“Bastards, as in plural?” I asked.
M. C. Mingo sat back in his chair and showed some teeth. “Lord love a duck,” he said. “Aren’t you the quick one. Bastards. Plural indeed. Figure of speech, that’s all. Bastards tend to come in small herds in this part of the state.”
“Of course,” I said. “So: Would you have any objections to my asking some questions around here in the county?”
“Why don’t you ask me your questions, Lieutenant? Or should I say mister?”
“Definitely mister,” I said. “I’m not a lieutenant anymore.”
“That’s right, you’re not,” Mingo said. “So: What are all these questions?”
I hadn’t prepared for this. I’d assumed that I would just start asking around to see who knew what, if anything, about the case. This was supposed to have been a simple courtesy call. A little voice in my head was saying maybe I should have listened to Sheriff Hayes. “Oh, I just want to see what folks have heard about the case,” I said. “Maybe spark up a name or two. I mean, a park ranger raped and beaten? That must have been news.”
“Even up here in backward old Robbins County, that what you’re saying?” the sheriff said. “As in, that kinda thing doesn’t happen here more’n, what, once a week? Is that it?”
I leaned forward. “Sheriff, I didn’t come in here to sass anybody. I just thought it basic professional courtesy to let you know I’d be walking around town asking questions. I have a Section 74 PI license, so I think I could do all that without seeing you.”
“Well, now, you’re both right and wrong there, Mister Richter,” the sheriff said. All the pleasantness, whether faked or real, had drained out of the conversation. “You were absolutely right to come see me. But you’re no longer a law enforcement officer, so you can forget all that professional courtesy business. And you are absolutely wrong to think you can come into my county and do one goddamned thing without my permission. And you know what? I do not give my permission. In fact, I invite you to get back in your vehicle and get out of my county before I throw your licensed ass in jail and pitch said vehicle into a mine shaft.” He leaned back in his chair and pasted his smiley face back on. “Anything else, there, Mister Richter?”
“Oh, c’mon, Sheriff-what grounds would you have for putting me in jail?”
“Trying my patience? Disturbing my office routine? Interrupting me when I was in a meeting?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I saw the meeting. I guess that would be a crime, interrupt that kind of meeting.”
I’d made a mistake. The sheriff stiffened, picked up a ballpoint pen, and began tapping it on the table in a slow four-beat rhythm. His face settled back into a cold mask. “I suppose I’ll just let that pass, Mister Richter,” he said finally. “I’ll lay it down to your being ignorant of how things work up here in the western mountains, you being of the urban persuasion. But we can cure that ignorance lickety-split, and we will, if you’re anywhere in my county in the next thirty minutes. Good day, sir.”
I didn’t linger. I drove back down the two-lane toward Carrigan County, my rearview mirror filled with the image of a Robbins County cruiser practically riding my Suburban’s bumper. Wasn’t like I hadn’t been warned, I thought. The shepherds, sensing my mood, kept looking back at the cop car behind them.
The deputy turned around about three miles out of Rocky Falls, and I relaxed a little. The sheriff could not legally arrest me for simply asking questions, but I knew damn well that I was in the very western, and very remote, end of the state, where one annoyed a county sheriff at his peril. I recalled Sheriff Hayes mentioning FBI agents going into a mine shaft. Come to think of it, Mingo had also mentioned a mine shaft. I wondered who the black-haired bombshell really was.
Ten minutes later, as I slowed down to negotiate a hairpin curve to the left, I suddenly hit the brakes. At the bend of the curve a mountain stream went under the road through an old redbrick arched bridge and dropped into a deep ravine. At the bottom of the ravine, I’d spotted a man running wildly down the creek bank, flailing through the underbrush, falling as often as he covered ground. He was a fat man with a full black beard, and he was being pursued by a pack of baying dogs. I pulled over and got out of the Suburban. The shepherds had heard the other dogs and started barking. I shouted at them to shut up. By now the man was a hundred yards down the bank.
I ran over to the guardrail in time to see the first and biggest dog catch up with the fleeing man and grab an ankle in his teeth. The fat man yelled in pain and went down heavily, landing with his head and shoulders in the creek and the rest of him still on the bank. The remainder of the pack arrived and, to my horror, swarmed all over the man until he was no longer visible from the road. Even from my distant vantage point, I could hear the snarling, see the bloody jaws tearing from side to side. When I saw the whitewater in the creek turn red I backed away from the guardrail.
I thought about getting my. 45 and seeing what I could do, but the scene below was out of effective range, and, judging from the blood in the water, it was already too late. I looked back down and saw that the dog pack was still going to town and the creek was still running red. Then movement caught my eye high up on the slope above the bridge, right at the tree line. A very tall, thin man was standing up there, dressed all in black, with what looked like a very long, antique rifle crooked over his arm. The man was watching the carnage below through a set of binoculars. I saw a glint of light on lenses as the binoculars swung around to train on me. I backed away from the guardrail toward my Suburban. The watching man put the glasses back on the dog pack, as if to say he didn’t much care if there had been a witness. Then I saw a small group of men, maybe five or six, standing above the lone watcher on a nearby ridge. None of them seemed to have binoculars, but they did have rifles. I decided it was definitely time to get the hell out of there as fast as I could safely drive.
Back at the lodge, I placed a call to my old boss, Bobby Lee Baggett, high sheriff of Manceford County. He called me back in fifteen minutes.
“What in the world are you doing up there in black-hat country?” he asked.
I told him, and then described my conversation with M. C. Mingo and what I’d witnessed out on the mountain road. “Normally,” I concluded, “I’d have called that mess in to the sheriff’s office. However…”
“Yeah,” Bobby Lee said. “I see your problem. You think those dogs killed that guy?”
“Several times over, based on the runoff. Then I think they ate him.”
“Wow. Maybe you should do just what M. C. told you to do-get out and stay out of Robbins County. Sounds like they have their own rules up there.”
“What can you tell me about M. C. Mingo?” I asked.
“Not much, Lieutenant. As I recall, he’s not a member of the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, and, of course, here in Triboro, we hardly ever have any contact with Robbins County. Heard some stories, but you know how that goes.”
“Well, now you’ve heard a new one.”
“But that wasn’t the sheriff up there on that tree line, was it?” Bobby Lee asked.
I had to admit that he was right. Bobby Lee was often right. I asked if I should make a call to the North Carolina SBI and report what I’d seen. Bobby Lee said he’d make the call and get someone from the SBI to contact me up there in Marionburg, which was exactly what I had hoped for. I gave the sheriff my number at the lodge and thanked him. He suggested I also make a report to Bill Hayes.
When I got back from lunch, there was a message from Mary Ellen Goode. I got her on the phone at the ranger station.
“I have to make a trip up to Crown Lake this afternoon,” she said. “Park Service business, of course. Want to come along?”
“What’s Crown Lake all about?”
“Red rocks?”
It took me a moment, but then I remembered. “Of course it does,” I said. “Where do you want to meet?”
Ninety minutes later we drove into a scenic overlook pullout and
parked. I had followed Mary Ellen’s Park Service SUV so that I could bring the shepherds along. She had thought that was a wonderful idea. The view was spectacular indeed, which is typical of the Smokies. Most people came up there to do stuff but spent a lot of time just looking at it. The air was clear and cool, and Crown Lake spread out in front of us in a silvery expanse of lightly rippled water, reflecting the lower end of the Smokies in the distance. The opposite shore was easily a half mile away.
“Are we in the park or in Robbins County right now?” I asked, joining her at the low stone wall. The shepherds were running around the parking lot with their noses down. She was in uniform and wearing a sidearm, I noticed.
“This is the park,” she said. “Robbins County is over on the other side, down that shore maybe two miles. This is where we found Janey’s Jeep. We have no idea of which way she went after parking here, or where she was taking the water samples.”
“Why was she taking water samples?” I asked.
“We keep track of lake acidity to see how much damage the western power plants are donating, season by season. Mainly looking for sulfuric acid, mercury, and other heavy metals.”
“Nothing of interest to the DEA, then?”
“The DEA? Not to my knowledge.”
I saw a trail leading off to the right that roughly paralleled the margins of the lake. “Would she have taken the samples here or walked around?”
“The lake is twenty-seven miles in perimeter, so she would have walked around part of it but not all of it. She was supposed to concentrate on the outflow of streams into the lake, and they’re predominantly coming from that long ridge on the north side. Feel like a walk in the woods?”
“Absolutely,” I said, calling up the shepherds. “Do I need one of those?” I asked, pointing at her sidearm.
“Technically that would be illegal. Practically speaking…”
“Right,” I said, walking over to my Suburban. “Avert thine eyes, madam ranger.”
We set out on the lakeside trail, walking initially north and then curving around to the west once we turned the end of the lake. I carried my trusty SIGSauer. 45-caliber model P-220 in a belt holster, partially concealed by a light windbreaker. Within minutes we’d each acquired a walking stick from the debris along the shore. The dogs were loving it, ranging far ahead and then loping back to make sure the humans hadn’t quit on them. For the most part the trail stayed within fifty feet of the shore, and came right down to the water where spines of the big ridge plunged into the lake. Mary Ellen, like every ranger who goes into the woods, carried a plastic trash bag along for the inevitable litter.
I told her about my reception at the Robbins County Sheriff’s Office. I did not tell her about what I’d witnessed out on the road. She said that she had talked to some of the rangers in the office, but not to her boss, about what Janey had said. They’d all been in favor of her going to take a look. As she said, they were all behind her. Way behind her.
“And what if we turn something up?” I asked. “How are you going to explain that to Ranger Bob?”
“Um, well…”
“You could always tell him that going to see Janey Howard and then coming up here was all my idea. You only came along to keep the Park Service out of trouble.”
She laughed. “I may take you up on that, except I think he already knows I called you in.”
“You’re not afraid you’ll get in trouble?”
She turned to look at me. “You know what? Janey Howard was a nice young woman. She’s a college graduate. She wanted to be a park ranger for the best reasons. Maybe a little idealistic, but, hey, she’s young. And some knuckle-dragging, slope-faced, slack-jawed, drooling brute who can’t even speak English grabbed her, beat her, raped her, sodomized her, and then threw her down a ravine to fend for herself with the coyotes and the bears. I want him dead. I don’t want him arrested. I don’t want him to have a lawyer. I don’t want him to plead insanity. I want him dead. I want him gutted, and I want to film the scavengers eating his guts. And, no, I’m not afraid I’ll get in trouble.”
I stared at her. “Hello, Mary Ellen Goode,” I said.
She looked down at the ground and sighed. “Okay, that’s just me, venting. At some point, reality will intrude. And, sure, we may both get into trouble. You want to turn back?”
“Hell, no. It’s not like you or the Park Service has retained me to do anything. And if I want to ask questions, I can.” I grinned at her. She was embarrassed, but she gave me a defiant smile. The one I remembered. The one that lit up the ranger station. “How much farther to the red rocks?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” she said, surprising me. “I actually don’t remember any red rocks on Crown Lake. But we’ve got at least four hours of daylight left, so I say we walk for another ninety minutes or so. If we come up empty, we turn around.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, and called in the shepherds to make sure they didn’t roam too far or scare up a mama bear with cubs. “Did you ever find Janey’s water samples?”
“No, we didn’t. They’re white plastic one-liter bottles. And her uniform and pepper spray are missing, too. Her radio was in the Jeep, along with the usual gear.”
We picked our way through the wreckage of a large tree that had blown down over the trail. “So she left her gear in the Jeep, walked probably on this trail, taking her water samples. So where are they?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“If she took, say, six empty sample bottles, and began sampling at that last creek we just crossed, she wouldn’t then continue to carry the full bottles-she’d leave the full ones at each sample point and then pick them all up on the way back, right?”
Mary Ellen stopped and nodded. “Right-so we should be looking for sample bottles to confirm that she even came this way.”
I pointed up the shoreline to where a wide creek flowed into the lake from the ridge above. “Let’s take a look up there.”
It took us fifteen minutes to find the bottle, which had been wedged between two rocks in the lake itself. “Okay,” I said. “So now we know she did come this way. When we run out of bottles or find a pile of empties, we’ll know where she started her not-so-excellent adventure.”
The next creek gave us nothing, but it was also quite small. The one after that yielded a full bottle. By now we were almost two miles around the shoreline, and the western slope of the big ridge was flattening out. I thought I could make out a firebreak road above us running through the trees. The trail was getting increasingly wilder and difficult to negotiate. Even the shepherds were having to pick their way through the underbrush. Mary Ellen said that budget cuts had resulted in many of the park’s walking trails being neglected. Frick took off after a squirrel and ran up a game trail, with Frack right behind her. When they came back a few minutes later, each was carrying an empty white plastic bottle.
“Bingo,” I said softly, relieving the dogs of their prizes. “I’d say she went that away.”
“But why?” Mary Ellen asked.
“Saw something? Heard something? Went to investigate and found trouble. Let’s give it a try. We still officially in the park?”
“Not when we leave this trail. Actually, the lake belongs to the power company; there’s a fifty-foot margin around the shoreline that belongs to the park. Up there is your favorite county.”
“Terrific,” I said, and sent the dogs out ahead of us along the game trail. If there were black hats up there in the trees, the shepherds would find them first. I hoped.
We climbed up the rocky slope and into a stand of pines, where the game trail disappeared. The ground was covered in a thick carpet of pine needles. The shepherds ran silent zigzag patterns with their noses down, exploring all the woodland scents. The ground leveled off about a hundred yards into the trees, and then we broke out onto the fire lane that cut across the face of the larger ridge beyond. I inspected the ground but saw no ruts or tracks that looked at all recent. There were hoofprint
s and the multiridged striations of a tracked vehicle of some kind underneath the weeds. Rainstorms had cut some deep runoff grooves down the lane where deer tracks were visible.
“Maybe she heard something up here on the fire lane,” I said, “but there’s no sign of what it was.”
We continued uphill for fifteen minutes and then retraced our steps, passing where we’d come out of the pines and going down the fire lane an equal distance. We came to a switchback in the lane that widened out into a small plateau. A huge old oak stuck thick limbs out over the bend, but again, there were no recent vehicle signs. The sun was slanting down toward the western mountains, whose ridgelines were backlit by an increasingly orange sky. The trees were starting to throw long shadows, and the shepherds flopped down along the side of the fire lane, panting.
“This happened a month and a half ago?” I asked.
She nodded, knowing what I was thinking. Looking for tracks was pointless.
We went back up to the point in the pine woods where we’d first come out and started back down toward the lake. I kept looking for any signs that the probationer had come this way, but there were none. The woods were thick enough to be getting dark, and I wondered what might be watching us. Halfway down through the woods, Mary Ellen stepped into a stump hole hidden by the pine needles and turned an ankle, so we had to stop and let her rub the soreness out for a few minutes. I held her hand while she hobbled the rest of the way to the edge of the trees, but when we stepped out onto the hillside, she pointed excitedly down at the lake.
“Look,” she said. “Red rocks.”
I saw what she was talking about. Where a spine of the big ridge came down into the lake, there were three large boulders about twenty feet offshore. The setting sun was painting them dark orange, if not red.
“Okay,” I said. “But what are we looking for?”
“Beats me, but let’s go down there,” she said. “I’m ready for some flat ground.”
The two shepherds started down with us but then stopped and looked back up into the woods. I noticed and turned around. Both dogs were looking intently into the tree line, but the advancing shadows made it impossible for me to see anything. I called them to come on, and they turned around and rejoined us, albeit reluctantly.
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