High Country

by Nevada Barr

  Dickie took it, wadding it in one hand. Not a treasured relict of filial affection after all. “Is there anyplace else you guys keep stuff?”

  “Lockers. You want to go through Trish’s locker over at the Ahwahnee?”

  “I’m her brother. I got a right,” he said stubbornly.

  A wee little switch was thrown in Anna’s brain, the switch that controls the circuits separating the civilized from the uncivilized. “Shit yes, you got a right,” she said. “Let’s search it. Come on. Hell, we’ll search them all. There might be a pencil stub or hairpin somebody borrowed off Trish and by Godkept. Can’t have that. You got a right. Let’s move it. No time to lose. The market value of half-used order pads might be tanking as we speak.”

  “Anna!”

  It was Nicky. She’d squeaked like a mouse.

  “Sorry,” Anna said, more tired than before. “Sorry,” she said to a stupefied Dickie. “Come on. It’ll only take a minute. I don’t think you’ll find much.”

  Anna had gone through Trish’s locker, as had park rangers seeking clues prior to and during the search. She didn’t recall precisely what was there, only that it was of no interest. Dickie followed her past the Dumpsters. The employee entrance was locked after midnight and they had to enter through the front of the hotel. So late, the lobby was nearly empty, just two women sitting talking quietly in front of one of the great fireplaces.

  “Can I help you?” came from an alert young man behind the counter. Anna recognized the face but had to read his courtesy tag to get the name. “Hi Josh. I’m Anna Pigeon. I work with Tiny in the dining hall. This is Richard Cauliff. He’s Trish Spencer’s brother.”

  Joshua, having better manners than Dickie, shook his hand over the counter. “Hey man. Sorry about your sister. She was cool.”

  “He’s come to get his sister’s things from her locker,” Anna said.

  “Sure. Sorry, man.”

  The locker room was even grimmer without bustle from the kitchen to lend it life. Anna opened her locker. It was empty but for a hairbrush, a tube of Chapstick, a ticket book and a spare apron. Anna’d never worn it, she preferred the other; it had more body. This one hung like a limp rag. “The Chapstick and the brush are mine,” she said.

  “That apron hers?”

  “Take it.”

  Dickie wadded the apron up with the dirty shirt and pants.

  “You want the order pad?” Anna asked sourly.

  He picked it up and riffled through the unused pages. “Naw. You can keep it.”

  “You’re a prince.”

  Anna walked him back out through the lobby and around to the parking lot, more to make sure he was really leaving than because of any desire for his company. He left her there without a word of thanks or good-bye and hurried across the asphalt with the air of a man escaping.

  Having returned to the dorm, Anna retrieved her pack. Before she could end this annoying day she had to deliver the needle and syringe into the hands of the deputy superintendent.

  “Too weird,” Nicky said.

  “Way too weird,” Anna agreed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  On the quiet, lonely and, so, blissful walk to Leo Johnson’s quarters, Anna replayed Dickie Cauliff’s visit in her mind. Of all the various weirdnesses, two stuck out in her mind. Since he’d been so desperate to collect every shred of material goods his sister had left behind, why hadn’t he jumped at the chance to search the room when Anna’d offered? Had he been intimidated by her hostility and sarcasm? Or did he know it had already been searched? And when she had handed him the order book from the locker, why had he riffled through the pages before choosing not to take it? Did he merely crave a sample of his sister’s handwriting or was he searching for something small enough it could be secreted between the pages of a three-by-five pad and, not finding it, rejected the item?

  “Too weird,” she repeated aloud.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Leo Johnson’s place was three houses down a gentle hill from Lorraine Knight’s. It was slightly larger, as befitted his rank, but on a tiny scrap of land, houses pressing close to either side, and it lacked the wild glamour the creek lent to the chief ranger’s home. The windows were dark. As she banged on the front door, Anna thought maybe the deputy superintendent had given up on her and gone to bed.

  Time on a doorstep has little relation to time anyplace else in the universe. Anna fidgeted and scuffed and wondered where the hell he was for what seemed an age. When she could stand it no longer she knocked again. This time she got a response.

  “Hold your horses,” was shouted from the internal darkness.

  Anna’d heard the phrase her whole life but, coming by itself into an ear accustomed to silence, it sounded absurd.

  “Champing at the bit,” she called back for no other reason than that she was tired and it amused her.

  A bang, a muttered curse and the porch light glared to life. The door opened. Leo Johnson stared at her owlishly. He was still in uniform down to badge and brass nametag. Shoeless feet, his big toe coming through the cordovan-colored sock on his right foot, and the rumpled state of the very nearly unrumpleable fabric of the NPS uniform attested to the fact he’d been lounging in it. Or sleeping. Or rolling around on the floor. Dog hair and bits of lint stuck to the breast pockets. No dog had barked.Maybe cat hair, Anna thought hopefully. Petting a cat would have been good after the cold comfort of her day.

  “What is it?”

  Johnson had forgotten she was coming. Given that, why was he up and more or less in uniform in a dark house after one in the morning?

  “I called,” she said. “I have something to show you.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Right.” He stepped back to let her in and had to steady himself with the door. One mystery solved: he’d been sitting up half the night in the dark drinking. Leaving her to shut the door he moved into the living room and switched on a lamp. Following, Anna watched him. He wasn’t any good. Not careful. Unsteady on his feet. The drinking was not habitual; he hadn’t yet developed the coping skills of a longtime alcoholic.

  “Sit down,” he said. “Sorry for the . . .” He waved vaguely at the rest of the room.

  Usually when a host or hostess said “sorry for the mess” it was merely to point up how tidy a place was. Not so with Leo Johnson. There was little furniture, one La-Z-Boy recliner and two office chairs, the padded kind that swivel. Walls were devoid of pictures or decoration. The mantel above the cold maw of the fireplace held only one personal item, a brass plaque mounted on wood leaning crookedly against the brick. Magazines were piled on the hearth and beside the recliner. By a lamp on the one end table were two glistening rings. Her wait on the doorstep had probably been caused by the deputy superintendent’s trip to the kitchen to hide his bottle and glass.

  The place was in such disarray that at first Anna thought he had only recently moved in. After closer study she changed her mind. Someone else had recently moved out, taking most of the furnishings, the family dog and undoubtedly the children, if there were any. The house looked like the crash site after a marriage has gone down in flames. Probably this was what had fomented the drinking. Chances were he’d not been at it long. Alcoholics didn’t rise to assistant superintendent in crown jewel parks.

  Leo sat in the recliner, careful not to lean back or slouch or crumple, sucking it up to appear in control. More from a sense of duty than because anything would come of it—if Johnson even remembered this interview come morning—Anna outlined the events of the evening then produced the blood evidence from her backpack.

  “It’s a water bottle,” Leo said, the confusion of drink overcoming his futile attempt to control a world out of whack.

  “I put the syringe inside.” Anna was pleased to note she sounded more patient than she felt.

  “Okay. Yeah.” He unscrewed the bottle’s cap and started to shake the syringe out, needle first.

  “Careful!” Anna snapped. “You
could poke yourself.” At this point she didn’t much care whether or not he inoculated himself with whatever the needle held, but she wasn’t going to let him screw up any fingerprints that might be there. Reaching out, she took the bottle from his hands. “Cap, please.”

  Leo didn’t relinquish it. Instead he closed the hand that held it into a fist. The blear in his eyes was darkening, shifting to red. Anna suppressed a sigh. Her father-in-law had been an alcoholic, a longtime guzzler of bourbon. Over countless spoiled holidays she’d seen this same metamorphosis, as soggy drunk became belligerent drunk.

  “You say you think somebody stuck this in your sleeve?” Johnson asked.

  Anna’s father-in-law had employed this trick too, bringing up a subject of interest or a challenge just as his disgusted audience was about to walk out on him. In no mood for it, Anna stood. “That’s it,” she said.

  “Sounds like somebody doesn’t like you much.”

  That stopped her. Not because of the insult. When the alcohol changed his face she’d known cutting words were bound to make an appearance. Since she preferred them to flying fists, she wasn’t particularly offended. What stopped her was the clumsy double entendre in his tone. Johnson had emphasized “somebody” in such a way as to suggest he knew who it was, that maybe it was somebody in this room.

  “Who?” she demanded.

  The harsh command in her voice sobered him momentarily and he snapped out from behind the leering mask dripping over his face. He pushed himself to his feet. “Must be somebody knows you’re working at the hotel,” he said.

  Way to go, Dick Tracy,Anna thought. She held out her hand. “Could I have the cap to the bottle, please?” He gave her a blank stare. She pointed to the fist hanging at his side. Johnson opened his hand, surprised to find it contained a white plastic bottle cap. Wordlessly he handed it to her. Anna screwed it back on the bottle.

  “That’s evidence,” Johnson said. He appeared to be sobering at a phenomenal rate. Drunks did that. Anna had learned not to trust it.

  “It is,” she said. “Of what, I don’t know. The contents of the syringe need to be analyzed. It’s probably blood. We need a tox screen at the least.”

  The deputy superintendent plucked the bottle from her hand. Short of snatching for it and possibly ending up in a wrestling match she’d lose, Anna had to accept that it was gone.

  “I’ll get on it.” He set the bottle on the arm of the lounge chair behind him. It toppled off onto the carpet.

  “You’ll want to refrigerate that,” Anna said. “It’s already been at room temperature for half an hour that I can account for and who knows how much longer it was in my jacket.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said in his sober voice. “It’s late. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got an early day tomorrow.” The man’s rapid changes, from stupid drunk to mean drunk to assistant superintendent, had Anna off balance.

  Giving up the evening as a bad job she said, “Good night.” Reluctantly leaving the message in the bottle to its fate, she turned toward the door.

  “If they know who you are at the hotel, there’s no point in you and Lorraine keeping on playing this game of yours. You’ve been made.” The phrase tickled him and he laughed too long and too loud. “Cops and robbers. You girls should’ve signed on with the LAPD.”

  The booze had lowered Johnson’s guard as well as his IQ. Leo was a sexist. Lorraine Knight was everything he wasn’t: smart and strong, energetic and brave. And very possibly being groomed for a position he was rapidly drinking himself out of. No wonder he wanted her to fail in this endeavor. If she discovered what happened to the four missing people, even if it was too late to save their lives, it would be an enormous feather in her political cap.

  Anna took a last look at the bottle and syringe and debated whether or not to tell him again to put it in the refrigerator. She decided not to. Given his mood, the more she pushed for it, the less likely he was to comply.

  “I’m for bed,” she said and headed for the door. This time he didn’t stop her. As she closed it she glimpsed him disappearing into the kitchen. Probably to retrieve his bottle.

  The following day was the first of Anna’s two days off. She celebrated by sleeping late. Once “late” had been noon. In her thirties her internal clock shifted. Now “late” was seven-thirty. The dorm’s kitchen was blissfully deserted. She sat over her morning coffee unmolested, her mind turning over the scraps of information she’d gathered.

  Lorraine was to take on the task of tracing the red Ford Excursion driven by the Camp 4 squatters as well as tracking down the nice-smelling city boys who’d held Nicky down and searched the room. Since Lorraine had been sent packing to Missoula, Montana, to teach Leo’s class, Anna assumed these chores had been handed on to one or more of her rangers. Having no way of knowing to whom, Anna had to let that go. Short of breaking into the deputy superintendent’s house and stealing back the blood and needle for analysis, that avenue was closed as well.

  Since she’d had the good sense to rent a car for the duration of her stay, driving to Mariposa and paying a visit to Richard Cauliff was a possibility. With luck, she might be able to unearth the root of his peculiar greed for his sister’s old clothes and used cosmetics.

  “Hey,” she said aloud. The sound snapped her out of the speculative life of the mind and into the gray kitchen; gray because the ceiling of clouds that had settled on Yosemite two weeks before had yet to show any sign of lifting.

  The previous night Anna had suffered distractions venial, mortal and professional. A possible connection had been missed. Richard Cauliff had been in Yosemite Valley all evening. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that he’d rigged the needle in her jacket sleeve. In the classic litany of means, motive and opportunity, he had opportunity. Motive, always a subjective thing, could have been to revenge himself on Anna because she’d taken his sister’s place.

  Weak,Anna thought. It was the motive of a lunatic and Dickie came across as relatively sane. And, too, it required a passion for the deceased that was markedly missing. Dickie was either indifferent to his sister’s fate or a stoic of mythic abilities. Had Cauliff planted the needle, he would have known what was in Anna’s locker. There’d have been no need for the midnight visit. Unless he hadn’t realized Anna had taken his sister’s locker along with everything else of hers. He could have searched for one marked “Trish” and failing to find it, plunked himself down in the dorm to await Anna’s return.

  Dickie Cauliff was directly connected to one of the missing persons Anna had been brought to Yosemite to find; that was more than she could say for the rest of the facts she’d collected. Dickie won pride of place on her “to do” list.

  Glad to have an objective, she hit the road. First Mariposa, then another hour to visit Cricket in Merced. Nicky had said she would be in the hospital a couple more days for observation and testing. Since Anna had ostensibly saved her life, she hoped for a warm welcome and a cooperative spirit. Hoped. The shelf life of heroes was short.

  By eight-thirty Anna’s alarmingly turquoise subcompact was threading through the granite boulders that heralded the southwestern entrance to the park. The sudden narrowing of the valley with its mansions of stone and press of evergreens was at once magical and oppressive. Despite the cold and the lowering sky that held the park in grim stasis, Anna was not blind to the beauty of the place. It was easy to understand why Yosemite imprinted on the souls of so many. People spent lifetimes worshipping at her granite altars, painting and photographing her every mood, fighting to protect her waterfalls and lakes. Still, as Anna left this natural bottleneck, she experienced a sense of release and a lifting of spirits. For her, the glory of canyons and glens was best appreciated from the crest of a nearby hill. Open empty spaces where she could see what was coming suited her best.

  The road to Mariposa followed the Merced River. On the opposite bank from Highway 140 ran an old railroad bed. In the early 1990s, the flood that swept so many buildings from th
e park had taken out a lot of bridges, leaving derelict railroad buildings and the weathered ruins of barns, sheds and homes marooned in a time when the railroad was the main artery pumping commerce through the foothills to the mountains. Rather than slavishly attend to the rats running pointless races in her skull, Anna amused herself by imagining the lives and times of the softly delineated world across the river.

  Mariposa was a lovely town, coy and cute enough to trap tourists but with a life of its own coursing honestly behind the roughcut gingerbread. At a guess, the population was under three thousand. Anna found Dickie’s address obligingly published in the phone book and located his house without difficulty. Feeling anything but inconspicuous in a shocking blue car, she parked across the street and what would have been half a block down had this steep neighborhood been structured in an urban grid instead of narrow crooked lanes.

  Mariposa snowplow drivers must be among the best in the world,she thought idly as she double-checked the number on the mailbox, then settled in to get a feel of the place.

  Dickie’s home was down-at-the-heels but looked solid and surprisingly neat for the residence of a young unmarried man. Anna stopped herself. She knew nothing of Cauliff: whether he was married or single, owned or rented, worked or lived on unemployment.

  Smoke trickled from a stovepipe above what was probably the house’s main room. Someone was home. The windows were blanked with curtains of maroon with twisted parallelograms in gold, a fabric the like of which Anna had not seen in forty years. It put her in mind ofThe Jetsons with its cartoon vision of the future. The colors were still vivid, as if the curtains had not often been pulled over the years.

  Nothing to be gained by sitting obtrusively in blue, she left the car and crossed the street. The short concrete walk to the front door was broken by tree roots. Three alders towered up from the tiny yard. Probably planted as saplings when the house was first built, they now rose thirty or more feet above the roof ridge. Grass, if there was any, was hidden beneath their leaves, long since fallen and never raked away.