BLIND DESENT Page 15

  Had Frederick Stanton been the proverbial last man on earth and Molly the recipient of the last fabled Spanish fly, there wouldn't have been an affair.

  The pit closed. Sanity resurfaced.

  "And?" Anna said.

  "She wasn't home," Frederick admitted.

  Of course she was home. It was 11:40 P.M. New York time on a Tuesday night. Molly was drinking Scotch and watching Leno. She was a woman of regular habits. Nothing short of a patient crisis or a seventy-five-percent-off sale at Bergdorf Goodman could lure her out from one of her sacred "at home" nights. She'd refused to pick up. She'd probably refused to pick up for two years.

  "She'll be home for me," Anna said unkindly, and, "Thanks for calling." As a courtesy, she let him say good-bye and hang up first.

  Three times she tried to dial Molly. On the third attempt her fumbling fingers pushed all the right numbers. As expected, the machine answered.

  "It's me, Anna."

  A clatter of plastic followed as Anna's older sister grabbed up the phone.

  "Anna. Thank God."

  "I've been drinking," Anna said. It was the last piece of information she'd intended to communicate that night.

  "It happens," Molly said.

  "And thinking about Zach."

  "Oh, my. Sounds like you've had a real bad day."

  Not alone, Anna thought. Not alone at all.

  11

  Her part in the rescue at an end, Anna had no business remaining at Carlsbad Caverns and no intention of returning to Mesa Verde until she had unraveled what had happened to Frieda. At best guess the body recovery would take another twelve to twenty-four hours. Till then she had a place to stay. Pleading injury, exhaustion, and all manner of unprovable but debilitating ills, she'd asked for and received sick leave. Hills Dutton, her district ranger—indeed, all the staff at Mesa Verde—was reeling from Frieda's death. Winter was the slow season, and Anna was not really needed. She could easily beg a week or more and get it.

  Beer and bruises had given her a fitful night's sleep. Thrashing around in Zeddie's down comforter, she stalked and was stalked by killers of all stripes. More than once she woke up in a panic, fighting a ceiling of stone that was no longer there. Around three in the morning she'd dragged her bedding out onto the back patio to feel the reassuring cold of starlight on her skin as she slept. When day finally dawned she was relieved, if not rested.

  Between her first cup of coffee and her morning shower she formulated a modest plan. Or the first stumbling steps of a plan. Sondra needed to be tracked down, information on the other members of the team to be ferreted out. Bundled up in a sweater of Zeddie's and a battered leather jacket she'd inherited when Zachary died, she walked from the housing area to the cluster of neat stone buildings that housed Carlsbad's administrative offices.

  Clouds hung heavy over the desert, adding a pervasive damp to winter's chill, dulling the light of the sun to a gray throb in the south. To Anna the day was made beautiful by its mere existence. Cold embraced and invigorated her. A sharp wind from the northwest reminded her how magnificently alive even this barren chunk of earth was. Down a steep slope from the cave resource building where she'd originally been assigned to man the telephones were the offices of George Laymon and the superintendent. Anna hoped for a low-profile schmooze with the secretaries. In a park as small and isolated as Carlsbad Caverns there would be few secrets. Whose car was parked too long in front of whose home, who drank and, perhaps more damningly, who didn't, would be common knowledge. It seemed as good a place as any to begin.

  That assumption couldn't have been more wrong. Once in the door she was caught up in the machinery of government.

  In the wake of the failed rescue attempt and the blaring media coverage, administration was buzzing with activity. Each decision would be reviewed, all plans reconsidered in a new light that would change as the political winds changed. Blame might be assigned, selected heads might roll but, most important, a dense layer of paper would be generated. Like a frightened squid obscuring the past with ink, the NPS would muffle the incident in memos, reports, and revised operating procedures.

  As Anna walked in the door, Jewel, George Laymon's secretary, said, "Just the person I was looking for." Never a good sign. "George wants to talk to you. He's in with Brent, but they should be pretty close to done."

  The implication that Anna would, of course, sit and wait docilely till summoned was strong. At an early age a serious streak of contrariness had been discovered in Anna. The only two stickers she'd ever considered slathering on her Rambler's bumper read "God Bless John Wayne" and "Question Authority." Today she chose not to rise to the occasion. Claiming a folding chair near Jewel's desk, she sat and composed her face along cooperative lines.

  Jewel was a stocky woman in her early thirties with an abundance of black hair curling down her back to bra-fastener level. Not a glint of a shine escaped the careful tangle of curls, not a thread of gray or red or brown. The hair was black as construction paper, flat and rough. Bangs and sides were cut short and teased high on the crown. Hair was molded into flying wings above each ear with industrial-strength hair spray. From the front the coif looked big, a lion's mane. From the side the effect was lost. The volume was two-dimensional; the popular style always made Anna think of the false fronts on buildings along movie Main Streets of the Old West.

  "What's up?" she asked in hopes of opening channels of communication.

  The secretary was more interested in her computer screen than in gossiping with Anna. "Debriefing," she said without bothering to turn around.

  "Critical incident stress debriefing?"

  "Something like that."

  After incidents in which rangers were exposed to unusually stressful situations—the death of children or fellow employees, long rescues in which the victim died, or messy accidents with burned or mutilated bodies—the National Park Service had instituted debriefing sessions, times when the rangers involved could theoretically come to terms with their own personal trauma. Undoubtedly the idea was a sound one, but Anna'd never been to a session that proved helpful. It's just me, she thought, not for the first time.

  She eyed Laymon's office door suspiciously. Jewel had just said Brent, not a whole host of cavers. One-on-one was unusual unless it was with a bona fide psychologist. Laypeople trained to run the sessions always had all the participants in at the same time. Part of the therapy: sharing fears, inadequacies, strengths. Coming to know you weren't alone, that the bizarre things that passed through your mind weren't an indication of a character flaw. She turned her attention back to the secretary.

  Jewel typed like a fury, stiffened tresses quivering with the impact of lacquered nails on the keyboard.

  The office was cold and boring. Anna squirmed around, but comfort on a metal folding chair was elusive. "I thought it would be a group thing," she said, hoping Jewel would relent and amuse her.

  "Nope." Jewel typed on.

  There were no magazines to be seen. Anna's shoulder began to ache. She laid her injured limb along the edge of the secretary's desk.

  "Do you happen to know where Sondra McCarty is? Peter McCarty's wife?" Anna asked.

  "All nonessential personnel have been demobed."

  For all the expression Jewel put into the practiced words, she could have been one of those dolls with a ring in its back one pulled to make it talk.

  "She's a civilian. Peter asked me to check on her," Anna lied.

  "Packed and gone."

  A punch, a poke, and paper was sucked into the printer next to Jewel's elbow. Still she typed; she didn't miss a beat. Anna didn't think anyone outside the confines of the big city could type that fast. It was a talent best kept under wraps in the Park Service, or ham-handed rangers would endlessly be pestering one to type up their reports. Probably not an issue; Jewel looked pesterproof.

  "Are you sure Sondra's gone?" Anna asked, testing the theory.

  Flying fingers stopped midword and began a slow drum. Not pesterproo
f. Jewel screwed her chair around till she was facing her desk— not all the way around to face Anna, that would have constituted too great a commitment.

  "Absolutely positive." She whipped a pile from her "out" basket and, dabbing the pad of her index finger into a little pot of waxy stuff, flipped through it quickly, keeping her fingers stiff so the acrylic of her nails would not be compromised.

  "Packed and gone," she repeated with satisfaction, and shoved a list in Anna's direction. "She was given a ride down to the airport yesterday with some other guys. Guess she couldn't wait for her husband to come out."

  A note of humanity crept into Jewel's voice, suggesting she would have waited for a husband until hell froze over.

  "Good job, Brent, I mean that. Hang tough." The words wafted from Laymon's office as he pushed the door open to usher the geologist out.

  Brent mumbled something. He looked bad. Pale and unshaven, the haggard eyes of a man who'd been sleeping badly. Anna guessed she didn't look so hot herself.

  "Is Holden here yet?" Laymon asked Jewel. Anna could tell he'd seen her. Draped as she was over the end of his secretary's desk, it would have been impossible not to. He chose to pretend he didn't. A man who liked to deal with one thing at a time.

  "He can't come in," Jewel told her boss. She didn't look at him, but turned back to the computer screen. Her fingers rested on the keys, but she was neither reading nor typing. The screen had gone blank. She either had lost her text or had touched a magic computer hide-it button.

  Laymon wasn't in the mood to take no for an answer. "Did he call? I told you to interrupt me if he called."

  "His wife, she tol' me he gotta go to the doctor's about his foot."

  Jewel's articulation, her posture, her vocabulary, all were disintegrating under Laymon's disapproval. Anna wondered if it was personal or if the secretary habitually cowered in the glare of the opposite sex.

  "I got Anna Pigeon," she said with the air of a shopkeeper offering inferior but available merchandise.

  "Keep trying the Tillmans'," Laymon said. "Talk to the man himself, not his wife."

  Only after this exchange had been completed and a nod of acquiescence wrung from Jewel's bowed neck did George Laymon officially "see" Anna.

  "Good of you to come by," he said, managing to gather power unto himself by conferring obedience upon her.

  "I just sort of wandered in," Anna said. "I wasn't aware there was a critical—"

  "I appreciate your coming down so early," he said, and waved her into his office. Closing the door he winked conspiratorially and shook his head. "For a woman who types that fast, Jewel doesn't seem to get a whole lot done. How're you doing?"

  Laymon's attention, a focused beacon, lighted and warmed. Despite a natural aversion to being wooed by politicians, Anna had to admit the effect was flattering. Laymon ushered her gallantly—but ever so correctly, without a hint of condescension or sexism—to the single chair in his office. Padded, the seat and back covered with nubbly brown fabric, the visitor's chair, though significantly less grand, matched his desk chair. The desk matched a computer credenza behind it, against the windowed wall. The carpet was new, the potted plant in the corner alive. George Laymon obviously rated. Anna had been in superintendents' offices that weren't so well appointed.

  Laymon didn't retreat behind the pseudomahogany of his desk but perched on the side, one haunch on the wood, one booted foot swinging free. He actually must have paid attention in those management classes the NPS was always shipping the higher-ups off to. Putting me at my ease, Anna thought. She decided if he crouched down to her level the way one was taught to interact with children, she was going to leave.

  Laymon was a spectacularly average individual. Height, weight, color of hair and eyes: everything fell in the neutral zone. Because true average is a mathematical concept and not a class, he didn't vanish into the woodwork. Graying hair, good build, and regular features made him a handsome man. Anna guessed he was fifty-five or sixty, and had little doubt he could still have been quite the ladies' man but for one thing: he wasn't interested.

  She wasn't vain enough to think because a man wasn't flashing lights and sounding sirens the minute she walked into a room he was gay or asexual. Laymon's lack of interest was beyond the personal and had nothing to do with the expected photo of the lovely wife and two appropriately scrubbed kids framed on the desktop. Anna guessed it was something harder to come by than sex or affection that fueled his inner fires. Imposing order. Maybe knowledge. Attributes that could make him good at his job. Controlled zealots were just the people needed for the daunting task of saving what was left of the environment.

  "Brent sure looks like shit," Anna said, making conversation.

  "Brent's taking this hard," Laymon told Anna. "He's a sensitive man. One of the things that makes him the best in his business. Attention to detail and a straight answer no matter who it costs. But he takes a lot on himself. He feels somehow responsible for Miss Dierkz's death."

  Anna understood. After all, she was the one who had killed Frieda. "We all do," she said.

  "It's to be expected. How are you doing?"

  Anna gave him the short answer to that and several more questions designed to show her he was a caring administrator. Then he got down to the meat of his inquiry. Laymon had no interest in critical stress debriefing—there were procedures for that and they did not fall within his job description. What he wanted from Anna was a detailed account of his resource, Lechuguilla Cavern.

  "I'm from the 'Show Me' state," Laymon said. Exactly what had she seen? How far had she explored the Paddock? What had others told her of holes blowing, going leads? Who carried the survey and the sketches? How clear was Lake Rapunzel? How deep the slide? How unstable the Pigtail?

  Anna told him she was not the best person to ask. As a neophyte, a claustrophobe, and a close friend of the deceased, her powers of observation had been at a low ebb. Claiming to understand her limitations, he was still keen to hear her views, so she answered the questions as best she could. He pressed her for detail on Tinker's, Rapunzel, and the Pigtail—parts of the cave to which he had never been. Anna struggled to remember as much as she could and, in a childish desire to please, came close to making up answers—a human trait that made eyewitnesses so unreliable. Time after time she drew blanks and he pushed harder.

  Laymon was digging in a vein that had been mined out in the first few minutes of their interview. She could tell he wanted more, but there wasn't any more she could give. It made her feel stupid. Stupid was turning to annoyed before he finally gave up.

  Anna had said nothing about Frieda's death being not an accident but murder. In the light of day, she was unsure, hyperaware there was no hard evidence. In honor of Frieda, she had to try.

  Clearly, Laymon felt the interview to be at an end. He stood. Anna kept her seat. "Frieda thought the rock was pushed on her. Not fell. Pushed."

  The words out, she waited. Laymon looked blank, then, as the import struck, shock twisted his even features. Lines cut between his eyes and around his mouth. He sat down, this time in his official chair and in his official capacity.

  Anna told her story. Laymon took notes and didn't interrupt. When she finished he stared for a time out his window.

  "You realize how serious this is?"

  She did.

  "You've given us nothing to go on—not your fault," he added quickly. "Just the nature of the beast. Frieda was sure?"

  Anna admitted she was not.

  "And this print in the dirt, you're a hundred percent sure of that?"

  Anna stuck to her guns. The butt-print was real.

  The chief of resource management blew out a lungful of air and turned to face her squarely across the desk. "Holden is coming in later. I'll meet with him, the superintendent, and Oscar when he gets out of Lechuguilla. We'll take it from there."

  "Thanks," Anna said, relieved to have passed the buck.

  Now the interview was indeed over. Laymon rose and walked aro
und his desk, nudging her toward the door with repeated thanks.

  She managed one question of her own before it was closed between them.

  "What next?" The question was purposefully vague. She wanted to take the temperature of resource management, to find out if Holden, Oscar, Zeddie, or anyone else was going to be targeted as scapegoat. Her cynicism was uncalled for. Laymon was thinking only of the cave. A rescue, even one as carefully orchestrated as Frieda's, could go sour. Despite Holden's care, damage had been done. Possibly irreparable damage. Even without the rock slide, that many people, that much equipment couldn't be dragged through the fragile and pristine underground without leaving a mark. Since there was no way of guaranteeing that cavers would not injure themselves, and since the American public would never condone the idea of a "no rescue" wilderness where visitors went in at their own risk to come out or die as the gods and their own skills decreed, the only way to protect the cave, at least this newest and most virginal part, was to close it off. Until a truly compelling reason to allow people in arose, the cave could rest. Unlike the surface of the earth it would not be able to regenerate, to cure the wounds they'd left behind—or not on a timeline short-lived humanity could appreciate—but further impact would be stopped.

  That was fine by Anna. Holden would be miffed, and she could sympathize. Had Lassen Volcanic, Big Bend, Isle Royale—any of a dozen parks she could name without thinking—been closed to her she would be bereft, resentful. Caves she could comfortably leave in the dark.

  Cavers were another matter. Before she could get a clearer picture of the survey team that had been with Frieda, she needed to know more about the personalities involved. She had little idea how to go about gleaning background information. They were such a disparate bunch. Curt was a New York university professor, Brent a geologist for somebody, Peter a midwestern gynecologist. Who would she call, the AMA, the PTA? Sondra, at least, had a face, address, and phone number.