Dead Whales Tell No Tales
A Thomas Martindale Mystery
by Ron Lovell
“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”
—Jonah
Thursday, April 23, 1987
The next morning, back home in Corvallis, I ate breakfast and
headed west out of town on Highway 20 at seven thirty. The trip
was uneventful and there wasn’t much traffic. The log trucks had
gotten an even earlier start.
Ten miles or so past the wide spot in the road called Eddyville,
I glanced in my rearview mirror and my heart sank. The white station
wagon was several vehicles back. I immediately felt my stomach
do a flip flop and I was feeling nauseous. I was also getting
mad.
I stepped on the gas of my little Ford Escort, determined to get
away from my pursuer. I rounded a corner and noticed an unmarked
county road on the right. I slowed the car just enough to make
the turn safely and picked up speed as soon as I could. The road
was paved but narrow with a dense thicket of ferns, salal, blackberry,
and other wild plants growing to a height above the roof line
of the car.
In five miles or so, the road got steeper and the pavement turned
to gravel. At about that point, I passed a sign that read “Watch
for Log Trucks.” As if on cue, one of those huge vehicles loomed
ahead of me. We both stopped and the driver got out and walked
toward the car. He leaned in to talk to me.
“Been this way before, mister?” he asked above the rumble of his
idling diesel engine.
He was young and friendly looking, wearing the typical lumberjack
uniform: a gray striped work shirt, jeans held up by bright red
suspenders, heavy boots, and a hard hat that looked like helmets
soldiers in World War I wore in the trenches.
“No. I hoped I was taking a shortcut.”
“To where?”
“Oh, I guess Siletz and eventually Newport.”
“Well you’re a little off course for Newport. It’s back that way.”
He pointed in the direction I’d just come from.
“Siletz is this way but the road’s kind of narrow and slow. You’d
have better luck turning around and going back.”
“Well . . . I . . . I want to get back in here to take some photos.
I’m . . .
I’m . . . a photographer. Nature stuff. Outdoors and all of that.”
Mr. Liar was surfacing again.
He took off his hat and smoothed his hair in apparent befuddlement
at what this city slicker was telling him. He looked at the empty
seat beside me.
“Camera’s in the trunk,” I answered his unasked question.
I love good photography and think I know what a good photo is
but I haven’t taken a shot since my Instamatic days.
“Your choice. Just be careful of washouts. Pretty bad winter up
here. Also, don’t get off the road on foot or anything. Some of
these valleys have got hippie marijuana growers living in them.
They got booby traps and really mean dogs. So bad the state police
won’t go into some of them. Got that? I mean, be careful.”
I nodded, weighing a return to the highway and the white station
wagon or a venture ahead into unknown perils.
“I’ve got to get my load of logs to the mill over in Toledo. Mind
if I ask you to back up to that last turnout? Easier for you than
me.”
“Oh sure. Glad to. And thanks for the advice.”
He nodded and strode back to his rig. As I backed up to the turnout,
he gunned his engine, sending black belches of smoke out of the
truck’s twin exhaust pipes. When I was safely out of the way,
he rolled his vehicle forward, pausing to wave and honk his air
horn several times as he passed me.
I waved back and resumed my journey. The winding road made progress
slow and I worried about the damage the gravel would do to the
paint on my car every time I had the chance to speed up. Fast
or slow, my car raised big clouds of dust in its wake.
Several miles passed uneventfully and I was actually beginning
to enjoy the scenery. As the road climbed, the trees on the left
fell away so you could look out across the mountains and see the
Pacific Ocean in the distance. The road hugged the hillside on
the right. I stopped at one point just to look at the view, forgetting
for the moment that I was being pursued.
As I started down a long slope that curved to the left where the
road entered dense forest, the white station wagon suddenly came
into view in my side mirror.
“God. Not again!”
Who was this guy and what did he plan to do to me? What I was
finding out about Howard Phelps’ murder was making somebody very
nervous.
In spite of the bad road, I had to outrun my pursuer. But, in
an Escort? I accelerated slightly and the car picked up speed
going down the hill. I stayed as close to the cliff as possible
to avoid the crumbling edge. Too late I realized that the heavy
rains of the winter had washed away the road near the bottom.
Too late I saw that the road I counted on to get me safely out
of my predicament no longer existed.
My car wouldn’t have flown any better if it had had wings. The
momentum it gained going down the hill propelled it through the
air like a ski jumper at Aspen. It would have been thrilling if
I hadn’t been so scared.
Miraculously, the car landed on all four wheels in a flat area
that had once been a viewpoint. Feeling relieved to be alive,
I sat for a second to take stock of my situation. Except for a
nasty cut over my left eye, I seemed to be amazingly unscathed—no
broken bones or erupting blood vessels. I would be awfully stiff
and sore in the morning, but what else was new?
Sudden movement interrupted my reveries. Even though I had put
on the emergency brake, the car was beginning to roll slowly toward
the edge—and the deep canyon below. I ripped off my seatbelt,
opened the door, and jumped out as quickly as I could, staying
out of the way just as the car rolled quietly over the edge. Still
aware that someone was probably watching all this from above,
I ran into the woods. Once there, I paused to listen for the inevitable
sound of metal and glass far below. Seconds later, I heard an
explosion as the gas tank burst into flames. Hopefully, it wouldn’t
start a forest fire. That I didn’t need.
From my vantage point in the trees, I had a good view up the road.
At first I saw nothing. The station wagon was apparently obscured
by the shelf-like outcropping that had once been the road. I heard
stones falling and realized that this guy was making his way on
foot down the high embankment where the road had washed out.
I moved back into the forest and started looking for a place to
hide. I soon found a large fir tree next to a large mound of rocks.
It was easy to climb into the tree from the rocks and then use
the strong limbs to move higher and higher into the dense growth
at the top. My fear of being caught overwhelmed any worry about
falling. I only hoped my movement didn’t send pine cones falling
on the head of whoever was after me.
After several minutes, I stopped to catch my breath and listen.
Because of the thick tree limbs, I was fairly certain I couldn’t
be seen. The sound of falling stones had now been replaced by
feet trampling heavily on the forest floor. The sound got closer
and I held my breath, trying to look down without making a sound.
My pursuer stopped right below me and sat down on the large boulders
I had used to climb up on my present precarious perch. He fumbled
in his pocket for something, what I dared not lean over too far
to see. I waited motionlessly. Soon, wafts of smoke reached my
nose. Just what I needed: a contemplative, pipe-smoking killer!
He sat there for over fifteen minutes. I taxed every muscle and
bone in my body in an effort not to move. Luckily for me, a slight
breeze came up so that the occasional sound of stirring leaves
helped mask the thundering beat of my heart. I still didn’t dare
look down at him.
Suddenly, he got up and walked back to where the car had gone
over the side into the ravine. I couldn’t imagine that even he—super
being that he was—would try to rappel to the bottom to find my
car to see if my body was in it.
I listened carefully for another five minutes or so to his footsteps.
They were getting more faint all the time. I decided I had to
make my move. I climbed down slowly, branch by branch, until I
reached the boulder that had acted as a stepladder when I went
up. I scrambled down and started running in the opposite direction.
I’m not much of an athlete but I’ve always been a pretty good
runner. I made good time following what was probably a deer trail
through the forest in what I thought was a westerly direction.
After ten minutes, I slowed to a fast walk, then stopped to listen.
At first I heard nothing but the noises of the forest. Then, in
the distance, I heard the unmistakable sound of someone running
hard toward me.
Just then I spotted a wire nearly covered by leaves and pine needles
on the ground. I sidestepped it and changed directions, moving
south to avoid it. Was it a trip wire set up by the marijuana
growers the logger had warned me about?
I had read that Oregon had ideal conditions for growing pot; added
to that was the relative isolation of the Coast Range. I had probably
stumbled—almost– into one of those operations. I hoped my pursuer
would blunder blindly ahead and get hung up in whatever that booby
trap was set to do.
I was so certain that he would, in fact, that I stopped to listen.
In minutes I heard what sounded like a loud pop, followed by shouting
from where the wire had been tripped.
I slowed to a walk but kept moving away from the commotion. Soon,
I came to the start of a high wire fence running west. This was
obviously the limit of the pot grower’s property. Why they hadn’t
fenced off the eastern boundary I could only guess.
I felt safer now. The guy who was after me was probably incapacitated
and explaining his presence to the pot heads. The fence would
also serve as a guide out of here. For good luck, I rubbed the
scrimshaw piece in my pocket.
The forest was dense between the deer trail and the fence for
a few miles, then thinned out. I stopped to peer into what was
a small lush valley. In the distance at the bottom of the hill,
I could see a log house with smoke rising out of its chimney.
Very blissful, like the set for Lassie or Little House on the
Prairie.
I stayed in the trees but kept walking, wishing for a pair of
binoculars. It was sunny and bright in the clearing around the
house. I stopped and tried to see some movement.
Soon, an old pickup drove down the road from the east. When it
got to the building, two men ran out and three others jumped from
the truck. All were carrying rifles. I couldn’t hear what they
were saying but they quickly headed to the back of the truck.
As four of them stood in a semicircle, the fifth man started dragging
a large object out of the truck bed. He reached down and seemed
to be unzipping a large bag of some sort. Had they killed this
intruder—and was it my pursuer?
What I had seen was horrible. Coming from a world where fights
tend to be intellectual and usually inconsequential, it was hard
for me to comprehend such violence. I crept back into the dense
forest and started running away from the fence. I was badly winded
in ten minutes and stopped to rest on an overturned log.
Just then, I heard a loud crashing sound in the trees behind me.
All I could do was wait for a bullet in my back. I was too tired
to do anything else.