Bear Bait (9781101611548) (14 page)

“So, let’s go already!” She groaned and slid down in the passenger seat. “Why’d you have to bring your work truck? Everybody’s staring.”

“Put your seat belt on.” Joe pulled away from the curb. “You expect me to go home and swap cars just so I won’t embarrass you?”

“Crapola,”
she half whispered.

“I heard that. Where are your hiking boots and jeans?”

“In the gym bag, Dad. Duh.”

Joe gritted his teeth. It was really annoying how she acted these days as if he were an imbecile for asking the most basic questions. “Why’d you take your blouse off, Lili?”

She shrugged. “I got hot.”

“That was Mr. Martinson you were talking to, right?”

She nodded. “My science teacher. And his son, Michael.”

“Why did he put his hand on your shoulder, Lili?”

His daughter stared at him for a long moment, and then sighed dramatically. “I didn’t even notice.”

“Was that the first time Martinson put his hands on you?”

Shock passed over her face. A flush of color rushed into her cheeks. “I can’t believe you said that about Mr. Martinson. He’s my teacher! Just because you’re a cop—”

“Ranger.”

“That’s a government cop. You think that just because you arrest some pervs in the campgrounds, that everyone’s like that. Mr. Martinson’s nice. He teaches us all these cool things about science, about nature.” A smile crept onto Lili’s face. “And Michael’s nice, too,” she added. “He tells the greatest stories about bears. He’s going to let me help him catch one sometime.” She looked up at him from under her long lashes.

Thirteen years old, and boy, did she know how to flirt! Those warm caramel eyes, rosebud lips. Just like his wife, Laura, who could still make his blood race with one of her sultry glances. And why was that Michael kid talking to Lili about catching bears? Was that only teen-boy bragging?

He decided to change the subject. “What are you going to do with Aunt Summer today?”

“Learn how to track animals and stuff,” Lili said. “I’m interviewing her for my school project.” Then, under her breath, she muttered, “At least I can talk to
her
.”

SAM
dipped a test tube into the nameless creek. Although it was a lot less interesting than following bears, determining the health of all water sources was a necessary part of doing an environmental survey. The water was clear, but now she couldn’t help wondering about possible pollution from old mines in the area. There were no mines pinpointed on her map, but then, that was just the point, wasn’t it? The mine near Marmot Lake wasn’t on her map, either.

She stoppered and labeled the tube, stuck it back in her pack, and stood up, brushing the dirt from the knees of her pants. She was two miles from the closest road. It was blissful to get back to her survey assignment; to be away from people for a while. The summer day was pleasantly warm under a canopy of high clouds, and for once she was glad her uniform shirt had short sleeves. Following the readings on her handheld GPS device, she walked the border of the newly transferred park land, enjoying the fluting songs of wrens and the high-pitched warning chatter of chipmunks.

She surprised two gangly Columbia black-tailed bucks that crashed away through the woods ahead of her. Close to a clump of cattails in a seasonal wetland, she found tracks that could have been Raider’s. But she never caught a glimpse of a black bear.

Just before she exited a grove of Sitka spruce trees, a
flash of striped wings whirred through the boughs overhead. She watched in awe as the bird disappeared into the canopy. Without her reference book, she couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a spotted owl.

She started to document the sighting in her notes, but as her pen touched the page, a doubt crossed her mind. In this area, the known presence of this particular endangered species might entice illegal hunters into the woods. She decided to ask Peter Hoyle’s advice, maybe gain a point or two with him. Tucking the clipboard under her arm, she walked on.

The owl still thrived out here, along with the elk and bears, the salamanders and the squirrels. It always made her feel good to realize that humans had not yet irrevocably screwed up the entire planet. They hadn’t even irrevocably screwed up this area, although it had been designated multi-use for decades. She hoped her management plan would help to make sure humans wouldn’t ruin the place in the future.

The fifth NPS boundary sign she came across was six feet off the ground, nailed to a large Douglas fir.

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK BOUNDARY
NO HUNTING BEYOND THIS POINT.

The sign was intact, just as the previous four had been; that was good. However, on the next, a couple hundred yards down the invisible boundary line to the east, three bullet holes punctuated the message. And nailed beneath it was one of the blue-stenciled
THIS IS YOUR LAND
signs. Some creep, or maybe more than one, had stood at the base of this tree, right where she was now.

She heard a soft thud behind her, and swiveled to search the woods. A chattering squirrel bounced across a limb nearby. Beneath the tree was a large pinecone. That must have been what she’d heard, the pinecone dropping to the ground.

Taking a hammer from her pack, she peeled off the
remainder of the bullet-ridden NPS marker and pounded in a new one from the small supply she carried. Then she pried off the offending YOUR
LAND
sign. It gave her a chill just to touch the dang thing. It was spooky how these signs kept cropping up all over the area.

She heard a cracking sound up ahead. Peter Hoyle’s voice abruptly played back in her head:
We get at least one death threat a month
. Sam’s pulse quickened as the sneering camouflaged hunter suddenly materialized among the trees in front of her. She pulled her radio from her belt and held it to her lips.

She looked up again. No hunter in camouflage gear. Just a piebald tan-and-white alder amid the evergreens. Damn it. She was letting a few nutcases make her paranoid. With her neck prickling now, she turned to survey the area behind her. For a moment, the only movement was a white butterfly flitting among the salmonberries. Then, not more than thirty feet away, a cedar sapling twitched. Her breath caught in her throat.

When she spotted the mountain beaver at the cedar’s base, she laughed at herself for imagining someone was out to get her. She shoved the radio back into its holder. The rabbit-sized rodent didn’t move when she approached, but continued to chew steadily on the sapling. The creature didn’t even startle when she prodded it with the toe of her boot. Mountain beavers were not only inappropriately named—they weren’t beavers and they lived in lowland forests—but incredibly dumb animals. They had another name, sewellels, but nobody ever used that for some reason. The forest service routinely killed them because of the damage they did to young trees. But in Sam’s opinion, even the dumbest animals didn’t deserve death just for doing what they were biologically programmed to do. And this dumb animal was on the forest service side of the boundary line.

She scooped up the gray-brown herbivore. It squeaked once and then froze in her arms. No survival skills whatsoever. It was a miracle the primitive beasts were not extinct.

She carried the mountain beaver into the woods well beyond the NPS boundary, and set it down near a group of young cedars sprouting from a nurse log. “Now you’re in the park. Stay here and you’ll be safe. Lots of baby trees to gnaw on.”

The furball huddled in the same frozen position it had taken in her arms. Except for its rapid breathing, it could have been a stuffed toy. As she stood up, a scar on the landscape beyond the nurse log caught her eye. She stepped over the log and walked to a disturbed patch of ground.

Her steps came to an abrupt halt when she found the toes of her hiking boots resting in a primitive track that was not on the USGS map. Unofficial trails seemed to be common in the national forest; she’d already found several. She really shouldn’t be surprised; television commercials regularly featured four-wheel drives blithely tearing up hillsides and crashing through pristine mountain streams, and those damn
THIS IS
YOUR
LAND, WELCOME
ATV’S &
HUNTER’S
signs invited local drivers to do as they pleased. These tracks were new, not more than a week old. The damp dirt held recent impressions of heavy tire treads. She dragged a few limbs across the track to make it less attractive, but by herself she couldn’t build much in the way of a barricade.

She compared the readings on her GPS device with the USGS map on her clipboard, deduced that the track’s origin was probably just a little farther down the forest service road she’d parked on. Most troubling, it disappeared through the trees in the direction of Marmot Lake. Shit. The good ol’ boys didn’t need to break the chain or climb over the gate on the south side of the lake; they’d blazed their own route in from the north.

The radio hooked to her belt rasped out her call code, startling her. “Where are you?” the dispatcher queried.

“Due north of Marmot Lake, approximately one mile south of Forest Road 4255.” Was Hoyle checking up to see if she was working? “Who’s asking?”

“Joe Choi. He says to remind you of your appointment, whatever that means.”

Uh-oh. She checked her watch, saw that she was going to be late. “I’m on my way.”

Damn. Did she dare bring Lili back here? No, she decided. Anything—or anyone—could be at the end of the track. Further exploration would have to wait until tomorrow. She made a hasty sketch of the tread marks, drew in the track’s position on the map, and jogged back to her truck.

MORE
than two hours later, as Sam was describing how she knew there were owls in the area they were exploring, Lili interrupted, throwing back her head as she looked up from her notes. “Wait a minute! That’s poop!”

Sam kept her expression neutral as she pointed toward the droppings on the ground. “Wildlife biologists like to call it scat. See how there’s fur and tiny bones in here?” She broke apart a grayish sausage with a stick and leaned back so Lili could look.

Lili fingered her charred lock of hair. The wrinkling of her nose gave away her opinion of scat investigation.

Sam struggled not to laugh. “If I don’t know what kind of animal produced the droppings, I collect it—”

“
Collect
it?”

“I scoop it into a plastic bag so I can study it later. There are whole books about scat. You can find out a lot about the animal it came from; about what it’s been eating. Like this”—she poked at the droppings on the ground—“I can tell that this critter has been eating mostly mice, and I see one bird beak. So I deduce this came from an owl.”

The expression on Lili’s face was a mixture of horror and incredulity. “I may never eat again,” she said.

“Oh, you get used to it,” Sam told her. “Every job has something you don’t like about it.”

Lili tilted her head and studied her notes, brushing a fingertip across her lips in a sensual gesture that seemed older than a thirteen-year-old should make. “I think I’ll be a hair stylist, after all. That’d be fun, fixing hair.”

“Maybe you should interview a stylist. It’s not all clipping and arranging. How about all that ammonia in dye and permanents? How about dandruff and ringworm?”

“Ringworm?” The girl’s mouth was open.

“It could happen. And dandruff is common.”

Lili groaned. “Now I
know
I’ll never eat again. You’ve been a
big
help, Sam.”

Sam laughed. “Glad to be of service. You know, if you have a career day, I could bring different kinds of scat for the kids to look at.”

“Uh.” Lili ran her painted fingernails through her curly black hair, which she wore loose today. Then she said in exactly the same way Joe did, “I’ll get back to you on that.”

They walked on. Lili pointed out a butterfly Sam couldn’t identify, so Sam stopped to make a sketch of it. Sam showed Lili a salamander waddling through the long grass. The girl seemed impressed with the amphibian, so Sam glanced at the trees to see if she could find a tree frog. And spotted instead another
THIS IS
YOUR
LAND
sign.

“Damn it!” She stalked toward the sign, shifting her daypack from her shoulder so she could dig out the hammer. “These idiots just won’t stop.”

Lili’s face turned bright red. Was it because she’d said
damn
? As she pried off the offending sign, Sam tried to remember if she’d ever heard Joe or Laura swear. Should she apologize? She stuck the sign in her pack.

“Do you throw them away?” Lili eyed Sam’s daypack.

“The signs?” Sam shook her head. “I’m collecting them in a locker at the division building. One of these days, the park service might get around to lifting fingerprints from them.”

Lili’s eyes widened. “Why?”

“Because it’s a federal crime to deface government property. And these signs are encouraging people to commit crimes. You know that hunting and ATVs aren’t allowed in the park, and now this area is part of the park.”

The girl continued to stare at the daypack, and the blush
on her face darkened. A suspicion flared in Sam’s mind. “Do you know who’s been putting up these signs, Lili?”

Lili shook her head, darted a hasty glance at Sam, and then stared at her boots. “Why are you asking me?”

“I just thought that you might—”

When the girl’s head came up, her eyes were defiant. “I thought you liked me. Now you’re accusing me of things, just like Dad and Mom.”

Sam stiffened. Was this guilt talking, or just normal teenage paranoia? “I didn’t accuse you of anything, Lili. I was hoping you might be able to help me out.”

“Well, I can’t.” The girl pulled out her cell phone and checked the time. “Dad’s going to be here any minute, and we didn’t even see any bears.” Lili started walking back to the rendezvous point.

Sam dashed to catch up. “Sorry about the bears. They aren’t that easy to find, unless you leave food out for them regularly, and of course that’s not a good idea. Why do you want to see a bear?”

Lili shrugged. “I just think it would be cool. A boy at school talks about them sometimes.”