Bear Bait (9781101611548) (16 page)

Sam waved at the NPS aide on duty behind the counter as she strode over to the forest service offices. She’d just raised her hand to knock on his door frame when Arnie Cole swiveled in his chair and spotted her. “If it isn’t Tiny Temporary Ranger Westin!”

When she was introduced to the rail-thin man ten weeks ago, he asked her on a date. She said no. Since then, he hadn’t missed a chance to heckle her. It was either his idea of revenge or some sort of adolescent courting behavior he’d never grown out of.

She switched off the radio on her belt so she wouldn’t have to compete with it while she talked.

“Sizzling Summer Westin.” Cole leaned back in his chair and raised his feet onto the battered metal surface of his desk. An official-looking form skidded from under the sole of his hiking boot and fluttered to the floor.

She hoped he’d lose his balance and fall over backward. No such luck.

“Steamy Summer, Hot Time Summer in the City, Celebrity Summer Westin.”

This was getting old. “Did you sleep through the harassment seminar, Arnie?”

His smile dimmed a bit. “I’m just teasing. You know that.”

“I guess you’ve just learned my given name.”

“From the TV news, no less. My boss tells me this is the second time you’ve graced the airways.
And
that you’re downright famous on the World Wide Web. And here I was thinking that you were plain old Sam Westin.”

“Give it a rest. Please.” She perched on the arm of his visitor’s chair.

He gave her a lipless grin. “I’ve been doing research on you. Turns out you’re Cougar Lady. Cat Woman.”

She groaned. He’d read up on the Zachary Fischer story. “It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as the media made it sound.”

He raised his elbows and interwove his long fingers behind his head. “Are you going to do a story on us? Are we going to be on the Internet?”

She slid from the arm of the chair down onto the seat. “In case you missed it, I’m not on the Internet anymore. I’m not writing for anyone now. As you pointed out, I’m a temporary contractor for the park service.”

“What a comedown. From
Wilderness
Westin.
Wild West
.”

He would have discovered her “cool” name invented by the Save the Wilderness Fund. “Knock it off, Arnie.”

“Oh, all right.” He retracted his feet and his chair legs thudded into position. “I like your new look, by the way, especially the black stitches. The makeup is from that new line, Bride of Frankenstein, right?”

Ignoring him, she bent to pick up the paper from the floor. He leaned over his desk and rearranged the papers he’d dislodged, staring at her as he tapped pages into alignment. Probably hoping to see down her uniform shirt. “So what’s the tiny temp from Interior doing over here in lowly Ag land? Come to learn something about forestry?”

“I already know how to use a chainsaw.” Sam handed him the page she’d retrieved. “No, Arnie, I’m here to pick your brain. Since we both know what a minuscule area that is, it shouldn’t take more than a minute of your time. What
can you tell me about recent activities around Marmot Lake?”

“See,” he said, grinning, “You do need me.” He rose from his chair and clasped his hands behind his back.

“I keep finding tracks made by ATVs and four-wheel drives,” Sam prompted.

“They’re just having fun. See, that’s the problem with the park service. In the forest service, we understand that maybe a guy wants to drive his Jeep or ride his dirt bike out in the trees sometime.”

“Well, there’s not going to be any more of that kind of fun out there.” She waved a hand impatiently. “Tell me about the history of the area.”

“Marmot Lake. When the bigwigs asked which parts of the National Forest they could steal for Parks, I said, please, please, please take
anything
but the area around Marmot Lake. It’s the pride of the USFS, I told them. Sure, it’s scenic and it’s a natural wildlife corridor between the mountains and the coast, but look at all those big trees just waiting to be turned into two-by-fours.” He gestured dramatically, his arms raised toward an imaginary audience.

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 something 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—