Anna Pigeon - Track of the Cat Part 18

Unable to remember where she'd heard it, Anna just smiled.

Paulsen rocked back, crossed his legs, resting his ankle on his knee, and grinned hugely. "Since you been so nice as to come all the way over here to pay me a visit, I'll tell you."

Now she knew it was of no value. Or he was going to tell her a lie.

"Dalrimple. My momma's maiden name. Daddy built this house for her. Jerimiah D. Paulsen. My old friends call me Jerimiah D."

With a start, Anna remembered then where she'd heard it. The information wasn't nearly so useless as he'd thought. Maybe she didn't have what she wanted, but she had enough.

Sheila had seen something-probably stumbled on it by accident while patrolling the park perimeter for lightning strikes. They, in turn, had stumbled on her. Whatever the specifics were, Anna did not doubt Paulsen knew. She also knew this was not the way to outfox the bluff and hearty Mr. Paulsen. He'd been at it too many years, enjoyed the game too much.

Time had come to leave.

"You've an impressive collection," Anna said, looking at a Sako hung above a wide mantel made of native rock. The barrel was polished with love and long use. The stock was intricately carved dark wood.

Paulsen, following her gaze, stood and walked over to the fireplace. He lifted the weapon down with the reverence of a pilgrim handling a piece of the true cross.

"This is my baby." He sounded as if it were the literal truth. "Finest weapon ever made. Bar none."

Anna put down her coffee and joined him by the cold grate. "May I?" she asked holding out her hands for the rifle.

He all but s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, holding it possessively to his chest, then chuckling at his own reaction. "Sorry, honey. n.o.body touches her but Jerimiah D. n.o.body. A man's got to have something that's all his own." Reverently he replaced the rifle on its stone pegs.

"Now," he said turning to Anna. "What's on your mind? Much as it flatters an old man, you didn't drive all this way to have a cup of coffee with me."

"I've been nosing around about the Dog Canyon ranger's death," Anna told him. He would already know that much. "There's talk of local ranchers wanting to wipe out the lion population in retaliation."

Paulsen laughed, a series of voiceless gusts that came out his nose. "h.e.l.l, we've been trying to do that for years. Y'all breed 'em up there in that d.a.m.ned park. It's a wonder there's a cow left west of the Pecos."

Anna let that pa.s.s. She wanted to get on with her lie and get home. "I was hoping I could convince you to speak out against it. You're one of the most influential ranchers on the New Mexico side."

Paulsen was used to the ineffectual flattery and pleas of environmentalists. Anna hoped hers was commonplace enough to be believed.

He draped an arm around her shoulders. "It ain't gonna happen. You got a lot to learn about ranchers. We defend what's ours. From varmints and the G.o.ddam Park Service."

Anna shrugged off the heavy weight. "Thanks for the coffee," she said. "I'll show myself out."

The snorty chuckle followed her as far as the butler's pantry.

CHAPTER 21.

"Dr. Pigeon is in session ... ah ... Just a moment. Hold please."

Anna sat in the semi-darkness of the Cholla Chateau's laundry room listening to Cheryl's laundry squeak around and around in the dryer.

The voice returned. "May I say who's calling?" Molly had had the same receptionist for eleven years, an efficient woman who steadfastly refused to recognize Anna's voice.

"Her sister," Anna said. The Open Sesame.

"One moment please." There was a click, then strains of Handel's Water Music Water Music filled the earpiece. Molly soothing the savage beasts. filled the earpiece. Molly soothing the savage beasts.

"Hallelujah!" Molly came on the line.

Anna glanced at her watch: five-thirty in Texas, seven-thirty in New York. "You ran late with your last client."

"Silly b.u.g.g.e.r wouldn't stop crying. I couldn't get a profound sentence in edgewise. And I was feeling particularly insightful today. What's up? You don't usually call this early in the week."

The sucking sound: toxic, killing smoke going deep into her sister's lungs. Anna repressed a comment. It crossed her mind that, were she gone, there would be no one left to nag Molly, get her to quit before it was too late. "Not much. Another 'accident.' A herpetologist bit the dust. Death by snakebite this time."

"Jesus!" Molly laughed with the career New Yorker's reliance on black humor. "Lions and tigers and snakes, oh my! You're on hold ... can I pour you a drink?"

"Got one," Anna replied and clinked her wine gla.s.s against the plastic mouthpiece.

"It figures," Molly said. Handel flooded in. Anna was sorry she'd refrained from comment on the cigarette.

"Cheers." A gla.s.s containing one careful shot of scotch clinked down the two thousand miles of wire from Manhattan.

"To old friends and better days," Anna said and they drank in silence. "I'm coming to New York," she announced, deciding it in that instant. "I'm going to camp on you and make end runs up to Westchester County to see Edith."

"When? When are you coming?" Molly didn't sound as pleased as Anna had antic.i.p.ated.

"I don't know ..." Anna faltered. The plan was too new for dates. "I've got a ton of annual leave coming to me. I thought I'd come in September if-"

"Ha!" Molly exploded. "IF. What in the h.e.l.l are you up to, Anna? What's going on? You're doing some silly d.a.m.n thing with that snake and lion business."

"What makes-"

"Hmph!" Molly cut her off. As children they'd both practiced doing hmph hmph like it was spelled in books. Molly had become very good at it. "Psychiatrists aren't omniscient for nothing," she said. "The snake and lion business, Anna. Out with it. I hate suspense. Always read the last page first. Adjust expectations." like it was spelled in books. Molly had become very good at it. "Psychiatrists aren't omniscient for nothing," she said. "The snake and lion business, Anna. Out with it. I hate suspense. Always read the last page first. Adjust expectations."

Anna sighed. "I've done 'How,' " she admitted.

"And?" Molly demanded.

There were times Anna wished her sister had gone into interior decorating, labor relations, anything but what she had. But the obvious had never held any interest for Molly. EFFECT left her cold. It was CAUSE she was fascinated with.

"And I've got some final checking to do," Anna equivocated. "Then I'll know everything."

"Everything? Like who is going to win the World Series? Whether G.o.d can make a stone so big He cannot lift it? What Scotsmen wear under their kilts? Or just enough to get shoved under whatever pa.s.ses for a trolley there in Timbuktu?"

"Do you know what Scotsmen wear under their kilts?" Anna countered.

"I'm a psychiatrist," Molly returned. "Not a sociologist. I know what they want want to wear under their kilts." to wear under their kilts."

Anna laughed despite the acid drippings from the New York exchange into her West Texas ear. "I'll know everything," Anna said. "Then I'll come hang my shingle out next to yours: 'Psychiatry: 5 cents.' "

"It'll never sell on Park Avenue," Molly told her. "We're like physicians of old but instead of bleeding the patient, we bleed the bank account. Take the Root of Evil onto our own broad shoulders."

"A modern-day sin-eater," Anna said.

"You got it. Now what the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l are you up to? Back to the snakes and lions, Anna."

Anna did not intend to tell Molly anything, not until she had a story with a beginning and a middle and an end. She'd called because she needed to hear her sister's voice once more. "Some checking. I'll call you Sat.u.r.day and tell you what I found."

"It's Tuesday. Four days of checking?"

"No. Thursday and maybe Friday of checking."

"You're going to creep about like the Lone Ranger stalking the forces of evil clad in Virtue and Right, is that the deal? A miniature, middle-aged John Wayne."

"They're dead," Anna snapped. "Pathetic as it is, I'm it. n.o.body else gives a d.a.m.n. Bureaucrats-monkeys who hear no evil and see no evil-are first in line for promotion."

A long silence paralyzed the phone lines. Not even the sighing of cigarette smoke broke the darkness.

"You there?" Anna asked hesitantly.

"I'm here," Molly said. Then, very deliberately: "If you get yourself killed, I will kill you. Is that clear? I will donate all of your things to the Pentecostal Church. I will have you embalmed and put on display in the Smithsonian as the World's Biggest Horse's a.s.s. Call me Sat.u.r.day."

"I will," Anna promised.

"Before noon. At noon, Eastern time, I call out the National Guard."

"Molly, I-"

"Gotta go. I'm reviewing Suicide As a Solution Suicide As a Solution for the for the Washington Post." Washington Post."

The click. The dead line.

What the h.e.l.l, Anna thought. She knows I love her.

Thursday night the moon rose full and round at nine-twelve p.m. Anna was waiting for it. The light came first, a faint silvery glow on the bottom of the few ragged clouds left from the afternoon's fruitless thunderheads. Then a dome, slightly flattened, pushing up into the saddle between El Capitan and Guadalupe Peak. Fainthearted stars faded from sight. Cool, colorless light poured down the park's western escarpment, rolled out like liquid silver across the ravine-torn desert to pool black under the spreading brambles of the mesquite and shine in the cholla needles.

Sand sparkled as if lit from beneath, the white salt flats glowed with reflected glory. Shadows became fathomless. The moon, as if held to a regal creep by a suddenly broken string, popped clear of the Guadalupe Mountains. Its light bathed the Patterson Hills. Desert hills: rugged and stony and cut deep with washes. No roads, no trails intruded on this outlying stretch of land. No people hiked or camped there. Not in July when daytime temperatures rose above a hundred and ten degrees and there was no water for miles in any direction.

It was there Anna waited for the moon. The tent she would use for its meager shade if she had to sleep away the next day's heat was stuffed into its nylon sack. The gray Ensolite sleeping pad she'd folded in half to use as a seat cushion. Cross-legged, hands loosely clasped in her lap, she sat in the pose of a cla.s.sic desert pilgrim.

A boulder, flaked into miniscule staircases by heat and cold, threw its inky cloak of shadow over her. Sand was strewn over her tent and pack. To creatures dependent on sight and sound for their prey, she was invisible. She sipped at one of the jugs of water she had carried in. In the Pattersons, in July, she would sweat all night, losing water to the desert even in darkness. Since six p.m., when she'd begun the hike in, she had consumed almost a gallon. Two more gallons were cached close by.

Once above the escarpment the moon dwindled rapidly in size but its light flowed unabated through the dry clean air, caught the iridescent sh.e.l.ls in the ancient reef-become-mountains and the salt crystals of the long dead sea. Anna could see each spine on the small barrel cactus growing at the edge of the shadow that hid her. Each petal of its glorious bloom was perfectly illuminated but robbed of all color. The papery flower showed blood-black.

Soon, night hunters would be coming out: the scorpion, the rattlesnake, the tarantula.

And me, Anna thought. Despite her feeling at one with the night, she was aware of a certain creepiness, a feeling of hairy-legged beasties tickling up her arms and legs.

The moon shrank to the size of a dime, pa.s.sed overhead, slipped down after the stars. Shadows moved in their prescribed arcs. Anna's joints stiffened, her ears ached from listening for the alien footsteps that had heralded Craig's death the night of the last full moon. Sleep swirled around her, catching her head dropping, her dreams encroaching.

Anna rubbed her face hard, twisted her spine, hearing the settled bones cracking back into line. She took a sip of the lukewarm water. What she wanted was wine: a drink for her brain, not her body. It crossed her mind to take the pledge, go on the wagon, but she couldn't decide which was worse: pending alcoholism, or remorseless unrelenting sobriety of the rest of her days.

Taking another pull of the water, she let the sky draw her eyes into its perfect depths. No fear, nothing so petty as murder: it soothed her, overwhelmed her as it always did with a comforting sense of her own littleness; the rea.s.suring knowledge that she was but a single note in the desert's song, a minute singing in the concert of the earth. She thought of Molly, of her office full of clients.

In the city the lights blinded the night sky, robbed it of stars. Only the moon could compete, a pale contender against the roving searchlights of mall openings, the unwinking concern of security lights. No one was given an opportunity to feel deliciously small, magnificently unimportant. Everyone was forced, always, to take their dying littles as truth.

Slowly, Anna breathed in through her nostrils, inhaling the desert, knowing this wisdom would pa.s.s, knowing she would flounder in nets of her own devising a thousand times before her dust blew across the mountain ridges. But as long as the desert remained, as long as the night sky's darkness was preserved, she could read again her salvation there.

The jagged teeth of the Cornudas Mountains to the west devoured the moon just after four a.m.

Craig Eastern's Martians were not coming. The Smithsonian was not getting its exhibit of the World's Biggest Horse's a.s.s. Not tonight.

Anna brushed the sand from her pack and put up the one-man tent on the west side of her boulder where the morning sun wouldn't find her. She unfolded the pad and lay down, enjoying the freedom to stretch. Luxuriating in the knowledge that snakes and spiders and scorpions were zipped outside in their own world, Anna slept.

The sun turned her nylon home into a Dutch oven an hour before noon. Unable to sleep any longer, she read and ate and dreamed the afternoon away moving as little as possible. There was no sound but the audible sear of sun on stone. Creatures of the Patterson Hills were hidden away waiting, like Anna, for the night.

At sunset, she folded her tent and ate her supper. The second gallon of water and half the third were gone. In the cooler evening air, she began her inspection of the area. She'd arrived too near dark the night before to do any searching. Pulling out her binoculars, she examined the hills for three-hundred-and-sixty degrees around. Nothing moved but air shimmering with heat.

Anna's boulder was near the top of a rugged hill three-quarters of a mile south of where Craig Eastern had camped, across the narrow talus saddle from where they had found his corpse in a bed of rattlesnakes. Between her and Eastern's camp the saddle flattened out, made a table of broken slate.

Anna studied it through the gla.s.ses. It was the only possible place in a three-mile radius of the ridge where Craig had camped. In the shadowless light she could see a game trail along the spine of the ridge she camped on and down to the land bridge between the two hills.

Again she searched land and sky full circle. For the moment she was alone but for a jet in the northeast quadrant of the sky. Leaving the binoculars behind, she trotted down the ridge, following the faint animal track. Lechugilla spines curved like daggers shin-high. Low, rugged barrel cacti, aptly named "Horse Crippler," pushed up through the rocky soil. No trees, no shrubs more than twenty or thirty inches tall grew on the hills, and the cacti were a foot or more apart, rationing the meager rainfall.

On the land bridge connecting her hill with Eastern's at the head of a long L-shaped ravine, she stopped. Gridding the saddle in her mind, Anna began a foot-by-foot search. The hard ground held no prints, but near the center of the ridge she found what she was looking for: a broken piece of slate, a stone with a scratch on it, and a crushed cactus. Eight feet away, running parallel, was another short line of destruction. Satisfied, she trotted back to her comfortless bivouac.

As the first pinp.r.i.c.k stars dared the blue above the mountains, she camouflaged her pack with sand and pebbles and took up her vigil on the dark side of the terraced stone.

Ten-fifteen brought the moon's silver bulge, pushing up the sky above El Capitan. The desert hills began to itch and skitter with small close life.

Anna began to wait.

Waiting changed from the pa.s.sive to the active, became a burden to bear, a weight to lift with each breath. Time seemed to change direction, flow backward.

I don't do well at this, she thought. Good or bad she ached to make something happen, take action. She pulled out her watch. 11:17. Fourteen minutes had elapsed since she had last checked the time. How many more to go? Thirty? An hour? Never? Irrationally she wondered if she could survive another vigil at the next full moon; if she could survive the next half hour of this one. Surely her nerves, taut an hour and two minutes after moonrise, would begin snapping soon. She'd hear tiny cracks, like rubber bands breaking under pressure, and bit by bit her body would begin to grow numb.

Another waiting, as intense, as desperate, flashed into her mind and she almost laughed aloud. She'd been fifteen, waiting for Dan Woolrick to call. Sylvia had said he'd told Donny he was going to ask her to the Tennis Court dance. All one Sat.u.r.day she'd waited for the phone to ring, afraid even to go to the toilet lest she miss it.

A small comfort: waiting for death was easier than waiting for a boy to call.