Borderline: A Novel Part 20

"I'll fight you." The anger was back, the cold anger of a grown woman.

"No you won't, Judith. How would that look? Desperate."

"Do you love her?" The little girl was back and tugging at Darden's heart if not at Charles's.

When Charles spoke again his tired voice held a peculiar mixture of steel and sympathy. "I'm going to marry goi1emher, Judith. As soon as the divorce is final."

There was an intake of breath, then, razor-sharp edges cutting out of her throat, Judith said, "Don't tell me you've knocked up your b.i.t.c.h this time. What a cliche you are. She going to walk down the aisle with a big s.l.u.t's belly?"

"Don't do this," Charles said.

"Why? You can do it but I can't talk about it? You're such a hypocrite!"

"Please, Judith, don't do this. It's over. Let me go quietly. Neither of us needs this at the moment."

Again Judith regressed to that seven-year-old watching her mother drive away for the last time. "Stay, Charles, please, I love you. Just stay for a while. It will be different, you'll see. Wait until the election is over, give me that at least. Give me time. Please."

Darden could hear Charles's sigh from where he sat, an exhalation of the years of bowing down to Judith's wishes, of his family's need to keep the Pierson name free of scandal, of his own inability to shake off the chains shackling him to live his own life. For a moment Darden thought he was going to knuckle under again, give Judith what she wanted, and was about to heave his own sigh, one of relief, but Charles surprised him.

"Sorry, Judith, I can't."

"You won't marry your b.i.t.c.h," Judith nearly snarled. "Never."

Charles opened the screen door.

"Never. You might as well get that through your head, Charles. You aren't going to leave me and marry some little wh.o.r.e. Never."

Charles stepped out onto the porch and gently closed the screen door behind him, holding it until it latched the way a person would who was afraid any small noise would disturb those within.

"Charles, please, I love you," trickled on tears from inside.

Darden half expected Charles to say, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a d.a.m.n," but he only turned away.

"You heard?" he asked when he saw Darden sitting on the porch.

"I heard," Darden said.

"I filed for divorce before we left Houston."

"So I gathered."

"Stay out of it, Darden."

"Why don't you go do whatever it is you need to do," Darden said as he pushed himself up out of the plastic chair. "I need to see to Judith."

"Stay out of this, Darden," thir. Charles said again, this time with a hint of threat in his voice.

Darden said nothing, just reached for the door to Judith's room. Charles turned and walked quickly down the shallow stone steps. He was pus.h.i.+ng b.u.t.tons on his satellite phone as he went.

Steeling himself for Judith's pain and anger, Darden knocked gently on the wooden frame of the screen door then opened it, not waiting for an invitation to come in. Judith would be beyond words at this point. All he could do for her was provide a shoulder to cry on. In the past, when Charles strayed there'd been something he could do about it, pay people off, scare people off, force Charles back into the mold for another month or year or ten years. This time he didn't think that would work. Charles had finally grown a spine and was willing to take the punches that would be thrown at him to get what he wanted.

He wouldn't get what he wanted and Darden found himself feeling a little sorry for the guy, little being the operative word. Stepping into the room he was rocked back onto his heels as Judith flew at him, eyes streaming, and glued herself to his chest. Burying her face in his shoulder, she let the sobs come. She was a little thing; bones like a bird, Darden thought as he gathered her up and carried her over to the bed. A chair would have been more comfortable for him-after she'd turned eight or nine, he felt she was grown up enough that no man should see her undressed or be in her bedroom-but the straight-backed wooden chairs were too small for the both of them. He settled against the headboard, one foot on the floor and one knee bent under to make a bit of a lap for her and let her cry it out.

"You're okay, you're strong," he murmured as he gazed over the top of her blond head at the rustic wooden dresser against the wall. Judith was strong. Whether he was strong enough for the storm forming around her, he wasn't sure. The situation might have gone too far this time.

"Charles is leaving me," she cried, the words gurgling with tears and misery.

"I know, Judy. It's been coming. You'll be all right. You'll get through this, wait and see."

"I won't!" she wailed, and he patted her back and stroked her hair.

"Shh, shh, you're okay."

"My head is so full of monsters," she cried.

When she was little and had bad dreams or horrible thoughts after her mother left, she'd called them monsters that lived in her head. He'd not heard her use the term in thirty years. Tears came to his eyes and he did what he had done then, when he was a young man and she was a child. He pressed his lips to her forehead and made a loud sucking sound then spit with a noisy p'tui.

"Got one out," he said. "A nasty b.u.g.g.e.r. Black and leathery and spiny."

Again he pressed his lips to her forehead and slurped then pretended to spit.

"Ouch! That 3"> fob.u.g.g.e.r had claws!"

Judith looked up at him and smiled, a weak watery smile but he was glad to see it.

"What would I do without you, Darden?" she asked, and had the same look in her eyes that had captured him so many years before.

"Just what you always do, Judy. You'd dry your eyes, suck it up and run back into the fray."

She laughed and got up from his lap. It was a relief. Light as she was, his right leg was going to sleep.

Judith crossed to the small mirror and, taking a hairbrush from the top of the dresser, began putting herself together. Darden escaped the bed and took one of the straight-backed kitchen chairs.

"Charles thinks he's going to marry the b.i.t.c.h," she said without looking at him.

Darden didn't say anything. He knew better than to talk when Judith started speaking in a voice sharp as lemon juice. He didn't like to hear her like that and he didn't like what the sourness did to her face. From where he sat he could see it in the mirror, how her lips became twisted and her eyes narrowed.

When she did it she reminded him of the witch in Snow White, the animated version Disney made, a beautiful face in the gla.s.s turning dark and sick and ugly. He looked out the window so he wouldn't have to see it anymore.

"He said he loves her and she wants to have a litter of his brats."

A little black-and-brown bird with s.h.i.+ning bugle bead eyes hopped up from the fieldstone steps to the concrete slab of the porch. c.o.c.king its head, it fixed one eye on Darden and waited expectantly. Deciding he wasn't going to proffer any crumbs, it hopped away on its spidery feet till it hopped out of sight beneath one of the armchairs. Darden kept his eyes fixed on where it had disappeared, trying not to imagine Judith's face. The sound of the hairbrush was loud, sc.r.a.ping her scalp with each pull. If she kept at it her thick bleached hair was going to stand on end.

"Charles wants to rush the divorce so he and his brood mare can start playing house right away. Not in Houston-he said that like he was doing me a big favor-he's going to move to Virginia to be near the b.i.t.c.h's parents, who are all slavering like dogs over the aspect of having little grandkiddies shrieking underfoot."

"Stop it, Judy," Darden said. The bitterness was beginning to erode the core of him where his love for her was housed.

"He's in for a big surprise," she said with a black brand of satisfaction. "No wife. And if I've got anything to say about it, no brats."

"Judith, that's enough," Darden said sharply. She stopped brus.h.i.+ng her hair. He'd been right; it was standing out in a ragged halo around her head.

"Leave it alone feavng or now," he said a bit more gently. He started for the door.

"Where are you going?" she demanded. The hairbrush was held stiffly in her hand, the arm half raised as if it was a weapon and not a tool for personal grooming.

"I'm meeting Anna Pigeon, the woman who saved the baby, for breakfast."

"Don't leave me," she said pitifully.

"I'm not leaving you, honey. I'm just going to get something to eat. I doubt I'll be gone even an hour. I'll be back before you know it."

"Can I come?"

Darden looked at wild hair, the tear-streaked face and eyes that were clouded with pain and fury and G.o.d knew what else.

"I don't think that's a good idea, honey. Why don't you take a hot shower and relax. I'll bring Mrs. Pigeon up after we're done."

"Please let me go with you," she begged. "I'll be good."

Darden had never been able to say no to her. He considered doing it now for her own good but the hope and hurt on her face wouldn't let him.

"Do you promise?" he said.

She traced a cross on her chest and said, "Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a million needles in my eye." There was a mocking edge to the smile she gave him and he laughed.

"Fix your face and flatten your hair and come on," he said.

TWENTY-SEVEN.

The Houston security guy hadn't shown up yet and Anna was outside the dining room on the patio, sitting backward on a picnic table bench, her elbows on the tabletop, her feet stretched in front of her, the sun on her face. She didn't mind waiting when she could do it in such a magnificent spot. Lazily she watched as a bright summer tanager worked its way through the crooked branches of a pine. One of Texas's little-known delights-little known to everybody but birders-was that it was home or host to a tremendous variety of winged creatures, some quite rare. Anna loved the colorful birds, indigo buntings and hummingbirds and bluebirds and tanagers, but her favorites were common house sparrows. They were so delicate and curious and brave. Often too brave. Piedmont, her big ginger tiger cat, had nailed one on her balcony in Colorado not a month before and Piedmont was getting on in years and not as quick as he once was.

Cyril and Steve and, to Anna's surprise, Chrissie had no plans to fly out before they were scheduled to in five days. The moment their folks were told about the shootings, Anna had thought they would demand their children come home. That would have been the case, Cyril a.s.sured her, so she and Steve hadn't told them. Asking whether Lori's mother would have told them was halfway out of her mouth before she remembered that these were college kids. Their parentsaen't didn't know one another. They probably had only a hazy idea who their friends were and not a clue from which part of the country they hailed. In college it was nothing to wander off for a weekend or a vacation after giving the parents the sketchiest itinerary.

They were staying because Cyril was determined to find out what happened to Easter. Vaguely, Anna remembered swearing to herself that she would save Easter no matter what it took, but she'd been under a lot of stress at the time. Fed, clean and out of danger, the beast was looking less and less like a symbol of all that was good in mankind and more and more like a skinny old Mexican cow.

Santa Elena Canyon was closed to raft trips but the NPS wouldn't be able to maintain that for long. There was too much economic impact on the outfitters to shut down their livelihood for any length of time. Since they couldn't get another raft or canoe trip down the river, the three kids had other plans. Anna suspected they involved sneaking across the border into Mexico where the land was flatter leading up to the Rio Grande and hiking upriver. Probably mooing and strewing bits of hay or grain as they went, she thought with a smile.

Crossing into Mexico, except at officially sanctioned border stations, was illegal, but Anna wasn't worrying about it overmuch. These were three white college kids from New York. n.o.body, including the Mexicans, cared whether they crossed the border. It was the other way around that got Border Patrol and Homeland Security's undies in a bundle.

A bit of pure Texas came walking up from the parking lot. Big blond hair, makeup heavy and perfect, clothes from Neiman Marcus or Saks or some store neither Anna's budget nor her inclination had her shopping at anytime soon. This woman did it up right. She pulled it off with such a natural grace that, on her, it looked good.

Anna smiled and nodded politely when their eyes met then was immediately sorry she'd done so. Miss Texas veered off course and walked over to Anna's picnic table.

"Aren't you the woman who saved that baby from the river?" she asked. There was nothing Texas about her speech patterns. Upper Midwest, Anna thought, but she was only guessing; she had none of Henry Higgins's talent.

"There was a bunch of us," Anna said. "Prenatal salvation is kind of a group sport."

The woman laughed and Anna liked it. It sounded well-used and never rehea.r.s.ed.

"I'm Gerry Schneider," she said, and stuck out her hand. Anna shook it.

"Anna Pigeon." She didn't add that she was a park ranger. For one, she was on vacation. For another, she wasn't sure she still was.

Without waiting for an invitation, Gerry sat down on the bench opposite Anna. "I'm beginning to think this is my lucky day. I've been wanting to talk with somebody other than NPS bra.s.s about the incident. They're on the body recovery today but the head of law enforcement-Jessie Wiggins-had no intention of letting me tag along. I suppose I could have rented a jeep and followed, this being, at least nomie, aeadnally, a free country. Even in Texas. But by the way he was clouding up at the mention of my presence I didn't think the antagonism I would earn would be worth the story I got. Body recoveries aren't terribly gripping. Mostly they underline that the event is truly over and the good guys lost."

While she rattled on, Gerry Schneider plopped a shapeless leather bag, scratched and nicked from years of hard use, on the rough planks of the table and removed a tiny tape recorder, a yellow legal pad so rumpled she must have been sleeping with it, and three ballpoint pens, the cheap kind that come in packs, and set these items in a neat row between her and Anna.

"So, tell me what happened?" Gerry said, and turned an open, interested face upon Anna.

Anna sat up straight and put her elbows on the table, resting her chin in her palms. "And you want me to do this why?" she asked.

Gerry laughed again. "Cart before the horse," she said. "I guess I should be glad I can still get carried away with a story. I'm a newspaper woman. I report for the Houston Chronicle."

"Of course it was interesting to me and to the park that a couple people were shot and a baby was brought out of the mess but I'd think a big city paper like the Chronicle would have more shootings than they could shake a stick at outside their back door," Anna said. "Why would they send a reporter all the way out here to be Johnny-on-the-spot in less than twelve hours to cover our measly two dead?"

"They wouldn't," Gerry said flatly. "We were all sent here to cover Mayor Pierson's big announcement. Not that it was news but that woman has a way of getting coverage that other politicians can only dream about, so El Paso was here, Middleton, three reporters from the Dallas Ft. Worth area and me."

"Where's the rest of the pack?" Anna was getting a creepy feeling she was going to be pestered to death simply because a pa.s.sel of newspaper people had a room paid for, per diem and nothing else to do.

"Don't worry," Gerry said. "It's just little old me. The pack left first thing this morning. Some even left last night as soon as the dinner was over."

"Why are you still here?"

"I thought the C-section rescue of the river baby would make a terrific color piece." Gerry Schneider's eyes grew skittery and her voice went up a few notes. As a liar she was hopeless.

Anna raised an eyebrow and waited.

"Don't you want to see your name in print?" Gerry tried.

"Not so much. In high school I did," Anna said. She was enjoying sparring with Ms. Schneider. "I was on the debate team and when we won they'd print our names. Now when it happens it's nothing anybody wants to hang up with a refrigerator magnet.

"What story did you really stay out heallrefere to cover? Or should I say, 'dig up'?"

Gerry planted both palms flat on the table and fixed a level gaze on Anna. "I have been in this business for thirty-six years-and before you start thinking I'm as old as Methuselah, I am counting my years on the high school yearbook-and I have never mastered the art of lying. It has been a terrible burden, as you might imagine.

"I haven't packed and gone because there is something going on with our mayor and I don't know what it is. I'm skulking about, sniffing in corners, hoping to turn up something juicy. There, now you know the worst. I will stoop to tabloid scandal if it makes a good story."

Anna appreciated the candor. "Do you know anybody in Health and Human Services in Houston, anybody you could lean on to make sure a baby is taken proper care of?" she asked on impulse.

"I might," Gerry said carefully. "Is this about the baby you rescued?"

"Yes."