“Look at the ground and grass and foliage. With fog at this time of the morning, there’s always a coating of condensation covering everything. When something passes and brushes it, it comes off. Compare the two forks, and one obviously has had either a person or a good-sized animal pass by.”
Sure, that’s obvious, Tonto, she thought. I guess I’ve got the right partner for today’s adventure.
The trails forked, becoming progressively narrower and more overgrown. By the third fork, she could see what the Fish and Gamer meant about the dew and the foliage.
You really can tell the difference, she admitted silently. Even I can do it. Greta Havorsford, expert tracker!
The fog off the ocean got thicker, as they started a downward trending slope north. The trees didn’t block as much of the mist flowing over the cape. They could have been within thirty feet of Lawton and not seen him.
Abruptly, they stepped around some shrubbery and faced nothing in front of them. Nothing. Only straight ahead and downward. They stood on a rocky surface on the edge of nothingness. Greta’s heart jumped into her throat.
“Well . . . this is the end of the line for here,” Sheffel said nonchalantly.
They could hear surf beating against rocks below them. Greta remembered her Google examination of the cape and knew that directly in front of them must be a drop of a hundred feet or more.
“I guess we missed where he cut off this part of the trail,” Sheffel said quietly. They started back. After about fifty feet, Sheffel stopped to bend over and look more closely at some brush next to the trail. He reached out and tugged at something. A branch snapped away, revealing an opening. He whispered, “See this?”
It was a small brown hook, similar to what would be used to suspend something from an arbor or a ceiling, screwed into a half-inch branch. Sheffel pulled the branch over and showed how the hook could loop around an adjacent branch, holding the two together and creating the appearance of a solid barrier.
“No one’s ever going to notice the hook unless they look right at it, which there’s no reason to.”
“Unless you’re creeping around trying to track someone,” she muttered.
He stifled a laugh. “Yeah, unless that. So here we go again.” He stepped off the narrow trail to a relatively more open space through the foliage. They moved slowly and quietly, coming to a rock formation. The only way around it lay along the face toward the ocean. They circled the formation and found themselves once more at the drop-off.
“Well, fuck me,” Sheffel muttered. A rope was secured around a foot-diameter tree trunk, the other end somewhere below toward the sound of surf. Spaced knots in the rope would assist climbing. Where it ended, they couldn’t tell because the rock face curved downward.
“You mean to tell me he climbs up and down a rope to the ocean!” whispered an astounded Greta.
“Most likely, it’s only partway down. There could be a ledge or something out of sight. That’d be my guess. From there, he works down the rest of the way.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“Wait until he comes back up.”
“Wait here?” The damp air chilled her, even with her heavy clothes.
Sheffel th
ought for a moment. “Well, as long as we catch him with the abalone, I guess it doesn’t matter where we wait. Still, it would make a better case if we see him climbing up with a bag of booty.”
Greta grinned. “So you’ve switched to believing he’s really a poacher?”
Sheffel grinned back. “From what we’ve seen, I can’t imagine any other reason he’s taking such steps. As for waiting, why don’t we take turns watching here and back at the parking lot? This is liable to take several hours. That way, at least one of us will be comfortable, and we’ll also catch him if he manages to get back to his car by a different route.”
“Sounds good.” She flashed on the thermos of decaf that beckoned from her car. “Being this is mainly a Fish and Game case, I’ll let you take the first tour here. I’ll come back in an hour, and we can switch off. I promise to leave some decaf coffee for you.”
“Decaf?” he said with disgust. “Why bother calling it coffee?”
“It’ll be hot.”
“Okay. One hour,” he agreed.
Greta started back the way they’d come when something caught her eye. She looked closer. Something dark and lumpy lay underneath spruce branches hanging to the ground. “What’s this?”
She pulled aside a branch, reached in, and pulled out a black waterproof sack. Then she found a second sack.
Sheffel took one sack from her. He reached inside to discover a bag holding clothes.