SPIDER MOUNTAIN Read online

  “Bingo,” I said softly, relieving the dogs of their prizes. “I’d say she went that away.”

  “But why?” Mary Ellen asked.

  “Saw something? Heard something? Went to investigate and found trouble. Let’s give it a try. We still officially in the park?”

  “Not when we leave this trail. Actually, the lake belongs to the power company; there’s a fifty-foot margin around the shoreline that belongs to the park. Up there is your favorite county.”

  “Terrific,” I said, and sent the dogs out ahead of us along the game trail. If there were black hats up there in the trees, the shepherds would find them first. I hoped.

  We climbed up the rocky slope and into a stand of pines, where the game trail disappeared. The ground was covered in a thick carpet of pine needles. The shepherds ran silent zigzag patterns with their noses down, exploring all the woodland scents. The ground leveled off about a hundred yards into the trees, and then we broke out onto the fire lane that cut across the face of the larger ridge beyond. I inspected the ground but saw no ruts or tracks that looked at all recent. There were hoofprints and the multiridged striations of a tracked vehicle of some kind underneath the weeds. Rainstorms had cut some deep runoff grooves down the lane where deer tracks were visible.

  “Maybe she heard something up here on the fire lane,” I said, “but there’s no sign of what it was.”

  We continued uphill for fifteen minutes and then retraced our steps, passing where we’d come out of the pines and going down the fire lane an equal distance. We came to a switchback in the lane that widened out into a small plateau. A huge old oak stuck thick limbs out over the bend, but again, there were no recent vehicle signs. The sun was slanting down toward the western mountains, whose ridgelines were backlit by an increasingly orange sky. The trees were starting to throw long shadows, and the shepherds flopped down along the side of the fire lane, panting.

  “This happened a month and a half ago?” I asked.

  She nodded, knowing what I was thinking. Looking for tracks was pointless.

  We went back up to the point in the pine woods where we’d first come out and started back down toward the lake. I kept looking for any signs that the probationer had come this way, but there were none. The woods were thick enough to be getting dark, and I wondered what might be watching us. Halfway down through the woods, Mary Ellen stepped into a stump hole hidden by the pine needles and turned an ankle, so we had to stop and let her rub the soreness out for a few minutes. I held her hand while she hobbled the rest of the way to the edge of the trees, but when we stepped out onto the hillside, she pointed excitedly down at the lake.

  “Look,” she said. “Red rocks.”

  I saw what she was talking about. Where a spine of the big ridge came down into the lake, there were three large boulders about twenty feet offshore. The setting sun was painting them dark orange, if not red.

  “Okay,” I said. “But what are we looking for?”

  “Beats me, but let’s go down there,” she said. “I’m ready for some flat ground.”

  The two shepherds started down with us but then stopped and looked back up into the woods. I noticed and turned around. Both dogs were looking intently into the tree line, but the advancing shadows made it impossible for me to see anything. I called them to come on, and they turned around and rejoined us, albeit reluctantly.

  When we finally reached the rocks, they weren’t really red anymore, even though the western sky was. They were just three twenty-foot-high boulders that had rolled down the slope ten thousand years ago and stopped here, probably many years before the lake had been created by the TVA dam at the other end. A dead tree created a bridge of sorts from the shore out to the first rock, and I, using my stick for balance, went out on the trunk to look into the water.

  Where something glinted on the bottom. I bent down to see what it was and then swore softly.

  “What?” Mary Ellen called from the shore.

  “This lake belongs to the power company, right?” I asked. “Not Robbins County?”

  “Right,” she said. “What do you see?”

  “I think it’s a body,” I called back to her. “All wrapped up in chains.”

  I got back to the lodge just after ten o’clock that evening. I let the dogs run around for a few minutes while I fixed myself a scotch and then called them back in. Carrigan County deputies had been the first responders to our report of a body in the lake, followed by the Park Service. Mary Ellen and I had managed to extract ourselves from the fun and games around eight. We’d had a quick dinner in town, and then she’d gone home. I had the sense that discovering the body had upset her, and that I’d resumed my role as harbinger of death and destruction. She hadn’t said anything, but I’d felt it.

  Sheriff Hayes had given me a head-shaking look when he arrived on scene. Typhoid Mary’s older brother was back in town. No one had recognized the body, because the fish had been at it for a while, so identification was going to take some time and applied organic chemistry. The sheriff hadn’t been happy when he found out why we’d gone up there looking. Mary Ellen hadn’t quite understood that, until I pointed out that our getting the girl to talk and then reveal a solid lead might just possibly make the Carrigan County Sheriff’s Office look bad. I had called Bobby Lee Baggett back in Triboro to tell him what we’d found. Bobby Lee pointed out that if the girl had witnessed a murder, then discovery of the body put her in danger. I hadn’t thought of that, but I got Mary Ellen to say something to Sheriff Hayes. It turned out that he had thought of that, so now Mary Ellen was on his shit list as well. I called Baby Greenberg’s number and told the voice mail what we’d found and where. I decided not to add to my reputation by telling Sheriff Hayes what I’d witnessed on the road to Rocky Falls.

  The single malt was a welcome relief, and, as best I could tell, the shepherds weren’t mad at me. I walked out to the screened porch that stuck out over the creek bank. The night was cool and clear. A million tree frogs were chirring in the darkness, and the creek splashed pleasantly under the cabin. I was about to sit down when the shepherds woofed from the front porch. Then someone knocked on the screen door.

  I hadn’t left any lights on, but there were some solar sidewalk lights out front and I could see that a slender, dark-haired woman was standing out there. The shepherds were sitting up, but they’d been trained not to execute a canine feeding frenzy display just because a stranger showed up at the front door. They made their presence known, and that usually took care of the Bible salesmen and prospective intruders.

  “Yes?” I said from behind the screen door.

  “Lieutenant Richter?” she said in a husky, low-pitched voice. I couldn’t see her features. “I’m Carrie Harper Santángelo, SBI. Sheriff Baggett made a call? If you can turn on a light I can show you my ID.”

  I laughed and opened the screen door for her. “I would but I don’t know where the switch is. Come on in. Don’t mind them—they’ve been fed.”

  “That’s good,” she said, eyeing the two big shepherds as she came in. “I’m told that it’s the ones who don’t go nuts when the doorbell rings that bear watching.”

  “All dogs bite,” I recited. “I’m having a scotch on the back porch—care to join me?”

  “Sure,” she said. She was five-seven or -eight, jet black hair, with a classical, aquiline nose. She was of either Italian or American Indian descent. She was wearing jeans, a white blouse, and a loose-fitting, lightweight blue blazer. Once in the kitchen she presented her creds, which I dutifully examined. I got her a drink, and we went out onto the back porch. I brought the bottle. I saw her eyeing all the wedding suite accoutrements.

  “Which office?” I asked.

  “Raleigh. I’m an inspector in the professional standards division at headquarters. I drove out today. If this is the bridal suite, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “All I could get on short notice. Plus, if I drink too much, a bed’s never farther than about five f
eet away.”

  “You don’t look like a man with a drinking problem,” she said. Her complexion was very smooth in the light spilling out of the kitchen. She had dark, almost black eyes, and she looked right at me when she spoke. Professional standards work, known as internal affairs in some jurisdictions, encouraged the direct approach.

  “No, I guess not,” I said. She kept her blazer buttoned even though she was sitting down. I could make out the lump of a shoulder rig just under her left shoulder.

  “So,” she said. “M. C. Mingo. I understand you’ve met?”

  “Today,” I said. I then explained what I was doing up here in Carrigan County, my prior relationship with the Park Service and Mary Ellen Goode, and why I’d touched base with Bobby Lee. She listened without interrupting. I had the impression that some part of that dark-eyed brain was recording my every word. Or the other lump in her pocket was a voice-activated recorder.

  “Tell me something, if you don’t mind,” she said, when I’d finished. “What was the deal with your not testifying in that mountain lion case?”

  I sighed. Inquiring minds always wanted to know, especially if they were cops. “How much time you got?” I asked warily.

  “How much scotch you got?” she replied.

  “That much time,” I said. “Okay, let’s do the abridged version.”

  When I’d finished, she nodded and sipped some scotch. “And now you’re private and working for the district court. What’s that like?”

  “It’s not like being boss of the MCAT in Manceford County.”

  “What’s the Park Service think about your being here?”

  “Less and less,” I said. “Apparently their headquarters wanted this mess with the probationer all to go away. Bad for park business. After today, it’s probably going to reflash. So: M. C. Mingo?”

  “Right,” she said. “M. C. Mingo. Sheriff of Robbins County for the past twenty-odd years. No opposition at election time. Ever. Related to the evil hag who runs most if not all of the drug trade in Robbins County.”

  “That would be Vivian Creigh.”

  “The one and only Grinny. Our intel is that she runs it like a Mafia don—stays up on Spider Mountain and controls every pound of meth, grass, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and even the damn ginseng. She has soldiers, and they work for a capo, her son, Nathan. Her father ran it before her and reportedly invited his three grown sons to settle who’d be in charge when he checked out. One brother died exploring an old gold mine, which caved in following a mysterious explosion. A second brother accused Grinny of having a hand in the matter, and then he died after being set upon by a pack of wild dogs.”

  I nodded. “I’ve seen those bad boys.”

  “Probably not,” she said. “This all happened when Grinny was eighteen. She’s fifty now, or thereabouts.”

  “Then their descendants, maybe.” I told her about watching the dog pack take down the fat man. She whistled quietly.

  “What happened to the third brother?” I asked.

  “He became the sheriff of Robbins County.”

  “Ah-ha!”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “So—then there’s Nathan. Grinny was married?”

  “Probably not. There’s Nathan and a daughter, Rowena, who are reportedly by different fathers, who have themselves long since gone into the cold, cold ground. A Creigh family tradition, apparently.”

  “Spider Mountain. As in black widow.”

  “That’s what some of the locals call it. Interestingly, nobody in law enforcement has ever seen her. We know where her place is, but that’s about it.”

  “Why is that?” I asked. “I mean, you and the DEA guys seem to know a lot about the Creigh clan. Why hasn’t some state or federal task force gone in there and hauled the whole bunch in for questioning?”

  She tinkled the ice in her empty glass, and I poured her a refill. “You know how it is,” she said. “The SBI comes in only when we’re invited in. M. C. Mingo declines to invite. The DEA prefers to work alone. The Bureau comes in only if it’s big enough and there’s positive PR potential. Right now they don’t consider western North Carolina as having positive PR potential, especially after the Eric Rudolph fiasco. Homeland Security is obsessing with grubbing out crazed Muslims. The state attorney general has his hands full with urban crime. The sheriff is related to the kingpin. That’s why not.”

  “Amazing.”

  She shrugged. “Personally, I don’t think anyone cared all that much until the meth epidemic began. Hillbillies running ‘shine, maybe some grass, whacking each other out with nineteenth-century rifles over some hundred-year-distant insult—big deal, as long as they kept it in the hollers.”

  “But meth is changing all that?”

  “Yes. There’s a river of the stuff coming out of these hills, all under the control of Grinny Creigh. We think. We just can’t prove it.”

  “Big money?”

  “At the retail end, yes. But we don’t believe it’s all about the money for her. I mean, hell, you’ve been to Rocky Falls. What would big bucks get you there—a double helping of grits? She lives on the side of a mountain in a log cabin with a privy, for crying out loud. No, it’s about control. The Creigh clan has run the dark side of things in Robbins County for decades. Grinny Creigh is a spider: Step out onto her web and here she comes, fangs and all.”

  “So it’s the sheer quantity, not just the basic crime?”

  “Yes. That’s supposedly why Greenberg and his crew are working up here.”

  “Why do you say supposedly?”

  “Because they don’t seem to do much. On the other hand, that’s a secretive bunch, so nobody really knows.”

  “I met him the other day.”

  “We heard,” she said. I thought I saw the ghost of a smile cross her severe face.

  I grinned back. “They got uppity around my shepherds. What can I say?”

  “Baby’s a city boy,” she said. “A little jumpy and aggressive. But as far as we know, he’s a good cop.”

  “He’s a frustrated cop right now,” I said. “Says he can’t figure a way into Robbins County, either. He was interested in the fact that I might be able to go up there and shake some bushes.”

  “Well, there you are,” she said. “Work a deal. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have some feds behind you.”

  “Only thing is, I think they’d be way behind me,” I said, recalling Mary Ellen’s comment. “Besides, I didn’t come up here to solve the meth problem. I came to help Dr. Goode find out what happened to her probationer. And I think we got closer today.”

  “Interesting that you’re helping her but not the Park Service.”

  I nodded. “True, but they’re apparently scared shitless of getting into a blood feud with the Creigh clan, who probably know the park better than any ten rangers. I guess I can see their point.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “You let a bunch of crooks, even colorful ones, know you’re scared of them, they get bolder and bolder. What we need up here is a SEAL team. Send them into Robbins County and let them start cutting some prominent throats in the night until all this meth crap stops. Unfortunately, they’re all otherwise engaged these days.”

  I laughed. “Don’t remember ever meeting a bloodthirsty SBI agent before,” I said. “Usually you guys are all about the paper chase.”

  She didn’t smile back at me. “There’s another thing,” she said. “One we don’t understand at all. The state police collared a guy for vehicular homicide in Robbins County. Basically, a case of serious road rage. Nudged a tourist minivan off a cliff with his pickup because they were going too slow. At one point he implied that they better not mess with him because he worked for Grinny Creigh.”

  “The state guys just love to be intimidated.”

  “It’s almost as good as resisting arrest. Anyway, long story short, their detective bureau tried to turn him, without success. In the process of questioning him, though, he dangled a tidbit, saying that Grinny was a ‘f
lorist.’ The cops were baffled, and when this guy realized they didn’t understand the code, he stopped talking.”

  “A florist? As in, say, hallucinogenic botanicals?”

  She shrugged. “Who the hell knows? Street slang morphs daily. Nobody’s ever heard the term. But if you do get involved in Robbins County and hear that word, we’d love to know what kind of new and original evil shit that is.”

  She fished in her pocket and produced a business card. “Keep this handy,” she said. “You find a hole in Robbins County that regular law enforcement can drive through, please call me. If I can’t talk my bosses into exploiting it, I’ll take some leave, come up here, and go after it myself.”

  “That sounds like there’s a personal angle,” I said.

  She looked right back at me. “Anything’s possible, Lieutenant. By the way, I haven’t informed the local law that I’m here. I’d appreciate your keeping that confidence. In the meantime, be careful. The hills really are alive and all that good stuff.”

  After she’d left, I slipped on a jacket and took the dogs out for a last call among the defenseless trees. The cabins were mostly dark and the shepherds had ranged ahead down a creekside path. This was getting interesting, I thought. First a DEA agent, and now an SBI agent, both complaining about not being able to penetrate Robbins County, and both offering to partner up if I should succeed. And why should I succeed where law enforcement had failed? All I’d done was to prize some useful information out of the injured probationer. We’d found a body, but there was still no direct evidentiary tie to Janey Howard. I wondered if that “grinning hangman” business meant the guy in the lake, assuming it was a man, had been hanged. It certainly hadn’t been your usual park excursion.

  And what in the world was this “florist” stuff? The druggy world came up with more interesting code names for their addictions than even the government. But I’d come up to find out what happened to Janey Howard, not to chase druggies. I think that chasing druggies has become a form of white-collar welfare for law enforcement. As far as I’m concerned, drugs ought to be decriminalized and sold at government outlets for tax revenue. Let the addicts shoot up and die if they want to—meth, heroin, ‘ludes, coke, tranks, ups, downs, you name it, they are all just manifestations of Mr. Darwin’s theory of natural selection. I just wanted to quit finding the miserable bastards climbing through my basement windows.