by Ed Robinson
An officer with the Banner Elk Police Department returned our pistols the next day. I tried to ask him a few questions, but he claimed not to know anything. We had our guns back, but the questions remained. I wasn’t sure if confronting the Chief was wise. Maybe I should just let it go and hope that would be the end of it. My gut told me that was wrong, but I wasn’t up for more confrontation just yet.
I spent a few days splitting logs and bringing in wood. We’d had freezing temperatures at night but no snow yet. Our gravel drive needed to have some stones moved around to fill the ruts we’d created. Brody had some crafts she wanted me to help her with. There were no crazed killers loose on the mountain, as far as I knew. I relaxed and settled into the routine of cabin living.
That serenity was destroyed a few nights later. I woke to loud banging on the door at three in the morning. I grabbed my pistol from the nightstand and racked a round into the chamber.
“Police. We have a warrant,” a man yelled through the door. “Open up, or we’ll break the door down.”
Prudence told me to not necessarily believe that it was indeed the police. I wanted to stay armed, but what I knew about the Chief told me that it probably was them. Brody was at my side with her weapon within seconds.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I think that if they kick the door in and see us holding weapons, they’ll kill us.”
“Tell them we’re coming,” she suggested.
“Hold on, hold on,” I yelled. “It’s the middle of the damn night you know.”
We put our weapons back and made ourselves presentable. I opened the door and was immediately confronted by a large cop from the Banner Elk PD. He shoved the warrant in my face and pushed his way inside. Two more cops came in behind him.
“What’s the warrant for?” I asked.
“You’re welcome to read it for yourself,” he said. “But I’ll ask you to step outside while the K-9 officer brings in his dog.”
“Drugs?” I asked. “Are you kidding me?”
“Let the dog work,” he said. “Go outside.”
“I’m staying here and watching your every move,” I said. “In case you want to plant something. Brody, keep an eye on them too.”
“Your cooperation will make things easier,” he said.
“This is our home,” I told him. “It’s an ungodly hour for you to bust in here. Do your search, but we’re staying.”
“Bring in the dog,” he yelled.
There were no drugs in the cabin. The K-9 officer swept each room diligently, but the dog alerted to nothing. Brody and I never let any of the men out of our sight. Once the downstairs was pronounced clean, the dog handler wanted to check the loft. That meant getting his dog up a ladder. He went up first and tried to coax the dog to follow with no luck. Finally, two of the other cops helped lift the dog upstairs. It was a small area. The dog gave up after a few minutes. He sat and looked at his handler expectantly. The officer shrugged. The dog was hoisted back down.
“Don’t forget the garage,” I said. “You want to be thorough don’t you?”
The big cop sneered at me but motioned for the dog handler to check the garage. Of course, he found nothing there either. It would have been a funny scene if not for the early hour and tremendous intrusion. They spent a few minutes walking the dog around the grounds outside before calling it quits. The big cop snatched up the warrant on his way out. I never did get a chance to read it.
“What the hell was that all about?” asked Brody. “This is bullshit.”
“Looks like we’re the target of an intimidation campaign,” I said. “The Chief has it in for me for some reason.”
“What do you want to do about it?”
“I’ll go have a talk with him,” I said. “After I get some more sleep.”
I went back to bed, but I couldn’t stop thinking about recent developments. First, it was the guns, and now it was a drug-sniffing dog in the middle of the night. I had to put a stop to it. I couldn’t let the Chief continue to interfere in our lives. There was no probable cause to search our home. We were outside the jurisdiction of his department. He was stepping further and further over the line with each incident. I went back to the idea of talking to the State Police. I felt that we’d need a lawyer eventually. We didn’t know a thing about the local selection of lawyers, and we didn’t have a computer to do any research. Too much thinking made sleep impossible.
Brody and I kicked around some ideas over coffee. We didn’t come up with much, opting to put off decision making until after I spoke with the Chief. I drove to town by myself. Making sure to obey the speed limit and use my turn signals.
“What do you want?” asked the Chief when I walked in.
“I want to know why you invaded my house in the middle of the night for no reason.”
“Because the pot is gone,” he said. “The pot up on your mountain. Not many people know about it. Seemed reasonable that you’re the one that took it.”
There had been fifty or so plants growing up on the plateau. My friend Pop had planted and tended to them. Cody Banner had killed him over the weed. I’d later killed Banner. I had taken the pot plants, but I’d delivered them to Pop’s sister. She’d always been the one to sell them on his behalf, keeping a small cut. I didn’t want Banner to have them, so Brody and I harvested them and gave them away. Pop’s sister kept the windfall. In a sense, I was guilty of taking the pot, but I didn’t possess it.
“I tried to get you to arrest Banner over those plants,” I told the Chief. “You didn’t lift a finger. Now you want to charge me?”
“I can’t charge you if I can’t prove it,” he said.
“You could have proved a case against Banner,” I said. “Easily.”
“What’s past is past,” he said. “You’d do good to keep that in mind.”
“So because you turned your back on obvious crimes, I should let you walk all over me?” I asked. “Where the hell are you coming from?”
“Whatever you think you know about how I run my department, you will keep it to yourself,” he said. “Understood?”
“Or you’ll keep hounding me until you find a reason to arrest me?”
“I just want you to know who runs this town,” he said. “We don’t take kindly to flatlanders interfering in our business.”
“You came crawling, asking me to interfere,” I said. “You couldn’t do the job. The State Police and I did it for you.”
That got his anger up. He knew I was right, but couldn’t admit it. He couldn’t possibly know what Shook had told me, but it was clear he had his suspicions. That’s what this was all about. He needed me to keep quiet about what he’d done to the poor man. I wasn’t sure I was willing to cooperate.
“Get out,” he said. “Watch your step around here. Maybe go to Boone to do your shopping.”
“Have a nice day, Chief.”
A few months prior, I’d pissed off the Sheriff of Watauga County. Now I’d made an enemy of the Chief of Police in Banner Elk. I didn’t purposely provoke either one of them. The Sheriff refused to do his job, and the Chief used the power of his position to bully people. I had very little experience dealing with local law enforcement. On the water, I worried about Fish and Wildlife officers or occasionally the Coast Guard. I’d managed to dodge whatever FBI agents tried to find me. On land, I’d had two run-ins with cops, just months apart.
That wasn’t part of the dream we’d envisioned when we moved to the mountains. Our little cabin was very well secluded, with just one neighbor. He’d built our place and lived in it while he built a much larger cabin nearby. He was getting older and wanted to sell off some of his holdings. It seemed the perfect arrangement for us. I didn’t own the whole mountain though, and I certainly couldn’t wall off my property from the outside world completely.
The crisis with Shook was over, but problems lingered. As a matter of fairness, I wanted to expose the Chief’s behavior. As a more practical matter, we had to live near
his town. He could make life difficult for us if he chose to do so. I could think of no immediate resolution to the problem. I went home to talk it over with Brody. She knew much more about the law than I did.
“Many times, the State Police will investigate wrongdoing by smaller agencies,” she said. “If we were talking major corruption, the FBI would take over.”
“We’re not in a position to attempt to bring them in,” I said.
“We are not,” she said. “But the State Police might be. Depends on how they feel about it.”
“Rominger told me about one particular incident,” I began. “Shook got tazed in a bar in the presence of his wife and some patrons. It was an embarrassing situation: bodily fluids and whatnot. They thought that was all there was to it. Didn’t mention the affair.”
“They got the sanitized version from the Chief,” she said.
“I need to tell them what I learned from Shook,” I said. “See where it goes from there.”
“What do we know about the relationship between the two departments?” she asked. “Or the one between the Chief and the Commander for that matter?”
“Not a thing.”
“If they’re buddies we won’t get anywhere,” she said.
“If they’re enemies the Commander may jump at the chance to take down the Chief.”
“Who knows with rural and small-town politics?” she said.
“Who does the Chief report to?” I asked.
“Most of the time it’s the mayor,” she said. “But I can’t be sure in Banner Elk. It’s a very small town.”
“Who’s the Commander answer to?”
“The Governor,” she said. “After his state commander.”
“I don’t think we want to pursue the matter that far up,” I said. “We don’t have the resources or the pull around here.”
“Outsiders poking their nose in local business,” she said. “Meanwhile, we have the Chief breathing down our necks.”
“We can’t live like that,” I said. “Did you put away the SAT phone?”
“Not yet,” she said. “Here it is.”
I still had Rominger’s number programmed into the phone. I hit send and waited for him to answer. He picked up on the third ring.
“Breeze, right?” he said. “What’s up?”
I told him the whole story about my talks with Shook up on the mountain. I told him about the harassment we’d received from the Chief.
“Sorry to bother you with this,” I said. “But we don’t know where else to turn.”
“I’m not sure if I can help,” he said. “But I’ll run it by my boss. That’s all I can do.”
“I’ll leave this phone on for a few days,” I said. “Call me when you can.”
I plugged the phone into the charger and shrugged. I hated to leave my fate in someone else’s hands. I hated that Brody was collateral damage in the Chief’s plan to maintain dominance of his little domain. I hadn’t asked for any of this. I hadn’t been thinking clearly since Shook took his own life. It had disturbed me to be so close to it. The resulting adrenaline hangover felt like it was still with me. Brody wasn’t her normal cheerful self. We’d completely remade our lives to move here. We’d taken a true leap of faith. Now it was going to shit. I couldn’t stand idly by and let that happen, but for the moment, I didn’t know what to do about any of it.
Six
Over dinner, I apologized to Brody. She was my reason for being here. She was my world. I needed her to know that I was going to fix this.
“I’m so sorry about all of this,” I said. “I know this isn’t what you signed up for.”
“I know it’s not your fault,” she said. “There’s just something about you that attracts trouble. You have to know that by now.”
“It’s not a trait that I’ve ever tried to foster,” I said. “I’m pretty good at minding my own business.”
“Until a crisis pops up,” she said. “Then suddenly you’re all gung-ho to get involved.”
“I’d tell you it’s my civic duty but you know better,” I said. “Maybe I’m still trying to make up for all the things I’ve done wrong.”
“You should explore that thought further,” she advised. “When will the scales be balanced? When will it be enough?”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “I don’t know if it will ever be enough.”
“I can’t help you with that,” she said. “I wish I could. A lot happened before I ever met you.”
“I’m guilty of at least manslaughter down in Guatemala,” I said. “Who knows what the repercussions of my drug running are. The list goes on.”
“I don’t need to hear it,” she said. “I know who you are now. How much good do you have to do to erase your guilt?”
“That’s the crux of it, I suppose,” I said. “One thing I do know is that I love you. Don’t ever doubt that.”
“I don’t,” she said. “And I won’t. You changed your life to make me happy. I won’t ever forget that.”
“Now it’s all fucked up,” I said. “I’m having trouble thinking my way out.”
“Maybe you need to clear your head,” she suggested. “Go up there on the mountain and do that Zen thing. You’ll figure it out.”
“You sure you won’t mind?”
“I need you whole,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of life to live together. I see how you are about this mountain. Go ahead. Get your head on straight.”
I went up into the woods prepared to stay for a few days. It was nice to climb the mountain without worrying that a madman was up there with a weapon. I wasn’t hunting or tracking anyone. I wasn’t working on a strategy to defeat any rivals. I could enjoy nature and commune with it. I followed my old path alongside the creek for most of the day, finally arriving at its origin, the spring-fed pool my friend Pop had shown me.
I sat on the edge of the round basin and marveled at God’s creation. Where did the never-ending water supply come from? The water was clear and cold. I cupped my hands and drank it in. It seemed to cleanse my soul. I was able to let go of the recent strife that was holding me down. I looked around at the trees and rocks, then down the stream that ran past my cabin and down into the valley. Brody and I had found a wonderful place to share our lives. Next time, I’d bring her up here with me.
The sun was low, and I needed to prepare for the cold that would follow nightfall. I still had enough time to make Pop’s cave-dwelling if I hurried. I took one last drink from the pool before hoisting my pack and heading for it. My mountain legs had held up nicely. I was rested and refreshed. The short journey to the ledge that led to the cave was no problem for me.
Once inside, I lit the small oil lamp to illuminate my room for the night. I saw that it was almost out of fuel. I poked around for a container of lamp oil but, didn’t find any. I unrolled my sleeping bag and spread it out over the top of Pop’s bedroll. I placed the lamp near it to help warm things up in my sleeping quarters. I had granola bars and dried fruit for dinner. I never ate that crap in Florida. I tended to eat out of cans when I was poor, subsidized by fresh fish. When I had money I ate meat and potatoes, also alternated with fish that I caught. Brody had changed our diet in the mountains with fresh vegetables and fruit. She made us a good breakfast almost daily. If I hadn’t enjoyed hiking the mountains, I’d be fat as a tick by now.
Instead, I was strong and healthy. Once I’d gotten acclimated to the higher elevations, I took to it like I’d been born here. Now it was my refuge from a messed up world. The craziness of society was threatening to encroach on our peace. I’d done nothing to the Chief, but he had singled me out for persecution. My mere presence was a challenge to his authority. I wished it wasn’t so, because his actions were a challenge that I couldn’t let pass. I was my own authority. I asked no man to bow to me, but I would not bow to anyone else either. All I cared about was freedom. Freedom had been my motivation ever since I’d quit my job and run off to live on a boat in Florida.
I settled down in m
y rock tomb to think things through. The temperature outside was in the mid-twenties. It was probably just above freezing inside. There was no draft to speak of so it was comfortable enough. I couldn’t imagine living in that little hole every day as Pop had. He must have struggled mightily during the coldest days of winter. I was accustomed to dealing with extreme heat and mosquitoes. Neither was a problem in the mountains.
My mind kept drifting off topic. The issue was how to handle the Chief and his gross intrusion into our lives. Talking to him man to man hadn’t accomplished anything. Taking him on with the aid of other law enforcement agencies and lawyers meant a drawn-out ordeal that would diminish the life we’d come here to find. The concept of justice also had to be applied to the equation. Did I turn my back on the Chief’s abuse of power to maintain my personal comfort level? Did I leave it up to his next victim to fight for justice, or try to put an end to it before that happened?
I knew how Brody would answer. She was a firm believer in right from wrong. Until she met me, she’d never gotten a parking ticket. She’d made it her life’s mission to uphold the law as an FBI agent. I’d made it my life’s mission to try to avoid jail regardless of the laws I’d broken. In that respect, we were an odd couple, but her influence had not only helped me to change my ways, but to attempt to make amends.
On the other hand, launching a crusade against a Chief of Police would embroil us in just the kind of controversy we’d hoped to avoid. It would be a high-profile battle that would re-open my history for the world to see. Brody would face the same kind of scrutiny. She hadn’t left the FBI on congenial terms. Our last two encounters with the Bureau had gone way over the line of legality. The last one had come with a clear admonishment. Their debt to us was paid. Don’t expect more help in the future.
This case with the Chief was ripe for a referral to the FBI, but we were unable to call on them. If the State Police Commander agreed to look into the matter, would he ask the Bureau for help? There was no way for me to know. I’d disturbed the political atmosphere of western North Carolina when I’d killed Cody Banner. His senator grandfather had been put in his place and fallen off the radar. His developer father was relieved to escape the embarrassment that his son had wrought. The Watauga County Sheriff had been smacked down and overruled by the Bureau. Now he had an opponent in his re-election campaign with a good chance to win. It always came down to politics, no matter how rural or backwoods the area.