Borderline: A Novel Part 15

Martinez took a deep breath and blew it out noisily, then another exhaled on the noise. "Lisa-my wife-is a big yoga person. Can't hurt." He did it again and seemed calmer.

"Lisa just had the baby?" Anna wanted to see if the story would change at all.

"Edgar."

"Eddie?"

"Never. Edgar. Lisa's thesis was on Poe. She thinks the man was the greatest writer of the nineteenth century."

Anna guessed Martinez was in his mid-forties. Lisa was probably the second wife. Or the third. A twenty-something wanting her own family on the tail end of her husband's, whose children were already grown and gone. It was common enough: Sir Paul McCartney was frolicking with a child who would graduate from college when Papa was an octogenarian. Anna had never much liked the picture, but she suspected it was more because of the iniquities of aging from gender to gender than because it was evil in and of itself. Money was a factor, so the child might lose a father at an early age but there would be a Ferrari in the offing to take the edge off her grief.

Where the heck was Paul? She looked at her watch. It had died at twenty past three. "What time is it?" she demanded.

"No watch. It's my day off."

Anna remembered they were in the twenty-first century and rolled the satellite phone over so she could see its face. Paul had headed back down no more than forty-five minutes ago. It would be an hour before she could begin he e sto expect him. She wished she'd had him leave some of the water. There was an inch left in Helena's cup and the baby was fast asleep. Absurd as it was, Anna could not bring herself to drink it.

"If you'll tell me the rest of the story, I promise I won't do anything as horrific as preferring live babies to dead ones again," Martinez said.

He'd recovered his sense of humor. The least Anna could do was to pretend she'd recovered hers. She proffered a fake laugh. The sound amused her so much she laughed outright. It would be good to have a distraction.

"Sure," she said. "But no asking to hold Helena."

"Holding babies is the best therapy there is," Martinez said.

"You're sure warm and fuzzy for a Texas ranger," Anna grumbled. "What ever happened to stiff upper lip and smile when you say that, pardner?"

Martinez just smiled. She was beginning to like the smile. No light but that from the moon and the desert, his big white teeth in his dark face put her in mind of the Cheshire cat.

"So after the C-section . . ." Martinez cued her.

Anna told him the rest. Carmen's death, Lori's, Easter's probable demise; he heard it all with solemn dignity, none of it yanking him up by his roots the way the news of the woman in the strainer had. Freddy Martinez was somehow connected to the dead woman, to the baby she held on her lap, a connection that moved him from rage to exultation and back again.

Careful not to disturb Helena, Anna moved the Glock closer to her thigh. Until she knew what that connection was she would keep both it and the baby close.

TWENTY.

Shortly after nine o'clock Darden was riding down from the Chisos with a seasonal ranger. The dinner was still in full swing and he hated to leave but it wasn't his choice; it was Judith's. Word that shots had been fired on the border resulting in the injury or death of tourists had become common knowledge almost before Darden had made it back through the gift shop to the dining hall. This common knowledge was not accurate. The few known facts had been pa.s.sed through imagination, misinformation and self-interest until the final result was as screwy and varied as the end of a children's game of Rumor.

Judith knew this phenomenon better than most. "I don't care what is true," she'd whispered to Darden after giving him his orders. "I care what I can use."

Shots fired on the Rio Grande should come in handy in the next few days while she hammered out her platform on border control. He could have dashed out and tried to corner Bernard Davies, but he doubted that would do anything but get the ranger's hackles up. Staying out of the way until they'd gotten things under control was the better part of valor and, too, he didn't want to miss Judith's announcement speech.

She was stellar: strong and smart and convincing without losing her charm. Unfortunately the press-and it was they who this week in the wilds was primarily aimed at-were distracted by the smell of blood from the direction of the border. Several had disappeared but came wandering back, looking disappointed. Gerry, he didn't see again. She must have gotten in on the excitement one way or another.

The mayor's entourage had no shortage of vehicles but in his experience, car trips bred conversation, so Darden cadged a ride from a boy ranger. The kid had to be twenty-one-he had a gun on his hip-but with his downy cheeks and acne, he looked about fifteen. Clearly it galled him that he was patrolling campgrounds when the most exciting thing that had happened all season was happening without him. A good subject to pump for gossip, Darden thought.

As it turned out, no pumping was necessary. It hadn't taken but one interested look-and that was overkill-to set the kid off. Boy Ranger was anxious to let Darden-whom he mistakenly thought was still Secret Service, a delusion Darden did not disabuse him of-know that, though not chosen to help with the rescue, he was definitely in the know.

"I gotta make one more pa.s.s through the campground before I head down," the kid said. "You'd be surprised how much trouble campers can get up to."

Darden would be surprised but he didn't say so. "You figure those people on the river were camping?" The segue was about as awkward as it could get, but it forced the conversation Darden wanted back on track.

"Oh, yeah, for sure," the kid said. "They were with this commercial outfit out of Terlingua. There's been radio traffic about it all night. A couple of people were shot, from what it sounds like, and there was a ranger from Rocky Mountain on the trip with her husband and kids, I guess."

The kid drove like little old ladies are supposed to and seldom do. He gripped the steering wheel at an eleven and one position and leaned forward as if he was afraid the car would try to break away on its own if he let down his guard for an instant. If the kid didn't have neck and back trouble already, he would by the time he was thirty. Which, at the rate they were creeping around the snaky black-top between tent sites, he'd be by the time they started down to headquarters.

"They didn't know what they were doing and lost the raft at the slide. That's a rapid about a mile or so in," the kid said. "I've been through it half a dozen times. It's a piece of cake if you know how to read the water."

Darden knew he was supposed to be impressed so he murmured: "Impressive," and all was well; the kid powered on.

"Was the ranger leading the trip?" Darden threw in to keep the kid on subject.

"No, the ranger was this woman named Anna Pigeon. She got mixed up in some funny business on Isle Royale and killed a guy. I guess she flipped out over it and they put her on administrative leave. From what I heard, it was a righteous shooting. Me, I wouldn't bat an eye. So you have to shoot a bad guy? Isn't that what we're hired on for?"

The last bit sounded like a quote and Darden wondered who the lucky ranger was that this boy wanted to be like. He didn't have any desire to meet him.

"Anyway, they didn't make the rapids and lost all their gear."

Finally they were done with the dangerous campground patrol and turning onto the main-the only-road leading down from the Chisos Mountain Lodge to the park headquarters below. Darden heaved a sigh of relief before he could stop himself. He'd wanted the gossip, but the kid was a pain in the patootie, the sort of person who drains the life out of life by trying too hard. It occurred to Darden to overlook it due to the ranger's youth, but he didn't. This kid would be the same at thirty and forty and fifty, mid-level boring at some oversized firm, kissing up and talking down.

Darden took off his seat belt. Not that the kid was so bad it made him suicidal but, with his present physique, there was no way to get comfortable with the belly band cutting one way and the shoulder strap another.

The kid slammed on the brakes and Darden nearly bashed his head on the dashboard.

"You have to wear your seat belt in all government vehicles," he said. "Safety issues." Then, realizing he sounded like the little prig he was, he added: "I don't bother with them when I'm on my own, when your number is up, it's up, right?"

"Riiiight," Darden said sourly, and put the belt back on.

"What was it I heard about shots being fired?" Darden said when they had again reached their snail's pace. The ride with the kid had been a bad idea, but he might as well get out of it what he could.

"I guess somebody was shooting at them or something."

The boy ranger went on after that, but Darden had quit listening. The opening sentence didn't bode well for even a sc.r.a.p of truth making it into subsequent statements.

HEADQUARTERS WAS humming. The rescue team had returned with the victims, the ambulance was back, half a dozen cars were parked hurriedly in the front lot and all the lights were on. The boy ranger insisted on escorting Darden in, probably in hopes of being included in whatever was going on inside. He wasn't. The chief ranger wasn't particularly thrilled to have Darden show up unannounced, either, but Darden was good at ingratiating himself when the need arose. He poured on humility salted with a need to understand the park's issues and was allowed to join the group in the conference room. He took a chair in a corner, out of the limelight and the line of fire, and proceeded to vanish as best he could by looking older and fatter and sleepier than he actually was, a person of no import, n.o.body to be reckoned with. Wallpaper, Darden liked to think of it. In moments he was forgotten.

The room was s.p.a.cious and, during the day, probably had a spectacular view of the mountains. At this hour the big square windows on the southwest side of the conference table showed as black mirrors. On the intorsd aernal wall were three good photographs of scenic stuff and one in black and white of the park in the early days, but other than that it looked like any of a hundred conference rooms Darden had wallpapered.

Bernard Davies sat at the head of the table in an office chair made to match the oak of the table. He had it tilted back as far as it would go to accommodate his long legs and sat with his right ankle crossed over his left knee, exposing eight inches of white sock. His left hand rested on the ankle, looking too big and too rawboned for a man with an office job. Beside him was a compact man wearing wire-rimmed gla.s.ses. He looked to be in his forties, but had already lost most of his hair. What remained was still dark brown and curled over the tops of his ears and collar like fringe on a threadbare carpet. Darden remembered he was the head of the law enforcement wing for the park but couldn't recall his name. Bad PR. He was slipping. Once he got Judith into the governor's mansion he would step down, he promised himself. Judith needed a sharper man than he'd become. A younger man.

The head of law enforcement had his elbows on the table and an open, sympathetic look on his face that Darden bet got him a lot more information in a week than the old hard-line cops got in a lifetime. Across from him was the river district ranger, Freddy Martinez. He was dressed like a cowboy, down to his high-heeled boots, a Mexican cowboy-vaquero, that was what they called themselves. Darden knew a lot about Martinez; he was so outspoken about the evils of closing the border between the park and its companion villages on the other side of the Rio Grande that Judith had figured she might have some trouble with him, or be able to use him as a foil if he wasn't all that bright. Darden was surprised how good-looking he was. Sitting comfortably in one of the swivel chairs, a foam coffee cup in his hand, he didn't give off the aura of a fanatic, but one never knew.

The others-there were six of them if the baby was counted-were at the other end of the table. Had he no clue what was going on, Darden would have known where the power was by the obvious separation between Us and Them. Rangers and tourists or, in this case, victim tourists. A double Them.

The three teenagers, two obviously brother and sister if not fraternal twins, and the third, looking like she was going to burst into tears at any moment, he spent little time on. They were as lost as sheep and he was pretty sure the boy ranger had been mistaken. He didn't peg any one of them as belonging to the older couple. The woman sitting, holding the baby, had to be the Anna Pigeon Boy Ranger had waxed so derisive about. The fallen ranger from Rocky Mountains, wherever the heck that was. Montana probably. One of the square states in the middle of the country, anyway.

She was small, her hair was a bird's nest, dried blood or catsup or mud speckled her face and arms. The shirt she was sort of wearing was ripped till it would have put a bag lady to shame and she was no spring chicken, forties at a guess. But she didn't look crazy and she didn't look like the sort of person who gave up without a fight. Or gave up with a fight, for that matter. She struck Darden as the kind whose corpse would kick you three days after you shot her.

Davies and the law enforcement ranger-whose name Darden still couldn't recall-didn't see her that way. They were too professional to want to let their condescension show but not good enough actors ense to do it up thoroughly. In the tone of their voices and the tiredness of their smiles Darden could see that they didn't want to deal with her as a fellow ranger, as another law enforcement professional, as a peer of any kind. It was more comfortable for them to put her in the role of poor little crazy middle-aged victim. A waste, Darden thought, one of their own was front and central to the incident they wanted to investigate and they were ignoring her.

There were reasons: she wasn't in her own jurisdiction-cops, even tree cops, didn't like anybody else stirring in their pot-and she was in bad odor with the central office. Cooties were not merely a malady of elementary school children. Adults were as vulnerable as any third-grader. n.o.body wanted to get somebody else's cooties on them. But Darden guessed it was much simpler than that. Anna Pigeon was a woman and women were easier to deal with when they were cast as mommies and wives and victims, roles most of them had never played from a time before many were born.

Underestimating women was the last gasp of male dominance, Darden figured. He used to do it himself. A first lady of the U.S.A. had cured him of that before he was thirty. She was little like this Pigeon woman and ladylike and perfectly groomed and soft-spoken and he'd mistaken that for being weak. It nearly cost him his career. He'd not made the same mistake again with any woman.

Anna Pigeon might look like a waif out of a d.i.c.kens novel but she was taking in everything that was said, scanning the table the way he scanned a room, looking for anything amiss. Women noticed different things than men did. Darden hadn't exactly made a study of it, but he'd paid attention. Female agents were better at noticing personal details and interpreting them: unironed shirts, beard growth, body language, vocal tones, sidelong glances, lapses in personal hygiene, cosmetic surgery, hair dye, what clothing cost and where it came from. In the political jungle this paid off more often than watching for the glint of gun barrels in windows or bulges under sport coats.

The man standing behind her chair-Darden a.s.sumed he was her husband by the way he was standing guard over her-interested Darden as much as the Pigeon woman. He didn't look any better than she did, white hair, a little too long for corporate work, was matted on one side and sticking out in wires on the other. His face was drawn with fatigue and years, his clothes were filthy and torn. Scratches marked his arms and his legs between the drooping cargo shorts and the battered Tevas. Yet he was utterly dignified. No, dignified wasn't the right word. There wasn't any sense of cla.s.s consciousness or pride. More that he seemed completely comfortable in his own skin, completely devoid of insecurities. He was still as an oak tree is still on a windless day; the life is there, and the strength, but what one notices is the welcoming shade.

Darden figured he'd like Mr. Pigeon if he ever got the chance to know him. He doubted Judith would have much interest in him. He didn't look like a man who could be used. That's what Darden had been sent here for; things and facts and people Judith could use. Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon didn't look like good bets. He was turning his attention to the three college kids when the door to the conference room opened and a tall woman with tightly permed gray hair slipped noiselessly in. A secretary, n.o.body but secretaries had so soft a footfall and so firm a determination. They had to be trained in it in secretarial school but Darden could never get one of them to admit it. They'admso d just laugh and say, "Oh you!" She leaned down to whisper in Bernard's ear.

"Good. Thank you, Darlene." Darlene whispered out and they all sat quietly, watching the open door till she returned with another woman whom they had apparently been expecting.

"Thanks, Lisa, you're a lifesaver," Bernard said as a Hispanic woman in her late thirties stepped into the conference room. She looked ordinary: nice eyes, a little thick around the middle, black hair with a stylish salon cut, Levi's over a broad, alluring bottom and a very generous bosom. Very generous. Anna Pigeon seemed to find her extraordinary. She looked startled when the name Lisa was proffered. Then the set of her mouth changed subtly and she looked pleased or respectful. Darden wasn't sure which. Maybe both.

"Hi, baby," Martinez said, and stood to give his wife his chair.

She didn't sit but walked around to the "Them" end of the table. "Is this the famous river baby?" she asked Anna.

"That's it," Bernard said. "Thanks again, Lisa. You can take it into my office if you'd be more comfortable there."

Lisa ignored him, waiting for Anna to answer her question. "Yes," the ranger said. She didn't offer up the child and there was a fierceness in her manner that Darden didn't understand unless the baby was her grandchild and her daughter was one of the victims of the "shots fired" reports circulating up at Chisos Lodge.

"Do you have a name for her?" Lisa asked, as if she and Anna and the baby were alone in the room.

"Helena," Anna Pigeon said, and she finally held out her arms so Lisa could take the baby.

"Helena and I are going to dinner," Lisa said, smiling down at the woman with the empty arms. "Then I'll bring her back to you."

"Lisa, we haven't decided-" the chief ranger began.

Lisa Martinez shook her head fractionally and he stopped mid-sentence. She smiled again at Anna and took the infant from the room. Before they had all settled back into their chairs there was a gabble of noise from the hallway and the door was opened again by Darlene, who did not look pleased.

"Mayor Pierson," she said flatly.

Smiling, Judith managed to slip by the secretary and still appear to have been ushered in.

Darlene wasn't the only one displeased. This was a bad idea and one Judith had not shared with Darden.

He half rose, hoping that she had come down the mountain in the shank of the evening merely to give her good old Darden a ride back to his cabin. No such luck. She settled into a chair on the Us end of the table with the aplomb of one for whom the meeting has been called and nodded graciously at Bernard Davies, granting him permission to rperon esume his job.

Darden suppressed a groan. Had he not been feeling so sorry for himself, he would have felt sorry for the chief ranger. Bernard cleared his throat, probably trying to think of a way to throw her out, get his conference room back, and he might have done it, too, had Judith not preempted the decision.

Leaning in a bit, not flirty but conveying sincerity, she looked Davies in the eyes and said: "I sure appreciate what you're doing." Without saying so she made it sound like he'd invited her, that this was her party.

Darden eyed her narrowly. Her linen trousers were still unwrinkled and her silk blouse had not wilted. The short blond bob was neatly in place and her makeup perfect, but she had a feverishness in her eyes. Drugs would have been the first thing that popped into Darden's mind, but Judith didn't do drugs. As far as he knew, she didn't. After the wink from Kevin, he was beginning to think he didn't know as much about Judith as he'd believed.

s.e.x was his second thought, but if it was a roll in the hay with Kevin or anybody else, it had not left her languorous or satisfied. Judith was avid, greedy, not so the general public would notice, but Darden could see it. He thought she was afraid, as well, and anything that frightened Judith was bound to terrify him.

TWENTY-ONE.

I know you've gone through this all before for Jessie and I know you're tired so I'll try not to make this any longer than I have to." The chief ranger was talking, Bernard Davies. Anna knew him vaguely from a forty-hour refresher they'd attended in Apostle Islands some years before. He'd been a district ranger at Great Sand Dunes, if she remembered correctly. She tried to concentrate on what he was saying but she found herself watching the door through which Lisa had gone with Helena. Anna had been dead wrong about Freddy Martinez's wife. She wasn't number two or three; she was his first love and mother of two children, a nineteen-year-old son and Edgar. Edgar had been, as Martinez had put it on the ride out from the canyon, "a pleasant surprise."

Lisa had volunteered to serve as temporary wet nurse for Helena. For this Anna loved her, but she suspected she would have liked her even if she hadn't proved useful. The baby was a curious thing, Anna thought. She left an empty place in Anna's lap when she was taken to dinner with the generous Lisa Martinez, rather like when a cat jumped off her lap. The fleeting moment of acceptance and comfort was gone, replaced by a sense of freedom to move. Realizing she was holding her arms in an awkward bowl ready to accept baby or kitten, Anna relaxed them and let them lay in her lap. They were heavy, so much so she wondered if she would be able to lift them again when the time came.

"Mrs. Davidson?"

Lost in her thoughts, Anna hadn't been following the conversation around the conference table. A prolonged silence brought her back from her woolgathering expedition. All eyes were upon her.

"Mrs. Davidson?" Bernard Davies said again.

That was her. Anna was Mrs. Davidson. "Yeah. Right," she said, shaking her head to clear it. "Sorry. Tireder than I thought, I guess." Did Bernard recognize her from the Apostle Islands cla.s.s? For reasons she could not put her finger on, she believed he did. The "Mrs. Davidson," once a t.i.tle of respect, had become one of dismissal in certain circles. Ranger Pigeon, or Ms. Pigeon, or simply Anna, would have put them on a more equal footing. The chief ranger was putting distance between himself and her, she could feel it as clearly as if he'd straight-armed her, but she hadn't a clue why he would act that way.

He didn't keep her in the dark.

"I understand you're on administrative leave from Rocky," he said. "Down here on vacation?"

Bernard had called her chief ranger. Anna had hoped her lapse into tears in Vincent James's office had been confidential, but she knew the hope was in vain. Nothing was confidential but that which was kept in one's own skull. Records were subpoenaed, people talked or, if they didn't talk, they told by their silences. Every move Bernard made, the inflections in his voice, the way his eyes slid away from her when she tried to meet his gaze, told her he believed her to be a broken vessel. The use of her married name let her know that he preferred it that way. When he'd first laid eyes on her-given that he'd erased Apostle Islands from his mind-she'd been holding a baby. That, too, would count against her. Women with babes in arms were seen as victims. Not that there was malice in it, but they were to be protected, given parking places nearer the supermarket doors, and first, in theory at least, to be handed into the lifeboats when the ship was going down.

Anna didn't know whether to fight it, give in to it or laugh. In the end she did nothing; she answered the chief's question. "Yes. Vacation."

Relief flickered momentarily in Bernard's eyes and she knew he was well aware of what he was doing, that he was intentionally putting her on a shelf-or out to pasture. She flattered herself that it was because he knew she would not let go of this, administrative leave or not, till she had found out who killed the three women and where Helena would go from here. Flattered herself because even as she enjoyed the thought, she was aware it was not true. Bernard just wanted her in a pigeonhole where he would not have to deal with her.

Anna smiled at him. This was one pigeon it was going to be hard to label and forget. The smile bothered him and he looked quickly to Paul. Anna was surprised until she caught sight of herself in the black mirrors night had made of the windows. The smile on her face had a wolfish quality, a tinge of the cold of a Michigan winter hardening the edges.

"Mr. Davidson-"

"Paul." In the mirror of gla.s.s Anna saw her husband's smile as he put things on a less formal basis. There was nothing cold in it. Nothing warm either. She suspected he was as aware of Bernard's dismissal of her as she was and it was making him wary.

"Paul," the chief said, more comfortable now. "Why don't you sit down?"

Anna had known but not given abut. "ny thought to the fact that Paul, as exhausted as he must be, had chosen to stand behind her and Helena rather than relax. Something, maybe just instinct or habit, was keeping him on guard.

He took the chair next to hers, reached over and lifted one of her hands from her lap and folded it into his, both resting on his thigh. The heat and the touch buoyed Anna up and the t.i.tle Mrs. no longer nettled her. Not for a moment did she doubt it had been meant to belittle but, given her Mr., it never would. She closed her fingers around Paul's and waited to see what Bernard had next on his "to do" list now that he believed she had been summarily disposed of.

"You've been through this with Jessie." He nodded at the head of Law Enforcement, Jessie Wiggins. He'd been with the paramedic and the two rangers who had fetched them off the rim of the canyon. Jessie nodded. As far as Anna knew, Jessie didn't have an agenda and hadn't seemed to react to the news that she was on administrative leave for PTSD or whatever the park had chosen to call it. "I'm going to have to ask you to go through it once more for me. Mayor Pierson of Houston and her head of security, Darden White, are in the park for the border impact convention and asked if they could sit in."