The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  Then we fixed a huge hot meal of fried eggs, beans, and potatoes. I used my old Girl Scout knife to open the cans and slice the potatoes. The can opener worked pretty well. And gosh, a sturdier blade you will not find this side of Army Ranger school.

  The food tasted terrific; even Petey wanted seconds.

  Well after dark, we left camp in the Porsche. Petey curled into a ball of sleep instantly in the back. I made sure to power-jack my cell phone, keeping up the battery just in case.

  The sheriff’s post in Harkett was lit inside by only a desk lamp. Leaving Petey in the car, Daniel and I walked in together. To my slight relief, Deputy O. Grolech was not on duty.

  An exhausted-looking male deputy got up, took Lance’s camera in his hands, and looked at it soberly. His name badge said S. MINOR and he had a straight nose and a prominent forehead. I went through the whole goddamned story of Lance and Gina again, getting more emotional this time. The deputy said, “Yeah, Olive and the sheriff mentioned something about this.”

  The radio buzzed and crackled; he kept an ear toward it. Deputy Minor was maybe only twenty-five, but his face showed the wear of wisdom gained a little too young: he had that look that expected nothing of you. I couldn’t imagine how one adapts to the uniform and the weird demands of public safety.

  “We’d like to help,” he said, just as the sheriff had, “but the whole darn town of Harkett’s falling apart. There was a blowdown this afternoon in the north end, and every officer’s out there, every fire, every rescue, every cop from all the mutual aid towns that can come, which isn’t many ’cause they’re all in the same situation we are. We’ve got the power company guys, the linemen, they’re all out there, and more are coming in from Tacoma and Olympia. We’re gonna be working through the night, cutting people out of their houses—there’s trees down like you wouldn’t believe, big ones. Big ones, ma’am. They don’t put down taproots here, you know. Don’t need to, how wet it is.”

  He rubbed his gaunt cheek. “Just when we get on top of one thing, you know...” He trailed off and looked me in the eye. “Sheriff Craig’s in-laws are trapped in their trailer. You gotta open those things like a sardine can; you gotta lift the tree off and cut, and hope you’ve got everything cribbed up well enough so something else doesn’t give way while you’re at it. The Seattle stations’ve sent TV crews out there, but you know what? I hope they brought supplies, because it looks like the highway’s gonna wash out any minute. They still haven’t found the fishermen. I expect the Coast Guard’s gonna call off the search before midnight.”

  “Good!” I said, “because then maybe they can—”

  “The Harkett’s at higher flood than my wife’s granddad’s ever seen it, and he’s ninety-four. We’re gonna need every helicopter for rescue work in town.”

  “But what about my sister?” I whispered.

  “We’re gonna get out there to help you as soon as we can. But this is a cataclysm. I’m awful sorry.”

  He questioned me closely as to where we’d found the camera, and Daniel helped me pinpoint it on the map.

  “That’s Silver Coast land,” Deputy Minor muttered to himself. “Rough country.” He sighed into his hands. “Really rough country up there.”

  I stood silent, my heart breaking. Daniel took my arm.

  _____

  We wanted more groceries, but no place was open. By the time Daniel steered the car onto the bridge over the Harkett—the curve of its lower course that ran through town—the river was lapping and pushing at the timbers on its upstream edge. Snags were beginning to catch on it, foaming the water around them.

  At first light the next morning we carried as much of our stuff up to the boys’ camp as we could, so as to use the place as a base. We moved into the least moldy cabin, which according to wood-burned lettering on the door was Badger Cabin, and struck off for the upper Harkett again.

  By now Petey was onto the vibe that things were getting rather life-and-deathy. I regretted having dragged him along on this insane trip, but there was nothing I could do about it now.

  We made good time toward the river gorge and its log bridge, on our mission to reach the next ridgeline beyond the Harkett, where Daniel guessed we’d have a chance of spotting something: Lance’s red jacket, Gina’s yellow plastic poncho. Smoke from a fire? The rain flung itself so steadily, I doubted Prometheus himself could have kindled a blaze.

  Daniel carried his daypack with drinking water and some safety equipment.

  Today Petey did not run ahead; he moved steadily between Daniel and me, a serious expression on what I could see of his face beneath that hat, which was acquiring quite the wilderness patina of creases, dings, and dirt. He seemed somehow protective of me, checking to see that I’d made it over a log he’d vaulted easily, sticking close to me when we stopped to rest.

  Have I mentioned the sounds of this forest’s treetops as the wind ebbed and flowed over the land? The trees always told you the wind was coming before you felt it, for the tops of the trees were like their own ecosystem, moving in wavelike synchrony. The sound was much louder than a sigh. You’d hear them begin their long hypnotic phrases, whfffwhfffffff, like some prehistoric chorus that never had to pause for a breath.

  The trees were unsettled this morning; the wind swirled.

  I remembered a certain huge stump that looked like Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, and knew we were near the river chasm. I pricked my ears away from the tree sounds to listen for the roaring water.

  A minute later my heart leaped when I heard someone screaming.

  The three of us rushed forward, scrambling headlong through the brush.

  Breathless, we broke from the trees at the lip of the gorge. Big swift Daniel almost flew over the edge, given his momentum. We pulled up and listened.

  Another cry came, terribly hoarse, as if the person had been screaming on and off for a long time. The voice was so raw I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. “Gina!” I hollered. “Gina? Lance?”

  Words solidified: “Help! Oh Lord a-mighty, oh Lord a-mighty, someone hear me! Please, oh, oh, oh!” The cries faded into moans.

  “Where’s it coming from?” Petey asked frantically. Strangely, he looked up into the treetops that overhung us, as if the voice might be coming from there.

  For between the roar of the river as it smashed into the rocks in its bed and ripped at the slabs on its banks and the fact that the rock walls of the chasm reflected sound as absolutely as mirrors reflect light, we could form no idea of where the person was.

  Petey got down on his stomach and GI-crawled to the precipice as Daniel had taught him long ago: the safe way to check out a cliff.

  Daniel yelled strongly, “Where are you?”

  An instant of disbelieving silence, then, “Here! Here! I’m here! Beneath you! Oh Lordy!”

  “It’s a guy!” Petey said.

  We all flopped down to look.

  A man who was not Lance was clinging to a protrusion in the cliff face about thirty feet below us. “Oh Lord come get me! Help me,” he groaned.

  “OK, calm down, buddy,” said Daniel in a steadying voice. “We’re here now.”

  The man’s face was contorted in pain. His head was bloody, one side of his face ripped raw. My heart turned. He was clinging to the rock with both arms, his army-type wool jacket providing some friction, perhaps. His lower body was hanging into space and, craning my neck, I could see dark blood on one leg of his jeans.

  “I’ve been here all night, oh help me, I’m dying.”

  “Oh, hell,” breathed Daniel, looking closely at the rock between the man and us.

  There was a terrifying amount of empty space in that river chasm.

  Petey was distraught. “We’ve gotta get him out of there! Hurry up, Daniel, let’s go down!” He scooted one leg over the brink.

  Daniel yanked him by the pants away from the edge. He grabbed Petey’s shoulders and turned him man-to-man. His fingers dug into Petey’s jacket, and I saw my boy wince.
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br />   “Listen to me, both of you.” Daniel’s eyes burned at us. “The last thing we’re going to do is hurry.”

  “But he’s hurt,” said Petey, desperately. “He’s yelling.”

  “Pete, when rescuers hurry that’s when they get in trouble themselves. They can die. Don’t listen to his yelling. Don’t let it upset you. You can do that. OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Now you two do what I tell you. Keep calm and don’t rush. Rita, empty this pack completely. Give Petey the rope, the yellow webbing, and one of the carabiners. Give me the space blanket. Get the first-aid kit ready, but try to stash it with the rest of the stuff where it won’t get wet. Get the empty pack ready to be the friction point for the rope where it goes over the edge. Petey, decide which of these trees’ll work for an anchor, take the webbing and tie a tensionless hitch.”

  Daniel went to the precipice and got down on his hands and knees. “My name’s Daniel,” he called to the man. “I’m coming down to help you. What’s your name?”

  “Joey!”

  “Joey, I need you to be calm and hold on.”

  “Oh, Lordy, I’m so tired. I’m busted up!”

  “I know.”

  “I bounced offa that ledge! My leg’s busted.”

  “You’re gonna be OK.”

  As we worked, Joey seemed to calm down; his cries became less frequent, and not as loud.

  Daniel organized our rescue operation smoothly and swiftly. He called encouragement to Joey and gave clear, unhurried directions to Petey and me.

  He checked Petey’s knot holding the length of webbing. “Good. Now teach your mom how to belay me while I tie in.” He fiddled with the carabiner and the rope.

  Petey said, “Mom, you do like this with the rope around you, like this.” He showed me how to use my waist as a capstan in case Daniel should come off the rock. “Don’t let him have too much slack.”

  From Daniel, at the cliff’s edge: “Pete, I need your hands.” Petey scuttled over.

  Sweat and rainwater dripped from Daniel’s nose. “Sit down and make sure the rope stays over this bag, you see? It’ll keep the rock from cutting it through.”

  “OK.”

  “Stay clear of the edge. Don’t do anything else unless I tell you, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Listen, Rita and Petey. The rope’s not long enough for me to get the whole way down to him. I’m gonna have to untie and downclimb and get him up to where I can tie him in. If I do that but can’t find a free route up, you guys’ll have to haul him up by yourselves.”

  “We can do it, right, Mom?”

  I sure as hell hope so.

  Joey by now was no longer talking, only moaning.

  Daniel carefully picked a path downward, watching his feet under him, his eyes searching, his large hands gripping the wet rock expertly. His hands were white against the rock, and the hairs on the backs of them stood out dark.

  His head disappeared over the edge.

  “Mom, that guy looks bad,” said Petey, looking down.

  “He’ll be OK.” I payed out the rope as Daniel descended, keeping it taut against his movement.

  “Mom, now he looks dead.”

  Chapter 16 – Rivers and Tides

  Gina supposed she ought to feel lucky that Bonechopper hadn’t simply shot her.

  The river roared so loudly she felt engulfed by the sound itself, pounding deep in her sternum. Her bones ached from sleeping on the rocks. She had never been treated so crudely, not even by the Burris brothers on a bad day.

  She stood thinking on an islet in the middle of the Quilmash River, just as it approached the Harkett River to merge with it. Bonechopper, aided by Alger while Dendra held her and Kenner at gunpoint, had rigged a cable spanning the river directly above this place, a gravel bar with nothing growing on it.

  He had fixed some sort of sliding rig to the cable, then taken Gina by the waist caveman-style and zipped out to the islet. He had dropped her, then hand-over-handed it back to shore, some fifty feet distant. The other shore was about the same distance away. The cable went clear across, Alger having run to a point upstream, forded the river, and received the cable end, weighted with a heavy hasp, that Bonechopper had heaved across.

  She was far too short to reach the steel strand without the extra length of wire Bonechopper had used to slide along it; she had attempted to pile rocks so she could climb up to it, but the big ones were too heavy and the smaller ones not stable. If she tried to swim it, the violent current would immediately sweep her downstream into the churning rapids. Moreover, the water was ice-cold; Lance had told her these rivers were mostly fed by snowmelt from the peaks. What she could see of the Harkett River ahead was whitewater even worse than here in the Quilmash.

  Bonechopper had returned with a heavy blanket, a piece of thick plastic sheeting, and some beef jerky, which he tossed to her without even setting foot on the gravel.

  “What am I supposed to do when the tide comes in?” she demanded.

  “There is no tide here, you idiot,” said Bonechopper.

  “My ass there isn’t!”

  “Well, I guess you’ll see.”

  Isolated from the whole world here. No way off, except at the whim of these tree-murdering assholes. She knew damn well rivers were affected by the tides; she’d seen a documentary on tidal activity up the Amazon. If a river that big got tides, surely this one would.

  She’d wrapped herself in the blanket, then the plastic, which kept her more or less dry. There was no way to stake out the plastic like a tent. She had watched the whitewater slam relentlessly against a boulder on the upstream side of the islet, the drops spraying straight up like a shower of marbles, and she watched the river race by on either side of her, dizzying, and she watched it foam on downstream, smoothing over deep pools, then showing its strength again when rocks came up.

  Last night on this islet had been terrifying as she waited for the tide to claim her.

  She had paid money to see movies where stuff like this happened. That one last year about the army nurses who’d gotten separated from their unit in Iraq and tried to hike back to base through the mountains, except they met up with mercenaries from New Zealand who suddenly developed other plans for them. Kym LaFevre and Dirk Westaway had been pretty good in it.

  Yesterday as she and Kenner had marched to the log poachers’ camp at the point of Bonechopper’s gun, they had managed small chunks of communication.

  “This day is not going according to plan,” commented Kenner from the side of his mouth.

  Gina was grateful for his grace under pressure. Given the immensity of the Harkett wilderness, Gina’s mind reeled at how improbable it was that Kenner would turn up like this.

  Every so often she would pretend to stumble, and when Kenner would take her arm their heads would be close, and the sound of the rain muffled what they said.

  Kenner didn’t waste time asking for the play-by-play. “Where’s Lance?”

  “Went off to try to find their truck, didn’t come back. These guys are timber thieves.”

  “Shit.”

  “How did you know where to look for us?”

  “The pictures Lance sent.”

  “You know this area that well?”

  “Well enough.”

  These tree-killers were a bunch of liars—Alger chief among them. “Trust me,” he’d said. “Safest thing for you two right now is to come along with us.” When they got to camp Gina had stood there staring at him, waiting for him to do something, to defy Bonechopper—for that was the vibe she got, like he was going to stand up to this creep—but after a moment’s hesitation all he’d done was help set up Gina’s captivity, efficiently and with a minimum of talking. His face was expressionless the whole time. Wishful vibe-sensing, that’s what she’d done.

  If this was safety, she’d take dangerous any minute now.

  Dendra had jeered at her.

  “Fuck you all!” Gina had hollered as Bonechopper returned to shore
after dropping her stark supplies.

  That night she’d gnawed hungrily at the jerky and cupped water from the river to drink. It tasted great, she had to admit that.

  There had been no tide.

  In the morning, above the river’s roar, she had heard a commotion from the direction of the camp, which ended in a terrifying howl: “Nooooooo!” Then a husky, torn-animal gurgle.

  She hoped the person howling was Dendra, but deep down she knew it was Kenner.

  _____

  The guy named Joey was not dead, though at times I feared our rescue might finish him off.

  I don’t know how Daniel did it, but after he untied himself from the rope and climbed the last ten feet to the protrusion to which Joey clung, he managed to lift him by the arms and muscle him up to a side ledge within reach of the rope.

  He couldn’t find a quick, safe way up for himself without the rope, so Petey and I set ourselves and began the task of hauling Joey to safety.

  Barely conscious by now, Joey was just able to fend himself off the sharp projections once Daniel got him going.

  My back and arms burned with the strain.

  Petey helped me haul, and every few feet of rope we gained he made a loop and knotted it so that it couldn’t all pay out again if I lost my grip, which I did once.

  “Uhhghh!” grunted Joey when that happened.

  “Rita!” Daniel shouted from below. “Hold him steady!”

  “Goddamn it, I’m doing the best I can!”

  “Easy, Mom,” said Petey. Six years old.

  He helped me drag the injured man to the sheltering canopy of our anchor tree. Then he untied the loops he’d made and lowered the rope to Daniel. In a minute Daniel was with us, and he and I set to work on Joey with the first-aid kit.

  Joey was a young guy in pretty good shape, strong-looking upper body, which I guess was what saved him.

  I was ashamed to feel horribly impatient that we’d gotten stuck doing this rescue, while Gina and Lance were God knew where. Of course we had to do everything we could for this man.