Liberty Falling-pigeon 7 (35 page)

In another park, Anna would have considered resource theft. Miss Liberty was valuable only in wholeness, in spirit. Pieces of steel or copper that could be carted off by the strongest, most determined child would be worthless. The kid could make more money collecting aluminum cans for recycling.

If the pack contained incriminating evidence, then of what? Before Hatch's death, no crime of any magnitude had been committed in the monument for ages. Guns and knives would have shown up at the security gate. And the same things that made the statue a lousy place to sell, buy or trade contraband made it a lousy place to do so with anything that could be used for blackmail. Blackmail was the only purpose Anna could think of for toting around incriminating evidence.

If the child was unknown to Hatch and had suicided, then it made no sense that Hatch jumped out of guilt for pushing her. If the child suicided, it also took away the revenge motive for Hatch's death. If he hadn't murdered the child, why kill him? Unless whoever the kid was working with, the mysterious snatcher of packs, blamed Hatch because he'd chased the girl, caused her to sacrifice her life. That brought Anna back around to the pack. What was in it that was so important it fomented a suicide and a murder? And who had the means and opportunity to avenge themselves on Hatch? Means wasn't tough. It wouldn't take much strength to dislodge a man sitting on a wall. Anna could do it if she had a running start and the element of surprise. Opportunity was trickier. The pusher would have to get on the island after hours, get into and up the statue and know where and when Hatch would be at his most vulnerable. A number of people working on the island knew of Hatch's Gauloise habit. Any one of them could have done it. Or anybody who had been watching the statue for a time. Hatch's smoking perch was visible for miles in three directions.

Then there was Corinne: different island, mixed with different people, no known connection with Agnes, Hatch, the backpack or the statue. Anna wasn't a die-hard cop who didn't believe in coincidences. They happened all the time. In literature they were rife. Thomas Hardy made a good living writing about improbable coincidences that had an impact on many lives. But this didn't feel like one. There was a common thread tying all the incidents together: none of them made one whit of sense. That was a pattern. If none of them made sense, it indicated there was a key piece of information missing, the key that would unlock doors on both Liberty and Ellis.

The "attacks" on her? The collapse of the stairs, the push into an oncoming train? Her memory of those events had mutated. At the time, she'd felt a malicious intervention but in retrospect she wasn't sure. What connection had she, a stranger, to anything that might be festering at the monument? Maybe one, and it was a stretch, but if there had been something hidden under the stairs, the same thing that had been moved to the garden where she'd found Corinne, it was possible someone had been afraid she'd seen it and so tried to dispose of her. Seen what? The same flaws in logic that stymied her when she thought about the contents of the child's backpack applied. Ellis was almost as unlikely a place for the exchange of illegal substances as Liberty. The south side was relatively deserted, but given a choice of all the places in New York to hold a secret rendezvous, it would be near the bottom of any list.

Hypervigilance was a common symptom of people under stress. Perhaps the "attacks" were simply an overstimulated survival instinct latching onto common events with uncommon fear. Like her suspicions of Dr. Madison and his locked desk drawer. The identity of Agnes Tucker had been established. If Madison for some obscure reason had been trying to obfuscate his connection with the city morgue, he'd been wasting his time. Therefore it wasn't logical that he was hiding anything. Logic had to factor in. There was no reason to injure or kill her; therefore no one had attempted to do so. QED.

 Patsy was in her office. Once again the phone was clamped to her ear.

Plans for the Pot Party, as she'd deemed it, were in full swing. "Pot" was not the pot of parties Anna had frequented in her salad days but short for "melting pot." Because of the nature of the bill Mrs. Weinstein was angling for, this Fourth of July Liberty Island would represent nearly as many nationalities as it had during its heyday as a port of immigration. A fitting tribute and clever politics.

Anna eavesdropped until it became obvious that Patsy wasn't going to be any fun for an hour or more. With a waggle of her fingers to show there were no hard feelings, she left to amuse herself elsewhere.

Without a conscious choice being made, Anna's feet carried her to the tangled garden where Corinne had lain for so long. On the steps, tucked under the living shade of forty years' unchecked growth, the only movement a stirring of leaves, light muted, sun fragments sparkling through the canopy, there was a sense of isolation, if not solitude.

Like the other gardens, the Commissioner's was small, enclosed. One could enter only by descending the steps where Anna sat. Before, this garden had struck her as intimate. Today it was claustrophobic, dangerous: nature caged, a green tiger waiting, angry, resenting its captors.

Ambient fear, the raw pure kind that fuels panic, began building behind Anna's sternum. The tips of her fingers went numb and her scalp tingled. Years had passed since she'd suffered an anxiety attack--another legacy of her husband's death. Breathing deeply and evenly, she rode it out as she'd learned to do, mind and body lifted on a cresting wave of nameless terror. The wave broke in a gush of cold sweat, and panic faded, leaving her weak and very alone.

To occupy her mind, she listed options: She could go to Liberty, to Patsy's house. She could return to Manhattan. Both choices brought back the tingle of rising fear and she decided to stay where she was.

For a minute or two she stared at the fading impressions heavy round things had made in the leaf litter at the bottom of the stairs. Nothing new revealed itself. Undergrowth had been slashed and trampled during the rescue effort, a rude path cleared to where Corinne had lain. Enjoying, in a perverse way, the scratching of twigs against her bare legs, Anna pushed through. External pain distracted her from the claws of the inner demons.

By the light of day she could see the creeping tendrils of poison ivy and stopped to examine her hands and arms. No blisters. It had been over twenty-four hours. For once she'd gotten out of a physical scrape scot-free. Her lucky star must have been on the rise.

The ground was clear where they'd put down the backboard and packaged the actress. Anna picked what looked like a spider-free, ivy-free zone and sat down tailor-fashion. Cloying heat settled around her. Silence was just one more memory of Colorado. Sultry air thickened with the hoot of ferries, the growl of motors, the fetid breath of seven million scurrying souls.

Anna was in a foul and edgy mood.

She sat. She waited. She relaxed her body. She eased her mind. Oppression did not lift. Dark thoughts bubbled below the surface of forced calm. Leaf by leaf she began sifting through the debris, looking for anything Joshua might have missed. Looking for a clue, a project that would occupy her till Molly was well enough that Anna could go home to Mesa Verde and breathe.

The garden was rich in artifacts: half a wooden button, pop-tops from the days before aluminum drink cans were changed, a marble--a green cat's-eye. Anna pocketed that, not for professional reasons but because she liked it. A safety pin, shiny and new.

On all fours to facilitate her grubbing, Anna didn't touch it. Unlike the other oddments, the safety pin was recently brought into the garden. Not a smidgen of rust or dirt dulled its surface. Nose near the ground, she studied it. The closing end had a blue plastic cap, the big kind people used to use to fasten babies' diapers before those Velcro-like tabs and the incredible waste of disposables were invented. Judging by the color, it could have been used to fasten Corinne's nightgown. Near the pointed tip was a brownish discoloration. Blood, she guessed. The safety pin might have been the implement used to scrape the message into the actress's arm. Anna retrieved a piece of notepaper from her pack, folded it into an envelope and, using sticks as tweezers, pinched up the pin and dropped it into the paper container. She didn't know yet what she would do with it. Already she was guilty of disturbing evidence--if it turned out to be evidence. In New York she had no rights as a law enforcement officer. Training covered this situation explicitly: her duty was to report her findings to local authority, turn over anything she had, be available for interviewing should they deem it necessary, then butt out, be a private citizen.

Anna slipped the envelope into the pocket of her shirt and then buttoned it.

Boots scraping on concrete intruded into her thoughts. Billy Bonham stood in the door, blocking the exit.

Not blocking,
Anna corrected herself to stop the sudden rush of a panic that hadn't been banished but merely held at bay.
Just standing. Not blocking. Standing.

"Hey, Billy." She was pleased no quaver of fear tainted the words.

"What are you doing here?"

Not a very welcoming statement. "I'm crawling around," she said, and sat back down as if laying claim to her right to exist in the world.

"What did you put in your pocket?" This aggressive, confrontational Billy was not the same man who'd shared his tales of ghoulies and ghosties with her on the stern of the
Liberty IV

"You're sure grouchy," she countered. "The heat getting to you?" Dodging his probe, she realized she wasn't going to be a good little ranger. She was going to keep the safety pin and pursue it in her own way. Billy she didn't trust to deliver it. She didn't think the Park Police would treat it with the seriousness she felt it deserved.

"I guess," he replied, sounding more like his old self, and he sat on the top step. Anna was relieved at this relaxing of attitude. Still, she was uncomfortable having a brawny, well-armed boy squatting between her and freedom. The crack to Corinne's skull had been vicious, delivered with the strength of rage. Maybe Billy had done it by mischance, mistaking her for a "haint." Maybe he had nothing to do with the woman's assault. And maybe he had an agenda Anna didn't want to be a part of.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, hoping if he talked long enough she'd get a feel for his state of mind.

Bonham blew a gust of air out through loose lips. Staring between his knees, he plucked a living shoot off an azalea and began methodically stripping the leaves. "It's that thing with that actress. Everybody thinks I heard her calling for help and was too scared to come look. That's a flat-out lie." Without looking at Anna he said overloud: "I didn't hear anything. Not a doggoned thing."

Up till then she was half inclined to believe him, but the remark smacked too much of a working denial: denying it to others, and most important, denying it to himself. Anna fervently hoped he'd leave the Park Service. Especially if Corinne died. The knowledge that he'd abandoned an injured woman to die because he was scared of the dark would unbalance him. Either he would push so hard to prove himself that he'd be a danger to everybody he worked with, or he would retreat into bitterness and self-justification. Either way, he was washed up as a good law enforcement officer.

"What happened that night?" Regardless of the wisdom of unsettling a questionable cop blocking the one exit, she couldn't resist pushing.

"Nothing! I told them that," he snapped. Anna nodded noncommittally and took up her own twig, stripped it and began tracing patterns on a small slate of earth cleared when the backboard was dragged across it. Billy had not turned and left when he first found her in the garden. Deep down he really wanted to talk or there was something he wanted to find out by getting her to talk. Anna would win any battle of silences. At twenty-two, it was a grievous burden to sit without doing, without speaking. At forty-four, it was a practice and a pleasure.

"I was on my usual rounds," Billy said after a short time.

"Ah." Anna made an interested noise to grease the wheels.

"I go two or three times a night. You know--walk the perimeter. We don't have to go into the buildings on Islands Two and Three," he said defensively.

That was true. They were too decrepit to be safe by night. "Safety regs," Anna said helpfully.

"Yeah. These places are death traps."

An overstatement, but Anna let it pass.

"There was nothing out of the ordinary that night. Nothing. If I'd heard something, you think I wouldn't check it out? That's crazy. I'd check it out."

"What's ordinary?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" Billy was suddenly suspicious, his baby-blue eyes narrowing.

"You said 'nothing out of the ordinary.' What's ordinary for a night patrol of the island?"

"Nothing." He used the word again. "I mean nothing much happens. That's why I wanted day shift--not enough action." He laughed with a false bravado and Anna pitied him. Maybe over time the lies would come easier.

"You get boats wanting to land at night. Kids on adventures mostly. This is my first summer, but I guess it happens a lot. I've scared a
couple off a time or two. You know, come by and seen them just offshore like they'd been here. Once or twice somebody's walked or ridden bikes over the bridge from Jersey there behind the registry building. I've chased a few of them off. That's about it. It's pretty boring. I mean it's real boring. I would have welcomed something to break the monotony." Again he laughed, same tone. Billy Bonham hadn't been bored nights on Ellis, he'd been scared.