Deep Down (I)

by Karen Harper

  “Cassie,” Emmy said, rising from behind the counter and her computer screen. “You look all het up. What is it?”

  “It’s truth and consequences time, I guess,” she told the younger woman as she leaned against the counter to keep her legs from shaking. Evidently unsure what was coming, Emmy stood her ground behind her desk. “The reason I warned you about Ryan Buford the other day—it’s ’cause last time he was here in Deep Down, he took me for a real ride.” Cassie bit her lower lip and pressed her fists on the countertop. Her car key bit into her palm. “We were lovers, but he deserted me the minute he found out I was pregnant. He was real bitter—blamed me, said I was trying to trap him when he was the one who trapped me. Into wanting him. Into being really stupid to think he’d stay with me or take me with him.”

  “Ryan is Pearl’s daddy?” Emmy gasped, then, wide-eyed, covered her mouth with both hands.

  “I swear to God. You’re the first one I’ve told, including Jessie and Drew—and Pearl. I know you’ll be thinking you can change him, but who knows that he doesn’t have a girl in every port—you know what I mean.”

  Emmy looked like she’d puke. “Has he—been to see you this time, too?” she asked.

  “Only skulking around and today talking to Pearl about ‘parent visits.’ I told her he was a salesman the other day, but I’m gonna tell her the truth, after I tell him to keep away from us again. You know where he is?”

  “I—yes, kind of,” she said, finally coming around her desk toward the counter. “He was going to go back to the Fur and Sang Trader, for another quick game or two of billiards, he said. He planned to pick up his gear at Audrey’s, then maybe go out to work at the old logging road under Snow Knob. I told him about that photo your friend Tyler Finch took, warned him something weird was in the area, but he said it must just be someone fooling around.”

  “I s’pose you’re upset with me bursting your bubble about him,” Cassie said as she took a couple of steps toward the door, then turned back. She was relieved that Emmy was not screaming at her to get out of here. “It’s not just sour grapes, I swear it,” she told the teary-eyed girl. “It’s just he can be like day and night, like the way he was so sweet and then turned on me. I found out too late he thinks Deep Downers are pretty dumb, ‘a few cards short of a full deck,’ as he put it. Well, I gotta go. I’ll try all three places. I realize you’ll tell Drew what I said, and that’s fine. I should of told him long ago for sticking with me like a good friend.”

  “Yeah—he’s great. Gave me this job, let me make a mess of things while I learned. He’s out looking for Junior Semple, thanks to you.”

  “I saw his Cherokee way down by Castors’ place. Thanks for not killing the messenger of bad news, Emmy.”

  “I admit I kind of picked up on how Ryan thinks most of us are a bunch of hillbillies, but I been lying to myself—lying with him, too, the rat. Guess you protected him too long, but I won’t make the same mistake. I think he’s fixing to move on real soon anyway.” She shook her head. Tears spilled down her cheeks; she looked hopping mad. “And here, I was hoping he’d come back if they started to build the roads and properties he’s laid out, after the Sunrise Mountain area’s cleared.”

  “Cleared? Of trees? Logged? You mean just a few strips of it, for the single road and a few properties.”

  Emmy shrugged. Tears dripped off her chin, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away. Even with the counter and Ryan separating them, Cassie felt so close to the girl she could have hugged her. But she had something big to do.

  “See you later,” she said and went outside. She walked right down to Vern’s Trader. The window sign said Closed. Where was Jessie, on her first day of working here?

  She climbed back in her truck, so she’d have it if she needed to make a fast getaway after facing down Ryan at Audrey’s B and B. It was about to be prime time at the Soup to Pie now.

  Though she knew it was right where she hid it under the seat, she leaned down and touched the rifle and box of cartridges before she pulled out.

  Drew’s stomach churned as he listened to Junior’s diatribe. He cursed a lot of people, including him. Peter Sung’s name was in the disjointed hysteria, too. Drew could not believe an independent mountain man like Junior Semple would crack like this, but he knew damn well that people’s childhoods could damage them for good—or bad. He had to get Junior out of here, get him help. He’d have to go at this another way.

  He drew back the flap of the hunter’s blind and started to untie his feet. It took him a minute to realize that Junior was finally making a confession, but it was so clearly under duress, he wondered if any of it would be admissible in court. Maybe he’d gone too far, but for Jessie and Mariah, he guess he might even go farther.

  He strained to hear what Junior was saying. “Peter, he promised to buy the sang, gave me the sticks, see? Promised me a hunt dog—keep the sticks away from dogs, ’cept the ones steal sang. Year of work, poachers get them, take it all…”

  Drew loosed the man’s hands from the other pole but left him cuffed. He sat him up. “You’re saying Peter Sung got you those varmint sticks?”

  “Yeah—to protect the sang he’d promised to buy. Wants all the sang he can get, at any price.”

  “What else did he want from you in return for the sang money, bail money and the hound?”

  Finally, the man’s eyes seemed to focus. “’Nother crop of virtual wild, soon as possible.”

  “Did he ask you to keep an eye on Mariah’s sang count?”

  “She came to count mine, that’s all.”

  “I need more, Junior!”

  “I told him I thought her numbers weren’t so good this year.”

  That might have panicked him, Drew thought. Maybe he’d tried to buy Mariah off, and she’d refused, or even threatened to go to her superiors. But if Junior wasn’t Sung’s lackey, would the rich, elegant businessman stoop to getting his own hands dirty with murder? With arson, and trying to pin the blame on Seth? Of course, Beth Brazzo would be in his way, too, with her grandiose, competitive plans to buy lots of local sang.

  “But nothing else?” he asked, his face close to Junior’s. “You didn’t follow Mariah to see what else she counted?”

  “I didn’t hurt her!”

  “Did you tell Peter Sung where she said she was going next?”

  “He asked me. Yeah, guess I did.” He looked dazed. Was he only telling him what he wanted to hear, or was it finally the truth? “Didn’t think nothing of it,” Junior went on, his voice rising again. “Listen, I need a head doctor, not a jail cell. Told you all I know. If Peter did more, it wasn’t with me. I can’t go back to jail!”

  Drew helped him to his feet and wiped one of his folded shirts across his sweaty face. His eyes and nose were running, but Drew had no intention of uncuffing him. As if he’d escaped from the gates of hell, Junior hoofed it back to the road, suddenly the model prisoner. The only thing was, if Junior had to testify in open court, would he tell the same story he’d revealed in a closed box?

  Jessie was surprised to see that the old logging road entrance to the forest under Snow Knob was closed off to cars. Bright orange plastic tape stretched across the entry where a No Vehicles sign hung. So where had Drew and Seth parked? She did see Ryan Buford’s truck and what looked like surveying gear laid out on the ground. He evidently heard her car, because he appeared from behind his truck to wave and walk toward her.

  “Sorry about the barrier today!” he called as he approached. He wore a white hard hat and a bright orange jacket that matched the tape. “You might know the day I decide to do this final positioning, it’s Grand Central Station here.”

  “I’m supposed to meet Sheriff Webb,” she said as he leaned down to talk in her window.

  “That’s what I mean. The sheriff and Seth Bearclaws drove in a little bit ago—separately. I asked them both to park out of my way in the brush farther back, just for the day,” he explained, pointing toward the north. “By the wa
y, I took your advice and told Seth that I admired the Seminoles and Cherokees. He didn’t say much, but he nodded.”

  “That sounds like him. But where are they?” she asked, looking far past him.

  “They just walked into the forest, not more than—” he glanced at his watch “—six, maybe seven minutes ago. I figured it was you driving in, because they said if you came quick enough, you should follow them. I think they were really eager to retrieve something.”

  “Can I leave my car right here? I’m sure I can catch up with them.”

  “Sure. I’ll bet you can because Seth wasn’t moving too fast and they had some stuff with them. A camera, backpacks, not sure what else.”

  She turned off the ignition and unlocked the door. Ryan opened it for her. She considered getting the badger skin out of the box in the trunk to show Drew and Seth when she caught up to them, but decided not to risk something happening to it or having to explain it to Ryan. She’d thank him later for giving her the tip about Vern having that Siberian ginseng hunter costume. Maybe he’d even have to testify against Vern. Right now, she needed to make tracks. At least she knew exactly where they were going.

  Pulling her mother’s denim bag over her shoulder and locking her car, she thanked Ryan and sprinted for the forest path she knew all too well.

  Drew took Junior to the office to book him before taking him into Highboro. Emmy looked up from squinting at the computer screen. “Oh, you got him!” she cried.

  “Yep, and he’ll be our guest until he writes out a statement for me. Junior, I have to put you in the cell for a few minutes, but you can just look straight out down the hall through the bars, not at the other three walls. I’m going to phone Highboro and make sure you’ll have a lawyer and a doctor when we get there. You’ll write down everything you told me about Peter, right?”

  “Ain’t got no choice now.”

  “As soon as you do, you can call your wife, and we’ll get her in to see you.”

  He walked Junior down the hall and, though he felt him tense up as if he’d balk, he put him in the larger of the two cells and locked him in. Like in some cartoon, the man stood with his hands gripping two bars and his face pressed between them, staring out.

  “Drew!” Emmy called to him and motioned before he could even stop in the john.

  “What?” he asked, following her down the hall toward her workstation. Although they were the only two in the room, she kept whispering.

  “Cassie was here, and she said something you should know.”

  “Tell me. Hey, have you been crying, or are those red eyes from staring at the PC screen?”

  “She said I could tell you that Ryan Buford is Pearl’s father. He’s been harassing her, talking to Pearl. He—She wanted me to know before I got in too deep with him.”

  “Damn him! I’m sorry, Em,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and giving her one gentle shake. “For her and you. Well, one mystery solved. So she wants to file a complaint or get a restraining order, or have me talk to him? Actually, I’d like to put my fist to that handsome jaw—maybe once for her, once for Pearl and once for you. Where is she now? I can phone her before I take Junior to Highboro for safer keeping this time.”

  “I told her some places he might be. I don’t really know where she went. But something else,” she said, tugging him toward her desk. “I decided to use Google to find Rat Ryan through the Department of Transportation that he said he works for—but he doesn’t. Look.”

  He leaned over her shoulder to see what she had on her screen. He studied the crowded Web site page for a minute. “But that’s a list of operatives for the logging industry—their on-the-field lobbyists and information brokers,” he said.

  “Yes, but see, his name is listed here as the senior aide to the Lumber Logging Lobbyists, the LLL. I can’t find him listed as an employee or aide or anything for Transportation. In south Florida—at least that wasn’t a lie—he oversaw the clearing of large tracts of forest to make way for resorts, condos and golf courses. You know, I overheard him on the phone once laughing about some motto—‘Cut out and get out.’ But I had no idea he meant trees.”

  Drew felt as if he’d been sucker punched in the gut. Just a few driveways and retirement cabins, my foot! Timber theft or tree poaching was small potatoes compared to what Buford’s cronies must have in mind for the Deep Down area. Wouldn’t that mean that Buford had a vested interest in keeping the sang count low? If the government slapped a moratorium on digging and exporting sang, locals would be more likely to want to sell land and the timber on it. Maybe he saw Mariah as someone who would lead a campaign against any serious logging.

  “Get Jessie on the line over at Vern’s Trader,” Drew told her. “Then try to track Cassie down somehow. Try her home phone, too. Tell them both to stay put, and patch them both through to me.”

  “Drew, if Ryan lied about who he worked for, I can see why. People would have hated him, maybe hunted him down around here. You—you don’t think he hurt Mariah?”

  “I’m not sure. I still think Peter Sung hurt Mariah, so I’m going to call the Lexington police from my office. If Peter’s home, they can take him in for questioning. Get on the phone, because I want to bring Jessie up to speed and keep Cassie from facing down Buford alone. Same for you with him—keep clear for now. You understand?”

  She nodded grimly as she reached for the phone. “When I heard what he’d done to her and Pearl, I knew my dream with him was over. Truth is, I’d like to kill him with my bare hands, but I don’t think I’ll have to once word gets out what he’s really doing and who he really is.”

  Chapter 26

  26

  T he muted chiming of keys and coins inside her mother’s denim bag accompanied Jessie’s steps as she jogged the path Drew and Seth had taken. She figured she’d catch up with them before she came to the clearing along Bear Creek. She wished they would have waited for her, but they were obviously on to something big, maybe evidence that could degrade or be taken by someone else. She couldn’t wait to tell Drew what she’d learned about Vern.

  The headache she’d lied about to Vern clamped her forehead like a metal band. Even as she ran, she fumbled for her bottled water and plastic bottle of aspirin in her mother’s bag. Having something her mother valued and carried with her on her last day was comforting. Besides, now they had answers. Thank God, the man who had killed her—no doubt while wearing that terrifying costume—was locked up and would soon enough be locked away for good. Solving her mother’s murder had eased the guilt she’d felt over never quite forgiving her for sending her away with Elinor. She understood it, yes, was even grateful for it, but deep down forgiving was something diff—

  What was this in her bag? Her hand seized on something long and leathery. She shuddered. It felt so much like a stiff snake that at first she gasped and stopped to open the bag and look inside.

  A dog tracking collar! She was carrying one of Peter Sung’s dog tracking collars!

  She glanced all around but saw nothing, no one. When could he have put this here? Oh, yes, he’d been so eager a couple of hours ago to carry her bag into Vern’s office for her. But was it just a gift for her or Drew, or was it secreted here so he could stalk her?

  She could not take the chance. If it was a harmless gift, she’d retrieve it later. She dug it out of her bag and wedged it in the crotch of a maple tree just off the path. A large rock marked the tree, so they could retrieve the collar on their way out. It would be something else to tell Drew. Let him decide what its purpose had been.

  Her next thought shocked her so that she almost stopped running. Could Peter be guilty of her mother’s death, too? Vern and Peter were obviously close friends. If they were in collusion for Mariah’s murder, maybe they were responsible for Beth’s, too. Peter, of course, had the perfect alibi for the second murder, since she and Drew were with him at the time in Lexington, but he’d been in the general area the day her mother was killed. As for Beth—Jessie had not had a
shadow of doubt that Beth had been murdered, too, and by her mother’s killer.

  Anxious that she’d fallen farther behind the men now, Jessie pushed herself even harder. Ryan had said Seth wasn’t walking too fast, though she knew he was usually quite sprightly, even for his age. Maybe his losses had really gotten to him.

  Despite the sporadic sunlight bleeding through the trees, even with the bird sounds, Jessie suddenly felt alone and afraid. Her heart pounded, echoing her footsteps through the rustling leaf litter. At least, she told herself, when she got to the clearing and the creek, she’d be able to spot the men. She could hear the creek and the muted roar of the more distant falls already. She was almost there.

  Sprinting out of the forest into the clearing, she looked in the direction the men must have gone. No one. Behind her, not a soul in sight. But she couldn’t see as far as the ancient tree that had cradled her mother’s body, so she pushed on.

  The wind chilled her perspiring skin, as if looming Snow Knob breathed down on her. For the first time in her headlong rush to tell Drew about Vern and to be a part of his and Seth’s discovery of another piece of proof, she began to shake. Surely Ryan had not been mistaken about the way Drew and Seth had gone. Besides, Seth’s note had backed up what Ryan said. But with Drew’s concern about keeping her safe, wouldn’t he have waited for her?

  Maybe they were on the other side of the tree up ahead. “Drew! Seth!” she shouted, then switched to screaming. “Sheriff! Sher—iiif!”

  Something was very wrong. She could feel it, taste and smell it. She was getting out of here. Ryan had misunderstood.

  As she shaded her eyes with one hand to scan the area, she realized she was close to the spot where she and Drew had seen the sang patch with the spade’s slash marks and the strange berry designs that were echoed in the cuts on her mother’s face.