Landslayer's Law

by Tom Deitz

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Landslayer’s Law

  In memory of River

  Acknowledgments

  Prelude: The Splendor Falls

  PART ONE

  Prologue I: There…

  Prologue II: and Back Again

  Chapter I: Changing Shifts

  Interlude I: A Time Between

  Interlude II: Spying

  Chapter II: Maps and Legends

  Chapter III: Out of the Night

  Chapter IV: Rude Awakening

  Chapter V: Reunion

  Interlude III: Debriefing

  Chapter VI: Can’t Refuse

  Chapter VII: Reunion

  Chapter VIII: Midsummer Night’s Team

  PART TWO

  Chapter IX: World Travelers

  Chapter X: Revelations

  Chapter XI: Floor Fight

  Chapter XII: Wising Up

  PART THREE

  Chapter XIII: Homerun

  Chapter XIV: All at Sea

  Chapter XV: Weathering the Week

  Chapter XVI: Moebius Ship

  Chapter XVII: Secrets Squirreled Away

  Chapter XVIII: When the Ship Comes In

  Chapter XIX: Storm Wrack

  Landslayer’s Law

  By Tom Deitz

  Copyright 2016 by Estate of Thomas Deitz

  Cover Copyright 2016 by Untreed Reads Publishing

  Cover Design by Hunter Martin

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  Previously published in print, 1997

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Also by Tom Dietz and Untreed Reads Publishing

  Windmaster’s Bane

  Fireshaper’s Doom

  Darkthunder’s Way

  Sunshaker’s War

  Ghostcountry’s Wrath

  Stoneskin’s Revenge

  Dreamseeker’s Road

  www.untreedreads.com

  Landslayer’s Law

  Tom Deitz

  In memory of River

  Acknowledgments

  Soren Andersen

  Jennifer Brehl

  Beulah N. Deitz

  John Douglas

  Amy Goldschlager

  Tom Jeffery

  Virginia Martin

  Deena McKinney

  Howard Morhaim

  Wilda Quarantino

  Jeff Smith

  B.J. Steinhaus

  Hollis Townsend

  And a special thanks

  To Buck Marchinton for

  lending me John Devlin

  Prelude: The Splendor Falls

  (Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Wednesday, April 23—midafternoon)

  “Where does that ’un go?” Ralph Mims demanded from the passenger seat of Ben Carl’s black Grand Cherokee. He pointed ahead and to the left for emphasis—straight under Ben’s stubby nose, which irked the hell out of that feature’s rather more attenuated owner. Not for the first time did Carl wonder what he’d got himself into: agreeing to show this flatland resort developer around the wilds of Enotah County. Though technically a flatlander himself, he’d lived up here in the north Georgia mountains for over thirty years and sold real estate for twenty of ’em: more than long enough to know every pig trail, logging road, and mile-long gravel driveway in half a dozen counties.

  He’d just not expected to play tour guide down all of ’em in three days. Shoot, the Cherokee showed more mud than paint now; he’d had one flat, chipped an expensive aluminum rim, and this dratted picky money-monger still hadn’t found a piece of property that suited him. Of course it’d help if Mr. Fat-ass’d explain what he actually wanted!

  The finger hovered in place, though Ben had a strong urge to swat it halfway back to Athens, whence Mims had emerged like a grumpy rattler with the coming of spring. “Sullivan Cove,” he supplied instead—because he had to. “Private property—or Forest Service.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So was every other piece you’ve shown me the last two days. Why should this be any different?”

  Ben ground his teeth and accelerated gently—pointedly—along the long straight that had uncoiled at the tail of the tortuous curves, grades, and switchbacks that marked the descent from Franks Gap and the White County border. Mountains rose to either side, lush with spring hardwoods spiced with evergreens: a frame of wilderness bracketing the cultivated river bottoms ahead and mostly to the right. “It’s different,” he sighed through his teeth (still not slowing), “because the Sullivans’ve been there two hundred years and haven’t sold an acre they haven’t been forced to. Shoot, the REA had to march the old man out with shotguns when they built the lake, and even then—”

  “Lake?” Mims removed the finger, but effectively replaced it with the rest of his stocky body, as though he would climb through the grimy windshield if he could. “Turn! Now!”

  “Waste of time,” Ben countered, even as he complied. After all, he was charging by the hour—and charging a lot. Maybe he should think about overtime—or, given the Sullivans, hazard pay. Please God, don’t let’s meet old Dale, he prayed, with an audible sigh, as he swung the Cherokee hard left across a culvert and down a gravel road.

  To the right, a low wooded ridge loomed close upon a few acres of freshly plowed farmland, facing an old, if much-augmented, clapboard house perched atop a bare hill an eighth-mile across the way, with the mountain they’d just descended lurking protectively above the splintery gray rampart of decrepit outbuildings behind it. A slim blond woman in jeans sat on the front porch drinking something from a glass that sparked in the sunlight; a newish Ford F150 and an oldish Crown Vic marked the terminus of a steep, rocky driveway just past the dwelling. “Sullivan number one,” Ben announced. “Bill and JoAnne. I’d mess with him ’fore I’d mess with her, but I wouldn’t recommend messin’ with either.”

  “Farmers?”

  “Technically. She works in a plant once in a while; he fools around with sorghum, and I think there’s family money.”

  Mims (blessedly back in his seat) eyed the house speculatively—likely equating its patchwork shabbiness with lack of prosperity, which was a mistake in this case, and a big one. “Reckon they’d sell?” he queried, right on cue.

  “Not for a million bucks.”

  “Any kids?”

  Ben started at that, which he reckoned a non sequitur, except that maybe Mims figured setting their kids up right might make a difference. He knew better. Still… “Two boys. Little ’un’s still at home—must be ’bout ten or eleven now; older ’un’s down at the University. ’Bout to graduate, I reckon. Smart kid, that ’un is: smartest boy in the county, I’d say—maybe the smartest person, period.”

  Mims merely grunted. They passed a small church and graveyard to the right, a series of steep rolling pastures to the left. Matc
hing arcs of woodland angled in further on, reducing the roadside fields to cramped strips no more than fifty yards wide, before opening out to the left on another farm even more run down than the first. An ancient, tin-roofed frame house stood there, abandoned behind a range of ragged cedars, looking for all the world as though some enormous constrictor had coiled about the structure and squeezed. A newer trailer further back and across the drive appeared well-kept and occupied. “Sullivan number two,” Ben observed. “Dale. Bill’s uncle.”

  “Age?”

  “Seventy—maybe? Who knows?”

  “Kids?”

  “Nope.”

  “Heirs?”

  “Bill’s boy David, I reckon.”

  “The smart ’un?”

  “Yep.” And by then they had entered the wilder land that marked the last half of Sullivan Cove Road. Mims had perked up, Ben noted sourly, as though he’d finally found something that interested him. Just his luck, too: for him to get the hots for the one chunk of real estate he’d never pry loose from its masters.

  ”Where’s this lake?”

  “Road dead-ends there,” Ben replied, grimacing as they crunched into an unexpected rut. “Old Sullivan place is underwater beyond.”

  Ralph nodded smugly. Ben masked his irritation with a yawn. The land had opened up again, fallow fields alternating with patches of woods, alternating with serious forest. Ahead was a glitter that could only be water. Blue sky rose above: cloudless, save for a vague troubling in the air, like wind made manifest.

  The road petered out in a turnaround ringed by the pale, worn-out stalks of last year’s broom sedge and pockmarked by the darker detritus of countless campfires. Without asking, Ben parked the Jeep and switched off the ignition. “Wanta get out?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Ralph replied smartly, fumbling with the door lock. “I’m real impressed so far.”

  You would be, Ben nearly blurted out, even as he schooled his expression to careful blandness. A pause to steel himself, and he joined Mims on the scraggly grass at the end of the road. Mims inhaled deeply. “Looks good!” he enthused, striding toward the fringe of pines that screened all but the merest shimmer of the lake. Ben followed doggedly. The larger man’s ample bulk blocked most of the view ahead.

  “This is it,” Mims proclaimed, hands on hips. “Why didn’t you tell me about that mountain?”

  “What mountain?” Ben wondered, easing up beside his client. But then he saw.

  The land sloped down before him in a series of bare shelves, equal parts red clay and yellow rock until they disappeared beneath the glassy waters of a wide, mysterious-looking lake. But straight ahead—no more than half a mile offshore—a small mountain reared a near-perfect cone above the surface: a cone whose summit was faced with raw cliffs of some white stone—quartzite, probably—that glittered so brightly in the sunlight it hurt to look upon.

  “That mountain,” Mims snapped, pointing.

  “Oh…right,” Ben choked. “I forgot about that.” Mims stared at him incredulously. “You forgot? How could you forget something like that? Hell, it’s perfect! We’ll put a lodge on top, with a cable-car to it, and a marina here, and cabins, and—”

  Ben wasn’t listening, absorbed as he was with pondering how he could possibly have failed to recall a view as spectacular as this. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it before, though not often since high school, it being a popular parking and skinny-dipping spot—if the Sullivans didn’t catch you. Yet the image he’d retained in his mind as he’d turned down the road had included the lake but not the mountain. Funny that was; real funny. And even odder now he thought of it, was the fact that this had happened before. More than once, in fact, he’d trundled down this very road, come to the lake, and been amazed to find a perfectly good mountain there. It was as if he forgot about the place as soon as he left it. Or, he realized with a shudder, as if the peak didn’t want to be remembered.

  “Who owns this?” Mims bellowed, gesturing broadly to either hand.

  “I’ll…have to check,” Ben managed, desperately glad to confront something comprehensible, however stressful, in lieu of what seemed to be tricks of the mind. “Doubt it’s the Sullivans, though. REA condemned it for the lake, so it’s either them or the state.”

  “In either case, money talks,” Mims boomed. “Leave the state to me. You find out who holds the deed.”

  “Right,” Ben murmured absently, rubbing his eyes. Maybe this time he’d remember.

  PART ONE

  Prologue I: There…

  (near Sylva, North Carolina—Thursday, June 19—late afternoon)

  “…and stay where you can hear me!” Jamie’s ma hollered from the open door of the run-down pink-and-white trailer that perched precariously on the steep hillside. Dark pines loomed behind it: the Pisgah National Forest. Jamie tried not to feel ashamed as he looked back. It was no fun being poor, no fun having a redneck daddy and a sometime whore for a mom (though he wasn’t supposed to know that word, or what it meant), no fun living in a place that looked like the woods had kicked it out like so much trash piled on its doorstep but not collected.

  No fun having to keep tabs on a tomfool dickhead of a younger brother.

  Still, the park beckoned: the nice clean streamside picnic area down the hill and to the right, where the government land ran up against 441, with only his folks’ washed-out gravel drive dividing all that neatness from their place, with its—what was that word he’d learned in school last week? Squalor?

  Jamie strode along, relishing being alone. (Eight-year-old Alvin running on ahead like a banty rooster didn’t count, ’cause he was actually a fairly sharp kid most of the time, good-hearted when Ma and Pa let him, and cleaned up decent well in the bargain.)

  No! He wouldn’t think about that; he’d think about good things. Pretty country everywhere but straight behind. A sweet, clear stream to play in: collecting rocks, or chasing crawdads, or looking for raccoon tracks; or even, sometimes, and not always in vain, panning for gold.

  And the tourists. Most folks hereabout didn’t care for ’em, but Jamie kinda liked ’em, ’cause they mostly drove cool new cars or (increasingly) pickups, and wore new clothes, and had good food and lots of it, and sported fresh haircuts and—and even smelled good. (And when was the last time Ma or Pa smelled good?) And often as not, they had kids him and Alvin could play with who didn’t know his folks were Poor White Trash.

  Jamie kicked at a pine cone, venting a rush of anger that had risen, maxed out, and faded all in a dozen strides. And by then he’d reached the road—no need to check before dashing across the gravel drive—and was dogging Alvin’s shadow into the fringe of pines that hid the park from his folks’ ugly lot. Quiet enclosed him there in that borderland, if not true peace. He inhaled deeply, relishing the scent of evergreens in lieu of the all too familiar sweat, beer, and burned grease that clogged the air back home.

  “Come on, slowpoke!” Alvin chided up ahead, his Appalachian twang softened by the million dark green needles that filled the yards between. Impulsively, Jamie darted forward—and emerged into dazzling light.

  It could’ve been another country: the clean, bright land of his dreams. But it was only a parking lot, recently paved, newly marked and painted—and empty. Jamie felt a pang of regret at that. No new kids to hang out with today and pretend he was a savvy and sophisticated city boy. No one to let him try their electronic toys, no town talk to listen to, so he could copy it—and maybe, someday, work the hick out of his own voice.

  Empty.

  “Damn!” he muttered, and jogged off to where Alvin was already disappearing down the trail to the creek. He joined him a moment later—and was shocked to discover that his brother was not alone. Two other boys crouched on the rocks there—or were they boys? They had really long hair, for one thing, and were awfully smooth-faced and slender, but they had wide shoulders too, and strong jawlines. It was hard to tell their ages—fourteen or fifteen, maybe: a little older than himself. There was
also a girl, which might be good or might not. You had to be careful of city girls.

  And these were clearly not country folk—not in clothes like that: new leather jeans and bright silk shirts, and with their hair dyed shimmery green and blue like those guys in Green Day, only darker, and with their ears and eyebrows pierced, but—there was no other word, in spite of two of ’em being boys—beautiful all the same.

  “They’re from the mountain,” Alvin announced, as he sat down on a flat rock and commenced dabbling in the water. “They’re musicians.”

  The girl’s eyes twinkled with mystery, even as she laughed; and the sound was like harmony sung with the tinkling water. She was also carrying a small drum. “You found that out already?” Jamie gaped. “Boy, you’re fast!”

  “We told him,” the smaller outlander admitted. “We knew he wanted to know and was afraid to ask—so we told him.”

  “You stayin’ over at the lodge?” Jamie wondered, feeling even smaller, dirtier, and uglier than usual.

  “Near there,” the taller boy acknowledged. “We became bored and decided to…see what we could find.”

  “Well, you found us,” Jamie grinned. “That’s about it. Not much goin’ on ’round here.”

  “I do not think I would agree with that,” the girl retorted, flashing a smile so dazzling it almost hurt to look at. She shook her head so that the rings—six at least—in each ear jingled. There was something else funny about her ears too, but Jamie didn’t dare look too close, ’cause that would be staring, which was rude—and he suddenly wanted, very badly, for these strange, neat folks to like him.

  “So what shall we play?” the smaller visitor inquired, rising.

  “Tag?” From his larger companion.

  “Follow-the-leader?” Alvin countered—because he was good at it, quick and nimble and fearless as he was.

  The girl bit her perfect lips, then shook her head. “Hide-and-seek,” she proclaimed, staring at Alvin curiously. Then: “Jamie, I think you ought to be it.”

  Jamie started to protest, but decided these folks might choose not to play with him if he did, so he nodded. “How high you want me to count?”