High Country

by Nevada Barr

  Scott was around the island, bending over them. “Trish Spencer,” Anna gasped. “Alive. Outside. Get her.”

  Scott dithered, hating to leave the carnage.

  “Go,” Anna yelled. She slid the gun away from Tiny and herself. That done, she loosed Tiny’s arm and grabbed a fistful of the orange-blond overpermed hair and cracked the smaller woman’s head against the floor. Tiny went still.

  Crawling because she wasn’t sure she could stand, Anna retrieved the gun. Back against the island, pistol in hand, she waited. In moments Tiny regained consciousness. For a heartbeat she was disoriented, and in that heartbeat Anna saw a different woman, not the heartless drug dealer with family connections who ran the Ahwahnee dining room with an iron hand, but a small lonely woman past sixty who’d lost those she loved most in life.

  Anna was unmoved.

  The momentary innocence of forgetfulness cleared from Tiny Bigalo’s brain. Her eyes again became hard and dark as she sat up.

  “You won’t shoot me,” she said to Anna.

  “I’m a federal law enforcement officer working undercover. I will shoot you,” Anna replied.

  Tiny didn’t afford her the pleasure of looking surprised or chagrined. “Bitch,” Tiny said.

  “You’re under arrest for the murder of Jim Wither, among other things.”

  Tiny looked at the chef lying in a pool of his own blood, the slashed hand flung out still reaching even in death. “At least I killed the stupid fuck. He’s better off,” Tiny said coldly.

  “Maybe he returned the favor.” On Tiny’s raw scraped cheek was a single bloody handprint. Jim had reached her before he’d died.

  The rangers came. The body was taken away in the ambulance. Trish and Tiny would spend the night in Yosemite’s jail, Jim in the morgue. Sealed neatly in an evidence envelope, the apron went with the rangers. Anna didn’t even get the dubious pleasure of ripping the back out to see if she was right, if it contained names and addresses of drug contacts.

  Though it was late, well into the still dead hours between midnight and sunrise, she stayed after the rangers, EMTs, murderers, suspects and victims had gone. Having lost his friend and mentor as well as his midnight snack in an unexpected blood-bath, Scott shouldn’t be alone. And she was too tired to move. Sitting on the kitchen floor more or less where she’d sat holding the gun on Tiny, she kept the big man company while, armored in latex gloves, he cleaned up Jim’s blood. There seemed a sea of it, too much for so wasted a body to contain. Perhaps it was an illusion created by the beastly brightness against the cool gray tiles.

  They’d spoken little since the noise and clutter left them, but Anna was sure Scott was glad she was there. “Was Lonnie a whore?” she asked after a long silence.

  Scott, on his hands and knees like a scrubwoman, left his soap and water to sit across from Anna, his back against the wall. He closed his eyes. Enough time passed that Anna thought he had dozed off, his body shutting down after too much horror.

  “Yeah,” he said finally. “Like Tiny said. All of it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him?”

  Silence grew between them again. Anna hoped Scott hadn’t been offended by the question, but she was too tired to ask or apologize.

  “I thought about it,” Scott replied after a while. “A lot. Especially after Lonnie died and Jim tore himself up. It was Tiny who told him he’d given Lonnie AIDS, and Lonnie thought it a great joke to play along. The whole thing made me want to wring somebody’s neck. But Jim had such a fantasy going. He’d known Lonnie way back when Lonnie was just a teenager—and Lonnie was a NBW, a natural beauty wonder—curly blond hair, big blue eyes . . . and the ethics of a sewer rat. Jim never saw the rat part. To him Lonnie was a gift from the gods. I thought the guilt he carried would be less of a burden to him than the truth.”

  “Death of a lover instead of death of a dream?”

  “Something like that. I knew he’d go ballistic if he found out Tiny’d been using him the way she had. He smuggled drugs for her as repayment for helping him be near Lonnie. If he’d known the whole thing was a setup he’d have spilled the beans just to get back at her. You know how that would end, with Jim dying in a cell while Tiny got off. She’s too slippery. I doubt they could have proved the drugs Jim carried originated with her.

  “What now?” he asked, opening his eyes. “What’s the whole story? I got some of it when Trish began to spew.”

  “Spew” was an apt description. After Scott had dragged her in and the rangers arrived, Trish wouldn’t shut up. She’d put Anna in mind of a hippopotamus relieving itself, the tail windmilling, shit flying in all directions. According to Trish, when Mark and his minions had found her, Dix, Caitlin and Patrick jumping their claim they’d started shooting. Trish said she’d dumped her pack and managed to get away. The others hadn’t been so lucky. The spin she tried to put on it was that she’d sought the apron and the little black book to avenge her fallen comrades and help uphold the law by producing the incriminating list. The story was full of holes, but Anna didn’t doubt a good defense attorney could polish it up nicely before trial.

  She told Scott of the downed plane, Tiny’s nephew Mark’s burning, Phil’s death, the mining operation—all that she’d seen and much of what she’d pieced together.

  “I’m guessing things will move quickly,” she said. “With the names that are in the apron, Mark Bigalo, a.k.a. Bellman’s name and whatever comes back on the prints from Dix’s cabin, it should be fairly easy to find at least some of these guys. Some will roll on others. The plane might answer a few questions, but it won’t be recovered till the lake thaws. What a mess that’s going to be.”

  They sat a while longer, Anna’s rear end growing numb from the hard flooring. Her eyes closed. She drifted. Into that halfway house between the real and the dreaming, Scott’s voice penetrated.

  “Hey,” he said. A deliciously warm hand cradled Anna’s cheek. Had she been the size of Thumbelina, she would have curled up in its palm and slept for a week.

  She opened her eyes to find Scott’s face close to her own. He smelled faintly of talc, an innocent and reassuring smell. He smiled, tired and kind. The warmth and strength and sheer maleness of him wrapped around her.

  “I want to sleep with you” he said. “No strings, just comfort. It’s been one hell of a day.”

  It had. Scott was young and strong and handsome. And so very alive.

  Anna needed an infusion of life. With an effortlessness that took her breath away he lifted her in his arms and stood. Anna was a small woman. Men had lifted her, carried her before, but its charm never palled. A part of the body or soul remembered childhood when, in her father’s arms, she was safe and loved. No harm could come to her. The vicissitudes of the world would break harmlessly against the rock of his hard-muscled arms.

  Memories of another life beat against the windowpanes of her mind, gray flutterings of fragile wings against darkened glass. She turned her face to the fragrant hollow of Scott’s shoulder and shut them out. The warmth of his lips on her forehead put them to sleep.

  Scott laid her gently on his bed and pulled away. The spread smell of sunlight and cologne. Anna let the softness and perfume blanket her mind. Scott switched on a lamp shaded with rose-colored glass, then pulled off his shirt.

  Unmoving but not unmoved, Anna watched the dark fabric slide up his back.

  “Well, hey!” Scott said, injecting a dose of the mundane into Anna’s shush of sensation. “What with the mayhem and all, I forgot. I haven’t worn this shirt in a while.” From the breast pocket he produced a square of pink paper, the kind offices keep for recording phone messages. “This came for you a few days back. I figured I’d better take it up and keep it for you. You were in such bad odor with everybody in the dining hall, I could see it ‘accidentally’ ending up in the trash. It came from registration.” He handed her the note.

  Anna didn’t want to read it. The loose ends were tied. It would be old news. She rolled onto one elbow and
reached to set it on the nightstand.

  “It must be one of your drug buddies. It’s from a ‘Tico.’ No honest man calls himself Tico.”

  Trousers still on, Scott sat on the bed next to her. “Let me know if I hurt you,” he said and began loosening the Velcro on her ankle brace.

  Anna didn’t know any Tico. Her so-called drug buddies were either burned, dead or under arrest. The note became more interesting. Tilting it toward the rosy light, she unfolded it.

  “Piedmont got lonely. We brought him home with us. Love, Taco.”

  The windows of her mind flew open. Life, her life, real life, rushed in.

  “Wait.”

  “Did I hurt you?”

  Anna didn’t answer. She was looking at the date on the message. The call had come the night she’d spent in the high country, the night death had beckoned with the promise of golden shores and diamond waters. It was then, she’d seen it then: seen Paul lift the big orange tiger cat to his shoulder and carry him from her house in Rocky Springs.

  Her heart remembered who she was.

  The pretense and lies begun at the Ahwahnee and cemented in place by the horror in the high country broke and fell away. Her mind cleared. Into it came the warmth of a home and hearth waiting for her in Port Gibson, Mississippi; a man who was more than just comfort for a night, a man who, with luck and grace, would be comfort for a lifetime.

  She laughed. It caught in her throat and became a sob. So close, she had come so close to losing one of the few chances at purity remaining to hands so recently bloodied.

  “What is it?” Scott asked.

  Anna looked at him. Saw him. A nice guy. Not a hero or a soul mate or even a roll in the hay, but a good man deserving better than a woman’s passing insanity. He deserved love.

  And so did she.

  “What’s wrong?” he pressed.

  “Nothing. Nothing a little fried okra and a visit with my priest won’t fix.” She punched him gently in the shoulder and laughed, without tears this time.

  “Take me home,” she said. “And count your blessings.”