P Deutermann - Spider mountain

She smiled. It did wonders for her face, but it wasn’t the dazzling, sunny smile I remembered from when I’d first met her. “I came back to work after a month’s leave. Told my boss everything. Big mistake. They wanted to transfer me out west, or to Washington headquarters. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the Smokies.”

“So then they, what-put you in a cocoon?”

“Exactly. I was having trouble sleeping, so they sent me to a counselor. He fell in love, or at least lust, and I had to disentangle myself from that mess. If I wanted to go out to the backcountry they always sent someone along. That screwed up the duty rotation, had people standing extra duty. I thought about quitting, but what else would I do? I had no idea.”

“I know the feeling,” I said. “I was a cop. That’s a job that defines you in today’s society. Now I’m supposed to be some kind of private eye and I feel a little ridiculous most of the time. Plus, everyone knows I don’t have to work anymore.”

“So the big bucks came to pass, then?”

“Boy, did they ever. Even after taxes and grasping lawyers, it was a hell of a lot of money. You eaten?”

She shook her head. “I typically have a late lunch and leave it at that.”

I talked her into dessert and coffee, and we talked about the past two years. She had written me a letter after the dust settled that seemed to invite a relationship, but it hadn’t panned out. I’d been too busy reestablishing my identity to get away from Triboro, and she had become increasingly reclusive. I asked her why she really wanted me to look into the Janey Howard incident.

“It’s become a political football,” she said. “The incident involved two counties and the national park, and no one wants to own it. Meanwhile Janey is a whimpering wreck over in Murphy, and, of course, she’s provided zero useful information. Her parents finally got disgusted and told everyone to go away. She was my newbie, and I feel responsible.”

“What’d the investigation reveal?”

“Not much. We found her Jeep and tracked around the lake with dogs, but it had rained and they got nowhere.”

“What kind of dogs?”

“Labs, as I remember.”

I snorted; I despised Labs. Blockheaded, passive-aggressive lumps, every one.

“Anyway, she was found some miles away from the lake, so she may have been abducted, taken somewhere, and then assaulted.”

“And she’s said nothing?”

“One of the EMTs reported she said two words on the way to the hospital-‘hangman’ and ‘grinning.’”

I sighed. “Not much. Almost sounds like that tarot stuff.”

She touched my hand. “You can forget the whole thing if you’d like to,” she said. “At least three authorities did look and came up with zero. I’ve no right to impose on you this way.”

At that moment she looked over my shoulder and withdrew her hand. I turned to see the young ranger who had been so unfriendly earlier come in and give Mary Ellen a disapproving look as he went into the bar. “Oh-oh,” I said. “You’ve been spotted consorting with the devil.”

“They’re just being protective, Cam,” she said.

“Well, let’s face it, Mary Ellen-last time I came out to these parts two people died and you were taken hostage. I guess I can see their point.”

“That case was very different,” she said. “This was just a straightforward assault.”

Ain’t no such thing, I thought. Especially up here in the western Carolina mountains.

The next morning I called on the sheriff of Carrigan County, William Hayes, whom I’d met before. He’d been sheriff for a while and looked it. Sixty-something, gray hair, politician-cop face with paternalistic eyes. I explained over coffee why I’d come up to his neck of the woods, trying to cast my mission more in terms of doing Mary Ellen Goode a favor than of actually hoping to solve a case that, presumably, the sheriff and his people had already taken a good swing at. The sheriff was not fooled for a moment.

“Last time you came around, you cut quite a swath,” Hayes said. “Mountain lions, dead guys. You still got those two shepherds?”

“Out in the car as we speak,” I said. “Bobby Lee Baggett ever give you the whole story about all that?”

“Enough to know I didn’t want any of that Triboro shit up here,” the sheriff said.

“It was a lot bigger than Triboro,” I said. “Tell me: What do I need to know about Robbins County?”

“Two words-stay the hell out of there.”

“Two words?” I asked.

“ ‘Stay’ and ‘out’ are the operative ones. Sheriff M. C. Mingo is the law over there. He takes the notion of territory serious-like. You know their motto?”

“I’ve heard it,” I said.

“Well, in Robbins County, everything is M. C.’s business, if he says so.”

“Mary Ellen said they weren’t cooperative in the Howard investigation.”

The sheriff snorted. “Master of understatement, that woman,” he said. “M. C. flat declared that it didn’t go down in Robbins County, ‘cause if it had, he’d have known about it and he would have shot the bastards responsible, most likely for resisting arrest.”

“Resistance is good,” I said. “But, bottom line, if it did happen in Robbins County, that answer cuts both ways.”

Hayes nodded. “Not much I can do about what goes on over there. Our cooperation is limited to notifying M. C.’s office that there might be a mutual problem. We get an official acknowledgment, and then, if M. C. sees fit, what usually happens is that some battered hillbilly appears out on the county line road just dying to jump into the back of one my cruisers and confess to any damn thing at all. You know about the Creighs?”

“The Indian tribe? Cree?”

“Nope, the Creighs.” He spelled the name. “They just pronounce it that way. They’re the clan in Robbins County. Run by an old woman lives up on the side of a mountain. It’s got one name on the maps, but everyone in Robbins County calls it Spider Mountain. Guess why?”

“Lovely,” I said.

The sheriff grunted. “I’ve never seen her. Not many folks have, apparently. There’s not too many ways you can make a living in Robbins County other than tourism, and the Creighs tend to scare off the flatlanders. So lots of the folks up there subsist on welfare and supplement their existence by running ‘shine, weed, meth, mushrooms, and any other damned thing they can grow, dig up, boil down, or sell in the dead of night. And this Grinny Creigh is supposedly at the center of that web.”

“Grinny?”

“As in the way a hungry witch grins at a fat little child who blunders into her cauldron room asking about lunch. Her real name’s Vivian.”

“So why don’t the state guys or the feds take her out?”

He sighed. I realized he looked a good deal older than the last time I’d seen him. Older and a bit preoccupied.

“It would take an army to root those people out,” he said. “The bad ones, I mean. Robbins County is all up and down, and mostly empty wilderness designated as state game lands. The Creighs and their like have been at this kind of stuff for over two hundred years. Block the roads, they run the rivers. Block the rivers, they’ll hump it out on mules. Some Bureau types went in there back when they were hunting Eric Rudolph. Had to be rescued from an abandoned gold mine shaft. Said they had no idea how they got down there.”

“And this Sheriff Mingo protects them?”

The sheriff leaned back and hitched up his trousers. “Well, that’s a little blunt, maybe. The way I see it, he’s riding herd on a wolf pack. He offers up a sacrificial lamb just often enough to keep the SBI from coming in force. It ain’t like he’s a regular at the annual Carolina sheriffs’ convention, so not many people outside Robbins County know him.”