Hunting Season (15 page)

Anna admired his sense of honor. A lesser man might have jumped at a chance like this. "Tricky," she agreed. "I guess we go slow."

"Grab a burger then tackle Badger and Martin?" the sheriff said.

Anna looked at her watch. "Later. John Brown's FBI agent's due at the Port Gibson office in forty minutes. You ought to be in on that."

"I guess," Clintus admitted and put the car in gear.

7

 The Federal Bureau of Investigation was waiting for them when they arrived at the Port Gibson Ranger Station. His car, painted shiny black and bristling with antennae, was parked out front. Alongside it were two NPS patrol cars. Barth was on duty, and it looked as if Randy had taken it upon himself to come on early so as not to miss out on any potential humiliation that Anna might be dealt.

He'll be wanting overtime for it too,
Anna thought sourly and wondered if she'd have the spine—or the mental energy—to deny it to him. Barth Dinkins was on the phone. He looked up long enough to give Anna and Clintus a nod, then went back to his conversation. From the one-sided scraps Anna could hear, he was talking to Tupelo, arranging to have the names of the dead slaves recreated on a new sign.

Randy Thigpen's desk was empty. From Anna's office came the sounds of voices. Thigpen had commandeered her personal space as well as the attention of the FBI agent Brown had called in. Mississippi, one of the more sparsely populated states in the eastern half of the country, was getting downright claustrophobic. Everywhere Anna turned in this wretched investigation, it seemed there was a slithy-tove of good old boys plopped down between her and her immediate objective. The irritation that had tingled when she'd seen Randy's patrol car began to burn.

"Anna, Sheriff," Thigpen said expansively as they appeared in the office doorway, the good manager hosting his staff. "This is special Agent Ronnie Dent out of Jackson."

Dent nodded. Neither man stood. There were only two chairs in the office and Thigpen was parked in Anna's. It was a small secretary's chair with an adjustable back. The back had been sprung when she'd taken over that spring, and Anna had gone to some time and trouble to bend it back into an ergonomically correct piece of furniture. Thigpen's fat ass was squashing it into worthlessness.

"Agent Dent." Anna said evenly. She introduced Clintus. Then, "Randy. Why don't you call and see if the autopsy report is ready?" It wouldn't be. Not till later in the afternoon, but Anna was damned if she was going to stand around on one foot then the other in her own office.

Thigpen reached for the phone on her desk. "Got that number?" he asked.

"Why don't you use the phone on your desk," she said. "Barth's got a directory, I think."

There was a brief battle of wills. Thigpen's eyes narrowed and his long mustache twitched as he tried to think of ways to maintain the high ground without doing anything overt that might get him fired or, at any rate, a reprimand from the big dogs in Tupelo.

"Ronnie, go ahead and bring Anna up to speed," he said finally, and levered his bulk out of the ruined chair.

"Randy," Anna stopped him. "Bring the sheriff a chair, if you would please."

He tried to think of a comeback but failed. For once Anna'd gotten the last word. She indulged in a moment of satisfaction knowing, with Thigpen around, it was bound to be short-lived.

When he'd cleared the doorway, Anna took possession of her chair. The back was so bent if she'd put her weight against it she would have toppled over backward. Balancing herself on the seat, she sized up Special Agent Ronnie Dent.

He was young, early thirties at a guess, and put Anna in mind of a brick: stocky, short, red hair, red face pocked with old acne scars. Because of his face Dent came across as a much bigger man than he was. With little alteration and still maintaining its humanness, it could have been a baboon's face, disproportionately wide and flat. Either through natural physiognomy or learned control, it was a face that gave nothing away.

Briefly, with occasional inserts from Sheriff Jones, Anna recounted what they knew of the killing of Doyce Barnette, including the unsatisfactory interview with Herm Thorton.

During the recital Randy returned and, finding the chairs occupied, leaned in the doorway. He filled it completely and Anna felt a twinge of claustrophobia closing her throat. Having Thigpen between herself and freedom was unsettling.

The instant she'd finished talking, Thigpen pushed his voice if not his person into the room. "Autopsy'll be done this afternoon or tomorrow," he said, speaking only to Special Agent Dent. "I doubt there'll be any surprises there. This thing's pretty much what we were talking about earlier. As straightforward a case of sadomasochism gone wrong as I've seen in my thirty years working this beat."

Anna only just avoided rolling her eyes. Thigpen had been on the Trace for thirty years, but she was willing to bet the closest thing to a sadomasochistic homicide he'd seen was the perverse way possums insisted on committing suicide under the wheels of speeding cars.

"Rape's about the only sex crime we get down here," Dent said, sounding mildly disgusted at southerners' lack of imagination. "If you can call that a sex crime."

Thigpen shot Anna a look of triumph as though Dent had scored one for the home team, but Anna knew what the FBI agent meant. Rape was about violence, hate and dominance. Sex had little to do with it.

"Any ritual trappings about the corpse or the room you found it in?" Dent divided the question between Clintus and Thigpen. Anna'd been born female, she'd grown into a
small woman and, in the past ten years, had slid into middle age. If ever there was a cloak of invisibility, time and circumstances were trying to weave her one. Once she would have fought it, clamored for her share of the attention. Now she merely used it, sitting quietly, watching the interplay, hoping to learn something.

"Like Satanism, you mean," Thigpen said.

"Yes." Dent sounded hopeful.

For a bit, Randy didn't say anything. Anna thought he looked disappointed. He'd not seen the corpse. Everything he knew was secondhand. She waited with interest to see if he'd refer the matter to her or the sheriff. He didn't. After a few seconds he brightened.

"There was a religious text circled," he offered.

Dent wasn't much impressed. "Just asking," he said. "Routine. We've gotten a lot of press attention over the Satan cult thing but they are like ghosts. Everybody seems to believe they exist but nobody can find any real evidence that they do."

He pushed himself up, choosing to be the one to end the meeting. At least he spoke directly to Anna. He might prefer dealing with men, but he knew where the seat of power lay in this office. That was enough for her.

"We'll run your murder through the mill, see if we get any hits on the MO, see if there's any known operators hereabouts, that sort of thing. You get any hard evidence, fingerprints, whatever, give me a call and I'll plug them into the system for you."

Your murder. You get. For you. Dent was semiofficially dumping the crime back into Anna's lap. Should something interesting turn up, the door was left open for him to snatch the case back. Anna was glad she was not an ambitious woman. once Dent had taken his departure Thigpen shifted gears. The change was sudden and relatively complete as if he'd remembered that he'd turned over a new leaf. He became friendly, interested and what, to the uninitiated, could have passed for open, honest and helpful.

Since she was in the office, had Clintus on tap and both her rangers in house, Anna decided to have an impromptu meeting to see if they'd learned anything. Barth was occupied with the vandalism of the Mt. Locust sign but Randy, during his last brief phase as a decent hardworking park ranger, had volunteered to seek out the friends and associates of Doyce Barnette. Randy spoke first. Anna let him. She didn't want to dampen any real enthusiasm the guy might have developed for the work he was paid to do.

Thigpen had been industrious. He'd compiled a list of people half a page long, single-spaced and, for a wonder, neatly typed. No addresses or phone numbers had been included and Anna had a cynical moment wondering if Thigpen had just made the whole thing up. The names of Badger Lundstrom, Martin Crowley and Herman Thorton were not listed.

"We'll need to divide the list up," Randy finished. "Interview the lot of 'em. Anna, why don't you take the first six and the sheriff and I'll split the last."

Anna let the suggestion slip by. "Clintus," she said.

The sheriff briefly outlined their interview with Herm Thorton.

"Talking to folks around town I didn't hear those names," Thigpen said when he'd finished. "If they were friends of the deceased, there's not much there. I doubt he saw them much."

"According to Mr. Thorton they played poker together every Friday night and some Saturdays," Anna said.

Randy looked annoyed. "Yeah ... well..." Whatever he was going to say next, he apparently thought better of it. His face readjusted into the visage of the new and improved Ranger Thigpen. "Well, if you all think they are worth the time, I'd like to be in on it when you talk to them. Once they've been got out of the way I think we'll need to take a good close look at these fellas." He waggled the list he'd made as if to tempt them to do the right thing.

The sheriff had business to take care of. Probably getting the lunch Anna had denied him earlier. It was pushing three o'clock. It was decided they'd meet back at the Port Gibson office near 5 p.m., quitting time for Badger Lundstrom. Lundstrom was a scrap metal dealer. He and his twenty-six-year-old son lived a bachelor existence on the western edge of Port Gibson.

Randy wanted to talk about his list of names. Barth needed her to stop by his slave cemetery on the way to Natchez. A blinking light on the old phone machine that served the district office summoned Anna to the news that Chief Ranger Brown wanted to speak with her.

Anna had been a field ranger for more than ten years. She'd been a manager for seven months. The seven months seemed the longer of the two. With mumbled excuses and vague promises, she fled the office and her erstwhile assistants. She wanted to see Paul. Just see him, talk to him, hear his voice. A touch would be nice, but she could forgo that. It had been so long since she'd truly needed a man she felt the craving in a place deeper than hunger.

"Jesus," she murmured as she turned on the ignition.
Been so long.
Less than twenty-four hours had passed since she'd said good-bye to Paul Davidson on her doorstep in Rocky Springs. The fall equinox had come and gone two months before. Theoretically, the days were getting shorter.
Time is relative,
Anna reminded herself. For reasons of its own, it had chosen to do its petty pace thing this day.

For a minute she just sat. The aches and stings from her rush through the woods gathered in force and she felt old and tired and decrepit. Last night she'd been hunted. How could it be only last night? Eons seemed to have passed. Time was kaleidoscoping. Zach, the high deserts of Colorado, riding Gideon through the backcountry of Texas—these things seemed to have happened only yesterday, yet her strange adventures in Dixieland felt as if they'd taken place in another life.

Memories of who she'd once been struck so acutely she was moved to tears and had to fight to keep from sobbing out loud. She missed her husband, her sister, the sound of dry wind in the piñon pines.

"Get a grip," she ordered herself and jammed the Crown Vic into reverse, not sure where she was going but knowing getting away from where she was was imperative.

The piercing shriek of a siren cut through the mental storm, and Anna slammed on the brakes. In her preoccupation, she'd not looked behind her and had very nearly run into another patrol car. This was why law enforcement was trained to back into parking places, she reminded herself as she shut the ignition down.

Sheriff Paul Davidson got out of his squad car. In the perfect gold light of afternoon his blond hair gleamed. Anna had not noticed before but now, liking the way his uniform fit him, liking the way his thighs pulled the fabric taut when he walked, she saw he'd lost weight. The divorce he was fighting for was costing him. He'd grown leaner, harder looking. It suited him and Anna wanted nothing so much as to collapse in his arms and feel the strength of him down the length of her body as once she'd craved the feel of the earth against her bones.

"Hey," she said neutrally, shoving her feelings into a box that got harder and harder to open again over the years. "What brings you out here?"

A fleeting shadow of pain darkened his blue eyes at the curtness of her greeting. Pain of Anna's own answered it, but she didn't amend her words by so much as a smile. Unreasonable as it was, her sudden need for him and his inability to answer it made her angry.

"I've got a couple little things, excuses mostly," he replied in a drawl made genteel by four years at the University of Tennessee and three years in seminary in Austin, Texas. "But my main-most reason was to see you, see how you're doing. Rumor has it, you've been stepping out on me."

For a moment Anna was aware of nothing but confusion and the perverse pleasure of having, however unwittingly, stirred this splendid man's heart. Then she remembered. "Last night," she said.

"If I'd've known you were going for a moonlight walk, I'd've hung around." Paul was smiling his slow gentle smile but there was an edge to his words. He was angry that Anna had been in danger, that she'd been hurt, made afraid, that he wasn't there to take care of her.