Nevada Barr - The Rope

“They don’t think that,” Jenny said. “It’s just something they have to consider, Jim says.”

“I was alive, Kay was dead,” Anna said after a time. “I hit Regis and left him—”

“And didn’t mention that fact for quite some time,” Jenny added.

“Right.”

“For no apparent reason, you climbed a miserable dangerous trail in the heat of the day with no food or water to speak of.”

“Right. Why would I do that if I wasn’t expecting to meet someone?” Anna asked.

“Because you’re a greenhorn, a citified, ignorant fool,” Jenny suggested, a smile in her voice.

“Right,” Anna agreed. “Start a list. We demand drinking fountains on backcountry trails. Any theories on how I ended up in the bottom of the hole with a dislocated shoulder and a ladder coiled up neatly beside the jar’s mouth where I couldn’t even see it?”

“Actually there are,” Jenny admitted.

“You’re kidding!” Anna exploded, rising half off the planks of the bench.

“Don’t upset Buddy,” Jenny cautioned. “I don’t want to be washing in tomato juice for the next week.”

Anna settled back. Night had come in earnest. Jenny could just see her housemate’s outline. Lack of vision honed her other senses, and she breathed in the faint plumeria smell of shampoo and a hint of childhood innocence from the Jergens lotion Anna used. Cotton, washed and worn for so many years it was as soft as old flannel, whispered against the rough wood when Anna moved. The scents and sounds were familiar, comforting. Not surprising, given the fact that most of it belonged to Jenny. A trip to La Boutique Target would be necessary as soon as possible.

“And why, pray tell,” Anna asked icily, “do the Powers That Be think I was in the jar and the ladder was not?”

Jenny took a breath to repeat what Jim had gleaned from the meeting in Andrew’s office and conversations to and from Wahweap on Steve’s boat.

“No, wait, let me,” Anna said bitterly. “A life in the theater should make fiction my forte. Lying my second language. I kill Kay, bury her, climb out via the nifty boat ladders, coil the rope ladders up, and store them by the rock. Then I creep back to peek down the throat of the jar to admire my handiwork, slip, and fall in, banging my head and hurting my shoulder in the process.”

Jenny was impressed. “In a nutshell,” she said and, “Stranger things have happened.”

“They sure as hell did,” Anna grumbled.

“College-age boys,” Jenny mused. “We’ve got Heckle and Jeckle on tap—Gil and Dennis, the maintenance seasonals,” she added for Anna’s benefit. “Three Hispanic guys about the right age work at the marina. There’s more up and down the lake working seasonal for us or concessions. Then of course there are a zillion party boats vomiting über-rich teens and twenty-somethings onto the beaches daily.”

“I don’t suppose they bothered to wonder why I would choose a big flat rocky chunk of nowhere for a rendezvous with boys ten years my junior, or why any woman would agree to meet me there.”

“Kay and or the boys might have driven out to Hole-in-the-Rock Road from Escalante. The quickest way for you would be up that trail. They’re hoping to get an ID on Kay’s body. That should clear up a lot of things—where she was from, why she was here, what vehicles she owned.”

“If she drove out from Escalante, where was her car?” Anna asked.

“Maybe the rapist boys drove it away. Or maybe you hid it.” Jenny said.

“This is a pretty pickle,” Anna said.

Jenny laughed.

“Would you roll me a cigarette?” Anna asked suddenly.

“You don’t smoke,” Jenny said, oddly appalled by the request.

“I didn’t think I did,” Anna said, “but it’s beginning to look like there’s nothing I won’t stoop to.”

Jenny was stung. Because Anna was under a lot of stress, and because Jenny was enamored of her, she let it pass, but she didn’t roll the cigarette.

“Somebody murdered Pinky,” she said suddenly, having no idea why the thought popped into her head or out of her mouth.

“The little rattlesnake?” Anna asked.

“I found him under Regis and Bethy’s porch. His body had been laid out in a line. A nail—big, maybe six-penny or ten-penny—was driven through each end of his snaky body and into the dirt.”

“Somebody crucified a snake,” Anna said flatly. “There is something I wouldn’t stoop to after all.”

“He was under Regis’s porch,” Jenny said.

“Regis found me in the solution hole.”

“If what you told me is true, he lied about hearing you crying.”

“What I said is true.” Anna’s voice was flat and cold.

Jenny shuddered inwardly. “Sorry,” she said. Other than food and clothes the greatest gift she could give Anna was faith, utter and complete belief in her every word: If Anna said she saw pixies or skin walkers or flying saucers Jenny must believe.

“I know you’re telling the truth,” Jenny said.

“No you don’t,” Anna said. “Even I’m not sure what my truth is.”

The pygmy rattlesnake was on Regis’s mind. On his desk were background checks he needed to review and file. At present there were few job openings. Seasonals were in place. A full-time district ranger for Dangling Rope was the only job pending. Given that the federal bureaucracy ground slower than the wheels of justice, he didn’t feel any urgency.

By choice Regis had never been hunting or fishing. Madison, Wisconsin, was not exactly Mecca for members of the NRA; still, hunting was seen as a noble tradition and bass fishing almost a devotional pastime. There had been plenty of invitations. None had tempted him, not even for the “bonding experience” with other males, or proving of himself in some outdated blood ritual.

Even as a kid he couldn’t imagine a more miserable pastime than freezing in the snow, sputtering in the rain, or baking in the sun to acquire something that could be bought at Kroger’s already gutted, butchered, filleted, and wrapped.

Some things did need killing. Pinky Winky the snake had to be killed. What was Jenny’s deal with naming the thing? It was a wild animal. Less than a wild animal, it was a venomous snake. Having a poisonous reptile under the porch wasn’t cute, it was stupid. Snow White —the Disney animated version—had warped the minds of an entire generation of women. They thought the creatures of the forest would frolic on their skirts, dance with them. Forest creatures were more apt to spit and bite, in Regis’s experience.

He did like the way snakes moved, water snakes through water, land snakes across land. No legs, no arms, not so much as a fin or a finger, yet they moved rapidly and with grace. The pygmy rattlesnake was a little thick and short for true gracefulness, but it moved well enough. Yet he killed it. Its death was such a nonevent. No more than wadding up a piece of paper and tossing it into the trash.

His mother and grandfather didn’t value life, not this life anyway. They were devout, not just in church on Sunday, but Saturday night. As an only child and an only grandchild, Regis had gotten the full attention of their God. Not a particularly nice deity. He would never have dared say so, that was blasphemy. His grandfather’s God, as manifest by his grandfather, was all about control. The old man had money, scads of it, and doled it out to his daughter-in-law and grandson only when he deemed them worthy in the eyes of the all-seeing.

There were the Rules. Abortion was murder. At eleven or twelve, he remembered a night foray to a liberal church and putting tiny white crosses all over the lawn to protest the fact they had a doctor as a member who worked with Family Planning. Regis told that story once to the horror of his college girlfriend and her roommate, but, in truth, it had been a hoot. They had even blacked their faces commando style. Black ops. He’d loved it.