He’d passed the point of gentle reason. I jerked out of his grasp. “Mr. Shoal, someone may need help. I’m going where I can call the sheriff’s office. You can discuss your property rights with Sheriff Peters when she gets here.”
“Don’t nobody need any help,” the message bearer muttered, bent over with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. “Trust me on that.”
I gave Shoal a final stare before continuing up the logging road, picking the shortest route through the trees to higher ground.
After some wrangling, I got the dispatcher to put me directly through to Rudy Mellin. He could call in Sheriff L. J. Peters if he wanted to; I preferred to avoid dealing with her.
Rudy wasn’t enthusiastic about driving up the mountain based on nothing more than, to quote him, what some guy said.
“So you didn’t personally see the body.”
“No, Rudy, I didn’t. But the guy looked green around the gills and blithered like an idiot. He didn’t make it up.”
“He said it was in a hole.”
“Yep.”
“Like a grave or something?”
“I don’t know.”
“For love and money, A’vry. It’s probably a deer carcass. I had a rough night last night and I’m scheduled to clock out in another hour. It’ll take longer than that to drive—Why don’t you go look at the so-called body yerself and call me back.”
“Rudy—”
“Come on, A’vry. As a favor to me. Least you got sense enough to know if it’s a dead deer. That, or get yerself a new best friend in the Sheriff’s Department. L.J. would love to come up there if only you’d call her.” True, the trip to check it out was much shorter for me than for him. It might be nothing, after all. I gave Rudy a dramatic sigh. “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
He gave me his direct number. I continued over the hill, then down the other side to rejoin the logging road as it circled the hill. When I rounded a curve, I saw a small group gathered in the lee of an abrupt outcropping of rock.
Lionel Shoal had beaten me to the scene, taking the shorter route along the logging road to check things for himself. He was walking away from the small clump of people, fumbling for his cell phone. His bluster had evaporated, and he looked gray and shaken.
I didn’t have to ask where to look for the body. Everyone faced, at a respectful distance, the rock embankment. Some still clutched their garden trowels. Nobody was talking. When I joined the group, I could see what looked like a dark slash in the bank and could smell what had sobered Lionel Shoal and the others.
As soon as I saw the lace-up work boot sticking out from an opening in the rocks, I knew it was no deer. Judging from the swollen, mottled skin peeking out of the dark blue pants leg, the guy who’d run downhill to report the body was right. Whoever it was didn’t need any help.
I searched among those who’d gathered. Noah was nowhere to be seen. Chasing the story elsewhere? Looking for somebody to take charge, I spotted the two most sensible people I knew: Mom and Maggy Avinger. I made my way over to them and quietly asked if they’d herd everybody away from the shaft. I climbed back up the hill to call Rudy, huffing to get the sticky sweet smell of decay out of my nostrils.
7
Late Sunday Afternoon
Whew! Wisht somebody’d found him sooner. Gawd, what a smell!” Rudy Mellin sauntered over to join me on my perch in the sun, upwind from any stray odor but with a good view of the logging road, the surrounding forest, and any movement by curiosity seekers or four-legged scavengers around the narrow opening in the rocks below.
In the short time since I’d returned to Dacus, I’d increased the amount of time I’d spent in criminal matters several hundredfold, from near zero to too much. Before November, I’d spent my time in civilized lawsuits, defending doctors and large corporations, making only occasional forays into the criminal courts as a guardian ad litem, usually for children who had a parent heading off to jail and who needed somebody rep-resenting them in a custody hearing. I’d also done some pro bono plea agreements and had been intrigued enough to study up on investigation procedures, hoping to find something to aid my admittedly guilty clients or their kids. That had not prepared me for Dacus.
First, I’d had to deal with Donlee Griggs—a gigantic goofball who’d fancied himself my suitor in high school—along with his buddy Pee Vee Probert and their frequent drunk-and-disorderly charges. Then the Garnet Mills fire I’d witnessed in November while helping Melvin when he’d been suspected of his wife’s murder. And now a dead body in an abandoned mine. Nothing had fully prepared me for this.
I had hoped Rudy would handle the investigation but, forty minutes after I called him back with the bad news about the body, Sheriff L. J. Peters herself led the procession. Three patrol cars and an ambulance crept up the logging road, dragging oil pans over the rocks and tree roots. L.J. brought the coroner—who was a life insurance agent when he wasn’t pronouncing decomposing bodies dead. Rudy and another deputy drove the other two patrol cars.
L.J. carefully covered her bowl-cut black hair with her Smokey Bear hat as soon as she unfolded her six-foot self from behind the cruiser’s steering wheel. She fingered the butt of her gun and the baton handle with that hint of official malice that drives me mad.
I’d known L.J. since grade school, when she’d periodically slammed me against the wall in the restroom just to prove she could. Now she could wield power without violence—unless, I’m sure, someone presented a situation where violence might be both entertaining and within the definition of “reasonable force.”
It didn’t take long for L.J. and Lionel Shoal to square off. Predictably, Shoal made the mistake of trying to out-officious Lucinda Jane Peters. Distracted by watching the coroner try not to get too close to the ripe corpse, I didn’t notice how the meeting between L.J. and Shoal began. I only saw how it ended. This was the third time I’d seen Lionel Shoal in action, and not once had he impressed me as a man of tact or diplomacy—or good sense. He preferred bullheading his way through the middle. Maybe that’s how developers got things done where he came from. I could’ve told him it would not be a good way to handle L.J., but he never bothered to ask. Not too smart for a guy in his line of work.
By the time I noticed their encounter, Shoal stood toe-to-toe with L.J. In high school, L. J. had been a basketball standout. She was beefier now, which only added to her intimidation factor.
“Mr. Shoal,” she said, her voice calm and dangerous, “we need to continue this conversation down at the Law Enforcement Center.”
She stood so close that Shoal had to crook his neck back to stare at her. He belatedly began to realize his disadvantage. On many levels. He let her lead him to her patrol car. She gave him the courtesy of not handcuffing him since he wasn’t under arrest, but with a slam of the door, she cut off his pleas to let him sit up front He probably thought she’d let him play with the siren.
L.J. removed her hat, tossed it in the front seat, folded herself behind the wheel, and drove slowly away, with Shoal’s head bouncing from side to side in the rear window as the car wallowed over the deep ruts.
Rudy and the other deputy L.J. had left at the scene took down information from the plant rescuers before letting them go home. Camden County doesn’t have enough crime to justify a full-fledged crime scene crew, so we had to wait on a team from SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Lester Watts and a kid with a crew cut arrived after L.J. left While the kid shot some videotape, Lester halfheartedly took a few photos, but nobody could count on Lester’s results. Everybody stayed back from the body itself, awaiting the experts.
“Any guess how long he’s been there?” I asked as Rudy joined me, propping his rump against the boulder where I sat cross-legged.
Rudy shrugged. “He’s bloated and his skin’s so black you can’t even tell what color he started out being. We’ve had some pretty nice days, up in the fifties, but the nights have been near or below freezing. Who knows what being st
uffed in that hole has done. He’s been there more’n a couple of days, but I wouldn’t say he’s been there for a couple of months. Nothing more than a wild-ass guess, though.”
Rudy wouldn’t have seen a lot of dead bodies in Camden County, but his wild-ass guess would still be better than mine.
“What’s that hole he’s stuck in?” I asked. Rudy had been closer to the body than anyone else, and even he’d kept a good distance, not wanting to contaminate the scene but wanting to get an idea of what they were dealing with.
“If I’uz to guess, I’d say it was an abandoned mine shaft.”
“That’s what somebody else said. That crack in the rock is a mine?”
Rudy nodded. “There’s quite a few up in here, most of ‘em just places cut back into a hillside, like that one. Some go back far enough to need timber supports. Most of those larger mines are all rotted and tumbled in by now, though. Nothing like the mines you see on those old TV westerns. These are small, hard-scratch holes.”
“What’d they mine here?”
“Gold, mostly.”
“You gotta be kidding. That’s really a gold mine?” Rudy had to be pulling my leg.
“Sure. Lots of people dug or panned for gold up around here, from before the Civil War, some up into the thirties. The Depression, I guess, had people looking for any way they could to get some money.”
“Gold mining in Camden County. Imagine that.”
“Where do you think they got the name Golden Cove?”
“Thought it was just some cutesy stupid name. Was there much gold up here?”
“Naw. Guess they got the fever because of the richer veins just to the east and west of here. But around here, it was mostly just something folks did to tide ‘em over after the crops were in. Or to keep from having to find honest work.”
“How’d’you know so much?”
“My grandmother had an abandoned dig on her place. She allowed as how it just gave my granddad somewhere to hide out from chores. Said the little bits he found never amounted to a knot on a gnat. Said he could’ve made more working a week’s shift in a cotton mill.”
“You ever dig for gold?”
“Naw. Granny would’a tanned my hind end good if I’d gotten near that tumbled-in hole. My uncle did show my brother and me how to work an old sluice he had. We got some little flecks of gold we kept in a glass aspirin bottle filled with baby oil. But that’uz a potload of work for a teaspoon, let me tell you.”
I’d read about gold veins farther east in North and South Carolina. Charlotte had even boasted a U.S. mint at one time to process the gold discovered nearby. Then gold fever struck in Dahlonega, Georgia, to the south and west of these mountains, before San Francisco and Alaska lured the dreamers even farther from home. That had been a hundred-plus years ago. Three hundred years before that, the local Indians had suckered de Soto into leaving them alone, each tribe passing him along by telling him of other tribes with golden riches—always over the next hill.
I could imagine some dirt farmer up here scratching away, hoping to hit it rich or just to afford some little extra for his family—or to sucker his wife into leaving him be. As good a way to waste time as any, I guess.
“Reckon he was digging for gold and something fell on him?” I asked.
“Hard to say.” Rudy shifted his weight, trying to find a comfortable spot on the boulder. “Hard to say.”
“How long before these crime scene folks get here?”
“Also hard to say. I promise you, we’re not high on their priorities. I can also promise you, I’m not going to be the schmuck who spends the night up here guarding the scene.”
“I hadn’t thought about that. Guess somebody has to keep an eye on things until they’ve finished. Can they work after dark processing it?” I pictured huge klieg lights and generator trucks. The sun was already angling low through the trees. It would slip behind the ridge before long, bringing early dark.
Rudy just shrugged.
We sat companionably studying the crevice in the hillside and the leafless trees and the glint of sun on the mica-flecked soil. Rudy resettled his backside on the sloping outcrop and chewed on a piece of broom-straw. L.J. hadn’t reappeared, not that I’d expected her back. A couple of other deputies sat in a patrol car they’d managed to maneuver down the rock-strewn road to within thirty yards of the no-longer-abandoned mine.
“I’m going to head back into town,” I said after a while. “Unless you need me for something.”
Rudy spit out a stray piece of straw and looked a little disappointed. “Sure you don’t want to volunteer to keep an eye on things here tonight? That’d be enough to interest some deputies in the assignment.”
“Fill me in later, okay?” I had to admit to more than a little idle curiosity, but I had some work to do, like reading case law and puzzling over what to do about Maggy Avinger and her husband’s little elegiac.
Rudy startled me by reading my mind. “You gonna fill me in on that hypothetical you were chewing over the other morning?”
I know I must have looked guilty. “Urn—no. I mean, there’s nothing to tell. If there was, you’d be the first to know.”
His eyes narrowed into slits and one corner of his mouth crooked up. “You sure.” It wasn’t a question.
“Sure.” I meant to be sincere. “See you later.”
He hooked a thumb in his belt loop, up under his overhanging belly, and gave me a knowing nod.
8
Sunday Evening
By the time I got back to Dacus on Sunday night, it was dusk, the time of day when I either have to be distracted or depressed.
All weekend, I’d mulled over what to do about Harden Avinger’s poisonous tombstone. After watching Maggy, I was even more convinced that she and my mother had been cut from the same world-beating, earth-saving bolt of cloth.
Though Maggy didn’t agree, I knew the accusation, not the angel, was her biggest problem. Even if I found a way to stop Innis Barker from installing the angel, everybody in town would eventually be whispering about what was hidden, buried. Short of exhuming Harden—which would create almost as much stir as the tombstone itself—what else was there?
After much thought, I decided I would call the hospital pathologist tomorrow morning. If she had kept tissue samples, I’d find out what was involved in getting them tested and how much it would cost. That could settle the first part of Maggy’s problem, the accusation.
Then I could focus on what to do about the angel. I needed to reread the copy of Harden’s letter Maggy had left with me. Tomorrow morning, I’d go by and see Innis Barker at the monument company, talk to him about options for keeping Harden’s hateful words from achieving the immortality of granite.
I also needed to puzzle my way through what Dot Downing could do about Lionel Shoal’s double dealing. Of course, without seeing the deed, I couldn’t know what legal covenants had been made as part of the sale. I also needed to learn more about wetlands protection. Only four states in the nation have a greater percentage of land mass in wetlands than South Carolina. As a result, the state legislature has seen fit to supplement federal environmental protection with some stiff laws of its own. Frankly, though, I hadn’t known we had wetlands in the hills.
Maggy had spoken so convincingly about protecting the cove forest, and after seeing the vulnerable trees and delicate orchids and habitats that no rescue efforts could save from the bulldozers, I wanted to know what the options were.
So I did what lawyers with legal questions do: I logged onto my office computer and searched the specialized legal databases and some environmental Web sites. Too much fringe-element nut stuff in some of the environmental sites, and too little explanation of the reach of statutes onto private property.
Despite masses of environmental protection legislation at both the state and federal levels, the law governing whether a property owner can plow under wetlands on his own property was confused and mired in controversy. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled
recently that the Army Corps of Engineers was reaching too far onto private property to prevent development; the court interpreted the Clean Water Act more narrowly than the Army Corps of Engineers had wanted, so the Corps had continued to find new ways to push against the restrictions.
For a moment—just a blink—I felt sorry for the guy in one of the cases who’d purchased a lot and couldn’t build on it because of the wetlands. In another blink, the sympathy was gone. Buyer beware. Was there ever a way to know ahead of time what the Corps or any other regulatory body was going to allow or condemn?
Congress has the power to regulate activities in interstate commerce. As a result cases had held that any river regulated by federal law had to be navigable and thus able to be used in interstate commerce. Wetlands had to drain into a navigable river in order to be federally protected. Otherwise, the wetlands were governed by the state.
If the wetlands were protected, an Army Corps of Engineers permit was required before any building could commence. The Corps and the federal courts were in a tug-of-war: The Corps wanted to regulate every damp patch of ground in the nation, and the courts kept limiting the reach of regulations. In short the law wouldn’t be clear until the Supreme Court settled the issue—if then.
Did the wetlands on Dot Downing’s property drain into a navigable river? Did it drain into the Chattooga? In that case, would the federal Wild and Scenic designation protect the river’s watershed, even though the river wouldn’t be termed “navigable” for interstate commerce? No, according to the documents I pulled up, the Wild and Scenic protection extended only to development along the river, not to its wetlands and feeder streams. Still, if he didn’t have a required state or federal permit, siccing the regulators on him could mean fines, a possible jail term, and an order to stop work.
The staunchly independent personal rights part of me hated government telling somebody what to do with his property, but it warred with the part of me that had spent the last two days wandering under a thick canopy of poplar and black walnut trees. The plundering of those woods disturbed and saddened me.
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