“You’re in the clear,” Gunter said. “All told, after the deed tax, you’ll get all two hundred acres for half a mil.”
Extine grinned, a bit of bacon stuck between his two front teeth. “During the boom, it would have gone for two and a half, easy.”
“Times change,” Larkin said. “A man has to change with them.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Gunter said, hoisting a mock toast with his coffee cup.
The waitress came over, a pretty brunette who looked to be either a high school student or a college freshman. Barely legal, in other words, according to the arbitrary moral standards of the state of North Carolina.
“Refill?” she said to Larkin, holding out a brown plastic urn.
“No, thank you, but can I ask you a favor?”
She frowned, probably used to enduring the flirting of middle-aged men for tips. “I can’t give away any recipes.”
Larkin laughed. She had good, strong shoulders. So many teens slumped, but posture in a young lady projected confidence. “I’d never ask for secrets.”
The young woman glanced around at the tables she was serving. “I only have a minute.”
“I’d like to invest in this area for the long haul, but I want to make sure the young people have a reason to stay. Are your friends happy here, or are they all eager to escape to the big city?”
“It’s okay here,” she said, picking a safe answer. “Not many jobs.”
“What about you? What are your hopes for the future?”
Gunter and Extine’s eyes crawled all over her shapely figure as if they wanted their partnership to extend into the perverse instead of the merely corrupt. Larkin wanted to slam their faces into the puddles of syrup on their plates, but he stayed calm. He even smiled. Such weaknesses could be exploited if necessary.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” she said. “I guess I’ll keep working here after graduation and maybe take some classes at the community college.”
“You’re a good waitress,” Larkin said, hoping he didn’t sound condescending. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
She took that as permission to go check on her other customers. “Holler if you need anything.”
Gunter’s eyes shone as if he needed plenty. Larkin spoke to him to yank his attention from the girl’s swaying hips. “Any other obstacles on the development?”
“Things pop up,” Gunter said. “But we’re in pretty good shape. We pulled in Bill Willard, who developed Mulatto Mountain. And Logan tapped Mac McAllister, a local business owner and county commissioner. They carry a lot of water with the planning commission, so that will get us around some of the more expensive subdivision requirements.”
Extine beamed at their cunning. “The bank pretty much gave us an unlimited line of credit, too. Everybody’s on board.”
“Think there will be any blowback?” Larkin switched from coffee to ice water, so he wouldn’t be too wired for the day ahead. There was much to do. “Environmentalists, competition, or a snooping local media?”
“Not around here,” Gunter said. “You get some university hippies from time to time, but they’re busy with Wall Street these days. They don’t get hits on their blogs about ridge-top destruction unless they’re taking on the coal companies or global warming.”
Larkin saw Extine’s gaze shift out the bleary window, to the commercial strip that was as soulless and corporate as any in America. “Mr. Extine? Are you holding something back?”
“Well, we do have a squeaky wheel on the commission. Heather Fowler. Some tree-hugging dyke from the university who’s against any kind of development.”
“I don’t think she’s a lesbian,” Gunter said. “She just hangs around with women because men are scared of her.” He turned to Larkin. “Don’t worry, we can handle her. She’s pretty easy to marginalize, and if it gets right down to it, she’s just one vote against four.”
Larkin hid his amusement. “Anything else?”
Extine’s tiny eyes somehow became even smaller, two black pinpricks beneath a hooded brow. “Your connection to Archer McFall may lead to some talk.”
Larkin had wondered if they’d get around to that. One thing he’d learned was that people rarely wanted to talk about the most important thing, tiptoeing around the elephant in the room so it would sleep longer. Larkin adopted an expression that was a mixture of curiosity and concern. “What do they say about Archer?”
Gunter and Extine exchanged a weighted glance, as if neither wanted to speak of it. Finally Gunter, his plump lips shining with bacon grease, spoke in a lowered voice that was barely audible over the surrounding chatter and the clink of silverware.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been a preacher,” Gunter said. “Reviving that old church and building a little congregation. You’re from Texas, so you don’t know what it’s like in these parts. Mostly Baptist and Methodist, with a little Episcopalian mission work left over from the 1800s. But Archer was a fringe preacher, and people whispered that he was starting a cult.”
Extine dipped his beakish nose lower and cut in. “A couple of bodies turned up on the property. The medical examiner said they were killed in animal attacks, and the sheriff went along with that story. But.…”
Larkin gave the appropriate frown of dismay. Archer had made a mistake by using religion. While faith was a good weapon in anyone’s arsenal, it ignited too many base emotions and aroused too much controversy. Religion was absolute—either you bought into it or you believed it was the root cause of all evil, suffering, and exploitation in the world. That might have been all well and good for the Catholic Church of a thousand years ago—and few had wielded the whip and the cross in such perfect tandem—but this was the Modern Age, a New Enlightenment.
Spiritual persuasion was no longer effective. The best conquests were performed through voluntary and eager participation. The buy-in.
It was so much cheaper to just purchase people’s souls than to foreclose upon them.
“But what?” Larkin McFall said in response to Extine’s unfinished sentence.
Again, both men seemed reluctant to speak. The waitress came by with the coffee pot and Larkin allowed her to pour him a refill. Neither Gunter nor Extine tried to look down her blouse when she bent over. This was a serious subject, apparently.
“Well,” Extine continued. “Given the McFall history … you know how people gossip.”
“The ghost stories,” Larkin said. “Even my branch of the family has heard them. So you’re saying we should back off these potential millions because of the Boogie Man?”
Gunter and Extine both sat up in alarm. Gunter was practically ebullient, pressing his ample waist against the table as he lurched forward, his paisley neck tie curling as Larkin’s coffee slopped around the rim of his cup. “No, no, no,” he gushed. “That’s all in the past. People will talk, sure, but then they’ll go back to their beer, their football, and their bills. Nobody has the energy to worry about old family grudges.”
Larkin nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s roll.”
He flagged down the waitress for the check. When she ripped it from her pad, he looked it over and said, “Good handwriting. It’s encouraging to see a person your age who values clear communication. What’s your name?”
The young woman had obviously been trained that the customer was always right, even hundred-year-old grab-assers who sat at the counter all day working a ninety-five-cent cup of coffee. Her face was flushed from the oily heat of the kitchen, and Larkin hoped she would make her escape from this rural purgatory. Not that he had a personal stake in it or anything.
“Melanie,” she said.
Gunter made a big display of reaching for the check. Larkin knew the man’s playbook from front to back—he always researched his potential partners so he would know how to play them. Gunter was always there at the United Way campaigns, the mission-trip fundraisers, and the community education summits, but his tax returns revealed that charitable contributions constituted
barely half a percent of his income. He was only generous when it offered deep dividends.
“Thank you for the excellent service, Melanie,” Larkin said. “I’m Larkin McFall. I’ll probably be coming here more often.”
Her pretty gray eyes widened slightly at the “McFall,” but she gave her on-duty smile and said. “I hope ya’ll enjoyed your food.”
Larkin left her a twenty-dollar tip. Cheaper to buy than foreclose.
CHAPTER FIVE
Sheriff Frank Littlefield sat down at his desk and looked around at all the junk he’d soon have to start packing.
Most of the piles of paper would stay for his successor—thank God—and the department memorabilia could probably stay as well, although undoubtedly most of it would end up in a county auction as soon as he was out the door. He’d take his Officer of the Year Award, which had been bestowed on him by the North Carolina Sheriff’s Association in 2001, but he could care less about the collection of confiscated bongs. In his early years in the office, a drug bust had been a big deal, but then the murders and disappearances had started piling up, and skater kids smoking a stinky green weed had stopped seeming like such a priority.
Yes, he would soon leave this job, but he was pretty sure it would never leave him.
Officer Perriotte stuck his head in the open door. “Heading out on patrol, Sheriff,” he said.
“You on the west end of the county tonight?”
“Yes, sir.” The “sir” wasn’t necessary, but Perriotte hoped to ride the transition with a newly elected sheriff, and since no one was sure who the candidates would be, he was working every angle. “Got my fishing pole and camping tent just in case the weather’s nice,” he joked.
“Can you do me a favor and cover Little Church Road? Check on the Day place while you’re out there?”
Perriotte’s cheerful expression froze. “The McFall property, you mean?”
All the officers knew that Littlefield’s younger brother had died at the red church decades ago, and it had only been a few years since Littlefield and a female deputy had driven a vehicle off Little Church Road and into the river. The deputy had drowned. Her death had been the third fatality during what Littlefield referred to as “six weeks of hell.” But the sheriff didn’t want sympathy, and he certainly didn’t like the look he saw on his officer’s face.
“A McFall is back in town and we’ve got a violent death on our hands,” Littlefield said. “It’s probably just coincidence, but Darnell Absher wasn’t found all that far from the McFall property.”
“You mean this Larkin McFall guy? If you don’t mind my saying so, he’s too much of a sissy to get his hands red with murder. And what would his motive have been?”
“If you believe the legends, McFalls don’t need a motive,” the sheriff said, well aware he was in danger of sounding like he was suffering from early-onset dementia. Although he supposed it wouldn’t be all that early. Christ, he felt a hundred and ten already.
“Okay, Sheriff, I’ll give it a look. Do you want me to stop in on the Days?”
The sheriff waved a tired hand. “No, no, just do a drive-by. Make sure nothing’s out of the ordinary.”
“You’ve got it.” Perriotte hurried off before he had a chance to gather more reasons for questioning Littlefield’s competency.
Littlefield picked up the phone and dialed Hoyle’s number at home. The balding little medical examiner had been threatening to give up the post for decades, even though he still worked part-time as a pediatric doctor. A county ME received a modest stipend that was nowhere near fair compensation for being on call around the clock. But Littlefield suspected Hoyle liked grumbling almost as much as he loved a good medical mystery.
“Sheriff, are you still up?” Hoyle said, having apparently seen the departmental number on caller ID. “I figured you’d be done with your milk and cookies and all tucked in by now.”
“I couldn’t find my teeth, so I couldn’t eat my snack,” he joked back. “And I forgot which pillow was mine.”
“Sleeping alone is hell, isn’t it?”
“At any age,” Littlefield said. He didn’t sleep alone every night, but he didn’t need to tell Hoyle that.
“Just hope you don’t get an enlarged prostate. Getting up and whizzing every two hours is for the birds.”
“I can hardly wait,” Littlefield said, hoping Hoyle didn’t break into a marketing pitch for adult diapers. “Got anything new on Absher?”
“Just what I already told you. Multiple contusions consistent with a fall of more than twenty feet onto a hard surface—or in this case, multiple surfaces called ‘rocks.’ Cause of death is subdural hematoma. He was likely unconscious and the blood vessels in his brain didn’t clot fast enough to give him a chance. Of course, if he’d been found sooner—”
“You don’t think he died instantly?”
“The only thing that bothers me is that it almost looks like too many contusions. A couple of the skull fractures were on different sides of his head. I suppose he might have bounced off a big rock and struck a smaller rock, but it’s almost like he injured himself and then climbed up the bank and dropped off a second time.”
“Except he would have been unconscious after the first fall.”
“Theoretically. Brain trauma is a tricky thing. At an ME convention, one doc told me about this man who accidentally drove the blade of a hatchet into his forehead. The blade lodged perfectly between the two hemispheres of his brain. He not only survived, he drove himself to the emergency room like that, the hatchet handle dangling between his eyes.”
Littlefield rubbed his brow and wondered if his looming headache was psychosomatic. “If he was high on something, he might not have had a normal perception of pain.”
“Still waiting on the toxicology report from the state. Everyone in town knows he had a history of alcoholism, but from what I can tell his blood-alcohol level was normal at the time of death. Of course, for Darnell, that meant about two-and-a-half times the legal limit.”
“Well, I still don’t know how he got there, but he sure didn’t drive.”
“That’s your job, Sheriff—figuring out the stuff nobody can explain.”
Yeah, and that’s why I’m retiring. “Okay, fax me over the tox report as soon as you get it.”
“Fax? Nobody faxes anymore. You really are an old coot, aren’t you?”
Littlefield smiled and rang off with a “’night.”
The phone had barely hit the cradle when Sherry, the departmental secretary and communications coordinator, buzzed him on the intercom. “Someone to see you, Sheriff.”
Littlefield sighed. He’d always worked well beyond his posted office hours, mostly because he didn’t want to sit alone in his small house looking for something to do. But he usually handled public calls and personal meetings during the day—a fact Sherry well knew, because she handled his schedule. This must be someone special.
Littlefield pushed the response button on the intercom. “Send him in.”
“Her, sheriff. Her.”
Damn.
He made a big show of staring at the clock on the wall as Cindy Baumhower came in, but he couldn’t help glancing at her. A tendril of her flowing auburn hair was stuck in one corner of her mouth, looking fetchingly cute. But her brown eyes were serious. “You were supposed to call.”
“Got a dead man on my desk, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
She pressed her palms on his desk and felt around. “Must be the Invisible Man because I don’t see anybody.”
“Come on, Cindy. You know about Darnell Absher. You wrote a story about him.”
“And I did you a favor. Played it like an accidental death. Better be glad I’m on your side.”
“Sleeping with the editor of the local paper sure has advantages.”
“I don’t recall us doing much sleeping.” Cindy came around the desk and Littlefield stood to meet her. She puckered her lips and bent forward.
The sheriff drew back. “Not in
the office,” he said. “You know what a blabbermouth Sherry is.”
“We’re just about the worst-kept secret in Pickett County.”
“Since I’m still on duty, you have to ask official questions from a safe distance.” Littlefield had maintained firm boundaries during the first stages of their relationship, but lately he’d come around to an attitude of “to hell with it.”
Cindy pulled from a pocket the spiral-bound notebook she habitually carried. She flipped through scribbles to a clean page and plucked a pen from a coffee cup full of them on the desk. “Any developments in the Absher death?”
“No, ma’am. We’re still officially calling it an accident while we await the toxicologist’s report.”
“Any reason to suspect foul play?”
“Not at this point.”
“Anything to say about the fact that he died near the McFall property and the red church, where half a dozen people have died violently under mysterious circumstances over the past fifty years?”
Littlefield swallowed. Cindy was an excellent researcher, but she also took a deep interest in the paranormal. Or at least she had back when ghost stories were more about folklore than idiots on reality TV shows yelling “Boo!” in the dark.
“We have no reason to connect this incident with any other incidents which may or may not have occurred,” he said.
“You’re saying ‘we,’ Sheriff. That’s a distancing mechanism. Aren’t you accepting full responsibility for this investigation?”
“As long as I’m the sheriff, the buck stops here.”
Cindy made a big flourish of writing the quote in her pad. “Clichés are another distancing mechanism. One last question. Didn’t the victim die near where Detective Sheila Storie’s body was found after that crash five years ago?”
Littlefield clenched his jaw and muttered through tight lips. “Goddamn it, Cindy. That’s not fair.”
“All’s fair in love and journalism.”
“I wouldn’t push the ‘love’ angle if I were you. That one has a way of vanishing faster than McFalls around these parts.”
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