Flashback (36 page)

The Chief Ranger, Arnie Flescher, kept her on the phone for three-quarters of an hour. She was given a much-deserved earful for not calling him immediately on the accident with the motor shifting and her realization of the drugging. Fortunately she had been Johnny-on-the-spot with her phone reports on the sinking of the two boats and the injury of Bob Shaw.

Once she had been reprimanded and showed herself properly contrite, he got down to park business. Because of the difficulty of communication with Garden Key, coupled with the fact that as an acting Supervisory Ranger Anna didn't have a working relationship with the various Florida law-enforcement agencies, Arnie himself would take over tracing the identity of the two dead men and the green Scarab. He also promised to follow up on Theresa Alvarez's whereabouts and to question her about Lanny's drugging if they found her. If they didn't her, he'd file a missing person's report.

"If we don't track down this girl, it doesn't necessarily mean she's met with foul play," Chief Ranger Flescher warned. "The Cuban community looks after their own. That doesn't always coincide with the needs of law enforcement."

Anna thanked him for the help and the warning and hung up feeling a good deal better than she had. Asking for help: what a concept. She made a mental note to do it more often. Though she was only "acting"-a stranger to the park and the environment-she'd gotten in over her head both literally and figuratively and never once had it occurred to her to call for help.

"It's called teamwork, you idiot," she said to the ghostly reflection of her face in the computer screen.

Vaguely she remembered she'd wanted to accomplish three things before she called it a day. The third escaped her, and for a while she sat in the office chair, swinging back and forth, staring mindlessly at the blank computer screen.

Pictures. It had finally floated into the accessible part of her brain. Lanny hadn't been the one to weed out those of his departed girlfriend. With that information, the few bad snapshots of Theresa that had been overlooked became more interesting. Since the pictures had not been banished by a brokenhearted lover there had to be another reason they were gone. Either the picture abductor had a serious passion for Theresa and stole pictures rather than panties to sate it or they'd been removed because they might show something that would harm the thief.

The few snaps Anna'd gotten from Lanny's box were in her desk drawer. She took them out and turned her chair to better catch the slice of light leaking through the firing slit. A beautiful woman without much in the way of clothing. None of the shots caught her face. Why steal the face pictures? Identification? Surely a woman as good-looking as Theresa Alvarez had photos scattered behind her like breadcrumbs. She could probably follow them back to the first boyfriend she ever had.

Pawing through the desk, Anna unearthed a Sherlock-Holmes-style magnifying glass and amused herself looking at the pictures in extreme close-up. Even high-powered magnification didn't reveal a single blemish on Miss Alvarez's behind. Pity. Anna moved the glass over to one of the dark-haired men-both with their backs to the camera-who stood with Theresa on the startling white sand of the beach between the northwestern bastion and the old coaling docks.

"Eureka," she said, and, "Hah!" At last she'd found a connection.

20

My eyes adjusted quickly to the dim interior of the powder room. To my knowledge there has never been gunpowder stored in these strange little rooms. With the war over and the fort, though unfinished, already obsolete, there may never come a time when gunpowder will be warehoused here.

So, but for Tilly and a pile of board ends left from the unfinished walls lining the chamber, it was empty, airless and stiflingly hot. That Tilly was alone at first relieved me of some of my worry. Then I saw what sorry shape the poor thing was in. She lay crumpled on the far side of the scrap lumber. Her hair had come down and was pasted in sweaty strands across flushed cheeks. Dress, hands and face were streaked with dust and sawdust. So much had adhered to her face, even in the questionable light I could see the cleaner tracks where tears had cut through the grime. Her eyes were closed and her left hand pressed, palm on her nose, fingers on her forehead, as if she kept her face from falling off her skull. The back of her hand was bloody and her knuckles scraped.

With the worry and embarrassment she'd caused me I'd thought when I found her I would shake her till her little pea brain rattled in her head. The moment I laid eyes on her that thought was as if it had never been.

Because she was alive, I could not be angry anymore. Because she was so clearly hurt my heart broke for her. My first thought was of the worst. The rough soldiers, Sinapp with his hot eyes, the chase-one might think in a place so overcrowded as this there would be nowhere away from prying eyes or helping hands to assault a young girl. Such is not the case. There are a few such comers isolated amidst the clamor. The powder storage rooms would serve very well. A cry might not be heard over the sound of building and men's voices.

"Tilly," I said and was surprised to hear my voice break with tears. She lowered her hand and I was glad to see her face was unmarked with anything more damaging than dirt. When she saw me she did not stand but held her arms out the way she used to when she was a little thing and wanted one of us to lift her up.

Risking a rusty nail through the soles of my soft slippers, I went to her and held her. Safe or repentant or just emotionally strained, she began crying in earnest. After she'd wept the dust off of her face and onto the front of my white pin-tucked bodice, she settled down. I got her to sit up so I could have a look at her.

I was comforted by the fact that her buttons were buttoned, her laces laced and no part of her attire that I could see was torn. After she calmed somewhat I asked if she was hurt.

"No..." The word trailed off as if she wasn't sure or struggled to remember.

"Did anybody... did the men-"

"No!" She was sure this time and vehement. Pulling a little away from me she tried pushing her hair back into the bun she wore high on her head, a sign of womanhood I doubt she could have gotten away with at her age if she still lived with Molly.

"No," she repeated, looking ready to burst into a second flood of tears.

She acted at odds with herself-with me-the way she does when she's lying.

"I would never tell anyone, Tilly," I promised. "Not a word, not to Joseph, not to our sisters-" (This last part was a lie. I would have told you the first opportunity I had to get my hands on a pen.)

I truly meant it about not telling Joseph. Had the old Joseph found out she'd been assaulted, the men involved would be hanged. This new Joseph who has chosen to let a sergeant show disrespect might not mete out punishment. Besides, I didn't need Joseph. At that moment I sincerely believed that I would find someway to kill any man who hurt Tilly in that way myself. I still believe it but am deeply grateful I was not called upon to test it.

"I've not been touched," Tilly said. This was spoken in a rational tone and I believed her.

"Tell me what happened." This is a question that becomes all too common when one lives with our sister.

"I had... I went... I needed..."

The silly creature was trying to think of a way to get around the fact she'd been to the conspirators' cell alone. Saving her the effort and me the time, I said: "Went to Dr. Mudd's cell without me."

"Yes," she admitted.

"And not for the first time." She looked at me with such surprise, had my generosity not been taxed by the day she'd forced upon me I might have laughed.

Not ready to confess yet, she went on without addressing it. "Dr. Mudd wanted to see me about something important, he said."

"How did he say?" I demanded. "Did he send a message?"

Tilly realized the thin ice she walked on only when she heard it cracking. Not only Mudd but any soldier or inmate who assisted him could be whipped for carrying messages to a child of an officer without the express permission of that officer.

Rather than lie, she said nothing. I say that to her credit. On looking back, I do not believe Tilly to have told a single falsehood-at least not in words and at her tender age the nuances of deceit, omission, allowing presumption, half truths and misleading statements still seem to dwell on the side of godliness if only just barely. Sam Arnold's warning came back to me then. He'd said Dr. Mudd was taking advantage of Tilly's admiration of him, using her for his own ends.

"Go on," I said when it was clear my ominous silence and baleful stare were not going to coerce any more out of her on the subject of Dr. Mudd's summons.

"I went there-to Dr. Mudd-and we talked."

"What about?" At first I thought she wasn't going to tell me but would add it to the list of secrets that were aging us both far more efficiently than the passage of time ever could. A light came into her eyes and she leaned in toward me, lips parted. She wanted to tell me-tell someone. The secret was positively dancing a jig on the tip of her tongue. Still she hesitated. My guess was she'd been told by our illustrious prisoner not to.

This time my hopeful silence worked.

"You must promise not to tell," she insisted.

Of course I promised, but with every intention of breaking it, and so endangering my immortal soul, should keeping Tilly's secret place her in harm's way.

"Dr. Mudd is innocent," she whispered triumphantly.

I didn't respond to that. It was not much of a secret. He'd been insisting on it since the beginning, and Tilly had been saying much the same thing, thus earning the ill will of union soldiers and sympathizers at the fort. She seemed to take my silence as ignorance because she leaned ever closer, till our foreheads were nearly touching.

"He didn't do it, he didn't have anything to do with the assassination of poor Mr. Lincoln."

"I know what you meant," I said with some asperity. "You told the soldiers as much after you left his cell, did you not?"

Again she gave me that look of foolish astonishment, amazed that an adult might have done homework of her own.

"Yes. But I now have the proof of it."

"Do you have it with you?" I asked.

I must take back what I said about her never having lied outright. She did so twice. This was the first.

"No," she told me and had the decency to turn her head away to save me the disrespect of lying to my face.

There was little I could do short of wrestling her down in the dust and searching her pockets and person, so I let it pass.

I changed the subject. "How did you scrape the back of your hand? It's bleeding."

This was the second lie: "I fell."

I waited in hopes she would see the error of her ways and tell me the truth, but she didn't.

"I came out of the cell and Sergeant Sinapp and some of his men were loitering there," she volunteered, as if this late and little bit of honesty would wipe away the other. "I don't know if they were waiting for me or if they'd gathered in that particular place by chance. That sergeant-I hate him, Raffia. I know Molly says it's wrong to hate and I don't think I've ever hated anyone before, not truly, but I hate Sergeant Sinapp."

She looked at me, waiting for a reprimand I expect, but as that would have been the pot calling the kettle black, I said nothing.

"Anyway, he started saying things about my being in with the prisoners, awful things that just aren't true but are no less hurtful and hateful because they're lies." Tears filled her eyes again.

I ignored it. "So you told him why you'd really been there," I said.

"Yes."

"To gather evidence-proof-that the man condemned by the highest court in the union after weeks of testimony and evidence was actually and against all odds innocent."

"Yes."

"And that you had this proof."

"Oh, Raffia," she burst out. "He was so awful and so smug and superior."

"Tilly, if Dr. Mudd really did have proof of his innocence, don't you think he would have brought it up at the trial rather than wait till he was incarcerated a million miles from home and then entrust it to a sixteen-year-old Yankee girl?"

"But he didn't have it then. Don't you see?" she pleaded.

"So here on a key made of sand in a fort he's never been to before he found something that exonerates him. That makes no sense, Tilly."

"No. No," she said. "He didn't find it, it came."

"In the mail?"

Tilly seemed to think she'd told me too much. Her face, open with enthusiasm moments before, grew still and closed.

I tried a different argument. "If he'd gotten something that could win him his freedom, don't you think he would have called Joseph immediately? Why the secrecy? Why give it to you?"

"He didn't want it destroyed."

"By whom?" I asked, but Tilly wouldn't tell me any more. Clearly any and all persons but for herself were cast as the destroyers. I gave up. "When you came out of the cell, what did he do, Sergeant Sinapp?"

"I hate him," she repeated with even more vehemence than the first few times. "He said, 'Let me see it.' I started to leave and he grabbed at me. Then they were all grabbing at me and I got away and ran. The others stayed but he came after me. I heard a crash and some cursing but I didn't look back. I kept running. I think he tripped over one of the cats that likes to sun itself on the stored lumber." She was quiet for a moment, then she added: "I've always liked cats. Do you think we might feed them?"