Borderline: A Novel Part 21

"And in return I'd get an up-close-and-personal account of the rescue so my time here won't be totally wasted?"

"That's the deal."

Gerry's gaze was distracted from Anna, flying over her shoulder toward the parking lot. "If you want someone with real connections, here she comes."

"Uh-oh," Darden said with joviality that sounded forced. "Gerry Schneider. Watch out, Anna, she'll be dragging every skeleton you ever had out of your closet and have them dancing the samba before you know it."

"h.e.l.lo, Darden," Gerry said sweetly, and Anna guessed the two old warhorses had a shared past or wished to have a shared future.

"Anna, you've met Mayor Pierson," Darden said.

"Call me Judith," the mayor said.

She was standing with her back to the sun so Anna could not see her face but, in silhouette, it was clear her shoulders were an inch or so higher than normal and her hands, though not formed into fists, had fingers that curled into claws. Tension radiated from her the way sound will from taut wires when the wind blows.

Before they could settle in, Anna rose from the bench. "I don't know about anybody else, but I'm hungry."

"Mind if I join you?" Gerry asked, echoing Darden's words from his roadside stop.

"That would be great," Anna said. "The more the merrier." She liked Gerry but mostly she was thrilled with the new addition to their impromptu breakfast club because Darden and his mayor almost growled out loud when Gerry crashed the party.

Inside the lodge dining hall, at a table for four near the immense glasehe divs windows overlooking the basin, Anna got a clearer take on Judith Pierson. In contrast to the perfectly pulled-together politician she'd met the previous night, this Judith was pale and pinched, her hair hastily combed and her makeup slapped on rather than applied. Gerry noticed as well. Anna believed if she squinted she would be able to see the reporter's ears p.r.i.c.king up the way dogs' will when they hear a whistle.

Over eggs and bacon Anna told her story. She'd been so caught up in trying to stay alive and put one foot in front of the other, so tired afterward and so busy with Helena, she'd not thought the events through in an orderly manner, but merely snagged bits and pieces as her brain had a free moment. When she was a young woman, she remembered wondering why stay-at-home moms, known to her generation as housewives, didn't write epic novels, create great paintings or memorize all of Shakespeare. They had nothing to do all day but sit around, play with the baby, tidy up, why not be creative? Having spent part of a day and a night with an infant, Anna knew she owed each and every one she'd internally sneered at an apology. It was mind-boggling how all-absorbing caring for an infant was. Cute little aliens who stole one's brain and rendered their body a slave.

With an interested audience and no interruptions, putting the story chronologically, and attempting to put it logically, information and images that had gotten lost resurfaced. Events that she had accepted at the time showed themselves as unacceptable.

She'd finished describing how the woman had appeared caught in the strainer when Gerry said: "Bernard-the chief ranger-thinks she was probably trying to cross to have her baby on American soil and got swept downstream."

Anna hadn't entirely bought into that idea because of the pedicure and the bikini wax, signs of a woman living an urban and urbane life. Hearing Gerry make the statement in the clear light of day, she realized it was absurd.

"That's a tragedy," Judith was saying. "But-"

Clanking her fork down against her plate, Anna cut her off as the scene tried to play out in her mind and failed. "She couldn't have," she exclaimed. "If she wanted to cross she'd do it where there was a road, easy access to a vehicle, maybe a family member or friend waiting to pick her up and get her to a medical facility. The only place that fits that description is Lajitas." Her three dining companions stared at her blankly. They did not know the park.

"Lajitas is almost on the park's western boundary. There's a crossing there, a little bit of development, a road-that sort of thing. Lajitas is one of the places people used to cross back and forth before the border was closed after nine-eleven. That's where a woman wanting to have her baby in America would cross. On that side of the park, anyway."

"And she must have fallen and been swept downstream," Judith said, stating it as known fact rather than conjecture.

"Lajitas is miles from Santa Elena Canyon, two or three at least. Maybe more. We found this woman a mile into the canyon."

"Couldn't she have washed down thereesheile? I mean the cow did and you said rocks and trees were rolling," Gerry said.

"Yes," Anna said. "Easily. But what are the odds she'd still be alive after she did? Three or four miles of wild river bashing a very pregnant woman against everything that floats and everything that doesn't; she'd have drowned before she'd been in the water three hundred yards."

"What are you saying?" Gerry said at the same instant Mayor Pierson said: "If she was a strong swimmer-"

"Either she crossed near the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon and lost her footing, which makes no sense, there's nothing there for a woman in her condition to cross for and no easy access to shelter or medical help or even a phone, or this was no accident. She was put in the river by somebody who wanted her dead and wanted it to look like an illegal border crossing that had tragic results."

Saying the words, Anna knew she should have thought of this before. Once seen it was obvious. The next step in the equation was equally obvious.

"They wanted her and her baby dead," she said. What she didn't add because it was too frightening to speak aloud was maybe they-whoever they were-still wanted the baby dead.

Stunned by these conclusions, Anna ate mechanically while the conversation clattered around her. Helena's mother, nine months pregnant, had a bikini wax. That bit of information should have screamed louder than it had. To have that bit of vanity attended to in the late stages of pregnancy didn't suggest poor Mexican girls keeping up with the latest trends. It spoke of pampering and spas and a social stratum where services could be bought at exorbitant prices. According to Chrissie, and she had been confident of her observations, the dress was a cheap rayon number from Wal-Mart.

The woman had been taken, forced to change into cheap clothes, transported to the mouth of the canyon and dumped in the river, possibly after knocking her unconscious for good measure. The water provided a cause of death-drowning-wreaked havoc on trace evidence and, if the perpetrator was lucky, obscured identification of the body. Heavy rains and the river rising had been icing on the cake, stealing the body away before it could be autopsied.

"Homicide," Gerry said, and though Anna suspected she was not a ghoul at heart, she heard the glee in the reporter's voice. This was a story worth hanging around for.

"Looks like it," Anna said.

Gerry started scribbling on her yellow legal pad. Anna paid no attention; she was interested in Darden, sitting across from the reporter. He'd been the one to call this meeting of sorts, and now it was clear he wanted to get away as soon as he could. His physical self was shrinking away from the mayor as if his body was not waiting for his mouth to make the excuses before it removed itself from the premises.

Judith must have sensed the incipient exodus as well. She laid her fine-boned hand on his beefy arm to pin him down. Darden flinched and Anna wondered what sort of relationship the two had. It was moe has are than professional, that much was clear, but the mayor didn't touch him like a woman touched a lover.

"This homicide sounds convenient," Judith said. "The ranger you are staying with, Frederick Martinez, is speaking to the convention today on the evils of the border closing after nine-eleven and continuing to keep it closed today. Handy that such a tragedy happens at the moment he needs to highlight his argument with an emotional appeal none of us can help but identify with."

"Freddy can't speak at the convention-" Anna began but stopped mid-sentence. That was what Lisa's cryptic statements about unemployment referred to. Freddy was a government employee. As an employee, and therefore a representative of the government, he was not free to express his political beliefs. The Park Service cut rangers a lot of slack on this issue, but to fly in the face of the rule in one's own park on topics under debate by local politicians that affected that park would probably get Freddy fired. He could lose his retirement. Anna marveled at the good face his wife had been able to put on what had to be a family disaster.

"Originally he turned the invitation down," Judith said. "I had my secretary keeping tabs on who was to be here and what their arguments were likely to be. It was my guess that he had turned the invitation down because his arguments for opening the border were threadbare. His premise about the death of the little border towns and the vacuum it left to be filled by crooks and drug dealers was old news from before the Mexican drug wars broke out."

Gerry looked up from her pad of paper. "Are you saying this park ranger murdered a pregnant woman and tried to kill her fetus to get the border reopened? Is this guy a fanatic or a lunatic or a psycho or what?"

"All I am saying," the mayor stated quietly, "is that it looks as if Ranger Martinez has decided he now has an argument worth making."

Darden eased his arm out from under Judith's and glanced at his watch. "If you ladies will excuse me," he said as he pushed back his chair. "I've got to meet Gordon and Kevin in a few minutes. Don't worry about the check." He winked at Gerry then smiled to include Anna in the gesture. "I'll have it put on the mayor's tab."

"Darden-" The mayor said his name with a desperation that startled Anna. The fragility that had vanished while she listened to the story of the river incident and discussed Freddy's nifty new argument was back. For the briefest of moments she sounded like a little girl afraid of being left alone in the dark.

"You'll be listening to this Martinez?" Darden asked her.

"I guess." The childlike quality was fading but not yet gone.

"I'll see you there," Darden said with a depth of rea.s.surance that only served to confuse Anna further. Maybe they were family, niece and uncle or cousins. They looked nothing alike and the vibe between them wasn't that of father and daughter, not quite.

In the few seconds the exchange required Judith Pierson's expression had hardened, matureeard/did. "When you see Kevin, tell him I need to see him, will you?"

Darden didn't answer right away and Gerry's eyes took on a predatory gleam. Maybe this was the scandal she'd sensed brewing. "What about the Martinez thing?" Darden avoided the request.

"Tell Kevin to come and get me out," the mayor said, and smiled. She may have thought the smile was seductive or suggestive. To Anna it was snaky, no lips and all fangs.

"Ladies," Darden said by way of excusing himself, and walked away.

"I'm disappointed you didn't bring the baby," Judith said to Anna. "I only got a glimpse of her last night but I would love to see her again. Is she staying with you at the Martinezes' place? Where is that, Terlingua?"

There was no need for the mayor of Houston to ingratiate herself with an out-of-favor ranger from a park not even in her state, so Anna figured the interest was genuine and answered.

"For now," she said. "At some point the child-care people will take over."

"And you don't want that," the mayor said. The woman had more insight than Anna had been prepared to grant her. That or Anna was more transparent than she liked to think she was.

Anna didn't say anything. She stirred her coffee so she'd seem to be doing something and stared out the window. Judith could help Helena; Anna wasn't fool enough to think she couldn't. Had Judith Pierson not been the mayor of a huge and rich city she would have been able to help Helena. Judith was a woman who knew her way around the system, Anna guessed. The woman sounded sympathetic and Anna's first impression of her as a person who might kill and eat the children was undoubtedly off base. Still, she didn't want Judith's help with placing Helena and she didn't know why. Gerry's help she'd solicited, bartered for, and Gerry, well connected as she might be, probably didn't have the clout Judith had to cut through red tape.

"That's an area I'm familiar with," Judith said gently. "Just let me know if you need anything."

"Thanks," Anna said. "I will-and I will need something." She pushed as much grat.i.tude into her tone as she could. Because she had taken against the mayor was not reason enough to turn away anybody who might be in a position to make Helena's life better.

"I do believe it's time," Judith said, and Anna was glad of a change of subject. "Are either of you going to come see what Ranger Martinez will make of this unfortunate circ.u.mstance?"

Anna thought three murders rated more than "unfortunate circ.u.mstance," but being a woman who could enjoy understatement in better circ.u.mstances she mustered a smile. "I think I'll pa.s.s," she said. "I expect I've heard most of it before."

Judith left Anna and Gerry sitting at the table nursing their third cups of coffee. Anna had the day to kill before she met Cyril, Steve and Chrissie for dinner at a place in e atd GTerlingua they had raved about. The Starlight Theatre on the Terlingua Porch; at least it should be colorful.

After a moment she poked the disreputable leather satchel at Gerry's feet with her toe. "What else have you got in there?"

"The rest of my life," Gerry answered. "What do you need?"

"Do you have a laptop and satellite hookup?"

"Does the Pope like long dresses? Of course I do."

She lifted the shapeless sack and plopped it on the table between the salt and pepper shakers and the crumby toast plates. Having cleared a place in front of her, she set up her laptop and phone. "What are we looking for?"

"Bernard, or maybe it was Jessie, said this had happened before. That a woman trying to cross the Rio Grande to get medical treatment had been carried downriver and drowned. Can you find something on that, if it happened?"

"Nothing easier," Gerry said. From one of the satchel's many zipped pockets she took a pair of reading gla.s.ses, the frames a tiger print with sparkles at the temples, and put them on the end of her nose. "Okay."

While Gerry searched new databases for stories that related to what they were after, Anna watched three vultures drying their wings on the top of a mountain, a small mountain from where she sat but big enough if it were to be measured from the ground up. Black and wide-winged, the center bird on a high finger of rock, the two flanking on slightly lower crags, they put Anna in mind of the thieves on either side of Jesus at Golgotha. That put her in mind of Helena's mother crucified on deadwood and garbage. Had she been sacrificed on the altar of Freddy Martinez's belief that the greater good would be opening the border between Big Bend and Mexico, that the new and better life breathed into Boquillas and San Vicente and Santa Helena-villages where the economy had been all but shut down with a single stroke of a pen-would balance out the evil of two murders?

Anna couldn't imagine Freddy in that story. A man with a wife and children, a man with a family he appeared to love, might kill other men or even women, but a pregnant woman? Anna doubted it. Unless she was more to him than a symbol, unless she posed a threat to the life he had or wanted, then this hypothetical dad could do it. Kill for personal reasons and pose the body for political reasons. Was this woman blackmailing Freddy, threatening to tear his family apart, take from him all he had? Was she carrying his child?

That wasn't beyond the realm of possibility but, even with the proposed obliteration of his world, Anna couldn't see Freddy killing the fetus. Racism was a wretched thing, the putting on of individual traits to an entire race of human beings, but in Anna's experience, Mexican men loved kids, venerated mothers-to-be. Not that one didn't get knocked off now and then for the usual reasons, but she felt it would be a harder murder for them than for people raised in certain other cultures.

Had another person killed the woman and Freddy helped dispose of the body in such a way iein /dit would look like an accidental death? That didn't work, not unless Freddy and the supposed murderer were such dimwits they hadn't known the woman was alive when they put her in the water. Particularly since it would seem one of the major motivations for putting her into the river while she was still alive was so the corpse, when it was found, would attest to death by drowning.

Regardless of Anna's continuing belief in Freddy's intrinsic humanity, she wasn't as comfortable leaving Helena in the care of his wife as she had been when she left that morning. That was another point in Freddy's favor: if he'd wanted the baby dead, why had he asked his wife to feed it? To get his hands on it before child services whisked it away? To kill Helena before a DNA test could prove she was his daughter?

That was a little draconian, Anna thought. With the mother dead, who would be demanding the DNA test? And, in this day and age, outside of his own family, it wouldn't have much in the way of repercussions if it was Freddy's child. Lisa might forgive Freddy an affair, but she would never forgive him for murdering a baby to hide it from her. At least Anna didn't think she would.

Two anti-Freddy facts were inescapable: Freddy knew something about the drowned woman and Freddy was sitting pat in the shooter's seat when Anna and Paul had climbed out of the canyon.

"Well, that didn't take long," Gerry said.

"What've you got?" Anna hitched her chair around to the end of the table so she and the reporter could both see the computer screen.

"An article written eight months after nine-eleven, about the time when the border was closed between the park and the villages."

They read together and silently. The article was short. Two days after the border was closed a young mother, the wife of one of Big Bend's Mexican firefighters, the Diablos, had been stopped by Border Patrol while trying to cross the river with her mother and mother-in-law. In the confusion of the border patrolman trying to turn the women back and the anxious women, one of whom was in labor, trying to explain their predicament, the pregnant woman had fallen. The river wasn't at flood level, but it was high enough she couldn't regain her footing and drowned.

The surviving women, mother and mother-in-law, had never been told the border had been closed.

After three days of searching, a young river ranger named Freddy Martinez found her body in a strainer. The body was recovered and taken out by way of Rio Grande Village. The ranger who had found the dead woman attacked a border guard and had to be pulled off by his fellow rangers. The Park Service attributed the uncharacteristic behavior to fatigue and stress. Martinez had refused to be taken off the search. Another ranger told the reporter that Martinez had been without sleep for close to seventy-two hours.

The border guard did not press charges.

"Poor Ranger Martinez," Gerry said. "The worst kind of deja vu all over again."

"That or revenge," Anna said. "Re-create the crime but this time the victim is 'one of theirs'?"

"I thought the woman you found was Mexican?"

"Hispanic," Anna said, and: "Maybe. Her baby has hazel eyes."

Gerry suffered a moment's confusion, her sharp eyes clouding till Biology 101 came to her rescue. "Right," she said. "Dominant gene."

"n.o.body in America is all of one thing or all of another anymore," Anna said. "But it's interesting."

"It is interesting," Gerry said. Her eyes were again going out of focus.

Not confusion, Anna guessed. "What are you thinking?" she demanded.

"Nothing."

"No woman is ever thinking nothing," Anna said.

"It has nothing to do with Freddy."

Anna tried to stare her down but it was clear this was the sort of secret Gerry had decades of practice keeping from more persistent and alarming inquisitors than Anna.

Giving up with good grace, Anna leaned back in her chair. The coffee cup tempted her for a moment but one could only drink so much of the stuff before it warped the taste buds. "The article says Freddy stayed up seventy-two hours, then attacked a border guard," Anna said. "You don't hear a lot of reports of ranger brutality. We are a peaceful people for the most part, trained to use our radios rather than our guns, teach bad people to be good conservators of the wilderness and campers to work and play well together. Yet this river ranger with a nice wife and a kid at home drives himself to the edge of his endurance on a body recovery, then punches out the first border patrol agent he sees."

Gerry raised her eyes from the computer screen where she'd already clicked onto another train of thought.

"Freddy knew the woman killed in 2002," Anna said. "Don't you figure? Why else all the dramatics?"

Gerry glanced back at the laptop. Anna didn't know if it was merely a habit that gave her time to think or if she'd continued the research while Anna deliberated the old-fashioned way.

"The article didn't say he did," Gerry replied.

"Freddy hasn't said he did either. He hasn't mentioned the case at all. The two mirroring each other so closely, wouldn't you think he'd have brought it up, told the story of when he stayed up for three days running? Most people would have."

Anna stopped talking and let her gaze wander back out the window. The mountains were compelling, ever-changing as the angle of light changed. For a while now she a ste'd not felt like herself, or like the self she remembered. The pit was new, the fear of spiraling down until she was everybody's albatross and n.o.body's friend. Or wife.

But the pit wasn't the whole of the difference in her internal landscape. Mindscape. Fog was a part of it. She'd always been good at mult.i.tasking. For the past week even mono-tasking had been an effort. Part of it was this was not her park, not her crime to solve, not her evil to root out. Most of her consciousness wanted to pull away, go to the movies-if there were any movies within a day's drive of Big Bend-sit in the desert sun and watch lizards. She would have, too, she told herself, if there was anybody trustworthy to look after Helena, if Cyril's cow was found safe and growing fat on beaver tail cactus, if Freddy would shut up and keep his job.

"Would you?" Gerry's voice brought her back into the dining room.

"Maybe," Anna said. "I'm getting tired of fighting the good fight. If it is a good fight. No. I wouldn't," she said with sudden determination. "Good or bad, this isn't my fight."