Spider mountain

17

The Bigs showed up an hour later in a Carrigan County cruiser. They drove right past our position and didn’t stop until the shepherds ran up to their vehicle. My guys love cop cars. I saw that Carrie hadn’t heard them arrive, so I pulled the keys and slipped out of the Suburban. The Bigs got out and Luke, bless him, handed me a cup of takeout coffee.

“Y’all havin’ fun?” he asked.

“About as much as you,” I said. They were looking around for Carrie. I pointed to the Suburban and folded two hands to my cheek to tell them she was asleep. Then I told them what we’d learned.

“Mr. King’s gone into Rocky Falls with his people,” Luke said. “Old boy named Ken Llarper is acting Robbins County sheriff now.”

“He a Creigh ally?”

Luke shook his head. “Older guy. Longtime cop. May even be kin to Ms. Santangelo over there. Took Mr. King into Mingo’s office and was tryin’ to explain how things worked in Robbins County.”

“That’ll take some doing,” I said. “In the meantime, we need to get those kids safe.” I told them what we’d run into in our latest unsuccessful attempt to breach the Creigh compound. Big John spat into the grass and suggested we go get us some antifreeze. I knew what he was talking about. Farmers who had a problem with feral dogs would often put bowls of antifreeze out in their fields and keep their livestock up for the night. Animals simply couldn’t resist lapping it up, and then died horribly. The problem was that you got everything, not just the target pest.

“We also don’t know where Nathan is,” I said. “He might be there, he might be up in the hills, he might be watching us right now. This is going to take a crowd.”

“Got one’a them at the sheriff’s office right now,” Luke pointed out.

“Your radios work out here?” I asked.

It took two more hours to get said crowd to the Creighs’, and gaining entry turned out to be a cakewalk. The bad news was that there was no one there. No Grinny, no kids, no Nathan, not even any of the dreaded dogs. As I had suspected, there were also no drugs or other evidence of any criminal enterprise. Carrie and I got to sit out on the front field side while a host of heavily armed deputies from both counties tossed the place. They found the dead dogs we’d shot, which helped to corroborate our stories, but that was about it. The cabin itself was unremarkable, with furnishings and supplies typical of the people who lived up there. If there ever had been children there, the cops could find no sign of them.

They’d brought an EMS truck along, and one of the medics treated Carrie’s hand and gave her a tetanus shot just to make her arm feel as good as her hand. We both gave formal statements to one of King’s people, but the stark fact remained that the Creighs, the important ones, anyway, had vanished. Along with their flowers. We were nowhere. Again.

King himself wandered down into the field at about sunrise. He looked to be as tired as we were, and not at all pleased to see the two of us. I kept looking for Storm Trooper Gelber to complete my day.

“I told you to go home,” he said.

“Why, good morning to you, too,” I said. “You know more now than before I interfered?”

He started to answer that but then changed his mind. He asked Carrie how her hand was and she shrugged, which must have made the tetanus shot really happy. Her hand was bandaged and looked to be twice the size it should have been. Big, bad dog.

“There’s nothing in there of any use whatsoever,” he said, nodding toward the cabin. “Maybe in the daylight we’ll do better.”

“Any signs of children being there?” I asked.

“Not a thing,” he said. “Not a damned thing.”

“Well, we know there was at least one in there,” I said, “and she said there were five more. Did you find out what was behind the house? That mound leading out of the hill?”

“The guys are working on that. There’s no evident door or tunnels or anything like that, or at least not so far. I’m thinking of having them dig into it from the top.”

“Be careful,” I said. “The whole damn crew might be hiding in a tunnel or an old mine under there.”

“Don’t tell me my business, Mister Richter,” he said. Just then there came the double booming report of a shotgun from inside and a flurry of activity up in the house. King swore and trotted off to see what had happened.

“What do you think?” Carrie asked.

“Booby trap? A lurking mastiff? Why don’t you and I blow this pop stand, go get some breakfast and then some sleep.”

“He did tell us to go home,” she said.

There were two queen-sized beds in the motel room, and we each collapsed into one the moment we got to the room. It was daylight outside, so I forced myself to get up and put up the DO NOT DISTURB sign. Then I remembered I had to feed the muttskis, and then I had to take them for a walk. By the time I got back, Carrie was almost an hour ahead of me on the sleep marathon, and I was in that fugue state where I knew I needed sleep but wasn’t actually sleepy. I also knew that somewhere along the line I’d go sideways and crap out, big time. The shepherds, damn their eyes, had no such problems and crashed on the bathroom floor.

I made sure I had my room keycard and went down to get some coffee. I took my cell phone and then sat in the Suburban and called the Bigs. I asked what that shotgun discharge had been all about.

“Nasty little trap,” Luke said. “They found a false wall in the basement that led into that hump behind the house. Guy broke the lock, pushed opened the door. Felt something tugging when he opened it. He’d been to Iraq with the Guard, so he hit the deck about the time a twelve with a string trigger laid both barrels into the doorway.”

“He get hurt?”

“Mostly scared,” Luke said. “Another guy in the basement got one pellet in the back from a ricochet, but he had his vest on.”

“And what was behind the green door?”

“Possibly the nursery,” he said. “But completely empty. No furniture, toys, clothes-nothing. Empty. They found the remains of a recent fire behind one of the barns, but there’s still no evidence of children here yet.”

“Well, do we have Christian believers now?”

He paused before replying. “King keeps saying it’s possible, but he’d be happier to find a toy chest or some other evidence that there were six kids kept here.”

“Evidence again.”

“Well, they’re kicking it around. They’ve got your various statements, and that thing about Grinny being a florist. We just don’t have any Creighs or any kids. Lots of discussion about that problem. Feds in the wind.”

“Good,” I said. “About goddamned time, too.”

“Where’s Santa Claws?”

“In her tree, fast asleep. One claw’s a lot bigger than the other.”

Luke was quiet for a moment. “You be nice to her, you hear?” he said. It wasn’t any kind of direct threat, but more an expression of proprietary concern, as in, you mess her up, we’ll mess you up. I’d also noticed that most of the homespun dialect had disappeared.

“It’s not like that,” I said.

“You lookin’ at still waters there, Lieutenant,” he said. “You might be the last to know.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And she’s the one keeps getting hurt.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

He didn’t say anything, but I was now sufficiently fascinated that I wanted to keep it going. “So: You think I ought to be on point a little more,” I said. “And Carrie in the rear with the gear?”

“Might not be a bad idea.”

“You want to be the one who tells her that, Big Luke?”

“Um.”

“Un-hunh. Because I don’t. I might start getting hurt, you know what I’m saying?”

He started laughing. It sounded like a bear with a digestive problem.

“Look,” I said. “I could have bailed, all the way back to beautiful downtown Triboro, where my terribly satisfying paper chase awaits. Instead, I stuck around.”

He laughed some more. Now I wanted to whack him, but it would be embarrassing to whack somebody in the thigh.

“They’re wrappin’ up here,” he said. “King says he has to ‘frame’ the sheriff shootout problem with the media. See if they can convince the feds to go chase Grinny and whatever troops she took with her just based on that incident.”

“Tell King to remember that Grinny has a plan to unload all the merchandise, and if she can’t do that, the merchandise is going to end up in someplace called the glass hole.”

“What in the hell is the glass hole?”

“Something bad, according to a little girl we met, and I’m NFI beyond that. But the truth is, Grinny’s capable of slitting all their throats if finding her with kids poses a threat, and of course it does.”

“Mr. King’s been up all night,” he said. “He’s a little testy right now. I might have to wait on suggestions from you for a bit.”

“Just so somebody reminds him. We’re in that same motel, but I plan to take Carrie out of here and back to civilization, assuming I can talk her into letting go for a day.”

“You know what they say about assumptions, Lieutenant.”

“You should hear me on that subject,” I said, and then I had an idea. “Any chance Carrie and I could get into Grinny’s cabin once the crowd subsides?” I asked.

“I’m pretty sure they’ll seal it and put a deputy on it. Keep it pristine for our federal betters, assuming they’re coming in.”

“There you go assuming,” I said. “Any particular deputy?”

He caught on right away. “I’ll give y’all a ring if it works out that way,” he promised.

Carrie apparently heard me trying to sneak in and sat up in the bed. She used both hands to do it and instantly regretted doing that. I’d brought a second cup of coffee back with me and offered to share. She shook her head and flopped back down. Her bandaged hand made it look like she was wearing a white oven mitt, and her face made it evident that using it was still out of the question.

“Anything I can do for that?” I asked her.

“Always wanting to play doctor,” she said, closing her eyes.

I bent her head forward and examined the rifle wound, which looked scaly and horrible. That probably meant it was healing. “And some people call me a shit magnet,” I said.

“You’ve just learned to duck faster,” she said.

I took her other hand, and she opened her eyes again. “You found out what you wanted to know,” I said. “We’ve failed every time we’ve tried to get our hands around the Grinny Creigh problem. Both sheriffs involved are headed for the cold, cold ground. Is it maybe time to let the big boys do their thing?”

“They’ll cap it off,” she said. “There’s no way in hell they’re going to find Grinny and her crew in those mountains. And the Bureau will not want a reprise of their Rudolph debacle. They’ll ride in, take over the case, announce they broke up a ring of child peddlers and the two principals are dead. Victory.”

“But we’ve both told them there are six kids in her clutches.”

“We’ve told them lots of things,” she said. “And they’ve done squat.”

“I want to go back out there when all the cops are gone,” I said. “We’re missing something.”

She sighed and closed her eyes again. “My hand feels like a bus ran over it,” she said drowsily. “Let’s sleep on it instead.”

I hadn’t let go of her hand and she hadn’t let go of mine, so I lay down beside her. I gathered her in and she snuggled willingly, warm and sweet.

“You are beginning to affect my better judgment,” I said to the back of her neck.

“Like you have any choice in the matter,” she murmured.

I laughed. Even with all the coffee onboard, we both went out like that proverbial light.