Carla Neggers: Night’s Landing

Nate had left Cold Ridge at eighteen and never went back to live.

He never would.

“I caught the dogwoods when I was home in April,” Rob said in his amiable southern accent. “You don’t see so many dogwoods up here.”

“Dunnemore? Are you going to keep talking about goddamn flowers all afternoon?”

“Dogwoods are a flowering tree-”

“I know. Give me a break.”

“You should come to Nashville. My sister-” Rob flinched suddenly, his body jerking back and up, his knees stiffening as he grabbed his upper left abdomen and swore. “Fuck. Nate…shit…”

Nate drew his Heckler & Koch, but told himself Rob could just be having a back spasm or a heart attack. The guy almost never swore. Something had to be wrong. Maybe a bee sting. Was he allergic?

Rob staggered back a step, his suitcoat falling open.

Blood.

It seeped between his fingers and spread across his white shirt on his upper left side.

A lot of blood.

“I’ve been shot,” he said, sinking.

Nate caught him around the middle with his left arm, still holding the HK in his right hand, and glanced around for cover, spotted a rock outcropping near the pond on the other side of the path.

The shooter-where the hell was he?

Rob tried to keep his feet moving, but Nate more or less dragged him toward the rocks, then realized he hadn’t heard any gunfire. Apparently no one else had, either. People were going about their business. Two elderly women with Bergdorf Goodman bags, a middle-aged man jogging on the path, a park worker inside a fenced area near the far edge of the tulips. They were all potential targets.

“Get down!” Nate yelled. “Federal officers! Get down now!”

The park worker dove for the ground without hesitation. The women and the jogger were confused at first, then did likewise, covering their heads with their hands and going still, not making a sound.

The rocks seemed a million miles away. Nate had no idea where the shot had come from. Fifth Avenue? Central Park South? The undergrowth along the shore of the pond presented a number of places for a shooter to conceal himself.

A trained sniper could be within hundreds of yards.

A bullet tore into Nate’s upper left arm. He knew instantly what it was. He swore but didn’t let go of Rob, didn’t let go of his semiautomatic.

Definitely no gunfire. Even with the street noise, he should have been able to hear a shot.

The asshole was using a silencer.

“Put pressure on your wound,” he told Rob. “Don’t let go. You hear me? I’ll get help.”

But before Nate could get to his feet, a mounted NYPD police officer rode toward them. “What’s-”

“Sniper,” Nate cut in. “Get off your horse before-”

He didn’t need to finish. The NYPD cop saw Rob’s bloody front, saw his badge on his belt and dismounted, shouting into his radio for help. Officers down. Sniper at the pond in Central Park.

Nate knew the cavalry would be there in seconds.

The young NYPD cop stayed calm and crept toward the rocks. “You both hit?”

Nate nodded. “We’re deputy marshals. The shooter’s using a silencer.”

“All right. Stay cool.”

Rob moaned, his arm falling away from his wound. Nate took over, applying pressure with his hand, as he’d learned in his first-aid training. He could feel his own pain now. His suit jacket was torn and bloody where the bullet had ripped through the fabric. What caliber? Where was the bastard who’d shot him?

Who was next?

The NYPD cop yelled instructions to bystanders.

Sirens. Lots of sirens on the streets above them.

Nate looked at the thousands of tulips brightening the dull landscape.

What the hell had just happened?

Sarah Dunnemore jammed a cinnamon stick among the ice cubes and the slice of orange in her tall glass of sweet tea punch and sat back in the old wicker rocker on the front porch of her family’s 1918 log house. The air was warm, no hint yet of the heat and humidity that would come with the middle Tennessee summer, and the sky was washed from yesterday’s rain. A gentle breeze floated up from the river and brought with it the faint scent of roses.

Somewhere nearby, a mockingbird sang.

Sarah had warned herself to be prepared for the worst when she came home. Leaks in the roof, unmowed grass, bats, mice, food rotting in the refrigerator-her parents had last been in Night’s Landing in early April, though they wouldn’t necessarily notice such things or have them tended to. But they’d hired a new “gardener,” as her mother called the property manager, and he seemed to be working out. He hadn’t disappeared yet, as so many of his predecessors had, and he was good at his job. The lawn was manicured, the flower and vegetable gardens were in top shape, and the house was in good repair on what was a perfect early May afternoon.

The Dunnemores had arrived on the Cumberland River in the late eighteenth century and had been there ever since, sometimes eking out a living, sometimes managing quite nicely-always having adventures and too often dying young.

After just one sip of her tea punch, Sarah resolved not to drink the entire pitcher by herself. It was even sweeter than she remembered. She’d come home last at Christmas, but tea punch was a summer treat. She’d only made it to Night’s Landing once the previous summer, a whirlwind visit that did not involve a leisurely afternoon on the porch.

The porch was shaded by a massive oak that she and her brother, Rob, used to climb as children, but even the lowest branch was too high now. They’d sneak up there and spy on Granny Dunnemore and their father, arguing politics on the porch, or their mother as she snapped beans and hummed to herself, thinking she was alone.

Sarah had made the tea punch herself, dunking tea bags into Granny’s old sun-tea bottle and setting it out on the porch for an hour, then adding the litany of ingredients-frozen orange juice and lemon juice, mint extract, spices, sugar. She knew not to ponder them too much or she’d never drink the stuff. She never had an urge for sweet tea punch except when she was home in Tennessee.

Her friends in Scotland had made faces when she’d described Granny’s recipe. “Do you waste proper tea on it?”

Well, no. She didn’t. She used the cheapest tea bags she could find.

She took her friends’ chiding in stride. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have oddities in their comfort cuisine.

She’d spent two weeks in Scotland in the fall and then the past three months straight, working nonstop, completing-yes, that was the word, she told herself-the final project in a series of projects under one huge heading: the Poe House. How dry and ordinary it sounded. Yet it had consumed her since high school, before she even knew what historical archaeology was.

The Poes had arrived on the Cumberland River not that long after the Dunnemores. Sarah knew their family history, the history of their post-Civil War house just downriver, of the land it was built on, better than she did her own. She’d written articles and papers, she’d done interviews and research; she’d organized archaeological digs on the site; she’d preserved documents and artifacts; she’d scrambled for grants; she’d helped create a private trust that worked with the state and federal government to preserve the Poe house as an historic site; and now she’d produced a documentary that took the family back to its roots in Scotland.

It was time to move on. Find something else to do.

She had no idea what but pushed back any thought of the possibilities before it could explode into a full-blown obsession, as it had on the long trip home from Scotland. What would she do now? Teach full-time? Work for a foundation? A museum? Find a new project?