Page 18

EIGHTEEN

GAbrIEL

Thursday

Gabe glanced at his watch. It was early afternoon and would be light for several more hours. Elton had written the directions down on a yellow legal pad, explaining, “There’s no reliable signal up The Valley unless you have a sat phone. I don’t have one anymore.” The lack of a cell signal worked out fine for him since Gabriel had not yet replaced the phone he’d lost. On the other hand, he noted as he turned up the road Elton had indicated, there was also no way he’d be able to call for help if he did run into trouble.

A risk he was going to have to take.

Crystal Creek was a county road until it hit the backside of the Olympic National Forest and turned into a Forest Service access road. The dwellings were few and far between and mostly resembled what he’d seen at Smitty’s RV Park and along the highway from Olympia. Ramshackle RVs and mobile homes, and several wood buildings that, even to Gabriel’s uneducated eye, had been constructed without any kind of blueprint or design, maybe over several years. Some of these were beautiful and well taken care of, others appeared abandoned.

“You’ll see all types up that way in the summer, but in the winter, it’s mainly locals and undesirables. And sometimes those are the same people,” Elton had warned him.

There was more than one burned-out structure; it probably would take a damn long time for emergency services to get out this way. Gabe appreciated getting away from it all, but this was further away from civilized facilities than he was comfortable with.

As Elton had said, Crystal Creek Road started out paved, but the smooth ride didn’t last long. After a few miles, the pavement disappeared. The truck was bouncing along from pothole to pothole, and the surface of the road resembled an old-fashioned washboard, probably from a tractor-type tread.

“Fucking hell,” Gabriel muttered when he was forced to hit the brakes and navigate around a three-foot-high boulder that blocked most of the road. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

As the truck continued to rumble upward, churning up the frozen mud beneath its tires, the trees were packed noticeably closer together and closer to the road, until all that Gabe could see with any certainty was the road itself and the forest on either side. Elton had prepared him for this as well and said it was by design, that folks who lived up here didn’t want strangers’ eyes on their property. They’d moved up The Valley to get away and weren’t always friendly to outsiders.

“When you get to mile eight, you need to start looking for a mailbox. It’s painted light blue and looks like it’s been hit by cars more than once, because it has. A bit past that, there’s a right turn. Road’s unmarked and hard to spot. You’ll need to drive very slowly. If you see the green sign for the forest road, you’ve gone too far.”

Elton hadn’t mentioned the sign advertising Snowcap Estates, so that must have been put up more recently. There were no estates yet that Gabe could see, just a semi-cleared area and many survey sticks with plastic orange ribbon tied to them. Marking out lots, he supposed.

“Where is this place?”

Gabriel was getting frustrated; the damn driveway had to be close by. He’d driven too far twice now and turning around on this narrow lane was a bitch. For the third time, he crept back up the road, scanning for the mailbox, his foot pressed on the gas just hard enough to keep the truck from stalling out. After about two hundred feet, he noticed a spot where the trees and shrubs seemed thinner.

“Here goes nothing,” he muttered. Twisting the steering wheel to the right, he pushed hard on the gas pedal. In response, the engine roared and the front tires bumped across something, possibly a fallen branch, then through the curtain of thicket and deadfall. Abruptly, just like Elton had promised, the truck was through the barrier and a clearing was in front of him.

Astonished, Gabriel lifted his foot up, and the forward motion of the truck almost came to a halt.

“Shit.”

At the last second, he gunned the engine again, and the Ford lurched forward, continuing along the barely visible track. Mud and debris splashed onto the front and sides of the truck and the windshield. He flicked on the wipers, which spread a thin coat of muck across his field of vision.

“Fucking great,” he said, flailing around for the wiper controls again, this time to clean off the grime.

Another few minutes passed before Gabriel was across the clearing and had reached the structure Elton had told him he’d find there.

If anyone was inside or around the property, they would have heard him coming. Surprise was simply not possible. Which, Gabe supposed, was the point of the long approach. Cutting off the engine, Gabriel again sat in the front seat for a few minutes, taking in what he could see.

With the engine off, the temperature in the truck’s cab quickly turned chilly; it was much colder at the higher altitude than it had been on Heartstone. But at least it wasn’t currently raining—or snowing, he supposed. The truck’s engine ticked rhythmically as it cooled, a pleasant sound after the miles of bumping and jostling that caused everything in the truck that could to creak and groan. And some things that shouldn’t have. Elton had been right about the Honda never making the trip. Gabe would’ve called it a day at the three-mile marker.

The clearing was just that, an open space of nine or ten acres, and from where he was parked, he could see the Snowcap Estate sign. It was closer than he expected. He wondered how Gordon felt about new neighbors.

Trees had been harvested, probably years ago. Many of the remaining stumps had smaller trees growing from their remains, and some of the new growth looked to be ten feet tall. He didn’t know how long it took for that kind of growth to happen, but it wasn’t overnight. He’d learned long ago that an observer could tell how long since a forest fire had taken place by what weeds and wildflowers had taken root. A clear-cut was not the same thing, but the recovery must work in a somewhat similar fashion.

Gabriel also didn’t see visual evidence of a pot farm—but again, no expert. There were no vehicles apart from a rusted-out 1970s Dodge van. Once it had been red, but it had faded to an odd pastel shade and, by the look of the weeds growing under it, in it, and on it, the thing hadn’t moved in years. Maybe decades.

What he did see were unidentifiable plants waiting to spring back into action once the weather turned nice again. Or less rainy and miserable anyway. It wasn’t as if the growing season along this side of the Olympics was particularly long; surely marijuana needed a certain amount of sunlight?

The shed appeared to be a simple structure: four walls, a mossy roof, a door. Windows were a maybe. He eyed the door, which was constructed from a set of weathered vertical planks held together by a warped board nailed across them from corner to corner. Gabriel twitched his shoulders; a feeling that he was being watched made him uneasy but as far as he could tell, there was no one around but him.

Each of the four walls leaned slightly inward under the weight of the moss-covered peaked roof, as if it were a group effort to hold themselves up. If one of the walls moved, they would all fail. The lichens, ferns, and other opportunistic plant life growing along the edges and eaves of the roof quivered in the light breeze.

The shed-shack was waiting. Lurking. Hunched as if trying to make itself invisible.

“If I start to hear banjos playing in the distance, I am so out of here.”

Gabriel really wished Elton had been able to come along or that he’d still had his sat phone. Someone to talk to would be helpful about now. He knew he shouldn’t stall any longer; he needed to take a closer look and the day was only drawing closer to sunset. The last thing he needed was to get stuck up The Valley in the ass-back of nowhere in the dark with no goddammed phone.

“Fucking get this over with. Bigfoot isn’t hiding in there.”

Gabriel slid from the driver’s seat onto the dirt and gravel of the access road, and the soles of his boots sunk deep into the sludge.

“Lovely.”

Picking his way to higher ground, he managed to avoid the huge, muddy, water-filled pothole near the front tire and took that as a good sign. A sign at least. The puddle looked almost bottomless. A person could possibly drown in it if they weren’t careful.

Stomping his boots against the swampy earth for reasons Gabe couldn’t explain, he inhaled a lungful of the cold mountain air, blew it out again, and then forced his feet to start toward the shed. Jokes about banjos aside, he felt a deep reluctance he couldn’t explain. It was probably the fact that he was on the run and right now felt extremely exposed and alone, but the mob wouldn’t be waiting for him here. They were refined criminals, more likely to ambush him in a place closer to civilization.

An ambiguous scent that he couldn’t immediately identify floated on the air. Gabe paused again, trying to work out what it was. Not the skunky scent of pot. Another, stronger gust of wind whipped across the clearing, and the smell was gone.

“Hello? Gordon MacDonald? Are you in there?” he called out quietly as he moved closer to the decrepit building. As if Gordon wouldn’t have already heard Gabe’s arrival. If he had been around, he probably would have announced his presence. Then again, he could have had Gabe in the sights of his shotgun by now. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.

If he hadn’t promised Elton that he’d “poke around,” Gabe would have been back behind the wheel of the truck already.

To one side of the shed, a lumpy pile of something unidentifiable was covered by a plastic tarp held down by large rocks. It wasn’t hard for Gabe to imagine a body under there or—well, a body. He peered closer. Unless it was a small person, he was going to assume construction supplies. He definitely saw the side of a large white bucket, the kind a person could buy at the hardware store.

“Gordon?” he called out again, wondering what else to say. Christ, he’d only met the man once. He couldn’t very well say, “ It’s me, Gabriel, the guy who roughed up a couple of your customers the other day.”

“Gordon? Elton Cox asked me to see if you’re up here, and if you are, are you okay? He’s worried about you.”

Still no reply. The only thing he heard was the rustling of the wind as it returned for a third pass, catching at the boughs of the evergreen trees and shrubs behind and around the shed. The blue tarp flapped and rattled under its influence, making him flinch.

“It’s a fucking tarp, Gabe. Get a grip.”

Forcing himself to cross the remaining few yards to the shed, Gabriel banged his fist against the door. Which, he realized, was stupid of him because the building was no more than three or four hundred square feet. If anyone was in there, they’d heard him coming, probably from miles away.

“If they could still hear,” Gabe muttered grimly. A deep sense of foreboding came over him. He didn’t like the feeling.

Open the door, Chance. Get it over with. Standing in front of a closed door isn’t going to change whatever might be inside.

Thanks, Mom.

The door creaked slightly open.

“Here goes nothing,” he whispered as he reached his hand out. Heidi’s voice was right—he needed to get it over with.

Grasping the heavy fisherman’s-style rope looped through a hole in the wood in lieu of a doorknob, Gabriel pulled the door open as far as he could, which wasn’t much. A flat rock he’d thought was a sort of welcome mat or front step was set just high enough to keep the door from swinging wide.

The smell Gabe had been aware of earlier was worse in the shed, much worse. He slapped a hand over his nose and mouth, not that it helped. There was a decidedly earthy, organic deadness to it. His first thought was that an animal had crawled inside and died, but some instinct he would have preferred to ignore told him it wasn’t an animal.

Gabriel forced the door across the rock until it was wide enough that the afternoon light was able to creep over his shoulders and get inside for a look. It took a couple of seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dim. There was just one window, and it was covered with newspaper, so the only significant light came from the open doorway. It illuminated an unpleasantly still form.

“Shit.”

Gabriel stumbled backward, flailing his arms and nearly falling on his ass in the muddy driveway. He desperately wanted to get away from what he’d found. He wanted to have never found it. “Shit, shit, shit.”

At the opposite end of the shed lay a body. A human body. The smell was that of decay, of decomposition. Covering his mouth and nose, Gabriel forced his feet to inch forward, intending to—well, he didn’t know what he intended. If it was Gordon, he was beyond help. Biting his lips together, Gabe grasped the edge of the door and forced it open enough that he could squeeze through the gap.

But just a few short steps inside and Gabe knew the body wasn’t Gordon MacDonald’s, which was good. Unfortunately, he did recognize it, which shouldn’t be possible considering he’d been in the area less than a workweek.

Dwayne Fucking Perkins. In the middle of his forehead, where there hadn’t been one a couple of days earlier, was a small, round hole. The hole was tidy, neat—death had been almost instantaneous, Gabe guessed. He certainly wasn’t going to check for a pulse. Not with that smell.

“Motherfucker.”