No Way to Die

by Warren C Easley

  It was good advice, and I had every intention of heeding it.

  Chapter Two

  A deputy sheriff finally arrived with Claire and took charge of the situation. We were detained for about forty minutes until a crime scene tech and two paramedics arrived. The last thing the deputy said was, “Thanks again, Mr. Claxton. Recovering that fishing license saves us valuable time.” He glanced at Claire, then back at me. “I’d appreciate both of you not disclosing the name until we confirm the victim’s identity and notify next of kin.”

  “Of course.”

  The sky remained overcast, but Claire and I had lost our desire to fish. After retrieving our fishing gear and backpacks, we hiked back to the car, loaded Arch, and headed back to the beach house. We’d been up since the crack of dawn, and I was relieved when Claire quickly dozed off in the car. I wasn’t looking forward to discussing the ugliness we’d just witnessed. I had a lingering sense of unease I couldn’t quite put my finger on—perhaps shame mingled with helplessness. I felt as though the curtain had been pulled back, revealing the evil and depravity humans were capable of, and I wanted to shield my only child from this reality. But, of course, I couldn’t.

  I glanced over at her—the delicate nose, sculpted cheeks, and mouth with turned-up corners were all her mother’s. The firm line of her jaw, even in sleep, had more to do with me. I had vowed to be the best possible parent I could be after Nancy’s death. Of course, Claire was a grown woman now and knew the realities of the world only too well. She’d been through the suicide of her mother, and later, a harrowing hostage situation that added an extra helping of salt to my salt-and-pepper hair. But still…

  Whoever said you never ceased being a parent was right.

  The beach house we were staying in was just south of Coos Bay, near Yoakam Point, a rocky finger of land jutting into the Pacific. The bleached-out structure stood on a lot dotted with stunted, wind-sculpted conifers. The interior was tastefully furnished and featured lots of interesting art on the walls, including a large Jackson Pollock print in the living room that I joked to Claire looked like a paintball fight gone bad.

  A plank deck spanned most of the back of the house, affording a commanding view of the Pacific, and a steep, wooden staircase led down to a long stretch of sand known as Lighthouse Beach, owing to a decommissioned lighthouse looming at its southern boundary. A client offered the house to me out of appreciation for a favorable settlement I’d won for him. “We never use it in the spring, Cal. Stay as long as you want,” he told me.

  Needless to say, I wouldn’t have been able to afford such a choice spot otherwise.

  On arrival we unloaded our gear and immediately leashed up Archie for a walk—needed by all of us. The sun had broken through and a brisk, offshore breeze blew the tops off the head-high breakers rolling in from the northwest. There were no other dogs in sight, so I unclipped Archie, who dashed off down the beach, scattering a tight cluster of shorebirds. The short-legged critters took flight, swept out in a broad semicircle, and regrouped at the waterline farther south.

  Claire looked at me like I’d just murdered a puppy. “Dad, those are snowy plovers. They’re endangered. Dogs upset them.”

  “Oops, my bad.” I made a mental note to brush up on my shorebirds and their ecological status as I whistled at Archie to heel.

  We walked a long time just breathing in the delicious sea air. Finally, Claire broke the silence. “Are you okay, Dad?”

  It was just like her to be worried about me. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m sorry you had to see that up on the river.”

  She shot me a look that said I shouldn’t worry about her. “That poor man. Why would someone do something like that?”

  I shrugged. “Hard to say. Avarice, wrath, lechery, one or a combination of your basic, deadly sins, most likely. Whatever drove the killing, it was a strong statement, probably designed to put others on notice.”

  Claire shuddered visibly. “In that setting, on that gorgeous river, it just seems so incongruous, so…inhuman. How could anyone be thinking of murder there?”

  “Just remember the beautiful steelhead you caught. Not many fly-fishermen can say they hooked a native on that river. Think of that when you think of the Millicoma.”

  She laughed with a tinge of bitterness. “Sure. What about you? Don’t let this conjure up bad memories, Dad.”

  She was referring to a brush I had with the FBI, a Russian oligarch, and his hired assassin. It was a wrenching, violent experience, but even worse was that during that same period, a woman I deeply cared about broke off our relationship. Claire insisted I take the time to decompress from it all. “No problem,” I answered with more conviction than I actually felt. “Nothing’s getting in the way of this vacation.”

  The plovers finally circled around behind us, and after another quarter mile I got permission to free my dog again. He immediately launched himself down the beach, this time in pursuit of a couple of low-flying gulls who were definitely not on the Endangered Species List. They veered off over the surf, and he followed suit. A wave smacked him head on, and he came up sputtering with a shocked look on his face.

  Claire and I howled with laughter, and it occurred to me that my daughter might be onto something, dead bodies notwithstanding.

  * * *

  A squall blew in the next morning, thrashing the Pacific into a white lather and pinging rain against the big bay window in the living room. It was spring in Oregon, after all. While Claire sat curled around a book—Tartt’s The Goldfinch, if memory serves—I was busy putting breakfast together, an omelet made with spinach and mushrooms, some fried Yukon Golds, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. There’s nothing like a front row seat to a Pacific storm to give you an appetite. The squall left a sodden, drizzly sky in its wake, so we grabbed our raincoats and headed for Coos Bay, leaving a pouting Australian shepherd behind.

  As we crossed the South Slough on the Cape Arago Highway Bridge, the pleasure boats and commercial fishing fleet at the little harbor town of Charleston came into view to the west near the narrow entrance to the Bay. It looked like most of the boats stayed home that day, which seemed a wise decision. After taking a sharp bend to the north, the bay stretched out—some twenty square miles of it—in a lopsided, inverted U with the cities of Coos Bay and North Bend nestled neatly in the crook. Clinging stubbornly to the remnants of the logging and fishing industries, the contiguous cities had decidedly blue-collar vibes. We picked up some groceries to augment what we’d brought with us, got Claire a new pair of Tevas for beach-walking, and then the caffeine bell went off.

  We stopped at a little, flat-roofed shop on the Coast Highway just below the Coos Bay/North Bend dividing line. Called Coffee and Subversion, it was an indie bookstore that promised “The Best Espresso in Town,” according to a sidewalk sign. A chime on the door announced our entry. Claire inhaled a lungful of air. “I love the smell of books.”

  “Me, too, especially when it’s mingled with the smell of strong coffee.”

  One side of the place was filled with books, new and used, and the other housed a coffee shop with threadbare but comfortable-looking chairs and low tables. Most of the seats were taken by people in deep communion with their little screens. “Good morning,” a woman behind a counter on the book side called out. She was tall and broad with a raging shock of silver hair streaked with magenta highlights. “Make yourselves at home.” We nodded, and I went for the coffee and Claire for the books. As Claire browsed, I sipped a double cappuccino and perused the items on a community bulletin board, an exuberant hodgepodge announcing everything from yoga and Pilates classes to theater auditions and community protests.

  The item, “Wanted: female drummer for ecofeminist folk metal band,” made me chuckle. Another one printed in bold, red letters caught my eye: “Stop the LNG Terminal. Sign the petition at the desk. Get involved.” Like most Oregonians, I knew about the controversial propo
sal to site a liquid natural gas terminal in Coos Bay for foreign export, pitting environmental activists against a Canadian multinational energy company that promised jobs in a region that badly needed them. This bookstore looked like ground zero for the activists.

  I had moved to the book side of the shop and was looking through the mystery section when I overheard a name that stopped me dead, “…Howard Coleman…” I closed the book in my hand and began listening intently to the conversation, which drifted over the tall bookrack from the sales counter. “Yeah, no kidding,” a male voice said. “They found him over on the Millicoma. Somebody tied him up and threw him in the river.”

  “Oh, God, no. He was murdered?” It was the woman with the magenta hair. Her tone was fraught with emotion. “Do they know who did it?”

  “I don’t think so. But, you know, when he wasn’t fishing, he ran with a rough crowd. Must’ve gotten sideways with somebody.”

  The woman sighed deeply. “I’ll have to tell my grandson.”

  A long pause. “Yeah, I guess you will. How’s he doing, anyway?”

  “Not well, not well at all.”

  The bearer of news left the shop. I didn’t see the book I was looking for, so I went to the counter. “Looks like you don’t have Nesbø’s Macbeth.”

  She swept a length of variegated hair off her shoulder and looked at me with intelligent eyes. “Wouldn’t you know it? Sold the last one two days ago. I can order a copy and have it here by noon tomorrow.”

  I told her to do it, and we left after I signed the anti-LNG petition. I felt torn, because I knew the region needed jobs, but I’d had it with the global-warming deniers and felt it was time to move away from burning fossil fuels of any kind. Besides, if I’d balked, my daughter would have disowned me. As we walked to the car, I said, “The woman at the counter knew the man you found in the river.”

  She stopped and looked at me, startled. “Really? How do you know that?”

  “I heard her talking to that tall, bearded guy who left ahead of us. He was filling her in. I think her grandson must have been close to the victim.”

  “Did you say anything?”

  “No.”

  Claire made a face. “What a weird coincidence.”

  It was weird, and like most lawyers and cops, I distrusted coincidences, because they rarely were. But this one, clearly the real thing, evoked a vague sense of disquiet—as if there were some reason why I happened to overhear that conversation.

  That’s ridiculous, I told myself. Knock it off and enjoy the vacation.

  Chapter Three

  “Dad, check out these anemones. They’re the most intense lime-green I’ve ever seen!” It was Claire, and she was crouched next to a tide pool south of where we were staying. The skies had cleared, so we’d grabbed our backpacks and were hiking along the beach toward Cape Arago, a postcard-worthy headland jutting into the Pacific. The suspension bridge connecting the mainland with the cape had long since fallen into the sea, and the abandoned lighthouse, visible from our deck, stood on the islet like a sentinel refusing to desert its post.

  “Oh, and the sea urchins. Look at them! Deep violet.” Claire looked up at me, her eyes shining with wonder and enthusiasm. This wasn’t the first time we’d explored Oregon’s tide pools, but she always had the same reaction. She was born with a deep affection for the natural world, and I loved her for it.

  A couple of small, multicolored sculpins darted across the pool, and Archie nearly pounced. “Whoa, Big Boy,” I said, laughing, “leave the fish alone.” Drawn from one pool to the next, we were eventually pushed back toward shore by the incoming tide. The north swell that appeared the day before had intensified. Offshore, ten-foot waves broke like thunderclaps, the whitewater raking across a garden of craggy rocks and sending plumes of spray high into the air. I pointed toward the horizon, sharply etched against an azure sky, unobstructed. “Look, Claire, it’s almost like you can see the curvature of the earth from here.”

  She shaded her eyes and looked westward. “You’re right. Aren’t you glad you came, Dad?”

  I took a deep breath of sea air and exhaled. “Yeah. I’m glad. Except for my place in Dundee, this coastline’s my favorite spot on the planet.”

  She gave me that look, and I knew a lecture was coming. “Well, then you need to come down here more often and not spend so much time at the Aerie, Dad. I don’t want you to become some kind of work-obsessed hermit.”

  I probably blanched a little but managed a smile. “No worries.” Brave words, but I knew deep down she had a point. I wasn’t going to revert to that uptight L.A. prosecutor I was before her mom died, but she was right about the hermit bit. Sometimes I felt I could manage best with just a dog and a daughter living her own life. Relationships of the romantic type, I had learned, could be painful.

  She kept her sapphire eyes on me. They sparkled in the sunlight. “How’s that woman in Portland you’ve been seeing?”

  She was referring to a city councilwoman named Tracey Thomas I was casually dating. “Oh, she’s fine. We, uh, see each other now and then, when our schedules allow.”

  Claire frowned. “When your schedules allow? How romantic.”

  I shrugged. “Neither of us feel rushed. As a matter of fact, Tracy suggested we take a hiatus for the next few weeks, her way of respecting your visit, Claire.”

  “That’s nice but not necessary. Have you heard from Winona?”

  I looked out toward the horizon. Winona Cloud was my ex-significant other. She moved from Portland out to the Warm Springs Reservation to work for the Confederated Tribes. “No, not directly. But I hear she’s cutting a wide swath through the male-dominated culture on the rez.”

  Claire laughed. “Not surprised at all. I think you should—”

  A wave rolled in, forcing us to scramble. I took the opportunity to change the subject. “What about you? You’ve been mum on your social life lately.”

  She smiled, the kind that says I thought you’d never ask. “Well, not too long ago I met a guy I really like.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  A bit of color rose in her face. “His name’s Gabriel Silva. He’s from Argentina, but he’s been living in the U.S. for a long time.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “He has a small consulting firm in Boston that teaches businesses how to become sustainable. He’s brilliant, Dad.” She went on to sing Mr. Silva’s praises—not only brilliant, he was a rock climber, a mountain biker, and, like Claire, an environmental hawk.

  “Sounds like an interesting guy. Are you seeing a lot of each other?”

  “Well, he’s in the middle of a start-up, and I’m traveling between Harvard and the Gulf Coast a lot.”

  “How romantic.”

  She stopped and looked at me, trying to look indignant. “Well, this is different.”

  “Really?” I tried not to laugh.

  She shook her head as a guilty smile spread across her face. “Okay, I concede the point.”

  That made us both laugh.

  Back at the beach house that night, Claire made a huge salad, I fried up some fresh rockfish crusted with Parmesan, and she crashed not long after we finished the dishes. I poured myself a Rémy Martin and sat down in front of the bay window in the living room. A waxing moon had followed the sun into the Pacific, and the ocean was now a dark shadow against the faint violet glow of the horizon. I sat gazing at the void while absently stroking Archie’s broad back and sipping the cognac.

  Yeah, Claire was right, I told myself. This is just what the doctor ordered.

  * * *

  The fair weather held, so we spent the next morning down on the beach, reading and using our cell phones to stay connected to the world. Claire was heading up a long-range study of the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Gulf Coast wetlands. New data had arrived, which required her to j
oin a fifty-minute conference call. I listened with one ear, marveling at her command of the complex subject matter.

  That’s my baby girl, I said to myself with no small amount of pride.

  I’d managed to clear my court appearances for the next two weeks, and there were no new messages awaiting me that morning. Absence from my Dundee office did mean, however, that I was jeopardizing new business, never a good idea for a struggling one-man law practice. And the fact that I also did a day a week of pro bono work in downtown Portland didn’t help my bottom line. But with the help of my early retirement pension from my years as a prosecutor for the city of Los Angeles, I made it work for Archie and me.

  After lunch, I drove into Coos Bay to pick up the book I’d ordered. Coffee and Subversion was busy, at least on the coffee side of the house. The woman with magenta hair waved to me from the book side, which was nearly deserted. “Your Nesbø’s in.”

  “Be right there.” I ordered a double cappuccino, wet. It came in a big, thick mug and was finished with a heart-shaped medallion of milk floating on top, the signature of a skilled barista. I crossed over to the book side to browse the stacks—everything from Tolstoy to Márquez—and when I finished my coffee, approached the sales counter. “Great selection of books here.”

  The woman’s streaked hair was unruly but with a purpose. She cracked a rueful smile. “Thanks. I just stock things I’ve read or would read if I had infinite time.” She glanced over at the customers deeply absorbed in their digital devices. “If people read books like they do their smartphones, I’d be a millionaire by now.”

  I laughed. “You’re bucking the tide with an independent bookstore.”

  The rueful smile again. “Story of my life.”

  I paid cash for the book, and she handed it to me with a Coffee and Subversion bookmark in it. “I’m guessing you’re not from around here. Where are you and your, ah, companion staying?”