Ill Wind (34 page)

Apparently it was going to pay off. “Shoot,” Anna screamed, and kept rolling. Iron glanced off her upper arm followed by numbing pain, then smashed into the ground with such force she felt it through the earth.

Then Anna’s collapsible baton was in her hands. In one desperate motion she rolled to her feet and whipped the weighted rod out to its full length.

The pipe wrench struck her shoulder. For a sickening instant she felt her fingers loosen on the baton but no bones had been broken and strength flooded back.

“Shoot!” she yelled as she lunged at her attacker swinging the baton. It connected somewhere between the gauntleted elbow and shoulder with a bone-cracking jar that pleased Anna to her toes.

The insect grunted but didn’t fall down or back. The wrench was tossed from right to left hand and slashed at Anna’s face.

Jerking the baton up, she braced the tip across her left palm and blocked the blow. The force shot angry pains down her wrists and left her hands tingling. Before her attacker recovered balance she kicked out, hoping to connect with a kneecap. Her boot cut along the inside of the assailant’s ankle.

A scream was ripped loose. The wrench chopped down.

Again Anna blocked it but this time her baton was forced to within an inch of her face. Her assailant was stronger and more heavily armed.

“Shoot!” she screamed.

“Get out of the way!”

“Jesus.” Anna jerked the baton back. Overbalancing, the insect stumbled forward a step. She stepped into the opening and rammed the tip of the baton into the exposed gut with all her strength and weight.

Her attacker bent double. Both hands on the baton, she swung the butt down toward the back of the canvas-covered neck. The pipe wrench caught her across the shins. Her blow fell wild, glancing off the breathing apparatus.

A shoulder slammed into her chest and she fell back. Mud softened the landing but breath was knocked from her and her head snapped back, splashing muck into her hair and face. Curling up like a spring, Anna held the baton perpendicular to her body to ward blows from her face and upper body. With her feet she kicked out, keeping the pipe wrench at a distance.

“Shoot, goddamn it!”

The wrench arced up. Anna kicked but the cloying mud hampered her, adding to the nightmare feeling. Bracing her arms to absorb another strike, she yelled, “Look out!” in the slim hope of unsettling her assailant.

The insect should have heeded her unwitting advice. A gun’s report hit Anna’s ears at the same time the bullet struck. The force of the shot pushed her attacker upright.

For a bizarre moment the insect head hung over her, the wrench halfway down its arc, as if deciding whether to complete the strike or not. A second shot rang out and the fingers gripped so tightly around the wrench sprang open. The wrench fell, cracking Anna’s knuckles against the baton, then slithered heavily into the mud at her side.

The masked figure stepped back stiff-legged, then crumpled, muscles and ligaments no longer receiving orders from the central nervous system. The strings that moved the puppet had been cut.

Anna felt as if the second shot had cut her strings as well. Her head dropped into the sludge, the baton fell from her hands, her legs were rubbery, useless. Confusion clouded her mind, her heart pounded, and she felt as if she were going to vomit.

Sirens and sucking sounds took over but she had little interest. A face formed over hers and she yelled.

“Take it easy,” Stanton said. “Are you okay?” Taking her hand, he pulled her to her feet. Disoriented, nauseated, Anna shook her head to clear it. Nothing cleared. She tried to remember if she’d taken a blow to the head and couldn’t. Cyanide gas: she remembered the almond smell.

Sirens closed in and the clearing was filled with chaos. “I called the cavalry,” Stanton said.

Anna dragged her hand across her eyes to gather her wits. Her eyes began to burn viciously. Tears blinded her and she couldn’t force her eyes open. Wherever the sludge had come in contact, her skin burned.

“My eyes,” Anna said. “My eyes . . .”

“Holy smoke,” Stanton said softly as she reached blindly for him. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Anna held tight to his arm and stumbled over the uneven ground. “Did you kill him?” she shouted over the sound of the sirens.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Was it Greeley?”

“Yes.”

“Good. What a son of a bitch.”

“You’re going to be all right,” Stanton said.

“DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO FUCKING COLD?” ANNA barked.

“ ‘Flush with copious amounts of cool water,’ ” Stanton quoted sententiously.

“Cool, damn it, not cold.”

Anna heard the protest of antique plumbing as Frederick turned the shower knob. “That better?”

“No.”

“Well, think about something else, like July in Georgia.”

“Shit. My eyes!” Water cascading down from her hair washed more acid into her eyes. The burning made her whimper. It felt as if the jelly of her eye was being eaten away.

“Keep flushing,” Stanton said. “Tilt your head back.” Anna felt his hand on the back of her head and tried to do as he said. “Try and open your eyes so clean water gets in them.”

“Can’t. Hurts.” Anna heard the whine in her voice and shut up. She was shivering and not only with the cold. Blindness: now there was a bogeyman to put the fear of God into one. Blindness, paralysis, and small closed spaces.

“You’ll see. We got it in time,” Frederick reassured her. “I drove like the wind. You would’ve been proud. A regular Parnelli Andretti. Open now. Come on. A teensy-weensy little peek,” he coaxed, and Anna was able to laugh away a bit of her terror.

His fingers were plucking at the buttons of her uniform shirt, peeling it off her back as gently as if he feared he might peel the skin off with it. His very care scared her and she tried to help, jerking blindly at her shirttail.

He pulled it free for her. “Yowch! You’ve got an ugly gouge down your ribs. Greeley get you with the wrench?”

For a moment Anna couldn’t remember. Her brain was fogged and that, too, scared her. The answer came in flashback. “Stick took my gun,” she said. “Scraped me.”

“You’re burnt,” Stanton said.

“What does it look like?” Anna strove for a conversational tone but missed.

“Not bad. Not bad at all. Looks like a sunburn but not blistering or anything. Here.”

Cold water was deflected to stream down her back. Keeping her face tilted so the dirty water would run away from her eyes, Anna gathered her hair and held it out from her body.

“Let me get your shoes off,” Stanton said. “We don’t want this pooling in ’em and dissolving your toes.”

“That’s a soothing picture,” Anna mumbled. She kicked off one shoe and felt him pull the other off as she lifted her foot.

“I’m going to cut your trousers off, okay?”

“Cut. And warm up the water. I’m getting hypothermic.”

“Just a tad.” The aged metal creaked in protest and the edge went off the cold.

Anna pushed her face into the stream and pried her eyes open with her fingers. She must have cried out because Stanton was asking what was the matter and she could feel the warmth of his hand on her bare shoulder.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “You’ll get this shit on you.”

“Right. Are you okay?”

Anna shook her head. She couldn’t hold her eyelids open for even a second. The fact that she could see light beyond her eyelids seemed a good sign, but the fluorescent light over the stall in the women’s communal shower at the tent frames where Stanton had brought her was so bright even a blind woman could see it. The thought sent another stab of fear into her and Anna tried harder to get fresh water under her lids.

Stanton slit her pantlegs and Anna gasped with the cold and the relief. Her skin burned and itched where the acid-drenched mud had soaked through. As he cut away her underpants he said, “Oooh. Black lace. A collector’s item. I shall have them stuffed.”

Anna was grateful for the banter. Pain and panic had destroyed any vestige of modesty but she appreciated the thought. “As I recall, you never wanted to know me this well.”

He didn’t reply.

“How much more time have I got?”

“Thirteen minutes. ‘Flush with copious amounts for twenty minutes,’ the doctor said. You’ve done seven.”

During the wild and, for Anna, sightless ride from the cliff’s edge, Stanton had radioed Frieda to call the emergency room in Cortez. The doctor on call had given instructions for treatment. Stanton was carrying them out with kindness and precision. For the first time in more years than she cared to count, Anna felt taken care of. It made her weak and she was afraid she would cry.

Hoping Stanton would attribute the gesture to modesty, she turned her back on him. “Distract me,” she said when she could trust her voice. “What do you figure? What happened?”

“The obvious: Greeley had the water truck rigged to smuggle toxic waste into the park to dump it. It shouldn’t be too hard to trace where the stuff was from.”

“Cyanide gas,” Anna said. “Almonds, remember? And acid. Some kind of acid wash used in industrial manufacturing, maybe. Stacy stumbles onto the scheme. Greeley kills Stacy.”

“Maybe.”

The doubt in his voice irritated her. She ignored it. At present the topic held little interest for her, but it was the only thing she could think of besides her eyes and she didn’t care to think about that. “Greeley must’ve made Stacy breathe the fumes,” she went on. Fleeting sadness darkened her mind. “The prints on his arms and shoes were etched with whatever it is I’ve been rolling in.”

“Think Greeley dumped him in the kiva just to be mysterious?” Stanton asked.

“We’ll never know, but probably. Jamie’d been babbling on to everybody about the solstice and angry spirits. He might have been taking advantage of Jamie’s ghostly brouhaha.”

“So he carries him into the kiva, folds him up in the fire pit, rakes it all smooth, puts on Meyers’ shoes, backs out, and tosses the shoes back where he got ’em.”

“Mysteries are like magic,” Anna said. “Once you know how the trick is done, it’s obvious to the point of stupidity. I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts Silva was blackmailing Greeley,” Anna said, suddenly remembering the short-lived spate of expensive gifts he’d poured into Patsy’s lap. “He reported seeing a truck at night once. He was out at all hours harassing Patsy. Maybe he saw something else. Put two and two together.” Anna pressed her face near the shower head, hoping the water pressure would force it beneath her lids.

“Tom must have gotten greedy,” Stanton said. “Ted probably started threatening the wife and kids to shut him up.”

So Tom had been guardian angel and not stalker after all, looking after his girls the only way he knew how. “Killed Pats” wasn’t a confession of firsthand homicide but guilt at putting her in danger. “Threats against his family would shut him up all right,” Anna said. “Tom was obsessed with his ex.”

“But you can’t trust a drunk.”

“Nope. And nothing easier than getting a drunk to take a drink. Point the truck in the right direction and wedge a golf ball in the linkage. Greeley was a golfer. Tom mentioned it one day.”

Silence. “Are you still there?” she demanded. Panic rose in her chest and a sour taste poured into the back of her throat.

Something heavy slammed into the tile near her head. Covering her face and neck, Anna collapsed to the floor of the shower. “I can’t see, goddamn it! I can’t see!” she was screaming.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry. It was me, Frederick the idiot.” Stanton’s voice was in her ear, his hands on her shoulders. “A spider. A black widow. No kidding. As big as a Ping-Pong ball. Huge. It looked ready to pounce. I hit it with your shoe. Sorry.”

“Fuck you. Fuck you.” Anna began to cry. Stanton crouched down in the shower and held her. The slick fabric of his windbreaker stuck to her cheek and his arms were warm around her. Water dripped from his hair to her face. He held her as she would hold a frightened kitten, tightly, carefully so it wouldn’t hurt and couldn’t fall.

When she could finally stop, he helped her to her feet.

“Four more minutes,” he said.

“Thanks,” was all she could manage.

When Anna had only a minute left to go, Frieda took over. She and Frederick discussed Anna’s disposal in hushed tones till she couldn’t stand it anymore and shouted at them.

Frieda shut the shower off and wrapped a shivering Anna in clean towels. “Can you see?” she asked.

Anna forced her eyes open a slit. “I guess. No. Sort of.” The pain was there but not so intense and she could make out shapes, light and dark.

“Keep your eyes shut,” Frederick said, and Anna felt him winding soft gauze around her head. “I’m going to bandage them both closed. You know the routine. Don’t want you looking hither and yon scratching things about.” The bandaging done, he kissed her on top of the head and left to return to the crime scene.

As Frieda wrapped Anna’s hair in dry terry cloth, she said: “I’m going to drive you to Cortez. Hills is out at the scene. Paul and Drew took Jennifer down soon as they got there. She’d come around. She got a hell of a wallop on the head, but it looks like a concussion and a good story’s all she’s going to come away with. Short’s lucky.”

“If I weren’t so glad she weren’t dead, I’d kill her.”

“C’mon, you were young once,” Frieda chided.

“No, I wasn’t.” With her aching muscles and acid-etched body, Anna felt as if it were true.

 

 

DR. Dooley kept Anna overnight for observation but released her the next morning with eye salve and a cheap pair of sunglasses. The world was still a little fuzzy around the edges but it looked good to Anna.

She pulled on a pair of mechanic’s overalls and rubber shower thongs Frieda’d dug out of her trunk and left for her. Her own clothes were ruined. Hopefully the duty nurse hadn’t thrown them away. They were evidence.