“She lives in the adjoining cove. Hates Grinny Creigh. Related, but has nothing to do with her. Hid us from the black hats when we had nowhere else to go. Showed me the best place to set up a watch on the Creigh compound. I think she’s all right.”
But even as I said all that, I still wondered. Nathan had known exactly where to find me, and they had somehow found out about Carrie’s quest. King saw my sudden doubts. Laurie May had either set a trap or was maybe now lying injured or worse in her cabin after a beating at the hands of Nathan.
“What?” King asked. I laid it out for him.
He sighed and made some more notes. “Well,” he said, “our problem is just what you said. I’ve got an asset inside Mingo’s office, but so far all we have is a bunch of stories backed up by zero physical evidence. Even now, all we got is a raft with some holes in it. We can’t legally go busting in on any of the Creighs without court paper, and I don’t think we’d get the paper.”
“How about conducting a general, wide-area search for Carrie, then?” I said. “You have a credible report that she’s been shot. Even Mingo says so, and I sure as hell say so. Search the whole damned county, and make sure you get into Grinny Creigh’s compound while you do it. Urgently. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“You have no authority to do anything, here or over there. You know that. And Mingo would love to get his hands on you again. And if he does, this time you won’t make it to any damn jail.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I said, with more confidence than I really felt. “I’ll get the Big brothers to help out. Carrie may be out there in the woods right now, waiting for help. And you can be damned sure Mingo will have people looking just as soon as he thinks you guys have given up.”
The phone rang. King asked me who had this number, and I told him lots of people. I picked it up. It was the front desk in the main lodge. “Taking calls now, Mr. Richter?” the operator asked. For a moment I didn’t understand him, then remembered that I’d asked them to block all calls earlier while I got some sleep.
“Yes, I am—who’s calling?”
“No name, sir, but he’s local and I’d guess he’s been up in them thar hills for awhile.”
“Give me ten seconds,” I said, nodding with my head toward an extension phone on the kitchen counter. King understood immediately.
“On three,” I said after hanging up. The phone started ringing again, and we picked up simultaneously.
“I gotcher woman,” a rough voice declared.
I was about to say she wasn’t “my woman,” but finally my feeble brain engaged. “Prove it,” I said.
“Prove it? Awright, I will.” King had the handset jammed under his ear while he worked his cell phone frantically, probably trying to set up a trace.
I heard shuffling noises in the phone, the man’s voice barking some orders, and then Carrie was on the line. “Hello?” she said in a weak voice.
“Carrie? This is Cam Richter. Are you injured?”
“Head hurts,” she said. “Hair’s all sticky. Hurts.”
She wasn’t entirely there for the conversation, which confirmed a head wound. I wanted to ask her where she was, but she’d have no idea and was probably wearing a duct-tape blindfold anyway. There was more noise on the phone, a grunt of pain from Carrie, and then Mr. Personality was back.
“Satisfied, are ye?”
King was making keep-him-talking gestures. “Actually,” I said, “I’m not sure who that was. It might be her, but she’s out of her head.”
“Yeah, she is. Got her a real nasty hairdo, she does. By rights, she oughter be dead.”
“And you would be—Lucas?” I asked.
“Ho-o-o-o!” he exclaimed, making an owl noise. “How d’ye figger that?”
“Your deputy buddies told me you shot her and you’d gone to find her body.”
There was just a fractional pause before he responded to that. I saw King mouth an expletive and shake his head.
“I ain’t Lucas and I ain’t shot nobody and I don’t have no truck with no damn deputies,” he said. “You want yer woman back or not?”
“If it’s her, yes, I want her back.” And I want you dead, I thought. “What’s the deal?”
“Deal? I ain’t proposin’ no deal. I’m a’tellin’ ye what yer gonna do, you want this woman back alive.”
“Okay, then, shoot,” I said amicably. I didn’t need to challenge this guy. Remember the objective, I told myself. Get her back, then you can take other action. King had closed up his cell phone. No go on a trace, but he continued to listen in.
“You’n me’s gonna meet up,” he said. “You gonna bring a bag’a money. Cash money. Five thousand greenback dollars, cash money. I get the money, I’ll tell you where she’s hid at. No money, I leave her there to die. Plain as that.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s plain, all right. I can do that. Meet where?”
“Where you was this mornin’,” he said. “Where them cops was parked, a’waitin’ for ye.”
“So you are Lucas,” I said. “You missed me this morning. How do I know you won’t be sitting in the trees with that rifle, waiting to try again?”
“ ’Cause I want that damn money. I was s’posed to git paid for killin’ the both of ye. Y’all got lucky. Then I figgered, hell, more’n one way to skin this here cat. But you gotta come alone, now.”
He’d given up pretending he wasn’t Lucas. “I don’t know, Lucas,” I said. “I come up there alone, carrying a bag of money, you shoot me down from ambush, then kill the woman, you get my money and your paycheck. Now why should I take chances like that?”
King was giving me a strange look, but he was back on his cell phone, trying something else.
“You looky here, lawman,” Lucas said. “I don’t need to go puttin’ you down, or this woman, neither. Didn’t know she was a cop, awright? Nathan and them’re gonna git you for what you done to Rowena. Far’s they know, this here woman’s puffin’ up in the damn river, but they ain’t payin’ me nothin’ without no body, an’ the way I figger it, they’s all so stirred up right now, I take them a body and then it’s gonna be me in the damn river.”
“That doesn’t solve my problem, Lucas,” I said. “How about this—I come in one vehicle, my backup comes in a second one. We get there together, in the dark. The place where you said. Can she walk?”
A pause, as if he were thinking about it. “Maybe.”
“Then we’ll arrive together, two cars. One plain car, one cop car. You send her out of the woods, she gets in the plain car. My partner then gets out, puts the money out on the ground, opens it up in the headlights so you can see it’s really there, and then we both drive away. You come out when you want to and we’re done with it.”
“How do I know ye ain’t trickin’ on me?”
“Because we want her back, Lucas. And we can get the five thousand—we’re the cops. Five thousand doesn’t mean squat to us. And we don’t have to go to any bank to get it. Besides, our fight’s not with you—it’s with the Creighs. We’re gonna have us a war, Lucas. You want to be part of that, or do you want five thousand bucks, cash money, right now, and the chance to get out of Robbins County for good? Who else but the cops can do that for you?”
There was a long silence on the line this time. I decided to wait him out. It was a simple enough proposition, and we each stood to gain.
“Midnight tonight,” he said. “Mess with me, I’ll cut her damn throat. Best believe that.”
“I do believe it, Lucas. Like I said, our fight’s not with you. You were just paid to do a job of work. Didn’t pan out. So now we both get to make it right and get on with business. Midnight. We’ll be there.”
“Awright then,” he said and hung up.
“Damned hotel PBX system,” King growled. “Blocked the trace. Good work on your end, though.”
“We can get the money from Sheriff Hayes’s office,” I said. “He’ll have a buy-money stash. Then—”
“�
��We’ is not the operative word,” King said. “‘We’ means us, not you. It’s our girl missing, and we will go meet this guy and get her back or bring him back in a rubber bag. You are still beat to shit from the morning, so you are going to stay put.”
I sat back in my chair and just looked at him. I knew that what he was saying made sense. He had the authority to execute the swap, and the means to put up the proper surveillance and backup nets.
“You know I’m right on this,” he said with a weary smile.
“Yeah, but.”
“I understand. But let us do our jobs. We know she’s alive, for the moment anyway, and if we can get her back for five grand, we will have dodged a large bullet. You stay put. We don’t need any stray operators in the mix right now. We get her back, we’ll call you and you can go see her in the hospital, okay?”
Much as I wanted to go along, Lucas wouldn’t know me from Adam. He wanted his money, and probably wanted to put some distance between him and his prisoner now that he knew she was a cop. I agreed. “Can she have her mamba stick back?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“That belongs to the state; she no longer does.”
King left to round up his team and make arrangements. I went out front and took the shepherds. We watched them go. Gelber still looked angry, but I now suspected he was one of those guys who always looks angry. I spotted the county cruiser Hayes had promised sitting out in a corner of the parking lot and walked over to shoot the breeze with the deputy. To my surprise, it turned out to be one of the Big brothers.
“I see you’ve got a new job these days,” I said.
Bigger John grinned and stubbed out his cigarette.
“Does M. C. know you hired on over here?”
“Don’t reckon,” he rumbled. “But he will.”
“I never thanked you guys for saving my bacon the other night,” I told him.
“That done it for us,” he replied. “Them Creighs is outta hand. They find that Harper girl?”
I had to think for a moment before remembering Harper was Carrie’s maiden name. “SBI’s got an angle, going to work it tonight,” I said. “Did you know her before she left for Charlotte?”
He shook his head. “Wasn’t born yet. But Mingo—he knew her. Said her old man had been a problem once upon a time, but not no longer.”
He lit up another cigarette and blew a big cloud of aromatic smoke out into the night air. It momentarily made me want to go back to the noxious weed. A car came by us going into the parking lot, and two kids in the back were staring at us as they went past.
“We have a pretty good line on Agent Santángelo,” I said. “Some guy named Lucas wants to trade her for cash money.”
“Might be Lucas Carr,” John said. “He’s done some stick work for M. C. from time to time.”
I didn’t have to ask what stick work was. “Have you ever heard any rumors about Grinny Creigh and children in the county?” I asked him.
“Other than she cooks ’em and eats ’em?” he asked.
“Yeah, besides that. Something maybe worse.”
He didn’t say anything for a long minute, just kept puffing on his cigarette. It looked like a white toothpick in his massive paw.
“We did a road scrape once,” he said finally. “You know, one’a them real messy MVAs? Old boy had drove himself into a tree on a bad curve. His bottom half was puddled up a coupl’a feet from his top half. The top half was still alive, talkin’, like nothin’ had happened.”
“Adrenaline’s amazing stuff,” I said.
“Mm-hmm,” he agreed. “So’re seat belts. Boy couldn’t see he’d done been cut right in half. He was goin’ on, mile-a-minnit, sayin’ he had to do surgery, that he was a doc, and he was late. He didn’t look like no doc, more like one’a them ay-rabs. Wasn’t no way we could move’m or help’m, so we let him talk, just kinda waitin’ for him to bleed down. Couldn’t’ve got’m out without a backhoe, you know what I mean? I asked him where he was goin’ in such a damn hurry.”
“And?”
“Said he had to git to the county hospital here in Marionburg. Kept jabberin’ on about how late he was. Other boy with me, he asked’m who was he cuttin’ on. Said he had to do surgery on a kid. By now, he was nose down and goin’ fast. Other boy asked him, what kid. Said one’a them kids over to Miz Creigh’s place.” John glanced up at me to see if I’d heard the important bit.
“Kids? As in plural?”
He nodded. “Kids. At Grinny Creigh’s place.” He ruminated on that notion for a moment before continuing. “Now, there ain’t been no kids to go anywhere near that Grinny Creigh’s place for some time, not after hearin’ the old folks around Robbins County talk about her boilin’ babies by moonlight an’ all. Anyway, M. C. shows up. Wasn’t unusual—he always comes out when we get a bad MVA.”
He took a final drag on the hapless cigarette and pitched it. “You know what?” he continued. “I b’lieve he knew that fella. M. C. got there just about the time this so-called doctor crossed Jordan. M. C., he tells us to go back on patrol, he’s takin’ over the scene. Called some other deputies in, called the funeral home over here in Marionburg. Last we heard of it.”
“When was this?”
“Three years back,” he said. “If there’s any paperwork, M. C.’s got it in them private files of his.”
“Fatality on the highway, the state cops do the investigation,” I pointed out. “The state police reconstruction team comes in. They close the road, make a big deal.”
“Not if they don’t hear nothin’ about it,” he said calmly.
I leaned back on the left front fender of the cruiser and thought about this little story. One among many about Robbins County.
Stories. Unfortunately, that was about all we had. Stories and flashes of mortal violence in the night that seemed to evaporate in the cold light of day. What in the hell would a foreign doctor be doing up here? I’d seen one last night, but no locals would want an Asian or any other kind of foreigner working on them—they’d call in a woods healer first. But kids, plural, at Grinny’s place? This would interest Carrie, along with what I’d overheard, a lot. I told him that Sam King would want to talk to them both.
Bigger John was watching two teenaged boys lounging around an expensive German car, trying to pretend they weren’t checking out something interesting inside. John turned on the cruiser’s headlights and caught them square. They put their hands in front of their faces, moved away from the car, and then sauntered back toward the main lodge as if nothing had happened. I heard the radio crackle into life inside the cruiser. John bent forward to listen and then grunted.
“Gotta go back in,” he said. “You okay here for a little while?”
“I think so,” I said. “I’ve got my buddies in the cabin. And Nathan Creigh’s ten-gauge.”
“How’d you get ahold of that?” he asked. I told him, leaving out the part about Rue Creigh.
“Hope you whaled on him real good,” he said. “ ‘Cause that old boy won’t rest till he gets it back. And you with it.”
“I’ll be happy to face him again if he’s really interested,” I said.
“Not his style,” he said. “Think big-caliber ball, Reb rifle.”
After he left I walked across the parking lot and up to the main lodge. I’d left the shepherds in the cabin, along with the ten-gauge. I might get away with carrying a handgun into the hotel, but a shotgun would definitely make the waitstaff nervous. For that matter, the remaining shells were now thoroughly soaked and probably useless.
The lodge had a nicely appointed cocktail lounge. I limped in and ordered a single malt and a hamburger, in that order, and tried not to think about long guns. It was ten thirty, and I was disappointed at not being able to go along on the ride to recover Carrie Harper Santangelo. Special Agent King was right, of course, but I was also ashamed of having just left her there. The hamburger came; if the bartender thought it was strange to be washing down this cul
inary extravaganza with twelve-dollar scotch, he certainly didn’t say so.
The lounge was full and humming. They had a fusion blues trio in one corner, a small dance floor that allowed for as close a dance as you might want, and the usual collection of mildly desperate men and women looking for love or at least some company. Including one Moses Walsh, who was ensconced at a corner table with a woman in her late forties trying hard to look thirty-nine. He was dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt and clean, faded jeans and had some kind of Indian decoration in his hair and at his throat. With that face, he had the part covered in spades.
The woman got up to visit the powder room, so I grabbed my scotch and sauntered over.
“Big Chief on the road to glory?” I asked.
I got a sonorous western movie grunt and a squinty-eyed sideways look. “Big Chief on short final,” he said. “He hopes.”
“I think I would need some more scotch for that one,” I said, watching her walk away from us. “Not sure that would be a good wake-up.”
“Ain’t never gone to bed with no ugly woman,” he quoted. “But I have woke up with some. Where’d you hear about Big Chief? I haven’t heard that since high school.”
I told him and he smiled. “Didn’t know her,” he said. “She pretty?”
“Very,” I said. “And a senior internal affairs inspector in the SBI.”
“Oh,” he said.
I laughed. We talked for a few minutes, and then the woman came out of the bathroom, headed back toward the table. She stopped to talk to another woman of a similar stripe.
“You gonna introduce me? See if she has a friend?”
“Paleface blow Big Chief’s cover, he’s gonna die.”
“No worries,” I said. “And what kind of Indian are you supposed to be tonight?”
“Chippewa.”
“I don’t believe they were ever in these parts,” I said.
“No, but everyone’s cherokee’d out up here, so Chippewa it is.”
I got up, trying not to laugh out loud, and walked away, nodding at the returning lounge queen. Fifty trying for forty was more like it, but Mose was obviously a practitioner of the Go Ugly Early rule. He was also probably getting lucky a whole lot more than I was these days.
SPIDER MOUNTAIN Page 24
