Banner Elk Breeze

by Ed Robinson

  “That’s a ridiculous theory,” said Brody.

  “About as much evidence as you have,” he said. “Short of sending an army to scour every blade of grass up there, I don’t see how we can bring a case. We’ll probably do something about the dope, but it’s doubtful we’ll clear up the murder.”

  “Pick him up and question him about Pop,” Brody said. “Maybe he’ll crack easy. Worth a try.”

  “I’ll let you know if we get a break,” he said. “I’ll spare you the spiel about lack of staff and limited resources. That’s just the way it is.”

  Nine

  After he left we felt defeated. I’d convinced myself that the case against Pop’s killer was a slam-dunk. Brody seemed to think they could still nail him by arresting him on trafficking charges and putting the screws to him over the murder. I felt that they lacked the enthusiasm for that strategy. Neither of us were lawyers, but we’d both had plenty of experience with the law, both good and bad. We were missing something. Why weren’t they going after this guy with everything they had?

  In the meantime, I’d try to find the bullet. I’d try to learn more about Cody Banner. He was practically my neighbor, after all. Maybe I could catch him at his hunting camp and shoot the shit, take stock of the man, buy him a beer. I’d have to keep an eye on him. If the cops didn’t close in before harvest time, I couldn’t just let him walk away with the crop. Certainly, catching him in the act would spur the cops to take action. One way or another, he was going down for something.

  I got curious about the hunting seasons in the area. Fall was coming. Soon there’d be hunters in the woods on the other side of the mountain. I hadn’t hunted since I was young. My father took me into the woods and taught me, but I lost interest in it in my adulthood. I’d been a good shot with a long gun, mainly a shotgun and a .22. As long as the target was still, I could take its eyes out at a hundred yards. In the Army, I qualified as a Sharpshooter with the M-16. I didn’t miss out as far as three-hundred yards. My problem had been with fast-moving targets. Rabbits and ducks confounded me. I could hit a big, slowly dropping goose, but anything faster than that and I was terrible. It drove my father nuts. He took me out in a field and threw oil cans up in the air for me to practice on. I rarely hit one. Target shooting was another matter. Dad was a pro at the range, often hustling other shooters in contests of accuracy. I picked up that skill from my old man. I could split a matchstick with a .38 from twenty feet. Suddenly I wanted to buy a rifle. If it came down to a confrontation between me and Cody Banner, I needed to be on equal footing.

  Brody and I drove down to Boone once again to visit High Country Tactical. The gun shop was on the main road from Banner Elk into Boone. At first, no one seemed interested in helping me, but when I asked for the Remington Model 700 they were all ears. I let them sell me a bunch of 30.06 ammo and an orange vest. I got a brochure for the Hunting Rules and Regulations of Watauga County. I stopped by the Sheriff’s Department on the way home. I showed the Sheriff my receipt for purchase and the boxes of ammo, just so he’d know it was a new purchase.

  “I’ve no interest in violating your Second Amendment rights,” he said. “But this seems a curious purchase, considering the circumstances.”

  “There’s a murderer loose on my mountain,” I said. “Just looking for an even playing field. Besides, I thought I’d do a little hunting this Fall.”

  “I haven’t decided if you’re a brave sumbitch or just stupid,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful up there. Wear your orange.”

  “Safety first,” I said, giving him a wink.

  I wanted him to know that I wasn’t giving up on our little mystery. Maybe if he didn’t want me to interfere, he’d get off his ass and do something. Meanwhile, I’d keep plugging away at my own investigation.

  “What do you think about the bullet?” I asked Brody. “You think there are random bullets lodged in trees all over the mountain?”

  “Not likely,” she said. “But he has a point. If the body was left where it fell, it would be more obvious for a jury that the bullet we find is the one that killed him.”

  “What about DNA?” I asked.

  “Finding Banner’s DNA on this random bullet doesn’t prove he killed Pop,” she said. “Just that he once fired off a shot not far from his hunting camp.”

  “No,” I said. “I meant Pop’s DNA.”

  “It’s theoretically possible,” she said. “But extremely difficult. The FBI is probably the only agency that could come close.”

  “It just so happens that you have a friend in the FBI,” I pointed out. “One who’s taken a personal interest in our activities.”

  “This isn’t an FBI matter,” she said.

  “Can’t local law enforcement ask for their help in certain cases,” I asked. “Like complicated forensics?”

  “Other than serial killings, forensics is the main reason the locals call the FBI,” she explained. “But it’s not a common practice. They’re called the Feds because they investigate federal crimes. This hardly qualifies.”

  “These particular locals can’t even get striations off a bullet without sending it to Raleigh,” I said. “They really don’t have the resources needed to solve this.”

  “They have to be the ones to ask the Bureau for help,” she said. “The FBI can’t just come in and take over, despite what you may have seen on TV.”

  “I think your buddy could possibly persuade them that they needed help,” I said. “Make a sincere offer of assistance.”

  “It’s no good without that bullet,” she said. “We’re just playing a game of what-if until we find it.”

  “Then I guess we know what we need to do,” I said. “You still up for climbing around our mountain?”

  “I’m game.”

  In my head, I knew that finding the bullet was a fool’s errand, but my heart drove me on anyway. For the time being, we were at a standstill. Searching for it would give me something to do. It would also get Brody up in the woods with me, which was something I wanted for us to share. In a short time, I’d put the Florida landscape behind me, trading it for the Blue Ridge Mountains. I didn’t intend to look back.

  We climbed the hill the very next day after I’d picked up a new pair of Merrell’s from the Little Red School House. Brody stuck with her boots. She carried the Smith & Wesson and I carried the new rifle. We traveled light, with just water and a few snacks. We moved quickly for the first half of the hike until I stopped her and told her to sit down.

  “Get your breath,” I said. “Try to relax. Bring your heart rate down. Just be for a minute.”

  “Zen and the art of mountain climbing?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “Let’s just sit still and chill out for a few minutes.”

  We sat quietly for five full minutes. I was hearing more than before, seeing and smelling more.

  “Listen,” I said. “Really listen.”

  “For what?”

  “What do you hear?” I asked.

  “The creek,” she said. “Some birds.”

  “Okay, concentrate on those sounds,” I instructed. “Listen beyond them. Try to hear the background noise.”

  “I hear the breeze on the leaves now,” she said. “Didn’t notice that before.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now allow the sounds to be amplified. What else is there that you didn’t hear at first?”

  “Us,” she said. “We make little sounds every time we move. My own breathing. Your breathing.”

  “I’m going to shut up now,” I said. “Take a few more minutes. Take in all the noises.”

  We sat in silence, totally still, for another ten minutes. Brody gave me a look. She was starting to experience it. She nodded but held up a hand for me to remain still and quiet. I let her drift off into her own mountain zone for a while. I did nothing until she spoke.

  “I’ll admit I hear a lot more,” she said. “But not like having a bionic ear or anything.”

  “What do
you smell?”

  “Earth,” she said. “Soil, leaves, bark.”

  “Take a minute to explore the smells further,” I said. “Go beyond the obvious.”

  Again I left her alone to do her own thing. She was receptive to the idea. She trusted me. She took another ten minutes or so to concentrate on smells.

  “Okay, I smell myself,” she said. “Soap and shampoo and my clean clothes. I can smell you too, but you’re so close. Same thing. We’re clean people in the wilderness.”

  “Any natural odors?”

  “Pine,” she said. “And I think the creek itself has a smell. Something crisp and clean.”

  “There’s oak and poplar and birch too,” I said. “Not as aromatic as pine, but still there.”

  “It’s very subtle,” she said. “I sensed more but didn’t know what they were.”

  “You’re off to a great start, grasshopper,” I said. “Ready to move on?”

  “Onward and upward.”

  “There’s no one else up here,” I said. “But stay alert like always. I’m going to move quickly so we have time to search when we get there.”

  “I’m following you,” she said.

  My legs had become more accustomed to all the climbing, but it was still hard work. Brody hadn’t done nearly as much hiking as I had, so she tired quickly.

  “My hamstrings are on fire,” she said. “I need to stop for a minute.”

  “Take a break,” I said. “Practice tuning in your senses.”

  “I need to catch my breath first,” she said. “Is it this steep all the way up?”

  “For the most part,” I said. “You’ll get better at it.”

  Brody pulled herself together and we moved on. We’d get plenty of rest at the top, and the trip down would be much easier. As we neared the pot patch, I signaled for her to slow down and listen. I didn’t expect company, but we couldn’t be too careful. We crouched together and surveyed the site. There was no trace of another human. I whispered for her to cover me while I went to the other side and checked down the hill. There were no signs of life there either. The search could begin.

  I showed Brody where I thought the shot was fired from.

  “Anyone coming will approach from here,” I said, pointing down the western slope. “I’ll be over there poking around in the trees.”

  “Got it,” she said. “I’ll set up here and listen for anything out of the ordinary.”

  For the third or fourth time, I attempted to triangulate the path of the bullet. I walked over the spot where the body had fallen and towards the bullet’s likely resting place. I carefully inspected each potential tree. I even looked for nicks in the bark where the bullet may have glanced off. It was a slow and tedious process. I lowered my level of alertness to outside stimuli, trusting that Brody had my back. I needed to focus all of my concentration on the task at hand. My eyes scoured every square inch of tree trunk and lower branch over a fifty-yard square area. At least three hours passed with nothing found. I came up empty.

  I walked over to Brody and she offered to trade places with me for a while. I gladly accepted. I propped myself behind the shooter’s big rock and faced toward Cody Banner’s hunting camp. I let Brody do her thing and paid attention to the sights and sounds of the hillside. I hefted our new rifle and looked down its sights, aiming at a random tree. If it came down to it, could I shoot a man with it? I’d fired a weapon during violent situations in my past, but it was always in order to save my life. An assassin was drawing a gun and I had no time to think it over. I simply reacted. A drug runner was ripping apart my boat with an automatic weapon. I blasted in his direction with my shotgun, barely aiming. Looking down the barrel of this rifle was another feeling altogether. You could take a man out at several hundred yards with a weapon like this. He’d never know who shot him. It took a cold-blooded killer to do something like that. I wasn’t sure I had it in me.

  I heard Brody call for me. I turned and she waved for me to come over. She then pointed up, higher in the trees. I noticed that she was slightly downhill from me as I walked towards her. I recalculated the possible path of the bullet. It may have hit higher than I’d been searching. Brody had already figured that out.

  “If it hit one of these trees,” she said. “It’s got to be up there. Higher than we can see very well.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “A ladder, I guess,” she said. “Or one of those climbing tree stand things the hunters use.”

  “I’ve never used one,” I said. “Don’t know if it would mark up the trees, or even how to work it.”

  “So we need a nice light ladder,” she said. “Ten feet or more.”

  “That’s going to be a bitch to carry all this way,” I said.

  “I don’t see what other option we have.”

  “We could build one up here,” I said. “Bring an ax or saw, some nails and a hammer.”

  “Spoken like a real mountain man,” she said. “You really are adapting to this life, aren’t you?”

  “I like it,” I said. “It feels good to be close to the land. You can never own the water. It just allows you passage. This mountain feels like home.”

  “Welcome home, Breeze.”

  We had a bite to eat and drank some water before departing. I picked a new tree to continue my marking of the territory. The hike back down was ten times easier than the climb up. It took half the time. It was good to have our cabin as a refuge. We both felt safe there, regardless of what might happen outside our doors. I’d split and stacked most of the wood on the porch. We’d purchased a generator in case the power went out over the winter months. We bought some warm clothes. We were actually looking forward to the first snowfall.

  We drove into Banner Elk the next day to visit Lowes. I bought a sharp hand saw, stout nails, a lightweight hammer, and a roll of thick twine. I’d never built a ladder before, but how hard could it be? We spent the rest of the day catching up on chores. There was no word from the Sheriff’s Department or the Banner Elk PD.

  We climbed back up the mountain on fresh legs. Brody made it with less difficulty and fewer rest periods. We went through our safety protocol before starting to build a ladder. The coast was clear. I hunted around for straight saplings or long branches to fashion the outside rails. The new saw cut nicely. I cut another branch into smaller sections to form the rungs. Brody put a nail in each juncture and I wrapped them up with the twine. It wasn’t pretty, but it would do the job.

  Brody was much lighter than I, so she got the ladder climbing duties. I stayed on the ground with the rifle strapped over my shoulder. After deeming a tree bullet-free, we’d move on to the next. We worked all afternoon in vain. We were both frustrated.

  “It must have missed all these trees and gone out over the ridge,” she said. “No finding it down there.”

  “We should have bought a metal detector,” I said. “We could sweep all around the trunk and branches until it beeps. Wouldn’t even have to see it first.”

  “You might have thought about that yesterday,” she said. “But it’s a good idea.”

  “Getting a little slower in my old age,” I said.

  “Let’s call it a day, grandpa,” she said. “Come back with a metal detector.”

  I dragged our homemade ladder deep into the brush, away from the pot plants. The hike back downhill was a breeze.

  Ten

  We had to drive to Boone to find a metal detector. I found a good one that wasn’t too heavy. We played around with it in the yard to dial in the sensitivity. Afterward we set up an improvised target out behind the cabin. We each fired a few rounds with the rifle. The early results were not promising. Brody said we needed sandbags to rest the weapon on. We were a long way from sand, so we used a stump from the woodpile instead. We both shot better, but still not stellar. I watched as Brody fiddled with the sights and tried again. She repeated the process until she could hit the center of the target multiple times in succession.

  I took my turn behind
the stump. I relaxed my arms and slowed my breathing. I lined up the sights, let out one last breath slowly, and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the target just a fraction of an inch from Brody’s best shot. I pulled off a second shot that was equally accurate. We were satisfied that our weapon was ready and that we could wield it effectively. Brody loaded a backpack with supplies before we called it a day.

  We sat on the porch with a cold beer and watched the creek roll by. A doe came down for her daily dose of apples. Squirrels chased each other around a birch tree. Hummingbirds buzzed the flowers and Brody’s feeder.

  “I really love this place, Breeze,” Brody said. “I’m so grateful to live here.”

  “Sure is peaceful,” I said. “Other than that whole killer on the loose thing.”

  “We’re doing what we can,” she said. “Why do you suppose the cops are sitting on their hands?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Incompetence, lack of incentive. Maybe the guy is connected. His name is Banner. The sheriff said he was a descendant of the original Banner family.”

  “But we’re talking about murder,” she said. “They can’t cover it up like a DUI.”

  “It’s a murder that would be damn hard for them to solve,” I said. “They don’t want to put in the kind of effort that we’ve been putting in. It’s hard work.”

  “So what about the weed?”

  “I really thought they’d do something about that,” I said. “But attitudes are changing about dope. It’s barely a crime anymore. I got caught with two pounds and managed to get probation.”

  “Thanks to a crooked lawyer.”

  “And money,” I told her. “The lawyer’s services didn’t come cheap. I’m sure I indirectly contributed to the bribe as well.”