I make a quick perimeter check of the hill, looking for more tracks, but don’t see any except something with hooves, then take off at a jog heading southwest for my first landmark, the bent tree. The morning air is colder than I expected, plus there’s a little wind to add some bite. Unfortunately it isn’t cold enough to freeze the ground like it was on the way up. That would have been nice—fewer prints. As I run I calculate how long this mission should take. Once I reach the ridge it’s ten minutes down to the creek. Two minutes to fill the bottles, a twenty-minute climb to the ridge, and fifteen minutes to Stumptown. I told Astrid I would be back in an hour. It should be less if I’m lucky.
The hike to the ridge is easy, although I have to cross several patches of snow and post-holed twice past my ankles. I locate the crooked-finger tree without any problem even though Gooseneck Mountain is covered in thick gray clouds. I stop for a quick look back toward Stumptown. I see a few of my tracks, but not enough to be obvious.
Once I hit the ridge I try to keep my descent as close as I can to the route we took on the way up. Meanwhile I do visual sweeps of the slope below, constantly searching for signs of movement in the shadows. Unfortunately there is more snow here and lots of deadfall to work around. It’s impossible to descend without leaving a trail. I stop and listen every twenty yards. The forest is silent except for the wind, which seems to be picking up, and not much farther down, I can hear the whisper of Tanum Creek. It’s a little louder, restless. Must be the recent rain. I run past the rock where Astrid and I woke to see the deer—then hit the brakes and turn around. I thought I saw a speck of something that looked out of place. And there it is, a cigarette butt. I scan for more tracks but all I see are a couple of ours. Maybe an elk hunter stopped at this rock for a smoke a long time ago. Cigarette butts take years to biodegrade. So I keep moving. It’s five minutes to the creek from here. On the way down I slip in the mud. The water bottles bang against each other. The sound echoes in the cold air.
The last twenty feet down to the creek are steep and slick thanks to the rain and snow. I do a slow 360, looking for anything out of place, any movement that might be a threat. All good. I make my way carefully down to Tanum Creek. The water is cold and clear. I wash my hands and face. I drink nearly a full liter of creek water before I top off the bottles and head back up to Stumptown.
As I’m reaching for a root to pull myself up over the bank, I hear a sharp SNAP a few degrees to my right, maybe thirty feet away. I freeze, then slowly lower myself to the dirt. I stay that way for a minute, listening for more sounds. All I hear is the burbling creek. I count to twenty, raise my head up over the bank. I’m hoping to see a deer like I did two days ago. It could have been a branch breaking under the weight of snow. Or a rock falling. I will my nerves to settle. Whatever or whoever made that sound, I’m not seeing it. I have to decide now—climb up the hill, or stay here. But Astrid is in bad shape. She needs water now.
I scramble up the slope, water bottles in each frozen hand. I hit the ridge with my lungs on fire, find the tree, then angle toward Stumptown. I stop suddenly twice and turn to look behind me. Again, I think I hear something, but another frozen minute of standing perfectly still reveals nothing.
Just when I pass the hill and head for the stump, I sense movement off to my left. I spin in time to see the arm of a black jacket slip behind a tree. He’s fifty feet from where I stand. No way I can make it to Stumptown. There’s only one choice now—keep walking past the stump and hope he follows me. With my heart pounding in my ears, I walk past the stump toward another rise. For a second I remember feeling this same way in almost this same spot when Ty and I believed Benny was going to shoot us in the back. When I’m a hundred feet beyond the stump, I risk a glance over my shoulder to see if he’s following me. A man in a black coat and black knit hat is standing fifteen feet from the stump, looking at the ground. He’s smaller than Tirk, and he’s holding a gun. He bends down, picks up something small and white. It’s the iPhone. Shit! He looks in the general direction of the stump. Then he looks at me, raises his gun, and smiles.
LUSTER, OR.
TWO MONTHS AGO
55
Cory divided Operation Rome Burning into three phases. Phase One was planning and preparation. Phase Two was the escape. Phase Three was living off the grid. Phase One had three components: gear and supplies, technology and tactics, strength and stamina. Between himself and Ty they scraped together $2,200. The first thing Cory did was reserve a ten-by-ten storage space and pay for three months in advance in cash. Then he listed all the things they needed to put in that storage room, and they started to buy their supplies a little bit a time, here and there. Never enough to catch the attention of a town with too many prying eyes. Their goal was to stay off the radar before they went off the grid.
On the technology and tactics front, Cory needed an insurance plan in case the video wasn’t convincing enough. He remembered seeing Kayla exit Harvey’s office on the day they arrived, so he thought she might have a key, and she did. He borrowed it, made a copy, and snuck in while Harvey was out of town. Ty wanted to mess with some of the fly rods, maybe break one or two, just tiny little cracks, but Cory nixed that idea. He planted two motion-activated mini spy cam video recorders, one on the bookshelf and the other in the planter behind Harvey’s desk. Harvey’s secret phone that he used late at night was an old Samsung with the pattern-style password. Between the two cameras Cory was able to analyze Harvey’s hand motion frame by frame and determine the pattern. It took him all of five tries, but he figured it out—the pattern was a “hook,” of course. Then Cory hacked his phone and cloned it by using a SIM duplicator. He built a Squarespace website, uploaded the video plus the hacked texts and image files. He subscribed to MailChimp and scheduled an email blast for noon on October 20. The blast contained a letter of introduction and a website link for three media outlets: the local NBC news affiliate in Luster, the Oregonian, and CNN. He cropped out all of Kayla except her hand. That was the best he could do to protect her identity. He hoped that catching Harvey in a car with another woman, plus the pictures Harvey had on his phone, would be enough to sink him. Anticipating that this operation would have collateral damage, one of them being Kayla’s mother’s medical expenses, Cory created a GoFundMe campaign that would launch the day they left. The goal was $250,000.
The gear and supplies started to accumulate in the storage room. They bought their backpacks on different weeks, Cory’s at Walmart, Ty’s at Mel’s Outdoor Store. The following month they bought a first aid kit, cook stove, sleeping bags, and foam pads. Ty insisted on buying a Petzl ice tool. He thought they were totally badass and might come in handy since Cory, despite Ty’s determined efforts, would not allow them to acquire a gun. Too much risk, not enough reward. For food, they bought small amounts of canned and dried foods at separate grocery stores, and kept buying until they had enough to fill the back of the Volvo. By the time September rolled around, Cory calculated they had enough food to last them through the winter, particularly if Cory caught fish in Tanum Creek and Ty managed to kill a deer with a spear, which was all he talked about for a solid month.
Cory also started running. At first he couldn’t run to the end of the driveway and back. He slowly increased his distance to a quarter mile, a half mile; then, as his weight continued to drop, he added running trails to increase agility and strength. He sold his PlayStation on Craigslist, deleted his Battlenet account, swore off hamburgers, pizza, soda, and even Chloe’s double-chocolate fudge brownies. Meanwhile he discovered interesting ways to cook kale, spinach, and lentils. Rebecca was the first to comment on his weight loss and asked him, “Who’s the special guy…I mean, girl…I mean, whatever?” Charlene noticed the following week and insisted on a shopping spree because all his clothes were saggy. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. They spent a fun afternoon together and hit all the expensive spots, purchasing clothes that were way outside Cory’s budget. She loved his new look, and declared at lunch over thei
r salads that his inner heartthrob was showing. Cory felt guilty about allowing her to spend all that money on clothes he would never wear—until she explained that it was Harvey’s money. Then he tried on and liked everything she hung over the dressing room door, secretly whispering, “Thank you, asshole,” every time Harvey’s credit card flashed.
Ty did his part too, by avoiding prolonged exposure to Harvey. Ten minutes at dinner was about all he could handle. He signed up for summer two-a-day workouts as if he intended to play football in the fall. Coach told him it looked like he would be a starting DB, as long as he kept his bad ankle taped, and didn’t let that mean streak of his get in the way of his instincts and talent. Ty didn’t get into any fights until their second home game on October 11. He was chop-blocked by an offensive tackle on the side with his weak ankle. That hit resulted in a thirty-yard touchdown reception. On their next possession Ty upended the guy in front of the opposing team’s bench, even though the play had already been whistled dead. Ty was ejected from the game. He limped off the field, then turned in his uniform that night.
On the morning of October 17, seventy-two hours before Operation Rome Burning entered Phase Two, Cory was stretching in the driveway for his morning run. Harvey walked out the door dressed in his running tights.
“Trail or road?” he asked.
“Trail,” Cory said.
“Perfect. Let’s go.”
Cory hesitated. Harvey was usually done with his run by now. Cory had never run with Harvey, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to start now. On the one hand, he was leaving in three days, so why not? On the other hand, he was leaving in three days, so why risk it?
“What’s wrong?” Harvey said. “Afraid you can’t keep up with a forty-eight-year-old retired judge with a pacemaker?”
“No. I have a class in an hour and I can’t afford to be waiting around for you.”
Harvey grinned. “Well, I know you know CPR, so I’m in good hands.”
They ran to the end of the driveway and turned right onto a well-worn path through the trees. It was wide enough for two side-by-side runners, but not by much. Cory fell in behind Harvey, who waved his arm and said, “Get up here with me.”
Cory picked up his pace and matched Harvey, stride for stride.
Harvey asked, “How much weight have you lost?”
“Thirty pounds.”
“When did you start?”
Cory thought he should be careful here. Vague was better than specific. “Mid-July.”
“Ten pounds a month. That’s impressive.”
Cory concentrated on the path. Now would not be a good time to sprain a knee.
Harvey said, “Justin told me you sold your PlayStation.”
“Yeah.”
They rounded a short bend, then followed the trail down into a gully. This was where it followed a dried-up creek and got tricky with lots of rocks.
Harvey said, “No more late-night gaming?”
“There are better ways to use my time.”
The path climbed out of the gully, angled steeply up to a ridge with a split-rail fence at the top that marked the neighbor’s property line. It was hard work and Cory’s lungs were burning, but this part was his payoff. The neighbors raised llamas, and when they were in the pasture he would stop and talk to them. They always seemed interested in what he had to say. They were out this morning, and his favorite, the white one with the black ear, was waiting for him by the fence. But Harvey pressed on with his questions. Cory preferred the llama.
Harvey said, “Three months ago this activity would’ve killed you.”
“Thinking about this activity would have killed me.”
The path swung away from the fence, took a short hundred-foot pitch down to the road. Cory was relieved to be off the dirt and onto solid pavement. From here it was less than a quarter mile to the driveway.
Harvey accelerated. He looked over his shoulder, saw that Cory was struggling.
“Keep up,” he said. “Always finish strong.”
Cory stayed with him, but when they reached the driveway he nearly collapsed. He bent over, gasped for breath. It felt like his lungs had shrunk to the size of walnuts. Harvey stretched beside him, waited for him to recover. When Cory could breathe again they walked up the driveway toward the house.
Harvey said, “You think I haven’t noticed, but I have.”
“Noticed what?”
“You’re different.”
“Different how?”
“Ty’s basically the same. But you were drifting. Now you seem more…directed.”
Cory focused on the door. Twenty more steps.
Harvey said, “In my experience, people don’t change unless there’s a reason. What’s your reason?”
Not what. Who.
“I was tired of being overweight.” Then, “Actually I wasn’t tired of being overweight. I was tired of people seeing me as fat.”
Harvey laughed. “After thirty years of fishing, I know when I’m playing the fish, and when the fish is playing me.”
Cory didn’t know how to respond, so he didn’t.
Ten feet from the porch, Harvey stopped and said, “It occurs to me that I asked all the questions. Do you have any for me?”
Cory thought for a moment. Yeah, there was one. He decided what the hell.
“Why did you do it?”
Harvey looked at him. In that instant Cory saw it there, the wolf, in those eyes behind the gray. He wondered if that’s what Kayla saw when she was in the car with him.
Harvey said, “Do what?”
“Be foster parents.”
The gray eyes softened from hardened steel to liquid mercury. The wolf faded. “Fostering was Charlene’s idea. She wanted to do something positive with the good fortune we have. She thought it set a good example for the kids, to help the less fortunate and welcome them into our family. I thought the idea had merit and flew it past Lester. He thought the optics were good.”
The optics were good? So it was political. “But why us?”
“That’s a little more complicated.” Harvey put his arm around Cory’s shoulder, whispered in his ear. “I knew your father.”
His words stopped Cory cold.
Harvey smiled. “I was filling in for a judge in Jefferson County for a month. While I was there a man was brought up on possession charges for a small amount of cocaine. During the arraignment an attractive woman walked into my courtroom with one of those strollers for twins. I have a vivid image of her in my mind because she sat down, exposed a breast, and started feeding her babies. In my courtroom! Unfortunately for her, she was married to one Benjamin Bic. I lectured him on the evils of drugs, that he had two infant sons and a wife. It was all standard stuff. Since it was a Class C felony and he was a nonviolent first-time offender, in exchange for a guilty plea I sentenced him to three months in a drug treatment facility and mandatory drug testing for one year. When I saw the Bic name come up as twin siblings looking for a foster care family, I had to say yes. If not for your mother and her brazen stunt, I would have written your father off as another loser destined for a lifetime of incarceration, sent him to jail, and forgotten the name completely.”
Cory wondered how differently life would have turned out for those twins if their mother had fed them in the hall instead of the courtroom that day. “So the reason we’re here is my mother’s boobs?”
“That may answer your question, but it doesn’t answer mine.”
“What is your question?”
Harvey smiled and opened the door. “What I want to know is, why are you still here?”
STUMPTOWN
NOW
56
Tweaker Teeth says, “Where is she?”
I could run but I won’t get far. If he kills me then I can’t help Astrid. She’s dying twenty feet away from where he is now. She won’t make it out of here without me. So I stand there while Tweaker Teeth points the gun at me, hoping he needs me alive more than he needs me dead. I say, �
��She took off.”
“Yeah? Then why’re you still here?”
“Looking for my phone.”
“That’s two lies you told me. Wanna try for strike three? But before you answer you need to know that I am not in the fuckin’ mood.”
I say nothing. His right eye is nearly swollen shut. It could be the car wreck. Or, I think as my stomach clenches, it could be Ty.
He says, “If she’s gone then why two water bottles?”
This is an easy one thanks to the first aid class. “I’m a diabetic. I need a lot of water.”
Tweaker Teeth shakes his head. I don’t think that answer works for him. He turns the gun sideways a little. “Right. And I’m a runway model. You know what I think?”
I shake my head.
“Benny talked a lot when he was high. An’ he was one of the highest flyers that ever lived. One night he went on and on about a magic stump in the woods that was gonna solve all his problems. Meanwhile I got Tirk on my ass sayin’ that Benny skimmed at least two hundred grand from the business. So I’m thinking: Here I am in the woods with one of the Bic boys and guess where I find his phone? Not ten feet from a stump in the fuckin’ woods. So I’ll give you one more chance to speak the truth. Don’t be stupid like your brother. Where’d he hide it?”
What did he do to Ty? I have to swallow that thought for now. He wants the money. I focus on that. “Benny showed us a map once, but it burned in the fire. It was thirty feet from a stump buried in garbage bags next to a big boulder.” I point to a boulder. “I’m pretty sure that’s where the money is.”
“How do you know this is the right stump?”
“He took us up here once. He told us about an elk he shot and followed the blood trail to this spot. We figured this had to be the place.”
Deadfall Page 26
