“I’ll think about it-it was more of a summons before the throne than a kidnapping. Will you need a formal statement as to what I witnessed out there on the road with those dogs?”
“Can you describe the victim?”
“Ragout?” I said, prompting suppressed grins among the other cops.
“Let’s see what M. C. has to say tomorrow morning,” the sheriff said. “In the meantime, give some thought to going back to Manceford County. Actually, give it a lot of thought; I can’t stand all this goddamned excitement.”
I promised I would, and the meeting broke up. Mary Ellen stayed behind, after having exchanged what I sensed to be a few tense words with Ranger Bob as he left the cabin.
“Your boss seems unhappy tonight,” I said.
“Let’s say he isn’t thrilled with developments,” she said. “I have been suitably cautioned about bringing outsiders into Park Service business.”
I thought about a scotch and then decided to make some coffee instead. Mary Ellen and I went back out to the porch.
“Given all the hostile vibes up here, maybe the sheriff is right,” I said. “I should back out and let you folks get on with your interesting lives.”
She gave me a wan look and nodded. “I really appreciate your coming,” she said. “I’m just sorry…”
“That it turned up yet another dead body and more violence?”
“That wasn’t your fault,” she said with a sigh. “But…”
“Yeah, but. It does seem to happen a lot. Like every time you and I get together. Maybe the sheriff was also right about my being a shit magnet. I wish things were different.”
“This is such a beautiful place,” she said, looking out at the creek rushing through the night below our feet. “The Smokies. The park. This whole end of the state. It’s sad to think there are people who come out here to hurt other people, make narcotics, hunt people down with packs of dogs. That’s the stuff that happens in big cities, not out here in God’s country.”
“Violence in these mountains was here long before Mr. Vanderbilt bought the Smokies and gave them to the government for a park,” I said. “I imagine it takes a hard individual to live off the land out here.”
“Who was the girl in the truck?” she asked, a little too casually.
“Rowena Creigh,” I replied. “Grinny’s daughter. She seems to think very highly of herself. She showed up in her truck after I’d been dismissed. It beat walking back.”
“Was she the one the man said he saw leaving your cabin earlier this evening?”
I was surprised, but then remembered that second witness. “No,” I said. I didn’t elaborate. I sensed that somehow all these unknown women had become important to Mary Ellen, although, superficially at least, she had no claims on my loyalty. And vice versa.
“There going to be formal repercussions from Ranger Bob?” I asked.
She smiled. “I don’t think so. I think he’s more upset about you than me.” She hesitated. “Bob’s carrying a bit of a torch, I think. I keep fending off, but someone must have told him persistence pays. One day I’ll have to get firm, I suppose. Mostly it’s harmless.”
I remembered the hostile looks Bob had been shooting my way during my little debrief. I wondered how harmless the guy really was. Mary Ellen was a striking woman who took her beauty in stride; she might be a whole lot more important to Ranger Bob than she knew.
“All the more reason for me to get out of Dodge,” I said, finishing my coffee. “I’m glad I could be of some help. I think.”
She smiled. “We’ll have a ton of paperwork to do after today. I’ll let you know what they find out about the victim and the second hangman.”
Once she’d left I thought about taking the dogs out for a final night walk. I decided against it. One unscheduled truck ride was enough for one evening. I decided on a nightcap after all. As I sat out on the porch in the dark, I wondered if my association with the lovely Mary Ellen Goode wasn’t drawing to a close on more fronts than just the Howard case.
We’d met by chance during the cat dancers investigation, and I’d been smitten, probably like every other normal man who saw her for the first time. But the fact was, the entire context of our time together had been violent and especially frightening for a park ranger with a Ph. D. A man and a woman may draw very close under those circumstances, but in the cold light of day, it was common ground you both wanted to go away.
Frack came out to the porch and flopped down on the rug. We both decided to sit there and listen to the creek go by.
4
The muttskis roused me early the next morning with some tentative woofing on the front porch. I grabbed my bathrobe and went to the door, where a deputy stood waiting patiently, flat hat in hand and mirrored sunglasses firmly in place. He looked to be at least thirteen. Or perhaps I was getting old.
“Morning, Deputy. What’s up?”
“Sheriff needs to see you,” the deputy replied, looking nervously at the shepherds now that I had the screen door open. They were sitting behind me, waiting for breakfast. “Problem in Robbins County.”
“What kind of problem?” I asked, wondering why the early-morning summons.
“Um,” the deputy said, knotting his hands. “Sheriff Mingo says you killed a man over there last night?”
I blinked in the bright morning sunlight. “News to me,” I said, “but you tell the sheriff I’ll be right over.”
“Do I need to wait for you, Lieutenant?” the deputy asked, pointedly.
“Nope. I need a shower and some coffee, and then I’ll be right along. Want to come in and meet my shepherds?”
“No, sir, reckon I don’t. Big dogs make me nervous.”
“Okay, then. Tell him thirty minutes.”
The sheriff was waiting for me at his office a half hour later.
“Shit magnet, reporting as ordered,” I said. The sheriff smiled grimly and offered coffee. He then explained that M. C. Mingo had called over from Rocky Falls and asked him to round up one Mister C. Richter and deliver him to the Robbins County Sheriff’s Office, forthwith, as they say in the big city.
“Says he has a complaint report of a fight at Grinny Creigh’s place on Spider Mountain wherein you assaulted two men, one of whom was sixty-three years old. The Creigh people say one’s got a broken leg and the old guy’s dead from a fist to the head.”
“It was an elbow,” I said. “It still hurts. He have a warrant out?”
“Now that you ask, he didn’t actually mention any warrant. You said last night two guys tried to administer a little discipline and you put ’em down. Care to amplify?”
I went through the fracas in detail, reminding the sheriff that I had been abducted by these two men, chained into the back of a pickup truck, and taken against my will to the hills for my “conversation” with Grinny Creigh. “The older guy was out cold but definitely breathing when I left; the other guy did seem to have a broken leg. But I’ll claim self-defense in the context of a kidnapping. And I will get a warrant for the whole damn clan.”
The sheriff drummed his fingers on his desk for a moment. “Lemme call him back. Why don’t you wait out in the bullpen.”
“Ask him if he can produce a body,” I said from the doorway. “You know, habeas corpus?”
“Don’t tell me my business, young man,” Hayes snapped, and waved me out of his office. He summoned me back in ten minutes. I had taken the time to make a call of my own to my estate attorney in Triboro, J. Oliver Strong, Esq. Lawyer Strong was a wills-and-probate guy, but his firm had a stable of criminal defense lawyers. Strong told me to sit tight and that one of them would call me back within the hour.
“Seems M. C. does not have a warrant,” the sheriff reported. “Although he says he can scare one up one pretty quick. FYI, the magistrate over there is married to a Creigh. The habeas question got a little bit murky, though. He hasn’t personally seen a body, nor have any of his deputies. Whole thing’s ‘verbal’ at the moment, pending lots and l
ots of further investigation.”
“They’re really all over it, aren’t they.”
“I told him what you said about getting a warrant out for Grinny and her whole crew. He started in with nobody having proof of any abduction until I told him we had witnesses at the lodge, plus the fact of Rue Creigh delivering your tired ass back to the lodge around midnight. That definitely slowed him up some. I asked how likely it was that she’d be offering you a ride in her pick-’em-up truck if you’d just killed one of their people with your bare hands right there in her front yard.”
“What’d he say to that?”
“That it would probably have turned her on. Rue’s got kinda of an exotic reputation in these parts.”
“Yikes. So where are we? I have lawyers in motion.”
The sheriff shrugged. “Ball’s in his court right now. If the Creighs can produce a body, and he can get his warrant, he may or may not follow through with it. He has to know that the feds have been looking for a way into Robbins County for months now.”
“And?”
“Kidnapping is a federal crime. A perfect handle for them to get right into the middle of all this. You know how they do-come in riding one charge and then suddenly growing arms like an octopus. My guess, even if that guy did kick? Mingo’s gonna think on it and then fail to produce a corpus. One less Creigh isn’t worth a federal invasion. In the meantime, however, I need you to stick around.”
“Damn, I was just about to declare victory and leave town.”
“Be still, my heart,” he said wistfully. “Right now I need to see what the jungle drums are saying up in the coves and hollers. Maybe find out who this supposedly dead guy was. And, more importantly, whether or not he has kin of his own.”
“As in, if M. C. isn’t going to handle it, some irate relatives might?”
“As in, you bet your flatlander ass. You better stay out of open windows and keep those dogs with you.”
“They’re out in the car right now. But wouldn’t I be safer waiting this out in Triboro?”
The sheriff scratched an ear. “That might pose me a political problem,” he said. “Folks will be watching to see what happens with this. You and I are sitting here drinking coffee because you’re an ex-cop. If I let you leave the county, I’ll hear about it. So stick around. This won’t take long. And in the meantime, can we get your formal statement about how y’all came to stumble on that body up at Crown Lake?”
I dictated a statement to the sheriff’s secretary, signed it, and drove back to the lodge. I lectured the dogs on the way back about wandering off when there were bad guys hiding in the bushes. They paid close attention for a good thirty seconds before yawning in unison and going to sleep. The defense lawyer called on my way back to the love cabin. I briefed him on the situation. He told me to say nothing to anyone until I knew what the real situation was, and that his retainer for a felony criminal charge was fifteen thousand. I noted the advice and the price and said I’d be in touch if there were any further developments.
Back at the cabin I called Mary Ellen Goode and told her what was going on. She said she’d already heard. Her voice was strained and she was speaking formally.
“Lemme guess, Ranger Bob standing right there?” I asked.
“Yes, sir, that’s correct,” she replied. “Let me look into the matter and call you back.”
I said okay and hung up. I then called Tony back in Triboro and brought him up to date on developments in the provinces. Tony had already heard. The lawyers’ courthouse gossip circuit had been humming ever since my first call to Lawyer Strong. Women had nothing on lawyers when it came to gossiping, unless they were lady lawyers.
“Bare hands?” Tony exclaimed. “That’s what you get for turning into a gym rat. Think you’re the Terminator now or what?”
“It felt a little bit like Sicily,” I said. “All those guys standing around in the dark with their luparas. I guess I’d had enough of being pushed around by toothless cretins. Listen, I need some stuff sent up here.”
After about three months of relative idleness, a friend in the Marshals Service had offered me a job doing routine investigatory work as an independent contractor for the federal court in Triboro. Once Annie Bellamy’s estate cleared, I no longer needed to do anything but read my financial statements, but the walls had begun to close in. Anything was better than just sitting around. It wasn’t exactly demanding stuff-background checks, witness management, short-notice paper scrambles during a court session-but it got me out of the house and interacting with other people again, and it was also a great excuse for Sheriff Bobby Lee Baggett to stop hounding me about getting back out in the world and doing something besides pump iron and brood about getting some revenge down the line.
Sergeant Horace Stackpole, one of my guys who’d been on the original MCAT, took retirement a few months after that and looked me up for a drink. We were joined by another cop and got to talking about what cops can do after leaving the Job. I bitched about the boring nature of the work I was doing, and the third guy suggested that I form my own company and hire only ex-cops, like Horace, and we could all work as much or as little as we wanted to. The courts had an unending need for people who could retrieve information and documents, witnesses who might not know they were witnesses, and other odds and ends quickly. Cops knew how to do all of that, and had the networks to get to certain people and information quickly. I suggested that Horace found the company, but, as he pointed out, I was the one who both had money and didn’t need to work.
So I did, and Hide and Seek Investigations, LLC stood up a month later, with a condition of employment being that you were an ex-cop who had retired in good standing with your department. Coming from me, that was something of a dark joke among the guys, but what the hell: I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I justified the ex-cop criterion because of some semimysterious security requirements of the courts. That of course was BS, but it kept the professional job-discrimination Nazis off our backs. I made it a rule that everyone working there had to approve any new hires. Any cop who makes it to retirement has both an established professional reputation and people who know him and will vouch for him-or not, as the case might be.
There were now six of us, with the other five doing most of the work while I dealt with the larger management issues, such as making the office coffee and handling the mail. We had an office on the second floor of a bail bondsman company in downtown Triboro. It was pretty Spartan, but it had the advantage of being near Washington Street so the guys could still hit the sheriff’s office and city cops’ watering holes for lunch and afterward. Two of the “guys” were women, both of whom had been street cops with the sheriff’s office. Both of them had gone through the trauma of having husbands go astray. They now did a flourishing business of predivorce reconnaissance work for suspicious wives, and they loved their work. We loved their after-action reports.
Like Horace, Tony Martinelli had joined us from the MCAT when it was broken up after the cat dancers case. None of us worked full-time, and the money from the contracts went proportionally to the people who put in the most hours. Most of them were filling up 401(k)s, and I took a dollar a year and the biggest office, a massive corner suite twelve feet square and overlooking a culturally intriguing back alley. With more cops finding out about our little operation, I knew we’d soon need more office space, something I’d have to attend to when I got back from helping Mary Ellen Goode. But all in all, none of us took our second “career” very seriously, and I the least of all.
I gave Tony a list of the things I needed and asked him to overnight it all to the lodge. I also asked him to see if he could find out what the street term “florist” meant in contemporary druggie circles. Then I retrieved Carrie Santangelo’s card, called her, and asked her for the GPS coordinates of Grinny Creigh’s cabin.
“I can get you those,” she said. “Should I ask why you want them?”
“Probably not,” I said. “I’m about to exercise one of the
privileges of not being a cop anymore. Think deniability.”
“Deniability’s good,” she said. “Hang on and I’ll get you the coordinates. And if you’re going to go do some recon, make sure you file a flight plan.”
“With whom-Carrigan County?”
“If it were me, I’d tell Baby Greenberg. You really ice some guy with your bare hands?”
For God’s sakes, I thought, did anyone not know about it?
I put a call in to Baby Greenberg. The agents had motel rooms down the road in Murphy, and he called me back in thirty minutes. I explained what I wanted to do.
“Been nice knowing you,” the agent said.
“Can’t be that bad,” I said. “And it seems I’m stuck here for the weekend anyway.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
I sighed. “The guy was alive when I left. I think it’s all bullshit. He just wants me in custody in Robbins County.”
“So you’re gonna what? Waltz over there and solve the man’s problem for him?”
“He’s gotta catch me first, and I’m not going anywhere near Rocky Falls.”
“The closest we’ve been able to get to Grinny Creigh’s place is twenty-four thousand miles-that’s where the satellite cameras live.”
“Anybody ever try just driving up there? I mean, if you think they’re going to give you guys some shit, go get a few dozen marshals to go with you.”
“The problem is that we have no grounds for one of our usual home invasions. And no supervisor is willing to put his agents at risk of an anonymous bullet through the windshield just for a face-to-face meeting with this woman.”
“But if they shot at you, then you can bring a crowd.”
“If who shot at us? And from what crag? That’s the problem. I can’t feature Grinny Creigh taking a muzzle loader down from the mantel and opening fire on a car full of feds. But there are some guys up there who would make a wager out of it. None of us wants to die on the off chance that we can score a bust. Your theory’s good up the point of who volunteers to be the casus belli. It’s that simple.”
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