Endangered Species (40 page)

force was applied.

Once inside, Anna flipped on the overhead lights.  Dense foliage

effectively screened the house from the road and she had the added

security of knowing that anyone who might take her to task for unlawful

entry-not to mention once again following up on an unauthorized

hunch-was well off the island staking out the Hansons.

The place was just as she'd left it, down to the dirty dishes on the

table and in the sink.  The smell had escalated, a considerable rankness

enhancing the illusion that all the oxygen had been leached out of the

air.

Sitting at Hammond's desk near the front door, she studied the five

snapshots Scotch-taped to the wall.  She took one down and slipped it in

her pocket, then jerked open the desk drawers.  On her previous visit

she'd been looking only for Hammond's logbooks, had opened only

containers and envelopes that might have concealed a long narrow ledger.

The packets of color snapshots in their WalMart envelopes had earned

only a cursory glance.

Anna pulled them out and laid them on the desk.  Sifting rapidly

through, she looked at each photo, then checked the processing date on

the envelope.

When she emer ed from Hammond's quarters, stars prickled a perfect

cloudless sky.  The light was fragile but tenuous, revealing nothing yet

refusing to give way to night.  For a moment Anna stood trying to

capture the essence of peace that solitude customarily afforded.  On

Cumberland it was not to be found.  Though the island lacked the

richness and verdancy of a jungle, the heat-soaked trees hiding behind

veils of moss breathed out the same powerful secrecy she'd felt the few

times she'd been in the tropics; a knowledge of things unseen, powerful

and dark.  It was no mystery to her that voodoo developed in a hot

island climate, that witches preferred the darkling woods.

Shaking off thoughts of less than corporeal dangers, she sought the

pragmatic sanctity of the truck.  Making one brief stop at the fire dorm

to collect the key from the nail where Guy kept it, she drove to the

ranger station.

Frieda picked up on the sixth ring.  Time zones were working in Anna's

favor.  In Colorado it was not yet nine o'clock.  At the sound of the

Mesa Verde dispatcher's voice Anna experienced a stab of homesickness.

In that instant she was back on the high tableland, the delicate scent

of pine and dust in the air, a memory of sunlight on the cliffs ." How's

Piedmont?" she asked, one's cat being the living, breathing embodiment

of all that was Home.

"Hey, that's what I called you about," Frieda said ." Well, not exactly

but sort of related." She laughed ." Not related at all really, but

funny.  oops.  Maybe not.  I guess you had to be there."

Frieda was a bit tipsy.

Anna envied her.  They'd begun their relationship as drinking buddies.

The friendship had endured through Anna's climb onto the wagon and was

as strong as ever.  Still, when booze called, it was usually in Frieda's

warm tones.  She had a knack for giving everyday things a festive air:

filing, typing, drinking.

The dispatcher would hardly announce the death of Anna's orange tiger

cat in such cheerful tones; still she forgot the reason for her call in

her concern for Piedmont ." What happened?" she asked bluntly, cutting

across the wine-tinted babble.

"It's a long story.  Well, not that long." Anna waited through what she

knew was a fortifying sip, probably of a hearty red.  Frieda resumed:

"Bella came with me to feed Piedmont-she takes care of the socializing

end." Anna smiled to think of the little girl her fat tomcat had taken

such a shine to.  Bella Meyers suffered from dwarfism.  With her fairy

face and foreshortened legs, Piedmont looked the size of a mountain lion

when he walked next to her.

"Anyway," Frieda went on ." They got to playing and one or the other of

them-Bella says Piedmont, Piedmont insists it was Bella-knocked over the

urn with Zach's ashes.  You left it on the coffee table.  I guess the

top was loose."

Anna remembered ." I was going to sprinkle him," she said feebly.  She'd

been going to sprinkle her late husband's ashes for nearly nine years.

Somehow she never quite got around to it.

" They scattered all over your Navajo rug."

"That's okay.  Zach always liked that rug.  It won't hurt if a little

bit of him gets vacutamed up every now and then.  I've been meaning to

cast those ashes to the winds.  Maybe this is an omen if,Iling me it's

time to get on with it."

"It's an omen, all right." Frieda laughed, then made an effort to get

herself under control, but amusement percolated beneath her words ." I

shouldn't laugh," she apologized ." You may not think this is all that

funny.  Bella cleaned them up like the good little girl she is .

She thought they were cigarette ashes and she didn't want them to make

your house 'all stinky." She flushed them down the john."

Breath gusted from Anna's lungs.  She remembered the paralysis and panic

when she'd fallen from the horizontal ladder in second grade and landed

on her back.  Gulping fishlike, she managed to get enough air to speak

." She flushed Zach down the toilet?"

Frieda laughed ." Sorry," she said more soberly ." Yup.  Right down the

loo." Again she giggled.

So many years of toting a sacred icon, never finding a place holy enough

to commit it to, then a seven-year-old girl consigns it to the sewers ."

Jesus," Anna said ." That's that, I guess."

"That's all the news that's fit to print," Frieda said ." Jennifer's

here.  I ought to go make hostess noises.  Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Anna restored the phone receiver to its cradle and sat for a

bit in Norman Hull's high-backed chair.  Hollowness formed within her

and she wasn't sure, but she thought she felt lighter, as if a burden

carried so long its weight had become part of life had been lifted.

Frieda was right: an omen.  She would have preferred something classier:

a burning bush or a host of angels singing on high, but as omens went

this one got right to the point.  Anna laughed .

"Sorry, Zach," she said in the general direction of the ceiling ." We've

all got to let go sometime."

Frederick's oft repeated invitation to move to Chicago and set up

housekeeping came to mind.  Forty-two; Anna counted up her years on

earth.  How many more chances would she get?  According to the tabloids

it was a buyer's market.  Her stock wasn't slated to go up anytime soon.

"Get thee behind me, Satan," she said to ward off the fears of a

generation.

Anna doubted she'd ever move back to a city.  Not just to be with

Frederick Stanton, at any rate.  In her head she heard Molly's voice

pitched in her best shrinity tones ." Listen to the qualifier, Anna:

'Not just to be with Frederick .  .  ."' Anna waved a hand in front of

her face as if dispensing a crowd of angry mosquitoes.

Plunked untidily in the perfect order of the chief ranger's desk, the

phone reminded her of why she'd come ." Precocious senility."

She excused the lapse as she picked up the receiver and punched in

Frieda's number a second time.

"That's not what I called about," she said when Frieda answered ."

Remember you told me Slattery Hammond had two other restraining orders

filed against him in addition to the latest one his wife filed?" Anna

gave Frieda a second to assimilate the change of subject, then pushed on

." You said they were withdrawn.  At the time, I just assumed they were

filed by Mrs.  Hammond.  Feints before the actual battle so to speak. Do

you remember if she filed all three?"

Frieda said nothing.

" Are you there?" Anna demanded.

"Keep your pants on," Frieda said mildly ." Give me about fifteen

minutes and then call me at the office."

" Thanks," Anna said.

"Don't mention it.  I was just relaxing after a ten-hour day. Abandoning

my guests and rushing back to the office at the drop of a hint is my

idea of a good time."

Anna laughed because it was true.

She passed the time by going over the photographs she'd confiscated from

Slattery's desk.  Laying them out like a hand of solitaire, she trained

Hull's lamp on them and studied the figures.  They were all very much

alike; long shots, some obviously taken with a telephoto lens.  The

breathtaking scenery of the North Cascades served as a backdrop.  In

each was a figure, usually alone but sometimes in a group of two or

three others.  About a third of the pictures featured a slight,

brown-haired woman dressed for hiking, most often in shorts but in full

yellow rain gear in half a dozen of the shots.  A baby in a backpack was

strapped on her back.  Because of the distance from the cameraman to his

subject, Anna couldn't make out the woman's features, but from the

straightness of her spine, the slender body, and the infant, Anna

guessed she was young.

The pickup date on the Wal-Mart envelopes containing the photos of the

woman and child was within the last eight months.

The second group of pictures, four rolls of film's worth, were older.

The most recent was dated seven months previously.  The others went back

a year and a half.  These followed the same pattern as the shots of the

brunette: all long shots, all of the same woman, all against the

dramatic scenery of the Cascades.  The only difference was these were of

a slight blond woman with shoulder-length hair.  The same woman who'd

sparked a sense of recognition in Anna when she'd first looked at the

snaps taped to Hammond's wall.

The telephone rang and she jumped as if she'd been poked with a cattle

prod.

" Frieda here," the dispatcher cut in, before Anna could finish the

litany of Cumberland Islani National Seashore ." Good news/ bad news

joke.  I found it faster than I thought I would and it has less

information than I remember.  The only restraining order that's got a

name attached is the one that stuck, the one his wife filed against him.

Since the other two were rescinded they've got a record of the action

but not of who initiated it."

"What were the dates?" Anna grabbed the phone pad to scribble on.  The

top sheet held a note from Dot and Mona: "See us ASAP."

Anna stuck it under the corner of the phone where Hull couldn't miss it

and ripped off another sheet for herself.

"Let's see .  .  .  The first was August of last year and the second was

December, same year.  Are you onto something?"

"I'm afraid so.  I'll keep you posted.  It's okay about the ashes."

Fried laughed ." Sorry," she said ." Something about it just gets to me.

" You didn't tell Bella?"

"Heck no, the kid's got enough to worry about as it is."

"Tell her thank you for me," Anna said.  As she hung up she could hear

Frieda was laughing again.

Headed north, back toward Plum Orchard, Anna drove slowly .

Night had triumphed.  With oak branches meeting overhead there were no

stars.  All that existed of the world was the narrow stripe of olor