P Deutermann - Spider mountain

“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.”

We got to the front porch about the time Laurie May found her box of shells. I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed at not getting to fire the shotgun or if she just hadn’t had her coffee yet. She peered at us carefully through the cracked front door and then nodded. I think she recognized the shepherds and then us, in that order.

“I knowed someone was down there,” she said. “Didn’t see them dogs, or I’d’a knowed it was you two. Come on in. I got me some coffee makin’.”

Carrie thanked her and we went in. I told the shepherds to stay on the front porch and to leave the chickens alone. They were visibly disappointed. Chickens could be real fun.

“Saw ’em cop cars a-flashin’ on the river road early this mornin’,” Laurie May announced from the kitchen. The cabin smelled of well-done coffee and wood smoke. The aroma could have been coming entirely from the coffee, too. “Was that somethin’ to do with you-all?”

“Yes, unfortunately, it was,” Carrie said. “M. C. Mingo and his crowd are looking for us.”

“What’d y’all do now?” she asked, bringing two mugs of coffee out to the table.

“Came into Robbins County and asked too many questions,” I said. “Went some places we weren’t supposed to. He surrounded us down on Crown Lake and put me in jail.” I told her what had happened after that. Carrie’s eyebrows rose when I described meeting Ace.

Laurie May was studying my face intently. “You don’t look like no outlaw to me,” she said. “Are ye?”

“I’m a retired deputy sheriff, from back east in Manceford County,” I told her. “Apparently M. C. Mingo doesn’t care for outsiders poking around in Robbins County.”

“Laurie May?” Carrie said. “As I told you, I’m a police officer, too. Why don’t you sit down and let me tell you a story.”

When she’d finished, the old lady nodded. “It figgers,” she said. “Folks is always talkin’ about runaways and such. Grinny Creigh’s mean enough, too. But what about them mothers? What’s God gonna do to a mother, sells her own child?”

“Burn her in hell until the end of time,” Carrie said simply, and Laurie May was one hundred percent on board with that solution.

“I’ve been talking to some people in Washington,” Carrie said. “There’s a federal task force looking into child-trafficking rings. There’s word that a ‘shipment’ is expected soon from this part of the state. We need to find them, and stop this mess.”

“Where you gonna look?” Laurie May asked.

“We have no idea,” Carrie said, looking across the table at me. Pile on, she was saying.

“I saw Sheriff Mingo bring a little girl to Grinny’s cabin,” I told Laurie May. “She stood there and yelled at her for a minute. Then she grabbed her and smothered her until she was unconscious. Then Mingo took her away.”

Laurie May was shocked by this, but then a flinty expression settled on her face. “Don’t surprise me too much,” she said. “That son of hers, that Nathan? Folks say he killed a boy at school for laughin’ and makin’ fun of how he looked. Stabbed him through the mouth with one of them long knives he’s got, folks say. Throwed the body in a cave. Ain’t nobody ever seen him again. There’s murder in them Creighs for sure. You say Mingo’s lookin’ for ye right now?”