Nevada Barr - Blind Descent

Peter McCarty leaned on the mantel of a fireplace that hadn't been used in so long it had been converted to a storage place for magazines. On his handsome face was a look of proprietorship and reflected glory that he had in no way earned. Not by matrimony, at any rate, or by any basic honesty that Anna had noted. Tonight she found the hypocrisy irritating.

Oscar was giving full attention either to the performance or the performer and spared Anna the barest of nods. The two strangers smiled politely, then glanced away. Curt Schatz held the apple-cheeked baby girl on his lap, looking almost as happy as if she'd been a cat. Perhaps all nonverbal animals share the same charm. Schatz dangled his keys in front of chubby grasping fingers in lieu of paws, percolating giggles taking the place of purring.

Anna caught his eye and he stood immediately, shifting the child to his hip in a practiced movement. A smile illuminated the shadows of his beard, and behind horn-rimmed spectacles, his eyes were welcoming.

Warmth brought Anna unpleasantly close to tears. If you want somebody who's glad to see you so damned bad, why don't you get a dog? she mocked herself. The self-inflicted cruelty stemmed the waterworks for only a moment. Then she remembered she had a dog, Frieda's dog, Taco, a trusting, slobbering, jowly, loving, jumping golden retriever.

"And I want a shot of whiskey!" Zeddie wailed, the depth of her voice filling the small room and pouring like hot wax into one's bones.

Anna's eyes filled.

"Uh-oh," Curt said. "Don't do that. I'll get you a beer if you'll stop," he coaxed.

"Wine," Anna said. "And it's a deal."

Schatz deposited the baby girl with her mother and vanished around the corner into Zeddie's kitchen-cum-dining area. The song came to an end in laughter and a spattering of applause. Faces turned toward Anna. She stood just barely inside the door. For a moment she believed Brent Roxbury's blood still stained her face and hands and that was the reason for the stares. Then she remembered it had been washed away in the ladies' bathroom at the BLM offices.

"What?" she said. "What?"

An embarrassing silence descended. Mouths moved like those of grounded goldfish, but no one spoke. It occurred to Anna that one of them must be her gunman. Who else could it be? Sondra McCarty, only pretending to be gone, stalking the desert with a high-powered rifle? Maybe.

"Your wish. My command. All that shit," Curt said, returning with a water glass full of red wine.

The spell was broken. People moved. They talked. They drank. And if any of them wanted Anna dead, she couldn't read it in their faces.

A little wine, a little music, the cat transferred to her lap, Curt sitting at her feet playing with the baby, and Anna was willing to believe she had imagined the whole thing: the funky stares at the door, the shooting, Brent's blood, even Frieda's murder. Willing but not quite able. Normalcy, instead of making violence seem unreal, was itself made unreal by that violence. Despite the purring Calcite and the warm cabernet, Anna was on edge.

Zeddie strummed her guitar, humming snatches of tunes Anna didn't recognize. With a thump, Zeddie dropped the flat of her hand onto the strings, cutting off the music. "So what did you think of Big Manhole?" she asked.

Anna twitched as if she'd been struck.

Peter dropped his pose at the mantel and took two steps across the room. Hands on knees, he peered into her face. "Are you all right?" He laid the back of his hand across her forehead as a mother checking a child for fever might. Anna would have flinched again, but she managed to control it. McCarty's face ballooned in front of her, bobbing and weaving. Cold sweat pricked in her armpits. Noises sounded distorted.

"I'm fine," she said, and heard her words as from a distance. An anxiety attack; Anna'd never had one, but she'd sat with enough displaced tourists suffering the symptoms to recognize it for what it was: an all-encompassing physical fear reaction that came from nowhere. Pain was better, exhaustion, depression, toothache, the dry heaves, herpes, hives. Breathing slowly through her nose, she rode the horror like a breaking wave. It'll pass, she told herself and, for the first time, understood why those words of wisdom always failed to comfort.

McCarty was still in her face. It was all she could do not to shove him back. Deliberately she stroked Calcite, concentrated on the warmth of the cat's fur under her hand. When she could lift the glass and find her mouth, she drank wine. Every eye was on her. It made things immeasurably worse.

To keep from rushing screaming from the room, Anna began to talk. "Big Manhole was…" Her voice sounded hollow and distant. She tried again. "Brent was at Big Manhole." Better. "Somebody shot him. Killed him outright. Half his face was blown off." Her intention had not been to shock, yet she slapped the morbid images across the party faces of those with her. Even as she was disgusted with herself for tracking her misery into someone else's home, she watched for any reaction that might say, "It's me; I am your shooter."

Oscar looked as if he'd sustained a physical blow. The young mother nestled under her husband's arm. Curt appeared annoyed at this emotional breech of etiquette, but he closed his free hand over the arch of Anna's uninjured foot in a show of support. Zeddie and Peter pounced on her offering succor. Zeddie's strong arms hugged Anna. McCarty propped her feet up on the sofa. Curt was sent to make hot drinks-the outdoorsman's cure for whatever ails.

Anxiety was carried away in the hubbub, leaving Anna drained and nervous. Cat still intact, she was pampered and enthroned. From her place of honor she told the story a third time. Not once, not from anyone, did she feel a flicker of guilt, see a hint of foreknowledge or an iota of ill will. Either the sniper wasn't there, or he or she was desperately clever and a practiced deceiver.

Her tale of gore effectively killed the party. The young couple were the first to go. The woman scooped her child from Schatz's lap as if merely being in Anna's vicinity might give the baby bad dreams. Oscar lingered awhile longer. He'd known Roxbury, had worked with him. Though Brent hadn't been killed in the park the superintendent would want to be told, as would George Laymon. The Bureau of Land Management would take the brunt of police and media attention, but it would be a courtesy to inform the people at Carlsbad who had been connected with Roxbury. "Courtesy" was Oscar's polite term. The underlying message was understood. Park employees learned it almost as soon as they learned where to pin their name tags and the appropriate way to wear the flat-brimmed Smokey Bear hat. Like brass anywhere, NPS bigwigs hated being blindsided. The underling who failed to inform them of approaching disaster was severely frowned upon. More than once Anna had avoided much-deserved punishment by the simple expedient of telling her district ranger she'd screwed up before an irate citizen could give him the same information in a less palatable manner.

Oscar ended with the NPS's standard warning. "I doubt newspeople will call you. This isn't a park-related incident. If they do, refer them to me, George, or the superintendent."

Don't talk to them. Everybody got that.

"I want to talk to George," Anna said.

Iverson was at the door, holding it ajar, letting the heat out in the tradition of winter guests. A pained expression met her words.

"I think Brent's killing is linked to Frieda's," Anna pushed.

Oscar looked weary. "I'll set it up in the morning, okay? First thing."

Anna nodded. Oscar left. For a long minute the four of them stayed where they were, scattered around Zeddie's living room, no one wanting to meet Anna's eye.