Bear Bait (9781101611548) (27 page)

“‘It’s not yet time’?” Chase echoed, rising up on one elbow to peer down at her. “What the hell does that mean?”

She shivered. “I don’t know.”

“God, Summer.” He stretched out beside her again and pulled her over against him, spooning. “You
are
going back to the bunkhouse, aren’t you?”

“I am,” she promised. “At least at night.”

“Two more weeks out there?”

“Yep.” Two weeks until unemployment. And then the trip to Kansas; her father’s wedding. Things to look forward to.

“Do you know a man called Jack Winner in Rushing Springs?” Chase asked.

“I don’t know anyone over there except for park staff. Who is he?”

“The owner of the truck you found in the Marmot Lake lot. Your friend Choi went to see him on Friday.”

That chafed a little, that neither Chase nor Joe had told her. “And?” she prompted.

“Winner said he didn’t know the area was off-limits now. He has no criminal record. He owns a small business, a little furniture-making shop. But according to Choi, he was sweating like a racehorse after the Kentucky Derby, so he may be hiding something.”

“Jack Winner,” she repeated, memorizing the name.

“Leave it to law enforcement, Summer. Stay away from him.”

“Of course I will.”
Yeah, right
. Winner could be responsible for the explosion and fire, for the bullet that barely missed her, or for that pool of bear blood at the end of the track. Jack Winner could be Lisa Glass’s murderer.

“You could stay out of the field, couldn’t you?” Chase asked. “Just work in the office?”

Good thing he couldn’t see the expression on her face. “I could.” But she wouldn’t.

“You have a management plan to finish.” He caressed her cheek lightly with one finger. The tingling sensation made it difficult to maintain the sharp edge of annoyance she’d felt just a second ago. His finger brushed over her lips and slid down her neck. “You have a speech to write,” he added.

The speech. The conference. Anxiety bubbled up, warring with the delicious sensation of his fingers on her skin. “Thanks for reminding me,” she groaned. “Now I’ll never get to sleep.”

“I know a great way to relax.” He pressed his body full length against hers.

When the chimes of her alarm began at 5
A.M.
, Chase was still curled up at her back. For once she was reluctant to leave civilization and return to the woods.

TWO
double lattes and two and a half hours later, Sam drove off the Kingston ferry and headed west. As soon as she crossed the Hood Canal bridge onto the Olympic Peninsula, she called Joe Choi.

“Morning, Joe.”

“Sam? Why are you so chirpy? It’s only seven thirty. I just walked out of the house.”

“I wanted to catch you before you get busy, or out of range or something. Anything on that vehicle I reported Thursday night over at Marmot Lake? The bear poacher? Probably a smashed oil pan or a dented axle?”

“Slow down, girl. How much caffeine have you had, anyway? We’re still checking it out.”

“Are you checking on Garrett Ford like I suggested?”

In the background, she heard the engine of Joe’s truck start up. “I had the Forks police drive by his place,” he said, “but he wasn’t home all weekend. Just FYI, we haven’t had any previous run-ins with him.”

She’d bet that Ford was holed up somewhere working on his truck. “Can you check the repair shops in Port Angeles and Sequim for his truck?”

“Maybe.”

Why did he sound so reluctant? She said, “If I were you, I’d check his phone records to see if he called park headquarters on the dates threats were made against the staff.”

“Whoa, Sam. As far as I know, Ford’s an upstanding
member of the community. Do you know something that incriminates him?”

She had to admit that she didn’t. “It’s intuition.”

“That sounds like something Laura would say. Law enforcement generally requires more…like evidence.”

“That’s what I’m looking for,” she said, annoyed. “Did anyone check that illegal track over the weekend?”

“A bunch of us barricaded it off with brush Friday afternoon.”

“Good.” Of course, that didn’t mean that a new track wouldn’t be blazed into the area, but maybe the barricade would slow them down for a while.

“And before you ask, we’re checking the gate to Marmot Lake a couple of times a day,” he added. “Where will
you
be today?”

“In the office, working on my management plan.” Just thinking about being closed up all those hours while the sun was shining made her antsy. At least she’d brought her own laptop from home, so the computer work would go a little faster. Surely she could salvage a couple of hours. “I thought I might pick up Lili later and take her out to the beach for that other interview I promised her. Think she’d go for that?”

“In a heartbeat. Laura’s taking Lili to school right now. You can probably catch Laura on her cell.” He gave her the number.

“I’ll call. Joe, what do you know about Jack Winner?”

“You and Perez teaming up on me?”

“What?”

“He called five minutes before you did.”

That was interesting. Did the two of them know something about Winner they didn’t want to tell her? “What’d he want?”

There was a long pause, then he said, “Come to our house for dinner, Sam. Six o’clock.”

Something he couldn’t say on a cell phone? That seemed ominous. But one of Laura’s home-cooked meals would be
a good deal. “That sounds great, Joe. I’ll call Lili and Laura now. See you at six.”

On the front door of the district headquarters was a poster asking for the public’s help in solving the case of
Murdered USFWS Enforcement Officer Caitlin Knight
. Sam studied the photo beneath the headline. Caitlin had been a large-framed, square-faced woman with long black hair; the type of woman that people called handsome instead of pretty. Her dark eyes stared confidently at the camera. She looked like a fighter, and Sam couldn’t help wondering what her last moments had been like. The text neglected to mention that only Caitlin’s right hand had been found so far.
Be on the lookout for other body parts
was probably too grim a message to print in a public notice.

She lugged her laptop to her desk in the NPS/USFS district headquarters. In her box in the mailroom, a fax waited for her. It was from Richard Best at
The Edge
, asking when he would receive the draft of her speech.

Sam bristled. Best wanted to censor her words? She supposed he did have a right to at least read them, since his company was paying her to do the speech. She decided to send it to him at the last minute so she could ignore any critique he had to offer.

So far the speech consisted only of a few notes from newspaper articles about attacks against environmentalists. The discovery of a hit list of activists in Montana was the latest news she had stumbled across. Had Caitlin Knight been just a name on a list to someone? Were there more murders to come?

It’s not yet time
. She shivered, again feeling the rose thrower’s breath on her cheek. But those words could mean anything. He might be some wacko who believed in the Rapture, when only the enlightened few would be taken up to heaven. Her name certainly wasn’t on
that
list. The thought of religion reminded her of her preacher father, although he was not a fundamentalist type. The trip to Kansas was only two weeks away. She needed a haircut.
Did she even possess a slip or a pair of pantyhose anymore? She’d have to check the bottom of her lingerie drawer.

She clenched her jaw, poured herself a cup of sludge from the communal coffeepot, and sat down at her desk. If she didn’t focus, she’d never get anything done today.

Because she used her own laptop from home and up-to-date software, her work on the environmental report and management plan went faster than she’d expected. She decided that the best tactic to protect the Marmot Lake area from illegal hunters and ATVs would be to again open up the picnic area and campground to the public. New latrines, bear-proof trash containers, and food-hanging lines would have to be installed. To start, she tackled the issue of public access: first, widen the trail around the lake into a nature loop accessible to wheelchairs and add educational signs about the ecology of the area; then, as soon as possible, blaze connector trails to meet up with the major east-west hiking paths that led out to the ocean beaches and up into the rugged valleys of the Olympic Mountains. She used a scanned map and a paint program to sketch out the suggested routes, making sure to avoid areas that were elk calving grounds and prime bear habitat.

What to do with the Lucky Molly Mine was her biggest quandary. According to the map provided by the park service, the mine shaft opening was now on the national park side of the boundary and therefore off-limits to mining, but the old tunnel extended to the forest service side, which meant that there, it was fair game for prospectors. If the current crater was filled in and all signs of the mine’s existence removed, would people stop looking for it? That hadn’t stopped them so far. Or would it be better to fence off the opening, make the mine a feature of the area, and install a plaque detailing its unsuccessful history? That could be an opportunity to educate the public about the mining laws. But that could backfire, too: a new awareness might inspire a fresh crop of prospectors to take advantage of those laws.

Except for the desk clerk out front who dealt with the
public, Arnie Cole was the only other person in the building. She took the risk of approaching him in his office and asking his opinion.

“Ah, I knew you’d be back,” he said with a grin. “Why not sell passes and let the yahoos dig for gold? They’re gonna do it, anyway; might as well make some money from it.”

In other words, he was no help. To make matters worse, after that he cruised by her desk every fifteen minutes. “Need any more help?” he asked. He tried to read her laptop screen over her shoulder. By one o’clock, she was desperate to escape from the building.

After eating her lunch of cheese and crackers at the picnic table in back of the building, she returned to her laptop and checked her online resources for Jack Winner’s address. If Chase and Joe weren’t going to be forthcoming about what Winner was up to around Marmot Lake, then she was going to find out for herself.

According to the map on her computer screen, Rushing Springs was a tiny dot just off Highway 101, about fifteen miles south of Forks. She should be able to easily make a round trip and still pick up Lili at the library at three thirty.

THE
dot on the map represented a gas station/quick market hunkered on a gravel pullout next to the highway. The rest of Rushing Springs was a collection of tumble-down cabins and manufactured homes scattered through the woods.

Jack Winner didn’t answer the door of his cheap-looking but tidy double-wide manufactured home. Its windows were too far off the ground for her to do any snooping there. She had to content herself with peering through the dusty windows of the remodeled barn out back, cupping her hands to the sides of her face to block the glare. Only a few items of furniture seemed to be in progress: a handful of dark-stained lecterns and various pieces that might eventually be a desk of some sort. Winner Woodworking
didn’t look like a prosperous business, at least not from this angle.

“You lookin’ for something?”

Startled, she turned to find a man at her side in faded jeans and flannel shirt, with longish graying hair. He was older than she’d expected—around sixty or so. His tennis shoes had holes over his little toes. He didn’t look like the type to drive the monster black pickup. “Jack Winner?” she asked.

“He’s not home, I guess, or you wouldn’t be back here.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“Ernest Craig.” He held out a trembling hand.

She shook it, pretending not to notice how hard it was shaking, then told him her name. “You’re a neighbor of Jack’s?”

“I live back there through the woods.” He pointed down a gravel track, but she couldn’t see anything but trees. “I was taking a walk. Not much place to go around here, but walking keeps me from…well…it keeps me out of trouble.”

Craig’s watery gray eyes remained glued to her face with a fierce intensity. He didn’t appear to be in very good shape, but he had at least eight inches and sixty pounds on her. Maybe she should have told someone she was coming down here.

His expression suddenly brightened. “I
know
you,” he said.

“I don’t believe we’ve ever met, Mr. Craig.”

“From TV, I mean. I seen you on TV. It was over at the bar, oh, a week or so ago.”

That had to have been the KSTL program Peter Hoyle had mentioned. The one about the conference and speech.

“I remember because this one guy there wasn’t too happy to see you.”

She knew it was Garrett Ford even before Craig described the man. Nobody else except Mack and Joe knew her around here, but Ford had known her on sight. She decided to cruise past his place as soon as possible.
See if there was a big dent in his pickup or a bear skin drying on the clothesline.

Focus, she reminded herself. Winner’s truck was in the lot at the time of the shooting incident at Marmot Lake. That had started off as a paintball game. “Do you know if Jack and his friends like to play paintball?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen ’em heading out with boxes of those paint pellets and coming back all colored up.”

“Can you tell me the names of some of his friends?” Maybe she could get some information from this guy that Chase and Joe didn’t have.

Craig stared up at the trees and thought for a minute. “There’s a Phil somebody, I don’t know his last name. He works here sometimes. I should know, really I should…” He looked embarrassed, and ran his fingers through his shaggy hair.

“That’s okay. I can’t say that I know my neighbors very well, either.” Blake was the chatty one; she was the hermit writer.

Craig was still thinking. “I know Jack’s got family up in Forks. His mom lives up there.”

He made it sound like Forks was in another state instead of fifteen miles up the road. A sorrowful expression crept onto his face. “You work for the park?” he asked.