Liberty Falling-pigeon 7 (20 page)

Not quite all. Anna pulled herself over the high wall, squashing her breasts against the granite, till her head poked over the edge. Three or four yards from where he had hit was a small round object. It had been in shadow, unnoticed, but the sun had moved and now struck a bright splinter of gold from its side.

A swell of sound brought Anna's head up. They were coming: the first of the shuffling feet, the grubby hands, voices mixed, robbing language of meaning.

Anna slammed back through the door to the inside of the pedestal. The hum of machinery let her know the first elevator of sightseers was on the way up. Unable to bear the wait for a ride to the bottom, she ran for the stairs that snaked down, steps hugging the pedestal walls.

Out on the star-shaped plaza, a stain of tourists was beginning to spread. She darted past a maintenance man armed with mop and bucket, sent no doubt to cleanse the last of James Hatchett from the face of the world. No one had yet gone near the corner where Hatch died. Anna caught her breath and, shading her eyes from the glare off the water, got her bearings. The maintenance worker began mopping. She drew a mental line from where he worked to four yards out. The sun no longer reflected from the metal, but the small round container Hatch had carried in his pocket was still where she'd spotted it from the balcony.

She sat on her heels and stared without touching. One side was scratched and slightly dented, but otherwise it had survived the fall in good condition. When Hatch was airborne, or perhaps just as he struck the ground, it must have been dislodged from his pocket and rolled the twelve or so feet to where it presently rested on its side, like a coin toss that ended on edge and remained there.

Fingerprints were probably not an issue; still, Anna couldn't bring herself to pick it up without protection. Having neither gloves nor handkerchief, she pulled off her socks and, one hand looking like Shari Lewis's Lamb Chop eating a rice cake, lifted the container and gently loosened the lid.

Inside was nothing but clean white sand.

Didn't the condemned, even the self-condemned, have a right to a last smoke? It wasn't like Hatch had to worry about the Gauloises shortening his life. Maybe he jumped earlier--before his accustomed smoke break. A man of strong habits, he probably would not have moved up his nicotine ritual even for the Grim Reaper.

On a hunch, Anna went back to the base of the pedestal and, eyes focused on the ground, began a tight zigzag-pattern search. Knowing that what she sought, if it existed at all, could be destroyed by one tourist in flip-flops, she moved as quickly as she dared. Three feet out from the wall, she found it: a worm made of silver-gray ash, the granite beneath discolored from the heat.

Hatch had sat facing Manhattan; he had started to smoke that ritual Gauloise. He had not finished it.

Anna didn't believe for a second that a man who carried a tin of Waldorf-Astoria sand in his shirt pocket had Hipped the butt over the wall. It had fallen from his fingers when his fanny left the balustrade.

Surely such
a
fastidious man would not intentionally go to meet his maker with a lit cigarette in hand.

13

Tourists swarmed. Anna marked the ash and the place she'd found the tin of sand the only way she had at hand. With the leather punch on her Swiss Army knife, she scratched the stone of the plaza. Defacing a National Monument. At the moment, the number of the Code of Federal Regulations she was breaking slipped her mind, but it was a classic.

That done, she ran a serpentine pattern through the throng, down the mall and to the headquarters building across from Liberty's gift shop and restaurant. Not a soul was in attendance. There was no dispatcher for the monument. Doors were locked.

The chopping cadence of rotor blades took her to the wide lawn area behind Patsy's cottage. As she arrived the helicopter was lifting off. Clay-pool was gone with the corpse. Standing in the prop wash was the Park Policeman, Andrew--Anna forced herself to recall his name. Thinking of him only as "that handsome black guy" was as tacky as the boys remembering only "the blonde with the great ass." "Andrew," she said, to reassure herself she wasn't a sexist pig.

He turned; sunlight caught the sweat on his high cheekbones. He smiled--good strong teeth, straight and square, the best of Burt Lancaster and the Masai.

Maybe she
was
a sexist pig.

"I've got something to show you," she told him. "Nothing probably. But your headache, not mine."

"If food can be worked in, you're on." He fell into step beside her. At headquarters, he took possession of the tin of sand, bagged it and wrote the appropriate information before sealing the evidence bag. Whether or not he actually viewed this relic as evidence, Anna couldn't tell, but he treated both her and Hatch's memory with respect. She appreciated that.

Andrew then got the park's 35mm camera from its cupboard and the two of them returned to the top of Fort Wood where Hatch had fallen. Wind or feet had taken the ash. Even the scratch marks were hard to find, searching as they had to through the aimless wandering herd. Anna found where Hatch's idiosyncratic ashtray had lain and where what she claimed was the ash of his cigarette was located. Andrew photographed the places indicated and entered time, date and other pertinent data into his log to be filed along with the photographs. They spoke little during this exercise, and as Andrew went through the motions, Anna couldn't help but feel it was just that: an exercise. So Hatch jumped before he smoked? So this once he threw caution to the winds and flipped his cigarette butt instead of smothering it neatly in his pocket tin? Could be it wasn't even his cigarette. Anna didn't know French Gauloises' ashes from those of a Camel. She didn't even know if there was a test for it, and since she hadn't collected the ash when she had the chance, the point was moot. A maintenance man, one of the janitorial staff, anybody who smoked nonfilter cigarettes, might have dropped the burning fag end and walked on. By some freak it could have remained intact overnight.

Anna didn't believe it. But since her flight back to Colorado wasn't booked yet and her convalescent nursing duties had been usurped by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, she'd nose around, see who, if anybody, smoked nonfilters. It wasn't that common. She'd only known two: her sister Molly with her Camel straights and John LeFleur, a crew boss she'd fought fire with in Northern California. Pall Malls were his drug of choice.

Over hot dogs and Cokes bought at a vendor's wagon on the esplanade, Anna told Andrew her idea that Hatch had been pushed or had fallen accidentally, and how the ash and tin figured into the theory. He listened in silence, his jaw muscles rippling with each bite. When she'd finished he waited a minute before speaking. Either he was a man who gave all information due consideration, or somewhere along the line he'd learned to look as if he did. He'd be a natural at interviewing witnesses.

At length he sucked his teeth clean, neatly wiped his mouth with a napkin, then proceeded to roll it into a tight ball between meaty palms.

"Pretty hard to fall off there by accident," he said. "The sill is wide, not sloped or slippery or anything. Maybe he could have been leaning out to see something?"

Since the wall around the parapet was nearly chest-high, that sort of tumble wouldn't be plausible unless Hatch already had his legs on the downhill side. "Him sitting, smoking, something happens down below, he leans out for a better look?" Anna suggested.

"Could be."

They both thought about that, their eyes on the towering pedestal, the visitors dwarfed to ant size in its shadow. Even Hatch, come through familiarity to be comfortable on the parapet, wouldn't treat the sixty-foot drop with the casual disregard it would take to merely lean too far, lose one's balance and fall.

"Probably not," Anna said, discarding her own suggestion.

"I wouldn't think so," Andrew agreed. He tossed the rolled napkin at a trash barrel and missed by three feet. "Underprivileged youth," he excused himself as he retrieved his litter. "No inner-city midnight basketball for this child. I'm from Wyoming. Green River."

A cowboy. Anna had always had a weak spot for cowboys.

"That leaves murder and suicide," she said.

"It's early yet. There'll maybe be a note."

Tourists, girls of about twelve or thirteen, descended upon them like a flock of starlings, all racket and flutter. Andrew patiently answered the vacuous questions they'd dreamed up to get the pretty cop to pay attention to them. Anna waited. It was one of the things she liked about the Park Service--liked about America, when one thought about it in the grand scheme of things. Policemen were still the good guys. They were still the ones people turned to in times of trouble, the ones lost children sought out in crowds. People in the United States didn't scurry indoors and hide when a uniform appeared. Watching this microdrama unfold within shouting distance of Lady Liberty's elephantine ear pleased Anna's sense of symmetry.

"Let's walk," Andrew said as the girls giggled away. "Moving targets are harder to hit." Taking the initiative, Anna sauntered down the walk circling old Fort Wood. "Where were we?" Andrew asked, then answered his own question. "Suicide note. Right. I didn't know Hatch that well. Working alone, day shift, night shift, you only see each other in passing. I heard he was upset about the kid that jumped. I also heard he was under investigation. Good reasons to check out if your mind works that way. Mine doesn't. Suicide makes no sense. Why crash a party you're going to be invited to sooner or later anyway?"

Anna had nothing to say to that. Andrew was apparently too well adjusted to realize that by the time one is suicidal not only does the word "party" carry no cheery connotations but real-world logic has gone by the wayside.

Anna's pilgrimage to Molly's shrine was short. When she arrived Frederick, half-glasses with magnifying lenses of the sort one might purchase at Wal-Mart perched near the end of his beaky proboscis, was reading a sonnet aloud. Sonnet 29 if Anna wasn't mistaken. She left before his heart did the "lark at break of day arising" part, and though she exited amid a storm of protest, she seriously doubted she'd be much missed. As an excuse for her early departure she said she wanted to look up Dr. Madison before he went off shift. This brought her those gee-there's-hope-for-Anna-yet smiles that she would never learn to appreciate.

Knowing full well Molly would check up on her to see how the "romance" was going, Anna asked a passing nurse how to find David Madison. The woman verbally mapped out the way to his office. TV would suggest doctors do not have these havens of sanity but dash about from patient to patient, eternally free of paperwork. Anna had to either give up on television as even a distorted mirror of reality or believe Dr. Madison was highly placed in this particular organization.

The doctor was not in, but his door was ajar and, having carried the charade thus far, Anna decided she'd stay long enough to leave him a note--quick thanks, door open for future possibilities sort of thing. She edged inside, feeling out of place and mildly sneaky though her motives were no more underhanded than usual.

His office was utilitarian but by no means sterile. Evidently the man never threw anything away. Or filed it. Medical journals were piled along the walls. Out of knee-jerk snoopiness, she glanced at a couple dates. The old-timers had graced his floor since June of 1988. Manila folders in various colors and states of disrepair were packed into a bookcase behind a desk lost beneath more of the same, loose papers and what looked to be Mardi Gras trophies--cheap beads and plastic cups.

Madison might have one of those minds gifted with a Gestalt location system. Anna had had an aunt like that, Aunt Margaret. Margaret could dive into any of the many rat's nests in her study and within moments produce whatever yellowed newspaper clipping or antiquated recipe she had in mind. Researchers were just beginning to uncover evidence that the female brain was built for big-picture thinking and the male for categorization and separation.

That or Madison was just a slob. Since Anna had matriculated into middle age, it took very little to knock a man off her "possible" list. A slob was borderline. She tucked this away without even being aware she did so, and moved to the desk to find paper and pen for the intended note.

This seemingly simple task was thwarted by the plethora of documents. A Post-it note, a Bic pen, the necessities of life, were lost in the debris. She circled around the desk and sat in a maroon leatherette ergonomically correct and, because it was designed for a man six foot five, uniquely uncomfortable chair. Her feet barely touched the floor. For an unsettling moment she felt like a very little girl playing where she shouldn't be playing.

Then, in essence, that's what she became. Before her eyes were two dreadfully tantalizing folders awash in the sea of pulped trees. One, a corner protruding, was labeled "Dr. Pigeon, Molly, Mary, Margaret." Thinking there might be but one daughter, Anna's parents had taken the precaution of naming their firstborn after every female relative still living on either side of the family. Seven years later, when Anna made her appearance, there was no one left. Fortunately her mother had been reading
Anna Karenina,
or she might have ended up being named Tiger or Coco or Potkins or Skeeter after a favorite family pet. The other, less obvious but equally enticing folder was labeled "Consultant--NYC Med Ex." A connection with the person who had autopsied Hatch's Jane Doe and, perhaps, would do Hatchett himself.