High Country- Pigeon 12 (15 page)

"I have something I need to show you," she said when he came on the phone. "I'd rather it be tonight," she told him when he tried to put her off and added, "I'd rather not tell you over the phone," when he wanted to know what it was.

Hanging up the receiver, half a dozen movies where the protagonist uttered the fateful words: "I'd rather not tell you over the phone," flashed piecemeal through her mind. Roughly translated into cinemaese those words meant: a bad thing will prevent me from telling you until the plot thickens considerably.

Pretending she didn't feel the cold hand of superstition clutching the back of her neck, she went to her dorm room to change clothes. Another minute or two wasn't going to make any difference and she was tired of feeling like the tablecloth after the feast.

The door to the room she shared with Nicky and Cricket was open, soft light falling in a bar across the mud-tracked linoleum of the hall. The sight reassured her criminals were not ransacking within and Nicky had recovered sufficiently to return to her happy social self.

Nicky was not alone. Sitting on the edge of her bed, a glossy magazine open on her knees, she looked as if she was waiting in a dentist's office for a root canal. Slouched in Anna's desk chair was a lumpish young man in the ubiquitous winter costume of Levi's, fleece pullover and dirty running shoes. Both of them looked immensely relieved to see her. Two young persons of opposite genders alone in the dark of night thrilled to see a middle-aged lady; the news couldn't be good.

"Hey," Anna said. "What's up?"

"This is Richard Cauliff," Nicky said.

Before she could continue, the man in the chair said. "I came to get my sister's stuff."

Richard. Dick. Dickie. "Right," Anna said. She flipped the switch by the door turning on the overhead light to get a better look at him. He was in his early twenties, thick from between the ears to the hips. Not much neck to speak of and not nearly enough hair. He hadn't shaved his head-maybe not living close enough to fashion's cutting edge for that-but he'd had it clipped as close as a new boot camp recruit's.

The effect was not flattering. His ears were too big and his skull an unattractive shape, the forehead sloping back to a pointy crown, the bone over the spine ridged and protruding.

"Anna Pigeon," Anna introduced herself and thrust out her hand in a manly fashion, a habit picked up from a feminist mother and years spent in what had been, when she'd begun, a man's profession.

Without rising, Dickie leaned forward and shook it tepidly. "I came for Trish's stuff," he repeated. "I'm her brother."

It occurred to Anna that he didn't recognize her voice from the phone call earlier in the day. A good thing. It wouldn't do for a mid-level payroll clerk to be showing up in the employee dorm smelling of pepper steak and blackened catfish.

Her first impulse was to ask for identification, but it was too heavy-handed for a disinterested waitress and one who'd never even met his sister. Besides, Dickie's ID was in his DNA. If not a brother, he was a close relative. Anna recognized the dark brown eyes and buckteeth from the photograph of Trish the chief ranger had shown her. Dickie's teeth were even more prominent than his sister's. A rude comment of her dad's surfaced in the back of Anna's mind: "Looked like he could eat corn on the cob through a picket fence."

Despite the slipshod way he'd been slapped together, Dickie might have been appealing in a goofy sort of way had not acne ruined his skin. The scars were deep, pitted, the flesh ruddy and new outbreaks thrust through the damaged flesh. Treatments now existed for cases as severe as his. Anna pitied him that his parents had been too broke, indifferent or ignorant to save him the disfigurement.

"I'm the lady who took over Trish's job-just till she gets back," she said.

An emotion other than dull, carplike sullenness flickered in Dickie's eyes. Anna couldn't tell if it was in response to her stepping into his sister's shoes or to the halfhearted sop she'd tagged on the end about Trish's imaginary return. Either way, it wasn't a happy gleam. Suddenly Anna got tired. Fatigue dropped on her chest so heavily it was hard not to stagger under it. The day had been excessively long and filled with people who wanted, feared, or hated things Anna couldn't quite get a grip on. Sour peevish humanity had soaked her in spiritual brine till, had a vampire been around to sink fangs into her, he would swear he'd bitten into a pickle.

"The rangers took her packed-up belongings just after I got here," she said. "You'll have to ask them what happened to them. Now if you don't mind, I'd like to go to bed."

Nicky shot her a look of admiration, and Anna was reminded of her salad days when she thought she was tough but in reality was so very young and unsure she couldn't even get rid of Jehovah's Witnesses who came uninvited to her door or hang up on phone solicitors, let alone evict a person who'd managed to get inside.

The force of age and authority brought Dickie up from the chair but didn't move him out the door. He wanted to go; Anna could see that in the shuffle of his feet and the cant of his shoulders. It was as if his body were pulling for the door and only a stubborn mind held it back. And maybe not the mind of Richard Cauliff; he didn't look like a man determined to stand his ground to get what's rightfully his. Everything about him, the body language, his eyes shifting away from hers each time they met, the sullenness, screamed of a servant afraid to return to his master without whatever it was he'd been sent to fetch.

"I got that stuff, but stuff was missing from her stuff."

Anna wanted to give him something just to avoid having to hear the word "stuff" one more time.

"You want to search the room?" she asked. "Be our guest. Just hurry up. I'm dead on my feet."

"You got her clothes on. She said." He pointed at Nicky with a forefinger, the nail bitten till the quick was bloody in places.

Anna laughed. "Jesus. You want her uniform? Hell, I'll buy it from you. Twenty bucks suit you? Depreciation on polyester pants is a bitch. Not much resale value."

"They're mine. I got a right."

Though he'd yet to show any sign he suffered grief over the loss of his sister, it crossed Anna's mind that he might want the clothes because they had belonged to her, because she had worn them. She backed off.

"Sure. They're all yours. Step outside and I'll change."

He didn't move.

"I'm not changing in front of you."

He left, closing the door behind him. Nicky jumped up and turned the deadbolt. "He was probably afraid we wouldn't let him back in," she whispered.

"We won't," Anna replied. She skinned out of the shirt and trousers, pulled on a pair of Levi's and a work shirt. Zipped, tucked and buttoned, she unlocked and opened the door. "One waitress uniform."

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 God kept. 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.