A Superior Death (7 page)

“Not if he was the reincarnation of Charlie Mott,” Damien said triumphantly. He and Tinker looked at her expectantly, twin Perry Masons having delivered the coup de grâce.

Anna rubbed her face. “Could we have some light in here, please?”

Damien hopped up obediently and switched on the overhead. The room’s mystery vanished. For a few moments the three of them blinked at one another like surprised owls.

“I’ll look into it,” Anna said and dragged herself up on legs numb from sitting so long. “Right now I’m for bed. Thanks for the tea.”

“You can stay here,” Tinker offered. “Damien and I sleep on the lower bunk.”

Damien reached out and took his wife’s hand. They shared a smile that made Anna lonely.

“Stay,” Damien said. “You can sleep with Oscar if you don’t mind cigar smoke. Oscar likes company sometimes.”

Anna knew housing for seasonals was tight in the National Park Service but this arrangement shocked even her. The bunks were barely wide enough for one adult. “I’ll sleep on the
Lorelei,
” she said. “Thanks just the same.” She grabbed up her daypack and stepped toward the door.

“Oscar says, ‘Anytime,’ ” Anna followed Tinker’s look to the tumbled goods on the top bunk. From within a cave of boxes, they were being watched by two button eyes. The little stuffed bear had a dilapidated red bow tied around his neck and an amiable expression on his face.

“Thanks,” Anna said, not knowing whether she addressed Tinker or the bear, and made her escape into the cleansing cold of the night.

Like the southwestern deserts, the northern lake country was a land of extremes. Anna bumbled through the thick dark of the forest like a blinded thing, then, moving onto the open shore between the woods and the dock area, was struck with a light so intense she turned expecting to see a spotlight shining from a fishing vessel. Instead, she saw the moon. It was brighter here than anyplace she’d ever been, fulfilling a long-standing exaggeration: a sharp-eyed person actually could read a newspaper by its light.

The
Lorelei
was moored in the concrete NPS dock, tied at bow and stern. Anna stepped over the gunwale and let herself into the cabin. Pilcher’s boat was the twin of the
Belle Isle.
At the forward end of the cabin, between the two high seats and down a step, was a small door. Anna ducked through it into the triangular-shaped space in the bow. Padded benches lined the bulkhead. Beneath them she knew she would find, among the flares, line, and emergency medical supplies, the
Lorelei
’s spare sleeping bags.

She unloosed the bow hatch and propped it open. In a space so familiar, the light of the moon would be adequate. Or would have been had District Ranger Pilcher been more organized. “Pigsty,” she grumbled as she cleared a space for herself and unrolled a sleeping bag that smelled of mildew. Everything smelled of damp and was cold to the touch. Fully clothed, she crawled into the bag and thrashed her feet violently to warm it.

As she pulled the stinking cover under her chin, she stared up through the hatch. Seventeen stars pricked the eight-by-sixteen rectangle. They didn’t shimmer like desert stars but burned steady and cold: lights for sailors to navigate by. Stars seemed close to the earth in the north woods but not friendly, not the eyes of angels watching over children as they slept.

The Quallofil bag was slowly warming, but it was a moist warmth Anna knew would turn clammy in the coldest part of the night. She would wake shivering with her clothes stuck to her. At least with Oscar she would have been warm.

Her thoughts turned to Tinker and Damien. Tinker was in her thirties—probably not more than five or six years younger than Anna—but she seemed so childlike. She and Damien, with cloaks and candles and bears, playing out some game they might even believe. A game where horror held more of excitement than of nightmares, where danger and adventure were synonymous.

And Scotty Butkus the reincarnation of Charlie Mott; Anna laughed aloud in the darkness. The story of Charlie and Angelique Mott was a staple on the island. Tales of cold and cannibalism were common in the Northwest. The other end of the island was named for the legendary flesh-eating spirit, the Windigo. Modern thought would have the Windigo a symbol of the cold and the loneliness and the starvation that faced mere humans who dared the northern winters. But some still believed it flew and moaned and consumed the unwary.

Charlie was the personification of the Windigo. The story was true. He and his wife had been left on Mott Island without supplies. As winter wore on, Charlie had begun to look at Angelique with a new hunger, ever sharpening his butcher knife. Finally she had escaped to live in a cave. Charlie had perished, his body kept fresh in the cabin by the awful cold. Angelique survived by snaring rabbits with nooses made from the hair of her head.

Had Scotty that lean and hungry look? Tinker and Damien thought they saw it; saw the result in the fleshy roll around his belly.

In the morning, Anna decided, she would talk with Butkus—nose around—find Donna before Tinker and Damien got themselves crosswise of Scotty. For all his apparent good-old-boy bonhomie, he had a reputation for stabbing people in the back. Anna would not like to see Tinker or Damien hurt.

She thought of them sharing their narrow bunk. They must sleep curled together like kittens. It would be a good night to curl up with someone.

There’d been a man in Texas. Rogelio was a man to curl up with on hot nights. Not a Zachary, not someone to share a life with—or a narrow bunk bed—but a good man. “A warm body,” she said to those same stars. “I could do with a couple of those right now.”

Maybe Molly was right; maybe it was time to sprinkle Zachary’s ashes, give him to the lake. Anna smiled. Zach would be miserable in this wilderness of water and woods. He would have his ashes sprinkled over Manhattan on New Year’s Day. “At least then you’d be on Broadway,” Anna said to a memory.

 

 

 

 

T
he lake, at least in the harbor, chose to be kind, and rocked Anna gently to sleep before she had time to think too hard.

CHAPTER 4

A
nna woke feeling groggy and gummy. The Administration Building on Mott had an employee shower for the use of guests and backcountry rangers on overnight to the “big city.” She paddled her kayak the few miles down-channel and treated herself to a hot shower that wasted enough water to keep her permanently out of the Environmentalists’ Hall of Fame. It was worth it. The heat steamed away the mildew she felt beginning to grow in her hair and rinsed the sweat, mosquito repellent, and sunblock from her skin.

Dried and refreshed, she cadged a cup of bad coffee from the pot the dispatcher always kept hot, then wandered out to the dock to drink it in with the thin sunshine. The day was fair and promised to be warm—or warm for Isle Royale—somewhere in the sixties. A westerly breeze, smelling of pine and the loamy soil of the boreal forests, trickled in over the island.

Anna leaned back against the warming cement of the quay and closed her eyes.

She was down to the last gulp of coffee, the Cremora scum clinging to the plastic cup, when Scotty Butkus stomped onto the dock, reminding her of her promise to Tinker and Damien.

As always when in uniform, Scotty looked natty. The creases in his shirt were as sharp as if he ironed them instead of just snatching them out of the dryer before the permapress became permacrunch. His brass badge sparkled and his cowboy boots were polished to a fine gloss.

The boots were an absurdity. There wasn’t a horse for hundreds of square miles and anything but soft, white-soled shoes were forbidden on boats—they marked up the decks. But Scotty went booted in the
Cisco,
a nineteen-foot runabout he used for harbor patrol. He’d even worn them in the
Lorelei
the time Anna had ridden with him and the District Ranger to Windigo.

Scotty was also wearing his side arm. Because of the low crime rate and the ever present danger of death by drowning, wearing defensive equipment on ISRO was optional. Butkus was the only ranger who opted to lug the heavy piece around. In concession to water safety he had struck a compromise that was strictly against regulations: he didn’t wear the full belt with cuffs and reloaders and holster, but just the pistol in a light-weight breakaway holster on the belt of his trousers.

Cowboy, Anna thought. The gun was just for show.

She’d wondered why Pilcher never called him on his boots, why Lucas Vega hadn’t made him adhere to the defensive equipment standards. Then Christina, who worked as a part-time secretary in the main NPS office in Houghton, told her why the brass treated Scotty with kid gloves. When typing the minutes of the last Equal Opportunity meeting, Chris had discovered Scotty was suing ISRO for not giving him Pilcher’s position when he’d applied for it. He accused the park of discriminating against him because of his age.

The way he saw it, the fact that he refused to learn the long-range navigation device all the Bertrams were equipped with, and had let his scuba-diving license lapse was mere detail.

Anna smiled. She knew altogether too much about Scotty Butkus. It was handy having someone on the inside.

“Morning, Scotty,” she said, shading her eyes to look up at him.

“Morning. Lieu day?”

She nodded. He looked awful. His face was gray and puffy and his eyes were bloodshot. The skin on his neck hung loose. He looked like a man who was drinking heavily, sleeping poorly, and was badly hung over. Anna doubted he had eaten his wife. In the shape he was in he probably couldn’t keep vanilla yogurt down, much less a woman.

“Where’s Donna?” Anna asked. “I haven’t seen her around this trip. She missed Denny’s party.”

“God damn him!” Scotty exploded. Anna was so startled by his outburst she twitched the last swallow of coffee onto her trouser leg. “That son of a bitch ask you to nose around? Tell him to look after his own goddam wife for a change.”

“No,” Anna said calmly. “Denny didn’t send me. I was just making polite conversation. Why? What would Denny want to know he couldn’t ask you himself?”

Scotty chose not to answer for a minute. He jumped into the
Cisco
with surprising agility. Anna could see she’d underestimated his physical abilities. He was killing himself with booze and cigarettes but he had kept his strength. His upper body looked powerful, the arms hard-muscled.

He busied himself checking the fuel levels, the lines, and a few other things that didn’t need checking. Anna sensed he was itching to gossip, to vent what was evidently a long-standing gripe. She watched in silence.

“The s.o.b. was pestering Donna. She put a flea in his ear, by God.” He smiled a crooked, inward smile that Anna could’ve sworn he’d learned from watching Randolph Scott movies. “That little gal he married on the rebound is in for a hell of a life hitched to that bastard.”

“Is that why Donna didn’t come to the reception?” Anna persisted.

Suddenly Scotty looked wily, his eyes narrowing in an almost cartoon fashion. Suspicious, Anna thought, but it could’ve just been the hangover biting down. “Donna’s gone back to the mainland. Her sister, Roberta, has a ruptured disk. Donna’s looking after the kids till she gets on her feet again.” He turned the key and the
Cisco
responded with a rattling lawn mower noise. Anna got up and untied his lines for him. “See ya,” he said as she dropped them over the side. Without a backward look, he motored out toward the main channel.

Anna picked up her Styrofoam cup. It was time to find out a little more about Donna Butkus. Anna had entered on duty May 3, six days before the early staff had moved to the island. The Butkuses had followed a week or so later. Secreted away on Amygdaloid, she had missed Lucas Vega’s getting-to-know-you potluck. Almost everything she knew about her fellow islanders she’d learned secondhand through Christina’s letters. As a secretary at the headquarters in Houghton, Chris was in on everything.

Anna carried her cup back to the Administration Building.

The architect hadn’t catered to any north woods notion of romantic design. It was purely governmental: a low, boring, wooden building with a concrete walk, a square of exotic grass species mowed short, and a white flagpole flying the Stars and Stripes. Inside, it was made only slightly more interesting by the addition of maps and charts on the walls.

Anna let herself past a counter installed to keep out Unofficial Persons and walked down the linoleum-floored hallway to the third door on the right. The drone of a computer printing out hung in the air like dust and there was the smell of stale coffee. Sandra Fox, ISRO’s dispatcher, sat with her back to the door. Sandra was in her mid-fifties with close-cropped red hair and a comfortably rounded body.

“Come for another cup of your fine coffee,” Anna said to announce herself.

“Hi, Anna,” Sandra said without turning from the keyboard. “Be with you in a sec.”