“Didn’t they understand what classified information means?”
“Loretta told me it was just a convenient excuse. The real problem was they thought Loretta would leave them. Not marry a local boy and settle in the valley like the rest of them.”
“Is that what she did?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She looked down at the letters. “We lost touch. I assume she stayed in Western North Carolina, but I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. Maybe now that Frank’s remains have been found, she’ll resurface. She could be a grandmother who has no interest in involving her family in a painful incident from her past.”
“Your other brother, Zack, Cory’s father. Cory said he went to Asheville to look for Frank.”
Nancy smiled. “Yes, he went to look for Frank and found his own life in the mountains. Zack was between Frank and me in age. If he’d lived, he’d be sixty-eight now. I’m sixty-six. Frank, well, Frank would be seventy-two.”
“Did Zack share anything he might have learned about Frank’s disappearance?” I asked.
“No. Just that Frank walked out of the tracking station and was never seen again. Like he’d been beamed up to the Starship Enterprise.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. Again, I reviewed the letters in my head. “Did you ever learn why your brother was called Slew Meister?”
“No. Maybe because if a problem arose, Frank was the one who slew it? Like he said, the title sounded like a medieval knight.”
Yes, I thought. Except in this story, the knight was slain by the dragon.
Chapter 6
Nakayla and I left Blue to spend the night with Cory and her aunt. The coonhound didn’t give us a second look as we drove away. So much for canine loyalty.
We spent the night at the Hotel Roanoke, a magnificent Tudor-style structure built with railroad money in 1882 and predating both Asheville’s Biltmore House and Grove Park Inn.
After sleeping late, we took advantage of the hotel’s Sunday brunch. I ate enough to nearly put me in a food coma.
We returned to Nancy Gilmore’s around one to find she’d prepared a pound cake and coffee.
“Just something to tide you over for your trip back to Asheville,” she said.
I forced myself to devour a slice so as not to hurt her feelings. That’s the kind of guy I am.
When I declined a second piece, Nancy slid her cup aside, got up from the table, and retrieved a sheet of white paper from the sideboard behind her.
“This morning, I read through Eddie’s letters to me and copied what I told you yesterday. It was from his last letter and referenced what Frank must have asked after I gave him Eddie’s address.” She pushed it across the table to me.
Her cursive handwriting was so perfectly penned that it looked like professional calligraphy.
“Cory hasn’t seen it,” Nancy said. “You can read what Eddie wrote aloud.”
I cleared my throat and began. “I received a nice letter from Frank. Please tell him I’m passing his concern up the chain of command. He might be contacted directly, or a response will come to me. I’ll write him if I learn something. Meanwhile, tell him to relax and go fishing for some of those elusive brown trout instead.” The excerpt ended.
I looked up. “Do you know if Frank was ever contacted?”
“I don’t think he could have been. Eddie wrote this letter after Frank disappeared. And like I said, Eddie was killed soon afterward.”
I knew from my experience in Iraq that getting mail in and out of a war zone wasn’t like dropping a letter off at your local post office. Weeks could have gone by from the time Frank wrote his letter and Eddie received it.
“What should my aunt do now?” Cory asked.
Nakayla looked at me. “FBI?”
I nodded. “Nakayla’s right. Nancy, you should contact Special Agent Lindsay Boyce in Asheville. We can give you that information. Ask her if she’d like to see the letters your brother wrote shortly before he was killed. That way, you’ll be on record as trying to be helpful.”
“Yes,” Nakayla agreed. “Don’t underestimate the power of a family pressing for answers.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Cory added.
“Then why don’t you take them?” Nancy asked her niece. “You can hand deliver, and I won’t run the risk of losing them in the mail.”
“All right,” Cory said. “But you should still talk to Special Agent Boyce directly. The letters are your property, and you’re the one authorizing their release. I’ll make sure the FBI returns them.”
We left with the correspondence and a disappointed coonhound who no longer enjoyed Nancy Gilmore’s pampering.
* * *
Monday morning, Nakayla and I began implementing the strategy we’d devised on the drive home from Roanoke. With Cory standing by to liaise with the FBI, we split up the key aspects of the investigation that surfaced from the conversation with Nancy Gilmore—Frank’s involvement with Loretta Case and the unknown concern that fueled his letter to Eddie. The fact that his brother-in-law served in army intelligence must have been a reason for Frank’s request for help.
Nakayla outshone me on the computer, so she focused on tracking whatever online records existed for Loretta Case. However, where she excelled in navigating through cyberspace, I could chart a course through equally perplexing terrain—the U.S. Army.
I placed a call to the cell phone of one of my fellow warrant officers with whom I’d served in Iraq. Actually, he’d served under me before his own promotion to chief warrant officer. My reviews of his stellar performance had propelled him on the fast track, and he proved eager to stay in touch after my career-ending wound and discharge.
“You got me.” The phrase was his stock answer for not giving his name until he learned the caller.
“Now that I’ve got you, what the hell do I do with you?”
“Sam, my man, how’d you get through? Don’t you know I’m on the do-not-call list? You’re supposed to be blocked.”
“Don’t give me that. You know I’m on your speed dial for when you’re stuck on a case.”
He let out a deep-throated laugh. “And who’s calling whom?”
“I don’t want your pride keeping you from getting my help. Surely, there’s something I can assist you with, Chief Warrant Officer DeShaun Clark.”
He laughed again. “Well, there is a certain major I’d like to be rid of.”
“You’re on your own with the brass. I solve crimes. I don’t commit them.”
“Ah, so now you’re following a rule book?”
“No. And that’s why I’m calling you. Are you still at Bragg?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve been tied at the hip with a prosecutor for a couple months. It’s enough to wish I was back with you in Baghdad.”
“Then you have my sympathy.”
“So seriously, what can I do for you?”
“We’ve had a body turn up, bones actually, of a computer scientist who disappeared from a NASA tracking station in the mountains up here.”
“Is the guy military?”
“No. But his brother-in-law was. Army intelligence. My dead NASA guy mailed him a letter about something that was bothering him. I have correspondence from the brother-in-law that he ran the concern up his chain of command. The computer scientist disappeared, and his brother-in-law was killed in Vietnam a short time later. We have no record that any action was taken regarding the concern.”
“Hmm.” Clark was silent a few seconds. “When did all this go down?”
“The summer of 1971.”
“And the bones just turned up?”
“Yeah. We’ve had some forest fires, and a work crew cutting a firebreak unearthed him.”
“If he wasn’t military, then I don’t know how I can help.”
“It’s the brother-in-law
I want to know about. I spoke to his widow yesterday. She was never told exactly how or where her husband was killed.”
“Well, that certainly fits an intelligence profile. So you want me to discover what he kicked up the chain of command and if it ties into your bone man?”
“That’s about the size of it. Off the books would be better since I don’t know what I’m stepping in. But if you need to run it through channels, we have an FBI murder inquiry underway, and the feds will be interested in the brother-in-law’s correspondence. If someone in the army squelched his request, it could be embarrassing.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Clark said. “But if murder’s involved, then no one wants to be blindsided. Let’s start off the books and see what I can quietly turn up. Give me the particulars.”
I provided Clark with names, dates, and what little information Nancy Gilmore had known about her husband’s time in Vietnam.
“OK,” Clark said. “I’ll be back to you as soon as I can.”
I thought he was going to hang up, but instead he asked, “What’s your gut telling you?”
“About what?”
“About Eddie Gilmore?”
“Frank DeMille’s my case,” I said.
“Yeah, but the Sam Blackman I know wouldn’t leave it there.”
“I don’t like that Eddie sent a request through army intelligence and then he and Frank both die, even though they’re half a world apart.”
“Eddie was in the company of over fifty thousand who died there, Sam.”
“Then find the evidence that will make this feeling in my gut go away.”
An hour later, Nakayla came out of her office with her iPad. “I found a Loretta Case Johnson living in Transylvania County not too far from the tracking station.”
I got up from my desk and followed her into the center room. She took her favorite spot on the sofa, and I sat beside her where I could more easily view whatever she wanted to show me. Blue got up from the carpet, circled three times, and lay down in the exact same position.
“Did you go through property records?” I asked.
“Not initially. Public records of weddings and deaths. I found a 1976 wedding registration for Loretta Case and Randall Johnson. I discovered no death record for either one.”
“Did you search beyond Transylvania County?”
“Bordering counties only. I felt it was more productive to drill down on this Loretta before expanding beyond our region.”
I pointed to the iPad. “So what’s on this?”
“An interesting website.” She angled the screen toward me.
The headline read “Aliens Over Asheville” and showed a saucer-shaped UFO hovering over the skyline.
“Did Shirley put you on to this?”
“No. I called Tuck Efird and asked him about his ex-wife, the one he said was into UFOs. I thought we ought to be aware of anyone else who has an interest in PARI. He gave me this URL address.”
I took the iPad and scrolled down the screen to a list of articles. “Bigfoot Roams the Appalachian Trail.” “Reincarnated Atlantis Citizens Uniting Once Again.” “Cloudy Night Skies Bring Hordes of Interstellar Travelers to PARI.”
“So what? Bigfoot’s now a suspect?”
“No. It’s the article about starless nights being the favorite time for incoming and outgoing spaceships at PARI. The author interviews several past employees. One is named Loretta Johnson, who worked there from 1969 to 1981.”
“Really? Then I guess I’m the one with the Bigfoot in my mouth. Stellar research, my lovely, if you’ll pardon the galactic reference.” I pressed my finger to open the article and read how the alleged UFO activity at the astronomical facility was accelerating. The final person quoted was identified as Loretta Johnson, who claimed not to have witnessed any alien presence during her twelve years of employment. I found that a strange interview to publish on a site dedicated to asserting aliens were among us. But then Loretta qualified her answer by saying she couldn’t refute any claims made after 1981 because she had been let go soon after the Department of Defense had taken over. She stated the whole tone of the facility changed and there was constant traffic of dark SUVs with tinted windows coming and going. The fence around the perimeter was fortified and poison ivy planted along its footing as a further deterrent.
Her comments were followed by an italicized footnote provided by the editor of the UFO website: Although Mrs. Johnson claims not to have any knowledge of UFO activity during her time at the government site, others close to her state that the interstellar conspiracy did touch her life. Her fiancé, a scientist with NASA, disappeared without a trace in 1971 in what is most likely an alien abduction. Furthermore, Mrs. Johnson’s reluctance to confirm that possibility can be attributed to memory alteration at the time and her subsequent dismissal as a tactic to remove her from any circumstances that might trigger her recall of what really happened.
“Amazing,” I said. “They use her denial as proof that it occurred. But it’s pretty clear this Loretta Johnson is our woman. I wonder how they’ll explain the discovery of the bones.”
“Easy,” Nakayla said. “They’ll simply say Frank DeMille died while in the custody of the aliens and they returned his skeleton to be discovered.”
I laughed. “Hell, these people might even claim the aliens started the forest fire with their death rays to make sure his remains were found.”
“But it doesn’t sound like Loretta has extreme views,” Nakayla said. “It’s more plausible that the Department of Defense would shut down civilian presence if the purpose and mission changed to something far more classified than tracking an Apollo spacecraft whose launch was known to the entire world.”
“I’m not saying we don’t talk with her. I’m just saying being quoted on a site like this doesn’t bolster your credibility.”
“Which is why we need to separate her from the people quoted as being close to her.”
I gave the iPad back to Nakayla. “Do you have an address for her?”
“Yes. But her phone number’s unlisted.”
I thought for a moment and then checked my watch. Ten forty-five. “I’d rather see her in person anyway.”
Nakayla frowned. “She may not know Frank DeMille’s remains have been discovered.”
“Then all the more reason to break the news face-to-face. And your face will certainly be more reassuring to her than a voice on the phone.”
Nakayla stood. “Let’s go, Blue.”
The hound got to his feet and shook himself.
“Are we bringing him?”
“No. I’m taking him to Hewitt’s office. Cory and Shirley will watch him.” She handed me a small piece of paper with an address. “Put this in the Garmin and be ready to leave when I return.”
Chapter 7
Although Nakayla and I each had a GPS app on our cell phones, the ridges and narrow valleys around us made cellular coverage spotty, and the more remote the destination, the less likely we’d have consistent access to a tower. One minute, you might have three bars of signal, and the next, none. So we’d purchased a Garmin handheld satellite GPS that could offer not only road maps but also topographical information for hiking. The fact that Nakayla instructed me to prep the Garmin told me Loretta Case Johnson didn’t live in an easy-to-reach gated community.
With Blue comfortably sleeping in the law firm, we left Asheville and headed for 8560 Dusty Hollar Road, an address that found us returning along the familiar route to the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute. When we passed the entrance to PARI, Nakayla said, “It looks like Dusty Hollar will be a left turn in about a mile.”
“She lived close to work,” I said.
“Assuming that’s where she’s lived the past fifty years. But you’re probably right. Family property kept her tied to the area. I’ll bet her husband’s a local. Frank DeMille w
ould have been her one chance to get out of this valley and explore the world.”
Dusty Hollar Road proved to be a narrow, potholed blacktop that tested the description “two-lane.” It was more a one-and-a-halfer. Mailboxes got sparser the farther we penetrated the narrow valley. Then the patched asphalt ended, and the surface became packed dirt mixed with bluestone gravel. The houses visible through the trees looked like they’d last seen a coat of paint when the Russians launched Sputnik.
“A hundred yards ahead,” Nakayla said. “Should be right around the bend.”
“Glad we’re in the CR-V rather than your car. I hope we don’t need four-wheel drive.”
We didn’t. Rounding the bend, we saw a modern log home with a red tin roof, spacious wraparound covered porch, and flowers in dark-green window boxes. A small satellite dish was mounted next to a stone chimney. No cable TV in this neck of the woods.
A freshly graveled driveway looped off the dirt road, passed in front of the house, and ended in a parking lot adjacent to an open pavilion about forty yards away. A green Jeep Cherokee was parked at the closest point to the house.
“This isn’t what I expected,” Nakayla said.
“That shelter looks like it could hold all of Dusty Hollar.”
I swung into the driveway, tires crunching the thick gravel. A thin woman in black jeans and a pink, short-sleeved shirt stepped out as I stopped in front of the porch steps.
She held a fiddle in one hand and a bow in the other. The gray hair and lined tan face fit a woman of Loretta’s age. She stood at the top of the steps, her dark eyes looking down on us with suspicion.
I lowered my window.
“You lost?” she asked before I could utter a word.
“No. Not unless Loretta Case Johnson doesn’t live here.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Who wants her?”
I decided not to dance around the subject with this fiddle-toting woman. “The family of Frank DeMille.”
The bow dropped from her hand and tumbled down the steps. She leaned against a post and took a deep breath. “You Frank’s kin?”
Murder in Rat Alley Page 5