John, with Hugh trailing officiously after, had gone to make the call to Base. Anna was just as glad. She needed time to think. Then she needed to talk with Frederick in private. Or what passed for private over the airwaves.
Leaning against the boulder in the semidarkness of the makeshift tent, she closed her eyes and hoped for rest if not sleep. Both eluded her. Fragments of conversations, images, ideas, drifted through her mind.
Gonzales, boyish and earnest, chucking a meat inspector into the Truckee. Gonzales leaving the summer job because he was suspected, accused of, or framed for arson.
Either Len had falsely accused Lawrence or he had known of the arson. Six years ago: it seemed a little late in the game for revenge but grudges had been held longer and with less provocation.
Nims might have been blackmailing Lawrence, threatening to report the arson.
No. Anna shuffled that card to the bottom of her mental deck. Nims would be in just as much hot water for not reporting it when it happened. Besides, Lawrence didn't have anything but youth and good looks. Sex? Could Nims have been blackmailing Lawrence for sexual favors? Anna could easily see Lawrence killing a man for that. But not six years later in a firestorm. He'd have beat him to death with his fists the first time the subject came up.
Lawrence said Nims ordered the fire set. Could he have been blackmailing Len? That made as little sense as the other way around. Nims was right: nobody would have believed the kid then and even less so now. Unless Lawrence had found proof.
Still, it was Nims who'd wound up dead. Blackmailers didn't tend to kill their victims. No profit in it.
Then there were the lies. Either Lawrence had lied about Hugh seeing him exit his shelter or Pepperdine had lied. Since Anna put her money on Pepperdine, she decided to grant Lawrence Gonzales at least temporary amnesty and moved on.
Hugh Pepperdine had known Nims was dead before he should have. Hugh had, Anna was convinced, lied about Lawrence seeing him get out of his fire shelter. Pepperdine was a veritable casserole of modern-day neuroses. Anna wished she could turn him loose in Molly's Park Avenue clinic for an hour or two and get a psychiatric profile on him. Insecurity teamed up with conceit, braggadocio with cowardice, selfishness with a need to be admired. Pepperdine was dysfunctional—to put it politely—and he was lying, but Anna couldn't figure out why. So far she'd heard nothing that connected him in any way with Leonard Nims. He didn't appear to have done anything sufficiently interesting in his short life to make him a candidate for blackmail. And Anna doubted he had the muscle memory to shove a knife into another man's ribs.
Violence is learned. She remembered practicing kicking till her back ached, swinging a baton until she could no longer lift her arms. Practicing technique was part of it but just as important was teaching the body to respond without having to wait for orders from a mind that might be otherwise engaged.
Women—and momma's boys like Hugh Pepperdine—had a harder time of it. Movies, books, television, myths and wives' tales taught little girls to shriek and throw up their hands in despair. Mind and body had to be taught to overcome programmed helplessness.
Lawrence Gonzales had the muscle memory. So did Joseph, Anna realized. When she'd startled him, he'd swung on her with a movement so ingrained it was not precipitated by conscious thought. He'd not learned that in art history class.
Stanton said Joseph Hayhurst was working to block an oil lease on what he believed to be a culturally significant site. Surely that wouldn't be grounds for murder. Not that one Leonard Nims more or less was equal in value to an irreplaceable historical artifact, but because Nims was a bureaucrat, a cog in a very large machine. He'd be replaced. There was no way one could kill them all, though Anna suspected activists often fantasized about it.
Removing Len would be, at best, a temporary solution. Unless it was a foregone conclusion that Len would okay the lease where another would not. What had LeFleur said? Nims rubber-stamped oil lease applications "NSI," No Significant Impact. The oil drillers must have been grateful. How grateful? What would it be worth to them in cold, hard cash?
Lawrence said Nims ordered him to light a wildfire, people needed the work. How much? In Susanville Nims had been in a position to hire local firefighters. What would it be worth to a man out of work, trying to feed a family?
Anna opened her eyes. She had a couple of homework assignments for Frederick Stanton next time they made contact. If Nims was in the business of taking kickbacks for favors rendered, Joseph might want him dead.
Who else? LeFleur would be better off professionally exposing Nims than killing him.
Neither Stephen nor Jennifer had motive as far as Anna knew but they didn't have alibis either. Out of necessity Anna had granted Jennifer temporary amnesty. Much as she would like it to, that couldn't include Stephen. Stephen had the knowledge to pierce Len's heart at one go. Anna believed he had the strength of character to share his fire shelter when the chips were down. Odd that in this murder she must first find the person kind enough to save the victim's life—unless the murderer recognized the situation as a dream-come-true from the beginning. Unlikely, Anna thought. Too much going on for detailed plotting.
Black Elk moaned and jerked in his sleep. Anna laid her hand on his chest hoping to comfort him. He opened his eyes and looked into hers but she doubted he was seeing her.
"How're you doing, Howard? Can I get you anything?"
The big man didn't answer. Anna moved and his eyes didn't follow. Whatever he saw, it was not of this world. "Len shouldn't have done it," he said clearly. "Paula wasn't hurting anybody."
Howard was dreaming or delirious and Anna felt a stab of alarm. Curiosity overcame it. Feeling like a heel even as she did it, she pressed him: "What shouldn't Len have done?"
Black Elk hadn't heard her. He closed his eyes and his body relaxed. Whatever alarm had gone off in his fevered brain had been answered and he fell into a doze.
Leaning back again, Anna closed her eyes as well. Unless Howard was totally lost in dreams, Len had done something to Paula Boggins. Perhaps the something over which Paula had clawed his face. Jennifer had been questioning Paula; probably some of the conversation had soaked into Howard's consciousness, hence the outburst.
According to Stanton, Paula had been arrested twice. Page had bailed her out twice. She lived fairly comfortably with no visible means of support. Boggins might be living off an inheritance or alimony but if not she was getting paid for something that went unrecorded. Odds were it was illegal. That being the case, it was possible Len had been blackmailing her and/or Neil if he was in partnership with her. She and Neil had a relationship that spoke of familiarity and tolerance without affection. That smacked of a business relationship based on mutual need or profit.
It made more sense to Anna than the Gonzales/Nims scenario. Boggins could knife someone if she had to, Anna would lay money on it. Paula would do whatever she had to to get by. Page didn't seem an unlikely source of violence either.
Anna had a hunch Paula's means of support might be illuminating. She added to her list of things a suggestion she needed Frederick to track down.
More out of habit than because there was anything she could do for him, Anna checked Howard's pulse and breathing, then settled down to ponder Neil Page. Page acted suspicious, if that counted for anything. He was always creeping off by himself, anxious to cast any particles of blame, however small, on someone else. He'd been quick to deflect interest from himself by telling Jennifer Paula and Nims had quarreled and Paula had scratched Len.
Page also insisted Paula had seen him getting out of his shake 'n' bake. Should that turn out to be true, it effectively let him off the hook. Too bad, Anna thought. So far it was a tossup between him and Pepperdine as to who she'd most like to pin a homicide on.
Scooting as close to Howard as she could, Anna laid her arm across his chest to share her warmth with him. As soon as Jennifer returned they could compare notes. Till then she would try and get some rest.
Chapter Twenty
SLEEP HAD FINALLY overtaken Anna and in her dreams she was warm and fed and unafraid. When the sound of fabric rubbing against itself intruded, her mind, loath to desert the comfort it had found, attributed it first to window curtains floating in a gentle breeze, then to the swish of starched petticoats, a sound dredged from so deep in her subconscious all she could come up with to account for it were the ruffled squaw dresses she and Molly had been given for Sunday school when they were children. The picture was so alien it woke her and she found herself slumped under the fire shelters. The arm she'd draped across Black Elk's chest tingled from being too long in one position and her lungs hurt from trying to soak up oxygen around the smoke-borne debris lodged in the tissues.
Jennifer Short had returned. She stunk of sulphur and the top layer of grime on her face had been sluiced to a translucent gray.
"What time is it?" Anna asked, as if it mattered.
Short looked at her wristwatch. "Coming on two."
Anna had slept less than an hour but she felt better for it. Carefully, so she wouldn't wake Howard, she pinched up the sleeve of her shirt and hauled her arm off his chest. He didn't stir but the sleep that claimed him was more akin to trauma-induced unconsciousness than true rest. At least he was still breathing, though ragged gurgling sounds attested to the effort. Anna laid the back of her hand against his neck. He was hot to the touch. Fever boded ill but the over-warm skin felt good and she left her hand there in hopes an exchange would benefit both of them.
Jennifer settled down in the gloom near Black Elk's knees and stretched her hands toward one of the metal hard hats Joseph had filled with coals. Her fingers trembled.
"What did you think of that weird lake?" Anna asked.
Jennifer didn't reply. She didn't even raise her eyes. The yoke of depression Anna had thought thrown off was back, pressing down on her shoulders, bowing them till it looked as if it must be causing physical pain.
"Jen!" Anna said more loudly.
Finally the younger woman looked up. Her eyes were as dull and opaque as the waters of the thermal spring.
"You look like shit," Anna said kindly. "You've caved in somehow. What were you guys doing up there?"
"Nothing. Washing. Like that." Jennifer lowered her eyes again and pushed her shaking hands nearer the makeshift brazier. "Coals are near dead."
"We'll find more," Anna said, though she was far from certain they would. The Jackknife had consumed all the fuel for miles. All they had left were her leavings.
"What did you get out of Paula?" she asked, hoping to engage Jennifer's mind.
Short just shook her head. "She saw Neil get out of his shelter. That's about it." That minimal exchange seemed to exhaust her and she hung her head, staring sightlessly at dead embers.
Anna sat up straight and looked Jennifer hard in the face. "Something happened up at the lake. You've folded up on me like a cheap umbrella."
Jennifer sighed so deeply the air caught in her damaged lungs and came out on a dry whispering cough. "Josh... Stephen said..." She ran out of air and sat for a moment without speaking. With an effort she sucked in a lungful and began again, the words coming quickly. "Stephen said everybody thinks Josh lit the fire—this fire—on purpose." She looked up at Anna, waiting for her to say it wasn't true.
Anna floundered around for a serviceable lie but she was tired and didn't come up with one quickly enough.
Jennifer crumpled, resembling a rag doll whose stuffing has all leaked away. "Being he's gone they can say anything. Pin it on him. Like it doesn't matter. Like he won't care that what he'll be remembered for won't be any of the good things he did but for burning down California." No tears stood in her eyes, they were dry and rimmed with red, but her voice was choked with them and for a minute she was unable to go on.
Anna cast about for something comforting to say. "Not everybody says arson," she tried. "Some figure he just let the campfire get away from him—"
"That's crap!" Jennifer snapped, and Anna was silenced. "Josh wasn't stupid and he knew all that Woodsy Owl shit. Jesus! People think a gay man can't rub two sticks together and make a fire. Give me a break." Anger gusted and was gone, leaving Jennifer once again empty. "Josh didn't let his fire get away. That's crap," she finished softly.
To Anna it seemed a little thing, but in grief people latched onto minutia. At least it was graspable and, with luck or hard work, sometimes even reparable. Time and again she'd seen people who'd lost a child or spouse to accident or disease dedicate the remainder of their lives to a crusade against whatever had taken them.
It was something to do, Anna supposed. It provided direction and a reason to get out of bed mornings. Maybe it made them feel closer to those they'd lost.
"If he didn't do it, maybe somebody else did," Anna suggested. "When we get out of here, I'll talk to the Forest Service; see if we can go over the arson investigation reports."
