Sam doubted that Arnie ranked high enough to have any voice in the matter, but she let him ramble on.
His gaze came back to her. “Naturally, being the stuffed turkeys they are, they fell for it. Drew the boundary line around it just like that.” He snapped his fingers. Then he paced across the planked floor to a map on the wall, and dragged his finger down a red line that partitioned off former National Forest land. “Took half my district.”
Oops. “You’re not losing your job, are you, Arnie?”
“Not me,” he said meaningfully, and she wondered who around there was getting the axe. “They’re reapportioning the districts; I’m getting a new piece up north.” He turned and looked at her. “They didn’t hurt me; I was thrilled to get rid of Marmot Lake.”
“Why?” Her mind raced now, picturing a toxic waste dump under the lake’s placid surface. PCBs, radioactive metals. Not hard to imagine after reading that article on mining and watersheds two nights ago.
“Oh, let me count the whys.” Arnie was enjoying this conversation way too much. That meant that he was serious about the problems in the area. He ticked them off on his fingers. “First, there was the hunting, all year round. No attention to seasons or picayune little details like that.”
Sam winced at the memory. “I ran into an illegal hunter last Thursday.”
“Anytime anyone even thinks they see a bear ass out there, they shoot at it.” He grinned at his double entendre. “I mean a bruin butt, not a naked human ass.”
“I figured that,” she said quickly, hoping to head him off before he segued into an enumeration of other body parts.
“But do all those bullets and arrows whizzing around send our bruins scampering to the backcountry? No, siree. When the pesky beasts aren’t ripping apart the family coolers, they’re dumping out the trash cans. Or crawling into tents. I figured that was why you closed the campground.” He gave her a quizzical look.
“It was closed when I got here.” She was told it was NPS strategy for the transition from USFS to NPS. Her management plan was supposed to include advice on whether or not to reopen the campground and picnic area.
“So I guess the bears would be reason number two.” He extended a second finger, and then a third. “Reason number three: paintball wars. When the nutcases weren’t firing real bullets at bears, they were firing paint bullets at each other. At least half a dozen times each year we’d get a call about crazies crawling around in camouflage, aiming rifles at each other.”
That explained the splashes of paint she’d noticed on trees around the lake. She’d figured that they’d been marked for cutting or something.
Arnie pulled down his collar and tapped a circular red scar on his neck. “You probably think paintballs are harmless, but those things hurt! They can put an eye out, even kill you if you get hit close up.”
“What did you charge these paintball warriors with?” Did popping a paintball qualify as firing a weapon? Would spattering paint across the scenery count as vandalism, destruction of government property?
His eyes shifted back to the map. “Just ran ’em off.”
She guessed that Arnie had never caught up with the gamesters.
He tapped the map. “And that brings us to reason number four: the Lucky Molly Mine, which you discovered the other night.”
Aha. “Surely it hasn’t been active for a long time.”
He snorted. “Someone tries to claim it nearly every year, but they never can make it pay. Most don’t last more than six weeks, but there was always blasting or some freaky activity going on back there. We kept filling it in, then some hotshot prospector would dynamite it open two months later. It’s on all the old USGS maps.”
Great. “What kind of mine is it?”
“Gold, sweetheart. At least that’s how it’s billed.” He raked his long dishwater blond hair with his fingers. “Someone trying to open it up again?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. During that arson fire over there, I sort of stumbled onto the mine. Well, you were there…” She frowned, remembering his wolf whistle at the time. “That crater wasn’t there a week ago.”
“I saw Lindstrom boosting you out of that hole. Wish it’d been my hands instead of his.” He bounced his eyebrows.
She ignored his comment. “Do you think someone wants to open up that mine?”
His smile faded. “You’d better hope not, Sam. You don’t want an active mine in your territory. We’ve got one down in our southern section, close to the reservation, and when they’re not putting out toxic smoke or leaking cyanide into the streams, they’re losing explosives right and left and blaming us for not locking up the woods at night.”
“Losing explosives?” That sounded serious.
“Last March, it was a pound of C-4 and six blasting caps.”
“What’s C-4?”
He greeted her ignorance with a look of disdain.
“I don’t blow things up very often,” she said. “Unlike the forest service, park employees—even temps—aren’t paid to destroy the natural surroundings.”
To her surprise, he let that remark pass, and responded only with, “Ever heard of plastique?”
“Sure.” That moldable claylike stuff spies and bank robbers were always glomming into keyholes on television.
“You could flatten a city block with a pound of that stuff. Or divide it up and blow up a dozen cars, or a few houses. Or—”
“I get the drift.” Jeez. So maybe the boom she’d heard had been a real explosion, not just a firecracker or a rifle shot.
“But why are you asking me all this? You’re not law enforcement. You’re not even—”
“I know, I’m not an aide, I’m not even permanent staff.” She was tired of hearing about it. “Look, Arnie, I was hired to document the ecosystem in the new sector and come up with a management plan. So it’s my job, at least right now, to be interested in all the flora and fauna and human activity, both past and present, and especially, any threats that now exist in that area.”
“I’m on your side, remember?” He held up both hands in a gesture of surrender, and she realized that she had pounded on his desk.
“Well,” she said, for lack of anything better. Illegal hunting. Mining claims. C-4. He’d confirmed her fears and added a new one. Now she was supposed to be on the lookout for bombs in the woods, too? And then there was the arson angle, and Lisa Glass had added kidnapping to the list. What was next? Meth labs, she thought, remembering her conversation with Ranger Paul Schuler near the lake. She stood up to leave, and switched her radio back on. Now she wished she had a partner to accompany her, especially down that newly blazed track. Did Mack or Joe or any of the rangers have cowardly thoughts like that? Probably not. She stiffened her back.
Arnie walked her to the door. “I hear that you stay with Mack sometimes. He’s got a girlfriend, you know. That hot red-haired chick. Jodi.”
She turned. “Mack and I are friends. I sleep on his couch.”
He smiled. “I have a couch, too, Summer.”
Was he actually trying to be nice? “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “Thanks.”
“It folds out. Into a double bed.” His right eye closed in a lascivious wink.
The door had just closed behind her when the radio on her belt squawked. “Three-two-five, come in. Three-five-four.”
She pulled it from her belt. “Three-two-five.”
“Westin? That you?”
The voice and the radio code were unfamiliar. “This is three-two-five. Sam Westin. Who’s calling? Over.”
“Oh yeah. Three-four-five. I mean three-five-four. Greg Jordan, at the lookout?”
The poet/firewatch volunteer. Sam grinned at his awkward communication skills. At least someone was sloppier than she was. “What’s up, Greg?”
“You asked me to call you if anything looked hinky at Marmot Lake? Over.”
“Yeah? What’s up? Over.”
“I think I heard a gunshot, and I can see glints of s
omething shiny now and then. On the west shore of the lake. Should I do anything? Over.”
“Stay put and watch for smoke, Greg. I’m going to check it out now.”
ERNEST stared at the phone. He’d ripped three pages out of the Greater Seattle phone book at the library and started calling all the landscape companies. On the very last listing, he struck gold: when he’d asked for Allyson Craig, the old guy who answered the phone told him that she was out in the field and would call him back. Ernest couldn’t wait to hear his daughter’s voice, find out what had kept her away last weekend.
The phone suddenly bleated a shrill note, making him jump. He grabbed the receiver. “Allie?”
“This is Alice.”
The voice didn’t sound like his daughter, but then she was far away. “Allie, honey, is that you?”
“My name is Alice Gray. Who are you looking for?”
He explained despondently. She sympathized with him for a moment before she hung up. Damn! Another dead end. He reached for the whiskey bottle and found only a sip left in the bottom. What was he going to do now? Call every landscaper in the state of Washington?
He heard ringing, reached for the receiver again, and then realized it was the doorbell. As he hefted himself to his feet, the sound repeated, like an annoying mosquito.
“Coming!” he bellowed. Just how fast did they think a man with a bum leg could get to the door?
A smallish man in a county sheriff’s uniform stood on the front steps. The sun glinted from the brass emblem on his hat as he raised his eyes from the little notepad he held. “Good afternoon, sir. Does Allyson Craig live here?”
Ernest felt his heart lurch like it missed a couple beats. Please God, don’t let this be bad news. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s my daughter. She works over in Seattle, but she comes back weekends.”
The sheriff, or deputy, or whatever he was, held out a thin sheet of paper. “We found a Chevy Nova with this registration in it over by Bogachiel State Park, down by the river, about half a mile north of the public fishing dock.”
Ernest stared at the paper. He had to swallow hard before he could say, “Oh God.”
The man looked startled. “Sir?”
“Allie never came home last weekend. I thought maybe…” He couldn’t finish. What had he thought? That she’d told him she wouldn’t be home and he’d forgotten? That she’d run away from her old drunk of a father? Anything other than this—
The deputy put one hand on Ernest’s forearm, and used the other to push the screen door open wider. “If it’s all right with you, Mr. Craig, I think I’d better come in.”
THE gate barred the road to Marmot Lake. Good, Sam thought, this was a false alarm and Raider wasn’t really in danger. But when she reached for the lock, she found that the chain had merely been draped over the posts to make it look as though it were still secure. Her stomach cramped with anxiety. Something hinky, indeed. She drove through, leaving the gate open behind her.
She tried to raise Joe Choi on the radio. “Three-four-seven, this is three-two-five. Come in, three-four-seven.” No response. Next she tried the dispatcher. To her dismay, Peter Hoyle responded. “What’s going on out there, Westin? Over.”
“Where’s Joe?” Sam asked.
“Choi is on lunch break. Where are you? Over.”
“I’m on my way to check out suspicious activity at Marmot Lake. Someone broke the gate lock again. Over.”
“That’s a job for law enforcement. I’ll dispatch Tyburn to that location ASAP. Turn that vehicle around now, Westin, and go back to the duties you were hired to do. Over.”
Sam knew that unless Norm Tyburn was by some miraculous coincidence in this sector, he wouldn’t be here for forty-five minutes at the earliest. By that time, anything could happen: Raider could be dead, the forest could be on fire again, some wackos could be torturing another girl.
“Westin? Acknowledge. Over.”
She swung the truck into the gravel parking lot, switched off the engine, and intermittently thumbed the Talk button on her radio. “Didn’t get that, HQ, you’re breaking up. I’m at the lake now. I’ll report my findings. Three-two-five, clear.” She switched off the radio and slid it back into her belt holster before getting out of the pickup.
She’d parked close to a late-model black pickup, gleaming with stripes and chrome. Jacked up on extra-large tires and adorned with two spotlights mounted above the cab in addition to its four headlights, the vehicle leered down at her like a monstrous black widow about to pounce on an insect. It looked exactly like the sort of vehicle a bear poacher would drive. Or a would-be gold miner. Or an arsonist. Kidnapper. Meth cook. Or maybe just a local backwoodsman; heaven knew she’d seen enough of these in Forks. Whoever it belonged to was, at the very least, trespassing, and deserved to be grilled about that.
She noted its license number on her notepad. After scrutinizing the area to make sure the owner wasn’t lurking nearby, she made an undignified climb onto the running board. A quick inspection of the interior revealed little. Two men’s windbreakers lay across the seat. A pack of cigarettes on the dashboard. A rifle rack barred the back window. Empty. She prayed that it had been that way when the truck entered the parking lot.
Using the side mirror as a handle, Sam lowered herself to the ground. The loose gravel crunched under her boots. The noise seemed loud in the deserted parking lot. She chewed her thumbnail for a moment. Should she wait for Tyburn? Who knew how long that would take? Go in search of the pickup’s passengers? As Hoyle had reminded her, law enforcement was not her job. Still, she was the only ranger here, even if she was only a temporary one.
Pop. Pop. Tightly controlled explosions that, in an urban environment, might have come from a nail gun or a backfiring muffler. But here in the hills, it could only be gunfire. From the far side of the lake. Damn it!
She jogged across the lot and started down the trail. Please let this be paintball, she prayed. Please don’t let me find two illegal hunters and a dead bear at the end of this path.
THE deputy listened to Ernest’s story about his missing daughter, then borrowed the phone and called his office. He told someone to seal the Nova and call a forensics team. Ernest wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound good.
“I don’t know,” he heard the deputy say into the receiver. The man’s eyes connected with Ernest’s for a second, then he turned away and said in a low voice, “It might be related to that other…incident. Yeah. Get them on it ASAP, see if there are any, uh, similarities.”
After he hung up, the deputy asked if Allyson had ever been fingerprinted.
Ernest shook his head. “No, she’s never been in trouble. She is a good girl.” Please, let Allie still be alive and well; let him still be right to say is and not was.
“These days people take fingerprints for all sorts of reasons. Some jobs require them. Some parents get their kids fingerprinted just in case they get lost.”
Was the deputy accusing him of being a bad father? Fingerprinting a kid—what was the world coming to? He shook his head again. “No prints.”
“Do you know her blood type?”
Oh God, no. “Was there blood in her car?”
The deputy avoided meeting his eyes. “It’s just a formality, sir.”
“Type O, I think. Same as mine.”
The man wrote it down.
“What other incident?” Ernest asked.
“Pardon?” The deputy looked up.
“I heard you say that this might be related to ‘that other incident.’ What’d you mean by that?”
The deputy’s gaze flicked to the tabletop, to the notepad, and finally came to rest on the pen in his hands. He was a young man, clearly uncertain about what to do. “There’s probably no relationship, but…”
“Just spit it out, man.” He could take it, Ernest thought. Christ, he had to take it, didn’t he?
The deputy’s brown eyes were cool, analytic. His gaze was locked on Ernest’s face as he said, “
This morning, under the fishing dock, we found a woman’s hand.”
12
JACK Winner crouched behind a blackened tree and pulled the pistol in close to his chest. After checking the path ahead, he dashed to the cover of the next tree, making no more noise than a chipmunk scampering across the dry ground. Shit, he was good at this.
Leaning against his new cover, Jack chanced a quick look through the branches. King, in camouflage pants and olive T-shirt like his, was in motion, running to the next large tree. King’s back was toward him, his eyes fixed on some spot in the distance. Ha! He had him now. King had no idea that Jack was behind him. The man needed to learn to be more careful. Allie had been better, more aware of her surroundings. He’d never been able to sneak up on her like this. She’d even managed to surprise him twice.
He swallowed. Thinking about her made his throat hurt. Best not to dwell on the past. Just look at the news: soldiers were dying all the time in routine exercises, when carrying supplies, in transit to and from the real action. And they were soldiers, he and Philip and Roddie and Allie. She deserved a medal of honor and rifle salutes.
The pain ambushed him in the gut again. It was hard to believe there was not a shred left of Allie, but he’d found nothing; he couldn’t even tell where she’d fallen. But as King had pointed out, there were bears around Marmot Lake. And bears were scavengers. From now on, he’d shoot every single one he saw.
Allie had been part of the real army, the Americans who knew how to think for themselves, not those poor dupes giving it up in Afghanistan and Iraq, all to make Walmart and Exxon and DuPont even more filthy rich. He could understand bin Laden wanting to take down those monuments to money in New York. Too bad the idiot wasn’t better at targeting just the CEOs. He didn’t need to kill the janitors and secretaries, too.
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