Nevada Barr - A Superior Death

Several times a season Lucas, Ralph, Marilyn-the Chief Naturalist-and Lyle, the head of Roads and Trails, spent three days in the backcountry camping and hashing out wilderness-management issues.

“Ah. Well, I’d better get on with it before we get run down out here,” Anna said.

“Whatever your business is here, finish it up pronto,” Scotty said, enjoying himself. “I need you on the north shore on a day like today.”

“Will do.”

Inside and out of Anna’s head, the fog grew denser. Scotty and the Lorelei faded like specters come sunup. The Belle Isle fired up at a touch and Anna cracked the throttles. In the thick mist there was no sensation of movement. Following the jagged green map on her radar screen, she felt her way into the little harbor at Mott Island and inched up to the dock. The Loon , the Blackduck , and Pizza Dave’s little aluminum runabout were all snugged up to the concrete. No one who didn’t have to would be out on the water today.

Anna tied off her lines and followed the gravel path to the Administration Building, invisible thirty yards away.

“Coffee…” she croaked at the door of the dispatch room and Sandra returned a throaty chuckle.

“Fresh pot,” she said without turning from her keyboard.

“When you die you shall be canonized,” Anna promised. Secure in the knowledge the Chief Ranger was deep in the woods, she took Lucas’s personal coffee cup, a white mug with “Smokey the Bear’s a Communist” emblazoned on it in red. Fresh coffee in a real cup; the day was beginning to look less bleak.

“Not your cup,” Sandra admonished as Anna poured, and she realized she’d given herself away by the tiny clicking sound the neck of the pot made when it touched the rim of the cup.

“I’m using Lucas’s,” she confessed.

“That’s tantamount to sitting in the emperor’s chair,” Sandra warned. She’d finished whatever she’d been working on and turned to face Anna.

“I’ll polish my prints off when I’m finished.” Anna took a drink and sighed with satisfaction.

“Are you working over here today so Scotty won’t be all by his lonesome? Terrible to be all dressed up and nobody to boss.”

“Nope. Already got my marching orders from the Acting Chief: back to Amygdaloid ASAP. Suits me fine. I just came by to dish the dirt.”

By way of repayment for the information Sandra had provided, Anna told her of the Jim and Carrie affair and that it had been stopped. The dispatcher echoed Patience’s reaction with a shocked “Counseled!” But being less cynical than either Carrie’s mother or Anna, Sandra put her faith in Lucas Vega.

“He’ll come up with something,” she said confidently. “His mother owns half of San Diego County. There’s bound to be a few pocket senators or congressmen he can lean on to lean on somebody.”

Over a second cup of coffee Anna asked after Jo. Sandra had seen her several times, had her over to dinner once. “She’s working hard,” the dispatcher said. “Talks about PCBs and fish and slime and percentages of whatever in the whatever. She’s nailed down every minute of every day.”

“Whatever works,” Anna said, but she wondered how Jo fared during the endless minutes of her nights.

Tinker and Damien provided the only good news. Evidently Scotty had ceased his blackmail and they were of good cheer. Sandra said they were haunting McCargo Cove every spare minute in search of the mythical peregrine.

“They won’t find it today,” Anna said.

“Rumor has it it’s foggy.”

Anna drained her coffee cup. “Come on, Delphi,” she said. “Lead me back to Amygdaloid.”

Coming around Blake’s Point, eyes glued to the Loran, Anna was half sorry the water was so flat. Even the slamming of the hull against hard water would have been preferable to the absolute nothing she felt.

Between Blake’s Point and Steamboat Island, Anna executed a turn to the 248-degree heading dictated by experience and charting. Amygdaloid Channel, usually a narrow comforting waterway, took on a different aspect when neither shore was visible. She threaded her way carefully down the center.

The dock at the ranger station was deserted. Having eased the Belle Isle into her space, Anna disembarked.

Indoors, with four cluttered walls and a fire roaring in the woodstove, the fog seemed less malevolent. Anna took a couple of Advil for her head, made a pot of strong tea, and sat down at her desk to catch up on the month’s paperwork. How many diving permits issued, how many fishing licenses sold, how much in revenues to be sent to the Michigan Fish and Game. She wrote up a 10-343 Case Incident Report on two fire rings she’d destroyed and rehabilitated on Green Island and a half-page on the removal of the fishhook from the Minneapolis man’s thigh. There was a short form to be completed on two visitor complaints that the party boat, the Spirogyra , had been making undue noise after quiet hour. For Ralph’s amusement, Anna included one visitor’s statement that the denizens of the Spirogyra were calling down aliens from outer space. She deliberated on whether or not to write up a 10-343 Case Incident Report on the Jim Tattinger situation or a 10-344 Criminal Incident Record. Knowing Lucas would wish to decide along with Patience and the Superintendent whether or not to treat the incident as a criminal act, she contented herself with writing a summary narrative that could be typed on either form later on.

Over a tuna fish sandwich and soggy potato chips, Anna opened the packet of interoffice mail she’d brought back from Mott. There was a memo regarding the Backcountry Management Group meeting dated four days earlier, and an announcement for the coming Chrismoose festivities held on the island every twenty-fifth of July. One memorandum piqued her interest for a moment. Lucas had written up a report on the FBI’s investigation of the Castle murder. No new information, it said, and ended with the vague threat: “Frederick Stanton will continue to head the ongoing investigation.”

Tea, food, and routine paperwork had a normalizing effect. Anna’s brain no longer felt so fog-choked. Relief at this modest clarity was soon paid for with the nagging sense of something forgotten. Pushing away the papers that cluttered her desktop, she put her feet up and teetered back in her chair, her fingers intertwined and cradling her head. It had always been her private contention that this was the pose Rodin should have chosen for The Thinker .

Staring into the blankness beyond the window, Anna let her mind wander back over the day. The sense of uneasiness stemmed from her early-morning conversation with her sister.

Molly was her arbiter of sanity, her rock, anchor, and reality check. Without a doubt, Anna knew she owed Molly her life. There were days after Zachary had died when only the knowledge that her death would make her sister angry beyond recovery had kept Anna from taking her wine-wrung grief out on the Henry Hudson Parkway at eighty miles an hour.

Molly didn’t hold with suicide. “You’ve got to stay in the game. Your luck’s bound to change. Be a shame to miss it,” she liked to say.

And this morning, when her sister was in trouble, all Anna had found to say was: “Gee, gosh, I’m real sorry…”

Somewhere in the conversation there must have been a word or a phrase that should have meant more to Anna than it did. Molly based her practice on the belief that if you listened hard enough and long enough even the most troubled person could tell you how to help them.

The sense of something missed might have been the squandered chance to repay even a fraction of the debt she owed her sister. Anna rocked her chair down. Next time she would listen harder, longer.