Read Endangered Species Online
Authors: Nevada Barr
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Suspense, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Pigeon; Anna (Fictitious character), #Women park rangers, #Cumberland Island National Seashore (Ga.)
light bulb, decorated with a folding paper shade the size and shape of a
beach ball, cast a warm glow over a jungle of potted plants and ceramic
animals.
Lynette's calm acceptance soothed Anna more than she would have
admitted.
"Cut it off, all of it," Anna said as Lynette emerged from the cabin
with comb and scissors. Her voice sounded far away, as if she was
listening to herself on the radio, and she stopped speaking .
Being stoned was an art form and she had long ago lost the knack .
Piled on top of the night's adventures, the dissociation was
disorienting, frightening, and she wanted little more than to be
straight .
Time, she promised herself. If memory served, by noon she should be
completely down.
Had Lynette questioned or argued or pried, Anna had no doubt that she
would have run screaming into the woods. As it was, the woman began
gently brushing the tangles from her hair, taking great care not to tug
or pull. While she worked she talked, her voice low and sweet and
monotonous, like rain on the roof. The words themselves were
unimportant. Occasionally Anna tuned in: "We used to have a corgi . .
. The dress my sister wore was this awful tangerine . . . Mom said
the cats couldn't sleep on the bed . . ." Pointless wonderful stories
without drama, violence, or passion.
Knots inside Anna's head began to loosen and, as the planks beneath her
became covered in hanks of hair, she felt as if a vise were being
unscrewed from her skull; blood flowed, thoughts moved. She started to
cry.
Lynette either didn't notice or kindly forbore comment. The snipping
went on a long while, or so it seemed to Anna-time continued to do its
petty-pace thing, skewed by drugs and distraction .
When she eventually came back from the nowhere she'd gone to, Lynette no
longer chattered but hummed a melody: "Amazing Grace." Religion, at
least of the church-and-Sunday-school variety, had never made much sense
to Anna but she'd always loved that hymn. This creaking morning it fell
on her ears like the voice of fate itself. Once before, she'd reached
religious epiphany through music .
She was a sophomore at California Polytechnic State University .
the song had been the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun." She'd been stoned
then as well, but having a considerably better time.
"Was blind but now I see." Lynette put words to the tune. Her voice was
cool and soft. Anna liked hearing her sing.
Her sing.
Th two words reverberated.
"Orinsing," Mitch Hanson said that, or something that sounded like it.
Anna drained the last of her tea and set the cup on the porch rail
between a blue glazed rabbit and an African violet.
Whispering on stockinged feet, Lynette picked up the mug and slipped
through the screen door to make more tea. Anna scarcely noticed she'd
gone. The old fat dog collapsed at her feet. She kicked off her
moccasins and rubbed her toes along his back. He grunted, admitting to
at least one porcine ancestor.
There goes Ellen's college tuition. Ellen Hull? Norman Hull's
daughter?
A year with the Seven Sisters. Radcliffe? Barnard, et al?
Orirising-and an echo. Orinsing-sing. Or in Sing Sing. Ellen would
end up in college or in prison.
A bit of the letter Anna had found in the chief ranger's desk from
Ellen's aunt in Pennsylvania made sensc in this new light ." The change
isn't helping Ellen. Things aren't working out." And a bus ticket back
to Georgia. Alice Utterback: Nice wife but that kid's a piece of work.
In Hull's calendar beside his daughter's name had been the initials "PO"
on several of the dates. Parole officer.
"Ellen's selling dope," Anna said to the dog ." Her dad must get it from
the Hansons. Ellen peddles it in the schoolyard." What could be better?
The girl had just turned thirteen, according to the letter .
Most definitely a minor and, so, hard to prosecute.
She saved her daddy's life. What was that abOLit? Had Ellen, via the
Hansons, told her dad not to be on that plane? Or had she known Todd or
Slattery was onto the marijuana plot, told her dad, and Dad saw to it
they were disposed of? Had the Hansons intended to kill Hull and Ellen
told him and so saved his life? That would mean not only the chief
ranger but his daughter could be in danger. If at first you don't
succeed . . .
"Shit! I cannot, cannot think," Anna muttered, and found another cup of
hot tea pressed into her hands. She sucked at it greedily ." God, but
I'm thirsty," she said by way of thanks.
"Can you tell me what happened to you?" Lynette asked. She'd taken up
the scissors again and was snipping near Anna's right ear .
Anna set down her tea, turned, and took hold of the other woman's wrist,
pointing the scissors away from her throat.
"That depends on whether or not you killed Slattery Hammond and Todd
Belfore ,she said bluntly.
Lynette's eyes widened and her breath was drawn in with a shush of
sound. She looked shocked, not guilty, but over the past hours Anna had
lost faith in the reliability of her perceptions.
"Why would I do that?" Lynette said. That wasn't an answer but it
didn't strike Anna's ear as an evasion either. Lynette made no attempt
to free her arm. It was beginning to shake.
"Woman scorned and all that," Anna hazarded ." YOU found out Slattery
was married."
" I didn't know he was. Not till you told me."
An idiotic rhyme racketed through Anna's fogged brain and before she
could stop herself she gave voice to it ." Liar, liar, pants on fire."
Lynette looked startled, laughed; then her face blanked and she stared
into the darkness ." I guess I knew," she said.
Anna waited. After a moment the woman began to tell her story.
"The morning Slattery was killed I went by his house to pick up some
things. There was a letter and I read it. She didn't mention the
little boy."
Anna's grip tightened ." What time was it?"
"When I read the letter?"
"When you were at Hammond's house."
"Early. Eight or a little before."
Anna's attack had been later in the day. Lynette could have been lying
about the time, but she didn't think so.
"I was there in the afternoon," Anna said, loosing Lynette's wrist and
turning back on the stool ." There was no letter." From the corner of
her eye she could see Lynette's hand come up, the sharp scissors
pointing at -a soft spot just below Anna's ear. For too long, Lynette
neither moved nor spoke, and Anna wondered if she'd misjudged her
quarry. She tensed, ready to grab the scissors if she had to.
A sigh so deep Anna felt the air puff in her hair gusted from Lynette's
lungs. Their little tableau came to life. Lynette combed, snipped;
Anna picked up her mug of tea ." I took it," Lynette admitted ." I was
going to confront him with it the next time I saw him .
First I wanted to pray about it."
"Any revelations?"
"Somebody should punch the SOB's tucking lights out."
Anna spewed a mouthful of Earl Grey into a Boston fern ." Don't do
that," she spluttered ." You'll choke me to death."
"Someone did put his lights out," Lynette said soberly ." I've felt bad
and not only for the deaths. I don't know that I was in love with
Slattery-he wasn't the kind of man that is good for people-but I was
very attracted to him. I thought maybe
"All he needed was a good woman's love?"
"Pretty stupid?"
"Not necessarily."
"I felt bad about him and Todd. Me praying and them dying .
Not that I prayed for their death. I'd never do that. But God knows
our hearts. There's a dark spot in mine. There was that day."
If Lynette's God couldn't reassure her he didn't down airplanes on a
jilted girlfriend's whim, Anna certainly wasn't going to try .
"What were you picking up at Hammond's house?" she asked instead.
"Some boxes Dot and Mona needed back for their Llpdating project."
Because she needed to talk and Lynette was willing to listen, Anna told
her about the night in the hog pen, the Hansons and their remark about
Ellen's college tuition. She finished her story at the same time
Lynette finished cutting her hair. Drugs, murder, and conspiracy were
temporarily shelved for the important things in life .
The two of them went into Lynette's crowded bathroom so Anna could see
her new hairdo.
In the old and spotted glass, her face looked unfamiliar. Hazel irises
were rimmed with bloodshot whites. Time's crows had left tracks around
her eyes, and her forehead was creased with lines etched deep by the sun
of the high deserts. She ran her fingers through the short hair, liking
the feeling of lightness, cleanliness ." I look like a little boy," she
said in some wonder.
" Or a pixic."
"A little old man is more like it." Anna riffled the short hairs on her
left temple. All were white, standing out in a fan against the darker
reddish brown over her ear ." My neck looks chickeny."
Lynette didn't chime in with the expected compliment and Anna was mildly
offended ." I like it," she said at last ." I like it a lot."
"Third mug of tea in hand, sipping this time, satiation lending her a
veneer of civilization, Anna sat out on the porch. Bare legs propped up
on an overturned bucket, trousers hung over the rail, she waited for the
dots of clear nail polish to dry. Southern wisdom-or a sinister bent
toward practical jokes--had inspired Lynette to daub the lacquer on each
and every chigger bite. The theory behind the practice was that,
deprived of oxgen, the bugs would suffocate .
Anna hoped it would be a slow and hideous death.
Lynette was curled in a hanging basket chair suspended over the dog ."
Why would Mitch and Louise burn Norman's share of the crop-if it was
Norman's?" she asked.
"Spite? Malice? Revenge?" Anna suggested ." Maybe they were gunning
for Hull and got Todd by mistake."
"Norm might have asked them to burn it. You know, saw the light and
wanted out of the business," said the kinder Lynette.
"Wouldn't the Hansons just say, 'Goody, more for us,' and keep the lot)"
"Too much work for the two of them?"
"The area getting too hot to wait for a second crop to mature?"
Both tired of the guessing game and relapsed into silence .
Strains of "Be Careful of the Stones That You Throw" sounded from the
stereo inside ." Good stuff," Anna said of the music ." Incredibly
rich."
"Staple Singers. Black gospel."
"No white gospel?"
"We try," Lynette said, and Anna laughed at the disappointment and
resignation in her voice ." I guess when for generations the Lord and
music were the only outlets allowed for self-expression, you get really
good at both."
Light was beginning to raise the night to the east ." I'm dry," Anna
said, and stood to pull on her trousers.
"Are you straight?"
As an arrow, Anna lied.