P Deutermann - Spider mountain

Bobby Lee was right-I was way off my home turf and would probably be a whole lot safer back in Manceford County. The manslaughter charge had to be bogus: I hadn’t killed anybody that night, and that guy had been breathing when I walked away. He could have croaked after that, of course, but if so, why couldn’t Mingo produce a body?

On the other hand: Carrie’s proposition sounded a lot more exciting than running down writs and warrants for the court marshals. Baby Greenberg had surprised me up in the hills; for a city boy he’d carried his share of the load quite well. And, of course, I was intrigued by Carrie’s guarded references to a crime beyond methamphetamine sales and service. That mean old woman had almost smothered a kid, much as one might wring a chicken’s neck for Sunday dinner. That dramatic gesture with her arms made me think maybe she’d done that before. M. C. Mingo certainly hadn’t seemed shocked; he and Nathan had dumped the child’s unconscious body into his backseat like a sack of potatoes. The cuffing indicated that the kid wasn’t dead, but she sure wasn’t healthy.

I heard footsteps approaching out on the gravel walkway. Frick padded out to the front door. It turned out to be Mary Ellen Goode, of all people. She was wearing jeans and a light sweater, and she ran her hand nervously through her hair when I appeared at the front door.

“I know. I should have called,” she began, but I waved off her apology.

“Come on in. It’s always good to see you.”

That got me a sweet smile. We settled on the porch after she declined the offer of a drink. She still looked very tired, and I wondered what it was going to take to pull her out of her depression. She told me that Janey Howard had finally made a full statement to the sheriff’s office, confirming what the coroner had already concluded, namely, that the man in chains in the lake had been hanged. She’d also given a description of the two men she saw doing the hanging.

“Did you get to hear the description?” I asked.

“Yes. One was older and thin; the other she described as being a heavily bearded fat man. He’s the one who beat her up, among other things.”

“That sounds like the runner I saw taken down by the dog pack,” I said. “Robbins County, taking care of business, perhaps.”

She gave me a sad look. “It depresses me that the only things you and I ever talk about are murder and violence,” she said. “I guess, well, I guess that’s why I dropped by.”

I waited, although I was pretty sure I knew what she was about to say. I think we’d both had high hopes in the past about a possible relationship, but time, distance, and some unholy memories had proved toxic.

She took a deep breath. “I think it best for my mental health that we don’t see each other anymore,” she said. “And I’m truly sorry about that. I had hoped…”

Suspicions confirmed, I thought. “I understand,” I told her. “I wanted the same thing. But I worked a violent profession for many years, and now it looks like I’m right back in it.” I told her that the SBI wanted to hire me to work a problem in Robbins County.

She nodded, as if not surprised. “And I’m the one who asked you to come up here,” she said. “So my problem is partly of my own making. Not your fault at all.”

“I don’t feel like I’m at fault, Mary Ellen,” I said gently. “My life was going pretty well until we uncovered the cat dancers. My ex and I were getting back together, I was leading an exciting and productive police unit, and life was pretty good even if I was just a cop. All that changed when someone started frying bad guys. If I made a mistake, it was getting you involved in all that.”

“I thought I could handle it,” she said. “Now I know better.”

“You need to find a nice guy who’s not wearing any kind of uniform,” I said. “I think maybe you should get out of uniform, too. You have that Ph. D. Go back to the campus. Change your life. Run with some civilians for a change.”

She smiled. “You haven’t been around academia much lately, have you?” she said. She looked away for a moment and then swore softly.

I got up, took her hand, and pulled her up out of her chair. For a moment, I wanted to kiss her, just to see if this was all talk. But the look in her eyes signaled apprehension, not desire. “C’mon,” I said. “I’ll walk you back to your car.”

When we got out to the almost empty parking lot, she surprised me with a warm embrace. I kissed the top of her hair and told her I’d miss her. I was surprised to discover how true that was. Frick had come outside with us and was hovering anxiously, ever sensitive to charged human emotions.

Mary Ellen recomposed her face, slipped into her car, waved, and drove off. As she neared the ramp back up to the hotel’s main entrance, there was a flare of headlights and a rumble of tailpipes as Rue Creigh’s pickup truck popped over the hump at the top and slewed down into the parking lot. Rue’s window was open and her long hair was blowing in the breeze. Her widelipped coloratura face was clearly visible in Mary Ellen’s headlights, and it was my turn to swear. Talk about lousy timing. Rue Creigh’s late-evening arrival was precisely what I didn’t need to happen just then.

Rue drove over to where I was standing with my shepherd and shut the noisy truck down. The engine was powerful enough to literally shake the truck when it stopped.

“Hey there, lawman,” she said brightly. “Did I show up at a bad time?”

I shook my head. “Hello, Miss Creigh. What brings you out at this late hour?”

“Late?” she said. “This ain’t late. This is about when I get goin’.”

I almost thought I could smell alcohol on her breath. Her face was flushed and her pupils were unusually large. Then I wondered if maybe she was riding a meth horsey, since that was the family trade. I mentally chided myself for making a cop’s observations. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Frick was watching this woman carefully.

“Well, it’s my bedtime, Miss Creigh,” I said, trying to keep it light.

“Works for me, honey,” she said with a leer. “Best believe I know all about bedtime.”

I kept a smile on my face. “I do believe,” I said. Then I had an idea. “The problem is that first I’m gonna have to get on the phone with that young lady who just left and do some serious fence mending.”

“Aw,” she said. “Can’t that wait? Besides, she didn’t look none too happy to me. Y’all have a fight?”

“Something like that,” I said. “We go back a ways, and the history has some bumps in it.”

“So you’re tellin’ me that you ain’t gonna invite me in for a drink?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”

She shifted herself in the truck and then opened her door. “You want to check out my outfit before you make up your mind, lawman?” She pushed the door wide open and stretched those long legs out into the night air, revealing that all she was wearing below her waist was a pair of panties that would make the girls down at Victoria’s Secret blush. She raised one leg and ran her hands down its full silken length just to make sure I got the point.

I stared for a second. What man wouldn’t-she radiated sex.

“We don’t have to go inside,” she said, her voice husky. “You could do me right here. More exciting that way. Somebody might even see us.”

And then the moment was broken when Frick advanced and started barking. It was an urgent, rapid-fire, shepherd warning bark, and as Rue turned to look at the shepherd, I saw the knife on the seat right next to her. It was a long boning knife of some kind, with a wooden handle and a glinting, slightly curved blade nearly eight inches long. She moved her hand to push it out of sight, and Frick jumped at her. She quickly withdrew into the truck and slammed the door.