Nevada Barr - The Rope

“You didn’t tell Regis, did you?” Anna asked.

“I did, too,” Bethy insisted.

No sneaky smile.

“But not right away.”

“You won’t give me water and I’ll die.”

For a second Anna thought she was going to burst into tears of self-pity, but she didn’t. “You came to the jar first, to make sure the kid was telling the truth, didn’t you?” Anna asked.

Bethy’s eyes narrowed to reptilian slits in her heat-reddened face.

“If you tell me I’ll let you have a real drink,” Anna offered. Bethy glared at her, hatred burning in her eyes. “Why not tell me?” Anna asked conversationally. “If Regis really is coming, and really will kill me, it won’t make any difference, will it?”

Bethy tried to spit at Anna, but her mouth was too dry.

“Regis likes me,” Anna goaded. “He didn’t come to the solution hole to kill me. He came because he loves me. Regis brought me water and food. We picnicked and made love.”

The struggle in Bethy’s face was almost comical in its intensity. Muscles bunched and brow furrowed, lips twisted until it looked as if several personalities were fighting for the same body. Fascinated and repelled, Anna watched. This was something she had to tell Molly.

Careful Bethy lost to Vicious Bethy. “You did not. I took your clothes. I cut WHORE in you. I made you drink shit water. I spit in your sandwiches. I said when you were supposed to die.”

The pure vitriol smacked into Anna’s mind. For a minute, she could do nothing but stare at Bethy in revulsion. In all her years watching the best in the business play every villain from Lady Macbeth to Cruella de Vil, Anna had never seen evil. She’d seen actresses playing evil, some of them brilliantly. The real thing wasn’t merely something seen; it was a tangible wave felt on exposed skin, on the retinas and the lining of the throat.

Mental illness and evil were not the same. Molly, who dealt with all manner of nutcases on a daily basis, and knew mental illnesses for the diseases they were, also believed in evil, a darkness that transcended the malfunctioning of human brain chemistry. Crazy people, Molly insisted, were only dangerous the way abused dogs and frightened horses were dangerous. In their struggle for what they perceived as necessary for survival, other people occasionally got trampled or bitten.

Evil people hunted and hurt because they hated. Truly evil people did it because it was fun.

Poison washing over her, Anna felt a need to return to the pragmatic.

“How did you find me?” she asked. In the broken pocked landscape, riddled with basins and stones, Anna, with the help of a tracker and two rangers, had had a tough time finding the jar.

“Pizza Face said he didn’t know where you were dumped. I made him take me to his guy friends and they showed me,” Bethy said with satisfaction. “They couldn’t wait for me to see. Then they stripped you naked and raped you a bunch and I did it to you with a stick.” She smacked her lips as if the vile words tasted good to her.

Though Anna was about ninety-nine percent sure those things had not been done to her, the shame she’d worked so hard to overcome returned with a vengeance. She breathed through it. When all but the stink of it was gone, she said, “They. You said ‘they.’ All three of the boys came back with you?”

“Don’t you listen? I told you Jason Pizza Face said he hadn’t been with the other guys. He was like this big innocent, you know? Just watching and stuff.”

The rope wrapped around Bethy was loosening, not because Bethy struggled but because Anna hadn’t done a good job of tying her up. Like many other things, tying a person securely was a lot harder than it looked. Before Bethy got free, Anna was going to have to act. In a minute, she promised herself, too tired and hot and freaked out to move.

“Let me get this straight,” Anna said with a sigh. “These guys kill a woman and throw the dead and the living women in a hole and they’re all Johnny-on-the-spot, gung ho to tell the ranger all about it and lead her to the scene of the crime.” Anna pushed herself to her feet, picked up her daypack, and shoved Bethy’s half-full water bottle inside. “You’re so full of shit I can’t stand to be around you. When I get back to the Rope I’ll tell Jim Levitt where you are. If I happen to remember.” Shrugging into the pack, Anna started southwest toward where the trail led down to Dangling Rope Marina. It was longer and much farther than going by way of the slot canyon and Panther, but she had had her fill of hanging by a thread from high places.

“No!” Bethy shouted, finally sounding afraid. “No. I’ll tell you stuff. Real stuff. True and everything.”

The note of genuine panic—the first honest emotion Bethy had evinced other than fury and smugness—stopped Anna. She looked back at the filthy woman, trussed up like a cannibal’s catch, her skin beginning to burn thought the dust and the sunscreen, and felt a tickling of pity. Not for Bethy. In Anna’s opinion she deserved whatever came, as long as it was unpleasant. Pity for the person she would be if she allowed Bethy to die of thirst knowing firsthand what torture it was.

“Tell you what,” Anna relented. “I’ll split the water with you. You’ll be able to wriggle out of your ropes before you die and can drink it then. It will keep you going until somebody comes to get you.” She started to fulfill the promise by retrieving her own empty water bottle so she could share what she had.

“No! No,” Bethy cried. “Don’t leave me alone.” Her eyes, beseeching, held Anna’s. No sneaky smile. She genuinely was afraid of Anna leaving.

Anna stopped what she was doing, too rattled and weary to think and move simultaneously. Her previous adventures had taught her a little something. She’d left a note telling Jenny she was going canyoneering with Bethy Candor. Of course she hadn’t said where because she hadn’t known at the time.

Bethy’s Zodiac was moored at the sandstone blocks separating Panther from the slot. Jenny was working, due back at the Rope around six thirty. If she patrolled Panther today she might even see the Zodiac.

Anna also carried a few more practical things with her when she was going away from civilization. Besides the additional water, she had matches, a compass, a Swiss Army knife, a Maglite, granola bars, sunscreen, a ball cap, ChapStick, and a paperback book— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Since last time she’d found herself on this plateau in the company of persons who meant her no good, she had become much stronger and more savvy in survival skills.

Still, unless she ignited a piñon tree with the matches and Anne Brontë’s work, she had no way to let anyone know where she was. Where they were.

“If I don’t leave you, nobody will come find you,” Anna said reasonably, “and I’m sure as hell not taking you with me.”

“Just stay a little longer,” Bethy begged. “Please? Please? Pretty please with a cherry on top?”

It was quarter past two. There would be enough light to hike out for another six hours. This time it would not take Anna twelve hours. Knowing the way, and being hydrated and fed, she could do it in four. Maybe less.

Bethy’s fear and pleading didn’t factor into her decision. Bethy’s willingness to tell her “real stuff, true and everything” did. It wasn’t in Anna’s nature to walk away before the final scene played out.

Feeling more saintly than she had a right to, Anna gave Bethy a good long drink of water before she sat down to finish interrogating her. She opened with “If I even think you’re lying to me, I’m gone.” With a small plane’s engine droning in the distance like the buzz of a bluebottle fly, she said, “Start with why those guys agreed to show you my jar.”