Authors: Nevada Barr
She was happily ensconced with a trio of visitors, holding forth in excellent ranger style, adroitly avoiding admitting she knew zip about the flora and fauna on the coast of Maine, when her cell phone vibrated.
“Excuse me,” she said as she took it from its wallet and glanced at the face. “It’s a call I need to take,” she apologized.
As she turned away, she heard the woman say, “Isn’t that nice! She apologized!” The teenaged son said, “For what?”
“The stalker is here,” Heath said without preamble.
Caller ID had done away with the need for most of the old rotary niceties, an advance Anna appreciated.
“In Maine. In the park. Or says he is,” Heath said.
Phone to ear, Anna walked across the loop road and into the trees. Talking to a ranger in uniform was too great a temptation for visitors to resist, regardless of what the ranger was in the middle of. She switched the phone from her left to her right hand. Since she’d taken a bullet in her left bicep a year or so before, the arm had been opposed to remaining in static tension for any length of time. Unless she kept it moving, it stiffened and ached.
Oddly, that the stalker was in the park jolted Anna. With Heath sequestered on Boar, she’d fallen into the trap of feeling Elizabeth was safe, as if she were vacationing in a secure resort, and being stalked was no more real than a death at a Mystery Dinner.
Cybercreep was here.
“This is good news,” she decided, settling cross-legged on the pine straw, careful not to lean against the tree. Sap was impossible to get out of polyester.
“You’re kidding, right?” Heath asked.
“No. In cyberspace we had the chance of a snowball in hell of finding him. In a national park, it may be doable.”
“Good point.” Heath sounded relieved. “Except that he intends on doing more than slinging porn at E. He wants to meet with her.”
Cybercreep had escalated. Anonymous bullies usually stayed anonymous. If this one was calling for a face-to-face, it was because he wanted to do something more than shame and frighten. He wanted a hands-on experience.
“Start at the beginning,” Anna said.
“I got two texts—in reality, Elizabeth got the texts. Her phone buzzed. I grabbed it. I’ve saved them,” Heath said unnecessarily. She, Anna, Gwen, and E had already had that talk. “The first says, ‘I know where you are.’ Not very original; we knew that from the heroin. The second says, ‘Come to Cecelia’s Coffee Shop today at six. Come by yourself if you want your real life back.’ Cecelia’s is in Bar Harbor on the town square. I Google-Mapped it.”
“Better and better,” Anna said. “A time and place.” Silence followed that. Heath was no dummy. She would know the “better and better” could involve using E as bait at some point. Without knowing who the stalker was, or what he wanted—other than the obvious: rape, white slavery, psycho amusements of all sorts—there was danger in letting him within shooting distance of E. Then again, if they did use E as bait, at least they would be there when whatever trap he had planned began to unfold.
“This is not usual for a cyberbully, is it?” Heath asked. “More like a blackmailer, but so far nobody has asked us for anything.”
“You’re right,” Anna said. “Poison pens and cyberstalkers thrive on being hidden, anonymous, watching the havoc they create from the safety of their webs—spider or otherwise. They wouldn’t want to meet for coffee in public. Has E seen the texts?”
“Not yet. She and Wily are off somewhere licking their wounds.”
“Wounds?”
“John gave Gwen two lobsters. She mentioned to E that they were boiled while alive.”
“The mice,” Anna said, remembering the little corpses nailed to the side of the outhouse at the cabin in Rocky. Nailed while they still lived. Not an image a young girl should have burned into her brain. Or a ranger of a certain age, for that matter.
“Get your real life back,” she said, changing the subject. “What do you figure that means? If they’re talking reputation, that ship has sailed.”
Heath groaned. “God, don’t say that.”
“When I was in high school there was a girl all the boys called Rosie Rotten-crotch,” Anna said, remembering. “Supposedly she was the school hump. At that age, I never thought to question it. Now I wonder if Rosie said yes, or maybe no, to the wrong boy. Or if a jealous girl started it. Rosie was an American Indian girl from the local Paiute tribe. Scapegoat. Nobody cared to dig any deeper.” Anna felt a stab of guilt. She hadn’t cared either. “Rosie was ruined. There’s no way to rehabilitate this sort of reputation wreck.”
“Yes there is,” Heath insisted firmly.
Anna let that stand. If Heath said it, they’d figure out a way to make it true. Later. She glanced at her watch. “It’s four thirty. Our stalker might know you’re in Acadia, but I bet he doesn’t know you’re on Boar, or he’d have given E more lead time to make the meeting. I think I can make it.”
“So can I,” Heath said. “I’ll call a water taxi and meet you in Bar Harbor.”
“No,” Anna said. “‘Come alone if you want your life back.’ Elizabeth was to come alone. We should assume this person knows something about you. We don’t want to scare him off.”
There was a long silence, then a gust of air that Anna suspected was tainted with tobacco smoke. “Right,” Heath said finally. “A woman in a wheelchair is noticed. Then ignored.”
“It’s the first part that would wreck the surveillance.”
Denise picked Anna up ten minutes after she called. Denise’s unsettling aura, the one that made Anna’s spine tingle, evaporated as Anna told her what she wanted. The abrupt loss of Denise’s erratic hypervigilance made Anna wonder what she’d been expecting. What she’d been fearing. Given Ranger Castle’s behavior, Anna didn’t think “fear” was too strong a word. Maybe whatever had inspired her sudden retirement was still haunting her.
“So,” Anna finished, “Elizabeth’s stalker is here in Maine. Wants a meet-and-greet. E’s off somewhere communing with the spirits, but we don’t want to let the opportunity slip past.”
Denise leaned forward until her chin was almost resting on the steering wheel. “Are all men such bastards?” she demanded. “Serial killing, child molesting, rape, bestiality—you name it, men do it.”
“Women, too,” Anna said because she was in the mood to poke a hornets’ nest.
Denise sucked an audible breath through her nose, then puffed the air out of lips loose with scorn. “Sure. One, two maybe. Not enough for a decent statistic. Get real. Women do shitty things, no doubt about it, but the twisted male victimization of women is front page every day. Got a cult leader? What’s the first thing he does? Makes all the women sleep with him. Got a God? First thing the guy says—and the gods are all guys nowadays—is ‘Obey your husband. Put yourself in a black bag so nobody can see you.’ Root of all evil, Eve and the goddamned apple my ass! More like Adam and his snake.”
Anna laughed. “I like that. I have to remember to tell my husband. He’s a priest.”
Denise looked at her, her eyebrows in a shocked V. “Like defrocked?”
Anna laughed again. “Episcopal.”
“Sorry I shot off my mouth,” Denise said. She sounded more sulky than sorry. Rather like a child who got caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to.
“Don’t be,” Anna said easily. “In this case, you’re preaching to the choir. This victim is a particular friend of mine.” She didn’t mention that E was her goddaughter. Being married to a priest was condemnation enough to a cynical ear.
Having cleared the change in routine with Peter, Anna and Denise would swap out cars so they weren’t in a marked NPS vehicle. Denise would accompany Anna to the coffee shop. It was unlikely, but whoever was behind the bullying might recognize Anna on sight. Denise had the advantage of being an unknown.
“Do you know anything about stalking via the Internet?” Anna asked as Denise pulled the patrol vehicle into the parking garage beneath her apartment building in Bar Harbor.
Denise’s head jerked back as if Anna had flopped a nasty fish in her face.
“What are you implying?” she asked, an edge to her voice.
Maybe Denise had done a bit of cyberspying after the split with Peter. Before the Internet, dumped girlfriends had to drive by “his” house to see whose car was parked there. Now, armed with personal information, they could read credit reports, check Facebook. All manner of interesting new methods of self-torture were available.
“I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to this stuff,” Anna replied mildly. “I hoped you might know more.”
“Oh,” Denise said. “No. I’m not into that. I don’t even have a cell phone.”
For a law enforcement officer not to have a cell phone was tantamount to dereliction of duty. More was the pity; a cell phone saw to it that no one was ever truly off duty, or home from work. Anna tossed this lack of modern technology onto the pile of Weird Denise Castle Things growing in the back of her mind.
With the nervous reluctance of a jeweler ushering in a cat burglar, Denise let Anna into her apartment. To Anna’s eyes there was nothing to be ashamed of. The place was neat to a fault—no books, no magazines, no cats or dogs or dirty underpants on the floor. White walls were decorated with framed photographs in black and white of the park both above and below the surface of the Atlantic. The carpet was white, no off-color spots where beasties vomited or booted feet left dirt. The couch was white, black-and-white zebra-print pillows standing sentinel at either end. A glass coffee table and a flat-screen TV finished the decor.
With the air of a wary damsel inviting a vampire over the threshold, Denise said, “This way,” and ushered Anna into the apartment’s single bedroom. It was as monochromatic as the living room. Both rooms had the impersonal feel of having been “dressed” by a Realtor looking to sell.
“These should fit well enough,” Denise said, pulling a pair of gray linen slacks and a white pleated-front blouse from the closet. A narrow black belt was hooked over the hanger by the buckle. The clothes in the closet were all arranged in outfits. She laid the clothes on the bed, then took a shoe box from a neat arrangement of shoe boxes on the closet floor. “Size seven and a half,” she said.
“That will work,” Anna replied.
Denise looked around the sparsely furnished room, then left reluctantly as if she thought Anna might pocket any valuables left lying around.
Having put on Denise’s outfit, Anna studied herself in the mirror on the sliding closet door. In any mall in America she would have gone unremarked. Salespeople would trust her. PTAs would welcome her as a member. Anna felt deep, deep undercover. Still, it was good to be free of the Kevlar vest. Anna missed the days when they were an option, not a requirement, for law enforcement rangers.
In the mirror’s reflection she noted the single personal item in this impersonal lair. A photograph stood on the black wooden nightstand. Drawn to it, Anna picked it up. A narrow rectangle, matted to fit the standard frame, showed a much younger Denise in her Park Service uniform. Three fingers wrapped around her right arm. It must have been taken when she was with Peter. He’d been cut out and the mat redone to cover the excision. Symbolic, this hiding of the past with a black mask. In the photo Denise was smiling, an expression Anna had seldom seen on her face. It had been taken before Denise had gotten her teeth capped. Her old incisors, the way they neatly overlapped, struck Anna as familiar.
“Are you done?” Denise demanded. She had entered without knocking and stood in the bedroom door radiating disapproval.
“Yes,” Anna said. “Is this you?” she asked, holding up the photograph.
“It was,” Denise said.
“You remind me of somebody,” Anna said, turning the picture to study the image.
Denise laughed, a cartoon laugh, “Heh, heh, heh.” In two steps, she’d crossed the small room and taken the picture from Anna’s hands. “I have that kind of face. I always remind somebody of somebody else.” Opening the drawer on the nightstand, she dropped it in facedown, then snapped the drawer closed again. “Let me get dressed.”
Summarily dismissed, Anna slunk back into the living room. She’d thought the woman had been warming to her. Evidently that phase of their relationship was abruptly at an end. Why? Was Denise hiding something? Shame at having cut Peter from a picture? Embarrassment at having her crooked teeth on display? Her sudden iciness seemed overkill for such minor humiliations.
Unless Anna had stumbled on a sore spot, pushed an old button. Perhaps Denise had been teased about the teeth. One never knew which closets harbored a stranger’s skeletons.
In moments Denise emerged from the bedroom in black slacks and a white sleeveless mock turtleneck. “Let’s get on with it,” she said as she walked to the door. Opening it, she held it, whisking Anna out with a sweep of her hand.
Door closed and locked, Denise relaxed marginally. By the time they’d traveled down the stairs to the garage, she seemed nearly her usual slightly weird self.
She opened the door of a forest green Mazda Miata. The top was down. “Cool,” Anna said as she slid in.
“Not very practical,” Denise said as if she quoted a stern and humorless mother.
Cecelia’s Coffee Shop was on the town square in the heart of Bar Harbor’s tourist district. Had the Miata not been so small, parking would have been a bitch; as it was, Denise slipped into a slot between two SUVs less than a block from the square.
She and Anna were intentionally early. They bought ice cream in small foam cups from a vendor in a pseudo-nineteenth-century cart complete with horse, then wandered to a bench in the square where they could watch the coffee shop.
“Your stalker can’t have too sinister an intent on his mind,” Denise said as she carved out a neat bite of ice cream with her tiny plastic spork.
“Not here,” Anna agreed. This wasn’t the haunted house at midnight. There would be no kidnapping, raping, or pillaging. Café tables sat beneath a striped awning, mothers and students and tourists perching on the ironwork chairs. People in shorts and T-shirts carrying plastic bags emblazoned with the names of local shops entered. A few minutes later they exited, iced coffee or mochaccino in hand. Nothing fishy, nothing shady.