September 5, 2000
Portfalls, Washington
Though Claire Malvern was a sound sleeper, something woke
her. Except for the constant, distant roar of the
waterfall, their fishing lodge lay silent. She couldn't
even hear her husband's usual deep and steady breathing.
She reached across the king-size bed. The sheets on his
side were cold. Still groggy, she pushed herself up on her
elbows. The muted red glow of the digital clock on his
side of the bed illuminated no shoulder, no silhouette.
The numbers read 3:13 a.m.
She flopped back down, then held her breath, straining to
listen, but the rush of river mingled with the falls
shrouded other sounds. Once comprising a central dining
hall and a series of separate cabins, their rebuilt
fishing lodge sprawled along a heavily treed crest
overlooking the volatile Bloodroot River, which ran with
rain and snowmelt from the Cascades to Puget Sound.
Claire fought her exhaustion. They had both been working
too hard. Yesterday had been Labor Day, and labor they
had, on this big, old place into which they'd sunk their
assets, toiling toward their dream of opening The Falls
Bed and Breakfast as soon as possible. Keith had been a
bit edgy lately; he'd probably just had a bad dream or
couldn't sleep. Or maybe the anchovy pizza had given him
heartburn.
Their attached bathroom was dark, and the door wide-open.
Perhaps he was downstairs, just wandering, planning,
envisioning the future. Their move from Seattle to the
small town of Portfalls, in rural, rugged Washington, had
been his idea. She loved the beauty here, too, but they
had left good careers in their mid-thirties for this great
escape, as he called it.
Adrenaline pumped through her. She sat up. The room seemed
chilly, but she felt flushed with distress.
"Keith?"
The sharp sound of her voice startled her.
"Keith?" she repeated louder.
Claire got up, shoved her feet into her slippers and
tugged on her terry-cloth robe. In the cold moonlight that
threw itself through the tall, new windows, she could see
quite clearly. Knotting her belt, she looked over the
banister at the hulking shadows cast by the big pieces of
furniture in the high-ceilinged great room below.
"Keith? Where are you? Are you okay?" In both the bedroom
and loft, she began to turn on lights, even though it
meant anyone on the river would be able to look in on her
through the span of windows, as if this were a lighted
aquarium. But surely no one was out there at three-
thirteen in the morning. Besides, if Keith had stepped out
on the deck for some reason, the lights would draw him
back. So what if he'd surprised her with a late-night
walk, however unusual?
Claire hit the recessed ceiling lights for the great room
and hurried down the curved wooden staircase, blinking at
the brightness. She sensed, somehow, that Keith wasn't in
the house, but she kept looking. She checked that the
doors were still locked, the bolts shot, too, then
realized he could have gone out and relocked everything.
She rushed through the kitchen to the garage, where their
SUV and truck sat. Then, hoping he had just walked to one
of the three bedrooms in the wing they'd been renovating
for future guests, she snapped on more lights. In each
room, Claire looked out onto the deck that ran the entire
length of the lodge above the river.
No sign of Keith.
She began to panic. Claire considered herself a down-to-
earth person, but she had a fanciful bent, too, or she
would never have been a successful interior designer and
painter. Her serious nature began to do battle with her
imagination. Her husband had gone for a walk and had been
sitting on the deck stairs, staring at the beauty of the
moonlit woods and the rapids of the foaming salmon river,
when he tumbled off the step and hurt his ankle. Maybe
he'd been calling for her outside and she hadn't heard
him. Or he'd gone out to the old fish-cleaning shed to
putter.
But none of that was like him.
Her heart pounding, she tore back upstairs, taking the
steps two at a time, and yanked off her robe and
nightgown. Shivering, she pulled on underpants, jeans and
a sweatshirt, and shoved her feet into her old, paint-
splattered loafers. She was angry with him now. Why had he
left without waking her? This wasn't like him. In ten
years of marriage, he'd never done anything like this.
She took his pistol from the bedside table drawer. The
Smith & Wesson .38 revolver was ice-cold to the touch; she
grabbed a jacket just to have a pocket to carry it. Though
only nine inches long and one pound in weight, it felt
huge and heavy. She hated guns and rarely touched the
thing. But outsiders might be camped nearby, especially
during these big salmon runs on the river. It was common
for fishermen to walk under their windows, hopping across
the boulders below, or to park along River Road and access
the river through their driveway, even though their sign
said Private β No Parking or Stopping.
Downstairs again, with a flashlight in one hand and cell
phone in the other, Claire went outside and checked the
back deck. She thudded down the stairs, circling the lodge
and looking in the outbuildings, then moved away from the
lights. She decided she'd have to shout for him, even if
it attracted someone else. Fishermen were mostly a helpful
lot, caught up in the excitement and camaraderie of
chasing the silvers, pinks and sockeyes driven here by
desperate instinct to spawn.
For once she cursed the Bloodroot River and the falls,
wishing for silence so she could hear Keith's voice. Her
flashlight trained on the ground, she started down the
path that ran along the river.
"Keith?" she shouted, her voice breaking. "Answer me!"
"I can't believe it's this late β or early," Nick Braden
told the two other men chowing down at the counter of D.B.
CafΓ© at the tiny Portfalls airport. "It's four a.m., I'm
on duty at eight, and need some shut-eye. I haven't done
the graveyard shift for years β thank God. Even with this
food, I'm starting to feel like a zombie."
"You make out the schedules," said Jackson, the Native
American counter cook. "Give yourself a coupla days off
for once."
"You the man!" Herb Black agreed, his mouth half-full. "So
how in the Sam Hill you gonna get the graveyard shift when
you're doing the sched'ling?"
All three customers, hunched over the cedar counter, were
polishing off plates of bacon, eggs and hash browns
smothered in ketchup. Jackson kept the coffee cups full.
Nick sat around the corner from the other two, where he
could observe them and the entire room β habit from years
as a military policeman and then as an officer for various
rural Washington police departments.
"Yeah, you got you a real hotbed of crime to keep an eye
on 'round here, Sheriff," Herb kidded him. Herb was a
pilot who flew fishermen or tourists out to the San Juan
islands. "Piece o' cake β that's what you oughta be
eatin'."
On Herb's other side, Pete Simpson, who was shiny-head
bald, snorted a laugh as he wiped his plate with a piece
of toast. "Hell, show some respect here. The man's got
three deputies to cover three islands, on top a big, bad
Portfalls. He's not exactly Sheriff Andy Taylor of
Mayberry anymore. I'll bet his officers got more than one
bullet in their guns, too. With the growth 'round here,
it's more like NYPD Blue these days."
"You got that right," Nick said, going along with their
ribbing. He was used to masculine kidding from the
military and the sheriff's office, and always gave as good
as he got. "Juvies with too many beers in them, domestic
spats β I could tell tales that would curl your hair, me
hearties." He rose from his stool and dropped a folded
five on the counter, though the bill only came to $2.99.
"Not to mention," he added under his breath,
"drugs, thefts and the big biz in search and rescue for
jumpers."
Beyond banter now, the others nodded. Citizens were
concerned about crime creeping north from Seattle as the
population of tourists and citizens climbed. It was common
knowledge that the old railroad bridge had been a favorite
site for local or drive-in suicides for years.
The derelict bridge offered a scenic view of swift water
fed by the mesmerizing falls, but there were few
observers. Only the occasional fisherman hiked up the
river that far; once in a while, Nick's deputies on random
patrol checked the river path. Unfortunately, during the
overlapping salmon runs, something especially luring and
elemental seemed to beckon as a person looked down into
the rushing river with fish leaping, fighting hard against
the pristine but powerful current.
On his way out, Nick nodded to Jackson, who sent him a two-
fingers salute on his baseball cap for the good tip. More
than once, the cook had given Nick a heads-up when he
suspected something strange going down around here. Just
last month, Nick had busted a so-called sportsman flying
cocaine in from Canada, in a clever reversal of the usual
south-to-north route.
Nick walked through the otherwise empty cafΓ©, which was
built like a big Quonset hut. He stopped part way, looking
out the windows that faced the short, blue-light-edged
runway where small planes landed from the various islands
and towns up and down this part of the coast. His only
luxury in life, the beloved purple-and-white Cessna 206
Amphib, sat anchored near the single hangar, sitting high
on her wheels and floats. He often flew the Susan to the
small outer islands included in his jurisdiction. Despite
the heckling he took, his duties as small-town, rural
county sheriff were many and demanding, so he rarely used
the plane just to get away anymore.
He started out of the cafΓ© again, glancing as he always
did at the framed, yellowed FBI poster hanging by the
front door. MOST WANTED, the big print read. Twenty-some
years ago, the now-notorious D. B. Cooper had hijacked a
Boeing 727, then bailed out nearby at ten thousand feet
with $200,000. Some of the money had been found, but never
the man himself β who would be in his seventies by now.
The guy had simply disappeared, and many, including Nick,
had spent far too much time trying to figure out how.
Capturing such a high-profile criminal was the stuff that
law enforcement officers' dreams were made of. Nick's
ambition had been to be sheriff here, so he'd worked hard
and spent too much money for his campaign last November.
His landslide election had been worth it, but being
sheriff was a double-edged sword.
It meant more Rotary Club speeches, more PR work and even
media interviews, more hand-holding of distraught victims
before turning the case over to his staff β and, in this
day and age, more attempts to stay politically correct and
not get sued. It meant less time for the hands-on solving
of cases that had once excited and challenged him. But it
kept him damn busy, and he needed that. He'd lost his
wife, Susan, five years ago this week, but somehow he had
never quite moved on emotionally from her death.
The moment he unlocked the door of his unmarked Ford, he
heard his radio crackle with the night dispatcher's voice.
The static of his portable radio had bugged him while he
was eating; at this late hour, since he wasn't technically
on duty, he'd turned it off for once.
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