The Deader the Better (7 page)

“You know how bad that road is,” Rebecca said.

“Wicked at night,” J.D. agreed quickly.

Claudia flicked a glance at her husband. “They can spend the
night with us, can’t they, J.D.? They can have our—”

“They said they needed to go, Claudia,” he interrupted.

“I heard what they said, J.D. There’s nothing wrong with my
ears.” Her tone had that singsong quality people develop when they
spend too much time talking to children. I felt like I’d walked in
on the last act of an art film. The knotted muscles along his jawline
suggested that he was about to tell her what parts of her anatomy did
indeed have something wrong with them. He opened his mouth, thought
better of it. “Hot in here,” he said. “I’m gonna take a
little walk.”

He took two quick strides across the room, jerked open the door
and was gone. Screen door banged. Children stood still and silent.
The air was magnetic with tension. Amazing the kind of nonverbal
communication you develop with a partner over time. I was already
halfway out of my seat when Rebecca shot me look number forty-nine.
The one that meant I should follow J.D. so’s she could find out
from Claudia what was really going on here. She didn’t have to ask
twice.

J.D. was walking in circles in the driveway, rubbing the back of
his neck and looking up into the racing gray sky.

“How’s fishing?” I tried. Seemed like a good bet. To
fishermen, the only thing as good as wetting a line is talking about
it. No go.

“Fishing,” J.D. snorted. “What’s that? Heck, Leo…I don’t
even remember the last time I went fishing.” Behind him loomed the
forest primeval. North America’s only rain-forest. A
hundred-fifty-foot canopy of leaves and needles so deepgreen thick
that, in places, the sun never reaches the ground. Sodden and springy
underfoot, a serpentine maze of fallen limbs and eight-foot sword
ferns so thick and tangled you have to crawl. Perpetually wet and
smelling of decay. Everything covered with thick iridescent moss.
Everywhere the sound of moving water.

“Sorry about…in there,” he said.

“You ought to hear Rebecca and me on a bad day.”

He snorted again. “Lately, seems like that’s the only kind me
and Claudy have.”

He laughed at himself. “Listen to me…sound like I ought to be
on Oprah or something. Come on. I’ll show you around.”

I fell in beside him. We walked down the asphalt ramp. To my left,
directly beneath the guest cabins, a pair of spanking-new jet boats
sat beached on the rocky shore. Aluminum, twenty-footers. Probably
thirty grand apiece. Same Three Rivers logo painted on the sides. At
the bottom of the ramp, a gray Avon raft was pulled partway up onto
the pave ment. The wooden floor of the inflatable was littered with
pop cans, candy wrappers and orange life jackets. At the bottom, we
turned right, picking our way along the bank for sixty yards, until
we came to a rocky point. We stood at the crux of an inverted Y. A
genuine confluence. Over one shoulder was the Bogachiel, over the
other, the Hoh. In front was the two miles of tidal flow called the
Quileute River. Beyond that…Tokyo.

Yesterday’s rain had leached the red clay banks down into the
water, leaving both rivers murky and out of fishing shape.

“There’s the beauty of it,” he said emphatically, as if he
were trying to convince one of us of something. “You own this
property, you own the last seven miles of the river before it empties
into the ocean.”

He turned and pointed upriver. “You can see there…see how
steep the banks get?” I saw. No more that a half mile upstream, the
river was the better part of thirty feet below the forest. He pointed
out in front of us. “Half a mile downriver right at the end of this
property, it becomes a big tidal mudflat. No way to get anything in
there to pull a boat.”

He pointed out toward the ocean. “Between us and the ocean
there’s something like a thousand acres of private land with the
reservation on three sides and the ocean on the other. This was a
homestead. It was here before the reservation. Old guy I bought it
from, Ben Bendixon, his grandfather lost an arm to a Hoh musket
ball.”

“A lucky find,” I commented.

He looked up at the leaden sky. “Yeah…that’s what I
thought,” he said.

I didn’t figure him for the type who’d readily tell his
troubles to somebody he’d only met once before, and I sure as hell
wasn’t the type who particularly wanted to hear them, but something
inside of me had the urge to draw him out.

“How’s that?” I asked.

He picked up a stone and threw it out over the water, trying to
skip it. Sunk like…yeah, you guessed it.

“It’s the local yokels,” he said. He threw another rock. Two
skips. He slapped himself on top of the head. “Why am I boring you
with this? You don’t want to hear this stuff.”

I sat on a smooth black boulder. Watched him pitch rocks at the
river for a while. On the far side of the Hoh, two blacktail does
bent low over the water for a drink.

“What about the locals?” I pressed.

“It started with vandalism,” he said. “Had all the signs
torn down several times. Then somebody hooked a truck to the fence
and pulled out a couple of hundred feet. Left it just laying there in
the road. Threatening phone calls all hours of the day and night.

“Got the numbers on my caller ID. Took ’em down to the
sheriff. Nothing.” Then, he told me how the family came home from a
weekend with the grandparents and found their new station wagon
missing. Glass all over the ground. Thought it was stolen until he
noticed the glass on the boat ramp and the oil in the water. It took
a Navy diver and three tow trucks to pull it out of the river.
Totaled. Squashed nearly flat by the force of the water. Insurance
had replaced it with the new Subaru in the driveway. He picked up a
rock the size of a baseball and heaved it out into the river.

“Right there,” he said. “There’s a hole in the bedrock
nearly twenty feet deep. Right off the end of the ramp. You can feel
it in your feet when you’re in the boat. Millions of years with two
rivers beating on it. It’s like a black hole. Anything you throw in
there, it don’t come out.” He shook his head and continued the
story.

When none of that worked, the road was suddenly under
construction. Closed. Tore it down to bare rock and then just left it
that way. Six months they had to come in the way we came in today.
J.D.’s attorney complained to the state Highway Commission. Finally
the state started nosing around and the powers that be had to get on
with the project. Then, thebridge. Soon as the road was paved, they
closed the bridge. Said it was unsafe.

“Is it?”

“Not one darn thing wrong with it. Heck, for a month or so after
they closed it, I just pulled the barrier aside and drove right on
over.”

“Until they got serious about the gate.”

He nodded. “You noticed.”

I said I had. He picked up on what I was thinking.

“I know it sounds paranoid. Every time I say it out loud I
wonder about myself, but I swear, Leo, it’s the truth. They’re
trying to run me out of business.” He skipped another rock across
the surface. Three.

“Why would they want to do that?”

“’Cause Ben sold me the property.”

“So?”

Seems the county had been making a major effort to buy the
property, but this Bendixon character had steadfastly rebuked all
offers for the place. Said he was born there and, by cracky, he was
gonna die there. When he suddenly reversed field and sold out to J.D,
things turned ugly, ’cause first thing J.D. did was to post the
place NO TRESPASSING, which meant that every other boater and
fisherman had to pull out way upriver at the town boat ramp. Either
that or learn Japanese. What had heretofore been one of the most
heavily used boat launches and fishing holes in this neck of the
woods was suddenly off limits. Needless to say, feelings ran high.

“How come he sold it to you?”

He told me about how he and the old man had met one day. Both of
them out bank-fishing. Ben had invited him to the cabin for coffee.
How they became friends. About how he used to stop and make an offer
on the property whenever he was around this part of the peninsula.
Trying to win out on pure persistence. How it got to be a joke
between them and how one day, out of the blue, the old man left him a
message on his voice mail. You want the property, get yourself over
here.

“I’d given up. I was looking at eighty acres on the Dungeness.
I think he was lonely. By the end, if you wanted to find him during
the day you just went to the Timbertopper Tavern. He didn’t drink
much but…and then the dog…” he began. “I think that was the
last straw.”

“What dog?”

“Ben lived out here for the last fifteen years with this old
springer spaniel named Chappy. His wife died back in the
mid-eighties. Ever since then, it was just Ben and that old dog.”
He could tell I was lost. “Chappy died the day before Ben called
me. I don’t think Ben wanted to live out here all by himself. I
think Chappy dying kind of put him over the edge, if you know what I
mean.”

I said I did. “Where’s the old man now?”

“Moved in with his daughter in Port Townsend.” He searched the
ground, kicked up a flat stone and then sent it sailing. One skip.

“I guess he knew I’d take care of the place,” he said
finally. I asked the obvious question. “No way to avoid posting
it?”

“What was I going to do?” he asked me. “Let the locals do
for free what I’m charging customers thousands of dollars to do?”
He had a point, but I could see how that move could make J.D. more
than a bit unpopular with the local sporting set.

“Besides that,” he went on, “they’ve got no regard for the
fishery. They ignore the catch limits. They gill net; they dynamite.
Heck, I’ve seen ’em shoot fish. To them it’s just a resource
that’s always been. No matter how many times you tell them, they
just can’t imagine that the fish won’t always be there.” He
skipped another rock. Five skips. “Guy that owns the tackle shop in
town, name of McGruder…that SOB likes to brag about how one time he
and his brother-in-THE DEADER THE BETTER | law wired two volleyball
nets together, came down here and netted themselves up the better
part of a ton of Chinook salmon in one night.” He shook his head
sadly. “You came through town, didn’t you? You saw what they did
to the land. How you going to be reasonable with people like that?”

When I told him I didn’t know, he became even more animated.

“And the bridge and stuff was just the beginning. Suddenly the
electrical wiring in the new cabins—which they’d preinspected and
approved—all of a sudden, it was no good. Nope. They waited until I
had all the finish work done and then told me they’d changed their
mind and none of it passed inspection. Heck, I’ve had the interior
finish work on some of those cabins done three separate times.”

It went on and on. All that was missing was the CIA involvement.
As he recounted his litany of conspiracy, I couldn’t help but
notice how different he seemed from the person I’d met a couple of
years before. The guy with the twinkle in his eye and the very real
sense that his life was charmed suddenly seemed mortal.

He threw up his hands. “I should have been open for business
six, eight months ago. Took me ten years to build my client list and
now I’m losin’ ’em. One by one I’m losin’’em. I don’t
know how much longer…” He caught himself.

“You know, Leo, I almost called you a couple of times. I thought
maybe…you know…a detective could find out what the heck is going
on around here.” He looked up at the sky.

“Except, of course, I wouldn’t be able to pay you, either.”

I couldn’t decide whether he was just letting off steam or
whether, at this point, I was supposed to volunteer to help him out,
so I chose my words carefully.

“If what you needed was a detective, the money wouldn’t be a
problem,” I told him. “We could work that out.”

Not carefully enough. I watched as his face took on that same
knotted quality I’d seen back in the cabin. “You don’t believe
me, do you?” he said suddenly.

“If you’re asking me whether I think you’re lying, the
answer is no.”

“Oh…so what I need is a shrink instead of a private
detective.”

“If you’re asking my opinion, I think you need an attorney.”

“I don’t have time for—”

Above the rushing of the river, Claudia’s voice. “Jaaay Deee,”
she called. Then again. “Jaaay Deee.”

He brushed his hands together and then wiped them on his back
pockets.

“We better get back,” he said.

He talked as we picked our way among the rocks. How he’d hired
state-certified inspectors of his own. How he was taking it to court.
Already won the wiring battle. Plumbing was next. How he’d been in
contact with the state Attorney General’s Office. He stopped at the
bottom of the boat ramp and pulled the Avon farther up out of the
water.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to lay a bunch of stuff
on you. I’m just frustrated.” He kicked a rock down into the
water. I told him not to worry about it.

“Gotten so bad, Claudia’s working at the daycare center over
on the res. She and the kids putt over in this thing every morning.”

The slap of little feet pulled my attention up the ramp. It was a
race. Giggling madly, both children ran down the slope, nearly out of
control, rushing headlong toward their father. J.D. met them halfway,
scooping one up in each arm, swinging them around his head as they
squealed with delight. He carried them the rest of the way to the top
on his shoulders while they laughed and struggled to escape. At the
top, he set the kids back on their feet. Rebecca was wearing her
coat, twirling her keys. The little boy ran to Claudia’s side.
Tugged on her dress. She scooped him up, resting him on her hip. He
whispered in her ear.