Endangered Species (23 page)

'.In a bad way," Dijon concurred ." Nothing against Lynette, but the

whole story was just too perfect: hearts and flowers and clap .

Guaranteed to make them drop their drawers."

"Are you going to give it a try?"

"Whatever works

"Maybe Slattery 'betrayed her trust' one too many times," Anna

suggested.

"You mean .  .  .  Naw." Dijon pushed himself up off the windshield and

stared out across the causeway.  After a moment he shook his head ." No.

I don't see it." Then: "You think?"

"Take it easy," Anna laughed ." I don't think anything.  We're just

talking."

Dijon leaned back ." Boy, that would be a twist, wouldn't it?

Lynette icing her lover?  I like it."

If Dijon had any idea how his innocence showed through a hundred cracks

in his armor, he would have been mortified.  Anna stored that thought

away in case she needed it for self-defense at some later date.

"What else you got?" he asked.

"Not a whole hell of a lot," Anna admitted ." Tabby knocking off Todd?"

"Never happen.  That woman couldn't unhook her own bra .

Without Todd, she's falling apart."

"What if he was going to run out on her?" Anna told him the story of

their midnight contretemps in the meadow.

"Still can't see it," he said, settling his cap more comfortably over

his face ." She'd crawl-not kill-if her man was walking out."

"I don't know," Anna said.  She was thinking of the burned fingers and

the needle punctures ." She's tearing herself up over something."

" Grief."

There was more to it than that, but since she didn't know what, Anna

kept the thought to herself ." How about Norman Hull?  He was supposed

to be on that flight.  Maybe he knew better."

Dijon considered that for a while ." No," he said finally ." 'Foo big a

pain in the butt to fill Todd's position.  Who'd take it?  There's

diddly-shit to do.  You'll have to do better than Hull."

Anna told him about Slattery Hammond's lawsuit against Alice Utterback.

"That's it," he said languidly ." A woman carrying that much brass is

unnatural.  Ball-busting bitch nails middle-class white guy.  I bet it

happens all the time." He was trying to get a rise out of Anna, but with

his youth and transparency, he only succeeded in being kind of cute.

"Let's go mess with Marty Schlessinger," Anna said suddenly .

"She lied to me about hearing the shot that hit that Austrian kid."

" God, I hate it when people lie to me," Dijon said.

"You're in for a miserable life then," Anna told him ." Everybody lies

all the time just for the hell of it.  By the way, you've got a tick on

your neck."

"Jesus Christ!" Dijon yelled, and scrambled from the hood to wrench the

side mirror out to where he could examine himself .

"Shit.  There's no tick."

*See what I mean?"

*Anna, I wish you had balls.  Then I'd know what to do with

*

YOU.

* I do," she said as she fired up the truck's engine ." A whole

collection mounted on the wall of my study."

Marty Schlessinger lived in a shack.  The house, the hog pens, the

outbuildings, stuck out of the forest floor like a rejected set from The

Grapes of Wrath.  If the buildings had ever been painted, sun and salt

air had stripped them bare again.

The house was built in the southern tradition Anna had heard referred to

as a "shotgun shack." The rooms were arranged in a line, one after the

other from front door to back.  Presumably, one could fire a shotgun

through the entire structure without doing too much damage.  The screen

on the front door was blasted outward as if someone had tested the

theory.  Most of the window screens were torn or missing. The shake

siding had been broken in several places as if a truck had backed into

the house and the damage had never been repaired.  Gouts of tar paper

flagged the holes.

The hog pen was ten or fifteen feet from the house.  Fence and shelter

were the same weathered gray.  Repairs had been made with whatever came

to hand.  A rusting dozer blade shored up a stretch of fence line.  The

door of an automobile, yellow upholstery still clinging to the side, had

been used to stop a hole dug beneath the wire.

Being clever creatures, the pigs were sleeping through the heat of the

day.  Under the rude and crumbling shelter, Anna could see a sow with

eight or a dozen piglets, all of whom had fallen asleep suckling.

Cumberland Island's pigs were unlike any she'd ever seen .

In most ways-eyes and ears and snouts and tails-they were thoroughly

swinish, but their markings were odd.  Dark hash marks the length of the

pig ran down their tawny backs from nape to rump .

They weren't the stripes of a zebra but the stylized markings she was

used to seeing on the backs of chipmunks.  Island life must have made

for creative couplings.

Schlessinger's ATV was parked in the remains of a shed adjacent to the

sty.  The wide door lay on the ground several yards from the building.

Long pointed hinges, rusted the color of dried blood, were attached to

the wood.

"Looks like she's home , Anna said ." Shall we?"

"What'll we say we're here for?" Dijon asked, suddenly shy.

"Just being neighborly."

"You do the talking," he said, and climbed from the truck.  He took a

last glance in the side mirror.  Still looking for the tick.

The biologist had to know they were there.  Not more than a vehicle or

two passed her place on any given day.  And Anna and Dijon had waited in

their truck the requisite few minutes required when paying calls south

of the Mason-Dixon line, but Marty hadn't come out on the porch to greet

them.  Schlessinger forced everyone to do things the hard way.

Walking several yards apart, Anna and Dijon approached the ratty

dwelling as if John Dillinger waited within.  Schlessinger had that

effect on people.

" You knock," Dijon said.  He was whispering.

Anna had to force herself not to follow suit.  Rapping on the doorframe,

she called: "Hi.  Anybody home?"

"Yeah," came a sharp voice.  Anna took that as an invitation and pulled

the screen open.

Marty's home wasn't air-conditioned and, though her windows were open,

the shades were all drawn.  The air was close and heavy with innumerable

odors, all of them vile: rotting animal parts, formaldehyde, grilled

cheese, dirty laundry, coffee, mildew.

Anna covered her nose with her sleeve, then, realizing it was the height

of rudeness, lowered it and tried to breathe normally.

Clad in a dingy brassiere and sweatpants cut off above the knee, a

bottle of Nestea in one hand, the biologist sat in an overstuffed chair

tucked back in a corner.  Stuffing showed through on both the arms where

the fabric was worn away.  She didn't move when Anna and Dijon came in.

Her eyes were narrowed against the light.  She looked as if she dared

either one of them to comment on her wardrobe or her lifestyle.

Blind from the sunlight, Anna saw everything, including the half-naked

biologist, as mud brown.  The house was kept worse than the pigsty.

Every surface was covered in chunks of shell or bone .

Papers littered the floor and were piled haphazardly among books and

magazines.  1rays and dissecting equipment, smelling as if they'd not

been cleaned since the last adventure in marine pathology, were pushed

to one side of a wooden table just outside the cooking area .

Through a wide arch was a bedroom, also furnished in Early junkyard, and

the back door.

Schlessinger had her feet propped on a lobster trap with two

one-by-twelves nailed across it.  Open and unopened mail was piled on

this makeshift coffee table.  More spilled from the shelves of an

unstable bookcase next to the front door.

" Hey, Marty," Anna said pleasantly.

Undone by the brassiere and the aging flesh it failed to adequately

conceal, Dijon mumbled something and became instantly engrossed in

reading the spines of the books.

"Are you lost?" Schlessinger asked.  Her attitude was the only cool spot

on the island.  Sweat was starting and Anna felt it crawling through her

hair.

"No.  Just on patrol and thought we'd drop by."

Schlessinger took a swig of her tea and said nothing.

Anna's eyes were adjusting to the dimness.  Marty's face was pale.  Her

blue eyes looked unnaturally large because the pupils had shrunk to

pinpoints.  Her feet, elevated on the coffee table, tapped the air

rapidly as if keeping time to a hot jazz beat in her brain .

Hostility radiated from her.  She didn't seem frightened or nervous,

just swelled with ambient anger, like a pit bull looking for somebody to

chew on.

Clearly this wasn't going to be passed off as a social call.  Interest

piqued, Anna began her questions with a feeling akin to excitement.

Maybe cops smelled emotional violence the way fire horses scented smoke:

pulses quickened, hooves stamped to be in on the chase.

"We had a few minutes," Anna began, as if Marty had welcomed them with

open arms, "and I thought I'd pop by and see if you remembered any more

about those shots you heard."

"Shots?" Marty echoed, and Anna believed she'd genuinely forgotten. Then

the biologist's face hardened with returning memory and she said, "What

shots?" like a bad actor.

Anna outlined the roadside report Marty had given, just as if

Schlessinger's question had been an honest one.

"That's not how I remember it," Marty said when Anna had finished ." I

asked you if you had heard anything.  You weren't listening." She took

her feet from the lobster trap and leaned forward, elbows on knees.

Tufts of white hair curled from her armpits.  Without even wanting a

peek, Anna was afforded full view of generous cleavage, all deep brown.

Marty tanned in the nude.  Schlessinger's eyes followed Anna's to her

own chest, apparently noticing for the first time that she was only half

dressed.  The realization left her unmoved.

"Now that's settled, maybe you should get back to work.  That's what

you're here for, aren't you?  Work?  Or is that concept too complex for

government employees?" The pale eyes fixed on Anna's face .

Uneasiness began somewhere in the vicinity of her heart and was pumped

out along her arteries like poison.

"Yeah," Anna said, rising from the edge of the chair where she'd perched

." Thanks for your time.  We'd better get-"

"Hey," Dijon interrupted ." I used these things all through college.  No

wonder I got C's."

Both women had forgotten Dijon.  While they conducted their tdte-&-tdte

he'd continued his perusal of Schlessinger's bookshelves.

" What?" Anna said.

Dijon held up a letter, obviously mass-produced with lawyerly letterhead

and a to-whom-it-may-concern look to it ." They recalled the Lewin

electron microscopes.  Major flaw.  The readings are warped on about ten

percent of them."

" Put.  It.  Down."

Schlessinger's voice was so deadly cold Anna backed a couple steps

toward the door.  The biologist was standing, her white hair, free of