A Superior Death

custody.

Anna showered with the bathroom door open so she could hear the phone. As she was toweling dry, it rang. Mindful of her guest manners, she answered, “Bittner residence, Anna Pigeon speaking.”

It was the librarian from Hopkins. Yes, there had been a number of articles on Theresa Coggins published in the newspaper between 1978 and 1980. Ms. Coggins and her husband, David Coggins, had been on trial for manslaughter. They had been accused of the wrongful death of their daughter, Constantina, aged ten months, twelve days.

“Whoa!” Anna breathed.

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“They were finally acquitted,” the librarian said, sounding mildly disappointed. “That’s everything, except a wedding announcement two years later: David Coggins marrying a woman named Agnes Larson. Nothing else on Theresa Coggins. She may have left town or changed her name.”

“Do you have a fax machine?” Anna asked abruptly.

“There’s one at the post office.”

Anna gave the librarian the park’s fax number and her own profuse thanks.

The newspaper articles beat her to the ranger station on Mott. Seventeen articles in all, covering the death of the child, the trial, the public outcry, the acquittal.

The first paragraph of the first article told the story. “During last Sunday’s cold snap, when temperatures were hovering at thirteen below with a windchill factor in the minus forties, David and Theresa Coggins went cross- country skiing on Winetka Lake near their home in south Hopkins. They took their ten-month-old daughter, Constantina, along in a backpack worn by Mrs. Coggins. Exertion kept David and Theresa from feeling the cold but the baby, confined to the backpack, froze to death.

“ ‘I thought she was sleeping,’ said the nineteen-year-old mother. ‘Then she just wouldn’t wake up.’ ”

Anna leaned back and rested her head against the wall in the dispatch room. A blue baby doll: “Scotty should have his heart cut out with a dull Boy Scout knife.”

“Put me on your list of volunteers,” Sandra Fox said, never taking her fingers from the printout she was reading. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a shit, you know that, Anna Pigeon?”

“I’m just postponing the inevitable. You always find out everything eventually. Think of it as a challenge.”

“I hate that damn fax machine,” Sandra said without rancor. “Messages blatting in and out of my dispatch and I can’t read them.”

Anna chuckled aloud to let Sandra know she knew it was a joke. Sandra went on with her reading, fingers keeping her place when she was interrupted by the phone or the radio. Anna slipped off her shoe and buried her toes in Delphi’s warm fur. The dog thumped the floor with her tail.

Scotty was blackmailing Tinker to stop her and her husband from investigating the disappearance of his wife, the alleged lover of the dead man.

Damning as it was, Anna was not convinced Scotty had killed Denny. She could see Scotty, in a drunken rage, accidentally killing his wife. But the Castle murder appeared calculating, dangerous, clever.

“Scotty hasn’t got the balls,” she muttered.

“Beginning, middle, and end,” Sandra said, “or I don’t want to hear any of the story.”

Anna relapsed into thought. If not Scotty, who? Jim Tattinger, because he was a creep? Because Castle was a threat to him professionally? Because Castle knew or suspected something? Tattinger had left the Virgin Islands under a pall. Had Denny known why? Had Tattinger been suspected of plundering the shipwrecks? Suspected but not proven guilty, so the accusation was never made public? Or, more likely, to avoid bad press the NPS had decided to “handle it from within”?

Was Tattinger continuing those activities at ISRO?

“Sandra, do me a favor?”

“No. No way. Not possible. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. You scratch my back, et cetera.”

“Find out why Jim Tattinger left the Virgin Islands.”

“Is Jim being investigated in the Castle thing?”

“No,” Anna admitted. “There’s not a scrap of evidence against him. That’s why I need you to find out for me. Personnel, the District Ranger-the official channels will be closed.”

“Island dispatcher to island dispatcher?” Sandra said with a smile. “The centers through which all information flows? You want me to abuse my position of trust to wheedle gossip from an unsuspecting peer?”

“That’s it in a nutshell.”

“Tit for tat,” Sandra replied.

Anna told her what she could of the circumstantial evidence built up around Tattinger, of finding him sneaking around near where the Kamloops went down after the murder but before the body recovery. She wanted to hint at Jo’s and the Bradshaws’ innocence, but until they were officially cleared by the FBI, she didn’t dare. It wasn’t much, but Sandra took it as a sign of good faith.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.

Anna thanked her and left for the sunshine on the dock. The fog had burned away and the day promised to reach close to seventy degrees. She was anxious to get back to the north shore, resume her routine duties.

The Belle Isle needed refueling and Anna’s supply of candy bars was perilously low, so she made a stop at Rock. Pacing in front of the bench above the harbor was Damien Coggins-Clarke, preparing for his nature walk. Anna jogged up the path in his direction. Once again she was given a less than enthusiastic greeting.

“It’s okay,” Anna said gently. “There’ll be no more threats. The past won’t be dragged out. It’s been taken care of.”

Damien stopped pacing and looked at her squarely for the first time. “The Windigo is so powerful. People eaten up with fear. They must devour others but they’ll never be sated. I thought I could take care of her,” he added simply. “But all I could do was love her.”

“In the end that will be all she’ll remember ever needing,” Anna said.

Damien paced the length of the bench again, his eyes on something farther away than the mountains. “Is it over?” he asked when he’d returned to where Anna was standing.

“The blackmail is over,” Anna replied. For a mother the death of a child would never be over.

Two beats of silence passed in which Damien’s face slowly lit up from within. “I want to give you something.”

Inwardly, Anna began to squirm. Gifts made her uncomfortable. Before she could voice her concern and wriggle away, Damien had fished something out of his trouser pocket. “Here. It’s a greenstone. We found it out from shore,” he assured Anna. Collecting greenstones on the island was illegal but off shore the practice was allowed. “It’s the nicest one I’ve ever found.” He pushed it into her hands.

Anna looked at the glossy jade-colored rock fitting as neatly as a robin’s egg in her palm. It was a beautiful specimen, rounded from years of wave action, deep clear green with veins of a lighter color running through it in an uncharacteristic pattern.

“You were always supposed to have it,” Damien said earnestly, as if afraid she was going to give it back. “I just didn’t know till today. When I brought it up, Tinker said, ‘Look how the gray zigzags, like the gray through Anna’s braids.’ See? It’s always been yours.”

“Thank you,” Anna said, and closed her fingers around the stone.

Damien looked pleased. Behind him a noisy group of mostly teenage girls was coming up from the lodge. “Looks like your audience is arriving,” Anna said.

“I want to run and tell Tinker the good news-will you take my nature walk, Anna?”

He enjoyed the look of stark terror on her face for a moment before he said: “Just kidding.”

As Anna made her escape she heard Damien’s girlish voice calling “Thanks!” after her and: “Oscar says you are one stout fella.”

Oscar, it seemed, could communicate telepathically over fairly good distances. The whimsy pleased Anna.