Borderline: A Novel Part 27

"It would probably be a good idea to get her back where she can have a bed and a bottle of her own," Gerry said.

"I guess," Anna admitted reluctantly. She looked at her watch. It was well after six and neither Paul nor the kids had shown up. Anna was more annoyed than worried. Her worrying quotient had been used up by Helena.

"Would it be okay if I ate first?" she asked.

Gerry laughed. "You need my permission to eat?"

Anna felt a fool. In need of foisting responsibility off on another's shoulders had rendered her childish.

"We'll eat first," she said firmly.

Gerry didn't eat but kept her company a her comnd held Helena while Anna downed a most excellent chicken enchilada, refried beans, rice and enough guacamole and chips to keep a Super Bowl party going smoothly. Knowing she needed to keep her head but needing more to take the edge off one h.e.l.l of a day, she washed it down with another beer.

At seven-thirty, she had run out of things to devour and she and Gerry had hashed over the Darden-dead-woman connection till they'd rendered it threadbare. It was time to go "home." Lisa might have returned and Helena could have the comfort of breast milk and a real woman to hold her for a while.

Maybe Paul would be back as well. Anna craved his company and the strength of his personality the way she craved rest and food after a long, arduous hike.

"I guess we'd better go," she admitted as the waiter took the last of the dishes away.

"I've got a date," Gerry said. "And I believe mine has shown up."

Anna looked to the door of the restaurant to see the chief ranger, in civilian clothes, waving at Gerry. "You work quickly," she said.

"I have been called fast," Gerry replied with a smile. "One must catch them between divorces."

The chief ranger came to their table as Anna stood and took Helena, showing the world what a good quiet baby she was, from Gerry's arms. "Is the body recovery team back yet?" Anna asked.

"Only just. I heard them on the radio as I was driving down. They had some complications retrieving the victim and had to re-rig. I'd have called and let you know when Paul was coming back but you don't answer your phone. I've been trying to get in touch with you," Bernard said. "Health and Human Services out of El Paso-"

"Gerry told me." Anna saved him the trouble of repeating the news. "What time will they be coming for Helena?"

"Midafternoon is my guess. Everything in Texas is a long drive," Bernard said.

"She'll be ready." Relief at being relieved of responsibility, relief at the thought Helena would be safe and cared for, sudden startling pain at the thought of losing the little girl, fear of what sort of future awaited her smacked into Anna's emotional center all at once. Instead of taking her leave, she stood rooted beside the chair she had just vacated.

"Do you want us to give you a lift back to the Martinez place?" Gerry asked.

"No." Anna forced herself to come alive again. "It's not far and I need the air. Tomorrow," she said to Bernard.

"Turn your cell phone on," the chief ranger called after her as she left the table.

The long desert evening was doing a slow fade into night. Light was still clear and blue but colors had gone from the hills and into the sky. With the cooling aithe coolr the bracing perfume of the sere tufted gra.s.ses and creosote bushes was lifted on the slight breeze coming down from the mountains to the east. Breathing deeply, Anna cleared her head of the beer and the talk and the close confines of the restaurant. Helena, too, was rejuvenated and began to squirm and make small but not unhappy sounds.

The eerie "Slow, Children at Play" sign with the skeleton child was not as amusing without the full light of the sun on it and, feeling superst.i.tious and silly, Anna hurried past it to cross the main road. She was halfway down the dirt track to the Martinez house when headlights raked green from the desert ahead of her.

Paul was her first thought and she felt her spirits rise. Turning, she s.h.i.+elded her eyes from the glare of the oncoming lights.

It wasn't an NPS pickup truck or patrol car. The lights were on the front of an oversized, coal-black SUV.

THIRTY-SIX.

Anna didn't hesitate. She turned and ran perpendicular to the road. A hundred yards or less from the dirt lane was a hill, long and low and as unglamorous as a berm pushed up by a John Deere caterpillar but steep enough she doubted the city-bred four-wheel drive could climb it. What was on the other side, she hadn't a clue.

Streaks of hard light slued across the rocky soil, igniting tufts of gra.s.s and sparking green and fuchsia from the barrel cacti. The beams aligned themselves with Anna and she could see her shadow running like ink in front of her nearly to the hill. The SUV was driving cross-country. This close to witnesses, Anna had hoped the driver wouldn't have the nerve to leave the road.

Holding Helena close to her chest and praying to G.o.ds she hadn't believed in thirty seconds before that she wouldn't fall and crush the child before Darden got an opportunity to murder them both, Anna ran. Adrenaline and determination lifted her feet and she flew the first twenty yards. The second twenty, with the lights so hot behind her, she was blind to anything in her peripheral vision, and her thigh muscles began to liquefy, losing the ability to push as hard as they needed to. At fifty yards she had a cruel st.i.tch in her side and could hear the smooth, unstoppable crunching of tires and engine murmur behind her. Darden wasn't going to bother with hands-on havoc; he was simply going to run them down. She turned abruptly right and fled into the relative darkness.

The ground grabbed at her feet and cacti s.n.a.t.c.hed bits of flesh from her calves. Ahead she could see faint yellow lights from the Martinezes' kitchen window. Lisa would be home by now and, with her, Edgar. Maybe Freddy was back, as well, broad-shouldered, well-armed Freddy. Maybe he wasn't. Anna couldn't chance it. Turning once more she ran again toward the hill, now fifty yards and a million miles away.

White knives of light sc.r.a.ped across the desert, seeking her. In seconds they pinned onto her back and the engine roared as the driver pressed the accelerator pedal to the floorboards. There was no cover, no place to hide.

Anna stopped and turned to face the oncoming vehicle. Breath rasped ...so loud in her throat and ears she didn't know if Helena was crying or not. Any normal infant would have been screaming her head off. Any normal woman would have been screaming her head off. Anna screamed loud and long and hoped it would raise help from somewhere. Headlights bounced, lancing over her. She readied herself to jump whichever way the fates decreed when the SUV came within striking distance.

Thirty feet from her and the baby, the SUV skidded to a halt in a gout of dust and the driver's door flew open. "Anna, Anna, don't run, it's me, Mayor Pierson, Judith." The small blond woman appeared from behind the black metal door and walked toward her, hands up as if Anna held a gun instead of a baby.

"G.o.d you're fast," Judith said, panting as if she had been chasing Anna on foot. "You've got to come. I know everything Darden has done. He's coming for the baby."

"Stay where you are," Anna said, and Judith stopped. Moving out of the line of light until she could see the mayor but doubted the mayor had any kind of view of her, she asked: "What has Darden done?"

Judith Pierson didn't say anything. She turned her head and looked to the east where the Chisos were silhouetted against a sky of the faintest sea green. Headlights caught her hair and Anna could see it had been washed and set since breakfast. The side of her face that was lit up had tear streaks in black where she'd cried off her mascara.

"I think Darden killed somebody," Judith said quietly.

"Who?" Anna demanded. The woman caught in the river strainer was the expected answer but Anna had learned the expected isn't what necessarily happens.

"The baby's mother, the Mexican woman. At least I think he did-or had somebody do it." Judith didn't try to find Anna in the gloom outside the cone of light but kept her eyes on the distant horizon.

Having entered the place one came to in an investigation gone haywire where no one is to be trusted, Anna asked: "Why come here? Why not go to the rangers or your other two security guys?"

"Darden's coming for the baby, Anna. I think he means to kill it."

"All the better reason to call the rangers."

Breathing was becoming easier. No longer gasping like a landed fish, Anna could hear Helena's soft whimpering, the comfortable purr of the big car's engine.

"I couldn't," Judith said simply, and tears dragged more sooty tracks down the cheek Anna could see. "I was afraid they would kill him. You can call them but I was hoping you'd go someplace safe so there won't have to be any killing."

"Why didn't you just call me?"

"I did, d.a.m.n you!" Judith yelled, anger breaking through. "You wouldn't answer your d.a.m.n phone."

Anna couldn't fault her there. Persons of authority and consequence had already attested to the fact that Anna was not answering.

Another pair of headlights cut across the landscape in an arc moving from west to east, flas.h.i.+ng off the s.h.i.+ny fenders of the black car. Hoping it was Freddy and he'd come out to see who was traveling off road in his neighborhood, hoping it was Paul and he would sense with that bond said to connect lovers that she needed him, Anna watched the lights.

Judith was watching them too.

The lights were high and wide apart with the cold blue-white glare of halogen bulbs instead of the warm yellows on older vehicles.

"It's him," Judith said flatly. "It's Darden. Get in!" She ran from the light and Anna heard the driver's-side door slam shut.

The second car was another SUV; Anna could see the black boxy shape against the lighter gray of the desert floor as it left the main road and turned down the lane toward the Martinezes'. Unsure what to do, she watched. There was no way she could outrun a four-wheel drive. In the dark she couldn't run far without doing herself and Helena serious damage. No cover but the hill fifty yards away and that would have to be climbed. Alone, able to grab and hold and crab on hands and knees, it wouldn't have been much of a challenge. With Helena and the night, she wouldn't make it up in the kind of time that was apparently left to her.

Running was out; standing and fighting was a bad idea. So she waited for a sign. When the gas hog turned from the road and began grinding across the sand and scrub toward her, she decided that was it.

"Wait!" She ran to the pa.s.senger side of Judith's SUV, which was already rolling, wrenched open the door and hauled herself and the baby in by unauthorized usage of the seat belt.

Judith spun the wheel and gunned the engine. Had they been on pavement there would have been an impressive squealing of tires. The SUV had a big turning radius but Judith bettered the factory stats by a few yards. She nearly stood the behemoth on two wheels as she powered it around till the nose was pointed in the direction of the lane. Anna thought she would angle toward the main road or head the opposite way, toward Freddy and Lisa's, but she did neither. Aligning her headlights with those of the oncoming car, she floored it.

Anna had never liked the game of chicken and she yelled words she knew were permanently scarring Helena's tender psyche as they hurtled directly at the other car. Darden didn't swerve. Neither did Judith. Anna's cursing became one long moan of antic.i.p.ation. Had she been on her own, or the car traveling more slowly, she would have opened the door and taken her chances diving into the nearest sotol bush.

Judith might have been yelling, as well, but in the clash of lights and the knowledge of certain death, Anna didn't hear her. Squeezing her eyes shut, she held tight to Helena, hoped Paul wouldn't be too handsome in his widower's weeds and prepared to die.

"Whooeee!" JudiWhooeee!th was laughing. Anna opened her eyes. Darden was b.u.mping out through the rough at an angle and they had reached the road in one piece. "He blinked!" Judith shouted as if this was a high school game of dare after several six-packs of beer and she had just won it.

"Don't do that again," Anna snarled.

"Sorry," Judith said, but laughter was bubbling beneath the word.

"Don't," Anna repeated, her anger at the danger to Helena and herself heating the word from the inside.

Judith looked over at her, her face limned with the faint illumination from the dashboard. "I am sorry," she said, and this time there was no laughter. "I wouldn't have done that with anyone but Darden. I knew he would break first. He always did."

Anna wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean and was too furious to pursue it. n.o.body ever knew what anyone else would do, no matter what the existing pattern. Lives-especially hers-shouldn't be bet on the outcome.

They reached the paved road and Judith turned toward Study b.u.t.te.

"No," Anna said. "Left toward the porch. The chief ranger is there. He has his radio with him. He can call in whoever he needs to."

"Is Bernie armed?"

The mayor was the first person Anna had heard refer to Bernard as "Bernie." Perhaps they had gotten close during the excitement of the past few days.

"No," Anna said. "He may have his weapon in his car."

"Then it's a bad idea. Look." Judith's eyes flashed blue-green as she glanced in the rearview mirror. Two headlights jolted back onto the road and began bearing down on them. "Darden never goes anywhere unarmed. That car is fully loaded: automatic rifles, a couple of handguns that I know of. Bolted to the back of the seat is a piece that looks right out of Desert Storm."

Long guns that could pick off river rafters-or newborns-from a canyon rim a thousand feet above.

Terlingua looked too much like Okay Corral country for the image of public carnage not to take root in Anna's imagination. A wide brick porch loaded with people out to have a good time, a crazed ex-military man with automatic weapons, blood spattering the graying wood: though it was hard to think Darden was crazy enough to reenact Rambo, the Evil Years, it wasn't a chance Anna was willing to take.

Judith was proving a good driver. As the SUV pushed closer she picked up speed and moved the ungainly vehicle around curves with surprising skill. Better than Anna could have done, she admitted to herself as she fastened her seat belt tight across her hips. Without a car seat, the baby would be dead if Judith ran into anything. Afraid trying to buckle her into the backseat in some fas.h.i.+on would be more dangerous, Anna held her and hoped for the best.

Judith pulled onto Highway 170. She didn't turn east into the park but west toward the tiny town of Lajitas. Darden started blowing his horn and flas.h.i.+ng his lights.

"Panther Junction," Anna yelled.

"Too far," Judith said calmly. Considering they were being chased at high speed by a man believed to be a homicidal maniac, Anna couldn't help being impressed by her control and alarmed by her detachment. "There's a high-end hotel there," Judith explained. "If we can reach it ahead of Darden, they can get their security to deal with him till the sheriff or posse or the cavalry arrives."

Lajitas was where Carmen and the merry band of rafters had put into the Rio Grande. That seemed so long ago, Anna wondered if Cyril and Chrissie and Steve had children of their own by now, if the river had changed course, if the rockslide had eroded down to a riffle of pebbles in a sedate stream.

A sidelong reading of the speedometer told Anna they were nearing a hundred miles per hour. Doable on the straight roads of Texas, where there was lots of visibility. "If we're lucky Darden's flas.h.i.+ng and beeping will catch somebody's attention and we'll get pulled over."

"There's never a cop when you need one," Judith said. The relieved laughter that had followed the game of chicken was gone, but on a level Anna didn't want to dwell given her situation, the mayor seemed to be having a vicious kind of fun.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

Darden's lights flared closer and he stood on the horn. Startled, Judith jerked the wheel and the SUV dropped two tires off the pavement onto the shoulder of the road. For a sickening instant Anna thought the ungainly vehicle was going to roll but Judith regained control. The close call seemed to have an effect on their pursuer. Darden stopped blowing his horn and dropped back until he was several car lengths behind.

Anna's pulse slowed slightly and she found she could think instead of merely react. "Why would Darden want to kill Helena?" she asked.

Judith sighed. "My husband has a habit of getting women into trouble," she said. "This time the woman showed up at the lodge nearly nine months pregnant and demanded to see Charles. She found me instead. Her name was Eleanor Cheevers; she's the daughter of the amba.s.sador from Argentina and an English engineer. Well-placed enough to know the damage her appearance would cause me. Ms. Cheevers wanted money; that's what they all want. I set her up in the Lajitas spa-at my expense, of course-and the woman agreed to refrain from contacting Charles until we could come up with the cash. I was buying time. At least I thought I was. Darden is a final-solution kind of guy. He thought killing her and the baby and making it look like the accidental drowning of a poor Mexican woman would solve the problem. n.o.body puts a lot of time into investigating that situation.

"He had his goons take her down to the Rio Grande. They were supposed to kill her and let the body float downriver to give the elements a chance to destroy any forensic evidence and, if they ...were lucky, never be discovered at all.

"Evidently Ms. Cheevers proved a handful. She got loose and the river took her. Darden followed from the canyon rim to make sure she didn't get out of the water alive. When she got caught in the strainer and you saved her, he decided he had to kill her. She died on her own but the baby would be DNA evidence that could hook him to the murder. After that things got out of control.

"Darden was trying to help me. He is the most loyal person I've ever known. My success is more important to him, I sometimes think, than it is to me. He knew if I found out, I'd call the police, so he didn't tell me."

As they cruised down the highway at a slightly less alarming speed, Anna digested that bit of information.

"If all this mayhem was to cover up the fact he murdered several people, and wanted to murder Helena, going into a public place, guns blasting, would tend to be a little counterproductive," Anna said.

Judith pounded the steering wheel with such violence both Anna and Helena squeaked in alarm.

"He'd do it because he's gone crazy! You should have seen him up at the lodge after his two hired thugs failed to get the baby. They're dead, did you know that?" she demanded.

Anna didn't bother to answer.

"He told me. He said they'd called to get picked up because they had to ditch the car they'd rented. He had Kevin, his psycho protege, go get them, take them to some deserted place west of Terlingua and shoot them.

"Oh G.o.d!" Judith shouted, and the car swerved dangerously. "I should have seen this coming. I might have been able to stop it, get him help. Darden's got post-traumatic stress syndrome from so many wars and skirmishes and dirty political a.s.signments that he doesn't know if he is coming or going half the time.

"He worries about getting old, worries that he's losing it. His mom has Alzheimer's and he worries that he'll go that way too. Maybe this was his way of trying to prove he was the man he used to be, and when it got screwed up it pushed him over an edge in his mind. Maybe he's back in the jungles or deserts or villages or wherever he was for those years. I don't know. I do know that he's not thinking straight."

"Maybe a public bloodbath is his way of committing suicide by cop," Anna thought aloud.