Flashback (41 page)

Oh dear. I must go now. Joseph just put his head into the room to inform me he requires my presence. I expect he wishes to leave our quarters and knows the instant he's gone I will go and talk to his pathetic prisoner down the hall and undermine her corrective punishment. Joseph is a great believer in the restorative powers of solitary confinement. I should know. He has discovered ways to isolate me even when in the company of others. Forgive me the self-pity. It has been a trying day. I will finish this tomorrow. A boat with the mail is expected and I can send this off to you.

Tilly is gone.

Joseph kept me with him for the remainder of the day yesterday but, before bed, I crept down the hall to wish Tilly good night. She was in her room then and told me to sleep well as she always does. This morning she was gone. Her bed was mussed as if she had slept there, and all that was missing were her shoes and the clothes she had worn the day before.

At first I thought she'd defied Joseph and was walking about the fort, possibly just enjoying the breeze on the moat wall after so long cooped up in her room. I searched the island and the fort, hoping to find her before Joseph did. There was an unsettling sameness to my seeking her as before, and it lured me back to the powder magazine, but this time she wasn't there.

Finally I grew afraid for her-not of Joseph's wrath, but for her very person. I told my husband, and a search was begun in earnest. With everyone engaged, soldier, prisoner and even the work crews, it was but a half to three-quarters of an hour before every nook and cranny of this small key had been looked at.

It was discovered that Joel Lane was gone from his cell and Sergeant Sinapp was missing the small sailing skiff the Merry Cay he uses to go fishing and turtleing.

Everyone thinks Joel and Tilly have run off together and it must be so. Joseph has sent soldiers out to all the keys within half a day's sailing from the fort to see if the two runaways have landed. A handful of the men keep small pleasure boats, most just big enough for two or three passengers. As far as I know Joel has no skill as a sailor and, till she came here, Tilly had never been on anything but the canoe in the pond behind our old house.

Forced inactivity has worn me down to tears more than once today. Joseph blames me for Tilly's running away and the escape of Private Lane. He has condemned me to sit out the search when it would be a relief to me to be with one of the sailing parties. I cannot speak to Mr. Arnold, Mudd or anyone else with the exception of Luanne.

That chafes more than restricting my movements. As Sam Arnold and the doctor live in such close quarters with Joel, it is my hope that they might have heard or seen something that would help us. Joseph will, of course, speak with them, but I hold to the belief that they-or at least Mr. Arnold-would tell me things they might not tell one of the soldiers. There is also the possibility that Dr. Mudd had a hand in this. Should he have other "proofs" of his innocence that he felt he could not trust to the hands of Mr. Lincoln's army, I do not now think he would hesitate to use an innocent girl as the vessel for getting them to his supporters. What keeps me from really believing this to be the case is, though he might risk an innocent's life, surely he would not risk his precious documents. He must know as well as I the near impossibility of two unskilled sailors surviving a sixty-mile sail in a tiny skiff.

Joseph's condemnation of me as the author of this tragedy would cut me had not my own already cut to the quick. What possessed me to allow-no, not merely to allow, but to join in with-Tilly's fascination with these men? Pride? Did I see myself, as Tilly did in the beginning, as ministering angel? Christian saint? Saving the tormented boy from the evils of war and Sinapp?

I am coming to question myself; in pretending to do a kindness was I merely seeking excitement or entertainment?

And when Tilly began to lose interest in Joel (an interest that was obviously rekindled when I was not doing my duty and watching over her) and fall under the sway of the persuasive Dr. Mudd, why didn't I tell Joseph? Had he truly become unapproachable, changed? Or was it that I was changed, changed by, if not welcoming then certainly not rebuffing, the current of interest I sensed from Mr. Arnold?

Peggy, two hours have passed since the above sentence was written. I return to this interminable letter because I've no other channel for the chaos that has become my thoughts and feelings. I took time out from that fruitless and indulgent self-castigation and did something unthinkable. Do you remember how deeply offended we were when we were girls and Molly would search through our things to make sure we were not involved in improper behavior? I swore then, should I have daughters, I would never submit them to this invasion. Molly was right. Young girls need guidance more than privacy.

Today I searched Tilly's room in hopes of finding an indication of where she'd planned to go. To that end I was frustrated. What I did find has deepened the mystery of her elopement (at least we must hope it is an elopement and young Mr. Lane doesn't intend to ruin her). In a wooden cigar box beneath her underthings-why is it as girls we believe that is a viable hiding place?--I found several notes I can only presume were written by Dr. Mudd. Who delivered them I don't know. I suspect the doctor, with his gentle demeanor and air of injured innocence, managed to turn one of the soldiers to his purpose.

Two were simple summons: "Please come alone, S." And: "Could you find time today? S." The third was rather more interesting. "I have found something. S." They weren't dated, so I have no way of knowing when they were sent, but it serves to ratify Tilly's practice of sneaking to their casemate without me attending her.

Other than that, her room was as always: untidy and girlish. She'd carried Joseph's dictionary in and left it in a heap by the dressing table. I rescued it lest he discover its absence and the rude indignity with which it had been treated. A place was marked with a black feather. I doubt there's any significance to this. With the constant circling of magnificent frigate birds, we have an abundance of these. Before returning it to Joseph's desk I turned to the page she had marked.

She'd underlined one of the words and put three exclamation marks next to it in the margin. The word was doppelganger. Whether it means anything as pertains to her elopement, I have no idea. There was nothing missing from her closet or dressing table that I noticed, and it was not till afterward, when I'd had time to think, this began to bother me.

Till then I'd accepted the obvious; Tilly and Joel had run away together in the stolen skiff, the Merry Cay.

I'd convinced myself Tilly's ardor for Joel Lane had rekindled during her solitary visits to his cell. Now it would seem those visits were instigated by Dr. Mudd. The last two times I visited, Joel was not behaving like a man who has regained his lady love but as a sulky and jealous boy. These things could be explained away easily enough by the gaps in my knowledge of what transpired in my absence. It's Tilly's wardrobe that is so wrong. I know our sister. She had run to this presumed assignation wearing the skirt, blouse and stockings she'd worn yesterday-the day she fled the soldiers and I found her in the powder room. She'd worn them again though they were dirty, dust-streaked and stained with sweat.

Would a girl eloping with the man she loved intentionally wear such disreputable garments? Wouldn't she rather dress as if she would soon be standing before a minister? Especially Tilly, who is so fastidious about her appearance?

I had not thought I could feel more frightened for her, but I do. If she did not elope, what then? Is she carrying Dr. Mudd's messages to the mainland? Were that the case, one would think she would wait till next we sailed to Key West to shop or visit and take it then. That would be the safer way both for her and for Dr. Mudd's supposed documents. Were Mudd foolish enough to wish this ill-conceived flight, would he not go himself? Joel Lane will be released in the next few months, perhaps even weeks. It is the Lincoln conspirators who must serve out their lives on Garden Key. Escape for them must be paramount, and for Joel absurd.

This logic, if logic it is and not the imaginings of a febrile mind, applies to the elopement. Tilly, though passionate, has ever been a practical girl. Why risk possibly dying at sea to run away with a prisoner, when in a very short time he would be free and all she'd need do is book passage on one of the many ships that pass through here to meet him?

If this is so, where are these children and what has become of the missing boat, the Merry Cay?

23

The enormity of the skies was as dark as the small square Anna'd watched through the office window. Wind blew hard from the south with gusts from the southwest. Swells were six to ten feet. She had boated in rougher water when she was a ranger on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. There the water had been deadly, the summer temperatures of the lake ranging between thirty-nine and forty-two degrees. Here wind, rain, water and preternatural darkness were all warm; a phenomenon Anna found hard to get used to despite her time in Mississippi.

The warmth was comforting, offering a false promise of safety. Lake Superior had learned its cold treachery from the Atlantic Ocean; warm water would drown one as quickly as cold and without the anesthetic of numbing its victims first.

She didn't bother with rain gear. In twisting wind and waves, she'd be soaked to the skin in minutes even if she pitched a tent on the deck of the Reef Ranger and piloted the little craft through its window. As the Boston Whaler's engine idled, she buckled on one of the standard-issue, full-sized, personal flotation devices, easing the bottom strap so the vest would fit over her sidearm and Kevlar vest. The days when one strove to keep one's powder dry were long gone. Modern weaponry would fire when wet. Chances were good the SIG Sauer would work on the bottom of the ocean, though Anna had no desire to conduct that experiment in the near future.

Her handheld radio was another matter. Maybe it would work wet, maybe it would work over the disturbance of the storm, but not likely. Fortunately the boats were equipped with more powerful communications equipment. She could raise the mainland from the Reef Ranger's radio if she had to.

Given her druthers, she would use neither. Before she'd come to the dock, she'd taken the precaution of asking Bob to stand by on the radio. She'd forgotten this was Bob Shaw she was talking to. Ensconced in pillows, a cat on his lap, iced tea and magazines within easy reach, he still had his radio at his elbow and turned on, monitoring his realm. With his leg in a cast from toe to mid-thigh there was little he could do physically, but he could alert Daniel or, should the need arise, the coast guard. Teddy was good with a boat as well, so there would be plenty of people to come fish her out if she was washed overboard.

For the next little while, she wanted to stay off the airwaves. The bits and pieces of information she'd been poring over all day suggested Ranger Shaw wasn't the only one monitoring the National Park Service's law-enforcement frequency.

Safe as she was going to get, Anna cast off the mooring lines and opened throttle, powering up quickly before the elements could smash her boat into the pilings.

There was no danger of colliding with much else above the water. Not a single boat remained at the fort to weather the storm. The harbor was empty, as was what she could see of the ragged slate-colored sea.

Pushing the throttle to full, she headed south, out of the harbor. There were no park visitors to rock with her wake and, in water this high, power was necessary to hold a course and keep the bow into the wind so a wave wouldn't broadside her and roll the boat.

Out past the markers she noted not everyone had run for shore. Half a dozen shrimp boats, nets furled and rigging sticking out the sides like whiskers on an ungainly catfish, had fled for shelter in this harbor in the midst of the sea as commercial ships had since Cortez began sending gold back to Spain.

Before she reached the shrimpers, Anna took advantage of a smooth high swell; riding to its crest then letting the wind help her spin the Reef Ranger shortly before it would have crashed into the trough. Her vulnerable side was exposed no more than a few seconds, then, wind at the stern, she was turned, heading north between Garden and Loggerhead.

In alignment with wind and waves, boating was not so much dangerous as battering. Sailing around the world in a one-woman boat, never high on Anna's list, was dropped from adventures she would like to have before she died. The bow broke through the uppermost part of oncoming waves, then fell to the trough and again began to climb. Anna didn't sit, bent her knees and every other trick she could remember from years back. Still she was jarred to the marrow. She'd once met a ranger from St. John National Park in the Virgin Islands who'd broken vertebrae in his neck in just such water as this. The bones had cracked from the pressure of being jammed repeatedly.

What with other matters clogging her mind, a piece of key information had gotten by her. Or she hadn't had a context in which it would show as important.

Patrice had radioed. A red go-fast boat had passed Loggerhead heading east.

East Key was Anna's bet.

In the Dry Tortugas nothing that wasn't man-made stuck up much above sea level. Even the few trees tended to be stunted, low to the ground, evolved to withstand the hurricanes that blew each summer and autumn. East Key had no trees, just a courageous collection of salt scrub bushes circled between the dunes like a wagon train in Indian Territory. The waves were higher than the sand dunes on the tiny key, and Anna watched from the crest of each as she breached, looking for the small island. Possibly the key was underwater in storms. She'd not served at this posting long enough to know. The park was mostly shallow water. In rough weather, when the water was scraped into mountains and the valleys were hare, some of the coral reefs were too close to the surface to pass over in a boat.