Borderline: A Novel Part 8

Anna handed Paul the b.l.o.o.d.y knife, then slowly insinuated both hands into the abdominal cavity. She cradled the baby's head in one hand and its b.u.t.tocks in the other and lifted it delicately from its mother's womb.

Cyril had brought over the sleeping bag. "The dry-bag didn't keep things all that dry," she apologized, "but I found a bit that the river missed."

She knelt beside Paul and made a cradle of her arms, the sleeping bag a hammock between them.

The fetus-a person now with rights and privileges, an American citizen-lay quietly in Anna's hands. The face was perfect, smooth and relaxed, all the tiny fingers and toes in place. Anna had not sliced off a single one.

"It's a girl," Anna said.

"Wish we had some cigars," Steve murmured from behind her.

"You're supposed to hold it by its feet and whack it," Chrissie said knowledgeably.

The girl wasn't breathing. Anna bent over the child, put her mouth over its mouth and nose and sucked gently. Warm salty liquid came into her mouth. She spat it to one side. The baby looked at her, made a wet gurgling sound and, breathing, closed its eyes again without having uttered a single cry.

"What a trouper," Paul said.

Anna laid the little girl in the down nest Cyril had made for it. Cyril folded a bit of the bag over the baby, the rest trailing sodden and enormous from her to the dry-bag it had been liberated from.

"You have to wash it and cut its cord off," Chrissie said.

"Do you think it could get any milk from its mom?" Anna was asking Paul. The issue of whether dead women lactate for a moment after death wasn't one she'd ever had the need to consider.

"I don't think so. The milk isn't there right away. It has to come in. I think the baby's nursing is what triggers it."

"Too bad. I need a couple strips of cloth to tie the cord." Anna turned back to what she could do rather than what she could not.

Paul cut and tore two strips of fabric from the sleeping bag piled between him and Cyril and handed them to Anna. She tied them on the cord a couple of inches apart then cut between the ties. As she severed the umbilical cord it occurred to her that the second tie wasn't necessary. The mother was beyond any danger of bleeding to death.

For what seemed like a very long time, none of them moved or spoke. They simply watched the baby, held cuddled now in Cyril's arms, nothing but her face showing from the nest of down.

"She needs a name," Steve said at last.

"Maybe she has one. Her father may still be living."

"If he is, why was the mother swimming about in a raging river all by herself two minutes before she was about to give birth? Her father is c Heas a d.i.n.k," Cyril said sharply.

"An aunt, then. Or a grandmother," Anna said.

"She needs a river name," Steve insisted. "It will do irreparable psychological harm to the infant if, during its early developmental stage, it is referred to as it."

"They name them at the orphanage," Chrissie said.

"Oliver Twist," Steve suggested. "Call her Ollie for short? Does anybody still go to orphanages?"

"How about 'Anna,'" Lori said. "Anna saved her."

"No," Anna said. She shook her head and repeated: "No." The prospect filled her with dread. In a moment of pure pagan superst.i.tion she believed if the child were named Anna she would be burdened with a lifetime of memories of violence and death.

"I found her," Chrissie declared. "How about Christine if we're going that route."

"Helena," Paul said. "Santa Elena is a b.a.s.t.a.r.dization of Saint Helena. The name Helena means 'light' or 'torch.' She's the patron saint of empresses."

"Perfecto," Steve said.

"Helena Christina," Chrissie said.

"Get off of it, Chrissie," Cyril said mildly. "Ugh, I got to get up before I can't." Reaching across the butchered corpse of the mother, she held the baby out to Anna.

"I like babies well enough," Cyril said as Anna awkwardly gathered the little creature into her embrace. "But, hey, I got the cow."

"Fair is fair," remarked her brother.

"I didn't get anything," Chrissie complained.

"That is because you were not a good little girl this year," Steve said reasonably. "Come on, Lori. I think the dry-bag Paul found is yours. Help us rifle through your worldly goods in search of loot."

The students left.

Anna, Paul, Helena and the corpse were left under the shale shelf.

"Bring Easter over and we'd have a nativity scene," Paul said.

"A pretty gruesome one," Anna said. "Poor old Mother Mary kicked the bucket."

"You didn't kill her, you know that."

Anna did and felt no guilt on that score. Even if she had killed the baby with her amateur surgery she would have felt no remorse, sadness perhaps and a sense of failure, but not guilt. Both would have coth he died had they not met up with her.

"Somebody did," Anna said.

"Carmen seems to think it was an accident."

"Maybe," Anna said. "But look at her crotch."

"No."

"Oh. Okay. When I was pulling down her panties to make the first cut I saw that she had a Brazilian bikini wax. Her hands and feet are soft and her nails manicured. I don't add those together and get a desperate Mexican mother-to-be wading the river in search of medical a.s.sistance."

Paul said nothing for a while. The sun had returned and Anna welcomed the heat. Life was easier to deal with when one's feet weren't wet. She was getting comfortable holding Helena. The feeling that she would either drop her or crush her trying not to had pa.s.sed. She was dimly aware of the positive sounds of the rest of the group as they began to get warm and dry.

"Somebody put her in the river," Paul said, trying out the idea.

"Somebody dressed her in a cheap dress and put her in the river. The pedicure, manicure and wax would pay for ten dresses like the one she was wearing."

"She was about to give birth to a child and was . . . what? Hit on the head, maybe. Chloroformed, maybe. Something nonlethal but that incapacitated her in such a way, should there be an autopsy, it would indicate she had drowned." Paul tried that thought on for size.

"It seems a bit draconian and complex," he said after a bit. "The murderers I deal with are more hapless individuals with poor impulse control and major anger issues."

"Help me up?" Anna asked.

Paul stood and steadied her as she rose from her knees, the baby in her arms. It would have been easier if she'd handed him the child then scrambled up in the usual way, but Anna wanted to hang on to Helena for a while. Though, in truth, the baby would probably be safer with Paul-he knew babies, he could baptize them, marry them, bury them and arrest them as necessary in between-Anna couldn't shake the sense that Helena was only truly safe as long as she held her.

"I guess you're supposed to feed tiny citizens," Anna said when they'd left the shade for the warmth and cheer of the sunlight.

"She'll last till the cavalry comes."

Anna had completely forgotten about Carmen, climbing up the rockslide in search of a pa.s.sing satellite to bounce her cell phone call off of. She and Paul walked toward the river, where they could look back at the slide where it tumbled down from the canyon's rim.

"I don't see her," Anna said. "Maybe she's all the way out by now."

"No, there she is." Paul stepped behind her and pointed so she could follow the line of his finger with her eyes.

"Nearly to the top," Anna said.

The kids stopped strewing the contents of Lori's dry-bag in the sun and looked where Paul was pointing. A hundred or so feet from the top of the canyon wall, Carmen was crawling to the top of a giant's stair-step of rock.

Steve cupped his hands around his mouth. "Hey," he called. "We've got a baby."

Carmen got to her feet and, hands on hips, looked down at them. "What?" she yelled back.

"A girl. A baby girl," Steve hollered. He scooped the baby from Anna's arms and held it to the sky, the sleeping bag dragging on the ground.

Carmen hooted a gleeful sound and waved both hands over her head.

There was a sharp cracking sound like that of a paddle smacking the side of a metal canoe and the guide pitched forward. Her body left a red smudge where it hit the next ledge twenty feet below, then bounced and was gone from sight in the boulder field.

ELEVEN.

Charles Pierson was looking every inch the tortured Ashley Wilkes. His stylishly cut blond hair, usually blow-dried to perfection, fell across his wide brow as if he'd been running his hands through it, and lines of tension pulled the skin tight beneath his pale blue eyes. With his innate sense of what was right for any occasion, he'd dressed in light gray linen trousers and a dark shirt, not quite a suit but cla.s.sy, a good mix of casual wilderness and sharp big city. The expensive pleated trousers were creased where he'd crossed and uncrossed his legs and the black shirt had blond hairs on the shoulders.

Charles had chosen to wait for his wife on the veranda-that or Judith had thrown him out. At home, they slept in separate bedrooms and, for the most part, lived separate lives. When he traveled with Judith she insisted they share a room, if not a bed. It would not look right to const.i.tuents to be seen as suffering marital discord or, worse, exhibiting the habits of old money.

"How's our girl?" Darden asked.

"What?" Charles looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. "Oh," he said. "Judith. She's Judith." He looked past Darden as if waiting for someone more interesting to come up the flagstone steps from the parking lot.

For the briefest of moments Darden wondered if he had an inkling of what Judith had planned for him, and a feeling that, when he was younger would have been guilt, flickered and went out in Darden's breast. There'd been too many bodies under the bridge for Darden to suffer true remorse for one more, but some jobs were more odious than others.

"I'd better get cleaned up." Darden excused himself and went into his cabi fht=n.

In the tiny old bathroom with tile nearly as old as he was, Darden stood under the shower and let the hot water rinse the dust from his hair and skin and tried to foresee the future. For all his civility, Charles was a loose cannon. He'd proven that back in his college days at Oxford. The woman he'd fallen for, the woman Darden knew from her morgue picture, had been one of his professors. English teacher, if Darden remembered right, Beowulf. And not the type that usually drove men mad with desire: a little overweight, nice enough looking in a domestic intellectual kind of way-nice but smart, too preoccupied to waste time on hair and makeup.

According to what Darden had been able to glean from the spa.r.s.e information on this era of Charles's life, Pierson went nuts for his little English woman. Head over heels, bonkers, followed her around in a way that was tantamount to stalking.

At least that was how her husband described it shortly before he threw Darden out of his rooms. Phillip Amblin, too, was a professor at Oxford and somewhere in the neighborhood of three decades older than his nice little wife. Like the handful of others who knew the ins and outs of the affair, the professor would not talk about it.

Public records told Darden Mrs. Amblin had died in a car wreck. A student, Mr. Charles Pierson of America, had been first on the scene. The scene was a foggy night on a seldom traveled country lane in Somerset. The official report deemed it an accident due to speeding and poor visibility.

After the incident Charles disappeared for three years. Darden hadn't been able to find out where he'd spent his time, whether his family had whisked him off to some small country house or he'd gone vagabond or into a lunatic asylum. After the three years pa.s.sed he emerged back on the Houston social scene and would only smile enigmatically when asked where he'd been all that time.

Judith met him at a fundraiser for the library a.s.sociation and pursued him until he married her, more out of exhaustion than love, Darden had thought more than once. He'd had a couple of previous dalliances but Darden sensed no real pa.s.sion in them, more desultory boredom on the part of both parties.

Darden doubted Judith had any idea of what Charles was capable of when roused to a pa.s.sion. She'd never seen it. Maybe that was part of the draw; she sensed a pa.s.sion there but had never been able to tap into it herself. It kept her always trying and always hurt and always angry. Anger went two ways in Darden's experience, out or in. Out it became violence in its myriad forms-spite, back-biting, shooting, undermining, stabbing, belittling, battering-in and it became depression. Judith was not the depressive sort. Considering what she had in mind for her husband, Darden couldn't but think she was acting the fool.

When Darden emerged from his room dust-free and dressed in a suit and tie, Charles was pacing the veranda. "Would you tell Judith I've gone down to the lodge?" Darden asked as Charles turned at the far end beyond Gordon and Kevin's room and started back, one hand thrust in his pocket, ruining the line of his trousers, the other raking through his hair.

Charles showed no indicatio kd nontn that he'd heard, though they were nearly close enough to shake hands. Darden gave up and knocked softly on Judith's door.

"I heard," she called from inside. "Go."

Darden smiled. Judith was in full politician mode, every fiber of her being focused on what she could say that would catapult her to the next level. Walking down the flagstone steps he heard the skritch of flint on steel and looked back over his shoulder. Charles was lighting a cigarette. Cigarettes in public were a no-no.

Anger in its myriad forms.

Gordon was already in place at the lodge dining room, crisp and professional-looking in his dark suit. Tonight was for the big guns; tonight Darden didn't want to blend in. The public needed to see that Judith was important and powerful. Nothing spoke of power like the suggestion that there were those who so feared or hated one that bodyguards were a necessity. Darden had known more than one wannabe politico unworthy of anybody's bullets who spent a fortune on protection just so it would look as if he were important enough to kill.

"Keep an eye on Charles," Darden said. "If anybody is going to do Judith in tonight it's going to be him. He's strung out and feeling reckless. I saw him lighting up outside Judith's room."

"Whoa," Gordon said. Though he didn't smoke, Kevin did, and they knew there'd be h.e.l.l to pay when Judith caught a member of her entourage in the act. She figured if she could see it, the public could see it.

"We might have another snag, boss," Gordon said. He didn't look at Darden as he spoke, and Darden didn't look at him. Standing shoulder to shoulder as if they were on inspection, both of them watched the room rather than each other. It was a habit Darden had trouble picking up for work and setting down for his leisure time. His mother and the few women friends he saw on a regular basis complained about it. They said it looked like he was just killing time talking to them while he looked around for something better to do.

"Such as?" Darden asked.

"Martinez. He was around this morning looking like a rain cloud. I wouldn't put it past him to try something."

"That's all we need. Doesn't he have a canoe to paddle or something? Drat."

Frederick Martinez was the river district ranger. Darden had been warned about him by the head of the convention when he was setting up Judith's visit. Martinez was an American, but just barely. Darden didn't have anything against immigrants. Every American was an immigrant; the only difference was what time their boat landed. Even the Indians were said to have walked across from Russia or somewhere. What Darden didn't like were immigrants who wanted to be Americans to get the goodies but wanted to be known as whatever they were before: Iranian, French, Mexican, African. Wanted to open the borders so their pals could thunder to the trough but wanted to keep their native "culture." Whatever the heck that meant. What it meant to Darden was that they didn't want to be Americans. They wanted to use Americans.

That was how he had Martinez pegged at first. The guy had been born in Texas but only because his mama had the guts to make it happen. She and his dad were Mexican nationals who hadn't a pot to p.i.s.s in back in old Mexico. After discreetly investigating the guy, Darden had to admit he was more than that. He was a fanatic. According to Martinez, the greatest crime ever committed in Big Bend National Park wasn't murder or rape or drug running or stealing lizards, snakes or cacti, it was closing the border. He'd been fighting to get it reopened for over eight years. He'd made a racket but accomplished nothing. Border closings were done in rooms the likes of Martinez would never see. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of citizens would never see. When edicts came down from on high, the veil of "national security" cloaking them, they were harder to protest if the hoi polloi didn't know who to protest to, which office to march in front of with their adorable little signs and bulk-mail logo-ed T-shirts.

Darden didn't doubt that Ranger Martinez was positively panting to use Judith's party as a soapbox for his cause. If he'd found out Judith was running on a build-the-wall-and-man-the-watch-towers border control platform he might do more than that. If he could get past Darden first.

"Speak of the devil," Gordon said, and gestured out the picture windows with a twitch of his square chin.

"You keep an eye out for Ranger River Rat," Darden said. "I'll see if I can't keep the press happy." Again they had gathered on the patio. Smoking in public didn't damage a journalist's image.

As Darden shook hands, slapped backs and made jokes-what Judith referred to as his warm-up act-he saw Charles walking alone down the slope from the cabins. Head down, cell phone pressed hard to his ear, Charles was walking fast. His shirt had come un-tucked in the back and his hair had graduated from mussed to standing on end over his ears where he'd been raking at it. The plan was for him to arrive hand in hand with his wife just after the party started so the conventioneers would see a charming picture of good grooming and marital bliss set against the magnificent backdrop of the Chisos Mountains.

Christ on a crutch, Darden thought uneasily. The man was unraveling and Judith was about to pull out the last thread unless Darden intervened.