Boar Island (42 page)

Once she felt sufficiently recovered to drive the six miles to the Barneses’ house, she gathered her courage.

For decency’s sake, she put on the shirt and fastened a few buttons. Traversing from the rear seat to the front to climb behind the wheel wasn’t as easy as she’d pictured it. Finally in place, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the headrest for a moment.

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” she whispered. Opening her eyes, she saw the item she was to deliver before she could go to bed. A two-foot-long model of a Hawaiian outrigger canoe was sitting on the passenger seat. “And miles to go before I sleep.” She groaned and turned on the ignition.

The way to the Barneses’ home led back through Bar Harbor, then to the east a quarter of a mile before the road forked, the western fork crossing the narrow land bridge connecting Mount Desert Island to the mainland. Denise’s apartment complex was on the way. Anna slowed as she drove by. A light showed in the upstairs apartment where she’d changed into Denise’s clothes for the first fruitless attempt at the cybercreep.

Denise’s little green Miata wasn’t in evidence in the parking spaces beneath the complex. A white Volvo had taken its place. Anna snugged the Crown Vic neatly, and illegally, behind the Volvo. Her errand would only take a second. Even if the car didn’t belong to Denise, she should be back to move the Crown Vic before anyone needed to leave the complex.

On her first two visits the stairs had made no impression on Anna: short, one level, a romp in the park. This trip she felt all thirteen. Good deeds were never a good idea. Leaning against the doorframe of Denise’s apartment, she knocked, then rang the doorbell. A long silence followed. Relief crept in. Anna wasn’t up for even the short exchange of “This is yours” and “You’re welcome.”

“Who is it?” Denise’s voice came from behind the door.

“It’s me,” Anna said.

There was no peephole.

Feeling foolish, Anna opened her mouth to announce herself properly, but “me” must have been sufficient. Anna heard the slide of bolts and the rattle of a door chain. The knob turned, and the door swung open.

Paulette Duffy stood in the spill of light, her blond hair falling around her face, her pink scrubs rumpled, the front stained, a silver laptop computer held at her side. Anna stared stupidly. Paulette gaped at Anna in absolute shock, mouth open, lips pulled back showing nice, neat front teeth.

Pieces fell like bricks through Anna’s mind and into place: the photo by the bed of a younger Denise before she’d gotten the overlapping front teeth fixed, Mrs. Duffy’s blond hair, identical twins, Huntington’s disease, the uncontrolled movements of chorea, short-term memory loss. Mood swings.

This was Denise. Denise was the other twin.

In the instant it took for this to flash through Anna’s mind, she realized that Denise might have murdered Kurt Duffy while Paulette was establishing her alibi in the Acadian Lounge, and here Anna had come gimping up the stairs in the middle of the night with no weapon, no backup, no vest, and no radio.

“Hey, Denise,” Anna said. “Love the hair. Peter said you’d left this in your office.” She held up the canoe in both hands.

“Thank you,” Denise said. She didn’t reach out for the canoe.

Anna took a step back.

From within the apartment came the high gasping wail of a baby crying.

Denise swung the laptop at Anna’s head. Reflexively, Anna threw up her arms, using the canoe to deflect the blow. Her shoulder locked. The laptop smashed through the thin balsa wood, shattering the model, to strike her above her eye where the knot from her last head trauma had yet to begin to heal.

“You’re dead” was the last thing Anna heard.

*   *   *

When she regained
consciousness, or what she assumed might be consciousness, she was blind. She tried to open her mouth to scream, but it was sealed shut. Struggling, she tried to figure out where one arm started and the other left off. A soft smelly pillow was hot against her chest. Her legs had been welded into a single unit, like the tail of a mermaid.

“Stay still or you’ll kill her.”

The whisper was close. Without eyes, Anna couldn’t tell if the whisperer was in front of her or behind her. “Denise?” she said. What came to her ears was a muffled “Hunhh?” Duct tape, or something very like, had been put over her mouth. Probably her eyes as well. She could feel the pull on her eyelids when she tried to open them.

“In your arms is a baby. If you fall down, or fight, or do anything except exactly what I tell you to, you might crush her. You might asphyxiate her. You might snap her little neck.” As directionless as fog, as sibilant as wind in the eaves, the whisper rasped around Anna. “You might jam your chin through the soft spot in her skull and get baby brains in your mouth.”

Words hissing in her ears, Anna became aware of the life she held in her arms. The smell was a dirty diaper, the heat a tiny body, the softness the rounded contours of an infant. Lowering her head, she felt downy hair tickle the underside of her chin. This had to be the baby Gwen had so airily assured them would turn up. Denise had taken it.

Ransom? Anna wondered. Was the child the child of a rich person? Auction the little creature off to a barren couple, or sex traffickers? It seemed a bit ambitious for a retired park ranger. Kidnapping was America’s least favorite sport. Hard to pull off, severe penalties, and a live product: Anna doubted law enforcement officers would risk it. At least not sane law enforcement officers.

Denise Castle might not be entirely sane. Huntington’s could cause mental disorders; Gwen had said that. If Huntington’s mixed with regular craziness, the results might be bizarre.

Peter Barnes had spoken of how Denise looked at Lily, how she looked at Olivia, how she reacted to the mention of her previous home. Was the baby some kind of compensation for losing her relationship?

Did it matter?

Not much, Anna thought. What mattered was the life duct-taped in her arms. If there was life.

There was no movement. If the baby breathed, she couldn’t hear it. Had she crushed it already? Squeezed the little rib cage until the baby couldn’t draw breath? While unconscious, had she folded over and smothered the child? Darkness greater than blindness gripped Anna. Her heart grew cold and still. Her hands, each taped tightly to the opposite elbow to provide a cradle for the infant, were useless but for the little finger on her left hand. She could bend that one. Denise had missed it in her wrapping. Gingerly, Anna poked the baby. It didn’t move or cry. She poked it again harder.

Feeble squirming, then tiny baby feet kicked into her damaged joint, making it throb. “Thankyoubabyjesus,” she meant to say. “Mmmghhh” was what reached the air. Anna allowed her heart to recommence beating.

Craning her neck until her shoulder knifed her in the back in self-defense, Anna managed to nuzzle the infant’s face. The baby’s mouth was not duct-taped shut. Anna allowed herself a meager trickle of relief. At least the child would be able to breathe as long as Anna could keep her exhausted muscles from collapsing and squashing the poor thing.

“I’m going to cut the tape on your ankles,” the whisper said. “You’re going to get up and walk quietly where I tell you to.” The tip of a sharp object poked into Anna’s cheek under her right eye. “If you are not absolutely compliant, I will poke out this eye, then the other, and so on. Nothing I do can be bad because you are a dead pigeon, and dead pigeons have no rights. If you understand, nod your head.”

The prick of flesh beneath her eye receded. Anna nodded. Strands of hair were plucked from her head. Her hair had been taped down along with her eyelids and arms, effectively pinioning her head in one place. An image of Gulliver, surrounded by mallet-wielding Lilliputians, his head staked to the ground by his hair, flashed through her mind. The benefits of a reading life, she thought absurdly.

Again she nodded, more firmly this time. Maybe there was some slippage. Maybe she could trade hanks of hair for greater movement. Something to keep in mind.

A hand insinuated itself beneath her left elbow, where it was taped tightly to her ribs. “Up,” the voice breathed. The hand pulled. Anna floundered to her knees, mindful of not crushing the baby, of not losing her balance and falling on it, while the voice—Denise Castle’s, she assumed—continued popping, “Up, up, you. Get up. Up.”

Without sight, the Rohypnol remaining in her system, combined with fatigue and shock, compromised Anna’s balance, making her unsteady on her feet, unsure where this “up” was. Her inner ear insisted she was listing to starboard, but when she tried to compensate, she was jerked the other direction by the hand beneath her elbow.

“You hurt that baby and you’re dead meat,” Denise said, full voice this time.

Anna shuffled her feet further apart, centering her weight carefully around her spine. The sense of toppling to one side diminished. Palpable mist slid over her skin. Anna staggered back.

“It’s just a shawl, you stupid bitch. Stand still,” Denise ordered. The shawl was arranged around Anna’s face. A few more hairs were plucked from her head as Denise tucked the fabric around her arms and the child held in them.

“You are going to be a good little pigeon. Don’t even think of trying to fly the coop or make any kind of noise. If you do, you could fall down the stairs and kill the baby,” Denise said.

Hands landed hard on Anna’s shoulders, sending a crippling wave of agony down her side. The hands propelled her forward. The baby began a thin wail.

“Then your eyes would be gouged out and there’d be no more of your peeking and pecking,” Denise said as she turned Anna to the left. They stopped. There was the sound of a door shutting. “Keep that baby quiet.”

Again Denise was muttering. They must be out of the apartment, in the hall.

“Stairs,” Denise said.

With Denise muttering, “Step, step, step,” Anna felt her way down, relying on the hand under her elbow for balance.

Thirteen, Anna counted in her head. They were down in the parking area.

“You can’t make anything easy, can you?” Denise growled.

Hands fumbled at Anna’s crotch, and she wondered if she was being sexually assaulted, but Denise was only digging the keys to the Crown Vic out of her pocket.

A beep, then Denise poked, prodded, and cursed Anna and her burden into the seat of a car. By the height of it, Anna guessed it was the white SUV parked where the Miata had been on her first visit.

“Stay,” Denise ordered. “Or you’re dead.”

You’re dead.

Denise had said that the instant before Anna lost consciousness from the blow to her head with the laptop. It hadn’t been a threat; it had been a statement. When Denise first opened the door, her face had gone slack with shock at the sight of Anna.

That was when the scene with the ghost of Hamlet’s father should have played out. Anna’s one shot at acting in a Shakespeare play and she’d blown it.

No one but Heath’s family and Peter knew Anna had been “killed.” Denise had gone pale because she believed Anna was dead. Ergo Denise had been the one to dump her body into the sea. Denise and Paulette. Walter had seen two people in the boat.

Anna felt the shoulder strap slide across her arms, pushing the baby more tightly against her chest. A click let her know her seat belt was fastened. Since Denise had killed her once, thrown her into the ocean, then knocked her unconscious and taped her up like a mummy, this nod to safety had to be about the baby. Denise wanted the baby safe, her talk of Anna killing it notwithstanding. The baby was what was important.

Anna was just being moved from point A to point B. Never a good thing for a victim. Point B was always nastier than point A. Once they were there, Anna could be disposed of without interference. That was the reason point B held such an attraction for kidnappers, rapists, and murderers.

The baby continued to whine.

Anna wished she’d called Paul before she’d left the island, wished she had taken the first plane home, never stopped to do her good deed for the day, wished the child would stop crying, while at the same time taking comfort in the fact that it had sufficient air with which to cry.

“Hmm, hmm,” she crooned, and brushed the infant’s head with her duct-taped lips. The baby wailed louder, its fragile skin abraded by the rough tape.

The driver’s door opened. “All set?” Denise asked as if she and Anna were going on a routine campground patrol.

Not knowing what else to do, Anna nodded as much as her netting of hair would allow, then a bit more, hoping to loosen the tape.

“Good,” Denise said. Denise had been gone less than two minutes; she had to have put the NPS patrol car in another of the parking spaces beneath the rental units. If the apartment the slot was assigned to was occupied, it would be found as soon as the renter came home and wanted to park. If the apartment was vacant, it could be days. Still, Peter and Lily were expecting Anna. Peter knew where she’d been going. When she didn’t show in an hour or two, he’d come looking. He’d find the car.

That was something.

Being on the move seemed to soothe Denise. Gone were the hissing and the hurrying. Anna heard mirrors being adjusted, a seat belt fastened, the engine coming to life. The SUV backed out of the narrow space. Off to point B.

Had Anna decided to set a trap to catch herself, she couldn’t have done it more thoroughly. She was alone, unarmed, injured, fog-brained, and had delivered herself into the hands of a deranged kidnapper. The proverbial handwriting had not merely been on the wall, it had been all but tattooed across Anna’s forehead. Denise liked to dive at night. Denise had a boat at her disposal. Denise had refused to be seen near Paulette the morning after the murder, was paranoid about Anna being in her apartment, reacted bizarrely when Anna had asked about the photograph where her teeth were identical to Paulette’s, showed the same chorea as Paulette Duffy.

Shaking her head, Anna groaned.

“Okay?” Denise asked.

Anna nodded.

The distraction of the cybercreep had kept her from paying attention to what was going on in the park, the park she’d been brought in to help protect and preserve. Instead, she’d played hooky, worked on personal issues, and one of the rangers nominally under her supervision had gotten away with the attempted murder of Anna and, probably, the actual murder of Paulette’s husband.