High Country

by Nevada Barr

Anna scarcely heard her; her mind was working overtime, things falling into place, small things. Had Jim inadvertently killed his lover, his anger at her saying it was the other way around made sense, as did his bone-deep terror of infecting anyone else. It was no wonder he had moved heaven and earth to find a way to spend time with his sweetheart. Love was a great motivator, but it paled in comparison to guilt. Guilt could move mountains one painful shovelful at a time.

  They reached the parking lot. Tiny didn’t stop to let Anna off in front of the dormitory but continued, circling around looking for a parking place.

  “You helped Jim with his meds,” Anna said. She should have kept her mouth shut, but she was so tired the guard between thought and speech had gone to sleep.

  “Oh hey, Nancy Drew’s just figured out who put the bloody syringe in her sleeve.”

  The change in Tiny’s voice as well as the words jolted Anna into hyperawareness. They were just cruising past the last of the parking places. Tiny was not slowing down.

  “You can let me out here. I’ll walk to the dorm,” Anna said.

  “I don’t think so,” Tiny replied and accelerated.

  CHAPTER

  20

  It crossed Anna’s mind to jump from the car, but they were already moving at thirty or forty miles per hour. A lot of damage could be done hitting frozen earth at those speeds. Anna was scared, but not that scared. Still, she couldn’t afford to wait. If bad guys wanted to move one from point A to point B, odds were B was going to be a whole hell of a lot worse than A.

  “Don’t do it, Tiny,” Anna said and reached for the wheel. Going into the ditch or a tree at forty miles an hour wouldn’t be a picnic, but with seat belt and airbags Anna figured she’d survive.

  A snaky slithering sound came from the down coat behind the seat. A cold hard circle of iron pressed into Anna’ skull. “Don’t you do it.” A woman’s voice.

  “Trish.” In the split second before Anna uttered the name, two more ragged pieces of information fit themselves together. Cricket’s terror at the hospital. Her insistence that Dickie Cauliff hadn’t come to see her though the ID-checking receptionist had a scrawled D. Cauliff in the visitor’s register. NotD. Cauliff butT. Cauliff. Trish had gotten in by flashing an old ID, one still bearing her maiden name. And Cricket had said to Nicky, “If you see her, tell her I couldn’t find it.” Her. Trish.

  “You’re not dead.” Anna let go of the steering wheel. “What a pity.”

  “Nope. Alive and intend to stay that way. You’ve got something of mine.”

  “You were in your brother’s truck,” Anna guessed. “You tried to run me down. What then? Search the body?”

  “Trish is a fool,” Tiny snapped. “She would have got us all killed.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t,” Trish said. Probably to regain face she tapped Anna hard with the barrel of the gun.

  Tiny turned left at the main road, heading away from the village. Anna’s mind should have been spinning with plots and plans, schemes to save herself, but it was oddly quiet; not the centered place from whence come the deepest thoughts but the weary blank one feels when, in the midst of going from one room to another, the reason for the trek is momentarily forgotten. Anna’s mind locked down in that becalmed state, and for the life of her she couldn’t kick it loose.

  For the life of her.

  Just to do something, to change enough outer variables so that inner gears might start to turn, she talked.

  “So you draw off blood while helping Jim with his shots and rig that booby trap in my coat. What was your point? That in ten years I’d be dead and out of your hair?”

  “The point was to get you the hell out of my dining room,” Tiny said. Because she was so small, she drove like Anna’s grandmother—a four-foot-ten fighting Quaker Democrat—hunched forward clutching the wheel, peering over its top. Anna was pleased to note her brain had thawed sufficiently to dredge up the image but wished it had snagged something more useful.

  “Dane Trapper’d put you in and you were nosing around. I pegged you for a company spy from day one,” Tiny gloated. “Besides, you’re a lousy waitress.”

  Anna wasn’t tempted to defend herself. Over the last couple of hours she’d become resigned to the fact that she didn’t have much of a future in the food services industry.

  “Clever you,” she said. “What were you afraid I’d sniff out, your little drug dealing operation?”

  Tiny said nothing. Trish gave Anna’s skull another rap with the gun barrel. The crack rattled Anna’s brain. Several more pieces fell in place: Tiny was childless. Tiny sent money to her beloved nephews. Tiny had left the valley for a family emergency the day Anna had come down from the high country. This was a family business.

  “How’s Mark?” Anna asked. She needed to keep them engaged. Why, she wasn’t sure; as long as they believed she had whatever it was they so desperately needed they would keep her alive. She just felt better talking. Words covered the blank spot in her brain that refused to come up with any heroic measure faster than a speeding bullet. That Trish would pull the trigger, Anna had no doubt. Though she couldn’t see the woman’s face, she could feel the sick excitement of a thrill-seeker lusting after the ultimate high, the murder of a fellow human being. “Your nephew,” Anna said when Tiny didn’t take the bait. “Last I saw him he had a bit of a hotfoot.”

  “You’ll wish that’s all you got,” Tiny hissed.

  “You take him to the hospital?” Anna pushed. “What did he do? Hike out?”

  “When Mark didn’t come out I told those bozos he was with to clear out and went looking.”

  “There it is,” Trish said.

  “I know where it is,” Tiny snapped. “I’m not blind.”

  “Unlike Mark,” Anna said.

  “Shut up.” The pistol barrel cracked against her head again, this time hard enough to set her ears ringing.

  “How did you know where the plane went down?” Anna asked and flinched, but Trish didn’t hit her again.

  “Ever hear of cell phones?” Tiny sneered. “My nephew Luther called me before they crashed. When Trish showed up with the dope she’d ‘found,’ I knew exactly where they’d gone down.”

  Luther. Anna’s paralyzed brain began to creak to life, thoughts coming slowly, laboriously. The name Luther was ringing bells. For a moment she was quiet, listening to this internal clamor. When it died away the memory was there. She’d heard the name from Scott the night they’d gone out, he for bourbon, she for tea. Luther had been his cell mate in Soledad penitentiary. Luther had shared in the joy of cooking, been a recipient of the “treats” Jim smuggled in along with the food for his classes.

  Nephew Luther had been dealing dope in prison. Jim Wither served as a mule getting him product. Anna guessed that was the price Jim paid for the privilege of being with Lonnie the last months of his life.

  A hefty price tag. Tiny had power over him until the statute of limitations on his crime ran out. No wonder he’d turned a blind eye and asked no questions when she’d taken his blood.

  Tiny was not a small-time dealer, she was a franchise. Her brother, whom Scott said had connections in the field of corrections, must run a family business, one that had taken the life of one son, Luther, and the eye of the other, Mark.

  Tiny turned and drove into a campground at the end of the valley, a lovely spot on the banks of the Merced River away from the bustle of the village. It had been empty since a spring flooding had damaged the campsites and facilities.

  Tiny neatly negotiated the car around the sawhorses bearing the “Closed for Rehabilitation” sign and pulled deep into the trees where they wouldn’t be seen by a passing patrol ranger. She turned the lights off but left the motor running. It was too cold to sit long without heat and, Anna noted, the car had automatic door locks, the kind that locked without human interference and stayed locked till the ignition was turned off or a magic button pushed. Anna had no idea where the magic button was. Anticipating a future need for this
information, her right hand crept to the door and began exploring.

  “Hands in your lap,” Trish ordered. The gun barrel struck. Momentarily Anna forgot where her hands were.

  “Where is it?” Tiny demanded.

  At first Anna thought she spoke of the door-lock button.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was mortified to hear the whine in her voice. She had grown terribly afraid, the kind of fear that smothers thought and unravels courage. In the ice and ink of the high country with a psychotic drug dealer hounding her, there had always been something she could do: a place to run, a face to strike at, a burrow to hide in. In this warm and comfortable sedan, a gun to her head, seat belt safely fastened and no idea in hell what was wanted of her, she was crippled with helplessness.

  To stave off that unacceptable sensation, she breathed deeply through her nose and pressed the foot with the bad ankle into the floorboards. Pain dispelled incipient hysteria.

  “Before you hit me with that damn gun again and addle what brains I have left, tell me what you’re after,” she said as reasonably as the situation permitted. “Honest to God, I don’t know what you think I’ve got.”

  “Bullshit,” Tiny said.

  “My apron,” Trish snapped. “My fucking apron. Where is it?”

  The surreal swept away the real and with it Anna’s fear. “Yourapron ?” she cried. “This is about yourapron, for Chrissake?” The absurdity brought her up against her shoulder restraint as she turned in the seat to face Trish. By the dim green light from the dashboard she saw the gun, looking as big as a cannon. A silencer was affixed to the end of the pistol. These women were well connected with the underworld. The shot would never be heard. The gun was probably stolen and certainly unregistered. Anna would be found dead in an abandoned campground and the murder weapon would never be traced.

  Fear returned. “Your brother came and got it with the rest of your things,” she said.

  “That was my spare apron. The other apron. You kept it. Where is it?” Trish punctuated her words with another vicious blow to Anna’s temple. Had she not been sitting she would have fallen.

  “You hit her too hard,” she heard Tiny say as if from a distance. “We need her conscious.”

  Anna took that as a cue and went limp.

  “If you’ve killed her I’ll wring your neck,” Tiny fumed. “That stunt with the truck used up your stupid quotient and my patience for one day.”

  “She’s faking.” This was said in Anna’s left ear. Trish was leaning close. “Watch.”

  A rustle. A move. A sharp object was jammed in Anna’s upper arm and twisted. Anna cried out.

  “See?”

  “Let’s cut the crap, Anna,” Tiny said. “Where’s the apron? Tell us and we’ll let you go.”

  They wouldn’t let her go. During the short drive from the hotel to the deserted campground Tiny had told her secrets. Nobody puts all their secrets in one basket, then lets that basket live. Besides, Anna had gouged and torched a favorite nephew. That was bound to go against her in the final reckoning.

  For a long and frightful moment, she couldn’t remember where the apron was. Just as she thought she had really and truly lost it, it came back to her. The night she and Scott went to Yosemite Lodge for drinks she’d been wearing it. Scott had noticed. She’d taken it off and thrown it in the backseat of his Mustang along with her day pack. She’d never retrieved it.

  “I hid it,” Anna said.

  “Where?”

  “You can’t get to it without me.” Reflexively, she threw her hand up to protect the side of her face. True to form, Trish struck. This time the barrel rapped across Anna’s knuckles. Pain in the small bones of her hand was worse than the pain in her skull, but at least it didn’t scramble her brain.

  “You tell us,” Trish said. “We’ll worry about getting it.”

  “I tell you. You shoot me. What’s in that for me?”

  Trish whacked and prodded for several more minutes, but Anna held her ground. It wasn’t hard. The moment they no longer needed her she was dead. A halfhearted beating was nothing compared to that.

  She had no plan, no deep reason for leading them to the apron. She only knew that where she was—point B—was hopeless. The variables had to change before she could manufacture a chance to better her odds.

  Tiny put a stop to Trish’s redundant and stupefying brand of torture. “All right, Miss Smarty-pants, we’ll play it your way one time.”

  The “Miss Smarty-pants” coming so close on the heels of being bludgeoned about the head struck Anna as terrifically funny. She was going to be killed by a Sunday-school teacher.

  Hilarity and battering dizzying her, her mind spun through Tiny’s next words.

  “We’ll go one place. One. You’ll give us the apron or we shoot you where you stand.”

  The need to laugh evaporated. Anna didn’t doubt for a moment that Tiny spoke the truth.

  “Go toward Ahwahnee,” she said and was relieved to feel the car begin to move. During the short drive no one spoke. Anna’s mind turned on the coveted apron. She’d liked it because it was stiffer, had more body than the other one. Something must have been sewn into the back panels. Something light and supple, like the interfacing used in cloth belts and collars. Cash was the first thing that came to mind, the cash from the pilot’s satchel she’d found among Trish’s things. But unless the denominations of the bills were greater than any the U.S. Treasury printed, the apron couldn’t hold enough to tempt a businesswoman such as Tiny Bigalo into risking kidnapping and murder to get it back.

  Besides, Tiny and Trish didn’t feel as if they were motivated by greed. Not at the moment anyway. They were scared. Fear boiled off of them in palpable waves that, when inhaled, left a bitter taste at the back of Anna’s throat.

  Therefore the lining of the apron must contain papers which, if not retrieved, threatened their lives.

  These fragmented ideas banged around in her aching head as they drove through the sleeping valley, the moon casting a perfect light on frosted trees and the glittering shingles of the marvelous old buildings. Blind to the beauty, Anna remained in her own skull.

  The pilot’s satchel: maps, maybe cash, a change of underwear, a toothbrush. What else would be deemed necessary to the personal health and hygiene of a man flying a plane loaded with weed?

  Names and addresses of contacts. The thought illuminated Anna’s dark contemplations so suddenly she glimpsed the cartoon lightbulb above her. The apron contained the pilot’s little black book with the names of the drug dealers he bought from and/or sold to. Trish must have taken it along with whatever else the satchel contained.

  “You tried a bit of blackmail, did you?” Anna asked. “Thinking you could squeeze the big boys for some real money?”

  “Trish is a fool,” Tiny said. “Where to? Don’t mess with me. I’m old and it’s past my bedtime and I never liked you anyway.”

  They’d passed the village. Anna was taking them to the employee housing where Scott’s Mustang would be parked. She’d not thought much further than that. No brilliant idea came to her now. “Turn left,” she said. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  Tiny did and they drove down the quiet lane behind the row of homes facing onto the meadow. Scott’s Mustang was parked behind the house he shared with Jim Wither.

  “Stop,” Anna said as they drew level with it. “Park here.”

  “Where’s the apron?” Trish demanded as if she’d expected to see it hanging on a tree marked with a big red X.

  “I’m taking you to it,” Anna said irritably and cringed, but the expected blow didn’t come. “We get out,” she said. Tiny turned off the ignition and Anna heard a satisfyingthunk as the automatic locks popped open.

  “Me first,” Trish said.

  For a woman so young Trish Spencer was well versed in controlling prisoners. Fortunately, Tiny didn’t take well to orders from underlings. She took off her seat belt, opened the driver door and turned h
er back on Anna.

  Quicker than she would have believed possible given the slings and arrows which had abused her body over an impossibly long day, Anna grabbed the dash with her right hand, the back of her seat with the left, pivoted on her butt, lifted her feet above the console and with all the strength of desperation planted both boots in the small of Tiny’s back.

  The little woman shot out, smashed into the half-opened car door and fell face-first onto the roadway. Anna released her seat belt and scrambled after her, hoping to win free of the car before Trish realized what was going on and made it around from the rear passenger door.

  Anna’s hands were on the door’s kick-plate when whatever it was that hit her hit. A boot. A knee. Not the barrel of the handgun; Anna’d become intimate with the feel of its caress.

  Had it been light the world would have grayed out. As it was dark, Anna merely lost her sense of up and down, time and place. The stunning was short-lived. When her knees and elbows banged into the frozen asphalt, “down” was firmly reestablished. A new ache tampered with her tender skull. Trish had a fistful of hair. Jerking Anna’s head up, she rammed the silencer into her ear.

  “Don’t shoot her,” Tiny hissed. She’d come to all fours and crouched nearly nose to nose with Anna, two dogs ready to fight. “One sound out of you and I rip your fucking tongue out with my fingernails. Got that?”

  Anna nodded. Tiny’s fingernails, undoubtedly acrylic, were an inch long and painted the color of old blood. From the faint spill of moonlight through the trees, Anna could just see the woman’s face: black and white, all eyes and years.Nosferatu. The right side of her face, from cheekbone to jaw, glittered in black stripes where the ice and pavement had scraped away the skin.

  Deliberately, Tiny raised one long-nailed hand and raked hard down the side of Anna’s face.

  “We’ll be the Bobbsey Twins,” she whispered and Anna wondered if the headwaitress was entirely sane or if she’d delivered one too many turkey quesadillas.

  Using the door for assistance, Tiny pulled herself to her feet. “Get her up,” she ordered as she retrieved her coat from the backseat and put it on. Anna felt herself being lifted by the hair and was surprised at the younger woman’s strength. Trish did it one-armed; the other arm, with the hand holding the gun, never wavered. The cold metal of the silencer’s tip pressed and banged into the cartilage of Anna’s ear till she could have screamed with the constant invasion of pain and noise.