Not Dead Enough

by Warren C Easley

  When I finished I realized that my case against Jacob Norquist wasn’t all that compelling and wondered how Bailey would react. Sure, as a hunter Jacob Norquist fit the profile, and Norquist was probably Townsend’s illegitimate son. I knew Townsend had used guides from Idaho, too, and thanks to Braxton Gage, I had a possible explanation for the skimming at the damn, which had set this whole thing in motion. Then again, Norquist could be Gage’s son, and Gage could be a clever liar.

  Clearly, without a photograph to confirm he was the man I saw in Clarno I was way ahead of myself.

  The custody hearing was gut-wrenching. Both parents let their antipathy for each other cloud their judgment on what was the best for two beautiful kids. I got through it, but honestly I wanted to crack their heads together.

  Bailey called while I was in the hearing and left the following message: “Thanks, Mr. Claxton. I agree it’s probably best to keep the mother out of this at this point. I’ll try to secure an Idaho driver’s license picture of Jacob Norquist. If there’s more than one, I’ll e-mail them all to you. If we get a match, call me at this number, and we’ll go from there. Maybe the mother knows where he’s hiding, since we sure as hell can’t find him. Nice work.”

  I had to skip lunch to prepare for a DUI case that afternoon, which turned out to be a waste of time, because my client got the book thrown at him. A client who plows into the back of a police car while intoxicated is tough to defend. When I got back to the farm I was hungry but still tight as a coiled spring. I took Archie for the long run up to the Pioneer cemetery with my cell phone in tow. No calls came in, and when I got back, nothing on the computer from Bailey, either. Damn, damn, damn.

  I was low on groceries and berated myself again for not shopping more often. After feeding Arch, I fried up two eggs in olive oil and wolfed them down with couple of pieces of toast and a beer while checking my notes from the research Fletcher Dunn and I had done. The guide service Royce Townsend had used was called the Idaho Adventure Guides and Outfitters. Of course, even if Norquist worked there, it would only suggest a link between him and Townsend. In any case, it would be something Bailey could check out.

  Norquist’s picture was key, damn it. What the hell was taking Bailey so long?

  I checked my e-mail again. A small, spinning circle on my screen indicated an incoming message was downloading. I waited and waited, and it kept spinning and spinning. If Bailey sent me too large a digital file my computer would choke on it. My DSL phone line didn’t have all that much bandwidth, after all. Sure enough, I got an error message stating that an incoming e-mail had timed out. “Shit.”

  I called Bailey again, but of course he didn’t pick up. I left a message for him to only attach one photo per e-mail, and then I waited some more. Nothing happened, so I dragged my laptop upstairs, propped myself against the headboard of my bed, and tried to get caught up on my e-mail. But my mind kept turning back to the possible link between Jacob Norquist and Royce Townsend, which brought me around to another concern—if I was right about the connection, then Winona was swimming with sharks just like Sheri North fifty years earlier.

  I decided to call Winona just to check in. “Hello, Cal,” she answered, sounding a bit surprised to hear from me. “How are you?” I felt better just hearing her voice, although it stirred something in me better left alone.

  “I’m okay.” I was brimming with news but didn’t dare share it with her. I figured the less she knew at this point the safer she would be. “I just wanted to check in and see how things are going.”

  “Oh, I’ve been busy collaborating with a professor up at U Dub who’s studying orcas. He claims they can’t survive in Puget Sound unless the salmon populations are saved. Salmon’s their main food source. Now, get this—he thinks the key is removing the four dams on the lower Snake River. I’ve seen his data. He makes a compelling case.”

  “Sounds seditious. Have you cleared this with Oberführer DeSilva?”

  Laughter. “Oh, shut up. I’m going to show this to Jason just as soon as I get the whole picture worked out. This is a completely new angle. I mean the fate of salmon and orcas intertwined? Think of the power of that argument, Cal.”

  “I see your point. Maybe something as emotionally charged as threatened orcas would stir up enough anger to get something done. After all, they’re warm-blooded mammals like us.” We kicked this around, and she plied me with more data and statistics than, given my agitated state, I was up for. I finally changed the subject, saying for no particular reason, “Has Timothy’s mother had any more wolf dreams?”

  She laughed again but with less levity. “I don’t think so, but I haven’t talked to her in a while. Actually, I’ve had a recurring wolf dream myself. I’m walking on a deserted beach and see this wolf in the distance. He turns and looks at me for a while and then trots back into the trees. That’s it. Pretty weird, huh?”

  “Well, I guess your totem’s warning you to be careful.” I tried to make it sound light, but I meant every word of it.

  “Could be,” she said before changing the subject. “Still nothing on the sniper, huh?”

  I puffed a breath. “He seems to have vanished into thin air.”

  “How could he do that? I mean the terrain out there’s so barren.”

  “It’s barren, but it’s vast, too. And he knows the high desert. But if he hasn’t slipped out of the perimeter they’ve established he’ll eventually run out of food and water, and they’ll catch him.”

  She signed heavily. “Well, I hope that happens soon. God, will you ever forgive me for getting you mixed up in this?”

  “Not your fault, Winona. I, uh, feel like this thing’s going to break open any time now.”

  “Do you still feel like Braxton Gage might be behind it?”

  I forced a light tone. “Oh, I certainly don’t have any evidence of that. That’ll be something for the police to unravel once they catch the sniper. Speaking of police, have you heard anything from your friends in Portland?”

  She sighed. “Yes. As a matter of fact, I have to go back tomorrow for another interview.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Oh, some details in my statement needed checking. I suggested we do it by phone, but that didn’t go over. I talked it over with Jason and Royce, and Royce offered to have one of his attorneys sit in with me.” She paused. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “A second interview is fairly common, but I would use the attorney, Winona. They might get more aggressive this time around.”

  She laughed. “That’s not possible.”

  The conversation drifted off into everyday things, and before I knew it we’d talked for over an hour. Somehow, this engendered an intimacy neither one of us intended nor expected. I was still under her spell when she apparently realized the impropriety of our lengthy, late night chat and said a hasty, almost flummoxed goodbye.

  Afterwards, I lay there thinking about how nice it was to hear her voice, although I had the damn dream she described stuck in my head for some reason. Every time I closed my eyes to sleep I saw that wolf on the beach. The funny thing was, it wasn’t the wolf that drew my attention. It was the beach.

  I had nearly drifted off when it hit me. “The beach!” I cried out so loud that Archie came out of his corner barking at the top of his lungs.

  I flipped the light back on, logged back on my computer, and pulled up the white pages. I’d completely forgotten about the first address I’d found for a Shirley Norquist—the one in the beach town of Depoe Bay. I’d skipped over it, because Gage had told me she lived inland, near Salem. What if Jacob’s mother owned that house, too? A small cottage in a tiny coastal town would be an ideal hiding place for someone on the run. I pulled up a satellite image on the computer. The cottage was on a narrow, isolated road off Highway 101.

  Could Jacob Norquist have slipped out of eastern Oregon and be hiding there?r />
  I still hadn’t heard from Sheriff Bailey and thought about calling him but decided against it. My hunch was a long shot, and even if he bought it, I was sure things would move at glacial speed at best. He’d have to arrange to send in some local cops or the State Police to have a look, and he wouldn’t do that without some kind of confirmation from me.

  I wasn’t in a glacial speed kind of mood.

  I thought about the fact that Shirley Norquist had brought her son Jacob up in the small town of Independence. He must have gone to the local high school. High schools have yearbooks with lots of photographs. A few minutes later I was scanning a montage of photos for the Central High School Panthers’ yearbook on the Internet. I found a formal picture of Jacob from 1979, his senior year—a nice looking kid with a narrow face and large eyes, like I remembered. But I wasn’t positive. Then I found a candid shot of him bearing his nickname, Jake. His face was turned to the side, revealing a prominent nose. The smiling kid I was looking at was maybe twenty-five years younger than the man I’d glimpsed that day near Watlamet’s ranch. But I was pretty damn sure he was the guy.

  It was an easy decision. I could be in Depoe Bay before the sun came up to see if I could spot Jacob Norquist and seal the deal. Hell, I wasn’t going to get any sleep now, anyway.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  I made a thermos of coffee and put Philip’s .357 Magnum, a flashlight, and a pair of field glasses in a backpack. The satellite images showed a small, square house and stand-alone garage well south of the Depoe Bridge on a narrow road on the east side of Highway 101. There were several other houses on the road with ample space between them. About a quarter mile south, another narrow road ran parallel to the one of interest. A patch of densely forested land lay between the two. If I parked on the second street, I might be able to work my way through the trees and find a spot to watch the back of the cabin from a safe distance.

  The plan made sense, but I was mindful of my last encounter with this guy. I paused for a moment and had to chuckle. What was that old military saying? Something about battle plans never surviving contact with the enemy. Well, my plan was once again to avoid contact with the enemy.

  I made great time on Highway 18 and after cresting the Coastal Range began to follow the twisting path of the Salmon River. Except for a barred owl that flapped through my headlights like a low flying drone, I had the road to myself until an empty logging truck roared up behind me and rode my bumper clear into Otis, where I turned south on 101, and he thankfully turned north. I crossed the bridge into Depoe Bay shortly after five a.m., but it took another ten minutes to find the road the cabin was on, which was set off from the highway and unmarked. I missed it twice. On the third pass, I cruised by and turned left at the next road, which had only two summer rentals on it, both of which looked vacant. I parked at the cul-de-sac and walked back to a point that would put me roughly in line with the Norquist cabin one street over.

  I could barely see my hand in front of my face as I moved into the forest understory. Using a couple of short bursts of the flashlight, I saw what I was up against—sword ferns, silal, dense patches of Oregon grape, to say nothing of closely-spaced cedars and hemlocks. I saw no poison oak, but who knew going forward? I tried to plod straight ahead, but the going was tough, and I found myself zigzagging so much I almost lost my bearings several times in the thick undergrowth.

  I was a good way in when a faint light flickered through the trees from the direction of the cabin. I moved another step, stopped, and it went off. Shit. Is that light moving toward me? I took another step, and the light winked back on. I stopped and pulled the Magnum out of my backpack as the hair on the back of my neck turned to wire. I stood still and watched. The light remained stationary. I took a step, and it went out again. I relaxed and let a breath out. The light wasn’t moving. It was my movement through the trees that created the illusion. I put the gun in my belt and trudged forward as quietly as I could.

  I reached the edge of the forested area maybe fifteen minutes later. The light that had guided me was above the back door of the Norquist cabin. The rest of the structure was shrouded in deep shadow. I found a spot behind a red cedar whose trunks had twinned, leaving a narrow gap affording what I hoped would be a good view of the cabin. A thick patch of silal further concealed my perch, which was maybe forty yards out.

  I took off my backpack and poured myself a steaming cup of black coffee. I sipped the strong brew, although I didn’t need the caffeine. If I had been any more wired, I would have been glowing. There were no sounds except for the occasional high-pitched creek, creek, creek of a colony of frogs, which overlay a rhythmic chorus of crickets. The low wattage bulb above the back door stared back at me like an indifferent eye, and nothing moved in or around the place. The light meant there was a good chance someone was home, I told myself.

  Let’s see what the morning brings.

  The first hint of dawn came when I noticed the bloody scratches on my forearms from the hike in. I was crouched behind the double-trunk cedar with what turned out to be an excellent, if sharply angled view of the back of the cabin. I watched through a pair of binoculars as the structure began to slowly emerge out of the shadows like someone was pulling a curtain back. Features closest to me revealed themselves first—a wrought iron table and chairs, a gas barbeque, a kitchen window. The barbeque was uncovered, another hint someone might be staying at the cabin.

  My pulse ticked up when a vent pipe on the roof began emitting a thin wisp of steam. I checked my watch. It was six-thirty on the nose. It could be someone had awakened or the response to an automatic timer on a thermostat. A set of French doors that opened onto the patio appeared next, then another window, and finally, the back of a freestanding garage next to the house. As the light came up, I focused a gap through the curtains on the French doors, which promised a partial view of one room inside the house, probably the dining room.

  As the shadows resolved into shapes, I made out a couple of chairs at a table with two glasses on it and what looked like an armchair in the far corner of the room. I put the binoculars down and waited for more light. When I looked back I stopped breathing for several beats.

  Was someone sitting in that chair?

  I couldn’t quite tell. I retreated back into the woods for better cover, moved fifty feet to my right, and repositioned myself. The light and the angle were better now as I focused the binoculars again on the inside of that room.

  Someone was sitting there. The head of this person was still not clearly visible, but it was lolled to one side at a disturbing angle. I moved in a little closer, waited for more light, and refocused.

  The image, now sufficiently clear, made me flash back to the grisly discovery of Sherman Watlamet. A man sat in that armchair, and the side of his face and most of his shirt were stained the color of oxidized blood.

  Chapter Fifty

  From the front page of The Oregonian the following day—

  Body of Suspected Killer Found

  DEPOE BAY, Oregon—An Oregon State Police spokesman reported that a man named Jacob Norquist of Boise, Idaho, was found dead inside a house in Depoe Bay on Wednesday, April 3. The body was found by state troopers at approximately 8:45 a.m. following a tip from an undisclosed source. The spokesman said that the cause of death was under investigation, but initial indications suggested that the victim used a handgun to take his own life with a single shot to the head.

  Dubbed the “Oregon Sniper” in the media, Norquist was the subject of an intensive manhunt in the Northwest. An itinerant hunting and fishing guide, he was wanted in connection with the recent murder of one person and the wounding of another near Clarno, Oregon. Both victims had been shot at long range with a high caliber rifle. The victims were Sherman Watlamet, killed on March 16, and Deputy Sheriff Cleta Grooms, wounded on March 24. Norquist is also a suspect in the bludgeoning death of Cecil Ferguson of Portland and the attempted murder of C
alvin Claxton III of Dundee, Oregon. The spokesman said the motives for these crimes have not been fully determined at this time, and it is not known whether others were involved.

  A rifle matching the caliber of the weapon used in the shootings in Wasco County was recovered at the scene along with undisclosed physical evidence connecting Norquist with at least one of the crime scenes. The house in which the victim’s body was found belongs to his mother, Shirley Norquist, of Independence, Oregon. According to the spokesman, Ms. Norquist is cooperating with the investigation and stated that she was not aware her son had taken refuge at her beach cabin. Ms. Norquist could not be reached for comment. The spokesman also indicated that a witness has positively identified the victim as the man seen leaving the murder scene in Wasco County.

  Asked to comment on the death of Norquist, Oregon State Police Captain Harvey Patterson said, “Thanks to the diligent police work and outstanding interagency cooperation between the Oregon State Police and other jurisdictions, we believe another criminal is off the streets of Oregon. We were closing in on Mr. Norquist, and apparently he realized this and decided to take his own life. We’re all a little safer now.”

  Anyone with information related to these crimes is encouraged to contact the Oregon State Police or the Sheriff’s Department in Shaniko, Oregon.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Two Weeks Later

  An irritating sound began ricocheting down the deep well I was in. I tried to will it to silence, but it was insistent. My phone. The first thing I thought of was my daughter, Claire. Has something happened? It wasn’t Claire. It was Philip. “Can you bust free?” he said the moment I quit fumbling and managed to put my ear to the phone.

  “What? Jesus, Philip, what the hell time is it?”

  “It’s four-thirty. You want to fish? I had a party cancel on me and sent my guides home. I’m on the Deschutes with an empty boat.”