Read Online Sisters of the Road by Barbara Wilson - Free Book Online Page A

told us this, and the varying degrees of disbelief—and relief—on my fellow students’ faces.
    Like some of my classmates I’d dreamed briefly of following a career in anthropology. Find a Polynesian island of my own and chart its kinship systems, bring honor and fame upon the name of Nilsen. I’d be the Ruth Benedict or Margaret Mead of my generation, braving hardship, weird food and malaria to understand just what made those tribal people tick.
    But I’d gotten a little bogged down trying to remember the relative skull sizes of the toolmaking Australopithecus and the homo heidelbergensis, and eventually anthropology, like many scholastic obsessions, had died a natural death at the end of the quarter. Besides, there weren’t all that many undiscovered Polynesian islands left.
    Being on the street, however, brought back memories of Mr. Lieberman and his lectures on society as a cultural organization. “Go downtown,” he used to urge us, “and take a look around. You’ll be surprised what you see.” That was urban anthropology and nobody wanted to do it. What was Seattle compared with Samoa? But now it suddenly occurred to me that that’s exactly what I was doing—looking at this society from the outside, with an anthropologist’s eye.
    And that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
    There were things here that I needed to feel as well as witness. The sexual energy, the danger, the excitement. The way the music was bringing back memories of reckless sexy new kinds of feeling. The way the cold air felt like freedom downtown at night.
    “I heard you’re looking for Trish. Who are you, anyway?”
    The voice, woolly with a cold, was harsher than its owner. She had soft, paper white skin and dyed black hair shaved closely at the sides and long on top, falling into her eyes. In spite of her motorcycle jacket and pierced nose, she was very fragile and young-looking; I could have more easily imagined her curled up by the fireplace in a fluffy bathrobe reading fairy tales than out on the street.
    “Pam Nilsen,” I said and waited.
    She looked disconcerted for a moment, then threw back, “Trish doesn’t know anyone named Pam.”
    “She does now. She stayed at my place last night.” I didn’t go into it. If she knew something she could tell me, but I was starting to realize you didn’t get anywhere if you came on too strong.
    The girl took out a cigarette and lighter from her pocket and threw a rapid glance at some of her friends across the street. They’d probably appointed her to be the one to check me out. She obviously wanted to look like she had it all under control.
    “I knew Rosalie too,” I said. “I was the one who took her to the hospital. She and Trish were together out near Sea-Tac when I picked them up.”
    “I don’t know a Rosalie,” she snapped, but she was frightened.
    “It doesn’t sound like the girl had too many pals around here. Now that she’s dead anyway. It’s a sad thing when people stop caring what happens to their friends.”
    I said it casually but I watched her reaction under the fall of dyed black hair. She sniffled and blew out smoke. “Why should I trust you?” she finally asked.
    “No reason. Just because Trish did, that doesn’t mean you have to.”
    “Look,” she said hoarsely. “There’s a million cops out tonight, poking their noses into everything, driving by every five minutes—and all because of… because of that girl getting killed. We can’t do a damn thing without them picking us up. It’s a drag, a fucking drag.”
    So much for my powers of observation. I’d been out here almost half an hour and I hadn’t noticed a single cop. It must be the plainclothes vice squad, obvious to everyone except me, who expected to see the protectors of the peace in regulation blue.
    And for the first time it struck me that I wasn’t just observing a scene here; I was being observed. The cop and detective from two nights ago had probably driven by me two or three