SPIDER MOUNTAIN Page 20

  She threw some sticks in the woodstove, shook the ash grate, pitched in the cotton waste, and then stirred the soup pot. “Where’s ‘at pretty woman?” she asked.

  “Over in Marionburg,” I said. “She managed to get out of Robbins County, but I don’t think she can come back here while Mingo’s people are all stirred up. I’m going to hike out.” I explained some of what I’d learned in the phone call.

  “I’ll heat ye some soup,” she said. She clanked the firebox door shut. “You know they gonna be out there in them woods. Prob’ly have ’em dogs with ’em, too.”

  “I can’t let them take me again,” I said. “Especially now that my allies have been backed out.”

  “Which way you gonna go?” she asked.

  “I think the best route will be over the ridges toward Crown Lake. I think the roads will be too dangerous.”

  She stirred the soup some more. I realized I was really hungry. The back of my neck had settled down to a warm burn, which I hoped was not an infection getting under way.

  “If’n it was me,” Laurie May said slowly, “I believe I’d go t’other way. They gonna be lookin’ for ye to run for Marionburg town. If’n it was me, I’d go up and over that ridge yonder and hide right in Grinny Creigh’s backyard. Ain’t none’a them gonna expect you to do that.”

  Including me, I thought, but she had a point. If that shooter had alerted the rest of Nathan’s crew and the sheriff, the woods would soon be alive with the sound of guns being cocked and slavering dogs sniffing out trails. They would in fact never even think to look at Grinny’s place. She saw me considering it and gave me a toothy grin.

  “I’ll show ye a shortcut through that backbone ridge yonder,” she said. “Put you into Grinny’s place sideways, other side’a them dogs. They’s a little cave on the bottom side of her front field. Maybe you can hole up in there, watch and see where she’s hidin’ them poor young’uns.”

  And that was the objective, wasn’t it, I reminded myself. Carrie had defanged herself when she resigned from the SBI. She had no legal authority to pursue Grinny Creigh. Neither did I, for that matter, but I was here and she wasn’t. If I could watch the Creigh place undiscovered for a few days, maybe I could actually put some flesh on the bones of Carrie’s theory about Grinny selling children. The transponder was still in place, for now, anyway, so, in theory, I could call out.

  Evidence. We desperately needed evidence.

  “Okay, I’ll do just that,” I said. “The cave big enough for me and the shepherds?”

  She nodded and then told me to sit down and eat. I briefly wondered how she knew about a cave over on the other side of the ridge. On the other hand, she was old enough to know damn near everything about these hills.

  An hour later we turned down the lanterns in her cabin, put them in the front windows, and then slipped quietly out the back door. I had my field belt, the spotting scope, a bedroll, water, and the SIG .45. Laurie May had fixed up a bag of bread and a couple of hard-boiled eggs. The shepherds seemed to sense our need for stealth; they were sticking close and moving in silence. There was a weak moon rising above the mountains, so between her knowledge of the path and a borrowed walking stick, I managed to stay upright as we climbed through the rock rubble toward what she had called the backbone ridge. We seemed to be heading right into the side of it as the ground rose, and I wondered if we were going to have to go straight up and over. But then we walked into a dense stand of gnarled pines whose branches were low enough to require constant swatting. Laurie May was moving surprisingly fast for a woman of her age, which hopefully meant she knew right where she was going. After about seventy-five feet of pine needles and bugs going down my shirt, we broke out in front of a crack in the ridge.

  “This here broke clean through the ‘bone long ways back,” she whispered, pointing into a narrow defile, which was in total darkness. “They’s water runnin’ through it, comin’ down off ‘n them sides. Foller it through to t’other side, go down to yer right hand, mebbe twenty rod, to the cave hole.”

  “Thanks, Laurie May. I’ll try to come back out after dark tomorrow. If by any chance Carrie contacts you, tell her where I am. If she comes to your place, try to keep her there until I get back.”

  She nodded in the darkness, squeezed my hand, and started back into the pines. I approached the passageway through the ridge. Her description of it breaking clean through was accurate. I stepped into the crack and looked up. Sheer rock walls rose on either side of me, no more than six feet between them where I stood but getting wider toward the top, which had to be two or even three hundred feet straight up. The ground underfoot was loose stone and mud, and I could see thin dark streaks of moisture weeping down the sides of the defile. I’m not one to feel claustrophobic, but this passage through the heart of the ridge got me close to it. I tried to imagine what titanic forces could split and then open the whole ridge like this. I had to resist the temptation to keep one hand on the walls to make sure they weren’t closing together on me. The shepherds followed nervously, stopping when I did and picking their footing carefully.

  The path through the crack led straight across for about a hundred yards and then slightly downhill, and the water took on some depth as I neared the other end. The air was dank and cold, and the looming rock walls seemed to amplify my every footstep, no matter how careful I tried to be. At the other end the crack narrowed down to no more than four feet, and it took all my willpower not to bolt the last fifty feet.

  Finally I reached the other end and stopped just short of stepping out onto clear ground. The hollow containing Grinny Creigh’s place opened in front of me, and I had a good view down the slope and overlooking the buildings and pens around her cabin. My vantage point was a good three hundred or more feet above the cabin in elevation. There was no cover on this side of the ridge except one lonesome pine tree, which was tapping the water seeping out of the crack. I hesitated to just step out there; there were dim lights on inside the main cabin, but all the outbuildings were dark. I was facing the south end of the cabin, so I couldn’t see anything on the front porch where she’d been enthroned the night I’d been there. And might be tonight.

  I stepped just out of the crack and sat down to watch for a while, mostly to get my night vision acclimated to the moonlight. Now that I was out of that sheer-walled split in the mountain, I could see much better. The tiny weep spilling out of the crack went straight downhill and disappeared into a brush-covered gully. I used the telescope to scan the compound, looking for any signs of humans or dogs, but there was nothing moving down there. There was a slight breeze blowing across the face of the ridge as cooler air from the upper back ridge poured downhill toward the road and creek way down to my right. Otherwise there wasn’t a sound coming from the hollow.

  The shepherds lay down on either side of me, and their warm, furry hides were comforting. I settled back against the rock, and my shirt collar reminded me of the rifleman who’d damn near laid me down on the other side. Which further reminded me of the cell phone. I took it out, turned it on, and checked for a signal. One lonely bar, and it wasn’t entirely persistent. I switched it back off since I had no way to recharge it.

  After a half hour my back was getting cold, so I decided to find the cave. Having no idea of how long a rod was, I elected to simply go sideways down the ridge, moving slowly and feeling along the rock wall for a cave entrance. I’d gone maybe fifty feet when I heard and then saw the headlights of a pickup truck coming up from the river road toward Grinny’s cabin. I was well above their line of sight but decided to freeze in place and sit down again, trying to make myself small. On a full-moon night they might have seen me, but I figured I was pretty inconspicuous against the gray rock wall of the backbone ridge.

  The truck stopped in front of the cabin and shut down its engine and lights. I halfway expected someone to get out and haul yet another chained body out of the truck’s bed. Instead I watched Nathan get out of the passenger side and go into the cabin. Even a
t this distance he was unmistakable, his stooped figure moving awkwardly up the steps and into the shadow of the porch. I saw a match flare on the driver’s side. That was good—the match would destroy the man’s night vision should he happen to look up in my direction. I was still pretty exposed and considered moving on down the hill. Then I remembered that motion wasn’t the best idea if perchance someone was actively scanning the ridgeline.

  Ten minutes later Nathan appeared out of nowhere at the back of the pickup truck. He had two large dogs with him, which he proceeded to heave up into the bed of the truck. I could hear their claws scrabbling for footing. One of them started barking, and I heard a rough voice yell “Shut up” at him. Nathan got back in and the truck started up. The driver turned on his headlights, and now it was my turn to lose all night vision as his brights swept across my position on the hillside. All I could do was hope like hell they weren’t looking up here, because there wasn’t a stitch of cover anywhere. In the event, the truck kept going and soon was out of sight and sound down the hill. I stayed put until I could see again and then continued my way down the ridge in search of the cave.

  About three hundred feet from the crack, I felt the rock wall give way to a narrow opening. I had a penlight on my field belt, but decided not to take any chances. I sent the two dogs into the cave instead. Hopefully there wasn’t a six-foot-long rattlesnake denned up in there for the night, because if there was, we were in for some noise. Both shepherds popped out of the cave a minute later, so I decided it was reasonably safe for me to try it out. The opening was only four feet high and perhaps eighteen inches wide, so I had to duckwalk sideways into the cave. The actual cave curled to the right from the entrance. Once inside, I turned on the penlight and checked the ground for snakes and the ceiling for bats. Nobody home.

  The cave wasn’t much of a cave—it was just a hole in the rock. It had a sandy floor and went back about ten feet, ending in a crack in the rock that was perhaps a foot wide. The ceiling started out at six feet but rapidly sloped down to no more than four at the back. I shone the light into the crack but couldn’t see anything that resembled a passageway, just more gray rock. Fortunately the cave was dry as a bone. I switched off the penlight.

  “Okay, mutts,” I announced quietly. “We’re officially here.”

  I shucked my bedroll and the field belt and then moved back to the entrance to see what kind of view I had. It wasn’t terrific. Because of the way the cave entrance made that initial turn, I couldn’t see much of the Creigh place without coming back outside. Fine for the nighttime but dangerous during the day. I went outside and sat down with my back against the rock again. The cave would be okay for holing up, but I needed a watching point that would conceal me and the dogs while giving me a clear view.

  There was another problem. Nathan had come back to the cabin to get some dogs. If they were trackers, and if he went to Laurie May’s, they might track me up to and through the crack. After the shooting earlier, somebody knew I was in the area, and probably where I’d come from. In which case, I didn’t want to be holed up in any dead-end cave. They could just stick their shotguns into the entrance and leave the resulting gore to compost.

  The cell phone slipped out of my pocket. I picked it up, switched on, and checked for a signal. This time there were two whole bars. I fished around for Carrie’s number and called her. She answered on the third ring, and I moved back into the cave’s entrance.

  “Where are you?” she asked. Her voice sounded a bit off.

  I told her and then asked her the same question.

  “At your fancy cabin,” she said. “My room at the main lodge was on the government’s nickel, which is no longer on offer.”

  “Good, I’m glad someone’s using it. I wish I were there instead of out here in this damned cave.”

  “You didn’t tell me you had all this scotch here,” she said. “I may have overindulged. Just a little.”

  That accounted for her voice and slightly slurred words. “Good for you,” I said. “Having second thoughts about resigning, are we?”

  “Yep,” she said. “Standing on lofty principle usually means the next step is down. The loftier, the farther down. I should have eaten something. I’ve already got a headache.”

  “Regrets?”

  “Well …,” she said, hesitating. “I’ve discovered that being in the SBI gave me most of my identity. Now …”

  “Now you feel naked,” I said. “No badge, no creds, no gun, no authority. And guess how I know all this?”

  “Yeah, I suppose you do. I’m desperate to pursue this thing with the Creighs, but I’m no longer a player.” I heard a hiccup. “May have fucked up.”

  “Would they take you back?”

  “You know? I’m not so sure. My boss didn’t try very hard to talk me out of it, now that I think about it. Of course, he was pissed over what we’d been doing here in the hills.”

  “Drink lots of water,” I said. “Get some sleep. Everything looks better in the daylight.”

  “I won’t,” she said. “Daylight means mirrors. What are you going to do?”

  “Laurie May suggested I hide out in Grinny Creigh’s hollow because that’s the last place they’d go looking for me. But Nathan just showed up to get some dogs, so my plan may have to change, and soon. There’s no good cover where I am now.”

  “I should be out there with you,” she said. “This is my beef.”

  “Right now you’re more useful to me in Marionburg,” I said. Especially with a snoot full of scotch, I thought. “I may yet need extracting if these guys get lucky.”

  “I suppose,” she said. There was a moment of silence, a noise I couldn’t identify, and then I heard her say “Oh, shit.” Then the connection was broken.

  I immediately called back. The phone gave me a canned system message saying it was no longer on the air.

  What the hell had just happened? Had the Creighs gone after Carrie? In Carrigan County? I shut the phone off and restowed it. I looked at the shepherds, who were lying there alert, awaiting orders. Something told me to get out of that cave and to go in motion. I told the dogs to stay down and stepped out of the cave to reconnoiter. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that Nathan and his dogs might be on my trail pretty soon, so I couldn’t stay up here on the ridge, and it wouldn’t be terribly bright to let them catch me in that crack in the rock.

  Okay, we’d go down to Grinny’s. If Nathan and his dogs had tracked me toward the cabin, he’d think his dogs simply wanted to go back to the pen. I hoped.

  I roused the shepherds and we set out down the ridge. There was no cover until I got within a hundred feet of the cabin, and then we slipped into a tree line. I went downhill along the tree line until we got abeam of the cabin itself. I put the shepherds on a long down and crept to the house side of the trees, some thirty feet from the porch. This was where Nathan’s black hats had been standing the night they brought me up to socialize with Grinny. The wind was slightly in my face, which hopefully would keep the dog pack behind the cabin from detecting us. Grinny’s reputed second sight might present a more dangerous problem. There was some light coming through the curtained windows, but it was yellow and diffused, probably lantern light. I couldn’t see anyone inside or on the grounds.

  I was trying to figure out what to do next when I heard another vehicle coming up the pasture road below the cabin. It sounded like a modern SUV instead of one of the ancient pickup trucks these folks seemed to favor. Whoever it was knew where he was going and drove right up to the front of the cabin. I settled down in the pine thicket to watch as the vehicle, a dark-colored Chevrolet Tahoe, stopped and shut down.

  For a long minute, nothing happened, and then the front door of the cabin opened and Grinny Creigh stepped out onto the front porch. A foreign-looking man got out of the SUV and greeted her in the lilting accent of Southwest Asia. He went halfway up the steps and stopped when she told him to wait there, and then she went back into the cabin.

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sp; I studied the man as he waited in the dim moonlight. He was perhaps five-seven or -eight and in his late thirties. He had a sharply outlined, close-cropped black beard that joined his mustache, and he had the prominent nose of Pakistan or perhaps India. He wore khaki trousers and a light windbreaker, under which I could see a cell phone and a pager clipped to his belt. He waited patiently on the front steps, looking around at the mountains and open fields around the cabin as if he’d seen it all before.

  The door opened and Grinny Creigh reappeared, carrying a lantern this time and leading a young girl by the hand. The girl was between eight and ten years old and very thin, with flaxen hair and a pinched, frightened face. Grinny gripped the little girl’s wrist as if to make sure she wouldn’t bolt as she raised the lantern to fully illuminate the child. The man on the steps examined her carefully, asking her to turn around a couple of times, and then came up on the porch to lay his hands on her. Given what I was expecting, I was surprised to see that he wasn’t touching her in a sexual manner, but rather examining her, the way a doctor might. He looked into her eyes and mouth, asked her to cough even though he didn’t have a stethoscope, and felt her limbs as if to gauge how well fed she was.

  I experienced a sudden urge to shoot them both and rescue the little girl. But for all I knew, this was a county social services doctor or PA making a house call of some kind, even if it was pretty late. The child was thin and frightened, although she didn’t look to be ill. Grinny just stood there looking bored, but not letting go of that slim, bony wrist for one moment. I thought for just a second that I glimpsed another small, pale face peeking through the curtains at what was going on out front, but then it was gone, like a ghost on the move.

  The man thanked Grinny and said that everything was acceptable. Grinny turned the child around and sent her into the cabin. Then she turned back to the man, who had stepped down to the walkway.