“Look, Lundin, I understand that you and your family are still upset. No one wants to believe one of their own is a?—”
Casey interrupted Deter before he could finish. “Don’t finish that sentence, just don’t.” He put everything he had into his glare. He’d been patient, he’d played nice for long enough. It was time to rock the boat.
The deputy shot him a hard glance and turned back to his cruiser. “By the way, there was some kind of a fire at Paulson Point last night, Spurring did a drive-by.” With that, he returned to his car and roared off, chunks of gravel and mud spitting out from underneath his tires.
“God, he’s an asshole. Maybe next time, I’ll let you out of the car. You’d just bark at him, and he’s really not worth the effort although it would annoy the hell out of him.”
Backbehind the wheel, Casey reversed and turned the Jeep so he pointed toward the road. He was supposed to head into the office and grab the Forest Service vehicle before his rounds, but his anger and frustration at Deter Nolan had him riled up. Instead, Casey drove the opposite direction. It was the rainy season, but he needed a walk in the woods to clear his head after that encounter. Then he’d see if there was any damage at Paulson Point.
“When the time comes, you can bite him for me.”
He could have sworn the dog smiled.
Sheriff Eli Rizzi was the power in the county—and the county commissioner’s unofficial right-hand man on Heartstone. Casey wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that most of the commissioner’s decisions were put through a Rizzi filter first. Rizzi’d held the position of sheriff for almost twenty years, and unless someone more popular came along and unseated him, Rizzi was going to have the job for a lot longer. Especially with deputies like Nolan and Spurring, who thought the sun shone out of Rizzi’s ass. The thought left a bitter taste in Casey’s mouth.
When he reached the fort’s access road, Casey turned down the long drive that passed by the battlements and eventually ended at the picnic area where he’d had to help Deter and Richie. A trail that he liked followed along the fence line of the mothballed base, running behind the enormous, military-built, cement structures.
Growing up on Heartstone, Casey, along with most of the island kids, had explored all the battlements, tunnels, and supposed secret rooms the military had built underneath the massive buildings. There were all sorts of stories floating around about dead soldiers, murders, and of course, ghosts.
The path was rarely used, even in the summertime, so it tended to be overgrown and was perfect for when Casey neededa break from everything. It ended near a sealed-off entrance to one of the tunnels and an artillery foundation that had never been completed.
“Go on. Don’t chase anything,” he told the dog. “Don’t do your business where I can’t clean it up.”
Bowie bounded off but not out of Casey’s sight. Every few minutes he’d slow down and look back over his shoulder, silently urging Casey to hurry the heck up. For his part, Casey forced the conversation with Deter out of his mind. He inhaled a lungful of the oxygen-laden air and was rewarded with an immediate feeling of calm. Then he rolled his head, forced his shoulders to relax, and followed Bowie into the woods.
He was enjoying the peace that being outside away from humanity gave him when, uninvited, an image of Gabriel Karne popped into his head.
Karne was a bit taller than Casey and had slightly narrower shoulders. There were hints of silver in his short dark hair and in his beard, overall bringing a younger, darker Timothy Olyphant to mind. And fuck it, but Casey had always had a thing for Raylon Givens. The stranger was probably about ten years older than him, which meant nothing, but it did bring up questions as to why he’d shown up on the island alone during the offseason. Men of his age usually came in with families or fishing buddies in the height of summer.
Casey didn’t trust him. Nothing in their two encounters screamed trustworthy. Hell, there wasn’t even a whisper.
Who was this disreputable castaway that Elton had taken under his wing?
Something about him grated hard on Casey’s last nerve. He wasn’t sure if it was the smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, the tinge of wariness in his gaze, or the sleazy charm he employed to try and weasel out of consequences. Karne was up to no goodand Casey was going to figure out what it was before he hurt Elton or anyone else in Casey’s jurisdiction.
Bowie barked and dashed off, snapping Casey out of his thoughts.
“Bowie, come!” Casey ordered. “By me!”
There was a rustling in the underbrush ahead of him, then Bowie came back into his sight.
“What the hell?”
Bowie was well behaved and trained because Casey worked with him almost every day, and in general, the dog wasn’t interested in humans unless he’d been introduced to them.
“You can’t just take off like that.” What had prompted him to bolt? If Casey asked, he’d just get a doggy roll of the eyes.
“Sorry, dude. I gotta do this if you’re gonna be like that,” Casey said, clipping Bowie’s leash onto his collar before they followed the trail around the bend. “I don’t want you scaring anyone.” The trail they’d just used might be lesser known, but the public area they were approaching was not. Even during the winter months, the fort had its fair share of daytime visitors.
After a bit more of a walk, they reached the first of the huge cement battlement structures and one of the unfinished artillery foundations. The big guns intended for the fort hadn’t been delivered by the time it closed, but that didn’t stop kids and adults from climbing in and around where they would have been mounted. Aside from the one Casey was heading for, there were eight more of them scattered across the park.
He stopped walking and peered down into the cement-lined hole in the ground. A crumpled wet paper bag from a fast food place lay at the bottom. At least he’d been prepared to find litter here because there was always something.
Bowie had his nose to the ground, following an interesting scent that led away from the gun mount and toward the battlement.
There was another impatient tug on the leash. “Alright, I’m coming.” He’d grab the bag on his way out.
On the one hand, the battlements were fascinating, especially if you were a history buff or a twelve-year-old kid. But they didn’t belong in the forest so they were also just plain weird, a relic of a brief period of time.
