High Country- Pigeon 12 (2 page)

"It's a holdover from the Sunsocy killings," the deputy superintendent said dismissively.

Like the rest of the country, Anna had followed those grim events on the news.

People managed all sorts of ways to damage or extinguish themselves in Yosemite. They fell off the magnificent cliffs, got lost, suffered from exposure, broken ankles and bee stings. The brave or crazy died in base jumps from El Capitan. They crashed hang gliders and fell out of trees, committed suicide off Half Dome, overdosed, brawled. Search, rescue and even the occasional death were daily fare in a park as wild and yet as heavily visited as Yosemite. Even the odd happenstance of four park people going AWOL would not have shaken the social foundations as recently as two years ago.

That was before a psychopath working in the nearby town of El Portal had sexually assaulted and murdered four women, one of whom lived in an inholding surrounded by NPS lands.

Though the man had been caught, his evil had not stopped. The sense of safety many had enjoyed in the glorious stone heart of the Sierras died along with the women. The monster had graphically illustrated the fact that there is no place beyond evil's reach. Because of this, the disappearance of the park people raised fear levels in the valley till there were times when the small hairs on the back of Anna's neck fairly prickled with it.

Talk would have it that the Sunsocy murders were happening again, that a copycat had taken up residence in Yosemite Valley.

Chief Ranger Knight had brought Anna to Yosemite because she, too, feared the killings had just begun.

CHAPTER 2

In five days the only toxins Anna had sniffed came from the head waitress, Tiny Bigalo, a dried-up wisp of a woman with the energy of a hundred monkeys, all of which, if put in a barrel, would be no fun. According to her staff, Tiny, autocratic by habit and inclination, had "a bee up her ass," "a burr under her saddle" or "been on a tear for weeks." As a consequence everyone associated with the dining room scurried about in tight-lipped resentment expressing their frustrations by clashing dishes and slopping coffee.

Trish Spencer had been an intimate of Tiny's, which was one of the reasons Anna had been placed in the dining room. So far her efforts at sucking up to the fierce little woman had failed to bear fruit.

As much as being gregarious and ingratiating went against her grain, Anna managed to become friends with two others on the Ahwahnee staff. Anna Pigeon the waitress, the spy, was pleased with these human acquisitions. Anna Pigeon the ranger looked upon both relationships with a jaundiced eye.

The first contact caused Anna's conscience the fewest qualms: Scott Wooldrich, the assistant chef. At thirty-seven he was old enough and at six-foot-four and two hundred twenty pounds he was big enough to take care of himself. Whether or not he would prove a font of information as she wormed her way into his affections, Anna couldn't say. Even without that professional perk, he was a worthwhile ally. Bluff, good-natured, fun-loving-all those Iowa farm boy cliché‚ Scott ran interference between offending waitpersons and the wrath of Jim Wither. The febrile and brilliant chef could hear Scott's baritone when his ears were closed to other voices of reason. Such were Wooldrich's charms, Anna'd even seen him tease a smile out of Tiny a time or two.

What roused Anna's radar regarding the ease with which she'd become friends with Scott had little to do with the assistant chef and much to do with human nature-hers. Whenever she became bosom buddies with a blond, blue-eyed hunk that made her little heart go pitty-pat, she questioned her motives.

The second connection was more likely to prove useful, but despite her attempts to justify it as necessary, it caused Anna the occasional stab of guilt.

Mary Bates, an exquisite, naturally blond, seventeen-year-old hotel maid, was a concessions brat. Her parents had worked at the Ahwahnee and she'd grown up in the valley. This year Mom and Dad had moved on to better jobs at the lodge in Yellowstone. Out of love for Yosemite, Mary opted to stay behind and work for a year before going to college. It was the first time she'd been separated from family. She was a sitting duck for Anna's "hip mother" or, God forbid, "hip grandmother" routine.

Anna had intentionally adopted her to use as bait. Being a woman of a certain age there were natural barriers when it came to cuddling up to the men on trail crew who'd worked with Patrick or the eclectic and unpredictable community of climbers inhabiting Camp 4. A nubile blond opened more doors than a gold badge.

Revulsion at this subtle form of pimping might have outweighed expedience had Mary been made of lesser stuff. Having grown up in the park, despite her youth and fairy-princess good looks, she was accustomed to the dangers of bears, hypothermia, falling rocks and climber dudes.

"Hey, Anna, over here," was hissed as Anna passed the hostess's station with an armful of heavily-laden plates.

The very child she contemplated using for her own ends stuck her towhead from behind the fronds of a plant tired with winter and dropping leaves onto the stained and polished cement floor. Employees were discouraged from hanging about where they did not belong; one of the many niceties that marked the Ahwahnee as a grand hotel.

"Yeah?" Anna whispered back, stealth being contagious.

"When does your shift end?"

"Three-thirty."

"Want to go for a walk? I've been making beds all day and feel like an old wadded-up piece of tinfoil."

"A walk would be good."

The blond slipped into the underbrush.

At three thirty-five Anna clocked out and left the hotel by way of a utility entrance that let out through the Dumpsters at the back. There was something Disneylike about the Ahwahnee, about Yosemite Valley. Natural features were too big, too perfect: domes of granite sliced neatly into aesthetically appealing halves, rocks and trees juxtaposed to delight the eye. The Merced River, clear and emerald by turns, chuckled through in glittering communion with wind in the pines.

And, like Disneyland, Yosemite required machinery to run smoothly, law to regulate too many people, too many cars and buses, walls to hide the ugliness of Dumpsters, boneyards, toilets. Like H. G. Wells's future, parklands must have the Morlocks to keep Eden beautiful for the Eloi. Periodically, when this stage-set unreality struck, Anna was nearly overpowered with a need to flee into the high country, the ninety-five percent of the park that was wilderness. She'd yet to make it more than a mile from the main road. As with all true evil, whatever had set off Lorraine Knight's alarms centered round the human element.

Besides, Anna consoled herself as she scuttled through the garbage and mud-spattered vehicles, it's cold. Camping, hiking and communing with the gods seemed less appealing when temperatures dropped below fifty degrees.

In deference to her age and status as a year-round waitress, Anna had been offered one of the hotel's employee houses-a single-room tent-frame to which walls and a bathroom had been added. The dorms were reserved for seasonal workers and those significantly lower on the food chain than the main dining room waitstaff. Tempted as she was to snatch at this scrap of solitude, she had requested dormitory housing in the room where Trish Spencer had lived.

In communal housing it was more likely she would hear the kinds of rumors that never make it to the ears of law enforcement and, by being placed in a living situation "below her station in life" she had a built-in reason to be one of the valley's disaffected, should she choose. All the better to be part of the whining and plotting of others on the fringes.

The room she shared with the two busgirls, both securely under thirty, was dark and dank due to the weather without and the d‚cor within. Her roommates had yet to reach the age where visual order was necessary to the psyche. The place resembled the inside of a laundry hamper. Dirty clothes and female accoutrements were heaped on unmade beds and vomited out of open dresser drawers. Anna's first task on arriving in her new persona had been to pack up Trish's things while Nicky and Cricket-the roommates she'd inherited along with the missing woman's apron, shirt and pants-looked on with the thrilled misery of those half playing at tragedy.

During the search the NPS had gone through Spencer's belongings, hoping for a clue that could tell them where she'd gone. In the normal course of events it would have been Yosemite rangers who packed up the missing woman's goods for shipping or storage. Lorraine Knight left the task to Anna, hoping it would serve as a bridge to the missing woman and a way of breaking the ice with the roommates. It had been successful on both counts.

Anna waded through to her wee tidy space to peel off her uniform. White shirt, black polyester pants and black many-pocketed apron: these Anna had borrowed from the late-very late-Trish Spencer, and everything was a couple of sizes too big. Not only was Anna an imposter, but a poorly-dressed imposter at that. Walking a mile in someone else's shoes was a tad creepy when done literally.

Mary was dressed and waiting. She wore Levis, running shoes and a red hooded pullover that made her look like every wolf's dream of Little Red Riding Hood.

Perfect, Anna thought and suffered a pang of remorse for being bloodlessly pragmatic. "Ready?"

"Want to go to the village?" Mary asked as she fell into step beside Anna. "I've got to get some things."

"Sure." En route Anna would come up with a plausible excuse to get her living lure to Camp 4; see if they could coax anything interesting from the climbers. Though active and seemingly anxious to help with the rigors of the search, they'd been characteristically close-mouthed with law enforcement.

While Mary made her purchases in the grocery department, Anna poked around the souvenirs section. Depending on one's point of view, YosemiteVillage with its deli, pizzeria and full-service grocery store was either a tremendous convenience or proof the park was going to hell.

Making conversation, Lorraine Knight had told her how the local public school, some forty-five miles away, had held a children's symposium on the nation's parks, asking the children what they would do with Yosemite Valley. The park's rangers sat back complacently waiting for their enlightened offspring to lead the way. The consensus of the kids from Yosemite was that a Costco and an orthodontist should be added to the village's repertoire. The three-hour round-trip drive to these necessities was a very real burden to them.

During her college days Anna and others had contemplated monkeywrenching the village infrastructure in hopes of driving out the urban blight. Thirty years later and now, at least temporarily, a resident, she was sympathetic with the children; she was was glad she didn't have to drive eighty miles every time she ran out of shampoo.

Civilization was comfortable.

Anna dearly hoped she'd never reach the point where the love of comfort outweighed her love of the natural world, but she wasn't about to make any rash promises even in the privacy of her own skull.

As they left the store, passing the statuesque twin pines which graced the entrance, Anna decided to nudge.

"Let's go down toward Yosemite Lodge. I'll buy you a drink." Mary would have hot chocolate, but the alcoholic phrasing flattered the girl's youth and fit with Anna's assumed role. Since Anna had picked Mary up she'd kept herself open, warm, fun and funny, winning the girl's trust. This was the first time she would use it.

Set the hook before you reel her in, Anna thought sourly as Mary bobbed charmingly along at her elbow. Too good a catch to throw back, she told herself philosophically and began:

"That Dixon guy, the one that got himself lost with those others, didn't he live in a camp somewhere down here?"

"Yup. Camp 4. It's really famous. Climbers come from all over. They're a wild bunch. Sort of a force unto themselves. Wanna go see it? It's just past the lodge."

Candy from a baby. "Sure. Did you know him? Dixon? That would be pretty creepy."

"Not know him," Mary admitted reluctantly. Like most people, she wanted to be in the center of the excitement even if only by association. She was a longtime park-dweller, and Anna ostensibly in Yosemite for the first time. It would be tempting to anyone to embroider the truth to such a willing believer. Anna admired her for resisting.