The Raven Mocker (18 page)

Though Evelyn understood the supernatural nature of what they were dealing with, she suggested they call the police. John, still distraught, told her not yet… at least not until he had a chance to search deeper in the woods for Hanna. He hastily ate the quick breakfast she prepared and then dressed more appropriate for a longer stay outside.

Evelyn also dressed warmer. Together, and with Shawn, they searched the woods surrounding the clearing for the next several hours. But to no avail. Discouraged, they came back to the cabin shortly after noon.

John placed a call to the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department. Due to the holiday week, the staff had been reduced with everyone expected back by New Years Eve. One of the few deputies available, Jerry Van Hueson, agreed to stop by the next morning once 24 hours had passed since Hanna’s disappearance. Evelyn watched her grandfather become incensed by this, but knew he understood as well as she that it would take a hell of lot more help than the sheriff’s department or any other law enforcement agency could provide in order to find and rescue Hanna from the demon that took her.

Perhaps, as John suggested, it had something to do with the long forgotten ‘spirit people’ who once ruled this section of North America centuries ago, according to Cherokee lore. The notion seemed ridiculous to Evelyn at first. Yet, how else to explain Hanna’s slipper trail that led to the ancient altar, along with the dismembered wolf carcass left at the edge of her grandfather’s property? Not to mention the strange toe marks next to Hanna’s. John told her the unusual imprints were identical to others he found yesterday.

Together, they discussed this until the sun dipped behind the mountains around 4:30 p.m. John felt the powerful urge to try to reach David one more time, calling his cell phone, since he could never reach him at the Hobbs’ home number in Littleton.

“
Grandpa… hang up the phone and I’ll prepare my cards for a reading,” said Evelyn, gently, moving to take the receiver from his hand now that his conversation with David had ended. “Let me at least try to find out what the entity intends to do. Maybe I can also determine the general area where it has taken her.”

He almost relented, loosening his grip on the handset. But then he gripped it even tighter.

“
I need to make a few more calls, and then we’ll see about a reading,” he told her quietly. “Why don’t you wait in the living room while I call Dr. Kirkland and Dr. Pollack. It shouldn’t take long. I must warn them one last time about the bones and relics they took from the ravine….”

He didn’t have to finish for her to understand fully what he intended to tell the two esteemed professors from the University of Tennessee. The bones and relics—including the jeweled gold scepter with an extremely sharp ivory edge that Dr. Pollack was especially enamored with from the moment it had been unearthed—must immediately be returned to where they were taken from, and reburied.

But that alone wouldn’t be enough to appease the spirit’s anger. Formal apologies handled the ancient way, with shaman dances and the incantations of the Cherokee, performed in the presence of the two contrite Caucasians while the items were reburied would be the minimum expectation. Then it would be up to the mighty
anisgas
, the warrior forefathers to come through on John’s and her behalf, as they beseeched them to rescue Hanna from her imprisonment in the underworld.

Neither one conceded she might already be dead.

***

The first call went to Dr. Peter Kirkland, picked up by the professor after the second ring. John was pleased to finally connect with him after weeks of getting the runaround from the Forensic Department at UT and leaving numerous voice mails that were never returned. Despite his urge to lash out in anger, John maintained remarkable self-control in discussing what had happened. Dr. Kirkland patiently allowed him to tell all that had transpired for him and his family since Thanksgiving, including Hanna’s disappearance. But when John entreated his help in gathering the items taken from the sacred ravine in Cades Cove, the professor responded with the arrogance that had irritated John since he made the regrettable decision to tell him about the uncovered remains of Allie Mae McCormick.

John lashed out at Dr. Kirkland when he responded as if he heard nothing John told him. The professor’s steadfast pragmatism left him shortsighted about the consequences he and Dr. Pollack now faced. The call escalated into a shouting match that ended with John demanding he turn the items over or he’d forcibly do it himself.

Evelyn started to move toward the kitchen as she watched her grandfather tremble in anger, but he waved her off. Despite Dr. Kirkland hanging up on him, he needed to make one last plea for help with this. Perhaps Dr. Walter Pollack would listen, being a noted expert in the study of the ancient Native American peoples who once flourished in the southeastern United States.

John dialed Dr. Pollack’s home number after failing to reach the professor at his office. Elaine Pollack, the professor’s wife answered. His request to speak with her husband summarily denied, she’d already said goodbye and left him with a dial tone before he could say anything else. He called again. This time she responded even more sharply than the previous attempt, telling him to keep his ‘Indian affairs’ to himself until after the holidays, and to show ‘better honor and respect for this time of year like a good Christian.’ She tersely hung up leaving him completely livid.

“
Look! Tell your husband that I need to speak to him NOW-W-WW!!
” he shouted into the receiver when he spoke to her a third time, his blood pressure raising to the point his chest ached. “
If anything happens to my little girl
…
my
granddaughter, because of what he’s done, Dr. Pollack will personally pay for it all!!
...
You got that, lady? Let me speak to him now
—”

Elaine Pollack hung up again. All further attempts to contact her husband reached either a busy signal or were directly transferred to voice mail. John slowly returned the handset to the small cove in the kitchen, his shoulders shaking. This time, Evelyn came to him in the kitchen. Tears streamed down his face. She wrapped her arms around him and the two wept together bitterly, while the sunset’s last vestige waned, giving way to the night’s dark wintry chill.

Chapter Nineteen

Shortly after sunset, Dr. Peter Kirkland hurried along the stone pathway that led to the lighted steps of Dr. Walter Pollack’s stately Italianate styled mansion. The front door framed within an immense arch, he hesitated just before ringing the doorbell, casting a third glance over his shoulder toward the eastern woods. The previous two times he did this, right after parking his Jeep in the circular drive in front of the Pollack estate, revealed nothing definitive to worry about. Yet the unmistakable feeling of being observed and studied by someone hidden nearby, perhaps behind the thick tree line across from the driveway, left him anxious to get inside the house as quick as possible.

The doorbell’s polyphonic chimes reverberated throughout the main floor. Dr. Kirkland raised his gloved hand to shield the porch light’s yellow glare while he peered through the small medieval-like window inset on the side of the door closest to him. The foyer inside dark, the window reflected a distorted image of a bespectacled middle-aged bearded man, with receding white hair pushed to and fro by the wind.

The foyer suddenly filled with light, illuminated by a large crystal chandelier. A moment later the heavy wooden door began to open, and the delicate face of Elaine Pollack peered out toward him. A railroad heiress whose family was among the oldest money clans in Knoxville, the eighty-acre Pollack estate had been procured a decade earlier by her parents’ considerable wealth. Her father’s affluence had also been largely responsible for Walter Pollack’s rapid rise within the academic ranks, to where he now stood next in line for the Archeology Department’s chair position.

Elaine studied Peter Kirkland for a moment as he stood in the cold, waiting for her to grant him admission inside her privileged abode. Her alluringly soft blue eyes radiated warmth that belied her amused smirk.

“
Walter’s expecting you upstairs, Peter,” she told him smugly, brushing her shoulder length blond hair away from her face before pulling the door open enough for him to squeeze through.

“
I expected Charles to be the one to let me in tonight,” said Peter, sliding past her as he stepped into the foyer, the soles of his winter boots echoing throughout the main level as he stepped onto the gray marble floor.

He noticed now her dark green housecoat and wondered if she’d taken ill since his last visit, just two days prior to Christmas Eve. He felt a twinge of guilt as he watched her struggle to close the door, but knew she wouldn’t appreciate any chivalry from him.

“
He’s off tonight,” she explained, turning toward him after locking the door, pausing to peer outside through the same tiny window that he’d looked through moments earlier. “Even the family butler deserves a holiday break, I suppose.”

“
Hmmm,” his only response, followed by awkward silence between them. He could feel her contempt radiate toward him as she brushed by, and he prayed for something witty to say that wouldn’t fall prey to her biting sarcasm.

“
Like I said, Walter is expecting you.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him just before leaving the foyer, pointing to the adjoining turret and the curved wrought iron stairway that would take him to Dr. Pollack’s second floor office.

Dr. Kirkland removed his coat and added it to the brass hall tree next to the front door. By the time he’d gathered his briefcase and straightened his sweater, Elaine had disappeared from view. He didn’t see her in the living room as he peered through the railings while climbing the stairs to the second floor. His view was partially obscured by the large flocked Christmas tree standing near the foyer. But at least he now had more time to think of something clever to say to her when his visit ended.

He never stopped trying to re-ingratiate himself on friendly terms after an unfortunate incident involving her philandering husband and a young intern last fall, which he knew about but said nothing to her or even to his wife, Darlene, one of Elaine’s closest friends. Only her desire for the esteemed status as a University of Tennessee department chairman’s wife kept her marriage to Dr. Pollack intact. Rather than take it out on him, she chose Walter’s closest friend and colleague at the university to revile in his place.

Walter’s upstairs office sat just down the hallway to the right of the stairway. The hall itself reminded Peter of a five star hotel—the Ritz Carlton would be so lucky to have imported marble columns and an exquisite Mediterranean runner along its length that complemented expensive European millwork. The place had even been modeled after a castle in Milan, or so Elaine once told him—back when their speaking terms went beyond mere formality.

“
Pete, come on in!”

Walter stood up from behind a massive mahogany desk that sat in front of a large stained glass window featuring a giant falcon as it soared over a mountain stream similar to what lay just a few hundred feet from the mansion. Slightly taller than Peter, his curly blond hair, steel blue eyes and chiseled facial features alluded to a Greek god. Dressed in faded Levis and a pair of house slippers, the outline of his well-toned upper body was clearly visible underneath his red flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

“
I came as soon as I could,” said Peter, as he stepped into the room. He waved off Walter’s offer to share a drink with him, sitting down in one of the leather chairs in front of the desk. “It’s been a long day, and Darlene is expecting me back before seven o’clock. We might have a bit of a problem, Walt.” He frowned and set his briefcase on his lap, prepared to open it.

“
Not yet,” Walter advised, motioning for Peter to wait. “Are you sure you’re not interested in helping me finish off the sherry left over from Christmas Eve?”

His eyes twinkled with mirth, and the extreme confidence of the man seemed to ooze invisibly from every pore. Peter envied him—always had. At thirty-five, nearly twenty years younger, he seemed impervious to his senior colleague’s unease. A lifetime of good fortune kept him insensitive to doubt, especially in those around him. Whatever Walter wanted in life always came to him. Prestige, wealth, love…. Even when Elaine nearly left him over the tryst last summer with Dorothy Tummins, his lovely young graduate intern assistant, Peter knew firsthand that Walter’s belief in everything working out to his liking never wavered.

“
I’m sure.” Peter replied wearily and then let out a low sigh. “John Running Deer is threatening to file suit against us with the NCAI, once the holidays are over next week.”

“
So that’s why you’re so damned glum?”

For a moment Walter seemed pained for his friend, perhaps real compassion for the man who showed him the political ropes around the university without ever asking for any favors in return. He chuckled as he stepped around the desk and went over to the open doorway, peering down both sides of the outside hall before closing the door.

“
I promise this will all seem unimportant once I share some great news with you, Pete. Just like that, all your worries will fade away.”

He snapped his fingers to illustrate his point, pausing to add another hickory log to the large fireplace, near where his oversized desk sat. Like the rest of the ‘Pollack castle’, no expense was spared in outfitting his office. Paneled in the highest grade of cherry, along with handcrafted moldings, trim work, and other exquisite treatments throughout the room. Peter often mused on how this room was larger than any of the rooms in his own home—including the spacious den of his three-thousand square foot Victorian located just a few miles from here. A large mahogany bookcase took up the wall on the right side of the fireplace while a state-of-the-art media center dominated the opposite wall.