Spider mountain

8

The following morning Big Luke brought me a breakfast tray from the jail kitchens with a paper cup of coffee perched on top. He handed it to me through the food slot in the bars and then left. He came back an hour later.

“Y’all’s lawyer is here,” he announced as he retrieved the breakfast tray.

Lawyer? What lawyer was that? Not the high-priced esquire from Triboro, certainly. I felt the stubble on my face and wondered when I was going to get some clean clothes and a shaving kit.

Bigger John came down the corridor, followed by a man with a briefcase. He looked vaguely familiar. John unlocked the cell door and let the man in, re-locked the door, and stood patiently outside. The lawyer handed me a business card, but when I looked at it, all it said was go with it. When the looming deputy didn’t leave, the “lawyer” looked pointedly at him. When John still didn’t get the hint, he asked John to leave so that he could speak in private to his client. John said, “Oh,” and then left us alone. I finally recognized the “lawyer” as one of the DEA agents from Greenberg’s team. He was freshly shaved, his hair was cut, and he was wearing a suit and some lawyerly eyeglasses. He sat down on the bunk, opened the briefcase, and took out a legal pad. He patted the bunk and I sat down next to him.

“Got some documents you need to see,” he said in a loud voice, pointing at the ceiling, and then showed me what was written on the pad. If anyone was listening to us, this guy wasn’t going to give them an inch.

Basically the pad revealed that Carrie had been released when her boss and a team of SBI agents showed up at the sheriff’s office that morning. Baby Greenberg had stashed Frick and Frack at my love-nest cabin. Mingo had produced a bench warrant for my arrest and refused to release me, SBI consultant or no consultant. My hearing was tentatively scheduled for a week from today at the Robbins County courthouse.

Mingo was playing hardball because his cousin, the magistrate for Robbins County, was backing him up. The Manceford County Sheriff’s Office had been informed of my predicament, as well as my real lawyer in Triboro. SBI had been unable to get Mingo to investigate the logging-truck “accident,” once again because they could produce no evidence, the pile of logs in the creek notwithstanding. My Triboro lawyer was not optimistic on bail, given the relationship between the sheriff and the magistrate, nor did he feel that a recusal motion had much chance of success. SBI was going to work that angle and also request a venue change. Greenberg was setting up a surveillance cell in town in order to make sure there were no late-night rides resulting in a shot-while-attempting-escape deal.

Any questions?

I took the pen and told the agent to get someone close to the two big deputies who ran the holding cells and explain what a federal task force was all about and how it might be to their advantage to switch sides before the roof fell in on Mingo.

What roof is that? the agent wanted to know.

Make one up, I wrote. They’re outside Mingo’s criminal crew.

You know that? the agent wrote. I hesitated, but had to shake my head. What’s Carrie Santangelo going to do? I asked.

She’s in hot water within the SBI because of this, he wrote. Her boss couldn’t explain to his boss what we were all doing out there. He’s pissed. Carrie’s pissed. Baby’s beyond pissed.

I need some clean clothes and bathroom gear, I wrote.

The agent shook his head. They’re going to book you and process you into the jail system today, he wrote. Jumpsuit city. Sorry.

That evening I found myself the sole occupant of that small wooden building attached to the main sheriff’s office headquarters. My theory that it had been the town’s original jail apparently was correct, based on the interior furnishings. It was connected to the main jail wing by a breezeway across one side of the parking area. There were four cells, in a two-across configuration. Each cell had a metal bunk bolted to the floor, a seatless toilet fixture, a steel sink, and a tiny table and chair, also bolted to the floor. Unlike the main building, there were actually one-foot-square barred windows up high in the cell walls, which was fortunate because there was no other ventilation system. The front of the cell and the dividing walls were freestanding bars. The exterior walls appeared to be made of stone blocks. I half-expected to see Marshal Dillon coming through the wooden door leading out to the breezeway.

They’d booked me that morning after my “lawyer” left, taking my street clothes and issuing me a lovely orange jumpsuit, some really uncomfortable jail shoes, a blanket, a single sheet, a pillow, and some basic toiletries. I was allowed to shower and shave with a disposable razor, which Big Luke retrieved when I was finished. Then the amiable giant had escorted me to the annex, as he called it, and placed me in a cell.

“Sheriff said to put you in here on account of you bein’ an ex-cop,” Luke told me. “Didn’t want no trouble from the other prisoners.”

“What other prisoners?” I asked him.

Luke grinned and shuffled his feet. “Well,” he admitted, “ain’t none right now. Sheriff Mingo, he don’t hold much with puttin’ folks in jail, less’n it’s real serious-like. The field deputies usually just take care of things, one way’n another.”

“‘Taking care of business’?” I said. “That still the official motto here?”

I could see that Big Luke was just a bit nervous; perhaps it was because John wasn’t around. I decided to try a little probe. “You ever hear of a woman named Grinny Creigh?” I asked.

Luke’s eyes flared in recognition. He looked around as if to make sure no one had heard that. “I gotta go now,” he’d said. “Supper’s down at five.”

Supper had turned out to be a bag of limp greaseburgers from the town’s one and only fast-food joint, which was definitely not one of the national chains. As darkness settled, I wondered why I’d really been moved out to this old building. If indeed there were no other prisoners, it would have made more sense to put me right next to the front office in the modern jail wing. The small building was appropriately gloomy; there was only a single overhead light in the aisle between the cells. Through the windows I heard a dog barking; it sounded a lot like Ace, who was probably out patrolling the parking lots now that night had fallen. It was no wonder the two brothers weren’t too worried about any escape attempts, not with old Ace on the job. Anyone slinking around the parking compound at night would invoke a very different set of shepherd rules.

I looked into the bag. The fries had congealed on the bottom into a starchy mass. I ate one of the hamburgers, drank some watery Coke, and then pitched the bag through the bars into a trash can in the aisle-way. I missed my nightly scotch. My liver probably did not.

After a few hours I heard some vehicles entering and leaving the compound, which I surmised meant a shift change. It was nothing like the mass movement of private and official vehicles that took place in the much larger Triboro Sheriff’s Office, but the noises coming through the tiny windows were familiar. Fifteen minutes later, all was quiet again.

I flopped down on the lumpy bed. The building was about as devoid of human comforts as a building could be. No radio, no television, no apparent ventilation or air-conditioning, no telephone, that single incandescent light, and the smell of old wood. There wasn’t even a ceiling, just a maze of wooden rafters and beams from what had to be the nineteenth century, if not older. The floor was made of thick wooden planks of random width, with well-worn tread marks down the center. The door hardware looked to be made of wrought iron, and there was even a set of supports for an inside locking bar to keep lynch mobs at bay.

I got up and examined the cell door’s lock, which was of the old-fashioned skeleton key design. If I’d had a coat hanger I could probably have worked it open. But to what end? That big oak door had to be two or three inches thick, and there was probably another one of those locking bars in place on the other side. Besides, there was no usable metal in the cell whatsoever; in that regard, it was an entirely modern jail. I sat back down, wondering if the light stayed on all night. I could see no light switch. I wracked my brain to think of some way of getting that cell door unlocked, but it seemed truly hopeless. They’d taken not only my clothes and shoes but my watch and, of course, my pocketknife; the jumpsuit had no belt and my prison shoes fastened with Velcro.

Face it, sunshine: They got you. I drifted off to sleep.

I awoke in near total darkness. Someone had finally turned out the light, and the reflected light from the sodium vapor towers around the parking compound provided the only illumination. Without a watch, I had no idea what time it was. I heard a sound coming from the end of the aisle nearest the door to the outside: metal scraping on metal. A key?

I got up off the bunk; I’d fallen asleep in my jumpsuit. I pressed my face to the bars at the front of the cell and tried to see the door, but it was too dark. Then I saw a thin vertical line of light appear and heard a hinge squeak. The line held steady and then widened until I could see a figure standing at the door. Then there were two, and from the size of them, I recognized the big brothers. Big Luke came in while Bigger John stayed by the door as lookout. Luke was holding something in his hand and, for a scary moment, I wondered if I’d been all wrong about the Big brothers. I backed away from the bars until I saw the ring of keys.

“Come on,” Luke rumbled quietly.

“We going to play with Ace again?” I asked as Luke unlocked the cell door. John was no longer visible.

“Mingo’s comin’ with his mountain boys,” Luke said. “Fixin’ to burn this place. Come quiet, now.”

That was pretty damned clear. I didn’t look back. I followed Luke down the aisle, out the door, and into the parking lot, where John had a cruiser waiting in the shadow of the old jail building. Luke opened the right front and back doors. “Git in,” he ordered. “And git down on the floor.”

I slid into the backseat and Luke shut the door quietly. I then rolled sideways and got down on my knees behind the front seat. Luke got in and John drove the car forward. I heard gates sliding, then felt the car go down a ramp and accelerate into the street. I could see the top windows of the main office as we drove by. I didn’t see anyone looking back at me.

It occurred to me that I might be going for a ride in the mobster sense. Being the sole occupant of the old jail building made it easy for someone to take me out of the complex. I began to think of my next move.

“Okay,” Luke announced. I got back up into a normal sitting position as John took a couple of turns and then headed out of town up a mountain road. From the backseat the two brothers looked like a circus act, their huge shoulders almost touching in the front seat. I could hear the static of the patrol radio, but the computer screen wasn’t on. That meant they were offline, and no one in operations should know that the car was out of the lot. I didn’t know if that was good news or bad. I surreptitiously looked to see if the back doors had interior handles. They did not.

“So what’s going down, boys?” I asked, casually, reaching for a seat belt as John sped up the mountain road.

“Like I said, Mingo’s gone to git his Spider Mountain boys,” Luke replied. “I heard one’a the front office deputies sayin’ they was gonna be a insurance fire back in the old jail and that Mingo said not to pay it no mind till it dropped.”

“This guy know I was in there?”

“Don’t b’lieve so,” Luke said. “Everybody thought you was still back in the holding pen. Ain’t nobody been back that way since we took you out.”

“Lovely,” I said. “And if the old building burned down, nobody would care very much.”

“Yup.”

“You guys get a chance to talk to somebody about a federal task force?”

“Yup.”

That explained why I wasn’t cuffed in the car. I saw the dashboard clock; it was two fifteen. John took a couple of switchbacks fast enough to make the tires complain, and then we pulled over into a scenic overlook space. John nosed the car right up against the stone wall, switched off the lights, and got out. Luke opened the right back door and motioned for me to get out, too. Neither had his weapon out. I wondered if this was Robbins County’s version of the Tarpeian Rock, Rome’s original execution place.

From the overlook, we had a good view of the town down below. The main drag through town was clearly lighted, and we could see the river and the backs of the houses that perched on the hillside above the main street. The sheriff’s office parking lot was visible because of the sodium lights. John produced a thermos of coffee and some paper cups. He poured all three of us some coffee and then pitched the empty thermos back into the front seat. Luke lit up a cigarette and sat down on the stone wall that framed the overlook. Down below in the town we saw an SUV of some kind starting up the same road we had just climbed, several hundred feet below the overlook. A second one turned into the road a moment later. I finally began to relax when they produced coffee.

“That them drug cops?” John asked.

“I reckon,” Luke replied. Five minutes later a black Bronco pulled into the overlook with its headlights already off. Baby Greenberg and Carrie Santangelo got out. They were both dressed out in tactical gear. Carrie walked ahead of the DEA agent, carrying a camera with a long telephoto lens. The second vehicle, a 1500 series Suburban, pulled in behind them. The two men inside stayed in the vehicle. One was my “lawyer,” who waved.

“Love your outfit,” she said to me, giving the orange jumpsuit an amused once-over as she went to the overlook wall.

“Got your stuff in the Bronco,” Greenberg said, and then turned to the brothers. “Gentlemen, well done.”

John and Luke acknowledged the compliment without comment, while I went over to the Bronco. I was really pleased to see four sharp-pointed ears silhouetted against the glass in the way-back compartment. I opened the back hatch and the shepherds came out, greeting me effusively. Finally I told them to sit down and then climbed into the backseat of the Bronco to change. Greenberg came over.

“How’d you turn them?” I asked.

“Wasn’t hard,” Greenberg said. “Convinced Big Luke; Bigger John goes along with whatever Big Luke says. Carrie helped.”

“I was afraid they didn’t know what was really going on here,” I said. “That they wouldn’t believe it.”

“Oh, they believed it,” Greenberg said. “Or Luke did, anyway. I think they both have a pretty good idea that M. C. isn’t playing by the rules. And they knew all about Grinny Creigh and her reputation up on Spider Mountain. Actually acted a little scared of her.”

“Smarter than they look, then,” I observed. I climbed back out of the Bronco and threw the rolled-up jumpsuit into the weeds.

“Your weapons and stuff are in the way-back,” Greenberg said. “I also told them about what she did to that kid. They said something interesting, or at least Carrie thought so.”

“Which was?”

“That Grinny Creigh is known for doing things to children. Like some damn witch, as they put it.”

“They’re coming,” Carrie announced from the parapet wall. She had the camera out of its case and was looking through the telephoto. I grabbed my weapons and gear belt and joined the others at the wall.

Down below we could see a small caravan of four vehicles entering town from the mountain end, led by a police cruiser. They were moving slowly through the town, stopping at the two traffic lights that turned red against them even at this hour. When they got to the sheriff’s office compound, the cruiser kept going. The other vehicles, three pickup trucks and another Bronco, pulled into the side street that ran beside the compound. Their lights went off as they drove down into the narrow street past the back of the parking garage. The cruiser continued down the main street, turned left, and left again on the street that ran parallel to and above the main drag. It stopped a block away from where the other vehicles had congregated.

The parking-lot lights put the entire area outside the fence in shadow, so we couldn’t see anyone approach the old jail building. Carrie could, however, and she reported that they were placing a ladder against the outside wall of the old jail.

“One guy’s going up the ladder,” she said, staring through the lens and clicking the trigger. “Someone on the ground’s handing him something. A can, I think. Yeah, a can. A one- or two-gallon gas can, I think. Yes, it’s red. He’s pouring it into the building through a little window. There goes another one. Think you’d have smelled that?” she asked me.

“For a minute or so, probably.”

“Think anyone would have heard you yelling?”

“Probably not.”

“Deputies, want to see what I’m seeing?”

The Big brothers shook their heads in unison. It was apparently bad enough that it was happening, and that no one inside the sheriff’s office was doing anything about it. On the other hand, I thought, they also knew there was no trapped rat in the old jail screaming for help, not that that would have mattered much. Luke’s expression was one of resigned dismay.

“Ladder’s coming down. Wait for it-there she blows.”

We could all see the sudden flare of orange fire inside the old building, first in one window and then through them all. Smoke started up from the eaves of the roof. But there was no alarm, and if there was an internal surveillance system on the parking lot, no one inside the main building would have seen anything out back because there were no windows in the old jail facing the compound’s parking lot.

We watched as the fire took hold in the dry timbers and beams. We saw a man passing by on the sidewalk out in front of the main building stop and stare, and then saw two figures come out of the shadows, grab him, and pull him into the dark alley. Bad time to be a witness, I thought. The shepherds were glued to my side. Then we saw the arsonists’ vehicles appear on the street behind the compound and head back down to where the cruiser was waiting.

“That Mingo’s cruiser?” Greenberg asked. John looked through the camera lens and nodded. The fire was starting to break through the end walls of the roof. I actually thought I could smell it, but knew we were too far above the blaze. The four vehicles passed the cruiser without stopping and turned right back out to the main street, where the trucks went one way and the Bronco the other. Then we saw the front porch lights of a nearby house come on and people run out into the street, staring at the fire. A few minutes later the town fire department siren began to wail. Frack, who loved to howl, started to reply, and I had to tell him to stifle.

Carrie put the camera back into its case and returned to the Bronco. She called the Big brothers over. “You guys were officially off duty, right?” she asked. They nodded.

“Okay, go home. And that’s where you’ve been all evening, no matter what. You keep your ears to the ground, and if you get any hint that Mingo knows how the lieutenant got away, you get yourselves over into Carrigan County and report to Sheriff Hayes.”

“Shouldn’t they just go ahead and do that now?” Greenberg asked.

“Not while Mingo’s thugs are out driving around. Let the dust settle. You guys have a way to know what’s happening in town, don’t you?”

Luke said yes and, as usual, John agreed. Carrie gave Luke a cell phone. “Keep this with you. If you get into trouble, press this button right here twice and it will call one of us. Don’t use it for anything else. Don’t turn it off. If it rings, it will be one of us. And in any event, report to Sheriff Hayes’s office by tomorrow night. Got it?”

“Yes’m,” Luke said, apparently somewhat awed by the sight of a woman giving orders.

“You’ve done the right thing,” Carrie said. “When this is all over, you boys will be entirely in the clear. Now, get going.”

The deputies went to their cruiser, where Luke popped the trunk. He lifted out two tactical shotguns and an ammo belt. He gave one of the guns to John. Then they got in and drove off.

“How long before Mingo figures out what happened?” I asked.

We looked down the mountainside and saw that the darkened cruiser was still parked on the back street. The fire department had arrived, and now the back door of the main building was open, spilling light and deputies into the parking lot. The old jail building’s roof collapsed into the stone walls with a shower of sparks, and then the fire truck’s water streams began to take effect.

“He’s probably been called on the radio,” Carrie said. “So he’ll move pretty soon. Their noses will tell them no one was in the building.”

Greenberg made a face. “Then we need to boogie,” he said. “He’s gonna have black hats and white hats scouring the county for his ‘escaped’ prisoner.”

“Can we make it to Carrigan County?” I asked.

Greenberg shook his head. “We could have, but probably not now. There’s only one road, right through town there.”

“Actually,” Carrie said. “There are others.”

We both looked at her in surprise. She shrugged.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this. Mingo had to know you guys were in town. How’s about you and your people take one vehicle and go down there, show up on the scene, and baffle them with some DEA bullshit. Carrie and I will take your other vehicle and head for the hills. We’ll figure out next steps once we get clear.”

Greenberg gave Carrie a questioning look. She nodded. “Good a plan as any,” she said. Then she turned to me. “Laurie May’s?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” I said. “They’ll expect me to run for Carrigan County, not toward the other side of Spider Mountain.”

“Mingo’s moving,” Greenberg announced.

“Is that cell phone transponder still set up?” I asked.

Greenberg said no, but that he would put it back on the air first thing in the morning.

“Got any maps?” I asked the DEA agent.

“Don’t need any,” Carrie said. “I know these hills. I grew up in this county. Let’s go.”

I whistled up the shepherds, and we swapped gear and vehicles with the other DEA agents. Then Carrie got in on the driver’s side. I settled the dogs in the back compartment and jumped into the front passenger seat.

“Ever see the movie Thunder Road?” Carrie asked, as she cranked the Suburban around and pointed it up the mountain road. I took one look at the grim expression on her face and cinched up my seat belt. For a supposed city girl from Raleigh, this lady was full of surprises tonight.

The Suburban was a federal seizure and forfeiture vehicle taken from a drug dealer. Even though it was the smaller of the two versions, it had a big V-8, four-wheel drive, tinted windows, and a beefed-up suspension system. Carrie drove it like a bootlegger, and all the questions I wanted to ask about her little bombshell back there definitely had to wait as she took paved road, dirt road, curves, straightaways, and hills at the same breakneck speed. The shepherds, who normally rode sitting up, were not visible in the way-back.

I had no idea of where we were until she skidded through a right turn down by what looked like the same creek where Mingo had staged the logging-truck accident. Suddenly we saw a police cruiser coming fast the other way, a few S -bends ahead of us, its light bar flashing blue strobe light through the trees.

“Duck down,” Carrie ordered, flipping on her brights, and I bent over in the seat. I felt the Suburban twist left, accelerate, and then swerve hard right, its horn blaring angrily. Then I heard the sounds of a crash behind us as Carrie decelerated hard going into the next curve.

“Okay,” she said above the noise of protesting tires.

“He get a look at us?” I asked as I straightened back up.

“He was busy,” she replied. “Now he’s wet. Hopefully, so’s his radio.”

We drove to the road leading up to Laurie May’s cabin, turned into it, and then hid the vehicle behind an old shed barn out of sight of the dirt road. We watched a few more police cruisers go by down on the hard-top road, but no one came nosing around. We watched for half an hour longer, but traffic seemed to have evaporated. I let the dogs out for a quick runaround and to make sure no one was nearby. I put them on a long down near the vehicle and got back in. Frick started barking at some woods creature, and I told her to shut up or I’d cut her ears off. She was visibly terrified for a good five seconds. Carrie asked if they always yawned like that when I yelled at them. I told her it was a fear response.

“Okay, Special Agent,” I said. “Explain, please.”

“Baby asked me if I had a personal stake in all this,” she said. “He said you’d asked.”

“Yup.”

“First I should tell you that I’ve resigned from the SBI.”

“Whoa,” I said. “What happened?”

“The operations director fanged my immediate boss pretty hard, with direct orders for me to back off,” she said. “She was not happy with the fact that I failed to ID myself as SBI when Mingo made his move. Said that we needed to regroup on the Robbins County problem, get a federal task force going, get the big Bureau back into it.”

“And you disagreed?”

“Hell, yes. I mean, we’ve done all that before. But she’s a bureaucrat first and a law officer second. A task force means meetings in Washington, overnights at cushy hotels, and a new bullet on her resume. Regarding the real problem, turns out all she really wants to do is kick the can.”

“The real problem?”

“The one you’re supposed to guess.”

“Unh-hunh. And you’re retirement eligible, or did you just up and quit?”

“Took an early out,” she said. “Just like you, as I recall.”

I didn’t remind her that I had taken early retirement with a multimillion-dollar trust fund in the wings. Her bailing out of a good state job was a lot more significant a move than my leaving the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office.

“So what’s the personal beef here?” I asked. The sky outside was starting to lighten in a false dawn. The shepherds were curled into tight little balls. Sometimes they were useless as guards, unless a bad guy happened to step on their tails.

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.”