“Since last night. Why didn’t you tell me Thomas Cole was your grandfather?”
He looked down at his cup, a wash of pink creeping up his neck. “I didn’t think you’d take me seriously if you knew.”
I thought about that for a moment, then said, “Why so long since your last byline?”
He made a face. With a flip of his wrist, he splashed his coffee onto the fire, which steamed and hissed in protest. “What is this, an interrogation? You want to know why I’m not on their website? Because I’m not important enough.” He didn’t bother to hide the ache in his voice. “They let me write filler these days, strictly freelance, strictly print, buried in among the ads.”
“That can’t pay much.”
“I do okay.”
“You have a bee in your bonnet about Tom Cole. Maybe it’s the conflict of interest that bothers them.”
“I’m covering the show. That’s not a conflict of interest. My grandfather’s story, I’m doing on my own time. And why shouldn’t I? They’re not paying me to be here.”
I said, “Is that why you became a reporter? To emulate him?”
He looked down at his cup as if he wished he still had something left to throw onto the fire. Or as if he wished there were something stronger in it. “No,” he said. “To vindicate him.”
“Start at the beginning,” I said. “Why are you so sure he was murdered?”
“I told you. He wouldn’t have done what they said. He wasn’t a drunk.”
“People who aren’t drunks sometimes get drunk.”
“Not him. Not like that, so drunk he’d pass out with his face in a creek.”
I said, “I asked the sheriff about Sylvia Whitehead. He said there were no bruises on her shoulders.”
“Of course he’d say that.” He stood up, paced the length of the fire pit and back again. “You think I’m tilting at windmills now?”
“The pot asks the kettle if it’s black?”
That brought a smile. “Maybe so. But I want to know. You think I’m out of line?”
“I think some of the cases you picked out were probably accidents or suicides. The sheriff said being an activist doesn’t make you immortal. Much as I hate to agree with him, it’s true.”
“My grandfather was no accident.” He paused behind his chair, gripped the back of it until his knuckles whitened. “Of course Hap tells you there were no bruises on Sylvia Whitehead. What else was he going to say? But her daughter says there were, and why would she lie? And look at Dan Bitmore. An experienced hunter, out with other experienced hunters. You think that gun just happened to go off when Dan just happened to be in front of it?”
“It does sound suspicious. But not ironclad. Tell me about Tom Cole. Why was he so gung-ho against soring?”
“He always loved animals. Crusaded against cockfights, dog fights, you name it. When he heard about what they were doing to the horses, he jumped on it. He knew his stuff, did the research, found the sources. And he knew how to write so ordinary Joes and Janes could understand. There was a massive groundswell of opposition. It looked like it might blow the Walking Horse world apart.”
“And that’s what he wanted?”
Eli shrugged. “He was on a mission. He was going to burn the whole metaphorical field and watch the snakes come crawling out.”
I’d read about his crusade online. Graphic descriptions of horses in pain and photos from shadowy sources made his stories like kindling for the coming conflagration. The Walking Horse Mafia, as Carlin had jokingly called their latest incarnation, warned him to stay out of their affairs. When he didn’t, they started a campaign to ruin his reputation.
“They pulled out all the stops,” Eli said. “Prostitutes came out of the walls saying they’d serviced him. Random drunks would swear they’d watched him drink himself under the table. Even some of his sources switched sides. Said he’d bribed, coerced, or just plain misquoted them. But he stuck to his guns, and because of the kind of guy he was, his editors believed him, and his wife—my grandmother—stood by him.”
“And he wouldn’t stop.”
“He wouldn’t stop, and he wouldn’t go away.” He laughed, a small sad sound. “Funny, if he’d been less of a paragon, he might still be alive.”
On a windy Tuesday night in April, Tommy took a call from someone he described only as a source. He told his wife he was going out to meet a man who had an inside track on who was soring and who was taking bribes to look the other way.
“I’ll be back by nine,” he said. He put on his jacket, gave his wife a kiss, and left the house with his notepad in one pocket and his tape recorder in the other.
At ten o’clock, she started to worry. By eleven, she was frantic. At midnight, she dialed 911 and was told he’d probably lost track of time and to call the next day if he wasn’t home by supper.
But they found him before that. Early the next morning, a guy heading to Blackwater Creek to fish found Tommy’s car parked by the road and Tommy lying facedown in the water. His tape recorder was still in his pocket, the tape inside it blank.
Lori Mae Tillman, a woman who lived in the next county, came forward and said he’d spent an hour at her place, then headed for home, still drinking heavily.
“That woman lied,” Eli said. “They must have paid her off. And we’ll never know for sure, because she’s dead now. Diabetes.”
“You checked.”
“Damn right I did. And whatever they paid her, I hope she choked on it.”
I gave him a sharp look. His emotions were as raw as if Thomas Cole had been his father, someone he had known and loved and lost. But Cole was almost twenty years dead when Eli was born.
“What did the autopsy show?” I asked. “Young guy, died alone, there would have been one, right?”
“He drowned,” Eli said. “That much of what they said was true. But his blood alcohol was way too low to have been drinking like the Tillman woman said.”
“That should have raised red flags.”
He shrugged. “I think it did, but anyone who ever cared about that case is either dead or retired. It’ll never be solved, not while Trehorne and his friends stick to their guns.”
Khanh came out with the frozen gel pad, and I pressed it gently to my side. A lance of pain shot through at the pressure, then ebbed beneath the coolness of the gel. She sat down on the trailer steps. I said to Eli, “Let’s say you’re right, that Tommy was murdered by whoever he went out to meet. This mysterious source. What makes you think it was Trehorne?”
“People who cross Sam Trehorne and his crowd tend to end up dead. Dead or broke or burned out. The number of barn fires in this county’s almost double what it is statewide—way more than other rural counties—and I’ve done interviews with seven people who will say the Trehornes drove them out of business. I know that’s not enough to make a case, but that’s why I’m looking for other cases like Tommy’s.”
“You want to prove a pattern.”
He bobbed his head. “That’s right. A pattern. And when I can prove it, I’m going to bring the whole damn lot of them down.”
23.
He thanked us for the coffee and went back to his camper. As he walked away, I turned to Khanh. “I need to grab some Tylenol and take a shower. Why don’t you go over to the Underwoods’ booth and see if Sue and Maggie need anything? If they’re there, and if they don’t already know, tell them what happened.”
She nodded, started clearing away the remains of our meal. “Okay. I clean up here first, then go to booth.”
I braced myself for the pain and kicked some sand into the fire pit to douse the flame. “Don’t take any chances. You see anything off, you come and get me, you hear? Don’t try anything heroic.”
She threw a grin over her shoulder. “Yes, boss man. This family, only one hero.”
I’d just washed down two Tylenols when my cell phone beeped and a text from Khanh popped in: Trouble here. You come now.
My pulse quickened. Calm down, I
thought. She’s in a safe place. Safe enough to text.
Sprinting was out of the question, so I broke into a gentle jog. It felt like being gored by a rhinoceros, but by the time I reached the edge of the campground, the pain had subsided some. Strangely, running felt better than sitting or lying down. I picked up the pace, ran past a woman longeing a colt in the warm-up ring and a few early bird vendors rolling up the plastic tarps that covered the entrances to their booths. Somewhere behind the arena, a tractor growled to life.
Khanh’s text scrolled through my brain: Trouble here.
You come now.
Come now.
Come now.
I found Khanh standing in front of the TASA booth, her hand over her mouth. Relief that she was safe and whole washed over me. Then I noticed the booth—or what was left of it.
Torn pamphlets and flyers had been scattered across the ground and trampled. Someone had spray-painted Horse fuckers, Get Out and Go home, PETA freaks on the walls in neon red, then streaked the paint across the front of the “Walk On—Naturally” T-shirts. The tarp that had covered the front entrance overnight had been ripped away.
“You okay?” I said.
She nodded. Pointed to the front counter and made an arcing motion with her hand.
I didn’t draw the Glock. Khanh had looked inside the booth, and she had texted me from here instead of running for cover. That she’d gestured me forward meant there was no one in that booth who was a threat to me. Still, I approached it cautiously and listened first. There was nothing, just a low, insect hum. I peered over the counter.
The torn tarp had been flung on the floor, then littered with more papers and pamphlets. The coolers were upended, empty soda cans scattered around. Cola and ginger ale pooled in the folds of the tarp, and flies and sweat bees buzzed around the puddles.
There was a bulge in the tarp that gave my stomach the same familiar leap I’d felt at the Underwood barn.
I didn’t bother going around to the side door. Instead, too focused on the bulge to fully register the pain in my side, I climbed over the counter. A few flies swarmed up as I dropped onto the floor. They buzzed around me for an agitated moment, then settled back onto the plastic.
“What you see?” Khanh asked. “This bad, right? This very bad?”
I didn’t answer her, just bent to lift one corner of the tarp.
Slowly I peeled back the plastic, saw more pamphlets and a broken ballpoint pen bleeding dark blue ink onto the floor. A smell rolled out, the smell of voided bowels and bladder, and I saw a leather cowboy boot in violet and indigo, painted like a Ukrainian Easter egg.
Maggie James.
24.
For a moment, I knelt beside her, remembering the plain woman with the dazzling smile, and a sudden rage flickered beneath my breastbone. She’d been kind and cheerful and harmless, and someone had snuffed her out with less thought than if she’d been a mosquito.
I touched her calf just above the boot she’d loved. The skin was already cool to the touch. I wanted to pull back the plastic to see how she’d died, but this was a crime scene now, so instead I stepped around the tarp to the side door and, for the second time in two days, punched in 911.
It took less than fifteen minutes for the sheriff to pull up beside the booth. Behind him were a couple of deputies in county vehicles, an ambulance, and a brawny woman in an unmarked Impala. While the deputies taped off the area, the woman strode into the booth, pulling her hair into a quick bun as she went, then snapping on a pair of latex gloves.
The sheriff sauntered to where Khanh and I stood watching the proceedings. He didn’t look happy to see me.
He ran me through the story twice, then said, “You just attract trouble, don’t you, boy?”
“Seems to me like I find trouble that’s already there.”
“Could be.” He scratched his chin. “You do know the person who finds the body is the first one we look at.”
I raised my eyebrows and looked at Khanh. “You think this little one-armed woman is your killer?”
The corners of his mouth twitched upward. “Somehow I think she’s stronger than she looks.”
“She is, at that.”
The hint of a smile faded, and he rubbed his face with his hands. “I liked Maggie,” he said. “Everybody did. Not a reason in the world for anybody to kill her.”
“TASA,” I said.
“That’s all Carlin. Maggie’s got a big heart, and it’s easy to lead her around by it. Carlin sells her a load of bull about the poor abused horses, of course Maggie’s gonna want to help.” He shook his head. “I bet there’s not a person in this county hasn’t had a sickness or death in the family, but Maggie showed up on their doorstep with an apple pie or a tuna casserole.”
“The vandalism,” I said. “She must have seen who did it.”
“Nobody would kill a woman to get out of a vandalism rap.”
He had to know that wasn’t true. There were people who would kill for fifty cents, or because they didn’t like the look on a stranger’s face, or just for kicks. There were people who would do it just because they could.
I said, “He covered her up. That wouldn’t have delayed finding the body, so he did it for another reason.”
He gave a dry laugh. “You saying this piece of scum felt some remorse?”
“Remorse or maybe guilt. He felt something, anyway. Either he didn’t want to look at her, or he didn’t want her to look at him, or he felt bad about killing her and didn’t want to leave her exposed. I don’t think killing her was part of his plan.”
“That’s a lot of or’s.”
“Nature of the business, Sheriff. Mind if I take a look?”
He hitched up his pants. Seemed to consider it. “Don’t touch anything, and don’t get in my medical examiner’s way.” He nodded toward the woman with the bun. “That’s her there. You can call her Dr. Walsh. And I guess you might as well call me Hap.”
I left Khanh with the sheriff and stepped into the booth’s side entrance, where I stopped to watch the crime scene being processed. The tarp had been pulled back. While one of the deputies photographed the scene, Walsh plucked a hair from Maggie’s blouse and tucked it into an envelope.
Maggie lay on her back, hands crossed over her chest. Her corneas had begun to cloud, and the blood had begun to settle, giving her face a waxy pallor and staining the back of her neck, arms, and legs a purplish color. A livid bruise circled her neck. I leaned forward for a closer look. Saw blossoms of petechiae in the whites of her eyes.
Walsh looked up. “Excuse me? Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my crime scene?”
“Sorry.” I stepped back. “Jared McKean. I worked homicide in Metro Nashville for a while.”
“Past tense.” She gave me a stern look. “And another jurisdiction. I don’t have time for rubberneckers.”
“I can appreciate that. I’m on the private ticket now. This seems to be related to an arson I’m looking into.” I nodded toward the sheriff. “Hap said I could take a look if I stayed out of your way.”
“And are you out of my way?”
“I hope so, ma’am. You’re pretty terrifying.”
That brought a laugh. “Good. I guess you can stay. Just don’t go getting too comfortable.”
I stayed until they loaded Maggie’s body into the ambulance. By then a crowd had gathered, shuffling their feet and murmuring, pressing against the yellow crime scene tape. Mace Ewing stood near the back of the crowd, his arm around Trudy, who looked shaken. No sign of Sam Trehorne, or his family, who lived close enough to sleep at home. Sue Blankenship stood off to one side, hugging herself as if a word might break her. Khanh saw where I was looking and went to put her arm around the older woman.
At the other end of the crowd, Eli stood tapping notes into his phone. I stepped over the tape, and he came over to me, smiling. “Guess it’s going to be hard for anyone to say there’s nothing going on now, huh?”
I frowned. “What’s th
at? Gallows humor?”
His smile dissolved. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I meant no disrespect. It’s just that I can’t think about it too much. That poor woman, what she must have gone through. I have to think about it as a story or I’ll drive myself insane.”
“I can see that,” I conceded. Cops are known for gallows humor too. “Whatever it takes to get you through.”
When the ambulance had gone and the crowd dispersed, Khanh said, “What now?”
“Depends,” I said, watching the deputies start to bag the evidence. They looked competent enough, but I wished Sheriff Hap had called in the TBI with their expert technicians. “How are you feeling?”
“Sad,” she said. “Sad for Maggie, sorry for all this hurt. But life very hard. Every day, something sad, something good.” She gave me a small smile. “About time for something good.”
I pulled my keys out of my pocket and dangled them in front of her. “You want to drive the truck?”
“With trailer or no trailer?”
“No trailer.”
Her eyes sparked, and the smile grew. “Yes. Where I’m driving to?”
“We passed a county courthouse back at the town square. Can you go and see if you can get access to the public files for these twelve cases?”
We walked back to the trailer, where I handed her the list with the names and dates I’d gotten from Eli, not counting Thomas Cole, whose file would be in Davidson County. While she packed her laptop, I climbed into the truck and pushed the front seat forward as far as it would go.
“Don’t give them all the names unless you have to,” I said. “If you’re lucky, they’ll let you in the archives without a fuss. If you have to tell them something, say your father served in Vietnam, you’re looking for his relatives. If you have to give a name you’re looking for, start with the oldest one. Sylvia Whitehead.”
“Lady who drowned in bathtub.”
“Right. The older the case, the less likely it is to raise a flag.”
She nodded.
“If you can make copies, do it. You can use our office credit card. If not, take notes. The officers who worked the case, the medical examiner who signed off on it. I don’t think it will be dangerous, but if you don’t want to do it—”
A Taste of Blood and Ashes Page 13