Music of Ghosts

by Sallie Bissell

  “What was it?” Lily cried.

  “Probably a bat,” Jonathan replied.

  “Wait! I want to get out and make sure it’s okay.”

  “You don’t need to mess around with bats, Lily.”

  “But it might be hurt!” Quickly, the child opened the door and scampered out of the backseat.

  “Lily! Get back here!” cried Jonathan.

  She paid no attention. Irritated, Jonathan thumped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Damn it,” he said, disgusted. “I’ve got to get some sleep tonight—I’m taking a fishing party up to Big Witch Creek at dawn.”

  Mary couldn’t help but wonder why he’d played stickball if he’d had such a tough day coming tomorrow, but she made no comment. “Take it easy,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt. “I’ll go get her.”

  She got out of the car. In the dim light, the backs of Lily’s sneakers were two small bobbing orbs. Mary followed them, listening for Jonathan’s door to open, his own footsteps to start following hers. Instead, all she heard was an abrupt silence as he turned off the engine. Odd behavior, she thought, for a man who’d once spent half a day tracking a bobcat winged by an errant arrow.

  “I found it!” Lily shouted, from the far side of the road.

  Mary jogged forward, wanting to stop the child if Jonathan had indeed hit a bat. “Don’t touch it, Lily,” she called. “Bats can be dangerous.”

  “It’s not a bat!” Lily pointed to a quivering lump by the side of the road.

  Mary hurried closer. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she began to make out not leathery wings, but white feathers, a yellowish beak. “Go get a flashlight, Lily. And tell your father it’s not a bat.”

  Lily ran back to the car. A few moments later she returned with the flashlight, Jonathan behind her.

  “Shine the light down here,” Mary whispered. Lily pointed the flashlight at the creature on the ground. The lump became an owl. It had brown wing feathers, a cream-colored chest speckled with brown dots. The face was white but ringed in a delicate line of tan feathers that made the shape of a heart. With round black eyes, there was a kind of innocent sweetness about the bird’s face. It looked terrified.

  “Is it Ugugu?” Jonathan asked, using the Cherokee name for a Great Horned Owl, an animal that traditionally presaged death.

  “No,” said Mary. “Cut the flashlight, Lily. It’s really scared.”

  As Lily doused the light, Mary turned to Jonathan. “It’s some other kind of owl. It’s hurt.”

  He made a soft grunt of regret. “I’ll go take it up in the woods.”

  “What for?” asked Lily.

  “To put it down, Lily. It can’t fly.”

  “We can take it home and nurse it—”

  “Lily, I hit it with the car. It will die soon. Better to let me kill it quickly, in the woods, than to let it flop here by this road.”

  “No!” cried Lily. “You can’t kill him!”

  “Lily, it’s cruel to—”

  “He’s beautiful! His face is like a heart!”

  “But Lily—“

  The little girl started to cry. “He’s alive. He wants to live!”

  Jonathan knelt down in front of her. “Honey, you’ve seen wounded animals before. I’ve told you about the cycle of life.”

  “I don’t care about the cycle of life. I don’t want him to die!”

  Mary bit her tongue and kept silent. This was a Walkingstick affair; she knew better than to intrude, uninvited, between father and daughter.

  “I know somebody who’ll help him!” Lily’s tone rose in desperation. “Dr. Lovebird!”

  Jonathan frowned. “Dr. who?”

  “Dr. Lovebird. The man who flew the eagle today. I went over and talked to him. He heals birds when they get hurt.”

  Mary smiled, remembering Nick Stratton’s stage name.

  Jonathan took Lily’s hand. “Honey, this owl probably has a broken wing—he’ll never fly again. Even if Dr. Lovebird could save him, he’d have to stay in a cage the rest of his life. He could never do what he loved.”

  “But that’s better than dying!”

  Jonathan looked at her, his gaze serious. “You really think so?”

  “Yes.” Lily began to wail again. “He wasn’t doing anything wrong. You’re the one who hit him!”

  “Accidents happen, Lily,” he told her. “Sometimes bad things happen that are nobody’s fault.” He reached to pull her close, but she twisted away from him, her face streaked with tears.

  “Dr. Lovebird can save him, Daddy. You hit him—you could at least take him there!”

  “I’m not taking that owl anywhere, Lily. Dr. Lovebird flies eagles; he probably doesn’t know a hoot owl from a hummingbird.” Jonathan stood up and took a step toward the bird. Lily scurried to stand in front of him.

  “No!” Her voice shook with rage as she tried to shove her father away. “You can’t kill him! I won’t let you!”

  Stymied, Jonathan turned toward Mary. She could tell that he now wanted her input. Lily had inherited her father’s stubbornness, and Mary had helped the two negotiate body-piercings (one hole per ear lobe only), tattoos (absolutely none), and late-night reading (until nine p.m., but only if all homework was completed). Tonight, she was going to have to find them common ground over this bird.

  Mary looked at the owl, quivering by the side of the road, then she turned to Jonathan. “Let’s take him home. Maybe he’s just stunned. If he’s okay in the morning, we can let him go.”

  “That’s a good idea!” Lily said eagerly.

  “But … ” Jonathan began, then stopped as Mary lifted a silencing hand and turned to Lily.

  “Lily, if he’s not okay in the morning, then we’ll have to release his spirit. It’s cruel to let a wounded thing suffer.”

  Father and daughter glared at each other, neither willing to give ground.

  “Is that agreeable?” asked Mary, thinking how much Lily’s expression mirrored Jonathan’s.

  “Yes,” said Lily.

  Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Okay.”

  “Good,” said Mary. “That’s the deal. Lily, you stay here with the owl. Your father and I will go to the car and get something to put him in.”

  They left Lily with the flashlight and walked back to the car. “Don’t you know that bird won’t last the night?” whispered Jonathan.

  “I do.”

  “Then why get her hopes up that he’ll live?”

  “Because she’s almost hysterical, Jonathan. Wringing the bird’s neck is not the answer.” She turned to him, sudden tears stinging her own eyes. “Don’t you think some things might be worth trying to save?”

  He made a noise—a snorting kind of Cherokee phrase that had no real definition, but always meant disapproval. Still, he opened the trunk of the car and retrieved an old quilt they’d used for picnics. “Just remember that I’m leaving way before dawn. If that bird is still alive in the morning, you’re the one who’s going to have to kill it.”

  Six

  While Mary Crow grappled with the injured owl, Jerry Cochran sat at his desk, steeling himself for his two most hated duties. The news conference he’d scheduled for ten p.m. was bad enough; far worse than that was his next-of-kin call to Carlisle Wilson. He’d been trying to reach the governor ever since he left Stratton’s bird center. But the old man, according to some mush-mouthed aide, was “out fishing.” Cochran finally decided if he hadn’t reached the man before the press conference he would break the news without releasing the name of the victim. It would not make him look abundantly professional, but he couldn’t sit on a homicide story for twenty-four hours. As Ginger often reminded him, the public has a right to know.

  Impatient, he stared at the phone, willing the old man to call him back. As the thing sat mute and uncooperative, he
started re-reading the statement he was going to give the press, striking through Lisa Wilson’s name with a red pen. That presented a new set of problems. Giving the bare bones essentials—just saying that they’d found a twenty-one-year-old female dead on Burr Mountain would only make the reporters—Ginger especially—start digging for more. He could just picture their reaction if he told them the unvarnished truth—that Governor Carlisle Wilson’s only daughter had been strangled and mutilated at a remote cabin reputedly haunted by ghosts.

  Suddenly, the phone rang. Jumping, he grabbed the receiver, hoping Geneva had the real governor on the line and not just the aide she’d managed to come up with so far. “Hello?”

  “This is Carlisle Wilson.” The old man’s voice sounded gravelly, as if he’d been asleep. “Who’s this?”

  “Sir, I’m Sheriff Gerald Cochran, Pisgah County, North Carolina.” Jerry tightened his grip on the phone, retreating into cop speak. “I’m afraid I have some very bad news. This morning a twenty-one-year-old white female was found dead on the east face of Burr Mountain. Our investigation determined that she was Lisa Carlisle Wilson of 41 Princeton Mews, Raleigh. I’m afraid she was the victim of a homicide.”

  “But that’s my daughter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She’s a victim? I—I don’t understand.”

  “Sir, Lisa had gone on a campout with some fellow interns from the raptor center. One of those interns found her this morning. We’ve been trying to reach you for quite some time.”

  “You say she died on a campout? Did she fall off a cliff?”

  “No sir.” Cochran took a deep breath and started back at square one. “As I said earlier, your daughter was the victim of a homicide.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Finally, the old man spoke again. “You mean someone killed her?”

  “Yes, sir. I am so sorry.”

  “But who would kill my Lisa? She’s just a girl … ”

  “We’re working very hard to determine that, sir. The SBI has joined our investigation, and her autopsy was given top priority at the state lab in Winston-Salem.”

  Carlisle Wilson began making a strange noise, somewhere between a cry and a choke. Cochran held the phone away from his ear. No stranger, he thought, should be privy to this kind of grief. At length Wilson’s sobs abated and he spoke again, this time with the snap of a drill sergeant. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Cochran. Sheriff Gerald Cochran.”

  “Well, Sheriff Gerald Cochran, I’m leaving right now. I’ll be in your office first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “But sir, your daughter’s remains are at the state lab. It might be better to—”

  “Son, you just told me my Lisa was killed in your county,” the old man growled, sounding every bit like the governor who once held all of North Carolina by the scruff of the neck. “You can bet your sorry ass I’m coming there. And I’m staying there. I’m going to roast your balls over a slow fire until you find out what the hell happened to my little girl.”

  Wilson slammed down the phone, leaving Cochran listening to the dial tone. He hung up the receiver slowly, thinking he’d probably just made the worst notification call in the history of law enforcement. He’d meant to express his sympathy, assure the governor he would find the girl’s killer. Instead, he felt like he’d just thrown a rock at a hornet’s nest.

  He was wondering how Carlisle Wilson might roast his balls when someone knocked on his door. “Yeah?” he called, half expecting to see the old man already there, his eyes on fire.

  Geneva peeked in, her gray hair newly permed into puffy curls. “I’m sorry, Jerry, but it’s past ten. The reporters are … ”

  “Aw, nuts!” Cochran bolted up from his chair. Carlisle Wilson had pushed the press conference totally out of his mind. “I’m on it.” He grabbed his coat. “You go on home, Geneva. You’ve gone above and beyond today, and I appreciate it.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff.” She smiled a sweet, grandmotherly smile. “You get some rest, too.”

  He hurried down to the small room they used for official announcements. As he opened the door he found five reporters waiting—Tronda O’Brien from the Greenville paper, Shirley Heifner from Asheville, a couple of stringers he didn’t know, and of course Ginger, who sat front and center, still dressed in the shorts she’d worn for the sports park ceremonies. She would, he knew, ask the toughest questions. He’d learned that the fact that they slept together did not make her go easy on him—if anything she doubled-down on the questions that made him squirm.

  “Just doing my job,” she would tell him later in bed, those green eyes coy behind dark lashes. As much as he loved her, he knew getting a story would always come first for her. And he respected her for that.

  Clearing his throat, he stepped to the little podium Geneva had set up. “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” he began, nodding at the five expectant faces looking up at him. By tomorrow, he knew they would be not five alone, but five in a sea of reporters clamoring for this story. He took a deep breath and began to read his statement.

  “This morning at 8:57 a.m., we received a call that a body had been found on the east face of Burr Mountain. Officer Rob Saunooke was dispatched to the scene; I arrived approximately an hour later. We discovered that a twenty-one-year-old white female had been the victim of a homicide. She was one of six student interns from the Pisgah Raptor Rescue Center.”

  Shirley Heifner looked up from her laptop. “What was the cause of death?”

  “The victim’s at the state lab now,” Cochran said. “I’ll release that information when I have it.” He thought of those cuts, all over her body. Never would he release that, not to anybody.

  “Where are the other interns?”

  Cochran said, “They are currently being interviewed.”

  “Are they college or high school students?”

  “College. Two are from Duke, two from Carolina, one from NC State. The victim was enrolled at Carolina.”

  Ginger, who’d been taking notes but also watching him closely, raised her hand.

  “Were they anywhere near the old Fiddlesticks cabin?”

  He looked at her with a tight smile. His precious love had seen through his tap-dancing and asked the question he’d been dreading. “As a matter of fact, that was the location of their campsite.”

  She pressed on. “Can you identify the victim?”

  He knew he couldn’t evade her question. She would find out tomorrow anyway. “The victim was Lisa Carlisle Wilson, of Raleigh. Daughter of former governor Jackson Carlisle Wilson.”

  A moment of stunned silence enveloped the room, then the questions swarmed like gnats. What was the governor’s reaction? Has he released a statement? Have you brought in the SBI? Do you have any suspects or persons of interest?

  This was the part he hated. Reporters asked questions that, this early, he never had the answers to. Sometimes he wished he could reveal a murder investigation after the fact, when they’d caught the killer and tied up all the loose ends. Ongoing investigations always made cops sound so stupid.

  After he’d said “We don’t know” and “I can’t say at this point,” he stopped the grilling. “I really can’t comment any more tonight. I’ll schedule future press conferences as new information becomes available.”

  More questions erupted, but he left the podium and walked out of the room. He closed the door then paused to look back through the glass window. The reporters sat bent over their tablets, sending the story to their respective copy desks. Though it was late-breaking news, Lisa Wilson’s murder would probably be on the front page of every paper in the region. He watched Ginger, pecking on her laptop and thought suddenly of the diamond ring in his dresser drawer. If the day had gone as he’d planned, that ring would be glittering on her finger now. She would not be typing, filing a story. He would not be trying to figu
re out what in the hell happened to the governor’s daughter, and Lisa would not be on a slab in Winston-Salem with God knows what carved all over her body.

  Seven

  Mary Crow lay in a dream-tossed sleep, one minute trying to teach Ann Chandler Cherokee, the next trying to find a seat on the governor’s bus. In the current one she and Jonathan were fighting over a dead hawk. They were pushing each other away from the bird when suddenly it came back to life and began to peck Mary’s shoulder, hard and insistent. At that point, she awoke with a start, sitting up in bed to find Lily standing there in her pajamas, tapping her shoulder.

  “Wake up, Meyli,” she whispered urgently, using the Cherokee version of Mary’s name. “I think the owl’s dying.”

  “The what?” Mary asked, thinking she must still be dreaming.

  “The owl. The one Daddy hit last night.”

  Mary blinked, trying to sort her dreams from reality. A hawk had not been pecking her shoulder—Lily had been trying to awaken her. She looked over at Jonathan sleeping beside her. As usual, he’d turned his back to her. The unwrinkled white sheets stretching like a snowfield between them.

  “Get up, Meyli.” Lily tugged at her arm. “Hurry!”

  Mary slipped out of bed and hurried to Lily’s bedroom. They’d put the injured bird in a cardboard box with some shredded newspaper. Jonathan had wanted to leave it on the back porch, but Lily had insisted on bringing it up to her room. Now it was struggling to fly—panting, reeling, vainly batting its wings against the sides of the box. In one corner of the box Mary saw a thick clump of dark red matter that could have been blood or vomit or both.

  “Pleeeease can we call Dr. Lovebird?” Lily held up a business card that pictured a cartoon of Nick Stratton playing a fiddle with all sorts of birds perched on him. Beneath the picture was the line Invite Dr. Lovebird and Friends to your next school event.

  “It’s three in the morning, Lily. We can’t call him now.”

  “But he said to call him if we ever found an injured raptor.”

  “He didn’t mean in the middle of the night,” Mary croaked, her throat like sandpaper.