Read Online Burn- pigeon 16 by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Nevada Barr
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Mystery Fiction, Police Procedural, Pigeon; Anna (Fictitious character), Women park rangers, New Orleans (La.)
Ads: Link
way a washerwoman would wring a mop. What she'd taken for random blood seeps from the outside were crude but intricate drawings done in blood and probably with a fingernail or stick. The figure looked like a cross on an altar with coffins or pineapples to either side. Anna had no idea what, if anything, it was supposed to mean. She turned her attention back to the bird. Despite the scribbling in blood, it was possible Jordan had found the bird dead rather than killed it. Either way a sick mind worked behind it, sick and dangerous.
Gently she rolled the bird onto its back. A wooden skewer, slender and smooth--the kind that could be bought anywhere for backyard shish kebob--had been colored black and green with a Magic Marker, then plunged into the pigeon's breast. Blood blossomed around the puncture.
So much for the found-dead school of thought.
Rocking back on her heels like a Bedouin, Anna retied the corners of the cloth, then stared down the narrow brick path. The murder of an animal, however humble the beast or lowly by society's standards, always hurt her in a deep and personal way. "Bastard," she whispered, then, having gathered up the butchered bird, rose to her feet, staggered, and saved herself from falling by grabbing the trash bin, an action that dragged an ache from the soft tissue below her arm where a bullet had gone through a month before.
Two months prior to the bullet a psychopath had smashed her ankle with a wrench, and, though these wounds had ostensibly healed, her body could no longer be trusted. Periodically the bones and flesh remembered the brutal injustice and collapsed in a welter of self-pity.
Or revenge. If the body and the mind/spirit were not, indeed, one, but separate entities as many religions suggested, her mind had a lot to answer for. Her ankle and underarm weren't the only portions of her anatomy that had been sacrificed to whatever she believed to be the greater good at the time.
Maybe old age was the inevitable revolution of the oppressed before the dictator is ousted from the land. Anna hoped, when the time came, the coup would be quick and not a prolonged uncivil war between flesh and spirit.
Anna put the tortured pigeon, in its tawdry shroud, back into the trash and closed the lid. Harming animals, even those as unappealing as subway rats and city pigeons, saddened her on a level violence to humans did not. There was no point to it, nothing to be gained, no power to usurp, no obstacle removed: It was cruelty for cruelty's sake, the basest instinct made manifest.
As the thought rolled unspoken through her mind, another rose to contradict it. This bird had been tortured and killed, but the colored stick, the markings on the cloth, suggested voodoo. Voodoo was still practiced in New Orleans, a mishmash of African beliefs and lore and superstitions that had sprung up in the South to encompass all kinds of magics--or what devotees believed were magics: spells, curses, rituals, love potions, pointing the bone--a killing curse, if Anna remembered--zombies, spirits, gods, snakes.
It was possible her new neighbor Jordan, the tattooed gutter punk with hostility toward women who saved dogs, was into the dark arts.
EIGHT
Slowly Anna walked back to the cottage. The sensuous embrace of the city and the storm, of ancient trees and vine-covered walls, had changed subtly. Beneath the fecundity and the history, she sensed a core of rot, the feeling that New Orleans's endless party was in the spirit of Nero fiddling while Rome burned or musicians playing on the deck of the Titanic as the lifeboats were lowered into the sea.
Men and women singing the blues and blowing jazz while their sons and brothers shot each other down in the streets of Center City.
Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it and let the dark thoughts clear from her head. Over the past winter she had more or less lost her wits. This spring she had found most of them again. Still, she wasn't yet strong enough to walk
Gently she rolled the bird onto its back. A wooden skewer, slender and smooth--the kind that could be bought anywhere for backyard shish kebob--had been colored black and green with a Magic Marker, then plunged into the pigeon's breast. Blood blossomed around the puncture.
So much for the found-dead school of thought.
Rocking back on her heels like a Bedouin, Anna retied the corners of the cloth, then stared down the narrow brick path. The murder of an animal, however humble the beast or lowly by society's standards, always hurt her in a deep and personal way. "Bastard," she whispered, then, having gathered up the butchered bird, rose to her feet, staggered, and saved herself from falling by grabbing the trash bin, an action that dragged an ache from the soft tissue below her arm where a bullet had gone through a month before.
Two months prior to the bullet a psychopath had smashed her ankle with a wrench, and, though these wounds had ostensibly healed, her body could no longer be trusted. Periodically the bones and flesh remembered the brutal injustice and collapsed in a welter of self-pity.
Or revenge. If the body and the mind/spirit were not, indeed, one, but separate entities as many religions suggested, her mind had a lot to answer for. Her ankle and underarm weren't the only portions of her anatomy that had been sacrificed to whatever she believed to be the greater good at the time.
Maybe old age was the inevitable revolution of the oppressed before the dictator is ousted from the land. Anna hoped, when the time came, the coup would be quick and not a prolonged uncivil war between flesh and spirit.
Anna put the tortured pigeon, in its tawdry shroud, back into the trash and closed the lid. Harming animals, even those as unappealing as subway rats and city pigeons, saddened her on a level violence to humans did not. There was no point to it, nothing to be gained, no power to usurp, no obstacle removed: It was cruelty for cruelty's sake, the basest instinct made manifest.
As the thought rolled unspoken through her mind, another rose to contradict it. This bird had been tortured and killed, but the colored stick, the markings on the cloth, suggested voodoo. Voodoo was still practiced in New Orleans, a mishmash of African beliefs and lore and superstitions that had sprung up in the South to encompass all kinds of magics--or what devotees believed were magics: spells, curses, rituals, love potions, pointing the bone--a killing curse, if Anna remembered--zombies, spirits, gods, snakes.
It was possible her new neighbor Jordan, the tattooed gutter punk with hostility toward women who saved dogs, was into the dark arts.
EIGHT
Slowly Anna walked back to the cottage. The sensuous embrace of the city and the storm, of ancient trees and vine-covered walls, had changed subtly. Beneath the fecundity and the history, she sensed a core of rot, the feeling that New Orleans's endless party was in the spirit of Nero fiddling while Rome burned or musicians playing on the deck of the Titanic as the lifeboats were lowered into the sea.
Men and women singing the blues and blowing jazz while their sons and brothers shot each other down in the streets of Center City.
Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it and let the dark thoughts clear from her head. Over the past winter she had more or less lost her wits. This spring she had found most of them again. Still, she wasn't yet strong enough to walk
Similar Books
