Fatal Voyage tb-4

by Reichs, Kathy

  “Gone off where?”

  “They figured she was visiting family.”

  “And?”

  “Her room suggested otherwise. All her toiletries were there, toothbrush, dental floss, face cream, the things a woman takes when she travels. Her clothes were still in the dresser, suitcase empty under the bed. Her arthritis medication was sitting on the nightstand.”

  “Purse? Car keys?”

  “Negative. Looks like she may have left the room on her own, but she wasn't planning to be away overnight.”

  Crowe listened while I described my own visit to the inn, leaving out nothing but my larcenous intentions.

  “Why do you suppose Ralph went into her room?”

  “Your intuition may have been right. Curiosity. Or maybe he knows more than he's letting on. Maybe he wanted to get something out. I don't have that yet, but we will be watching Mr. Stover. We'll also talk to anyone acquainted with the victim, look for witnesses who might have seen her during the time she was missing. You know the drill.”

  “Round up the usual suspects.”

  “In Swain County, that ain't many.”

  “Was there nothing in that room to suggest where she might have gone? An address? A map? A toll ticket?”

  The line hummed.

  “We found two numbers next to the phone.”

  As she read the digits, my stomach tightened.

  The first rang at High Ridge House. The second rang the cellular-on my belt.

  An hour later I lay in bed, trying to sort and evaluate what I knew.

  Fact: My mysterious foot did not belong to Daniel Wahnetah. Possibility: The foot came from a corpse at the courtyard house. The ground stain contained volatile fatty acids. Something had decomposed there. Possibility: The foot came from Air TransSouth 228. Biohazard containers and other problem body parts had been recovered near the wreckage.

  Fact: The foot and its dossier were now missing. Possibility: Primrose Hobbs had kept the material. Possibility: Primrose Hobbs had returned the material, which was then taken by someone else.

  Fact: The remains of Jean Bertrand and Pepper Petricelli had not been identified. Possibility: Neither man was on the plane. Possibility: Both the detective and his prisoner were on board, their bodies pulverized by the explosion.

  Fact: Jean Bertrand was now a suspect.

  Fact: A witness claimed to have seen Pepper Petricelli in upstate New York. Possibility: Bertrand had been turned. Possibility: Bertrand had been burned.

  Fact: I had been accused of stealing evidence. Possibility: I was no longer trusted because of my relationship with Andrew Ryan, Bertrand's SQ partner. Possibility: I was being set up as a scapegoat to prevent me from participating in the investigation. But which investigation, the plane crash or the courtyard house? Possibility: I was at risk. Somebody had tried to run me down and had trashed my room.

  A tickle of fear. I held my breath, listening. Silence.

  Fact: Primrose Hobbs had been murdered. Possibility: Her death was a random act of violence. More likely: Her death was related to the missing foot.

  Fact: Edward Arthur obtained the property at Running Goat Branch in 1933 through his marriage to Sarah Livingstone. He rented it as a campground, then built a lodge, then sold the land in 1949 to a man named Prentice Dashwood, but title was taken in the name of H&F Investment Group, LLP. Arthur had not erected any stone walls or a courtyard. Who was Prentice Dashwood?

  I turned on the lamp, retrieved McMahon's Delaware fax, and scurried back to bed, my lips chattering. Huddled under the covers, I reread the names.

  W. G. Davis, F. M. Payne, C. A. Birkby, F. L. Warren, P. H. Rollins, M. P. Veckhoff.

  The only name that was remotely familiar was that of Veckhoff. A Charlottean named Pat Veckhoff had served in the North Carolina senate for sixteen years. He had died suddenly the previous winter. I wondered if there was a link to the M. P. Veckhoff on the list.

  Returning the room to darkness, I lay back and searched for connections among the things I knew. It was hopeless. Images of Primrose kept disrupting my concentration.

  Primrose at her computer, glasses on the end of her nose. Primrose in the parking lot. Primrose at the scene of a commuter plane crash, 1997, Kinston, North Carolina. Primrose across a card table, playing bid whit. Primrose in Charlotte. The Presbyterian Hospital cafeteria. I was eating vegetarian pizza made with canned peas and asparagus. I remembered hating the pizza, but not why I had met Primrose there.

  Primrose lying in a body bag.

  Why, dear God?

  Was she carefully chosen, researched, stalked, then overpowered as part of an elaborate plan? Or was she selected by chance? Some psycho's sick impulse. The first blue Honda. The fourth woman to exit the mall. The next black. Was death part of the plan, or did things go badly wrong, spinning out of control to one irreversible moment?

  Violence against women is not a recent phenomenon. The bones of my sisters litter history and prehistory. The mass grave at Cahokia. The sacred cenote at Chichén Itzá. The Iron Age girl in the bog, hair shorn, blindfolded and leashed.

  Women are conditioned to be wary. Walk faster at the sound of footsteps. Peek through the hole before opening the door. Stand by the controls in the empty elevator. Fear the dark. Was Primrose simply another marcher in a random parade of female victims?

  Who was I kidding? I knew the reason. Had no doubt.

  Primrose Hobbs had been killed because she fulfilled a request. My request. She had accepted a fax, taken measurements, and provided data. She had helped me, and in doing that she had threatened someone.

  I'd gotten her involved, and that someone had butchered her for it. The guilt and sorrow formed a physical weight pressing on my chest.

  But how had Primrose posed a threat? Had she uncovered something that I did not know? Had she realized the significance of that discovery, or had she been unaware of its importance? Had she been silenced for what she knew, or for what someone feared she would figure out?

  And what about me? Was I also a threat to some homicidal madman?

  My thoughts were interrupted by a soft wailing from below. Throwing back the covers, I pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and slipped into my deck shoes. Then I tiptoed through the silent house and out the back door.

  Boyd was sitting beside his doghouse, nose pointed at the night sky. On seeing me, he sprang to his feet and waggled the entire back half of his body. Then he dashed to the fence and went bipedal. Leaning on forepaws, he stretched his neck and gave a series of yips.

  I reached over and scratched his ears. Boyd lapped my hand, giddy with excitement.

  When I entered the pen and leashed him, the dog went hyperactive, spinning and kicking up dirt.

  “Be cool.” I pointed a finger at his snout. “This is against the rules.”

  He looked at me, tongue dangling, eyebrows dancing. I led him across the yard and into the house.

  Moments later we lay in the dark, Boyd on the carpet beside my bed. I heard him sigh as he settled chin on forepaws.

  I fell asleep with my hand on his head.

  THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE EARLY, FEELING COLD AND EMPTY but unsure why. It came to me in a thick, dreadful wave.

  Primrose was dead.

  The combined agonies of loss and guilt were almost paralyzing, and I lay still a long time, wanting nothing to do with the world.

  Then Boyd nuzzled my hip. I rolled over and scratched his ear.

  “You're right, boy. Self-pity does no one any good.”

  I rose, threw on clothes, and sneaked Boyd out to his run. During my absence a note appeared on the door to Magnolia. Ryan would be spending another day with McMahon and wouldn't need his car. The keys I'd left on his bureau were now on mine.

  When I turned on my phone, I had five messages. Four journalists and P & T. I called the repair shop, dumped the rest.

  The job was taking longer than anticipated. The car should be ready by tomorrow.

  We'd gone from “could” to
“should.” I was encouraged.

  But what now?

  An idea rose from deep in my past. The favorite refuge of a worried or restless little girl. It couldn't hurt, and I might uncover something useful.

  And for a few hours, at least I would be anonymous and inaccessible.

  Following toast and Frosted Flakes, I drove to the Marianna Black Public Library, a one-story redbrick box at the corner of Everett and Academy. Cardboard skeletons flanked the entrance, each with a book held in its hands.

  A tall, spindly black man displaying several gold teeth occupied a counter at the main entrance. An older woman worked beside him, securing a chain of orange pumpkins above their heads. Both turned when I entered.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Good morning.” The man showed a mile of precious metal. His lilac-haired companion eyed me suspiciously.

  “I'd like to look at back issues of the local paper.” I smiled disarmingly.

  “The Smoky Mountain Times?” asked Mrs. Librarian, laying down her staple gun.

  “Yes.”

  “How far back?”

  “Do you have material from the thirties and forties?”

  Her frown deepened. “The collection begins in 1895. It was the Bryson City Times back then. A weekly. The older publications are on microfilm, of course. You can't view the originals.”

  “Microfilm will be fine.”

  Mr. Librarian began opening and stacking books. I noticed that his nails were buffed, his clothes immaculate.

  “The viewer is in the overflow room, beside the genealogy section. You may only have one box at a time.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mrs. Librarian opened one of two metal cabinets behind the counter and withdrew a small gray box. “I'd better explain the machine.”

  “Please, you mustn't bother. I'll be fine. I'm familiar with micro-film viewers.”

  I read her expression as she handed me the microfilm. A civilian loose in the stacks. It was her worst nightmare.

  Settling at the machine, I checked the box's label: 1931–1937.

  An image of Primrose flashed into my mind, and tears blurred my vision.

  Stop. No grieving.

  But why was I here? What was my objective? Did I have one, or was I merely hiding out?

  No. I had a goal.

  I was still convinced that the courtyard property lay at the center of my problems, and wanted to learn more about who had been associated with it. Arthur had told me he'd sold his land to one Prentice Dashwood. But beyond that, and the names on McMahon's fax, I was unsure what I was looking for.

  In truth, I held little hope of finding anything helpful but had run out of ideas. And I had to do something about the charges against me. I couldn't return to Charlotte until my car was repaired, and I was barred from any other form of inquiry. What the hell. History should teach something.

  A poster had decorated Pete's office during his stint in uniform, guiding words embraced by JAG attorneys uncommitted to the military system: Indecision Is the Key to Flexibility.

  If the maxim was good enough for officer-lawyers of the United States Marine Corps, it seemed good enough for me. I'd look for everything.

  I inserted the film and wound it through the viewer. The machine was a hand-crank model, probably manufactured before the Wright brothers went flying at Kitty Hawk. Text and pictures swam in and out of focus. Within minutes I felt a headache begin to organize.

  I flicked through spool after spool, making trip after trip to the front desk. By the late 1940s, Mrs. Librarian relented and allowed me a half dozen boxes at a time.

  I skimmed over charity events, car washes, church socials, and local dramas. The crime was mostly petty, involving traffic offenses, drunk and disorderly, missing property, and vandalism. Births, deaths, and weddings were announced, garage and barn sales advertised.

  The war had claimed a large number from Swain County. From '42 to '45 the pages were filled with their names and photos. Each death was a feature story.

  Some citizens did manage to die in their beds. In December of 1943, the passing of Henry Arlen Preston was front-page news. Preston had been a lifelong resident of Swain County, an attorney, a judge, and part-time journalist. His career was recounted in radiant detail, the highlights being a term in Raleigh as a state senator, and the publication of a two-volume work on the birds of western North Carolina. Preston died at the age of eighty-nine, leaving behind a widow, four children, fourteen grandchildren, and twenty-three great-grandchildren.

  The week following Preston's death, the Times reported the disappearance of Tucker Adams. Two column inches on page six. No photo.

  The obscure little notice touched something in me. Had Adams enlisted secretly, then died overseas as one of our many unknowns? Had he returned, surprised his neighbors with tales of Italy or France, then gone on to live his life? Had he fallen from a cliff? Run off to Hollywood? Though I searched for a follow-up, nothing more on Adams's disappearance was reported.

  The rugged terrain had also claimed its victims. In 1939 a woman named Hilda Miner left home to deliver a strawberry pie to her granddaughter. She never arrived, and the pie tin was discovered beside the swollen Tuckasegee River. Hilda was presumed drowned, though her body was not located. A decade later the same waters took Dr. Sheldon Brodie, a biologist at Appalachian State University. A day after the professor's body washed up, Edna Farrell was thought to have fallen into the river. Like Miner, Farrell's remains were never found.

  I leaned back and rubbed my eyes. What had the old man said about Farrell? They should have done better by her. Who were “they”? Done better in what way? Was he referring to the fact that Farrell's body wasn't recovered? Or was he unhappy with the quality of Thaddeus Bowman's memorial service?

  In 1959 the fauna claimed a seventy-four-year-old Cherokee named Charlie Wayne Tramper. Two weeks after his disappearance, Charlie Wayne's rifle turned up in a remote valley on the reservation. Bear tracks and spoor suggested the cause of death. The old man was buried with full tribal ceremony.

  I'd worked on victims of bear attacks, and knew what had remained of Charlie Wayne. I shook the image from my mind.

  The list of environmental hazards courtesy of Mother Nature went on. In 1972 a four-year-old girl wandered from a campground in Maggie Valley. The little body was dragged from a lake the following day. The next winter two cross-country skiers froze to death when caught in a sudden blizzard. In 1986 an apple farmer named Albert Odell went searching for morels and never returned.

  I found no reference to Prentice Dashwood, to the Arthur property, or to the officers of the H&F Investment Group. The closest I came was a May 1959 spread on a fiery crash on Highway 19. Six hurt, four killed. Pictures showed tangled wreckage. Dr. Anthony Allen Birkby, sixty-eight, from Cullowhee, died three days later of multiple injuries. I took note. Though the name was not uncommon, one C. A. Birkby was listed on McMahon's fax.

  By noon, my head pulsed and my blood sugar had dropped to a level incapable of sustaining life. I slipped a granola bar from my purse, did a stealthy peel, and munched quietly as I cranked my zillionth spool through the viewer.

  Issues from recent years were not yet on microfilm, and by midafternoon I was able to switch to hard copy. But the headache had already escalated from a minor disturbance to major pain that swirled across my frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes and pulsed at an epicenter behind my right eye.

  Final stretch. The tough get going. Bring it home. Remember the Gipper.

  Shit.

  I was flipping through papers from the current year, scanning headlines and photographs, when a name caught my eye. George Adair. The missing fisherman.

  The coverage of Adair's disappearance was detailed, giving the exact time and place of the fatal fishing trip, a description of the victim, and an itemized account of what he was wearing, right down to his high school ring and St. Blaise medal.

  Another childhood flashback. The parish priest. The
blessing of throats on St. Blaise Day. What was the story? Blaise was reputed to have saved a child from choking on a fish bone. The medal made sense. Crowe said Adair complained of throat problems.

  Adair's companion was interviewed, as were his wife, friends, former employer, and priest. A grainy picture was printed beside the story, the pendant clearly visible around his neck.

  Who was Crowe's other missing person? I searched my pounding brain. Jeremiah Mitchell. February. I moved back almost eight months and began a more careful perusal. Small things began to connect.

  Jeremiah Mitchell's disappearance was reported in one short paragraph. On February 15 a seventy-two-year-old black male left the Mighty High Tap and walked into oblivion. Anyone having information blah, blah, blah.

  Old ways die hard, I thought, feeling a prickle of anger. White man goes missing: feature story. Black man goes missing: blurb on page seventeen. Or maybe it was station in life. George Adair had a job, friends, family. Jeremiah Mitchell was an unemployed alcoholic who lived alone.

  But Mitchell had once had kin. A follow-up appeared in early March, again a single paragraph, seeking information and citing the name of his maternal grandmother, Martha Rose Gist. I stared. How far back had I seen that name?

  I returned to the boxes, jumping the microfilm weeks at a turn. The obituary appeared on May 16, 1952, along with six inches in the arts column. Martha Rose Gist had been a potter of local fame. The article included a picture of a beautifully decorated ceramic bowl, but none of the artist.

  Damn!

  Checking to be sure the overflow room was empty, I clicked on my cell. Six messages. Ignoring them, I dialed Crowe's number, muffling the beeps with my jacket.

  “Sheriff Crowe.”

  I didn't bother announcing myself.

  “Are you familiar with Sequoyah?” I asked in a loud whisper.

  “Are you in church?”

  “The Bryson City library.”

  “Iris catches you, she'll rip off your lips and feed them to her shredder.”

  I assumed Iris was the lilac-haired dragon I'd met at the entrance.