Steven Brinkman felt awful about his complicity in the Shearwater juggernaut, and about his career calling in general. Go with the private sector—that’s what his old man had advised him. His old man, who’d spent twenty-six years with the U.S. Forest Service and had nothing positive to say about government work. If I had it to do all over again, he’d grumble, I’d jump on that job with the timber company. Private sector, son, all the way!
And though it was the handsome salary that had induced Steven Brinkman to sign on with Roger Roothaus, he also honestly thought he could make a difference. Fresh out of school, he naively believed it was possible to find middle ground between the granola-head bunny lovers and the ruthless corporate despoilers. He believed science and common sense could bring both sides together, believed wholeheartedly in the future of “environmental engineering.”
Then they put him to work counting butterflies and toads and field mice. And before long, Brinkman was also counting the days until he could go home. He didn’t want to be on Toad Island when the clearing started. And he would never return afterward, to see if it ended up looking like the scale model.
For living quarters, Roothaus had provided a secondhand Winnebago but Steven Brinkman rarely used it, choosing instead to sleep under the stars in the doomed woods. Here he could drink recklessly without drawing Krimmler’s ire. Most evenings he’d build a campfire and play R.E.M. on the small boom box that his sister had given him. The locals had long ago pegged Brinkman as a flake, and let him be.
Rarely was his outdoor solitude interrupted by anything noisier than a hoot owl, so he was therefore surprised to see a stocky stranger clomping into his camp. The man’s blond hair was eccentrically spiked, but it was the houndstooth suit that put Brinkman on edge, even after half a quart of Stoli.
“I’m looking for a dog,” the man announced, in a voice that was almost soothing.
Brinkman tottered to his feet. “Who’re you?”
“A black Labrador retriever is what I’m looking for.”
Brinkman shrugged. “No dog here.”
“Possibly with one ear cut off. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that.”
“No—”
In a flash the man pinned him against the trunk of a pine tree. “I work for Mr. Robert Clapley,” he said.
“Me, too,” said Brinkman. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Are you Steven Brinkman?”
“Dr. Brinkman. Yeah, now—”
“The troublemaker?”
Brinkman struggled to break free. “What? I’m a field biologist.”
The spiky-haired man grabbed him by the throat. “Where’s the goddamn dog, Doctor?”
Brinkman spluttered a protest but Clapley’s man knocked him down with a punch to the gut. “Jesus, you don’t know what I’m talking about,” the man said disgustedly. He kicked through the campsite, swearing. “You don’t have the goddamn dog. You’re not the one.”
“No.” Brinkman was on his knees, gasping.
“But you’re still a troublemaker. Mr. Clapley doesn’t like troublemakers.” The man took out a pistol. “And you’re trashed on top of it. Not good.”
Brinkman fearfully threw up his dirt-smeared palms. “There was a guy here, a couple days ago. He had a black Lab.”
“Go on.” The man brushed a moth off his lapel.
“On the beach. Guy my age. Very tan. He had a big black Lab.”
“How many ears?”
“Two, I think.” Brinkman was pretty sure he would’ve remembered otherwise.
“What else, doctor?”
The man placed the gun to Brinkman’s temple. Brinkman had been drinking so heavily that he couldn’t even pee in his pants, couldn’t make neurotransmitter contact with his own bladder.
He said, “The guy drove a black pickup truck. And there was a woman.”
“What’d she look like?”
“Beautiful,” Brinkman said. “Outstanding.” The Stoli was kicking in magnificently.
The spiky-haired man whacked him with the butt of the pistol. ” ‘Beautiful’ covers a lot of territory, doesn’t it?”
Brinkman tried to collect himself. He felt a warm bubble of blood between his eyebrows. “She was a brunette, in her early thirties. Hair so long”—Brinkman, using both hands to indicate the length—”and the dog seemed to be hers. The Lab.”
“So they weren’t, like, a couple.”