A Superior Death

like the last stars from the night sky.

TWELVE

Never to see the sun again,“ Anna grumbled. Standing in sweats and mismatched wool socks, she drank her morning coffee, staring out the window above her kitchen sink. The day presented a bleak and dismal aspect. An overcast sky pressed down to the top of the cliff that backed Amygdaloid Ranger Station. Oily-looking raindrops crawled down the glass.

“Come on down,” Anna hollered. If the clouds settled into fog, obscured the lake, the Kamloops dive would be postponed. As it was, the day managed to be completely without sympathy: cold and damp and dark with perfectly adequate visibility.

Anna crossed to the yellow enameled bureau with its chipped edges and olive-green knobs. Amid the clutter of hairpins and badges was an oval box, the lid carved with monkeys frolicking in a jungle of leaves. The handles formed the graceful upward wings the Balinese put on their temples. Anna lifted off the lid. Inside was a handkerchief edged with lace. The creases were yellowed from being so long folded. In the middle of it was the dull gold of a wedding band.

After Zachary died Anna had taken it off and folded it in the “something old” her mother-in-law had given her. Her hand looked ugly without it, she’d never stopped believing that, but in the first years she’d been unable to answer the questions generated by a ring. “What does your husband do? I see you’re married-is your husband with you?”

At Molly’s suggestion she had taken it off. “It’s nobody’s damn business,” her sister had said.

“People will think I’ve stopped loving him,” Anna worried.

“Fuck ‘em,” had been the psychiatrist’s advice.

Anna thought about putting it back on; a comfort, a talisman for the dive. A thousand times over the years she’d thought of putting it back on. As always, she returned it to its linen nest. She still wasn’t ready to answer those questions.

“Three-oh-two, one-two-one.” Her radio cracked the solitude and Anna shot it a baleful look. “Three-oh-two, one-two-one.”

“Keep your pants on, Lucas.” She crossed through the open door into the ranger station and hit the mike button of the base radio. “Three-oh-two,” she responded.

“What kind of deck you got over there?”

It crossed Anna’s mind to say it was socked in, but she crushed the lie as unworthy-and too easy to detect. “I can see three or four hundred yards. The storm isn’t sitting on the water. Some rain. No wind.”

“The MAFOR promised more of the same. Waves one to two meters.” The MAFOR was shorthand for the marine forecast. All the ranger stations posted the day’s MAFOR before they opened shop in the mornings. On busy days there’d be a line three or four boaters deep waiting to read it before the thumbtacks had even cooled.

“Officer Stanton, Ralph, Jim, Scotty, Jo, and I are about to head out.” Vega’s voice rattled the speaker. “We’ll be to Amygdaloid in thirty minutes or so.”

“I’ll be waiting with bells on,” Anna said.

“One-two-one clear.”

For whom the bell tolls, Anna thought. It tolls for thee. She laughed aloud, relieved by her sheer morbidity. “I’m wasted in the Park Service,” she addressed the mute radio. “Melodrama was my true calling.”

Half an hour later, when the Lorelei pulled up to the dock, Anna was waiting, surrounded by gear. Only one of the boats that had given the place such a festive air the night before still remained. Rain, slow and cold and with apparently no intention of stopping in the foreseeable future, had driven the fisherpeople back to the more protected amusements on the mainland.

The 3rd Sister would still be around somewhere. Hawk and Holly were indifferent to comfort. Only a clear and present danger kept them out of the water. When clients paid the 3rd Sister for an adventure it was not unlike making a contract with the devil. There was almost no way out.

The Lorelei glided up parallel with the dock, and Ralph, green from head to foot in foul-weather gear, came out on deck. Lucas didn’t shut down the engines.

“How time flies when you’d rather be in bed,” Anna said as she handed her air tanks over the gunwale.

Ralph gave her a life vest and she fumbled at the side lacings. ISRO had purchased all Large and Extra Large in the expectation of a future filled with nothing but brawny, strapping rangers. Even having cinched it as tightly as it would go, Anna knew it would probably pop off if she were ever thrown unconscious into the lake.

Lucas motored slowly away from the dock, scrupulous as ever not to create a wake where it could damage another vessel. A crew cut and long brown hair were about all Anna could see of Frederick the Fed and Jo. Scotty and Jim hovered behind the two benches. Ralph stayed out in the rain with Anna. Lightly, he touched her elbow. “How are you doing?”

His kindness irritated because it reminded her of her fear. “Never better,” she retorted.

Ralph laughed. “Anna Pigeon: heart of gold, body of iron, nerves of steel.”

“Oh pshaw!” Anna pronounced all the letters: “puh-shaw.” Next to “damn” it was her sister Molly’s favorite word. It took the place of “expletive deleted.”

Ralph just laughed.

Anna pulled the drawstrings of her Gore-Tex hood close around her face and backed up against the cabin out of the wind. She could put off meeting Officer Stanton a few minutes longer and she preferred the fresh air to the self- inflating chatter Scotty would suffocate the cabin with, given such a prestigious audience.

Besides, she hoped the cold would drive Ralph inside. The last thing she wanted was someone to call her bluff. Two terrors battled for dominance in Anna’s belly: that she would dive and that she wouldn’t. The latter was worse. She was afraid Pilcher would offer her a way out and she would take it.

He leaned against the cabin next to her, the bulk of his body cutting the wind that curled around the side. Boyish brown curls escaped his hood, contrasting oddly with the broken nose and unsettlingly old eyes. Ralph Pilcher wasn’t a handsome man, but Anna guessed it had never stood in his way and she felt a sudden stab of pity for his wife. In sympathy with the unknown woman, she moved a couple inches away from his sheltering warmth.

“A few things,” Ralph said as the Lorelei motored out of Amygdaloid Channel onto the vast gray bosom of Lake Superior. “The superwoman act works well for you, Anna. Good cover. But you don’t need it on a dive. It’ll kill you on a dive. This is a team sport. I’ll be looking after you. Lucas will watch me. We’ll all keep an eye on Jim.”

Anna laughed. She was feeling better. She took back her two inches. The hell with Mrs. Pilcher.

Ralph relaxed back against the cabin wall and for a moment they stood in companionable silence watching the wake fold in on itself and disappear.

“Ever do a body recovery?” Ralph asked after a while.

“A few. Always on dry ground.”

“In Superior they’re not too bad. No smell. Usually we’d take the mask off. If they were diving-breathing compressed air-the change in pressure makes fluids froth out the nose and mouth. The family doesn’t need to see that.”

Denny’s face would be clean when Jo saw him again. No mask. No tanks. No suit. Did Jo know that? Would she be surprised? Could she feign surprise if she was not? Jo had tremendous strength for so small a woman. Years of tramping through forests and swamps with her laboratory on her back had seen to that. She was-or had been-a diver, Anna thought, remembering the distinctive scars on her arms. And she was a determined woman. She had determined to marry Denny Castle and against all odds had finally succeeded. Was removing Donna Butkus a prerequisite for success? Murdering Denny the price of a long madness? Or killing them both revenge for a life squandered on an unrequited love?

The tenor of the engines changed as Lucas throttled down. They were nearing the Kamloops‘ marker buoy. Anna shook her head to clear it of the fog of unanswered