SPIDER MOUNTAIN Read online

  “It’s a long story. Let’s all go to my cabin.”

  Once in the cabin, the senior Carrigan County sheriff’s deputy told me that a guest on the second floor had seen a pickup truck leave the parking lot with what looked like a body in the bed. He’d called 911, and the responding deputies found my two German shepherds racing around the parking lot looking for me and displaying just a bit of aggression, meaning no one in the lodge could get to a vehicle. It also kept all the cops in their patrol cars until their sergeant, who’d shown me into Sheriff Hayes’s office the other day, had called Mary Ellen Goode, a known associate of the possibly missing ex-lieutenant Richter, to corral the agitated shepherds. A ninety-minute search through the surrounding area had produced nothing but the facts that I appeared to be missing, my cabin was unlocked, and my car keys and wallet were in the kitchen. They also had a second witness statement about a woman seen leaving my cabin earlier in the evening. Mary Ellen had called her supervisor at Thirty Mile station, the redoubtable Ranger Bob, who’d brought along the senior law enforcement ranger from the station.

  I got everyone situated out on the creekside porch and held an impromptu debrief, leaving out only my visitation from the lady SBI agent. Then Sheriff Hayes himself arrived, and we had to go through it all again, while the other cops verified and added to their notes. When I had finished, the sheriff gave me a long look and then commented on my continuing propensity to instigate trouble.

  “You are a regular shit magnet, Lieutenant,” he said.

  I grinned. “Guilty,” I said. “But you have to admit, you know more about what happened to that girl than when I first came here.”

  “And now that we do, will you be leaving soon?” the sheriff asked, sounding hopeful.

  “That depends,” Mary Ellen said, provoking an annoyed look from Ranger Bob, who’d been about to speak.

  “On …?” prompted the sheriff.

  “Mrs. Howard called me earlier this evening,” she said. “After she heard about our finding that body, she sat down with Janey and had a heart-to-heart. She said Janey was ready to tell me what happened, although she did not want to talk to the police. So I went back to Murphy. I took along a tape recorder.”

  She fished the recorder out of her bag and set it on the table. We all listened to Janey Howard tell her tale of witnessing the execution and being taken down, assaulted, and then driven away out into the woods dressed in only a blanket.

  “So now we know what the word ‘hangman’ was all about,” Mary Ellen said.

  “And that there were two men involved in it, not just the fat boy I saw getting eaten by a dog pack,” I said. “Grinny Creigh did not tell the entire truth.”

  The sheriff just stared at me, until I remembered that I hadn’t told him about the dog-pack incident. I did now.

  “Ain’t that something, now,” the sheriff mused, shaking his head. He turned to Mary Ellen. “We can’t use that tape as evidence, you understand. If there’s gonna be a prosecution, she’s gonna have to make a statement, ID a bad guy, and testify in court.”

  “I understand,” Mary Ellen said. “I just thought you would appreciate finally hearing from the victim. At least you know where to look.”

  “Yeah,” the sheriff said unhappily. “That’s not necessarily progress. Means I now have to call M. C. Mingo.” He turned to me. “You want to press charges?”

  “I’ll think about it—it was more of a summons before the throne than a kidnapping. Will you need a formal statement as to what I witnessed out there on the road with those dogs?”

  “Can you describe the victim?”

  “Ragout?” I said, prompting suppressed grins among the other cops.

  “Let’s see what M. C. has to say tomorrow morning,” the sheriff said. “In the meantime, give some thought to going back to Manceford County. Actually, give it a lot of thought; I can’t stand all this goddamned excitement.”

  I promised I would, and the meeting broke up. Mary Ellen stayed behind, after having exchanged what I sensed to be a few tense words with Ranger Bob as he left the cabin.

  “Your boss seems unhappy tonight,” I said.

  “Let’s say he isn’t thrilled with developments,” she said. “I have been suitably cautioned about bringing outsiders into Park Service business.”

  I thought about a scotch and then decided to make some coffee instead. Mary Ellen and I went back out to the porch.

  “Given all the hostile vibes up here, maybe the sheriff is right,” I said. “I should back out and let you folks get on with your interesting lives.”

  She gave me a wan look and nodded. “I really appreciate your coming,” she said. “I’m just sorry …”

  “That it turned up yet another dead body and more violence?”

  “That wasn’t your fault,” she said with a sigh. “But…”

  “Yeah, but. It does seem to happen a lot. Like every time you and I get together. Maybe the sheriff was also right about my being a shit magnet. I wish things were different.”

  “This is such a beautiful place,” she said, looking out at the creek rushing through the night below our feet. “The Smokies. The park. This whole end of the state. It’s sad to think there are people who come out here to hurt other people, make narcotics, hunt people down with packs of dogs. That’s the stuff that happens in big cities, not out here in God’s country.”

  “Violence in these mountains was here long before Mr. Vanderbilt bought the Smokies and gave them to the government for a park,” I said. “I imagine it takes a hard individual to live off the land out here.”

  “Who was the girl in the truck?” she asked, a little too casually.

  “Rowena Creigh,” I replied. “Grinny’s daughter. She seems to think very highly of herself. She showed up in her truck after I’d been dismissed. It beat walking back.”

  “Was she the one the man said he saw leaving your cabin earlier this evening?”

  I was surprised, but then remembered that second witness. “No,” I said. I didn’t elaborate. I sensed that somehow all these unknown women had become important to Mary Ellen, although, superficially at least, she had no claims on my loyalty. And vice versa.

  “There going to be formal repercussions from Ranger Bob?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I don’t think so. I think he’s more upset about you than me.” She hesitated. “Bob’s carrying a bit of a torch, I think. I keep fending off, but someone must have told him persistence pays. One day I’ll have to get firm, I suppose. Mostly it’s harmless.”

  I remembered the hostile looks Bob had been shooting my way during my little debrief. I wondered how harmless the guy really was. Mary Ellen was a striking woman who took her beauty in stride; she might be a whole lot more important to Ranger Bob than she knew.

  “All the more reason for me to get out of Dodge,” I said, finishing my coffee. “I’m glad I could be of some help. I think.”

  She smiled. “We’ll have a ton of paperwork to do after today. I’ll let you know what they find out about the victim and the second hangman.”

  Once she’d left I thought about taking the dogs out for a final night walk. I decided against it. One unscheduled truck ride was enough for one evening. I decided on a nightcap after all. As I sat out on the porch in the dark, I wondered if my association with the lovely Mary Ellen Goode wasn’t drawing to a close on more fronts than just the Howard case.

  We’d met by chance during the cat dancers investigation, and I’d been smitten, probably like every other normal man who saw her for the first time. But the fact was, the entire context of our time together had been violent and especially frightening for a park ranger with a Ph.D. A man and a woman may draw very close under those circumstances, but in the cold light of day, it was common ground you both wanted to go away.

  Frack came out to the porch and flopped down on the rug. We both decided to sit there and listen to the creek go by.

  4

  The muttskis roused me early the next morning
with some tentative woofing on the front porch. I grabbed my bathrobe and went to the door, where a deputy stood waiting patiently, flat hat in hand and mirrored sunglasses firmly in place. He looked to be at least thirteen. Or perhaps I was getting old.

  “Morning, Deputy. What’s up?”

  “Sheriff needs to see you,” the deputy replied, looking nervously at the shepherds now that I had the screen door open. They were sitting behind me, waiting for breakfast. “Problem in Robbins County.”

  “What kind of problem?” I asked, wondering why the early-morning summons.

  “Um,” the deputy said, knotting his hands. “Sheriff Mingo says you killed a man over there last night?”

  I blinked in the bright morning sunlight. “News to me,” I said, “but you tell the sheriff I’ll be right over.”

  “Do I need to wait for you, Lieutenant?” the deputy asked, pointedly.

  “Nope. I need a shower and some coffee, and then I’ll be right along. Want to come in and meet my shepherds?”

  “No, sir, reckon I don’t. Big dogs make me nervous.”

  “Okay, then. Tell him thirty minutes.”

  The sheriff was waiting for me at his office a half hour later.

  “Shit magnet, reporting as ordered,” I said. The sheriff smiled grimly and offered coffee. He then explained that M. C. Mingo had called over from Rocky Falls and asked him to round up one Mister C. Richter and deliver him to the Robbins County Sheriff’s Office, forthwith, as they say in the big city.

  “Says he has a complaint report of a fight at Grinny Creigh’s place on Spider Mountain wherein you assaulted two men, one of whom was sixty-three years old. The Creigh people say one’s got a broken leg and the old guy’s dead from a fist to the head.”

  “It was an elbow,” I said. “It still hurts. He have a warrant out?”

  “Now that you ask, he didn’t actually mention any warrant. You said last night two guys tried to administer a little discipline and you put ’em down. Care to amplify?”

  I went through the fracas in detail, reminding the sheriff that I had been abducted by these two men, chained into the back of a pickup truck, and taken against my will to the hills for my “conversation” with Grinny Creigh. “The older guy was out cold but definitely breathing when I left; the other guy did seem to have a broken leg. But I’ll claim self-defense in the context of a kidnapping. And I will get a warrant for the whole damn clan.”

  The sheriff drummed his fingers on his desk for a moment. “Lemme call him back. Why don’t you wait out in the bullpen.”

  “Ask him if he can produce a body,” I said from the doorway. “You know, habeas corpus?”

  “Don’t tell me my business, young man,” Hayes snapped, and waved me out of his office. He summoned me back in ten minutes. I had taken the time to make a call of my own to my estate attorney in Triboro, J. Oliver Strong, Esq. Lawyer Strong was a wills-and-probate guy, but his firm had a stable of criminal defense lawyers. Strong told me to sit tight and that one of them would call me back within the hour.

  “Seems M. C. does not have a warrant,” the sheriff reported. “Although he says he can scare one up one pretty quick. FYI, the magistrate over there is married to a Creigh. The habeas question got a little bit murky, though. He hasn’t personally seen a body, nor have any of his deputies. Whole thing’s ‘verbal’ at the moment, pending lots and lots of further investigation.”

  “They’re really all over it, aren’t they.”

  “I told him what you said about getting a warrant out for Grinny and her whole crew. He started in with nobody having proof of any abduction until I told him we had witnesses at the lodge, plus the fact of Rue Creigh delivering your tired ass back to the lodge around midnight. That definitely slowed him up some. I asked how likely it was that she’d be offering you a ride in her pick-’em-up truck if you’d just killed one of their people with your bare hands right there in her front yard.”

  “What’d he say to that?”

  “That it would probably have turned her on. Rue’s got kinda of an exotic reputation in these parts.”

  “Yikes. So where are we? I have lawyers in motion.”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Ball’s in his court right now. If the Creighs can produce a body, and he can get his warrant, he may or may not follow through with it. He has to know that the feds have been looking for a way into Robbins County for months now.”

  “And?”

  “Kidnapping is a federal crime. A perfect handle for them to get right into the middle of all this. You know how they do—come in riding one charge and then suddenly growing arms like an octopus. My guess, even if that guy did kick? Mingo’s gonna think on it and then fail to produce a corpus. One less Creigh isn’t worth a federal invasion. In the meantime, however, I need you to stick around.”

  “Damn, I was just about to declare victory and leave town.”

  “Be still, my heart,” he said wistfully. “Right now I need to see what the jungle drums are saying up in the coves and hollers. Maybe find out who this supposedly dead guy was. And, more importantly, whether or not he has kin of his own.”

  “As in, if M. C. isn’t going to handle it, some irate relatives might?”

  “As in, you bet your flatlander ass. You better stay out of open windows and keep those dogs with you.”

  “They’re out in the car right now. But wouldn’t I be safer waiting this out in Triboro?”

  The sheriff scratched an ear. “That might pose me a political problem,” he said. “Folks will be watching to see what happens with this. You and I are sitting here drinking coffee because you’re an ex-cop. If I let you leave the county, I’ll hear about it. So stick around. This won’t take long. And in the meantime, can we get your formal statement about how y’all came to stumble on that body up at Crown Lake?”

  I dictated a statement to the sheriff’s secretary, signed it, and drove back to the lodge. I lectured the dogs on the way back about wandering off when there were bad guys hiding in the bushes. They paid close attention for a good thirty seconds before yawning in unison and going to sleep. The defense lawyer called on my way back to the love cabin. I briefed him on the situation. He told me to say nothing to anyone until I knew what the real situation was, and that his retainer for a felony criminal charge was fifteen thousand. I noted the advice and the price and said I’d be in touch if there were any further developments.

  Back at the cabin I called Mary Ellen Goode and told her what was going on. She said she’d already heard. Her voice was strained and she was speaking formally.

  “Lemme guess, Ranger Bob standing right there?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir, that’s correct,” she replied. “Let me look into the matter and call you back.”

  I said okay and hung up. I then called Tony back in Triboro and brought him up to date on developments in the provinces. Tony had already heard. The lawyers’ courthouse gossip circuit had been humming ever since my first call to Lawyer Strong. Women had nothing on lawyers when it came to gossiping, unless they were lady lawyers.

  “Bare hands?” Tony exclaimed. “That’s what you get for turning into a gym rat. Think you’re the Terminator now or what?”

  “It felt a little bit like Sicily,” I said. “All those guys standing around in the dark with their luparas. I guess I’d had enough of being pushed around by toothless cretins. Listen, I need some stuff sent up here.”

  After about three months of relative idleness, a friend in the Marshals Service had offered me a job doing routine investigatory work as an independent contractor for the federal court in Triboro. Once Annie Bellamy’s estate cleared, I no longer needed to do anything but read my financial statements, but the walls had begun to close in. Anything was better than just sitting around. It wasn’t exactly demanding stuff—background checks, witness management, short-notice paper scrambles during a court session—but it got me out of the house and interacting with other people again, and it was also a great excuse for Sheriff Bobby Lee Bagge
tt to stop hounding me about getting back out in the world and doing something besides pump iron and brood about getting some revenge down the line.

  Sergeant Horace Stackpole, one of my guys who’d been on the original MCAT, took retirement a few months after that and looked me up for a drink. We were joined by another cop and got to talking about what cops can do after leaving the Job. I bitched about the boring nature of the work I was doing, and the third guy suggested that I form my own company and hire only ex-cops, like Horace, and we could all work as much or as little as we wanted to. The courts had an unending need for people who could retrieve information and documents, witnesses who might not know they were witnesses, and other odds and ends quickly. Cops knew how to do all of that, and had the networks to get to certain people and information quickly. I suggested that Horace found the company, but, as he pointed out, I was the one who both had money and didn’t need to work.

  So I did, and Hide and Seek Investigations, LLC stood up a month later, with a condition of employment being that you were an ex-cop who had retired in good standing with your department. Coming from me, that was something of a dark joke among the guys, but what the hell: I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I justified the ex-cop criterion because of some semimysterious security requirements of the courts. That of course was BS, but it kept the professional job-discrimination Nazis off our backs. I made it a rule that everyone working there had to approve any new hires. Any cop who makes it to retirement has both an established professional reputation and people who know him and will vouch for him—or not, as the case might be.

  There were now six of us, with the other five doing most of the work while I dealt with the larger management issues, such as making the office coffee and handling the mail. We had an office on the second floor of a bail bondsman company in downtown Triboro. It was pretty Spartan, but it had the advantage of being near Washington Street so the guys could still hit the sheriff’s office and city cops’ watering holes for lunch and afterward. Two of the “guys” were women, both of whom had been street cops with the sheriff’s office. Both of them had gone through the trauma of having husbands go astray. They now did a flourishing business of predivorce reconnaissance work for suspicious wives, and they loved their work. We loved their after-action reports.