Rattleman

by

George D. Shuman

ISBN              1484036085

EAN              978-1484036082

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

‘Rattleman’ is published by George D. Shuman

http://www.georgedshuman.com

‘Rattleman’ is the copyright of the author, George D. Shuman, 2012. All rights are reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters in the novel are fictional. Any similarity to anyone, living or dead, is coincidental.

George D. Shuman can be contacted via his website at:

http://georgedshuman.com

As always to my children, Melissa and Daniel

I was born in the Appalachian extension of the Allegheny Mountains in Southern Pennsylvania. My parents had a weekend cabin on the Pleasantville Mountain and I remember meeting, as a teenager, a local walking through the woods wearing an old revolver on his hip and carrying a gunnysack. He told me he was picking Ginseng.

In 1964 a young girl, Peggy Anne Bradnick, was kidnapped near Shady Gap, Pennsylvania, two counties east of us, by a man who dragged her away from her siblings while she was walking home from a school bus stop and pulled her into the woods.

The man who kidnapped Peggy Anne Bradnick turned out to be William Diller Hollenbaugh, AKA ‘Bicycle Pete’ or ‘Mountain Man’, as he was known in this rural mountainous area of southwest Pennsylvania. Hollenbaugh had been sentenced to twenty years for burglary in 1939 and served his time between prison and mental institutions. Upon release he committed local burglaries and shot and wounded two farmers in the days leading up to the kidnapping.

For the next seven days Hollenbaugh would chain Peggy to a tree and hide her in a cave in the mountains.

The story of Bicycle Pete and Peggy Anne Bradnick became a national affair, even by the news standard of 1964. My father had a business partner and good family friend who owned a summer cabin at the foot of the mountains near Shade Gap. I begged my father to let me take time out of school so we could go there (as we had many times before) and get us up close to all the action. My father considered it for a while, but then said no. I think it was my mother that pulled the plug.

Hollenbaugh would eventually shoot and kill an FBI agent, then break into a summer cabin and shoot and wound a Sheriff’s Deputy named Sharpe. It was the very same summer cabin I had hoped we would be staying in.

Hollenbaugh forced the gunshot Deputy to drive him and his hostage Peggy Anne out of the property, but there was a gate at the entrance of the lane to the cabin, and when Sharpe got out to open it, he bolted and alerted nearby troopers that Hollenbaugh and Peggy Anne Bradnick were in the vehicle.

Hollengbaugh grabbed the girl and escaped to yet another farm on foot and it was there that he was fatally shot by a Pennsylvania State Trooper.

Undoubtedly these childhood memories and stories were influential when more than two decades later I undertook to write ‘Rattleman’.

George D. Shuman.

Chapter 1

Iron Mountain, West Virginia

March

Everywhere the Sheriff looked there was water. Water dripping, water gurgling, water trickling down the hillsides. It melted from the snow-covered rocks and ice-covered trees, from power lines and rooftops creating fissures beneath the packed snow. It gouged ruts through muddy roads, feeding brooks and creeks that formed gravity powered streams, plunging off the mountain to Silver River nearly four thousand feet below.

The Sheriff sat in his Jeep, defroster on high, blowing warm breath into numb hands, ears prickling as if stuck with a thousand pins. Watching the road behind in the side mirror, he tugged wet socks from his feet and laid them over the vents on the dash. The windows were fogged and he wiped them with his elbow.

Spring had come early to Kettle Hollow.

The radio crackled.

“331 … are you there?”

Martin reached for the microphone and keyed it, interrupting the static. “331 go. Where’s the crime lab, Sam?”

“… accident … Dilley’s … noon … Douglas … to raise you.”

“I copy the crime lab for noon? Tell Chief Douglas I’ll call him tonight.”

He tossed the microphone on the dash and massaged his feet with cold hands. He sneezed on the sleeve of his jacket and rummaged through the glove box for a bottle of aspirin, shook a few into his hand and chewed them dry.

Kettle Hollow had once been a summer hunting camp for the Cherokee Indians. Then fur trappers muscled in, supplying London with America’s first great commodity. When the beavers were all decimated the loggers came for timber, and when the timber was all felled they bored holes into the earth to plunder coal. When the coal was all gone the survivors were left to farm the piteous soil, so they grew corn and potatoes and made moonshine for a living. They had become, by majority, a community of de facto outlaws.

Winters were especially hard in Kettle Hollow, snow cutting the mountain off from civilization for weeks at a time. If someone died in the interim, they were packed on a rooftop to keep the animals from getting to them. Which was probably what Buc Thompson was thinking when he brought the lady’s head down from Lake Nawakwa.

From his rear view mirror Martin Wayne squinted at the growing cloud of exhaust. The thermometer was rising fast and a thick ground fog was forming over the warming snow. On a hillside he could see the top half of a cow, the bottom shrouded by mist. An old woman walked past the Jeep carrying a bundle of wood; a man wearing a sack for a hat stopped to peek through the passenger side window. People stood in open doorways scratching fleas and puffing on cigarettes. Then there was movement in the mirror and a vehicle appeared, a dark Chevrolet Suburban with a light bar on the roof. Martin grabbed the damp socks from the dash and began to stretch them over his feet.

The driver was Kirsten Berkley, not only a pretty brunette but a state police corporal and senior forensic technician. She opened the window and banged a radio microphone against the side of the vehicle. “How in the hell do you talk to anyone up here? Isn’t this still part of America?”

Martin jerked his head toward the shanties. “Go ask someone who the President is.”

She tossed the mike on the seat, nodding at the man sitting next to her. “Marty, this is Jeff Wittis. Jeff’s a Bluefield boy, former Jug-head like you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Or was that jar-head? I get confused.” She leaned back in her seat. “Jeff, this is Sheriff Wayne.”

Marty leaned over to look at the young man. He wore a blue jumpsuit with the insignia of the West Virginia State Police. He smiled. “No such thing as a former,” he said, reaching past Kirsten to shake the man’s hand.

She was wearing perfume, something intoxicatingly familiar. It was impossible to avoid looking at the open second button on her blouse.

The rookie smiled back.

“Hoo-ugh,” Kirsten said dryly.

Kirsten Berkley was assigned to K Troop out of Pocahontas County. She was also the daughter of Superior Court Judge Adam Berkley, who presided over Superior Court in Marion, West Virginia.

She unfastened her shoulder harness and let it snap away. “So what have you got here, anyhow?”

“Jane Doe,” Marty said, pointing to the top of a building. “At least the head part of her.”

Kirsten closed her eyes then opened them quickly and made a smiley face at her partner. “That girl is just everywhere,” she said, bobbing her head back and forth Valley-Girl-style. “And now she’s lost her head.”

She opened the door. “Why don’t you introduce us?”

Marty led them to a woodshed behind an old smokehouse. All traces of wood had long since been removed and the small enclosure was covered with snow, trampled by muddy boots and large paw prints. He nodded toward a ladder that looked less sturdy than the wall.

“I left her like I found her, Kirsten.”

The trooper wrinkled her nose and stepped across a pile of dog shit, climbed the ladder to the roof and bent over until the upper half of her body was out of sight. “How long has she been up here?”

“About nine hours,” Marty said.

“Looks like something from Creature Feature.” She put her hand behind her back and wiggled it. “Jeff, grab the bag with the yellow tag out of the truck.”

The young man took off for the Suburban.

“Farmer got pulled under the wheel of his tractor down in Dilley’s Mill,” she said. “The family was all in the field by the time we arrived. Cousins and little kiddies standing knee high in the snow, dead body under the tire, parents letting them hang out like they were at a circus. Why do they do that?”

Marty shrugged.

“So the boy that found her. Sam said he was ice fishing?”

“Yep,” Marty said. “Saw her head caught in the flow along the shoreline. He had to break the ice away to remove it from the lake. Brought her here and put her on the roof so the dogs wouldn’t get to her.”

She looked over the edge at another pile of dog shit then went back to what she was doing. “Pretty smart, I’d say. She’s in relatively good shape. You were up there yourself?”

He nodded. “About two hours ago. I staked the hole where he found her and shot a dozen pictures around the shoreline. If my shoe size is sufficiently calibrated for your reports, you won’t have to slog a mile with your measuring tape.”

Kirsten lifted a boot. “These little piggy’s are just fine with the size of your little piggy’s. In fact, you can’t imagine how thankful they are.” She glanced down to make sure her partner hadn’t returned. “You know, we should get them together some time.”

Marty lifted his eyebrows.

“He never saw the rest of her body?”

“Nope,” Marty said, “but she could easily have been under there. Ice is a foot thick and piling up along the shore. Slabs as big as a refrigerator door.”

Kirsten nodded and leaned close until her face was almost touching the woman’s head. “Ice expands with literally tons of pressure. Easy to separate a head from the body if it gets wedged in between.”

She tugged out a pair of surgical gloves and snapped them over her wrists.  “If she was caught in the ice she must have been in the lake before the water froze. Sometime early December I would think.”

Marty nodded and sneezed.

“God bless you,” she said. “I can tell you she’s not a local.” Kirsten lifted the ear lobes with her finger. “Five piercings in each. Hair cut too short and spiky and color came out of a bottle.” She turned the head sideways and put her flashlight on the mouth. “Cuts around the lips and gums. Nice set of teeth. There’ll be dental records if she was ever ID’d.”

Kirsten straightened up and played the flashlight down on Marty’s face.

“So when were you planning on calling me?”

Marty put a hand up, squinting to block the light. “Did I say I was going to call you?”

“Last month.”

“Refresh my memory.” His eyes strayed to the back of her jumpsuit. Kirsten was all woman – uniform or no.

“Almost Heaven, end of the bar, around midnight. I think there were at least a dozen witnesses.”

“Drunksies don’t count, Kirs. And besides, you’re still married.” His eyes went to her wedding ring and he nodded toward it.

“Oh, Marty. It comes off like everything else.” She used her free hand to unzip her jacket.

“See?” She zipped it back up. “Besides, how will I know if I want to leave my husband if I don’t sleep with you first?”

He laughed. “You’ve been sniffing too much formaldehyde, Kirs.”

The rookie Wittis returned just then, gingerly climbing the ladder until he could reach her hand to transfer the bag.

She removed a camera from it and strapped it over her neck. Then she took another and twisted off the lens cap.

“Marty’s father,” she called down to the rookie, “was a cross between a cowboy and the last of the Mohicans. He could travel at night dead reckoning. No moon, no stars, no compass.”

She blew warm breath into her hands to limber up the fingers.

“Ever hear of Calvin Wynn Wayne?”

The rookie shook his head.

“Only the most famous lawman east of the Mississippi.” She put the lens cap between her teeth and fired off a volley of still shots. “All the sports magazines featured him in the sixties and seventies,” she said out of the side of her mouth, lens cap still clenched between her teeth. “Shot and killed a fugitive here in 1967.” She switched cameras and took a few pictures straight down at the head. “Just up the road past the general store, isn’t that right, Marty? Of course, there wasn’t a real road back then. Calvin had to come up on horseback, shoot the guy and then lash him to the saddle to take him back down. It took him all night, but the next morning he walked his horse up Main Street in Marion while the churches were letting out Easter morning. Can you picture all those little darlings in their white gloves and bonnets?” She spit the lens cap back into her hand. “Reins in one hand, dead man over the saddle, big black hole in his back where the bullet came out.” She shuddered, faking an orgasm. “Now that’s when cops had balls.”

Wittis raised an eyebrow at Marty, who only shrugged.

“Reporters just happened to be in town to write a piece on the hundredth anniversary of the coal mine massacres.” She lowered the large camera and the bag to Wittis. “Wait for me at the bottom,” she told him, pointing to where she wanted him to stand.

Wittis backed down the last two rungs while she finished taking pictures. Then she tucked the smaller camera into a thigh pocket and picked up the woman’s head in her gloved hands.

“A cameraman snapped a shot of Calvin tying his horse to a parking meter. It made the cover of TIME Magazine. Put a sheet of plastic down there, Jeff.” She nodded toward a spot the dogs hadn’t stepped on, looked over at Marty and said, “You don’t mind if I share your family history, do you? Mine’s not nearly as interesting.”

Not waiting for his reply, she started carefully down the ladder with the head in both hands. “Anyhow, Calvin Wayne’s best friend was a full-blooded Cherokee. Toby’s still living up on Emmett’s Fork by you. Ain’t that right, Marty?”

Marty sighed.

Kirsten set foot on the ground and laid the head on the plastic sheet between the men. “So you see he was raised half cowboy and half Indian. Best of both worlds, huh?”

Marty looked apologetically at the rookie.

Kirsten was crouched over the woman’s head. “So she’s obviously been preserved by the cold.” She pressed a finger against the woman’s neck and the skin moved under her glove. “Eyelids are torn here. See those cuts on the lips I been talking about? One, two … third one here.”

“Fish?” Marty noticed that the rookie Wittis was trying to busy himself with the equipment instead of looking at the head.

Kirsten shrugged. “I don’t think so. Lines look too clean to be bites.” She leaned close to the face and shook her head. “Once again, I’m going with sharp ice. Jeff, how about bagging her up for me.” She came to her feet and peeled off the gloves.

The rookie gathered the cameras and headed back to the Suburban. Marty thought the young man was looking less well by the minute.

“Shall we call it … undetermined?” Marty asked.

Kirsten nodded, reaching into her jumpsuit for a notebook. “Yeah, I’ll get her under some lights tonight and we’ll send her off to the lab in Charleston. Are you coming over for the second half of my show?”

Marty shook his head. “Have to catch the rerun, Kirs. I’m in court with your father in the morning.”

“Then how about tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“When you buy me a beer for all the fine work I did.”

Marty smiled. “Kirsten, you really need to remember the last time we had a beer.”

She tried to look innocent, which was wholly ridiculous on Kirsten. “What?”

“We made damn fools of ourselves, is what.”

“Oh, Marty. No one cares what we were doing.”

The rookie came back wearing heavy rubber gloves. He was carrying a seven-foot body bag.

“This?” he asked doubtfully.

Kirsten nodded.

He looked at both of them, then put the head in the bag and rolled up the remaining ends. Afterward he headed back to the Suburban.

“And they were just jealous,” Kirsten said. “If you hadn’t been so sappy over Sarah, you might have gotten lucky in the parking lot.” She ran her tongue over her lips.

Marty laughed and started for the Jeep, but Kirsten ran to catch up with him. By the time he reached the running board, she was at his shoulder and this time the smell of her perfume made him sad.

“Of course, we could skip the beers and just go straight to your place, Marty.”

Marty put his back to the door and sighed. “Kirsten, we are not going to go anywhere together. Not as long as you’re married. Got it?”

“Seriously, Marty,” she put her hands together. “Things haven’t been that great between Rick and me. We’ve been having problems.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said earnestly, “really I am, but the answer is still no. Not in this town,” he lifted her hand, “and not while this is on your finger.”

“Your problem isn’t that I’m married.” She drew her hand away. “Your problem is Sarah. You’re hoping she’ll come back and you don’t want anything to spoil it in case she does. You’re living in a dream world, Marty. You know that?”

She began to walk away.

“You’re not even close, Kirsten,” Marty yelled.

“Bullshit.” She swung round and stood glaring at him. “You think Sarah will get tired of the big city and come crawling back and you’ll both live happily ever after. Well, I’ve got news for you. Sarah isn’t interested in small pond fish anymore. Sarah’s landed a much bigger trophy than you.”

She turned and strutted toward the Suburban, stopping halfway to look over her shoulder, her voice suddenly silky. “I’m on evenings next week. Call me. I’ll slip out early.”

“Jesus,” he said, pounding his fist on the cab. “Just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?” He took a few steps toward her, not caring that her partner was staring at them wide-eyed from the Suburban.

“Just what I said.” She turned to face him. “I’ll meet you after work at your place.”

“About Sarah,” he shouted.

Kirsten groaned and turned to look at him again. “I saw her at the Holiday Inn last week at Vickie Patterson’s wedding. I was taking pictures.”

“Sarah?” he said skeptically. “Here in Marion?”

“She was with State Representative Stanton.” Kirsten put her hands on her hips. “You know, he’s a real handsome guy. Didn’t she intern with him after grad school?”

Marty looked at her, unable to speak.

“Give me a call, Marty. It’ll be fun.” She winked and turned for the car.

He stood there in the snow, staring at her as she got in the Suburban, managed a U-turn and started back down the mountain. He tried to recall any conversations he’d had with Sarah about her internship at the state capital, but nothing came to mind. Not that it would; Marty was a lot like his father in that way: blind to the details going on around him in life. So blind he had come home one evening to find his engagement ring on the kitchen counter and all Sarah’s things gone from the closets.

Marty spun round and kicked a chunk of ice that struck high on the wall of the woodshed, sending a cat yowling into the eaves. Then he started up the sidewalk, taking deep breaths and thinking it might after all be a good night for a beer.

The door to the general store was swollen shut and he had to shoulder it open. Smoke was seeping from the seams of a blistering woodstove and it burned his eyes when he entered.

“Got any chewing gum, Hattie?” He pulled off his gloves, stamping his boots on a pile of flattened cardboard. An old woman was stocking shelves behind the counter.

“I’ve got Teaberry and Juicyfruit,” she said. “Which will it be?”

“Juicyfruit.” He fished out a dollar bill and sat on a crude wooden bench.

“They’re not old,” she said, “just brittle from the cold.”

He grunted.

“So how was your climb to the lake?”

“Wet,” he told her, unwrapping a stick of gum that he pushed into his mouth. “What do you think about the head that Buc found?”

“Not exactly friendly country up there.” She nodded in the direction of the mountaintop. “Not for city people anyhow.”

“Who said she was from the city?”

“I saw the girl’s hair,” she said. “Everyone did.”

“You think it was an accident?”

“She wouldn’t be the first or last to get lost in the Appalachians. I say a prayer every time one of them hikers goes by. They don’t like to follow the trails anymore. Not exciting enough. They want to pit themselves against nature. Act like them survivalists on television.”

Marty looked at her, wondering what television she was talking about. There wasn’t a television within ten miles of Kettle Hollow.

“What people, Hattie?” He made a face.

“You know. Survivalist people. They go out in the middle of nowhere and see who can outlast the other.”

Marty squinted at her.

He considered the possibility of someone hiking to the lake and drowning. There were thousands of people on the Appalachian Trail each year and it was easy enough for them to see the Iron’s summit looming to their west; conceivable that someone might leave the well-marked trails if they were curious enough to climb it.

Iron Mountain was not named for any mineral deposits, but for its physical resemblance to a flat iron. The western face was a sheer wall of stone that climbed to four thousand, seven hundred feet. The north, which was pretty jagged, dropped vertically to the Silver River gorge. To the south the mountain was a virtual boulder field that descended to the Monongahela National Forest.

If someone did approach on foot they would most likely come from the east. That is where the summit sloped to Lake Nawakwa and it would be one of the first things they would see. Who would dare swim in the lake he couldn’t imagine. Nawakwa was frigid mid-summer and the shallow waters were covered with dead trees. As anyone could see, it was not a lake for recreation.

“Gaudineer Mountain is just up range too,” Hattie was saying as if reading his thoughts.

“They get tourists up there by the busload to see the leaves turn each fall. Come to see the Virgin Spruce. Buy them I SLEPT WITH THE VIRGINS T-shirts from the locals. You know, they take in more money on them T-shirts than the state gives them each year in preservation funding.”

“Hattie, no offense, but where do you get all this stuff?”

“I read.” She shrugged. “You know I read.”

He shook his head, rolling the pack of gum back and forth in the palms of his hands. An image of Sarah and Representative Stanton crept into his thoughts ... Sarah interned with him the summer she graduated.

“Gaudineer is one hell of a hike from here, Hattie.”

Hattie shrugged. “Well if she wasn’t a hiker she must have come from a city and got into a bad situation and someone brought her up here and dumped her body in the lake. Would have had to have happened last fall before the lake froze over.” Hattie split a box down its spine with a buck knife and clucked with her tongue.

“But you haven’t seen any strangers up here?”

“Everyone’s a stranger.” She folded the box and dropped it on the floor.

Just then his mind wandered to something that happened last year, about a month after he had taken the job as Sheriff. A woman went jogging near Durbin, West Virginia and was never seen again.

“Got a state map, Hattie?”

She pointed with the tip of the knife. “Shelf under the cinnamon sticks.”

He laid the map out on the counter and put his finger on Durbin, forty miles from Iron Mountain by road, or closer to eight as the crow flies.

Police there had found the woman’s car parked in a lot behind the fire station the day after a Thanksgiving 10K. She and seventy other runners had come to Durbin to compete in their annual Turkey Trot benefiting the local volunteer fire department. Police would later find her purse, wallet and clothes locked in the trunk. No one could recall seeing her cross the finish line after the race.

Marty folded the map. “How’d the winter go, Hattie?”

“Kelso boys drove me crazy. I could hear them trying to break the lock off my door every couple of nights. I’d put the light on outside the trailer and they’d run off in the dark. One night I just came down here and locked myself in. Sat right there and waited in my chair with my shotgun. Once they got it open a crack I let ’em have both barrels full of rock salt. Didn’t see them for a month after that. When I did, the one looked like he had the measles.”

Marty turned to see a rough circle of holes embedded in the wooden door.

Hattie shrugged. “Other than that, it was business as usual. You want a pop?”

Marty nodded. She opened a bottle of root beer and handed it to him.

“Why are you still up here, Hattie? Winters are getting a little rougher all the time.”

She looked at him amused. “You sound just like your father, though him I should have listened to.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Back when there was still time.”

“It’s never too late to do anything, Hattie,” Marty said.

“Oh, don’t be silly, boy. Some things you’d be a fool not to accept. Acceptance is part of life too.”

“Yeah,” he said absently. “I suppose it is.” Sarah’s landed a much bigger fish than you ...

“You need anything special from town?” He took a drink from the bottle.

She shook her head. “They’ll be bringing up stock this week – if it doesn’t snow.”

“There’s none in the forecast.”

“Take some books and magazines next time you come around.”

“I’ll talk to the girls at the library,” he said.

“Don’t you have a wedding coming up?” she asked.

Marty set the bottle on the counter. “We’re not going to do that anymore.”

The old woman laid the knife on the counter, and looked at him.

Marty shrugged.

“Ah, Marty, I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “Me too, Hattie. She said she wanted to try the city for a while.”

“So did you, not too long ago.”

Marty nodded. “Yeah. Once upon a time.”

“Well, it just means God has something else in mind for you.”

He laughed. “No, God thinks I’m a cat. He likes to dangle things in front of me and then snatch them out of my reach.”

He set the root beer down and walked to the door, rubbing his hand across the pockmarks in its warn wooden surface, wondering how many kids were walking around town with rock salt in their butts.

“It just means something else is going to come along,” Hattie said. “Things work out. Just you wait and see.”

“Yeah, thanks Hattie,” he said quietly and closed the door.

By noon Marty was back in his office in the county courthouse. His first call was to the Pocahontas County Sheriff about the jogger who had gone missing in Durbin last fall. Marty had him fax a copy of the original missing persons report and a few minutes later he held it in his hand. Her name was Annie Myers and a notation under a block marked ‘jewelry’ read ‘five gold studs/each ear.’ It was hardly conclusive, but the matching holes in the ears of the victim was enough to let loose the first butterflies in his stomach.

He dialed Kirsten’s number at K Troop, but the line was busy. Then he returned the call to Chief Douglas from Quills Landing across the river.

“Douglas,” the voice growled.

“It’s Marty, Doug.”

“Heard you got some head this morning,” the Chief guffawed.

“Very funny.”

“I’m surprised those loony tunes didn’t make soup out of her. Caught a couple of my citizens boiling a baby pig in an alley one night. Liked to scare the bejeezus out of me. I was ready to shoot someone until I realized it wasn’t human.”

Marty rubbed his temple. “Sam said you called. What can I do for you, Doug?”

“Looking for some head of my own actually, except mine’s still alive and attached to two feet. She’s a red head and not the natural kind either. Looks like she did a handstand in a bucket full of Kool-Aid. She’s got a barbed wire tattoo around her neck and needles sticking out of both eyebrows. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot her over there in Mayberry.”

“What’s she wanted for?”

“For pissing me off! Girl ran out on a dope charge. Sam knows all them hopheads hang out in Marion. Tell him if he sees her to give me a call. I’ll meet him at the bridge and take her off his hands.”

“Sam’s not putting anyone in my car until I hear the words ‘probable cause’ or ‘arrest warrant’.”

Douglas belched. “You keep that probable cause shit on your side of the river, Marty. Things aren’t quite so volatile over your way.”

Marty heard a beer can snap in the background.

“What’d this girl do anyhow?” he asked, rolling a stick of gum into a ball and tucking it into his mouth.

“I arrested her around the corner from Tiny’s place on the river. Searched her pockets and found a gram of cocaine. Told her I’d flush it if she’d go back to Tiny’s and buy another with marked money.”

Marty narrowed his eyes. “Tiny’s out of prison?”

“Monday a week and they’re already lined up at his door. Don’t seem a year’s gone by, does it, Marty? Goddamned revolving doors of justice, eleven months for narcotics possession and a firearm to boot. Now does that make a bit of sense to you?”

Marty took the chewing gum out of his mouth and tossed it in the wastebasket. Feeling a stab of pain over his left eye, he began to rummage through his desk drawers for a bottle of aspirin. “They said the gun wasn’t operable. Didn’t have a firing pin.”

“Doesn’t need to function,” the Chief said. “US versus Rivera.”

Marty laughed. “I thought you didn’t care about the law, Doug?”

“Time and place for everything,” Douglas said.

“What happened to the girl?”

“I threw her dope in the storm grate and sent her back to Tiny’s. When she got around the corner she took off like a jackrabbit. I should have put the cuffs on her when I had the chance.”

“I’ll tell Sam to ask around, but if he finds her, you’re coming here to get her. She is not going into any of my cars.”

“Suit yourself,” Douglas said.

“Goodbye.” Marty replaced the receiver. He took three aspirins and tried Kirsten’s number at the forensics office again. The line was still busy so he grabbed his jacket and shut off the lights.

It was dark by the time Marty arrived at his home on Emmet’s Fork Gap. He tugged off his boots and left them by the door, dialing up the thermostat on his way to the living room. He built a fire and called forensics again, but Kirsten had gone home for the day.

A stack of bills lay on an end table; yesterday’s newspapers were strewn on the floor. He picked one up and started turning pages. A minute later he went to the kitchen and got a Coke from the refrigerator. He snapped it over the sink, staring at photos stuck to the refrigerator door. Sarah, tall and tanned in a short black dress at a friend’s wedding; Sarah wearing a green halter-top at Spruce Knob Lake; Sarah in a bikini on water skis; a yellow knit cap throwing snowballs; denim overalls in a pile of orange leaves. He reached out and gently ran his finger over them.

How long does it take, he wondered? How long before an hour could pass without thinking about her?

He tugged the photos from the refrigerator and took them with his Coke to the living room. Then he sat on the rug and stared into the flames.

He tried to recall the telephone conversations he’d had with Sarah when she was working at the state capital. He tried to remember the return addresses on letters addressed to her on the dining room table each night. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but yes she had seemed distracted by the mail. Had he really been that naive?

He wanted to lay her pictures on top of the burning embers. He wanted to watch them curl into black ash and disintegrate into smoke. But instead he laid them on the rug and put his head next to them and fell asleep, reflections of the fire flickering across the ceiling.

When he dreamed it was of a deep blue lake. Sarah was just offshore floating on her back and calling out to him to join her. He could see the sun sparkling on the water all around her. He began to take off his shoes and jeans, but then the water turned dark beneath her. Something was rising to the surface. He yelled, “Sarah!” but she couldn’t hear him and he screamed her name again, running toward the water as a great toothless creature broke the surface and with its maw gaping wide open, swallowed her whole. He saw a green-gray fin as it arced to make its dive and it was matted with weeds and old fishing line and nets. The creature plunged into the depths, leaving an oily slick on the water.

The phone rang, startling him awake.

“Yes?” he said groggily.

“The head.”

“Kirsten?” He pushed himself off the floor. The logs in the fireplace had burnt out, embers smoldering orange.

“The report on the woman missing in Durbin last year. She had five piercings in each ear.”

“Gold studs,” he said.

“You’ve read it.”

He grunted.

“There’s more,” she said. “Those cuts on her lips. I was wrong about the ice. Something sharp was inserted in her mouth. Her gums and tongue are all cut up and it looks like someone pried the fillings out of her teeth.”

Chapter 2

Blood Mountain, Georgia

April

Bands of pink and orange light stretched across the craggy bluff on Blood Mountain, Georgia, the last rays of sun setting on the hunt for thirteen-year-old Megan Lawson. It was day five of the search and authorities were beginning to lose hope.

Jane Cameron, a veteran Vogel State Park Ranger and Georgia State Search and Rescue Instructor raised her binoculars to study an aberration on the bluff, wondering if she was looking at an entrance to a cave or a trick of the diminishing light.

She removed a small camera from her backpack and took a picture. Then she checked her cellphone for a signal, found none and slipped it back into its holster. The batteries of her park service radio had expired nearly an hour before when she sent her search team down off the mountain.

She looked at her watch and then at the waning sun. Most of the others would be at the shuttle busses or the command center eating Red Cross sandwiches and waiting for the press conference that aired out of Blairsville each evening. Tonight the Lieutenant Governor would announce an end to the official search. Tomorrow morning volunteers and legions of Girl Scouts from across the country would board busses for home, leaving the park service with what would be termed as a recovery.

Cameron knew that before she decided to investigate the bluff, she should get help, but it was a forty-minute descent to the Ranger Station and by the time she assembled a team with fresh radios it would be dark; locating a man-sized opening on the side of a mountain would be improbable using artificial light.

She could also lead a team back in the morning, but temperatures were expected to plummet into the forties overnight. If Megan were still alive and on the mountain she might easily succumb to hypothermia.

Jane dropped to one knee and let the binoculars dangle around her neck. She couldn’t discount the possibility of a cave; rock formations were always changing with weather and time. But it wasn’t on any geological maps she had ever seen, and literally hundreds of people had trampled or flown over the area throughout the week. How could they all have missed it?

Yet there it was, resting on a narrow ledge that tapered its way toward the top of the bluff, and how in the world would the Girl Scout ever have found it? If Megan were already down here she would never try to ascend. Clearly the roads and parklands were below her. If she had been up there on the bluff she would have had no reason to go over the edge. You couldn’t see the cave from above, and anyway there were too many other more obvious directions to go. Which wasn’t to say she hadn’t; if Jane had learned anything in twelve years of wilderness rescue, it was that people did the unexpected.

But the hour was getting late. If she was going to investigate she needed to find a way up there and fast. The rocks tapered to forest less than a mile to the east, but getting there and back would take time and precious daylight. The alternative was to approach it head on; to climb the face of the wall without the benefit of rope and pitons.

Cameron knew the dangers of climbing alone. She had devoted an hour of every search and rescue course to the subject of ‘risk.’ When rescuers became victims they compounded the original threat. Their actions were detrimental to the people they were trying to reach and posed a threat to the safety of their coworkers as well. How many times had she driven that point home?

But the bluff was less than two miles from Flatrock Gap and the trail above the Walasi-Yi where Megan Lawson had gone missing. This cave, or whatever Jane was looking at, was well within the probable range of the search. To her, it was one of those now or never moments and one too tempting to walk away from. She began to doff her binoculars and camera and tucked them in the mesh pouch on her backpack.

Megan was last seen in a column of eleven Girl Scouts, hiking to the summit of Blood Mountain to join three other troops from the Greater Atlanta Council. She was there one minute and gone the next, according to the girl who had been walking just in front of her.

It was first assumed that she had stopped to adjust her gear, tie a shoe lace or get a drink of water and then somehow missed the trail markers in her haste to catch up with the others. But when the Troop came back to look for her, she had vanished into thin air. She neither called out for help nor responded to their repeated shouts, a fact that promptly concerned law enforcement.

Megan had been a Scout for three years and was trained to remain in one place if she ever got separated from the others. It was her scoutmaster’s opinion that she would not have wandered willingly from the trail.

The cops were thinking the same. That one of the fifteen hundred visitors who had passed through state parklands last weekend might be the reason she couldn’t be found. A woman had gone missing from a camper just two months before. Had someone been lying in wait near the trail?

Rangers spent the week sifting trash containers and dumpsters around public restrooms and campsites throughout the park. Georgia State Police amassed security videos from welcome centers, gas stations, ATM’s and every restaurant, motel and retail outlet in the area, hoping to convert license plates and credit card slips into names they could feed into the FBI’s national database for known sex offenders and pedophiles.

And then there were volunteers on ATVs, horseback and foot, civil air patrols, and for three nights a National Guard helicopter that scanned the mountains with sophisticated heat-seeking infrared lenses.

With one hand Jane shielded her eyes; the sun was teetering on the summit, large and red and easy to look upon. Soon it would slip below the horizon along with any chance to investigate. Think quickly, Jane: ten minutes to the base of the bluff and ten minutes to climb the rock wall. That would leave her with just enough daylight to explore the crevice and get safely down off the rocks.

She took a mental inventory of her belongings: pocketknife, flash light and compass in her cargo shorts. If she found the girl alive there were energy bars in her backpack along with bottled water, thermo blanket and a medical kit. They would have to weather the night or descend in the dark, but her cellphone would begin to pick up signals once she reached the service road, about thirty or forty minutes away.

She tucked the backpack into the crook of a stubby tree, pulled on fingerless gloves and started jogging toward the bluff.

The sun doused the mountainside around it in a rusty red light. The closer Jane got, the clearer the aberration became. It was nearly forty feet above the base, a small black crevice just large enough for a person to crawl in.

The climb proved more difficult than she had anticipated, boots clawing ineffectively at loose shale until she reached the wall of solid rock. It took all of the next ten minutes to scale it hand and toe, but at last she reached the ledge and mantled it with a heel hook, planting her knees firmly on the ground. And was immediately rewarded with the fetid breath of a cave.

“Jesus,” she whispered in awe. It was real.

She looked down at where she had come from and saw shadows creeping to the base of the rocks. The sky above her had dimmed to pale gray and the horizon was faintly sprinkled with stars.

“Megan,” she called out, moving closer to the opening.

“Me-gan …” her voice returned in hollow echo.

She listened, but the only sound on the ledge was the sound of breaking twigs beneath her knees. She was about to call out again when the word “Meg –” lodged in her throat. Slowly she pulled the flash-light from a pocket and pointed it downward. It wasn’t twigs that were snapping under her weight; it was a hand-woven gate made of cane, just large enough to cover the mouth of the cave. When raised and leaned against the rocks it would camouflage the entrance the same dusty hue of the bluff.

This was the reason the cave hadn’t been visible to rescue workers throughout the week! This was the reason no one had spotted it from the air!

She felt the adrenalin course through her body, nerve-ends tingling in response to urgent signals firing from her brain, telling her to flee.

She let one boot slip back over the edge and lowered a leg until she found a foothold, hanging there by her elbows.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered, staring at the opening.

She shifted her weight and lost a toehold, plummeting a foot before grasping the ledge with her fingers, pebbles raining noisily upon the rocks below. She held her breath and listened until the sound diminished to a patter, wondering how far distant it had been heard.

Sweat trickled down the back of her neck. She was conscious now of every noise she made.

What should she do?

She thought about the meaning of the gate. The Indians had long used woven cane to construct walls known as wattles. The presence of one here implied at least some degree of permanency. Someone had spent time in the cave. And not two miles from the place young Megan Lawson went missing.

Since the gate was not in place, it was likely the cave was unoccupied. Whoever had taken it down had probably waited until dark and then left to hunt or scavenge at night. Perhaps she had missed them by a matter of minutes.

If Megan were really in there, this might be her one and only chance to get her out.

Putting the flashlight between her teeth, she began to pull herself back onto the ledge. Then she lay on her belly and used her elbows and knees to propel herself into the opening. The air inside was cool and musky with the pungent smell of bats and ammonia.

She kept moving until the rocks tunneled to her left. Pushing off the toes of her shoes and using her legs like pistons, she propelled herself forward a foot at a time. The air turned rancid as the tunnel opened into a chamber, but at least she was now able to rise to her knees. Here in the small dome of rock the smell was almost overpowering.

“Megan,” she called out, covering her mouth and nose. “Megan, can you hear me?”

She aimed her flashlight into the darkness, playing it slowly across the floor –

She gasped.

A human skeleton lay against one wall, arms to its sides. Black brittle skin stretched taut across a grimacing face, limbs threaded with brown ligaments and decomposed muscle. The hair was long and dark. The hands and feet were small, and around the bone of one wrist was a yellow rubber wristband etched with the one word – LIVESTRONG. A pair of khaki shorts stuffed with underwear, and two Columbia hiking boots had been placed between her ankles.

Jane panned the light to a pile of ashes, then above to a rock ceiling blackened by charcoal. In a corner she saw a man’s jacket and empty tins of food. In another corner there were heaps of branches and scraps of old paper. And a fire pit containing small bones.

“Megan,” she whispered, moving her light over the walls. “Megan … are you here?”

Breathe, she commanded herself. Breathe!

She took a stick from the fire pit and lifted the shirt. Saw a pair of dirty socks and badly torn blue jeans. There was old underwear and a threadbare knapsack in the corner. She opened it and found it stuffed with leaves and plant roots, crumpled up paper and a battered metal canteen. She removed the paper; a miscellany of park registration forms, newspapers and old fliers – kindling for his fires.

She dropped them and pointed the flashlight into the crevices, turning the light sideways, then slowly up and down, illuminating each foot of the perimeter around the chamber. The ceiling was smooth and someone had taken the charcoaled end of a stick and covered it with black crosses.

Her light fell upon something green and she tasted the acid of bile in her throat. She looked away then slowly looked back again as a bare leg, a shoe and a mound of straw colored hair swam into her vision. She dropped her head toward the floor and retched. Her hands began to tremble. Beads of sweat formed on her brow.

Panic was the enemy, she reminded herself. Emotion had no place here. Emotion could get you killed.

She inched forward on hands on knees.

The young girl’s eyes were wide-open, reflecting light, her mouth agape. Flies lighted around an open tear through the girl’s stomach; hundreds more amassed on a pile of rotting intestines between her legs.

Cameron vomited all over herself. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe in spite of the pressure that was building up in her chest, nerve endings tingling to the tips of her fingers and toes. For a second her composure gave way and an involuntary moan escaped her lips.

I must get out of here, she told herself, and fast. She turned quickly and her shoulder struck rock, knocking the flashlight from her slippery fingers. As it began to roll she lunged for it, sending it spinning into a crack in the stone floor.

And the chamber went dark.

Move, was all she could think of. Just move!

She backed away from the body, scraping hands and knees. She felt the powdery ashes of the fire pit clinging to her wet skin, felt her foot striking tin cans that began to roll and clatter like an army of giant cockroaches. She cracked her head on the ceiling and realized the chamber was closing in around her. Then she caught a blessed breath of fresh air and knew she was back at the tunnel.

She lay on her stomach, breathed in deeply and began to crawl out. Then she heard a scraping sound in front of her.

Someone was replacing the gate over the entrance.

Chapter 3

Appalachian Mountain, Tennessee

High on the summit a new undergrowth was beginning to take hold. Huckleberries and seedlings sprouted from the rich dark earth, spring's buds bursting on green branches, purple crocuses popping through last year’s peat.

The predators roamed here: the wolf and the black bear, and an occasional large cat, existing as they had in centuries past, well above the high watermark.

The Appalachians are an arduous range, their foothills pocked with hollows that are obscured from much of day’s light. Scattered here and there are crude pastures cut from rocky hillsides, none of it level, most of it angling uselessly skyward, exposing boulder and brush and bare edible roots that grow from the ground like long spiny fingers. It is home to a hardscrabble people who manage to eke out an existence from the unyielding earth.

Morning was breaking on Sweetwater Gap, sunshine illuminating the forest in shimmering light and jagged pools of dappled shade. Honeysuckle breezes came and went and woodpeckers tapped monotonously in the distance.

The snake was big as they go; five feet and thirteen rattles, thick and brown and covered with large grayish diamonds, head as big as a woman's fist. It was watching the man, silent, taut, tongue darting cool mountain air.

The man was crouched just feet from its head, elbows resting casually on his knees. His hair was greasy, his beard unkempt and growing into his collar. Scars and patches of dead skin mottled his forearms. One hand was missing a thumb.

The snake’s tail began to quiver and again came the eerie warning of its rattle. Everything in the forest went quiet.

The man shifted his weight, limbs performing with extraordinary grace, movements delicate, deliberate, animal-like. His breathing was shallow and fouled by ramps and wild roots.

The snake made a suggestion of a move and the rattling stopped.

The man froze in a nimble pose, sunlight flickering over his face, pupils black and static like glass in a china figurine. The snake didn't rattle its tail. It just coiled itself together one last inch tighter, like a man pulling back the hammer on a gun.

A bumblebee circled and rose lazily into the sky. A dead tree limb crashed in the distant forest. A woods rabbit nibbled its way onto the scene and froze, too late sensing the danger.

There was a blur of jaws and arm and the man was rocked off his heels, but a moment later he stood with his fist around the vicious neck. Then he dropped the snake in a heavy canvass sack and shouldered it behind a backpack. He scooped up a rifle and headed to a clearing on top of a knoll. The foothills of Tennessee swept away beneath him.

To the south he could make out the faint outline of Blood Mountain, Georgia surrounded by tiny black dots that would be helicopters hovering over the summit. To the west there was Signal Mountain and to the north a spire of white smoke climbing high above the trees over Tellico Plains. He watched the smoke drift toward Knoxville and loop back like the crook of a shepherd’s hook. It was the smoke of a man clearing land, of a man with a home.

It had been a perilous trek out of Georgia, aircraft skimming the treetops, rangers and policemen swarming the trailheads and high mountain roads. He had considered burying under the rocks until nightfall, but then the pressure let off and the helicopters seemed to drift east and then disappear. For the moment at least, the focus of the search had shifted from the mountains. He decided to descend into the foothills and set a course for the column of white smoke.

Rolfe Ledder was raised in a West Virginia Hollow, a place of poverty, disease and misfortune. At fourteen he ran away from home and took up life as a hermit, heading south through the mountains, surviving off whatever he could scavenge or steal. He found shelter in old barns and abandoned hunters’ camps, broke into homes and trailers, pilfering food, supplies and ammunition as he crossed the Monongahela south into Kentucky, then Tennessee and then Georgia, where his father had once told him oranges grew on trees.

He carried an old knapsack stuffed with ginseng roots and sweet birch, canteen, matches and chewing tobacco. A stitched leather pouch strapped across his shoulder contained roots and medicinal things, trinkets for luck and a handful of Devil’s Pulpit seeds. A crude looking knife with a barbed hook on the blade was tucked inside his belt; he had been told it was forged by hand in some ancestor’s blacksmith’s oven. Around his neck was a loop of catgut threaded with snake rattles that chattered ominously as he walked.

A filthy boy floated leaves in a puddle beneath an ancient Willow. A shirtless man with ropy muscle ran a chainsaw through scrub pines, dragging limbs to a roaring fire above a newly constructed cabin. One bicep was tattooed with a portrait of Jesus wearing a crown of bloody thorns; the other with the blue and white flag of El Salvador.

Rolfe screwed up his eyes.

A newly lacquered sign on the roof read Tellico River Trading Company. A raccoon paced the cabin porch dragging its chain past a dog’s water bowl. Kayaks, red and yellow, hung from the walls along with oars and snowshoes and a pair of antique skis. A two-man saw hung over the door, its long blade painted red. A double-edged axe leaned next to a whiskey barrel, and an old military gas can sat close to a partially open door.

He stepped out of the trees, taking note of the new station wagon and an old gray pickup parked next to it in the shade.

The roar of the chainsaw stopped and the shirtless man backed away, calling out in Spanish for the boy to join him.

Rolfe made his way off the hillside, passing a clothesline sagging under the weight of wet jeans and T-shirts, boxer shorts, bras and women’s panties. He looked at the clothesline a long moment, then back at the cabin where the door swung wide and a young blond haired man stepped into the light. He wore his hair in a ponytail and had on wire-rim glasses and a T-shirt with the head of a howling wolf.

“Not open, friend.” The man smiled with gleaming white teeth. “No electricity.” He pointed up at the barren telephone pole beside the cabin. “We keep hearing, ‘any day’.”

Rolfe kept walking toward him, skirting a stack of freshly cut pine. His eyes moved between the man with the chainsaw to the man on the porch of the cabin. “Ginseng,” he said loudly. “Be ten dollars a one.” He let the canvass sack slip off his shoulder. “Diamondback rattlers are two for twenty dollars.”

“Serpiente de cascabel,” the laborer whispered, pulling the boy behind him.

The man with the ponytail looked at the bags, then back at the stranger. “Rattlers?” he said incredulously.

“You buy?” Rolfe shook the sack in front of him.

“Uh’m, no.” The man shook his head. “See, we’re not like a real trading post or anything. We don’t actually buy stuff from the public.”

Rolfe stared at him undeterred, held the sack higher and shifted his weight between his feet.

The blond man’s eyes moved to the laborer, then back at the stranger. “You live around here, friend?” He tried to hold the smile.

Rolfe extended the sack toward him and shook his head. “You buy?” he repeated.

The blond man looked down at his shoes and sighed. He had met some real characters since moving to Tennessee. Most of them were harmless and only needlessly underfoot. Every week someone was telling him how to build a cabin or drill a water-well or run a business. Or they wanted jobs he didn’t have or brought him crafts he didn’t want to peddle. A group of Indians had even asked him to set up display tents on his lawn.

But aside from the woodcutter he met at Home Depot while attempting to repair his chainsaw – he had broken the blade trying to saw his very first tree and his wife threatened him with divorce if he didn’t hire the man on the spot – he always turned away the locals and did the finish work himself. Yes, he knew he was failing to ingratiate himself with the community and yes, he knew that sooner or later he was going to have to bite the bullet and say yes to someone.

He looked undecided for another moment, then put his hands up and said, “Okay.” He pointed to the whiskey barrel on the porch. “Put the snakes in there and let’s have a look at your ginseng.”

Rolfe walked up to the porch and loosened the top of the bag, spilling the snakes into the barrel with an angry thud. Then he took the ginseng roots from his knapsack and spread them across the porch.

He collected forty dollars, rifle cartridges and three foils of chewing tobacco before he walked back up the hillside and disappeared in the trees.

Long after he was gone, the blond man stood in the doorway, staring at the spot where he had last seen the stranger.

“Creepy.” A woman came up from behind and put her arms around his waist.

“Yeah, creepy,” he said softly.

“What in the hell are you going to do with rattlesnakes?”

He laughed. “You saw the brochure on Pageant Gourmets: Rattlesnakes at forty bucks a pound. Who knows what kind of profits there are in ginseng?”

She smiled. “You remember the dumbest things, Jason.”

“Naysayer,” he mocked.

She pinched him on the side. “Yeah, well I’m not touching one of those things, dead or alive.”

He reached behind and patted her butt. “I’ll roll the barrel out in the morning and dump them in the woods.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Then I’ll let you hang onto the ginseng.”

He stooped and craned his neck to look through the trees. “Did you see that necklace around his neck?”

She put her chin on his shoulder. “He bothered you, didn’t he?”

“Nah, just trying to fit in.” He shook his head. “Gotta be nice to the natives.”

“He wasn’t a native,” she said, “he was a bum.”

“Then we’ll call it our good deed for the day.”

“You’re lucky you’re so cute.” She kissed the back of his neck.

“Or what?”

“Or I’d move back to Greenwich and marry my old psychology professor.” She released him and retreated into the cabin.

“Dirty old man stalker, you mean,” he hollered back, but she was already out of earshot.

He stared at the trees a moment longer, then up at the sky. There had been planes in the air most of the morning. Now they seemed to have gone away. Maybe there was some news on the missing Girl Scout and Park Ranger, though he would be the last to know. He glowered up at the empty pole where the temporary power line was supposed to have been connected, but that was two weeks ago now and only God himself knew when the utility company would actually arrive.

The woodcutter was finished sawing the last of the trees he had marked for removal. Now he was stripping the trunks to be used for fence posts to enclose the clearing for a small parking lot behind the cabin. He would miss the Salvadorian, he thought. The man was never idle and worked dawn to dusk without complaint. He’d have kept him on to finish the job, but he was leaving tonight and relocating his family to Pennsylvania where a cousin had found him full time work. He had said his wife and son were excited about starting over. Tomorrow when they arrived at their new home they would celebrate the boy’s sixth birthday. His cousin had already bought them a cake.

He looked at his watch and thought – what the hell. “Call it quits, Juan,” he yelled. “Top off the gas can in town and I’ll throw in a tank for your trip as a going away present. Credit card’s under the visor in the station wagon. You can drop it off on your way out of town.”

The shirtless man smiled from ear to ear, nodding profusely as he raked the fire together.

Well up the hillside and behind the heavy trees, Rolfe put a stem of a Jimson Weed between his teeth. He shouldn’t stay any longer. There was a town just a few miles away. But the sun was already setting and the skies had cleared. It would be quiet until morning and by then he would be halfway to the Great Smoky Mountains. He knew they would be extending the search in every direction, but beyond the dense Smokies lay the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Cherokee National Forest. Two weeks from now he would be nearing the Kentucky-Virginia border, halfway to West Virginia and the million-acre wilderness surrounding his home.

An engine turned over and tail lights burned through the trees. A moment later the gray truck began to move down the lane. He looked toward the cabin, thinking about the clothesline, imagining the woman standing behind the door. He swallowed the noxious juice of the Jimson Weed and felt it numbing the back of his throat. He knew it was time to sit. As the weed began to hold, he slumped to the ground and put his head against the trunk of a tree. Waiting for the dreams that would follow.

He hadn’t always taken such chances. The girl on Blood Mountain had been a mistake. He had known that the moment he took her. She was with a group and he knew they would come looking, though he could never have imagined how aggressively. It wasn’t at all like the three-day search for that camper who went missing in February. This time they saturated the mountain with horses and airplanes and helicopters, hundreds of people on foot and more arriving each day in processions of busses that streamed south on Route 11. He’d had to wait a full week before a lull allowed him to check out the activity around the Walasi-Yi, a makeshift command center on the summit that distributed food and radios. And even in that short period of an hour, one of the Park Ranger’s had separated from the others and found his cave and the women’s bodies.

He heard the distant growl of an engine and looked up to see a solitary plane. There were times this morning when he was certain he would be caught. The helicopters had all but surrounded him. But then suddenly one by one they peeled away and drifted out of sight. The focus of the search had changed.

When he felt safe once more he caught rattlers and made his descent into Tellico Plains. His plan had been to look for one of the Indians who made local crafts for tourist shops in the Smoky Mountains. Rattlesnakes were profitable not only for their meat, but as skins for leather belts. If he couldn’t sell the snakes he would release them, and scavenge summer homes on his way north to the Blue Ridge Mountains. There was always some give and take when you lived on the fringe of society. Like the balance he maintained between avoiding people – even hikers and hunters – and approaching back alley pawnshops where a man might turn a blind eye to purchase an endangered species or a root harvested out of season, or even a suspicious piece of jewelry or gold.

Between these two extremes he liked to watch people from a distance: from the shadows around their sleeping bags to the wooded yards outside their trailers and homes.

Tonight, as it turned out, the smoke had led him to this cabin with the woman behind the door and the trader who bought his snakes. And in spite of the heavy concentration of policemen in the mountains he wasn’t done taking risks. Tonight he would not be watching from the shadows. Tonight he was going to make a visit.

The effects of the Jimson Weed took his thoughts to a church he had attended as a child. Coats and men’s sweaty hats – the women always wore bonnets – piled high on a wooden table. Men’s muddy work boots stacked across the concrete floor. Cold metal folding chairs and a night squeezed between his mother and sister. Shivering, clamping his elbows close to his skinny ribs and looking down, for it was Wednesday and he didn’t want to see it. Because always on Wednesdays the preacher brought the pine box.

He remembered how his small legs trembled, shoes dangling nervously above the concrete floor, ears prickled from the cold and eyes streaming from the fumes of a kerosene heater. He couldn’t take his eyes off the wooden box, placed in front of the pastor. He knew what was inside its well-worn, chipped exterior with its broken leather harness straps. A woman seated in front of him was mumbling in a strange tongue, soapy scum of dandruff peppering the shoulders of a dark jacket. There was a mongoloid boy who reeked of body odor, and the Naggy sisters who conspired under Shaker’s bonnets like a pair of black crows. They could disappear a baby, his pa once said, and his mother had been furious with him for saying it.

He looked up at his mother now, her eyes fixed upon the preacher, lips moving rapidly as she recited one of the psalms. She had told him she was going to give him one of the snakes that night, because he needed to learn faith so he didn’t end up like his father. If he were good the snakes wouldn’t bite him, she had said. If he were not he would suffer the consequence. Rolfe didn’t know how good you had to be, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t good enough.

The windows of the church were frosted over and candles danced in the drafts, wax rolling down their sides in creamy saw-toothed streams. The heavy woman in front of him rose to her feet, swaying side to side, babbling in tongue. He watched her labored gait as she made her way forward, reaching out with both hands. “Eckeneckenrayensaw-latimlayoxbi-cayse-nameen!”

He had squirmed in his seat as she reached into the pine box to pick up a snake, wrestling his eyes from her as he felt a new warmth in his lap and looked down to see his sister’s tiny hand. Her fingers encircled his own and she squeezed it three times like their pa had taught:

I … love … you.

He squeezed back four times: I … love … you … too …

He heard an engine and was startled from his reverie.

A door slammed.

He stood up, then walked unsteadily through the trees until he could see the light of the open cabin door. The truck. It was the truck. It had returned and the woman met the driver at the edge of the porch. They spoke for a moment and the truck left again.

She stood there in the light with her long hair cascading upon her shoulders. She wore shorts and a T-shirt. She took a pail down the steps and crossed the clearing where she disappeared into the trees.

A few minutes later she returned, slopping water. He watched her climb the steps as the raccoon followed her to the door, waiting on its hind legs until she returned with a treat.

Then the door closed.

He returned to his tree and slumped back to the ground and let himself drift off to sleep, his mind wandering through the archives of his memories to another cabin in another forest in another time …

The door was open and light from within formed a perfect cone across a blanket of fresh fallen snow. The earth sparkled faultlessly but for an erratic path of footprints that led to where he stood. Blood dripped from his hands turning the snow beneath him pink. An owl hooted thrice and the wind rattled leaves on dead winter trees. He imagined the legions of devils flying toward him. Ears bent back, eyes burning yellow, teeth bared in their rush to the feast.

Fear gripped him and he trembled. Kneeling down, he began to dig with his bare hands, unable to expel the stench from his nose or the horrible screams from his ears. Hand over hand he dug like an animal, colder than he had ever known; cold to the bone, cold to the soul that was no longer his own.

The owl hooted again, only now it was of this world.

It was after midnight he knew, or even early morning. The air had cooled and the stars sparkled brightly. He stood once more and walked through the trees, leaving his belongings behind as he started down the hill. The cabin’s chimney was spitting sparks into the night. A single lustrous cloud floated above a gibbous moon.

Nothing moved below the tree line but the coon’s yellow eyes. He heard the sound of its chain dragging across the porch as he passed silently between the tree stumps and the sweet smelling embers of the woodcutter’s fire. The chainsaw still rested by a stack of stripped posts.

Beyond it a pool of pale light from a side window was cast upon the ground.

He approached it until he was standing next to the green station wagon. Light flickered from a window, sheer white curtains parted several inches. The couple was naked, the man standing at the edge of the bed, the woman in front of him on all fours. She was rocking back and forth on the mattress, long hair switching across the sheets. Her head was turned toward the window and facing him, but her eyes were closed tightly and her jaw set in a grimace.

Sweat began to rise on the back of his neck. He tore his eyes away and staggered to the stack of stripped posts, lifting one to gauge its weight. Then he strained to put it on his shoulder, biceps swelling as he dragged it toward the porch and dropped its end noisily against the door.

He heard a sound from within, then voices talking anxiously.

He quickly raised the other end of the post and wedged it against the roof.

“Who’s there?” he heard the man yell. “Who’s out there? Is that you, Juan?”

The latch rattled, then a shoulder slammed against the door.

“Who’s there, you son of bitch, open this goddamned door.”

Rolfe picked up the gasoline can and began emptying it under the door. Then he took up the axe and brought it down on the coon’s long chain.

The man called out again, then a shotgun fired, sending splinters flying from the door. “Open the goddamned door!”

Rolfe put a foot to the whiskey barrel and tipped it over, spilling the rattlesnakes onto the yard. He watched as their dark skins slithered away in the moonlight. Then he scratched a match and dropped it on the floor.

There was a deep, low whump as flames shot up the walls, black smoke curling beneath the rafters.

The man inside threw himself against the door again and then fired the shotgun at the lock.

But the door stood firm as the smoke began to obliterate the flames, heavy billows gathering around the roof, blotting out the stars. Rolfe carried the axe to the side of the cabin and waited by the window.

First the woman’s head appeared, then her hands gripped the window frame. Rolfe grabbed her wrists and pulled her violently through, letting her drop to the ground where she writhed in a ball. When the man’s head came through he picked up the axe and buried it in his scalp, letting the handle slip from his hands as the body slunk back into darkness.

The woman screamed and he turned to take her arm. She fought him with fists flailing, trying to cover her nakedness with her elbows. But he grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the shadows.

The fire burned and the porch roof collapsed sending sparks into the sky. Blue flames erupted as hot gasses shot out of the chimney. Glass exploded, then ammunition, launching fiery projectiles into the night.

The woman drew her knees into her chest, eyes following orange embers that floated high above the trees. She thought about her husband and choked back a wail. He had sensed something about the drifter, she knew. He’d been uncomfortable or he would never have agreed to buy those snakes.

She didn’t want to die like this. She didn’t want to die right now.

“Elizabeth,” she said huskily, using her tongue to moisten her dry lips. “My name’s Elizabeth.” She looked up at him. His skin was wet with perspiration and reflected the jagged light of the fire. She could distinguish nothing in his expression, nothing from his eyes. “You don’t have to hurt me. I don’t know who you are –”

She her let gaze drop to the necklace of snake rattles.

“What’s yours?” she whispered.

In a psychology course she’d taken it was taught that rape victims should attempt to communicate with their attacker, both to delay and possibly diffuse.

“Your name?” she asked again, but he just stared back at her.

She looked down at the soiled clothing, the torn boots, the deformed hand that was missing a thumb. She took a breath and slowly lowered her arms. Perhaps she could try to bring things under control until she saw an opportunity to escape.

A muscle twitched in his cheek and she froze, not knowing what he was going to do.

She was about to speak again when he reached out and cupped her breast.

Ashes floated through the air, sticking to the sweat on his forehead. His hand moved from her breast to her stomach and he ran his fingers across it and down to her abdomen. He didn’t look agitated or insane or even dangerous. If anything he seemed divided as if only part of him was here.

At that moment he reached for her arm and pulled her onto her side, using his other hand to push up on her rump, manipulating her body until she was on hands and knees. The way he had seen her in the cabin.

“Please,” she whispered as he pushed her knees apart. “Please, no.”

She felt him pressing against her from behind and she bit her lip, eyes filling with tears as they rose to the level of the tree limbs. Her husband was already dead. No matter what happened now this night would define her existence. This night would never go away. She sighed and lowered her head in anticipation.

His hand reached between her legs, fingers brushing against her underbelly, reaching toward her dangling breasts.

“Mecabellub-deendalnahi-dulenbenay-kensolee.”

Searing pain shot through her chest. She could feel the hair on the back of his arm as it slid across her stomach, retreating between her legs. She dropped her head in time to see her intestines slip to the ground.

Chapter 4

Memphis Tennessee

One Month Later

The smell of brewing coffee lingered over the Memphis Marriott conference room. It was nearly one o’clock and five and a half hours since the group ate breakfast. The hotel banquet manager stood in the corridor outside, ear to the door, looking impatiently at his watch. His staff waited behind him ready to clear the room for lunch.

A plaque on a tripod next to them identified the group as the Southeast Chief of Police Conference, and in bold letters –

NO ADMITTANCE

Inside the room, full of high-ranking police executives, the image of a young blonde woman filled a floor to ceiling projection screen. She was wearing a park ranger’s khaki colored uniform adorned with the gold Georgia State Seal. For a minute the room had gone silent. She wasn’t a cop in the truest sense of the word, but she was definitely part of their world. Jane Cameron had been a Vogel State Park Ranger for thirteen years and was the recipient of the 2007 Governor’s Public Safety award for saving the life of two State Police helicopter pilots who had crash-landed in Lake Trahlyta. She was also a renowned search and rescue instructor, training law enforcement officers for as long as some of them had been on the job.

The Conference had been assembled at the request of an Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. An agent was leading them through a Power Point presentation that had been impersonal until now; pie chart statistics and volleys of crime scene photos depicting bones and scattered bits of clothing. Like doctors looking at x-rays, no one knew the victims personally, no one had shared a coffee or a beer with them, no one even knew their names. But the picture of Jane Cameron startled them. She wasn’t supposed to be there. She wasn’t supposed to be among them.

The agenda was in no respect unknown. The Bureau wanted to talk about the cave on Blood Mountain and a fifteen year old statistic that had for as long been the subject of debate. Crime analysts up and down the east coast mountain states knew that a growing number of women had been reported missing along a thousand-mile region bordering the Appalachian Trail. A particularly vexing statistic in an era with hand-held GPS technology and the proliferation of cellphone towers across the summits. But many were quick to point out the ever-increasing number of women turned outdoor enthusiasts; there were indeed more women kayakers, rock climbers and hikers than ever before. Perhaps the rise in the number of women gone missing might be reflective of nothing else.

And then there was always the inherent danger of the mountains. People falling down ridges and breaking their backs or neck. Some had heart attacks and others fell in sinkholes or drowned crossing rivers and streams. They were struck by lightning and crushed by rockslides and more than a few became disoriented and lost. No small number of hikers and hunters had died of starvation or hypothermia within shouting distance of a road.

But without evidence of a crime, the anomaly was just that. Less than five percent of the reported missing had ever been found, and the few that were discovered were in such a state of decomposition that it was impossible to determine a cause of death.

Nevertheless it was debated and often compared to the case of Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, who confessed to seventy-one murders committed over a period of twenty years. If it could happen in the Cascades, some said, it could happen in the Appalachians and the numbers could be as large or even worse. Those literal skeletons in everyone’s closet might just one day come back to haunt them.

Now the Assistant Director of the FBI wanted to have a meeting and everyone had heard the rumors. The skeletons were banging on the door.

The agent concluded his film presentation, leaving the image of Jane Cameron on the screen. When he left the stage he handed the projector’s remote to a tall weary looking man who climbed the steps and approached the podium.

The man spoke into the microphone. “For those who don’t know me, my name is Agent Fielding. I lead the operational arm of VICAP, the agency’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program out of Washington DC.”

The microphone howled then slowly faded away. A feeling of general discomfort hung over the room.

He looked around at the many faces, conscious of the emotion sparked by the ranger’s image. The shock of the discovery on Blood Mountain was still fresh on everyone’s mind: images of the bodies being removed by slings from hovering helicopters looping endlessly on the evening news, and pictures of the victims on the covers of every magazine and major newspaper in the country. Every detail was covered. From the search party that found Ranger Cameron’s backpack to the last photograph found on her digital camera, to the cave on the bluff and the screen of woven reeds that had been used to camouflage the opening. ‘Chamber of Horrors’, TIME Magazine dubbed it, over a photograph of animal bones and old garbage, taken in broad daylight last January from a camper parked at Winfield Scott Lake – a blurred image with shadows that everyone now knew were the eviscerated bodies of the Girl Scout and Ranger Cameron, and the skeletal remains of a missing thirty-year-old schoolteacher from Savannah. Until now the FBI had wanted no part in the state’s missing persons statistical debate. Police chiefs across the country were paid to suppress crime and their effectiveness in doing so was measured by an index. Low crime index numbers assured the public that the police were doing their job. High crime index numbers lowered public confidence and raised tension between police chiefs and the politicians who had appointed them. If even a small number of missing persons were suddenly reclassified as crimes, the index would spike and a political fracas would ensue over what other kinds of crimes the police chiefs or commissioners had been hiding from the public.

But all that had changed and Agent Fielding was here to give them the bad news.

“It has been four weeks and a day,” he said softly, noting the many eyes that remained on the wall-sized screen. “You all know what we found in the cave on Blood Mountain, Georgia. We hardly need to cover that in this room. You also know that the State Bureau of Investigation was called to the scene of a double homicide in the town of Tellico Plains, Tennessee, just an hour’s drive from the Georgia state line. Most or perhaps all of you are familiar with the details. A commuter pilot out of Atlanta saw a fire and reported it on the morning of April eleventh, less than seventy-two hours after Ranger Cameron went missing. Firemen arrived, put out what was still burning and found the bodies, one in the fire and one in the nearby trees. The man’s body was all but destroyed, but it was evident he had been killed with an axe. The woman had been eviscerated and her organs piled between her legs. We didn’t know then about the cave on Blood Mountain. It was another week before it was discovered and we connected the crimes. When we did, it seemed apparent there was only one major difference. One was conducted in an attempt at great secrecy. The other was blatantly out in the open.”

He rested his hands on either side of the lectern.

“The bodies in Georgia were autopsied by the chief medical examiner in Atlanta. The Tennessee victims were sent to the Center for Forensic Medicine in Nashville. All the women’s abdomens had been slit open with a knife and their insides put between their legs. From the available evidence there was no sexual assault. But the remains of the Tennessee female had another unusual feature. Her jaw was forcibly unhinged and two lower molars, numbers sixteen and thirty-one, were chiseled from their sockets.”

He picked up a bottle of water from the lectern and began unscrewing the cap. “The FBI was asked to review the cases due to the interstate issue. VICAP – my office – requested the bodies be transported to our lab in Washington DC.”

He scanned the faces in the room and took a drink from the bottle, screwing the cap back on. “Some of you have already heard the rumors.”

A few heads nodded.

Fielding put the water down and picked up the remote.

“For those of you who haven’t, a woman’s head was found last February in an out of the way mountain lake in north central West Virginia. It was later determined to have belonged to a jogger reported missing last Thanksgiving. Since there was no body, we don’t know the cause of death, but we did determine that the head was mutilated post mortem. Someone had removed the woman’s earrings and pried silver fillings from her teeth.”

There were whispers throughout the room.

“The head was preserved by the temperatures and then the ice, the tissue all intact. Lacerations were observed on the lips and inside the mouth, the deepest of which penetrated the bone of the lower mandible. Suddenly we had two skulls bearing evidence of post mortem mutilation, one in West Virginia and one in Tennessee. Our lab put the jawbones under a comparison microscope and digital imagery found something both rare and extraordinary.”

He flicked the remote and a magnified image of the two heads flashed onto the screen. The victim’s jaws were clamped open. One woman was clearly decapitated.

“Four cuts circled in red on the roofs of victims’ mouths were inflicted concomitant to the gouges or striations you see on the jawbone. What that means is that the instrument with a blade that penetrated the bone had a pronounced hook near the tip and it simultaneously tore into the flesh above it.” He pointed at the red circles. “Here, here, here and here. We believe it was a gut hook knife – a tool used by hunters and game skinners. You literally shove the tip of the knife into the flesh and pull away and the sharpened hook opens the flesh like a zipper.” He pointed at the jawbones. “These striations bear identical variations in width and imperfections. They are a match of incontrovertible certainty.” He held up two fingers. “Two victims, seven-months and two hundred miles between.” He looked around the room and lowered the second finger. “One knife, one killer.”

Whispers erupted into open conversation.

“But we didn’t stop there.” He raised his voice, holding up a hand to silence them. “We looked at the partial remains of five females found in the Appalachians over a fifteen-year period. They weren’t all complete and two remain unidentified. One that had been found in a limestone cave near the town of Eolia, Kentucky bears the same unique striations as those on the victims’ jawbones in Tennessee and West Virginia. In this instance we don’t have the derivative wound of the hook to look at, but our scientists tell us the blade is a match and that those particular remains have been in the cave no less than ten years.”

“God,” someone whispered. A few chair legs scraped on the floor as people began turning in their seats.

“Which brings us to your missing women statistic.” Agent Fielding left the podium and walked to the middle of the platform. “From a ten-year sampling of nearly sixty women reported missing along the Appalachian Trail, we decided to choose twenty-one that we classified as high probable abductions. I won’t go into the details of how they went missing, but five of these cases were between the years 2000 and 2005, another five from 2005 to 2010 and a whopping eleven between 2010 and 2012. If even half of these missing women were victims of a serial killer, he is stepping up the pace. His cooling-off periods are growing shorter. He has gone from years to months to weeks and now days. We know that this man was in Tellico Plains, Tennessee.” He pointed at the skulls on the screen. “It is evident from the eviscerations that he was responsible for the three attacks on Blood Mountain, Georgia. We also know that he was in West Virginia and Eolia, Kentucky.”

He looked around the room.

“Everyone knows the cycle of the serial killer. They fantasize, they kill and they feed off the memory. That is their cooling down period and it may last for many months or even years. When the memory no longer stimulates, they kill again. That’s the simplified version.” He put a hand in his pocket. “Emergency workers develop a tolerance to death, addicts a tolerance to narcotics, serial killers a tolerance to the euphoria provoked by memory. It doesn’t matter why they kill. It can be sexual, symbolic, rage turned inward or outward. What matters is that they can no longer sustain high cortical levels of arousal and they must kill again to get it. In time they become frenetic for that gratification and when this happens we see the first chinks in their armor. They have difficulty keeping up their normal appearance. Their families and coworkers might notice a change. They might start skipping work or stop going altogether. They’re coming apart, like a shooting star burning up in the night sky.”

He removed his hand from his pocket and pointed at the screen. “We may be seeing one of these now. This man who so cautiously hid victims in remote caves and mountain lakes has suddenly snatched a child from a crowded state park. Then he sets a house on fire at the edge of a town only forty miles from the epicenter of the single largest manhunt ever to take place in the state of Georgia. If he has indeed become frenetic, he cares less about evasion. Some serial killers even look forward to their end. Which makes them utterly lethal if approached.”

Fielding returned to the podium and picked up a sheet of paper and raised it over his head.

“Within forty-eight hours of the murders, the Tennessee State Bureau of Investigation put out alerts for usage of the victims’ bank accounts and credit cards. To date they remain inactive. What no one knew until a bill arrived in the victim’s mail two days ago, an hour before we called this emergency session of your Conference, was that a Visa card had been issued to the victims in the name of a limited liability corporation called Tellico River Trading Company. That card was used only once, for the purchase of gasoline at a filling station in Tellico Plains, and we got a break.” He picked up the remote and the screen changed to a black and white image of a man pumping gas.

“A surveillance camera captured this image seconds after the Visa card was swiped. He is Latino and in his thirties or early forties. His head is turned away from the camera, but there is a religious tattoo on his right arm. The gray truck behind him is a Ford, an older model F-150. Note the old World War II Jerry Can in the bed with a yellow X on it. Same kind of can was found in the fire. Note also the chrome F-150 on the front quarter panel is broken and reads F-15.”

Fielding put the remote down.

“Georgia State Police are revisiting the hundred hours of surveillance footage collected the week the Girl Scout and Ranger Cameron went missing. We are looking for a Latino male or a gray truck near the base of Blood Mountain or in the surrounding areas of Vogel State Park. Obviously we’re also focusing on the evidence found in the cave. So far there are fingerprints and DNA, but no matches to our database. How our killer came to discover and then frequent the cave is the sixty-four thousand dollar question and not just because it happened in Georgia, but because he has killed as far north as West Virginia. He is comfortable in the mountains – maybe a park worker or a climber or a caver. On the off chance he is part of some recreational organization, we’ve petitioned some of the better known clubs for their registers, including the National Speleological Society. But you all know the privacy issues and it’s a long shot at best. Vogel State Park didn’t even know this cave existed. Meanwhile, we’re issuing a national BOLO for the man and vehicle this morning. Your agencies will have received it by now. As you can see, the photo is poor quality and people are going to see gray trucks around every corner. Maybe he’ll do something suspicious and get pulled over and we’ll find a gut hook knife under his seat. Or maybe he’ll use the credit card again. That’s the best we can hope for right now.”

He nodded toward a young black woman sitting in the front row. “Agent Ross will provide you with a packet including the surveillance pictures and descriptions. Your people will need it in about five hours when our press office releases details to the media. Someone knows him. Maybe he has a home and family in one of your jurisdictions.

A woman raised her hand in the back. “Is anyone setting up a hotline?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. VICAP will of course be using the FBI tip line and website. If you’ve got the manpower and want to dedicate a line, we encourage it. Either way, tell your people to expect phones to ring. You know what’s going to happen when news of a decade old serial killer hits the press.”

Chapter 5

Leesburg, Virginia

A windowless cargo van sat along a narrow dirt road near Leesburg, Virginia, hood propped open and white rag tied to the outside mirror. Alongside the road was a steel fence enclosing a dozen small airplane hangars, a limp orange windsock and half-a-mile of blistering runway.

In the back of the van two technicians faced an array of intricate equipment. Speaking softly they watched a video monitor and a burgundy Mercedes approaching fast from behind. The car passed the van and continued to the gate of the airstrip where the driver put down the window and punched a code into a keypad. The gate swung open and the Mercedes progressed to hangar number four. A man got out and opened the trunk, removed a duffel bag and walked to a side door.

“Kingfish, this is Bright Red Zero. Subject one is driving Virginia Whiskey Robert Tango Three Three Five on a new Mercedes, copy? Trunk is open and he took out a duffel bag. Opened and is entering a side door.”

The camera in the van rooftop vent continued to feed video as the man and the bag disappeared. Twenty minutes later the door opened and the man emerged, but now he was empty-handed. He returned to the vehicle, got behind the wheel and made a U-turn, exiting the airstrip as the double doors of the hangar swung open. In the shadows of the building the propeller of a single engine plane began to rotate. Simultaneously an engine coughed to life. Then an orange and white Cessna taxied onto the sun-drenched tarmac. The pilot aimed his remote at the hangar doors and continued to taxi toward the runway.

“Motion!” one of the men hissed into the mouthpiece. “Doors are open and a plane, twin-engine … older model Cessna is turning RPMs. She’s rolling now, target is in the cockpit, pivoting toward the tarmac, gaining RPMs. The side of it’s coming up now. ‘Frank Ocean Edward King’ on an orange and white Cessna ... aircraft is turning into the runway ... starting her run, picking up speed aaaaaannnnnd ... she’s in the air.”

The men in the seats removed their headphones and started flicking switches. One of them dialed a number on the cellular phone.

“Joe’s,” a voice answered.

“Tell her he’s on the way,” the man said.

An hour later and thirty miles away, Drug Enforcement Agent Judy Wells walked through the revolving doors of the Capital City Hotel.

She was a pretty woman, though visibly pale, clothing understated and hanging loosely on her body, blonde hair rolled back into a bun. A bellman held the door, brow glistening with sweat. She forced a smile and crossed the marble floors toward a patch of monogrammed carpet and a black lacquered plaque that read Senate Lounge. Her watch said it was 4:35 PM.

Five carpeted steps descended to a dimly lit room where candles flickered over a cold stone hearth. There were dark oil paintings of Washington crossing the Delaware River, and winter at Valley Forge.

Two middle-aged men sat at one end of the bar, eating almonds from a crystal bowl and drinking tapered beers. Their ties were askew and their jackets draped over their barstools. By their appearance they had been there for some time.

Judy Wells slipped out of her own jacket exposing a gold sleeveless sweater and took the corner at the far end of the bar. A mirror at the back of the liquor bottles afforded views of the dining room and door behind. The bar was a favorite of Capital Hill workers, and in general a quiet place to meet during the day.

“Cocktail?” the bartender rasped.

He was an older man wearing a pressed white shirt and black bow tie. His fingernails were manicured and his hair dyed black and combed straight over his scalp. “Chardonnay,” she answered and nodded as he held up a bottle for inspection. She was still on duty, but that hardly seemed to matter right now.

The bartender stepped away and the cellphone buzzed on her belt. She reached for it and silenced the ringer, noting the call was from Jack Halligan, her supervisor at the Drug Enforcement Agency’s field office in Washington DC. Jack knew she was meeting an informant and wouldn’t be answering the phone, but his call had been expected. He would want to know what happened at the pistol range in Quantico today.

She replaced the phone, letting the call go to voice mail, and rested both hands on her knees.

The men at the end of the bar were laughing and raising their glasses in a private toast. An employee in white shirt and black slacks made her way through the dining room, rearranging chairs and lighting wicks in crystal candles.

Movement drew her eyes to the mirror behind the pyramid of brown and green bottles. A trio of women in business suits entered the room, crossed the carpeted dining room and took seats in an elevated section above a gleaming black piano.

The bartender returned with a glass, set it before her and poured the wine, nodding curtly before returning to a cutting board at the end of the bar. She watched him spin a lime on its axis and begin deftly slicing it in wedges.

With a trembling hand she raised her glass and took a sip.

This afternoon the informant made a ten kilo pickup in Norfolk and delivered it to Leesburg where DEA surveillance teams videoed the drop. A few minutes from now she would meet the informant and then return Jack’s call to endure questions about the case. And then he would want to talk about Quantico and the state of her mental health.

Everyone in the Washington Field Office knew that she had been hospitalized last winter and all had been sympathetic under the circumstances. Within a week of losing her baby to SIDS, her husband Tom moved out, announcing he was moving to Los Angeles. She had suffered an emotional breakdown and was diagnosed with acute stress disorder.

Her return to work a month later was more than anyone expected. Her boss, not wanting to overtax her, allowed her to work on her partner’s caseload.

Spring arrived and while she couldn’t say she was great, things appeared to be going smoothly.

Then last Monday Jack had called her into his office and asked her if she was ready for a case. There was little else to say but yes. She had been riding on her partner’s coattails since last winter. Sooner or later Jack wouldn’t be able to protect her anymore.

She was scared she wouldn’t be up to the rigors of a case, but appreciated the confidence Jack was demonstrating in her ability. So she said she was ready, and he dropped the bombshell that a high level informant in the Latora Crime family had agreed to work with the Agency. Judy was going to be brought in on one of the biggest cases in the city and she was at once both terrified and flattered. Maybe this was the beginning of her revival back to normal.

Agents don’t talk about crime families like they used to. The mafia was all but obsolete by the end of the twentieth century, having lost the war of survival of the fittest. Now the players had college degrees, rode in whisper-jets, pecked on laptops and entertained rock stars in their mansions. They were younger and smarter, and pound for pound the greater threat.

Jimmy Latora was one of those pioneers to break the mold. A political science major at Berkley in the 1970s, he had been offered a job in Belize with the Agency for International Development. He made friends quickly south of the border and it was said he bought his first kilo with a graduation gift from his uncle. In a year he had interest in a shipment of cocaine destined for Miami. In five years he had financed an entire shipment of his own. In ten he had a fleet, and all his confidants became millionaires; they were loyal to the end, forming an impenetrable barrier that had kept him out of jail for thirty years.

But Jimmy Latora Senior died in 2010 and his son Jimmy ‘Junior’, known for his pomposity and arrogance, had managed to produce enmity in the ranks. By 2012 there was a deep organizational rift. One of the longtime lieutenants he had insulted was a man named Carlisle. Now Carlisle was going to give them Jimmy’s organization from the bottom up.

Today was to mark the first video surveillance of a ten-kilo drop. A day Judy was actually looking forward to before an innocuous email arrived to inform her she was due at the Quantico pistol range for her annual service weapon qualification.

It wasn’t that big a deal. She could be in and out of Quantico by noon. Agents were always complaining that the qualification was inconvenient, but you went and got it over with and it was never a big deal. Or at least it hadn’t been until this morning when she had a panic attack on the firing line.

Afterward, she couldn’t describe it adequately. She had been standing behind the booths waiting for the order to move forward. A group of fifteen agents had just finished firing and the smell of gunpowder lay heavy over the room. She could still remember that smell and how it was making her queasy, and then as the Range Master ordered the class forward a feeling of dread began to envelop her. She stepped into the booth, put her hand on the grips and was wholly and utterly seized by fear. Gunfire erupted, paper targets began to rattle, a virtual hail of bullets sent downrange. She could only watch what was happening, heart pounding in her chest. She began to tremble as sweat flowed from every pore. Someone came up behind her and took her by the shoulders and pulled her gently out of the booth.

They sat her on a bench and brought her water and a paper towel to dry her face. She began to breathe to gain composure, crafted what she hoped looked like a smile and excused herself for the ladies’ room. Minutes later she returned and mumbled something about the flu and then she logged out at the security desk and walked quickly to her car. The feeling of dread didn’t leave her entirely, not until she was past the gate and headed down Route 1.

The agency had inflexible guidelines concerning weapons qualifications. First failures resulted in rescheduling. Second failures resulted in a week of retraining. Third and final failures resulted in suspension pending psychiatric evaluation. If nothing ‘duty related’ could be found to account for an agent’s inability to qualify, a formal process of termination would commence.

But no one was thinking about that now. No one suspected it was anything more than the flu. It was assumed she would return in a week and qualify in her second round and that would be the end of the story.

But Jack Halligan knew better, or at least enough to be concerned.

Judy looked at the Chardonnay and let her mind wander back to December, recalling how different things had been back then. She was living in the boutique district of Old Town Alexandria with her husband Tom and little Lynn, their new baby girl. They had titles to their cars and money in the bank. Christmas was just around the corner.

Sure there were challenges balancing work and a six-month-old baby. Tom was spending a lot of time on the west coast, but he’d had a recent promotion and promotions came with increased responsibility. There was nothing unusual about his demeanor. Nothing to alert her that something was wrong.

Then Lynn died. Just like that. One cold night she put her in her crib. The next morning she was cold and pale as if someone had stolen her breath in the night. Never could Judy have been less prepared for that day. Never could she have imagined such raw debilitating pain. And in the middle of all this Tom had gone missing. He didn’t call, he didn’t show; he was grief stricken, she had thought. He was handling Lynn’s death in his own way. But hours after the funeral it was clear there was another reason. He told her he was moving to LA and leaving that afternoon. His lawyer would contact her about details like the house. A truck would arrive the next day to collect his things.

A few days later Judy’s best friend Carol came by and found her balled up on the living room floor. She hadn’t slept or eaten for days.

The hospital admitted her for shock and observation. She was fed intravenously until nurses could compel her to eat. A week passed and she was released to a psychiatrist’s care and then began a regimen of anti-depressants and cognitive therapy. A month later she returned to work, numb, dazed and damned to despair.

She knew she wasn’t alone. She knew she shared life’s tragedies with an incalculable percentage of the population. She knew that millions around the globe were less fortunate. Yet for each it must be as intensely unique and personal. For each it was like living in hell.

She drank more of the wine and thought about her last few months on the job. To be honest she hadn’t been functioning at a very high level – not in the purest sense of the word. The more accurate term might have been ‘performing’. She had been going through the motions and people were enabling her to pretend. But then came the pistol range, which to a civilian must sound like a bad day at golf, but to law enforcement agencies around the world was an inviolable requirement of the career.

Looking back, it all seemed so unfair: every hour of every day had been like swimming through mud, all of it so exhaustive and repetitive and mind-numbing.

But you couldn’t fake your way through the pistol range. At the range you couldn’t avert your eyes or excuse yourself from the room. At the range the mind had to collaborate with the body. At the range there was need of all one’s senses.

In the end it wouldn’t matter that she was being treated for depression or even the fact that she was taking prescribed medications. Prescriptions weren’t forbidden to law officers. The government had learned years ago that people in treatment were less liability than those who were not. This was and always would be about Judy’s inability to qualify with a weapon, which in the Drug Enforcement Agency was a deal breaker.

She could feel heat rising from her shoulders and glanced anxiously at the mirror, taking another sip of the wine and trying to control her breathing. A tall man, well dressed in a beige linen jacket stepped into the reflection. He looked once around the room and walked to where she was seated. The gold sweater she was wearing was their prearranged cue.

“Judy?” he asked tentatively.

She nodded and he took the stool next to her. He offered his hand. “Carlisle,” he said with a light smile.

Judy took his hand and watched as his eyes strayed to the men at the end of the bar.

“They yours?” he asked, nodding toward them.

She shook her head.

“You’re different from what I imagined,” he said with a look of approval.

She shrugged and looked down at her lap as the bartender appeared. Carlisle ordered an imported beer and Judy waited until he was gone.

“Who was in the body shop?” she asked.

“Man named Frank Filas.” He pushed a business card under the corner of her napkin. It read: ‘Filas Fine Restorations’, and had the likeness of a Porsche embossed above an address and telephone number.

The beer came and the bartender poured. Judy slid the business card off the bar and tucked it into her purse. “The shop on Ocean Avenue. Have you been there before?”

He shook his head.

“But you’ve been living in Virginia for more than a month.”

“Pickup locations change all the time. Little Jimmy likes to keep it random,” he said, his voice tinged with sarcasm.

“Anyone else?”

“Two white guys in the back. I’ve never seen them before.”

“Did they know you?”

Carlisle shook his head. “Filas shut the door of the office and took the bag from a safe. It’s not the kind of office where the help hang out.”

Judy looked in the mirror, scanning the room behind them. “Tell me about Leesburg,” she said. “Ever seen the pilot before?”

“Never.” He raised the beer glass and took a drink. “Big mouth and too close to his business, if you know what I mean.”

“He’s a user.”

“His eyes itch and his nose runs. Told me he was flying to Ohio.” Carlisle inspected his fingernails. “The old man would have killed him for saying something like that. Sloppy business, running your mouth to total strangers.”

Judy was silent a moment, turning the glass of wine in her hands.

“Any idea where in Ohio?”

“Suburbs of Cleveland. Jimmy Senior kept a mistress there. Bought her a string of Pizza franchises in the late eighties. She cleaned up his money and after a couple of years got into the powder.”

“You know her name?”

“Sandy Mercer. She would be in her fifties or sixties by now.”

Judy reached in her purse for a pen and pad, scribbled the woman’s name and replaced it.

“Little Jimmy. You don’t like him very much?”

Carlisle tilted his head to the side and shrugged.

“You know one day a Grand Jury will start handing out indictments. Little Jimmy’s going to wonder how you managed not to testify.”

Carlisle scratched his thumbnail across the etching on his glass. “When the old man died Little Jimmy held a meeting. He said he wanted to make room for new blood. Then after twenty years of working for his father he took me out of Miami. Sent me to Norfolk and replaced me with some kid. Called that an enhanced security measure.” Carlisle’s words dripped with contempt. “Next thing I’m in a warehouse with a boat captain and fifty kilos when DEA Norfolk starts coming out of the woodwork. I hear later they got a tip out of Florida. Seems Jimmy’s new boy was going around South Beach like he was Scarface or something, talking about shipments of cocaine traveling out of Belize.”

Carlisle looked up and down the bar, then back at Judy. “So they covered up the bust and I made a deal with the US Attorney in Richmond. As far as I’m concerned, Little Jimmy managed to bite himself on the ass.” Carlisle tapped the bar with his finger. “Either way, he won’t presume to come after me. He doesn’t have the clout.” He raised his beer and finished it. Then he reached into his jacket pocket, removed a small envelope and laid it on the bar in front of her. “I took a spoonful from one of the bags.”

Judy put the cocaine in her purse. “What’s next?”

“Same run next week. I presume you’ll have people waiting in Ohio?”

Judy didn’t respond.

Carlisle stood and Judy followed. He pulled her jacket from the stool and helped her into it. He placed a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. “You know you should get out in the sun a little more,” he said

Then he walked away.

Judy looked in the mirror.

It took thirty minutes to turn the narcotics in at the DEA lab and another ten to get up the nerve to call her supervisor.

She filled him in on the Carlisle debriefing and they talked about setting up DEA surveillance in Ohio. Then he came around to asking about the pistol range at Quantico.

“What did you hear?” She tried to keep it light.

“I hear everything,” Jack said. “Just wanted to know if you were okay. This really about the flu? Or something else?”

“It’s probably the flu and maybe some stress like everyone else.”

“Don’t bullshit me if you’re in over your head. If you feel overwhelmed by the Latora investigation, turn it over to your partner. Whatever you do, don’t let this crap interfere with your head. I’m not saying you’re not sick, but if it’s something more than the flu get it fixed. Don’t go back there and give them a reason to question your fitness for duty.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him.

“Well if you’re not by Friday morning, I suggest you call in sick. Take a sabbatical. Do what you must to get better.”

“Thanks,” she said, “I’ll be fine by next week. And I appreciate the advice. I really do.”

Kendrick’s was not the kind of place that they usually met for a drink. Carol preferred the more upscale bars like in Georgetown where she was routinely greeted by name. But it was Carol who insisted they have a drink on Judy’s birthday and Carol who decided Kendrick’s was to be the place.

Judy took the handrail and descended a set of concrete steps to a basement, sirens wailing toward GW Hospital on Pennsylvania Avenue. She tried to recall Carol’s exact words.

“Don’t forget to wear a skirt ’cause the flashy lure gets the fish.” It was one of her cutesy sayings.

“We’re talking young crowd here, definitely a skirt, and keep it short. Wouldn’t want to embarrass me on your thirtieth birthday.”

But that was Carol’s way: Carol always light and whimsical, Judy dark and brooding.

In many ways it was Carol who had saved her. Carol was the kind of friend that would drag her out on weekends when she would rather sleep through the day. Carol haranguing her about wearing pants suits that she called Judy’s government blues, urging her to dress up for the endless string of parties that appeared like magic on Carol’s kitchen calendar.

Judy didn’t always go along with her friend. Often she dug in and stayed on her couch. But in truth she considered Carol the only friend she had left, and when Carol was overly persistent she acquiesced out of fear. She didn’t want Carol to stop asking her out altogether. Carol, she had come to believe, was the last thing on the planet she had left to lose.

Tonight was one of those nights she had felt compelled to go along.

The room was dark and the bar stools were heaving, day shift from George Washington Hospital still wearing their scrubs. Carol wasn’t there when she arrived, which she considered odd since Carol got off work an hour before she did.

Judy found a stool at the end of the bar and ordered a Chardonnay, wondering if she should try Carol’s cellphone, deciding after a minute to wait. Even a fender bender could confound traffic this hour of the day.

She stared at framed caricatures on the wall: man on a surfboard with wavy blond hair and piano-key sized teeth, a woman in a polka dot bikini with a hula-hoop around her waist. A door slammed shut behind her, LADIES’ ROOM plaque above a half torn poster of Michael Phelps. For a long moment she looked at the door, paint peeling above an old brass knob. She began to feel queasy. She turned slowly in her stool and looked down at the rail, rubbed the wood with her fingers where someone had scratched the initials DRG next to an old cigarette burn. The feeling of dread started to come over her. Like the dread she’d felt at Quantico just moments before her round of fire. Pre-panic they called it; those few moments before an attack. She could still remember standing there, the ever-present smell of cordite in the air. But this time the cordite smelled like burnt hair, and the pall of dread wrapped its cold arms around her.

The room began to seem smaller. She looked at the red exit sign over the front door, trying to judge the number of steps. She wanted her check, but the bartender was busy with a customer. She covered her mouth with her hand, hiding the rhythm of forced breathing. And thought suddenly about her father.

Until last month he had been only a vague childhood memory. He had died when she was only eight, not long before her mother suffered a stroke and was confined to bed in a nursing home.

It had now been twenty-two weeks since her daughter Lynn died of SIDS, twenty-one weeks since Tom packed his bags and walked away, fourteen since she had returned to work and discovered nothing would get better, that nothing would really change.

She lost touch with her friends, people who found it uncomfortable to talk about their happy lives. Carol was the exception, probably because they were such different people. Judy was the conservative who shunned societies and associations; Carol a card-carrying member of every fervent cause.

The bartender turned her way and Judy raised a hand. He started toward her, but a pitcher was thrust before him and he stopped to take an order. The couple sitting next to her poured an envelope full of vacation photographs on the bar. She shivered as a siren wailed on the streets above.

It was odd, she thought, how quickly life turned around. One day you were making plans for the future and the next you were thrown into a maelstrom of despair and confusion, hanging onto sanity by a thread. And it was never the same afterward. Once you had reached the edge you never returned.

The ladies’ room door slammed behind her and she winced. One thousand one, one thousand two …

It was her psychiatrist who had probed for memories about her father. Judy had tried to conjure an image of the man and realized how little she remembered. She knew she was in her bedroom playing with a dollhouse on the day he died. Her mother had said she found his body in his office and a neighbor came to take her away as ambulances were arriving. One year later her mother suffered a paralyzing stroke. They had nurses in the house ever after. Her mother died when she was away at college. The family house was sold to pay for all the years of medical care. It was at her funeral that she learned from an aunt that her father hadn’t died of a heart attack. That he had shot himself in the head.

The bartender coughed and she found him staring at her with raised eyebrows. She glanced at the empty glass in front of her and mouthed the word “check.” As the bartender walked away her Blackberry began to vibrate. She took it from her belt expecting to see Carol’s name. The readout said ‘Private.’

She hesitated a second, then pressed TALK. The couple sitting next to her poured yet another envelope full of Disney World photographs on the bar. There was a metallic noise on the line and then the connection went dead and a text message popped up that read ‘Happy Birthday!’

She put her phone down on the bar and was so absorbed in paying the check she was completely taken by surprise when Carol rushed up and threw her arms around her. “Happy Birthday!” Carol said, grinning; there were a half dozen friends standing behind her.

Judy smiled as they hugged, then turned to acknowledge the others and by the grace of God or the complexity of the human brain, the panic-stricken moment passed.

Conversation was still a little awkward: people no longer asked how she was doing. No one patted her reassuringly on the back. No one wanted to say the wrong thing or talk about their husbands and kids. Judy had to smile over the composition of Carol’s gathering. One of the men, she had once admitted to Carol, was cute.

The party broke up by ten. Carol was working on the last pitcher of beer, talking about who had come and watching young couples enter from the movie theatre that let out across the street.

“What about Troy and how he was looking at you tonight?”

“Shut up,” Judy said.

“Wouldn’t you just like him with his shirt off one time?”

“Shut up!”

“You going to be an old maid the rest of your life?”

“It’s just the last thing on my mind right now,” Judy said and she told Carol about what happened at the range. “I thought I was doing okay,” she said. “And then I’m standing there with my hand on my gun, my shirt soaked with sweat and I’m shaking like a little girl. I can’t even pull it out of the holster.”

“Have you been sleeping?” Carol asked.

“A little better,” Judy lied.

“Other panic attacks?”

Judy shook her head.

The bartender was polishing glasses, a muted episode of Law and Order playing out above the bar.

Judy heard laughter erupt at the end of the room, loud, loose, carefree laughter and she tried to recall the last time she had such a feeling.

“You know you need more time. Why don’t you take your boss’s advice and put in for a sabbatical.”

Carol was a mocha-colored pixie with sassy red hair. She wore dangling red earrings and rings on all fingers. There was also some jewelry under her blouse.

“You know, I’ve always told you that you needed to deal with this before you can deal with anything else. I’ve been telling you that for months.”

“I am dealing with it,” Judy retorted. “I’m seeing a shrink. What else can I do?”

Carol didn’t answer.

Judy blotted one of her eyes with a napkin. “Right now the job is all I have. You and the job, and I feel like I’m going to lose that too.”

“Don’t think like that, girl. No one is going to get rid of you because you’re going through a rough period. If next week comes and you still have a problem you just tell them you need more time.”

Judy smiled. “You don’t know the government.”

“Then to hell with the government. You went to law school. Take the bar and practice like your father. You’ve got a lot more choices than me, Judy. Look at me. I’ve got a High School education.”

Judy didn’t look convinced.

“Besides, it’s never going to get that far.” Carol made a gesture with her hand. “You’ll do fine next week and then all this worry will be behind you.” She leaned over to fill Judy’s wine glass with the dregs of her pitcher.

Judy tasted the warm beer, made a face and quickly set it down. “You know Tom never wanted to be married to me in the first place. He just didn’t want anyone else to have me.” She blew her nose in a napkin and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I don’t think he was ever happy we had Lynn.”

Carol snorted, but then Tom had never been high on Carol’s list.

“I used to tell Lynn every night when I rocked her to sleep, that I would always be there for her. And I couldn’t even keep my first promise.” A tear rolled down Judy’s face and clung to her chin.

Carol reached out and wiped it away. “Things happen, Judy. Babies die, people divorce. It’s called life. We all have to go on.” She took her friend’s hand. “I’m sorry, hon. I know that sounds weak, but there are people in the world that really care about you. I care about you.”

Judy looked at her, half listening, half drunk. She picked up a paper coaster and tore off a chunk. “I just feel really old tonight,” she said. “Old and empty.”

Carol frowned, deciding to fill her own mug with the remains of the pitcher, but then pushed it away and started rummaging through her purse. “Look, kiddo,” Carol said excitedly. “I got you something.” She handed Judy a small gift-wrapped box.

Judy blinked several times to clear her eyes and then she opened it. It was a small gold cross on a chain.

“I know you’ve had a lot of hard knocks lately and thought what the hell, could it hurt?”

“It’s lovely.” Judy laughed, tears beginning to well again. She threw her arms around Carol and began to cry. “Oh, thank you,” she sobbed. “It’s just beautiful.” She held it in her hand. “You really think there’s a heaven, Carol?”

“You mean with angels and all that shit?” Carol had heard all this before. Every time Judy drank too much.

She pulled her friend close and gave her a hug. “Yeah, Judy. Why not?”

“Lynn would be there,” Judy whispered.

“Yes, Lynn would be there. Of course she’d be there.” Carol shook her head. “So you want to get home now?”

“Yeah, let’s get out of here.” Judy pushed the chair away noisily and got to her feet.

Carol smiled weakly. “Happy birthday.”

Chapter 6

Iron Mountain, West Virginia

Rolfe Christian Ledder stepped out of the trees on Cemetery Hill. The graveyard smelled of honeysuckle and ruptured earth. There was a rectangular hole no larger than a child. It reminded him of a day when he and his sister took turns lying in an open grave to see what it felt like.

Funerals had always terrified him in his youth. Long processions of mourners walking behind horses pulling black draped coffins, and the hollow peel of the church bell that tolled once for every year the person had lived. It was the funerals where the bell only rang a handful of times that scared him the most.

He raised his eyes to a single leaden cloud, felt its chill when it passed over the sun. The grass bent low as a breeze rippled across the hill and a feeling of terror settled over him. The cloud lingered a long moment, then dispersed in wisps of smoky tendrils. He stared at the sun for as long as he could, wondering what it meant.

He looked at the soap colored tombstones and the inscriptions obscured by centuries of wind and rain. His sister was buried just next to his mother and he lay down upon her grave, remembering her face, knowing that she was living in Hell and that one day soon he would join her.

A distant truck blasted its air horn and he heard an engine growl. Quills Landing, at the foot of the hill, had once been a bustling river port full of barges laden with coal and timber. Now it was a freight hub, filled with fueling stations and earth rumbling trucks that buzzed on and off the interstate, like bees gathering pollen.

He followed the old footpath that descended the hillside, knees brushing hay as grasshoppers snapped stem to stem. The roof of the Pentecostal Church appeared. The cross on top was leaning to one side. He stopped in a heavy thicket above the parking lot. All evidence of paint on the cinderblock building had long ago peeled away. The air was dry and smelled of diesel.

Rolfe heard the clank of metal on metal and parted the brush. He watched Reverend Holland reach to pick up a horseshoe, and when the old man stood up he favored one leg, shoes dragging noisily across the heavy gravel.

He looked much older this year, his tall body stooped, his jowls swollen and his skin the color of purple. He wore the usual short-sleeve dress shirt and blue jeans with suspenders, white socks and heavy black shoes.

Rolfe’s mother had been there on the day the Lord chose Holland as a preacher. It was at a fall revival on the banks of Soapy Creek, she’d told him. A crowd had gathered to be baptized before winter’s first snow. His mother said that people came from many miles away, everyone waiting to be dunked in the icy river by old Reverend Elbuck. Horses stamped and wagon wheels creaked. Families huddled under blankets, sharing bread and apples and cider.

Morning drew to afternoon and the people grew restless. A voice began to rise up out of the crowd, wanting to know if there wasn’t anyone among them who’d had the calling. One who could take Reverend Elbuck’s place and baptize them before winter.

His mother said that Holland was uncertain at first, but he rose to his full height of over six feet and left his parents’ campfire and walked straight into the creek calling out for the people to join him.

She had said she was only a little girl, but when Holland put his hand on her back and lowered her face into the creek it was the first time in her life she felt loved. She had said it was the closest a human could come to touching God.

The next day they found Reverend Elbuck’s wagon on the side of a road, mule chewing the bark of a persimmon, preacher slumped over the footrest. He had one hand on his Bible and the other on his heart. She said the Lord had taken Elbuck and given the world Holland.

Holland founded his Church of the Pentecostals the next year, in a one-room building abandoned by a coal company. His mother said that God provided the building so that Holland could begin to save souls.

She told them that sin was behind all the evils on the earth, the reason babies died and milk dried up in cows’ udders; the reason people lied and fornicated and stole. She said it was a sin to say idle words, to wear bright colors or look upon one’s reflection in a mirror. She dyed their clothes brown with walnuts because walnuts were free and brown was a respectable Christian color.

Then there was Rolfe’s father who didn’t have so many rules, not for himself or for his children. He planted wobbly rows of sweet corn and took long walks through the mountains. He taught Rolfe how to hunt and fish and clean game without leaving waste. He played Hen and Chicks and Ring around the Rosy, made music from a tin whistle and fashioned dolls for Rolfe’s sister from burlap sacks and corn-silk hair. And he drank moonshine and sometimes got drunk with his friends.

Rolfe heard the horseshoes clank as the preacher dropped them to the ground. Holland stood stoop-shouldered at the far end of the parking lot, seemingly unsure of what to do next. Then he lifted his eyes to the hillside as if lost in thought.

Rolfe slipped out of the trees, climbing the creek bed toward the family homestead. Thirty minutes later he dropped his packs by a water hole and stripped off his clothes. He scrubbed his body with gritty sediment until his skin was red and raw. Then he dressed and took a path to a ramshackle cabin in a clearing.

The boards of the porch were stained black from walnuts his mother had left to dry in the sun. He remembered the cauldron of boiling clothes and his mother stirring them with a large wooden paddle. The cauldron was gone, replaced by empty jugs of his brother’s moonshine.

He tossed his packs and rifle under the porch and climbed the steps toward the splintered door, pushed it open a few inches and looked inside.

A haze of dust covered a plain wooden table. On the pine floor were grooves where his mother’s rocker had been. The furniture was all gone, the spinning wheel and loom – all no doubt sold for pennies at summer flea markets in the streets of Quills Landing by his good-for-nothing brother Clem.

He remembered the cabin in every detail: the stain from an old blackberry pail, the windowsills hung with slices of dried pumpkin and sprigs of withered sage, yellow plum, lady slipper and mullion roots. He recalled how the door was left open on summer days, shafts of light across the floor, homemade crosses hanging from beams and shutters and walls.

He could still see his mother dressed for church in a long dress buttoned to the neck, black bonnet and boots. He remembered the sunset’s disquieting transition from pink to purple. He remembered the terror of those night rides through the Hollow, the spindly black branches reaching down for them as their mother cracked a whip across the nag. He remembered how the people inside the church shouted and clapped and fell to their knees talking in strange tongue. He remembered how they feared both God and the Devil. And he remembered that oblong pine box next to the pulpit. The one with the red crosses painted on the sides.

His mother said his father belonged to the Devil because he didn’t believe in the church or hell.

His father said there weren’t any such things as devils and that they should open their windows and stop living in fear.

Rolfe was afraid of what God would do if he heard his father’s blasphemy, but not his sister Kate; Kate believed her father and she wasn’t afraid of anything.

Then came a day that their father had been drinking and arguing with his mother about going to see Reverend Holland. That evening he tore a cross from the wall and threw it in the fire. Then he picked up his coat and walked out the door.

Their mother told them their father had decided to go and live with Satan. Later she dragged them into the woods and pointed to a stump hole and told them it was where their father was now.

Kate called her a liar and took the beating for it, but Rolfe was terrified of the hole and never went near it again. Sin began to occupy his mind. He worried that the Devil could hear him thinking. He worried about becoming weak like his father. He thought the Devil would try to trick him into sinning or descending into the stump hole.

A change started to take place after that day. Their mother started brushing out her hair and wearing pinafores over her black dress. One night she readied the buggy and told them she wouldn’t be taking them to church anymore. It was rather disturbing to a boy who had been home-schooled on religion. Church, though a terrifying experience, was nothing compared to the fear of being left alone and unprotected in the dark.

Night was unsafe, their mother had always told them. Night was when men’s minds were idle and they thought about sin. Night was when the devils had most of their power, when they went looking for souls and young children to snatch for their fires. He looked up to the loft where he had once slept with his sister, remembered her lying there as branches scratched upon the roof. They had sounded like devil’s claws and the wind their icy breath. He would lie there with the knowledge that Kate didn’t believe in devils, worrying that God would hear her thoughts and let evil through the door.

And one day he did.

A bee entered the room and buzzed lazily in a circle before leaving to bother the Iron Weeds and Aster. He tried to remember his sister’s face, the way she looked before the devils got in, but her smile kept transforming into a scream.

That evening he climbed the mountain and sat in the trees overlooking Kettle Hollow, watching people as they moved between tin roof shanties. Near dark, a woman appeared high on a field. She was climbing toward the tree line, picking dandelion and softly singing.

A month of steady walking had kept him above the highways and trails of Tennessee and Kentucky. He had seen a few people since leaving Tennessee, but none of them women and none of them alone, until tonight. Until now.

He felt his heart quicken.

Chapter 7

Iron Mountain, West Virginia

Kettle Hollow could best be described as a cluster of dilapidated house trailers in a depression near the summit of the Iron Mountain, home to forty odd people who with the exception of old Dan Carnes had never wandered beyond the imposing shadows of the Appalachians. Carnes himself was born in the Hollow and educated like the others in a one-room schoolhouse that Hattie Wilson once taught, but back in the fifties he left to find work in Louisville and ended up joining a run-down carnival on its summer tour of the Bible Belt. That made Carnes the worldliest man on the mountain and that was why Carnes considered himself unofficial mayor of Kettle Hollow.

There was no real connection between the Hollow and the state’s bureaucracy, save visits from a postal worker who delivered the public assistance checks and a stack of magazines Hattie Wilson read cover to cover before using them to light kindling in her wood stove. The only industry on the mountain was moonshining and the biggest employer was Grant Cooney, who lived a mile off in the woods.

Matters of community interest though rare, were hashed out around Hattie’s woodstove and it was such a meeting today that brought Carnes to the front of the crowd.

He took a moment to project a more serious expression by removing a filthy ball cap.

“All of you heard Mary Saxe went missing yesterday. She was up on the hillside last night, tending to Willem’s goats. Tess saw her and so did Rachel and her little one.” He pointed to a child clinging to her mother’s skirt. “When she didn’t come home Willem went up to look for her and found some threads of her dress caught on the branch of a crabapple tree.”

He stamped his feet, looking down at his worn boots. “Willem’s been up there most all of the night and I think it’s time we had a talk before we call the police.”

Pete Krick stepped out of the crowd, pushing a sweat-stained cap back on his forehead and driving the toe of his boot against a board of the wooden floor. “So you’re thinking we need to call the police?” He squinted, catching the eye of two or three men around the room.

Krick had a negative opinion of most everyone in the Hollow, but especially of old Dan Carnes. “Why is it that every time something happens around here, you want to call the police? You think the police know something special about girls that run away from home? We all know Mary’s run away before. It happens to all new brides.”

Carnes took off his glasses and put them in the pocket of his flannel shirt. “It’s just we all know what a pretty little thing she is.” Carnes cleared his throat and patted the pocket where he had just put his glasses, feeling a little self-conscious about the way that had come out. He looked around for Willem and didn't see his head above the crowd, which meant he had probably gone back to his trailer. Then he looked at the Kelso boys whispering in the back of the crowd, chewing tobacco and grinning with their heads bent close together. “And if any one of you knows what happened to her, they best speak up now,” he said. “Once the law’s begun an investigation, they don't want to hear any excuses about there being some accident.”

“Oh, I get it now.” Krick took a step toward him. “You’re implying that one of us had something to do with Mary’s disappearance.”

Hattie Wilson’s voice cracked behind him. “Any of you geniuses give a thought about that woman’s head found up in Lake Nawakwa this spring?”

All eyes turned to the stalwart woman sitting on the counter. She was cutting sections of an apple with a buck-knife. Hattie, who had taught most of them how to read and write, was still an imposing figure at seventy-four.

“I don’t see what one’s got to do with the other,” Krick said, shifting his weight. “Whoever she was she didn’t come from around here. Everyone knows that.”

“And you don’t think it’s significant that someone was murdered a mile from here?” She chewed a piece of the apple, looking around the room. “Doesn’t it worry any of you about your women and your children?”

“Ain’t no –”

“Ah, shut up, Krick.” Hattie slapped the palm of her hand against the counter. “The only reason you don’t want the police here is because there’s moonshine cooking behind your trailer. Every one of you men should be up there helping Willem search for his wife instead of jawing about who’s calling who. I give you fair warning. I’ll be calling the police myself if she doesn’t turn up by morning.”

Krick ripped the hat from his head and crushed it in a fist on his way toward the door, and slowly the others began to follow.

Chapter 8

Marion, West Virginia

“Line one, is Hattie Wilson,” Sergeant Watson yelled.

Marty punched the phone and laid the newspaper aside.

“Hattie?” he said. There was a clicking noise on the line.

“Marty, that you?”

“Here,” he said and the connection became clear. “Everything okay up there?”

“You remember Willem Saxe? You met him the morning Buc Thompson found the woman’s head in Lake Nawakwa.”

“I’m sure it would be in my notes.”

“Willem’s wife went missing yesterday evening. I didn’t call when it happened because Willem wanted to check with the girl’s family in Quills Landing. She’s only eighteen and he thought she might have run home to her parents. Anyhow he’s been down there and the family hasn’t seen her. Just thought you should know.”

Marty put his feet down, a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Anyone check the lake, Hattie?”

“I know Willem’s been up there with a few of the others. Dan Carnes found some light blue thread caught in a thorn apple above the hillside. It was the color of one of Mary’s dresses, Willem said. Might be nothing or it might not be good.”

“I’ll see you in an hour.” He disconnected.

Marty looked up to the map on his wall and the pushpins he had stuck in Durbin and Lake Nawakwa. Two places that no percentage of the population had ever heard of or cared to, but a woman had started out alive at one and ended up dead at the other and there was no logical route in between. Which was what troubled him most about the revelation of an immigrant serial killer going up and down the Appalachians. How had a complete stranger in a truck with out-of-state tags found his way from Durbin to Lake Nawakwa on a Thanksgiving morning and not be seen? Marty had never disputed the forensics. That was not his issue. It was just that no one in Washington could appreciate how wary mountain people could be.

He had heard from Major Johnny Lazarus, family friend and commander of the state police criminal investigations unit out of Charleston, that there was an emerging theory about the man the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had dubbed the Mountain State Butcher. It seemed migrant workers who picked squash and tobacco in eastern Tennessee took up residence around Tellico Plains before they moved north to find work in the winter.

He had to admit that the migrant worker theory made sense if you stepped away from the map. It was true that a large number of people moved north and south between jobs. Field workers became minimum wage housekeepers and dishwashers, cooks and landscapers at the seasonal resorts. There were even migrant workers on the natural gas wells and oil pipelines. They had holed up in small hotels, intermingled with the locals and learned about the geography as they moved from state to state. A migrant serial killer who chose his victims at random might easily be overlooked before they moved on. And depending on their line of work, some might know the perfect place to dispose of a body.

But how would a migrant have found their way to a cave on Blood Mountain or a lake so remote as Nawakwa without being seen?

The alternative of course was a man who didn’t drive. Who didn’t need to understand the complicated back roads or worry about some policeman pulling him over because he looked lost or had a broken tail light; a man that came down off the mountains to hunt people.

Now that would be one dangerous son of a bitch.

Marty told Sam to call two officers to meet him in Kettle Hollow, then grabbed an extra box of radio batteries and carried them to his Jeep. The drive up the mountain took just over forty minutes.

He marveled at how nothing ever seemed to change in Kettle Hollow. Year after year the same truck axle would be lying on the side of the road, threadbare tire hanging from the limb of a tree, rusty Ford tailgate leaning against an old fence post. He drove past the hodgepodge of shanties and trailers and parked off the side of the road in front of Hattie Wilson’s store.

Three young boys sat on a tractor tire, passing a hand-rolled cigarette and blowing smoke through their nostrils. A sign above them read ‘General Store’.

“Seen Willem?” Marty asked.

One of the boys thumbed at the door.

Dan Carnes was sitting by the woodstove on an antique student desk.

Willem Saxe at nearly six-foot-three stood behind him, looking uncomfortable as Marty approached.

“Mind if we talk private?” Marty asked Willem.

Willem shook his head.

“This is from her dress,” Carnes interrupted, holding up some blue threads. “Found them on a thorny apple on top of the hill.”

Marty took the threads and stuffed them in his shirt pocket, turned to Willem and nodded toward the door.

“Outside,” he said gently.

Willem nodded and followed him to the door. The boys and their cigarette were gone as they stepped into daylight.

“Did you two have words?” Marty looked at Willem’s eyes.

Willem shook his head.

“You get along with her kin okay?”

Willem nodded.

“Was she seeing anyone serious before you two got married?”

Willem said no.

“But she’s run away before?”

“Twice,” Willem said. “When she was sixteen she hitched a ride from one of the truckers in Quills Landing. The state police found her at a gas station in Fairfield and brought her back to her mother’s. Once right after we got married she ran back to her parents’ house.”

“But not this time?” Marty asked.

Willem shook his head. “She was done with all that. I think she’s still up there.”

A red pickup truck came toward them, turned off the dusty road and pulled in behind Marty’s Jeep. Seconds later a white one pulled in too, and Sergeant Sam Watson climbed from the cab.

“Two teams, Sam,” Marty pointed up the hill. “I’ve got extra radios in the Jeep. I’m going up with Willem here,” he patted the big man’s back. “You guys take up the others.”

Marty didn’t expect to find anything that Willem and the others hadn’t found, but you never knew what was on a man’s mind or what he would say when you got him away from his friends. Maybe someone in the Hollow had been paying a bit too much attention to his new wife or maybe the couple had an issue he couldn’t talk about in public.

But Willem said nothing of the kind and the search went on until dark. Marty showed the Tennessee surveillance photo of a man by a gray truck to every household in the Hollow. They searched the lake and had a Division of Forestry helicopter fly over firebreaks and power lines looking for any sign of a gray truck. Mary Saxe didn’t turn up that day or the next. Marty knew that she could still be up there, lost but alive, maybe injured in a fall. Whole armies could miss a non-responsive victim in the mountains. Nights were cold and a person could lose their strength. Once you couldn’t defend yourself anymore the scavengers would move in and when you were dead they would scatter your bones like you never existed.

Or maybe she had never been lost and was pulled into the trees on the top of the hill. Maybe the man that put Annie Myers in Lake Nawakwa was back on the mountain.

It was eleven o’clock and there were messages on Marty’s voicemail.

One was from a cable news reporter who had heard there might be another missing girl on the mountain. She wanted to know if Marty’s office had comments. Another sounded like a sleepover of ten-year-olds making grunting noises into the phone. And then there was Kirsten Berkley, the forensic cop, who called to let him know that her husband was out of town. The last was from Major Lazarus, a long-time friend of the Wayne family and commander of the state police criminal investigation unit based in Charleston. Johnny Lazarus was part of a federal task force charged with finding what the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had dubbed the Mountain State Butcher.

Marty walked to the wall map and put his thumb on Tellico Plains, stretching his finger to touch the Iron Mountain and there was nothing to pinch between but the Appalachian Range.

He deleted all the messages and dialed Lazarus in the state capital.

“Shouldn’t an old man like you be home in bed at this hour?”

“I’m on my way home,” Lazarus growled. “What in the hell do you want?”

“How can you be going home and answer your office phone at the same time,” Marty asked.

“I have call forwarding, you idiot. Don’t they have modern technology up there?”

“I’ve got another woman missing on the Iron.”

“Have to speak up, Marty. I just left the carnival and the family is snoring like a pack of wolverines.”

“I said there’s another woman missing on the Iron,” he said louder.

“Jesus, tell me.”

“Not much to tell. She’s eighteen, married, last seen walking up a hillside over Kettle Hollow. That was three days ago now.”

There was a pause. “Her husband did it,” Lazarus said.

“Not this time, Johnny.”

“What about the neighbors? A sex crime?”

“We’re getting to know each other, but nothing like that yet.”

“And why are you calling me?”

“I want some troopers and helicopters if I can get them. I think he might have come back.”

Lazarus didn’t answer for a moment. “What’s the problem with asking the barracks commander,” he said at last.

“She’s got a history as a runaway. Twice.”

Lazarus sighed out loud. “Nobody facing manpower cuts is going to bleed their budget over a runaway. You’ve done your search, which is the most anyone can do. There comes a point where you have to move on.”

“It could be him,” Marty said.

“But what if it’s not?”

“It’s where we found Annie Myer’s head,” Marty insisted.

“Well then let me just tell you,” Lazarus said, “it’s not him.”

“Is that an assumption or are you stating a fact?” Marty asked.

“Just take my word for it, Marty.”

“Johnny,” he said sternly.

“Oh come on, Marty.”

“You know something, Johnny. And I need to know it too.”

There was a long moment of silence when Johnny’s words simply faded away with the unstable signal up here in the Appalachians. Marty thought he’d lost the call, then he heard Lazarus speak again. “This isn’t for the press or even your girlfriend,” he said.

“Jesus, Johnny, you’ve known me all your life.”

“He was spotted in Pennsylvania.”

“When?”

“About a week ago.”

“Why isn’t this on the news?”

“It’s not a confirmed ID. Witness saw the tattoo but no sign of the vehicle. He bought groceries in her store. Little Mom-and-Pop place near the Somerset exchange on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The Bureau’s convinced he’s still in the area. Looks like he’s set up house and is raising some kids.”

“Because?”

“He bought cereals, milk and candy. Even a package of mousetraps. They haven’t told anyone yet. Not even the local authorities.”

“Uh, hey, nothing for nothing, Johnny boy, but people don’t keep secrets like that anymore.”

“Listen, Marty. What matters is that they’ve narrowed the search to three counties instead of three states. You can appreciate that, right?”

“If he did it,” Marty said.

“Are you kidding me?” Lazarus retorted.

“I just can’t shake the doubt.”

“That what, Marty?”

“That an immigrant made it to the top of Iron Mountain and returned on the same road without being seen.”

“Why not?” Lazarus asked.

“Oh, come on, Johnny. They think I’m an alien up in Kettle Hollow. Do you really believe they wouldn’t have noticed a Latino male driving a gray pickup truck with Tennessee tags?”

“You sound just like that idiot down in Tellico Plains.”

“What idiot?”

“Oh, some sheriff who keeps talking about a bum seen around town.”

“Tell me more,” Marty said.

“Pretty short story. Locals saw a derelict along a highway around the time of the murders. Ragged clothes, straggly hair, carrying his life on his back, you know the kind. Just a little more common down south.”

“Not too common to mention,” Marty said.

“They’ve seen him before. Didn’t sound like a big deal.”

“The FBI checked it out?”

“Of course they checked it out. Tennessee broadcast a ‘wanted for questioning’ just a day or two after the murders. When they learned the victim’s credit card had been used and saw the video of the truck, they changed their focus. Not much point in pursuing it after that.”

“So what’s next?” Marty said.

“What’s next? Well, we’re moving the office picnic to Heather Park so we don’t have to share a ball field with the Mitzelhoff reunion. Bring Sarah and come as our guests. There’s going to be fireworks this year.”

Marty’s jaw tightened at the mention of Sarah.

“What I meant was, what’s the FBI doing?”

“I know what you meant,” Lazarus growled. “They’ll be concentrating on the area in Pennsylvania, hoping he comes back to the store or someone spots his truck.”

“Or kills someone else,” Marty said.

“Or that,” Lazarus admitted.

“Hey, if you want to call the state police barracks commander and start crying wolf over a runaway, be my guest. Call in everyone you can find. But I’m telling you it wasn’t him that took her and you know what happened to the boy who cried wolf.”

“Okay, fine,” Marty said. “You remember the name of the Sheriff down in Tellico Plains?”

“What on earth would you want to know that for?”

“I’m intrigued. I’ve got time on my hands.”

“And the FBI’s already been there and done that. For what it’s worth, it’s not your jurisdiction.”

“Free world,” Marty said.

“Hey, if you think some hobo is hitchhiking up and down the Appalachians butchering women and successfully disposing of their bodies, I salute your creative mind.”

“Jesus, Johnny. There are thirteen-year olds that hike the Appalachian Trail and a man who knows his way around could have waltzed between Tennessee and West Virginia in ten days.”

“That’s just crazy.”

“No crazier than an immigrant driving through the backwoods of Appalachia without being seen. I always thought whoever kidnapped Annie Myers in Durbin marched her through the woods to Lake Nawakwa and killed her there. Check a map, Johnny. We’re talking eight miles on foot versus a forty mile drive.”

Lazarus sighed, and there was another moment of silence which served to ease the tension between them.

“Anyone else ever known for oral mutilation?” Marty asked softly. “For taking dental work from their victims.”

“I asked the same question when I first heard about it,” Lazarus replied. “The FBI arrested a young couple in the sixties, name Rothenburg. They roamed Texas and Oklahoma killing old people and pawning their fillings and jewelry.”

“Dead, I presume?”

“Woman is, but the man’s still alive. Doing life in Florence, Colorado.”

“FBI’s alerted all the pawnshops?”

“Yep,” Lazarus said. “But the price of gold continues to skyrocket. You know it from your days on the streets of Pittsburgh. We can only guess at how much stolen gold is out there and melted down. The Sheriff’s name in Tellico Plains is Reeves. Now I’m pulling into my garage so why don’t you sleep on it and call me in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Johnny,” Marty said, and cut the call.

The mailbox was empty when he got home. He pulled his Jeep into the driveway and killed the lights. His boots crunched across the bluestone drive until he reached the door and there he stopped with his hand on the knob. The door was ajar!

He drew his weapon and pushed the door open quietly, seeing dim fire light glimmering on the pine floors of the hallway. A fire was burning in the living room.

Sarah had a key! Was she back?

He left his shoes by the door and moved quickly through the kitchen, hopes rising as he holstered the pistol, approached the archway into the living room and came around the corner. A candle was burning on the stone fireplace mantle, and a flimsy black bra hung from a kettle hook. His mail was stacked neatly on the coffee table.

He felt a lurch in his stomach and turned toward the bedroom, heart pounding in his chest.

Sarah!

The light was on, the door was closed. He put a hand on the knob and pushed it open.

The sheets of the bed had been pulled down. A pair of black panties hung from the bedpost and there was a tented note on a pillow.

He took the note and opened it.

Sorry about the breaking and entering, but I couldn’t find a key. You do have one hidden don’t you? I waited over an hour ...

Kirsten.

P.S. Hang on to the underwear. I’ll leave mine at home next time.

Chapter 9

Tellico Plains, Tennessee

Marty gassed his Jeep and headed south on Interstate 81; it was a six-hour drive to Tellico Plains, Tennessee. He told himself it was just to kill time, but it was truer that he didn’t want to be in town on the day he was to have married Sarah.

It had been months since she had moved to the state capital and he was sure that the story of her and Representative Stanton had gotten around. He could hardly believe it himself. Five months of jumping every time the phone rang, and that nauseous feeling that came over him every time he picked up the mail.

Then there were the reporters who had been calling his office every day, and blue-collar towns like Marion, West Virginia and Tellico Plains, Tennessee were becoming household names to loyal viewers of the six o’clock news.

He crossed the Tennessee border just before ten. Two hours later he parked in a one-intersection town opposite a plate glass window bearing the Tennessee state seal. A half dozen Cherokee Indians were watching him suspiciously as he crossed the street and entered the door below a sign that read MONROE COUNTY SHERIFF.

The room was dusty. The floor was oak and smelled of horses. The only furniture was a wooden desk that supported a broken antique lamp. In the corner a black German Shepherd raised an ear and growled.

“Morning,” a man said without looking up from writing. He wore an old gray sweatshirt, blue jeans and cowboy boots. The dog stopped growling.

“Afternoon,” Marty said, checking his watch. “You’d be Sheriff Reeves?”

The man peeked up through wire rim glasses, looked at a clock on the wall, then back down.

He was sixty-something, Marty thought, with a great sorrel mustache that covered his upper lip. His hair was somewhere between red and gray and pulled back into a ponytail. There was a frayed red kerchief tied around his neck and what he assumed was a wad of chewing tobacco stuffed in one cheek.

“I’ll be Reeves, if you’ll be Sheriff Wayne.” He banged his pen against the pitted desktop. “I was surprised to get your call since the FBI left town. Say, you got a pen that writes?”

Marty handed him one from his shirt pocket and the Sheriff started scribbling signatures across three half-page documents.

“Why’s that?” Marty asked.

“Oh, the FBI didn’t seem too impressed by us locals.”

Marty smiled.

The Sheriff tossed his papers in a wire basket and returned the pen to Marty, pushing himself away from the desk. “Payroll crap, most importantly my own. If I don’t send them in on time, they figure I died and won’t cut my checks any more. Damn government idiots.”

“You talk to this woman about your drifter again?”

The Sheriff shook his head. “Nope. I only go up there every now and then and it’s a rarer day yet when Sally comes to town. Anyhow, I figured you wanted to hear the story first hand. Got to grab something first from across the street. Meet me at the gray Jeep at the curb.”

The Sheriff took a heavy revolver from his desk and slipped it into a cracked leather holster that he slung over his shoulder.

“Bathroom’s in the corner if you’ve got to pee. When you leave, lock the door. Damned Indians will a rob a man blind.”

He pulled the door closed and was gone.

Marty stood staring at the window and then looked around the dusky room. The dog bared its teeth and growled.

The Jeep was an old open top with rotting matting and seats sprouting coils. The top was down, the doors had been removed. Marty no sooner reached it than the Sheriff stepped out of a windowless brick building with an arm full of blankets that he tossed onto the rear seat.

“The government sends me military surplus to hand out to the destitute,” he said, sliding behind the wheel. “Gulf War MREs are like momma’s own cooking compared to what we had in Vietnam.”

The windshield was strapped forward on the hood. The air was crisp and it struck them full face, bringing tears to Marty’s eyes on the road out of town.

After a few miles the Sheriff slowed and turned sharply uphill. There were no signs, no guardrails, no flags or cones to warn where the road had begun to erode away. They climbed switchbacks into sparse scrub pine and felt a noticeable drop in temperature. The forest was thin near the top and strewn with ferns and pale boulders. Stunted thorn trees grew in between.

“I looked up your mountain on Google Earth.” Reeves leaned over to spit tobacco on the road. “Lake Nawakwa’s quite a ways off the beaten path.”

Marty nodded. “That it is.”

“Makes you wonder how a migrant worker finds his way up there.” Reeves looked at him. “But that’s probably why you’re here, aren’t you?”

Marty shrugged. “Hard to beat a surveillance video of the suspect using the victim’s credit card,” Marty said. “So you knew them?”

“Couple of kids, from Connecticut. Bought an outbacker’s franchise and hoped to make money off the white-water rafters and fly fishermen come here.”

“Tell me about the Latino community.”

“Oh, we’ve got a lot of crop-pickers move around eastern Tennessee and a kind of don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy in Tellico Plains. One winter the state stepped in and converted an old motel into a shelter, after a woman and her baby froze to death in the back seat of a car. We know they don’t all have papers. When the FBI found out they were looking for a Latino they put on their helmets and flak vests and stormed the motel threatening deportation. You know how far that got them.”

Marty grunted. “A gift they teach at Quantico.”

“You said on the phone you’ve got another woman missing.”

Marty nodded.

“You think it’s him? The Butcher?”

“Probably not,” Marty said. “My girl’s got some history as a runaway. Just intrigued by the story about your drifter.”

The road circled the edge of the mountain then ended abruptly at a rockslide of boulders.

Reeves made a tight U-turn and shut off the engine. There were broken beer bottles on the ground and graffiti on the rocks.

Right away Marty noticed the unnatural silence.

“A little unnerving, isn’t it?” Reeves stepped out of the Jeep. “Like a vacuum. No nuts, no berries and where there’s no food there’s no animals.”

“What happened here?” Marty’s eyes roamed the landscape as he came around the Jeep.

“Quirk of nature,” Reeves answered. “Glaciers shoved a pile of slate together and things don’t grow so well in shallow soil. Only them thorn trees and ferns you can kick up with a boot. One dismal place, huh?”

“Where are we headed?” Marty asked.

“Just across that hill.” Reeves pointed through the trees. He grabbed an armful of wool blankets and started walking.

Marty happened to look at his watch, which read twelve-thirty. He was supposed to be getting married at one.

“Careful of the thorns,” Reeves cautioned. “They’ll tear you like a razor.”

Marty nodded and ducked under a limb. “This Sally woman, she lives on cans of military rations?”

Reeves laughed and shook his head. “The Cherokee bring her venison and vegetables. She makes medicines for them and their children. They feed her plenty well.”

Marty caught a whiff of smoke and it was sweet. Then the vague outline of a shanty appeared.

It had a stovepipe chimney and its walls were angled inward, giving the impression it was in a state of collapse. There was a fire burning outside and Marty began to cough as they neared. His eyes started watering and through the blur the woman appeared from the door, a small and willowy figure, chewing on something that looked like a finger. He stumbled, caught himself and then reeled against a tree. She was watching him with the palest eyes he had ever seen, slivers of white ice, the corner of her mouth leaking a dark tarlike droll.

Sweat began to pour from his body, soaking the back of his shirt. He reached for a branch and sliced open the tip of a finger.

Reeves grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into fresh air. He coughed and wiped his eyes and saw the woman still watching him. Next to her, waves of transparent heat rose from a trench of smoldering leaves.

“You okay,” Reeves said, releasing him.

He nodded, blotting his face with his sleeve. “What in the hell was that?”

“Hemlock or snakeroot. God knows what she’s cooking. Over there.” Reeves pointed and they walked downwind of the clearing. Marty filled his lungs with fresh air and they sat on the ground.

She came at them, grinning with teeth that looked like molten corn. Her skin was pale and stretched tightly across her cheekbones. She hiked her dress up and sat cross-legged in the dirt. Reeves held out army blankets and laid them on the ground between them.

“You sick?” She pointed at Marty, spraying spittle through a broken tooth.

He shook his head and saw that she still had the finger-like thing in one hand, only now it was a gnarly brown root.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m okay.”

“This is Martin Wayne from West Virginia,” Reeves said. “He wants to ask you about the man you and Dan Nenetooyah saw walking across the highway last month.”

“West Virginia?” She said the words slowly, emphasizing every syllable.

Marty nodded, finding it difficult to maintain eye contact.

“He’s a poacher.” She spat on the ground. “Digs up our ginseng and steals snakes. The Cherokee call him Rattleman. Wears a necklace of them.” She patted her chest below the throat.

Marty looked at her. “So you know him?”

She shrugged. “He visits the big flea markets at Sweetwater trying to sell snakeskins and ginseng out of season. Dan caught him digging around his farm once and told him he’d have him arrested.”

“Describe him.”

“Big man,” she said. “Long hair and bushy beard.” She scratched her chin and held up a hand. “Missing one of his thumbs. He was all dirty looking the day we saw him. Whites of his eyes like a raccoon.”

The men didn’t speak until they reached the Jeep. Marty stopped and put a boot on the front bumper.

“When did you first hear this?”

“Two days after the bodies were found. I happened to be up here with some clothes from one of the charities. Sally told me what they’d seen and I called Dan Nenetooyah that night. He told me the same thing and I passed it on to the agents the next morning.”

“What was their reaction?”

“I think they were intrigued at first,” Reeves said. “But the moment they learned about that credit card and got a picture, they started looking for a man in a gray truck.”

“Tell me about Dan Nenetooyah.”

“Big family around here. Commercial beekeepers. They sell honey, soap and candles and all that holistic stuff on the Internet. One of the sisters has a store up Gatlinburg. Does quite well.”

“He’s credible?”

“Dan’s been a three time Alderman in Tellico Plains. Serves as a special deputy when we need him,” Reeves said. “I’ve known him for thirty-one years.” He reached for the dash and turned the key in the ignition. “If Nenetooyah said it was going to snow on the fourth of July, I’d be putting on my winter coat.”

Chapter 10

Washington DC

Judy left the courthouse with a heavy satchel of trial transcripts. She had spent the week in the United States Attorney’s Office where her partner was immersed in a case, more or less avoiding inquiries from her boss, trying not to think about her impending date with the range. Not once during the week did she attempt to practice or even try to handle her pistol. Nor did she talk with her psychiatrist about what had happened. It was a form of self-sabotage, she knew, but her growing fear was that last week’s incident was only the tip of an iceberg.

Sure, she was terrified of losing her job, but even worse was the implication of what malady lay behind the panic attack. Maybe something was wrong with her physically, like there was always something wrong with her mother and it had lain dormant all those years. Was it happening to her now as well?

Right or wrong she was consciously avoiding the decision over whether or not to show up at the range. She could do like her boss said and throw in the towel until she talked to her doctors. Or she could take the chance it had been a fluke and wouldn’t happen to her a second time.

She crossed C Street through stalled traffic and was thinking about Jack’s admonition when her cellphone rang. Tossing her bags onto a park bench she reached for it as the pigeons began to close in around her.

“Hello?” she said, loudly over the traffic noise.

“It’s Carlisle.”

A taxi blew its horn. She cupped a hand over her ear. “What do you have?”

“Leesburg tomorrow, ten kilos like before. Tell your people in Ohio there’s going to be someone meeting the plane.”

“Time?”

“I’m leaving for Newport at four. Shouldn’t be more than two or three hours.” Then the line disconnected.

Judy sat on the bench and dialed the office, feeling a guilty sense of relief. The decision had been taken off her shoulders. Jack’s priority, she knew, was going to be Latora. The range would have to wait another week.

In Friday’s pre-dawn hours, three men in dark clothing crossed a field toward the hangar. They carried backpacks and wore black knit caps and shoulder holsters.

They entered the door with simple lock picks and emptied their bags on the concrete floor.

The steel walls were insulated with foam and they drilled holes through it, low to the ground, inserting lead wires with miniature microphones, patching them over with gray putty. They placed a transponder under the tail wing of the airplane and departed as utility company vans took positions on roadsides adjoining the airstrip.

Morning rush hour came and went. The sun climbed in a hazy humid sky. By noon it was sweltering and the airstrip was deserted. At two o’clock a black Honda arrived and a man pulled up to the gate, punched in the code and parked outside hangar number four. They listened as he entered the building, shoes scuffing noisily across the concrete floor. Finally he turned on a radio rock station and the listeners settled in for the wait.

At six-fifteen a maroon Mercedes came into view, turned up the dusty road and raced along the glimmering security fencing to the electronic gate.

The men in the surveillance vans sat up in their seats, attentive, recording the conversations from within.

“Hey,” Carlisle said.

“Pretty late,” the man in the hangar said, but the comment was without nuance.

“Friday rush hour,” Carlisle said casually. “You’re going to be met on the tarmac. Don’t go in the office and sign the register this time. It’ll be handled before you arrive.”

“What if I gotta piss?”

“Piss on the side of your plane,” Carlisle said indifferently, dropping the satchel on the floor.

The listeners could hear the thud and then footsteps and then the door. Carlisle emerged into the light and walked back to the Mercedes.

There were metallic sounds, a door latch and then footsteps. The radio terminated abruptly. Then there was a scraping sound and long-range camera lenses recorded the hangar doors beginning to open. A few minutes later the Cessna’s engine began to pop, then turned over and the whir of the propeller drowned out all else. The plane coasted onto the tarmac, the doors closed and the plane accelerated down the runway.

The pilot banked west on his climb out of Leesburg. Legions of birds swooped in and out of fields of ripe hay. Strings of glittering cars sat in gridlock on every highway. In the far distance he saw the line of Blue Ridge Mountains and above it a shimmering orange sun. He cranked up the volume on the CD player and lit a hand-rolled joint, feet pumping time to the music.

He checked the heavy Rolex replica on his wrist and looked around the cockpit. The 172 Skyhawk had autopilot, a luxury seldom spared in his line of work. In an hour he would be over the Appalachians and in three he would start his descent into Ohio. He yawned and looked down at the foothills, isolated communities twinkling like tiny constellations. He watched them come and go, getting fewer as he neared the Shenandoah Valley. He leaned back against the headrest and turned on the autopilot. Then he took another hit off the joint and closed his eyes.

The winds were with him, pushing his tail to one-seventy knots, calm and level and a mile above the earth. His thoughts drifted; the music and marijuana took him away.

Forty minutes later – yet just a moment in time to him – he opened his eyes and blinked in disbelief.

The horizon had changed. Drastically changed! And what he saw now no longer made sense. The pink strip of dusk was gone, replaced by pitch-darkness, but the darkness wasn’t smooth-edged anymore. There was something about it that bristled, like the quills on the back of a porcupine.

He fought to clear his head, snapping it from side to side. Then he realized what he was looking at and a metallic taste began to develop in his mouth. The bristles were … “fuck!” … trees! He yanked hard on the wheel and begged the console’s gauges for altitude.

The groaning Cessna climbed, but agonizingly slowly. The pilot held the wheel in a sweaty death grip, trying to will the small plane over the mountain. The new pitch sent shudders through the cockpit, but soon the nose began to respond and the needle on the altimeter moved slightly.

Then, even though he was gaining on the mountain, the pilot had what could be the last bad idea of his life: sacrificing all new altitude, he banked left where he thought the terrain looked a little lower.

Seconds later his wing clipped a forty-foot oak, catapulting him against the controls. He fought to stabilize the plane, all the while skimming treetops, gaining five feet, then ten.

Then a new rise appeared. An ancient ridge only thirty feet high, but the trees on it were more than the Cessna could overcome and they took him down quickly, snapping wings and tail, smashing out the small panes of glass around him. Long limbs seemed to reach for him as the light metal tube hurled through the forest amid sounds of screeching, wrenching, ripping metal. Finally he saw one sturdy hardwood hurtling toward him. He was still conscious when the plane struck.

Rolfe was on the mountain when the green, red and white lights of the airplane first appeared. He watched them growing larger until they were as big as small moons, then suddenly he could hear the drone of the airplane. It was heading straight for him, seemingly unable to gain enough altitude. It was too little, he thought, too weak surely, to fly any higher.

Mesmerized, he watched it begin to take form. First the smooth round contour of the nose and then the windshield and struts beneath the wings. He ducked, shielding his face as it flew across his head. He heard metal scratching trees and then a violent wrenching noise.

And then nothing at all, but silence all around him.

He grabbed his packs and ran in its general direction. The moon offered light beneath the trees, but it took almost an hour before the smell of fuel led him to the debris.

The wreckage had settled in a neat quarter-mile strip. Although Rolfe could smell the fuel, there was no fire. Embedded in the soft wood of an enormous pine, heavy foliage covered all but a section of the tail. He saw the pilot, motionless. He must be dead, Rolfe thought.

Seeing what was left of the aircraft he marveled at how small it was, the fuselage no bigger than a car. All of its extremities – wings, tail, wheels – had broken away. There was nothing left but a bare metal hull.

The thing sounded almost alive, sizzling and popping. Once or twice he jumped from it. Then cautiously he came closer until he was alongside the frame where the windows had been. The nose had completely collapsed against the tree. The pilot was still strapped in the cockpit, complexion surreal in the soft blue light, black blood covering his torso where the column had impaled his chest. Rolfe considered lighting a match, but decided against it. There was too much fuel in the air and daylight would come soon enough. He tossed his rifle and packs on the ground and sat at the foot of a tree to wait. And went to sleep.

In the murky light of dawn, Rolfe awoke and collected his things, looking once more into the openings where the plane’s windows had once been. The air was still filled with fuel and the coppery smell of blood, and the cockpit buzzed with insects.

He walked around to the pilot’s side and reached inside to tug the gold wristwatch off the man’s arm. He smiled as he plucked a clear glittering jewel that was pinned to one ear, and put them both in a pocket.

Midway along the fuselage he found a jagged tear and squeezed a shoulder through. There was a canvass bag lying on its side, and pieces of a clear plastic bag that had exploded and covered the carpet and everything else with white dust. Flour, he thought at first, or baking soda, but it glittered on the tip of his finger.

He reached for the bag. He managed to snag it by a strap and drag it toward him. The material was torn along the seam of a zipper and the inside was filled with more plastic bags.

Chapter 11

Washington, D.C.

Judy Wells walked to a window overlooking D Street, separating blinds to search for the source of commotion. Through a pink haze of drizzle beneath the streetlights, a cop in black rain gear was blowing a shrill whistle. An ambulance was trying to get over the curb around a PEPCO truck with flashing yellow lights. Men in blue hard hats were sawing a tree limb caught on power lines.

Behind her a door opened and her supervisor entered the room.

“They find it, Jack?” she asked.

“Twenty minutes ago.” He took a seat behind his desk and laid a document in front of him. “Mountain top in central West Virginia. Civil Air Patrol spotted a piece of tail wing in the trees.”

“I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head.

“First for all of us,” Jack said.

“So now what?”

“Area’s too remote to do a ground search in the dark. Local Sheriff will lead a search and rescue party in the morning. I want you to go with them.”

“Do they know what’s on board?”

“No details,” he said, “but they’re expecting you so you can be sure they’ve already surmised.”

“This thing about the pistol range?”

“The only thing I’m worried about right now is why that plane came out of the sky. Consider it a reprieve.”

She nodded. “Carlisle told me the pilot was a junky. It could have been an accident.”

“Or sabotage,” Jack said. “We already know Latora’s internal problems. Maybe we’ve misjudged Carlisle. Who’s to say there wasn’t a bomb in that satchel he handed the pilot? Anyhow, NTSB will be joining you.” He pushed the document toward her. “Sheriff’s name up there in West Virginia is Wayne. These are the directions to his office.”

She picked it up and folded it in half.

“You can do this Judy, right?”

She looked back at him and laughed, shaking her head. “I’m fine, Jack.” She made a face, walked back to the window and looked down at the flashing yellow lights on the utility truck.

“Fine,” he repeated.

“It’s a walk in the woods for heaven’s sake,” she said softly.

She turned up the collar of her jacket and lowered the window to keep her awake. There was little traffic on Route 50, but that didn’t surprise her. Who in their right mind would be heading toward West Virginia on a Friday night?

The dash lights of the Grand Victoria burned blue and the odometer she had set just outside of Washington recorded a hundred and forty miles. She adjusted the radio to scan stations, but it stopped twice on the same drawling preacher before she shut it off.

For mile after tiresome mile she thought about her life. And felt the hopelessness return.

There was a flip side to loving people, she decided. For every ounce of love you felt there was a pound of hurt stored away.

She had often wondered what her father was thinking before he died. Had he died of a broken heart, or was it from loneliness or guilt? If it was guilt, she could understand it. Judy knew all about guilt. Guilt was not being able to save your own child when you promised you would always be there for her.

Or maybe it was that her father didn’t feel anything. Judy could identify with that as well. Maybe, she thought, he died of nothing more than sadness.

She took 81 to Staunton and 250 to Durbin, turned on 28 and crossed the Greenbriar on 66 toward Slaty Fork.

After a thirty-minute climb up Iron Mountain, she saw a sign announcing Marion’s town limits. It was diagonal and green and peppered with buckshot. Someone had spray-painted a skull and crossbones over it.

The road was barely large enough for two cars, unmarked but for the occasional reflectors stuck in gravel, warning of culverts that had been dug out of the hillsides to keep runoffs from washing it out. It was unsettling; all the darkness, no streetlights, no string of oncoming headlights to light her way.

Every house looked empty. Yards and driveways were littered with broken toys and pickup trucks. There was a gas station converted to a pizza shop, a video rental store in a small metal building. An auto parts store, convenience store and an Agway with a loading dock … but as the hour approached midnight none were lit.

A bar with neon lights appeared, advertising Iron City and Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. She drove into the muddy parking lot and came to a stop between two large trucks. An illegible sign hung over the door, still strung with Christmas lights from some previous year.

The bar was smoky and filled with men in plaid shirts and beards. They were young and old, longhaired and bald. She went straight for the rail between a neon orange camouflage jacket and a pair of bib overalls.

Heads turned as she waited for the barmaid who was flirting with a customer. A whistle pierced the air, then laughter. Finally the barmaid turned and headed to where Judy stood.

“Yeah, honey?” She cracked her gum.

Judy wore khaki slacks, white oxford shirt open at the collar and burgundy calfskin jacket. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail.

“I’m looking for the police department,” she yelled over the blaring country music.

“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” someone howled.

“ ‘Bout a mile more on the right. Big gray stone building. Can’t miss it, honey.” The barmaid leaned across the bar and playfully slapped one of her customers across the face.

“You want a drink?” She glanced back at Judy. “I’ll put it on Billy D’s tab.” She pretended to slap the man again and everyone laughed.

Judy sighed. “No thanks, honey.”

She drove up behind the stone building and parked next to the gas pump, stopping in the hall to use the ladies’ room before opening the frosted glass door that read ‘Police Department’.

A man wearing a washed out gray uniform with sergeant’s stripes pushed his newspaper aside when she entered. His nametag read ‘S. Watson’. He looked back at her through heavy glasses. “Ma’am?”

“Agent Wells,” she said, handing him her ID. “Sheriff Wayne wouldn’t be in?”

“Left more than an hour ago,” he said.

She nodded, dropping her purse on the slat-backed wooden bench by the counter. The building smelled of old moldy paper and disinfectant. The walls and ceiling were painted green and were peeling in places above a hot water radiator. Except for rusty stains beneath the radiator, the floor was spotlessly clean.

“Plane crash,” she said. “Your office is leading the recovery tomorrow?”

“Sheriff said to tell you we’d meet here at five.” He tapped the desk to indicate here.

“No one’s been up to see it yet?”

He shook his head, looking at her carefully. “Be difficult to find in the dark. Must have been some dope on the plane, huh?”

“Is there some place I can stay tonight?” she asked, ignoring the question.

“Cherokee Inn,” he said. “It’s a couple a miles up the road on the left, just opposite the Gas and Go. You’ll see the thirty-foot plywood Indian out front.”

“Thanks,” she told him. “I’ll be back at five.”

The sign for the Inn was indeed attached to an Indian. She gassed the Agency car at the all night filling station across the street and bought a pack of blackberry flavored wine coolers, bag of potato chips and a copy of the local paper. It was going to be a big Friday night, she thought, in the metropolis of Marion.

Half an hour later she was showered and sitting cross-legged on a zigzag maroon and orange polyester bedspread, trying desperately to find a working channel on a cracked Zenith television chained to a dresser. The paper hadn’t taken five minutes to read. The former Five and Dime on Lincoln Street posed a safety hazard and was going to be leveled. Mayor Watkins praised the Preservation Society’s efforts to save it, but admitted it came second to books for the schools. Then there was the pig roast at the VFW and a picture of the Sheriff captioned, ‘Wayne says cause of death remains undetermined in the case of Annie Myers.’ The article was about one of the Mountain State Butcher’s victims who had been found in a local lake last year. The Sheriff looked young for the job, she thought, tossing the paper on the floor.

Outside her window was a spot-lit billboard advertising a local bank and a not-so-local girl holding hundred dollar bills in her hands. At least there’s a view, she thought dismally.

After thirty minutes she gave up on the television and drank two wine coolers, staring out the window and wondering where she would be this time next year. Then, unexpectedly, the tears began to fall.

Starting over was unimaginable. People did it all the time of course, but Judy knew she was in no condition to launch a new career. Gone was the confidence. Gone was the enthusiasm. She fingered the small gold cross at her throat and looked at the clock. It was one hour after midnight. She took a pill case from her purse and swallowed a sleeping pill. Then she walked unsteadily to the bathroom and brushed her teeth.

At last she shut off the lights and went back to bed, head on the pillow, watching a shaft of light drifting back and forth across the carpet, curtain swaying rhythmically above the groaning air conditioning unit.

Morning brought a sharp rap at the door. Splinters of sunlight replaced the incandescent streetlight. She felt a stab of fear before she remembered where she was.

Her legs were unsteady and she needed to use the bathroom, but the knocking persisted so she staggered to the peephole.

“Agent Wells?” a voice called.

She squinted at the blur of a large pink face.

“Agent Wells? It’s Sergeant Watson. We talked last night at the station.”

“Watson,” she repeated uncertainly.

“You said you wanted to go up see the plane?”

“Oh my God.” She yanked the door open to the end of the chain. “What time is it?”

“A little after eight,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d decided to stay back or not. Sheriff asked me to come down and check on you.”

She looked dazed. “Wait right there,” she said, and put her index finger up in the air for him to see. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Okay. Just ten minutes.”

She ran for the light switch and flicked it up. The display on the alarm blinked. The alarm clock had been plugged into an outlet wired to the light switch.

“Fuck!” she hissed, stripping off the T-shirt she had used for a nightgown. She ran to the bathroom and washed her face, dragged a toothbrush around her mouth and raked a brush through her hair, tying it back with an elastic band. Then she put on clean underwear, jeans and a new pair of boots bought on vacation in Mexico. Judy had never had an occasion to wear them before.

“Be right there,” she yelled, stomach still quite queasy from the wine. She put on a bra, pulled a top over her head, grabbed her calfskin jacket and walked to the door. She took a deep breath and opened it.

Sergeant Watson smiled, but she felt unable to return it.

The ride from Marion was miserable. The air was warm and sickly sweet and she longed for the bland air-conditioning of her Agency car. He had all but laughed when she suggested following him.

With every turn the pavement deteriorated. Washouts and potholes looked like bomb craters; overgrown bushes and vines whipped the doors. Dust had turned leaves from green to brown.

The truck springs creaked and the tailgate rattled. On the radio a country singer sang of hard times and Judy prayed she wouldn’t throw up.

“Took an hour to find the plane,” he told her. “Pilot’s dead.”

Judy nodded, wondering if anyone was preserving evidence. Wondering what Jack Halligan would think of her now.

“It’s not too far from the power lines he said, so they got lucky. Only a mile, maybe a mile and half walk.”

For a long moment she looked at him. “How long of a drive, Sergeant?” she asked.

“Sam,” he said. “Everybody calls me Sam. Fifteen miles in the truck, half an hour on foot. The groundcover’s heavy up there.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, turning away. She hoped the Sheriff would be smart enough not to touch the bag full of narcotics. It was rare, but they sometimes got fingerprints off the insides of cellophane bags.

“Can you reach him?” she asked. “The Sheriff? Can you ask him what’s going on?”

He shook his head. “Doubt it from here, but we’ll give it a try. You need a straight line of sight between repeating antennas,” he told her. “Cellphones are out of the question up here.”

“Three-One, you there, Marty? Three-One, over?” he tried to call.

“Marty’s the Sheriff?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Martin Wayne.”

No one answered the radio.

They rode in silence for another mile.

“So I guess there were drugs on the plane?” he asked.

She looked out the passenger window.

After a minute he looked over at her. “We don’t get a lot of drugs around here. Not in Marion anyhow. I mean there’s marijuana and prescription pills around the schools, but that’s about everywhere these days, huh?”

He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “The town we passed below the bridge is a whole other story. Quills Landing is one of the biggest trucking hubs in the northeast. They switch north-south cargo there. Just a little bit of everything goes on in Quills Landing. Thank heavens it has its own police.”

She turned her head away, hoping he would stop talking.

The pickup jolted in and out of deep ruts. They passed dilapidated farmhouses and barns so splintered you could see through the walls. There were no crops or fences. Animals – what few there were – roamed the hillsides at will. There were rusted hulls of automobiles, trucks without beds, parts of farm equipment strewn casually across the hills.

Twice she bumped her head on the roof of the cab and after a third she tried to slouch and ride the springs, but to no avail.

“Ouch,” she said, gripping the dash after a particularly hard bump.

“Sorry,” he said, “but it gets worse before it gets better.”

The road climbed then fell as they entered a depression near the top of the mountain and the fields were strewn with shanties and trailers.

“Kettle Hollow,” he proclaimed.

Pale boulders littered the earth. Thistle grew abundantly and ivy snaked around the discarded tires and parts of rusted machinery. There was an air of decay: a mound of charred wood that had once been a house, old cans and plastic bottles, buckets and feathers bleached, animal bones scattered about on the ground, and an occasional patch of onion grass or dandelion the goats hadn’t discovered. There was a plastic lawn chair by the road where someone sat. Judy had never seen anything like this before.

Sam slowed for a curve through a row of shanties built tight against the road. At the end of the shanties was a small building with a clay pipe chimney and signs advertising a general store. Behind it was a gray house trailer with jars of honey stacked outside. Judy thought the trailer looked neater than the others; it had a stone path lined with wilting sunflowers and someone had hung a faded American flag by the door.

Sam pointed. “Hattie Wilson’s place. She used to be the school teacher up here, before they started bussing kids to public schools. Now she runs the store and distributes the mail.”

“What did she teach?” Judy asked, trying to sound interested.

“Everything,” Sam said.

The road curved into a forest so thick overhead it looked like they had entered a tunnel. They sped through it for a mile, breaking into an open pasture that climbed the mountain toward the summit. Sam steered for a swath cut between the trees where large steel towers carried power lines over the mountain. Judy gripped the seat and the dash at the same time, holding tight as the truck rattled fiercely over uneven ground, angling skyward until there was only blue beyond the windshield. She scoffed at her foolhardy wish to bring the Agency car.

Ten minutes later she saw sunlight glinting on chrome as a cluster of pickup trucks came into view. When they drew to a stop the sergeant reached for his radio. “Marty, you there?”

Judy stepped out to stretch her legs. She heard the heavy cables humming on the towers overhead. A voice broke through the static. Someone on the other end spoke her name.

“Agent Wells,” Sam called out to her, pointing toward the trees. “We go in over there.”

The going was slow at first; wild grape and laurel thickets snared their feet as they moved along. The boots were stiff and unforgiving. Judy’s ankles were sore after the first ten minutes. Everything looked the same as they got deeper in the forest and she wondered how he knew which way to go.

“Are there snakes up here?” she asked, and when he nodded, she closed in beside him.

Brilliant sunlight flashed above the trees; the temperature climbed and Judy removed her jacket and tied it around her waist. Thirty minutes seemed like an hour, but at last they heard voices and in another five minutes they were at the wreckage.

“Not too bad, now was it,” Sam said, but Judy would not have agreed.

A young man turned and watched them approach – the man in the newspaper picture from last night. He was probably in his mid-thirties, Judy thought, good looking and solid, wearing a pair of work boots and a green T-shirt tucked into jeans. There was a radio in his back pocket and a Browning semi-automatic pistol tucked behind his belt.

“This is Agent Wells,” Sam said. “Martin Wayne is our Sheriff.”

Judy walked up stiffly to take his hand. “My alarm didn’t go off.” She made a face to indicate how alarms in general couldn’t be trusted and he smiled back politely.

Sam was mopping his brow with a red kerchief and dark rings of sweat began to expand under his arms. “Doc said he couldn’t make it, Marty. He’s got an office full of flu patients. Said we could put the body in his freezer though. He’ll do the autopsy tomorrow or we can call Pocahontas County?”

“It can wait until tomorrow,” Marty said. “Have the boys take it to his office.”

Sam nodded and walked away to join the others.

Judy walked toward the plane, leaving the Sheriff behind.

The wreck smelled of blood. A wave of nausea came and quickly passed. Flies swarmed the pilot’s seat and the instruments on the dash that had caved in around it. She could see the straight edged cuts in the fuselage where firemen had used a demolition saw to extract the body. She could see fingerprint dust on the exposed metal around the pilot’s window and on the fuselage and the tail. Behind the plane a woman in NTSB coveralls was taking photographs of a wing held aloft by two firemen. One thing was certain. The plane had not exploded midair.

“Found a wallet when we took him out,” Marty said, coming up behind Judy. He handed her a plastic evidence bag, exposing a New Jersey driver’s license that had been removed and placed alongside the wallet.

Judy took the bag, examining the picture of a man with long hair. The name was Edward Copeland with an address in Tom’s River, New Jersey.

“You know who he is?”

She shook her head and pointed at the plane. “Why are you fingerprinting the plane, Sheriff?”

“Come here and have a look,” he said, walking around the tail section to the opposite side of the plane.

Judy followed, finding him pointing to a jagged hole in the tail end of the fuselage. She stared at him for a moment and he nodded toward the hole. She approached it and crouched, looking inside. There was a dusting of white powder on navy blue carpet, and a foot-wide mark indicating something had been dragged across it and taken out of the hold. And that was it. There was nothing else to see. She looked up at him, bewildered.

“Obviously there was something in there before all the powder settled over it,” Marty said. “Whatever it was, someone beat us to it.”

She looked into the fuselage again, stood erect and turned to face him. “Excuse me?”

The Sheriff pointed into the trees. “Someone spent the night back here. You can see an impression where he sat, a wad of discarded chewing tobacco, a footprint in the dirt and some human scat.” He reached for his back pocket. “Found this on the ground where you’re standing now. The strap was cut clean, most likely on the jagged metal.”

She looked at his hands. He was holding a small buckskin bag. It was worn thin and had dozens of tiny black crosses etched in it.

She laughed nervously, extending the open palms of her hands. “Okay. So what am I supposed to say now?”

The Sheriff looked down at the bag in his hand. “Well, I don’t know what you were expecting to find on the plane, Agent Wells, but I’m assuming since you’re from DEA it was narcotics.”

She glowered, recalling the conversation in Jack’s office. You can do this Judy, right?

“Do you think I was born yesterday, Sheriff?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Don’t beg anything.” She waved a hand. “You think I’m going to accept that someone beat us here and took the drugs? You said you couldn’t even find this plane in the dark.”

She looked through the trees at the men in flannel shirts, a tight hard smile forming on her lips. She pointed at the plane. “What makes a lot more sense to me, is that someone was told I was coming here and there’d be time to beat us to the plane.” She locked eyes with him, reached for the cellphone on her belt, flipped it open and punched numbers on the keypad. “Or maybe the first man in took advantage of the situation.” She put the phone to her ear then looked at it again, tilting it sideways to catch a signal. Nothing happened.

“That’s what you think, Agent Wells?” Marty walked up behind her. “You think we’re all just a bunch of hicks waiting for the next big opportunity to come along?”

She shook the phone and raised it over her head, barely listening to what he was saying. Jack will just love this one, she thought: Agent oversleeps while locals steal a quarter million in cocaine. She needn’t worry about qualifying at the pistol range. This would be enough to end her good government career.

She turned with lips open to form words, but the expression on the Sheriff’s face stopped her.

“Agent Wells,” he said evenly, “someone spent the night beneath a tree over there.” He pointed toward a spot about twenty yards distant. “Everything we found is still here for you to see. You can go over and look at it or you can go away mad. I don’t see how that would help, but it’s entirely up to you.”

Judy looked down helplessly at her cellphone, then up at him again. She tried to speak calmly. “Who would be up here, Sheriff?” She extended both arms and rotated in a circle. “I mean who,” she said, her voice rising dramatically, “could possibly be up here?”

Some firemen turned to watch, as well as the NTSB investigator.

“Could be anyone, Agent Wells. Several hundred people live on these mountains. This is their life, their food, their medicines and fuel. Everything up here is fair game. There are no property rights here, no arbitrators or rules. If they find something it’s theirs, even if they don’t know what it is, which I’m inclined to believe is the case here.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Drop the innocence crap. We’re in the Appalachians, Sheriff. Not Jupiter.”

He shrugged and started to walk away. “Have it your way, Agent Wells. I’m just delivering the message. Be over there with my men. You do what you do. I’ll come and get you when we’re ready to leave.”

This time when he turned, he kept walking.

She looked around, taking it all in. The NTSB investigator was still studying the Cessna’s wing. Men were carrying parts out of the trees. Sheriff Wayne had walked beyond the scope of her vision. He seemed so genuine; could his argument have been plausible, she thought grudgingly. If the recovery team all arrived together it was unlikely that anyone could remove anything from the plane. She paced for a minute then stopped. Her feet were killing her in the new boots. Her ankles were sure to be blistered and bleeding. And then there was the mile long hike back to the truck.

She spotted Sergeant Watson and waved to get his attention.

“Sergeant,” she called out. He looked over and she waved. She wanted him to show her the place in the trees, the impression in the grass, the plug of tobacco and human excrement. She thought about the bag and the primitive looking crosses, thought about the light switch and alarm clock and wondered if she had made yet another mistake.

Ever so politely Sam escorted her into the trees, pointed to a place where the grass was compressed, pointed to the discarded tobacco and scat. She thanked him and he left to join the others. She stood there a long time and then came back to the plane, circling the fuselage, glancing off into the trees in the hope of finding the Sheriff, but he was gone. She took a seat on a log. She shouldn’t have been so quick to accuse. She should have kept her thoughts to herself. And all that anger pent up inside would have been more appropriately directed at herself. It wasn’t his fault she was not here when they first found the plane. He did his job. She did not do hers.

It was hours before she could see him again – late afternoon as the men started collecting their equipment. Sam was helping to strap the body bag to a sled while others lugged medical equipment and tools. Marty was standing next to the collection of debris where the NTSB investigator was taking final pictures. A few of the men began the slow trek out of the woods.

Judy brushed off her jeans and started to walk toward him.

He turned as she came up behind him. “How are those feet?”

She followed his eyes to her boots. “You noticed.”

“Saw you wince once or twice. The EMTs can patch up those blisters or carry you out on a stretcher.” He was mocking her now. But then he smiled to make it all better. “Or I can grab some Band-Aids for you to put on and we’ll just walk out real slow together.”

She smiled too at the thought of being carried out with the body bag. He must have sensed how much her ego had already suffered today: first she was hours late and then she came off as super bitch. “Let’s just do it the quiet way,” she said. “Band-Aids would be great.”

Marty walked off to catch up with one of the EMTs, then told Sam he would take care of getting the agent back to her motel.

Judy watched the men carrying their vast array of equipment from the scene, realizing how impossible it would have been to locate the wreckage at night. “I’m sorry about what I said back there, Sheriff. It was unprofessional and demeaning.”

“Already forgotten,” he said. “And call me Marty.”

She nodded. “You were first to arrive this morning? You were with the others when you found the wreckage?”

“We all came in together,” he assured her. “Nobody touched anything before I did, I can guarantee.”

Judy nodded. “Any chance of finding out who was up here last night? I mean are people friendly up here?”

Marty shrugged. “Those shacks and house trailers you saw on the drive up here make up the bulk of people who live on the mountain. They’re reluctant around strangers and that would include me, but the lady who runs the general store is a friend. She knows and hears about most everything that goes on.”

“The pouch.” She pointed at Marty’s back pocket. “It’s possible she’s seen it before?”

“We’re sure going to ask.”

“Thanks,” she said, feeling better and taking her first real look at him. He was better looking than his picture in the paper.

“You’ve been doing this for a while?”

He nodded. “Started out in Pittsburgh, taking DOJ courses at night. My dad was Sheriff here until a year ago when he died. One thing led to another and I ended up running for the job. Crazy, huh?” He shook his head.

“Why crazy?”

“Oh, I had other things in mind. Wanted to live in the city and leave the small town stuff behind. Dad held the office for forty-four years, five years short of a national record. I always said I’d never end up like that. Thought it was a bad thing.”

He looked at her a long minute. “You were right to think what you thought up there. I was sweating bullets when I first looked into that fuselage. It wasn’t until after I saw the leather pouch and packed earth by the tree that I started to calm down. A lot of people in Marion knew that a plane had gone down, firemen, policemen, the mayor and all their families. I only told the people that needed to know about you joining us this morning, but you can never be sure who told a neighbor or one of their kids. Anyhow, I understand your reaction completely.”

“Thanks,” she said, “but I lashed out too quick.”

“Noted.” He smiled. “So how’d you end up in drug work? You’re not from a long line of cops, I gather.”

The sun was going behind the mountain. The sky was powdery blue. She swatted through a cloud of gnats before opening her mouth. “Actually, I was in law school when I attended a lecture given by the Director of DEA. I graduated but never took the Bar. About a week later I was filling out an application.” She stumbled over a vine and Marty caught her by the elbow.

“Thanks,” she said, concentrating on her feet. “I remember thinking books weren’t enough for me at the time. I needed to do something more physical. In a sense, that Director recruited me.”

“And you like the work?”

She nodded. “I like the work.” Except for the fact that I’m prone to panic attacks and afraid to touch my own gun.

Marty suddenly pointed at the horizon. “Mars.”

Judy leaned down, following the direction of his finger. She shook her head. “Jupiter.”

“You’re sure?” He squinted.

She nodded, amused by his disappointment.

“Daylight up ahead,” Marty said. “Almost back to the power lines.”

“Thank God,” she said, visibly relieved.

When they reached the Jeep, she climbed onto the passenger seat and began wrenching off her boots. Marty reached across her lap to open the glove box and handed her a first aid kit with fresh bandages.

“You can join me for dinner tonight if you like. I haven’t eaten all day and I know for a fact you didn’t bring a lunch.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Judy said. “I might not be able to get up to an alarm, but I can still find my way around a town.”

“Suit yourself, but I’ll be eating alone.”

She looked at him. “No one at home?”

He shook his head and started the engine, making a U-turn in the field.

“Can we stop by the motel so I can put on real shoes?”

“You’d be the only one in the restaurant wearing them.”

Judy heard herself laugh at his joke and the sound of her laughter caught her by surprise.

“Actually, I have to stop at the office, make a few calls. I can drop you at your motel room and pick you up in an hour or two.”

“That would be fine. I have to do some calling of my own.” Judy was thinking of what she was going to say to Jack Halligan.

The ramshackle community of Kettle Hollow appeared as they crested a hill. This time she was struck by the hopelessness of it all; a third world piece of country and just hours from the nation’s capital.

Marty pulled the Jeep to the curb outside Hattie Wilson’s general store. The air was dry and the field around it baked by the sun. You could hear the chickens squawking, beating their wings in combat. One of the trailer doors slammed closed. Someone moved away from a stoop and disappeared around the side of a building.

The door to the general store had a CLOSED sign on it.

“This way,” Marty called, and Judy followed him behind the store to a small gray trailer. There were jars of honey stacked outside and a galvanized bucket of wilting dandelion. A tall tank of propane gas was attached to the front of the house.

Marty knocked and there was no answer.

They waited a moment. He circled the trailer and knocked once again.

“I can stop off tomorrow to show her the bag.”

“I can stay another day, if you don’t mind,” Judy said. “I’ve got to document this anyhow and might as well hear it all firsthand.”

She wasn’t looking forward to writing the report, especially the part listing who was present when they located the wreckage. The least she could do now was try to find out what happened to the cocaine. There was an informant involved, a major drug investigation derailed, and with or without her there was going to be an investigation.

“Tomorrow then,” he said and they walked back to the truck.

They descended the winding roads toward a neon haze on the horizon. It was the glow of Quills Landing and beyond them a string of diamond-like lights that were cars heading south on the interstate. At the bottom of the mountain, before the bridge that crossed over to Marion, Judy saw the cross on the roof of an old cinderblock church.

“Church of the Pentecostals,” Marty said. “They pass the snakes around in there.”

“You’re kidding.” She leaned to look out the window.

“Every Wednesday.”

“Thought they made that illegal?”

“Not in West Virginia,” he said. “And not that Quills Landing doesn’t have bigger problems.”

“Sam mentioned the town on our way up. He said they had a lot of drugs.”

“They get truckers by the thousands. Six diesel super stations grossing fourteen million dollars a year. Add cargo thieves, prostitutes and pimps and you’ve got a real party.”

“And cocaine,” she said.

Marty nodded. “Absolutely. They’re a municipality and pay their own police chief. I’ll give him a call when I get in.”

He lowered the window to look out at the stars.

“I used to stare at the sky all the time when I was a kid,” Judy said. “A cousin of ours had a lake house in Deep Creek, Maryland. I’d stay with them two weeks every summer, and when everyone went to bed I would sneak out and lie down on the dock until dawn. I can still hear the sound of water lapping against those pilings. I could just look up into space and never get my fill. Mapped out my whole life under those stars.” She sighed. “I haven’t paid them any mind since then. Simple things, huh?”

She stretched out her arms and examined her fingers, feeling cramped from being in the cab so long.

The Jeep lurched in and out of the ruts. A chuckhole sent them to the ceiling and back. “So what’s for dinner around here, Marty?”

“You like possum?”

“Still getting back at me?” She made a face at him, but then smiled, deciding she liked the Sheriff of Marion Township.

Judy showered, dressed and put on sneakers, then called her office. Jack was disturbingly quiet when he heard the news about the missing cocaine. He wanted to call the state police to launch an internal investigation, but Judy discouraged him. She said she saw the evidence with her own eyes. Someone had been there before them. It wasn’t going to be the final word on the investigation, but he accepted it for now. Judy was pretty sure they would take the case from her soon enough.

Marty and Judy ate hamburgers and drank milkshakes in a diner overlooking Silver River.

Judy, who wasn’t all that eager to go back to her empty room, ordered cream pie and pushed it around her plate with a fork.

“So tell me more,” Marty said. “You grew up where?”

“DC,” she said, laying down her fork. “Dad was a lawyer for the Department of Commerce. Mom was a stay-at-home philanthropist. She spent all the money.”

Marty smiled and she turned to face the dark window.

There was nothing to see, only her image on a black pane of glass. Over her shoulder in the reflection was a pie case on a counter, a Coca-Cola wall clock and an old black and white picture of a horse and buggy standing in front of the original diner. In that surrealistic moment she saw a younger version of herself and it made her sad.

“They’re still in Washington?” Marty asked.

She shook her head, eyes fixed on the reflection. “Dad died when I was eight, Mom when I was nineteen.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

She nodded, feeling the oddest compulsion to go on. “Mom was frail all her life. She had heart problems at birth. When Dad died, she didn’t handle it well. She had a stroke and then a heart attack and finally her immune systems began to fail.”

He shook his head, silent for a moment. “You said you were in law school. You wanted to follow in your father’s footsteps.”

Judy shrugged, noncommittal. “Yeah, I think there was something inside me that wanted to be like my father.” She pushed a loose strand of hair behind an ear. “He had an office in our house with these humongous windows overlooking a garden. Books on the shelves from floor to ceiling. I can still smell the old paper and leather. He had a picture of me on the mantle and he would hold me in his lap and read books to me.” She smiled. “He had this big leather recliner …” Her eyes became distant and she tilted her head in thought. “I have this indelible memory of him trying to teach me a poem: Remember me when I am gone away, gone far away into the silent land …” She laughed and looked at her reflection again and slowly raised a hand to cover her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

“Judy?” Marty leaned forward.

She lowered the hand and looked at him. “When you can no more hold me by the hand nor I half turn to go yet turning stay, remember me when no more day by day …”

Tears filled her eyes and she looked up at the ceiling with amazement. “I was eight!” she said, half laughing and half crying. “Oh my God, I was eight.”

“You remember the rest?”

She shook her head, trying to hold the tears back. Then she picked up a napkin to dab her eyes. “Sorry,” she said, smiling. “That came out of nowhere.” She took a deep breath. “When Dad died, Mom had his office things removed from the house. I was still staying with a neighbor at the time. I remember coming home to discover it was all gone – the desk, the books, everything. I never went back in that room again.”

A customer paying his bill dropped some change on the floor. She bent to scoop a quarter and squeezed out of the booth to hand it to him.

Marty watched her, thinking how she changed when she talked about her father. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something left unsaid.

“You never married?” he asked when she returned.

“I was,” she said, “but it didn’t work out. How about your father,” she asked abruptly, changing the subject. “It must be strange losing him and then having to fill his shoes all at the same time.”

Marty took a drink of water. “My father was an icon. You don’t fill an icon’s shoes.” He set the glass down. “I could chew your ear off about my father. It’s strange how much I know about the man and yet I can never say we were close. Maybe it was a generational thing but my father wasn’t big on affection. He didn’t encourage it either. He liked people, well enough, but when it came to emotion he completely shut down. My mother said it was the way he was raised. His parents were Dunkers, which is like being Amish with a D. I mean strict! So we didn’t pal around and go to carnivals and stuff, but losing him was hard. Looking back I wish I’d used the time with him better.”

“He was happy you became a policeman?” Judy asked.

Marty nodded. “Yeah, actually he was. He came to Pittsburgh to attend all three of my promotions.”

She sat back and folded her arms across her chest. “So chew my ear off,” she said. Marty looked at her for what seemed like a long second. “Tell me all this stuff that you know about your Dad.”

“Dad,” Marty repeated, folding his hands and placing them on the table, “left home when he was seventeen. He worked in a coal mine until he was twenty and took the job as Marion’s first constable. He was always quick to say he got the job because no one wanted it and it barely paid. The coal mines were running at peak back then and cash was the only currency, so his number one job was to escort payroll between the bank and company stores. One day a man from the next county killed his wife and went on the run.” Marty straightened the silverware on the table. “The area was still very rugged. You needed horses to get around. Dad rode up to Kettle Hollow during the spring washouts and when he entered the village someone ran behind an old smoke house.” He tapped the table with his finger. “Dad walked around the side of the building and a man leveled a shotgun on him and pulled the trigger. Just like that. No warning. He said he could hear that sound for the rest of his life.”

“God.” Judy leaned forward.

“But it was the sound of metal on metal,” Marty said. “He’d heard the hammer striking the firing pin. No explosion, no buckshot. Nothing happened. The man quickly broke open the shotgun barrel to eject the faulty shell, but by then Dad pulled his pistol and put a bullet in his chest. Next morning a reporter took a picture of him with the dead man over his saddle. The reporter happened to work for TIME Magazine so you can imagine what happened next. The town grew, they appointed him Sheriff, gave him a department and some men. Politicians came and went and until a year ago he outlasted them all. He never had much to say to people, but he stood at every baptism and knelt at every funeral. He nailed rooftops after storms and carried sandbags when the rivers flooded. He flipped pancakes at the church and sold Christmas trees for the Veterans of Foreign War. He couldn’t walk into a bar in this county and buy his own beer. Not ever.”

“You were proud of him,” Judy said.

Marty shrugged. “Yeah, I was. Maybe even more now than when he was alive.”

The waitress stopped by and refilled their coffees.

“How did he die?” Judy asked.

Marty looked at her. “Oh it’s a story, like everything else.”

“I want to hear it,” she coaxed.

“Okay. His best friend was the son of an Indian Chief. We call him Uncle Toby, but his name is Toweenah. He still owns the property adjoining me up on Emmett’s Fork. Anyhow, the two of them would take off hunting and not come home for days at a time. When they did come home, Mom would give them hell and feed them and send them off to bed. About a year ago there was a rabid bear on the mountain. Bears with rabies are very rare, but now and then you hear of one. A camper was killed on Gaudineer Mountain in his tent. Six months later a Pocahontas park ranger was attacked. The ranger made it into his pickup truck, but the bear hit the side of the truck and the next morning they found a claw embedded in the steel door.”

“God,” Judy whispered.

“A couple months later it tried to break into a house, knocked an air-conditioning unit out of a window and got its head in the bedroom. So Dad and Toby started to track it. They found signs of it, trees clawed to shreds, game killed and left for no reason. Dad was sixty-five at the time, but still hard as a board. One day Toby stayed behind to have a tooth pulled and Dad went up without him. A day went by and no one heard from him. Toby went up looking for him, but I don’t think anyone was seriously worried. He had spent plenty of nights in the woods on his own. But when another day went by the official search began. That night Sergeant Watson called me in Pittsburgh to tell me they had found him sitting with his back against a tree. A blood clot had traveled to his brain and paralyzed him from the waist down. He died exactly two months later. Everyone said it was because he couldn’t walk anymore. Possibly that’s true.”

“You never mentioned your mom.”

“Mom died of cancer five years ago.”

“Wow,” Judy said. “Too young, both of our parents.”

Marty nodded slowly.

“You never went after the bear?”

“Never had the chance.” Marty looked down and chuckled. “Toby killed it the day of the funeral. Five months later he had his first heart attack. Now he stays at home and I drop by to bring him pizzas.”

“Whew! What a story.”

Marty laughed. “The story is trying to operate a modern police department in Dad’s wake. When I ask the Mayor for something, like software for the computers, he’ll scrunch up his face and say, ‘old Cal never needed one of them, Marty’.”

Judy laughed and glanced at the clock. An hour had passed. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve interrogated you enough. Ladies’ room?” she asked.

He pointed and Judy left the table with a strange smile on her face.

Chapter 12

Marion, West Virginia

Judy dressed in her jogging things, replacing the Band-Aids on her heels and padding them with a roll of gauze purchased at the Gas-and-Go. Minutes later she was crossing the lawn in front of the motel, sun breaking out of the trees, blades of dew-soaked grass clinging to the tops of her running shoes. She reached the intersection of a narrow asphalt road and started running up a hill, slowly at first, testing the dressings on her ankles, feeling more confident as she passed the bank’s billboard near the top.

Picking up speed she ran through a switchback and climbed another steep hill, enough to break a sweat before the road leveled off through the trees.

A band of frigid air brought goose bumps to her flesh. She cleared the forest, passing by a herd of grazing cattle. Some stopped chewing long enough to see what she was doing. Then she turned back, shoes dropping metrically on the stretch of sparkling asphalt, an acrid smell of fertilizer hanging in the trees. And forty minutes later she arrived at her motel room door.

She grabbed clothes from her suitcase, turned the television on and headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later there was knock at the door.

She pulled a top over her jeans and looked through the peephole. It was Marty holding a greasy white bag and two coffees.

“Come in,” she said, returning to the bathroom.

He crossed the room and put the bag on a dresser, removing the lids from two Styrofoam cups.

“Got Bear Claws,” he called. “The kind you eat.”

“More hillbilly humor,” Judy said dryly into the mirror.

“I wouldn’t have expected you to be running. Not with those blisters on your feet.”

She finished cleaning the counter and discarded the wet towels. “I bought gauze at the gas station and wrapped my ankles.” She walked back into the room. “Went better than I expected.”

“Where’d you run?” Marty asked.

“Up behind the billboard.” She pointed.

“Joey Gilbert’s place,” he said. “Big dairy farm.”

“Yeah. Well I don’t think Gilbert’s cows have ever seen a jogger before.”

A news anchor on the television was talking about the Mountain State Butcher.

“I saw your picture in the paper last night when I got into town –” She stopped to listen. “He was right here last year? In this county?”

Marty shut off the TV. “A boy found a woman’s head in a lake on top of the mountain. She was reported missing last November. She’d been running in a road race a couple towns away.”

“And that was the case that started the ball rolling.”

He nodded. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Nothing boring about this place.”

Judy was silent for a moment. “You know, I want to thank you for dinner once again,” she said. “It was nice talking like that. I haven’t talked to anyone about myself in a very long time.”

“Hey, didn’t I do most of the talking?” Marty said.

“Not all of it.” Judy was still thinking about her father’s poem. Last night she had Googled the author, Christina Rosetti, and downloaded the whole of it.

Chapter 13

Canaan Mountain, West Virginia

It was a spectacular morning on the Canaan Mountain: blue skies and sunshine and plenty of cool dry air. Jessie Spangler could feel the sweat evaporate on her skin as the tires of her bicycle left the earth, rising from the natural ramp of Little Bend where she wiggled her handlebars back and forth, bracing for the tire strike, but unnecessarily – for how smoothly the coil-over shocks let her down.

This fucking machine was Nirvana!

Nine pounds of frame climbing the hills like an antelope; Fifth Element Suspension bearing her weight like ligaments and tendons on wheels. She carved turns at breakneck speed, dodged the stones and heavy roots, jumped old tree stumps like she was on a pogo stick. When she met the Middle Ridge Trail, she sliced around a corner in a power slide and headed toward the summit.

The bike had been delivered to her door last week with a birthday note from her new boyfriend. They were supposed to spend the day together, but he was stuck in Dallas for the weekend, attending meetings. At three hundred dollars a pound of bike, it was about the best present she could think of, and every minute she wasn’t stunned by its performance she was imagining exotic ways of returning the favor.

Her turbo Saab, with license plates VA LAW, was parked behind the Quail Creek Lodge. After her ride and a steamy hot shower she planned eighteen holes of golf, followed by a sauna and then lobster for one on the deck overlooking Blackwater River. She had left her cellphone in the room with no intention of checking it until Sunday morning. Her law office in Fairfax Virginia was closed for the weekend and clients could leave messages.

She smiled, remembering trying not to eavesdrop on her colleagues’ whispered remarks this morning: ‘She’s an incredibly physical woman with an incredibly sexy body,’ she heard them say. And she had felt quite self-conscious in her two-piece spandex as she lifted her bike off the car-rack, knowing they were all peeking at her through the windows.

It was noon when she checked her diamond Omega at the apex of the trail, ate a granola bar and dabbed Chap Stick on her lips. Then she mounted the frame and cut a figure eight before starting down the mountain.

The descent was fast, and cool on the skin. She leaned forward, her long legs pumping as she swept through the first of the turns, bike gripping the earth like a physical extension of her body.

She roostered up a grade and crested a long sloping chute. From the top it looked like a tunnel carved through the trees. She rode with her head low, hearing a waterfall splashing to her right, leaves brushing bare arms and the amazing titanium suspension mopping up her landings like a sponge. She feathered the brakes and flexed her arms, was about to stand on the pedals when she caught movement in the heavy foliage. She turned her head for a millisecond toward a kaleidoscope of leaves and looking back saw a pair of cold black eyes.

The millisecond turned into a second and a second was too long. Her shoulder grazed a tree, ricocheted her toward a rock, the tires left the ground and she went airborne. The last thing she remembered seeing was that pair of black eyes.

Marty and Judy crossed the Corporal Edmond Bridge looking down upon the town of Quills Landing. The far side of the river was strewn with rusting appliances and graffiti-sprayed rocks. Sudsy waste-water lapped along the shoreline where dozens of docks and warehouses looked about to collapse.

On the far side of the bridge, the road split in two; signs for Quills Landing and the interstate on the right, Mountain Road and Pentecostal Church on the left. He turned past the church and continued up the mountainside toward Kettle Hollow.

Twenty minutes later the now familiar community appeared.

Hattie’s store was locked again, but smoke was spiraling from the trailer chimney and a pair of cotton work gloves lay on the front step next to a pan stained by elderberries.

“Marty Wayne!” a woman’s voice called out from inside.

A pair of dog paws hit the screen and a tall slender woman appeared. She opened the door and a Bassett Hound charged between Judy’s legs.

Her first impression was of a seventy-year-old woman, but then she looked at the woman’s hands and amended the number to eighty, though Hattie for any number of years was a striking woman.

“Hattie, this is Judy Wells. She’s with the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington DC. Judy this is Hattie Wilson.”

The older woman, her hands stained black from cleaning berries, stood back and looked Judy over. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Come on in.” She held the door, waiting for the hound to follow. “Sorry about the mess. I just finished shelling berries.” She stuck her hands in a sink then dried them on a towel. “I saw you all racing up the mountain yesterday morning. Going up to see that airplane?”

Purple froth steamed on a pot of boiling water, and the sweet smell of berries lay heavy on the air.

“How’d you know?” Marty asked.

“Mail lady,” she said. “She came with papers early afternoon.”

“We stopped here ourselves, but no one was around.”

“Closed up and walked to Sulfur Creek to see Connie Liddell. She broke her hip last month. Can’t walk or fix herself anything to eat. Here, here,” she ushered them toward a threadbare couch. “Sit down.”

“What do you hear about Mary Saxe?” Marty asked.

“Nothing at all.” She looked at him gravely. “Willem still goes up there looking most days.”

“They’ve got her description all over the country,” Marty said.

Hattie put her hands on her hips. “Well I for one don’t expect to hear from her anytime soon.”

“I hope you’re wrong, Hattie.”

The old woman shrugged and sat in the rocker opposite them. “Hope I am too.”

“The airplane that went down,” he said changing the subject. “Someone got to it before we did. They took drugs away from it, Hattie. Cocaine.”

She made a face. “A couple of the teenagers headed up there yesterday afternoon. They probably followed your tracks in, but you were already there and gone by then. Haven’t heard anything else about it.”

He took the leather pouch from his pocket. “You ever see anything like this before?”

She reached for it, kneaded the soft leather in her hands, turned it over and traced the crosses with her finger. Then she poured the contents onto her apron.

“A buckeye, Marty. You know what this is? People used to carry them for luck. My mother taught us to rub one in the palm of our hands and make a wish.” She smiled at the recollection.

“And this,” she said, holding up a jagged brown leaf, “is Jimson Weed. Don’t eat this,” she told Judy. “Make you crazy.” She pointed at her ear and made circles with her finger. “The parsnip-like thing here, Dock Root, you take for the stomach cramps and these green leaves with the tiny yellow roots are called goldenseal, used for infection.” She looked at a small smooth stone, then set it aside, cupped one of the dark berries in her hand and shook her head. “I don’t know the others.”

She put them back in the bag and handed it to Marty. Then she turned to Judy. “Plants and roots are used for about everything up here, mostly cooking, but you’d be surprised how many drugstore medicines are made from them. My momma used to tell me if I didn’t learn cooking and cures I’d never get a husband.” She smiled and sighed. “Guess she was right.”

Marty stood. “If you hear anything at all –”

“You’ll be the first to know,” she said.

“Can I buy a jar of your honey?” Judy asked, pulling some bills from her jeans.

“Take one from the porch, dear.” Hattie shooed her away.

Judy left a five-dollar bill on the kitchen counter and the two stepped outside. She grabbed a jar on the way to the truck, got in and fastened her seatbelt. She twisted off the lid, scooped some honey with her finger and licked it off. “Want?” she extended the jar toward Marty.

He shook his head, put the Jeep in gear and started down the mountain road. When he turned he caught her smiling, long hair whipping out of the open passenger window and thought she looked amazing.

“Need to stop at the doc’s and see what’s become of the autopsy. We could get a pizza afterward and take it up to my Uncle Toby’s. He can be quite the clown, but it’s a good excuse to show you where I live and who knows, he may be able to tell us something more about the bag. Unless you have other plans.”

Judy smiled then shook her head. “Nope, no plans,” she said softly.

“Good,” Marty said.

Chapter 14

Marion, West Virginia

The doctor’s office was a three-story lavender Victorian in the center of town, the only house like it on town square. In the back was a ramp to a loading dock and a set of double steel doors. They parked beneath it and took the sidewalk to the front of the house. Entering under a tinkling bell they walked the length of a creaky wooden hallway. The house smelled of disinfectant and as they passed an empty waiting room Judy could make out the lilting strains of classical music coming through the cast iron heating vents.  At the end of the hall a set of stairs descended to the basement. Marty went first then Judy gripped the handrail. Midway to the bottom she saw a crucifix on the wall and the familiar spiritual portrait of footsteps in the sand.

Marty turned at the bottom of the stairs, stopped at a door with a peephole and knocked twice. The door opened and a man in a plaid shirt and khaki pants beckoned them in.

The walls were pale yellow and a stained glass window let in the only exterior light. Bright fluorescents crossed the ceiling and a large modern exhaust fan purred in the background. A flat screen television on one wall was tuned to a news station, no sound.

The pilot’s body lay on a stainless steel table with gutters and drains. The doctor returned to it with instruments in hand, leaning over as they closed the door. Judy could smell burnt bone from the Striker Saw as he cut away the ribs to examine the organs in the chest cavity.

Marty made a face. “Didn’t leave much to work with. Heard you’ve been busy.”

“The Surgeon General announced an epidemic of swine flu. Everyone’s sure that they have it now.” Using forceps he removed something that looked like glass and placed it in a tray.

“Sam told me the schools are sending fliers home to the parents.” He looked closer. “Anything obvious about the pilot?”

The doctor shook his head. “Contents of his pockets are on the counter. All but the wallet, which you already have.” He stepped on a floor pedal and used a hose to rinse blood from an arm. “See the track marks?” He pointed with a bloodstained glove.

Marty nodded.

“Was he alive when the plane went down?” Judy asked.

The doctor looked at Judy.

“Agent Wells, Drug Enforcement Agency,” Marty explained.

“Pleased to meet you,” the doctor said, looking back at the body. “He was alive until that steering column went through his chest.” He drew an incision with the scalpel and used a pair of clippers to snip something away. “You thought otherwise?”

Judy shrugged, leaning to inspect the pilot’s ear. There was a hole, but no earring. Tan-line on the wrist, but no watch.

“The plane was carrying cocaine.”

“Well, I think this guy managed to kill himself,” the doctor said. “We’ll run lab tests, but around here it’s usually pilot error.” He tossed the instrument in a stainless steel pan. “These mountains are littered with old planes.” He scratched his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. “You haven’t heard from any next of kin?”

Marty shook his head, eyes fixed to the television screen. He walked around the table and stood beneath it. “Mind if I turn this up, Doc?”

Judy looked at his face then at the television as he found the volume. “… hundreds of volunteers have joined officials on the Canaan Mountain in the search for Washington based attorney Jessie Spangler. State police officials say an FBI task force charged with identifying the so-called Mountain State Butcher have been made aware of the woman’s disappearance and are sending a representative to the scene. They caution, however, that it is too early to jump to conclusions, and rule out nothing as the search continues. Family members who have gathered at the Quail Creek Lodge hold out hope that their daughter is still alive. She is in perfect health according to her father and able to withstand the rigors of weather and terrain. The family pledges to remain here until the hour of her return. Meanwhile the state attorney general has announced a press conference at the lodge later this evening.  Very sad story, Jessie,” she said to the anchor. “And disturbing.” The anchor shook her head. “We wish the best for the Spangler family, of course. Anyone with information can call the number on your screen or go to Mountain four dot com and don’t forget to check updates on your web browser. Meanwhile, business owners who border the Appalachian Trail are watching revenues plummet in an already dismal economy. Some foresee closures if summer sales don’t improve. One motel owner putting it bluntly saying that high season was his bread and butter. If he doesn’t turn a profit by Labor Day he won’t be in business next year.” The report segued to an east coast map and a West Virginia weatherman.

Marty muted the volume.

“Two in two weeks.” The doctor leaned over the body and rubbed a spot on the dead man’s neck.

“Two?” Judy asked.

“Teenager,” the doctor said. “She went missing up on the mountain where you found this one.”

“The Butcher article I read in The Post didn’t mention her,” Judy said.

“Wasn’t news,” Marty said distantly. “She was a runaway.”

Marty stared at the muted screen for a moment. “Gotta go, Doc,” he said, taking a step toward the door.

“Send him to County General till you find the family?” the doc asked.

“That’ll do,” Marty said, pushing the door open.

Judy could tell he was affected by the news of the missing woman.

She looked at the crucifix and portrait on their way back up the stairs. She had seen the identical arrangement on a wall in a chapel in the bowels of George Washington Hospital Center. Tom wasn’t around the day of the autopsy. She knew she wasn’t wanted there either. No one was going to let her see her daughter or even tell her what they knew. She just didn’t want her little girl to be in the hospital alone. She just wanted to keep on keeping that promise.

But the medical examiner broke the rules and came to find her after the autopsy.

Hearing that your child died of SIDS was like hearing the cruelest joke in the world. It was an acronym, a shrug, even worse than no explanation at all.

“Can you give me half an hour in the office,” Marty asked. “I just want to call a friend about the Canaan Mountain.”

“Sure,” Judy said.

“We’ll do pizza afterward?”

“If you still want.”

Marty nodded. “Absolutely. It’s your last night in town.”

Chapter 15

Quills Landing, West Virginia

The steps up to the old pawnshop creaked under Rolfe’s weight. He ducked under a row of guitars and passed by stacks of old tires and wheels. Two elderly men smoked cigarettes in a corner, playing cards on a small table by a cold woodstove. One of them looked up, scratched his whiskers and looked back down.

Rolfe passed car radios and television sets, boots and leather coats and a display case full of handguns. At the end there was a tall wooden counter with a cash register and scale.

“Help you?” a boy asked. He was in his teens or early twenties, wearing a black T-shirt displaying a flaming red skull. His hair was the color of gold and combed to a spike on top of his head.

Rolfe put two wristwatches on the counter, one of them gold and the other sparkling with diamonds, three gold rings and a diamond solitaire earring. The boy picked up the watches and held them to the light. “Replica,” he said, tossing the gold Rolex on the counter. He squinted at the rings, studied the earring and dropped it as well. “Give you fifty for the watch and thirty for all the rings. That other stuff in front of you is junk.”

Rolfe nodded and the man reached for a form, scribbled with his pen and pointed to where he wanted him to sign. Rolfe made an illegible mark on the document and waited while the man counted eighty dollars, hesitated after he took it and leaned over to remove something from his new leather bag.

The boy looked at him when he set it on the counter, a dusty looking cake of white powder wrapped in cellophane and banded with duct tape. He couldn’t imagine what it was until he turned it over and saw the powder was sparkling on his hand.

“You buy?” Rolfe asked.

The boy was still looking in disbelief at the residue on his hand when Rolfe repeated himself.

“You buy?”

The boy held his hand up to the light. “Christ,” he said in wonder, glancing toward the men playing cards. He looked back at Rolfe and took a step back from the counter. “Why’d you bring that here?” the boy whispered, eyes darting toward the door.

Rolfe was unsure what to say.

“Who told you to bring that here?”

Rolfe shook his head, confused. “No one.”

He was conscious of the boy looking at him carefully, studying his face and his ragged clothes. Studying the scars on his wrists and the ugly graft of skin where someone who was not a doctor had found it necessary to amputate his thumb. “What’s up, boy? No need to be scared.”

“Pick that up,” the boy whispered and nodded his head toward the back of the store. Then he stepped from behind the counter and Rolfe followed him to a door.

The boy undid a deadbolt and pulled it open a crack. He peeked out and looked down the alley. “Go to the end where it meets the river. It’ll be the first house on the right. Knock loud and ask for Tiny. Tell him Jay sent you. You can remember that?  Jay.”

Rolfe nodded and repeated the word, “Jay.”

The alley smelled of urine and old garbage. It was dusk and people were sitting on their back porches, laughing raucously, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes.

Dogs growled and fires burned in vacant lots. People moved through the shadows as he made his way to the river.

“Ain’t friendly walking by like that,” a voice called out of the dark.

“That’s right,” another said.

A man stepped out of the shadows with a knife at his side. A second was brandishing a baseball bat and he slapped it against his open hand. “Come on big fellow!” They circled him. “What you got in the sack?”

The man with the knife stepped forward, slicing an X through the air. The man with the bat stepped to the right, moving around behind him.

Rolfe shot his arm out, seized the knife wielder’s neck and began to squeeze until cartilage popped, then he lifted him off his feet and turned to face the other.

It took a moment to register, but the second man locked eyes with his friend, watched his hands go to his throat trying to claw Rolfe’s fingers away.

Rolfe dropped the first man and took a step toward the other, but he turned and ran into the shadows, leaving his friend writhing on the ground. Rolfe looked down at the man, then shrugged and walked toward the river.

The street at the end was lined with rotting row houses, all of them gray, some of them windowless, some of them boarded over. The near one had a plastic chair on the landing. Trash was heaped in the basement stairwell, spilling out onto the sidewalk.

He climbed the steps to a wooden door, knocked and glanced up at the windows.

There was no response.

He looked up and down the street, saw no one and knocked again. This time a woman’s head appeared; she had a mane of uncombed hair, cigarette hanging from her lip.

“What do you want?” she barked.

“I’m looking for Tiny.”

She coughed and spat in an empty flowerbox, looked down at him and cocked her head to one side. She took a long deep drag on the cigarette and the ember burned hot orange.

“He ain’t no cop,” she yelled over her shoulder, and a man’s head, much smaller than hers, appeared alongside.

“What do you want?” the little man growled.

“Jay sent me.” Rolfe held up the gym bag.

The man withdrew his head and Rolfe could hear the sound of footsteps on stairs. Then a bolt being thrown back and the door swung open to a man no taller than his knee.

“Get in,” the midget demanded. “Get in.” He slammed the door behind him and locked it. “What do you want?”

Rolfe took the brick from his pocket and held it out in the palm of his hand. The midget stared at it, then slowly his hand came up and he pointed at the stairs.

The second floor apartment was furnished with red vinyl chairs, dirty shag rug and a dingy green velvet sofa. Dark jagged water stains reached across the ceiling, pale nautical wallpaper peeling off the walls.

The midget led Rolfe to a metal table scarred with cigarette burns. A plastic Budweiser pool table lamp hung overhead. There was a quart of Pabst Blue Ribbon on the table and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. A paring knife lay across a plate of cold sausage. Flies walked around the edges. The midget topped off his water glass with beer and stared at the gold Rolex on Rolfe’s arm.

“How do you know Jay?” he asked.

“The pawn shop,” Rolfe said.

“What is this supposed to be?”

Rolfe didn’t answer.

The midget took the knife from the plate and put the tip against the cellophane, looked at Rolfe and pushed it through. A small mound of powder spilled on the table.

“There are eight others,” Rolfe said. “Be ten dollars a one.”

The midget scooped a small amount on the tip of the knife blade and brought it to his nose. He snorted and put his head back and fixed his eyes on the cracks in the ceiling. When he lowered them again he was looking at Rolfe.

“How many more?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Eight,” Rolfe said.

“And you want ten dollars for each? Ninety dollars in all?”

Rolfe nodded less certainly.

And Tiny, who had never been blessed with any more luck than having lived through childbirth, took a deep breath. He remembered with unusual clarity the words spoken in Jewel’s last night – a drunken conversation between a prostitute and a volunteer fireman. It was just minutes after last call and the firemen said he had been up to see the plane crash on the mountain and that a federal drug agent had come to see the Sheriff and she was all the way from Washington DC.

“You got these outside?”

Rolfe shook his head. “Kettle Hollow.”

“When can you bring the rest?” the midget demanded.

“First light.”

“First light, first thing, you don’t go anywhere else until you come here?”

Rolfe nodded.

“Don’t be late.” The midget shook his head. “I’ll have your money right here on the table.”

Chapter 16

Somerset County, Pennsylvania

It was a retired borough policeman who first noticed the gray pickup in the parking lot of the rundown motel. Half obscured by a wrecked panel truck set on blocks, it had been backed into a corner with its license plate against a guardrail, driver’s side facing the trees. When he squeezed in behind it to have a look at the tag he saw it was from Florida, and quickly called the tip line for the FBI. The motel had been closed to tourists for years he told them, but the owner had started renting rooms by the month, mostly to minimum wage employees who worked at a nearby resort. Immigrants, he said contemptuously, were taking over the goddamned place.

Fielding got the message and thirty minutes later he was climbing down a grassy hillside to the parking lot. The air was unseasonably cool and there was a ring around the moon. The motel was badly neglected, the roof in a state of disrepair. The doors were dented, the walls peeling paint. A dumpster in the parking lot was spilling over onto the pavement. A clothesline draped between roof supports was laden with children’s clothes, and a single halogen streetlamp illuminated a row of old cars. A silver panel truck was sitting on concrete blocks, a broken driver’s side window replaced with a piece of waterlogged cardboard. Someone had spray-painted the word SPIGGER in white across the side. In the corner of the lot against a wall of trees sat the gray Ford truck. Fielding squeezed in behind it, noticing the chipped chrome letters F-15. The zero was missing. It was the wanted truck! Was the murder weapon inside, he wondered.

He knelt and quietly requested a registration check on the vehicle, quickly determined to be in the name of one Juan Rodriguez of Florida. He climbed back up the hillside and had a Pennsylvania State Trooper order a Transportation Department tow truck to be delivered to the scene. Then he sent an agent to the resort a mile away, checking the name against management’s file for employees.

It turned out that Juan Rodriguez had been hired by the resort as a landscaper on the morning of April 12th, two days after the fire and double homicide that had been discovered in Tennessee. The photo on a Florida driver’s license he had presented as identification bore little resemblance to the man in the surveillance video from the gas station. He had been given employee housing in the nearby motel, in room number three.

A voice came over the radio. Fielding acknowledged it and a minute later a procession of cars came racing down the road, turning sharply into the motel parking lot, cops spilling from every open door.

The man calling himself Rodriguez was asleep in room three. A woman and child watched open-mouthed as they placed him in handcuffs and tore the room apart. The truck was put on the crane, Rodriguez in the back of a police car and both were taken to the Somerset state police barracks fifteen miles east.

Fielding knew from the time sheets collected that Rodriguez had been at work when the Canaan Mountain lawyer went missing. That was the good news. He would call the parents of Jessie Spangler and tell them he had the Mountain State Butcher. That he hadn’t taken their daughter.  They could at least take some comfort in that and who knew, she might only be lost in the woods – and still be alive. But first they had to read Rodriguez his Miranda rights and Fielding wanted to be there.

Minutes later in an interrogation room, Fielding watched as a junior agent had Rodriguez sign the Miranda card to acknowledge his understanding of his rights. It was the weekend and the man was an indigent. A judge would have to appoint him a public defender, but that would not happen until Monday morning when he was arraigned.

Fielding could spend the rest of the night disbanding the mountain state task force, prepare a press release for the Assistant Director and then drive back to Washington where he would sleep for two days.

On Monday the prosecution would give the public defender a courtesy copy of the surveillance video of Rodriguez using the victim’s credit card. The United States Attorney would then point out the broken emblem on the quarter panel and the old Jerry can in the bed of the pickup that had been found on the murder scene. He would inform the court of the government’s intent to seek extradition for capital murder charges in Georgia. They would start with the murder of the Girl Scout Megan Lawson. Anyone who knew about death penalty cases knew you didn’t want to be convicted of capital murder in the Peach State. Jurors with crime scene photos would be wanting to put the needle in him themselves.

But Rodriguez surprised the agents after he signed the card and put down the pen. He said he wanted to talk to them now and without a lawyer. Fielding dragged a chair into a corner and straddled it and watched with interest as the interrogating agent opened a yellow legal pad.

Yes, he knew the victims, Rodriguez told them, but he worked two jobs and never owned a TV. In fact he had not even heard about the murders until he was brought into this room.

He had said he met the couple in a Home Depot in the town of Lenoir Tennessee. He’d been working there part time, stocking shelves and cleaning the warehouse. They had asked him about replacement bars for a chainsaw and while they were talking he told them he had experience as a professional logger. The woman wanted to know if he could work for them and he agreed, but only for a week. He had told them he was moving his family to Pennsylvania.

As for the credit card, he said the man asked him to fill up the gas can and also gave him permission to fill his truck tank before he left town.

“And when was this that you left town?”

“April tenth,” Rodriguez answered without hesitation.

“And you’re sure about that date?” The agent looked up at him. “You don’t want to look at a calendar?”

Rodriguez shook his head slowly.

Fielding nodded imperceptibly from the corner. The interrogator’s job was to lock down every detail, to establish the foundation for what would become a house built on lies. In time Rodriguez would trip up on his story, try to amend it and before long he would be buried under his own words.

“No.” Rodriguez shook his head more firmly. “We arrived here on the morning of April eleventh. It was my son’s birthday. He turned six.” Rodriguez actually smiled.

“You’re telling me you were on the road all night?” The agent was unimpressed, scratching a line on his pad. “And of course no one saw you.”

Rodriguez nodded. “Yes. We drove on Interstate 81 the whole way.”

“All right. And when you arrived here on the morning of the eleventh, who saw you then? Who can verify you were here and not in Tennessee?”

The agent coughed, pen poised to write. A hidden microphone picked up every sound in the room; a small domed camera caught the expression on every face.

Rodriguez spoke for a minute and when he was finished Agent Fielding leaned forward and rested his fingertips on the edge of the table. Someone would say later that the blood had drained from his face.

“Repeat that time.” Fielding raised a finger to silence the interrogator.

“Five a.m.,” Rodriguez said. “You can see it for yourself. It’s on the ticket in the glove box.”

Chapter 17

Marion, West Virginia

The Sheriff closed the door to his office and dialed the state capital.

He was put on hold and a minute later Major Lazarus came on the line.

“Johnny,” Marty said. “What the hell’s going on up there on the Canaan Mountain?”

“Trying to figure that out now,” Johnny said. He sounded strained. “I’ve been on and off the phone with Agent Fielding all evening.”

“They’re still in Pennsylvania?”

“Yeah and they’ve got the suspect and truck in custody.”

“So it’s over?”

“He’s under arrest is all I said.”

“Can you tell me who he is?”

“Immigrant from El Salvador, uh … name is Juan Rodriguez. INS shows him entering the country on a work visa in 1998. Was sponsored by a deadhead logging company based out of Sarasota Florida.”

“Deadhead logging?”

“They harvest sunken trees from the swamps.”

“And when the work visa ended he failed to leave the country?”

“No, actually he married a citizen and got his green card.”

“Okay, let’s back up. This work he was doing. Does it have anything to do with the investigation?”

“Well, it would explain how he could know the mountains so well.”

“Because?”

“Park Services contract logging companies to clean up their trails.”

“Blood Mountain?”

“They’re checking that now.”

“And you’re thinking that’s how he ended up in Kentucky and West Virginia?”

“Man working for a logging company would know plenty of remote locations,” Lazarus said.

“What about his truck. If he moves around he would have had to renew his license and registration.”

“Original address in Sarasota was demolished in 2006. He’s been using a Post Office Box in Sarasota Springs to renew. They only changed the law in Florida requiring a physical address in 2010.”

“So he could have been living anywhere the last six years?” Marty said.

“Precisely.”

“But there’s something else, Johnny. I can hear it in your voice.”

“Like I said, they’re trying to figure it out now.”

“You’re not worried you have the wrong man?”

“They’re checking on something is all,” Lazarus said flatly.

“There’s a hitch?”

Lazarus sighed out loud. “He claims to have an alibi for morning of the murders in Tennessee.”

“You keep reminding me he used the victim’s credit card.”

“He may have an explanation for that as well,” Lazarus said. “But Marty, give me time. This is only just unraveling.”

“What if it unravels that he’s not the Butcher?”

“I hear you and I understand there’s another missing person in your county. But we can only take this a step at a time. The FBI has people heading for the Canaan Mountain now. We’ll get a more definitive answer from Pennsylvania in the next couple hours.”“Just between friends, Johnny. This alibi could be good?”

“It’s a witness,” Lazarus growled.

“Could be reliable?”

“Impeccable.”

“Can you say who they are?”

“We are,” Lazarus said.

Chapter 18

Quills Landing, West Virginia

The evening service at the Pentecostal Church was underway as Rolfe climbed the hill out of Quills Landing. An ambulance wailed off the interstate, heading toward an alley near River Road.

The gravel lot was jammed with old American cars, chrome bumpers glistening under bare light bulbs, the voice of Reverend Holland crackling from homemade speakers nailed to the trees.

Rolfe had attended three of Holland’s services over the years, standing in the back and leaving before they ended. It was like the cabin and the cemetery and all the memories of his childhood. Sad and somehow painful, and yet he couldn’t leave them alone.

The congregation was seated when Rolfe entered the church.

“Lord deliver us from evil,” Reverend Holland said, his fingers pointing at the floor.

“Amen!” someone said.

“For Thine is the Kingdom.”

“Hallelujah!”

“And the Power.”

“Hallelujah!”

“And the Glory forever and ever.”

“Amen!” they said in unison.

The preacher shifted weight from foot to foot, bowed his head and raised his arms into the air. “Lord, we have walked in your narrow path of righteousness. We have spoken with pure and modest tongues. We have remembered your goodliness and salvation and all the blessings you have bestowed upon us.”

“Amen,” they said, louder.

“Now we come to you in humble worship, to praise you and to witness your extraordinary powers.”

“Hallelujah!”

“Do you want a sign, brothers and sisters?”

“Yes,” they yelled. “Give us a sign.”

Holland picked up his Bible and raised it over his head.

“Lord, grant your flock their one earthly desire, their one pursuit of the flesh. Grant them a sign as you did in the land of Egypt and in Bethsaida and at the pool of Siloam.”

Someone stood. “Amen!”

Holland strutted back and forth in front of the congregation.

“The Godless seek to tempt each other, as they too have been tempted by the one in hell!”

“They,” he pointed at the window, “fear death, because life is their only heaven. They,” he said more softly, “fear the serpent and the poison, and for good reason, my brothers and sisters.”

He walked slowly to the center of the room, crossed behind the beams that supported the ceiling and undid his tie behind a music-stand pulpit, his voice plummeting to a level just above a whisper.

“They lack faith,” he whispered.

The room went silent.

“And faith,” he said, “is the most precious element in the universe.”

“Amen,” someone said softly.

“Even the disciples lacked faith. Jesus showed Mary his wounds after the resurrection but the disciples refused to believe.” He pulled the tie from his neck and draped it over the music stand. “So he gave them another chance and then a third.” He shook his head as he rolled up the cuffs of his shirt. “Finally he told Thomas to put his finger in the very wounds.”

Holland looked around the congregation, eyes meeting eyes, stopping on Rolfe’s for a second, then folding his hands in front of him. “When they finally realized it was him he said to them, ‘Go into the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons. They will speak in new tongues. They will pick up snakes with their hands, and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all. They will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.’ And, brother’s and sisters, HE,” Holland said, his voice rising dramatically, pacing the floor from one end to the other, “WAS TALKING ABOUT,” his voice was thunderous now, “YOU!”

The crowd cried hallelujah and clasped each other’s arms, hugging and swaying, going forth to receive the snakes.

The door at the rear of the church opened and Rolfe stepped out into the night. Some, who saw him leave, thought he was frightened by the spectacle. Holland, who saw him too, had no such illusion.

Chapter 19

Marion, West Virginia

Marty put the truck windows down, the air warm and sweet smelling as they approached the top of Emmett’s Fork. A blue sign read: Elevation 4320 ft.

On the crest of the summit was an old log tavern with a pink neon sign on the roof that read: MOST HEAVEN.

Marty turned into the parking lot and rolled to a stop between two trucks.

“Most heaven?” Judy looked up at the sign.

“Almost Heaven,” he said. “They lost some letters during a microburst last April. Food’s a little greasy but the beer is always cold.”

He pushed the screen door open and ushered Judy in. A dozen heads turned at the bar and Marty lifted a hand, “John,” he said, then “Pappy.” He waved and nodded at some others, led her around the bar to a pine wood dining room, redolent of fried onions. The walls were covered with antlered deer and a bear’s head. There were fish and turkeys and a raccoon baring its teeth.

“Just like home,” she said blandly, all eyes watching them as they walked to a corner table.

The kitchen door opened and someone yelled, “Hey, Marty!”

Marty waved and the door swung closed.

She smiled. “Popular.”

“Born here,” he said.

A waitress with an abundance of cleavage stopped at the edge of their table and put a hand on his shoulder.

“What’ll it be, handsome?”

Marty looked at Judy. “You drink beer?”

She nodded.

“Pitcher and two mugs,” he said. “And two pepperoni pizzas, okay?’ He looked at Judy and she nodded again.

She studied a menu while they were waiting for the beer. When it came it was with a red plastic basket full of popcorn. A jukebox in the corner played a familiar sounding song. Ceiling fans raised fur on the stuffed bear’s ears.

“Pathetic-looking bear.” Judy pointed with her mug.

“He’s been hanging there since I was in a highchair,” Marty said. “And probably a whole lot longer. He and I never made it very far from home.”

“There’s something to be said for that.” She looked up at the bear. “There isn’t anything in my life that reminds me of my childhood. I mean all the places and all the people are gone. It’s like it never happened.”

Marty nodded thoughtfully. “You mentioned Deep Creek. Your summers at the lake.”

“My cousins.” She nodded reflectively. “They moved to the west coast when I was in sixth grade. Deep Creek was a lot like here.”

“Mountainous and backward,” Marty said.

“No,” she said, slapping the back of his hand. “Wild, beautiful, silent.”

“Silent?”

“No clutter,” she said. “No sirens or thumping car speakers. No car alarms and garbage trucks backing up. Like I said,  reminds me of Deep Creek.”

Marty laughed. “I guess I never appreciated silence. So then Marion is everything you expected it to be?”

She smiled. “I didn’t expect to be here a second night.”

“And what would you be doing if you were home?”

“Sitting on my sofa.” She shrugged. “Staring at my laptop and trying to figure out how to write about that missing cocaine.”

“But the silence got to you, so you stayed another day.”

She laughed. “Really, I’m not kidding. The only thing I can say for sure is that the plane didn’t blow up in the sky.”

Someone put money in the jukebox.

She looked at her hands and turned them over, looked some more and placed them on the table.

“I just have to say this one more time: I was too quick to judge you yesterday and it wasn’t really about you. It was me. It was about my own stuff. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, “but one more time, it wasn’t a big deal.” He raised his beer.

They were silent for another moment, Judy studying the walls.

The waitress stopped to check on them, left to refill the pitcher. Again Judy saw the way she brushed her arm against Marty’s shoulder.

“Don’t tell me you don’t get hit on,” she said.

Marty smiled. “She just fools around like that.”

“U’huh,” Judy said. “You must be the town catch.”

He laughed.

“So why no wife or girlfriend?”

“Just haven’t met the right one, I guess.”

“Never?”

“Once,” he admitted. “But never married.”

She nodded.

“And you. You said you were divorced? No kids?”

Judy lifted her mug and put it to her lips, waiting a moment or two before taking a drink. She put it down and crossed her ankles, seeming uncomfortable about what to do with her hands. At last she laid them flat on the table and cleared her throat.

“I had a daughter,” she said, eyes beginning to glisten. “Sorry.” She dabbed at them and looked at the ceiling. “I always seem to be crying in front of you.” She waved her hand. “I had a daughter named Lynn. She was six months old when she died of SIDS.”

Judy looked back down and reached for her beer, this time draining it as loud laughter erupted around the bar.

Marty’s mouth began to form words, but then closed.

And then something came over Judy, like a feeling that she had cleared a large hurdle. She had spoken Lynn’s name and it was behind her, like the bittersweet memories of her childhood, her parents and her marriage to Tom, and all those cousins who had once upon a time gathered on the lake at Deep Creek.

Suddenly time seemed different in Marion where it was okay to talk about the past and okay to be okay.

A siren wailed outside and flashing blue lights passed the windows.

The waitress approached the table. “Another pitcher for you two?”

Marty shook his head. “Just the pizza and a check.”

When she was gone again, Judy shook her head. “She wants you, you know.”

“She plays with everyone like that. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Better think again, Mister,” Judy said.

“Then she’s not my type.”

“Yeah, well, that’s good,” she said, “because I have no intention of being dumped in a bar with dead animals.”

“Oh, I’d never dump you.” Marty shook his head.

Judy looked at him with mock skepticism. “Yeah, well haven’t we all heard that one before?”

Chapter 20

Quills Landing, West Virginia

Myron Jenkins, voluntary caretaker and gravedigger for the Pentecostal Church, brought a lantern and a pint of Wild Turkey – courtesy of Reverend Holland – and climbed the field above the church toward Cemetery Hill. He had a shovel in his hand and a heavy tarp across his shoulder. He had already dug the Miller boy’s grave, but Monday was the funeral and tomorrow they were calling for rain. He could sharpen up the corners tonight and spread a tarp over it until Monday’s funeral. There was nothing worse than bailing mud from a grave while the congregation waited in the rain.

Suddenly the wind changed and he got a whiff of rotting meat. Something was dead and experience told him it was big. A coon or a fox; maybe even a deer. Probably it was coming from the tree line, but as he approached the open grave the smell only grew stronger. For a moment he felt a surge of anger, recalling a Friday night homecoming game when some teenagers stole a roasted half pig from a post-game party and brought it to Cemetery Hill. Two days later a funeral procession conveying a casket had found it rotting in the open grave under a mountain of empty beer cans.

But it wasn’t any garbage that was in his grave tonight. It was a woman. And she had been disemboweled.

Chapter 21

Emmet’s Fork, West Virginia

They drove a quarter mile past the tavern and turned onto a narrow road, following the ridge past a dozen identical A-Frame cottages. He finally turned into a driveway by a double wide trailer. There was an old white pickup in front of it, American flag decal on the bumper and a bow and quiver suspended from a rifle rack. Toby’s idea of a joke, he told her.

The old man answered the door dressed in checkered flannel pajamas and terrycloth slippers.

“Marty,” he said in mock surprise, “you should have told me you had a girlfriend.” He winked and ushered them both in.

Toby, shorter than Judy, was in his late seventies, with dark mischievous eyes and a nose hooked like a beak. His skin was dark and wrinkled like cracked clay, and he wore his snow-white hair in a crew cut. “I could have put feathers on and practiced on my Cherokee.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Marty said blandly, leading Judy into a neatly kept living room.

“Is she someone else’s?” Toby asked.

Judy shrugged. “No husband, no boyfriend.”

“Pity.” The old man shook his head. “He’s really not that bad. I can vouch for him. I’ve known him for a long time.”

She smiled. “Oh, I don’t mind him at all.”

“She’s a federal agent,” Marty said. “And we have something we want you to look at.” He laid the pizza box on the table. He reached in a pocket and handed Toby the leather pouch. “We found this yesterday morning up at the plane crash site.”

Toby looked at it for a moment, loosened the top and poured the contents out over the tablecloth. After a moment he looked up at Marty.

“What do you want to know?”

“Whoever dropped it there took drugs out of the plane. Twenty pounds of cocaine.”

Toby turned the pouch over in his hands, studying the crosses etched into the leather.

“Strap was cut?” He held up one end.

Marty nodded.

Toby picked up an item on the table. “Dock root.” He shrugged. “And this here is Yellow Root, both used for medicines. Then he picked up a tiny flat stone and pinched it between his fingers. “This pebble is called a madstone. Haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid. You find them in the belly of a deer every once in a while, like a gallstone. People keep them to cure rabies.”

“Rabies?” Judy repeated.

He nodded. “You dip the stone in milk and stick it to the bite. When it falls off, the poison’s been drawn into the stone.”

She raised her eyebrows.

Toby brushed aside the Buckeye and picked up one of the dark berries and held it close to one eye.

“What about those,” Marty asked.

“Devil’s berries.” Toby continued to study it. “From the Belladonna plant and very poisonous.” He dropped it on the table and picked up a stem with a dried purple flower. “This here is Wolf’s Bane. If you eat it, it can paralyze the lungs and you die of suffocation.”

“What’s all this mean to you?”

Toby looked at Marty. “It’s a medicine bag.”

“You’re speaking Indian medicine bag?” Marty said, surprised. “Does this make him some kind of a shaman? A medicine man?”

Toby shook his head. “No. Not necessarily. The origin of the medicine bag is certainly native, but white men have shared the mountains for centuries and many still cling to the old ways.”

He picked up the empty bag. “A shaman wouldn’t have sewn the bag together. The shaman believed that his magic could leak from the stitching. He would have made it from a single piece of hide.”

“So not necessarily an Indian, but he lives off the earth. He treats his own afflictions?”

Toby nodded. “I would agree.”

“Why would anyone put poisons in a Medicine Bag?”

Toby paused for a moment. “What we know about nature we have learned from someone’s experience – the result of some ancestor’s fortuitous discovery, or misfortune. Many must have journeyed to the brink of death in search of answers, some to cross over, some to return and tell the tale. Folk remedies were often complex and mysterious. You ask about poisons, Marty, so consider the Rattlesnake. We now know to treat the bite with the venom. The poison is the cure. And so it is with many things in life.”

Marty considered this for a few moments. “So he’s backwoods if nothing else. Likely uneducated.”

“Which doesn’t make him simple,” Toby said quickly. “Do not confuse education and understanding. He may be quite skilled in his element. May have a purpose for what he carries.”

“A purpose,” Judy said slowly, a faraway look in her eyes.

Toby handed the bag back to Marty and opened the pizza box, taking a piece and offering it to Judy.

“Oh, no thanks. We have our own in the Jeep.”

Marty started collecting the items on the table and putting them back in the bag. “I thought I’d take Judy up and show her the house before she goes.”

“Goes where?” Toby asked.

“Back to DC,” Judy said. “Tomorrow morning.”

“I like the Old Ebbitt Grill.” Toby nodded, grinning. “Two dozen oysters and half a dozen beers.” He laid the pizza back in the box, held up an index finger and hurried down the hall. A moment later he returned carrying a string of white shells.

“Indian love necklace,” he said, handing it to Judy. “They’re from the New River basin and prehistoric, I’m told. I was going to give it to the next squaw I came across.” He snickered into a cupped hand. “But now I’m too old. You come back again.” He took her hand. “I like you better than the last one.”

“Toby,” Marty said sternly.

“And you,” he pointed at Marty, “best watch out. These things work quickly.”

Judy slipped the necklace over her head and Marty reached for the doorknob, shaking his head.

“Maybe we should just head back to the motel,” Judy said as they were getting into the Jeep. “It’s getting late.”

“My house is only a mile away.” Marty sounded disappointed. “Besides there’s a reason I want you to see it.”

She stared at him. “You know I have to go home in the morning, Marty.”

“I know that, Agent Wells,” he said. “It’s just to see my place and straight back to your motel. We can eat the pizza along the way.”

She looked at him with raised eyebrows, then nodded. “Okay, but just to see your place.”

The road led them to a lane that wound through hardwood trees and at last to a log ranch house on a grassy hill, lawn gently sloping to a massive two-acre pond. Dark water shimmered under the light of the full moon.

“Oh my God,” she said, jumping out of the Jeep. She ran toward a wooden dock and kicked off her shoes. “Is it safe?” she yelled.

“Of course it’s safe.” He took the box of pizza and set it on the hood of the Jeep.

She ran to the end of the dock and put her feet in the water that was lapping gently against the pilings.

“Come on,” she called over her shoulder, patting the board next to her, pointing up at an orange star. “Saturn,” she said happily.

Marty sat next to her and looked up at the sky. Then he stretched his arm overhead. “Taurus.”

“Bull,” she said, turning to look at him.

He shrugged and drew a line with his finger to the north. “Orion.”

“Orion?” she looked at him doubtfully.

“Orion,” he assured her.

“Show-off!” She laughed.

Their shoulders touched; he could feel her bare foot brush his leg. A star streaked across the sky. His arm shot out at the same time as hers, fingers touching fingers as the meteorite plunged into the horizon and they kept their hands that way, in utter awe of the feeling.

When they turned, they turned together and in cosmic silence. He whispered her name.

Crickets chirped and fireflies twinkled, and frogs plunked into the water spreading rings of golden moonlight. The stars had multiplied a thousand fold and she reached for the back of his neck, leg sliding over his knee. Marty pulled her into his arms and lay back on the dock and they kissed, slowly at first, then passionately until at last they pulled away and looked into each other’s eyes.

“Must be the love necklace,” she whispered huskily.

He smiled, pulling her back into his chest, and they lay like that in perfect silence, neither wanting to break the spell.

Chapter 22

Somerset State Police Barracks, Pennsylvania

Juan Rodriguez’s memory of the morning of April 11th was uncanny in detail. He had said he’d been driving north on I-81 and picked up I-70 south of Breezewood as snowflakes began to fall. He wouldn’t forget that because it was the first snow his son had ever seen. When he passed the Welcome to Pennsylvania sign there was a police car sitting behind the trestle of an overpass. The policeman put on his lights, came up behind him and pulled him over. A cargo strap had come loose in the bed, and the buckle was dragging on the pavement showering sparks beneath the bumper. The officer took his license and registration, wrote him a warning ticket for having an unsecure load and told him to have a nice day.

Fielding ordered the junior agent to fetch the ticket from the truck. Then he found the Duty Office where he closed the door and asked the Sergeant how long the state police digital in-car videos were kept.

“Three months,” the Sergeant told him.

“How long to find one and put it on a screen?”

“Maybe an hour – if you know the day and time.”

The junior agent arrived with the ticket. Fifty minutes later a video attachment arrived on the Desk Sergeant’s computer. On the screen was an image videoed from the dash camera of a state police car as it was pulling over a gray truck with Florida tags. The trooper approached the vehicle, spoke to the driver who then got out and followed the trooper to the rear of the truck. It was Juan Rodriguez, the man in the interrogation room. In the lower right corner of the screen the date read 04/11/12 and the time 0503 hours. Snowflakes were melting on the trooper’s windshield.

Juan Rodriguez had been in Pennsylvania at 05:03 on April 11, four minutes after the Atlanta commuter pilot had reported the fire in Tennessee. Juan Rodriguez could not have been in both places.

Face blanched, Fielding raced from the room, punching numbers into the cellphone as he tried to find his driver. There would be no rest tomorrow, he knew. No rest in his foreseeable future.

Chapter 23

Marion, West Virginia

Marty’s phone startled him awake.

“Hello,” he said quietly, leaning over the side of the bed.

“It’s Sam, Marty. Sorry to wake you.”

“Tell me,” he said groggily. “Whatcha got, Sam?”

“They found a body up on Cemetery Hill. State troopers are already on the scene.”

“Any details?”

“They think it’s that lawyer from Canaan Mountain that went missing. She was killed with a knife is what I heard. Chief Douglas said he’d wait for you at the church. Fill you in there.”

“Tell him I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” he said. He switched off his phone and picked up the clock.

Judy opened her eyes tiredly. “What is it?”

“They found a body,” he said, squinting at the clock again as he set it down.

“God, Marty. Where?”

“Cemetery Hill. I’ll drop you at the motel on the way.”

“Can’t I go along?”

He turned. “You’re leaving this morning, remember?”

“I can sleep when I get back to Washington.”

He smiled weakly and leaned down to kiss her.

It was after 2:00 AM when they crossed the bridge to Quills Landing. Clouds had gathered, moving quickly across the moon. A wind out of the west bent treetops and the air smelled like rain.

On the side of the mountain Judy could make out the large white cross on top of the Pentecostal Church, pulsing blue under the wash of an emergency beacon.

They pulled into the parking lot next to an orange pickup with a strobe light on the dash. A heavyset man in a brown uniform was leaning against the driver’s door. He wore a white cowboy hat and boots.

“Chief Douglas,” Marty said, as they pulled alongside the truck. “Remember I told you about Quills Landing?”

The big man came alongside the passenger window.

“Hey, Marty.” He leaned down to look in the passenger window.

“This is Agent Wells, Doug.”

The Chief reached in and pumped Judy’s hand vigorously, stooping to get a better look at her face. “A federal agent,” he said. “My, but you two have been up working late.” He grinned, and winked at Marty.

Douglas’s great belly pushed against the passenger door. He wore a Sam Browne belt and a nickel-plated automatic with ivory grips.

“Hell of a mess up there.” He removed his hat and rubbed the back of his head.

“Who found her?” Marty asked.

“Myron Jenkins went up to finish digging the Miller boy’s grave. He told Preacher Holland what he found and Holland called me and I called the state troopers. She’s still up there.” He pointed. “Just like we found her. Gutted and cleaned like a deer.”

Douglas put his hat back on. “State trooper said your buddy Lazarus is flying in from Charleston and there’s supposed to be some FBI agent on his way. Must be thinking it’s that serial killer they’ve been chasing. Anyhow, Cemetery Road’s blocked just above the church. Easier to hoof it up the hill.”

Marty turned off the engine and Douglas stepped away from the door.

The three of them followed the footpath behind the church, climbing the hillside to the hayfield overlooking Quills Landing.

There were bright lights in the distance and the monotone chatter of police radios. They walked for several minutes before the outline of police cars appeared. Their headlights and spotlights were trained on a mound of earth between the tombstones.

A trooper approached them out of the dark, put his light up to their faces. “Marty,” the man said, before turning the light on Judy. He was tall and black and wore captain’s bars on his shoulders.

“Brad, this is Judy Wells, federal agent, DEA.”

Judy removed a badge from her pocket and held it up to the light.

“Ma’am.” The captain touched the brim of his hat. “Major Lazarus said to tell you he’s in the air. Wanted to know if you’d mind meeting him at Elkins airport.”

“Me,” Marty said dully. “You guys don’t pick up police majors when they come to town?”

The captain shrugged. “Said he wanted you and unless you really mind, I’m seriously short of troopers.”

Marty nodded. “Sure, of course.”

“Over here.” The captain waved them toward the spotlights. “Right next to the pile of dirt.”

The woman was lying naked in the open grave, arms at her sides and abdomen split from pelvis to breastbone. Her insides were laid between her legs. Her eyes were wide open and her mouth filled with congealed blood.

“Clothes?” Marty asked.

“By the tree line. No wallet, no ID, but there’s a dragonfly tattoo on her ankle, same as the lawyer on Canaan Mountain. Some of the agents over there are already on the way.” He pointed at his car. “Man who found her is Myron Jenkins, sitting in my back seat. Said he’s the caretaker for the church.”

“Yeah, I know him,” Marty said.

“Ain’t that something, girly?” Chief Douglas came up alongside Judy. “Ever seen anything like them eyes?” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “Sight like that’d send some good men off into the bushes.” He folded the handkerchief into a square and stuffed it into his back pocket. “Been there at least a day. Killer’s probably halfway to Hell or Hoboken by now. Heard you feds lost some cocaine up there on the mountain?”

Judy looked up, unprepared for the shift in subject.

Douglas removed his hat and ran a hand around the brim. “Actually, I heard that someone beat you to it.”

Judy opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.

Douglas wiped his forehead on a shirtsleeve and replaced the hat. He looked out over the lights of Quills Landing and sighed. “Imagine it’ll end up in my town sooner than later. I’m sure Marty told you we’re a regular Sodom and Gomorra down there. Just how much dope were we talking about, Agent Wells?”

“Ten kilos,” she said quietly.

Douglas whistled. “Well now, that’s enough cocaine to get someone’s attention. Maybe I’ll just get back and start knocking on some doors.” He touched the brim of his hat. “You kids be good now.” He smiled and backed away into the shadows.

Judy watched him disappear then returned her gaze to the woman’s body. He was right about one thing, she thought. She had never seen anything like those eyes.

“Kirsten on the way?” Marty asked the captain.

The captain shook his head. “The Bureau’s sending in their own forensics from Washington and troops from other barracks. Works out for me since half my troopers are in Charleston.”

“What’s in Charleston?”

“Breakfast at the convention center. Vice President is attending a DNC fundraiser.”

Marty looked at him, then up at the fluttering treetops, thinking something must have been terribly wrong in Pennsylvania.

“You heard a weather report?”

“Storm front’s over Kentucky,” the captain said. “Winds flipped a tractor-trailer on I-64. Should be a good one by the sound of it. Ought to be here within another hour.”

Marty nodded and looked down at the open grave. “Hope they’re bringing the tents along. Nothing worse than a muddy circus.”

Chapter 24

Marion, West Virginia

Marty dropped Judy off at the Cherokee Inn on his way to Elkins Randolph Airport to pick up Lazarus. There should have been more to saying goodbye than a hug and exchange of kisses on the cheek, he thought. But they had just stood there afterward, neither knowing what to say. Surely it would have been different if it were not for the crime scene on Cemetery Hill. You don’t leave the sight of something like that and pick up mid-conversation. But the spell had been broken and now they each had time to question what had happened, to wonder what the other one might be thinking. Maybe his emotions were out of proportion to the situation. Maybe Judy would actually be relieved to be going home.

Either way, she would soon be on her way to Washington. And then what? Just forget about what had happened? Neither had talked about or even suggested a future conversation.

Hattie Wilson had been right, he thought. And so had he. Something else had come along. And just as quickly it was going away.

The parking lot was empty; the tower light revolved through a steadily driving rain. He watched the buffeting wing lights of the twin-engine Beechcraft as it touched down and taxied to the terminal in a spray of rainwater on the tarmac.

Lazarus was first out of the plane and ran toward the door holding a magazine over his head. An airline agent opened the door and blocked it with a wooden wedge. Lazarus passed through the security gate and shook the rain from his jacket, then entered the small baggage area. “Marty,” he said, nodding as he took his elbow and pulled him away from the NTSB officers in screening.

“It came apart in interrogation. He didn’t do the murders in Tennessee.”

“And now you think he’s here.”

“We don’t know.”

Marty laughed. “And let me guess who your next suspect will be. A drifter carrying packs on his back?”

“They’ve got agents heading for Tellico Plains to get a composite,” Lazarus said. “And please don’t say I told you so. I’ll take the beating after we find this guy. Deal?” He looked Marty in the eye.

“Deal.” Marty sighed and then nodded.

“FBI’s doing the forensics – you already heard?”

Marty nodded again.

“They’re just hearing about this on the Canaan Mountain themselves. Once the press knows we have a body there’s going to be a media event on your mountain. From what I hear Spangler was a big deal. The State’s Attorney General is still with the family.”

“Mary Saxe was a big deal too,” Marty said.

Lazarus put a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, she was. And I’m sorry. Now let’s get back up there and put this thing right.”

The wind was picking up, state police helicopters grinding noisy circles over Cemetery Hill, scattering deer and livestock in nearby farms and fields. Long before dawn, house and barn lights around the foothills began to wink on.

Jewel had closed her bar and gone to bed at 3:00 AM, but sleep had been impossible, what with the helicopters and the wind rattling fire escapes in Old Town Quills Landing, scattering trash in back alleys where brutish looking cats searched for rats.

And now someone was banging on her door.

“Morning, Jewel,” Chief Douglas said from the rotting second floor landing of her apartment.

“What in the hell do you want?” she demanded, fishing a foil pack of cigarillos from a green cotton bathrobe. A gust of wind pelted them with rain and she pulled the robe closed at the neck.

“You know, Jewel,” he said. “There’s a story I always like to tell about you, a good story too, but I can never get it told the same way twice. Boy robs you with a Saturday Night Special and you shoot him full of holes on his way out the door. Or was it boy robs you with a finger in his pocket and you plant the Saturday Night Special in his hand. The same Saturday Night Special that’s been in your cash drawer for thirty years?”

“It was justified, you bastard.”

“He was shot in the back, Jewel. And don’t you forget about those shell casings in my safe. Might remember to have them fingerprinted one day, like a cold case investigation. And they just happen to come back to you. Be pretty hard to explain how you loaded another man’s gun. Wouldn’t it now, Jewel?”

Douglas pushed himself off the railing and turned to watch the strobe of the helicopter flying east away from the mountains.

“What do you want?”

He turned to face her, reached into her pocket and helped himself to one of her cigars.

“I heard a rumor.” Douglas leaned into the doorway and cupped his hands around the match.

Jewel laughed out loud. “No shit. You heard a rumor, in Quills Landing. Well don’t that beat all.”

Douglas nodded, tossing the match over the rail. “You know I never asked much of you, Jewel, but I’m asking you once tonight. I want to know about cocaine. I want to know who has the cocaine that went down on the mountain. I know you know the story and if you tell me, then it’s the last you’ll hear of me. If you don’t, I’m closing down that snake pit you call a bar and you’ll be peddling your ass at the truck-stops quicker ‘n biscuits.”

“Does the law know about you?” Jewel hacked out a cough. “Seems to me folks still have rights.”

“No, Jewel.” He bent down and looked her in the eye. “There are no rights when it comes to you and me. Folks like us? We just have understandings.”

She took a long drag on her cigar and turned to look at the lights of the retreating helicopter.

“What’s going on up there?” She waved her cigar in the direction of the mountain.

“Found a body.”

She flicked her ash. “Why ain’t you worrying about that?”

“Oh, they got too many college boys coming to suit me.” Douglas stared at her, waiting.

“Aw shit.” She flicked the cigar over the rail. “Tiny took one of my barmaids home last night and told her he struck it rich. Said he bought a shitload of cocaine and was moving to Nashville. But who in the fuck knows with Tiny?”

“When was this?”

“A little after two.”

Douglas looked at her. “See how easy that was, Jewel?”

“Yeah, well don’t let it get around, okay Chief?”

Ten minutes later Douglas was standing at Tiny’s door.

He drew a boot back and kicked, splintering wood and locks, and after a second attempt the door flew wide open. Douglas heard footsteps above and charged up the stairs, saw Tiny looking down at him and caught him by the heel of his foot as he turned to the bedroom.

“What the fuck?” Tiny yelled.

Douglas dragged him from room to room until he was sure they were alone. Then he took him to the kitchen and dropped him in the chair. “Sit still,” he ordered, flinging drawers and cabinet doors open, then headed into the living room where he scattered pillows and cushions from the couch – then he stopped. There were three zip-lock bags full of marijuana and a brick sized package of white powder wrapped in Duck Tape.

Douglas smiled and took off his hat. He laid the bags inside and walked back into the kitchen.

“Not much else to say, is there, asshole?”

A green knot was rising on Tiny’s forehead, blood trickling from one nostril. His lip trembled in rage as Douglas bent down to look in his face.

“Judge just let you out on bail,” he said, laying the hat on the kitchen table. He pushed the Budweiser lamp and let it swing over Tiny’s head. “Guess you know what this means?”

“Yeah”, the midget mumbled. “False arrest, assault and battery. I want a lawyer.”

Douglas smiled. It was obvious that Tiny saw something in the policeman’s eyes that scared him.

“Sure,” the chief said, strolling casually around the kitchen table. “You’ll get your lawyer, but first I want to tell you about Probable Cause. See, your lawyer’s going to tell you I had the right to break into your miserable little Hell. A witness, Tiny, someone who will testify that you bragged about buying a shitload, and those are your words, Tiny, a shitload of cocaine. And since a shitload of cocaine just happened to go missing in the last twenty-four hours, it was more than reasonable of me to suspect you were telling the truth. In fact it was probable. And now I’m going to put you away for the rest of your miserable life.”

“I still want a lawyer,” Tiny said again, but this time without conviction.

Douglas straddled the chair on the other side of the table. “I want to know where you got the cocaine.”

Tiny clamped his jaw shut, eyes darting to the cowboy hat on the kitchen table, feeling his good fortune tumbling like a crystal vase to concrete.

“You realize your prior felony makes you eligible for thirty more years, Tiny.”

Tiny shook his head, tears of anger filling his eyes.

Douglas reached for his hat and pulled it to the edge of the table. “Have it your way, Tiny,” he said, beginning to rise out of the chair.

“I don’t know his name,” Tiny said.

“Then they’re going to carry your little casket out of prison.”

“Quite tall and hair down to here. His clothes were smelly and ragged.” Tiny raised his left hand. “He didn’t have a thumb on one hand.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Kettle Hollow, I think. He said Kettle Hollow.”

Chapter 25

Marion, West Virginia

Judy had just gotten to sleep when the motel telephone rang next to her bed. The clock said 4:30 AM. Marty had dropped her off an hour before, and should be back at the crime scene now. She had been hoping for at least another hour’s rest.

She sat up and reached for it groggily. Who but her boss and Marty knew she was here?

“Hello,” she said hoarsely.

“Why hey there, Missy. I wasn’t sure if you’d be entertaining or sound asleep. Sounds like you were asleep.”

There was no mistaking Douglas’s accent.

“What do you want, Chief?”

“Probably you’re all tuckered out from all that investigating you and Marty Wayne have been doing. But hell, if I’d known you were alone, I’d have come to see you personally.”

“Do you want something?” she said sharply.

“Oh, I have something that could interest you. Thought you might want to have a look at some of your cocaine.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, you see, while you were tucked in there under the covers, I was out doing some old-fashioned police work. Got a brick of your cocaine right here and about to get the rest.”

Judy sat up and put her feet on the floor.

“Meet me in Quills Landing on the street along the river, just next to the old warehouses and docks. You’ll see the running lights on my truck.” Douglas hung up the phone.

Judy pulled on her jeans and dialed Marty’s cellphone, let it ring several times and heard it go to voicemail. Then she tried his office, but a recording referred emergency callers to 911. They would all be on the mountain, she thought. Everyone on Cemetery Hill.

They had already said their goodbyes and in a moment that was out of proportion to all the emotion she felt. It was so anticlimactic she couldn’t remember the words. Just the taillights of his Jeep as he pulled out of the parking lot.

She dressed and scribbled a note, telling Marty she had stayed to meet Chief Douglas. Then she rolled the note and tucked it into the doorjamb, got into her car and passed the pink vacancy sign on her way to the road to Quills Landing.

Something told her it was not going to be a good day.

Judy raced toward the Corporal Edmond Bridge, gray light of dawn creeping in under a swirling black haze. As she approached the intersection at the Pentecostal Church she thought about the woman’s eyes on Cemetery Hill and a shiver ran down her spine.

Then she thought about Marty again and what had happened at his place. Maybe she was just tired or maybe she was numb, but for some reason she felt no remorse. Nothing else mattered but seeing him again. As if her life had changed in the course of a day.

The streets of Quills Landing were shrouded in fog, ominous as the restless sky. Judy turned at the first intersection and steered toward the river. There was only one streetlight and it blinked amber in all directions. A dog dashed like a ghost between shadows and the sky opened up, rain beginning to fall as a shard of lightning sizzled over the river. A man stepped in front of her car and she skidded to a halt. He just stood there in his raincoat and floppy hat, staring at her with cold hollow eyes, then moved on with coat tails flapping behind him.

She pressed the accelerator and continued along the river until she saw taillights on the side of the street. Douglas’s pickup was idling opposite a block of dilapidated row houses. Exhaust rose in the falling temperatures. She pulled in behind him and pressed her elbow against her side, feeling the cold hard bulge. She hadn’t drawn or even looked at it since that day at the range, but there it was snug in its holster. Every instinct told her this was wrong. That she should drive away now.

She turned off the ignition and opened her door.

The wind picked up and waves of raindrops smacked the windshield.  She ran to the passenger side of the pickup and the door opened an inch. She pulled it the rest of the way and slid onto the seat.

Douglas grinned. “Well now, Missy. I’m so happy you came.”

“What happened?” Judy asked.

“Bit of a story.” Douglas put the truck in gear. “I’ll just tell you along the way.”

“Way where?” She put a stiff hand on the dash.

“Way to arrest the man who stole your cocaine,” he said.

“What about backup?”

“Hell, us country cops don’t need no backup. If I was to start calling for backup every time I went out to arrest someone they’d find themselves a new chief of police.” He shook his head. “No, ma’am, we already got this one outnumbered. Now I like to make my arrests early morning when people are still asleep. You going with me or not?”

Judy nodded, feeling a growing nervousness in the pit of her stomach. The truck lurched out onto the street and headed back toward the church at the foot of the hill. They climbed Mountain Road past a dozen police and rescue vehicles lining the field around Cemetery Hill.

Was it Marty that was bothering her and making her nervous or was it going off into the unknown with Chief Douglas? She looked back toward Cemetery Hill wishing she had left a voice message. At least Marty would have known where she was going. But she would find him when she came back and they would say their goodbyes again. This time she would tell him to call her. This time she would get the words right.

“We’ll be back by noon,” Douglas said, as if reading her thoughts. “Then you can call Washington and tell them how good you did.”

Judy stared out the window, thinking about Jack Halligan and then strangely enough about the pistol range. It all seemed like such a long time ago now.

Douglas told her about the midget and the man with the missing thumb. He told her about how he woke old Preacher Holland and learned there was a Ledder boy who unmistakably matched Tiny’s brief description of him. And how odd that only hours before, this same Ledder man had made a rare appearance in his church.

The rain came hard and steady as they climbed the mountain road. Halfway to Kettle Hollow they felt the full impact of the storm. Douglas had to slow to a crawl and leaned forward over the steering wheel to wipe the condensation from the windshield, searching the side of the road until they came to a break in the trees and the ruts that had once been a lane. He turned sharply and the rain came even harder; visibility had fallen from yards to mere feet.

Douglas held onto the steering wheel, tires spinning wildly, back end swiveling like the road had been paved with smooth ice.

Tree limbs shook and branches rained upon them. Leaves tore away, pasting themselves across the windshield.

They climbed a harsh grade that scraped the undercarriage of the vehicle and the rain kept coming harder until the sound was like a million ten penny nails falling on the roof.

Douglas kept climbing the hill, steering wheel tight in his hands, letting the tires follow the course of the ruts in the road. It took them around a bend, and the trees to their left fell away until there was nothing below them but a dark void. There was no turning back now; the road was too narrow, the grade too steep to turn around. The mud got deeper as they continued, tires slinging away what little traction was under them.

“Maybe we should stop,” Judy yelled over the din of the rain. “We can wait out the storm.”

Douglas shook his head, but she could tell he was nervous, constantly checking his side window for the edge of the road.

“It’ll level off soon,” he said. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

But as he spoke the truck slipped sideways. He put his foot down, tires spinning frantically. He was afraid to give up another inch. But instead of pulling them forward, the tires were digging a hole and the truck began to slide backward until the tailgate went over the embankment. They hung there on the edge of space, as the hillside on their right began washing away.

Thunder boomed. Judy could smell the engine overheating. The truck inched backward over the edge.

“Get out!” Douglas yelled and he held the accelerator to the floor. She pulled the latch, but the truck lurched sideways and she screamed as her door slammed closed and they slipped further back over the edge.

She remembered the expression on her mother’s face the afternoon she was told her father wasn’t coming home. She remembered her daughter’s tiny body lying cold in the crib. She remembered Marty’s face on the dock at his pond, thinking that good things never seemed to come to good ends.

The truck slammed into something hard and the passenger window exploded. Her body was wrenched sideways, suspended in air by her shoulder harness. Her left arm dangled over Douglas’s bleeding face.

The truck was lying on its side with Douglas on the bottom. She could hear the engine running and the windshield wipers beating. Beyond the windshield there were two shafts of light cutting through the haze as it continued to rain.

Judy looked down at Douglas and wondered what to do next. She saw the rise and fall of his chest. He was still alive. His cowboy hat was on the floor. Chunks of safety glass covered his scalp and hair.

She tried to reach for the release on her seatbelt, but it was twisted under her side.

“Chief,” she yelled. “Chief, are you okay?”

Her face was nearly touching his shoulder, her legs bent, the toes of her shoes against the dash. She smelled fuel.

“Chief,” she coaxed, trying to reach the key in the ignition, but her hand was still a foot away.

“Chief!”

She looked around, saw the glove box and managed to push the button with the toe of her shoe. The door fell open. There was a first aid kit inside. She got her foot on the side of it and maneuvered it out to her fingertips, then she pulled it into her chest and fumbled to get it open. As the contents fell she managed to catch hold of a pair of scissors and began the laborious task of sawing through the seat belt.

Ten minutes passed before Douglas finally stirred. As the last threads of the seatbelt broke free she plunged into him, reached for the keys in the dash and shut off the ignition.

Douglas moaned. Judy’s chin was jabbing into the side of his neck. He shook his head.

“Douglas!” she yelled in his ear. “I need to put my weight on you to reach the door. Can you hear me?”

He nodded.

Judy put a foot on his leg and another on the steering column and pushed until her hand could reach the passenger side window. “Okay, push my feet.”

Douglas managed to brace her feet as she put her head and shoulders through the window. She pulled herself over the side and fell vertically to the ground. She rolled on her side and looked up. She was facing the hot exhaust on the underside of the truck. The hood and the bed had been caught in the arms of two immense trees.

Now she had a new dilemma. Douglas was too big to get through the window.

She climbed back up and looked down at him. “I’m going to need to open the door for you. If you can unlatch it and move it a few inches, I’ll find something to pry it open the rest of the way.”

Douglas nodded, got a foot against his door and worked his way out from beneath the wheel. He reached for the door latch and prepared to push it straight up in the air. “Are you ready?”

“Just a minute,” she yelled, searching the hillside for a sturdy limb that she could handle. After a minute she found one broken by the truck’s fall. “Okay, open it, Douglas.”

He pushed, using the back of his neck and shoulder. The door went up by inches, but he had also expended the advantage of his height. Still, Judy had been able to cram an end of the limb between the door and the frame. “Okay,” she said. “Again.”

This time Douglas put a boot on the steering column and his shoulders raised the door another few inches, far enough for Judy to get the limb into the floorboard.

“You ready?” she said.

“Yeah,” he yelled.

Judy put her weight against the limb and Douglas shoved the door with his boots on the steering column, and when his shoulders opened it far enough, he grabbed the edge of the seat frame and pulled himself up until at last he fell to the ground. “There’s a flashlight under the seat,” he yelled, grabbing the limb and holding the door open. Judy crawled back inside and found it under the gas pedal.

“Christ,” he yelled and she could hear the limb begin to snap, but by then she was moving and quickly backed out the door. Douglas left the limb wedged in the door and rolled away from the truck next to Judy. They crouched there on the muddy hillside for a minute, struck by how close they had come to plummeting off the side of the mountain.

“You can climb the hill?” Judy pulled her wet hair behind her ears.

Douglas nodded.

They climbed the hillside together, both grabbing anything that wouldn’t tear away in their hands. Minutes later they reached the top and below them was only darkness broken by two shafts of headlights fading into space.

“This way,” Douglas yelled and she followed him, mud sucking shoes as they rounded a curve in the road. And there the rutted path ended in a clearing with a cabin.

“I’ll take the front,” he said, pointing. “You cover the window.”

Judy nodded, then ran through the puddles to one side.

There was a thump as Douglas’s boots landed on the porch and his fist began to pound the door.

Seconds later it swung open and a tall, scrawny young man in long underwear squinted out. Douglas pushed the door and shoved the man roughly against the wall. “I’m in,” he yelled, but Judy was already on the porch and crossing the threshold behind him.

She opened a window shutter and played the beam of her flashlight across the cabin floor, checked the four corners and a homemade ladder to a loft. She saw cardboard boxes labeled Chiquita Bananas along one wall, each filled with jelly jars of clear liquid. She put her light on the man’s terrified face.

“Put your hands in front of you,” Douglas ordered, backing up to the mattress on the floor. He used the muddy toe of his boot to drag off blankets.

“You live alone?” Judy asked.

“Just me.” The man nodded vigorously. One of his front teeth was missing, others protruding at odd angles from the gums.

“What’s your name?” Judy turned the light toward the loft.

“Clem.” He was craning his head, studying the scratches on her cheek. “You had an accident?” he asked. His eyes moved between them. Judy looked down at her clothes covered in mud and felt a welt rising above her eye.

“I’ll check the loft,” she said, turning to grab the ladder.

“Last name?” Douglas barked.

“Ledder,” the man said quickly.

“You got any brothers?” Douglas asked. “Man with no thumb?”

“Rolfe,” the man said, looking at the policeman, then at the open door. “He doesn’t live here or nothing. He just visits now and then. Sometimes sleeps under the porch.” He nodded toward the door.

“When did you see him last?” Douglas demanded.

Rolfe could feel himself rising through many layers of sleep, from the night terrors that had been dreams but always started out as memories. He had been standing on the bank of Sulfur Creek and his sister was wading midstream.

Her hair had been hacked away and there were patches of bald scalp. Her eyes were bloodshot and set in dark craters. Her lips formed a perfect O and a buzzing sound was coming from her mouth and the sound grew louder until it was like the drone of a million bees. She reached to gather the hem of her dress and began to lift it and he looked away. But his eyes were drawn back to her as she raised it to reveal the gaping hole in her stomach.

He heard heavy footsteps and the voices overhead. Someone was on the porch and hammering on the door. He brushed flies from his face. His fingernails were caked with dried blood. The door opened and a man shouted and the footsteps went inside.

He reached for his rifle and rolled out from under the porch.

The sky was dark gray, the rain falling steadily. He could see no one else in the yard.

He stepped upon the wooden planks and saw the back of a man in the shadows of the cabin. He was a large man and he was wearing a uniform and there was a gun on his hip. Rolfe aimed the rifle between his shoulder blades and pulled the trigger.

The force of the bullet spun Douglas’s body halfway around, hands reaching instinctively behind him toward the pain. Then his knees buckled and he collapsed and a dark stain began to spread across his chest.

Judy, halfway up the ladder, saw the silhouette of the man standing at the door. Then an explosion as Douglas fell to the floor. A second shot rang out and a bullet shattered her wrist. She fell backward from the ladder and dropped the flashlight as she hit the floor. It rolled in a semi-circle until it was pointing at Douglas’s cold and lifeless eyes.

She reached for her weapon as the rifle fired again. A second shot hit her forearm and she rolled away from the light, knees pressed to her chest, praying the explosions would stop.

Heavy footsteps crossed the floor and stopped beside her.

She looked up and saw a big man with wet hair and a long beard, his clothes sodden, the barrel of his rifle pointing at her throat. She could see the muscles twitching around his eyes, finger on the trigger.

But instead of shooting her he knelt and drew the gun from her holster, tucking it into his belt. Behind him against the wall the young man in underwear remained pinned against the wall, looking away as if he didn’t want to see.

“Help …” She formed the words that came out in a hoarse whisper. “Help me,” but the man refused to turn his head.

The shooter knelt and reached for her with a disfigured hand that had no thumb. Four fingers lifted the chain from her neck and he stared at the cross with a look of wonder.

A long tense moment passed. He released the chain, grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. Then he pushed her toward the door.

Chapter 26

Iron Mountain, West Virginia

There were troopers on all the main highways and Sheriff’s Deputies on back roads. Sam Watson and two of his officers were sent to check on the residents of more remote farms and houses in Kettle Hollow. They woke people up, looked in their barns and outbuildings.

Sam drove into the Cooney’s farm in driving rain, truck bouncing in the deep ruts until he reached the clearing and his bumper nearly touched the porch. The officer he had brought with him ran to look inside the barn.

Sam turned up his high beams and got out his shotgun, walked to the front door and pounded it with his fist.

“It’s Sam Watson, Grant,” he yelled. “Open the damned door.”

A minute later a balding man opened the door to the glare of the high beams, his son coming up behind him. Sam asked them to step out onto the porch.

“Everything’s okay.” He glanced inside the house.

“Hell you want?” the old man yelled. “What are you doing in my barn?” He pointed across the clearing.

“There’s a fugitive on the mountain killed a woman on Cemetery Hill.”

One of the officers came out of the barn. “Got enough corn and sugar in there to feed the whole state.”

Grant stamped his feet and looked out into the rain.

“We aren’t here about your stills,” Sam said.

“He killed him!” The voice came from the woods behind the barn. “Killed him dead!” A tall lanky young man in long underwear ran out from the trees, panting, his T-shirt covered with blood. “Killed them both –” His arms were wrapped tightly around his chest and halfway to the house he fell to his knees, head in his hands.

“The trees!” Sam barked to his officers, drawing his weapon and running toward the man.

“You hurt,” he yelled, glancing between the man and the trees.

“There was blood everywhere. I slipped on it and fell in it when I ran out the door.”

“What blood?” Sam demanded. “Whose blood?”

“The cop’s,” the man sobbed. “And that lady he shot who was with him.”

Sam grabbed the man’s T-shirt with his free hand. “What cop?” he demanded, kneeling to look in the man’s face.

The scrawny young man began to blubber.

“Who is this?” Sam screamed over his shoulder at the Cooneys.

“Ledder boy. Clem,” he yelled back. “Ledders from Sulfur Creek.”

Sam shook the Ledder man hard. “What cop?” he repeated. “What lady?”

“He was wearing a uniform,” the man said. “And the lady had a gun.”

Sam released his collar. Rain poured off his face. He slumped back on his heels. Marty and Judy were all he could think of. But how could they have ended up in Kettle Hollow?

“Follow me,” he yelled to the officers. He pulled the Ledder man to his feet and pushed him in the passenger seat of his truck, then ran around and jumped in behind the wheel. He put the truck in reverse and punched the accelerator, slinging mud over the porch before he fishtailed out of the lane.

“How do you get there,” he shouted to the man. “Which way do I turn?”

“Right there,” the man said. “Sulfur Creek,” and Sam jerked the wheel. “Just a little ways now. Right around the curve, there, turn there on the right.” He pointed at a set of deep ruts. Sam turned hard and his tires began to spin.

“How much farther?” he yelled.

The man shook his head. “Not far.” Then he looked up at Sam. “But what if he’s still there?”

“Who?” Sam yelled. “Who is still there?”

“My brother,” the man said, hugging his knees against his chest.

Sam picked up the radio and keyed the emergency services dispatcher. “332. Get an ambulance started to Mountain Road and raise me when they’re on the way. I’ll talk them in when they get near. And try to raise Sheriff Wayne.”

Sam put the vehicle in four-wheel drive. He could see the fresh tire tracks in the mud; another vehicle had been up the road this morning.

He heard his call sign come over the radio.

“331 copy that message. Go ahead 332, come in.”

Sam grabbed the microphone. “Marty?” he gasped.

“You having a problem up there, Sam?” Marty asked.

Sam felt a wave of relief. “I’m heading to Sulfur Creek, Marty. Man said he saw a policeman shot. You still with Agent Wells?”

“I’m on Cemetery Hill,” he said. “Agent Wells is on her way back to DC. What in the Hell is going on up there?”

“I have a young man with me, covered in blood, says a policeman was shot near Sulfur Creek. Says there was a woman with him. She was armed and she took some hits as well. I thought it was you two, Marty.”

Marty lowered the mike to his lap, looked at his watch and then stared across the field. Judy should be on her way back to Washington now.

He turned to Lazarus and yelled, “Get a roll-call from your people, Johnny. Sam says he may have a policeman down on the mountain. Ask about Kirsten Berkley too. Might be a female officer involved.”

Sam drove the lane until the truck would go no further. Then he got out and ran with shotgun in hand. He left the Ledder man behind for the officers to look after. Around the next curve the fresh tracks slid off the side of the mountain. He ran to the edge and saw an orange truck caught in the trees. It was lying on its side in a cradle of tree limbs, headlights still cutting swaths through the forest. It was Chief Douglas’s truck from Quills Landing.

One of the officers came up behind him and Sam gave him his shotgun and radio to hold. Then he made his way down the muddy slope, sliding part way, using roots for handholds until he reached the truck.

Rain pelted the forest, pinging noisily off the side of the truck. Mist crept out of the chasm below it. The windows were broken. There was a tree limb wedged in the door. He vaulted himself over the side and looked through the broken window. The cab was empty.

He labored back up the bank, retrieved his shotgun and ran the rest of the road with the officer alongside.

Soon he came to a clearing and a cabin. The door was standing open.

He released the safety and leaped to the porch. A man’s legs were immediately visible through the door. Sam stepped inside and saw a flashlight burning dimly on the floor.

Chief Douglas lay in a pool of dark blood. He’d been shot in the back.

“Over there.” The officer pointed, and Sam could see a blood smear beneath a ladder to the loft.

Chapter 27

Iron Mountain, West Virginia

There was only one reason to let her live, Judy thought. He needed a hostage. He had killed a cop and now he needed a human shield. When he felt safe once again he would kill her too. The only question that remained was how long it was going to take. She looked at the terrifying knife on his belt and thought about the woman’s eyes on Cemetery Hill. And she knew: he had made them watch as he cut them open.

She observed him carefully. He almost seemed to have had it all planned. He had taken packs from beneath the cabin porch and pulled her across the clearing and up into the trees, climbing the side of a hill and away from the cabin. What would he do next?

He pushed her again and she stumbled over a fallen tree. Reaching to break the fall with the one good hand she plunged into a hole full of leaves.

She struggled to get back on her feet, noting how thick the forest was, how easy it would be to sprint behind a tree. Her legs were good. She would have to wait for a chance to break free, but once she put distance between them the rifle would do him little good. The trees would protect her as she dodged her way back to the cabin. And in the cabin was Douglas’s radio and pistol. In the cabin she would have a chance to live.

He nudged her again and she moved forward.

The underbrush concerned her, and also the handicap of having no left hand to break her fall. Even if she could get beyond his line of sight she might stumble, and if she stumbled he might shoot her.

Her only other option was to wait to see what other opportunity might present itself later. And so she walked before him into the rain and the gray mist of dawn.

Pain began and ended everywhere, from her shoulder to her hand, so intense at times that she wanted to stop, to fall to her knees and let whatever was going to happen come now. But she kept walking, glancing behind, looking, listening for any evidence that someone was following. But there was nothing. They were alone and they were moving away from the cabin and the last place on earth anyone would think to look for her.

The grade steadily inclined. He pushed her through the trees with a hand and then the barrel of his rifle, nudging her when she strayed right or left. On and on they climbed, her injured arm hanging limp at her side, neck and face scratched red by the thorns and the branches she could not push out of her way, her vision blurred by tears.

Mud was caked around her shoes, turning them into ponderous weights. Her thighs ached. She fell countless times and used her elbows to get back up. They waded streams and skirted outcrops, slid into craters and climbed out of ravines. She focused on landmarks in that first hour, hoping to find her way back. She wanted to believe she had some advantage. That she was smarter than him. That she could outwit him when the moment was right.

But the farther they went, the more she doubted her logic and in the next hour she was near cataleptic, stumbling blindly into the unknown. She was getting more lost and he was getting more comfortable. He was entirely in his element, she thought.

One foot up, one foot down, toe tripping over a rock, shoulder striking a tree. Up, always up, always going away from the cabin and civilization. Blood dripping from her sleeves.

She wondered if Marty had tried to call her cellphone and got no answer. She wondered if he would have stopped by the motel and discovered her note in the door. If he had, it would lead him to her car in Quills Landing. Maybe then he would try to find Douglas and learn that the Preacher had sent them to Kettle Hollow.

But her best chance was also her most uncertain: the lanky young man in the cabin who had witnessed the shooting. She remembered that look of terror on his face. He was terrified of his very own brother.

What would the man have done when they left? Run to the nearest neighbors for help? But how far and how long would it take him before someone got to a phone? If anyone had a phone. A phone could bring help quickly. There were policemen all over the crime scene on Cemetery Hill. They could be at the cabin in minutes and send search parties onto the mountain.

The rain continued to pour, pelting leaves and no doubt washing away their scent. The sound of the rain never varied, like the constant rushing of a waterfall.

Rain ... rain ... She lifted a shoe, her mind now reliving the shooting in the cabin in slow motion. Play, stop, rewind, replay … over and over until she began to dissociate with the event, until it had nothing whatever to do with her.

Shock was beginning to set in. Her eyes were glazing over. She stumbled blankly ahead like a survivor leaving a plane crash or a bombing or a battlefield. She tripped and fell; and fell again, but this time she didn’t get up. This time she lay there ready to die, cheek against the soil, eyes going in and out of focus and the rain continuing to fall.

Once she thought she heard the bleating of a goat and looked up to see a horned animal chewing grass by a rotting post. Once he was pushing his fingers into her mouth and forcing her to swallow something bitter. Then the numbing from head to toe. She felt no pain, no fear, no emotion of any kind.

She was aware that he was leaning over her, tearing her shirt. She saw large, dark, luminous eyes on a face covered with dirt. She saw the big black knife in his hand. Then she saw nothing.

It could have been an hour or it could have been a day, but when she opened her eyes again it was dusk. Her mouth tasted horrible, her tongue was thick and sticky. He was sitting next to her and chewing on something, watching her.

She saw poultices on the bullet wounds and they had been tied in place with strips of her shirt. When he finished chewing he took a wad of something from his mouth and forced it between her lips. She held it there, looking back at him in wonder. Why hadn’t he killed her? What was he saving her for?

She looked up at the treetops; the rain had slowed to a light drizzle. She chewed the wad and it was like stems and bitter leaves. She swallowed the thing and he seemed pleased. He got to his feet, collected his packs and rifle and reached for her good arm to pull her to her feet.

She took a wobbly step, wondering if she was hallucinating. Was this a dream or was it real? Or maybe she was already dead? Thoughts of fear and escape were no longer there. Now there was only walking. Walking was all she had to think about now.

The trees began to thin and the earth turned to grit; rocks began to appear on a barren moonscape plain. To her right were the peaks of three mountains. To her left were trees that extended to the horizon.

Later the pain began to return, fragments of bone moving through, tearing at the flesh in her shattered wrist and forearm. She thought about the leaves he had made her chew. He had anesthetized her to keep her walking, to stay ahead of the people that would be looking for them.

She stopped abruptly, letting him get ahead by several yards, and he turned.

She looked around at the boulders and brush, reflecting how easily she had slipped from civilization. Was this where she wanted to die? On a barren mountaintop alone with this man?

She took an inventory of herself. She knew she was weak from blood loss. She knew her injuries were significant and that she might never again use her hand. But nothing was life-threatening and she still had another good arm and two legs.

She thought about her life and all the disappointments and sorrows. How easy it would be to let it end here, to escape the sadness, anxiety and fear. No one would look back upon it and blame her in the least. No one would even know. Death would appear to have been beyond her control.

Then she thought about Carol and Marty and wondered what they would have told her right now?

And decided she wanted to live.

She took a step forward and then another and the man shouldered his rifle.

The winds were changing direction, low-altitude clouds racing above their heads. Just before dark they descended into a boulder field. Far below them a narrow canyon led to the Monongahela Forest and an endless canopy of trees.

Chapter 28

Iron Mountain, West Virginia

Marty stood in the clearing by the Ledder cabin, watching the procession of federal agents arrive. Generators powered lighting as forensics technicians worked inside the cabin. Others were making a video of the porch and things beneath it.

Men and women in suits and leather shoes huddled under umbrellas with cellphones and PDAs. A team of tracking dogs was on its way from the Mount Olive Northern Correctional Facility.

Kirsten Berkley came up behind and put a hand on his shoulder.

“You all right?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“What were they doing here anyhow?”

Marty looked up at the mountain. “They found cocaine under the porch that came from that downed plane. Agent’s car was found in Quills Landing. That’s all they know.”

She nudged him and nodded toward the door. Two men in jump suits were carrying a body bag out onto the porch.

“The FBI sent me away. They took over forensics.” She tried to sound jaunty.

“I heard,” he said.

“I stayed on to volunteer for the search.” She looked up at the steamy mountain. “If these assholes ever get out of their loafers. Heard the dogs are on the way.”

Marty had heard the same. Air Traffic had grounded all flights until the front moved through. “Look, Kirs, excuse me,” he said, “but I need to talk to someone. I’ll catch you later, okay?” And he walked away.

“Later,” she called out, probably thinking he was taking it hard about Douglas.

Marty walked down the muddy lane, a steady stream of cops and agents coming at him from the opposite direction. At the end of the Sulfur Creek, both sides of Mountain Road were crammed with cars and SUVs. Exhausts plumed into the heavy air, wipers beating and defrosters fighting the condensation from a dozen fogged windshields. Medical vehicles sat ready with silent strobes turning. Prominent among them all was the FBI’s white mobile command bus with the many satellite dishes and antenna on the roof.

Some believed the fugitive man was hunkered down near the Ledder farm, hiding in a root cellar or in a cave under the rocks. Some thought he took asylum with neighbors or might have broken into someone’s trailer or cabin and barricaded himself in with his hostage.

State troopers paired with army reserve officers, patrolling the roads in Humvees, searching every standing building, every chicken coop and outhouse between the Cemetery and Kettle Hollow. Checkpoints were set up on the bypass ramps out of Quills Landing and truck drivers were required to open unsealed cargos. Patrol cars cruised acres of truck stops and the back alleys off the riverfront in the older part of Quills Landing.

Marty had sent Sam Watson and two officers to check on houses and farms around Kettle Hollow. The FBI had two crime scenes to cover and now the town of Marion was filling up with reporters. Sam had told him they were buying up motel rooms as far away as Durbin and Mathias.

Johnny Lazarus was just coming down the steps of the command bus and approached him on the side of the road. “The dogs are in a cargo plane. They’ll be here within the hour. Give me a minute while I talk to Agent Fielding.” He excused himself and started jogging toward an approaching car.

A woman on the steps of the command bus yelled out that there would be a briefing in ten minutes. Lines of uniformed officers had begun moving the cameras and newspaper reporters away. You couldn’t help but feel the overall sense of confusion.

It still wasn’t clear exactly how Douglas and Judy had found out about the cocaine and ended up at the cabin. But that didn’t matter right now. They had a cop killer to catch and a federal agent was his hostage. And the FBI spokesperson wasn’t even attempting to deceive the harrying press. There was little doubt there was a connection between the cabin and the crime scene on Cemetery Hill. Little doubt they were looking for the Mountain State Butcher.

The good news, if there could be any, was that his hostage would slow him down. If they deployed the dogs before dusk, they might make up for lost time. Fast dogs and fresh men would have an advantage over the shooter and a wounded agent.

The FBI’s strategy was to narrow the search. If they could anticipate the fugitive’s direction they could drop tactical teams in front and all around them. Snipers with night optics would be invisible in the dark. They could take him down with a single shot and he would never know what happened.

Marty wandered through the cars along Mountain Road. Someone had pitched an open-sided tent where coffee was being served and plastic rain ponchos were liberally distributed.

All three rings and the big tent, he thought. The circus really had come to town.

“Know who’s in charge?”

A man approached him from the direction of a white Lincoln Navigator. He was tall and distinguished looking with white hair and full trimmed mustache, fifty-something, Marty thought, but fit and walking with a younger man’s swagger. He wore expensive field pants and a pair of riding boots that would have cost a week’s pay.

“Phillips,” the man said, approaching him and reaching to offer his hand. “Lance Phillips. I own the Rainfield Kennels in Shady Spring.”

“Sheriff Wayne.” Marty took his hand.

“Saw you talking to someone from the bus and thought you could help.”

Marty nodded.

“I know that everyone is quite busy, but I just can’t seem to get the time of day.”

Marty looked at him. “What do you need, Mr. Phillips?”

“You know anything about dogs, son?”

“No, Sir,” he said.

“Well I’ve been around them all my life,” Phillips said. “Rainfield certifies more dogs than any other kennel this side of the Mississippi. I can tell you where a dog was born if they give me enough bark.”

Marty smiled politely.

“You know the difference between a tracker and a sniffer, Sheriff?”

Marty shook his head again, wanting anything but small talk.

“Trackers scent on ground molecules. They follow the dead tissue cells people leave behind. If you give them a whiff of a child blanket, a good dog can pull a kid out of Times Square. Sniffers on the other hand scent on air molecules. Those are your bomb dogs. They can smell narcotics, cadavers, accelerants – even cancer.”

Marty nodded with restraint.

“Man-hunters do both. Lose a ground trail, they can find it in the air. Follow it until they’re back on the ground again. A man runs from prison and a dog follows his ground scent to a river. Dog tracks the air molecules a mile upstream until the man steps on land again and the dog goes back to work on the ground. Best of both worlds.”

“The Mount Olive dogs do both?” Marty asked, now curious.

“Yep.”

“Sounds like good news.”

Phillips pointed at the mountain.

“The thing is, Sheriff, when a man escapes from prison, he’s covering territory he’s never stepped on before. Every scent he leaves behind can only lead in one direction.”

Marty looked at the man, growing more interested.

“Human cells and molecules linger around for hours, sometimes weeks and months, depending upon conditions.”

“You’re saying the dogs can’t differentiate between old scents and new,” Marty said.

“You’re quick.” Phillips smiled. “And I heard this man that you’re all looking for is native to the mountain. If he’s been up there for any length of time there are going to be older trails too.”

“And the dogs can get derailed, you’re saying.”

“It’s easy enough to do in weather like this. Nothing stays the same up there, all of those molecules swirling around in the wind and rain.”

Marty raised a finger, wanting to be sure he understood. “So the dogs could lose the fresh scent, pick up an old and follow it someplace he went last week?”

Phillips nodded. “Happens all the time. We walk paths in a training field over a period of several days. Then we try to get the dogs to follow the last one made. It takes a hell of a dog to do it. Takes a champion to do it every time.”

“How do you come to be here, Mr. Phillips?”

“I got a call from the Governor’s Office asking about my dogs. Happens my wife Jill took the kennel down to Arkansas to compete in the nationals and I had to tell him no.”

He pointed at the Navigator. “One of my pups got left behind, little Bluetick that had bronchitis. She’s had the last of her shots this morning and looks healthy and ready to run. Thought maybe we could help, but now no one seems interested.”

Marty looked at the command bus.

“You think your dog belongs up there on the mountain, Mr. Phillips?”

Phillips smiled. “I raised her daddy, Sheriff Wayne. That dog could all but read a map.”

“Can you wait right here?” Marty asked, looking through the crowd for Lazarus.

“It would help if I could get a personal item that belonged to either the shooter or the hostage.”

Marty raised his radio. “331 to 332, you there, Sam?”

“332, over.”

“Send someone down to the Cherokee Inn. I want used clothing from Agent Wells’ room. Tell them to bag it wearing gloves.”

Phillips nodded his approval.

A crowd began to organize around Agent Fielding. “There’s a couple of things he can do up there,” Fielding said in a loud voice. “All of them dependent upon the agent’s condition. The crowd closed in around him. “As long as Agent Wells is alive he can’t scale rocks or swim rivers. It should also narrow down his options about the terrain he chooses to tackle.”

An agent with an umbrella started passing out maps with concentric rings drawn around a radius of fifteen miles. “We have checkpoints set up on every approach but if he stays off the roads, and we expect him to, we’ll have to follow him across the mountains. The fugitive is a white male, thirty-three years of age with shoulder length dark hair and beard. He has a heavy gauge rifle and at least one handgun, the agent’s service weapon, a 10MM Glock. Most importantly he was born here.” Fielding pointed toward the mountain. “He knows exactly where he is. Does everybody here have one of the maps?”

There was a rustle of papers under umbrellas.

“The shaded sectors are considered the most improbable routes of escape. The western side of the mountain is a sheer rock face and inaccessible on foot, and Silver River runs through the gorge along the north, neither a place for a man with a wounded hostage. To the south there is bog and below it a boulder field that effectively blocks descent to a gap between two ridges. Here, to the east are the foothills that lead to Canaan and the Appalachian Trail. That’s the most likely direction he will take. And as you can see it’s a great deal of territory. There will be two teams of tracking dogs leaving the cabin where Chief Douglas was killed. They will be designated Mount Olive A and B. Now rain doesn’t destroy the fugitive’s scent, only disperses it, so these dogs should be able to stay with him in any weather. With luck we’ll pick up their trail before dark and be able to drop our tactical response units on the mountain.”

“What if we pin him down and he threatens to kill the hostage? Any plans to negotiate?” a young man asked.

Fielding shook his head. “We don’t know what triggers him, but at least two of his victims died within hours of meeting him. We know that two others were kept alive and force-marched through the woods. We don’t know how long they lived, hours or days, but I can tell you this. Agent Wells doesn’t want to spend a minute of uninterrupted time with this man. We don’t want to give him a moment to think about her and so we’ll push him hard and keep up the pressure. Our objective is to make noise up there because we want him to know we’re coming. The weather’s turning better and there will soon be surveillance in the air. Two C-130s with thermal imaging and heat seeking cameras will be arriving within the hour.”

Fielding pointed at the summit. “He’s one man. He’s tired and wet and burdened with a hostage. We are rested, we are many and we have technology on our side. Once the dogs get a fix on him we can begin to control the ground around him. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how we are going to bring our agent back.”

Marty saw Major Lazarus at the edge of the crowd and made his way toward him.

“Johnny!” he called, motioning with his hand. “I have someone I want you to meet.” He led the major away by the arm and they approached the dog tracking expert.

“Major Lazarus, I want you to meet Mr. Phillips,” he said. “Mr. Phillips, this is Major Lazarus.”

The men shook hands.

“Mr. Phillips wants to tell you why the Governor likes his dogs. The FBI’s been too busy to talk to him,” Marty said, “but I knew you would help him to get introduced and to get a radio. My sergeant will be bringing up some of Agent Wells’ clothing from her motel room for scent. Right now I’m going to see my Uncle Toby.” And with that Marty turned and walked toward his Jeep.

The dog handlers from Mount Olive prison wore military camos and carried Bushmaster rifles. Their gnashing German Shepherds looked as if they would like to snack on the little pale Bluetick from Rainfield.

They were divided into two teams and as Fielding had pointed out, had team leaders designated Mount Olive A or Mount Olive B. Lance Phillips would lead his young Bluetick on his own, everyone using the same radio frequency.

For the first time since the abduction, they were heading into the trees. Ten hours and twenty minutes behind their fugitive.

It was 4:10 PM.

Toby stared at Marty over his kitchen table. The wrinkles in the old Indian’s craggy face never moved. Finally he got up and walked to the back of the house. When he returned he was carrying a heavy clothes iron with a cord and he set it on the table, flat side facing him.

He reached around the side of the iron and touched the outer rim about three quarters of the way to the top. “The bog begins here and there are many acres of standing water. Below the bog there is a boulder field and below the boulders there is the canyon called Singing Rocks. The boulders will be difficult to negotiate and will slow him down, that is true. But if he knows his way through he could cross the canyon before morning.”

Marty sat back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling, thinking about his conversation with Lance Phillips. Thinking that the day had turned surreal.

“Why there?”

Toby tapped the bottom side of the iron. “The canyon is the gateway to the Monongahela National Forest and a million acres of trees.” He laid his hand flat on the table next to the iron and made a circle. “You will not find him if he reaches the Monongahela Forest.”

“Then the prison dogs will track him there and drop SWAT teams in the canyon.”

“And you win, either way, so what’s the point of not going? What I’m telling you is that he’s capable of losing the dogs. If he loses the dogs, or they take off in the wrong direction, the search teams and helicopters will follow. The winds on the Iron are constantly changing, Marty. You have already heard there can be dozens of false leads. If they divert manpower from the canyon there is a chance he could escape.”

Marty looked at the iron. “Toby, I can’t be wrong about this.”

“What are you saying, Marty? Of course you can be wrong.” Toby put a wrinkled hand on his and patted it reassuringly. “But he will cross the canyon at Singing Rocks by morning. Wait for him there.”

Marty pushed the chair back, walked to the door and put his hand on the knob.

“Why are you so sure?” he asked.

“Because it is what I would do,” the old Indian said.

Chapter 29

Iron Mountain, West Virginia

The Mount Olive dogs followed Rolfe and Judy’s unique scents almost directly toward the summit.

Lance Phillips waited with his little Bluetick until the bag of Judy’s used clothing arrived.

The Bluetick sniffed at the clothes and after a few minutes followed the others into the mountain.

As he packed, Marty listened to their progress on the radio.

In the higher elevations the winds would constantly change; there was less foliage to trap the molecules and the dogs began to circle. By dark the dogs and their handlers had slowed to a crawl.

Fielding had been right about one thing on the mountain. Time was the enemy. Judy didn’t want to spend any alone time with this man. If the dogs lost the scent, Judy’s chances grew ever slimmer.

Marty put a backpack together and pulled a rifle from a cabinet. The television was on in his living room and the media had converged on the foothills surrounding Marion. They showed aerial pictures of the cemetery and cabin, photos of Jessie Spangler and Annie Myer. Crime cable programs interviewed lawmen, psychiatrists, physicians and former hostages. It would be aired on every television screen in every home and every office. People would be standing transfixed in every airport and shopping mall and every waiting room across America. The world was hooked on the agent’s plight.

The fugitive was described to be a native of West Virginia. Police had not yet divulged what led the dead Police Chief and agent to the cabin. There were no known photos of the man, but someone had produced a sketch drawn from descriptions offered by a local preacher. The press used Judy Wells’ agency file photo, which came on screen every few minutes.

The radio chatter slowed to a trickle. The dog teams had unexpectedly split in two, one heading north toward the face of the summit, one heading east toward the Canaan Valley. It was already happening, Marty thought. They were already dividing.

He put the rifle and a backpack in the Jeep and started driving for Elkins airport.

A man’s voice on the radio began yelling excitedly. “B Team – the dogs are going hot west of Route 250! We’ve got someone on the run.”

“Copy that, B Team,” the command center acknowledged. “We’ll have a tactical team in front of you in minutes.”

Marty saw the two Black Hawks rising tail-first above the trees, turned his Jeep into the gates of the commercial airpark adjacent to Elkins Terminal and parked next to an open hangar door. A small red Bell helicopter sat on the tarmac. A sign over the hangar door read CENWEST MINERAL COMPANY. Marty shouldered his gear as a man emerged from the hangar.

“Hey, Marty. You all ready?”

“Ready, JJ,” he said.

Marty pushed his gear behind the passenger seat and strapped himself in. The pilot got behind the stick and pulled a headset over his ears. He made a circle with his finger and the blades began to rotate. They lifted off the ground and banked south and away from the direction of Iron Mountain.

Chapter 30

Iron Mountain, West Virginia

The Blackhawks carrying SWAT teams advanced in tandem across the foothills east of Iron Mountain. Just before they reached their B Team objective one of the A Team handlers shouted that their dogs were also beginning to sound on the summit. Was it possible, the command center wondered, that the killer and agent had become separated? Was it possible that she was down, and there were now two trails to follow?

The command center had no choice but to divide the Sikorsky helicopters, one directed to continue east of the mountain, one to loop back toward the summit, and it arrived first.

Dusk was blending into the slate covered stone. The A Team dogs charged blindly uphill, zigzagging through thirty-foot outcrops of granite and vegetation. Then suddenly they stopped and formed a barrier around the mouth of a cave. Ten minutes later the SWAT team arrived and used a concussion grenade to clear their assault. But inside they found no evidence of the fugitive or his hostage, only the rotting corpse of a young woman that had been disemboweled. Her body and her lice-covered insides had been laid on what appeared to be a cornflower blue dress.

East of the summit the B Team was approaching a gap in the foothills.

The Black Hawk pilot swooped overhead. “Copy B Leader, we have you crossing Becky Creek.”

“Command, that’s an affirmative. How far to Route 250?”

“Point nine tenths, B Leader, do you copy? We’re touching down on the other side.”

“Copy, that’s nine tenths mile. You’ll be hearing the dogs shortly.”

A mile east, the helicopter touched down on the barricaded road. Men and women spilled from the cargo bay, spreading into the trees on either side of Route 250. Then the helicopter lifted off again and banked out of sight.

“Go ahead, B Leader. This is J Hawk One. We are on the ground and we can hear your dogs.” He raised a hand to signal his team.

Snipers burrowed into the brush along the road. Some lay limp across tree limbs.

The dogs were closing in, then something big came crashing out of the trees. A shot was fired and others followed and the thing went down in a hail of bullets.

The dogs surrounded it, growling as it lay across the double yellow lines on Route 250. The snipers left their positions and closed in. It was a goat. Its head was thrashing and they could hear the chatter of beads tied around its neck. Only it wasn’t beads they found but a dozen Rattlesnake rattles and a swath of blood soaked cloth. And the cloth had a buttonhole and appeared to have been a shirtsleeve.

“Jesus,” one of them said, kneeling to hold the necklace in his hand. “Goat must have gone crazy thinking it was carrying a snake.”

Far south below the summit, the Rainfield Bluetick pup was trotting lazily through a cataract bog, sniffing sphagnum moss and cranberry vines while its master ate an apple and listened to the frantic calls from the A and B Team handlers.

The Bluetick’s American Kennel Association designation for the pup was Blizzard O’Poopsey II, but Phillip’s grandchildren named the dog ‘Molasses’ and not for lack of speed, but love of Grandma’s syrup which they fed to her with their fingers from a jar.

Phillips had continued to radio changing positions throughout the night, but he was moving south and away from the action and until now the FBI dispatcher had seemed uninterested.

The pilot of the small Forest Service Bell helicopter set down on a grassy clearing just south of the canyon.

“See you at thirteen hundred hours unless I hear from you first?”

“Right here.” Marty pointed at the ground, stepping from the cockpit to the landing skid. “I’ll radio the command center to call if anything changes.” Then he jumped to the ground with his rifle and pack. The helicopter lifted off, banking into darkness, and there was silence.

Marty looked up. The clouds had parted to reveal a patch of clear sky and one bright star.

He gazed at the rock walls standing like giant bookends on either side of the canyon, sheer and shimmering wet under the moonlight. To the north he would see the outline of the Iron Summit; to his back the Monongahela Forest.

The Canyon between was a narrow strip of meadow grass and wildflowers. This was the ground he had come to protect.

Chapter 31

Singing Rocks, West Virginia

They maneuvered through the boulders as if in a maze. It took them nearly two hours before Judy saw the gap between the mountains.

Above them winds were pushing the cloud ceiling apart, patches of haze moving like icebergs across the smooth black sea of night. Judy saw a star flickering in the south and it made her think of Marty.

Her back and legs ached from the day’s climb and descent. She had stumbled once and gone down on her injured arm, crying out in pain. He had given her more of the leaves to chew, but the bandages were covered in dirt and crusty blood. The pain was radiating through her arm to her shoulder.

Just as they cleared the last of the boulders the man threw his packs on the ground and pointed for Judy to sit.

She lowered herself carefully, pulling her knees into her chest, thankful to catch her breath, but anxious about why they had stopped walking.

The man knelt beside her and drew his knife, cutting away the poultices and discarding them to one side. The skin was raw and she was unable to move her fingers.

He prodded her with his boot until her back was against a sapling, undid the belt on her jeans and pulled it free. Then he took her mangled hand and jerked it behind her, tied her hands behind the trunk with the belt, and straddled her legs until they were face to face.

Judy almost passed out from the pain. She could feel the bones move under the belt as he stared into her eyes.

What was he thinking? Was this how it ended for the others?

It was ironic, Judy thought, how much she would have welcomed death in the weeks following her daughter’s funeral. There was a time, before the anti-depressants, when she only wanted to end the pain. To end the dark feelings of guilt and sorrow that continued to build inside of her. She couldn’t know of course, that the partitions of her mind were beginning to crack; that behind the death of her daughter and Tom’s desertion were much older memories trying to emerge.

It was only on top of the mountain when she had pondered quitting, that it began to occur to her that her father must have experienced a similar reflection before he died. He must have sat in his office and stared out the windows at the garden. He must have looked around the room and seen her picture on the mantle. He must have stared at the gun in those seconds before he pulled the trigger. For some reason he couldn’t hang on. He had to die along with whatever was slowly killing him.

She tried to remember those days following her father’s death, living with a distant relative and going to a strange school where she had no friends. Visits to the lady doctor who liked to play memory games and watch her draw. Something had been wrong even then, she realized. It was already in her genes.

The man’s hands went to her shirt and tore it open and peeled it down her shoulders. He took the gold chain in his fingers and stared at the cross, then pulled until it snapped and let it fall as he reached for her jeans. He jerked them apart above the zipper, wrenching them over her hips and she screamed until he picked up one of the bloodied poultices and stuffed it in her mouth.

He was going to rape her, she knew. Then he was going to gut her with his knife and make her watch as he put his hands on her organs and began to tear them out of her body. When she died from the pain or loss of blood he would take the cross and pry the rings from her fingers and check her mouth with bloody hands to look for fillings.

They would find her here, lying below the rocks, naked to the world, slashed open with her insides piled between her legs. She imagined Marty standing among them.

Wind rustled through the trees, shaking rain off wet leaves. She looked at the rifle leaning against a tree. The way the butt-plate was sitting in the dirt. The swipe of a foot might bring the barrel down facing him. Could a toe or a stick pull the trigger?

She thought of Marty and how quickly she had lost him. Stop it! she commanded herself. Just stop it!

But the thoughts continued to drip one after another into a fermenting brew, and the drink it produced was rage. Rage for all the helplessness she had ever felt; for her father’s suicide and her mother’s weakness; rage for the God who stole her daughter in the night; rage for the narcissistic husband who thought that people were disposable like toys. Rage for loving and losing again. And suddenly an unsettling kind of peace came over her and with it – malignant desire.

She sat there perfectly calm, chin against his shoulder, studying the delicate flesh under his eyes, the lobes of his ears where they protruded from his long hair, lips beneath the beard, his Adam’s apple sliding above the base of his neck and the pulsing blue artery alongside it. And the more she saw the more excited she became. He wasn’t a man anymore. He was a target with kill zones.

She stared at the carotid artery and imagined it dangling from an open tear in the flesh. Blue and umbilical-like it would pump blood all over his chest. She tensed her muscles, about to lunge for it with her teeth when his hands suddenly stopped and he recoiled from her body with a look of horror on his face.

She saw confusion in his eyes; something important had just happened. She followed his eyes to her stomach where his fingers were caught under the waistband of her panties.

He reached her abdomen and ran his fingers across the scar – the final relic of her daughter’s cesarean birth.

Her mind raced. What had happened? What was going on?

His silence made her want to scream, but she fought the impulse. Something important was happening in his mind. Something she didn’t understand and she needed to figure it out fast.

Then there was a sound, muffled, mournful, inhuman. He was coming apart, she thought. She had pushed him too far.

She readied herself, knowing she would only get one chance and then she heard the sound again and she realized it wasn’t coming from him at all.

It was the baying of a hound.

Chapter 32

Singing Rocks, West Virginia

Marty had already heard enough on the radio to know that the Mount Olive Correction Facility dogs had split in two and followed false trails. Johnny Lazarus would probably be calling him on the radio, but he had committed himself to the canyon and while he was anxious to know what was happening on the mountain, he was here for one purpose and that was to lie in ambush. This was not the time to be making noise in the brush or tuning on a police radio.

He had water and an extra battery for his radio and a jacket in his backpack to keep him warm. He shouldered his rifle and started across the canyon, staring at the towering walls on either side, feeling vulnerable until once more he reached the cover of trees.

There was a band of mountain spruce between the canyon and the boulder field. He would find a place in the tree line, just at the rim of the canyon, and wait. If Toby was right they would leave the boulder field, cross through the pines and give him a clear shot when they stepped into the canyon.

The winds had now cleared the sky of heavy clouds, the slightest shade of gray announcing dawn. He settled in a hollowed place.

And waited.

It had become necessary in the boulder field for Lance Phillips to keep his Bluetick on a lead. Otherwise she would have lost him as they zigzagged through the complex mass of outcrops and vehicle sized boulders. Lance was soaked with sweat. He was exhausted, but also pleased. It was amusing in a sense; she was so young for the work and to her it was still a game. But it was a game she was very good at and a game she had been born to win. The little Bluetick was holding fast to a trail.

They were nearly out of the rocks and into the pines when the pup began to howl.

“Phillips!” Lance yelled into the radio. “We’re coming out of the boulder field on the south side of your map. There’s someone out in front of us and we’re going to need backup.”

The radio dispatcher paused before he answered, seemingly perplexed. “Phillips, you say? This is the Rainfield dog that’s sounding?”

“Get someone down here,” Lance barked impatiently into the radio. Then he leaned down to cut the Bluetick loose and began to jog after her.

He knew the pup was finding an abundance of Judy’s scents: clotting proteins, gamma globulins, chloride and tissues crammed with cells. Night was the very best time to smell, with the air molecules closest to the earth, ten thousand scents per minute. The pup laid her nose to the earth, dripping and sniffing side to side.

She ran and she circled and ran once again. Little by little she eliminated the distractions and came back to Judy’s trail.

Marty heard the baying hound, grabbed his rifle and leapt to his feet.

They were coming at him from the direction of the boulder field, just as Toby said.

The helicopters should already be in the air and ready to drop snipers. He was about to become an observer, he thought, pulling the radio from his shoulder. There was little point in maintaining silence now. They would need to know he was here.

But then he heard a gunshot, hundreds of feet away. He looked at the trees, flicked off the safety on his rifle and waited for the sounds of running footsteps. But nothing happened. There were no bodies crashing through the trees, no beating blades of approaching helicopters to seal off the canyon. He heard the dog yelp again, then another shot.

He turned his radio on, volume low, and pressed it against his ear. The command center dispatcher was repeating the name Phillips, but no one was answering.

Lance Phillips! It was the Rainfield dog that had come off the mountain. Marty could hear the rising urgency in the dispatcher’s voice. If Phillips was out there he needed help.

He took a few careful steps into the pines, listening and then taking a few more. In minutes he was midway to the boulder field when he heard twigs snapping and then the monotone voice over a police radio repeating the name Phillips.

He was just ahead!

The light was poor. Every footfall could be heard through the trees. He moved cautiously toward the sound of the radio and suddenly heard the metallic click of a rifle bolt.

He froze and held his breath, finger wrapped around the trigger.

Then a gunshot rang out and he saw the muzzle flash as a bullet whacked into a nearby tree. He ran to escape a second shot that passed inches from his head. The police radio crackled several yards away. He dove to get behind a small mound and landed on the legs of a body. It was Lance Phillips and he had taken a bullet in the head. There was another muzzle flash and this time a bullet slammed into Marty’s thigh.

He rolled to his left and came up behind Phillips’ body, reaching for his pistol when a shot struck the earth and showered his face with dirt. He could make out nothing but the tops of the trees. How in the hell could this guy see him in the dark?

He put his hand across Phillips’ neck, feeling for a pulse but there was none. He tried to blink the dirt from his eyes. Come on, he thought, feeling the blood saturate his jeans. He knew the thigh wound was bad and needed pressure to slow the bleeding. He knew that couldn’t wait long or he’d pass out where he lay.

A dog started barking frantically.

Footsteps were coming closer and he gripped Phillips’ body. He could hear a man circling him, noisy and unafraid. Marty still couldn’t make out a thing, only the tops of the trees, which were glazed with a soft coating of moonlight.

The sound of the man’s steps stopped, but was he to the right or to the left? Marty held the pistol out in front of him and swiveled both ways.

Then he heard it – the snap of a twig as the mountain man charged out of the forest toward him. And as soon as he was close enough for Marty to make out a silhouette, he sat up holding Phillips’ body in front of him.

The muzzle flashed and the round hit Phillips’ chest. The concussion knocked Marty backward, but his arm was still extended and the Beretta was kicking out empty casings as fast as he could pull the trigger. When the noise stopped he heard an “Ughh,” and knew that at least one of his rounds had hit home. He heard the man crashing through the trees, but this time he was heading away from him in retreat.

Chapter 33

Singing Rocks, West Virginia

Judy heard the bay of a hound as the man jumped to his feet, grabbed his rifle and ran into the trees. She heard two shots followed by a moan and the faint sound of a dispatcher’s tedious voice. Someone was out there with a police radio! Someone was looking for her.

She tried to yell but the bloody rag muffled her voice. She looked at the man’s bag and fought to free herself from the strap, knowing her pistol was still inside with fifteen rounds in the magazine.

Then something moved in the brush behind her and in a blur leaped from the darkness right to her feet. It was a dog, small and pale and crouched in excitement. With eyes fixed upon her, it began to bark frantically.

She heard someone running and the rifle fired again, but this time a second weapon began to respond, a very different kind of weapon. It was the sound of a semi-automatic pistol. Someone else was out there. Someone had come to save her.

There were more footsteps and the mountain man staggered out of the woods. He wrenched the belt free from behind the tree and pulled her violently to her feet, picked up the knapsack and dragged her into the trees.

Her instinct was to resist, to slow him down until help arrived. But now that someone was chasing them he would probably shoot her if she fell or stopped, so this was not the time to take that chance. All of a sudden things were quite different: he was favoring a leg and there was a dark stain just below his hip. One of the shots had hit him.

Marty rolled in agony. The bullet had hit a bone and the pain was blinding. He pushed himself to his knees, limbs trembling as he crawled past the dead man, praying he could reach the backpack at the foot of the mound.

The gray dawn was showing pink over the treetops blocking the canyon. He saw the bag and dropped next to it, wiping tears from his eyes with the heels of his hands. He opened a flap and dug for the roll of tape he carried for emergencies. He found it and began to bind the leg above the wound, spooling it tight around his thigh until the tape cut deep into the skin. Suddenly the little Rainfield Bluetick came out of the trees, approached Phillips’ body and sat next to it, watching him with its head cocked to one side.

Marty rose slowly to his feet, grabbed his rifle and hobbled toward the canyon, wondering if they were already there. Wondering if he would make it before they crossed over to the other side.

The light improved as he made his way through the trees. It was difficult and slow, but he kept moving and minutes later saw the clearing. The air was cool and dry and clear. Sunlight was glinting off the peaks, but the canyon was still in shadow.

He stumbled forward to the edge of the trees and fell upon his stomach. He raised the rifle and put his eye to the scope and scanned the shadows until he saw them.

And there they were!

They were only midway to the opposite side. It wasn’t too late. But now he was alone again; there were no trackers behind him or helicopters in the air.

He used his wrist as a fulcrum to steady his shaking hands. Excruciating pain shot up his leg and into his torso. He gritted his teeth and blinked through the tears, put his eyes back to the scope and followed the shapes as they approached sunlight on the far side of the canyon. He would wait until they were visible again, and then he’d have a minute to take the shot.

Sweat poured from his forehead and salt burned his eyes. The shapes continued to move and he judged them at two hundred yards distant. He gripped the stock of his rifle and tried to steady the weapon, but he was cold and his body was beginning to tremble.

Just a few more yards ...

He saw the man step into the sunlight and he put pressure on the trigger. Judy was next to him and the man was dragging her with a tether round her wrist.

He put his sights on the man’s back, the largest mass of body he could find, but before he could pull the trigger there was a deafening roar and the man dropped to his knees as a Blackhawk crossed the peaks above the canyon.

Just as quickly the helicopter was gone. The man pulled Judy to her feet and tried to run. Marty found him in the crosshairs and with every ounce of control squeezed the trigger.

The rifle cracked solidly, followed by countless diminishing echoes that rang between the canyon’s walls as the man and Judy were catapulted into the trees.

Judy heard the echo of the shot. The man’s body jerked sideways before he threw them both into the shadows. As her face slammed into the earth he lost his grip on the strap around her wrist. She started to scramble away but his hand clamped her ankle. She turned and realized he’d been hit, and now he was fumbling with his free hand around the rifle.

His back was arched and there was a look of astonishment on his filthy face. Then she saw it: her Glock pistol had fallen from his open bag. She lunged for it and missed, then drove her foot into his hand, trying to loosen his grip.

He attempted to balance the rifle in four fingers and direct the barrel toward her head, but his body was oddly contorted and there was something wrong with his legs.

Judy kicked again, this time bloodying his knuckles.

The rifle wavered wildly. He pulled the trigger and the bullet nicked her ear. She could feel the superheated combustion and stippling of gunpowder burning her face. But it was a bolt-action rifle and now he had to chamber another round with one hand. Blood was pooling around a wound behind his hip. She could smell it along with the cordite in the air as her eyes rolled back into her head and everything went dark.

She was a little girl again, tracing designs on the wallpaper as she skipped down the steps from her second story bedroom. Her mother had told her to play quietly, but there had been a noise and she had decided to see what fell. The living room was empty like the dining room and the kitchen. The hallway to the sunroom was dark, but there was light under the door to her father’s office.

She ran joyfully, reached for the knob, yanked it open and found him lying on the floor. His eyes were open and there was a gun in his hand, a dark stain of blood spreading from beneath his hair. She would never forget the smell that was in that room; the blood and cordite and the reek of burnt hair. It had always been a lie, she suddenly realized. It was she, not her mother, who had found him dead.

She blinked again and was back in the present, everything like it had been a second before and the man was still fumbling with the bolt on the rifle.

With a deafening roar the helicopter returned, the sun glinting on the metal bay doors. The wounded man was slamming the bolt down on another shell. Once more she lifted the heel of her foot and drove it hard against his fingers, simultaneously throwing herself to one side, swiping for the pistol and in one fluid motion brought it level and pulled the trigger. A bullet ripped into his chest and the rifle fell to the ground just as the helicopter dipped in descent.

Men jumped from the open bays, running with rifles pointed.

Neck still crooked, his eyes wild and confused, he snarled like an animal as they encircled him.

Chapter 34

Marion, West Virginia

It was a morning full of surprises, according to one news reporter standing in the downpour behind the perimeter that kept the press away from the command center activity, deputies in orange vests and clear plastic rain covers on their hats having effectively blocked off traffic around the FBI’s Mobile Command Bus on Mountain Road. A public relations officer for the West Virginia State Police had just announced that the body of a woman found in a cemetery outside of Quills Landing was Jessie Spangler, a prominent Fairfax Virginia attorney reported missing on the Canaan Mountain two days before. He also announced that a manhunt for fugitive Rolfe Ledder had ended in an early morning shooting on the fringe of the Monongahela National Forest, about twenty-three miles south of the Iron Mountain. Ledder, seriously wounded, was airlifted to County General Hospital in nearby Marion. A hostage, Agent Judy Wells of the Drug Enforcement Administration, was alive and being transported by Medflight to the Washington Hospital Center in Washington DC. No word was forthcoming on her condition. Also in serious, but stable condition, was Sheriff Martin Wayne who was evacuated by medical helicopter to West Virginia University Hospital in Morgantown. A civilian, Lance Phillips of Shady Spring, West Virginia was pronounced dead on the scene.

A spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Investigation would not comment on a report that police recovered what they believe to be the murder weapon in the Spangler case, though they did announce that a joint local and federal law enforcement press conference would be held at noon at the Marion courthouse. Anticipation ran high that there would be a statement about the fugitive being the Mountain State Butcher.

Rolfe Christian Ledder had never been in a hospital before, had never experienced such an odd profusion of sounds and smells. Some of the staff’s accents were unfamiliar, not from any land he had ever visited.

He couldn’t see beyond the walls of his room, but there was significant activity going on around him. He couldn’t raise his head, which was braced, or his arms that were shackled to the bed. As for his legs, he simply couldn’t feel them.

The men and women who visited him over the weeks were generally friendly and not at all threatening. They told him a bullet was pressing against his spine and that someone was going to remove it when he was sufficiently healed from his other surgery. They said he would walk again and that when he was strong enough they would transfer him to a prison.

Most of the time Rolfe lived in a narcotic-induced world; a place where memories and dreams intermingled; where he was both a man and a boy from another time.

And as always he dreamed about his childhood and the church.

There were candles burning in the windowsills. The preacher was holding a rattler, its body thick and powerful, its tongue darting beneath two black eyes.

“Sin, brothers and sisters, is as plain as the nose on your face. As evident as the sun or the moon or the thousands of stars in the sky.

“Sin doesn’t sneak up on us in disguise. We aren’t suddenly overtaken by sin and unable to get out of its way.

“Sin is something we do willingly. Our eyes wide open to the choice.

“And how do we know it is sin?” he asked the congregation.

Holland waited a moment, raising his eyebrows into question marks.

“We know because the nearer we get to sin,” he said, raising the snake in the air, “the more uncomfortable we begin to feel. We know because sin has a special place in our human bodies.”

Holland put the snake back in its box and closed the lid. He smiled, strolling between the chairs, stopping midway to put his hand on a young girl’s shoulder. “Do you know where sin lives, young lady?” he asked. “Is it here?” He thumped his chest. “Have you ever felt sin in here before?”

The little girl shook her head and Holland smiled.

“No. Not here in your heart where the Holy Spirit dwells.”

He touched her nose. “You ever felt sin here in your nose?”

She giggled and shook her head.

“No. Not there either.”

He walked on and looked down at Rolfe. “This,” he said, pointing at the boy’s stomach, “is where sin dwells, brothers and sisters.

“Sin lives in our bellies!” he cried. “In the very bowels of our being.

“Amen!

“Sin is that gut-wrenching doubt! Sin is that nauseous feeling after we have disobeyed. Sin is that twisting guilt we feel when we have done something wrong. Ask any child where sin lives!” He pointed his finger at people in the congregation. “Sin is what we feel way down in our bellies when we are no longer on firm ground with God!”

It was late one sunny afternoon and their mother had gone early to meet Reverend Holland at the church. Rolfe was finishing the last of his chores and fetching water from the stream.

Kate was in the creek, standing naked in the hole where they bathed. She looked over her shoulder, but instead of covering herself, turned to face him. He had never seen more than a glimpse of a woman’s body before and had never thought of Kate as a woman until that moment.

Their conversation was awkward that evening, only words to fill a void. The hours of light were long. It was warm outside, yet neither was eager to leave the cabin. They didn’t play their usual games before supper. They didn’t read the Bible. Kate announced she was tired and going to bed early. There was something in her voice that made Rolfe nervous.

He climbed the loft behind her. She stripped to her slip and lay on the horsehair mattress. He took off his clothes and lay next to her, uncertainly. In a while he felt a strand of her hair tickling his cheek. He turned to look at her and her eyes were closed, but she was smiling.

He closed his eyes again, trying not to think about her, but he could not dispel from his mind the image of Kate in the creek.

Then fingers brushed his hand.

Hands touching hands, such an ordinary thing and yet this time was like no other sensation. Everything had changed between them. Nothing would ever be the same.

Rolfe could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

Don’t think about it, he tried to tell himself. Don’t think about the creek.

But her fingers touched again and this time took his hand and brought it slowly to her chest. Then ever so slowly she pulled the slip up to her neck.

God was watching, God saw everything! God knew that he was sinning because he wanted to move his hand. But when he did he couldn’t stop and felt the breasts and explored the nipples that grew hard between his fingers. Hesitant each time he moved because he was afraid she would make him stop. But she didn’t and he left the breasts to trace the curve of her ribs and then her stomach and the mound between her legs. And the wet place as her thighs began to spread in the most extraordinary moment of his life.

Skin touching skin, such an ordinary thing, and yet it had happened with all the potency of a thunderstorm. A force, that in spite of dire warnings was more tempting than anything he imagined. It was impossible to resist and worth all the tortures of Hell.

Rolfe was wheeled from his room one rainy morning and returned asleep that night. He had been told that the operation was a success.

In a week he was taking short walks in the halls under police guard. There was talk that in a month he would be released to a prison.

The police had returned his things, his knapsack and a leather pouch, everything but the gold wristwatch that policemen had confiscated while he was in the emergency room. He had seen his belongings in a metal locker in his room.

An old black man came to wash his floors at night. He had a deep soulful voice that reminded him of the south. The old man hummed, making circles with his mop. One evening Rolfe asked him if he could get his leather bag.

The old man looked at him, expressionless.

“It’s got my luck,” Rolfe pleaded.

The man never spoke, but when he returned to mop the next evening, he opened the locker and brought the bag to his bed. There was nothing in it that could harm anyone: leaves and berries and some odd looking seeds.

That night when the last staffer looked in on him, she thought Rolfe looked pale, but shrugged it off.

No one would ever notice the leather sack that Rolfe dropped in the trashcan next to his bed.

Chapter 35

Quills Landing, West Virginia

The copperhead arched its back and dropped from an empty chair to the floor, gliding toward the back of the room. Holland followed it, picking it up with one of his swollen hands, gently so as not to surprise it because the copperheads would bite you just a little quicker than a rattlesnake.

“Care not what man or woman understands when you speak in tongue.” He held up the snake for all to see. “For tongue is the language of God –”

He watched the man and woman enter at the back of the room. He had known Marty since he was a boy, spent time with his father who liked to fish the creeks in Kettle Hollow. The lady with him, with the cast on her arm, was about as familiar a face as you would see these days – a regular celebrity, you might say.

He had already been through all the questions with the state troopers, and then again with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But Marty and Judy Wells would want to know the more personal things about Rolfe. The deeper things. They would want to know what happened to him as a boy. Why he had become what he had become. They would want to know the things he wished could remain buried.

He never doubted that the day would come. It was God’s justice that he bare his sins in what took place. That he be exposed as everyone else was.

He reached to take a snake from a front-row parishioner, and then another and a third that he draped across his arm.

“Strive to receive your spiritual gifts from God.” He raised his arms holding the snakes above his head. “This is what separates us from the sinner. This is how we humble servants of the Lord can demonstrate our faith.”

One by one Holland lowered the snakes into the pine box and closed the lid.

“Go in peace, my brothers and sisters. Do God’s work and until we meet again ... Amen.”

“She was an unusual woman,” Holland said, cleaning his nails with a pocketknife. His hands were large and his skin was blotched purple and black. “She came here most every service I preached and back then I had three a week. She started bringing young Kate and Rolfe to church when they were just old enough to sit. Their father never came. He didn’t care much for religion.”

Holland walked to the open door and put a hand on the frame, looking out over the empty parking lot.

“She was a hard mother, but then she’d been raised by hard parents. She was a striking woman too,” he said. “Her daughter Kate was her spitting image.”

He coughed and dabbed his mouth with a handkerchief, looking away.

“Probably I made a fuss over her, likely a fool of myself as well. She said she wanted to talk about her marriage and in the beginning I went along, but I knew she was coming to see me and not the Lord and then one thing led to another. I think she believed that because I was a preacher it was all right. She had that much faith.” He shook his head. “Looking back I wanted to believe it too.”

Judy glanced at Marty and raised her eyebrows.

“Her husband left her not long afterward.” He coughed. “They hadn’t been … er … well, you know, consummating the marriage for quite a while. Is that the word, consummate?”

He turned and gave them a weak smile.

“She started leaving the children alone on the mountain. After services she’d come to my home. We spent hours together and pretended no one knew. But surely people did. Surely everyone did.” He shook his head and sighed.

“By God, those were troubled times in that home. In this home too.” He thumped his chest and removed his bifocals and cleaned them with the dirty handkerchief. “I knew it was wrong, but the Devil had his grip on me.”

He put the glasses back on and stuffed the handkerchief in his front pocket.

“And as sin breeds sin …” He gave a knowing look and picked up a Bible from a folding table by the door. His eyes began to look glassy and he shook the book in the air. “Anyhow, that summer her daughter Kate came to be with child.”

“How old was she?” Judy asked.

“Fifteen,” he said, kneading the book with both hands. “She hid it for … don’t know … maybe a couple of months, maybe less, before her mother realized what had happened. It was only months after her husband had left, so no one can be sure what she was thinking.”

“You mean she thought it was her husband’s?” Judy said.

Holland shrugged. “Whatever she was thinking, she was so enraged she called the Naggy sisters to get rid of it. We are not what you would call a very sophisticated people. And looking back we don’t always do the right thing. Anyhow, three weeks later the girl was dead.”

“What happened?” Judy asked, leaning forward with her cast resting on top of her knees. Holland held the Bible tight in his hands, fixing his eyes on the flaking gold lettering.

“They gave her a poison and tried to expel it with a hooked metal rod. His mother forced young Rolfe to watch. Maybe it was the poison or maybe it was infection, but the baby wouldn’t pass from her body and rotted away inside her.”

“Oh my God,” Judy said. “Didn’t her mother get help?”

“Rolfe fetched a doctor from Quills Landing, but the man didn’t take a minute to tell her Kate needed to be in a hospital. That he couldn’t help her.”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing. Her mother would not permit her to be treated.”

He pulled the handkerchief out with one hand and snorted into it. “She was here in church the night Kate died.”

He set down the Bible and leaned against the doorframe.

“Now this part I’m telling you is what no one’s ever heard before.” He took a deep breath.

“Her mother came home that night after church to find her lying on the kitchen table. Her belly was cut open and her insides were in a pile between her legs. The tiny fetus was lying there in all that blood. It had been born with webbed hands and feet that looked like hooves.”

Judy shuddered. “And Rolfe?” she asked.

“Was gone. Had run off into the mountain in heavy snow. After seven days everyone figured him for dead. Not many grown men could have survived the mountain in winter, let alone a fourteen-year-old boy. Five or six years later he was seen back and hanging around the Ledder cabin. Then every summer he would return, sleep under the porch for a time and head back up into the mountains again.

Holland coughed and fingered the watch in his pocket.

“Whose baby was it?” Marty asked.

Holland shrugged. “I guess we’ll never really know for sure.”

He looked out across the rows of chairs and wiped his brow with a sleeve. “Either way it must have eaten him alive, seeing what they’d done to her. Seeing the fetus like that. I can’t imagine what he was thinking.” He tapped the side of his head. “Too much for anyone to comprehend, let alone a young boy.”

“Post-Traumatic Stress,” Judy said quickly, thinking about the irony: she and Rolfe had shared a childhood tragedy, a loss and an act too horrible to remember, and those memories had become the fragile foundation of their lives.

“No one ever called the police?” she asked.

Holland stopped and turned to face them. “Kate was terminal when the doctor came by. He told the police without surgery she would have died within hours. No one knows what happened in that cabin and Rolfe was but a fourteen-year-old boy. Anyhow, they documented it as a suicide and we just buried her up there quiet, like hill folk do.”

Judy’s thoughts traveled to the night on the mountain when Rolfe’s fingers traced the line of her cesarean scar. Indeed, what must he have been thinking?

She stood and looked around the church; the metal chairs, the wooden podium, the white pine box beneath it with red crosses painted on the sides. “And his brother? Clem?”

Holland watched a pile of leaves scatter across the gravel lot. “Clem was God’s punishment for me.”

Chapter 36

Marion, West Virginia

Kate seemed to understand something more about their mother and the church than Rolfe ever grasped. “Don’t you see what’s happening?” she would yell at him. “Don’t you know why father left?”

He had been afraid for what they did at first, but later came to realize they were in it alone. There were no other friends, no relatives, no parents to watch over them. No church, no God, no threats of heaven and hell. To him there was only Kate and she was all he ever needed. All he would ever need.

She stopped bleeding in August and by late September she was getting sick. Her belly and breasts began to swell. Kate had no one to ask, no way of knowing if she was pregnant or ill. But she had seen young mothers in the church before and began to suspect that if God was punishing them, it was going to be with a baby.

She tried to hide it, knowing that babies took about a year to be born. By spring the snows would be melting and she and Rolfe could run away. Go south where their father said that oranges grew on trees and the days were all warm like summer.

She ate less each day and bound her stomach with strips of cloth. When she worked, Rolfe would see her drenched in sweat and doubled over with pain.

By December her mother suspected and tore the bindings from her body. Face contorted with rage, she beat her bloody with a stick. Then she harnessed the horse and drove off into the night.

Rolfe had wrapped his sister in a blanket and held her in his arms until they heard the wagon return. When their mother came through the door, she was not alone. The Naggy sisters walked in wearing their black bonnets, carrying their leather bag. Rolfe was made to sit in a corner and watch.

He endured Kate’s screams that night, wanting to help her, but frightened of his mother and the stalwart women in black. Hours passed before they washed their filthy tools and took out a pair of shears. The price of their services was Kate’s beautiful long hair.

She couldn’t climb to the loft that night. She rolled tightly in a ball, arms wrapped around her stomach, her face white, lips blue and eyes wild. He could see the blood smears all over her thighs and the calves of her legs.

She spent that night on the floor under a coat by the door where she could run outside when she needed to. Rolfe lay in the loft, awake, scared and wanting to talk to someone. Anyone.

She was pale the next day and went silently about her chores. By the end of the week she was feverish. By the following Monday she was convulsing.

Rolfe begged his mother to find help, to summon the sisters back or to get a doctor, but his mother said Kate needed to pray.

Nonetheless Rolfe ran the trail to Quills Landing and found a doctor. His mother sent the man away. She said it was sin that was rotting in Kate’s belly and that if he wanted to help he best pray along with her.

Rolfe did pray, but in the end he figured the Lord must have chosen not to listen.

Friday night his mother took the wagon to church. Kate began to shudder violently, slipping in and out of consciousness. She was racked by pain. She screamed for help and Rolfe could feel the heat when he was close to her stinking body. Her head, once covered with beautiful hair, was nearly bald. Her eyes were milky and her breath was foul. It ached for him to look at her.

Rolfe knelt and prayed once more, knowing it was the only remedy in the house, wishing with all his might that Kate would expel whatever was inside of her and become well again. That she would run away with him in the spring and go south.

“Out ...” she had whispered, her voice weak and trailing off.

He leaned close and stroked her forehead, squeezing her hand and looking at the crucifix on the door.

Her eyes opened suddenly.

“Get it out of me!” she screamed. “Rolfe, get it out of me! Get it out of me!”

She clawed between her legs and he backed away terrified.

“If you don’t get it out of me, I’ll die!” she cried, her face contorted by pain.

“Get the knife, get the knife, get the knife!” she panted.

A lump developed in his throat.

She kicked the last of the blankets from her naked body and seized her belly with angry hands. “Get the knife. Cut it out of me, you son of a bitch!” she screamed. “Cut it out of me, God damn you. Cut it out, you bastard!”

Her spit was thick and her lips were caked white. He staggered away, seeing the dark fluid leaking between her legs.

He picked up the old skinning knife from the counter and brought it toward her. She looked up at him with her teeth bared, lips grinning obscenely, hissing ... “Yesss, yesss, cut it out, you bastard. Yesss, yesss, yesss … cut it out of me, God damn you!”

He stood there, tears in his eyes, hands shaking and wanting someone to save him, to stop him, but there was no one there but Kate.

“Yesss, yesss, yesss, do it, Rolfe, do it now!”

Rolfe put the blade against her stomach, tears flowing and hand trembling as he looked down at her.

She grabbed his fist with both hands and plunged the knife into her belly and then yanked it toward her chest and her mouth fell wide open. Her eyes locked on his as he pulled it from her body.

“Get it out of me,” she pleaded and her eyes looked into his soul.

He reached inside of her and began pulling everything out. Putrid gasses filled the room as he dragged it all between her legs and she gasped once more then emitted a long dismal sigh. Her head rolled to one side, facing him. It was the last she ever moved.

The stench was overwhelming. Rolfe looked at the mess in his bloody hands and in them he saw a tiny red creature with hooves and screamed.

Chapter 37

Marion, West Virginia

The windows of the conference room on the top floor of County General overlooked the Silver River’s course to the east. Coffee cups were strewn around the room, empty soda cans and pastry boxes. There had been people in and out most of the afternoon.

In the distance Judy could see the hazy blue line of the mountains. The sky was pale and dominated by an orange moon.

She touched the glass with the tips of her fingers, eyes fixed on a star. The people behind her were taking their seats. Agent Fielding stood and walked to the podium.

Judy didn’t turn around, but a smile formed as Marty came up behind her. She was beginning to sense whenever he was in a room.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for what you did. Times like these pass by too quickly. We move on and forget to reflect on the sacrifices that make it possible.”

“I’m not here to attempt to add to what the Governor so eloquently expressed at the service.” He turned to look at every face in the room. “We are saddened by the loss of so many lives over the years and in this tragedy of enormous proportion. However, I want you to reflect on two names. A Forest Ranger named Jane Cameron and a man named Lance Phillips of Rainfield Kennels. Their blood was spilled so that others might not die.” He rapped the podium with his knuckles. “And that is not some self-serving platitude that we public servants use in self-praise. It is a literal statement with a very literal meaning. Someone spilled their blood to save others. How profound.”

He put his hands flat on the podium. “There are times, no matter how much knowledge or science we possess, when we find ourselves blinded by our beliefs. Sometimes we fail to see what we cannot understand, nor fathom what exists outside our experience. I found myself in such a predicament this summer.” He turned and looked at Marty and Judy. “If it weren’t for the courage of people in this room, the individual talents and instincts, things might not have ended as they did.” He folded his hands and lowered them before him. “There will be a lot of letter-writing when all is said and done, some well-deserved citations and more media attention than anyone should ever be subjected to. But nothing and I mean nothing, will come to you more sincerely than my thanks.”

He stepped away from the podium and edged through the small crowd to where Judy was seated, bending to give her a hug. Then he went around the room shaking hands.

Judy reached for Marty’s hand. “You know, I was just thinking how much your father would have been proud of you.”

“And yours as well,” he said.

She nodded thoughtfully.

“So what’s next?” he whispered.

“Well, the doctors won’t make a pronouncement for another month or two, but we both know I won’t be going back to the streets again. I think I’d like to spend some outdoor time with my new friend. She leaned to rub the little Bluetick’s ears, its pale belly rising and falling as it slept between her feet. Maybe I’ll study for the Bar while I’m waiting.”

“Really?” he said, looking down at the dog. Mrs. Phillips had asked if Judy would like to have the dog when she came back from the Hospital Center in Washington DC. She had said she loved the animal, but couldn’t bear the memories it would always bring. Besides, it had searched for and found Judy on that mountain. Perhaps they should be together now.

“Maybe I’ll go someplace quiet by the water. Some place where you can have a pet and see the stars.”

Marty grinned and closed his eyes, “Ahh,” he sighed. “I know of such a place. You might like it.”

All the muscles in her face began to relax. She took his hand again and looked into his eyes. “I was hoping you’d say that, Sheriff.”

“Did they ever find out what killed him?” one of the state policemen asked.

Fielding shrugged. “I talked to the chief of Pathology on the way over. She said that Rolfe was a walking medical time bomb."

“Autopsy?”

“Nah.” He shook his head. “Not even going through the formality. Doc said they performed forty-plus micro-procedures from the 300 Winchester Magnum round alone. The Sheriff’s big game bullet splintered the spine and lacerated every blood vessel and artery in the area. Then Judy fired the Glock into his chest. You know what Hydra-Shok ammunition does to soft tissue.”

“Hard to believe he made it as long as he did.”

Fielding nodded. “Any one of their procedures could have failed. Any one could have released a blood clot to the brain. I have to say, though, I'm just as happy it was now rather than later."

“Body will be turned over to family then.”

“Or cremated ..."

“How many women did he kill in all?” he asked softly.

“Officially, eleven,” the agent said. “Unofficially we’re scared to know. One can only guess at the number of caves out there.”

Chapter 38

Marion, West Virginia

Rolfe’s belongings, all packed into his knapsack, were turned over to Clem at the desk of County General Hospital.

Clem had come to claim the wristwatch Rolfe was wearing when he was brought to the hospital. He was disappointed when it wasn’t in his knapsack. Which meant it was still on his wrist.

When he asked to see his brother the lady at the counter informed him he would have to have his brother’s remains removed to a funeral home or have the hospital arrange a small ceremony in their chapel.

Clem told the woman he was the only relative Rolfe had and there would be no viewing or money for a funeral. If he could just see him now, he could sign whatever she needed and there would be no need for him to come back after the cremation.

It was late, only minutes until closing, but the woman allowed Clem to sign the document authorizing West Virginia to cremate Rolfe’s body. Then she called down to the morgue and whispered in the phone.

“Mr. Ledder,” she said finally, pointing over his shoulder. “Take those stairs to the basement and follow the blue line around the walls until you come to the morgue. The attendant will be closing in five minutes, so I suggest you make haste.”

Clem said that he would.

The attendant was wearing tiny headphones attached to a MP3 player and eating a slice of cold pizza. Clem followed him to the back room. He pointed to a metal cart pulled from one of a dozen steel doors in the wall. There was a sheet over the body and a manila folder lying across the legs.

Clem looked around. The room was cool and bright and reeked of caustic chemicals. A polished table edged with gutters and drains occupied one corner, and a large white clock loomed on the wall, long black hands snapping up the minutes.

“Look,” the attendant said, “I’ve got to punch the clock before I go into overtime, so close the door if you leave before I get back.”

Clem nodded and the attendant left.

He approached the gurney slowly, hearing the echo of his boots on the tile floor, feeling the hair rise on the back of his neck. He reached down and pulled back the sheet.

Rolfe was draped in a blue paper hospital gown. There were bruises on the backs of his hands and a blood stained Band-Aid still stuck to the inside of one forearm. There was the stub of knuckle that had once been a thumb, but Clem was annoyed that there was no wristwatch.

He was surprised at how much weight his brother had lost in the hospital. Limbs not quite so thick, face not quite so full. But it was the color of Rolfe’s face that surprised him most. He had expected to see someone pale in death. Instead Rolfe's cheeks were flushed, lips pink instead of blue. He looked no worse than that morning in the cabin when he had shot the two policemen.

Generators hummed in the deep recesses of the building, circulating chilled dry air, but Clem could still feel the sweat gathering on his neck.

Suddenly he turned and looked behind him, feeling a presence in the room. But no one was there. No one was watching him.

The long minute hand on the big wall clock snapped to twelve and his heart jumped. He started to pull the sheet back toward Rolfe’s face and for a paralyzing moment saw movement beneath the linen. Then a cold hand emerged encircling Clem’s wrist.

The attendant returned to an empty room, body covered with sheet, records lying across the legs. He snatched the last slice of pizza from the box and shoved the gurney back into the wall with the toe of his sneaker.

His keys were on the desk and he grabbed them on his way to the door, stopping to pull the trash from the bin and pushing his greasy pizza box on top of a discarded hospital gown. He exited the morgue, locked the door behind him and deposited the trash in a dumpster behind the building. Trying to remember on the way to his car, who had come in during his shift. There were no hospital gowns in the trash when he opened this morning. One of the doctors must have come through when he’d been in the restroom.

Chapter 39

Marion, West Virginia

A wind had picked up outside the hospital, shaking leaves on white poplars, spreading low ground fog that rolled across the grassy circle in front of the entrance. An ambulance sat at the doors, red lights sweeping through the mist.

Night was approaching from the east, dark clouds racing across an orange harvest moon. The air was damp and cool and fragrant.

The ambulance beacon swept across his face, then across his arm and his leg and the knapsack as he climbed the embankment above County General and hurried for the cover of the trees.

The pants were too tight and too long, and the boots were too large, but the air was fresh and he filled his lungs with it, taking aim for a constellation in the southern sky. He ripped the Band-Aid from his arm and reached for a tree branch, snapping off a twig, mashing it gratefully between his teeth, muscle rippling over bone, flexing, stretching, repairing.

About the author

George D Shuman was raised on a cattle farm in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania. He worked for a time in the steel mills as a riveter before moving to Washington DC and joining the Metropolitan Police Department.

Mr. Shuman held positions as a narcotics detective and was for a time commander of the training operations branch, retiring as a lieutenant from the Public Integrity Division responsible for investigating government corruption.

For the next decade Mr. Shuman held executive positions in the luxury resort business in both Montauk New York and Nantucket Massachusetts.

He now lives in Georgia where he writes full time.

To learn more about George D. Shuman, visit his website at:

http://georgedshuman.com