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  “And this Sheriff Mingo protects them?”

  The sheriff leaned back and hitched up his trousers. “Well, that’s a little blunt, maybe. The way I see it, he’s riding herd on a wolf pack. He offers up a sacrificial lamb just often enough to keep the SBI from coming in force. It ain’t like he’s a regular at the annual Carolina sheriffs’ convention, so not many people outside Robbins County know him.”

  “But he keeps getting elected?”

  The sheriff guffawed. I realized that had been a dumb question. “He’s a Creigh,” the Sheriff said. “That’s what the C stands for.”

  “Mary Ellen suggested the Park Service is scared to really pursue what happened to their probationer.”

  “That got just a bit murky,” the sheriff said. “They had a feds-only meeting-some Bureau types, Park Service, the local DEA guy-and decided to back off for the time being.”

  “The time being?”

  “We had no leads-nobody did. The girl is a semi-gorp. The DEA said they had some irons in the fire that ought to take precedence.”

  “DEA: That would be Special Agent Greenberg?”

  The sheriff grinned. “Met him, have you? That was quick. That old boy’s a pistol. Fuzzy looking, but don’t let that fool you.”

  “He and his goon squad irritated my shepherds,” I said. “Frick and Frack convened a short meeting with them in the back of their Suburban.”

  “Now that I’d like to have seen,” the sheriff said, laughing.

  “Greenberg and I worked it out over some scotch last night.”

  He finished his coffee. “Well, lemme tell you: Don’t try any of that shit with M. C. Mingo and his boys.”

  “If I were to go over there, should I go see him?”

  “What part of’stay’ and ‘out’ didn’t you understand?”

  “But if I did?”

  “You go over there pokin’ around into the Howard case? He’ll find you. Believe it.”

  “But you have no objections to my looking into what happened to her?”

  He rubbed his face with his hands. “Long as I find out what you find out, okay?” he said. “I do have to get elected, if you get my meaning.”

  I told him that I absolutely would do that, and then asked him about Moses Walsh.

  “Mose? Where’d you run into him?” Hayes asked.

  I told him.

  “He’s a retired city homicide detective,” Hayes said, surprising me. Mose hadn’t shared that tidbit with me on the creek bank. “Funny old duck,” Hayes said. “He’s been here a while, keeps to himself, hires out as a guide. People see that face, think he’s the original Indian scout. Then they see the Harley. He’s okay, best I can tell. Really likes to chase skirt during tourist season.”

  I thanked him for seeing me again and left to find Special Agent Greenberg.

  In the event, Greenberg wasn’t available until that night. He and his squad had been called to Gatlinburg over on the Tennessee side of the national park for a meeting. I spent the rest of the afternoon orienting myself in Carrigan County. I also visited the local newspaper and read accounts of the search for Janey Howard. I dropped by the Carrigan County social services office and was able to glean a little information about the socio-economic state of affairs in neighboring Robbins County. The census-verified population was quite small, just over seven thousand, although it was thought that the real population would be a third larger than that if the hill people had bothered to cooperate. The head count had been complicated by some ambiguities on the number of children in the county outside of the town of Rocky Falls itself. The Robbins County welfare office supposedly had some postulated numbers, but they had not been verified in quite some time.

  My questions about the Creighs produced deliberately blank looks. One lady in the welfare office told me flat out that running one’s mouth about the Creighs was a good way to become toothless, and it didn’t much matter which county you lived in. I asked her if her counterparts in Robbins County just sent out welfare checks to the Creighs based on what the recipients told them, and she said, yes, that was exactly how it worked. The sheriff’s office over there did periodic verifications, no one was complaining, and it wasn’t likely that anyone would, if I got her drift.

  I went back to my newlywed paradise, changed into running gear, and took the dogs for a run down the creek road. When I got back, Greenberg was sitting on the bank of the stream behind the cabin. I flopped down beside him, kicked off my shoes and socks, and let the icy water revive my feet while I told him what the sheriff had told me. He seemed a little less bouncy today.

  “He’s not kidding about M. C. Mingo,” Greenberg said. “That guy’s a piece of work. He’s all smiles and snake oil whenever we show up, but we can’t go anywhere without one deputy we can see and a few we can’t within visual range. Answers every one of our questions, and none of the info’s worth two shits.”

  “How about the Creigh clan?”

  Greenberg skipped a stone across the creek. “Lot of myth and legend over there about the Creighs. That said, getting your hands on one is apparently really hard, and if you do, they bite.”

  “It seems to me,” I said, “that if the local law is in bed with a meth gang, then there ought to be the mother of all sting operations running. Especially on the federal side.”

  Greenberg smiled. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, there, sport,” he said.

  I put up my hands in mock surrender. “I know. My brief is Janey Howard. I’m going to get Mary Ellen to take me to see the victim. Maybe together we can prod something loose.”

  “Good luck with that,” Greenberg said. “But if you do go up to that lake, please let me know. That girl may have been taking water samples for a reason, okay?”

  “Would she have known what that reason was?”

  He smiled. “Not necessarily,” he said.

  I said I’d keep him in the loop. I asked him about Moses Walsh, still mildly curious about the guy. I told him about our conversation of the evening before. It turned out that Greenberg did know him.

  “You see him in the bars sometimes; can’t miss that face. Big hit with the women.”

  “Hayes called him a funny duck,” I said.

  “Well, he was homicide police-some of those guys come out a little bit gonzo when they’re done. He’s never come up on our radar since I’ve been working up here.”

  “He said he was from this Robbins County originally,” I said.

  Greenberg shrugged. “He might be,” he said. “I don’t know. Why-you gonna hire him to be your guide over there?”

  “Thought crossed my mind. First I’m just going to go over there and snoop around a little.”

  “You tell Bill Hayes you were going to do that?”

  I nodded.

  “And he said what, exactly?”

  “I got the ‘two words’ lecture.”

  “You might want to listen to the man,” he said. “That would show great intelligence on your part.”

  “Why start now?” I asked.

  He grinned and shook his head. “Where are your furry friends?” he asked.

  I spoke Frick’s name and both shepherds appeared behind us in about two seconds, ears up, ready for action.

  “Man, I love that shit,” he said.

  “So do they,” I said.

  He watched the shepherds for a moment and then asked me if I was married. I said no, how about him?

  “I make it a point to keep women out of my life,” he said. “I plan to retire a semi-wealthy man, and women have a way of screwing that up for guys in my line of work.”

  “Not the good ones,” I said, thinking of the millions my ex had left me.

  “Both of’em?” he said with an ironic grin.

  After Greenberg left, I showered and called Mary Ellen Goode. It took some sweet-talking, but she finally agreed to pick me up at my hotel and take me over to beautiful downtown Murphy, North Carolina, where the Howard family lived. Janey Howard’s mother met us at th
e door of their two-story house, which was on a tree-lined street straight out of Mayberry. She was a tiny woman, and while she seemed genuinely glad to see Mary Ellen, she gave me a decisively wary look. Mary Ellen had called ahead. I didn’t know what she’d told the woman about me, but I could see that Mrs. Howard wasn’t exactly thrilled with my being there.

  Janey Howard was waiting for us in the living room. She was sitting in a rocking chair and did not look up when we came in. I winced when I saw her face. Her body language was that of a small child who knows she’s going to be hit again and is resigned to the first blow. Mary Ellen and I took seats on the couch opposite the rocking chair, while Mrs. Howard stood next to her daughter. I had told Mary Ellen what I wanted to ask, but agreed to let her do the actual talking.

  “Janey, you’re looking a little better than the last time I saw you,” she said gently.

  Janey blinked but did not respond. Her mother patted her shoulder and the girl twitched. I saw that Janey was not as small as her mother, but she didn’t look old enough to have been a park ranger, or even a probationer. Her face was still badly bruised, one eye bandaged shut. Her knees were locked rigidly together and there was a noticeable tremor in her right hand.

  Mary Ellen told Janey that I had come all the way from Triboro to find out who had done this thing to her. Janey shot me a quick, furtive look, but then resumed her thousand-meter stare. The tremor increased. The medical report had said that she had been raped, sodomized, and beaten. Four cracked ribs. Multiple hematomas. Broken nose. Four teeth permanently gone. Jaw dislocated. Retinal tear in one eye. Hearing damage in one ear due to a ruptured eardrum. Sunburn, insect bites, and a bacterial infection from contaminated water during the time she had wandered the woods.

  “Janey, the ambulance driver told us you said two words when they took you to the hospital. Do you remember going to the hospital?”

  Janey licked her puffy lips and nodded once, although she still didn’t look directly at either of us.

  “He said the words were ‘grinning’ and ‘hangman.’ Do you remember saying that?’

  Janey shook her head emphatically.

  “She doesn’t remember anything,” Mrs. Howard said. Her expression said that that was probably for the best.

  “Did they hang you?” I asked.

  Janey looked at me for the first time. There was a tremor in both her hands now.

  “She doesn’t remember anything,” Mrs. Howard said again. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

  Janey took several breaths and then nodded. Mary Ellen had been right, I thought. This was a total waste of time. The poor thing had simply cleared core on all her memories of the incident. This was pointless. I nudged Mary Ellen and indicated with my head that it was time to go.

  Mary Ellen looked relieved. She got up and went over to Janey. She took the girl’s hand and told her everything was going to be all right and not to worry. Nobody was going to hurt her anymore. Nobody was mad at her. As far as I could tell, very little of it was penetrating. The one question that was really bothering me was why she was still alive. Had the bad guy just let her go, or had she escaped? With all that damage, they may have just dumped her. So maybe this total amnesia was related to some final warning, such as You say one word and III come back and do it all again.

  Mrs. Howard escorted us to the front vestibule. “I told you this wasn’t going to be of any use,” she said to Mary Ellen. “It’s only because it’s you and not that other ranger that I agreed to this.” She spoke as if I weren’t standing right there.

  “I think she was warned off,” I said to no one in particular, but loud enough for Janey in the other room to hear me. “As in, she saw something and she was told to keep quiet or more bad things would happen.” I paused for a long moment. “And I completely understand,” I added. “I’d do the same thing. I’d just clam up.”

  Mrs. Howard gave me an angry look. But as she started to reply, Janey said something from the living room.

  “What’s that, dear?” Mrs. Howard asked, visibly surprised.

  “Look in the lake,” Janey said, her voice breaking. “By the red rocks.”

  Mary Ellen looked blank. I immediately wanted to go back in there to see what else I could elicit, but Mary Ellen shut me down. “We’ll just be leaving now, Mrs. Howard,” Mary Ellen said. “Thank you for letting us talk to her. A little bit at a time-that’s the way to take it, right? We’ll just be on our way.”

  Mary Ellen had my arm now and was tugging me firmly toward the front door. I watched Mrs. Howard try to hide her confusion and then quickly agree. She’d made a big deal out of the fact that her daughter remembered nothing, and now the girl had told us something.

  Back out in the car, I said nothing until Mary Ellen had had time to drive off and gather her thoughts.

  “Okay, why’d we eject just when she started to talk?” I asked.

  “I recognized that look in her eyes, Cam,” she said. “I’ve seen it in my own mirror. Telling us anything at all cost her. I don’t know what any of that means, but you wanted something more and you got it. I just thought one more question would be too much.”

  I considered that and then accepted it. “You’re probably right. So: What lake, and where are those red rocks?”

  3

  The following morning, I decided to drive over to Robbins County and make a formal call on the notorious Sheriff M. C. Mingo. Mary Ellen had been undecided about following up on Janey’s cryptic information, as the Park Service had officially closed the investigation and her boss most definitely wanted the whole incident to stay in its box. She said she’d talk it over with some of the other rangers and call me later that day.

  M. C. Mingo was in a meeting, so the desk officer asked me to come back in an hour. I went to a local diner for breakfast and then took a windshield tour of Rocky Falls. That didn’t take long. The town had sprung up along a two-lane road that paralleled the Roaring River as it cut its way down toward the Chance Reservoir. The river was about fifty feet wide as it ran noisily through Rocky Falls, dropping nearly five hundred feet in elevation along the two-mile notch occupied by the town. On one side of the road were most of the businesses and gas stations, with a single street of homes above and behind that. On the river side of the road were larger homes, interspersed with whitewater rafting outfitters, restaurants, B and Bs, and two motels. Across the river, the shoulders of Blue Home Mountain rose dramatically above the town, where they faced the slopes of Scotch Blood Mountain on the other side. There was a single rusted steel-trussed bridge crossing the river, and where it intersected the main street of town stood city hall and the sheriff’s office. I parked in the visitors’ area, opened the windows for the shepherds, and went back in.

  The desk sergeant asked me to take a seat and then made a phone call. A few minutes later a young woman came out of the sheriff’s private office. She was very pretty in a disco-trashy fashion, tall, black-haired, lots of lipstick, sloe-eyed, and amply endowed in all the right places. She was wearing painted-on jeans, a straining halter top, and bright red cowboy boots. She smiled at the sergeant, who was unabashedly locked on to that lush body, gave me the once-over, and then sashayed out the front door with a very deliberate, traffic-stopping walk. An invisible stratum of flowery perfume lingered in the air behind her.

  “That there’s Rue Creigh,” the desk sergeant announced, proudly. “Ain’t she somethin’, though.” The phone on his desk rang, and the sergeant, after clearing his throat, told me I could go in now.

  Sheriff M. C. Mingo was in his early fifties and was about as plain a man as I had ever seen in a sheriff’s uniform. He was five-eight or -nine, wore large bifocal eyeglasses, and had the soft, round, mealy-mouthed face and superior churchwarden expression I usually associated with Carolina politicians, all smiling eyes and teeth with just a hint of B’rer Fox glinting behind the glasses. His hair was dyed an unnatural dark brown. He had tiny hands, but his grip when he shook hands with me was surprisingly hard. He
wore a perfectly pressed khaki uniform, which could not disguise a tiny potbelly. He had a. 357 Magnum chrome-plated revolver on his hip, and his badge positively gleamed. I gave him points for not wearing one of those ridiculous four-star-general collar devices beloved of so many police chiefs these days. He indicated a chair for me and sat down behind his desk, which was piled high with neat stacks of paperwork.

  “You’re that cat dancer fella, aren’t you,” he said in a mild, high-pitched voice. “Up from Manceford County, right?”

  “I’m retired from the sheriff’s office there,” I said. “Doing some private work these days.”

  “A private eye,” the sheriff said dramatically. “My gracious. Right here in Robbins County. Who’da thunk it. What can we do for you there, Lieutenant?”

  The mention of my old rank spoke volumes. Someone had made a call during my hour-long wait to see the sheriff. I thought I could detect that bighaired bombshell’s perfume lingering in the air.

  “A friend has asked me to look into what happened to a probationer ranger assigned to the Thirty Mile ranger station over in Carrigan County,” I replied.

  “A friend,” the sheriff repeated encouragingly. His expression was pleasant, but those crinkly eyes had not lost their hard edge.

  I smiled. “One of the rangers at Thirty Mile. She was Janey Howard’s mentor. Apparently, the Park Service has put the case into a let’s-move-on box.”

  The Sheriff nodded. “Didn’t happen in Robbins County, that much I know,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I understand that nobody knows very much about what happened.”

  “Now, now,” the sheriff said. “You weren’t listening. I said: It didn’t happen in Robbins County. See, if it had, I’d have known all about it, and we’d have some guilty bastards sweating bullets out in the back cells. Whatever did happen, it must have happened in the national park. That would be on federal land.”