“Don’t beat yourself up, Mary Ellen,” I said gently. “It takes some time. You getting help?”
She nodded. “And you?” she asked. This time she did look at me. The fear was still visible in her eyes. If anything, brighter.
“Scotch at night, the gym during the day, and lots of quality time on the firing range. I’ll be in touch. You stop worrying.”
As I headed out to my Suburban I heard a voice behind me calling my name.
“Lieutenant Richter? A word, please?”
I thought it was the hostile ranger I’d run into when I first arrived, so I turned around very quickly, ready to quash any more bullshit from the hired help. But this ranger was older, and the title on his nameplate read CHIEF RANGER. He stopped abruptly when I spun around.
“Yes?” I said in as official a voice as I could muster. For the record, I’m sixone and I hadn’t been kidding about spending much of the last two years in the gym. The older man had to look up to speak to me.
“I’m Bob Parsons, chief of the station here. My people told me you’d come to see Mary Ellen Goode.”
“That’s right,” I said. I could see two sets of German shepherd ears outlined against the back window of my Suburban. The vehicle’s windows were open and they’d heard my tone of voice. I was about to add that she had called me, but then decided against it.
“My predecessor told me the story,” Parsons said. “About what happened up here and what happened to Mary Ellen.” He paused. “Look, Lieutenant-”
“I’m not a lieutenant anymore,” I said. “I took early retirement from the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office. And I suspect you didn’t get the whole story about what happened.”
Parsons nodded. “Right,” he said quickly. “She said you were a private investigator now.” He hesitated again. “Look,” he said again. “I’m sure there’s stuff I don’t know, and probably don’t need to know. But what I do know is that Mary Ellen is pretty fragile these days. Is it absolutely necessary for you to be here? Can maybe one of us help you instead?”
I considered the question. The chief ranger sounded sincere. “That’ll be up to her, Mr. Parsons,” I said. “For the record, I’m intimately familiar with what she went through. I was there for part of it. And the last thing I want to do is to upset her.”
“Up to her?” Parsons asked, and then he understood. “Ah-she called you?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Then this is about Janey Howard, isn’t it.”
“Why don’t you ask her, Mr. Parsons. Or you can wait for her to tell you. That actually might be the kinder course of action.”
Parsons shook his head. “The Howard case is complicated, Lieutenant. Very complicated. It involves more than just the Park Service.”
I pretended to be surprised.
Parsons sighed. “We’re not sure where the attack took place. Whether it was in the park or in Robbins County.”
“You are sure about the attack, though?”
“Oh, yes. God, yes. That girl’s lucky to be alive.”
“So. You jailed any bad guys for it?”
Parsons frowned. I suspected he probably did that a lot. “Um, no,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean people have stopped trying.”
“People?”
Parsons avoided the question. “Like I said, it’s complicated. Politically sensitive within the Park Service. I guess what I’m trying to say is you’d be doing everyone a favor if you just went back east. Really, you would.”
“Nice to meet you, Chief Ranger Parsons,” I said. I turned away from the ranger and walked to my vehicle. Parsons stood there for a moment, shook his head, frowned some more, and then walked back into the ranger station.
I took my shepherds for a quick nature walk and then left to find my motel. I wondered how long it would take Parsons to get on the telephone to talk to those mysterious “people,” and how long before they would get in touch with me.
I went into Marionburg and stopped at a grocery store to pick up some supplies for the cabin. Then I drove around the area for half an hour, refreshing my bearings and making sure I remembered where the restaurant was. There was actually quite a bit of traffic. Marionburg was the county seat of Carrigan County and had maybe eight thousand permanent residents. There was one main drag with mostly tourism-oriented shops and restaurants, a center square with the county offices, and rustic-looking residential neighborhoods.
It being early fall, rooms on short notice had been very scarce anywhere near the Smoky Mountains National Park, so I’d ended up acquiring the so-called bridal suite at the Blue Mountains Lodge on the south side of town. It was available because it cost a small fortune to rent it, but since money wasn’t something I had to worry about anymore, I said yes. When I’d told the reservations clerk that I might want the cabin for an entire month, there had been no objections. Weekly rate times four, bride not included.
The lodge featured a standard, two-story motel building next to the road and several outlying cabins in the back for guests who wanted extended stays. The complex was situated on a low bluff overlooking a wide, tree-lined mountain stream. I checked in at the front office at five thirty and then drove around the motel building into the lower parking lot. The cabins were stair-stepped along the creek, and according to the diagram, the bridal suite was at the very end of the left-hand row of cabins. The lower parking lot was almost empty. I surmised that the rest of the guests were still out whitewater rafting, hiking, trail riding, fishing, or even gambling over on the Cherokee Reservation.
I nosed the Suburban into the curb and was about to shut down when another vehicle slid close in alongside mine, so close that I could not have opened my door more than about four inches. It was another Suburban, as big as mine, and there were three men inside. The dogs were alarmed and I gave them a down command. The two windows on the other vehicle’s right side slid down. I lowered my driver’s-side window and looked over at the man in the right front seat. He was middle-aged and extremely hairy-beard, mustache, and a wild mop of grayish black hair on top folded into a ponytail behind. He wore a multicolored hippie headband and dark glasses on a neck rope. He was fox-faced and reminded me of some of the lawyers I’d encountered out riding their weekend Harleys when I’d been a cop. This guy’s coolly superior expression told me they were probably federal drug agents.
“You’re blocking my door,” I said. One of the men in back, dressed more conventionally in a khaki windbreaker and ball cap, snorted out a laugh.
“We need to talk to you,” fox-face said. “You’re Lieutenant Richter, am I right?”
“You’re blocking my door,” I said again. “Back up, please.”
“We’ll back up when we’re good and fucking ready to, Lieutenant. Oh, I guess I forgot, you’re not a lieutenant anymore, are you.”
“Once more, with feeling,” I said. “Back up.”
Fox-face grinned and raised a set of credentials for me to admire. “DEA,” he announced. “And we’re here to invite you to stay away from the Janey Howard case. We think you’re not qualified, not authorized, and not wanted here.”
“You’ve got me confused,” I said calmly.
“What?”
“With someone who gives a shit about what you think about anything. Back up, please.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, Mister Richter,” fox-face snapped, “you’re not a cop anymore. In fact, some people think you were a bent cop. If you’d like, we can reinforce that notion locally. So why don’t you leave? You know, easy way or hard way?”
“Let’s try my way,” I said, and then I punched down the left rear window button and gave a sharp command. The two German shepherds launched serially through the window directly into the other car, where they proceeded to cry havoc. They barked, roared, growled, snapped, slobbered, and pounced between the front and back seats until all three occupants had submerged from sight. I recalled them with a whistle and they happily jumped back into my Suburban, looking very
pleased with themselves. The whole thing had taken maybe twenty seconds. Longer for some than others, I thought.
I backed my Suburban away from the DEA-mobile, where no heads had yet reappeared, and parked it about twenty feet away. I let the dogs out and told them to watch the agents’ vehicle. They sat down ten feet away from it. The first head to pop up was the driver’s, whose white-faced visage was greeted with angry barking and raised hackles. The man quickly raised his window and then backed the car all the way out to the ramp leading to the upper parking lot. I watched them go. I wondered if I should wave, but decided not to. Once they’d changed underwear and showered, they’d discover that no one had actually been bitten. That would probably make them really unhappy. Crying shame.
The bridal suite cabin was appropriately designed. It was perched on a large rock that overhung the creek and was separated from the nearest cabin by a thick stand of Leyland cypress. It had all the important bases covered: an enormous bed in the single bedroom; three refrigerators, one each in the bedroom, living room, and kitchen; a large screened porch extending over a small waterfall with yet another bed. There was a pine-paneled living room, complete with a heavily padded bearskin rug and a huge stone fireplace. The bathroom had a large hot tub, which had a built-in cooler within easy reach. Each of the refrigerators was a fully stocked minibar, including the one in the kitchen. The bedroom had a large-screen TV and a stereo system that had been wired throughout the cabin. There did not appear to be any telephones. There was an interesting DVD collection stacked inside some kind of vending cabinet.
The shepherds looked at me as if to ask, And where do we go? I was tempted to put them back in my Suburban. On the other hand, they had done a firstclass monster mash on the uppity DEA guys. I went back out to the Suburban and got their dog beds. The shepherds were called Frick and Frack. My dog-aficionado friends had been appalled at the names, but they had the advantage of sounding different, dog commands being mostly an audio business. Frick was a sable spayed female, about eighty pounds and fairly intense. Frack was an all-black East German border guard number, an easy hundred pounds plus, whose specialty was sitting down and staring with those big amber eyes of his, which seemed to scare the shit out of most people. I set them up on the screened front porch and told them to watch for bad guys. Frick immediately assumed the alert; Frack, not one to sweat the load, yawned and lay down for a nap.
I’d been wrong about the phone. I hunted down the chirping noises and found it stashed inside a tiny pantry closet in the kitchen. I picked it up. Fox-face was back.
“I suppose you think that was funny,” he said. “I could have you arrested for assaulting federal officers.”
“I didn’t assault anybody,” I said. “My dogs may have gone to investigate some impolite assholes who didn’t know how to park their car.”
There was silence on the line. I made a quick decision: I couldn’t operate up here if the feds went to the local sheriff and made trouble.
“You have a name in addition to ‘special agent’?” I asked.
“Greenberg.”
“Okay, Special Agent Greenberg. You want to sit down and have a conversation like an adult, I’m willing to meet with you. But enough of this Miami Vice bullshit.”
I heard Greenberg take a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “Where and when?”
“You’ve got this number, so you know where I am. I’ll meet with you here. Lose the other clowns. Whenever you’re ready.” I hung up.
Greenberg knocked on the front screen door about ten minutes later. Both shepherds watched him but did not otherwise react. Greenberg watched them very carefully. I gave the dogs a command and then let Greenberg in. The DEA agent was actually kind of short, maybe five-six in his stocking feet, made two inches taller with the aid of expensive-looking cowboy boots. He wore jeans and a truly repulsive untucked Hawaiian shirt. He was broad-shouldered, though, and I thought he’d probably be dangerous in a street fight. Little guys built like this often were. He seemed full of nervous energy, eyes flitting this way and that as he checked his perimeters.
“Scotch okay?” I asked as we sat down on the screened porch over the creek.
Greenberg relaxed fractionally and nodded. I poured. The agent asked if he could smoke, and I said sure. “What is this place?” Greenberg asked. “You’ve got beds everywhere.”
“Honeymoon suite,” I said. “Only thing available on short notice.”
Greenberg grunted. I tipped my glass at him. “Shall we start over?”
The agent sipped some scotch and nodded. “I apologize for that bullshit in the parking lot,” he said. “That was unprofessional.”
“I apologize for setting my dogs on you.”
Greenberg nodded solemnly and then, surprising me, grinned. “That was fucking amazing,” he said. “All three of us are armed to the teeth-belt guns, ankle guns, knives-and nobody even thought about going for a weapon. And then they were just-gone.”
“It takes some training,” I said. “I take it Chief Ranger Parsons called you?”
Greenberg nodded. “He’s apparently a bit of a politician. Your being here has his wires humming. Puppets hate that.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me tell you why I’m here.”
I explained the background of my relationship with Ranger Dr. Mary Ellen Goode. How she had been drawn into the cat dancers case while I was still with the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office. How she had been taken hostage and held for several days in a cave in the mountains strapped into a homemade electric chair, and how she and I had fought our way out of the cave while being pursued by two starving captive mountain lions.
“Not exactly a great first date,” I said. “She had the living shit scared out of her, and she’s just now getting over it.”
Greenberg sipped some more scotch. “What’s with this dirty-cop rap, then?” he asked. “We checked you out with the Bureau guys in Charlotte after Parsons called. They said you refused to testify in that mountain lion thing.”
“True. And the reason for that is that some of the bad guys involved are still at large. We’re talking local Carolina law and maybe even some feds. Their wire-woman offered us a deal: We both go radio-silent, and there’d be no long guns in the night for Ranger Goode. Otherwise…”
Greenberg nodded. “That reads. I heard some weird shit about that whole business. Heard you became a millionaire when that judge got clipped in Triboro?”
“That judge was my ex-wife. We’d gotten back together when that happened. Frankly, I’d rather have her back.”
“Oh,” he said. “That why people think you took a fall?”
“My boss in Manceford County had some good advice. He said my enemies would think the worst, and my friends would know better. What strangers thought didn’t make a shit either way.”
Greenberg considered that for a moment. “So why’d she call you?” he asked. His left foot was doing this tapping routine, and I wondered if maybe this guy had gotten a little too close to his trade. He was positively wired.
“Like you said, she called me. Said that the Howard case has gone cold and that the Park Service head-shed is afraid of stirring up the ten-gauge, black-hat crowd in Robbins County. Local law here isn’t on speaking terms with the sheriff next door. She basically asked me to look around.”
“You licensed?”
I nodded.
“Okay,” Greenberg said. “My turn. We got called into the Howard case because the Park Service thought she’d maybe stumbled onto a meth pit. There’s never been a case of a park ranger being assaulted up here, not like that, anyway.”
“You think that’s what happened?”
“Who the fuck knows-we’ve got zip-point-shit. That girl was so traumatized she can barely remember her name, so we don’t even know where the hell it happened, in the park or in Robbins County. Which is definitely a place of interest.”
“Meth?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Meth, indeed,” Greenberg said. “It
’s becoming a fucking epidemic. No, not becoming-we’re there. And most of the crank in this region is coming out of these here hills; apparently it beats the shit out of picking ginseng roots when you’re looking for cash money.”
“How in the world can the DEA infiltrate the coves and the hollers in these mountains?”
Greenberg finished his scotch. I pointed at the bottle, but he shook his head. “Short answer-we can’t, of course. Oh, we can do the usual techie shit: night flights looking for infrared plumes, analysis of geo-science satellite imagery, the occasional roadblock collar. But going among the great unwashed, undercover? Fuh-geddabout it. All my guys have most of their teeth and can speak using the occasional two-syllable word.”
“So how do you work it?”
“We look for an angle, anything that can justify us going into Robbins County.”
“Like the Howard assault?”
“That would be nice. If we can’t get a search warrant based on a rumored drug deal, we get one in connection with an ongoing investigation of this assault on a federal officer. Or we can sample creeks and lakes where they throw their used chemicals and then file environmental charges. Anything we can hang our hats on. Which, admittedly, ain’t much.”
“And the last thing you need is for some Lone Ranger to come in and stir the pot.”
“Right again.”
“Unless maybe I stir it your way?”
Greenberg sat up and gave me a thoughtful look. “You made your manners with Sheriff Bill Hayes yet?” he asked.
“First thing tomorrow morning,” I said. “We’ve met before.”
“Why don’t you do that,” Greenberg said, fishing out one of his cards. “See how much he’ll reveal about the local two-legged wildlife. Especially next door in wild and wonderful Robbins County. If he gives you the okay to work his patch, then maybe you and I can do some business. How’s that sound?”
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