Page 40 of Snow Creek

“Some serious talent here,” Sheriff says.

“No shit,” I say.

Daniel Anderson emerges from the house and walks toward us. He seems normal. No gun. He has a neatly trimmed beard on a square jaw. It looks authentic. Not like the hipsters that flock to Port Townsend on the weekends to pose as lumberjacks or mariners. He’s lean and has close-cropped dark brown hair. He’s wearing Carhartt jeans and a purple University of Washington shirt emblazoned with the university’s mascot: a husky. When he smiles, I notice straight away that he has all his teeth.

“You folks from the fair committee?” he asks as he approaches.

His eyes are blue. The kind of blue that’s not really found in nature. Dark, with violet undertones. I break my gaze and Sheriff speaks up.

“No,” he tells him, holding out his badge. I do the same. “I’m Sheriff Tony Gray and this is Detective Megan Carpenter. Your work’s awesome, really. Daniel Anderson, right?”

“Call me Dan. I have a business license,” he says. “Take me a minute to get it.”

“No,” I tell him as he turns to go inside. “We’re not here about that, Dan.”

He stops and looks at me warily. “Then why are you here?”

We tell him about the Wheatons, though not everything. If he gets theLeaderor reads news online, he’ll know about the body found off the logging road. Since we don’t know for sure that it’s Ida, I won’t volunteer anything. Rumors thrive in the dark, unknown places like Snow Creek.

“Did you know them?” I ask, omitting the word “well” because no one seems to know anyone out here other than to wave to now and again.

But Dan does.

“Yeah, Merritt used to come down here. We both dug working with wood. He’s a furniture maker and he’d bring pieces over to me to sell for him. Didn’t like dealing with outsiders. Funny that way. I told him he was a commune leader without a real commune one time. That pissed him off.”

Sheriff interjects. “You were close?”

“No,” Dan says. “I wouldn’t say that. He came down here to unload his tables and stuff. We had a beer a time or two. His favorite was Miller. Tastes like piss to me, but hey, I stocked up some and we shot the breeze.”

“Did you know Ida? The kids?” I ask as he leads us over to a bench carved in the shape of an orca. I run my fingers over the grain of the wood. Smooth as satin.

He sits on a stump ready for carving and faces us.

“No. Not really. I was thinking of inviting them over one time for a barbecue. You know, to be neighborly. He wouldn’t have anything to do with that. Said his wife was shy and his kids were too unruly to take anywhere. I never saw anything like that in them. Always seemed like a nice family.”

“Ever say he was unhappy with his marriage?” I ask.

Dan doesn’t answer right away.

I give him a little push. He’s holding back. “What’s on your mind, Dan?”

“Oh, I don’t know. One time he told me, now he was a little drunk, he said that Ida didn’t always do what he wanted her to do.”

“What did he mean, if you know?” Sheriff asks.

Dan looks at me. He’s embarrassed about something.

“It’s fine. Go ahead.”

He nods. “Okay. It creeped me out. He told me that he’d trained her to do what he wanted and lately she’d been holding back.”

Ruth Turner’s “hand-picked” comes to mind just then.

“You mean sexually?” I ask.

He nods again, his face now pink. “Yeah, that’s the way I took it.”

We talk a bit more, mostly about his artwork. Sheriff asks if he knows any of the other neighbors and if they were close to the Wheatons.

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