“You didn’t like that kiss?” he asked.
“You’re getting better with practice, but I think somebody’s coming.”
A couple of seconds later, he heard the low whine of a car engine and the chink of gravel kicking off a steel undercarriage. Loss of hearing came with the years, he supposed, but it still sucked mule eggs. Sounded like a big ride, maybe another Caddy full of Budget Bill’s monkeys in neckties, but he decided to give the shotgun a pass for now. Pearl followed him out the front door.
The sheriff’s beige-and-white cruiser slewed to a stop, its bubble-gum machine strobing blue on the roof. Frank Littlefield climbed out of the driver’s seat, leaving the door open and engine running, meaning he was either hellbent for leather or else had a warrant burning a hole in his pocket.
Littlefield had gone a little soft in the belly and patches of gray marked his temples. His eyes were pouched and bloodshot, but that was only natural for a man who had lost a couple of detectives along the way, not to mention his kid brother. People gossiped about Littlefield, since freak accidents tended to dog his every step, but Hardy had pulled the lever for the man come every election day, Republican or no.
“Howdy, Sheriff, what can I do you for?” Hardy shouted, Pearl pressed close behind him and smelling of clean Ivory soap.
“Mind opening your cattle gate, Mr. Eggers?”
Ordinarily, Hardy would have made a joke about his cows being the law-abiding sort, but Littlefield’s expression and clipped tone discouraged tomfoolery. This was a man on a mission. “Sure enough,” he said, heading down the steps and breaking into a gimpy trot.
Littlefield got back behind the wheel and by the time Hardy swung the steel gate open, the sheriff had pulled the cruiser to the dusty twin tracks that led past a couple of hay barns and into the hills. Littlefield paused, his driver’s-side window down.
“I’ll need to go through the upper gate, too, but I’ll close it behind me,” the sheriff said.
“That one’s stickier than a widow’s honeypot,” Hardy said. “You might need a hand with it.”
Truth was, Hardy just wanted to poke his big snout into Littlefield’s business, and they both knew it. But Littlefield nodded his head to the passenger door. “Let’s roll.”
Just before Hardy ducked into the car, he gave Pearl a reassuring wave, but it didn’t diminish the deep worry lines on her forehead.
“Keep an eye on Donnie,” he said.
“And you keep an eye on yourself,” she shouted back before he closed the door.
The car bounced up the old roadbed that had once been used for logging, back before the timber clear-cutting of the early twentieth century. A lot of the access roads had been abandoned and gone back to saplings, and though Grandpappy Eggers had sold off logging rights, he’d kept open the main road across the mountain, even though it was now best navigated by four-wheel-drive vehicles. The sheriff seemed plenty determined, however, and Hardy didn’t think a few dents to the oil pan would slow him any.
“Manhunt in progress?” Hardy ventured, a line he’d probably picked up from a TV show.
“I’m not sure yet,” Littlefield said. “And I couldn’t tell you if I knew.”
The radio crackled. A laptop computer was fastened to the dashboard with Velcro, and a pump-action .20-gauge rested in the crotch between the two front seats. Littlefield picked up the handset and spoke into it. “Any word on Perriotte?”
“Nowhere in sight,” came the reply, the sibilant lost in a spray of static.
“I heard two shots,” Hardy said. “Is some nut up there with a gun?”
“Like I said, I can’t say.”
“Can’t say, or can’t tell?”
“Neither one.”
The sheriff ditched the handset and locked both hands on the wheel. The October heat and stress were squeezing sweat from his scalp. As they gunned up the incline, the herd of cattle gazed with disinterest, as if figuring that even if the car were edible, it was moving way too fast to munch.
“Might be one of them hippies,” Hardy said, enjoying his brief turn as an accidental deputy.
“What hippies?” Littlefield said, checking the digital readouts on the dashboard.
“Tree huggers. The ones trying to stop Budget Bill and the developers, claim Mulatto Mountain is an environmental treasure.”
“They aren’t the violent kind,” Littlefield said. “They’re more likely to pass out flyers and hold rallies on the library lawn, not pull an ecoterrorist number. They’re too busy smoking pot to figure out which end of a firearm is which.”
When they reached the upper gate, they found it as rusty as Hardy had promised. Littlefield pounded the sole of his boot against the latch until it finally broke free, and then the two men lifted the gate and shoved it against a reluctant tuft of blackberry briars until the opening was wide enough for the car.
“Thanks, Mr. Eggers,” the sheriff said. “Sorry I’ve got to leave you here, but this is official police business.”
“Go get ‘em,” Hardy said, slapping his palm on the roof. As the wide Buick cruiser weaved through the forest, branches slapping at the car’s flanks, Hardy wrestled the gate back into place. He looked down at the farmhouse and outbuildings nearly half a mile below, where they were tucked in the valley like a child’s alphabet blocks on a rumpled green rug. He imagined Pearl was still standing on the porch, hand shading her eyes, her thin lips pursed in worry. At a time like this, Hardy was glad his eyesight was as gone-to-shit as his hearing and his pecker.
He waved, on the long chance that she could see him, and started hoofing it up the roadbed in the wake of the cruiser. Sure, this constituted trespassing, as he was officially on property belonging to Budget Bill Willard and Elkridge Landcorp, and given his game legs and short wind, he probably wouldn’t make it another hundred feet, but he hadn’t had a thrill since the armed showdown with the developers and damned if he wasn’t looking forward to some action. Besides, his one-eyed rattlesnake twitched a little in the moist den of his boxers, as if maybe it wasn’t yet resigned to permanent hibernation.
Too bad he didn’t have his shotgun. But no way in hell was he going to walk down to the house and get it. He’d just have to improvise, if worse came to worse.
Littlefield might be able to handle the drug addicts and petty crooks of Pickett County, but Mulatto Mountain was an entirely different story.
A whole bunch of stories, come to think of it.
Hardy just hoped, for the sake of all that was good, right, and holy, that he’d make it to the top in time to keep everybody away from The Jangling Hole.
He’d not been there for his own son, but maybe he could scare off the next bunch before the Hole spewed more of its wickedness into the world.
CHAPTER FOUR
Shots fired. Officer down. Maybe.
I hate the unknown.
Too bad there’s so damned much of it.
Sheriff Frank Littlefield punished the cruiser, bouncing up the eroded twin ruts that passed for a road. Most of his counterparts in surrounding mountain counties drove
Humvees or oversize SUV’s, but Littlefield’s departmental budget had been stressed by the opening of a new jail and demands for beefed-up security at the courthouse. It seemed judges didn’t like the rash of nutballs passing down their own sentences in court, punctuated with the bang of hot steel instead of a cool wooden gavel. Besides, Littlefield’s self-image required he drive the most beat-up, high-mileage vehicle in the fleet, and the whining Buick had been ridden hard enough to earn a place on the scrap heap.
Some would put its driver in the same category. Littlefield had won the last election by 12 votes, and that was only after a recount. Pickett County hadn’t endured a Democratic sheriff since the 1970s, but political unrest had trickled even into the most remote and conservative pockets of the South. And folks still whispered about the red church and how Littlefield’s younger brother had died, as well as his chief deputy. Trouble cast a long shadow over the s
heriff, not a good circumstance for someone in his line of work.
He didn’t dwell on the past, because the past was mostly a string of failures. A less-arrogant man would have turned in his badge, or fail to campaign vigorously enough to win. Littlefield, approaching 47, figured he still had a few good years left, since modern police spent more time at the computer than chasing bad guys. The sad truth was, he didn’t have anything else to do with his life, and the opportunity for redemption always hung before him like a sagging Christ on crooked dogwood.
Maybe this was the chance. The report of “Shots fired” had kicked his heart into high gear, especially since his deputies were involved. Morton and Perriotte were recent hires, both with criminal justice degrees, and the Saturday-afternoon shift was a good way to break them in. Domestic violence calls and drunk drivers were the most common log ledgers, but this was Pickett County, and Littlefield had been around long enough to know things could take a sudden turn into the strange, especially on Mulatto Mountain.
The radio had been spitting static for the last two minutes, and Littlefield had no idea of his location. Like most native males, he’d hunted the mountain as a youngster, but the terrain had changed a bit since then. The hardwood forest became more dense, slabs of granite shelves had given way in places, and the old logging roads were slowly reverting to their natural state. Leaves slapped the windshield, and a branch slammed the side mirror against the chassis, cracking the glass. The front wheels of the Buick dropped into a ditch, and Littlefield decided he’d better go the rest of the way on foot.
Littlefield called dispatch and ordered the other responding deputies to stake out the foot of the mountain. If there was a shooter on the loose, better to keep the stray bullets away from town. Two roads girded the mountain, but anybody with a half a lick of sense could slip through the woods and stay out of sight. Littlefield’s order was designed to keep people out of the firing line, and he told himself it was smart strategy.
But the fringe benefit was that no witnesses would be around if things went weird.
Littlefield was out of the car and trying to get his bearings when a third shot rang out. Shouts arose from somewhere to his left, maybe a few hundred feet. His deputies must have tracked a suspect into the woods and now the parties were in a standoff near the ridge.
Good versus evil, right against wrong, light and dark in their eternal dance, all bleeding in a blind gray struggle that kept people like Littlefield motivated and employed. Littlefield cursed under his breath, wondering which side he truly served, and then eased between the trees, hunched low and stepping lightly.
Why hadn’t the boys used their field radios?
The last transmission had been their standard 10-20 check, reporting their response to the shoplifting call. Maybe they figured to perform a quick search and make the store owner happy, knowing shoplifters who left the premises were rarely apprehended. That didn’t matter now. All that mattered was getting everybody off Mulatto Mountain in one piece.
“Over here,” Morton shouted.
Littlefield drew his Glock, the first time he’d gripped the pistol in months, and risked giving away his location by answering. “You okay?”
“It’s Perriotte.”
“Is he down?”
“Sort of,” Morton shouted.
Littlefield worked past trees and up the slope, breathing harder than he cared to acknowledge, his chest a little tight around his ribs. He eased around a boulder, bits of lichen breaking loose and tickling down his collar.
“Sort of? A man’s either up or he’s down.”
“He’s down, but he’s not shot. Not that I can see.”
Littlefield was now close enough to talk without shouting, though the deputies were still concealed from him by the evergreen growth. “Where’s the gunman?”
“That’s the odd part. I don’t see one.” Then, lower, “Hang on, J.R. It’s going to be okay.”
Littlefield skirted behind a low thicket of cedars, the Glock heavy in his hand. He hadn’t shot anyone in years, not since Archer McFall, and he still wasn’t sure whether McFall counted as “anyone” or not. The jury was still out on that one. When your victim up and drifted into the river, leaving only a pile of dry mud behind, you couldn’t rightly carve a notch in your gun.
Winded, he leaned against an oak, bark scraping his cheek. From his new vantage point, he could look down on his officers, who were crouched behind a jumble of granite that jutted from the ground like the broken teeth of giants. Morton, the youngest, his chin red from a severe shave, peered over the stones and up the slope to Littlefield’s left. Littlefield surveyed the foliage. He saw no movement.
“Psst,” Littlefield called to Morton, figuring the element of surprise was shot to hell anyway. The distant sirens had surely tipped off the gunman that the cavalry was riding in, and not many roads led off Mulatto Mountain.
“Up there, Sheriff,” Morton said, waving his own pistol toward the peak.
“Did you see anything?”
“Movement, nothing much. Could have been a deer for all I could tell.”
“How’s Perriotte?”
“Peculiar.”
Peculiar? What the hell kind of diagnosis was “peculiar”?
Littlefield squinted into the forest, where gnarled limbs hugged the darkness and ancient things slept beneath the rotten crust. “Did he fire his weapon?”
“Three times. The last time, I was here, but I don’t know what in hell he was shooting at.”
“Hell with it,” he muttered under his breath. “Guess it’s always now or never.”
Littlefield approached the ridge, edging out from cover enough to let the gunman see him without getting a clear shot. If Perriotte had fired three times, the gunman might not even be a gunman at all. The correct term was “suspect,” but the target had not been identified by anyone but Perriotte. So that made it what they liked to call “a person of interest,” the lingo lawmen fell back on when they didn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground. And he was up-to-date on what constituted a hole in the ground, because The Jangling Hole was just such a creature.
“Creature,” shit. There I go personifying inanimate objects again. Should have checked into the loony bin the first time I ever saw a talking, shape-shifting stack of dirt. That would have spared lots of people lots of trouble, and maybe kept a couple of them alive.
Littlefield looked down to see his pistol hand was shaking. So much for all those Louis L’Amour novels. The sheriff’s only comfort was in knowing the Hole was on the far side of the mountain, hundreds of yards from the ridge and Perriotte’s apparent target.
“Cover me,” Littlefield said to Morton. The kid’s eyes were wide and wet like oily olives, but he nodded in something approximating confidence. A sheriff’s hiring practices rarely came down to a life-and-death roll of the dice, but Littlefield hoped Morton lived up to the bluff and bluster on his resume. Littlefield took three steps, then lost his footing in the slick leaves and fell on his rump. A fart escaped his clenched rectum.
He bit back a curse and rolled to his hands and knees. Keeping low, he scuttled to Morton’s and Perriotte’s concealment. Perriotte’s eyes were wide and blank, staring through the canopy as if scanning for angels against the high clouds. The downed officer was an Iraqi war vet, had served two tours with a National Guard unit before finishing his criminal justice training. Maybe he was suffering delayed post-traumatic stress disorder and had lapsed into some sort of bizarre episode, though the North Carolina ridges were far removed from flat sand, crumbling mosques, and roadside bombers.
“You okay, J.R.?” The new generation of deputies went by initials while on duty, an annoying habit that had migrated from the ranks of the state highway patrol. Littlefield would have preferred to call the man “Jimmy,” which would have seemed a little more humane. The deputy looked like he could use all the human connection he could get, because his lips were stuttering soundlessly and his eyelids twitched in broken focus.
“He’s been like that ever since he fired the third shot,” Morton said.
“Did you see what he was shooting at?”
“No, he just yelled, ‘See that?’ and cut loose. He dropped his gun and curled up in a ball, and he’s been like this ever since.”
Littlefield put two fingers to Perriotte’s jugular. The pulse was strong and rapid. No physical injury. But the deepest wounds were invisible and a lot of soul juice could leak from them before the protective scars formed.
“We were in pursuit of them kids,” Morton said. “J.R. went after the fastest brat, chased him around the ridge.”
“Were you guys near the Hole?”
Morton’s eyes narrowed and he rubbed at the raw skin of his close-shaven neck. “We could see it, but we didn’t go in. You think somebody was hiding in there? A fugitive, maybe, who got spooked when he saw cops?”
“Did he say anything after the first two shots?” Littlefield played his gaze along the ridge line but saw nothing. Even the crows had been startled into silence.
The ridge was like the backbone of a dinosaur, lined with boulders and spiky trees, the branches shorn and stunted by the endless winds. The Appalachian Mountain chain, the world’s oldest, was worn by eons, but parts of it had resisted age, as if beholden to laws besides the natural. Mulatto Mountain was such a place, and Littlefield could have sworn the mountain throbbed. He checked his watch and saw the numbers hadn’t changed since he’d stepped from the cruiser. He shook his left wrist and tapped the watch with the butt of his gun but the red numerals winked in a mockery of mortality: 5:53.
“When I reached him, he said what sounded like ‘He’s walking on nothing.’ What do you think that means?”
Sounded to Littlefield like a quote from some book or movie, but Perriotte wasn’t exactly among the culturally hip. He was more of a pork rinds-and-roller derby kind of guy. Though the deputy had a fondness for videogames, he mostly stuck to the shoot-’em-up kind where the line between the guilty and innocent often blurred and both were acceptable in piling up body counts. Perriotte was a registered Democrat, though you couldn’t tell it by his shop talk, and he attended the big new Baptist Church in Whispering Pines. Littlefield wasn’t one to meddle in his people’s private lives, unless there were suggestions of behavior that might come back to haunt his department.
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