Hard Truth- Pigeon 13 Read Online Free PDF Page B

brows, straight as a die, ran parallel above them. On a good day her lips might have softened the effect. Tonight they were as uncompromising as brows and bones.

One of the girls had thrown herself into the woman's lap when Anna had come on scene. The kid was too big to be a lap baby and her legs stuck out over the spoked wheels like jersey-clad sticks. Dr. Littleton had run to a tall, skinny child and wrapped an arm protectively about her nar-row shoulders. This girl didn't cling but sat rigid, her hands squeezed tightly between her knees, her chin tucked into her chest. Curtains of filthy; matted blond hair hung over her face like vines over the mouth of a cave.

Doing everything she could think of to make herself small and non-threatening, Anna backed to the edge of the light, squatted on her heels and removed her Stetson. She raised a hand to keep the EMTs back. Nei-ther girl had anything life-threatening that was readily apparent. What was apparent was that they were suffering severe emotional trauma. Anna wasn't in the mood to exacerbate it any more than she already had.

At least the camp dog seemed glad to see her. He was a scruffy excuse for a helpmate, which Anna guessed he was by the vest he wore. A lab-shepherd mix, maybe. One that had been washed with dark colors and tumbled in a too-hot dryer.

"Hey, fella," she said. Wagging his tail amiably, the dog came over.

The woman in the wheelchair shot one of them a filthy look. Anna couldn't tell if it was aimed at her for some unknown reason or at the dog for consorting with her. The pooch sat and presented his ears for scratch-ing. For a minute Anna tended to the animal, waiting for a bit of the ten-sion that had come with her and the two EMTs to drain out of the camp.

The weather gods were not helping. As they did most every afternoon, thunderheads had been building. Often, by nightfall, they'd dissipate. Not tonight. Lightning flickered to the southwest, startling the granite mountain peaks out of their sleep. Thunder rolled around as if audition-ing for the road show of Rip Van Winkle. Anna could smell rain and taste the ozone on the back of her tongue. It was a night when, had she been a cat, she would have raced from room to room leaping at shadows. The atmosphere was charged with a wildness as much metaphysical as meteorological.

When the air felt less electric, without rising or leaving the dog, Anna addressed the older woman.

"Dr. Littleton, can you tell me what happened?"

The doctor rose, stepped into the light and spread her hands as if she were about to give a formal oration. "My niece" - she said - "this is my niece, Heath Jarrod."

"Anna Pigeon, district ranger," Anna introduced herself.

"Heath had gone for a walk - " The word walk clanked against the metallic reality of the wheelchair, and the doctor came to a stop.

"Which path did she take?" Anna asked, to get her over the rough patch.

"Talk to me," the disabled woman demanded. She'd been growing more restive by the moment. Something had just reached critical mass. Anna could hear the ominous quiet of nuclear fusion clicking behind her teeth.

"What path did you take?" Anna repeated neutrally. It was too late. Ms. Jarrod had apparently reached a psychic point of no return. Despite the fact she had, nominally at least, gotten what she wanted, she pushed on.

"People think a chair makes a person stupid or invisible or deaf. I can hear you. This is a wheelchair, not a fucking cone of silence."

Anna laughed before she could stop herself.

A laugh might not have endeared her to the woman, but it served to startle her out of her fit of pique.

"So you went up the path. Which one?" Anna asked.

Question by question she got what she could of the story. It was short and simple. Ms. Jarrod wasn't inclined to be particularly helpful. The telling of the accident on the path and the discovery of the girls in their underwear was shortened to the point of haiku: "My chair, it tipped. Fell. The girls were