"You’re back?" Abe said. "And you didn’t call to say even hello?"
"I got in late, Abe. I didn’t want to bother you."
"Eight o’clock is too late to bother me? What am I, an invalid? You ate dinner?"
"Yes, I stopped in Port Angeles."
"So come on over for a glass tea and a Danish, maybe. Bertha went to a movie in Port Angeles. I’m all alone."
Gideon looked out the window at the darkening straits, now a misty mauve. He was in a somber, solitary mood. He wanted to fix another drink, take it back outside, and watch the evening turn to night. Maybe the heron would return. "Actually, it’s been a long day, Abe," he said. "I’d like to get to bed early. How about tomorrow?"
"Tuesdays the warden doesn’t let us have any visitors. Only Mondays. Come on, a glass tea, a piece cake, tell me how come it’s been such a long day. And then…"
"The last time you gave me one of those ‘and then’s’ I wound up on center stage at the great American Bigfoot debate."
"No, no, nothing like that. I just got something interesting to show you. You’ll see."
Chapter 13
"KBYO, Seattle. what is it, a TV channel?" Gideon asked, looking at the return address on the thick envelope Abe had wordlessly handed to him after listening absorbedly to his account of the past three days in the Quinault Valley.
"Radio," Abe said. "You sure you don’t want some honey cake? It goes good with the tea."
"No, thanks." He pulled the stapled sheaf from the envelope and looked at the title on the first page: The Joe Ambeau Show, February 28, 1982. "Is this a script?"
"A transcript. I just sent for it. I remembered a few months ago I was listening to this talk show-"
"You listen to talk shows?" Gideon was unable to keep the disapproval from his voice.
"Why not?" Abe looked honestly surprised. "I’m not interested in my own culture? I’m only supposed to listen to Ph. D. s and professors? Truck drivers and old ladies ain’t worth my time? Gideon, you got elitist leanings, you know that? For an anthropologist you got some funny ideas. Did I ever tell you?"
"Many times."
"It’s not a joke," Abe muttered. "Go ahead and read. Start on page seven, where the check is."
Gideon found Abe’s spidery red mark and settled back in his chair.
Mr. Ambeau: Joe Ambeau. You’re on the air.
Caller: Hello, Joe? Am I on?
Mr. Ambeau: You’re on the air, ma’am. Go ahead.
Caller: I just wanted to tell you that there are creatures that we don’t know about that hide in the rain forest. But they’re not like gorillas, they’re just funny little brown men.
Mr. Ambeau: Ma’am, we’ve been on this subject all morning, and I’m getting just a little tired of it. So here’s a notice to you and any other kooks out there. Unless you can prove what you’re talking about, don’t bother me or our listeners with any more fairy tales about monsters in the woods.
Caller: But I do have proof, Joe.
Mr. Ambeau: And what kind of proof would that be?
Caller: I wrote down what they said in my diary, which I just happened to have with me.
Mr. Ambeau: Happened to have with me. Uh-huh. This wouldn’t by any chance be my old friend who saw the giant flying saucer land at Copalis Beach last summer, would it?
Caller: Well, yes.
Mr. Ambeau: I thought so. It’s Looney Tunes time again, folks.
Caller: Now, Joe, don’t be funny. I was near that old trail they closed up, near where Seldes Creek runs into Finley Creek, panning for gold a few summers ago-
Mr. Ambeau: Panning for gold. Yes, uh-huh.
Caller: Yes, and I got a little lost, and I fell asleep, and I heard some voices-
Mr. Ambeau: Glory, hallelujah.
Caller: And so I opened my eyes, you know, just a little? So they wouldn’t know I was awake. And I saw them sort of sneaking among the trees, looking at me.
Mr. Ambeau: That’s really fascinating, ma’am. I could just sit and talk with you all day, but we only have another thirty seconds.
Caller: Well, I lay there very quiet, and I heard what they said. One of them, anyway, a little old man. He said, "kooknama reemee."
Mr. Ambeau: I see. You sure these were little brown men? You sure they weren’t little green men from that flying saucer of yours? Wearing space suits?
Caller: Oh, no, they were little brown men. And all they were wearing were little aprons, sort of.
Mr. Ambeau: Gotta go, dearie. Time for a commercial. Give us a call next time the moon’s full, hear, now?
When Gideon looked up, Abe said, "So what do you think?"
"I don’t know. It might be true, but-forgive my elitist leanings-my credulity is not enhanced by the flying-saucer bit."
"Good," Abe said. "A nice, healthy skepticism. Now, the first question is: Is there such a place as-what was it?-where Seldes Creek runs into Finley Creek?"
"The answer is yes."
Abe’s moist eyes widened. "You know this?"
"No, but I can see you have a topographic map unrolled on the dining-room table, and something tells me that you’re about to lead me over there and show me that, verily, there is such a place." But it wasn’t only that. Finley Creek had a familiar ring.
As soon as Abe jabbed his finger onto the map, Gideon remembered. And he knew they were onto something. "That’s where Pringle found the spear head; right where you’re pointing!"
Abe clucked softly. "So. What do you think of that? You wouldn’t happen to remember where those two hikers got lost five or six years ago? The ones who got killed?"
"I don’t think I ever knew. They were found in the cemetery. That’s only a few miles from there."
"I did a little looking in the old newspapers. It looks like they were both on a new trail that just opened up, the Matheny trail, that runs from the Queets River-what a name-all the way up Matheny Creek"-his finger slowly traced the line from left to right-"and then to this North Fork Campground along Big Creek. In between, for a few miles, it runs-guess where?-down Finley Creek."
"Why doesn’t it show on the map?"
"It’s not there anymore, not officially. It opened up in 1976 and inside of a month those guys disappeared. They closed the trail-a good thing, it looks like-and they never bothered to reopen it. Now the Park Service says it ain’t really necessary, and they ain’t got funds to maintain it, and so on and so forth. So it’s not on the map, and the signs are all down, and it’s all overgrown, and nobody knows it’s there. If you want my opinion, Mr. Skeleton Detective, that’s where your Indians are."
"But what about the ledge we found? That was up on Pyrites Creek, over ten miles away. So was Claire Hornick’s body. And that’s where Pringle found two of his points. You’re not going to say there are two groups in there, are you?"
Abe waved off Gideon’s comments. "Use your noodle. Think about what you know about the Yahi-"
"What do the Yahi have to do with it?"
"I’m just giving you an example," Abe said. "Keep your shirt on. When the Yahi were hiding in California all those years, they had two villages. In the summer they lived up on Mount Lassen, where it was nice and breezy. In the wintertime, they came down and lived in the valleys. Much warmer. Why shouldn’t these Indians do the same thing?"
"You think the ledge on Pyrites Creek is their summer home, and when it turns cold they move down to Finley Creek?"
"Why not? And if you do a little checking, which I did, you’ll see that the two hikers on the Matheny trail, they got killed in the winter, when the Indians would have been there, near this Finley Creek. But the Hornick girl, according to you, she’s dead two weeks, right? Late summer. The Indians would still be there. " He pointed at Pyrites Creek. "But now that the weather’s all cold and crummy, you can bet your life they went lower down, where it’s not so cold. Here." The finger thumped Finley Creek.