High Country- Pigeon 12 by Nevada Barr Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Nevada Barr
hour and a half southwest of the park.
What with one thing and another, forty-five minutes passed before Anna noticed Nicky had never arrived at the clinic.
CHAPTER 4
There were plenty of reasons Nicky might have stayed at the dorm: sloth, addiction, aversion to doctors. The only one that concerned Anna was collapse from respiratory arrest. She looked around for Lorraine. Through the windowed half-wall between the waiting area and the "No Unauthorized Persons Allowed" zone of the clinic, Anna saw her talking with the doctor.
In her present guise Anna couldn't very well barge in and report. One of Lorraine's law enforcement rangers chose that moment to walk past. Anna grabbed her.
"Nicky, my roommate, never showed up. She said she was coming. Whatever Cricket was into, Nicky did the same stuff."
For the briefest instant the ranger looked blank, and Anna feared the NPS was going downhill. The information jelled, the woman's eyes focused and she said, "I'll give you a lift."
It wasn't waitresses whom emergency-response people looked down on; it was anybody who wasn't them and/or wasn't in need of them, tunnel vision born of seven parts necessity and three parts arrogance. One on one, the caste differences disappeared.
The ranger's name was Diane, but that was all Anna learned during their short ride to the employee dorms. She talked a blue streak. A listener by training and inclination, Anna was uncomfortable doing all the talking. An indefinable power was lost. When one opened one's mouth, learning, seeing-the kind of seeing Anna was good at, seeing behind faces to the gears within that drive human emotion and action-was lost. Still, she persevered, telling Diane of the out of control hilarity, loss of balance, confused spatial relations, the sudden wedding party-every detail she could remember. It was her hope the ranger would repeat the information to Lorraine. What good it would do, she didn't know. There was nothing in it relating to the four missing kids, but it might help in diagnosing Cricket or, if they were unbelievably lucky, in finding the source of whatever it was Cricket and Nicky were using.
The door to the room she shared with Cricket and Nicky was closed. To Diane it meant nothing. In Anna tiny alarms went off. To her unending annoyance, the girls never closed the door. They were party animals who craved the incessant noise and constant comings and goings of their fellows.
Anna pushed the door open. The lights were off.
"Nicky?"
A squeak came from the darkness on Cricket and Nicky's side of the room. Nicky-or something-was alive and awake.
"It's Anna. I'm going to turn on the light, okay?" Without waiting for an answer, she flipped the switch by the door. For reasons she'd never been able to fathom, institutional light came in only two forms: dim and creepy like the leavings of a brownout, or harsh and glaring. The overhead lighting in the Ahwahnee dorm was of the former variety. The dirty wash of feeble illumination gave the room the look of a tenement building in a Eugene O'Neill play.
Nicky was on her bed in her waitress uniform, down to the small black apron she'd apparently forgotten to take off. The ticket book was sticking out of the pocket. She leaned against the wall, hands loose at her sides like a broken doll, face simultaneously blank and afraid. Anna wondered if she'd slipped into a drug nightmare and couldn't tell whether the demons she battled were from within or without.
Followed by Diane, Anna entered the room but didn't crowd too close to Nicky. "It's me, Anna," she said again soothingly. "This is Diane. She's one of the EMTs who came when you called. You never showed up at the clinic and we got worried."
"Is Cricket okay?" Nicky asked.
Anna relaxed, shoulders she'd not realized she'd tensed dropping, the small bones in her neck cracking softly. Nicky was in and of this world and able to think of someone
What with one thing and another, forty-five minutes passed before Anna noticed Nicky had never arrived at the clinic.
CHAPTER 4
There were plenty of reasons Nicky might have stayed at the dorm: sloth, addiction, aversion to doctors. The only one that concerned Anna was collapse from respiratory arrest. She looked around for Lorraine. Through the windowed half-wall between the waiting area and the "No Unauthorized Persons Allowed" zone of the clinic, Anna saw her talking with the doctor.
In her present guise Anna couldn't very well barge in and report. One of Lorraine's law enforcement rangers chose that moment to walk past. Anna grabbed her.
"Nicky, my roommate, never showed up. She said she was coming. Whatever Cricket was into, Nicky did the same stuff."
For the briefest instant the ranger looked blank, and Anna feared the NPS was going downhill. The information jelled, the woman's eyes focused and she said, "I'll give you a lift."
It wasn't waitresses whom emergency-response people looked down on; it was anybody who wasn't them and/or wasn't in need of them, tunnel vision born of seven parts necessity and three parts arrogance. One on one, the caste differences disappeared.
The ranger's name was Diane, but that was all Anna learned during their short ride to the employee dorms. She talked a blue streak. A listener by training and inclination, Anna was uncomfortable doing all the talking. An indefinable power was lost. When one opened one's mouth, learning, seeing-the kind of seeing Anna was good at, seeing behind faces to the gears within that drive human emotion and action-was lost. Still, she persevered, telling Diane of the out of control hilarity, loss of balance, confused spatial relations, the sudden wedding party-every detail she could remember. It was her hope the ranger would repeat the information to Lorraine. What good it would do, she didn't know. There was nothing in it relating to the four missing kids, but it might help in diagnosing Cricket or, if they were unbelievably lucky, in finding the source of whatever it was Cricket and Nicky were using.
The door to the room she shared with Cricket and Nicky was closed. To Diane it meant nothing. In Anna tiny alarms went off. To her unending annoyance, the girls never closed the door. They were party animals who craved the incessant noise and constant comings and goings of their fellows.
Anna pushed the door open. The lights were off.
"Nicky?"
A squeak came from the darkness on Cricket and Nicky's side of the room. Nicky-or something-was alive and awake.
"It's Anna. I'm going to turn on the light, okay?" Without waiting for an answer, she flipped the switch by the door. For reasons she'd never been able to fathom, institutional light came in only two forms: dim and creepy like the leavings of a brownout, or harsh and glaring. The overhead lighting in the Ahwahnee dorm was of the former variety. The dirty wash of feeble illumination gave the room the look of a tenement building in a Eugene O'Neill play.
Nicky was on her bed in her waitress uniform, down to the small black apron she'd apparently forgotten to take off. The ticket book was sticking out of the pocket. She leaned against the wall, hands loose at her sides like a broken doll, face simultaneously blank and afraid. Anna wondered if she'd slipped into a drug nightmare and couldn't tell whether the demons she battled were from within or without.
Followed by Diane, Anna entered the room but didn't crowd too close to Nicky. "It's me, Anna," she said again soothingly. "This is Diane. She's one of the EMTs who came when you called. You never showed up at the clinic and we got worried."
"Is Cricket okay?" Nicky asked.
Anna relaxed, shoulders she'd not realized she'd tensed dropping, the small bones in her neck cracking softly. Nicky was in and of this world and able to think of someone
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