High Country- Pigeon 12 (9 page)

The sun, watery and white with winter, had crawled above the cliff tops and poured light if not heat into the valley. Camp 4 was astir. Men were hanging clothes on the trees trying to dry them from yesterday's sleeting rains. Men huddled around fires and crouched over camp stoves. Men stared at each other over morning coffee. In the entire village of eleven tents Anna didn't see a single female. Climbing was mostly a boy's sport, though women were uniquely suited to excel at it.

Not finding an amiable woman with whom she might strike up a conversation based on gender or age, she approached three men in their late thirties or early forties who had pitched their tents fairly close to Dixon's cabin.

"Excuse me," she said pleasantly, "but is that North Face's newest tent? I've been thinking about getting one. Are they any good?"

Outdoorsmen dearly love to talk about gear. Before the wonders of the high-tech tent were halfway extolled, Anna was seated at their picnic table sipping their coffee. When she'd listened to the virtues and shortcomings of various pieces of equipment long enough to establish her credit, she shifted the conversation.

Gesturing at Dix's cabin with her tin mug she said: "Now that's the way to go: standing room, plank floor, woodstove."

To her surprise, the second her meager line hit the water, fish began virtually leaping into the boat. Her coffee klatch had a great deal to say about Dix's tent cabin.

A party had raged within its walls long after these sober fellows had wanted to go to sleep. Along with apparently every climber in Camp 4 and a generous sprinkling of concession employees from nearby Yosemite Lodge, they'd got wind of the gathering by the usual osmosis. They'd attended the first three hours readily enough, but when they'd called it a night the others were just warming up. The racket had gone on till three A.M.

"The rangers should've done something," one man groused.

"Did you report it?" Anna asked. He hadn't. Given that the park was fairly deserted this time of the year, probably no one had been patrolling within earshot of the festivities.

By careful questioning-controlling the direction of flow rather than trying to keep it going-Anna found out what she wanted to know. From around eight-thirty till the men she talked with pooped out at midnight, all four of the tent cabin's occupants were in attendance. At midnight the "slobby guy"-Anna guessed him to be the heavyset man she'd first dubbed "Beer" and who was later introduced as Billy Kurt-took the others, booted, bundled and backpacked, off in a red Ford Excursion.

"Big into winter camping," the man opposite Anna at the picnic table said.

"At night?" Anna asked.

"They like to hike in by moonlight," the fellow at her right elbow said. "They see more game that way." After this contribution he and his buddy exchanged an odd glance. Anna guessed this rationale had made a lot more sense the night before after a couple of six-packs.

"Thinking the party's over, the three of us turned in," said the first speaker. "Then Slob and the boy-faced prick come back, park that big damn gas-guzzling piece of shit in front of the tent like we were in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and the party starts up again."

"You can't park your vehicle in a campground. The rangers should've done something."

This time Anna didn't bother to ask if they'd reported it. These three had joined that majority who believe an all-seeing, all-powerful government owed them safety, comfort and a living whether they lifted a finger to help themselves or not.

A couple more nudges and she discovered they didn't know where the men had gone on their moonlight hiking and camping adventure. She stayed long enough to finish her coffee, then left with what she'd come for: none of the squatters could have been in on the search of the room and the assault on Nicky. She'd also gotten a bonus: the truck tracks she'd wanted to trace belonged to a red Ford Excursion. Instead of doubling back, Anna continued on past the tiny cluster of tent cabins at the east end of the campground.

Billy, or the boy-faced prick, was home, that or a black bear was napping on somebody's cot. Wet growling snores came through the tent's sides with such gale force Anna was surprised the canvas walls didn't puff out and in the way they did in cartoons.

Fairly confident that the owners of the Excursion were either gone or comatose, she headed back through the grounds of Camp 4 toward the parking lot that girded its western side. Campers had begun emerging from their brightly colored cocoons. There was an edge of excitement that she wouldn't have expected on a cold and hungover morning at the bedraggled tail end of the climbing season. Nights got below freezing and, with the previous night's drizzle, Anna would have thought the rock faces too icy to climb before ten o'clock.

The bustle and low-grade buzz kept company with her through the camp. Groups of guys were dragging out packs and boots. Climbers were mostly obsessed by the climb. Many never set foot more than a mile into the park, at least not horizontally.

Anna guessed the unusual combination of ice on the granite walls and dry conditions in the high country had inspired them to try their hand at winter camping. But for the single snowfall that had effectively sabotaged the search effort, there'd been no precipitation to speak of. Even at eighty-five hundred feet there was only a foot or so of frozen crusty snow. If the pattern didn't break, Yosemite was going to have one hell of a fire season come summer.

The coffee she'd cadged from various generous parties was completing its morning rounds, and she stopped at the camp's restroom.

Above her chosen commode near the outer wall was a small high ventilation window. Through this came the desultory morning conversation of a group camped just outside.

"What a bash."

"That fat guy was off his head."

Anna's ears pricked at that with such interest, had she been a terrier, the tips would have been quivering. She climbed on the commode seat to get her ears nearer the window, and began to eavesdrop.

"You think it's like he said?"

"Shit, even if you figure sixty percent was just hot air, it's worth going after."

"He swore he'd been there."

"Lot of people there last night. It's going to be a fucking gold rush."

"The guy'd been somewhere. Did you see the dude's feet? Hamburger."

"Yeah but I'm not dragging my butt all over hell and gone in the snow trying to figure out where."

"He said a low lake. How many can there be?"

"A shitload."

"That's what I want. A load of shit."

This scatological sally was met with much laughter. The voices trailed off as the climbers walked away from their site. Anna sat back down for some serious thinking.

Deep thought having availed her nothing, she zipped her trousers and rejoined the world of men. Slob or Billy "Beer" Kurt or whatever his name was wasn't the type to stray too far from an easy form of transportation. Taking an educated guess, she thought she'd find the SUV in the closest parking lot.

As luck would have it, one group of backpackers had their vehicle parked next to the only red Ford Excursion in the lot. She didn't dare get too snoopy-she'd look fishy as hell. Wandering past slowly she was amazed-as she always was-at how damn big SUVs were. Unless she was pulling a six-horse trailer fully loaded she'd have been embarrassed to be seen in the thing. Oversized SUVs were conspicuous consumerism taken to such lengths she marveled that people willingly participated in cruel caricatures of themselves by driving them.

Mentally she noted the Excursion was brand new-or nearly so-and hard-used by the look of the frozen mud caked on its underside. The plates were from MendocinoCounty outside of San Francisco. Anna memorized the tag number and moved on. Vehicle information and perhaps a closer look would be done by Yose's law enforcement rangers.

Being undercover, even such a benign undercover as a waitress in a fine restaurant with nary a mob boss or biker ring in evidence, was a pain in the ass. Divested of power, clout, radios, backup, cell phones, All Points Bulletins and computers that could talk to the DMV, NCIC, the FBI and, if one knew the e-mail address, probably God, she felt as if she was working half blind and mostly deaf.

Though remaining successfully undercover in a small isolated community was considerably more difficult than in larger operations, Anna felt slightly silly picking up the key Lorraine had promised her at the clinic. She gave no explanation as to why the chief ranger had left it for her-indeed Lorraine would probably have sent it with someone with a much lower profile than herself-and the nurse receptionist asked for none.

The key was not to the main fire cache that held the newer equipment-that was to the back of the Search and Rescue building resting its rustic beporched self between the barn and the old graveyard. Fortunately for Anna-otherwise she'd have had to tell too many lies to people too clever to believe her-Trish Spencer's belongings were stored in the old fire cache, a junk room more or less, in one of the snowplow garages up the hill. The garage doors were aligned with the SAR building and sat cheek-by-jowl with the great stone building that housed fire trucks, jail and law enforcement offices.

Looking as boring and unremarkable as possible, Anna fought briefly with the padlock, raised the door in an alarming clamor, then pulled it shut behind her. The odds of her fellow concessionaires smelling her for the rat she was were small. The odds of a ranger getting curious and chatting about it to the ruination of the investigation were much higher. Hiding from her peers was an unpleasant sensation. She shook it off with a twitch of her shoulders.

Locking herself in a grimy old garage piled with boxes undoubtedly providing winter homes for black widow spiders didn't add to her comfort or self-esteem. Batting at an eyeball-high string, she caught it and pulled. A hundred dusty watts from a bulb suspended from the eight-foot ceiling clarified matters.

Spencer's boxes were easily located. Last in, they were freest of dust and closest to the door. When Anna had packed them, she'd marked them with Trish's name, last known address and the date packed. There were four. Squatting on her heels, she cut the first one open with her pocketknife, which she had remembered to stuff in her checked luggage at the last minute. Confiscating Swiss army knives was an affront to that sovereign nation's neutrality, but she doubted that argument would have impressed airport security on her flight out of Jackson, Mississippi.

Using the unopened boxes as tables, she began to methodically sift through Trish Spencer's things. Over the years she'd had cause to rifle through people's belongings a number of times: the domestic detritus of the living, the dead or, like Ms. Spencer, those whose status was as yet undetermined. It wasn't a task she particularly liked or disliked but-and this she would confess to no one but her sister, Molly-it never failed to fascinate her. Other people's stuff. Being civilized to a certain extent, she wouldn't dream of going through her host's medicine cabinets or peeking in drawers. Being as curious as the doomed cat and of a sleuthy disposition, when the task was forced upon her she couldn't deny a certain thrill. When poking through another person's papers, underwear or computer files, there lurked that prurient and delicious possibility that one might come across a secret, the dirtier and more horrifying the better.

Secrets-if one could glorify them with such a titillating appellation-whispered or hinted at by most people's belongings tended to be little and boring: Grecian Formula, Viagra, pornographic magazines, bad poetry. But reality wasn't where the voyeur's excitement lay. It was the possible.

Ignoring this ignoble part of her psyche, Anna combed through the boxes with clinical dispassion. Trish's collected estate was run-of-the-mill. Perhaps better suited to a girl of nineteen or twenty than a woman of twenty-seven, but the seminomadic lifestyle of a concessions worker could account for it. Two of the boxes were crammed with clothes; a sparse wardrobe when spread out. Anna was reminded that Trish had a taste for gaudy finery and real short skirts, and the money for a couple of designer pieces: a Ralph Lauren leather vest and red Gucci stiletto heels. Underneath the clothing was a black leather satchel, a sort of soft-sided briefcase. Either Trish had found it or she'd had it for most of her life. The leather was scarred and stiff from at least one drenching. The handle was torn off and the stitching along one side ripped open. Anna looked inside. Nothing. The bag was out of place, but having no idea where it would be in place, she moved on.