BLIND DESENT Read online

  She would keep it real for herself, for Holden, for Frieda. And she would find who'd made the mark if she had to examine every posterior in New Mexico.

  10

  The next seven hours passed like a fever dream. With Frieda dead, Anna felt no compunction about rotating out. She climbed, crawled, and crept, a zombie clawing her way from the grave. Under protest but accepting the inevitable, Holden went out with her. Brent, too, took the opportunity to escape. Oscar, Peter, Curt, and Zeddie chose to remain with the new team and continue the body recovery.

  The closer they got to the entrance of Lechuguilla the more desperate Anna became to get out. Emotions, long held in tight rein, began to break their bonds. Claustrophobia returned in force, and she chafed and sweated at each delay. Only the ominous threat of appearing a fool or a blackguard kept her from abandoning Holden and the others to bolt for the surface. By the time they reached the culvert that would release them into the confines of Old Misery Pit, waiting her turn to ascend she had to count in Spanish and recite poems to hold on to the ragged edge of patience. At last the iron trapdoor was closed behind her, and she could smell the world, cold and dry with a faint perfume of desert plants. Ascending the last sixty feet to the surface, she forgot the steady ache from her shoulder in unadulterated joy. Even the dirt smelled alive. Gone was the dank sepulchral odor of soil unblessed by life or light. When she saw her first stars, she croaked out her delight from tired lungs. Night, real honest-to-God night, with planets and dead suns, clouds and breezes. After so long a sojourn underground, even the moonless sky appeared bright and welcoming.

  The glare and hubbub that awaited as she climbed into the narrow oak-filled gap protecting the cave's entrance was overwhelming. In anticipation of a heartwarming celebration of heroism and perseverance, a great crowd had gathered. News media from all over the country were there with harsh lights and makeup to herald the triumphant return. The news that Frieda died had surfaced only moments before Anna, and the party was in a confusion of changing gears, rewriting copy.

  Nobody wanted to be left out of the limelight; all the NPS brass was in attendance: CACA's superintendent, the head of resource management, the chief ranger, a sprinkling of bigwigs from Guadalupe Mountains, an hour to the west. A tent had been set up for the rescuers, both those going and those returning. Beer and pizza had been hauled out onto the desert hillside.

  Anna survived a grueling gauntlet of questions, condolences, and congratulations as she stumbled over the uneven ground toward the tent, where she hoped to hide. As a little fish, she gauged she should be able to slip through the net of cameras and well-wishers without too much difficulty. Not so Holden. Notoriety and a crippled ankle made him an easy target. The last Anna saw of him, he was pinned down by hot lights and microphones. Though sympathetic, she had to laugh. The man was worn out, his mind turned to putty, as was hers. Floodlights had brought down a host of moths, and as the news anchor asked deep and meaningful questions, Holden's eyes flitted here and there following the flying insects. He looked less like a hero than a complete lunatic. Anna hoped somebody with a VCR was taping the interview. When he'd recovered, she suspected he would enjoy the joke. Any laughter they could glean from this debacle was to be treasured.

  The cavers' tent, probably borrowed from CACA's fire cache, was a twenty-by-twenty-foot canvas shelter with flaps that opened at either end. Free of media types and, no doubt because of that, free of brass, the welcome was low key. No amount of hype could seduce them from the single fact that they had gone in to save a fellow caver and they had failed. Anna was hugged by strangers, some smelling nearly as bad as she did; kind words were murmured and a cold beer was pressed into her hands. They seemed to understand that she could not talk and could not stay. No overbearing do-gooder tried to stop her when she slipped out of the rear of the tent.

  The December air was cold on her arms and back. Clad only in tee-shirt and trousers—and those soaked with sweat—she emerged into a winter night, forty-five degrees at best, with a slight wind. Sweat turned to icy patches on her shirt, and the hair on her arms was raised by goosebumps. Anna revelled in it. Intellectually, she knew the honeymoon would be short-lived, but at the moment she felt she would never again resent the cold of the wind or the heat of the sun. So long as she could feel it, it would remind her that she was alive and above ground.

  When she'd gone far enough she could still see yet was hidden by the night from prying eyes, she sat down with her back to a small boulder weathered into a thousand tiny crevices, potential homes for all manner of beasties that might be attracted by her warmth: snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes, lizards. In her exalted state, Anna welcomed them all. Like some deviant Disney heroine, she would spread her metaphorical skirts for all the stinging, biting, scaly creatures of the world. She smiled at the thought of waltzing with a horned lizard to the plaintive strains of "Someday My Prince Will Come," a bevy of mud wasps holding up the gossamer train of her soiled tee-shirt.

  Numbness in her fingers reminded her she still clutched a beer. Years had passed since she'd given up the stuff. Not a drop had crossed her lips since the first summer she'd worked at Mesa Verde. Visions of blackouts and delirium tremens and inappropriate remarks had kept her sober.

  Deliberately, she took a long drink. It wasn't as good as she remembered it, but then little was. She caught herself in that thought and was ashamed. Cynicism was okay, bitterness a pain in the neck. The hairline difference between the two was hope and humor. The cynic had both, the embittered, nothing. She took another drink and enjoyed the sensation of alcohol and rebellion. Eventually she would have to confess to Molly. The whole point of being a recovering alcoholic was making sure there was a healthy dose of guilt and the catharsis of confession as a chaser for each drink. But for tonight none of that could touch her. She felt as if she'd squirmed out of the ground into a world where she was only partially committed, as if she were a ghost or the invisible woman. Shock might have explained the sense of detachment, but, as it was not altogether unpleasant, she chose not to question it.

  Despite Anna's rebirth on this higher plane, the cold was beginning to seep through the seat of her trousers, penetrate beneath the wet patches on her shirt. Soon she'd have to go back. Freezing to death ten yards from the tent would be humiliating to say the least.

  Till I finish the beer, she told herself, and stayed where she was, watching the drama under the lights unfold. Mouthing lines she could not hear, people three inches tall, as measured between thumb and forefinger, marched about in a purposeful manner getting absolutely nowhere. George Laymon, CACA's resource management specialist, pushed his way into the camera's frame between Holden and Brent for his moment of fame, then was hustled offstage with the geologist. The superintendent, resplendent as was Laymon in a Class-A dress uniform, joined them momentarily. Brent was released, and the two National Park Service men gravitated back toward the limelight.

  Brent bobbed this way and that, a man who had no place to go yet could not decide which direction would get him there the fastest. Suddenly his head jerked up, and the indecision left him. Anna watched as he walked, then ran, into the darkness beyond the floods. A minute later he reappeared, his fretful face transformed, almost handsome. In the crook of each arm he carried a little girl. The children were two or three years old. They were dressed identically in frilly pink dresses, white tights, tiny red cowboy boots, and little blue parkas with the pointiest hoods Anna'd seen this side of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Twins, she guessed, probably Roxbury's daughters by the way they clung and chattered and he laughed and nuzzled. A fourth member of the party dragged out of the shadows. Mrs. Roxbury, Anna presumed. She didn't seem to share the children's rejoicing in their father's safe return from the depths. Possibly she hung back only to give them their moment together.

  The beer was gone; hypothermia was just around the corner. Time to go back. It was all Anna could do to rise from the ground, and that wasn't accomplished in one fluid moti
on but in a series of grunting stages from fanny to knees, knees to feet. With cold and inaction her muscles had shut down. She was so stiff it surprised her she didn't creak like a rusty gate at every move.

  A bath. The concept gave her renewed strength. Now that she'd joined the ranks of the topsiders such luxuries were not unheard of. With this in mind she limped more or less cheerfully back toward the milling humanity.

  Each and every wish of Anna's had come true. Zeddie's house had been given to her with Zeddie's permission granted over the newly functioning field phone. There was a bath, solitude, beer in the refrigerator. Even a cat, a sleek white female with a gray saddle and ears so pink they were translucent. Calcite, she'd been told, was the cat's name.

  Anna had soaked till her skin shriveled, quaffed a second beer, and now sat on the sofa cocooned in Zeddie's sweatpants and hooded sweatshirt. The Austin Lounge Lizards poured forth musical nostalgia from an environmental movement that was over before Zeddie had graduated from high school. All was as it should be, yet Anna could not shake a restlessness so close to the bone her wiggling and twitching had alienated the cat. Despite overtired muscles, Anna wandered from room to room, stopping to stare out windows, gaze into the refrigerator, read the spines of books. More than once she braved the dropping temperature and padded onto the back patio in stockinged feet to look over the starlit expanse of the ancient reef and imagine, below it, the struggling forms of Oscar, Curt, and Zeddie, carrying Frieda's remains through dark and twisting channels.

  Shortly before the ten o'clock news, she devolved from stalking to outright snooping. Access with permission and no supervision to the home of one of the five people who could have had a hand—or a butt—in Frieda's demise: this was opportunity knocking loud and clear. Anna would have been a fool to ignore it. Or so she told herself as she poked through her generous hostess's private things.

  The photos weren't hidden away like a dirty secret but proudly displayed on bedside table and mantel: Zeddie and Peter McCarty grinning out from hot-colored Polartec pullovers on a ski slope. Zed-die in back of Peter hugging his neck, her chin on his shoulder, behind them autumn leaves vivid and plentiful—St. Paul, most likely.

  Did this flaunting of an adulterous relationship indicate that Zeddie knew it would soon be on the road to legit? Did she hope Mrs. McCarty might drop by to borrow a cup of carabiners, see the pictures, and run screaming for a divorce lawyer? Was it indicative of a sixties-like scorn for traditional values in keeping with Ms. Dillard's nuevo-hippie armpit hair? Or was it as simple as a girl wanting to show off her boyfriend and trusting that a twelve-hundred-mile separation from his significant other would keep her from getting caught?

  The skiing picture was several years old, judging by the length of Zeddie's hair, a good six to eight inches shorter than she wore it now. The autumn leaves shot was more recent, not last autumn but this one. Zeddie had been with McCarty before and during his marriage. It wasn't unlikely she had plans to be around after. Would those plans include pushing several dump trucks' worth of dirt down on his bride? Earlier suspicions to the contrary, Sondra McCarty was nowhere to be found, and Zeddie had spent the night in her husband's arms. If Sondra had counted on the rock slide to solve her marital woes, she'd been sorely disappointed. Zeddie, on the other hand, had come out smelling like a rose.

  Experience told Anna the odds against two unrelated murder plots hatched in a small space and over a short period of time were astronomical. Going on the assumption Frieda had been correct, and someone had pushed a rock down on her, then statistics dictated Frieda was the one and only target both times.

  Unless Zeddie thought Sondra was down in the hole when she shoved the rock. Unless Sondra thought it was Zeddie when she pushed the rock. In the perilous midnight of a cave, a case of mistaken identity wasn't too far-fetched. But the second time someone had actually died: Frieda. Coincidence? Luck of the draw? Frieda and Anna had been easily the most vulnerable. Could the pusher-of-stones have been so cold as to write off extraneous casualties as the cost of doing business?

  The mechanism of the crimes carried with it no gender connotations. Opportunistic, unprofessional sabotage—possibly even spur of the moment—was as likely to be attempted by a woman as a man. Like poison, it wasn't hands-on violence. If one was agile, no blood need spatter on one's person.

  Circular thinking; it tired Anna and she shelved the line of thought for the time being.

  Other than the photos, she found little of interest. Zeddie had submerged herself more or less completely into the NPS lifestyle. Wall pictures were of wilderness views and sports, magazines focused on wildlife and land management issues. Anna did find one outdated Allure stuffed down behind the toilet like a shameful bit of pornography. Even the most stalwart feminist was entitled to the occasional slip into girlishness.

  She was back out on the patio, basking in the light from the stars and ignoring the increasing cold when the telephone began ringing. Though she'd spent less than forty-eight hours buried in Lechuguilla, the things of the world had become alien to her. The phone bell jarred, a mildly upsetting intrusion that had little to do with her. Any moment now the caller would hang up or the machine would answer. She turned back to the desert, a breathtaking vista separated from her only by a low cinder-block wall. Zeddie's house was on a rise; her patio looked down over the Carlsbad complex, across miles of silvered desert to the shadowy beak of El Capitan, forty miles away in Texas.

  The ringing continued. Anna cursed Zeddie's fundamentalism. Even Ed Abbey would have an answering machine, for Christ's sake.

  Stomping back into the house, she snatched the receiver from the cradle.

  "Yeah?" Phone etiquette had deserted her.

  "Anna?"

  It had never crossed her mind that the call might be for her. Staying in another woman's house in another woman's park, she'd felt as isolated as if she'd borrowed a condo on Pluto.

  "This is she," she said formally, phone etiquette returning with a vengeance. "May I ask who is calling?"

  "It's Frederick."

  Anna said nothing, both the English and the Spanish languages gone from her head.

  "Frederick Stanton?" she blurted out after a painfully long silence.

  "Come on, Anna, it hasn't been that long." His voice was rich with intimacy and humor.

  Hers wasn't. "It has." Excitement, the sick variety, wallowed in her belly, mixing with anxiety, embarrassment, and cheap beer.

  "I guess it has," he admitted, and she relaxed a degree or two. She knew she was spoiling for a fight: with him, with Mother Teresa, with anybody. This conversation was a tightrope she must walk, a high wire between the maudlin and the shrewish. Unarmed, in a stranger's sweats, she felt unequal to the task. She felt unequal to anything but a cup of cocoa and a Perry Mason rerun.

  Groping for a neutral remark, she said, "How did you find me?"

  "I'm the FBI guy, remember?"

  "It's coming back to me." Self-preservation kept her from saying anything more.

  "You were on the news," he said. "Coming out of that cave. They said Frieda didn't survive."

  Anna had forgotten that Frederick had met Frieda the summer they worked a case together in Mesa Verde. A couple of emotions did brief battle with her. Guilt because he was a fellow mourner, and anger that he, who scarcely knew Frieda, had the unmitigated gall to presume on his brief acquaintance to reach out and touch Anna in her hiding place.

  Guilt won. It was amazing that a Methodist childhood could be so completely eclipsed by four years at a Catholic high school.

  "The anchor we'd tied into gave out. Frieda and I fell thirty feet. I landed on top of her, my knee on her windpipe. My weight crushed her larynx. Either she suffocated or I snapped her spine." Anna heard herself, angry and cruel, and knew she lashed out at both of them.

  Herself for the deed, and Frederick for not loving Frieda sufficiently in the brief time he'd known her.

  "Do you want me to beat you up about it?" he asked calm
ly.

  That was a shrink question, a Molly question. Guilt vanished to be replaced by tears. Anger was still very much extant.

  Anna took a deep pull on the beer she'd carried in with her. The problem wasn't that she'd consumed alcohol after abstaining so long, but that she hadn't consumed enough. Alcoholic thinking, came the words of a mentor she'd lost contact with. Eat my shorts, she told the memory, borrowing an epithet from Holden's accepted vocabulary list.

  "I've had a real bad day," she said, and laughed. Laughter turned to tears. She hid them with silence. Zach, her husband, lover, soulmate, so many years dead she'd almost managed to lose count, would have known why that was funny. 1988, Broadway, Crimes of the Heart. Mom hanged herself in the cellar, along with the family cat. Why? She'd had a real bad day.

  Feeling doomed to a lifetime of loneliness, Anna sucked down another draught of beer. Mentally, she removed a cold chisel from an imaginary toolbox. With it she chipped the tears from her face and voice.

  "Thanks for calling, Frederick," she said evenly, and was rewarded by a brief frisson of pride. "I didn't know I'd made the news. I'd better call Molly and let her know I'm okay."

  A silence followed, one so awkward that even through the miasma of alcohol and weirdness Anna generated, unspoken messages pounded like invisible radio waves.

  "I've already called her," Frederick said, his voice curiously devoid of expression.

  At the time Anna had sensed there was something bizarre about the end of her and Frederick's relationship. Anna was snapped back two years, held in the time warp of flashback. At her request Frederick had traveled to New York City to help her sister with a series of threatening letters. That was when things had gotten strange.

  With the impact of an Old Testament revelation, Anna knew: Frederick had had an affair with Molly.

  The knowledge, accurate or not, broke on her consciousness with the force of lightning. A pit beside which Lechuguilla paled opened in Anna's befuddled mind. The least breath of air would topple her into it. A vision of her sister's face dropped like a lifeline, and Anna grabbed on to it. Molly could be—indeed had been—trusted with Anna's life. A cornea, a kidney, a loan, a place to sleep; if Anna needed it, Molly would provide it. Were there a single drop of water in the Sahara, a last bite of ankle bone among the Donner party, Molly would give it to Anna. She knew this the way she knew her heart pumped blood.