An old Black man answered and urged me to come in and thaw my hands by the fire; he pointed to the phone and said I was welcome to use it to call for help. He musta been pushing 70 himself, and there he sat in the living room, next to a hospital bed where his mama lay dying. After I called Bill Davis, we sat together, in silence, warm and safe. I’ve never forgotten that man’s kindness—both to me and his mama.
Curtis and I talked a while longer. Then Della started yawning real big (I could tell she was hamming it up to make sure we got the message). Curtis started yawning too. I asked, “Where are you staying?”
“Over in Wilkes County, near the site. We’re still working the area.”
“That’s a long, windy drive. There’s room in our barn, if you’d like to hit the hay sooner, rather than later.”
Curtis just stared at me for the longest time. Then he jumped up, almost dropping his china cup and saucer on the floor. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I didn’t know what to say. Or more to the point, what I’d said. Thank heavens Della stepped in. “What Abit means, Curtis, is they have a lovely guestroom on one end of their barn, overlooking a beautiful mountain vista.”
When I realized what he was thinking, I started laughing. Curtis was still glaring at me, but pretty soon he managed a small smile. “Okay, Abit, I’ll take you up on that barn. I’ve only been drinking coffee, but like you said, it’s a long drive in the dark.”
We thanked Della, who seemed happy we’d both come over—and happy we were leaving.
Curtis followed me home in his car. I pulled the truck in next to the barn so Curtis would know where to park. As soon as I opened the truck door, Mollie jumped out and raced to the door, beating us there. Oncet I unlocked the room, she jumped on the bed and wouldn’t get off. She was trying to get Curtis’ attention, and I believe she did; he looked awful worried he might have to sleep with her. That made me nervous he’d still think I was putting him out with the livestock, even if that was only Mollie.
“Mollie, come on, girl. Let’s go to the house.” I clapped my hands a coupla times, and she trotted to the door. “Oh, and the sheets are clean, though they’ve been on there a while. I hope they’re not damp from all this rain.”
“Goodnight, Abit and Mollie,” Curtis said through a big yawn. “Thanks for putting me up.” He looked round the room and added, “Did you do this yourself?”
At first I thought he was saying it looked homemade. But then I saw a tenderness in his face, and I realized we were brothers, of a sort. He hadn’t always known a lot of kindness, either.
Chapter 49: Abit
That night a woman’s scream woke me round three o’clock. While my heart was trying to scrabble outta my chest, I reached for Fiona, thinking she was hurting. All I felt was dog fur. Then I thought about Curtis out in the barn, worried he might’ve been in trouble, or at the very least freaked out hearing screams in the middle of nowhere.
When I heard it again, I jumped outta bed. By then, Mollie had a worried look too. The third time, though, I knew: mountain lion. They sounded just like a woman crying out. I grew up hearing them all the time, but I hadn’t heard one in ages. All the building and bulldozing in the county had driven them deeper into the woods.
We still saw deer, turkeys, raccoons, and all kinds of birds. I wanted to add more animals to our farm, like banty hens and a rooster. Maybe someday we could stop leasing the hayfields to other farmers and have livestock of our own.
I got back to sleep round five o’clock. By eight I was frying eggs and bacon and baking biscuits for breakfast. Curtis came wandering in and told me not to make a fuss, but I couldn’t let him leave hungry. I asked if he’d heard the mountain lion, but he shook his head. I don’t think he believed me. He went about cleaning his plate. (I didn’t know he was vegetarian ‘til later, when Mollie was happily panting in my face while I laced up my boots, and I realized Curtis had given his bacon to her when I wasn’t looking.)
When we finished breakfast, I got up to clear the dishes. Curtis stood to help. “I can’t thank you enough, Abit. It gets lonesome on these cases.”
“Why’s that Stoltz guy so hard on you?”
“Oh, just a few things like rank, personality, race. And did I mention race?” He chuckled without humor. “But also because I’m not like most recruits. I don’t swagger, at least I hope you haven’t seen any of that.” I shook my head. “I got into the FBI to help people, not to prove how tough I was.”
I hadn’t ever had a friend my own age, except for Fiona. Everyone was fifteen, twenty, even thirty year older than me. Maybe you needed to have some wisdom about life to see my worth. Whatever, Curtis seemed different. “You know, my wife and boy are away for a while yet, and I could use some company too. Would you like to come to dinner, say, next weekend? Will you still be up here then? You could stay in the barn.”
We both laughed at that, then Curtis said, “We’re back and forth from Charlotte, depending on where we’re needed. There’s a good chance I’ll be around. But I insist on meeting for dinner at a restaurant. My treat. My mama would skin me alive if I didn’t honor your hospitality.”
Later that evening, Mollie joined me on the bed, me under the covers, her on top of them. I petted her for the longest time, hoping her sweetness would come through and fill me. But all I could think about was that damned word—bully. I started recalling all the ones from my life, Agent Stoltz on back to people at Mama’s church and Mr. Donnelly, principal at the elementary school. Every time I closed my eyes, hoping to drift off to sleep, I’d see one of them looming over me, meaning me harm.
I’d believed they knew what they were talking about, and that’d caused me to tiptoe through life. But none of them were round to make me do that now, and yet I carried on, picking my way. That was no way to live.
While I lay there, listening to Mollie’s deep breaths in sleep, I remembered what a counselor at The Hicks had taught me: Don’t run from bad memories—stay with them; let them play out in your mind.
It wasn’t easy, but I hung out with those assholes for some time, like we were in a staring contest. Eventually, as I held their eyes, it was like a sword started cutting away the layers of hurt from the schoolyard, my classrooms, Coburn’s, carving right on down to the source of it all: Vester Bradshaw. Daddy.
With each cut, I felt tears slipping down my face on to the pillow. By the time I finally felt sleepy, I had to turn the pillow over.
Chapter 50: Abit
Even with all the crazy stuff taking up my time, I still felt at loose ends with my family so far away. I turned to my woodwork and spent long hours in my shop with Mollie close by.
Shiloh seemed to sense my restlessness and tried to cheer me up with his jokes. They were all pretty bad, but I appreciated the thought and laughed for real a time or two. Like “So what if I don’t know what Armageddon means? It’s not the end of the world.” I wished I’d heard that one while I was going to Mama’s church. His other jokes reminded me of the corny sayings in the Christmas crackers Fiona’s father shipped over every December.
It wasn’t ‘til late in the day that I started wondering what Shiloh meant by a couple of the jokes: “Tell your boss what you think of him, and the truth shall set you free” and “When a man tells you he got rich through hard work, ask him whose.” I never really thought of myself as his boss—we just worked together, even if I did pay him every Friday—but it sounded like he was trying to tell me something.
When I shut down everything in the woodshop and turned out the lights, instead of going straight to the house, I headed over to the guestroom. As I opened the door, the smell of long ago wafted out. Even after all the changes, all the paint and new flooring, something from its past lingered, in a good way.
Before I closed the door, I called for Mollie. She stuck her head round the corner of the house and gamboled over, always happy to get inside somewhere different. We both got up on the bed and wrestled for a while. When she curled up wit
h her head on one of the pillows, I laid back crossways on the bed and started recalling how nice it had been to have Nigel visit (except when that weasel-faced gangster came round, scaring our boy). Over the years, Nigel and I’d grown close during my visits to D.C. and even closer while he lived in our barn. I felt more of a loss than I’d expected when he left for England.
Nigel’s grandson, Jason, had come down as promised to tidy up. He was a nice kid and spent the night in the room before heading back to D.C. Even though he’d cleaned it real good, the room still carried traces of my old friend. I got up and started poking round for no good reason. I found a tie clip with a sixpence coin that I’d need to mail him when we got an address plus a coupla bottles of British beer in the back of the closet. I opened one and drank it while rocking in the chair. The beer was on the warm side, but Nigel said that’s how he drank it back home.
I reckoned Nigel would return to D.C. in a year or so, when the heat was off. Or who knew? If he couldn’t come back, maybe he’d invite us over to England for a visit. We could go on to Ireland too.
That set me to thinking about Fiona and Conor again. They should be asleep now, what with the five-hour difference. I pictured them in their beds, Conor all snuggled up like he does, clutching the blanket tight, a worn-out stuffed puppy under his arm. I saw Fiona in her bed, maybe the one she’d had as a child. Like my family, hers had never moved from the old homeplace.
I spent the rest of the evening playing music in the guestroom. Those notes, especially the sweet, mournful ones, lifted me outta my life. I got swept away by a coupla songs that got their start right where Fiona was.
With her away, the band hadn’t gotten together to jam but a time or two. We were lucky we only had to reschedule one gig. We’d all agreed the audience would’ve felt ripped off with substitutes for Fiona and Conor, our stars. I missed our tearing round the countryside playing at different shows, so it felt good to get the notes under my fingers again and make that pick earn its keep. I cradled my mando and played songs like “Liberty,” “Soldier’s Joy,” and “Red-haired Boy.” They were merry tunes, but damned if that last one didn’t get to me anyway, thinking about my own red-haired boy.
Chapter 51: Della
After DEEP POCKET’s two-letter advice—DC—I knew I’d need Agent Stoltz’s help. A living, breathing FBI agent could cut through red tape a lot faster than me poking around next time I visited Alex.
There was no way I could write that story. I wanted to check out a few more leads, but I was sure even after that I wouldn’t have sufficient facts for a story worthy of publication. And in its current state of anecdotes, lists, and hypotheses, it was over the heads of anyone at the Mountain Weakly. (Yes, I’d thrown off my journalistic solidarity, resorting to the paper’s snarky moniker. I was disappointed in Blakely, who’d refused to run what we could use as a follow-up to the fire. And in Jessie. Even though I’d piqued her interest with the latest developments, once again she’d said no thanks.)
As for Sheriff Horne, he’d made it clear he couldn’t (in my book, wouldn’t) do anything with the information. Not only did he agree with Blakely that the story ended when Nigel and Fedora left the county, he was in such a foul mood lately, he’d become unapproachable. I asked around and found out his marriage to Mary Lou was on the rocks. I’d wondered why she’d been in such a good mood lately. Turned out she and her ex, Abit’s and my friend Duane Dockery, were getting back together. Duane had stopped drinking, gone back to school to learn masonry, and pretty much had his act together. Their kids were grown, and they were ready to try again.
But I felt obligated to do something with the information DEEP POCKET had risked his career over. Seemed I had no options other than to drive over to Ferguson, where I could talk face-to-face with Agent Stoltz.
When I arrived, no one was in the outer office. I knocked on Stoltz’s door, and I heard his voice call out, “Come in.”
I opened the door and saw him talking on the phone. I stepped back and started to close the door, but he motioned me in, pointing toward a chair opposite his desk. After he said his goodbyes and hung up, he smiled. “You and I got off on the wrong foot.”
That surprised me. He didn’t strike me as the type to apologize, if that’s what he was doing. But I was grateful for any break in the ice. “Well, I can’t even imagine the pressure you’re under, and I appreciate your seeing me now, especially since I didn’t make an appointment.”
“We’re busy, but not that formal out here.”
“It’s about something completely different. I know you’re already swamped, but I just want ten minutes of advice.”
“Fire away. Maybe you can help wake up my brain. I’m determined to find this SOB and break him like a wedding vow in Vegas.”
I laughed. “That’s a tough line to follow.” Thanks to my reporter days, I was able to encapsulate the story into five key points, starting with Nigel’s debacle and ending with DEEP POCKET’s envelopes and final instruction.
“Man, this is a real Peyton Place,” Stoltz said.
“Tell me about it. I thought I was escaping all the crime in D.C. only to land somewhere with a higher crime rate per capita.”
“I doubt that, but there are more crooked and craven dealings that I’d anticipated.”
From there, we traded career stories. He started out in D.C., and thanks to a broken marriage—she also worked in the Bureau and had seniority—he was sent to Charlotte. After that we quizzed each other about D.C., asking all the typical questions like Where did you live? Did you ever go to La Fourchette on 18th NW? What about La Taberna on I NW?
We were laughing and enjoying our memories. I was about to launch into one of my favorite D.C. stories when I saw Abit standing at the door. Stoltz had left it open for some air.
“Hey, honey, what brings you up here?”
“I need to see Curtis, um, Agent Maynard about something.”
Abit gave me the most curious look. I wondered what that was all about. I planned to ask him later. Right now I had other things on my mind.
“Hey, you two. I made a picnic and thought if you had time, we could head up to Stone Mountain,” I said to Stoltz before glancing at Abit to include him. I’d brought the food in case I needed to sweeten the deal with Stoltz for getting help in D.C., and I was glad I’d made extra so Abit and Curtis could join us. “It’s only an hour or so away—but it’s a world away from crime and overwork. I’ve always found a break in nature to be good for jump-starting my thinking.”
“Maynard’s over at the crime scene, but he’s due back soon.”
“What do you say? It’s almost quitting time for us civilians. How ‘bout it?”
“I could use a break. Thank you, Ms. Kincaid.”
“Della.”
“Okay, Della.” He smiled at me and then nodded at Abit, who looked like he’d just spent the entire day with Blanche Scoggins. Honestly, I didn’t know what had gotten into him.
“Abit, I hope you can join us,” I said. “Do you have plans?” He just shook his head and kept glaring at me.
“Is that no you don’t have plans or no you can’t join us?” He turned around and walked off, presumably to find Curtis.
Stoltz grabbed his cell phone and called someone. When he closed the phone, he said, “Let’s go get Agent Maynard. Looks like we could all use a break—somewhere, I hope, cooler than this damn office.”
Chapter 52: Abit
Earlier, I’d told Curtis he should be the one to tell Stoltz what Wallis and I’d discovered about where the next killings might be. I was hoping he’d get some extra credit. Besides, the idea sounded more believable coming from an agent, junior or not.
I saw Curtis coming my way as I walked across the parking lot. He looked as pissed off as I felt and made a thumbs-down motion.
When we shook hands, he didn’t smile. “Stoltz shot down the chronology idea,” was all he said. I shrugged, likely more used to put-downs than Curtis. “What brings you over here, Ab
it?”
“I’d hoped to get these to you before you talked with Stoltz.” I handed him a packet of notes Wallis and I had made earlier that day, fine-tuning the timeline and what might happen next. “Now the trip seems like a waste of time.” We didn’t say much as we headed toward Della, who was waving us over.
We all piled in her Jeep, Curtis and me in the back like a coupla kids. Up front, Della and Stoltz were carrying on like old friends. After we’d been riding for a while, along windy roads that made me kinda car sick, Curtis asked in a pouty voice, “When are we gonna get there?” I wanted to laugh—he sounded just like Conor—but I couldn’t muster even a smile. I tried rolling down the window, but the air blew gritty against my face.
Oncet Della laid out the picnic, my appetite came back. Man, she knew how to do it. The food was up to her usual standards—fried chicken, Waldorf salad, and homemade chocolate chip cookies. She’d brought beer too.
Della and Stoltz got all caught up in their D.C. talk, so I figured it was a good time to ask Curtis more about what Stoltz had said. We turned so they couldn’t hear us.
“It backfired,” he said softly. He nodded his head toward Stoltz. “He thought it was a faulty idea, too farfetched for us to pursue. When I wouldn’t let it drop, he started saying we didn’t have enough manpower to have teams in both Harlan County and Winston-Salem.” He stopped and looked even sadder.
“What else?”
“Oh, it’s just that if I bring something up, he’s sure to cut it down. I don’t know why I let you talk me into telling him about this. It would have gone over better coming from you.”
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