No Way to Die

by Warren C Easley

  Also by Warren C. Easley

  The Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries

  Matters of Doubt

  Dead Float

  Never Look Down

  Not Dead Enough

  Blood for Wine

  Moving Targets

  Copyright © 2019 by Warren C. Easley

  Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by The Book Designers

  Cover image © J. Helgason/Shutterstock

  Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Easley, Warren C., author.

  Title: No way to die / Warren Easley.

  Description: Naperville, IL : Poisoned Pen Press, [2019]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019021353 | ISBN 9781492699231 (hardcover: acid-free paper)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3605.A777 N6 2019 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021353

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Marge, who makes it all happen

  “There are no coincidences in the universe, only convergences of will, intent, and experience.”

  —Neale Donald Walsch

  Prologue

  Coos County Circuit Court

  North Bend, Oregon

  Waiting was the worst thing. A teenager with a man’s body and a baby face, Kenny Sanders sat at a table in a small windowless room with his mother, Krysta, and his attorney, Arnold Pierce. A security guard dozed on a chair in the corner as he had for the last hour. “It looks pretty good,” Arnold said, aiming the comment at Krysta, whose fear-tinged, red rimmed eyes betrayed the lack of confidence she was struggling to conceal. “Remember, they can only convict with a unanimous vote.”

  Krysta’s eyes flashed at him. “You mean we shouldn’t expect a not guilty verdict?”

  Creases furrowed Arnold’s forehead, and he pursed his lips. “No, Krysta. I’m just saying a guilty verdict’s a high bar. I’d settle for a hung jury. That would be a good thing.”

  Her glaring eyes never left him. “Well, Arnold, you haven’t done—”

  “That woman, juror number seven,” Kenny interjected, “kept watching me the whole time. I think she believes I’m innocent.”

  “She’s Dave Bradford’s cousin,” Krysta answered, hope rising in her face. “She has two teenagers. She should be appalled they’re trying you as an adult.”

  “It only takes one holdout,” Arnold said nodding with his lips pursed again, in what Kenny months earlier started calling “the trout look.” Kenny told himself he wouldn’t have to look at that stupid expression much longer.

  Time dragged by, sandwiches were ordered in, and when the jury finally adjourned for the night, Kenny was manacled and taken back to a holding cell. The look on his mother’s face as they led him away stayed with him. Not that he hadn’t seen that mixture of fear, sadness, and shame before. God knew she was suffering even more than he was. For Kenny, the whole ordeal had a kind of unreal, almost dreamlike, quality to it. This can’t be happening to me, he kept telling himself. Surely, they’ll realize I’m innocent, that I didn’t kill anybody. No way that jury would vote to convict me. No way I’m spending the rest of my life in prison. No fucking way.

  He lay back on his bunk and stared up at the chipped and cracked ceiling, knowing that sleep, if it came at all, would be filled with dark, threatening images. He couldn’t make any sense of his dreams, but they always left him feeling anxious in the morning. The events of that night sixteen months earlier drifted back like scenes in a movie, scenes he replayed in his head over and over again. If he’d just gone out with Stefanie, none of this would have happened. Stefanie. The thought of her still stirred him, her face below him, her ocean-blue eyes locked on his, her hot breath in his ear, urging him on. God, it had been a long time. But the minute he was arrested, she dropped him like he had the plague.

  So much for true love.

  He’d had no choice but to cancel his date with Stefanie that night. What could he do? He was offered a job and needed the money. Deliver the package, collect the payment, drop off the cash. The usual routine, he was told. Okay, he knew his supplier was bad news, but shit, times were tough on the coast, and everybody needed a hustle, didn’t they? How else was he going to have money for community college? It sure as hell wasn’t going to come from his stepdad, that tightwad son of a bitch. Anyway, the buyer never showed, and when the deputy sheriffs came by the next afternoon to say they wanted to talk to him at the station, he wasn’t particularly worried. He didn’t know what was in those packages, after all.

  But he’d been in trouble before, and his mom sounded worried. “You haven’t done something stupid again, have you?” she asked.

  “No. Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be back soon enough.”

  It seemed like the right thing to say at the time. If he�
��d only known what was coming…

  * * *

  On the morning of the verdict, Kenny jerked awake when he heard a key grate in the lock of the holding cell. A guard handed him a bowl of grayish looking oatmeal and a cup of brown water they called coffee. By the time he joined his mom and Arnold in the secure room adjoining the courtroom, he actually felt revived and full of hope—that is, until he looked more closely at his mom. She wore her best dress and bravest face, but as always her eyes betrayed her. Arnold smelled of booze and looked hungover. They waited, mostly in silence. There just wasn’t anything left to say.

  Two and a half hours later the bailiff stuck his head in the room and said, “The jury’s back. They have a verdict.”

  The courtroom was jammed with the friends and relatives of both Kenny and the victim, the latter outnumbering the former by at least four to one. The room fell silent when Kenny was led in and allowed to take his seat next to Arnold Pierce. Kenny’s mother and grandmother sat directly behind him. The tag team of prosecutors marched in next, a skinny-legged old veteran with a grizzled face, who Kenny called the Coyote, and his deadpan female counterpart, Dracula’s mother. After the jury was seated, the judge came in through a side door and mounted his perch. The judge had sagging jowls and tired, hound dog eyes. Deputy Dawg. It occurred to Kenny that the judge hadn’t said much through the whole trial, except to grouchily slap down some objection made by Arnold, who would sit back down looking like a whipped puppy.

  Today, however, the judge looked invigorated, and all eyes were on him as he asked the foreman if the jury had reached a verdict. “We have, Your Honor,” he answered. Kenny looked intently at the woman—juror number seven. She sensed his stare, and it was when she looked away and dropped her chin that fear gripped his young heart for the first time.

  The foreman stood, cleared his throat, and looked down at a sheet of paper, his hand trembling slightly. “We find the defendant, Kendrick Dennison Sanders, guilty of aggravated murder.”

  Chapter One

  Four Years Later

  The East Fork of the Millicoma River, Oregon

  The Oregon Coast Range started as a string of volcanic, offshore islands sixty million years ago. The congealed lava hopped an eastbound tectonic plate that eventually collided with the continent, pushing up a respectable mountain range that ran the length of the state and spawned twenty-two of the prettiest rivers on the planet. It was early spring, and I was hip-deep in one of my favorites, the East Fork of the Millicoma, which lay fifteen miles northwest of Coos Bay, the largest bay on the Oregon Coast. Oceangoing rainbow trout, or steelhead as they’re commonly called, were returning to the river to spawn after a two-year jaunt in the Pacific.

  As my Australian shepherd, Archie, watched from the bank, I was trying to provoke a steelhead or two into hitting the fly I offered up. Ichthyologists claim that migrating steelhead don’t strike the fly—in this case a gaudy chartreuse, red, and gold number called a Miss Molly—out of hunger but more from anger at having their space encroached upon by another aquatic creature. After strafing the water for a couple of hours with no luck, I was beginning to suspect that these particular steelies were the more even-tempered and inclusive types.

  I was fishing downriver from a moss-encrusted chunk of pillow lava that bordered a long, deep pool—the kind that attracted steelhead taking a breather. A light breeze riffled the emerald-green water and stirred the Douglas firs that had marched down through the rugged terrain to the river’s edge. “I know you’re in there,” I said, as much to Arch and me as to the fish. “Last chance.” When Miss Molly swung across the pool without being molested, I reeled her in and worked my way back to the bank. I’d just poured myself a cup of coffee from my thermos when I heard a high-pitched whoop followed by “Fish on!”

  It was my daughter, Claire, and she had apparently tied into her first steelhead of the season. It was no mean feat. Like the fabled North Umpqua that lay a watershed further south, the Millicoma was a river for those who seriously practiced the art of catching a steelhead on a fly. I set my coffee down, and Archie led me upstream to watch the fun.

  “Whoa, it’s huge,” Claire screamed again as I reached her. Her eight-weight graphite was seriously flexed, and I saw the surface stir with a glint of silver as the fish started to run downstream. She brought the rod tip up hard, and line screamed off her reel. The lunker finally got the message, stopped, and turned to face her. She started taking line back, a grudging fight that lasted several minutes. When she finally got the fish up close to her, it took off again and came out of the water like it was trying to take flight—once, twice, and with the third leap, threw the barbless hook.

  “Aw, damn!” Claire cried out.

  Archie stood at the edge of the bank and yelped with crazed excitement. He’d never gone in after an escaping fish, but I feared he might this time.

  Claire spun around, her eyes wide, her mouth agape. “Did you see that? Wasn’t it beautiful?”

  “Yep. Big, too, maybe twenty pounds, and his adipose fin wasn’t clipped.”

  “A native. How cool is that? How did you do, Dad?”

  I laughed. “Skunked. But seeing that beautiful steelhead just made my day. And he did you a favor by getting off. Releasing that monster would have been harder than landing him.”

  It was moments like this that made me grateful I had a daughter who insisted I take some time off. My law practice and workaholic tendencies left me little time for leisure. Fortuitously, things slowed down after a busy winter, and I was able to clear the decks without too much hassle. Claire had flown in from Boston, where she held a postdoctoral position at Harvard in environmental science. Over dinner at the Aerie, my farmhouse retreat in the Red Hills of Dundee, we settled on a two-week getaway on the southern coast of Oregon with thoughts of fly-fishing, hiking, and long walks on the beach. This early morning outing from our beach house to the Millicoma was the first item on our agenda.

  We fed Archie some kibbles and enjoyed our coffee break after the great fish escape. The morning was still young, and the sun had yet to pierce the low cloud cover, which boded well for fishing. Steelhead are famously skittish and less likely to bite in sun-drenched water. We separated again, and I worked my way around a sweeping oxbow downriver until I came to a gentle eddy on the opposite bank that looked promising. I clipped off Miss Molly and tied on a big, purple fur ball called a woolly bugger, an impressionistic rendition of the caterpillar of the same name. “This oughta get ’em,” I told Archie.

  I was on my fourth cast when I heard Claire cry out again, faint but distinct over the river clatter. No declaration of a fish on this time, it was a full-throated scream, and the sound of it nearly stopped my heart.

  I slipped and slid back to the bank on mossy boulders, dropped my rod, and took off upstream. Archie had already disappeared around the oxbow, barking all the way. I saw Claire just as Archie came up to her. She dropped to one knee and hugged him like she hadn’t seen him in a year.

  “What is it?” I said a bit breathlessly as I ran up to them.

  She stood, pointed upriver, and grimaced. “There’s a man in the water. He’s dead.” I followed her to a big, bleached-out snag that lay in the current at an angle to the bank. She pointed again. “He’s on the other side of that log. It’s horrible, Dad.”

  Not a big fan of dead bodies, I sucked a short breath when I saw him. Caught on a broken branch and buffeted by the current, the body gyrated in a macabre dance as if trying to free itself. He was faceup with glazed, wide-open eyes and blue lips that traced a circle. The image in Munch’s The Scream flashed in my head. Wearing a well-used fishing vest and patched-up waders, the body was a white male, maybe thirtysomething, showing some bloating and discoloration, indicating he’d been in the water for a while. His arms were pulled behind his back, and his legs were folded at the knees. As he bobbed in the current, I could see his hands and feet were not on
ly tightly bound but fastened together. It looked like he’d been surprised while he was fishing, and I shuddered at the thought of him being tossed hog-tied into this cold river.

  I looked up at Claire, who was watching me from the other side of the snag. “Looks like he drowned, and it was no accident.”

  She made a face. “I didn’t think so.”

  “I’m worried he might pop loose.” I extracted my phone from a sealed case in my vest. “No bars here. We should—”

  She cut me off. “I’ll go upriver and call 911. You can watch him.” I hesitated for a moment, suddenly uneasy about her traipsing off alone. She gave me a look, the one that always brought back her mother. “I’ll be okay, Dad.”

  “Be careful, then. Take Archie with you.”

  Claire and Archie started off, and I inched out on the snag to where I could grab the body if it came loose. I felt sadness at seeing a young life snuffed out, and anger and revulsion at what was obviously a cold-blooded execution. As he bobbed and twisted in the current, I saw a piece of blue plastic protruding from the left top pocket of his fishing vest. I hadn’t noticed it earlier and figured it might be working its way loose. I reached down and plucked it away before it could swirl downriver. A plastic sleeve, it contained a sodden but readable fishing license belonging to a Howard Coleman, thirty-six years of age, resident of Coos Bay, Oregon, and a business card that was almost illegible. I glimpsed something else while out on the snag—the victim’s hands and feet were bound with small diameter, multifilament steel cable. An unusual choice of material to hog-tie someone.

  I laid the license out on the snag to dry and then examined the remaining ink on the washed-out business card. I could just discern the faintest remnants of the letters “Mi i Yo da” written across it and the numbers “541 0 9” in the right-hand corner. The numbers had to be what was left of a phone number, since 541 was the area code for most of Oregon. I played scrabble with the letters for a while but didn’t come up with anything. I laid the card next to the fishing license and shook my head. Here I was, playing detective out of habit. Okay, I told myself, all you did was discover the body. This is not your problem. Remember, you’re on vacation.