The Deadly Bride: And 21 of the Year’s Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (2007) by Ed Gorman; Martin H. Greenberg

Author:Ed Gorman; Martin H. Greenberg [Greenberg, Ed Gorman; Martin H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Dust Up

Wendy Hornsby

When Wendy Hornsby isn’t writing, it’s probably because she’s teaching history. Educated at UCLA and California State University, Hornsby holds graduate degrees in Ancient and Medieval History and has served as a faculty member at Long Beach City College. Her novels have featured characters Maggie MacGowan, a documentary filmmaker in LA [A Hard Light, 77th Street Requiem], and Kate Teague, history teacher in CA [Half a Mind, No Harm]. In 1992, her short story “Nine Sons” was honored with an Edgar Award.

10:00 A.M., April 20, Red Rock Canyon, Nevada

Pansy Reynard lay on her belly inside a camouflaged bird blind, high-power Zeiss binoculars to her eyes, a digital sound amplifier hooked over her right ear, charting every movement and sound made by her observation target, an Aplomado falcon hatchling. As Pansy watched, the hatchling stretched his wings to their full thirty-inch span and gave them a few tentative flaps as if gathering courage to make his first foray out of the nest. He would need some courage to venture out, she thought. The ragged, abandoned nest his mother had appropriated for her use sat on a narrow rock ledge 450 vertical feet above the desert floor.

“Go, baby,” Pansy whispered when the chick craned back his neck and flapped his wings again. This was hour fourteen of her assigned nest watch. She felt stiff and cramped, and excited all at once. There had been no reported Aplomado falcon sightings in Nevada since 1910. For a mated Aplomado falcon pair to appear in the Red Rock Canyon area less than twenty miles west of the tawdry glitz and endless noise of Las Vegas, was singular, newsworthy even. But for the pair to claim a nest and successfully hatch an egg was an event so unexpected as to be considered a miracle by any committed raptor watcher, as Pansy Reynard considered herself to be.

The hatchling watch was uncomfortable, perhaps dangerous, because of the ruggedness of the desert canyons, the precariousness of Pansy’s rocky perch in a narrow cliff-top saddle opposite the nest, and the wild extremes of the weather. But the watch was very likely essential to the survival of this wonder child. It had been an honor, Pansy felt, to be assigned a shift to watch the nest. And then to have the great good fortune to be on site when the hatchling first emerged over the top of the nest was, well, nearly overwhelming.

Pansy lowered her binocs to wipe moisture from her eyes, but quickly raised them again so as not to miss one single moment in the life of this sleek-winged avian infant. She had been wakened inside her camouflage shelter at dawn by the insistent chittering of the hatchling as he demanded to be fed. From seemingly nowhere, as Pansy watched, the mother had soared down to tend him, the forty-inch span of her black and white wings as artful and graceful as a beautiful Japanese silk-print kite. The sight of the mother made Pansy almost forgive Lyle for standing her up the night before.

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