Snow Creek Quotes

“enclosed”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“Snow Creek was punched into the hills and mountains by logging companies more than fifty years ago. After the spotted owl put a halt to things, Olympic, Weyerhaeuser and Puget Logging sold off parcels at bargain rates—because there were no public utilities like water or power or sewer. That was fine for the folks that decided they’d rather live in a lonely world of their own making than the cookie-cutter places they came from. Some were hippie types—at least by the looks of them. Beads, flannel shirts and jeans so dirty they could walk across town on their own. Others came to do things verboten in the outside world. Pot growers, mostly. Some were believers in the occult—or at least pretended to be. A writhing mass of naked people under the moon was something no one would ever see in suburbia where the nosey neighbors lived with 911 on speed dial.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“Detective Megan Carpenter is no stranger to horrifying crime scenes, but when she arrives at the home of a woman whose body has been brutalized, Megan is shocked to discover that she knows the victim. Monique Delmont helped Megan when she was in danger years ago. And the killer has left a disturbing calling card… two laminated photographs of a sixteen-year-old high school girl – Megan.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“Regina had a strict mode of operation that was so rigid, so unyielding, that any, even the slightest change, could send her back to bed for a week. She lived with her wife, Amy, in a leaky cabin with an outdoor shower and an outhouse in the hills above Snow Creek. Completely self-reliant. They raised vegetables. Trapped squirrels for meat. Despite the fact that she had only one eye, Regina was an expert with a rifle.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“pulls”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“tasty.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“Names,”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“price”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“harvesting”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“perfect”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“promised”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“I check my email. Once more, nothing from my brother Hayden. My nearly empty glass follows me to my bedroom, and I lie there, half asleep, half woozy from too much alcohol. I run my hand through my hair. I’m back on the Walla Walla. The images are fuzzy, like an old VHS tape. Hayden is asleep, and I gently lift him away, deeper into a nest of paper towels. I turn in the dim light of the ferry bathroom and hold up my hair with one hand. I reach for the scissors and start cutting. Locks fall like autumn leaves over the dingy countertop and into the bottom of the pitted white sink. I cut, and I cut. Tears roll down my cheeks, but I don’t make a sound. I open a box of dye and apply it with the thin plastic gloves that come in the box. I smell the chemicals as my hair eclipses from brown to blond. I rinse in the sink, the acrid odor wafting through the still air of the bathroom. I tear a ream of paper towels to wring out the water and then, in what I think is a brilliant move, I turn on the hand dryer and rotate my head against the hot spray of air. I am in Maui. I am in Tahiti. I’m on the beach and I have a tan. A handsome boy looks at me and I smile. The dryer stops, and I look in the mirror and I see her. Mom. I look just like my mother. It was unintended genius. Hayden, now awake, seems to agree. “I miss Mom. Do you think they found Dad?” I indicate the second box of hair dye. “Your turn, Hayden.” He climbs up on the counter and lays his head in the sink as I wet his hair with lukewarm water. It reminds me of when he was a baby and Mom washed him in the sink instead of the tub. He scrunches his eyes shut as I rub in the dye. When I’m done, he will be transformed. He’ll no longer be the little boy with the shock of blond hair, the one that makes him look like he’s stepped out of the page of a cute kids’ clothing website. I look down at the name on the dye box.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“I don’t like it when people light a fuse and then get out of the way. If you want to find out something you need to stay on it. Never let go until you get where you need to be. Until you do what you need to do.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“She said that she knew that emotions only made the punishment greater.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“tell Sheriff I need to leave. I don’t want to be on camera again. A lot of good it did me last time. I shudder at the very idea of it.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“end-all, be-all.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“I sit across from Ruth and I take in everything I can about her. Her body language. Her ability to look me in the eyes. Her tics; if she has any. She does. She blinks harder than necessary after each gasp of her story. I can’t tell if she’s trying to wring out more tears or if that’s just how she is. She tells me Ida, and her husband, Merritt Wheaton, live in the hills above Snow Creek. It’s an area with a bit of”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“opening”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“something”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“physically”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“I’d never heard of anyone doing green burial and I ask him for details. Joshua tells me that the body—not embalmed—is wrapped in a mushroom-spore-infused shroud and is deposited just below the surface of the ground. It’s watered daily during dry months—which is where we are now—and as the body decomposes, it nourishes the soil. I can see the appeal, but I don’t think it would be for me. I don’t like the idea of being food for mushrooms. Actually, I don’t like mushrooms at all. It’s a texture thing.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek

“reassuringly.”
― Gregg Olsen, Snow Creek