Ridenour didn’t seem eager to bring this particular news to the Leung survivors, so it wasn’t too much of a battle to get him to agree, but he didn’t like it. He also wanted to take a deeper look into the car before we left; however, the doors were jammed and Strother pointed out that any additional poking about wouldn’t be appreciated by whoever had to investigate. Unhappily Ridenour jumped back to the ground and offered to drive me to Jewel Newman’s once the truck was safely on its way to the county yard with Strother in tow.
The truck driver rechecked his straps once we were all off his flatbed. He didn’t seem too pleased with any of us and I wondered if he was just grumpy in general or if the Grey oozing from the car was affecting him in some way. We watched him climb inside and start the truck rolling. Strother waved the flatbed out to the highway as I stayed behind with Ridenour.
“Who’s Newman?” I asked him as Strother walked away from us.
“Jewel’s the oldest of Steven’s kids. Married a fella named Geoff Newman back quite a few years now. They were in high school over at Piedmont together, but you couldn’t have called them sweethearts. The Leung kids have been trouble since they were little. The girls got a lot worse once their mother and brother died. Not that the brother was a prize—he was argumentative and arrogant.”
By now the flatbed had made it to the road and disappeared, heading for Port Angeles. Strother waved to us and then took off in his own car, leaving me and Ridenour to lock up the ranger station. As we walked toward his park service pickup truck, Ridenour continued the story. “I don’t know what Newman’s got—aside from money—but when he came back from college, he and Jewel hooked up and got married in a big hurry. You might be thinking he got her pregnant, but there never was a child, and she settled down to doing a lot of community work around the area—busybody stuff, if you ask me. The residents treat her like the queen of the lake. What she says goes with most of them. Except with her sister and a couple others.”
We got into his truck and Chaos stuck her nose out of my pocket to sniff the warm, weird smells, but decided she wasn’t too crazy about them and burrowed back down to nap some more. “What’s the story on Willow, then?” I asked.
Ridenour ground his teeth as he started the engine. “She’s just plain-ass wild. Half-crazy and all dangerous and no way to know how she got that way—both her folks were fine people.” He started driving and I kept on asking questions.
“Strother said there were warrants—for what?”
“Well, aside from a couple of homicides, there’s the petty stuff like smoking pot, trespassing, and vandalism, and then she got into breaking and entering, burglary, robbery, and a few other unsavory things. Most of it’s been down around Lake Sutherland and below—which is outside the federal park property—but not all of it. I can’t say I’m pleased to have a few federal charges to press if she’s ever caught—I don’t really like that aspect of my job when you come down to it—but Willow is dangerous. Unpredictable and crazy enough to do damned near anything. Something goes bad around here that isn’t caused by bears or tourists acting stupid, you can bet it’s Willow.
“She’s the best damned woodsman you’ll ever meet, though. That’s the mixed blessing of her having been born and raised here. She can track and hide in this country like no one’s business, which has made her impossible to catch. You’d almost think the trees and animals are on her side or something, and she’s as crafty and as mean as one of our mountain lions. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if she hadn’t killed her dad herself over some damned thing. She’s that mean and crazy. And she’s killed before, so it’s not like she’s squeamish about it.”
“Who did she kill and why?”
“Well, we’re not entirely sure she killed her brother—though that’s the general belief—but we do know she killed a telephone lineman who was working out around Lake Sutherland one summer.” His voice dripped disgust. “She claims he raped her and she shot him in self-defense when he came round for a second try, but she never reported the first incident, and the man was shot with her rifle from one hell of a distance, which sounds like lying in wait, not self-defense.”
“How did you get this statement from her?”
“Well,” he started, but the rest of his words were cut off by a squeal from the truck’s radio and a voice calling out for him to respond at once. Ridenour snatched the hand piece off its hook and barked back. “What the hell is it?”
“This is Metz out at Hurricane Ridge station. We have a situation.”
“What sort of situation?”
“You’re not going to believe this, Brett, but . . . we’ve got animals in the parking lot attacking the trucks, and that damned Leung girl seems to be with them.”
“Willow?”
“Yep. I’ve never seen anything like it—it’s like the critters are working for her or something. You need to get out here ASAP. There’s just me here and the rifle’s in the truck. I think I’m OK in the visitor center, but the rest of the station’s getting a hell of a mauling.”
“What sort of critters are we talking here?”
“Bunch of those crazy white deer, including some big bucks, couple of pissed-off bears—”
“You sure it’s bears?” Ridenour asked. I was wondering if the bears and deer weren’t ugly white guai instead.
“Damn it, Brett, I know a bear when I see one! One of ’em’s old Blaze, and I don’t know what got that grizzled old bastard out of his cave this early, but he’s having a ball ripping the doors off the compost shed. Those bucks are ramming everything he hasn’t ripped into yet and I don’t know why he hasn’t tried to eat one of ’em, but if you don’t get here soon, we’ll be knee-deep in mulch and bear poop!”
Ridenour swore. He turned to me with eyes slightly too wide and wild. “I’m going to drop you off at the top of the road down to Jewel’s place. You’ll be perfectly safe walking down to the house, and her husband can drive you back to the station at Storm King to pick up your truck when you’re done.”
“Done ?”
“Yeah. You’re going to have to give her the bad news about her dad yourself. I gotta go catch her crazy-ass sister !”
TEN
In a few minutes I found myself at the top of a steep graveled road with Ridenour’s park service truck vanishing into the distance. He didn’t seem to think it was odd that Willow Leung was apparently leading wild bears around—bears that should have still been tucked up at the end of winter hibernation, not rampaging around ranger stations. Frowning over the strange behavior of bears and park rangers, I started down the road to Jewel and Geoff Newman’s house.
It turned out to be the big glass-fronted house at the end of East Beach that I’d spotted down the shoreline from the sunken car. The place was impressive: two stories of wood and glass that spread across half the wide lot directly on the waterfront at one of the few locations with any beach to speak of. Remnants of an old dock clung to the shore at the extreme southeastern end of the property where the wedge shape of an ancient landslide had filled in the ground between Lake Crescent and Lake Sutherland. I didn’t even have to move toward the Grey to see the glimmer of blue power that ran under the ground to the other lake. The power lines and smears of color were stronger here, closer to the source, I guessed, than at Lake Sutherland.
In the Grey, the house was darker than the surrounding landscape in spite of being well illuminated with electric lights, as if the house somehow defied the energy—or drank it without a trace. Something magical lived here. The memory of an older, more rustic building flickered over the modern house. I was thinking I should take a deeper look at the area, when the front door opened.
A man stood silhouetted in the bright doorway and called out to me. “You can come in or you can go away, but you can’t just stand there.”
I shrugged and started walking toward him. His shape changed as I moved closer, and I realized he’d picked up something from inside the house. The long black shape set off a nervous stirring in my chest—it was a rifle. He didn’t shoulder it, though. He just waited to see what I would do.