Flashback (56 page)

Though softened by water and rot, she could tell the board's exposed end had not been sawed but broken. As she dug and pulled, she saw sledge or boot-heel-sized indentations where it had been repeatedly struck as if someone had gone to great lengths to smash it free of a structure.

Five minutes of digging and worrying it and the sand gave up a board five or six inches wide and a bit over two feet long. Risking her fanny to the yielding sand, Anna sat and examined her find. At first her flashlight revealed nothing more exciting than an old, square-headed, iron nail. As she looked, though, letters began to separate themselves from the shades of gray where white paint had once been emblazoned on the wood. Once looking for them, they became clear enough: rry Cay.

"I knew it," Anna whispered. She leaned back and closed her eyes. "You were right, Aunt Raffia. Tilly never left the fort." For the briefest of instants, borne undoubtedly on the winds of an acid flashback, Anna felt the presence of her great-great-aunt so strongly she smiled. Until it was gone she didn't dare open her eyes. Seeing ghosts at night when she was high was one thing. Seeing them mid morning, straight, was too much to contemplate. rry Cay.

The Merry Cay, the sailing skiff belonging to Sergeant Sinapp; the one he'd reported stolen the morning after Tilly and Private Lane disappeared, the boat that held together the thin fabric of lies about the supposed elopement.

It was as Raffia had said. Sinapp killed them, dumped the bodies and the smashed skiff in the ruined cistern, then saw to the bricking up himself. Anna didn't doubt but that she sat on Tilly's impromptu grave. Without realizing she did so, she patted the sand with the tenderness of a mother gentling a frightened child.

Whether bones would be found, she couldn't say. Not being a forensic expert she had no idea what a hundred and fifty years immersed in brackish water and wet sand would do to a human skeleton. For her, the finding of the boat was enough.

EPILOGUE

The refugees were taken to an INS holding facility by a flotilla of coast guard ships. According to the coast guard and INS, it was the largest single landing of illegal aliens since the British invaded in 1812. Anna had been a part of history.

The six fishing boats were stopped and taken into custody at about the same time the helicopter reached Garden Key. They had no intention of returning to Cuba. No one doubted that they were headed to Enrico's Marine Supply in Miami, but as they denied it uniformly, there might be trouble proving it. The coast guard took possession of the fishing boats as well as the captured Scarab. Not a bad haul.

Paulo, Rick, Butch and Mack disappeared into the legal system. There would be federal charges, charges by the state of Florida, and Cuban officials might want them as well. Good intentions or not, they had broken rules, laws, traditions, taboos and statutes in many jurisdictions. They would be in jail a long time. Mack and Butch faced the death penalty. Anna wished Paulo and Rick a mere slap on the hands, but they would get little leniency for being cute, young and good-hearted.

Bob and the wounded woman were medevacked out. Bob was recovering but would probably limp the rest of his life.

Anna remained at Fort Jefferson for two more weeks. Her time was spent writing reports and retrieving personal gear and NPS property off the bottom of the ocean around East Key.

Mrs. Meyers was rescued from the moat and underwent rehabilitation in Daniel's living room. Along with a few more scars on corpus and psyche, Anna would take away from the Dry Tortugas the wonderful image of Daniel, the burly maintenance man, flitting about muttering, "Oh my dear, oh my dear," and, "Don't hurt her. Careful," as the Harley was winched up onto the moat wall.

Anna photocopied Raffia's letters and turned them over to Duncan, the fort's historian. His feelings were mixed. Excavating the cistern that entombed Tilly, Joel Lane and then Theresa Alvarez excited him. The prospect of finding fragments, the DNA of which might be matched to an actual living park ranger, filled him with glee. The prospect of dismantling the walls of the powder room to discover Dr. Mudd's innocence and, so, the negation of his book proving the man's guilt-all but three chapters of which were already completed-did not.

Knowing the glacial slowness with which a big bureaucracy moves, Anna didn't count on this question being answered in her lifetime.

She wasn't concerned. She had the answers she needed and a future full of live people to look forward to. Paul renewed his proposal via e-mail. They'd set a date, March, scarcely half a year away. Place was yet to be determined.

Anna unpacked the black velvet box that housed the impressive diamond engagement ring Paul had given her and put the ring on. She needed to get used to the look and feel-and the idea-of it before she returned to Mississippi and had to make good on her promise of matrimony.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nevada Barr is the award-winning author of ten previous Anna Pigeon mysteries, including the New York Times bestsellers Hunting Season and Blood Lure. Her next book, to be published in June 2003, is Seeking Enlightenment... Hat by Hat, a skeptic's down-to-earth search for the spiritual. She lives in Mississippi, where she was most recently a ranger on the Natchez Trace Parkway.

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