Wolfwraith (14 page)

She frowned. “It’s beyond him now. I’m sure he’ll cooperate. If I get him to okay it, will you do it for me?”

“Sure.”

“And Shadow...”

“Yes.”

“Look, I’m sorry I came on so hard during your interview. We only wanted to see if we could shake your story about the pig. Call me Lorene, please?”

It was his turn to smile. He liked her direct style and was quickly losing his bitterness over the way she’d grilled him. “Okay. As soon as you can get permission from the commissioner, I’ll grab a boat and give you the ten-cent tour.”

“What do you mean ‘as soon as’? Let’s get this show on the road.” She pulled a cell phone from her fanny pack and flipped open the cover. Shadow watched quietly. It wasn’t a simple cell phone, but one of those more sophisticated gadgets he knew nothing about. A Blackberry or iPad or whatever those things were. She entered something on the keys, then rubbed her thumb across the small screen.

“That’s odd,” she said. “I’m not picking up a signal. No internet, no phone, nothing.”

“Cell phones hardly ever work on the cape. Especially in the daytime.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes they work. Other times the evaporation from the ocean and the bay forms a temperature inversion layer in the atmosphere. It blocks electronic signals. Since our radios don’t rely on satellites, it usually doesn’t affect them here in the park, but we can’t use them for long range very well. If you want to call Barnett in Richmond, it’d be best to use the phone at the contact station or one of the other buildings.”

“Then let’s get going.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to be linked to you until Barnett says it’s okay. I’m still on probation and I can’t afford to piss him off. You go, and have Betty, the secretary, call me on the radio if he approves it.”

Shadow backed out along the dirt road in his big truck with Lorene following him in the sedan, also in reverse. With a wave, he headed south toward Wash Woods to check on a school group occupying the bunkrooms of the E.E.C., near his residence. Groups often rented the center while they studied the relatively pristine beach, dunes, scrub forest and bay ecologies that blended together on the cape.

He was outside the E.E.C. building, talking with a teacher from the group, when Betty called him on the radio and told him to come to the contact station. When he arrived, Lorene awaited him in the hiker’s shelter directly across the lane from the station. Heat waves rose from the gravel road.

“That was quick,” he said from the window of his truck. “What did the Grand Mahoff have to say?”

“He said I could count on you for any assistance I might need, even if it takes you away from your regular duties.”

“Really? I expected him to say no, or have one of the other rangers help you. He was really emphatic about my not becoming involved.”

“He’s decided that the case would best be resolved quickly. ‘Bad for the park’, he says. Scares away the visitors.”

“Well, it’s clear he’s not reading the utilization reports. We’ve had mobs of people, the last few days, some of them pretty weird. Anyway, now I can show you what you like. Hop in and we’ll go down to the dock for a boat.”

Lorene got a bag from her car, first. He opened the door for her, threw a bunch of junk from the passenger seat into the back and stood back as she climbed up into the high cab.

As he pulled away from the station, she looked into the back seat. “Maid’s day off?” she asked.

He shrugged. It was only a half-mile to the dock; she could stand a bit of clutter. Besides, he kept the front seat fairly clean.

At the boathouse, Shadow shoved one of the johnboats into the water, checked the outboard’s gas and oil levels and cranked it into sputtering life. Lorene stepped into the boat and sat down in front. He tossed her a lifejacket and she put it on while he donned his.

As they eased onto the bay, he pointed out a nest built atop a tall man-made platform. A pair of fledgling birds looked down at them from the jumble of branches while their parents soared overhead, warning the humans not to venture too close.

“Osprey,” he said. “They were becoming endangered a few years ago. Now, we’ve got several nesting pairs in the park, there’s even a pair of bald eagles nesting in a tall tree on the wildlife refuge. It shows the tougher ecological laws are helping and a lot of wildlife is coming back. Deer and Canada geese are even becoming a problem in some parts of the state.”

“So I’ve heard. I read a newspaper article a couple of years ago that they had released wolves into the wild in North Carolina. It sort of makes me wonder if one of them could have come this far north.”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “There’ve been no sightings and one of the rangers would have noticed if there were tracks or signs. Wolves run differently from dogs, if you know what to look for in their tracks.

“Are you kidding? Is this like the cormorant with the missing eye?”

“No. There’s a difference in their gait. You can’t tell from a single footprint, but you can tell if there’s a clear series of tracks.”

They entered the cove, and Shadow stayed close to the shoreline on their left.

“It was right about here,” he said. “There. That’s the stick her sleeve snagged on.”

There was nothing other than the branch to distinguish this spot from any other along the bay. Lorene checked the area with a brief look and then turned to Shadow.

“Describe exactly how you found her and how you retrieved the body, would you?”

When he had finished, she spoke again.

“Did anything strike you odd? Other than the throat wound, that is.”

Shadow hesitated. “Well...only a feeling.”

“What kind of feeling?”

“I felt like something evil had been here. A spirit, almost like what I would feel when my grandmother called on them for something.”

Lorene’s eyebrows went up. “A spirit? And what does your grandmother have to do with it?”

“Her name was Min-ne-ha-ha, but I don’t tell most people because they think it’s a joke...”

“Isn’t that from the poem, Hiawatha?” Lorene asked. “I remember it from school.”

“Longfellow ripped off real Indian words and names, so now they’re clichés—anyway, Min still believed she was in tune with the old spirits, even though she went to Baptist church to please my grandfather. She’d still ask for good hunting or fishing, chant for rain or good crops—even though all she had was a small truck garden. And I would sometimes get a strange feeling when she did.”

She narrowed her eyes in thought. “Well, I’ve never been much on of a mystical person, although I’ve seen a few things I can’t account for. But—as far as when you found the first body—can you nail it down any tighter than that? Are you saying some kind of ghost did this?”

“No, I’m not saying that. I just felt something, well, different; I have no idea if it came from a human being. Although I found something later to make me wonder if it could have been a flesh-and-blood man.”

He told her of the marks in the mud bottom of the bay and his suspicion they might have been made by a murderer.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone about it when you first found it? Or when Morrow and I interviewed you?”

“No one really thought the first girl had been murdered—no one but me. Everyone said I was way off base. Besides, the girls could have made those marks when they launched their kayaks.”

“Way to go, Sherlock.” Her voice held reproach, but her eyes sparkled with what he hoped was amusement.

“Look, what was I supposed to do? Rain pretty much washed them away and I’d already been told to keep my suspicions to myself.”

“Why would anyone tell you that?”

“Barnett said he didn’t want any bad publicity for the park. But now I’ve heard a rumor they might close the park, so that doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Hmmm. I want to see where you found the marks,” she said. “To the dock, cabbie.”

“You don’t think it’s weird I put so much stock in a feeling?” he asked on the way to the pier.

“Nope. I don’t have any psychic ability, but I’ve known plenty who say they do. Some people tune in to the spiritual side. Me, I tend to stick to what I can see and hear.”

Shadow ran the boat to the same pier where they had met earlier. They climbed up to the board platform and he led her to the shoreward end.

He pointed. “Down there.”

The marks in the mud were long gone, of course. Shadow was describing them as best he could remember when a young man and woman emerged from the track leading back to the clearing. The couple was obviously startled by the presence of the ranger. The man began to retreat, pulling his companion back with him.

“Excuse me,” Shadow called. “I need to talk to you, sir.”

He stepped down from the dock and walked over to the couple, looking them over carefully as he approached. The young blonde woman was clad in skin-tight jeans and an even tighter halter beneath a black leather vest. She sported a ring through her pierced eyebrow and garish make-up that would have been more likely in a sleazy bar than in a state park, but Shadow was more interested in the man, little more than a boy really. He was wearing leather pants, a white tee shirt covered by an old, long-tailed black suit coat and he had on a pair of ridiculous looking platform boots that added six inches to his height. His dark, spiked hair was streaked with blue dye and his chin had a sparse goatee, set off by a pin through his lower lip. Acne covered his face and both of his ears had small rings running up and down the edges. His bleary, bloodshot eyes were patriotic—red, white and blue. Shadow, though, was more concerned with what had originally caught his attention.

He pointed toward the automatic pistol at the boy’s waist. “Firearms aren’t allowed in the park. You’ll have to give me that weapon.”

“What for? I ain’t used it or shit like that.”

“It’s a violation of state law to bring a weapon onto a state park except for licensed hunters during hunting season.”

“No big deal, okay? I’ll just leave your stupid, fucking park.”

“Yeah,” the girl said. “It’s fucking boring as shit here, anyway.”

Shadow ignored her. “This is your last chance to do this peacefully, son. Give me the gun.” He put his hand on the butt of his own pistol.

“I’m not your son and I told you I’m leaving. Don’t blow a gasket, dude.”

Drawing his sidearm, Shadow pulled the slide back with the claw to put a round in the chamber, and leveled it. “I’m placing you under arrest. Turn around and put your hands behind your neck.”

“Bullshit. You ain’t no cop.”

Shadow was incredulous. Was this kid really so stupid he would ignore a pistol pointed at his chest?

“The hell he’s not.” Lorene’s voice came from behind Shadow’s left shoulder. “Do what he says.”

The kid looked over at Lorene. “What are you? A narc?” He sneered, but he was turning around as he raised his arms. “Okay. Okay. Don’t make such a big deal out of this, okay?”

Shadow reached over and pulled the young man’s gun free.

The girl took a step forward. “Leave him alone, you fucking asshole!”

Shadow didn’t bother to look at her. “You keep swearing at me, young lady, and I’ll arrest you too.” He wished he could threaten—or do—worse to her.

He glanced back at Lorene as he holstered his gun and checked the boy’s cheap pistol. She stood five paces away with her weapon pointing at the kid.

The girl began whining about their rights, but he ignored her, except for noting she’d stepped up her cursing. Releasing the gun’s clip, he unloaded it, then pulled the slide back to see a cartridge fly from the chamber. He shook his head in awe at the young man’s lack of common sense—it would have served the dumbshit right if he’d blown off his pecker. He stooped and picked up the bullet, putting it in his pocket with the clip.

He turned and looked at Lorene. “I guess I’d better radio the contact station,” he said. “We can’t take him back in the boat.”

“Better frisk him first,” Lorene said.

”What for? I’ve got his gun.”

“Jeez, I thought... He might have more weapons for Christ’s sake. Don’t they teach police procedures to rangers? Go by the book.”

Damn. She was right, of course. He’d had a couple of week’s police training when first hired, but that seemed so long ago. The park had always seemed like another world to him, a peaceful island in a sea of worldly troubles.

He turned the kid around, pulled handcuffs from his belt and fastened them to the subject’s skinny wrists. Shadow had never had to use the cuffs before, but now was glad to have them.

He frisked the young man, who protested the entire time. Shadow felt an elongated object in one pocket and reached in. His hand emerged holding a glass pipe with a charred bowl and a clear bag with some brown bits of a leafy substance. One sniff confirmed it was marijuana. Opening the kid’s wallet, he learned the boy lived in Chesapeake, a nearby town.

“This you?” he asked. “Dave Macon?”

“Who the fuck’s license do you think I’d be carrying?”

Shadow finished his search, feeling sorry for the kid’s parents. Then he stepped away. Now the kid and his girlfriend were going on about ‘illegal search and seizure.’ Shadow unclipped his belt radio, which he always used when away from his truck, and called the contact station. He made sure to use proper radio procedures when Alex came on; he had embarrassed himself enough in front of Lorene. Alex agreed to meet him in the False Cape meadow to take the pair into custody. Although the girl wasn’t under arrest, she would be escorted from the park.