Cry Baby Hollow

by Love, Aimee

  “I need the names of everyone who might be relevant. Who told you he’d been missing? His mother?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “I only know her to say hi to at the Food Lion. I wasn’t told so much as overheard. A couple of the girls were talkin’ about it at Broad’s. I can give you the names they use there, but they’ll be fakes.”

  “Broad’s on the River?”

  “Yup, you been?”

  “No,” Matt said, sounding surprised and a little offended. “We’ve had it under investigation for some time. We get regular complaints about that place. There’s a community action committee trying to shut it down because they say it’s the center of a prostitution ring, and the sheriff won’t do anything about it.”

  If he had expected Joe to be shocked, he was in for a rude awakening.

  “I don’t know as it’s a ring as such, but the girls will go home with you if you pay their cab fare back after. Course, there aren’t any cabs around and you still have to drive ‘em…”

  “We’ve sent in a dozen undercover cops from all over the state and never gotten any evidence.”

  “Nope. You wouldn’t. They only cater to locals. You get hikers and tourists stop in every once in a while, but everybody can spot ‘em a mile away and everything just sorta stops when they’re there.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in wearing a wire sometime,” Matt asked eagerly.

  Joe laughed.

  “The man who helps shut down Broad’s is gonna be despised in three counties. I doubt ya’ll will find a local willing to help you out. Besides, the ladies all know to leave me be. They know who’s there for the beer and who wants company.”

  “But they’re exploiting those girls. Prostitution is illegal.”

  “If there’s any exploitin’ goin’ on at Broad’s, it’s the girls exploitin’ the drunks. It’s not like they take jobs there not knowin’ what it is.”

  “What if it was your daughter?”

  “I don’t have one, but if I did I hope I’d raise her well enough not to go home with strange men she met in bars, paid or otherwise.”

  “And you’re okay with this?” Matt asked Aubrey.

  Aubrey shrugged. “Apparently, they have very cold beer,” she told Matt.

  He sighed.

  Joe winked at her.

  Matt gave up. He got the name of the deputy who’d first joined them at the caves and the girls from Broad’s. Cherry and Divine, he agreed, were probably not their real names. He promised to call Aubrey in the morning and left with his food barely touched.

  “We ready too?” Joe asked. “Or do you want another round?”

  Aubrey shook her head and finished eating while he paid the check, then followed him out to the parking lot.

  “You need anything from your car?” He asked.

  Aubrey shook her head and Joe walked over beside it and hit a button on his keychain.

  “This is me,” he told her.

  Aubrey looked at the little Prius.

  “Where’s your truck?”

  “I only use it at the lake,” he told her. “I keep meaning to find another driver to take me into the city so I can leave it parked up there and use this one to go back and forth.”

  Joe held the door for her and Aubrey climbed in. She spent the drive silently looking out the window. All of her trips to Knoxville had been to the shopping centers on the outskirts, so Joe’s route along back roads and through quaint little neighborhoods was very novel. He headed toward downtown and pulled up in front of an old, carefully restored, craftsman house.

  “It’s lovely,” she told him as he pulled into the driveway and parked behind his truck.

  “I’ll sell it and move into a condo as soon as I get the place on the lake built. I’m only keepin’ it ‘til then cause otherwise I’d have to store all my extra furniture. Course, I’ll have to find a gay couple to buy it ‘cause the schools are bad in this part of town.”

  “How come you haven’t built yet? Vina said you’d been going up there for ten years.”

  “About that,” he agreed. “But she only sold me the lot five years ago and I’ve been tryin’ to find a local builder ever since. Cocke County ain’t exactly brimmin’ with folks eager to try their hand at solar, and I plan to stay off the grid.”

  “The grid?”

  “The power grid. I’m tryin’ to build a house that’s self sufficient in power and water.”

  He got out and came around to open her door.

  A dog barked nearby.

  “Damn it,” Joe swore. “I forgot. I’ve got your birthday present inside. I guess you’ll have to take it early.”

  “How did you know it was my birthday coming up?” Aubrey asked.

  “Vina.”

  “Of course. Well you didn’t have to get me anything.”

  Joe looked at her like she was crazy. “’Cause that was gonna happen.”

  “You could hide it,” she offered. “I’ll wait here.” She didn’t feel up to feigning excitement over a fishing rod.

  “It isn’t really hide-able,” Joe told her mysteriously.

  Joe opened the front door and a huge, white mass hit him square in the chest. Aubrey jumped back, startled, but Joe just reached in and turned on the porch light. The dog was enormous, coming waist high on Aubrey and, with its paws planted firmly on his shoulders, easily looking Joe in the eye. It gave him a big, sloppy lick and Joe reached up and scratched it behind the ears.

  “This is Drake,” Joe told her. “He’s a Kuvasz.”

  The dog eyed her warily and she reached out her hand, palm down for it to sniff.

  “He’s named after Count Dracula because the king of Hungary gave him one as a gift after he was released from prison.”

  The dog seemed to find Aubrey acceptable and held its head up to her to be pet. He had a thick, white coat, black eyes and nose, and black skin around his mouth. As soon as Aubrey reached out and stroked his head he looked up at her with an expression of complete devotion.

  “I didn’t realize you had a dog,” she said, smiling down at Drake and running her hand through the soft, white fur.

  “I kinda don’t,” Joe told her sheepishly. “You do.”

  “You got me a dog?”

  “Vina said you always wanted one…”

  “Yeah, when I was nine.”

  Joe looked crestfallen.

  “I don’t mean to say I don’t want one now, I just… I’ve always moved so much it was never an option,” she squatted down and ruffled Drake’s big ears. He lay down on his side, lifting his leg to allow her to scratch his belly. When she did, his back leg began to shake uncontrollably.

  “There’s a girl at my lab whose family owns a breedin’ farm. Someone put down a deposit on this guy and changed their mind. By the time they realized he wasn’t gonna come get him, Drake was too old to sell to somebody else. Most folks want puppies. He’s real well trained. He’s house broken and he’s fixed because his ears are too far off standard to be used for show or stud and he’s got all his shots. They said they’d take him back if you didn’t want ‘em, but I may keep him myself. Hey Drake! Go get me a beer!”

  Drake hopped up, gave Aubrey a quick nuzzle, then trotted into the house.

  “He can’t get the fridge open ‘cause it has one of those side handles instead of a bar on the front, but you gotta love him for tryin’.”

  Joe led her through the house and back to the kitchen. Drake was sitting alertly in front of the refrigerator. When they came in, he looked back at them and made a little whining noise. Joe opened the fridge and Drake stuck his head in, coming out with a long neck held carefully in his mouth. Joe shut the door and Drake held the beer out to him.

  “He’ll run beside you f
or miles without getting’ tired,” Joe assured her. “I tested him myself. You don’t even need a leash, he just stays with you.”

  Aubrey leaned over and kissed him.

  “You like him?” Joe looked intensely relieved.

  “He’s the nicest present I’ve ever gotten,” Aubrey told him truthfully.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Aubrey and Drake left the next morning, Joe having dropped them off at the Mini along with Drake’s bed, chew toy, food, bowls, favorite stuffed animal, brush, leash, and sun glasses. Aubrey wasn’t sure about the sun glasses. They looked like old fashioned aviator goggles and seemed like perhaps the stupidest invention she’d ever seen, but as soon as she was on the highway Drake started pressing his face against the window and looking over at her pitifully. She turned off the AC and slid the passenger window down, and Drake stuck his en

  tire upper body out into the wind. The goggles stayed put and protected his eyes, and Aubrey decided they must be okay because she’d never seen anything as happy as Drake was at that moment. His tail thumped against her chest, his tongue flapped beside his mouth like a wet scarf, and his fur danced like wheat in a storm.

  They were about halfway home, at the turn off for the tourist nightmare that surrounded the entrance to the Great Smokey Mountain National Park, when her phone rang. She hit the button and a voice came over the car speakers.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi Matt, what’s up?”

  “Woof!” Drake brought his head in and looked around for the strange man.

  Aubrey rolled up the window so she could hear and he looked at her mournfully.

  “Where are you?” Matt asked.

  “Still driving home,” she told him. “I just passed Sevierville.”

  “Ah,” there was a long pause and she imagined Matt would have preferred she drive home drunk than spend the night with Joe. “Well, I thought I’d give you an update. I called the sheriff and requested their report this morning, but was told that their fax machine was broken and they couldn’t email it because they don’t have a scanner. They also said that they couldn’t spare anyone to deliver it, so they offered to mail it to me.”

  “Great,” Aubrey fumed. “I don’t suppose you could tell them I’ll pick it up? I have a fax machine and a scanner.”

  “Not necessary,” he assured her. “I figured they’d try to delay, so I had a state policeman who owes me a favor waiting on standby. He walked in while I was still on the phone with them and managed to get a copy without anyone even noticing. I guess their security isn’t very tight. Anyway, he faxed it to me and the sheriff is mailing me a copy as well. It’ll be interesting to see what differences there are in the two. The coroner’s office was a lot more helpful. They emailed the autopsy right over. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “He didn’t die from a fall,” Aubrey told him.

  “Actually, he might have. He had some nasty skull fractures, but the interesting thing is that at least some of his um… wounds happened before the fractures. A possible scenario is that he was attacked and fell while trying to get away. I won’t know what caused the wounds until our guys have gone over the autopsy report more thoroughly. Since the death was ruled accidental, they already released the body and it’s been cremated, of course. Nothing is ever easy. But we have a lot of photos to go by. I sent them up to our firearms/toolmark guys to see if they had any clue about what type of weapon we might be looking for and the guy called me back in less than a minute.”

  “And?”

  “And he told me they’d already processed that case and he’d fax me a copy of their report, but he wanted to know why I was interested. He wanted to know if we finally had a suspect.”

  “They’d already seen the case?”

  “Yeah, it took me a minute too. It wasn’t until he mentioned having examined the body personally that it hit me. Noah Mosley wasn’t the first.”

  “Oh my god,” Aubrey breathed.

  “Yeah. The last one was two years ago in Pisgah. I’ve got the file. It was a young woman, but it’s easy to see why the guy in the lab was confused. The mutilations are almost identical. She was found in a cave too.”

  “You said the last… How many have there been?”

  “There were two hikers found the same year as the girl, but they’d been out in the weather a long time. The mutilations were very similar but the weapon was different. It could be the same guy just using a different knife.”

  “Where were they?”

  “They were found just off the Appalachian Trail only a mile or so over the border in Virginia, but that was a dump site. We don’t know where they were killed.”

  “So four?”

  “Four that we know of,” he corrected.

  They were both quiet for a moment.

  “I’m officially looking into this now, so that’ll be your last free update. The FBI generally frowns on its agents keeping civilians up to speed on ongoing investigations. I’ll be up by you in the next day or so to start doing some interviews. It might be a good idea to act as shocked to see me as everyone else.”

  “Matt who?”

  “Exactly.”

  They hung up and Aubrey slid the window back down for Drake. She wanted to call Joe and give him the news, but she wasn’t sure how Matt would feel about it and it would only make Joe more worried about her. She thought about the implications of a possible serial killer at large in the area and the fact that the sheriff might be covering up for him for the next forty minutes.

  When she finally left the highway and was waiting at the light in front of the Waffle House to turn toward home, it occurred to her that the killer might well be the person she’d seen on Joe’s dock. In Spite of the fact that the murders had occurred in three separate states, they were all within a short drive of the cabin. She wondered who it could have been and then began swearing so vehemently that Drake pulled his head in the window and looked over at her in alarm.

  “It’s nothing honey,” she soothed him. “Your new mom is just a complete idiot.”

  Why had she and Joe gone for a walk? They were waiting for the pictures to download. In the chaos of finding the body she had completely forgotten that she might very well have video surveillance of the killer sitting on a hard drive in her closet.

  When the light turned green she slammed down the accelerator and raced toward the cabin. She wove through town, whipped onto Dixie Highway and was just slowing down to make the turn across from Broad’s when she saw the red and blue flashers in her rearview mirror. She changed her signal from left to right and pulled into Broad’s gravel lot instead. A sheriff’s department patrol car pulled in behind her.

  She dug into her glove compartment and pulled out her registration and insurance card and then got her wallet from her purse in the backseat and retrieved her license. She looked into the rear view mirror, but all she could see was the officer’s hat tilted down as he talked into his radio.

  She pet Drake while she waited, promising him a big bowl of water and a treat as soon as she got him home. His ears perked up at the word treat and she remembered Joe had promised to give her a list he had of all the commands Drake knew. She’d call him as soon as she got home, she decided, and if she let something slip about what Matt had told her well... He hadn’t actually told her not to tell anyone.

  The officer got out of the patrol car and Aubrey wasn’t terribly surprised to see the massive bulk of the sheriff himself mosey up to her window. She slid it down and was mildly gratified to see how he had to stoop to talk to her.

  “License and registration, ma’am.”

  She handed out her documents wordlessly and waited while he examined them.

  “Did you know your insurance has expired?”

  “It hasn’t,” she assured him. “I just get all my documents electr
onically and must have forgotten to print out the new card last time. I know it’s current because I changed it as soon as I moved. My rates went down,” she explained.

  “So you’re a resident here?” He asked, as if he didn’t know perfectly well who she was.

  “Yes,” she told him. “I live on Red Bank Road.”

  “Your tag and license list a Reston, Virginia address,” he pointed out.

  No shit.

  “I haven’t updated them.”

  “You know you’re required by Tennessee law to get a valid state license and registration within thirty days of becoming a resident. You been here longer than that?”

  “Yes,” she told him, preferring a fine to dealing with the man any longer than necessary.

  “Do you know why I pulled you over today?”

  Because you’re a dick, she thought.

  “No.”

  “You were speeding,” he informed her. “I clocked you doin’ fifty-five over the bridge. Do you know what the speed limit is there?”

  “No.”

  “It’s twenty-five.”

  Aubrey had never seen anyone do twenty-five on the bridge. Even funeral processions took it at forty.

  “That means you were goin’ double the limit. That’s reckless driving.” He didn’t even try to hide his glee.

  “That’s ten points off your license, when you get one. You’re only allowed twelve in a one year period. I’d drive more carefully if I were you.”

  “I’ll do that, sir,” she promised, trying to keep the anger out of her voice.

  “Now if you’ll get out of the car, I’m afraid I’m going to have to impound it.”

  “What?!?”

  “I’ve got a report of a stolen vehicle matching the description of this one out of Chattanooga. I’m afraid I’ll need to impound it until your ownership can be verified.”

  “I just showed you my registration,” she protested.

  “Yes ma’am, unfortunately it’s not local and I’m not well versed enough in Virginia documents to tell if these are forged.”