Read Online Hard Truth- Pigeon 13 by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online

nothing else, drive the search-and-rescue officer insane.

"I didn't say they did nothing," Lorraine said. She paused a beat, caught Anna's eye. "They prayed. Round-the-clock vigils. Prayed in shifts. They kept right on doing it. Their whole little community."

Anna might have thought she'd softened but with this story the old cynical edges cut sharp as ever. The closest she came to Christianity was to espouse its tenet that God helps those who help themselves. That way, if God didn't bother to show, she'd at least have done what she could. So far, that had always been enough. Not an abundance, necessarily, but suf-ficient to stay alive and move forward. Now that two of the girls were back, this coterie of petitioners would swear God had finally heard their prayers. Six weeks. One would think an omnipotent's hearing would be more acute.

"Alexis' mother was praying night shift when I called with the good news," Lorraine said. "She had to get a replacement before she could come."

'A replacement," Anna scoffed. "What are they praying for now?"

"Candace Watson."

Anna had forgotten. 'Ah. Momma Watson must have shirked her prayers."

The chief ranger shot her a hard look. "You'll watch that kind of talk when the families are here."

Chastised, Anna was silent for a moment. Then she said, "So their religion is against medical intervention?"

"Not that so much. They were fine with the girls getting medical care. It's the psychologist and the police they balked at. During the in-vestigation subsequent to the search, they were less than forthcoming, uncooperative even."

"Why? Are they running a meth lab out of their commune or some-thing?"

"Who knows. A lot of these fringe sects have a deep distrust of the government, especially the law enforcement arm. It could be no more than that. Paranoias run deep."

"So we wait till the parents come."

"We wait."

They waited. Lorraine filled Anna in on the details of the search. Anna drank two cups of pretty good coffee cadged from the nurses' station. The rain stopped in a last growling thunderous threat to return the following afternoon. An hour passed, then two. Finally the automatic doors slid open and four people came in. By the teary; anxious, joyful, tired faces, Anna knew it was family.

They were known to Lorraine and rushed over in a body, questions frothing from their lips. The chief ranger calmed the waters with the oil of normalcy. She made introductions.

Mrs. Sheppard, Alexis' mom, was a tall woman, young but looking drawn and underweight as if she'd not gotten up from her knees to eat or sleep since her daughter had gone missing. She wore no make-up and had n a loose denim jumper over a long-sleeved white T-shirt. Her long hair was pulled up severely and wound into a knot on the top of her head. Despite the unglamorous treatment it was clear where Alexis got her looks. Mrs. Sheppard's face was fine-boned, the skin pasty but unblemished, and her eyes truly remarkable, wide set and sky blue. Though she had a thirteen-year-old daughter, she didn't look much over thirty, if that.

Mr. Sheppard was considerably older than his wife, twenty or more years. He'd apparently eaten the meals his wife had missed and carried a pouch of hard fat under his belt.

Mrs. Dwayne, Beth's mother, was dressed as conservatively as Mrs. Sheppard, in an ankle-length skirt, also of denim, and a cardigan, the kind Anna had worn as a little girl, pale pink with small plastic buttons from hem to neck. She was older than Mrs. Sheppard. Like Mrs. Sheppard, she wore her hair pulled up into a bun. As a concession to fashion-albeit one that had gone out twenty years before-the front was puffed up in an exaggerated pompadour. She clutched a pair of plastic cat-eye glasses in a sweaty hand. "Beth lost her glasses, they said. I brought her old ones..." She held them out as if this proved she was worthy of seeing her daughter.

No hands were offered. Anna nodded politely as each introduction was made, but her