Endangered Species (25 page)

square with the blotter.  Lined up on the opposite side of the desk, the

opponents faced off in the same two-inch formation: stamp dispenser,

pencil holder, paper clip magnet.

Alone in the center of a rectangle of unmarked green, Anna's candy

wrapper looked craven, a malicious act of vandalism.  Finishing the last

of the chocolate, she folded the leftover paper neatly and set it two

inches from the pencil sharpener.

Squat and colorless in a faint spill of moonlight, the phone sat like a

malevolent toad at the edge of the desk.  Years of isolation, of

distance from family, friends, and lovers, had created in Anna a

love/hate relationship with telephones.  They were often her only

contact with the people she cared about, and at the same time not only

pointed up how fragile that connection was but, she was sure, in some

arcane way managed to warp the very relationships it made possible.

Perhaps the plastic contained some dormant virus that came to life when

pressed long enough against the warmth of human flesh .

Once revived it would be in a unique position to penetrate the brain

orally or aurally, causing a chemical imbalance that brought on

obsessive calls to empty houses, fights with sweethearts, and long

silences costing more than ten cents a minute.

The clock over the door insisted it was just nine p.m.  She would wait

another half hour.  If nobody was home by then she'd give it up as a

lost cause.

Tilting back in Norman's chair, she cast about for something with which

to amuse herself.  Tidy men were not particularly entertaining, no

flotsam or jetsam to fiddle about in.  Normal men, men who didn't clean

out their wallets but transferred the whole mess every few years when a

new wallet appeared under the Christmas tree, carried their history in

their back pockets.

Desks served the same purpose, if on a more businesslike plane .

Hills Dutton, Anna's district ranger in Mesa Verde, had a magnificent

desk.  His professional past could be read in geological strata as one

worked down through the accumulated canyons of paper.

Hull was either indescribably tedious or had something to hide .

Anna clicked on the desk lamp.  just passing the time, she jiggled the

drawers.  They'd been locked.  A sense of challenge crept into her idle

snooping.  Rangers were the most trusting creatures on the planet.  They

habitually left wads of money, candy, hollow-point bullets, house keys,

car keys, and confiscatedalcohol littered around the office.  Amazingly

enough, with the exception of the candy, none of it ever disappeared.

The only people Anna had known to lock their desks-all two of them-both

turned out to be chronic litigators, always embroiled in one lawsuit or

another against the NPS.  Their secret-squirrel tendencies sprang from

paranoia that the information they'd gathered was actually worth

something.  With a renewed sense of purpose, she searched all the

standard key hiding places but came up eml)tyhanded.

A quick search of Renee's drawers proved more satisfying.  A key tagged

"Norman's Desk" lay prominently in the pencil tray.  Like any task, once

undertaken the search took on a life of its own, becoming important by

the simple fact it had proven difficult.  Anna carried the key back to

the chief ranger's office with a pleasant feeling of accomplishment.

After all her suspicious surmisings and stealthy machinations, the prize

wasn't worth the game.  The desk's interior was as sterile as the

surface.  Files were carefully marked and each folder contained what it

advertised.  Stationery and envelopes filled wooden racks.  In the

center drawer, the one usually doomed to catch life's precious litter,

there was precious little.

Anna flipped through Hull's desk calendar.  On the day of the airplane

crash he'd written, "Slattery, Stafford meadow-10 a.m., as if he'd

intended to keep the appointment.  The other entries were what might be

found in any day planner, notes of meetings and times ." Cheryl" was

dotted here and there and "Ellen" made a number of appearances along

with personal hieroglyphics-PU and PO, asterisks and underlinings.

Cheryl and Ellen, Anna knew from the general scuttlebutt, were Hull's

wife and daughter.

The only thing of interest was an envelope with a handwritten address

and a Pennsylvania postmark.  In for a penny, in for a pound, Anna

thought, and shook out a single sheet of paper covered with the same

loopy writing as on the envelope, and a snapshot.

" Dear Norm, I don't think the change has done Ellen-"

Anna refolded the paper and stuffed it back into the envelope unread.

The letter was clearly personal and there were limits to the rules she

would break without probable cause.  Somehow looking at a picture was

different.  Pictures, by their nature, seemed in the public domain.  The

photograph was of a young girl.  Anna would have guessed she was

eighteen or nineteen but loopy letters in pencil read , Ellen on her

13th birthday." Norman's only daughter .

There was a family resemblance in the watery blue eyes and narrow,

squared-off chin.  Heavy makeup and what looked to be very expensive, if

tasteless, teen-tart clothes hugged the chunky frame of a body not yet

out of childhood.

Engrossed as she was in meddling, when the phone rang Anna reacted so

violently she cracked her kneecap on the underside of the desk.  The

pain was intense but would be short-lived.  Breathing deeply and

counting backward from twenty, she glowered at the phone as if it had

attacked once and might try it again.  By the fourth ring she'd

recovered and decided to answer it.  There wasn't a chance in hell it

was for her but at this time of night it was possibly urgent.

"Cumberland Island National Seashore," she said.

"Yeah.  Hey.  This is Charley Riggs.  Who am I talking to?"

Anna was momentarily starstruck.  Riggs was the Southeast's regional

director.  Silently she closed and locked the desk drawer lest he sense

her transgressions ." Anna Pigeon, presuppression, fire crew," she

answered formally.

" Drought's pretty bad there, Anna?"

She recognized the use of her name for what it was-a politician's

trick-but she didn't resent it.  Government agencies were highly

political.  It was, if not good, at least expedient to have a politician

in charge.

Dutifully she prattled on about what they'd been doing on Cumberland,

until Riggs signaled her to stop with an indrawn breath .

"Well, hey, Anna, that's terrific-"

Anna rolled her eyes and wished she had another chocolate bar.

"Is Norm around?  He said he might be working late tonight."

No, Anna told him, and could she take a message?  Well, liey, Anna, she

could.

"I just got out of a backcountry management retreat in Big Cypress and

need to talk to him about the airplane wreck.  Tell him to give me a

call as soon as he gets in tomorrow, would you, Anlia?"

"Yes, sir." She wrote the message down on a notepad placed precisely two

inches from the phone.  A stray thought jarred her as she watched the

regional director's words draining from her I)en .

"Hey, Charley, how long was that retreat?" Maybe in her next life she'd

go into politics.

"Five days.  No fax, no phone, no running water.  We got a lot

accomplished but I'm getting too old to sleep on the ground."

Anna laughed politely and hung up.

The thirty minutes she'd designated had passed.  She had permission to

try Molly and Frederick a am, but she didn't reach for the telephone.

For some reason Norman Hull had lied.  He'd not been on the phone with

the regional director when the ill-fated Beechcraft left the ground.

Anna had little doubt that if she nosed around she'd find that Renee was

under the impression Hull had received the lifesaving call on the

mainland and the woman in St.  Marys believed just the opposite.  Two

lies, each tailored to support the other.  Deceit of that caliber

usually sprang from a more than casual motivation.

She unlocked the chief ranger's desk.  Having been handed probable cause

on the proverbial silver platter, she took out the handwritten letter

and read it through.  It was family news.  From the context, she

gathered it was from a sister of Norman's.  Ellen had been sent to

Pennsylvania for a visit with the cousins, had proven to be a major pain

in the butt, and was being put on the next bus back to Georgia.  Anna

refolded the letter carefully and placed it precisely where she'd found

it.  A man as anal-retentive as Norman Hull would notice any disruption.

Again she went through the files, this time with greater interest .

The bottom right-hand drawer held confidential personnel foldersthe

record of each employee, including letters of commendation and censures,

their personal information, and the numbers that Americans carry from

cradle to grave.

Anna pulled Slattery Hammond's folder from the neat arrangement of

hanging files.  There wasn't much to it; he'd worked for the parks only

sporadically, and as he was strictly seasonal, the service didn't much

care how he made ends meet in the off months.

She looked through the sheets quickly.  All of it was standardmemos,

evaluations.  When she reached the page containing his personal data,

she stopped.  Hammond's life insurance washandled by a company in

Washington State.  Dead He was worth $125,000.

Dead by accident on the job: $250,000.  Double indemnity.  Given what

Slattery did for a living, that codicil wasn't surprising.  Pilots

tended to believe the fool killer would call them home long before they

had a chance to die peacefully in bed; a romantic notion and most often

wrong.  The insurance companies bet on that.  This time they lost.  Anna

scanned the rest of the document to see who had won.  The beneficiary

was Linda Hammond, a resident of Hope, Canada, wife of the deceased.

Should she predecease him the moneys would be put in trust for his son,

Dylan.

Hammond was married.  Had Lynette known?  Certainly no one else seemed

aware of it.  Would a self-professed Christian commit murder to revenge

a broken heart and a damaged ego?  Absolutely .

Human beings weren't linear creatures, cut from one piece of cloth .

They routinely harbored moral dichotomies that would short-circuit the

most sophisticated robot.  And most did it effortlessly.  Maybe Lynette

was not only Christian but Catholic.  Fornication, murder, a quick

confession, and she'd be back on the Lord's good side.

Nothing in Mitch Hanson's history called attention to itself and Anna

went on to Lynette's.  Her only claim to fame was having started out in

the Park Service as a GS-I.  Anna hadn't known that low a designation

existed.  The stamp on her pay envelopes MLIST have been worth nearly as

much as the check itself.

There was no folder on Schlessinger.  She was attached to the NPS but

not of it.  Turtle-research funding was obtained from other sources.

Whoever was head of Resource Management kept the files on the marine

biologist.