Music of Ghosts

by Sallie Bissell

  “I need a priority on this,” Cochran told Agent Fred Brewer as two young men hauled Lisa Wilson down the hill. “This girl’s got connections.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Twenty years and forty pounds ago Brewer had been a Marine. He still wore his gray hair side-walled, still barked commands at his evidence-gathering troops as if they were establishing a beachhead on some hostile coastline. Cochran guessed that, in a way, they were.

  Brewer’s gray eyes sparked with sudden interest. “What kind of connections?”

  “Political.”

  “Who?”

  Cochran knew this could go two ways. If the SBI needed some good press in Raleigh, Brewer would muscle in on the case. If the connection was too hot, Brewer would lead his troops to higher ground. “Carlisle Wilson,” he finally replied.

  Brewer frowned. “Governor Carlisle Wilson?”

  “His daughter, by all reports.”

  “Aw, man,” said Brewer, suddenly sympathetic. “This could get bad. That old bastard’s got enemies in every county in the state.”

  “Enemies who’d go after his daughter?” asked Cochran.

  “I don’t know.” Brewer shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Too much heat for Brewer, Cochran thought as the agents lifted Lisa Wilson into the back of an unmarked van. This puppy’s going to be all mine.

  “You know we’ll help in any way we can,” Brewer said tepidly, beginning to distance himself.

  “Then when you get her to the lab, make sure John Merkel does the post-mortem,” said Cochran.

  Brewer snorted. “That fruit cake usually doesn’t come into the lab until midnight.”

  “I’ll get in touch with him,” said Cochran. “He’ll be waiting when you get there.”

  Brewer gazed at the now vacant spot under the pine tree. “Have you told Carlisle Wilson about this yet?”

  Cochran shook his head. “I want to talk to the guy she was working for first.”

  Brewer gave him a sympathetic slap on the back. “I don’t blame you, buddy. That’s one next-of-kin call I’d put off as long as I could, too.”

  Brewer helped him cordon off as much of the area as possible—then he left to go to Winston-Salem, promising to return first thing in the morning. As Cochran headed back to his cruiser, he paused at the cabin, remembering his adolescent terror. Back then the place had seemed huge—dark and foreboding as a castle. Today, it was just a mean little shack, furred with moss, slowly being cannibalized by wild grapevine and trumpet flowers. Still—something about the place made him edgy.

  “Your ghost was probably just some old brain-fried dude with a still,” he told himself as he walked up on the porch and gazed in the open front door. “Probably laughed his ass off at the two little punks who didn’t have the balls to steal a condom.”

  “Say what?” A voice ripped through the air behind him.

  Cochran jumped, turning in mid-air. He was ready to rack a shell when he saw Saunooke standing at the bottom of the steps.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” asked Cochran angrily.

  “Detective Clark took over the interviews.” The young Cherokee shrugged. “So I came back here. Sorry if I scared you.”

  “No problem.” Cochran lowered the gun, his heart beating fast. “Though you might want to announce yourself next time you come up behind somebody holding a Winchester.”

  Saunooke walked up to stand next to Cochran. He peered into the graffiti-rich rooms, now speckled with white fingerprint powder. “Creepy as hell, isn’t it?”

  “Kids come up here to get scared for a reason,” said Cochran.

  “Deegahdoli,” said Saunooke.

  “What’s that?”

  Saunooke laughed. “That’s what the Cherokees call this place.”

  “Deegahdoli means Fiddlesticks?”

  “No. There’s supposedly a ghost up here—deegahdoli means eyes.”

  “Come on,” said Cochran, heading back down the steps. “Let’s get over to the bird center. I want to positively ID this girl before I rattle Carlisle Wilson’s cage.”

  Half an hour later Cochran and Saunooke pulled up in front of the staring faces of a totem pole that stood above a sign that read “Pisgah Raptor Rescue Center.” Cochran got out of his car slowly, examining the totem pole for any of the same odd squiggles carved on Lisa Wilson’s body. He didn’t see any, but he still found it odd to come face to face with a Northwest Indian artifact here in Cherokee country. He turned to Saunooke.

  “You guys don’t put up totem poles now, do you?”

  Saunooke laughed. “Only for the tourists.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Cochran frowned at the stylized faces of an eagle and an owl. “Let’s go see what else is up there.”

  “Don’t we need a warrant?”

  “No. We’re just informing of a death today,” Cochran explained. “We’re friendly and respectful, but we keep our eyes and ears open, just the same.”

  They turned left and walked along a gravel path that led uphill. Though the woods were just as thick as at Fiddlestick’s cabin, Cochran sensed no silent, underlying malevolence here. Birds chirped, bees buzzed. An innate busy-ness hummed about this forest that made the silence at Fiddlesticks’s place even stranger. They hadn’t gone more than fifty feet when they met a wiry old man limping toward them, a huge bald eagle perched on his gloved right arm. When he caught sight of Cochran and Saunooke, he stopped immediately, the bird rousting its feathers at the abrupt surcease of motion.

  “Howdy.” The man respectfully touched the bill of an ancient Braves baseball cap with fingers that were sheered off at the second knuckle. “Something wrong?”

  “Are you Nick Stratton?” asked Cochran.

  He squinted up at him as if even this soft, leaf-filtered light was too bright. “No, sir. I’m Artie Slade. Nick’s up yonder at the cabin.”

  “Can you take us to him?”

  “Something wrong?” Slade asked again as the bird opened its beak and let out a shrill, whistling shriek.

  “We’d prefer to talk with Mr. Stratton,” said Cochran.

  “Then come ahead on.” The old man tightened his grip on a long leather strap that secured the eagle and turned around, heading back in the direction he’d come. Cochran and Saunooke followed, finally stopping at a cabin nestled between two tall sycamore trees. Recently built of new lumber, a wide porch surrounded it on three sides. On that porch two men stood talking. One slouched against the porch railing, smoking a cigarette while the other stood tall, with surfer-blonde hair.

  “Yo, Nick!” called Artie Slade. “Law’s here!”

  The two looked up, startled. For an instant both gazed at Cochran with hard eyes, then the tall surfer came down the steps.

  “Nick Stratton?” asked Cochran.

  The lanky man nodded. “I’m Nick Stratton.”

  “Do you have an intern named Lisa Carlisle Wilson?” Cochran noticed a deep scar that bisected the man’s upper lip.

  Stratton frowned. “I do. Is she in some kind of trouble?”

  “Mr. Stratton, at approximately nine a.m. this morning, we got a call from the east side of Burr Mountain. A twenty-one-year-old white female named Lisa Carlisle Wilson was found dead—the apparent victim of a homicide.”

  “A homicide?” Stratton looked at Cochran incredulous, as if he were someone dressed as a cop, playing a joke. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You mean Lisa’s dead?”

  Cochran nodded, knowing that it took awhile for people to wrap their heads around such grim news.

  Stratton asked, “What about the other kids?”

  “They’re fine. Downtown now, giving statements.”

  “Holy shit!” The second man shook his head as he stubbed out his cigarette on the porch floor. “Here we were figuring they were
just laid out drunk somewhere.”

  “I warned them that cabin was bad luck,” said the man who held the eagle.

  Stratton just stood there, looking like a man suddenly short of air.

  “I understand that this Lisa is the daughter of former governor Jackson Carlisle Wilson,” said Cochran.

  Stratton nodded.

  “Do you have any contact information for her?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice a croak. “Come inside and I’ll get it.”

  While Stratton headed back to his cabin, Cochran turned to the other men who were standing there watching the proceedings. “Did you two men know Lisa Wilson?”

  “We both worked with her.” The smoker gave a leering giggle. “We didn’t know her know her.”

  “You’ll both still need to give Officer Saunooke a statement.”

  The eagle wrangler piped up. “Can I re-cage this bird first?”

  Cochran nodded, then turned to Saunooke. “Interview this guy first, then get the other one after he ditches the bird.”

  Leaving Saunooke to the interviews, Cochran went inside the cabin. The place smelled of cedar and had Western décor, with the flag of Washington State draped over the fireplace, a hockey stick gracing the mantel. On one wall hung half a dozen musical instruments—fiddles and mandolins, a banjo and a guitar.

  “You play all these instruments?” he asked Stratton, who was rummaging through a small file cabinet in the kitchen.

  “Fiddle and mandolin. The kids play everything else.”

  Cochran wandered toward the kitchen, taking in the details of Stratton’s home. He peered at the refrigerator, searching the array of calendars and notes for any of those strange, runic letters that decorated Lisa Wilson’s body. He found nothing more exotic than a postcard from Costa Rica, written in Spanish.

  “I can’t believe this,” said Stratton, finally extricating an envelope from the file. “Here’s her information. What the hell happened to her up there?”

  “We’re not sure,” Cochran said.

  “But how can you not be sure, if she’s dead?” Stratton’s tone grew angry.

  “The state medical examiner determines that, sir.” Cochran always played his cards close to his vest. Maybe this bird guy would hang himself, if he was the killer.

  Stratton ran a hand through his long locks. “To think we were getting pissed because they were late coming back to work.”

  “Who was getting pissed?” asked Cochran.

  “Artie and Jenkins.” Stratton nodded toward the porch, where Saunooke was still talking to the smoker. “They had to cover for the kids this morning while I went to the sports park opening.”

  Cochran thought of Ginger, the picnic they’d planned to have, the ring he’d hoped to put on her finger later that night. “What did you do at the sports park opening?”

  “I took a couple of our ambassador owls and flew our eagle, Sequoia.” Stratton returned to the file and pulled out a business card that had a cartoon depicting him with an eagle on one shoulder. “I do an avian educational show for kids. Dr. Lovebird and Friends.”

  “And your interns help you with that?”

  He nodded. “They were supposed to. But yesterday they got a wild hair about going up to that old cabin. I figured they’d earned some time off, so I said okay.”

  “What exactly do they do here?” asked Cochran.

  “They spend the summer rehabbing raptors. Learn avian anatomy, banding, helping fledge out young eagles on the hacking stand.”

  “Hacking stand?”

  “A platform with open-faced cages, about thirty feet high. The eaglets learn to fly without human intervention.”

  “You a vet?”

  “I’ve got my DVM, also a PhD. I run this rehabilitation center, plus teach adjunct at Duke and Appalachian.”

  Cochran nodded. This Stratton might look like a beach bum, but he spoke like a man accustomed to mortarboards and diplomas. He looked back at the wall of instruments. “Anything I should know about Lisa?”

  “She was a nice girl. Good with birds, worked hard. Got along with everybody.”

  That strangled, mutilated body flashed across Cochran’s mind. “Are you sure about that? She didn’t get along so well with the person who killed her.”

  “I think a couple of the kids might have resented her,” admitted Stratton. “But they certainly wouldn’t have killed her.”

  “Why did they resent her?”

  “Kind of a teacher’s pet thing. She made sure I had a fresh pot of coffee every morning, that my porch was swept off.” Stratton gave an apologetic smile. “Ultimately, it got embarrassing. I had to ask her to stop.”

  Cochran nodded, casually looking for scratch marks on Stratton’s hands and arms. He wore a long-sleeved shirt buttoned to the wrists, but there were several cuts on the knuckles of his right hand. “Did Lisa have any problems with anybody else? Her family? Any old boyfriends come calling?”

  “Seems like she said she’d broken up with some guy.”

  “Mention any names?”

  “Honestly, I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t seem to know much about this girl, Mr. Stratton.”

  “It’s not my job to know much about her.” He frowned, defensive. “It’s my job to teach her about raptors.”

  “And hopefully get her home in one piece.”

  Again, Stratton ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what to tell you—she did her work, rehabbed a kestrel, tried to learn the guitar.” He shrugged at Cochran. “I can take you to her room, if that would help.”

  Cochran gave a tight smile. “That might help considerably.”

  The two men went back outside. The late afternoon sun had heated the air, making the smell of pine so thick Cochran could feel it on his tongue. Saunooke had dismissed the smoker and was starting to interview the bird-wrangler. Stratton led him back toward the totem pole but then made a sharp left turn down another prong of the path. They finally came to two large cabins joined by a walkway. Laundry flapped in the breeze from both porches—jeans and tee shirts on one, bras and bikini pants on the other.

  “The girls always claim that east cabin,” Stratton explained. “It’s got one more toilet and an extra sink.”

  Stratton walked to the cabin and opened the door. Inside, the room was divided into four cubicles, each appointed with bed and bureau, desk and bulletin board. They were what Cochran would expect from college girls. Pictures of friends decorated the walls, iPods rested next to laptop computers. Two of the girls had fiddles with beginning fiddle books. Another had a half-finished bracelet stretched across a beading loom and a deck of tarot cards.

  “Which cubicle is Lisa’s?” asked Cochran.

  “Beats me,” Stratton replied. “I never come down here.”

  Cochran walked around the room. Suddenly he stopped at the cubicle nearest the bathroom. “You think it might be this one?”

  Stratton came over to stand beside him. Both men looked at a well-appointed cubicle that had every available inch of the wall above the bed covered in pictures of Nick Stratton. Stratton working with birds, playing the fiddle, coming out of a creek bare-chested and dripping wet. Cochran turned and looked at the tall man who was gaping at the display. “Are you sure you never came down here?”

  “No.” Stratton gulped, embarrassed. “I had no idea she’d taken all these.”

  Cochran gazed at the photos with interest. “Too bad,” he said, pulling down a picture of Lisa beaming up at a shirtless Stratton, her missing ring clearly visible on her right hand. “Looks like your coming down here would have made Lisa’s dreams come true.”

  Five

  As it turned out, Mary missed every bit of the soccer game. Also the picnic as well as Jonathan’s game-winning goal in the over-35 Cherokee men’s stickball game. Between the gover
nor—who wanted to appoint her special prosecutor for crimes against women—and Jake McKenna, chief arm-twister for the governor, she didn’t get back to the sports park until well after dark. Now she sat, guilty and remorseful, as Jonathan sped them home, swerving up the tight mountain curves as overhanging limbs slapped against the roof of their car.

  “I’m so sorry I missed everything,” Mary apologized for the third time, breaking their sullen silence. “Did you guys have fun at the park?”

  “It was great,” said Jonathan. “Lily played an awesome game. After that we went swimming and had our picnic.”

  “Did you eat with Ginger and Jerry?”

  “They never showed up,” said Jonathan. “So we ate fast and went to the stickball game.”

  “Daddy scored a goal,” Lily added. “Everybody cheered.”

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there,” Mary made apology number four. “It’s just hard to turn down a direct invitation from the governor.”

  “What did she want?” asked Jonathan, a slight edge in his voice.

  “Just to thank me for all my work on the sports park,” Mary replied, deciding now was probably not the best time to bring up Ann Chandler’s job offer.

  “Wow,” said Jonathan. “Get chummy with the governor, who knows what might happen?”

  She started to tell him nothing was going to happen when suddenly Lily screamed.

  “Daddy! Look out!”

  Mary turned just in time to see a shadow swoop across Jonathan’s side of the car. He braked hard, pitching them forward. Mary winced as her seatbelt dug into her shoulder.

  The car fishtailed wildly, finally skidding to a stop diagonally across the narrow mountain road.

  “Everybody okay?” With a brief glance at Mary, Jonathan turned his attention to his child.

  Unharmed, Lily sat up between the front seats. “What happ-

  ened?”

  “Something flew in front of us,” said Jonathan, backing the car into the proper side of the road.