Blind Descent-pigeion 6 (28 page)

  He looked out the window for a minute, the cloudless sky bluing his eyes. His fingers drummed softly on the desk blotter. "I'm not surprised," he said. "Losing a patient is hard on anybody and harder on Holden than most." His focus returned to the room, the chair, Anna. Reasoning with her was at an end. Folding his hands in front of him, he told her how it was going to be.

  "In using a government vehicle in an unauthorized manner, you have overstepped your bounds considerably. You have made remarks without substantiation that do not reflect well on the people here, people who worked so hard to save your friend. You have no authority in Carlsbad. You are a guest of this park. Until now we have been willing to cut you a good deal of slack because of what you have been through. You've used that slack, Anna. I can put you in touch with human resources either here or, better yet, in your home park, and we'll get some counseling for you. Other than that, there is nothing we can do. Oscar and I have talked it over with the superintendent. This latest incident is a BLM matter. Your statement has been taken, but, as you arrived after the fact, you aren't a material witness."

  "Attempted murder, assault on a federal officer, illegal discharge of a firearm," Anna said. "Whoever it was shot at me more than once. Malice."

  George Laymon's eyes strayed again out the window. "You had a bad scare," he said carefully.

  "You think I'm making this up?" Anger boiled so hot the image of steam pouring from her ears didn't seem so much ludicrous as inevitable. What saved her from an unladylike outburst that would have gotten her tossed out of Laymon's office was the sheer profusion of hostile remarks that clogged her brain and tied her tongue.

  "I didn't say that, Anna. Some of these good old boys around here get carried away. Look at any road sign. They are all riddled with bullet holes."

  "My boot heel-"

  "Could have been broken off on a rock. That's rough country out there. Or it could have been shot off like you say," he said placatingly.

  Anna was not placated.

  "I just think there are many explanations you haven't considered.

  You're too close to this. Too personally involved. To put it bluntly, you're out of line. It's time you went home."

  A brief maelstrom of emotions ranging from acute humiliation to homicidal rage seethed. Because she was female, her body's natural response to the onslaught was tears, tears of anger that, had she allowed them to fall, surely would have burnt holes in the carpet like droplets of battery acid. Determinedly impassive, she waited for the storm to abate. She hadn't a leg to stand on. Everything George Laymon said was true. A Chinese aphorism came to mind: If you keep going the way you're going, eventually you'll get where you're headed. Where she was headed was out of town, if not tarred and feathered riding on a rail, then the modern-day equivalent.

  Going home to Mesa Verde, her tower house, her cat, tempted Anna to the very soul. It was, as the bard had said, peevish and self-willed harlotry that bade her stay. Self-willed harlotry won. The time had come to grovel fetchingly.

  Anna sighed and rubbed now-dry eyes. "Thanks, George. A counselor would be good. I know I've been a pain in the neck. I guess I needed to blame Frieda's death on somebody human. God is so unsatisfying." She laughed, and it took no effort to sound shaky and uncertain. "I'll talk to a shrink, get some rest, and get this ankle stable. I'd like to be here for Brent's funeral, get some closure. Then I'll head home." Laymon couldn't very well refuse to let her stay for the funeral of a coworker whose body she had found. That and a shrink appointment would buy her a few more days in which to continue wearing out her welcome. "Thanks again for listening," she said. "This has been a rough week."

  Laymon was relenting, though his eyes were still wary. Anna didn't want to overplay her hand. Pushing herself up from her chair and limping more than was called for by her rapidly healing ankle, she allowed herself to be shunted from his office.

  Outside the building, she stood in the thin winter sunlight pretending she felt some heat from it. Sheltered from the wind, it was almost true. She turned her face to the light the way a sunflower will. The day was young. Laymon was a professional; he'd managed to rake her over the coals in less than a quarter of an hour. One thing was sure: she was officially on foot. CACA wouldn't be giving her a vehicle in the near future. Later she would consider bumming a ride into town and renting a car. Since 1994 when the NPS had bumped most of their law-enforcement rangers up to GS-9s, her poverty days were over. Anna made thirty thousand and change annually. For a single woman living forty-five miles from the nearest retail store, thirty grand stretched a long ways. A rental car wouldn't break the bank. Maybe tomorrow, she thought. Today she was going on a hike.

Zeddie's house was empty. She was working the Big Room down in Carlsbad Cavern till noon, then roving a section of trail in the twilight zone after lunch. Peter would be hanging about, within whispering distance. Where Schatz was, was anybody's guess. Solitude was a relief. Having alienated her hostess with accusations of murder, Anna didn't relish getting caught raiding her refrigerator for a packed lunch. A bottle of Dos Equis beckoned with its long and graceful neck, but she declined, taking an Orange Crush instead. Demon alcohol would have to wait till she didn't have so much on her mind.

  A quick forage through the bathroom cabinets produced an Ace bandage. Ankle taped, food and water in a purloined daypack, Anna left the housing area and started cross-country in the direction of Big Manhole. A mile's walk took her over a rise in the earth that effectively blocked the Carlsbad buildings from view. Out of sight of headquarters, she ceased to move in a straight line and began making slow wide arcs, her eyes fixed on the ground.

  CACA's backcountry was rugged and not well traveled. The park was known for its cavern; visitors came to see the cave, not to hike. Little money was dedicated to the creation and upkeep of trails. Anna hoped this would simplify her task. In a hiking park the plethora of footprints would have rendered tracking nearly impossible.

  The desert was not good country for finding sign. The earth was hard-baked and covered with stones, though recent rains had softened it somewhat. On that Anna pinned her hopes. That and the shooter's mindset. He hadn't planned on leaving any witnesses. Maybe he'd not bothered to cover his trail. With her escape, he'd been thrown off balance. The glimpse she'd had of him, he'd been running. Runners left good prints.

  Two hours' careful traverse of sand and rock turned up little besides weathered litter and game trails. Cold drove the life of the desert underground, and she hadn't seen so much as a jack rabbit or a horned lizard. Three times she'd come across recently made footprints, and three times the trails turned away from her objective: shooting distance to Big Manhole. Anna remained unconcerned. Tracking was slow business, two hours scarcely a beginning.

  Wind, cutting in an endless blade across the exposed skin of her face, was an irritant, but she chose to use rather than fight it. This time of year it blew unwaveringly from the northwest. By keeping it first to one quarter, then, when she turned and began tracking in the opposite direction, to the other, she could stay on course without bothering to lift her eyes from the ground.

  Two more hours passed without producing results. Anna found a fold in the earth to deflect the wind and lunched on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Doritos, and the orange soda. From her niche she could see what she believed was the hill that housed the entrance to Big Manhole. In an unending landscape of fawn-colored hills it was hard to be sure without digging out the binoculars she'd pilfered from Zeddie's mantel. Beyond the hill a valley had been carved by a now-dry watercourse. The riverbed writhed like a snake through scabby hills and up under cliffs of white limestone. In an ancient oxbow, dry for centuries, was a pipe sticking out of the ground, a "dry hole" marker, where a well had been. A quarter of a mile beyond was another well, this one up and running. A black speck, followed by a comet's tail of white, barreled down the road toward the wells. A truck fighting the same choking dust that had engulfed Anna.

  She retrieved Zeddie's field glasses. A cement truck, no doubt laying a well pad somewhere in the hills. She followed the trail of dust back to where the rutted dirt to Big Manhole forked off from the gravel, then traced it up to the bald hillock where she'd found Brent's Blazer. A cream-colored pickup was parked there. Because of its protective coloring she hadn't noticed it with the naked eye.

  Interest rejuvenated, she moved the glasses slowly down the hill till she rested them on the entrance to the cave. Brent's blood, black now, stained the rock, but the body was gone. The sheriff would have taken care of that. Big Manhole was locked, or at least closed. The driver of the pickup was nowhere in sight.

  A minute's watch, and he appeared. Walking up from the gully separating Anna from Big Manhole came the rangy weathered form of Oscar Iverson. He was in uniform and so on duty. This wasn't a recreational jaunt. Probably he was there for the same reason she was; to see what he could find about the shooter who'd killed Roxbury. He'd driven around to the cave to backtrack.

  Anna deliberated on whether to show herself or not. Laymon had made it abundantly clear that she was persona non grata in these parts, and the previous night, Oscar had seemed none too pleased with her either. From her protected crevice she would be all but invisible unless she purposely called attention to herself.

  In times past she'd learned a good deal more from watching people than from talking with them. Words were used to obfuscate as often as to communicate. She decided on the role of unseen spy and cupped both hands around the end of the binoculars lest they catch the sun and flash out her whereabouts.

  Oscar wasn't a tracker. He moved quickly, his long legs eating up the terrain. She guessed he was following a fairly clear trail and cringed as his great booted feet slapped down, obliterating traces of the shooter. Halfway up the long slope, not more than fifty yards from where she hid, Iverson came to a stop and squatted down, his long green-clad legs poking out at the knees in a fair imitation of a praying mantis. For a while he stared at the ground, then he poked at something with a stick he found nearby. Whatever it was that he had unearthed, he picked up gingerly with two fingers and dropped into a plastic bag that he tucked away in the pocket of his coat. That done, he straightened up again and appeared to be searching the area.

  "Stomp, stomp, stomp," Anna whispered. Iverson's boots were falling with the oblivious regularity of the nontracker. Once the obvious had been snatched up, the scene was treated like dirt. There'd be precious little left to see by the time she got there. She wished she'd not stopped for lunch, not commenced her tracking on the far end. Railing against past decisions petered out the way it always had to: when she reached Eve wishing she'd not played with the snake, regret vanished. There are no alternate life paths.

  Finally Iverson moved on, and Anna allowed herself to exhale. He didn't go much farther. On higher, drier ground he lost the trail. After a few stabs into the brush, he gave up and returned the way he had come, over the same trail.

  "Stomp, stomp, stomp," Anna lamented.

  Briefly he stopped at the mouth of Big Manhole. Bowing his head, he dragged off his hat, a green billed cap with earflaps that tied beneath the chin. Ridiculous-looking garment, but Anna wished she had one. The wind was causing her ears to ache.

  Iverson stood combing his straw-colored hair with his fingers till it stood out in the wind. Anna wondered if he was paying his respects to Brent Roxbury's ghost or merely cooling his brains the better to think with. Whatever the phenomenon, it was short-lived. Pulling the hat back on, he made short work of the walk up to his truck and drove off. Anna waited till a plume of white told her he was headed out toward the main highway, then she packed up the leavings of her lunch and started down the hillside to see if anything was left of the shooter's trail.

  In minutes she reached the place where Iverson had stopped, a small clearing ringed with low growth and boasting a line of sight to the cave, an ideal place to lie in wait with a rifle. Anna paused just outside the clearing and hunkered down on her heels to study the ground. It didn't look as if the sheriff's men or any BLM people had visited the scene. Darkness would have prevented any serious investigation when they'd come to fetch the body the previous night. Either they'd be out later in the day, or they'd already come and gone but had failed to track the sniper.

  Iverson's prints were all over the clearing, the easily identifiable marks of a corrugated lug sole, the kind found on every pair of firefighting boots made by White's, the choice of elite wild-land firefighters from every land-management agency in the country.

  To one side of the clearing she could see where he'd crouched down and gouged the earth with his twig. In the dirt was a smooth indentation about an inch long with a slight T-shaped mark at one end. A rifle shell, overlooked by the gunman, had left its impression in the soil. That was what Oscar had bagged and pocketed. Several minutes' careful study was unproductive. If the shooter had left other tracks, Iverson's overlay them. With a snort of disgust, Anna turned her attention to the trail Iverson had followed up the slope for such a short distance. Again lug-soled footprints were all she found. Either they all belonged to the heavy-footed, Iverson, or the shooter also had been wearing White's boots. Near the ridge she lost the trail. The crown of this hill and the next were stripped bare of earth. Polished limestone remained, untracked and untrackable.