Anna Pigeon 02 A Superior Death by Nevada Barr

Author:Nevada Barr [Barr, Nevada]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pigeon; Anna (Fictitions character), Superior (Lake; Region), Isle Royale National Park (Mich.), Mystery & Detective, Pigeon; Anna (Fictitious character), Fiction, Women park rangers, Mystery Fiction, Women Sleuths, Superior; Lake; Region, General
ISBN: 9780425194713
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2003-09-02T07:00:00+00:00

she’s a princess or a prick-tease. I guess he didn’t start smacking her till

fairly recently. A couple months. Donna covers for him. She’s everything a good

South Texas wife is supposed to be: supportive, warm, covers up his flaws, takes

his abuse, and still looks pretty.”

“Like a handwoven Navajo rug,” Anna said.

“You got it.”

The phone booth door opened. The redhead stepped out. As Trixy rose to make her

call, Anna asked one last question. “Did you see Donna after that night? The

night they had the fight?”

“Nope. I had to go do an evening program. She was pretty upset. I gave her some

ice for her eye. Dave said he’d walk her home. That was it.”

Trixy’s call was short. The redhead waited with Anna on the bench; then the two

interpreters left together. Anna shut herself up in the booth and dialed New

York. After innumerable clicks and whirs—the sound of her paycheck going down

the drain—a machine answered. “Nobody’s here. Leave a message,” was the command.

Anna waited for the beep.

“It’s me,” she said. “Are you lying doggo?”

A click and a fumble. “ ‘Lying doggo’?” Molly said. “Is that a law enforcement

term: ‘The perpetrators were found in Macy’s lingerie department lying doggo’?”

“I’m backsliding. They don’t have a support group in Houghton for women

suffering from colloquialisms.” The familiar hush, the sigh of air. Anna hated

it. “Can’t you talk on the phone without a cigarette?”

“Can’t. Hipbone connected to the thighbone—it’s like that with cigarettes and

phones. Oral fixation, premature potty training, early childhood trauma, can’t

help myself. How did the corpse dive go?”

Anna told her, glad to be able to drag out all her fears and panics, expose them

to Molly’s harsh, reasoning mind.

She told her sister of the corpse’s half life, the bubbles and the floating

hands, the porthole vandalism, about Donna, about Scotty.

“What an asshole!” was Dr. Pigeon’s concurring diagnosis.

“Do you think he could’ve killed her?” Anna asked.

“Sure. Emergency rooms are full of battered wives. Some die. I see the rich ones

who live. They come to me to find out what’s wrong with them, why they keep

making a good man act so bad. That’s not saying this Butkus individual did kill

his wife. He may just be a batterer and an asshole.”

“Donna’s not the type to press charges and there’s no law against assholery,”

Anna said.

“If it weren’t so profitable for psychiatrists, I’d lobby for one.”

“How about eating the body?” Anna asked.

“The old Hannibal Lecter thing? Cannibalism? Pretty unlikely. It’s a very rare

form of psychosis. Very rare. And even the loonies don’t eat the bones and hair

and eyeballs and fingernails. They have their favorite cuts. Usually something

visceral—heart, liver. Like Dracula’s Renfield, they’re often trying in some way

to gather life or power from the victim and into themselves.”

“What if he wasn’t psychotic? What if he just ate her to dispose of the corpse?”

“Anna, you’ve been out in the woods too long. If he ate her, for whatever

reason, doesn’t that seem a teensy-weensy bit psycho to you?”

“I guess,” Anna conceded.

“I guess,” Molly confirmed.

Anna listened to a second cigarette being lit. Molly was going to die first,

leave Anna to flounder through life without a guide.

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