Page 22 of The Last Grift
“Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out,” Casey added as he tromped back to his truck.
Bowie greeted him with an enthusiastic wiggle and swiped at him with his tongue, the Labrador part of the mix coming to the front.
“Knock it off, you. I’m trying to get my seat belt on.”
They left the park behind them and were a few miles from his office where he would swap vehicles when, off to the side of the road, Casey thought he saw a faint glimmer. He slowed to a crawl and peered past his headlights and into the dark but couldn’t see anything. Shrugging at his tired brain’s imagination, he picked up speed again. Time to get to bed finally.
The park and forest headquarters—sucha long name for the tiny structure—was quiet from now until mid-March, just how Casey liked it. Casey and Greta were the only year-round full-time staff and the seasonal hires wouldn’t start until mid-April at the earliest. It was always difficult for him to get used to sharing space again, but at least he always had almost half a year to enjoy before he had to.
He parked the Forest Service truck around the back of the small building, next to his completely rebuilt 1987 Red Jeep Wagoneer—with faux wood paneling, of course. The Wagoneer and all the work it had needed had been a splurge consideringhow small his paychecks were, but it was reliable and the next best thing to the four-wheeler he drove while on the clock.
“Come on, Bowie, let’s get home.”
Jumping to the ground, Bowie raced ahead of Casey, his tail whirling as he dashed from the truck to the covered porch of the park office.
“You do know I’m the one with the opposable thumbs?” Casey asked as the dog sat back on his haunches and pointed his nose at the locked door. Bowie just thumped his tail against the wooden deck in answer. “Smart ass.” The dog probably did know the alarm code; if Casey gave him enough time, he would open the door on his own.
Inside, Casey flipped on the lights and headed for the desk, where he tossed the truck’s keys in the bottom drawer along with the citation book and locked the whole thing up. Then he and Bowie did a quick walk-through of the building as they always did, making sure everything was in order and hanging his ranger hat on the coat rack near the trash can.
The stash of buckets and bags in the cold room reminded him he needed to call Chenda Wall, his local mushroom contact. The fungi weren’t in danger of going bad, but the harvest needed to be sold sooner rather than later. For his part, Bowie checked to make sure the rope tug toy and Kong squeaky were next to his office dog bed where he’d left them earlier.
The building had been broken into last winter, so between them, Casey and Greta made the effort to stop by at least once every day. Satisfied that all was locked up and as safe as it could be, he punched in the code for the alarm again and stepped out onto the porch that ran the length of the building.
“Winter is really doing its best to arrive prematurely, isn’t it?” he said to the dog, pulling his hood back over his head and twisting the door handle to make sure it was locked. The weather gurus had been predicting a storm system for severaldays. Was there more to come? After a dry summer, everything needed moisture. Casey wasn’t complaining about it; he loved it when the rains returned.
“Come on, Bowie, let’s get home.”
He wavedBowie to the Jeep and made a mental note to call the county about the streetlight across the way again. He’d called once already, after it had inexplicably gone dark a couple of weeks ago. Without the lamp, the stretch of road that ran in front of the office got very dark at night. It hadn’t bothered him at first, but the days were only getting shorter. Casey didn’t mind the dark, but after the break-in, he was a bit paranoid.
Out on the road, he heard the drone of a car’s engine, distant at first but louder as it drew closer. Its headlights briefly illuminated the still sheeting drizzle as it sped past the building and headed north toward the end of the island. Casey frowned. The road wasn’t the busiest in the best of times, but it still had some traffic, he reminded himself. He was just being unreasonably jumpy tonight. “Which is why the fucking light needs to be replaced,” he grumbled. He looked down at an expectant and wet Bowie.
“Yeah, yeah.” Casey tugged the driver’s side door open and was about to motion the dog in when another sound reached his ears. The hairs on the back of Casey’s neck immediately rose. Bowie’s response was a slow, deep, menacing growl.
“What is it, Bowie?”
Slowly, Casey turned and looked over his shoulder. The office’s too-dark parking lot backed up to the fenced-off forested area that technically belonged to the Chimakum Island navy munitions base.
Was he just extra jumpy tonight? That didn’t explain Bowie’s growl. Maybe Bowie was reacting to Casey’s generalfrustration and slight twitchiness over the deep black of the night.
There didn’t seem to be anything out there.
The public wasn’t allowed access to the mothballed base, which meant all sorts of creatures had made it their home. Whatever they’d heard or, in Bowie’s case, smelled was likely a deer family cutting across the property or some other forest-type animal.
Hopefully, not the human variety. Those were the most dangerous.
Gravel crunchedunder the Jeep’s tires when Casey pulled in next to the boatshed minutes later.
“Best commute in the world,” he said to the doggy face in the rearview mirror.
Casey climbed out and opened the back of the Jeep. Bowie immediately jumped to the ground, his tail wagging. Whatever he’d heard or smelled at the park office was already long gone to him, but Casey hadn’t forgotten. He wouldn’t put it past the Perkins brothers to do something stupid in retaliation for him confiscating their mushroom harvest.
“Parking lot” was a grandiose term for the uneven graveled space next to the boatshed. There was only room enough for four smallish cars or two oversized trucks. Casey had parked in what he consideredhis spotseeing he was the only person who lived aboard. Most of the boats moored at Riddle Bay Marina were never sailed. When summer arrived, one or two of the vessels might be taken out for short voyages, but at the end of the season, the sails and rigging were packed up again.
The motion sensor security camera Casey’d attached to the storage shed flicked on, blinding him. Automatically, he squintedagainst glare. One of these days, he’d get the ladder out again and shift the light an inch so it wouldn’t shine directly into his eyes, but not tonight. Like Bowie, he just wanted to be home already.
The glow was mirrored by the dark waters of the bay and for no discernable reason, another shiver crawled up his spine. Something wasn’t right. Bowie was sniffing the ground as if he’d caught a scent he was interested in.
“The fuck.” Casey looked carefully around, trying to see what his subconscious was telling him was there—or not there.
