Boar Island Read online

  That was something.

  Being on the move seemed to soothe Denise. Gone were the hissing and the hurrying. Anna heard mirrors being adjusted, a seat belt fastened, the engine coming to life. The SUV backed out of the narrow space. Off to point B.

  Had Anna decided to set a trap to catch herself, she couldn’t have done it more thoroughly. She was alone, unarmed, injured, fog-brained, and had delivered herself into the hands of a deranged kidnapper. The proverbial handwriting had not merely been on the wall, it had been all but tattooed across Anna’s forehead. Denise liked to dive at night. Denise had a boat at her disposal. Denise had refused to be seen near Paulette the morning after the murder, was paranoid about Anna being in her apartment, reacted bizarrely when Anna had asked about the photograph where her teeth were identical to Paulette’s, showed the same chorea as Paulette Duffy.

  Shaking her head, Anna groaned.

  “Okay?” Denise asked.

  Anna nodded.

  The distraction of the cybercreep had kept her from paying attention to what was going on in the park, the park she’d been brought in to help protect and preserve. Instead, she’d played hooky, worked on personal issues, and one of the rangers nominally under her supervision had gotten away with the attempted murder of Anna and, probably, the actual murder of Paulette’s husband.

  Almost, Anna felt she deserved what she was getting, what she was going to get when Denise reached point B.

  Almost.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “We’re here,” Denise announced.

  Here, Anna knew, was between fifteen and thirty minutes by car from Denise’s apartment. First, Anna guessed, they were headed to Paulette’s house, but they didn’t go into a house. They went into the woods. Pine needles slithered underfoot as they walked the last hundred yards or so, and the smell of sap was strong in the night air. They were in a shed or garage; Anna surmised. She’d heard the unmistakable sound of a padlock being unlocked.

  “Sit,” Denise ordered.

  Blind, a baby bound to her chest, the best Anna could do was get to her knees and sit back on her heels. Duct tape made for secure bondage. Little of Anna remained mobile.

  “God,” Denise fumed. “You’re such a pain in the ass.”

  A hand pushed hard on Anna’s shoulder, toppling her onto her side. To keep the child from harm, Anna took the full weight of the fall on the point of her left shoulder. Her face was ground into rough carpet as her legs were pulled out of their bend. The baby began to cry, a few decibels higher and angrier than its ongoing pitiful mewling.

  Ripping sounds filled Anna’s ears; then she felt her legs being taped together again, once at the ankles and once at the knees. Clearly, Denise had a higher opinion of Anna’s threat level than Anna did. She doubted she could best a fly even if she had a swatter and a head start.

  “There,” Denise declared, when Anna was trussed up again. “Sit up.”

  Struggling like a landed fish, Anna tried to bring her torso up to right angles with her legs. She failed.

  An exaggerated sigh heralded the coming assistance. Hands slid under her shoulders and pushed her up.

  “This will hurt,” Denise said.

  Since a significant portion of Anna hurt, she hardly winced as Denise carefully pulled the tape off of her eyes.

  “Won’t have to get those brows waxed for a couple years,” Denise said.

  Her face was so close it was all Anna could see, and it was out of focus.

  “No reason you can’t talk,” Denise said. “You can even scream if you want. Nobody will hear you.” Crouching in front of Anna, Denise gently worked the duct tape free of Anna’s mouth.

  Drool ran from her newly freed lips and dripped on the baby’s head. Air, constrained by fear and pinched nostrils, rushed in through Anna’s mouth. She felt her chest expand against the tight wrapping of tape and the soft bundle of life she held in her arms.

  “Better?” Denise asked, her head cocked to one side like that of an alert Chihuahua.

  “Yes,” Anna said. “Thanks.” Absurd as it was, Anna was genuinely grateful for these small kindnesses. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, but they could show gratitude for the scraps given them.

  As Anna’s eyes cleared of tears from the stinging removal of the tape, the room that coalesced around her was not what she had expected from her garage or shed theory. Lit only by the light of a single kerosene lantern was a room built of rough wood. The curtains on the windows were open, showing a warm sunny forest outside. They weren’t windows, she realized dazedly, but mullions and frames over a painting of a summer forest scene. A crib with a stuffed bear in it sat in the corner. Beside it were a child’s tiny chair and a potty-training toilet

  Denise had brought her—and the baby—to a nursery.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” Denise sat down in a rocking chair with low arms and looked around the small space with obvious pride. “It’s a shame we won’t get to use it. We’ll have to build another just like it at our new place. It could be like a playhouse.”

  Despite the kindly light of the kerosene lamp, Anna’s captor’s face looked drawn and pale. The youthful glow the blond hair lent her had faded.

  “Tired,” Denise said, as if affirming Anna’s thought. Dragging her hand down over her face, fingers pressing gently on her eyelids, she mimicked a gesture that Anna equated with the living closing the eyes of the dead.

  A thousand questions boiled in Anna’s mind with such fury that she couldn’t get any to separate themselves from the maelstrom to form words. Her palms, each fastened tightly to the opposite forearm to make a basket for the infant, were growing numb. She could no longer feel the child breathing, but, with her eyes uncovered, she could see the tiny baby she held. Snot bubbled out of a nose as small and soft as a peony petal. The crying had stopped. Now the child looked up into Anna’s face with vaguely trusting gray-blue eyes.

  “You took the baby from the woman in the hospital,” Anna said to Denise. Her voice cracked from a throat so dry Anna could barely swallow. Without being asked, Denise got up, crossed to a shelf, and took out a bottle of water from half a dozen stored there. There were also several army surplus MREs, the kind Anna hadn’t seen for years, and two pairs of handcuffs. Anna looked longingly at the cuffs. After her time in duct tape, they looked positively humane.

  “Sort of took the woman’s baby, but not exactly,” Denise said, unscrewing the cap on the water bottle. She held it while Anna drank. Water was a fluid of many magical properties. Anna’s throat opened; her mind perked up; hope flickered where the water left its trail of strength.

  “What do you mean sort of?” Anna asked. “How do you sort of take a baby?”

  Denise smirked as she regained her seat in the rocker. “That isn’t the baby you think it is. Guess who you’re holding?”

  Anna stared down into the baby’s face. To her, all babies looked pretty much alike. This one was pink and round with a blank little face and wide open eyes. Why would she be expected to know this baby?

  Disparate facts, stored in unrelated places in her cerebrum, began to flock together like blackbirds into a pine tree: Paulette Duffy, an infant care LPN, Peter and Denise together, Peter and Denise apart, Lily and Olivia, Denise’s sudden retirement, Olivia mysteriously ill and transported to the hospital where Duffy worked.

  “Peter Barnes’s baby,” Anna said.

  “My baby,” Denise flared. “Olivia. What a stupid name. We’ll give her a better one.”

  “Olivia wasn’t the baby that went missing,” Anna said.

  “Hah!” Denise leaned forward, her elbows on her knees so her face was on a level with Anna’s. “The camera over the door in the infant care observation room is pointed at the crib. I walked in, back to the camera, carrying one baby, backed out, still not facing the camera, with another baby. Peter doesn’t even know his child has gone missing. That’s how much he cares about her. Do you think the baby should have water?” Denise asked, her face suddenly worried.
/>   “Probably, but done up like she is, I’m afraid she would choke. Don’t you want to hold her?” That was a question new mothers and grandmothers asked Anna. For some reason, women were supposed to want to hold infants. If Denise was among them, maybe Anna would be given an opportunity to do … well, some damn thing.

  For a long moment, Denise sat, chin in hands, elbows on knees, studying Anna and the baby. “I don’t want to hold it,” she admitted at last. Anna didn’t think Denise was talking to her so much as thinking out loud. “I thought I would. I really thought it would be like when my sister and I realized we were two parts of a whole. But when I carried the baby out of the hospital and didn’t feel much, I figured it was because things were so, you know, tense. Then back at my apartment all she did was cry. I tried holding her, doing the rocking thing. She kept on crying. She didn’t feel like a part of me, not like Paulette, more like a fish trying to flop its way out of a soggy newspaper.”

  “Babies aren’t for everybody,” Anna said sympathetically. “No big deal. I never went much for babies. Tell you what, nobody knows she’s gone. We could take her back and nobody would be the wiser.”

  Denise straightened up. She actually appeared to be considering the suggestion, and Anna felt a tiny spark of hope.

  Then Denise shook her head. “No,” she said firmly. “The closeness will come. It will just take a while.”

  “Why don’t you cut the tape so we can let her out of my arms? Then at least she can have water,” Anna said.

  “Soon,” Denise promised. “If Paulette comes back from work and everything is hunky-dory, we won’t need you for a hostage. Then we’ll leave, and in a few hours, I’ll send an anonymous message saying where you are and that will be that. No muss, no fuss.”

  Anna doubted she would be left alive. In their previous encounter, Denise had proved to be an individual who chose not to strain the quality of mercy in any meaningful way. A bullet to the back of the head or a one-way night dive was more likely.

  Again Denise wiped her face, fingertips pressing on her eyelids. Anna took the opportunity to see if she could bite the duct tape closest to her chin. She couldn’t, not without crushing the baby.

  “I know Paulette is your sister,” Anna said.

  Denise laughed. “My identical twin sister.” Shaking her head, she smiled to herself. “I’m still having trouble believing it’s true. Too good to be true usually isn’t.”

  “Oh, it’s true,” Anna said. “I know a lot about your family.”

  Denise had lifted the water bottle she’d used to give Anna a drink partway to her mouth. Her arm froze, suspending it midway between the chair’s arm and her face. Her eyes narrowed. It didn’t take a psychic to see the aura of paranoia and suspicion that darkened her visage. Paranoia: That was one of the symptoms Gwen had mentioned for Huntington’s. Committing murder could make a person a tad jumpy as well. Kidnapping, Anna suspected, was hell on the nerves. Denise would have to be crazy not to be paranoid.

  Since Anna had nothing to lose, she chose to feed it.

  “I know she’s your identical twin,” Anna said, shooting for the tone of someone starting on a long list of sins. “I know the woman who delivered you as babies. I know the legacy that your biological mother wanted to share with you.”

  The water bottle flew from Denise’s hand. Rolling, it left a dark wet trail across the rag rug where Anna sat. Denise hadn’t thrown the water intentionally. Her hand had spasmed.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Denise cried. Rising from the chair, she retrieved the bottle and set it on a small table beneath the pretend window. Hair whipping wildly, Denise looked around the room. “There’s nothing to wipe it up with.”

  “It’s only water. It will dry,” Anna said calmly. “I know about your dropping things, too. You didn’t used to be clumsy; now you drop things. Same with Paulette.” Anna wasn’t quite sure where she was going with this, just hoping that things would shake loose in a way that was more conducive to her surviving the night.

  Denise growled, or grunted—a sound associated with animals, not humans. Reaching behind her back, she drew something from her waistband.

  No surprise, a SIG Sauer 9 mm. Most likely the one Anna lost that night on Schoodic. The gun had never looked as big in Anna’s hand as it did in Denise’s. Viewed from the wrong end, the gun barrel seemed to take up half the room.

  “Stop playing games with me,” Denise said coldly. “If you know something, tell me. Otherwise, I’ll blow your head off. I might do it anyway. You are supposed to be dead already, so what difference would it make?”

  The thin yellow flame from the lantern reflected in Denise’s eyes. There wasn’t much else there that Anna could see. Not the panic at the spilled water, the confusion at not wanting to hold “her” child, the warmth when she spoke of her sister: Her face reminded Anna of a patient her sister, a psychiatrist, treated. Molly had taken Anna along on a visit to the mental health facility to see a woman who suffered from severe autism. A screaming fight between three other patients had overloaded the woman’s senses and she’d shut down.

  Denise had that same look, as if the soul had moved a very long way from the windows, so far it almost couldn’t be seen. Denise didn’t look insane. In fact, she looked saner than anyone Anna had ever seen, if sanity could be measured by control. She exuded the vibe of an individual totally detached and completely dedicated to the task at hand.

  A few times in her life Anna had thought she might be going to die. She thought that now. No one knew anything about death. No one came back to report on how it went down, what followed. Dead people gave no interviews, wrote no books.

  Perhaps that was the reason that, though afraid, Anna wasn’t nearly as afraid as she would have been if she’d been asked to speak in front of a crowd, or crawl down a skinny cave passage. Those things were real and scary. Death wasn’t real. It was the last page, the fade to black. It was hard to be truly terrified of an event that wasn’t quantifiable, that wasn’t quite real.

  “No games,” Anna said evenly. The baby quieted. Glancing down, she checked to see if it had expired. Olivia’s eyelashes were unbelievably long. They quivered on her round cheeks as her eyes moved beneath the closed lids. Still alive.

  “No games,” Anna repeated. “A woman I know, Dr. Gwen Littleton, delivered twin girls forty-some years ago. The babies were given up for adoption. Gwen and the mother became friends. The mother’s health was failing, and she decided to try and find her daughters.”

  “Makes sense,” Denise said. “She’s about to kick the bucket. Don’t want to die with abandoning two little girls on your conscience. Might go to hell. Tidy up with a quick ‘so sorry I fucked up your lives,’ and off to heaven goes Mommy.”

  Denise’s voice, hands, and trigger finger were rock steady. If she’d gone over the edge in the past few minutes, she hadn’t landed on Anna’s side. “Is there anything you want to get off your chest?” Denise asked in a flat voice. “I’m the closest thing you’re going to get to final absolution.”

  “You’ll lose your hostage,” Anna said. She’d wanted to sound reasonable, but her voice cracked, and she had to swallow to clear her throat.

  “We can work around it,” Denise said, and her finger tightened on the trigger.

  “If you shoot me, you could hit your baby daughter,” Anna said.

  “I’m a crack shot,” Denise said.

  “No. You used to be a crack shot. The legacy is you have Huntington’s disease; you can’t control your hands,” Anna said. “You put three bullets in Kurt Duffy from no more than ten feet away and none of them were anywhere near fatal.”

  “Bullshit.” Denise pressed the muzzle of the gun hard against Anna’s forehead. “Now I can’t miss.”

  “Wait,” Anna begged desperately. “You pull the trigger, this close, and the report will deafen Olivia. Rupture her eardrums. She’ll be deaf as a post her whole life, and it will be all your fault.”

  “Put your fingers in h
er ears,” Denise snarled.

  “I can’t,” Anna said.

  Denise glared at her. Turning suddenly, she yanked open the door and stormed out of the room. Through the open doorway all was in darkness until, about forty yards away, the overhead light in the SUV came on. Denise dove into the vehicle, only her legs sticking out.

  Anna took the time to look around the room. The place was childproofed. Nothing that could be used as a weapon, even if she had use of her arms and hands, came to her attention.

  A squawk made Anna’s heart lurch; then a voice called her number, then Artie’s. An NPS radio lay on the low table under the fake windows.

  The caller was the superintendent. They’d discovered Olivia was missing. Panic vibrated in his voice. Anna had to stop herself from shouting that Olivia was okay, that she had her. Not only would Peter not hear, but Denise would be interrupted in whatever she was doing in the Volvo and hurry back to the shed.

  Without fingers or even toes, pushing the TALK button on the side of the radio to reply would be an interesting exercise in ingenuity. Since that was Anna’s only option, she wriggled around until her back was to the radio and, shoving with her heels, began pushing herself along the rag rug an inch at a time toward the low table. “Sorry, Olivia,” Anna said as she managed to lever herself to her knees by bracing one elbow on the tiny chair by the crib. If she’d already killed Peter’s child, it wouldn’t matter. If she hadn’t, this wouldn’t be the fatal move.

  Anna nosed the unit over to the wall, then pressed her chin as hard as she could into the TALK button. Maybe she depressed it a hair, maybe not; still she said, “Anna Pigeon, maybe near the Duffy house. Help!”

  Denise banged back into the shed, slamming the door behind her. “Stupid bitch,” she hissed. In two strides she’d crossed the room. The radio was slapped onto the floor. “Sit.” Denise shoved Anna until she fell back against the wall and her rump slid down to the floor.

  A pair of Bose earphones was in Denise’s free hand. She squatted beside Anna, then carefully settled the phones over the baby’s ears.