Chapter 19
NINETEEN
CASEY – THURSDAY (UP THE VALLEY)
“I think I’m going to take a run up The Valley today, now that the storm has passed,” Casey told Greta.
Eyeing him, his work partner set her coffee mug down on the desk.
“You want company?”
“No. I’ll have Bowie with me. He doesn’t pry into my personal life the way you do.”
Greta snorted. “Any specific reason for the trip? Are you missing the potholes? I don’t think the grader has been scheduled up the top of the road yet.”
“Gabe told me he thought he saw Calvin Perkins’s truck the other day, but he wasn’t sure. What if Calvin, for reasons only known to him, hid out all winter and is alive? I think it’s likely he’d head back to familiar haunts.”
“Be careful, then. If he is alive, Calvin’s dangerous.”
“I’ve always thought Dwayne was the more unpredictable one.
With him dead, maybe it will be easier to reason with his brother now that some time has passed.
And besides, the driver could have been someone else.
Gabe didn’t get a good look. It’s also possible that Calvin’s dead and some opportunist stole his truck.
But I thought I’d take a long drive, see how winter treated the folks up that way. ”
“Just be careful, please.”
Casey nodded, then pulled on his coat and knit Park Service winter beanie and grabbed Bowie’s leash. Recognizing they were going somewhere, maybe a ride in the truck to happy-fun-doggy time, Bowie jumped up and headed for the office’s door.
“I’m always careful. Come on, Bowie, let’s go for a ride.”
Casey decided he’d head up The Valley as far as he could go to low-key check for Calvin and then turn around, stopping at one or two of the friendlier homesteads on his way back.
The folks up Crystal Creek were generally loners and stayed to themselves, but that didn’t mean they didn’t pay attention to traffic up and down the road.
“Christ,” Casey muttered, steering around a spot where the road was close to being washed out.
Slowing to a complete stop, he grabbed his pen and waterproof notebook out of the glove compartment, then made a note of the exact location.
As luck would have it, there was a handy mile marker.
Sooner rather than later, the county would have to repair or at least shore up the road.
There were more homesteads beyond this point, and they needed to be able to access their property.
Before those were Snowcap Estates and Gordon MacDonald’s property, the last place Calvin was seen alive. Putting the truck in gear again, Casey pressed on the gas. The tires spun but caught quickly, thank god. The last thing he needed was to get stuck and be forced to call Greta for help.
“Yeah, no. I’d never hear the end of it. Isn’t that right, Bowie?”
In the rearview mirror, Casey watched Bowie’s ears prick up and his tail smack against the seat.
Half an hour later, he finally arrived at Snowcap Estates.
The partially developed land depressed him.
The so-called investment group had cut down the trees and installed electric hookups, but that was as far as they’d gotten before the shit hit the fan.
Casey parked along the edge of the road and got out, thankful that the morning rain had lessened to a sort of enveloping mist instead of the downpour it had been when he’d left the ranger office.
He held the door open for Bowie, who jumped to the ground.
“It’s going to be a bath day for you after this.”
Bowie eyed him briefly and then trotted off toward a pile of logging debris, following some scent that humans could not smell. Casey trailed after him, keeping an eye out for anything unusual that might suggest Perkins had been around—or just anything unusual in general.
He ducked under the ragged Do Not Trespass tape still looped across the site’s access road.
A forensics team had been contracted to search for Suzie Warner’s remains, but conditions from December through February had been both cold and wet.
For complicated reasons, some to do with the weather and others tied to the estimated age of the remains and not having an idea where they might be located on the acreage, the West Coast Forensics team was still not due in for another week.
At least that’s what Casey had heard through the grapevine, the grapevine being Greta and her “sources.”
As he walked further onto the property, a sense of unease began to overtake him. As someone who spent a lot of time alone in the woods and someone that lawbreakers didn’t always welcome, he paid attention to the rise of the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Bowie.” He snapped his fingers. “To me.”
Already about fifty feet ahead of him, Bowie turned back and joined him. Maybe he was feeling the unease too.
“Good boy.”
Regardless of who was out there, Casey wasn’t leaving just yet.
“Calvin Perkins!” Casey shouted. “Are you out there?”
There was no immediate answer, which was not a surprise.
“Perkins, your mom is devastated and wants you home again.” Even jerks like Calvin had mothers who cared about them. “I don’t know if you’ve heard the news, but Eli Rizzi is in jail.”
No response, just the drip-drip of rainwater falling from tree branches, Bowie sniffing around, and his own voice.
Since the events of last fall, Casey had been wondering about the role Eli Rizzi had played in Dwayne’s and Calvin’s lives.
Had their careers of petty crime been encouraged by their uncle?
Calvin was the only one left who could say.
The hairs on his neck were telling him there was still someone—or something—out there.
Casey stopped and turned in a full circle, scanning the area.
With the leaves and other debris covering the ground and the copious amounts of mud and mud puddles popping up through them, it was hard to tell if someone had been there recently or if some sort of animal was watching him.
There was no shortage of bears and cougars up this way.
Bowie let out a sharp bark.
“What is it, boy?”
Casey grabbed Bowie’s collar and stood in place, his back to one of the few remaining fir trees, with Bowie between his legs. The space between his shoulder blades didn’t feel so vulnerable in this position. He tried to convince himself that his imagination was making him jumpy, but it didn’t work.
His cell phone vibrated, surprising him. It was rare for cell phones to have service up here unless there was a convergence of satellites and low cloud cover. Casey tugged the thing out of his inside pocket and saw it was Gabriel.
“Hello,” Casey said softly.
“It’s me.”
It was ridiculous how the sound of Gabe’s voice made him feel less jumpy. Who would’ve thought.
“It is.”
Casey wondered why Gabe was calling. His tone didn’t sound like “hey, was bored, whatcha doing.”
“Guess what I just found out?” Gabe asked.
“What?” The various scenarios that Casey’s imagination came up with ranged from Gabe’s espresso machine had been recalled to he’d been called for jury duty.
“Rizzi is dead.” Gabe put particular emphasis on the last d in dead.
Casey blinked. “What, seriously?”
“As a heart attack, as Elton would say. I don’t know the details, but Eagan told me he was found dead in his cell over the weekend.”
“Holy cow.”
“And more. Where are you? You sound outdoorsy.”
Bowie whined and tried to wiggle out of Casey’s grip, but Casey wouldn’t release him.
“I’m up at Snowcap. I thought I’d check up on your possible Calvin Perkins sighting.”
“Oh.” Gabe was silent, and Casey recognized that drop in tone. Gabe was worried. Now he knew how Casey felt way too often. Granted, Casey had come up here alone last fall and had been ambushed, so Gabe had a reason to feel concerned. “Have you found anything?”
“No, but I have that weird feeling you get when you’re being watched. Could be a human, could be a wild animal.”
“Would you do me a favor and get out of there? You don’t need to be the hero who brings in Perkins—if he’s even still alive. The truck just looked like his and I thought you should know about it. I didn’t think you would head off on a one-man mission to find the man.”
“Gabriel, if you thought the truck looked enough like Calvin’s to bring it up in conversation, then I’m going to take it seriously. He and Dwayne hung out up here, he’s familiar with the area, he’s got the survival skills. It makes sense that he might here somewhere.”
“The key word is somewhere. Just come back and we’ll drive up there together, okay?”
Casey didn’t want to hurt Gabe’s feelings by pointing out that Gabe was probably more of a hindrance than a help.
“Okay, I’ll head back.” He’d ask Greta to come back with him. She was an excellent tracker and great shot.
There was a snick sound on the line, and Casey figured the satellite was moving out of range.
“That’s Elton calling,” Gabe said. “I need to talk to him.”
“I’ll text when I’m back at the office.”
But Gabe had already clicked off. Casey tucked the phone back into his pocket and started toward the truck with Bowie at his heels.
The sense of being watched faded the farther he got from the tree line.
Was it a case of his imagination working overtime or had someone’s attention been focused on him?
Another unpleasant shiver crawled up his spine, and Casey moved a bit faster toward the truck.
A cacophony of barking reached his ears before he arrived at the log cabin.
Although the word cabin implied something small and quaint, and the Clark-Allard home was huge.
Three stories and constructed with logs from the property, it was set a mile or so back from the road.
The driveway wound almost aimlessly through the remaining trees until it finally ended at the back of the house.