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SIX

CASEY

Tuesday

“Fucking Tuesdays,” Casey grumbled. His stomach agreed. It was almost lunchtime and he was ready for the day to be over. Monday was never the issue, it was always Tuesday for him.

For a moment, he stared up at the slate gray clouds above the cedar and fir trees. Then he rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, blew out a heavy sigh, and returned his attention to the foul mattress someone had attempted to cram into one of the park dumpsters. A sharp bark came from the cab of his truck.

“I’m hurrying, Bowie.”

A shredded memory foam mattress oozed out from under the now crooked lid of the trash container. From where Casey was standing, he could see other household junk crammed inside along with the mattress. A broken chair with no seat, filthy clothing, a colorful plastic thing whose purpose must have been to keep a baby secure .

The huge metal container almost had a slightly guilty air about it, as if it too thought it should have tried harder not to be vandalized. Casey sighed again. Other people’s garbage was the last thing Casey wanted to deal with after his earlier encounter with the Perkins brothers. He’d only come this way because someone had called in and reported the gate open.

Normally, Greta would have checked the gate so Casey could finish the Perkinses’ paperwork, but his work partner was conveniently on vacation.

Just last summer, someone’d had the great idea of dumping their trash and then setting fire to it. Maybe to get rid of the evidence? It was pure luck that Casey had been patrolling the Forest Service roads that day and spotted the smoke before anything tragic happened.

“Small mercies, these folks knew what a dumpster’s for,” Casey griped, pulling out his phone to arrange for the county to come and take the garbage away and replace the damaged container. All of which was going to cost the park money that wasn’t in the budget.

Behind him, Casey could hear Bowie restlessly moving around in the truck’s cab. Bowie’s daily plan involved an orange ball and possibly chasing a squirrel by now, so this was not an authorized stop.

The majority of the park dumpsters were locked during the offseason, like this one had been. With a staff of two and few visitors, the park didn’t need regular trash pickup and certainly not where they were now, in the closed-off camping area.

“Hey, Lundin,” said the person who answered Casey’s call. “What’s up?”

“Randy, I need to schedule a pickup. Some assholes filled the container on the road behind the battlements. Circle D.”

“I’m telling you, that’s gonna keep happening,” Randy said.

“Thanks for the I-told-you-so, Randy. As you know, I don’t create the budget, I just have to live with it. And year-round weekly service will never be approved.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re scheduled to be by Friday for collection at the picnic area. Is that soon enough for you? Costs less if we only have to make the one trip.”

Casey wanted the overflowing trash gone immediately. “Fine. That’s fine.” He sighed, but quietly. Randy was doing a favor by adding this stop to their regular run.

“See you soon, then.”

“Thanks.”

Casey ended the call, his attention still focused on the overflowing dumpster. Who the hell had decided it was okay to cart their trash out to the park instead of disposing of it properly? He had half a mind to pick through the stuff and see if there was anything with a name on it, but it was raining, the wind was doing its thing, and the temperature was hovering in the low forties. And his stomach was complaining about missing lunch.

If he was going to be cold and hungry, he’d rather be cold and hungry and at the beach with Bowie. One last glare and he climbed back into his banged-up service truck and started the engine.

Fort Hood Park—just one of the locations Casey and his coworker Greta Harris were responsible for around Heartstone and the peninsula—had once been part of the defense system for Washington State, back when politicians had real concerns about an invasion by sea. Unlike the other three forts in the region, Fort Hood had been mothballed early on, but the state had kept stewardship of the acreage. A long and wide swath of the peninsula had then been protected from further development, a completely unintended consequence but one Casey was glad for .

This tiny sliver of the Olympic Forest was Casey’s sanctuary.

Some folks thought Casey liked the woods more than people—and they were right. Frankly, he didn’t see anything wrong with that. Humans were generally untrustworthy, and most of them talked too much. This time of year, when Greta traveled to Thailand or Peru, he was happy to spend his days mostly alone or with Bowie.

Casey hung a right onto the access road outside the closed camping area and heading toward the beach and picnic area, a nice flat piece of land that jutted due north into the Salish Sea. All year long, RVers could be found camping at the year-round sites there. In winter, it was often bitterly cold, but it was also beautiful, which was why people came and stayed.

Bowie sat up so he could see over the dashboard, his tail wagging and then stilling as he spotted something in the distance. Casey spotted it too.

“Goddammit, can people not read anymore?” Casey fumed. “And if they can’t, is the big red circle with a line through it somehow misleading? Pretty sure it means the same thing worldwide.”

Bowie did not have an answer for him.

Where the road ended, a silver pickup truck with a loaded trailer was backing up to the boat ramp. The closed boat ramp.

He stopped his Jeep a few feet away. Lunch was going to have to wait a little longer.

“Stay. You’ll get your turn in a minute, I promise.”

Bowie huffed his displeasure and continued to stare out the windshield.

Patting Bowie on the butt, Casey climbed out. The driver of the silver truck watched him warily.

“Ramp’s closed.” Casey indicated the signage he could see from where he stood .

“Um, yeah,” the driver replied.

Casey thought he recognized him, but with the knit cap pulled low and a heavy beard covering most of his face, it was hard to be sure.

“For a reason,” Casey said before the guy could come up with some excuse. “The ramp was damaged by the king tides earlier this month. You might not be able to get the boat back out of the water. I’m sure you don’t want to be stuck out there.” Casey looked out at the dark, choppy water; a water rescue would be cold and difficult. And push his lunch to dinner.

A crunching sound alerted Casey that another person was making their way around from the trailer. A low growl came from inside the Forest Service truck. This was someone Bowie did not like.

“Hey, Richie, I told you to put the fucking boat in the water!”

The driver—Casey now recognized Richie Weiss, who also lived on Heartstone—winced, a wary expression on his face, as Casey stepped around the side of the truck to meet his partner in crime.

For fuck’s sake, Deter Nolan was a sheriff’s deputy; he should know better. But, alas, Deter liked to think he only had to follow the laws that suited him.

“The ramp’s closed, Deter. You know that.” Casey kept the gusting wind at his back. “The sign is right there,” he couldn’t help but add.

Deter Nolan’s hand was clapped on top of his head in an attempt to keep his grubby cap from blowing away down the rocky beach. His already grim expression darkened further as he moved in Casey’s direction. Deter wasn’t huge like Richie or the Perkinses, but he was wiry and strong, and his unpredictable temper made him scary to most of the residents of Heartstone .

Casey wasn’t one of them. He refused to be intimidated by the likes of Deter Nolan.

A wave, larger than the previous ones, rose and smashed against the shore, violently rocking the trailer and the boat that still sat on it.

“Is your boat secure?” Casey asked. The angle it canted at had him suspecting it wasn’t.

Deter’s attention snapped toward the water and the aluminum fishing boat. The bigger waves weren’t finished. Another rolled in and over the lightweight craft, which, as Casey had suspected, was not fixed to the trailer. The vessel lifted up and started to slip further into the water.

“Motherfucker!” Deter yelled, scrambling to grab the boat.

Against his better judgment, Casey jumped into action. He skidded down the pebbled beach alongside the concrete ramp, grabbing one side of the gunnel while Deter grabbed the other.

The boat was already more than halfway into the water, and one of the trailer wheels had rolled off the ramp and was jammed between the slab and the barnacle-covered rocks.

At least Deter knew what he was doing; Casey didn’t have to give him any instructions while they muscled the aluminum craft back onto the trailer. But Casey hadn’t dressed that morning for a dunk in the ocean and was soaking wet.

The waves were coming in fast, pushing against Casey’s legs and then trying to suck him into the water as they retreated. Deter slipped and almost went under but managed to catch the side of the boat. Thank fuck because Casey would have had to rescue the man.

With one final heave followed by a cinching of the straps, the boat was secure on the trailer again.

“It’s going to take both of us to lift the trailer back onto the ramp,” Casey informed Deter.

Without responding, Deter sloshed around the bottom of the ramp, and together, with a little assistance from another large wave, they were able to lift the trailer up and onto the ramp again.

“That’s it,” Casey said, thumping the side of the boat.

Banging his fist against the bed of the pickup, Deter yelled, “Gun it, Richie! If you fuck up my boat, I’m gonna be pissed.”

Nice.

Richie, who’d been hanging halfway out the driver’s side window watching the whole thing, nodded, ducked back inside the cab, and revved the engine. The truck surged forward, pulling the streaming trailer out of the water.

“You two are lucky I showed up,” Casey said to Deter. “You could have lost your boat, or worse.”

He stepped over to Richie’s open window and leaned on his elbows against the door frame, trying to pretend he wasn’t freezing. “I’m not going to cite you this time. Consider nearly losing the boat a warning. It could have been your truck.”

Out of habit, Casey scanned the interior of the double cab. The back was strewn with fishing gear, haphazardly stacked on the bench seat. The front was cluttered too. The dashboard had several paper maps laying on it, likely local hunting or fishing spots, and the middle console held two go-cups and a handful of pens. He didn’t have to see the pens up close to know they had the Twana County Sheriff’s Office logo printed on them. Personally, Casey thought it a waste of county funds, but the TCSO had apparently ordered enough of them for every voting citizen who wanted one. And more.

Deter ignored Casey’s comment and didn’t bother with a “thank you.” He stomped around the front of the truck and climbed into the passenger side. The door shut with a slam and Casey jumped out of the way when Richie mashed his foot down on the gas pedal again, and the truck rumbled off. A hand shot out the passenger side window, middle finger raised.

“You’re welcome, asshole,” Casey muttered, sloshing back to the Forest Service vehicle, where Bowie stood on the bench seat and barked a good riddance directed at Richie and Deter. “Good dog,” Casey said as he climbed in. “At least those two idiots won’t turn into a search and rescue.” Bowie spun in a circle, his tail brushing across Casey’s face. “Not today, anyway,” he added.

Before Richie and Deter disappeared from view, Casey noted the same We’re Watching You sticker on Richie’s bumper that the Perkinses had on their truck. Maybe Deter had pressured Richie into it. Richie was mostly harmless, Casey thought, but suggestible. Which meant that, like his friend Gordon MacDonald, Richie often ended up in trouble that wasn’t his own.

Bowie whined, wiggled, and dragged his doggy tongue across Casey’s forehead and eyebrow.

“Gross, knock it off.” Casey laughed and pushed the dog away. “I know you want another walk, but we need to stop at home first. I have to change into dry clothes and eat something.”

With another put-upon sigh, the dog slumped down with his head on his paws as Casey started the engine. Just another day in his life working for the underpaid and understaffed Washington State Forest Service.

He passed by the closed campground entrance on the way out of the park and made a mental note to drive through that evening. The change in the weather and the seasonal closure would not stop the stupidly determined from sneaking into the park and risking staying overnight.

Maybe that should be his new bumper sticker: Stupidly Determined .