P Deutermann - Spider mountain

“Well, my goodness, lawman,” she said breathlessly. “That there dog is downright im-po-lite. What a party pooper.” Her voice was still teasing, but the look in her eyes was something entirely different. She knew that I’d seen that knife, and that I had to be wondering.

I cleared my throat. “That dog is telling me that you’re a dangerous woman, Miss Creigh,” I said. “I think you’re gonna have to find another party tonight. Nice seeing you. So to speak.”

She tried to laugh off being rejected, but there was a flash of pure hatred in her eyes. I waved and turned away to go back to my cabin. Frick put herself between the truck and me until Rue fired it up and drove off. On the way out of the parking lot she deliberately sideswiped a brand-new SUV parked in the lot, carving a nasty crease down its full length with the truck’s rusty back bumper.

Well, well, I thought, that would have been a ride. Then I reminded myself of Bobby Lee’s little maxim that served to douse any physical regrets at missed sexual opportunities: If she’ll do you, handsome, she’ll do anyone and probably has. Besides, I told myself, I had some serious thinking to do. And then, of course, there was that knife, right there on the seat. Do me here in the parking lot, she’d suggested. And while you’re at it, I’ll plant this steely beauty somewhere between your liver and lights. If we can’t get you one way, we’ll try something a lot closer up.

Mose Walsh was right-I hadn’t appreciated the danger.

The phone rang at five thirty the next morning; I fumbled for a bedside table lamp and then answered. It was Carrie Santangelo.

“You need to get out of there,” she said without preamble.

“I do?”

“Yep. I called Sheriff Hayes last night after I talked to you. I wanted to know what was shaking with the Robbins County beef. He said he was still waiting for Mingo to make the next move. I told him that you had a working relationship with the SBI and asked if he could keep me in the loop. He said he would.”

“And?”

“I just got a call here in my room from Hayes’s operations office. Mingo sent a telex in, saying he had a warrant for your arrest and would be coming down to Carrigan County at seven this morning to execute it, and would they please have a couple of deputies available to come along. The watch officer called Hayes, and he called me.”

I was fully awake now. “How’d they get a warrant without a body?”

“Robbins County,” she said. “Who the hell knows? But you need to get out of there, and now would be nice. I’ve got a place for you to go. Meet me out front in fifteen minutes.”

She was in the parking lot in an SBI unmarked Crown Vic when I came out, carrying a hastily packed bag and accompanied by two yawning shepherds. “Follow me,” she said, and I fired up the Suburban.

We drove through the predawn darkness to the Thirty Mile ranger station toll booth. There was a chain across the entry road, but plenty of room on both sides to get around it. We drove past the darkened Park Service offices and then down a paved road that led up into the park itself. The paved road became a hard-packed gravel road after a few miles, but that didn’t slow Carrie down. I had to drop back just to be able to see through all the dust. Six miles up the road we pulled into a clutch of log cabins scattered around a woodsy playground area. There were cars parked at the darkened cabins, and it was a busy hiking and camping season if the overflowing trash bins were any indication. Carrie drove through the little village and up a steep side road to a single cabin surrounded by tall pine trees, where she stopped and parked her car.

“This is one of the Park Service ranger cabins,” she told me when I got out. “Except the DEA’s had it requisitioned for the past year. Occasionally the SBI gets joint use.”

“For that investigation that isn’t going on?” I asked. The cabin was perhaps twenty-five feet square, with wraparound porches and a stone chimney at one end. The dogs ran around, Frick checking out the new surroundings, Frack insulting trees.

“Possibly. Come on inside.”

“Presumably there’s no one home right now?” I asked, as she unlocked the front door, barged right in, and started turning on lights. I half-expected a sleepy DEA agent to come stumbling out, gun in hand. There was a single large room, a small loft, and a kitchen-dining room combination occupying the left back corner. There was a bunkroom and a bath in the opposite back corner. A table was set up next to the fireplace, which was covered with wireless communications gear, cell phone chargers, and a desktop PC.

“There are basic provisions in the cupboards,” she said, “and I’ll bring you some fresh stuff once the stores open. But for right now, you’re legally on a federal reservation.”

“And theoretically, county cops have no jurisdiction here.”

“Unless the Park Service accommodates them, which it won’t once I get to someone at their district HQ over in Gatlinburg. You are going to play ball, right?”

“Only if you were serious about the decoder ring,” I said, and she grinned. We both knew that, at the moment anyway, I had little choice but to take their deal.

“Great,” she said. “Why don’t you make us some coffee, and I’ll explain what we need from you.”

She went back out to her car to get her briefcase while I loaded a Mr. Coffee machine I found on the kitchen counter. Carrie came back in and produced a contract and some credentials she had had made up identifying me as an authorized operational consultant for the North Carolina SBI. Over coffee she explained what the SBI wanted me to do.

“We’d like you to go back into Robbins County, on foot, and do a few days’ worth of physical reconnaissance.”

“The Creigh place again?”

“No,” she said. “The hollows around the Creigh place. There are several smaller communities up there-cabins, trailers, even some substantial homes, within five miles of the Creigh place. Some of those people have to be working for them, but there are other people up there who have nothing to do with the Creighs. Retirees on government or coalfield pensions, tenth-generation welfare rednecks composting in their trailers, good old boys with hunting pens.”

“And bad guys, too.”

“Oh, yes: the bootleggers, marijuana farmers, psycho-mushroom pickers, and, of course, the meth mechanics.”

“You guys have a database for the area?”

“ATF does, but they know it’s woefully deficient. Every time feds go up there, Robbins County deputies go along and, they suspect, call ahead. Everyone of interest just clams up. The regular citizens either don’t know or are afraid to run their mouths, and sometimes they’re just loyal to their hills and hollows and won’t talk to outsiders, period. DEA has had the same experience, and the Bureau has flat given up.”

“What makes you think I won’t get the same treatment?”

“Outside law has always come in crowds; we are going to be a couple of hikers.”

I put down my coffee mug. “We?”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” she asked brightly. “I’m coming along.” She started laughing when she saw the expression on my face.

“Oka-a-ay,” I said. “But now you have to tell me what this is really all about, because it’s obviously bigger than drugs.”

“I have a better idea,” she said. “We’ll go up there and look around. After a few days, we’ll back out, and then I think you’ll be able to tell me what this is all about. That way I won’t taint your conclusions.”

“We’re just going to walk the hills and dales, go knocking on people’s doors, talk nice to the moonshiners when we stumble on their stills, evade any of Mingo’s deputies who happen to live out there in some of these houses, and keep telling ourselves that Grinny Creigh won’t find out we’re up there?”