Serve & Protect

by L. J. Breedlove

  “Something’s bugging you, though,” Mac observed.

  “We’ve found bodies that don’t match any reports of missing hikers,” he said. “I report them to the sheriff, and he laughs at me. Says it’s my problem. I report it to the state, and they’re concerned too, but so far we’ve not made any progress.”

  “Someone is using the North Cascades as a dumping grounds,” Mac said flatly.

  Peabody nodded. “I don’t know for how long,” he said. “I got here two years after the previous head ranger retired. And I’ve got one more year before I’m retiring. This is beautiful country. Kind of a tradition to come here and retire in place, you know?”

  “And instead, you’re facing a serial killer?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t think so,” he said troubled. “But I’m not sure what we’re facing. We’ve found four bodies that couldn’t be identified in the last year. Another three hikers who turned up dead. I looked back into the records. Those stats match previous years. So maybe it’s my imagination.”

  “Or maybe it’s been going on a while,” Mac suggested.

  “Or maybe it’s been going on a while,” he agreed.

  They talked a bit more about constitutionalism and federal lands. Then Mac asked, “What do you know about these wilderness survival weekends the sheriff is involved in?”

  “Didn’t know he was,” Peabody said, startled. “I deal with a guy named Craig Anderson, out of Marysville, and Ken Bryson, in Sedro-Woolley, does the logistics. They seem to be very popular with the Seattle crowd. Men in their 30s who want to come up and pretend they’re Rambo, it seems like. Why?”

  “It keeps coming up,” Mac said vaguely. “They get permits and everything?”

  He nodded. “Anderson’s been real professional to deal with.”

  Mac noted he didn’t mention Bryson again.

  “Good to know. Been thinking it might be an interesting feature piece.”

  Peabody looked at him skeptically. “I didn’t think you did many feature pieces,” he said, revealing for the first time that he’d recognized his name.

  Mac grinned. No, Janet didn’t let him do many feature pieces, he thought amused. Like using a Glock instead of a flyswatter.

  He and Angie got up to leave, then he hesitated. “If you have time? How far out is the ravine the hiker was found in? Could you take us out there?”

  Peabody looked at the clock, and shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Let me tell Sarah we’re going out. Meet me out back.”

  Mac and Angie headed out the back of the building where a National Park Service jeep was parked. “Mac?” Angie asked.

  “Dunno, babe,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter 12

  The North Cascades National Park was one of the most majestic and beautiful parks in the nation, Mac thought. And he’d seen a few. Not necessarily by his choice. But this one was remote. It was home to grizzly bears, timber wolves, and some said, veterans gone feral — men who couldn’t handle society after the ravages of whatever war they’d fought in, and headed for the hills. He thought of Eli Andrews, Janet’s husband. Eli couldn’t handle Seattle and life with Janet after Kuwait; he hid in the wilds of Seattle’s homeless population. When Mac needed help to rescue Janet, Eli had come with him. And he stayed behind in Jehovah’s Valley where he and Janet grew up. Mac hoped he was doing OK. He hadn’t figured out how to ask Janet about him. Maybe he could ask Timothy.

  Men like him, like the men in these hills, were more dangerous than either the wolves or the bears, Mac thought.

  Still it was beautiful land. He could understand how war-ravaged men might have found it easier to deal with the challenges of mountain peaks than the complications of interacting with people on a daily basis.

  Not him. He’d lived in Bellingham for four years and never did more than drive the North Cascades Highway loop once. He was a city kid. And Afghanistan had taught him all he wanted to know about high mountain peaks that got cold in the winter and hot in the summer. More like the eastern side of the Cascades than here, but he saw no reason to ever go back into the hills unless someone was paying him.

  Paying him a lot.

  But he and some friends had driven the North Cascades Highway one summer. The highway loop was closed most of the year — open from May to October with some flex on both ends. And it was beautiful. From a vehicle.

  Mac glanced at Peabody. “The North Cascades Highway open yet?”

  He shook his head, and started the jeep. “Highway 20 will open next weekend I think,” he said. “Be another month for some of the other roads.”

  Even calling Highway 20 a highway was generous, Mac thought. There were people out here who literally could not drive to town without 4-wheel-drive off-road vehicles for six months out of the year or more. He shook his head.

  “You hike?” Peabody asked.

  “Not since I got back from Afghanistan,” Mac said. He glanced back at Angie.

  “Angie?”

  “Used to,” she said. “Been awhile.” She was looking at the mountains with longing, however.

  “If you see something you want to photograph, say so,” Peabody said. “I’ll stop.”

  Well that was an improvement.

  Peabody obviously loved the Park. He pointed out things of interest, stopped frequently for Angie, and seemed to be in no hurry. “What troubles me about this ravine,” he said as he parked at a trailhead, “is that it’s so close to the road out. He had to have been coming down the mountain and he was so close to being out.”

  Mac said nothing. The more he heard, the more uncomfortable he became. The hiker had been hunted, he thought. And when it looked like he was going to escape them — and then be able to tell what happened — someone killed him and tossed his body in the ravine. Could that really have happened? Time in Afghanistan left him with a belief that more atrocities happened than most people realized. But here?

  “How did the body get discovered?” Mac asked, troubled.

  “Totally a fluke,” Peabody said. “We’d been searching the known trails. If the hiker had left them and gone too far from one, we knew we’d never find him. One of my rangers was searching and realized he was going to miss his boy’s baseball game. So, he decided to take a short cut across country to get back. He sees crows hovering over this ravine, and he thinks, ‘shit’. He works his way over — not easy from the direction he was approaching — and there’s the man’s body. He sends up a flare, and calls us in. But coming from this direction? Getting there is easy. Getting the body out from where he died wasn’t. He got himself wedged in I think.” He shook his head.

  Mac looked out the window of the jeep as Peabody navigated across a wooden bridge over a rushing stream. Water everywhere this time of the year, he thought. It was a wet, temperate rainforest up in here. But beautiful if you liked all this green growing stuff. He still tended to see everything as potential hiding spots for enemies.

  Peabody parked the jeep. “It’s about a mile in from here,” he said. “Do you want to hike in? Or does this show you what you’re looking for?”

  Mac glanced at him. Shrewd man, he thought.

  “Can we, Mac? Do we have time?” Angie asked. “I could do with stretching my legs. And I’d love to get some photographs of this area.”

  Mac hesitated. He would just as soon get back, but there was no reason to deny her. He shrugged. “Sure,” he said. He turned to Peabody. “Lead the way.”

  He thought he saw amusement in Peabody’s eyes, but the man just took a shotgun out of the jeep’s lock box. “I’m cautious these days,” he said. “Too many wild animals with babies. And that makes mamas nervous.”

  Mac laughed. He slung his backpack over his shoulder. “I was expecting concern about whoever is taking potshots at rangers,” he admitted.

  Peabody grinned and headed off on a narrow trail up hill. Mac gestured for Angie to follow, and he brought up the rear.

  Thirty minutes later they’d basically followed that
rushing stream upwards into the mountains and into the ravine. Coming at it like this, they entered the ravine at its base, not the rim. Mac could see what Peabody meant. This had been a pleasant hike. But if you were coming down from above you’d think this was rugged and remote. A good place to toss a body. But only if you didn’t know the area well, he thought suddenly.

  “Go ahead,” Peabody said. “Say it.”

  Mac looked at him. “So, you think it too,” he said. “The man was hunted. And when it looked like he was going to escape, someone killed him, thought he was hiding the body in a remote ravine. Thing is? That means he doesn’t know the area well.”

  “Or he didn’t care if the body was discovered,” Peabody said. “Glad to meet someone as suspicious as I am.”

  “Someone’s running a remake of The Most Dangerous Game?” Mac said, referring to the classic short story about a hunter who grows bored hunting animals and hunts men instead.

  “It would explain our unidentified bodies,” Peabody said. “I think he didn’t care that the body might eventually be found as long as it had been out in the elements to make cause of death unclear. We’ll see if he won that bet.”

  Mac nodded. And flattened as he heard the shot. “Down!” he shouted at Angie. The sound echoed through the ravine. Hard to tell where it was coming from. Peabody was crouching behind a rock, his shotgun up to his shoulder, looking along the rim.

  “Mac?” Angie asked.

  “Crawl to me?” he suggested. She was exposed where she was, although he didn’t think the shot had been aimed at her. Didn’t think it had been aimed at anyone. Just discouragement? Just enough to send them home. Angie got to her feet, but stayed low, and ran to him. He patted her shoulder, and she nodded.

  No more shots.

  “Time to head back,” Peabody said finally.

  And that was what the shooter wanted, Mac thought, but he didn’t protest. He was no trained crime scene specialist. He wasn’t going to find anything and say aha!

  So why was someone scaring them off?

  The question stuck with him as they hiked back out.

  The ride back was silent. As they pulled back into the gravel parking lot, Angie said suddenly, “I don’t get it. Why shoot at us?”

  Peabody parked, turned off the jeep. “Best answer I’ve come up with is they’re discouraging us from going into the park.”

  Mac thought about that. “Are hikers reporting potshots?”

  Peabody shook his head. “Just rangers,” he said. “Just the rangers.”

  They thanked the ranger and drove into Sedro-Woolley to look for lunch.

  “There is something called the Mestizo Mexican restaurant,” Angie said. “Willing to try it? Or there’s a burger place that’s supposed to be good.”

  “Your dad?” Mac asked, teasing.

  She laughed. “Nope, Yelp. But the menu doesn’t look any different than any other Mexican restaurant.” She sounded disappointed.

  “I’m game,” he said. “And then I want to see if anyone is around Wilderness Adventures.”

  The food was good, typical Pacific Northwest style Mexican food. Mac missed Tex-Mex sometimes, from his days in El Paso. But this was good, and he was hungry.

  “So, what do you think?” Mac asked. “Tells?”

  Angie smiled, but she looked troubled. “He was expecting someone to shoot at him,” she said.

  Mac nodded. “Whole thing is weird as shit,” he admitted. He shrugged. “So, we keep gathering string, until it makes sense.”

  “He was awfully blunt for being recorded,” she observed. “I wanted to like him for it. But...:” She trailed off with a shrug.

  Mac was surprised. He’d liked the man. “But you didn’t like him?” he asked curiously.

  She shook her head, troubled by it. By something. “Will you check with the coroner’s office on Monday?” she asked.

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I’ll do that,” he said.

  He took time to make a list of his growing follow up calls and questions, and then they drove past Wilderness Adventures. No surprise that it was closed on a late Saturday afternoon this early in the season. They stopped to look around. It looked like your typical shop, Mac thought, peering into the windows. Part travel agency, part REI. Some white-water rafts and kayaks out back. He grabbed a brochure from the bin by the front door.

  “Time to head back to the hotel,” Mac said. “Unless you’ve got better ideas?”

  Angie looked tired. “No, I’m good,” she said. “I’m not even going to ask for more tulip photos.”

  “Thank God,” he said.

  Angie laughed.

  It was easy to talk to Angie, Mac thought, on the way home. He found he liked having someone to bounce ideas off. He’d always worked stories alone. If he talked about a story with anyone, it was Janet. Sending a photographer along had been a good idea, and sending Angie along had been inspired. She saw things differently, partially because she was more visual than he was, and partially because she had a knack with people. He probably wouldn’t have gone by to see Jorgensen’s wife, or Norton’s ex, without her. He would have been curious, but he would have felt intrusive. Having a woman along made those visits work.

  And he just plain liked her. She’d been companionable but not flirtatious. She’d dressed sensibly, during the day, low-key and unobtrusive, but then she’d put on a dress and heels for their evening out, and that had been the right thing, too.

  “You said you really wanted this assignment to work?” he said, recalling her words about getting rid of the fuchsia streak. Which he still hoped she was going to replace.

  She was silent for a moment. “Photographers don’t have beats really,” she said. “Requests come in from the editors and we take them. But somehow, I end up shooting the cute kid stories and Tulip Festivals. I want to shoot news. This seemed to be a chance to prove I can. Janet asked for me specifically. So, I want to do well.”

  Mac wondered why Janet had, but he suspected it was female solidarity. And maybe a touch of matchmaking. “You get two thumbs up from me as an easy colleague to work with,” he told her.

  “Back to you,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what to expect. You’ve got a rep for being... difficult? Not quite the right word. People find you intimidating.”

  “Just because I throw their coffee mugs in the garbage if they leave them half-full on my desk,” he grumbled. Then he grinned. “And there’s the guy I decked on the third day of work. And Precious Kevin? I put him up against the wall. Other than that? I don’t have the foggiest notion why anyone would think I was intimidating.”

  She giggled. “No, I can see you’re really laid back,” she teased.

  “I hope you think so, tomorrow,” Mac said. “Because I think we need to go to that church in the morning.”

  She groaned. “Doesn’t that sound like fun,” she muttered. “Fine, but we need to find a café with a good Internet connection so I can get some of these photos uploaded. And I’m going to want to spend the evening there. That OK?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But what’s this we bit? You’re the navigator. Find a place for us to hang out. I’ve some notes I want to send back too.”

  “And Facebook,” she said. “Don’t forget your Facebook time.”

  He sighed.

  Chapter 13

  (Mount Vernon, Sunday, May 4, 2014)

  Mac thought he should make a list of the things he’d learned from dating Kate. He wasn’t sure he would have gone to church for this story, if he hadn’t become more — he wasn’t sure of the right word — more comfortable? At ease with just being in a church? Before dating her, he doubted he’d been in a church a dozen times.

  And most of those had been for funerals.

  So, he felt like he had an idea of what to expect — at the least the basic order of things. Music, announcements, prayer. A sermon, more prayer. Oh, and that ‘greet your neighbor’ bullshit. He hated that. Angie dithered more than he did — mostly about having the righ
t clothes.

  “Wear dark pants and a long-sleeved top, if you’ve got them,” he advised. “Some will be dressed up, and some will be in jeans. That still seems weird. I was under the impression people dressed up for church, but I guess they don’t as much anymore. Especially people our age.”

  Angie nodded, and sure enough when she came down for breakfast, she had on black pants and a blouse that buttoned up the front. Short-sleeved but she looked right, Mac thought, and he told her so.

  “Even more? You look good,” he said with a grin. She laughed.

  They went back to the same place for breakfast, Mr. T’s, because Mac was hoping the same waitress was on shift. He thought she might have more to say. He’d neglected to consider how busy the place would be on a Sunday morning before church, but they did manage to snag a table in her zone.

  “You’re back?” she said. “Must have liked the food.”

  “We did,” Angie said, and added with a grin, “but you know men. They are creatures of habit. Why explore another restaurant when we know where there’s a good breakfast already?”

  The waitress laughed. “Coffee for you, and keep it coming, right?” she said. Angie nodded vigorously.

  “And what would you like?”

  Mac asked for iced tea, unsweetened.

  She brought that, took their orders, and kept moving. Mac began to think that he wasn’t going to get to talk to her. But then he wasn’t even sure what he wanted to ask.

  Angie glanced at him, and then when the waitress — her nametag said her name was Sue — came by to give her a refill, she said, “so you may have figured it out yesterday, but we’re reporters from the Seattle Examiner. Well, he is, I’m the photographer. We’re doing a story about the sheriff — and the Tulip Festival, of course,” she said with a laugh. “But I was wondering, if there was one person whose perspective on Sheriff Norton you’d recommend? Who would it be?”

  “You talked to Anne?” she said, considering.