Read Online Burn- pigeon 16 by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Nevada Barr
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Mystery Fiction, Police Procedural, Pigeon; Anna (Fictitious character), Women park rangers, New Orleans (La.)
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on the dark side for any length of time. It was too easy to go from a dead bird in a trash can to the sorrow of the world, to see the rust and rot and gangrene rather than the beauty in her surroundings.
"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," Anna whispered. Paul had once suggested the valley of the shadow was simply a way to describe life because in life one was in death, dying from the moment of one's birth. He didn't seem to think it was a somber thought at all, only a perfectly natural journey toward a land where death didn't hold so much sway.
Anna shook off the arguable comfort of Paul's words. They, too, seemed to lead toward a grimness of mind she wasn't interested in.
"Hi, Molly, it's me, Anna," she said into the cell phone. In the dark, windows open onto the balcony, she lay across the double bed in her tree house.
"To what do I owe this honor?" her sister asked with only a hint of sourness. Anna had been actively not calling her for a while. She'd been afraid she was too crazy and Molly would spot it. Now that sanity was just around the corner, she'd felt safe enough to let her sister in.
"Voodoo," she said.
"What? Somebody made a little Anna doll and stuck a telephone in its ear?"
"I'm in New Orleans, and some weirdo voodooed a pigeon and put it in the garbage where I'm staying."
"And because I'm a psychiatrist, you figure I'm very nearly a voodoo practitioner myself?"
Anna laughed because that was precisely what she thought. "Didn't you have to study that stuff somewhere along the line? Drugging people into zombies, behavior modification, repressed memories, multiple personalities, Rorschach tests?"
Molly thought for a moment, the comfortable--comfortable because it was familiar--silence between the sisters strung cross-country by telephone wires or, with the advent of cell phones, without wires at all. The ultimate voodoo.
"Actually we did. It was a long time ago. We're mostly into drug therapy these days, and doggone if it doesn't actually work. Though there are not nearly so many funny stories to tell at cocktail parties as there were in the good old days of analysis."
"Tell me," Anna said and wriggled down more comfortably in the bed. The motion set the springs to singing like a comic chorus in a French farce.
"Are you alone?" Molly asked as if on cue.
"Yes. Old bed. Bed with springs, no less."
"Ah. For a moment I thought you were having more fun than me. From what I remember, voodoo, curses, pins in dolls, spells--all that kind of thing--require belief in the power of magic on the part of the victim and a perpetrator with a powerful personality to be efficacious--the flip side of the placebo effect, a blend of hypnosis, faith, and intimidation. If mind-altering drugs are used, the effect is considerably enhanced. There are quite a few fairly credible accounts of people dying of curses or of being made into what the popular literature would call 'zombies.' If you believe the pigeon in the garbage means you will die, then you're doomed. That is, unless you go to a graveyard, swing a dead cat around your head three times, and say, 'Devil be gone.' "
Anna laughed. "How about Frederick?" she asked. Frederick was Molly's husband. A retired FBI agent, he now made a tidy living renting himself out as a cyber-detective, hunting mostly money but occasionally fugitives, throughout the World Wide Web.
"Freddy? Do you know anything about voodoo?" Molly called, presumably across their spacious Upper West Side apartment. There was a moment of faraway sounds; then Molly returned. "All Frederick knows is 'voodoo science,' the term they gave to the work the two jackass psychologists came up with to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and other black holes. Is there any more to the story?"
Starting at the levee, Anna took Molly through the many twists and turns till she was squatting on wet brick in a narrow alley fiddling around with a dead bird.
When she'd finished, Molly
"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," Anna whispered. Paul had once suggested the valley of the shadow was simply a way to describe life because in life one was in death, dying from the moment of one's birth. He didn't seem to think it was a somber thought at all, only a perfectly natural journey toward a land where death didn't hold so much sway.
Anna shook off the arguable comfort of Paul's words. They, too, seemed to lead toward a grimness of mind she wasn't interested in.
"Hi, Molly, it's me, Anna," she said into the cell phone. In the dark, windows open onto the balcony, she lay across the double bed in her tree house.
"To what do I owe this honor?" her sister asked with only a hint of sourness. Anna had been actively not calling her for a while. She'd been afraid she was too crazy and Molly would spot it. Now that sanity was just around the corner, she'd felt safe enough to let her sister in.
"Voodoo," she said.
"What? Somebody made a little Anna doll and stuck a telephone in its ear?"
"I'm in New Orleans, and some weirdo voodooed a pigeon and put it in the garbage where I'm staying."
"And because I'm a psychiatrist, you figure I'm very nearly a voodoo practitioner myself?"
Anna laughed because that was precisely what she thought. "Didn't you have to study that stuff somewhere along the line? Drugging people into zombies, behavior modification, repressed memories, multiple personalities, Rorschach tests?"
Molly thought for a moment, the comfortable--comfortable because it was familiar--silence between the sisters strung cross-country by telephone wires or, with the advent of cell phones, without wires at all. The ultimate voodoo.
"Actually we did. It was a long time ago. We're mostly into drug therapy these days, and doggone if it doesn't actually work. Though there are not nearly so many funny stories to tell at cocktail parties as there were in the good old days of analysis."
"Tell me," Anna said and wriggled down more comfortably in the bed. The motion set the springs to singing like a comic chorus in a French farce.
"Are you alone?" Molly asked as if on cue.
"Yes. Old bed. Bed with springs, no less."
"Ah. For a moment I thought you were having more fun than me. From what I remember, voodoo, curses, pins in dolls, spells--all that kind of thing--require belief in the power of magic on the part of the victim and a perpetrator with a powerful personality to be efficacious--the flip side of the placebo effect, a blend of hypnosis, faith, and intimidation. If mind-altering drugs are used, the effect is considerably enhanced. There are quite a few fairly credible accounts of people dying of curses or of being made into what the popular literature would call 'zombies.' If you believe the pigeon in the garbage means you will die, then you're doomed. That is, unless you go to a graveyard, swing a dead cat around your head three times, and say, 'Devil be gone.' "
Anna laughed. "How about Frederick?" she asked. Frederick was Molly's husband. A retired FBI agent, he now made a tidy living renting himself out as a cyber-detective, hunting mostly money but occasionally fugitives, throughout the World Wide Web.
"Freddy? Do you know anything about voodoo?" Molly called, presumably across their spacious Upper West Side apartment. There was a moment of faraway sounds; then Molly returned. "All Frederick knows is 'voodoo science,' the term they gave to the work the two jackass psychologists came up with to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo and other black holes. Is there any more to the story?"
Starting at the levee, Anna took Molly through the many twists and turns till she was squatting on wet brick in a narrow alley fiddling around with a dead bird.
When she'd finished, Molly
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