The
Within seconds he reappeared, the bundle under his arm, and stepped onto the quay. Anna waited till she heard him step off the concrete and onto the wood-chip path that led up from the water before she swung onto the deck.
In the
Overhead, silver flickered by in scraps and fragments where the moon poured through the overcast. Anna watched till Scotty reached the tree line, then followed at a trot.
Once they were in the trees, the darkness was absolute. Hand extended like a Hollywood rendition of the blind, Anna inched forward, cringing at the thought that she was walking into Scotty’s waiting hands.
The glare of an intruder light ignited the fog and she moved more confidently toward it. All residence areas were kept safe from the magic of the night by the intrusive glare of blue floodlights. This one marked the enclave of the seasonals.
From the porch of the house where Tinker and Damien roomed, a yellow light softened the heartless glow. Anna stood still, trying to pierce the fog with eyes and ears. Just when she was beginning to think Scotty had been bound for a different destination, one she had not even guessed at, she heard the complaining screech of a window screen being pried from its seating.
She forgot the cold, her fear. Careful of the placement of each foot, but moving quickly for all of that, she crept to the corner of the house. A scraping sound followed by a thump announced the screen had been jerked clear of the frame and dropped to the ground. For several seconds, Anna stayed where she was, back pressed to the wall. When she looked around the corner, Scotty’s boots were disappearing over the sill into Tinker and Damien’s room.
Anna retreated to the front steps. No lights shone inside. Tinker and Damien’s housemates either were out or had already gone to bed. She tried the door. It was unlocked, as she had expected it to be. Old boards, complaining of abuse, creaked as she crossed the living room. Trailing her fingers lightly along the walls, she moved down the dark hallway. At the second door on her right, she stopped and pressed an ear against the paneling. Furtive scuffling sounds came from within.
Silently, she turned the knob. When she was sure the latch was clear, she opened the door and stepped inside. The light switch was to her left. With the palm of her hand she shoved it on.
Scotty was crouched beside the bunk beds. In front of him on the floor was the package. Anna had come upon him in the act of unwrapping it.
“Howdy, Scotty, what’s happening?”
Anna had expected surprise, she had counted on it. What she’d not bargained for was panic. From his crouched position, Scotty lunged. His considerable weight struck her in the thighs and slammed her against the door so hard her thoughts scattered.
An instant later her mind refocused and she took in the situation as a camera would take a still shot. Near her waist, Butkus’s dark hair beaded with condensation from the fog; one booted foot trailed, the other, coiled beneath him, was lost from sight. His arm was locked behind her back, his shoulder wedged under her rib cage.
When the trailing foot recoiled, Scotty would lunge again, cracking her ribs and maybe her spine against the door.
Anna grabbed a handful of hair and, holding his head fast, gouged her right thumb up under his left ear where the angle of his jaw met his skull. The pressure on her rib cage increased. She dug the thumb deeper.
A little pain goes a long way. Even through his alcoholic haze, he had to be feeling the bite of the compliance hold. “Let go. Let go,” she repeated clearly and she pushed harder. She could feel him becoming paralyzed. “Do as I say. Do it. Let go.”
His arms dropped. He tried to say something. It could have been the word “Okay.”
Still holding his head between her fist and the gouging thumb, Anna eased herself from the door. He fell onto both knees. His hands came up to pry her thumb away but she screwed her knuckle into the nerve. “Hands down. On the floor. All the way. Do it. Do it.”
Scotty did it. She followed, pressing till he was facedown on the worn linoleum. “Hands on the small of your back. Cross your wrists. Hands back.”
Anna put one knee on his neck and one on his butt, then fished Pilcher’s handcuffs from her pocket. Scotty twitched when he heard the familiar ratcheting noise but it was too late. She rapped them on his wristbones and quickly made them fast.
Less than a minute had elapsed since she had entered the room. Her heart was pounding and her vision growing fuzzy. Anna sat down on the edge of the bunk. Scotty lay at her feet. One of her peers, a fellow ranger, a commissioned federal law enforcement officer, was bound like a piglet. Anna didn’t know what to do with him. Odds were good she was nearly as surprised at the turn of events as he was. And probably in more trouble.
The National Park Service would not be anxious to believe breaking and entering to further an employee’s blackmailing another employee to keep her from exposing God knew what. If Scotty pieced together a good story-a practical joke, climbed in the wrong window-Anna would end up at best with egg on her face, at worst on charges for assaulting an officer. She fervently hoped either Butkus wasn’t thinking that clearly, or the package contained a severed human head or at least a kilo of something incriminating.
“Jesus, Scotty, what the hell is going on?” she asked peevishly.
“None of your goddam business,” he said from the floor.
Anna thought about that one. “It is,” she decided. “You’re blackmailing a friend of mine. What’re you holding over Tinker?”
“You can’t prove I know a goddam thing about those two.”
“Then tell me what you know about the late Denny Castle. Like what made him ‘late’?”
No answer.
“Where’s Donna?” Anna tried. Scotty said something that could’ve been “Goddam intwerps.” Anna was tired. And she was tired of Scotty Butkus. “Leave Tinker alone,” she said. “Stop the blackmail. It’s killing her.”
“The hell I will.” He began to struggle, trying to sit up. Anna pushed him down with her foot. He banged against the board-and-brick bookcase the Coggins-Clarkes had assembled beneath the room’s one window. Candles rocked precariously. A cheap Instamatic flash camera teetered near the edge.
Anna picked it up. Click! Flash! “Gotcha!” she said. Scotty actually screamed as if the light had burned him. “The ‘old stallion’ knocked down and trussed up like a steer by a rangerette,” Anna said. Click. Flash. Scotty scraped his face away, turning it against the floor. “Too late. Got a good one,” she told him.
“This camera is Tinker’s. So is the film. I’ll see that she gets it. If you bother her, if whatever her big secret is leaks out in any way, I’ll encourage her to have the negatives blown up poster-size and put on trail crew’s bunkhouse door.”
For a moment Scotty neither spoke nor moved and Anna began to be afraid the shock had been too much and he’d died of a massive coronary.
“You’ll pay for this,” he growled finally. Despite the threat, she was relieved to hear him speak. “I got friends in damn near every park in this country. Every one of ‘em’s getting a call from me. I’ll by God smear your name from Acadia to Joshua Tree. You want a career in the Park Service? After this little stunt, you haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell. Not a hope.”
“These people known you long?” Anna asked.
“Damn right they have.”
“Then I can always hope they’ll consider the source.”
Scotty struggled to his knees. Anna let him. “Unlock these goddam cuffs,” he demanded.
Anna just looked at him, not rising from the bed where she sat. “Ralph keeps the key in his briefcase on the
