Endangered Species (44 page)

Hey, Lassie, Timmy's in the well, came a mocking thought, but it was the

only hope she had to go on and she clung to it.

A brief search located the fawn.  He was standing at the edge of the

cleared ground behind Stafford House.  On seeing Anna, he bleated once,

then stared into the black wall of woods.  Afraid she would distract

him, she fell back and hid in the shadows of what once had served

Stafford as a servants' wing.  For maybe a minute the animal trotted

back and forth at the tree line bleating; then he stepped delicately

into the foliage and was gone.

Anna followed as fast as she dared, entering the woods where he had

vanished.  A fatted moon had deigned to rise and fragments of light

littered the forest floor.  Relying on hope as much as hearing, she

trailed the little beast.  Once he'd established his direction, he moved

along at a good pace.  Near the salt marshes that skirted the sound, the

woods thinned.

The tide was in.  Only the tips of the grasses showed above the water.

They ebbed and flowed with the currents.  In the unrevealing light of

the moon, it was impossible to tell where grass ended and water began.

The shoreline was equally uncertain.  Land and marsh and sea blended

seamlessly into one another.  Fireflies added their stars and brought

the sky into this confluence of elements.

Trusting to the fawn's sense of smell, Anna followed in his wake.

Several times he stopped and wandered aimlessly along the edge of land

and marsh bleating plaintively.  At each stop Anna found herself holding

her breath, afraid both that he'd lost the trail and that he'd found its

end.  Bodies, weighted and submerged in the high saltwater grasses

beyond the low-tide mark would be effectively hidden from the world. The

natural action of the sea would wash away all signs of interference.

Carrion eaters would take care of the rest.

Flicka stopped a final time.  Anna waited for him to pick up the scent.

Time dragged.  The fawn paced and cried.  Twice he lay down and curled

nose to tail as if he'd given up.  He was as nervy as Anna and the

respites were short-lived.  After a restless moment he'd leap up again

to run along the water's edge.  At length he trotted back toward Anna,

stopped dead in the path, and sitting on his haunches, bleated at the

moon in a gentle parody of the wolf.  Flicka was lost .

Then so were Dot and Mona.

That's what you get for trusting prey to track predator, Anna thought

acidly.

For lack of a better idea, she stayed where she was, eyes and ears

waiting for the night to tell her something.  ]the moon had pushed above

the trees to the west.  In this wan light, she noticed a scrap of white

suspended several feet above the ground.  A piece of paper had fallen

and been caught on the spines of an oak seedling.

Wishing she had a flashlight and cursing whoever was responsible for

maintaining Cumberland Island's fire cache equipment, she lifted the

paper to her eyes.  Of itself it told her nothing, but excited at the

possibilities it suggested, she walked along at a snail's pace,

searching each bush and blade of grass.  Ten feet further on she was

rewarded for her diligence.  A second bit of paper was trampled into the

wet earth in a footprint-it was too dark to see it without a flashlight

but Anna could feel the edges with the tips of her fingers .

By turning the paper this way and that she could discern what could have

been the marks of a sneaker tread.

Four yards further she found another.  Eyes opened by this discovery,

she began looking for other sigris, and despite the poor light, found

them.  Dot and Mona had dragged their feet, broken off twigs, dropped

bits of paper and, once, a button from a blouse.  Crafty old women, Anna

thought, and smiled.  With a more durable form of bread crumbs, they'd

left a trail a blind woman could follow.  Cast in the role of that blind

woman, Anna inched along the narrow stretch of land between woods and

water noting unsmoked cigarettes, a pocketknife, Mona's Timex, Dot's

pinky ring, and three more buttons.  She left the items where she found

them.  If Rick had better luck with his flashlight, he was sure to

stumble across the trail more quickly than she had.  She could use the

company.

Heartened by Anna's taking the lead, Flicka gave up mourning and trotted

at her side, poking at each new piece of information with a cool dry

nose.

Twenty minutes were marked off in butts and buttons, then thirty; still

Anna's ears picked up no sign of the other women.  Going was slow, but

at a guess, she and the fawn had been following the trail for a mile to

a mile and a half.  Schlessinger was walking Dot and Mona up the

waterline into the designated wilderness area of the park where, though

less than pristine or untrammeled, there was less likely to be any

future disturbance of her makeshift graveyard .

In wilderness areas no power equipment was allowed: no cars, ATVs, chain

saws, bulldozers.  The less readily accessible an area, the less it was

used by visitors.  Over the years Anna noticed even a modest walk-a half

or three quarters of a mile from the parking lot-and the tourist

component was reduced by ninety percent .

People were lazy, people loved their cars, felt insecure away from them.

Law enforcement officers-even federal law enforcement officers, contrary

to some opinions-were people.  Without compelling evidence, the further

one had to walk from his patrol car, the less likely a search of that

area became.

To Anna's right the bank grew steep.  Currents eddying through the sound

had undercut the soil and it had fallen away, exposing roots the size of

a man's thigh.  In places trees had all but toppled into the marsh.

Clinging tenaciously to life, they hung over the sea grasses at right

angles.  In the dark, with what appeared to be a vast meadow undulating

to her left' Anna found it unnerving.  Her faith that she knew up from

down had been severely challenged over the previous thirty-six hours.

Navigable land narrowed between the crumbling bank and the muddy

commencement of the marsh.  Losing options put Anna on edge but this was

where the VIPS' trail was to be found and she had no choice but to

follow it.

When she and the ever-faithful Flicka had traveled another mile or more,

her ears picked up the sounds they'd been straining for .

Voices, muted, distant, and suddenly stifled, hit her senses with the

impact of an air horn in a closed room.  She stopped so suddenly Flicka

stumbled against her.  The fawn, her admirable compatriot, had just

become a liability.  When he caught the scent of his benefactresses he'd

trot bleating into their midst, effectively announcing that he'd been

freed and possibly followed.  Anna's memory flashed back to a night in

west 'Texas when she'd nearly laid down lier life for a mountain lion.

For those who'd seen the light, animals made good hostages.  Anna could

easily see Schlessinger, a knife at Flicka's throat, saying: "Nobody

moves or Bambi gets it." Chances were Dot, Mona, even she, would do as

they were told rather than see that perfect life cut down.

Sitting on a fallen log, Anna unlaced her boots.  Beneath she wore two

pairs of socks, thin knee-highs next to her skin to wick away the sweat,

and thick cotton midcalf socks over those to cushion her feet from the

rude leather of her Red Wings.  Having pulled off both pairs, she laced

her bare feet back into the boots, then fashioned a collar and leash for

Flicka by tying all four socks together.  the end of this stretchy line

she jammed down over a stub of broken branch that stuck up from the log

where she sat.

"I'll be back," she whispered, and cupped his face between her hands ."

Please, please be quiet or I'll make you into a venison sandwich."

Flicka licked her hand.

"Stay," she whispered, and moved quickly away, afraid to look back lest

eye contact inspire a spate of hopeful bleating.

The collapsed bank reached to the edge of the sound, blocking her path

and providing cover.  She stopped and listened.  Flicka was blessedly

quiet.  From beyond the irregular wall of soil and roots she could hear

Mona.

"I can't walk anymore." Mona's voice was too high, too loud.  A thud,

the recognizable sound of metal striking flesh, followed.

"Quiet." Schlessinger.

Moaning as directionless as that of the wind in the mountains undercut

the command.

"You didn't have to-" Dot.

"Quiet!"

Quiet followed.  Mona's bones were old, growing thin and brittle.  Did

one's skull grow thin and brittle as well?  Anna couldn't remember

reading anywhere that it did.  Pressing her belly into the dirt, she

wriggled her way upward.  The ridge was ten or twelve feet high on the

landward side and exposed the reaching claws of live oak root.  Seaward

it dwindled to nothing where the current took and redistributed the

soil.  Where Anna was it was maybe six feet high, and soft from its

recent separation from the island proper.  Loose dirt served her well,

covering the noise of her ascent.  Lizardlike, she reached the top of

the berm and lifted herself up on her arms to peek over the crest.  A

lizard measuring distance, she thought as she bobbed on her short front

legs.  Laughter, as unbidden as when she was stoned, built in her lungs

and she wondered if she'd become humor-impaired from her recent

adventures.

On the far side of her hiding place Dot, Mona, and Marty Schlessinger

were crowded onto a narrow neck of beach, squeezed between bank and

marsh.  Schlessinger stood, her shoulders and butt resting against the

vertical wall of dirt.  She held a six-cell flashlight in her left hand,

its powerful beam trained on the two VIPS. In her right was a handgun.

Not the simple cowboy six-cylinder wheel gun, but a Glock or a

Sig-Sauer.  Anna wasn't enough of a weapons aficionado to know the

difference in the dark, but she could tell it was a semiauto with a

magazine holding ten to thirteen rounds and one in the chamber.  Looking

at the familiar chunk of iron, she felt soft and naked.  It wasn't at

all pleasant.

Mona was crumpled in a heap, hugging her left knee the way Anna had seen

injured hikers do.  Dot knelt behind her in the mud, cradling her head

against her chest.  From beneath her fingers, near Mona's temple, a line

of blood or slime crawled downward.  By the indirect spill from the

flashlight, Anna couldn't be sure which it was.  It just looked black

and viscous.

" She can't walk any further," Dot said firmly ." Your hitting her is

just going to make it worse."

"I told you, I've got a bad knee , Mona said in a reedy voice.  'It's

gone out on me before.  I can't walk on it."

"An old football injury," Dot said.

Anna caught the wry and startled glance Mona shot her friend.

"Two choices," Schlessinger said ." You get up and walk or I shoot you

where YOLT Sit." Her body never changed position nor did the expression

on her face alter in any way.  Because she held the light, Anna couldn't