She took a deep breath and then told me the story. Santangelo had been her married name, which she’d kept after her husband, a state parole officer, had gotten himself involved with an eighteen-year-old waitress down in Charlotte. He’d called it a case of the seven-year itch but admitted that he was desperately in love. She’d called it grounds for divorce, and now he lived in a double-wide on half pay with his Waffle House queen.
Her maiden name had been Harper, and she had actually been born and raised in the town of Rocky Falls, right here in wild and wonderful Robbins County. She and her mother had left when she turned sixteen, not long after her father and younger sister had been killed in a road accident. Her mother had gone back to the Charlotte area, where she had family. Carrie had finished high school, gone on to college, and from there into the SBI. She’d begun as an intern during her senior year, which evolved into a full-time job offer when she graduated. She’d been in the professional standards division right from the start.
“This goes back to the so-called accident,” she said. “My father was a state game warden. He managed the game lands that surround the Smokies National Park on the Carolina side. At the time, the accident was described as ‘cause unknown.’ After I’d been at the SBI for a while I made some inquiries through the North Carolina DMV. Turned out it had been recorded as a hit-and-run accident, involving a large truck.”
“Like a logging truck?”
“Just like that,” she said, looking over at me. Her eyes were shining with steely resolve. “Big enough to knock Dad’s pickup truck backwards into a ravine from the inside lane. His truck went into a river. And, and this is the interesting part, they recovered his body, but not that of my sister.”
“Any evidence that she had survived the crash?”
Carrie blew out a long breath. “My father’s family came originally from the Carolina coast. Their ancestors were Portuguese fishermen for the most part. Harper was a name change way back when, we think. Very independent-minded people. Dad, for instance, refused to wear a seat belt. Just wouldn’t do it. Rainey, that was my sister’s name, always wore her seat belt. Dad probably died in the initial impact, based on what I saw in the DMV accident reconstruction report. But Rainey should have survived-there was virtually no damage on her side, even after going into that ravine. Her door was found open, and her school book bag was gone.”
“As in, maybe she got out?”
“Or was taken out. But the sheriff’s office report speculated she had been swept away in the river.”
“How old was she?”
“Eleven. And she was very pretty. I remember being jealous of her looks.”
“Don’t know why,” I offered, and she flashed a bitter smile.
“Who was the sheriff then?” I asked.
“Three guesses.”
I remembered Mingo thinking he’d recognized her. “Did you come back up here, poke around a little?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not until now.”
“Okay, so what’s your theory?”
She patted her coat pockets like a smoker does when he’s searching for a cigarette. She saw me looking and smiled. “Quit five years ago, but…”
“Know how that goes, too,” I said. She wanted to tell me what this was all about, but at the same time, she didn’t. I suspected that the mystery of this accident was as much the reason for her leaving the SBI as any overcautious bureaucrat boss. She leaned back and continued her story.
“Dad told us one time he’d run into some people pushing a small mule train in the game lands. Thought it was odd, the first time. Then, a month later, he encountered another group. Same deal-three mules, fully loaded with packs, armed men, moving at sundown. He stopped them, showed his badge, and asked them what they were doing. They drew guns and he barely escaped.”
“And then he went to the sheriff, didn’t he.”
“Yes, he did. Ten days later he was dead in the river. And a pretty young girl was missing.”
It was then I remembered her focus on children in Robbins County, and suddenly I thought I knew what she was pursuing.
“Carrie,” I said, “what are Mingo and the Creigh clan doing to children up here?”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. A morning crow on dawn patrol spotted our Suburban and set up a racket in the tree that covered the shed barn. I saw what looked like a lantern light come on up at Laurie May’s house.
“I believe they’re selling them,” she said finally.
Well, now, that trumps a meth smuggling case, I thought. Baby Greenberg and I had seen Grinny Creigh almost smother a child as if she’d been stepping on a snail. If she was trafficking in children, suddenly there were lots of possible explanations for her doing that.
“How does she acquire the ‘product’?”
“Gets hardscrabble women hooked on something, usually meth, and then trades what they owe for drugs for a suitable child.”
“What mother would do that?” I asked.
“A mother wouldn’t. An addict would. You saw one the other day. Remember the vampire at the single-wide? She would. And if she wouldn’t, he would.”
“And of course you can’t prove this.”
“I can’t prove it because we’ve never been able to get inside,” Carrie continued. “No one’s been able to get inside, not us, not the Bureau, not the DEA-no one. Until you showed up.”
“Hang on,” I protested. “It’s not like I got inside, either.”
“You’re the first person I know who’s gone face-to-face with Grinny Creigh and Nathan and lived to tell about it,” she said. “Look, I’ve been riding this hobbyhorse for a few years now. My cohorts back in Charlotte think I’m just a little bit OCD on this subject. I decided this was probably going to be my best chance to find out.”
There were two lights showing now up at Laurie May’s cabin. In a minute she was going to step out onto the front porch with that enormous shotgun and hurt herself. Carrie was looking at me expectantly, and I knew precisely what the unspoken question was.
“We need to go up there and announce ourselves,” I said. “Preferably before she opens fire on us.”
She kept looking at me. Those black eyes of hers were the closest thing to mental telepathy I’d ever encountered.
“Okay, I’ll work it with you,” I said. “But you’re going to have to find me some scotch.”
She snorted, turned around and heaved herself up on to the back of the seat, and started rummaging around in all the gear bags in the backseat. I could have taken some serious liberties, but I valued my life. She slid back down into the front seat and produced a bottle of Glenlivet. “Baby said you’d be going into withdrawal.”
“Baby is an officer and a gentleman,” I said. “Now-let’s go pacify Grandma before she finds the ammo for that Greener up there.”
9
We got to the front porch about the time Laurie May found her box of shells. I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed at not getting to fire the shotgun or if she just hadn’t had her coffee yet. She peered at us carefully through the cracked front door and then nodded. I think she recognized the shepherds and then us, in that order.
“I knowed someone was down there,” she said. “Didn’t see them dogs, or I’d’a knowed it was you two. Come on in. I got me some coffee makin’.”
Carrie thanked her and we went in. I told the shepherds to stay on the front porch and to leave the chickens alone. They were visibly disappointed. Chickens could be real fun.
“Saw ’em cop cars a-flashin’ on the river road early this mornin’,” Laurie May announced from the kitchen. The cabin smelled of well-done coffee and wood smoke. The aroma could have been coming entirely from the coffee, too. “Was that somethin’ to do with you-all?”
“Yes, unfortunately, it was,” Carrie said. “M. C. Mingo and his crowd are looking for us.”
“What’d y’all do now?” she asked, bringing two mugs of coffee out to the table.
“Came
into Robbins County and asked too many questions,” I said. “Went some places we weren’t supposed to. He surrounded us down on Crown Lake and put me in jail.” I told her what had happened after that. Carrie’s eyebrows rose when I described meeting Ace.
Laurie May was studying my face intently. “You don’t look like no outlaw to me,” she said. “Are ye?”
“I’m a retired deputy sheriff, from back east in Manceford County,” I told her. “Apparently M. C. Mingo doesn’t care for outsiders poking around in Robbins County.”
“Laurie May?” Carrie said. “As I told you, I’m a police officer, too. Why don’t you sit down and let me tell you a story.”
When she’d finished, the old lady nodded. “It figgers,” she said. “Folks is always talkin’ about runaways and such. Grinny Creigh’s mean enough, too. But what about them mothers? What’s God gonna do to a mother, sells her own child?”
“Burn her in hell until the end of time,” Carrie said simply, and Laurie May was one hundred percent on board with that solution.
“I’ve been talking to some people in Washington,” Carrie said. “There’s a federal task force looking into child-trafficking rings. There’s word that a ‘shipment’ is expected soon from this part of the state. We need to find them, and stop this mess.”
“Where you gonna look?” Laurie May asked.
“We have no idea,” Carrie said, looking across the table at me. Pile on, she was saying.
“I saw Sheriff Mingo bring a little girl to Grinny’s cabin,” I told Laurie May. “She stood there and yelled at her for a minute. Then she grabbed her and smothered her until she was unconscious. Then Mingo took her away.”
Laurie May was shocked by this, but then a flinty expression settled on her face. “Don’t surprise me too much,” she said. “That son of hers, that Nathan? Folks say he killed a boy at school for laughin’ and makin’ fun of how he looked. Stabbed him through the mouth with one of them long knives he’s got, folks say. Throwed the body in a cave. Ain’t nobody ever seen him again. There’s murder in them Creighs for sure. You say Mingo’s lookin’ for ye right now?”
I nodded.
“Where you gonna hide?”
We both looked at her, and she understood right away. “You wantin’ to hole up here, is that it?”
“We need somewhere to set up a base while we look for those children,” Carrie said. “You’re the only person we’ve met so far up here who’s not afraid of Mingo.”
Laurie May smiled. I think she recognized the sensation of some smoke being blown. “Y’all listen here,” she said. “I ain’t never said I wasn’t afraid of M. C. Mingo. I act all the fool and bluster them boys’a his like I was a crazy woman, but if’n they wanted to, they could do as they damn please. They know it, and I know it.”
“Okay,” I interjected. “Then it’s not right that we put you in any danger. If we can hole up here for the day, we’ll clear out tonight.”
“You hold your horses, there, mister deppity,” she said, wagging a bony finger at me. “I didn’t say y’all couldn’t stay. You just need to know how things really is. Ain’t no point in tryin’ to fool folks, not at my age.” She turned to Carrie. “Fetch my shawl over yonder, missy. I got somethin’ to show ye.”
We walked up the slope behind the house toward a circular grove of old pines occupying a wide swale. When we got closer we could see a tiny log cabin, perhaps twenty feet square, almost totally hidden by the sweeping pines. Based on the color of the chinking, the amount of moss on the foundation stones, and the lean of the stone chimney, I guessed it to be very old.
“That there’s Jessie’s cabin,” Laurie May said, stopping to catch her breath. “It’s got it some blood on the floor, but it’s a beauty for a hidin’ place. My granddaddy built it well more’n a hundred years back.”
The cabin had two shuttered windows, one on either side of the front door, a small front porch, and the single chimney at one end. The logs were of random diameter and black with age. The roof was painted metal that had rusted badly over the years. But the path leading to the porch was clear of weeds and there was no clutter on the porch.
“Blood on the floor?” I asked.
“Jessie’s my only daughter,” Laurie May said. “First born. Came to her beauty early on, married up with a no-good son of a bitch. They had ’em two young’uns right quick, but he was no provider, that one. Liked his whiskey, and liked to beat on her more’n he fancied workin’ for his keep. Right bastard, he was.”
“What happened?” Carrie asked.
“One night they had ’em a big ole set-to,” Laurie May replied. “Wasn’t the first time, neither. He was drunk and beatin’ on her some. Hurt her this time. Drew blood on her. She got the scattergun, told’m to clear on out. He said he’d kill her if she didn’t put it down. That the only thing she’d been good for was them kids. That he loved them and hated her. Hateful talk like that.”
She paused, staring hard at the cabin, remembering. A soft breeze stirred the big pines. Laurie May took a deep breath. “Then she went crazy, done somethin’ awful. She turned that there ten-bore on them little kids. Kilt ’em both dead, right in front of him. She tole him there wasn’t no reason for him to stay around anymore, was there. Then she walked out that door right there, and into them woods yonder. That was twenty-three years ago. Long time, but I remember it like it was last night.”
“What happened to her?” Carrie asked.
“She done disappeared off the face of the earth. I got one letter, months on after it happened. Tole me what happened, what she’d done. How sorry she was. That Larry, that was the bastard’s name, Larry, done drove her crazy. Said she knew she was damned forever. Said one day, she’d come back here and join ’em young’uns. They’s buried back there, behind the cabin. Last time we ever heered from her.”
“And Larry?” I asked.
“That no-count kilt hisself a week later. Took that self-same shotgun and blowed his head right off in his pickup truck. Did it right there on the main street in Rocky Falls. Took him near a whole bottle’a whiskey to work hisself up to it, but he done it, right there in broad daylight. They asked me if I’d bury him back there. I told them to burn his body, so’s it could keep up with his soul.”
“Damn,” I said. Blood on the floor indeed.
“Yessir, that’s a fact. But I been a’comin’ up here once a week, seein’ to the cabin. Said she was a-comin’ back, so I keep it ready. Clean. Firewood in the box. Ain’t no facilities, so you’d have to use my privy, but there ain’t no snakes nor a lick’a dirt in it. And ain’t no one goes near this place, neither, ‘cause folks ‘round here think it’s hainted by them young’uns and they daddy, wailin’ with the night wind for all they lost.”
I felt a shiver steal across my shoulders. There were probably more stories like this told across these hills than we knew.
“Shall we go inside?” Carrie asked me. I could tell she felt it, too. But the place was a perfect hideout, and at the moment we were fresh out of options. By now Mingo would have even the back roads covered.
Inside, the cabin was spotless. It was darkish; the front windows and the one door offered the only daylight. There were basically two rooms, one which combined a tiny kitchen, which had a woodstove and a dry sink, with a living room area containing a surprisingly large fireplace, a long farmhouse table, and six antique handmade wooden chairs. A smaller table by the door held four kerosene lanterns and some candles. The other room was a bedroom, which had a four-poster bed raised high off the wooden floor and a single oak armoire. The bed was made up with quilts and handmade pillows. There was another dry sink in one corner, with a brass chamber pot stowed on a lower shelf. There was no ceiling on the bedroom, and, like the front room, it was open to the rafters. The room smelled of old sachet and older dust.
“It ain’t fancy and there ain’t nothin’ modern about it,” Laurie May said, “but it’ll keep the rain off’n your heads. And looky here.”
She pulled aside a handmade knotted-rag rug revealing a trapdoor in the bedroom floor. “This here goes under the cabin and out the back. Tight squeeze an’ all, but somebody corners you up in here, you can sneak on out the back.”
I could just imagine what kinds of things were living under that floor, but it was good to know there was an escape hatch. There was another one of those rag rugs placed off center out in the living room area, which I was not going to look under.
“Like I was sayin’, I keep it clean and ready for when she comes home. I know it ain’t likely, but a mama’s got her duty.”
And her hopes, I thought. Of course, if her daughter ever did return, Laurie May would have a whole new set of problems, given what the daughter had predicted she’d do if she ever did come back.
“This is very generous of you,” Carrie said. “Are you sure it’s all right that we stay here?”
“Been enough pain and hurtin’ on young’uns in these hills,” Laurie May said. “If’n you can put a stop to it, I’m pleased to be of aid. You gonna have to hide that big vehicle, though-they gonna be lookin’ in barns like that one down there. That and them dogs, too.”
We moved our stuff out of the Suburban and into the cabin in the pines. There’d been no sign of a major search going on down on the hardtop, and only a few other vehicles moving along the river road, but it was still early. Mingo would have to know I’d had inside help getting out of that cell, and that might have delayed a broader search as he looked to clean house.
The shepherds plopped down on the porch as if they owned it. They knew where I was, and that was the main thing, except perhaps for chow. We had a fine view of tree trunks, which meant that no one down on the river road could see the cabin, either. Carrie plopped herself down at the big table. “Now what?” she said.
I sat down opposite. “You’re not wanted for anything. You didn’t break me out of the jail. Why don’t you take the Suburban, go to town, get up with Baby and his crew, make a formal report, and figure something out.”
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