Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (38 page)

Jaunty, that was the word for him; this man was positively jaunty. The left lapel of his coat stuck out a tad. Anna guessed he had a shoulder holster.

“Dude,” he said as he walked around the fire.

“Ladies,” Anna said. The Colt, the Walther, and the .22 appeared. All barrels pointing at the man’s heart.

Instinctively he threw his hands in the air. His first rational thought was to go for his gun.

“Don’t,” Anna said. “We’ve killed Sean, Jimmy, Reg, the dude, and your pilot. Don’t think we won’t kill you.”

Muscles in his legs and shoulders shifted as his brain shifted gears. He snapped a hard look at the dude, shins bare, eyes closed, a white plastic fork holding his chin up.

“Whoa,” he said and turned on his nice smile. It was fraying at the corners. “I have no idea what has happened here. I fly around here a lot. I’ve never seen anybody in this old camp. Today, when I flew over, I happened to see you down here. Airplane wrecked, no car in sight. I thought you might need help is all. No need for the heavy artillery. Just hoping to do a good deed in return for a refill.” He waggled the silver thermos.

He sounded so sane, looked so sane. His face was absolutely guileless. Confusion registered, surprise and concern, but not a single shred of anything resembling guilt or malicious intent. Anna suffered a disorienting sense of wrongness, feeling that perhaps she had fallen asleep for three days and when she woke up she was a stone-cold killer pointing a great damn big gun at the heart of an innocent man.

He took off his sunglasses and beamed at them with clear blue eyes that crinkled at the corners. “Can I put my arms down? I’m feeling kind of silly.”

“Barnyard?” Leah asked in an incredulous tone.

The mask slipped. Only a fraction, and only for a second, but Anna saw it; pure hatred flashed from beneath it like a bolt of black lightning.

“Take your gun out with two fingers, just like on TV,” Anna said.

“I’d love to help you out, sweetheart, but I don’t carry a gun,” he said easily, smile back in place.

“Shoot him, Heath,” Anna said flatly.

Heath raised the Colt.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I do carry a small personal weapon for self-defense. You should have been more explicit.”

“Two fingers. Drop it away from your body.” He did as he was told.

“Barnyard—Bernard—Bernard Something,” Leah said. She was standing now, as was Elizabeth. Katie, bravado damped, stayed tucked behind the dude’s corpse. “I met you. You were a junior partner of Michael and Gerald’s.”

“I’m afraid you’ve got me—”

“Sit down,” Anna ordered.

“I’ve been sitting for three hours, but if you say so.” He sat on the dry grass between them and the fire.

“Iverson. Bernie Iverson,” Leah said. “That’s it. You’re it. You’re him.”

“The dude called the man on the phone Bernie once,” Katie piped up.

The man laughed and shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Heath,” Anna said. Heath thumbed the hammer of the dude’s Colt back with its resonant metallic swallowing sound. “You don’t understand,” Anna said reasonably. “I want to shoot you. We want to shoot you. We’ve had a real bad couple of days. Are you Bernard Iverson?”

He put the mirrored sunglasses back on. His head turned right, then left, perhaps seeking a way out. Finally his jaw extended a little and he tossed his head, the way a high school girl might to get the bangs out of her eyes. “Yes,” he said. Superciliousness cloaked him from the receding hairline to the chin. “I thought it was time I collected what is owed to me.”

Part of him thought he was in the right. Given time, he would undoubtedly convince the rest of himself that he’d only been doing what he had to. Anna had known several people like that, sociopaths, but not easy to diagnose, sociopath lite.

“What is owed you?” Leah asked. Anna didn’t care, but Leah clearly did, so she said nothing.

“My share. Gerald and Mike shoved me out just before our business was about to take off.”

“They bought you out,” Leah said. “My designs made the business.”

“Momma’s a genius,” Katie said. “Literally.”

“Geniuses are a dime a dozen. Those designs were intuitive,” Bernie said. “Gerald didn’t give me time.”

Leah stared at him, mouth slightly ajar, as if he were an equation that didn’t add up.

“So you kidnapped Leah, her daughter, Heath, and her daughter because you think a guy named Gerald owes you, have I got this right?” Anna asked.

“I had nothing to do with these others.” He waved a dismissive hand at Heath and Elizabeth. “And Gerald owes me. As his wife, she owes me.”

“Because you might have, given time, come up with Leah’s designs,” Anna said.

“I would have.”

“This is unbelievable,” Elizabeth said. “We are beaten and dragged all over hell and gone because this creep thinks he
might
have come up with some designs?”

Bernie said nothing. He unscrewed the cap from his thermos, set it on the ground, and tipped the canister. A single drop came out.

Anna did not continue questioning him. Leah would not find relief. Not with this guy. Hitting men like this was like hitting the tar baby; they felt nothing and anyone striking out at them was trapped.

“Now she’s planning on putting me out of business,” Bernie said, addressing Anna, holding his coffee cup just as if there were coffee in it.

“Leah?” Anna said. Leah shook her head. “How is she putting you out of business?” Anna asked out of curiosity.

“Selvane,” he said, showing a hint of anger for the first time. “My company designs boats. Without selvane I’ll go out of business.”

“The magic slippery stuff,” Anna said. “Leah has the formula in her head. The thugs get the ransom and you get the chemical composition of selvane. Was that the deal?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Bernie rose to his feet.

“Sit,” Anna ordered him. This time he didn’t obey.

“I’m going to walk away. If you shoot me, you will be murderers. I’m just a man who happened by to help. Not even that. Nobody knows I’m here. I filed no flight plan. If anyone chanced to see my plane they couldn’t positively identify it—no number. I’m unarmed. You can’t say you shot me in self-defense. No one will believe you. No one will believe I was ever here.”

“Five of us can swear to it,” Anna said.

“And I have ten clergymen and judges who will swear I was with them,” he said smugly. He looked down his long patrician nose at Heath, Elizabeth, then Anna. “There’s no point in shooting me. It will only cause you further harm. I will take my leave now.”

“Why don’t I just shoot you in the leg,” Anna said. “Then, if somebody comes to find us, you can tell them your story yourself. That is, if you don’t bleed to death first.”

“If you wound me, or harm me in any way, I will sue you, your family, your employer. I will sue Hendricks and Hendricks. I will sue the American government and the state of Minnesota. You will die broke, in a tangle of red tape.”

Anna considered this. Bernie Iverson was right. If she shot him, he could keep her at least, and possibly Heath and Leah, in the courts until their lives were about nothing but depositions and lawyers’ fees. Based on their stories, the FBI or CIA or whoever dealt with extradition and international kidnapping schemes might pursue an investigation into Bernie’s affairs. For a while.

“You’re beginning to catch on,” Bernie said condescendingly. Anna wanted so very much to shoot him. Earlier, before people and food and sanity, she would have done so. Jimmy, extenuating circumstances. Sean, in the commission of a felony. Reg. The dude had shot Reg, but Heath had the dude’s gun. Who was to say who shot whom? A body, here and now, clearly shot down in cold blood; that might skew the investigators’ minds toward believing all three were murder. Not the ones who arrived on scene. They would see. Still, detectives, lawyers, judges, and juries on down the line, this would be nothing but words to them.

Anna was not going to shoot him, not even in the foot, and he saw it.

Bernie’s mouth nodded to himself, a snort of derision puffed out his nose. He held out the thermos. “Leah,” he said. “I can call you Leah, can’t I?”

She nodded dumbly.

“Give me a refill and I’ll be on my way. In a couple hours I’ll need a cup of good coffee.” He smiled, but the words were an order, not a request.

Leah’s head jerked back as if he’d slapped her. Her hand came out of her pocket and clawed the glasses from her face. She folded the temples and replaced the glasses in her jacket.

Bernie was holding out the thermos.

“Don’t give it to him!” Heath demanded.

Leah reached over the fire and took it. Nerveless, she fumbled the bottle and it fell to her feet. Bernie, smile in place, watched while she managed to gather it and the cap up from the dirt.

“Wipe it, would you?” he asked pleasantly.

“Momma, don’t!” Katie cried.

Leah wiped the dirt from the mouth of the thermos and the inside of the cup. Without speaking or looking at him, she filled his thermos from the pot of coffee Elizabeth had made, screwed the cap on, then handed it back to him.

Anna could not shoot him. Short of that, she had nothing to say. The others must have felt much the same.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Bernie said. His tongue clicked as he pointed a finger gun at Leah before walking to his plane.

Anna and the ex-hostages watched without speaking as he folded himself back into the cockpit, fired up the engine, turned the plane around, and taxied to the far end of the clearing. The plane turned, the engine revved, and the Beechcraft rushed toward them, the wheels lifting over their camp and vanishing in a roar.

“I can’t believe you gave him coffee! I hate you! You let him get away!” Katie wailed.

“I didn’t. In a few days he will feel nauseated. Then, for a day or two, he’ll feel better. Within a week he will die.”

Stunned silence followed this announcement. Then Heath started to laugh.

“What?” Anna asked irritably. “What am I missing?”

“Amanita,” Heath said between giggles.

“Destroyer Angel,” Leah said.

“You put that mushroom in his coffee?” Elizabeth asked.

“The toxin is water soluble,” Leah said. “I broke it and crushed it a little.”

“What mushroom?” Anna snapped.

“Leah found a Destroyer Angel,” Heath said. “She had it in her pocket.”

“There is no cure,” Leah said.

“I’m glad,” Katie said firmly.

“Bloodthirsty little wench,” Heath said, but she was still laughing.

To Wily, Anna said, “
All’s Well That Ends Well.
You’ve got to have seen that.”

Again the engine noise of a small plane disturbed the stillness. Laughter dried up. The women froze, all eyes on the sky.

“He’s coming back,” Katie wailed.

“I’ll shoot the son of a bitch,” Heath said. “I haven’t killed anybody yet.”

For a moment they all listened, nerves stretching toward the distant sound.

“No,” Anna said and sighed with relief. It was the sturdy growl of the old Lockheeds the Forest Service used. “That’ll be our ride.”

A
LSO
BY
N
EVADA
B
ARR

FICTION

Anna Pigeon Books

The Rope

Burn

Borderline

Winter Study

Hard Truth

High Country

Flashback

Hunting Season

Blood Lure

Deep South

Liberty Falling

Blind Descent

Endangered Species

Firestorm

Ill Wind
(a.k.a.
Mountain of Bones
)

A Superior Death

Track of the Cat

Nevada Barr Collection

OTHER NOVELS

Bittersweet

13
1
⁄
2

NONFICTION

Seeking Enlightenment—Hat by Hat

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NEVADA BARR is the author of the
New York Times
bestselling novels featuring Anna Pigeon. She won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel for
Track of the Cat
. Like her character, Barr worked for the National Park Service before resigning to write full time. She lives in New Orleans.

Visit the author’s Web site at
www.nevadabarr.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

DESTROYER ANGEL.
Copyright © 2014 by Nevada Barr. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein