“If he does have a heart condition,” I said, “it tends to sap the do-something right out of a guy.”
“Then he should retire and let someone else do the job. Right now the Creighs are walking all over him.”
“So you don’t think he’s dirty?”
She shook her head. I agreed with that assessment. “So how the hell do we prove this business with Grinny Creigh and children in Robbins County? And do that all by our lonesome?”
She grunted defiantly and sipped some of her scotch.
“We still have Baby Greenberg as at least a passive ally,” I said. “I don’t know about Sam King—he tried to make it look like he was washing his hands of this mess, but I’m not sure I believe that.”
“Whatever they’re doing, they won’t tell me,” she said.
“Right, so we have to figure out some way to blow this thing open. We need to find the children.”
She looked over at me in the darkness. “No shit, Sherlock,” she said, somewhat more amiably. “And how do we do that? You got a plan?”
“I got the glimmer of one,” I said. “What’s the very last thing the Creighs would expect us to do right now?”
She thought for a moment. “Come back at them?”
“Bingo,” I said. I explained what I had in mind. “So that’s what we’ll do,” I concluded. “But first we’ll need to execute a little cover and deception. And for that I need to go see Sheriff Hayes and eat some serious crow.”
I went out to my Suburban and drove out of the lower lot and up into the main parking area. One fire engine was still there, along with a state police crew, wading through three feet of white foam as they began the fatality investigation. The remains of the Dodge were covered in yellow rubber drapes, surrounded by several yards of police tape. There were a few gawkers out in the lot, but not very many, courtesy of the nauseating vapors exuding from the charred wreckage. I got a whiff as I drove by, and I drove over to the sheriff’s office in Marionburg with all the windows open.
Hayes’s office was still going strong after the incident at the hotel. I walked into the main reception area and told the sergeant on duty that I needed to see Sheriff Hayes.
“This is not a great time for visitors,” the cop said.
“Why don’t you tell him that Mr. Richter is here to apologize.”
“Richter. Right. Heard that name earlier. You sure you want to do this?”
“It can’t get much worse,” I said. He gave me a look that said, Oh, yes, it can, but went into the sheriff’s office. Five minutes later a deputy I didn’t recognize came out to reception and called my name.
“Sheriff says you can have three minutes,” he announced. He looked both ways and then said, “You sure you want to go in there?”
There’s an echo in here tonight, I thought. “Can’t wait,” I said, and he rolled his eyes. I was most definitely in deep shit with the Man.
Hayes was sitting behind his desk when I was ushered into his office. Gone was all the previously sympathetic friendliness. In its place was a steely glare, backed up by all the authority a southern county sheriff can muster, which is considerable. For a moment I thought maybe I had made a mistake coming over here. I noticed a small yellow prescription bottle next to his in-box. I skipped the pleasantries.
“I came to apologize and to tell you that we’re leaving,” I said. “Sam King advised the same thing, so we’re going to get out of Carrigan County and leave you in peace. I think Ms. Santángelo was out of line with what she said, and neither she nor I nor anyone at SBI thinks you’re involved with the Creighs or anything going on in Robbins County.”
“That’s nice,” he growled.
“Well, it’s true,” I said. “And how you handle the situation here is, of course, your business. We’ll need the morning to get our shit together.”
“That harpy going, too?”
“It’s Harper, but yes, sir. And I’m sorry for that mess at the hotel tonight. I don’t know that that was the Creighs, but I suspect it was.”
He relaxed fractionally. His face was no longer dark red as it had been in the cabin. In fact, he looked a little gray around the edges. “I had our people call Mingo’s office once we ID’d the car,” he said. “The license plate came up Robbins County and listed the registered owner. Mingo sent a deputy over, and he gave us a tentative ID on the owner. The occupants are all stumps, of course; they’ll require dental identification.”
“Let me take a guess on the owner,” I said. “A guy named Lucas Can?”
His eyebrows went up. “How the hell did you know that?”
I explained the background. “He said he’d made the Creighs’ shit list for screwing up the hit on Carrie and me in the river. My guess is they gave him one chance to redeem himself. They sent along two helpers to keep him honest. He’s the one Sam King was setting up on to get Carrie back.”
“Should have left that little witch over there,” he said, starting to spin himself up again. “Who’s that goddamned woman think she is, anyway?” Then he stopped, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “You say you’re leaving. Where are you going?”
“Away?” I said, echoing his earlier words.
“How far away?”
“Far enough to be out of your hair.”
“That’s not an answer,” he said.
“I know it isn’t,” I replied. He just stared at me for a long moment. He started to say something but then sighed and set his jaw.
“You told us to go, and we’re going,” I said. “Why not just declare victory?”
He leaned forward in his chair. “If you guys get yourself into any kind of crack up there with Mingo or the Creighs, do not, repeat, do not expect me or any of my people to come bail you out, understand?”
I nodded.
“And for the record, I’m telling you not to go back there. Let the appropriate authorities work the Robbins County problem. Neither of you fits that category anymore, right?”
I nodded again.
“Okay, then. We’re done. We’re still cranking out paperwork on your latest mess. Out.”
Back at the cabin I found Carrie busy sorting out her equipment. The two shepherds were in attendance, watching with their usual interest. Everything is a great adventure to a shepherd.
“He buy it?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “And he made it pretty clear that if we do go back there, there will be no cavalry from Carrigan County.”
“Never expected any,” she grumped. “Guy’s lost his nerve. He’s afraid of Mingo, and that’s the long and the short of it.”
“We have until noon tomorrow,” I said. “Time enough for us to get what gear we need and then to make our move. I’ll call Mose Walsh.”
“Go in daylight?”
I sat down on the edge of the bed. “The Creighs and Mingo own the night in Robbins County. I think if we just drive in there, go straight to Laurie May’s, we’ve got a pretty good chance of remaining undetected. Her place is nowhere close to town.”
She plopped down on the bed. “What we don’t know is whether or not she’ll let us hole up there again,” she said. “Or if she’s even there. They may have done something to her.”
“Or worse,” I said. “She might be part of it. That’s one loose end we need to work out. But that’s the only place I can think of to base, now that we’re been thrown out of here.” As I said that, though, I had another idea.
“What?” she said.
“We could base up in the national park,” I said. “Remember that cabin we used? The one that’s been requisitioned by the DEA?”
“That’s a long hike from where we want to go,” she said. “And the last time we had permission.”
“But it wouldn’t depend on Laurie May Creigh. Plus, I doubt the Park Service people know about your leaving SBI.”
She sighed. “That would mean I’d have to basically impersonate an SBI agent,” she said. “I don’t want to do that. Look: We need to break open this
child-smuggling ring. We can’t do that from the safety of the national park. We have to fight the Creighs on their own turf.”
“Taking on your enemy on his home ground is not usually a prescription for success,” I said.
“Mingo has to know he’s got Sheriff Hayes buffaloed,” she said. “He’s been there a long time, and he’s used to getting things his way. So’s Grinny Creigh. If we’re going to do this thing, we have to do what they least expect. It’s the only hope we have.”
They least expect it because it has the smallest chance of success was what I wanted to say.
“I guess I really can’t do this alone,” she said. She’d put a rueful smile on her face, and for a moment she reminded me a little bit of Mary Ellen Goode. A woman who’d been beat up now screwing her courage to the sticking point. She had to know what the odds were, and she was still determined to go back there and uncover the Creighs’ secret. I looked over at the two shepherds, who were still watching from the doorway. They were game, but then again, they were always game. Being game wasn’t the same as being smart, though.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s figure out what we’re going to need.”
12
We spent the morning doing logistics, checking out of the fancy lodge and into a much smaller motel closer to the Robbins County side of Marionburg. I called Mose Walsh late in the morning and then met him at the outfitter’s shop. Instead of maintaining their own individual shops, most of the local guides were associated with one of the two storefront outfitters in town. Mose met me at the one on the main street of Marionburg. He was chatting up one of the young salesladies at the register counter when I walked in. There were maybe a half dozen customers in the store, most of them just looking at all the woodsy stuff. Mose said something quietly to the girl that made her giggle and then came over to meet me at the front door.
“Don’t you ever quit?” I asked him. The girl at the register looked like she was maybe fifteen.
“Woman once told me,” he said, in his most dignified Big Chief voice, “that I was so damn ugly that women would be either repelled or attracted, but they’d all be just a bit curious.”
“Like your granddaughter over there?”
“She’s twenty-six, married, but not serious about it, God love her.” He looked around to make sure no one was listening to us. “What’re you guys doing, fucking around with Grinny Creigh and her demon spawn?”
“Us?” I said, pretending total innocence. “We’re just going camping.”
He nodded with his head in the direction of the pack racks, and we walked back there. “Word is,” he said, pretending to examine the pack selection, “that the auto-da-fe down at the lodge parking lot last night was a hit squad of meth mechanics from Robbins County.”
“Really,” I said. “What else does Mr. Word have to say?”
“That your lady friend is wearing a headscarf because one Lucas Carr creased her headbone with his thirty-ought, on orders from Nathan, who is, word says, somewhat indisposed up there on Spider Mountain.”
“Big Chief’s jungle drums are fairly well informed in these parts,” I said.
“All sorts of people go to bars. People go to bars, they drink. They drink, they talk. Big Chief doesn’t talk and actually doesn’t drink a whole lot anymore. Big Chief listens. So then they feel they have to fill the void. It’s fucking amazing, sometimes.”
“Heard any stories about the late Rue Creigh?” I asked.
His eyes widened. “That was you?”
It was my turn to pretend to be interested in the packs. I tried out my version of the Indian grunt. Mose wasn’t impressed.
“God damn, man, and you’re going back up there? Why don’t you just go find a hornets’ nest, pluck it down from the tree, and strap it on like a gas mask?”
I took him by the elbow and steered him to a back window where there were no other people. I told him what had happened with Rue and why we were going back in there, and all the wise-ass went right out of him. He stared bleakly out the window for a full minute, digesting what I’d told him. Then he shook his head resignedly.
“Try as you might,” he said wistfully, “you can’t get away from it. Kids?”
I nodded, then had a thought. “What can you tell me about Bill Hayes?” I asked. “Is he possibly in bad health?”
Mose shook his head. “It’s not him. It’s his wife. She’s dying of some badass bone disease. Docs told him to call the hospice. It’s fuckin’ the guy up, to hear the deputies tell it. What’re you and the SBI lady planning to do about this?”
“At the moment, I have no freaking idea,” I said. “First we have to find them.”
“You’ve got that bassackwards,” he said.
“I’m talking about the children, not the Creighs. Look, maybe you could help.”
He gave me a wary sideways look. “Help?”
“Yeah—you hear stuff. You say people talk to you. Push that process a little bit. Anything about exploiting children in Robbins County.”
He stared out the window again. “I told you, I gave that world up when I came back here,” he said. “Bad for the soul.”
I didn’t say anything. Let him fill the void this time.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Against my better judgment, such as it is. How can I find you?”
“We’ll find you,” I said.
Carrie and I had lunch in Marionburg, went back to the motel to make sure we had everything we needed, and then launched for Robbins County. I’d half-expected to see a Carrigan County cop car follow us out of town, but they apparently had bigger fish to fry. We’d divided our stuff into things to leave behind and gear we’d need up there, and left the excess in the motel room. We took my Suburban. I had Nathan’s shotgun. Carrie’s nasty little mamba stick was back in SBI custody, so now she had a nine in a belt holster.
She’d asked me to check her head wound, and to tell the truth, I wasn’t pleased with what I saw. The sutures were red and a little puffy-looking, and she admitted that she had a headache that wouldn’t go away. I asked her if she’d like to go back to the hospital for a quick checkup and maybe an antibiotic shot or at least another Betadine paint job, but she was adamant about getting on with it. I’d told her what Mose had said about Bill Hayes, and she seemed relieved.
It was midafternoon when we crossed the county line. We passed the usual tourist traffic on the two-lane main road as people came back from rafting trips and other excursions into Robbins County. We saw one cop car parked for a late lunch or coffee at a roadside eatery, but no other law enforcement activity on the road. If Mingo was expecting us, he wasn’t being obvious about it. The thought had crossed my mind that Hayes or someone in his office might tip off Mingo and his people, but I discarded the notion. Hayes might be afraid of the hard men in Robbins County, but I didn’t think he was part of their operation. He was preoccupied with problems closer to home.
We got to Laurie May’s place without seeing any of the local residents, and we hoped none of them saw us. I wasn’t worried about the honest citizens, but we hadn’t seen any people out in their yards or along the road leading up to her cabin. We stopped in front and waited for someone to come to the door. I saw Carrie playing absently with the stitches on her scalp and wondered how bad that mess hurt.
When no one came to the door, we decided to drive the vehicle around to the back so that it could not be seen from the river road or the lane coming up into the hollow itself. Carrie got out and went to the cabin’s back door and knocked. Nothing happened, so she knocked again, at which point I saw a shadow move behind the door’s curtain. I was still in the car and began easing my right hand down to the shotgun. The door swung open, revealing a short but large and densely bearded man standing in the doorway pointing an equally large shotgun in our general direction.
I probably couldn’t do anything for Carrie just then, not with a shotgun two feet from her chest. Frack saw the man with the gun and began growling. I told him to be quiet.<
br />
The man was staring at Carrie, who had frozen in place. “Who’re you?” he asked in a low voice. “What’re you-all doing here?”
“I came to see Laurie May,” Carrie replied, still not moving. I admired her poise—the muzzle of that gun looked like the twin tubes of the Holland Tunnel. “She knows us. Is she all right?”
He took a step backward into the kitchen and summoned somebody inside with a jerk of his head. A moment later his twin appeared in the doorway, holding another shotgun by the receiver, its barrels pointed down at the floor. Then I knew who they were—Laurie May had said she had twin boys, coal miners. The one who’d come to the door was looking over at me, and I nodded pleasantly. The other one slipped back out of sight. He returned after a minute and said something to his brother, who lowered his shotgun. Carrie turned in my direction and told me to come in.
Laurie May was in her bedroom, and when I saw her I swore out loud. Two black eyes, bruises on her face, and her badly bruised broomstick of a right leg stuck out from under the covers and rested on a quilt.
I looked over at one of the twins. “Nathan Creigh?”
He nodded.
“They made me tell ’em,” Laurie May said, blinking back tears. “That be-damned Nathan, he come in here and beat on me with my own walkin’ stick.”
Carrie approached the bed and took the old lady’s hand. “We know, Laurie May,” she said. “We know. And we know you’re no betrayer.”
“I ain’t,” Laurie May said with surprising vehemence. “I ain’t no betrayer. He beat on me. He done cracked my shinbone. He pushed me down, God damn his eyes.”
I introduced myself and Carrie to the twins. They weren’t tall, but they sure as hell were wide. Coal miners. One of them introduced himself as Bags, the other as David. They’d apparently changed their last names to Jones some years back, because neither one of them could abide the Creighs. Bags seemed to be in charge, so I decided to tell him why we were there. The twins listened in silence. Carrie apologized to Laurie May for bringing misery to her house, but Laurie May was defiant.
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