High Country- Pigeon 12 by Nevada Barr Page B

me said: 'He should've figured that.' And the other guy said: 'No. It was left.' Then they told me they'd kill me if I ever told anybody and they went."
     
    For a while the two of them sat in shared silence, each alone with her thoughts. Without the chatter of speech, the small sounds of the dormitory crept in to fill the void: the bathroom door opening, footsteps of someone returning late, the faint broken hum of conversation from another room.
     
    "Did they take anything?" Anna asked at last.
     
    "Not even our tip money."
     
    For anybody looking for quick cash in small unmarked bills, robbing the room of three waitresses would be a dream come true. Though they were encouraged to deposit their money regularly, because of the inherent lack of security that comes with communal living, between the three of them there was usually a lot of cash lying around. Whoever these men were, they hadn't bothered to pick up such small change, not even to try to make the break-in appear to be a simple theft.
     
    "Anything else?"
     
    "I didn't notice anything."
     
    "They didn't say anything more? Do anything? Did you see them to recognize them again?"
     
    "God no!" Nicky said believing that to recognize the bad guy meant he would kill you.
     
    "This sucks, but do it anyway," Anna said. "Close your eyes." Nicky obeyed unquestioningly. Guilt at using innocent young women to her own ends had been spent earlier in the evening when she'd dragged Mary to Camp 4. Anna felt nary a qualm about the discomfort she was about to cause Nicky.
     
    "Let your mind go. We're going to do a memory exercise. It'll help find these guys. Anyway, it won't hurt," Anna added a dash of honesty from old habit. "You've flushed the dope. You're standing outside in the hall about to come in the room. Be there now. Feel the floor under your feet, your hand on the knob. Now push open the door. Okay. Is it open?" Nicky nodded an affirmative. "Now we stop time. What do you see?"
     
    Nicky proved a good subject for this sort of game and recovered information she'd not known she had. The knee pressing down on her right elbow was clad in what looked and felt like slacks from a man's suit. She'd seen one of her assailant's feet. The shoe was a black dress shoe, out of place on a sleeting winter day in a wilderness park. The man who'd contemplated snapping her neck had smooth cool hands that smelled faintly of lotion. Both men "sounded" white. They'd spoken no extraneous words. There'd been no unnecessary touching or violence. That, coupled with the cash left behind, was too professional for the simple tossing of a girls' dorm room. Somebody in Yosemite was into something way over their head.
     
    The memory exercise had been so productive-and apparently cathartic-when they finished Nicky said, "Let's do it again. I bet I'll remember a bunch more."
     
    Anna declined. A second run-through and creative memory had a habit of filling in pesky blanks. "One more question," she said. "You told me the man who held you down smelled of lotion."
     
    "Yeah. You know, like Jergens or something. Hand lotion."
     
    "Any other smells?"
     
    Nicky closed her eyes, back in the game Anna had not wished to reprise.
     
    "Maybe cologne, but faint."
     
    "Any bad smells?"
     
    Nicky squeezed her eyes more tightly shut to aid recall. Finally she said: "He didn't fart or anything if that's what you mean."
     
    Anna laughed and the girl opened her eyes looking offended. To make up for her lapse, Anna became extra serious. "I was thinking more along the lines of gasoline, smoke, skunk, things like that."
     
    Nicky sniffed the air as if she wanted to be able to smell something for Anna. "Nope," she said disappointedly. "He smelled okay." Then: "You're not really a waitress are you," she asked shrewdly. Anna had forgotten her role; like a bad actor she'd dropped out of character. Mentally she cursed herself for carelessness and stupidity. Mistakes the magnitude of the one she'd just made could