and drifted

with the night.

The fire was out, the bodies bagged; yellow police tape cordoned off the

crash site.  Though Anna had never worked a plane wreck before, the dead

and dying were not strangers to her.  The twisting roads of Mesa Verde

National Park and the straight fast highway through the southern edge of

the Guadalupe Mountains had claimed their share of motorists.  There had

even been a man burned to death in a wildfire she'd worked in

California.  But he'd been totally consumed, reduced to elemental ash.

What was troubling Anna was the pilot's right ear.  That pink, human ear

nestled in the carnage.  The image would take a while to fade.  Weeks

would pass before the sight of a shrimp in a nest of fettuccine or a

dried apricot among the peanuts was rendered harmless.

Lowering her feet to the sandy bottom, Anna spread her legs and leaned

into the sleepy surf, reveling in the sensual thrill of water against

her skin.  The moon crept misshapen over the horizon, spilling its light

across the Atlantic.  Twining it through her fingers, Anna wove strands

of gold into the dark salt water, enjoying the mindless play.

After the fire had been declared out and the brass and the medics and

the machinery had ferried each other back to the mainland, Guy had

gathered the crew together.

"Bear with me now, I've had the training but this is the first time I've

had to use it," he'd said as he stood in front of the house that served

as the fire dorm.  His face was blacked from soot.  Kept clean by his

hard hat, his head gleamed in the growing dusk.  Propping one foot on

the stump of a tree cut nearly level with the ground, he rocked slowly,

thinking.

Legs dangling like children, Anna and Dijon sat side by side on the

tailgate of the pumper truck.  Rick leaned against a fender and AI sat

on one of the coolers, methodically packing his pipe.

A southern evening trickled in from the east, filling the cracks between

the shadows with soothing darkness.  Drought had knocked the mosquitoes

to their knees and only an occasional bloodthirsty whine pierced the

tranquillity.  Stars had yet to shine and the sky was colorless with the

abdication of the sun.

Air-conditioning, sofas, lights, window screens-all were less than

twenty feet away but no one thought to move the meeting indoors.  For

the five of them, tailgates and trucks were familiar ground, closer to

home than strange quarters.

"You've all heard of critical-incident stress management?" GLIY asked,

looking around for a neutral spot where he could aim a stream of tobacco

juice ." Anybody ever been through a session?"

Everybody but Dijon raised a hand ." Good.  Then help me out.  You

pretty much know the drill.  Anybody want to go first?"

Ten seconds ticked by; then Rick said: "It's a crock of shit, if you ask

me."

Anna felt a stab of anger on Guy's behalf but the crew boss took Rick's

words in stride, recognizing them for what they signified: discomfort.

This new touchy-feely stuff had yet to be embraced by some of the rank

and file.

Hands on hips, Guy stared upward a moment; a man collecting his thoughts

." Then why don't you just kind of be here in case somebody needs you to

listen, okay, Hick?" he said at last ." We won't be doing group hugs or

nothing."

Rick was nailed in by that.  No face lost.  Nothing to bluster against.

He propped an elbow on the edge of the truck bed and tried to look

superior.

Anna understood the impulse.  She didn't want to talk about her feelings

either.  Maybe nobody else shared them.  Maybe they weren't good enough.

Maybe it was nobody's damn business.  Maybe they were inappropriate;

that was the fear that silenced most people.

Goaded by fear of fear, Anna decided to go first ." I was afraid the

widow was going to drop that baby right then and there."

Nods all around.  Nobody outraged.  It was just a thought.  Anna felt a

little bad for referring to Tabby Belfore as "the widow." just

distancing herself, she guessed.

Half a minute crept by, tension stretching the seconds till Anna swore

she could feel herself aging, but she was damned if she was going to go

first twice.

" Hanson bothered me," Dijon blurted out.

"Yeah?  Why?" Anna knew that Guy, ever diligent to his duties as crew

boss, was trying to coax.  He was following the book.  But being born a

booted, hard-hatted man, there was a lack of conviction.  Like a good

soldier he followed orders, even those he didn't thoroughly comprehend.

It didn't matter.  Dijon answered anyway and that was what counted, the

talking ." He was so tucking 'Ho, ho, ho."' Dijon had forgotten to clean

up his language in front of a lady.  He must have been upset ." Then

he'd go all fakey, undertaker-sad."

"Maybe he didn't know what else to do," AI said.

"He's a dirtbag," Rick said.

More silence followed, less strained this time.  Night was flowing from

the east.  The anonymity bestowed by darkness eased their minds.

"I don't figure anybody was still alive by the time we got there," Dijon

said tentatively.  The hope in his voice seemed to crystallize all their

thoughts.  Finding dead bodies-even fresh ones-was one thing, but to be

there, helpless witness to the migration of souls, was something else

entirely.

Transmuted from gold to silver, the moon had shrunk to the size of a

dime.  The dunes were white with its light.  Silhouetted against the

sands, a small herd of horses walked north in single file: a

stallioneven at this distance Anna could see impressive equipment

drooping nearly to his hocks-five mares, and two foals.  The Cumberland

horses; the herd numbered close to three hundred animals.  For decades

they'd run wild on the island.  They were part of the lore, part of the

allure, part of the history.  And a dilemma for the NPS .

The fragile dune and interdune structures hadn't evolved to cope with

equine depredation.  Hardened hooves of these exotic beasts destroyed

the delicate plant life that held the sand in place.  Their enormous

appetites grazed down the vegetation between dune and forest, and the

sand was migrating inland, smothering the freshwater lakes.

It would be political suicide to kill them and economic folly to deport

them.  Blessedly uninvolved in higher management, Anna chose to float on

the tide and enjoy them.

Not for the first time the scene in the Belfores' kitchen played through

her mind.  Tabby's reaction had bothered Anna at the time .

In retrospect it seemed even stranger and she wondered if Tabby had

slipped a cog under the strain.

In her years as a park ranger, Anna had delivered her share of bad news.

People took the hit in a lot of ways.  The storm of grief had been

expected.  The denial wasn't out of place.  Tabby's sudden laughter,

though jarring, hadn't been particularly alarming.  Comedy of the absurd

was based on the fact that what startles may very well get a laugh.

Lazily, Anna looked toward shore.  The horses were gone.  So was the ATV

she'd borrowed to come to the beach.  A jolt of adrenaline disturbed her

calm till she spotted it where she'd left it.  A strong current,

scarcely felt in so large a body of water, was carrying her north,

parallel to the island.

The beach was devoid of humanity but not of life.  Minute skittering,

too far away for Anna to identify, attested to abundant actlyity.  Ghost

crabs probably; maybe even baby loggerhead turtles from an earlier

laying, though she doubted it.  Marty Schlessinger would have been in

attendance had that been the case.  And, too, the nests tended to be

further north, east of where the drug interdiction plane went in.

Anna's thoughts had come full circle, back to the accident and its

aftermath.  Back to Tabby Belfore's kitchen.  She recommenced playing

"What's wrong with this picture?" In a moment she hit on it .

It wasn't the surprise, the laughter, or the denial, but that they had

come late-a split second too late.  Tabby had been waiting for bad news,

just not the bad news she got.

What, if anything, that portended, Anna wasn't sure.

Rolling over onto her belly, she let the waves carry her shoreward till

her fingers touched bottom.  The deliciously wicked and wonderful

sensation enveloped her again as she wandered nude down the shoreline,

turning now and again to watch the moon fill her watery footprints with

silver.

staring at the old black rotary phone.  A corner of [the coffee table

was cleared of the wiquitous slither of magazines to accommodate it.  In

the bedroom of his small Chicago apartment dwelt all the FBI agent's

high-tech communications equipment: fax, modern, answering machine,

Touch-Tone cordless.  But when he really wanted to talk, he came to the

rotary.  It had heft and substance.  He could press the round receiver

to his ear and shut out the world, whisper into the cupped mouthpiece

and feel close to the other end of the line.

Staring at the lump of plastic, still warm from Anna's call, he was

dismayed to think how much of his life-social, family, business, and

love-was conducted over the phone.

Danny and Taters fluttered down from the magazines stacked on the mantel