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.)
see her as well as the others, but by the reflection of the moon off the
water, Schlessinger looked too tightly strung, a guitar string about to
snap. The skin of her face was rigid beneath her eyes and over her
cheekbones. In the brief silence that followed the ultimatum, Anna
became aware of the faintest of sounds, like distant rocks clashing
together in the surf. Marty was grinding her teeth. The barrel of the
gun hanging down by her thigh twitched spasmodically. The fingers of
her left hand drummed on the barrel of the flashlight.
If her drug of choice was cocaine and she'd bolstered her courage with a
line or two more than she was accustomed to, Marty Schlessinger was in a
volatile state. Fear was not a factor, but paranoia was. Pain wouldn't
figure into her equation till the drug wore off. Freedom from fear and
pain gave her more courage than Anna cared to think about. Consequences,
squeamishness, ethics, morality-all the leverage human beings use to
keep themselves and one another from tearing society apart would have no
effect.
"Shoot me then," Mona said, and dug a cigarette from the pocket of her
trousers.
"I thought you used those to leave a trail," Dot said accusingly.
"Held one back to smoke before the execution. I'm a sucker for
tradition." The words were brave and Anna was impressed, but she noticed
Mona's hand shook so badly she could scarcely light her cigarette.
Their captor seemed not to hear or not to process the information. With
a visible effort to keep the quaver from her lips, Dot went on with
forced nonchalance ." We left quite a trail, Marty. There's no way you
can erase it all. We left enough clues to send you to the gas chamber.
Why don't you just let us go? Mona and I don't care a fig about this
turtle thing. We never really understood how it worked .
We're just a couple of senile old schoolteachers. Let us go and this
never happened." Her voice grew stronger as she spoke. Years of
compelling children to learn were not wasted.
With a glimmer of optimism, Anna waited for Marty to see reason.
Unmoved and unmoveable by humor, logic, or pathos, Schlessinger raised
the semiauto with the unstoppable glide of a machine; preprogrammed and
soulless.
"Holy shit," Anna whispered. All the weapons she didn't have flashed
before her eyes. The tire iron still hung from her belt but it only
worked when applied up close and personally.
The pistol was reaching the end of its are. No sign of humanity yet
sparked in Schlessinger's pupilless eyes. Dot and Mona, closed in a
circle of hard light, Dot's hands on Mona's shoulders, watched the
barrel with frozen fascination. In a supreme act of courage and
defiance, Mona raised the cigarette to her lips and took in a lungful of
smoke.
Time was up.
Without thought, Anna snatched up a rock the size of a PingPong ball and
hurled it at Schlessinger. Gender had robbed Anna of a childhood spent
throwing and catching spherical objects. The rock hit the biologist in
the hip. Light and gun rotated toward the embankment. Three rapid
shots were fired into the woods. Schlessinger thought Anna was above
her.
"Run!" Anna shouted. Dot and Mona sprang up, Mona's knee miraculously
healed. The shout brought Schlessinger's gun and flashlight back
around. She caught the VIPs in the beam. They had bolted north, away
from the fall of dirt that hid Anna. Land gave way to marsh and they
plowed only a yard or two through the knee-high muck and grass.
Screaming like a banshee, Anna began throwing everything she could lay
her hands on: rocks, sticks, dirt clods, and something that felt
suspiciously like a frog. Her shrieks were guttural, visceral,
everything she could remember from training, monster movies, and PBS
snuff films. She hoped she sounded like an army of lunatics.
Forgetting Dot and Mona, Schlessinger turned on Anna, this time firing
in the right direction. Anna saw the muzzle flash at the same instant
she felt a slug pound into the dirt by her elbow. Loose dirt was no
match for bullets fired at close range. At best it would slow them down
just enough so the hole they blasted through her body would be bigger
and she'd die with less time for suffering.
Balling up like a pill bug, she rolled to the bottom of the hill.
Three more shots slammed into the bank in rapid succession, sending down
a rain of dirt. Now would be a good time for backup, Anna thought,
though to be rescued in such an ignominious position would be galling.
She wanted to uncurl herself and move to better cover. The original
barrage of rocks would have tipped anyone off-even someone slightly mad
and seriously high-that their attacker was unarmed. Any minute
Schlessinger would be coming over the ramparts of Anna's fort. For what
seemed a deadly eternity but was less than a second or two, Anna's body
refused to uncoil, to expose more of itself to danger. Then she was on
elbows and knees snaking south through the mud. As she crawled, she
hollered for Rick, AI, Dijon, and Guy; like Beau Geste, calling up a
phantom army to keep Schlessinger off balance long enough for Dot and
Mona to get out of the line of fire.
Given the efficiency of the island grapevine, Anna didn't hold out much
hope the ruse would work for long. That the Hansons were to be staked
out for a drug bust wasn't common knowledge, but everyone knew fire crew
had been called off Cumberland for some law enforcement
cloak-and-daggering.
A broken beam of light snapped over the berm. Anna logrolled into
deeper water. Stretched full-length, she presented an irresistible
target. The water was close to body temperature, making it hard to tell
where she was wet and where she was dry. She could feel her hands
sinking into the ooze that nourished the salt meadow. Grass, terribly
sparse for the duties she required of it, rose a foot or so over her
head. Disturbed slime gave off the rich smell of death and new life
intermingling.
Distressingly buoyant, Anna's legs wanted to float, her shirt and
trousers ballooning with air. Grasping the grass down near the roots,
she anchored her boots in the muck and forced her body beneath the
surface.
Marty Schlessinger reared up on top of the tumble of earth .
Either she was crazy or she'd figured out Anna had nothing but rocks in
her arsenal. Anna suspected both.
"Aaannaaa." The call was long and eerie, like that of an evil child ."
Olly olly oxen free."
Despite the tropical temperature of the water, Anna felt an icy current
running down her spine. Crazy people made her nervous .
Politically correct or not, crazy people made everybody nervous. In
madmen one couldn't help but see one's own potential slippage from
sanity. All rules were suspended. The game changed. Not even the
board remained the same.
" Your little old ladies are dead."
Sadness seasoned by a bitter sense of failure welled up within Anna. A
repulsive gush of self-interest carried it away. Marty didn't dare
leave Dot and Mona alive. If she'd already succeeded in killing them,
Anna's responsibilities were at an end. She could lie low. She could
run away. She could save her precious little hide. Inch by inch she
began easing backward through the marsh grass toward the open sound. A
quarter-mile's slither would bring her to swimmable water. After her
long intimacy with chiggers and ticks, leeches struck her as almost
family.
Pathetic bleating halted her progress. Flicka, tied to his stump, had
been alarmed by the shots. Sorry, Anna thought cravenly. You're on
your own.
" Flicka!"
Anna winced. It was Mona. Schlessinger had lied-or been mistaken. At
least one little old lady was still alive.
His mistress's voice excited the fawn and he began to cry frantically'
as if he were being disemboweled with a dull knife.
"Flicka!" Mona called again, closer this time. The fawn, unwitting, yet
as effective as a Judas goat, was leading Anna's lambs to the slaughter.
Cowardice begged her to stay in the marsh, her arms and legs and heart
were heavy with it. Warm enfolding mud was her dearest companion. Eyes
above the waterline no more than a selfrespecting alligator's, Anna
watched the events on shore unfold .
Things slowed. A creature of the marsh, she watched the human drama
with something approaching disinterest.
Grimly, methodically, reminiscent of the wooden men in clocks who raise
their mallets day in and day out to strike off the hours, Marty
Schlessinger's gaze was pulled from the south where Anna hid. The
semiauto began to swing up. Pivoting smoothly on her uphill foot, she
turned toward the fawn's guardian angel.
Necessity overcame self-preservation. With a shout, Anna came up out of
the mud like a creature in a horror film. Less than twenty feet
separated her from Schlessinger, but it stretched as distance will
stretch in a dream. Pulling the tire iron from her belt, Anna pushed
though air thick as the mud she'd come from. Roaring filled her ears.
Some of it she recognized as her own, some a higherpitched staccato.
Mona and maybe Dot shouting.
Her back to the bank, the ocean in front of her, besieged from two
sides, Schlessinger screamed like a cornered animal. The flashlight
fell away, its beam spiraling down the side of the mound .
Marty had the pistol in both hands. Fire flashed. Anna saw the ten
inches of blue and knew the shot had gone in the direction of the VIPS.
She yelled again. Time and distance collapsed. Suddenly she was at the
bottom of Marty's mountain. Black of metal, of roots, of human limbs
ran together. An explosion, so close Anna was deaf with it, struck at
the same time as a numbing blow to her inner thigh.
Anna had been punched, rolled in toxic waste, tumbled off cliffs, and
once, a woman had tried to drown her. But never had she been shot.
Outrage flooded her veins ." You shot me!" she heard herself screaming
." You tucking shot me." Fury swept her up. She'd never been so angry;
she was amazed her hair didn't catch on fire.
She hit Schlessinger in the knees and the woman fell back, head down the
far side of the berm. Her feet came up; the toe of one boot caught Anna
under the chin. Maybe it hurt, maybe it didn't. Anna was beyond pain.
Grasping Marty's ankles, she clawed her way up her body. Dirt mixed
with the water streaming from her clothes and she stuck like glue. A
fleeting question: How much of it was blood? She was alive, so the
femoral artery hadn't been severed. That would have to be good enough.
Hands hammered at her head. Anna fought back, smashing the tire iron
into what she hoped was fallible human flesh and not the unfeeling dirt
of the bank. Locked in tightly, there wasn't much leverage and the
blows did little harm. Stiff, clawlike fingers tore at her cheek. One
ripped the corner of her mouth. She bit it and hung on like a terrier.
Blood trickled down her throat, choking her. Her teeth were stopped by