Anna Pigeon - Track of the Cat Part 21

Her third day at Fort Jefferson Anna had been made painfully aware of a few administrational oddities of Dry Tortugas National Park: there was no place to hold prisoners and, though they were legally allowed to make arrests, it was highly discouraged by headquarters in Homestead. Two law-enforcement rangers keeping drunken violent shrimpers under guard in the open air for hours till the Coast Guard arrived wasn't a great idea. Transporting them three hours one way to Key West and so leaving the park without law enforcement or EMTs for a day didn't work either.

The best they could do was separate the combatants, bind the ugliest wounds and shoo the lot of them back onboard their boats.

The two shrimpers anch.o.r.ed in the harbor as Anna motored in were family owned. They'd never caused problems, and the lady on one of the boats had a terrific little dog she let Anna pet. Tonight should be quiet. Anna didn't know if she was grateful or not. With only one other ranger-Bob Shaw-in house, neither ever truly had a day off but slept with a radio ready to serve as backup for the person on duty. Quiet promised uninterrupted sleep. Anna supposed that was a good thing. Still, she would have welcomed something to do.

As she backed the Reef Ranger Reef Ranger neatly into the employee dock, Bob Shaw walked down the weathered planking. Opposite where Anna tied up, on the far side of the park pier with its public bathrooms and commercial loading area that the ferries from Key West used, the NPS supply boat, the neatly into the employee dock, Bob Shaw walked down the weathered planking. Opposite where Anna tied up, on the far side of the park pier with its public bathrooms and commercial loading area that the ferries from Key West used, the NPS supply boat, the Activa, Activa, was moored. Like Christmas every Tuesday, but better, the was moored. Like Christmas every Tuesday, but better, the Activa Activa arrived with supplies, groceries, mail and Cliff and Linda. Cliff was the captain, Linda the first mate. New blood was as exciting to the inhabitants of Fort Jefferson as fresh food. The crew of the arrived with supplies, groceries, mail and Cliff and Linda. Cliff was the captain, Linda the first mate. New blood was as exciting to the inhabitants of Fort Jefferson as fresh food. The crew of the Activa Activa could be counted on to bring the latest news and gossip along with other treats and necessities. could be counted on to bring the latest news and gossip along with other treats and necessities.

"Teddy took your stuff up to your quarters for you and stuck the perishables in the refrigerator," Bob said as Anna cut the engine. She tossed him the stern line and he tied it neatly to the cleat on the starboard side. Wind was more or less a constant on DRTO, and the NPS boats were tied to both sides of their slips to keep them from banging into the sides of the dock. Fenders could only do so much when the winds flirted with hurricane force.

"I'll be sure and thank her. Is Teddy in the office?" Anna asked. Teddy, short for Theodora, was Bob's wife.

"Till five, like always." He stood stiffly to one side as Anna heaved towel, fins, snorkel, and water bottle onto the dock.

Bob was a strange fit with the park. He'd been there for eleven years and clearly loved the place. He said, and Anna believed him, that he never wanted to work anywhere else and intended to serve out his remaining six years till retirement at the fort.

Anna suspected his desire to remain in this isolated post was due only partly to his love for the resource. A good chunk of it, she theorized, was because nowhere else could he live such a rich and rewarding fantasy life without coming head-to-head with the cynicism of his fellows.

Fortunately for her, Bob's particular brand of psychosis made him a great ranger.

Swearing he was five-six, though Anna, at five-four, could look him in the eye in flat shoes, he seemed bent on being the poster boy for a benign version of the Napoleon complex. Now, as he readied to go on his evening rounds-showing the flag, boarding boats he deemed suspicious, handing out brochures to newcomers and checking the boundaries because they were there-he wore full gear: sidearm, baton, pepper spray, cuffs, and a Kevlar bulletproof vest. If the man hadn't been such a strong swimmer, Anna's greatest worry would have been that he'd fall overboard and his defensive equipment would sink him like a stone. The only concession he made to the cloying heat was to wear shorts.

Though Anna would never have dreamed of telling him so, they tended to spoil the effect. Not only was he no taller than Anna, but he couldn't have exceeded her one hundred twenty pounds by much either. Like a lot of men who take to the water, most of that was in his chest and shoulders. Chickens would have been insulted to hear his legs compared to theirs.

"Anything up for tonight?" she asked as they made lines fast. Mostly she asked for the fun of hearing Bob's answer. His fantasy, as luck would have it, was that he was the sole protector (she didn't count for reasons of gender, and Lanny hadn't counted for reasons Bob clearly had but was too honorable to speak of) of this jewel in the ocean. Like all other great and honorable lawmen of history, Bob was constantly in danger from the forces of evil. Each and every boat could be smuggling cocaine from Panama, heroin from the east, guns from pretty much anywhere. All shrimpers were ready, willing and able to knife him in the back.

Given that he apparently genuinely believed this despite eleven years in a sleepy port, Anna couldn't help but admire his stalwart courage in facing each day, never late, never shirking. Having been exposed to this criminal-under-every-bush, Marshal Dillon under siege mentality the day she arrived, Anna was pleasantly surprised the first time she'd patrolled with him. Part of honor and duty-and natural inclination probably, though his tough-guy image would never let him admit it even to himself-required he be gracious, polite, and, when he thought no one was looking, overtly kind. Seeing that, Anna had been quite taken with the man and made it a point to resist the temptation to tease him about the boogeymen that lived under his boat. She didn't even resent his s.e.xism. Respect for a superior overrode it, and it wasn't personal. There were no women patrolling the streets of Dodge City, flying fighters over n.a.z.i Germany, or walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Clint Eastwood through the saloon's swinging doors.

Sans petticoat and fan, Anna simply didn't fit into Bob's worldview.

"Did you see the boats on the south side, anch.o.r.ed out a ways, not in the harbor?" Bob asked. He smoothed his sandy-red and handsome mustache with one hand and pointed with the other.

Vaguely Anna remembered pa.s.sing them, but had paid them little mind.

"I saw them."

"They've been here two and a half days. Never come into the harbor. Never visit the fort. Something's up with them."

Anna'd not noticed those things. And they were pertinent. Most folks, if they bothered to come to Garden Key, made use of the harbor and at least paid a curiosity visit to the fort.

"Good eye," Anna said and meant it. "I'll keep close to the radio."

Bob jumped lightly into the second of DRTO's five patrol boats. Only four were working. The fifth was beached behind the dock up on blocks. Bob took the Bay Ranger, Bay Ranger, a twenty-foot aluminum-hulled Sylvan. He seemed to prefer it to the st.u.r.dier Boston Whalers. Maybe because it was quieter, had a lower profile. All the better for sneaking up on evildoers. a twenty-foot aluminum-hulled Sylvan. He seemed to prefer it to the st.u.r.dier Boston Whalers. Maybe because it was quieter, had a lower profile. All the better for sneaking up on evildoers.

Anna shouldered the net bag she used to carry her dive things.

"Oh," Bob said as she turned to go. "You got a big box from New York waiting for you. Teddy said if there's bagels in it, she'll trade you some of her homemade key lime pie for some."

Anna waved Bob off, then stood a moment, habit demanding she do a visual check of an area after an absence of hours. The campground, with s.p.a.ce for only a handful of tents and, other than flush toilets on the public dock, no amenities, was quiet. Because there was so little dirt to be had on Garden Key, overnighters were by reservation only. Picnickers sat at tables nursing beers and sunburns, talking among themselves, families for the most part with lots of little kids scratching at mosquito bites, Kool-Aid smiles adding to the clownish colors of beach towels and bathing suits. Even Bob would have a hard time imagining an evil nemesis in the bunch.

Savoring the fact that she wasn't in a hurry, that, once again, her work for the National Park Service allowed her to rest her eyes and mind on a wonder most people would never take the time to see, she turned her attention to the fort.

Bob's motor's drone a pleasant burr in her ears, as comforting as the hum of bees in summer blooms, she looked across the moat at Fort Jefferson. More than the skysc.r.a.pers of Manhattan, the Golden Gate Bridge, or all of Bill Gates's cyber magic, it impressed her with man's determination to fight the world to a standstill and then reform it in his own design.

Seventy miles out in the sea, on the unprepossessing Bush Key, the magnitude of the effort awed her. Jefferson stood three stories high and was topped with earthworks and ammunition bunkers. A coal-black tower, built as a lighthouse but demoted to a harbor light when the taller lighthouse on Loggerhead Key was finished, thrust above the battlements. The black metal of its skin gave it an unearned sinister aspect. A wide moat, meeting the fortress walls on one side and contained by brick and mortar on the other, ran around the two bastions fronting the structure. Beyond was nothing but the Atlantic. At first the moat had amused Anna. Only in the front and along the eastern wall was it bordered by land. On the two other sides its outer wall separated it only from the sea.

When she'd first seen it, it had struck her as a conceit, the architect slavishly following the cla.s.sic castle moat theme though this fort was set in a natural salt.w.a.ter moat thousands of miles on one side and seventy on the other. Duncan, the island's historian and chief interpreter, had disabused her of that notion. Moats were not merely to keep land troops at bay but ships with malicious intent at their distance.

Trailing a young couple so in love they didn't notice it was too hot to be hanging all over each other, Anna crossed the bridge. As she stepped into the imagined cool and welcome dark of the entryway she heard the shivery sound of children giggling and saw a small head vanish into a stone slot. Anna laughed because heat and boredom had yet to diminish the childlike glee the fort engendered in her: "secret" rooms where ammunition had once been stored, dark and twisted caves where arches met and clashed and crossed at the bastions, designed by an architect who must have foreseen the genius of Escher. The formidable structure was now dissolving back into the sea with infinite slowness. Lime dripped out of solution as rain worked its way through ancient mortar. Stalact.i.tes formed, growing like teeth in the long, long pa.s.sages through the casemates. Standing at a corner and looking down arch after arch after arch, perspective skewed. It was easy to feel as if one were falling through time itself.

t.i.tLES BY NEVADA BARR.

Hard Truth

High Country

Flashback

Hunting Season

Blood Lure

Deep South

Liberty Falling

Blind Descent

Endangered Species

Firestorm

III Wind

A Superior Death

Track of the Cat

Bittersweet

NONFICTION.

Seeking Enlightenment... Hat by Hat