Endangered Species (19 page)

near the bridge of her nose.  With a herculean effort, she raised her

eyelids a quarter of an inch.

The vista was not inspiring: dirty blue flooring, a bit of plaid fabric,

and a black rubber lozenge.  Because it was unexplained, she fixated on

the black rubber.  For a frustrating eternity identification eluded her.

Finally perspective shifted and she saw it for what it was: a thick

waffled shoulder pad forming the butt of a twelve-gauge shotgun.

The rubber was probably why she was still alive.  Not that being alive

struck her as particularly attractive at the moment.

Screwing her courage to the sticking place, she blinked.  Each time it

grew easier ." Oil can," she croaked absurdly, thinking, like the Tin

Man in The Wizard of Oz, that all her joints had rusted.

The scratch of her own feeble words cut into her head and pain swelled

until it seemed her head must explode or her brains leak out her ears

onto the floor.  Squeezing her eyes shut only made it worse, adding a

sense of vertigo, and she opened them again.  Images dripped through the

cracks in her brain: searching Hammond's house, opening the closet, the

contents failing on her.

Short-term memory was coming back.  Perhaps she hadn't sustained any

serious brain damage.  Between the years of drinking and the occasional

blow to the head, she didn't have any little gray cells to spare.

Starting small, she wiggled fingers, then toes, flexed muscles gently.

When a modicum of control was restored, she fished her watch out of her

pocket and pulled it up as far as the chain would allow.  Another

staggering effort of will was required to bring the tiny gold numbers

into focus: 2:04.  She'd not been unconscious long-a few minutes at

most.  Another good sign.

Pushing herself up, she rolled into a sitting position, her back resting

against the wall.  Surely her brain had been bruised.  Not only did it

hurt but the pain went out along all the nerve paths till there was no

part of her that didn't throb in sympathy.  Anna was groaning, she

couldn't help it.  She was glad there was no one around to hear.

Like fo lifting, the pain began to recede, traveling back up the

synapses till it was at last contained in a burning knot behind her left

ear.  As the pain localized, Anna was able to think again.

What were the odds that the shotgun had merely tumbled down on her head

when she opened the closet?  Slim to nonexistent.  The gun didn't weigh

more than five or ten pounds.  The blow that struck her unconscious

carried considerably more wallop.  It crossed her mind to feel the size

of the lump on her skull but she wasn't ready to know that much.

Somebody wanted her out of the way.  Maybe permanently.

A spurt of adrenaline sent a shiver through the sweat between her

breasts.  Breathing deeply, she calmed herself with oxygen and logic. If

anyone wanted to kill her, they would have.  If they'd thought the deed

accomplished, they'd be long gone.  If they came back to finish her off,

she was too weak to defend herself anyway.

Vomit was drying on her face, the air was unbreathable.  She was losing

track of where the sweltering airless heat left off and the suffocating

ache in her head began.  She had to get a drink of water; she had to get

out of Hammond's house.

Walking struck her as too ambitious and, her head down like a bone-weary

mule's, she crawled on hands and knees out of the bedroom and across the

living room.  The front door stood wide open.  Anna thanked her

erstwhile assailant.  The effort of opening it would have set off a new

spate of sparks in her battered brainpan.

Afraid to stop lest she never get going again, she crawled over the

front stoop, down the dirt path, and across twenty feet of duff to where

she'd parked the truck.  Moving carefully, as if her head were a

porcelain egg only precariously balanced on her neck, she pulled herself

up and onto the seat of the pumper truck.  Her much-needed reward was a

quart of warm drinking water from her fire canteen .

Some she spilled, some she couldn't keep down, but most of it was soaked

up by her dehydrated body.

She hadn't forgotten there was water in Hammond's house.  She just

didn't want any part of it.

Under her right hand was the King radio.  The keys were in the ignition

where she'd left them.  Anna reviewed her options.  She could radio for

help.  In minutes everyone within hailing distance would swarm down on

her.  The role of victim would be wrapped around her till she was

trussed up like a Christmas turkey.  Everyone would have a high old time

clucking and caring and bustling her off to St.  Marys to the hospital.

There they would take her clothes, her boots, and her radio and put one

of those wretched little plastic bracelets on her wrist.

"Everybody will be so tucking jolly," Anna whispered through dry lips.

Motivated by this grisly scenario, she reached up and fingered her head

wound.  Goose egg was as good a description as any, but soft to the

touch like a water balloon and very tender.  From the size of it, the

mechanism of injury, and the length of time she was out, Anna suspected

she'd sustained at least a slight concussion.

So: bundled and trundled ignominiously to the emergency room, diagnosed

with a concussion and demobbed.  Not just Annait didn't work that way.

the whole crew would be sent home and a new one dispatched to replace

them.  This assignment was vacation money for Al's family, seed money

for Rick's garage door business.

All in all, Anna decided she'd just as soon have a headache on

Cumberland at time and a half than a headache in Mesa Verde for

considerably less money.

Letting the pain in her head settle, she stared at the gaping front door

of Slattery Hammond's rental.  Someone had gotten there before her. That

they were up to no good was obvious.  Why else hide?  It was also fairly

obvious they'd been looking for something they either knew or suspected

Slattery kept in his house.  The something was therefore valuable,

incriminating, or embarrassing.  She was there for the maintenance logs.

She'd not found them, but surely the only one they could incriminate was

the so-far apocryphal mechanic.

Drugs?  Guns?  Used tampons?  Kiddy scissors?  Pornography?

Letters?  Cash?  That staple in old movies: a cigarette butt with

lipstick on it and not Slattery's shade?  Anna's head hurt too much to

pursue it and she let the thoughts scatter.

Ten minutes saw her sufficiently recovered to try the ignition key and

ease the truck gingerly over the bumps between Hammond's and the

district office, Movement was good, some basic difference between the

quick and dead, confirmation that she was not yet among the latter.

In the dirt parking lot behind the ranger station, she parked in the

shade and pulled the side mirror around to see if her looks passed

muster.  Though she had chosen to hide her little adventure quite

literally under her hat, she was disappointed.  She looked fine .

Physical trauma should produce at least enough blood or bandages to get

one some sympathy.  Even her color was good.  The pallor of shock and

the flush of fever evidently canceled each other out.

Hull was in his office, the door open.  He welcomed Anna and urged her

to sit.  For once she was grateful for his formality.  Standing had not

yet become an occupation she excelled at.  And the air-conditioning was

heaven.

"Anna?"

She heard him say her name as from a distance and realized she'd allowed

herself to sink back in the chair and close her eyes.

"Thinking," she said idiotically.  Chief Ranger Hull was too polite to

comment.

"Did you find the aircraft logs for Mr.  Hammond's Beechcraft?"

Anna started to shake her head, thought better of it and said: "No."

"Mrs.  Utterback suggested the logs might be in the mechanic's shop.

I'll leave that to her."

"Somebody had been to Hammond's before I got there," Anna told him.

Hull's eyebrows flew up either in inquiry or because of his nervous

disorder.  His forehead wrinkled far up on his scalp and the eyes behind

the thick glasses bulged slightly.  It was a face that invited

confession but Anna quashed the urge.

"The place had been searched.  What, if anything, was taken, I have no

way of knowing."

Hull's myopic blue eyes slid off Anna's face and his long thin hands

began stirring in the mess of papers on his desk.  Poking through the

pages as if seeking something vitally important, he asked Anna, "Are you

sure?"

"Positive."

That wasn't the answer he was hoping for.

"Is there anyone who knew him well enough to know what he kept in the

house?" Anna asked.

"No.  Mr.  Hammond was what we used to call a lone wolf.  No one came to

visit him that I recall-we tend to know each other's business on the

island.  Too well, I sometimes think." the last sentence sounded bitter,

unusual in a man as rigidly controlled as Norman Hull.

"Have you heard anything about Tabby Belfore?" Anna changed the subject.

"Yes.  That reminds me.  She's doing much better.  The baby hasn't come

and evidently that's causing some-wellmotional problems.  They can't

very well give her tranquilizers in her condition.  Unfortunately she's

insisting on returning to Cumberland to her apartment.  Her doctor is

opposed to the idea but he can't forbid it.  Mrs.  Belfore's agreed to

let someone stay with her for a few days."

An alarmed froglike croak escaped Anna's lips.  The chief ranger

pretended not to notice.

"It's been cleared with Guy," he said without looking up.

Hull wasn't asking her and Anna was unpleasantly reminded that the

National Park Service was designed along paramilitary lines .

She could say no, but the repercussions wouldn't be worth it.

"Do you have any aspirin?" she asked plaintively, as he pushed a key

across the desk ." I've got a whale of a headache."

Hull steered her to Renee, his secretary, and closed his door firmly

behind her.  As usual Renee's desk was empty.  Beyond the Xerox, through

an old-fashioned sash window, Anna could see her in the shade of the

porch smoking one of her endless cigarettes.  The woman was uniquely

suited to the pastime.  She carried all her weight from the groin up,

giving her the shape of a little chimney, and if one squinted and used

one's imagination, her overbleached hair could pass for smoke.

Renee was helpful.  Rummaging boisterously through her desk drawers, she

said: "This has been some week, hasn't it?  More excitement than we've

had around here in a coon's age.  That boy getting his leg shot off,

Todd getting killed in that wreck.  Mitch was telling me and

Louise-Louise is his wife-about how tore up that airplane was.  And the

bodies all burnt up like.  Norm's daughter, Ellen, was at the houseboat.

She and Louise are kind of special friends .

Both are into gardening, if you'd believe that.  And Louise living on a

boat.  Maybe it's just something to say.  Ellen doesn't get on all that

well with her mom.  Louise kind of fills that bill.  Anyway, Mitch is