Endangered Species (43 page)

the nerves, the snubs, the tension, the silences.  Preoccupied with

Tabby Belfore, Anna had failed to realize their import.

As she fired up the pumper truck, Tabby and Lynette came out of the

upstairs apartment.  Legally Lynette was too drunk to drive but at this

hour of the night she would be the only vehicle on the road and, given

the surface of the lanes, Anna doubted the VW could get up enough speed

to do too much damage if she did stack it.  "Wear your seat belts," she

reminded them again.  She cinched her own so tight it bruised the thin

layer of flesh over her hipbones, but it would keep her behind the

steering wheel during what was promising to be a wild ride ." Take care,

take care," she whispered to herself.  Dead or injured she would be no

good to anyone.  Better to be late to Golden Gate than to arrive in hell

on time; a piece of rhyming wisdom handed down from her father played

through her mind.  Raised in California, she and Molly had missed the

point of the lesson when they were children.  They thought "Golden Gate"

referred to the bridge in San Francisco.

Under the present circumstances, the poem was too apt to be comforting.

A few minutes might make the difference between who lived and who died.

Anna's foot grew heavy on the gas pedal and she held on to the steering

wheel with all her might, keeping control of the fire truck as it leaped

and bucked over the rutted road.

Everyday life was full of unanswered questions, small mysteries that one

took no note of.  However bizarre any given fact, any unexplained

occurrence, unless it could be tied into the problem, it wasn't useful

information.  That was a sticking point in murder investigations; what

to factor in and what to ignore.

Anna had chosen to ignore a smattering of disparate pieces on the

assumption they were unrelated to the puzzle she was working on.  During

the jolting ride from Plum Orchard to Stafford, some of those pieces

began to fit in the holes left by the Hansons-as-killers theory.

Marty had thrown Anna and Dijon out of her home after Dijon had read the

memo recalling the Lewin electron microscopes.  Dot and Mona complained

that they were to have two paid assistants, neither of whom had

materialized.  Slattery Hammond had t;iken an uncharacteristic interest

in the loggerheads nesting on Cumberland Island.  Lynette had gone by

Hammond's the morning of the crash to pick up something the VIPs had

lent him and needed returned for their turtle project.  That afternoon

Anna had been coldcocked by someone searching for something they didn't

want anyone else to find.  Later Anna's truck was searched and

vandalized but nothing was taken, presumably because whatever the thief

had been looking for wasn't there.  Later that same day, in a sudden act

of charity that went against the grain, Marty Schlessinger offered to

help Tabby sort and organize the files Todd left behind.  The job had

been abandoned halfway through, leaving the apartment and the widow in

greater confusion than before.  Tonight Anna found a message on the

chief ranger's desk from the VIPS: "See us ASAP." Then Dot and Mona's

home awash in files, Flicka shut out in the road, and a Coke can used to

tap out SOS.

Anna was willing to bet there never had been an electron microscope-or

Schlessinger had sold it.  The money for assistants listed had gone into

her pocket, then up her nose.  Discrepancies in the files might have

been able to prove it.  Slattery's sudden interest in endangered species

must have been sparked by some suspicion of Schlessinger's activities.

He'd studied the files, obtained proof, and threatened to expose the

biologist.

Given this new slant, even the lie about hearing shots the day the

Austrian was injured was explained.  Possibly Marty, with her knowledge

of the island, had stumbled across Hanson's operation .

For whatever reasons-indifference, power, or free dope-she had kept

quiet about it.  When things started heating up after the wreck, she

needed to point the investigation in a safe direction.  What better than

a marijuana plot?  judges, police, and the American public were more

than willing to believe cannabis farmers capable of any sort of ghastly

crime.

"Damn," Anna muttered through clenched teeth, afraid if she loosed her

jaws she'd bite off her tongue.  Murders bore a disappointing

relationship to magic tricks-once one knew how they were done they

bordered on the banal, leaving one feeling, instead of awestruck,

thoroughly foolish for having been taken in.

Stafford was just over three miles from Plum Orchard.  Anna made it in

four minutes, possibly a land speed record for that stretch of road.

After she rolled to a stop by the wall, she could feel her viscera

quivering from the bombardment.  Having armed herself with a flashlight

and a tire iron, she slipped from the truck and, keeping to the darkest

stretch of night near the wall, put twenty feet between herself and her

vehicle.  Crouching down in a corner formed of wall and palmetto, she

waited.  Bursting upon a crime in progress with no weapon and no backup

was not appealing.  She wanted to get the lay of the land before she

made any decisions; see if the clanking arrival of the truck stirred

anyone from the cottage grounds.

A minute, then two, of forced inactivity passed.  Nothing moved, nothing

sounded but for the creak of the cooling truck engine and the stirring

of a summer night.  Convinced she was alone or outsmarted, Anna came

quietly to her feet.  the tire iron, a heavy cross suitable for

dispatching felons and warding off vampires, she shoved through I)er

pelt to free up her right hand.  Her left clutched a tltislilight

withbeam so brown and myol)ic she tossed it away in disgust.  SLiCli a

light would se e only to pinpoint her whereabouts.

'(the gate rened closed, Schlessinger's NIV parked in the tee of' the

wall near the VIPS' truck.  Noiselessly Anna let herself in and,

following the darkness where it flowed deepest, moved to the cottage and

pressed herself against the wall beneath the single high window.  the

light had been extinguished and there was no sound from within.  Again

she waited for two interminable minutes but nothing called attention to

itself, not a footfall' a word, or the telltale shush of fabric against

wood.

Fear dug taloned fingers into her stomach at the thought she litrd come

too late, that I)ot and Mona lay inside, forever quiet, their knowledge

and their files expunged from the face of the earth.  how hard could it

be to kill two old ladies?  Depended on the ladies, Anna thought.  Dot,

Mona, Alice-these were not women who'd go gentle into that good night.

She took comfort from that and from the presence of the vehicles.  If

Marty had finished her work, her Afy would have been gone.

Continued silence reassuring her, Anna crept around the corner of the

house to stand to one side of the front door.  Darkness mixed with the

heat, filling the cottage's interior.  The barest breath of air came

from behind and she thrilled to feel it ruffle her newly shorn locks.  A

sudden bleating and a clatter followed it.  Flicka had caught her scent

and skittered across the hardwood toward the door.

Anna swallowed her heart down to its usual resting place and stepped

away from the screen.  The noise of the little animal had startled her

but she took it as one more sign the cottage was empty .

With Dot and Mona available, Flicka tended to ignore mere mortals.

Reaching inside, she felt for the light switch.  Flicka pushed out as

soon as the latch was free and jumped up like an ill-mannered PUPPY, his

sharp hooves awakening the chiggers in her thighs.  Protected by the

lath and plaster of the wall, Anna switched on the interior light, then

bobbed quickly, one eye over the windowsill, one eye low around the

doorframe, trying not to provide a target where a target was expected or

leave it there long enough to be blown away.

The great room was empty.  Papers were everywhere, the file boxes

overturned.  Half-burned pages smoldered on the hearthstones.  A bath

and bedroom opened off a stubby hallway to the rear of the house.  Had

Anna been armed she might have felt duty-bound to go in.  Building

searches gave her a bad feeling.  In training she'd only been killed

twice, both times during a building search.  She was not sorry to be

excused from this one, and heartily relieved there were no dead bodies

cluttering up the front room.

Leaving the light burning, she ran lightly around the small dwelling.

Afraid of being abandoned for a third time in a single night, Flicka

hesitated for a moment, making short runs back and forth, then trotted

off, sticking close to Anna's heels.

Playing at Wee Willie Winkle, she peered in the windows and spied

through the lock on a back door that looked as if it hadn't been opened

in fifty years.  Enough light spilled into the back rooms that Anna was

satisfied that, unless the three women were crowded together under the

bed, the cottage was empty.

Relief didn't live long enough to blossom before it was replaced by

alarm and frustration.  Dot and Mona had been taken somewhere.  First

rule of self-preservation: Never let yourself be taken to the second

scene of the crime.  Regardless of promises made, evildoers don't move

the party for the greater comfort of the victim.  Anna remembered a

defensive-tactics instructor shouting at a timid young woman Student,

"These guys will rape you, kill you, and leave your body in a ditch. Why

is it you don't think they'd lie to you?"

Having returned to the front of the cottage, she stepped inside hoping

to find something to indicate where Marty had taken them .

They'd gone on foot, that much was clear by the vehicles left behind. It

had been less than an hour since Anna had seen the VIPS .

The sorting and destroying of files must have taken up some of that

time.  'They couldn't have gotten too far.  Anna had 360 degrees to

choose from, all equally dark and uninviting.  lo the east lay forest,

the Chimneys, and the sea.  To the south was the sound, the marshes, and

an old cemetery.  Westward the sound snuggled up to Stafford's grounds.

North was the designated wilderness area with both forest and saltwater

marsh.  A wealth of places to hide a body or two.  With care and tides

and fiddler crabs, a learned biologist could probably manage it so

they'd never be found; not by dogs and )lot by time.

Standing in the mess, Anna noticed she'd lost her shadow .

Flicka had been with her when she came back from the rear of the cottage

but hadn't followed her inside.

First the fawn was shut outside the grounds.  Possibly it had been an

accident.  Maybe an act of intimidation, adding anxiety about their pet

to Dot and Mona's mental stress.  Or the fawn was a distraction Marty

didn't need.  With coke and adrenaline calling the shots, the woman was

undoubtedly operating on the edge.

Then Flicka was shut inside.

Because he'd tried to follow, was Anna's guess.

"Flicka, here baby," she called softly, hurrying out into the yard .