Reichs, Kathy - Fatal Voyage

“The viewer is in the overflow room, beside the genealogy section. You may only have one box at a time.”

“Thank you.”

Mrs. Librarian opened one of two metal cabinets behind the counter and withdrew a small gray box. “I'd better explain the machine.”

“Please, you mustn't bother. I'll be fine. I'm familiar with micro-film viewers.”

I read her expression as she handed me the microfilm. A civilian loose in the stacks. It was her worst nightmare.

Settling at the machine, I checked the box's label: 1931–1937.

An image of Primrose flashed into my mind, and tears blurred my vision.

Stop. No grieving.

But why was I here? What was my objective? Did I have one, or was I merely hiding out?

No. I had a goal.

I was still convinced that the courtyard property lay at the center of my problems, and wanted to learn more about who had been associated with it. Arthur had told me he'd sold his land to one Prentice Dashwood. But beyond that, and the names on McMahon's fax, I was unsure what I was looking for.

In truth, I held little hope of finding anything helpful but had run out of ideas. And I had to do something about the charges against me. I couldn't return to Charlotte until my car was repaired, and I was barred from any other form of inquiry. What the hell. History should teach something.

A poster had decorated Pete's office during his stint in uniform, guiding words embraced by JAG attorneys uncommitted to the military system: Indecision Is the Key to Flexibility.

If the maxim was good enough for officer-lawyers of the United States Marine Corps, it seemed good enough for me. I'd look for everything.

I inserted the film and wound it through the viewer. The machine was a hand-crank model, probably manufactured before the Wright brothers went flying at Kitty Hawk. Text and pictures swam in and out of focus. Within minutes I felt a headache begin to organize.

I flicked through spool after spool, making trip after trip to the front desk. By the late 1940s, Mrs. Librarian relented and allowed me a half dozen boxes at a time.

I skimmed over charity events, car washes, church socials, and local dramas. The crime was mostly petty, involving traffic offenses, drunk and disorderly, missing property, and vandalism. Births, deaths, and weddings were announced, garage and barn sales advertised.

The war had claimed a large number from Swain County. From '42 to '45 the pages were filled with their names and photos. Each death was a feature story.

Some citizens did manage to die in their beds. In December of 1943, the passing of Henry Arlen Preston was front-page news. Preston had been a lifelong resident of Swain County, an attorney, a judge, and part-time journalist. His career was recounted in radiant detail, the highlights being a term in Raleigh as a state senator, and the publication of a two-volume work on the birds of western North Carolina. Preston died at the age of eighty-nine, leaving behind a widow, four children, fourteen grandchildren, and twenty-three great-grandchildren.

The week following Preston's death, the Times reported the disappearance of Tucker Adams. Two column inches on page six. No photo.

The obscure little notice touched something in me. Had Adams enlisted secretly, then died overseas as one of our many unknowns? Had he returned, surprised his neighbors with tales of Italy or France, then gone on to live his life? Had he fallen from a cliff? Run off to Hollywood? Though I searched for a follow-up, nothing more on Adams's disappearance was reported.

The rugged terrain had also claimed its victims. In 1939 a woman named Hilda Miner left home to deliver a strawberry pie to her granddaughter. She never arrived, and the pie tin was discovered beside the swollen Tuckasegee River. Hilda was presumed drowned, though her body was not located. A decade later the same waters took Dr. Sheldon Brodie, a biologist at Appalachian State University. A day after the professor's body washed up, Edna Farrell was thought to have fallen into the river. Like Miner, Farrell's remains were never found.

I leaned back and rubbed my eyes. What had the old man said about Farrell? They should have done better by her. Who were “they”? Done better in what way? Was he referring to the fact that Farrell's body wasn't recovered? Or was he unhappy with the quality of Thaddeus Bowman's memorial service?

In 1959 the fauna claimed a seventy-four-year-old Cherokee named Charlie Wayne Tramper. Two weeks after his disappearance, Charlie Wayne's rifle turned up in a remote valley on the reservation. Bear tracks and spoor suggested the cause of death. The old man was buried with full tribal ceremony.

I'd worked on victims of bear attacks, and knew what had remained of Charlie Wayne. I shook the image from my mind.

The list of environmental hazards courtesy of Mother Nature went on. In 1972 a four-year-old girl wandered from a campground in Maggie Valley. The little body was dragged from a lake the following day. The next winter two cross-country skiers froze to death when caught in a sudden blizzard. In 1986 an apple farmer named Albert Odell went searching for morels and never returned.

I found no reference to Prentice Dashwood, to the Arthur property, or to the officers of the H&F Investment Group. The closest I came was a May 1959 spread on a fiery crash on Highway 19. Six hurt, four killed. Pictures showed tangled wreckage. Dr. Anthony Allen Birkby, sixty-eight, from Cullowhee, died three days later of multiple injuries. I took note. Though the name was not uncommon, one C. A. Birkby was listed on McMahon's fax.

By noon, my head pulsed and my blood sugar had dropped to a level incapable of sustaining life. I slipped a granola bar from my purse, did a stealthy peel, and munched quietly as I cranked my zillionth spool through the viewer.

Issues from recent years were not yet on microfilm, and by midafternoon I was able to switch to hard copy. But the headache had already escalated from a minor disturbance to major pain that swirled across my frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes and pulsed at an epicenter behind my right eye.

Final stretch. The tough get going. Bring it home. Remember the Gipper.

Shit.

I was flipping through papers from the current year, scanning headlines and photographs, when a name caught my eye. George Adair. The missing fisherman.

The coverage of Adair's disappearance was detailed, giving the exact time and place of the fatal fishing trip, a description of the victim, and an itemized account of what he was wearing, right down to his high school ring and St. Blaise medal.

Another childhood flashback. The parish priest. The blessing of throats on St. Blaise Day. What was the story? Blaise was reputed to have saved a child from choking on a fish bone. The medal made sense. Crowe said Adair complained of throat problems.

Adair's companion was interviewed, as were his wife, friends, former employer, and priest. A grainy picture was printed beside the story, the pendant clearly visible around his neck.

Who was Crowe's other missing person? I searched my pounding brain. Jeremiah Mitchell. February. I moved back almost eight months and began a more careful perusal. Small things began to connect.

Jeremiah Mitchell's disappearance was reported in one short paragraph. On February 15 a seventy-two-year-old black male left the Mighty High Tap and walked into oblivion. Anyone having information blah, blah, blah.

Old ways die hard, I thought, feeling a prickle of anger. White man goes missing: feature story. Black man goes missing: blurb on page seventeen. Or maybe it was station in life. George Adair had a job, friends, family. Jeremiah Mitchell was an unemployed alcoholic who lived alone.

But Mitchell had once had kin. A follow-up appeared in early March, again a single paragraph, seeking information and citing the name of his maternal grandmother, Martha Rose Gist. I stared. How far back had I seen that name?