High Country

by Nevada Barr

  “Got to promise me three things,” she said.

  “Anything,” Mary replied. No hesitation, no jockeying. Anna believed she would be as good as her word.

  “You tell me before you do anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “You report back to me immediately after you do anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “And if I tell you not to do something, you don’t do it.”

  There was a fraction of a pause, but not enough to be alarming. “I can live with that,” Mary said.

  Anna sincerely hoped she could.

  “We’re home.”

  “Home” was of course the dormitory. At forty Anna’d sworn she would never accept dormitory accommodations again. The pajama-party atmosphere she’d so enjoyed as a boarder at Mercy High School and, to a lesser degree, in college, had lost its allure. There were times when even the strong sweet presence of Paul was too much for her to bear; times when her psyche couldn’t deal with the impact of any life not blessed with fur and paws. Paul seemed to understand this rather than take offense. An upstairs room in his historic house in Port Gibson, Mississippi, had been set aside for her exclusive use after they were married. He very kindly didn’t offer to decorate or furnish it for her. It was hers alone to do with as she pleased. He’d promised to knock before entering.

  Anna wished she were in it now, bare wood, bare walls, bare of furniture. Often as not, privacy and a hard floor beat company and a soft bed. The memory wavered, then faded. A room of her own and all that entailed belonged to another life. One that grew ever harder to hang on to. By repetition, the big lie of who she was became ever more believable.

  She stopped at the door of the room she and Nicky shared. Mary continued down the hall calling a “good night” over her shoulder. The prospect of being Anna’s partner in anti-crime had her jacked up.

  “Before you doanything, ” Anna reminded her, “you tell me.”

  Mary spun around, came to an abrupt halt, heels together. Saluting smartly, she said: “Ma’am. Permission to brush my teeth, ma’am.”

  Even knowing it only encouraged children, Anna couldn’t help but laugh. “Permission granted.”

  Anna opened the door and flipped on the light.

  Nicky wasn’t in. Anna had figured that when she’d found the door closed. Both Nicky and Cricket suffered from the fear that they were missing something when they weren’t at the heart of a group of babbling people.

  The room was a shambles. It seemed ironic that the only time she’d seen it tidy was after it had been tossed by professionals. She was half sorry she’d spent so much time and energy assuaging Nicky’s fears. Had she stayed scared she might have continued to pick up after herself if for no other reason than to create an illusion of control over some small part of her life.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Anna exclaimed, hearing her dead mother-in-law’s voice in her own. Nicky hadn’t been happy simply to trash her own side of the room, she’d trashed Anna’s as well.

  “Doggoned, silly-assed little nitwit,” Anna cursed gently. Up near Merced Pass she’d gotten enough of the brutal sort to leave a bad taste in her mouth when it came to four-letter words. She flicked on her desk light.

  “Oh dear.” Where she had been merely annoyed she was now alarmed. The clutter covering her unmade bed, spilling out the open door of her narrow closet and littering her desktop did not belong to her roommate. All of it was hers: books, papers, clothes, everything dumped out and tossed into a dismaying salad of single shoes, pencils, unmarried socks, Altoid mints, paper clips and other small things she’d thought to bring along as necessary to life and human dignity.

  Snapshots of Paul and Piedmont were on the floor. Snatching them up protectively, she held them to her shirt front as if she didn’t want them to see the mess.

  Much as she’d denigrated this cramped and crowded space, for the moment, it was all the home she had. On one level or another she’d been missing it for three days and two nights. Here she had pajamas that didn’t leave her fanny out in the breeze, a pillow that had been molded to her head, blankets that didn’t smell of cleanser. Herthings.

  Now somebody had messed with her things, tainted them, made them unfamiliar and scary. Still clutching the pictures, she sat down in the desk’s plastic chair and fought unsuccessfully not to cry.

  “You’re just tired,” she said to herself to excuse the childish outburst. The storm passed. She didn’t make a move to clean up but sat looking at her pictures. The smiling blond man with a badge on his chest leaning on a shovel; Anna had taken it one day when business took her to the nuclear power plant west of Port Gibson. She’d come across Paul digging Mrs. Mack’s pickup out of the mud. The cat was photographed asleep over the arm of her great-grandfather’s couch in the pose of a lion in the Serengeti draped over a branch waiting for an unwary wildebeest to happen by; a small defiant race-memory of being king of the forest.

  The snap of Paul unsettled her. He looked a stranger somehow. Scott Wooldrich’s warm smile superimposed itself over the sheriff’s face as if Scott were real, Paul a figment of her imagination. She put the picture back in the desk drawer and closed it.

  Piedmont was still Piedmont. She stared at his likeness and longed for his rattling purr in her ears.

  Anna was communing with her absent family in this fashion when Nicky came in.

  “Anna! Where’ve you been? You only had two days off. Did you know that? Tiny’ll be shitting bricks. What happened to your foot? Why is your hand bandaged? My God, woman, where have youbeen? ”

  The frenetic energy Nicky brought with her only served to make Anna realize how tired she was.

  “I went camping,” she said vaguely.

  Seemingly satisfied with the answer, probably because what had happened to her was of far greater interest than what Anna had been up to, Nicky plopped down on her unmade bed and began to chatter.

  “Boy did you miss all the excitement. It was totally bizarre. I meantotally. Yesterday—no wait, the day before yesterday—Cricket comes back. Something happened to her for sure. I mean it was like she quit breathing, you know, saw the white light and came back from the dead but different. Like inFlatliners. She was so weird. She comes in and hardly says ‘Hi Nicky’ before she’s going on about how she thinks you took some of her stuff. I mean she hadn’t evenlooked at her stuff, hadn’t started packing, nothing, so why she’s on about you taking things beats me. So I say, ‘Took what?’ Not that I thought you’d stolen anything. What would you want with anything Cricket’s got? Like you’re going to sneak off with a half-used tube of lip gloss or a pair of thong panties. Cricket didn’t have money except a jar of tips, which was all there. I know because I borrowed a couple bucks for pizza. Cricket and I do that all the time. Borrow from each other. So it wasn’t money she was missing. And her jewelry’s all junk. Anyway, where would you wear it? In this fishbowl somebody’d say, ‘Hey, aren’t those Cricket’s earrings?’ And there you’d be.

  “Anyway, she doesn’t tell me what she thinks you took but just starts plowing through your stuff. By now I’m getting a little pissed, back from the dead or not, and I start saying like, ‘Is it bigger than a breadbox? Smaller than a postage stamp?’ But she is just throwing your stuff out of drawers and crying, ‘It’s got to be here.’ Man, what a trip,” she finished.

  Nicky wasn’t the worse for wear, but Anna was out of breath from listening to her. For a moment she sat, eyes on the mess on her side of the room, trying to get her mind to work. “Did she find it?” she asked finally.

  “Nope. Her folks showed up. They packed Cricket and all her stuff in the back of their SUV and she was gone. Bizarre. She didn’t even say good-bye to me. All she says is, ‘If you see her, tell her I couldn’t find it.’ ”

  “Ah.” Anna’s bed, torn up and littered with what worldly goods she’d brought, began to look impossibly inviting. “Who was ‘her’? Me?”

  “I guess. Anyway, whatever it was, she didn’t
find it. What was it?”

  “I have no idea,” Anna said.

  “Oh come on.”

  “Really.”

  “Have it your way. If everybody’s going to go all double-oh-seven, you might at least let your roommate in on it.”

  Nicky waited expectantly, but Anna hadn’t the energy to protest her innocence at greater length. After a moment the girl harrumphed and slammed off to the bathroom to brush her teeth and Anna was left in peace.

  Two thugs had searched the room. Dickie Cauliff had come seeking something. Cricket had looked and couldn’t find it. Anna thought again of the water-and-fuel-soaked leather satchel. Were they all after the cash it had contained—presuming it had contained cash? The plane had been inward bound, probably from Mexico or the Baja, fully laden. The load had already been purchased. In a logical world the pilot would have flown out loaded with money, paid for the dope and started back. He would have had only enough to pay personal expenses on the return trip. How much walking-around money did the average drug mule need? Surely not enough to warrant three searches with the inherent risk and exposure that came with them. And the satchel hadn’t been large, about the size of a briefcase. Unless stuffed full of high-denomination bills, it wouldn’t contain enough money to be of serious interest to the sort of entrepreneur who imported high-grade weed by the planeload.

  Anna gave up thinking. Her brain was not in good working order and she had too little information. What she needed she could not get in her persona of waitress to the rich and pampered. Lorraine Knight had been the one carrying out that end of the investigation: tracking the red Ford Excursion, checking the lodging houses for suspicious registrants, background checks, the tox screen on the blood in the syringe—the details where the devil and often the truth were rumored to live.

  Johnson was worthless. Tomorrow Anna would call Montana and ask the chief ranger what the hell was going on.

  Not being in the mood for another chat with Nicky, she shed her clothes, crawled into the pile on her bed and, the picture of Piedmont under her pillow in hopes of good dreams, turned her face to the wall and slept.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Anna slept soundly, did not dream and woke refreshed. As she showered and dressed, drank her coffee and made desultory conversation with Nicky, what she had done, who she had been, those dark nights on the mountain nagged at her. Surely a decent human being would be wracked with guilt. Scenes of fire and ax should flash before her eyes, sudden terrors burn in her brain. Anna felt nothing. When she recalled the events of the past seventy-two hours it was as if she were remembering a movie or a story about something that had happened to somebody else. When time permitted, she needed to call her sister. Maybe she’d suffered a disassociation due to trauma. At present she scarcely felt there’d been a trauma. Oh, sure, she had knocked a man named Phil in the head with an ax and lit his buddy on fire, but other than that nothing much had transpired.

  She should suffer—care—but she couldn’t focus on it long enough to work up a good case of angst. She was grateful she wasn’t being assaulted by the creeping horrors, but it concerned her all the same. It would be a relief to know she wasn’t an amoral monster but merely suffering from a perfectly normal mental disorder. If not, then perhaps that icy visitation, the glacial stillness filling her, then turning to venom, was who she really was; the evil Mark called forth had not arisen from some otherwhere but resided in her.

  Was in her now.

  Anna didn’t want that to be true, though she had to admit it had been handy at the time. It was refreshing to be able to do dastardly deeds on a Sunday and report for work on Monday none the worse for wear.

  Seven-thirty and she was banging on Leo Johnson’s front door. She wanted to deal with Lorraine Knight, but chain-of-command and simple self-interest persuaded Anna to try Leo first.

  Johnson was awake and shaved, and because he was new to this business of drinking and not quite past redemption, looked like hell; his body hadn’t adapted to the nightly poisoning. An empty bottle was rolled partway under the lounger in the living room. Anna pitied him, but not much.

  “Anna,” he said, sounding surprised and not entirely pleased. “What dragged you out of bed so early on a cold morning?”

  The morning was freezing, crystal clear and the coldest since Anna had come to Yosemite. Till this morning, constant dreary cloud cover kept the temperatures moderated. The cold bit her ears and made her nose run. Such small inconveniences were nothing to the pleasure she felt in the blue of the sky and the bright white light of the winter sun.

  “I need to talk with you,” she said.

  “Let’s go on down to the office. I was just on my way.”

  “Here would be better.” Leo gave her a blank stare that lasted long enough she knew he’d forgotten precisely who she was and what she was up to.

  “Right. Right. Lorraine’s undercover operation.” That was all he said, no aspersions cast, but the tone was intentionally lighthearted and dismissive. The very worst sort of condescension, the kind that can be felt but not proved. The kind that, in the retelling, sounds paranoid on the part of the teller.

  Anna ignored it. Leo crossed behind the counter that separated the entry hall and living area from the kitchen, poured her a mug of coffee and shoved it over the Formica in her direction. The very thing to win back her good opinion. “Thanks,” she said. “Did I talk with you the other day when I came into the clinic?”

  “No.” His eyes darted around in a worried fashion. For a moment she wondered what in the hell he was up to. He settled, looked at her.Evidence, she realized. He was checking to see if any telltale bottles or other signs of his addiction were in the kitchen area. Finding it clean, he was able to concentrate. “I heard from the nurse practitioner there. Sharon. She said you’d come in a little banged up and had been full of wild stories she’d thought she’d better pass on to me.”

  “Did she?”

  “What?”

  “Did she pass them on?”

  Leo’s face hardened in annoyance, the impervious variety that higher-ups don when their subordinates become insubordinates. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?” he suggested.

  Marveling at the neat way he’d not only gotten out of answering a question that might pertain to his own competence but subtly put her in the wrong, Anna pulled up a counter stool. Admiration for good politics didn’t negate her anger, and as she sat down she took a moment to remember that she wasn’t in Yosemite to correct or improve the deputy superintendent. Due to unforeseen circumstances, Leo Johnson was all she had at the moment. It behooved her to find a way to work with him.

  She gave a concise report of her trip to Lower Merced Pass Lake. Speculation, deduction and emotional content she kept to herself. When she’d finished, she waited in silence for him to respond.

  He sighed. He drummed his fingers. He looked at her. Looked away. Sipped his coffee. Anna half expected him to shake his head as Sister Mary Janel had been wont to do on occasion, saying: “Anna, Anna, Anna, whatam I to do with you?”

  Sister Janel had never had to deal with her axing one man and igniting another, but Anna rather wished it were the nun across the counter rather than the man. Sister Janel never suffered from muddled thinking.

  “The nurse—Sharon—said something like that,” Leo admitted after a while. “It was over the top. I figured you were delirious, confused—hypothermia, a knock on the head.”

  Anna quashed the need to shout: “Then why didn’t you check it out, you lunkhead?” Obviously Leo hadn’t wanted to check it out. He wanted it to be delirium because then he wouldn’t have to take action. Action was risky in any bureaucracy. If things went wrong the blame must be laid at someone’s door. Usually that someone was the last provable decision maker.

  “That’s how it happened,” she said instead. “I got the idea Phil was killed. Mark, the one who came after me, might be alive. I didn’t stick around.”

  “What a mess,” he said
more to himself than her. “What a god-awful mess.”

  “They were staying in Dixon Crofter’s tent cabin. You might want to check—”

  “I’ll see to it,” he cut her off.

  Anna closed her mouth. A tide was turning and she had the unpleasant sensation it was turning against her.

  “Don’t leave the park,” Leo said. “You’ll be wanted for questioning.”

  He grabbed his coat and preceded her out of his house. Just like that she’d been demoted from investigator to suspect. At least that was the way it felt. From the bullish set of the deputy superintendent’s shoulders and the crimped line of his lips, Anna guessed now was not the time to pepper him with questions.

  Taking the line of least resistance she said, “Yes, sir,” and headed back toward the concession dorms.

  By quarter after eight she was in the Ahwahnee’s fine lobby armed with her credit card. Getting this particular call reimbursed by the NPS might prove tricky, but if she could get hold of Lorraine it would be worth it. After a few minutes wrangling, she browbeat a harassed-sounding fellow into pulling the chief ranger out of the class she was teaching.

  Feeling a bit of a whiner and a bit of a tattletale, Anna told Lorraine of her adventures to date and Johnson’s lack of support or assistance.

  When she’d finished, Lorraine didn’t hesitate. “Look. Stay out of Leo’s way. He’ll get a couple rangers up the trail and, if your story proves out—which I have no doubt it will—he’ll call in the Navy.” Anna was grateful for this; she’d been with the Park Service long enough that she was not accustomed to being blown off when she reported a double homicide. “Yosemite has an understanding with them. They’ve been very good about lending us support—particularly air support.