In a Dark Season (8 page)

“I’d like to hear more about the landlord’s wife.” His eyes still closed, Phillip began to move his hand in the direction of Elizabeth’s breast. She continued reading, seeming to ignore the lazy movement of his fingers on her arm.

“The house had seen the great drives swell to flood tide and then, with the coming of the railroad, recede to arid memory. But still there had been travelers eager for a meal, a dram, and a place by the fire—and still there had been the whispers.

“Time passed. The great fireplaces no longer roared; the smooth fields and rolling pastures gave way to multiflora rose, sumac, and locust. A rising tide of kudzu and grapevine began the green inundation of the long quiet porches that once had echoed with the heavy boots of the drovers. No one visited the old house now; only memories lurked in its empty rooms—memories and whispers.”

Just as his hand reached its destination, her voice fell silent. There was the riffle of pages falling to the floor as Elizabeth turned to him, pressing her lips to his while her hand began an exploration of its own.

Chapter 9

Cold Case

Wednesday, December 13

T
here were no defensive wounds; the old guy was probably asleep in his bed when he was hit on the head with a chunk of firewood. The firewood likely came from the stack by the fireplace….”

Mackenzie Blaine turned over one of the stack of yellowing pages that spilled from the worn file folder on his desk. “Yep, locust splinters found in the wound were consistent with the remaining firewood in the room. Of course, the weapon itself was presumably cold ashes in the grate by the time the body was found—”

“Hold on, Mac.” Phillip shifted in the uncomfortable metal chair opposite the desk. Hard as an ex-wife’s heart, with one suspiciously wobbly leg, it was the only seating choice offered a visitor. “Wouldn’t it have had to be a reasonably powerful assailant to kill him with a blow like that…not an elderly woman? It just doesn’t—”

The sheriff looked up with a puzzled gaze. “Elderly woman? Hawk, Miss Barrett was…let me double-check…” He flipped through the pages on his desk, ran a finger down one and paused.

“Nola Barrett was fifty-four at the time—and not exactly frail. Hell, I wouldn’t call her frail now, ten years later. Besides, it wasn’t the blow that killed him—it was the pillow over his face.”

Phillip frowned. “Was she ever charged…”

“No, she wasn’t. Sheriff Frisby evidently did a cursory investigation and then put it down to murder by person or persons unknown. Nola Barrett’s name doesn’t come into it except as the person who discovered the body.”

“And that’s it? The case was just closed?”

Marshall County’s newly reelected sheriff was silent for a moment, his shrewd brown eyes studying his friend’s face. Phillip waited.

Blaine returned the papers to the file, then stood. “You got a little time to waste?” He was pulling on a jacket and reaching for a hat. “Let’s take a ride.”

Phillip followed his friend down the hallway, past offices where uniformed men frowned at computer screens or bent over paperwork, into the stifling outer office. A small space heater whirred at top speed, producing a tropical heat in the windowless room. Here a stern-looking, white-haired woman presided over the telephone and reception desk. She detained the sheriff briefly with a litany of questions and reminders. Finally Blaine held up his hand.

“I’ll take care of all that this afternoon, Miss Orinda. If Horner calls, tell him the matter’s been resolved. Back by one.”

As they climbed into Blaine’s cruiser, Phillip rolled down his window. “I don’t know how you stand it, Mac. A couple of minutes in there and the smell’s all over me. That godawful air freshener’s bad enough but—”

“You get used to it.” Mackenzie was matter-of-fact as he pulled out of his parking place. “She can’t help it—it’s some kind of chronic condition. She should have retired by now but the job’s her life—she’s worked here since the dawn of time and knows everything there is to know about the day-to-day operation of the office. Be hard to replace her.”

Blaine put his own window partway down, admitting a crosscurrent of fresh air. “But, yeah, Miss Orinda does fart a lot.”

The sheriff’s cruiser nosed its way down the unpaved road paralleling the railroad tracks, past three ramshackle buildings and a small rusting trailer, before coming to a halt where the road ended in a brushy meadow. An abandoned school bus, covered with graffiti and resting on concrete blocks, lay ahead, half concealed by the tall, winter-worn scrub.

“You’re being awful damn mysterious, Mac.” Blaine had evaded his questions during the short drive from the sheriff’s office to this dead-end dirt road by the bridge at Gudger’s Stand.

Blaine grunted, pulled the cruiser to a stop, and pointed to the derelict vehicle. “Back in the early eighties, a bunch of hippies, river guides and such, used that during the summer. They had it fixed up like a camper—bunks built in and a little galley—pretty slick, from what some of the fellas tell me. This whole field was kind of a campground, tents all over the place during the rafting season.”

Phillip peered through the windshield at the rusting yellow hulk. “Okay, Mac. I get the picture. Happy hippie days, free love, grass for the growing, blowin’ in the wind, all that Summer of Love crap—what does this have to do with—”

“Well, your song reference is off by about twenty years, but aside from that—yeah, things were pretty loose down here. The sheriff’s department turned a blind eye to the marijuana back then—some say the cops were actually part of the supply chain—make a bust in one part of the county, then burn a token amount of the stuff and sell the rest at wholesale to the dealers. The late Sheriff Holcombe—”

Mackenzie Blaine stopped mid-sentence and opened his door. “Let’s stretch our legs for a few minutes.” Without waiting, he swung out of the car and made his way, limping very slightly, toward the abandoned bus. Phillip fumbled in his pocket for his woolen watch cap and pulled it down over his ears.
Kind of chilly for a walk—this isn’t like Mac. There’s something’s bugging him.

Zipping his jacket, he hurried to catch up with his friend, who was striding past the old bus and along a faintly defined footpath paralleling the river.

“So this must be where the Drovers’ Road was.” Phillip gestured down the trail. “Lizabeth’s been—”

Sheriff Blaine’s rapid pace slowed and he turned to fix Phillip with a look of utter seriousness. “Hawk, I wanted us out of the car for a reason. I was starting to run my mouth—do you know how easy it would be to bug the cruiser? And I can’t sweep the car every day without letting whoever it is know I’m onto them.”

Phillip stared.
Okay, in a minute he’s gonna crack a big grin and say “Gotcha” and we’ll have a laugh and get back in the car out of this friggin’ wind.

But there was no grin, no relaxation of the tension. “Mac? I think I missed something. What’s the punch line?”

“This is no joke. There’s something strange going on in the department…maybe in the county too.” The sheriff continued along the trail, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind. “I don’t know which of my deputies I can trust—one reason I didn’t want to talk about this back at the office.”

His strong fingers dug into the heavy sleeve of Phillip’s jacket.

“Listen, Hawk, I need another investigator—someone I know isn’t part of this…whatever it is. We’ve talked before about you coming to work for me on a permanent basis. I’ve been kind of waiting, thinking that whenever you and Miz Goodweather got around to—”

Phillip held up a hand. “Don’t go there, Mac. Just tell me what’s happening and what you need me to do. God knows, I owe you.”

Blaine’s hand fell away and he closed his eyes briefly. “Thanks, Hawk. I was afraid you’d think I was crazy. Hell, for a while, I thought maybe I
was.
It started with the letter…”

An anonymous letter, Mackenzie explained, purporting to be from the victim of a brutal gang rape. “She said that they’d kept her tied up and blindfolded for several days and she couldn’t be sure but that she thought it was probably in that bus back there. She said she’d been with a crowd that was partying. She admitted that she’d been drinking pretty heavily and must have passed out—anyway, she said when she came to, she was blindfolded and tied spread-eagle on a mattress with a group of men taking turns with her.”

“I don’t believe this shit—the victim wrote a
letter?
I thought by now everyone knew that coming in and getting the whole rape-kit procedure right away is the best chance for making a case. Hell, with the DNA—but maybe there’s still a chance—when did this happen?”

Mackenzie Blaine didn’t answer, but turned and began to retrace his steps back along the frozen ground. Bewildered, Phillip turned to follow.

“Mac, does this…girl…woman want to prosecute? Maybe she’s just testing the water before she gives her name and files charges. Did she say she knew who the men were?”

“Said she’s almost positive of two of them. She also wrote that they were responsible for a death, possibly several deaths, and that she wanted justice and was prepared to name names
if
I would assure her that there was a chance of success. There was a number I was supposed to call at a certain time so I could answer her questions before she decided whether or not to come in and make it formal. If she didn’t hear from me at that time, she said, she’d assume the case was hopeless.”

The sheriff slowed to study the blue heron on his accustomed rock across the river. The bird stood motionless on the partially submerged footing, his long, cruel beak poised above the frigid, rushing water. In a sudden blur the curved neck straightened, the beak plunged into the rapids and emerged, a silver fish wriggling in its inexorable hold. Another flash of silver, the fish disappeared, the neck resumed its graceful curve, and the heron returned to his silent vigil.

“Jesus, Mac, it’s too damn cold for bird-watching. So, when you called did you convince her to come in and file charges?”

“I didn’t call her. The time she set for the call was the next day. I left the letter with the phone number she gave on my desk when I went to lunch. When I came back, the letter was gone. I asked the various people on duty and no one had any idea what I was talking about. All I could remember about the phone number was that it was somewhere in Asheville.”

“You think someone in the office took the letter? That doesn’t make sense…what would—”

Mackenzie kicked viciously at a frozen clod. “Now I realize I shouldn’t have left the letter out for anyone to see. But I thought it was crank mail. I hadn’t believed her when she said that the reason for all the secrecy was because of the ‘big people,’ as she put it, in the county who would try to keep her from talking. That was why she wanted to set up a meeting with me, rather than coming in to the department.”

“And now you think one of these ‘big people’ has a…a friggin’
mole
in the department going through your correspondence…maybe even bugging your cruiser?”

Blaine’s face hardened and he turned up the collar of his jacket against the wind. “Yeah, Hawk, that’s what I think now. You know, I’d honestly believed the bad old days were finally past. You’ve heard the stories: how the county was controlled by a few powerful families and Sheriff Holcombe was in their pocket—or they were in his. Hell, I don’t know…Even when Holcombe retired and Frisby took office, Holcombe was still in charge—the ‘shadow sheriff,’ was what some people called him. Business as usual—everything just took a little longer because Frisby wouldn’t wipe his ass without asking Holcombe if it was okay.

“And Vance Holcombe sat there in his wheelchair in that old house on Center Avenue, keeping an eye on the town, while his brother Big Platt, out at Holcombe Hill, that farm of his just off the interstate, kept his eye on the rest of the county.”

As the sheriff spoke, Phillip stared at his friend, wondering if, perhaps, there was more to the story than Blaine was telling.

“Don’t get me wrong, Hawk, the Holcombe ‘machine’ wasn’t all bad. If you were a citizen with a legitimate gripe, you could take it to the Holcombes and get a fair deal—as long as you were registered to the right party. There was one old boy—made the mistake of running against Vance one time—never
could
get his road paved after that. Story is the pavement stopped right at his property line, the road turned into dust and potholes, and then back to nice blacktop as soon as it reached the other side of the property.”

“Lizabeth told me that story. But she said it seemed to her most of the old-timers she knew liked the Holcombes—she said it was a patronage setup, kind of like the Mafia godfather thing.”

“Oh yeah—and without the hit men. If you were on the right side of the Holcombes and a nice county job came up, you’d go see Vance or Big Platt and they’d help make sure your application was ‘expedited.’ We’re not talking major stuff; hell, school custodian or recycling center attendant were prize jobs for some of the folks around here. Still are, matter of fact. And the Holcombes weren’t reckoned to be overly greedy—they’d made their money when the interstate came through. Big Platt had enough influence to see that the road ran through a good long section of land the Holcombes owned. I think they just liked the power for its own sake, being the big men in the county.

“But anyway, Vance Holcombe died of a heart attack, sitting there on his front porch. Evidently Frisby was like a puppet with its strings cut—he resigned within the month. That’s when I was recruited from over in Marion to fill out the rest of his term. I didn’t know about the Holcombe machine then—it was the head of the county commissioners who contacted me. And when I took over as sheriff, never once did any one try to influence me, in any way. I never even met Big Platt—he had a stroke and passed away the year after his brother’s death. His sons, Little Vance and Little Platt—gotta love the South, don’t you?—are both lawyers with their offices in the sheriff’s old house there on Center—and if they’re running the county, at least they’re not running me.”

“I don’t doubt you for a minute, Mac. But—”

“Sorry, Hawk. I’ll get to the point. That letter that disappeared said Sheriff Holcombe knew about this rape and had been involved in a cover-up. It also said that he was responsible for murder.”

Phillip stared at his friend blankly, struggling to make sense of the strange account. “But Holcombe’s dead. How could he have anything to do with the rape described in the letter?”

“According to Ms. Anonymous, the rape occurred in October of ’95—eleven years ago.”