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In case Phillips was blowing her off, she also checked out Cape Meares and Bayocean Spit. Meares seemed the least likely, with only one tiny section of coast where a diver might come and go without much notice.
The nearby Bayocean Spit was potentially isolated enough. She jogged the spit’s beach twice in a week early in the morning and saw one other person on a Tuesday and eight on a Sunday. The single person could easily have been avoided. Still, a poacher would have had to park in view and walk over dunes to the beach and then out into the surf. There were so few distinguishing landmarks, she wondered about the difficulty of repeatedly finding a specific spot offshore.
I suppose if you know the area and use what few landmarks there are ashore, it’s possible, she told herself without conviction.
Cape Lookout and Cascade Head were different. Both had numerous well-hidden sections, though they were hard to access. Would a poacher be willing to hoof in as far as necessary, while carrying diving gear? How many abalones could someone carry out since they’d still be in the shells, along with the non-edible body parts?
Let’s say a pound each, she thought. Google says about a third is the edible part. At $200 a pound, say roughly $70/abalone. Figure less if the poacher had go-betweens and expenses. So . . . if it’s $30 an abalone, a healthy man might trudge out fifty pounds.
That’s $1,500 for a few hours’ work! Maybe I’ve got the wrong job. I wonder who gives diving lessons?
Risky work and likely exhausting, but was it worthwhile? She guessed it depended on the person and how much he needed the money. But enough money to kill for?
She couldn’t watch her three sites continuously, given the time and the difficult terrain. After a couple of days, she called Sheffel to sound out the problem. He came up with a potential solution. Fish and Game had a motion-sensitive camera setup its officers had acquired to study game and had recently used it to identify a pair of wolves wandering into western Oregon all the way from Idaho. Sheffel’s office had plans to study elk migration patterns, but his staff hadn’t finished planning the elk study yet, so the camera setup sat idle. Sheffel got the okay from his boss for Gretel to use it for maybe a month until the elk study started.
Greta thought Cascade Head was the most remote and likely spot. However, it was a large area and had multiple equally distanced access points. Since this was only a shot in the dark, she set up the camera where the dirt Cascade Head Road led from 101 to about a mile from the coast. The battery-operated camera recorded only when sensing motion. She set it up under some spruce branches hanging to the ground near the turnoff from 101, with a view to the dirt road. Any vehicle passing in front would activate the camera. Assuming little traffic on the road, the battery should last most of a week. Once the camera was in place, she drove back to Pacific City.
Five days later, she retrieved the camera. The battery still had a slight charge. She took it home and played back the contents on her computer. The five days worth of footage totaled about ninety minutes of actual recording. Using fast forward and pause, she wrote down the license plates and descriptions of forty-four vehicles using the road in the previous week. There were a few multiple instances of the same vehicle, for a total of thirty-eight different vehicles. She gave the list of license plates to Jasmine to run ownership and addresses. Nothing jumped out. Most were local residents, plus a few out-of-towners that included two out of state. No one with a criminal record. Trying to question people on the list with so little time and justification was out of the question.
Next, she tried Cape Lookout to the north. The only road ended at a parking area about three hundred yards off 101. Five days later, she again retrieved the camera and watched the footage at home. There were 152 sightings, which was daunting. Jasmine would shit a brick when Greta gave her this list. Nevertheless, she slogged her way through the recording, compiling a much longer list than the Cascade Head footage. Within the first thirty recordings, she noticed that the same license plate had already occurred six times–a faded green Toyota compact. Three round trips from 101 to the parking area. She noted the time stamps. Two of the round trips lasted only a few minutes. The third round trip lasted four hours.
She finished watching the latest recording about midnight. Oregon License GJR-839 was recorded for ten round trips to and from the Cape Lookout parking lot. Three stays lasted three to five hours, the other seven only a few minutes. It was as if the driver went in, checked something out, and then, if something wasn’t right, left immediately. If something was okay, then he stayed for hours.
The hairs on her arms stiffened, and her heart beat faster.
Don’t get too worked up, she told herself. Most likely, there’s some innocuous explanation.
Still, it begged further looking into.
No other license was particularly interesting. Two others had three trips that lasted about an hour each. Probably somebody walking out to the point and back as a routine, she figured.
The next morning, she didn’t send all the new plate numbers to Jasmine—just the one. Greta got a call back in less than an hour. The plate belonged to a Steve Lawton, 114 Maple Lane, Tillamook City. Jasmine had taken the initiative to run a database check. Nothing in the last year, but earlier were two short county jail terms in Washington, one for hunting elk out of season, and the other for taking abalone below minimum size!
Greta was sitting in her cab when she got the call from Jasmine; otherwise, she would have danced a jig. She had to believe she’d lucked out.
She took a few minutes to calm down and think through what to do next. She had no evidence on Lawton, only some curious connections. She picked up the folder holding her notes lying on the passenger seat. The three times Lawton had spent hours at Lookout Cape were a Tuesday, a Thursday, and a Friday. If she had more evidence, she might ask for help from Wallace or Connors. She discarded that option. She couldn’t follow Lawton all the time until he went back to Lookout Cape.
She checked the times again. All three of the times when he’d stayed several hours, he had arrived at different times of the day, with no time pattern. Then she had a thought. She used her smart phone to access the Internet and pulled up the tide tables. On all three occasions, Lawton had arrived about two hours before the lowest tide. Bingo!
She checked the next couple of days. The lowest tide shifted each day and would be after dark the next week. That was out. He wasn’t going to dive at night.
She looked further out on the tide chart. The next lowest tide during daylight occurred six days away. She thought about contacting Sheffel, but she didn’t have anything concrete. She would wait.
CHAPTER 9
A routine assortment of duties kept Greta busy the next five days: traffic patrol, someone disturbing the peace, a mistaken domestic violence report, a loose horse running around Pacific City, transporting a prisoner to Salem, one school talk, and on and on. Thoughts of Lawton never left her mind, as she waited for a daylight low tide. If he poached at Lookout Point and couldn’t dive until the tide was favorable, he’d be anxious to go again. The next low tide was at 8:45 a.m. the coming Monday, with sunrise at 6:53 a.m. She pondered how to estimate his arrival time. If he arrived about sunrise or earlier, he could be ready to dive an hour or more before lowest tide.
On Monday morning, she got to the turnoff to Lookout Point at five in the morning. She had scouted out the area the previous day. She drove another mile north toward Tillamook City and backed her vehicle into the undergrowth, so that she faced south. If he came to Lookout Point from Tillamook City, he’d pass her hiding spot.
She waited. Five-thirty. Six. Six-thirty. No sign.
She consoled herself, Maybe it’s wishful thinking. Maybe he’s not coming today, and I’ll have to come again tomorrow. Maybe—
A green Toyota compact passed by, heading south. The sky was lightening with the coming sun, although it was still dark enough to need headlights. She left hers off and followed him a quarter mile behind. The road curved just before the turnout, so she lost sight of the Toyota. At the turnout, she couldn’t see the green car and continued, speeding up. After the next curve, Cape Lookout Road ran straight for more than half a mile. There was no sign of another car. She turned the first chance she got and drove back to the turnout. Once there, she took the exit and stopped before reaching the parking area. She hadn’t really expected anything to come of this plan and had no clear idea what to do next.
After sitting and idling for several minutes, she drove slowly forward until the parking area came into view. There, she pulled to the side, got out, and walked a few feet, watching for Lawton. Five parked cars included two green compacts. She checked the license plates—one matched Lawton’s Toyota. She couldn’t see anyone. How would she know where he’d gone? Once anyone left the parking area, the main trail branched multiple times throughout the cape all the way to the tip. He could have gone on any of these trails, and she’d never find him. And if she did, then what?
Lawton’s driver’s side door opened, and a man got out. She had missed seeing him in the darkness. He had sat there while she’d scanned the surroundings and almost given up for the day! She stepped back into some foliage. He looked around, then opened his trunk, took out an empty backpack, and started off on the main trail to the point. He hadn’t noticed her or her vehicle.
