A Superior Death (40 page)

Catching Patience in the channel was her only chance. Once the
Venture
hit open water she would be lost. The Bertram was a powerful, well-built boat but she wasn’t particularly fast, not when compared to the reworked engine replacing the standard-issue on Bittner’s Chris-Craft.

If Patience realized she was being pursued, even in the close quarters of the channel she could make a successful run for it.

“There are a few advantages to being dead,” Anna mused. “It’s a good cover.”

“Yes,” Tinker agreed and Anna wondered what it would take to surprise the Coggins-Clarkes.

“Tinker, my three fifty-seven is just inside the door to the bow on the bench to the left under my trousers. Get it.”

Without a word, Tinker hopped down from the bench and opened the small door. Seconds later she reappeared holding the revolver on both palms like a sacred offering. “This will be a complication,” she said as Anna set the revolver on the dash between the depth finder and the radar screen. Tinker spoke with such assurance Anna wondered if she could see, along with things corporeal and existential, the immediate future.

The green mark on the radar grew larger. Reaching across Damien and his wife, curled together again like sweethearts, Anna banged open the side window. Cold air burst in and with it came a sound that was not made by the Bertram’s powerful engines.

“Can either of you drive a boat?” Anna demanded. She thought of the aluminum runabout and amended her question: “A real boat?”

“Damien can,” Tinker replied. At another time Anna might have found the pride in her voice touching. As it was, it only served to deepen her natural skepticism.

“Mmm,” she returned noncommittally, but she had no choices. “When I tell you, take the helm—the wheel,” she told Damien, who had crowded out past Tinker to stand near the pilot’s bench. “Do nothing till I’m clear of the deck. Then pull these back. Both of them. At the same time. All the way.” Anna laid her hands on the twin throttles. “Shove these two levers down halfway. That’s neutral.” Anna put her left hand on the gear levers. “Then just wait. Don’t drive anywhere. If you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes or so, start calling for help on the radio. Eventually, somebody’ll come get you. Got it?”

“Got it,” Damien replied, with such boyish earnestness that Anna’s misgivings increased substantially.

On some level she knew she should let Patience escape, knew she worked without backup, endangered Tinker and Damien, knew, at best, she was courting a tort claim against the National Park Service by enlisting the aid of noncommissioned employees, SCAs—scarcely more professional by legal standards than tourists. But Anna’s joints were aching as if they’d been bent backward to just short of snapping and her vision had narrowed till, unless she concentrated, it was as if she viewed the world through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. The bends. The truly bent could sometimes never get straight.

And Patience Bittner was not going to get away with it.

The green blip lost focus. Half a dozen yards ahead the
Belle Isle
’s spotlight illuminated the ghostly outlines of a boat’s stern. In the soft green tones of folding money, the name
Venture
was blazoned across it.

Anna held the
Belle Isle
back a little longer. The instant Patience recognized it she would run. The
Belle
couldn’t outrun her and Anna hadn’t the firepower to stop her. Wouldn’t use it if she had. Carrie would be with her mother. Risking a child’s life—however unpleasant the child—didn’t fall under the direction to Protect and Preserve.

“Here.” Anna traded places with Damien but kept her hands on the wheel and throttles as she would have with a student driver in a hazardous situation. “I’ll pull alongside. You hold it there till I’ve cleared the
Belle Isle
and am aboard the
Venture.
Then what?”

“Pull back the throttles, put her in neutral, and wait,” Damien repeated dutifully.

“Hand,” Anna demanded. He raised his right hand. She moved hers from the throttle and he laid palm and fingers over the handles as if he’d been doing it all his life. A flicker of hope, not bright enough to be called optimism but welcome anyway, sparked in Anna’s breast.

She placed her hand over his and opened the throttle all the way. The
Belle Isle
surged ahead, came alongside the Chris-Craft, her port gunwale less than a yard from the smaller boat’s starboard side.

Trading action for thought, Anna snatched up her .357 and ran from the cabin back to the
Belle Isle
’s deck. The ribbon of water between the two moving boats boiled black, reminding her of the cold and lightless death she had cheated and was, perhaps, still waiting for her. “Because I could not stop for Death,” she whispered, “he kindly . . .”

Using the seven feet of deck to get a running start, she threw herself across the widening gap between the boats. Through fog, all visible surfaces moving at differing speeds, through dark and fleeting arms of white light, she had an uncanny sense of flying as one flies in a dream.

The dream came to an abrupt end when the toe of one foot caught the
Belle
’s gunwale. The rushing black water came up. Throwing her arms forward, Anna grasped the
Venture
’s gunwale but her lower body was sucked down into the lake. The dry suit kept the cold from her.

The ache in her shoulder pried between the bones, letting what strength had returned after the exhaustion of the swim leak away. The lake was reclaiming her. The drag of the water, the pull of the
Venture
cutting through it, was ripping Anna in two, pulling her arms from their sockets.

Slowly, she loosed her grip, let the water and momentum pull her back along the gunwale toward the boat’s stern. The jets of water where the wake turned under made a last try for her, but Anna had one foot up on the waterline diving deck. A foot, a knee, another knee, and the lake had to relinquish its claim. Anna tumbled over the stern rail onto the deck.

She landed on Patience’s cast-off dive suit and fins. Damage and noise were somewhat alleviated. But the revolver was gone, dropped in the channel.

“Shit,” Anna muttered.

For a moment she stayed where she’d fallen, watching the twin Plexiglas windows in the rear of the cabin. No alarmed face appeared, no concerned head peeked out of the cabin door. Either the noise of her arrival had been masked by the roaring of the engines, or Patience had assumed the thump was due to the flapping of unstowed fenders or a sideswipe by the
Belle Isle.

Anna pushed herself up far enough to look back. The
Venture
’s wake curled in two tight lines of pale water on the black lake. The sudden appearance of another boat had put Patience into high gear. The
Belle Isle,
engines silent, was already losing herself in the fog. Only the red and green glow on her bow gave away her whereabouts. Damien had done his part admirably.

Now Anna must do hers.

No gun, no way off the boat: it was not a good corner to have painted oneself into. Surprise was on Anna’s side, height, weight, and training. Maybe training, she amended as she eased herself noiselessly to her feet. Patience could drive a boat, could dive like a pro, and could choose the right wine to go with the fish. If there’d been aikido or tae kwan do mixed in with the ballet and cooking classes, Anna might be in for a more entertaining evening than she’d bargained for.

And the thought of facing even a tiny murderer without a revolver was nearly as daunting as the thought of all the government forms she would have to fill out explaining how she lost it.

Perhaps Patience would give up without a struggle, bend to the will of the law as personified by Ranger Pigeon. It could happen. “Yeah,” Anna said and looked around the crowded deck for something she could use as a weapon.

In addition to Patience’s dive gear, the pockets along the gunwales just above deck level had the usual maritime paraphernalia. There were several hundred yards of line, scrub brushes, a fish gaff on a long wooden handle, and cleaning supplies: detergent and something blue in a plastic bottle with a metal spray-pump top.

Anna lowered herself gingerly onto her aching knee and unscrewed the top from the spray bottle. Closed in her fist, it might pass muster if she maximized her shock value—people never saw much when they were frightened.

It crossed Anna’s mind to kick down the door like John Wayne in
McQ,
uttering only a terse dry “Knock, knock” as the wood splintered. But doors, even cabin doors on boats, were a good deal tougher than one might think. There was the possibility she’d only break a few bones in her foot and alert Patience to her presence.

The engine slowed. The
Venture
was nearing the end of the channel and would head out into open water at the marker buoys in Middle Islands Passage. The upcoming interview was not one Anna cared to conduct any farther from land than she had to.

The customized Evinrude engine that propelled the small boat was housed in an engine box to the rear of the stern deck. Anna turned the butterfly nuts and lifted back the cover. Though it was of higher caliber and horsepower, the engine was much the same as the twin engines on the Bertram. Black spark plug wires popped up to meet her grasp. With a jerk, she pulled them loose, and dropped them overboard.

The engine coughed once and died. In the ensuing silence Anna felt naked, exposed. At any moment Patience would come out on deck to see why the engine had failed.

Bent double to avoid the windows, Anna stepped across the narrow deck. Bracing one shoulder against the cabin wall on the port side where the opening door would help shield her, she waited with the aluminum spray nozzle held in what she sincerely hoped was a sufficiently fierce and businesslike grip to discourage close inspection.

Surrounded by an insulating blanket of fog, the sounds from the cabin were at the same time very clear and quite unreal, as if they were happening inside Anna’s skull. Muffled clicks: Patience trying the key. Muttered words as there was no answering surge from the engine. Dull thumps: Patience closing the choke, shutting down the throttle, turning off the ignition in preparation for coming to check the engine. More murmurings: probably instructions to Carrie Ann.

Anna tensed, then forced herself to relax, to clear her mind. A shadow across the window, then the cabin door opened with a bang. Looking neither right nor left, Patience made a beeline for the engine.

Anna reached out, caught the door, and quietly closed it. Moving her body to block it, she wedged one rubber heel against the wood.

“Stop where you are,” she said softly.

Throwing up her hands and collapsing to her knees like an old-time rivalist, Patience screamed: “My Lord!” She pressed her hands theatrically over her heart, but such was the shock registered on her face, Anna guessed the gesture was unplanned.

“Stay on your knees and turn around,” Anna said evenly. “Face the stern.” She held the spray nozzle in two hands, her arms extended from her body, elbows locked.

“Do it.”

Patience turned all but her head. Chin on shoulder, she continued to stare back at Anna. The initial shock was wearing off. Anna could see thought and sense rushing back behind her eyes, unlocking the stony set of her facial muscles. “Face away,” Anna commanded. “Eyes on the engine box. Do it.”

Patience faced away.

“Lie down slowly on your stomach,” Anna ordered.

“Mom!”

The door hit Anna’s back and she wedged her heel more firmly against it to keep it closed.

“Mom!”

The distraction was giving Patience courage. Anna could see it in the restless twitch of her arms and legs. “Don’t even think about it, Patience. What with one thing and another, my nerves have been pretty much shot to hell today. Killing you is a real possibility.

“Carrie Ann,” Anna called without taking her eyes off where Patience Bittner sprawled. “Carrie Ann, this is Anna Pigeon. Stay away from the door. Stay quiet.”

“Mom!” Carrie hollered again and rattled the door.

“Sit down and shut up!” Anna barked. Silence from within except for a snuffling sound that could have been either shuffling feet or adenoidal aggrievement.

“Face down,” Anna reminded Patience.

There was nothing with which to secure her prisoner but the dive line stowed near Patience’s right hand. In close quarters Anna didn’t care to wade into the midst of the other woman to retrieve it.

“Reach out with your right hand, Patience. Do it slowly. Good. Take hold of the dive line and pull it slowly into the middle of your back.”

With a short growl that telegraphed her intentions, Patience’s fist closed round the coiled line. Twisting like a stepped-on snake, she rolled and flung the line at Anna’s face.

Instinct and training held Anna steady. Her finger squeezed the trigger. A trickle of foam dripped from the nozzle. Her own playacting had caught her up. The instant was enough. Patience pulled the fish gaff free of its clamps and sprang to her feet.

“Jump, Anna,” she said. “Jump. Maybe you’ll make it. I hope you’ll make it. Jump.” Slashing at Anna with a power born of desperation and adrenaline, she lunged.

There was nowhere to go but back into the black water, and Anna held her ground. The gaff was sharp. Anna felt it cutting through the dive suit, catching the flesh of her breasts, ripping. She saw it come free on the other side.

There was no time to wonder if she’d been badly hurt. Her hand shot after the shaft before Patience could make another swing. Fingers closing around the wood, Anna jerked hard, but Patience kept her footing, kept her hold on the gaff. Blond hair fell wild around her face and her jaw was set like a bulldog’s.

“Mexican standoff,” Anna said reasonably, holding tight to her end of the long staff. “Eight or ten hours and it will be light. Somebody will come along. The ranger always gets to win. Why don’t we stop now? Save ourselves a miserable night?”