suggested they were about three manly breaths from writing little Ms. Pigeon off as a hysterical woman. If Jenny squinted her psychic inner eye, she could almost see “that time of month” and “rape fantasy” and “cry for attention” flickering behind their eyes. Jenny could tell Anna felt it, too, and, because this was Eve’s Achilles’ heel, was beginning to believe that maybe the men were right, maybe she was crazy,
The bloody rock changed all that. The guys went on point like good hunting dogs. Cameras came out, as did little orange flags; measurements were taken; radios were held up to mouths as the machinery of however many law enforcement officials of however many jurisdictions were called.
Anna, chastised for picking up the bloodstained rock, as well as for walking across the crime scene to do so —though, until she had, none of them had known it was a crime scene—stood at the right front fender of the sheriff ’s truck, clutching her plastic water bottle and looking stunned. More than anything, Jenny wanted to wrap her arms around the poor bewildered little person, cradle her and tell her everything was all right, that Jenny was here and she needn’t ever be afraid of anything again. Instead, she wandered over and leaned against the hood next to her.
The metal was as hot as a branding iron. “Do you know where we are?” she asked gently.
Anna shook her head, one short jerk right, one short jerk left. She didn’t look at Jenny.
“About three hundred yards that way”—Jenny pointed south—“is the head of Panther Canyon. We went there the first day we worked together, taking water samples at the grotto.” Anna said nothing, gave no indication that she heard. Jenny wasn’t an EMT. She had no idea whether a person could go into shock this long after the traumatic event had occurred. Anna had been held prisoner, starved and dehydrated, then had wandered lost for twelve or thirteen hours before finding her way home. That would have put Jenny in shock, but Anna had seemed to cope well enough, playing with Buddy, tending to personal hygiene, relating her story to Steve and Andrew.
Until now she’d seemed, if not a pillar of strength, at least a reed, bent by the wind but unbroken. “Anna?” Jenny dropped her voice to the place women use to communicate heart-to-heart with children, injured souls, and small animals. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? We could wait here while the rangers go get the bad guy. I bet Steve would even radio the pilot to come back if you’d feel safer at Bullfrog or the Rope.”
Anna looked at her. The woman might be shocked into stillness and compliance with law enforcement, but her eyes were not blank and scared. They were determined and scared.
Unblinkingly she said, “What? And miss the eleven o’clock number?”
Jenny had no idea what that meant—something to do with the theatrical life, she guessed as she saw the ghost of a smile whisper over Anna’s lips.
Sheriff Frank Patterson was a tracker of local renown. Jenny and Jim Levitt had been informed of this by the NPS pilot who spent his lieu days on a piece of land near Escalante where he was building a house. As the men were going all
The six of them went utterly still. Had the others not reacted, Jenny might have thought her ears were playing tricks on her. The canyons played havoc with sound, muting noise nearby, carrying a laugh a mile before letting it go. Echoes had echoes, yet silence reigned. No one moved. Shadows black as crude oil puddled between their feet.
“I think—” Jim began. The sheriff, ahead and slightly above the rest of them, hushed him with a raised hand. Quiet as a stalking cat, Patterson began following tracks in the dirt, his head cocked at an odd angle as if sound would drop into his ears more efficiently that way.
Thin and small, the shout came again. A faint dying “Heeeeeeeeeelp.”
The eternal winds, breath of the canyons, sawed across the ears, and the voice sounded as if it emanated from the bottom of a well.
“Hello!” Steve Gluck shouted, hands around his mouth to form a megaphone.
Patterson pointed. “This way,” he said. He’d found the tracks. “Stay off to the side. Don’t foul the trail. It’s got a story to tell.”
Jenny was impressed with the display of woodsmanship until she topped the low rise where he stood. The trail wasn’t exactly as challenging as tracking ducks across a pond. It was more of a scrimmage line where several heavy-footed individuals had stampeded across the desert’s skin.
Anna started to trot. “Wait,” the chief ranger shouted.
Steve Gluck yelled, “Hold up there.”
Anna broke into a run.
“Damn the torpedoes,” Jenny muttered and ran with her.
Anna came to an abrupt stop. “There,” she said.
Jenny barreled into her and had to grab her lest the smaller woman fall to the ground. The feel of the bird- boned body and the clean smell of her sun-warmed hair robbed Jenny’s apology of much of its sincerity. She steadied Anna, in no rush to take her hands off her. Jenny would never, as the boys called it, “cop a feel,” or force her attentions where they were not invited, but a gift was a gift and she enjoyed it.
“That’s it.” Anna pointed to a black hole gaping at the sky from a flat stretch of ground. The slit in the earth was no more than two feet wide at the center and about five feet long, both ends tapering to a point like the lids of a half-closed eye. Beyond it were two sentinel boulders, taller than Jenny, and squared off as if machined that way. Their shadows fell across the opening. Coupled with low scrub brush and a scattering of rocks, the twin shadows effectively camouflaged the opening of the solution hole.
“That’s the mouth of my jar,” Anna said. She sounded proprietary. Had Jenny been stuck in a jar like strawberry preserves put up for winter, she’d have wanted sticks of dynamite tossed in and her name severed from the ruin evermore. Anna sounded almost fond.
“Are you there?” The frantic cry warbled up from the opening.
Footfalls were thumping up from behind as the men caught up. Anna stepped closer to the hole.
“Stay back,” Steve cautioned. He took hold of her arm. Anna shook him off.
“I hear you out there,” came the voice. “For God’s sake, get me out of here.”
Jenny looked from Anna to Steve. Neither seemed to know what to do next.
“Talk to me,” the voice begged.
Jenny walked past Anna, nearer the hole, and leaned down, hands on her knees.
“Regis?” she called down the stone throat of Anna’s jar. “Regis, is that you?”
TWENTY-FIVE
Like great wings the sky flapped and the desert heaved beneath Anna’s feet. Abruptly she sat, her butt smacking the ground hard as her knees gave way. Darkness gathered, the ghosts of crows flocking at the edges of her vision, until she saw only a long tunnel, at the end of which was the mouth of the jar. Jenny, Steve, Jim, Andrew, the sheriff, entered and exited from this circular stage, four actors talking at once; none making sense.
The jar interacted with the human cast, chattering as if it were the star, its voice rising hollow from beneath the ground. A rope was thrown. Brown gnarled hands flashed into the spotlight, and Anna watched the hemp snake down into its lair.
“Okay,” the jar shouted. Anna heard scraping up the throat of sandstone, felt scratching in her own throat, a fishbone dragged up her gullet with a bit of thread as Sheriff Patterson pulled on the rope. Hooks of the boat ladder hobbled in jerks from the hole in the ground followed by bright blue line and plastic treads.
The hooks were whisked offstage; the ladder remained.
“We’re set,” Steve Gluck called and, “Come on up, Regis.”
Regis, the neighbor guy, the personnel guy, the guy with the plump wife, the guy who sat with the others in the evening and drank beer from long-necked bottles, the guy who’d tried to lure her out of her shell, Regis crawled out of the ellipses, a worm from the eye socket of a skull.
“Water,” he croaked like a desert rat in a cowboy film. Anna watched him gulp from a white plastic government-issue water bottle. The crows took flight; lights came up; the stage grew to encompass all the
