Downpour

by Kat Richardson

  “Come on, come on,” I murmured. “Let it go.”

  Leung’s flames leapt in the corner of my eye as I started to raise my hand. I could feel the water lap at the toes of my boots and I turned my head toward the ghost. Encased in the red and orange of remembered fire, he also stared up. We both turned our sights on the car, willing it to keep moving, to clear the lake....

  The crane gave a squealing sound and lurched back into motion, the web of the lake’s hold on the car falling away as the car suddenly lifted free of the surface. Water rushed back to its source from the broken windows and crooked doorframes, and the noise sounded like the heavy sigh of a giant. Leung’s ghost turned toward me. Then he flamed up in a sudden bolt of red energy visible even in the wan sunlight of the afternoon and vanished with the stink of burned hair. I felt the same sense of emptiness that had accompanied the disappearance of the Russian girl’s ghost. Was the last remnant of Steven Leung now gone forever . . . ?

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned a little farther to find Ridenour reaching to pull me away from the water’s edge. “Come on back. We don’t need you in the drink, too. It’s getting damned late and we’d never get out of here before dark if we had to fish you out as well.”

  I nodded and retreated with him a few feet to watch the barge crew swing the car over the side and into the well of the craft.

  When we returned to the Storm King ranger station, Strother was standing in the parking lot, keeping watch for the flatbed, which drove in about thirty minutes behind us. The barge was also nearing the dock by that time and the pointing and parking, shouting and maneuvering of both the barge and the flatbed took longer than I’d have expected. The two men and the truck driver did eventually get the flatbed backed a few feet down the boat ramp and the barge tied up just right so the barge would have a shorter distance to move the crane arm when unloading the car. The truck driver didn’t seem happy about the water; he hadn’t brought hip waders and he took pains to let us all know he didn’t see how he was going to secure the load without getting wet. With the wind finally coming up along the lake as the sun tilted toward the western rim of the valley, the barge crew and the truck driver were especially eager to get finished and headed back toward home soon.

  More shouting and pointing went on until the problem was solved by the man in the dry suit who’d worked the smaller boat around the sunken car. He jumped to the dock and did the wading end of the business himself, though not without a show of annoyance. Strong words were exchanged in all directions, and the driver looked relieved when he could move the truck up onto the gravel above the water and tie the car down to his own satisfaction. The man from the barge rolled his eyes and returned to the craft after trudging back up the short dock to untie the vessel and jump aboard across the widening stretch of water. The jump wasn’t so good this time and he had to scramble to get in, but he made it, and the barge began chugging away from the dock and out into the deeper water to head west and south to Fairholm.

  While the trucker was checking on the straps he’d used to secure the car to the flatbed, and Strother and Ridenour were arguing between them, I took the opportunity to climb up on the bed of the truck and look into the remains of the car.

  A skull, some dying fish, and a litter of bones floated in a puddle trapped on the floorboards. Ridenour shouted as he noticed me leaning in through the broken driver’s window.

  “Hey! Get out of there, Miss Blaine! It’s not safe.”

  I turned back to shout over my shoulder at him, but I didn’t leave the car. “There’s a skeleton in here.” I looked back into the car and saw something gleaming green and gold through layers of Grey in the back footwell. “And some other things on the floor.” Besides water, the car seemed to leak a Grey mist. I wanted to take a closer look, but now was probably not the best time to try it, with tempers running a bit high and the hour growing late.

  Ridenour and Strother both scrambled up to join me while the driver protested that they were keeping him from leaving. They told him to wait while they shoved up beside me to take a look.

  Strother looked a little green as he spotted the skull, sticky with bits of soapy flesh still sticking to it here and there.

  Ridenour shook his head in annoyance. “Damn it, now there’ll be a bunch of damned investigators up here, making a mess in my park.”

  “Any idea whose car this is?” I asked. I knew exactly whose, since the license plate currently sitting on the desk in my hotel room matched the plate barely clinging to the front bumper. The whole front end had been folded into a V by impact with something I assumed was the cedar tree I’d first seen the ghostly car burning under, but I wasn’t going to hand over that information. Someone might or might not figure out the tree connection, but as far as I was concerned, the most important thing was done: Leung’s disappearance and death would now be investigated by someone. I just had to make sure whoever had hidden it in the first place didn’t have power enough to bring the investigation to a halt.

  Ridenour and Strother both backed up and began looking the car over until Strother shrugged and Ridenour scowled. “That’s Steve Leung’s car. I haven’t seen or heard from him in . . . must be five years. I wonder—”

  “I’m wondering the same thing,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s unlikely that the skeleton found in a missing man’s car would be anyone other than the missing man?”

  Ridenour’s expression went darker. “He could have killed someone, and then have run off and hid. . . .”

  I gave him a doubtful look. “Do you really think so? Do you think a man in his sixties is going to just dash off and leave a body in the lake?”

  “No, I don’t guess so.... Hey, how would you know how old Leung is?”

  “He’s one of the guys I was looking for while I was up here. But I didn’t find him and no one knew where or when he’d gone. He didn’t change his address with the post office or the people who send him his retirement checks. Looks like I’ve found him now.”

  “Hell,” Ridenour swore. “I guess I’ll have to go talk to Jewel.”

  “Is that one of his daughters?” I asked. I knew but couldn’t let on.

  “Yeah. Why were you looking for him, anyway?”

  “I’d rather discuss that with his daughters.”

  “Well, you won’t have any luck catching up to Willow—no one from law enforcement’s been able to catch her in years.” Ridenour’s tone was pointed and bitter.

  “So she’s a troublemaker?” I asked, making a mental note of the name—Shea had called her “Willa,” and I now assumed that was just his accent in play, not her actual name.

  Strother made a wry face and answered before Ridenour could. “Bit more than that. County and city both have standing warrants on Miss Leung for various violent and property crimes. So far, no one’s had any luck bringing her in on any of them.”

  I’d have to find a way to get to her, even though every local authority had failed. What fun. But I said, “I guess I’ll just have to go with Ridenour to see the other sister.”

  Ridenour didn’t seem eager to bring this particular news to the Leung survivors, so it wasn’t too much of a battle to get him to agree, but he didn’t like it. He also wanted to take a deeper look into the car before we left; however, the doors were jammed and Strother pointed out that any additional poking about wouldn’t be appreciated by whoever had to investigate. Unhappily Ridenour jumped back to the ground and offered to drive me to Jewel Newman’s once the truck was safely on its way to the county yard with Strother in tow.

  The truck driver rechecked his straps once we were all off his flatbed. He didn’t seem too pleased with any of us and I wondered if he was just grumpy in general or if the Grey oozing from the car was affecting him in some way. We watched him climb inside and start the truck rolling. Strother waved the flatbed out to the highway as I stayed behind with Ridenour.

  “Who’s Newman?” I asked him as Strother walked away from us.

  “Jew
el’s the oldest of Steven’s kids. Married a fella named Geoff Newman back quite a few years now. They were in high school over at Piedmont together, but you couldn’t have called them sweethearts. The Leung kids have been trouble since they were little. The girls got a lot worse once their mother and brother died. Not that the brother was a prize—he was argumentative and arrogant.”

  By now the flatbed had made it to the road and disappeared, heading for Port Angeles. Strother waved to us and then took off in his own car, leaving me and Ridenour to lock up the ranger station. As we walked toward his park service pickup truck, Ridenour continued the story. “I don’t know what Newman’s got—aside from money—but when he came back from college, he and Jewel hooked up and got married in a big hurry. You might be thinking he got her pregnant, but there never was a child, and she settled down to doing a lot of community work around the area—busybody stuff, if you ask me. The residents treat her like the queen of the lake. What she says goes with most of them. Except with her sister and a couple others.”

  We got into his truck and Chaos stuck her nose out of my pocket to sniff the warm, weird smells, but decided she wasn’t too crazy about them and burrowed back down to nap some more. “What’s the story on Willow, then?” I asked.

  Ridenour ground his teeth as he started the engine. “She’s just plain-ass wild. Half-crazy and all dangerous and no way to know how she got that way—both her folks were fine people.” He started driving and I kept on asking questions.

  “Strother said there were warrants—for what?”

  “Well, aside from a couple of homicides, there’s the petty stuff like smoking pot, trespassing, and vandalism, and then she got into breaking and entering, burglary, robbery, and a few other unsavory things. Most of it’s been down around Lake Sutherland and below—which is outside the federal park property—but not all of it. I can’t say I’m pleased to have a few federal charges to press if she’s ever caught—I don’t really like that aspect of my job when you come down to it—but Willow is dangerous. Unpredictable and crazy enough to do damned near anything. Something goes bad around here that isn’t caused by bears or tourists acting stupid, you can bet it’s Willow.

  “She’s the best damned woodsman you’ll ever meet, though. That’s the mixed blessing of her having been born and raised here. She can track and hide in this country like no one’s business, which has made her impossible to catch. You’d almost think the trees and animals are on her side or something, and she’s as crafty and as mean as one of our mountain lions. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if she hadn’t killed her dad herself over some damned thing. She’s that mean and crazy. And she’s killed before, so it’s not like she’s squeamish about it.”

  “Who did she kill and why?”

  “Well, we’re not entirely sure she killed her brother—though that’s the general belief—but we do know she killed a telephone lineman who was working out around Lake Sutherland one summer.” His voice dripped disgust. “She claims he raped her and she shot him in self-defense when he came round for a second try, but she never reported the first incident, and the man was shot with her rifle from one hell of a distance, which sounds like lying in wait, not self-defense.”

  “How did you get this statement from her?”

  “Well,” he started, but the rest of his words were cut off by a squeal from the truck’s radio and a voice calling out for him to respond at once. Ridenour snatched the hand piece off its hook and barked back. “What the hell is it?”

  “This is Metz out at Hurricane Ridge station. We have a situation.”

  “What sort of situation?”

  “You’re not going to believe this, Brett, but . . . we’ve got animals in the parking lot attacking the trucks, and that damned Leung girl seems to be with them.”

  “Willow?”

  “Yep. I’ve never seen anything like it—it’s like the critters are working for her or something. You need to get out here ASAP. There’s just me here and the rifle’s in the truck. I think I’m OK in the visitor center, but the rest of the station’s getting a hell of a mauling.”

  “What sort of critters are we talking here?”

  “Bunch of those crazy white deer, including some big bucks, couple of pissed-off bears—”

  “You sure it’s bears?” Ridenour asked. I was wondering if the bears and deer weren’t ugly white guai instead.

  “Damn it, Brett, I know a bear when I see one! One of ’em’s old Blaze, and I don’t know what got that grizzled old bastard out of his cave this early, but he’s having a ball ripping the doors off the compost shed. Those bucks are ramming everything he hasn’t ripped into yet and I don’t know why he hasn’t tried to eat one of ’em, but if you don’t get here soon, we’ll be knee-deep in mulch and bear poop!”

  Ridenour swore. He turned to me with eyes slightly too wide and wild. “I’m going to drop you off at the top of the road down to Jewel’s place. You’ll be perfectly safe walking down to the house, and her husband can drive you back to the station at Storm King to pick up your truck when you’re done.”

  “Done ?”

  “Yeah. You’re going to have to give her the bad news about her dad yourself. I gotta go catch her crazy-ass sister !”

  TEN

  In a few minutes I found myself at the top of a steep graveled road with Ridenour’s park service truck vanishing into the distance. He didn’t seem to think it was odd that Willow Leung was apparently leading wild bears around—bears that should have still been tucked up at the end of winter hibernation, not rampaging around ranger stations. Frowning over the strange behavior of bears and park rangers, I started down the road to Jewel and Geoff Newman’s house.

  It turned out to be the big glass-fronted house at the end of East Beach that I’d spotted down the shoreline from the sunken car. The place was impressive: two stories of wood and glass that spread across half the wide lot directly on the waterfront at one of the few locations with any beach to speak of. Remnants of an old dock clung to the shore at the extreme southeastern end of the property where the wedge shape of an ancient landslide had filled in the ground between Lake Crescent and Lake Sutherland. I didn’t even have to move toward the Grey to see the glimmer of blue power that ran under the ground to the other lake. The power lines and smears of color were stronger here, closer to the source, I guessed, than at Lake Sutherland.

  In the Grey, the house was darker than the surrounding landscape in spite of being well illuminated with electric lights, as if the house somehow defied the energy—or drank it without a trace. Something magical lived here. The memory of an older, more rustic building flickered over the modern house. I was thinking I should take a deeper look at the area, when the front door opened.

  A man stood silhouetted in the bright doorway and called out to me. “You can come in or you can go away, but you can’t just stand there.”

  I shrugged and started walking toward him. His shape changed as I moved closer, and I realized he’d picked up something from inside the house. The long black shape set off a nervous stirring in my chest—it was a rifle. He didn’t shoulder it, though. He just waited to see what I would do.

  I kept on walking toward the steps that went up to the door. “Hello,” I called out. “Ranger Ridenour sent me down to talk to Mrs. Newman.”

  I went up the steps, keeping my eyes on the man with the rifle. I wanted to put my hand in my pocket to keep the ferret from doing something that might upset him, but I didn’t think he’d like it if I hid my hands suddenly. As I got closer I could see him better in spite of the backlighting: He was about my height, middle-aged, judging by his posture, a little stocky. . . . Details were still hard to see with the bright electric light behind him, but when I reached the open doorway, I realized he was black and wearing dark clothes. Clallam County was so overwhelmingly Caucasian that it was almost startling to see him.

  I nodded and offered my hand. “My name’s Harper Blaine. I’m a private investigator and I’d like to speak with Mr
s. Newman.”

  The man put the rifle down just inside the doorway. He looked me over but didn’t take my hand. “What do you want with my wife?”

  “It’s about her father.”

  Newman crossed his arms over his chest. His energy corona was a dull, unhealthy olive green fired with jagged bolts of frustrated orange. “What about him?” He clearly wasn’t going to let me in without more information—if he let me in at all.

  “Mr. Newman, you may have noticed some activity down on the lake this afternoon, just a hundred yards or so down the shore.”

  “We certainly did. Jewel’s been agitated ever since. She’s sick and she doesn’t need any more upsets today, so if you’ve come to make any more trouble, you can go back where you came from right now.” The orange sparks around his head went red as he glared at me.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Newman, but I’m afraid I may need to upset her further. The car they removed from the lake was her father’s. I can go away and let Mr. Ridenour come speak to your wife tomorrow if you prefer, but I don’t think he’ll be any easier on her. He’s currently pursuing her sister and he doesn’t seem to have a very positive attitude about the family.”

  Newman snorted. “That’s the truth. But you won’t be coming up here and upsetting her, either. Whatever’s happened to that old car, it’s nothing to do with Jewel.”

  “Mr. Newman, there’s a body in the car.”

  “Well, it hasn’t got anything to do with us.” Everything about him seemed to darken and pull in.

  Distantly, a noise moved through the house and a weak voice tried to call out, but the words were too hard to hear. I could see something that sparkled with magic skitter across the floor of the open second-story balcony and down the stairs on my right. Whatever it was died out as it got halfway down. A rhythmic thumping started. I could tell from the slight tightening at the corners of his eyes that Newman heard it; he just refused to acknowledge it in front of me.