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ELEVEN

CASEY

Tuesday Evening

Casey scowled after the departing vehicle. “Good fucking riddance.”

Waiting in the rain for a random asshole who thought he was a comedian was the perfect end to a perfectly shitty day. The guy in 201C thought he was a charmer, and Casey didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. The kind of person who thought fast talking and a mischievous smile would get him out of a ticket. Casey snorted—no doubt it had worked for him in the past.

“I’m never letting Greta go on vacation again,” he grumbled. Earlier that day, she’d sent a picture of herself and Abby, her wife, relaxing on a beach somewhere in Thailand. Normally, Casey wasn’t a beach and fruity drink guy, but this had been the Tuesday that had never stopped giving.

Because he was in a shit mood and because he didn’t trust Charming Fucker, Casey moved over to the middle of the campground access road and waited until the silver car’s taillights faded into the distance. He knew it was a stupid get off my lawn moment and he didn’t care, although he did suppress the urge to shake his fist at the departing car.

For fuck’s sake, the Closed and No Trespassing notices were clearly posted. Why couldn’t people just follow them? Casey felt the tiniest twinge of conscience for handing out citations to campers, and occasionally he let people off with just a warning. But Mr. Charming had irritated the fuck out of him from the second he opened his mouth.

On a night like this one, with sheeting rain and the temperatures a good ten degrees colder than normal for the time of year, the park was no place to sleep. It was better to stay at a public rest area; at least there was water and an available restroom. This was why he and Bowie had gone out for a check, to make sure idiots like Charming Fucker didn’t end up in the hospital with hypothermia. Or worse, dead.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d discovered a dead body, but he would like it to be a rare occurrence. For one thing, the paperwork was a nightmare. Nowhere on the forms was there a space for death by idiot behavior.

“Jackass,” he muttered for good measure. His words seemed to float on the air before a gust of wind snatched them away.

Casey’d had to roust three other illegal car campers before getting to the person hiding out in site 201C, and none of them had set him off like the last guy. Did he think he was extra clever parking back there? It was one of the places Casey routinely checked because the spot was so secluded from the road compared to the rest. Summertime campers also loved it for that very reason.

The other illegal campers had packed up and left without too much argument, just a sorry and a random excuse. They hadn’t tried a flashy smile or ridiculous finger wave as they left the campground. The fucking guy thought he was fucking irresistible. He was not.

He was probably down on his luck, Casey reminded himself, and the ticket he’d issued could have been a warning. But with Greta gone, the park’s resources were stretched to the limit, and he didn’t need a search and rescue call because someone got lost in the forest looking for somewhere to take a piss.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out,” Casey added as he tromped back to his truck.

Bowie greeted him with an enthusiastic wiggle and swiped at him with his tongue, the Labrador part of the mix coming to the front.

“Knock it off, you. I’m trying to get my seat belt on.”

They left the park behind them and were a few miles from his office where he would swap vehicles when, off to the side of the road, Casey thought he saw a faint glimmer. He slowed to a crawl and peered past his headlights and into the dark but couldn’t see anything. Shrugging at his tired brain’s imagination, he picked up speed again. Time to get to bed finally.

The park and forest headquarters—such a long name for the tiny structure—was quiet from now until mid-March, just how Casey liked it. Casey and Greta were the only year-round full-time staff and the seasonal hires wouldn’t start until mid-April at the earliest. It was always difficult for him to get used to sharing space again, but at least he always had almost half a year to enjoy before he had to.

He parked the Forest Service truck around the back of the small building, next to his completely rebuilt 1987 Red Jeep Wagoneer—with faux wood paneling, of course. The Wagoneer and all the work it had needed had been a splurge considering how small his paychecks were, but it was reliable and the next best thing to the four-wheeler he drove while on the clock.

“Come on, Bowie, let’s get home.”

Jumping to the ground, Bowie raced ahead of Casey, his tail whirling as he dashed from the truck to the covered porch of the park office.

“You do know I’m the one with the opposable thumbs?” Casey asked as the dog sat back on his haunches and pointed his nose at the locked door. Bowie just thumped his tail against the wooden deck in answer. “Smart ass.” The dog probably did know the alarm code; if Casey gave him enough time, he would open the door on his own.

Inside, Casey flipped on the lights and headed for the desk, where he tossed the truck’s keys in the bottom drawer along with the citation book and locked the whole thing up. Then he and Bowie did a quick walk-through of the building as they always did, making sure everything was in order and hanging his ranger hat on the coat rack near the trash can.

The stash of buckets and bags in the cold room reminded him he needed to call Chenda Wall, his local mushroom contact. The fungi weren’t in danger of going bad, but the harvest needed to be sold sooner rather than later. For his part, Bowie checked to make sure the rope tug toy and Kong squeaky were next to his office dog bed where he’d left them earlier.

The building had been broken into last winter, so between them, Casey and Greta made the effort to stop by at least once every day. Satisfied that all was locked up and as safe as it could be, he punched in the code for the alarm again and stepped out onto the porch that ran the length of the building.

“Winter is really doing its best to arrive prematurely, isn’t it?” he said to the dog, pulling his hood back over his head and twisting the door handle to make sure it was locked. The weather gurus had been predicting a storm system for several days. Was there more to come? After a dry summer, everything needed moisture. Casey wasn’t complaining about it; he loved it when the rains returned.

“Come on, Bowie, let’s get home.”

He waved Bowie to the Jeep and made a mental note to call the county about the streetlight across the way again. He’d called once already, after it had inexplicably gone dark a couple of weeks ago. Without the lamp, the stretch of road that ran in front of the office got very dark at night. It hadn’t bothered him at first, but the days were only getting shorter. Casey didn’t mind the dark, but after the break-in, he was a bit paranoid.

Out on the road, he heard the drone of a car’s engine, distant at first but louder as it drew closer. Its headlights briefly illuminated the still sheeting drizzle as it sped past the building and headed north toward the end of the island. Casey frowned. The road wasn’t the busiest in the best of times, but it still had some traffic, he reminded himself. He was just being unreasonably jumpy tonight. “Which is why the fucking light needs to be replaced,” he grumbled. He looked down at an expectant and wet Bowie.

“Yeah, yeah.” Casey tugged the driver’s side door open and was about to motion the dog in when another sound reached his ears. The hairs on the back of Casey’s neck immediately rose. Bowie’s response was a slow, deep, menacing growl.

“What is it, Bowie?”

Slowly, Casey turned and looked over his shoulder. The office’s too-dark parking lot backed up to the fenced-off forested area that technically belonged to the Chimakum Island navy munitions base.

Was he just extra jumpy tonight? That didn’t explain Bowie’s growl. Maybe Bowie was reacting to Casey’s general frustration and slight twitchiness over the deep black of the night.

There didn’t seem to be anything out there.

The public wasn’t allowed access to the mothballed base, which meant all sorts of creatures had made it their home. Whatever they’d heard or, in Bowie’s case, smelled was likely a deer family cutting across the property or some other forest-type animal.

Hopefully, not the human variety. Those were the most dangerous.

Gravel crunched under the Jeep’s tires when Casey pulled in next to the boatshed minutes later.

“Best commute in the world,” he said to the doggy face in the rearview mirror.

Casey climbed out and opened the back of the Jeep. Bowie immediately jumped to the ground, his tail wagging. Whatever he’d heard or smelled at the park office was already long gone to him, but Casey hadn’t forgotten. He wouldn’t put it past the Perkins brothers to do something stupid in retaliation for him confiscating their mushroom harvest.

“Parking lot” was a grandiose term for the uneven graveled space next to the boatshed. There was only room enough for four smallish cars or two oversized trucks. Casey had parked in what he considered his spot seeing he was the only person who lived aboard. Most of the boats moored at Riddle Bay Marina were never sailed. When summer arrived, one or two of the vessels might be taken out for short voyages, but at the end of the season, the sails and rigging were packed up again.

The motion sensor security camera Casey’d attached to the storage shed flicked on, blinding him. Automatically, he squinted against glare. One of these days, he’d get the ladder out again and shift the light an inch so it wouldn’t shine directly into his eyes, but not tonight. Like Bowie, he just wanted to be home already.

The glow was mirrored by the dark waters of the bay and for no discernable reason, another shiver crawled up his spine. Something wasn’t right. Bowie was sniffing the ground as if he’d caught a scent he was interested in.

“The fuck.” Casey looked carefully around, trying to see what his subconscious was telling him was there—or not there.

Eventually, he spotted some tracks in the gravel that were not the Jeep’s. Additionally, the chain and padlock that kept unauthorized visitors off the pier had been moved out of position. Casey knew this because he set them the same way every time he left.

Maybe he was paranoid, maybe he just knew most people were shitty.

“Probably just Elton stopping by,” he told Bowie, continuing to scan the graveled area. Bowie didn’t seem to think anything was amiss as he gleefully lifted one leg to pee on the chain-link fencing.

The last thing Casey needed was a break-in. It wasn’t as if the sheriff and his deputies—or the menace known as the Twana County Community Watch, TC Watch for the locals, which was really a volunteer militia— would investigate anything to do with a Lundin. They probably wouldn’t have responded to the one at headquarters except for the pesky fact it had happened on government property. Hell, they might not bother to respond if it happened again. Casey and Sheriff Rizzi weren’t even frenemies.

Casey would not have been surprised to learn it had been the sheriff, or one of his minions, who’d done the breaking in. At the time, he’d briefly considered Calvin or Dwayne Perkins, but they were more the bulls-in-a-china-shop types. Subtle was not their game.

Sliding his key into the padlock, he twisted it and was rewarded with a snick as the lock opened. Seconds later, he and Bowie were on the other side of the gate and it was locked behind them again. Casey strode and Bowie bounded to the end of the pier where the Barbara was berthed.

Home sweet home

Casey climbed aboard the sailboat, using a railing to keep from slipping. At thirty-five feet long, the Barbara had a lot of living space for a single guy, and Casey utilized every bit of it. Below were two bedrooms, a galley and sitting area along with the stateroom, although he used one of those rooms for storage.

He plunked his backpack down on one of the bench seats and stripped out of his damp jacket and muddy boots. Then, hanging up his coat, he stashed his muddy footwear by the causeway that led to the deck and stashed his hard drive in the drawer with his keys. Everything had its place and there was a place for everything.

“Hold it,” he said to Bowie. Quickly, he grabbed the spare towel he used to dry the dog off. When that task was done, he tossed the dog a treat that was deftly caught in midair. “You didn’t even chew that,” Casey said with a chuckle. “But good boy. Good work today.”

Was he unusually jumpy tonight from the earlier encounter with Calvin and Dwayne and the jerk at the campground? For now, he was going to assume the tire tracks were Elton’s and not worry about them.

For whatever reason, the old man had his own key to the gate and checked on one of the sailboats fairly regularly. Casey knew Elton didn’t own the boat, he “just kept an eye on it.” But as Elton aged, less and less of the needed maintenance had been taken care of .

Rummaging through his cupboards, Casey found a can of chicken and rice soup. He opened it, dumped the contents into a saucepan, and set it to warm on the two-burner stove. While his dinner was heating up, Casey retrieved his cell phone from his backpack. It wouldn’t hurt to give Elton a call, and he needed to send the video he’d taken of the Perkinses to the head office in Olympia. He should have done it earlier.

“I’ll talk to Elton tomorrow,” he grumbled when he saw the time. Bowie thumped his tail in agreement from where he was curled up on his bed.

And before any of the other tasks, Casey set up his weekly call-time with his brother.