Backcountry

by Pamela Beason

  Chapter 24

  She drove two hours from Bellingham to North Cascades National Park to tackle the Maple Pass loop. As she climbed the trail, delighting in the kaleidoscope of autumn vegetation surrounding the lake below, she heard the sharp whistles of not one, but three different pikas. Pausing to search for the small round-eared mammals in the rock-strewn mountainside, she murmured, “Kyla, Kim, can you hear this?”

  Pikas were declining in all mountain ranges. They needed cold weather and their populations were falling victim to global warming. They’d already disappeared in some parts of the Rockies. It was heartwarming to find a healthy pocket of these tiny rabbit cousins here in the north Cascades.

  The huckleberry bushes were at the height of their glory, their crimson leaves delicately edged with white frost from the night before. The short needles of the alpine larches were brilliant yellow. In a few short weeks, the branches of the conifers would be bare.

  At the pass, hoarfrost furred the ground and the wind was fierce, but Sam pulled on her hat, zipped her jacket, and perched on a rock to eat her lunch and absorb the 360-degree view of the Cascade Range.

  When she heard a familiar rustle in the spindly trees, she quickly dug out the sunflower seeds she’d packed. Cocking their black and white heads, the gray jays watched, their shiny eyes eager but wary. She held her left hand above her head, opening it to reveal the seeds. “For Kim.”

  When she felt tiny bird claws close around her fingers and the tickle of the jays’ beaks as they picked up the seeds, she raised her right hand, also full of hulled sunflower seeds. “For Kyla.”

  It took only minutes for both seeds and birds to disappear, and for tears to streak down Sam’s cheeks. Wiping her hands on the thighs of her pants, she sat for a moment more, letting the cold wind dry her face.

  Did Troy spend his days with the specters of his wife and daughter? Was he coping better than she was? Was he moving on with his life? Chris was in Alaska fishing.

  Was everyone ready to accept that Kim and Kyla’s murders might never be solved? Could she ever be okay with that?

  Hell, no. How could that ever be okay? Their killer was still out there.

  She made an effort to unclench her fists. She couldn’t wallow forever. She had to find new hiking companions. Do volunteer work until paid jobs appeared. Paddle with the kayak club. If Chase couldn’t come to her, she’d drive to Salt Lake whenever he returned to his condo there. It’s not as if anything was keeping her in Bellingham right now.

  When she returned to her house, Blake surprised her with a store-bought pizza and news. “You got back just in time to say good-bye. Sophie’s leaving us.”

  “What?” She’d gotten used to having a dog around. And although Simon was still resentful, the cat had finally stopped hissing at the quiet canine.

  “I know.” Her housemate’s tone was mournful. “But check this out. When I heard Troy say that about the dog that traveled across country, I got to thinking.”

  He pulled out his phone, showed her a Facebook page. Lost dogs, Washington State. In the photo, the basset mix had a red kerchief around her neck, and she seemed to be smiling. Bring Trixie Home, said the caption. Home was Tacoma.

  Sam blinked. “Tacoma? Trixie?”

  The dog stood up from her bed in the corner and looked at Sam, a question in her large brown eyes.

  The doorbell rang.

  “That’s them.” Blake walked to the front door.

  As soon as the door opened, chaos erupted.

  “Trixie! Trixie!” Two girls rushed in, nearly trampling Blake. Their apologetic mother was behind them. The dog bounced up off her bed. She raced first to the kids, her ears flopping, and then galloped in excited circles, skidding on the hardwood floor, baying loudly.

  Trixie was a totally different dog than Sophie had been. The mother and Blake and Sam scratched their heads about how Trixie had ended up more than a hundred miles from her home, but the answer seemed irrelevant now. The girls, one on each end of the dog, carried their pet to the car.

  The house seemed a little empty after the family had left. Even Simon wandered over to the abandoned dog bed, sniffed, and then strolled away, his tail held stiffly erect, not knowing what to make of the dog’s sudden departure.

  “Wine is needed,” Blake decided, popping the cork on a bottle of merlot. “We’ll miss Sophie, and I bet even Simon will, too. But how can anyone argue with a happy ending like that?”

  Sam accepted the glass he handed her. She wanted a happy ending, too, but there would never be one for her friends. She needed at least a satisfying resolution. She needed justice.

  * * * * *

  A few days later, she was in the Kickin’ A Saloon, slowly stretching out her beer after the line dance lesson and waiting for a familiar song to come on. She sat with her group of dance friends. Tonight, they were all feeling Kyla’s absence so strongly that they could barely stand to look at each other. Conversations would start, then someone would mention Kyla’s name, and the talk would grind to a painful halt. Not an elephant in the room, but a ghost. Or maybe a corpse. Make that two corpses, two ghosts. How long would it take for that awkwardness to pass?

  The place was, as usual, filled with far more cowgirls than cowboys, so all the patrons had noticed the two new men at the table behind Sam. The high stools were so close that she was practically touching butt cheeks with one of them, a burly fellow wearing khaki pants and a buttoned-down shirt. His companion, a good-looking man with blond-brown hair and a fashionably trimmed three-day beard, seemed familiar.

  She ran through the possibilities in her head. Had she met him in the kayak club? She didn’t think so. Hiking club? Maybe. Often someone showed up for a hike only a couple of times per year. But she was pretty sure she would have remembered this man because he was around her age, and good looking. Had she taken a class with him at the community college? Was he a regular at one of the local brewpubs? The last seemed most likely; he had a beer in his hand right now.

  In a pause between songs on the sound system, billiard balls clacked loudly from the pool table in the corner as a player made a break shot to begin a new game. The television on the wall above the pool table was showing the local news with no audio.

  “Oh, no.” Her friend Margie grimaced as she pointed at the screen.

  An image of Pinnacle Lake was followed in quick succession by photos of Kyla and Kim. Without sound or closed captioning, Sam couldn’t tell what the newscasters were saying. When a photo of the trailhead sign was revealed, though, the words TRAIL REOPENED appeared across the top of the screen. So the story wasn’t about a new clue, but about the hiking trail being opened to the hiking public again.

  “Those poor women,” muttered the buttoned-down man behind her, whose stool she was almost sharing.

  “One of these days it’s gonna happen all over again,” said his bearded companion.

  “What? How?” her butt-cheek buddy asked. Then he added, “I thought the husband did it.”

  Sam winced. Poor Troy.

  “Maybe,” the bearded guy said. “But maybe it could have been, like, target practice that went wrong.”

  “What?” his buddy asked.

  Damn coincidental target practice to kill two women. More like an execution. But then Sam remembered that these guys couldn’t share her knowledge of how precise the shots had been.

  “You know, like that gal at the picnic who got zinged by a stray bullet from target shooters who were half a mile away.”

  Sam grimaced. Zinged? The poor woman had been killed in her own back yard.

  The bearded guy suggested, “You know how the government says some trails are only for hikers—no bikes or horses or llamas or camels allowed, right?”

  “I guess,” chuckled his companion.

  “So why aren’t there trails just for hunters—no hikers allowed?”

  The buttoned-down guy grunted. “Would make a lot of sense.”

  Sam turned to look at the two men again.
A memory finally dropped into the appropriate slot in her brain. Sliding off her stool, she walked around the table to the bearded fellow. “Excuse me.”

  He glanced up from his beer.

  “You’re Nick Lewis’s father, aren’t you?”

  He sank back on his stool, his expression startled. Sam abruptly remembered that although she’d studied him twice, first in Troy’s video and then at the closing ceremony, Lewis had never been introduced to her.

  “I saw you with Nick on the last day of the Wilderness Quest session,” she hastily explained. “That day was so hectic, I’m not surprised you didn’t notice me.” She held out her hand. “Sam Westin. I was the field guide in charge of Nick’s group.”

  He grasped her hand with his own. “Tom Lewis. Nice to meet you, Cap’n Sam.”

  She chuckled. “Just Sam, please. I’m surprised to run into you so far north. Nick said you lived down south in Everett.”

  “We do. I work for a beverage distributor. I cover a five-county region.” He tilted his head toward the bar. “I just convinced this place to give us a shot for some new craft beers.”

  “Excellent,” she said. “The more variety, the better.” She took a quick glance at his companion, who was now checking his cell phone.

  “This is my new associate, Pete,” Lewis said, causing the man to look up. “I’m teaching him the ropes.”

  After she and Pete shook hands, Sam turned back to Lewis. “How is Nick these days? I think about him a lot.”

  “We’re doing good.” Lewis stared into his beer glass. “I think we understand each other better now than we ever have in the past.”

  His mention of the past brought to mind his odd speech on the last day about leaving the past behind, but this was not the time or place to quiz him on that. She wanted to ask Tom if his son had stopped cutting himself, but Pete was listening intently and she didn’t want to reveal any family secrets. Then she remembered the button.

  “Tom, this is probably the weirdest coincidence, but that story about the Pinnacle Lake trail just reminded me. I think I have a button from Nick’s shirt.”

  Lewis straightened in his chair, his posture stiffening. “What?”

  “Nick has been on that trail, right? You guys have hiked down there.”

  He wiped his mustache with a finger. “Maybe. I’m not sure. Trails all kind of blend together for me.”

  Except when a double murder makes one especially memorable. “Well, I was on that Pinnacle Lake trail about six weeks ago picking up trash, and I found a button made out of shell. It had a scrap of red thread in the holes.”

  Lewis picked up his beer glass and swirled around the last dregs, a clue that she was rambling on. “So?”

  “When I saw the shirt that Nick wore when he came to Wilderness Quest, he had the cuffs turned back because the sleeves were too long.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know that trick because I’m sort of vertically challenged myself, so I do it, too, make French cuffs like that to shorten sleeves. Anyhow, I noticed that the buttons on Nick’s cuffs were made out of real mother of pearl, which is not common these days. And there was one button missing, and a piece of red thread dangling where it should have been. Since the shirt was green, that was noticeable.”

  At this point, his friend slid off the bar stool and headed for the men’s room. Creases appeared in Tom Lewis’s forehead and his eyes strayed over her head toward the dance floor. Yep, she was definitely rambling.

  “So, anyhow, small world, eh?” she summarized. “I’m pretty sure I found Nick’s button on the trail there.”

  “Yeah, small world.” He held out his hand. “I can take it now and give it back to him.”

  “Um, sorry, I don’t have it with me.” The button was in the glove compartment of her car, but a gremlin in the back of her mind was warning her not to hand it over. “When I saw you, I wanted to tell you about it. I can bring it to your house sometime.” She wanted to check on Nick for herself.

  He forced a chuckle. “Don’t worry about it. It’s only a button.”

  She couldn’t insist on visiting, could she? She’d have to drop in uninvited. “Okay,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Tom. I really enjoyed having Nick on my crew. And he’s a truly talented artist. You should encourage that.”

  “Of course.” The corners of his mouth turned up, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  She trotted back to her stool, took a few sips of her beer and chatted with her dance friends. When the DJ played one of her favorite songs, a bunch of dancers got up, and Sam ended up doing three dances in a row. By the time she finished the third, her beer was lukewarm and her shirt was plastered to her backbone with sweat. She stepped out the front door to cool off in the evening breeze, and walked to her Civic to get a clip to fasten her hair up off her neck. When she opened the trunk, she was careful not to bonk the kayak strapped into the rack on top of her car.

  Next to her Civic, some dinkwad had taken up five spaces by parking a black pickup crosswise with a speedboat in tow. A loud voice called her attention to the far end of the lot. Tom Lewis slapped his friend on the shoulder as they stood next to a Cascade Beverage Distributors van. Pete slid into the driver’s seat of the van, then Lewis walked to the black pickup.

  Dinkwad identified.

  He paused, studying her kayak. “This yours?”

  After shutting the trunk, she ran her fingers through her hair. “Yep. I’m too lazy to take it off my car between trips. I see we’re both boaters.”

  “Right.” He stroked the fiberglass flank of his speedboat. “I planned to combine business with pleasure on this trip, do a run around the San Juans.”

  “You’ll love the islands,” she said. “And the weather and tides are supposed to be decent for the next few days. I plan to get out tomorrow myself.”

  “I’m thinking of buying a kayak for Nick.” Walking to her kayak, he ran his fingers along its side. “Impex,” he read from the label there. “Is that a good brand?”

  Twisting her rope of fine blond hair, Sam secured it at the back of her head with the clip. “It works for me, but this boat was a Craigslist special. I’m not sure if the company is even in business anymore.”

  “Craigslist? Good idea, I’ll check that.” He peered down at her. “Where’s your favorite spot to row?”

  “You mean paddle. I go to Chuckanut Bay most often, I guess. It’s close to my house and more or less protected, and there are multiple put-in spots not too far away. My favorite put-in is Mud Bay, but that only works during high tide. It’s named Mud Bay for good reason.”

  “I get it.” He pulled open his truck door. “Thanks for the info. See you, Sam.”

  “Say hi to Nick for me.”

  He waved as he slid into the driver’s seat of the pickup.

  She went back to the dance floor inside the saloon. As she stepped through Ford Boogie and Booze Cruise, her mind kept returning to the Lewises. The weird conversation about the past on the last day of the expedition. Tom Lewis seemed like a nice enough guy, but his insensitive comments today about the hunters-only trail and the stray-bullet victim nagged at her.

  Then there was her recall of Nick’s strained relationship with his father. The whole “man up” spiel. Nick’s cutting.

  Tom couldn’t be a truly abusive father, she reasoned, because he’d cared enough to sign Nick up for wilderness therapy. But had he or Nick’s mother done something horrible in the past to the boy?

  Chapter 25

  The tide at Mud Bay would rise for another hour, and Sam planned to paddle for no more than two, so she knew she’d still be able to load her kayak afterward without having to slog through sticky ankle-deep mud. The evening was a cool and crisp. The hours just before sundown were perfect here, with the wind dying down and the water in the protected bay smooth as satin. She carried her kayak on her shoulder from her car to the shore, then returned to move her car from the loading zone to the lot down the street.

  As
she slid into her seat, in the distance she noticed a truck towing a boat. A clueless tourist headed for the beach? Not only was Mud Bay too shallow for most motorized craft, but there was no boat ramp and no place to turn around a trailer. The truck turned down a side street. A local, then, returning home. She parked her car, walked back to the beach, donned her life vest and spray skirt, and then paddled away into the quiet.

  Kingfishers flapped along the shoreline ahead of her, complaining about her presence as they flew. She startled a great blue heron, who added his or her noisy objections. If only the silly birds would fly back behind her, everyone would be happy. But no, their avian brains were pre-programmed in some way that made them move ahead eighty percent of the time, only to be surprised again when she showed up to interrupt their fishing a few minutes later.

  Paddling under the railroad bridge that separated Mud Bay from Chuckanut Bay, she marveled as she always did that the structure had never been blown up by the anti-coal-train activists. The busy train tracks might be a historical part of Bellingham, but they were ugly scars on the scenic waterfront face of her town.

  Kayaking was a form of meditation for Sam. She often mulled over her problems out here. She had to decide what to do about her suspicions surrounding Tom Lewis. After reflecting on what Nick had said about hunting, she’d had Blake call Fish and Wildlife, pretending to be Thomas Lewis asking about dates for his hunting permit. Just as she suspected, Lewis had a license for this season. Only a hunter would have made that “hunters-only trail” comment she’d overheard in the saloon.

  Should she call Detective Greene? The woman would probably laugh at her. All she really had was an offhand remark in a bar, a perfectly legal hunting license, and a button, for heaven’s sake. No, she argued with herself, she also had Nick’s behavior, the cutting, and the odd verbal exchanges between father and son.

  Still. All circumstantial, Chase would say.

  Nick clearly felt guilty for some reason; something awful was eating the poor boy alive. Maybe notifying Child Protective Services would be a better bet. Would they keep her identity secret?