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Plummer had nothing to report about the case, except that Wallace had called him, irate about word slipping to the media of the new effort on the Toompas case. Several reporters had asked Wallace whether the case had been reopened. Wallace told them the case had never been closed, and that the deputy sheriffs were just following up, as they routinely did. The sheriff was not a happy camper. He said that every time the media mentioned the case, it only reminded people that it wasn’t solved yet. He reiterated that they needed to finish up. Plummer assured him they would by the coming Friday. Wallace didn’t register the extra two days.
Greta sighed. “James, so far we’re not getting anything new. I don’t see us finishing canvassing all the homes. Obviously, Wallace won’t agree to give us more time. What if tomorrow we quit trying to hit every house and just go to ones we’re sure someone is home and, even then, only every so many houses? We ask whoever is home if they’ll take several copies of the photos to pass around to their near neighbors. That way, we finish up tomorrow, and it gives us one day to think of something else.”
“So. We’re deputizing citizens,” Plummer countered, amused.
“Sure. Why not?”
“It’s likely to get even more attention than before. Wallace is already on edge about the media.”
“What’s he going to do? By the time it gets back to him, it’ll be on toward Monday anyway.”
“I’m not sure how many people will be willing.”
“We find those who are home, ask them to talk with everyone within, say . . . three houses, and then we skip to the fifth house. That way, there would be overlap, and we’d get the photos to the most people the fastest.”
“Well . . . I’m not sure it’ll be all that efficient, but what the hell.
No worse than the way we’ve been going. Let’s do it and then agree to meet at six tomorrow to see where we are.”
“Sounds good.”
She hated leaving a job undone, which was how she viewed the Toompas case. Yet as empty-handed as they were, somehow she still felt okay.
Maybe I’m just reconciling that we aren’t going to figure this out, she told herself.
Looking for a diversion from the case, she took a chance and called home to Missouri. To Greta’s surprise, her sister Heather answered the phone, and for the first time in ages they had a normal conversation for almost fifteen minutes. Almost immediately, Greta knew something was bothering her sister—she was civil. The only details that Greta got out about Heather’s personal life was that she lived at home again, for the first time in a year.
She deduced that Heather and the latest boyfriend must have split up—the latest “this one’s for real” boyfriend.
Greta didn’t voice that last thought. Then her mother came on and fortuitously only talked for a few minutes because she was getting dinner on the table. It was late for her family, almost seven-thirty their time. Her father had worked after hours, covering for the night shift pharmacist who had been delayed getting to the store.
Then it was the usual conversation with her father—weather, health, anything interesting the last week. Finally, it was Jeanine but for only a moment because the call to sit down for dinner could be heard over the phone. All in all, a very satisfactory phone call, which buoyed Greta’s mood.
While she made two grilled cheese sandwiches and a salad, she sipped on the same riesling she’d concentrated on the last few months. It had been over a month since she had done anything social with the few friends she counted in the area, and she had also skipped last month’s weekend dance trip to Portland. In addition, her exercising had lapsed from three or four times a week to two or three times.
I’ve got to start being active again and not let myself get pulled in so much. Portland next week after we close out the Toompas case. I’m definitely going, and the hell with Toompas and Tillamook. I’ll also call around tomorrow and get myself invited somewhere over the coming weekend. And I’ll try to make both of the games for the Cloverdale girls basketball team on Friday and Saturday.
Her dinner ready, she put on her favorite version of Pride and Prejudice. She ate while watching and knocked off the bottle by the closing credits.
The sound of sea gulls through the open windows woke her the next morning. She didn’t know why they flew around in fog so thick, you couldn’t see a hundred feet.
They need fog lights, she thought. Or maybe they’re like bats. Calling out and using the echoes to know if they’re about to run into something.
Normally, she wouldn’t eat anything before exercise, but she felt like doing a long run, so she ate a banana. She put on a pair of orange sweats with a hoodie, tied the house key onto her right shoe, and tucked identification, her phone, and her .32 pistol in the top’s pouch.
Crossing the street on the way to the beach, she noticed a dark sedan parked a block away. It looked similar to the one she might have seen the previous day. A prickle ran along the hairs on her arms, as she remembered several such sightings lately. She shook her head and chided herself. It wasn’t as if there were no dark sedans in Pacific City. She’d been asking so many people whether they’d noticed strange vehicles that now she was seeing them herself.
She couldn’t make out whether anyone was in the car, so she put it out of her mind and continued on. Even at this time of the morning, there were a few people sprinkled along the beach: two men letting their dogs run loose, an older couple holding hands, three women walking together, and a man carrying a bag—probably hoping to find shells or something interesting washed ashore. She greeted those whom she passed; some she recognized and others she didn’t. With the fog so thick, she couldn’t determine the exact number of people on this section of beach. A herd of elephants could have been a hundred yards away and not been visible.
She started her jog south, figuring to go all the way to the end, to the mouth of the Nestucca River. Within a hundred yards, she couldn’t see another human and relaxed into the rhythm of the run.
She never stressed about trying to run fast; she just kept up a steady ground-covering pace. Though an outside observer might think she was loafing, her height and long legs ate up the ground. The light breeze hardly disturbed the fog, which hung almost motionless down to the ground. The tide ebbed, and, with no storm at sea, the surf broke low. The only sounds were the waves, the water running up the beach, and her own footsteps on the wet sand. It was almost a zenlike state, as if she were the only person in the world. The enveloping fog hugged and protected her. Even the seagulls were absent along this section of the beach, and the sandpipers wouldn’t arrive for another month or more. By spring, there would be hundreds of them scurrying along the wet sand, probing for morsels disturbed by the waves.
Sometimes the beach had different classes of flotsam, depending on the time of year and the weather: logs, stumps, seaweed, shelled creatures, and jellyfish. Today, the beach looked as if a cleanup crew had removed everything except the sand. Then, at two miles, Greta came upon a crab defending itself from a seagull. The bird would lunge at the crab, wings flapping, and try to peck the victim. The crab alternately scurried backward or dug into the sand, all the time snapping at the gull with its main claw. With enough damage, the crab would finally succumb, and the gull would feast on its still-living victim.
Greta loved watching gulls soar and hearing their eerie call but hated them when they picked on other creatures. She changed course toward the dueling pair and yelled. The gull squawked and flew off, scolding her for stealing its meal. She squatted and watched the crab. Its two eye stalks waved toward her, perhaps trying to determine whether the large creature in front of it was another predator. She picked it up by the shell, walked just into the water an inch deep, and tossed it into deeper water in front of a breaking wave.
That’s all I can do for you, Mr. Crab, she told it. You’ve got to get yourself back out into the deeper water if you’re going to survive. Good luck.
