“Oh, God, no. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Then what is it? You look like—”
“Hello, hello!” Cicero, who had followed Rachel from the kitchen, swooped onto Tom’s shoulder.
Tom’s dour expression dissolved. Laughing, he reached up to scratch under the bird’s neck feathers. “Hey, pal. What’s your name?”
“Cicero,” the parrot answered.
“Great bird,” Tom said. “Does he talk a lot?”
“Oh, yeah, a blue streak. So what brings you out? What’s wrong?”
Again Tom’s features shifted, settling back into an ominous seriousness that alarmed her all over again. “Could we sit down?” he said.
“Sure. Want some coffee?”
Rachel hoped he would say no and get to the point, but he accepted the offer. With the parrot still perched on his shoulder, he followed her to the kitchen. Rachel quickly flipped over the top printout on the table so he wouldn’t see what she’d been reading. He might assume she was learning more about Melungeon history out of personal interest in him.
She filled a mug and turned to find him sitting at the table, reading the page she’d tried to hide. He had the courtesy to look abashed at being caught. “Sorry,” he said with a grin. “I’ve been a professional snoop for so long I don’t have any manners left.”
She couldn’t be annoyed with him when he flashed that grin, and she had a feeling he knew it. With one hand she pushed the letter from Nelson out of sight under a dish towel, with the other she offered Tom the mug. “You take it black, right?”
His smile widened. “You remembered.”
How had this happened, him in her kitchen in the evening, flirting with her and making her feel like a flustered teenager? “Cicero,” she said to the parrot, “go back.”
“He can stay,” Tom said. “Makes me feel like a pirate. I like it.”
“He won’t seem so charming if you end up with bird droppings on your uniform.” Rachel picked up the squawking bird and set him on the back of Frank’s chair. He shook out his feathers with an air of indignation.
“If you’re interested in Melungeon history,” Tom said, “I’ll lend you some of my father’s books. He probably collected everything that’s ever been published on the subject. He was kind of an expert, I guess.”
Tom couldn’t have anything urgent to tell her, if he was willing to engage in chitchat. Rachel sat opposite him. “What about you? How well do you know the history?”
“I know enough. Most of it’s pretty grim. I’d rather live in the present.”
“We all have to do that, whether we want to or not,” Rachel said.
“Hungry,” Cicero said. “Feed me.”
Rachel gave him the rest of her cheese sandwich, and hoped it would keep him quiet for a few minutes. He held it in his claws and began to nibble.
“So,” Tom said, “is this interest in Melungeons because of Holly Turner? Did you call her?”
“Not only did I call her, I interviewed her and offered her a job.”
He sighed. “Damn. I was afraid of that.”
“You’re not still having doubts about recommending her, are you?”
“I’ve been wishing all day that I’d held back on it.” Tom sat forward with his hands clasped around his mug. “If I’d known yesterday who she really is—”
“Troy Shackleford’s illegitimate daughter?”
He lifted a black eyebrow. “She told you?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I’m hiring Holly, not her family.”
“Did you interview her on the phone or in person?”
Okay, here we go. Prepare for a lecture.
“I saw her at the diner where she works.”
“Jesus Christ, Rachel. After what I told you, you went to that place by yourself?”
“And survived.” She spread her arms and smiled, hoping she seemed more casual about it than she felt. The memory of Buddy Shackleford’s hand gripping her arm brought back a shiver of fear and outrage. “Remarkable, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t a joke, Rachel. Those people are dangerous. All the Shacklefords are involved in criminal activity, and I doubt they like strangers showing up on their turf.”
You don’t know the half of it.
She wasn’t about to describe her run-in with Buddy and her unwilling exit from the Wild Mountain Rose. “Holly’s not involved in their drug business.”
“You don’t know the girl.”
“Neither did you when you recommended her for a job.”
“You have to hold off on hiring her.”
That sounded like an order. “I beg your pardon?”
“Just till we get this case squared away.”
“Holly hasn’t done anything wrong. You’re the one who wanted to get her out of that environment.”
“And I still do. This isn’t about Holly. I’m trying to protect you, Rachel. I can’t even tell you from what. I’ve just got a bad feeling about it. I think the Shacklefords are capable of anything. You don’t want to get mixed up with them.”
“Do you think Holly’s father killed Mrs. McClure?”
Tom pushed fingers through his thick hair. “My father thought so, but I’m just getting started, and I can’t jump to conclusions. At the very least, though, Shackleford’s hiding something.”
“He could be innocent,” Rachel said. “Of murder, anyway.” She was surprised at how much she already cared about Holly, how much she wanted the girl to escape the burden of having a killer for a father.
“Don’t count on it.”
“I don’t care what her family’s like. I will not break that girl’s heart by taking back my offer.” Rachel saw his earnestness turning to exasperation, but she couldn’t give him what he wanted.
“When does she start?” he asked.
“We haven’t decided that yet. But soon.”
“Will you at least do me one favor? Don’t go into Rocky Branch District by yourself again.”
“I’m afraid I can’t promise that either,” Rachel said, remembering her commitment to pick up Holly when she was ready.
“You’re a damned stubborn woman, you know that?” He threw up his hands in surrender. “All right. Well, I have to get back to headquarters.” He rose and Rachel followed him to the front door. “I hope that girl doesn’t come trailing trouble behind her. Call me if you need me. For anything, anytime.”
He touched her cheek with his fingertips, so lightly she couldn’t protest, but the feel of his skin on hers brought a flush of heat that dismayed her.
She shut the door behind him, locked it, slid the bolts into place.
Listening to his car drive away, she wondered if Tom was exaggerating about the Shacklefords because it was his job to consider the worst-case scenario. Or was he speaking the simple truth?
Back in the kitchen, she placed the dishes in the sink, poured soap and ran hot water. She stared absently at her ghostlike reflection in the window above the sink, her mind focused on the coldly menacing look on Buddy Shackleford’s face after he’d followed her back to the animal hospital. She had seen that look before, in Perry Nelson’s eyes, and knew it existed independent of her, that she’d done nothing to deserve it but would always have to fear it.
Something moved outside. Rachel snapped to attention. Somebody was out there in the dark, watching her. She yanked the curtains shut and took a step back.
A crash outside jolted her. Metal, something falling, rolling.
Then she realized what it must be.
She slumped against the sink in relief. The possum that lived under the cottage. Of course. It was getting into the trash again.
Get hold of yourself.
She breathed slowly, deeply, and felt her heart slow down. She ran a glass of water and drank it straight down, washing the cottony dryness from her mouth and throat.
Then she froze, the empty glass halfway between her mouth and the sink. She could have sworn she heard another noise. Only her imagination, she told herself. But it had sounded like a car engine starting up somewhere among the trees behind her house. She listened intently, but heard nothing more.
The silence of the winter night settled around her again.
At nine in the morning Tom, accompanied by Brandon, pulled into the swath of mud, snow, and iced-over puddles that served as the O’Dells’ front yard. They lived near Mrs. Turner but appeared to be several steps farther down the economic ladder. Bare clapboard showed through where the green paint had peeled off, and a downspout leaned away from the gutter, shimmying in the wind.
In answer to Tom’s knock, a woman cracked the door a few inches to peer at him and Brandon. A tangled mass of dull red hair surrounded a face so lean that her cheekbones threatened to slice through papery skin.
“Mrs. O’Dell?” Tom asked.
“Who wants to know?”
He introduced himself and Brandon. “We need to talk to Rudy.”
She stared at Tom for a moment, her watery blue eyes taking in his uniform before shifting to examine his face. “You John Bridger’s boy?”
“Yes, ma’am, my father investigated Mrs. McClure’s disappearance. Now I’m investigating her murder.”
“So you come straight here to blame my Rudy.”
“We just need to ask him some questions, then we’ll be on our way.”
Tom watched the play of emotions in her eyes and realized she was as likely to slam the door as to invite them in. He placed a palm on the door to keep her from shutting it without warning.
He was disappointed, though, when she stepped back and opened the door wider. If her son was in the house, she wouldn’t be letting them in. Rudy had probably fled out the back when he saw the police car pull up.
“Take a look.” She gestured. “See for yourself he ain’t here.”
Followed by Brandon, Tom entered a stuffy, overheated living room. The fireplace was unused, but hot dry air rattled from a baseboard vent.
Mrs. O’Dell stationed herself next to a battered tweed couch, pulled her sweater closed, folded her arms. She was trying hard to be defiant, but she looked scared to death, maybe for herself, more likely for her son. Tom thought of Pauline McClure’s skull, laid open by an ax. This frightened little woman might be shielding a murderer.
“Where is he?” Tom asked.
“You already made up your mind it was Rudy, and you want to put him on Death Row. Well, I ain’t helpin’ you kill my boy.” Her voice wavered on the words.
“I haven’t made up my mind about anything. I want to hear his side of the story.”
“Your daddy never cared about Rudy’s side. He accused him without a bit of proof.” She shook her head. “I wish to God my boy never went to work for that woman. Uppity trash, that’s all she was. Thought she was so fine, catchin’ a rich husband. Well, she was still colored, and no better’n any of you.”
She glared at Tom as if daring him to take offense. The middle class and the moneyed class had their streak of prejudice, but it always seemed to Tom that it ran deepest and most bitter in people at the bottom of the heap.
“If it makes you feel better to look down on me,” he said, “go right ahead. But I’ve got a job to do, and I intend to find your son.”
He glanced around at the worn furniture, the open
National Enquirer
on the coffee table, the knitting needles and yarn on the arm of the easy chair. If any man lived with the widow O’Dell, he hadn’t left an impression. “Troy Shackleford told me Rudy was living here.”
Her mulish toughness vanished the second she heard Shackleford’s name. She stiffened and pulled in a breath. “Why’re you talkin’ to him about me? I ain’t got nothin’ to do with none of the Shacklefords. I steer clear.”
“Has Troy threatened you?” Tom asked.
“I didn’t say that! I didn’t say nothin’ against him. You can’t claim I did.” She trembled, her bony shoulders vibrating. She might be afraid of the police, but she was downright terrified of Shackleford.
“We won’t repeat anything you tell us,” Tom said.
“You listen to me. I got to live here. If it gets around I was talkin’ to deputies about the Shacklefords—” She broke off, stalked to the front door, yanked it open. “You want to come back, you come with a warrant.”
Tom wanted to shake her till the truth fell out, but the loathing and fright on her face told him she was done talking.
The second he and Brandon cleared the door, it slammed behind them. Almost as warm a goodbye, Tom thought, as Mrs. Turner had given them.
He opened the door of the cruiser, but closed it again without getting in. “Where would O’Dell hide if he saw a police car drive up?”
“The wood shed?” Brandon suggested.
“We can’t look in it without a warrant.” Tom scanned the hillside behind the house. Near the top, almost hidden among the trees, he thought he saw a curl of smoke. Hard to tell with the winter sun hanging directly above the ridge and shining in his eyes. He squinted. Yeah, that was a cabin up there. “Come on, let’s take a hike.”
They rounded the house, crushing a path through tall weeds. Catbriars caught at the wool of Tom’s pants. Out back, he and Brandon surveyed the mud and snow in the yard and on the steps. No fresh footprints, no sign they’d flushed O’Dell from the house.
They set off up the steep incline through the bare-limbed oaks and maples. Halfway to the cabin, they stopped to rest, and Tom looked down at the house. Mrs. O’Dell stood on the back porch, moving a mirror back and forth to make sunlight flash off the glass.
“Damn it.” Tom swung around to look above them. “He’s going to take off.”
They scrambled up the mountain, their boots slipping on mud and matted leaves. They’d gone ten yards when Tom heard the crack of a rifle shot, and a split second later a bullet slammed into an oak two feet from his head.
“Take cover!” Tom yelled. Brandon threw himself behind a tree trunk. Tom pressed his back to a maple and plucked his radio off his belt. He keyed it with shaking fingers. “Come in, come in.” Static. “Shit! We’re out of radio range.”
Another shot rang out. “Jesus Christ,” Tom muttered. He felt like tossing the useless radio into the nearest ravine. If he lived long enough, he might.
Brandon looked over at him with wide, scared eyes. “We can’t get any backup?”
“We’re on our own.” Tom tried to swallow the hard, dry lump in his throat. A trickle of cold sweat crawled down his spine. “If we start down, he could shoot us in the back. We can flank him, try to take him. You game?”
“Yes, sir, I’m up for it.” Brandon bounced on his toes and looked ready to jump out of his skin.
“Draw your weapon, and try to stay covered.”
Do it. Go.
Gun in hand and his heart banging against his ribs, Tom spun away from the tree and ran in a half-crouch to the right. Brandon took off to the left.
Rifle fire split the air again and again and bullets sprayed the ground and trees.
Keep moving, don’t give him a target.
Tom saw the cabin clearly now. Log walls, one window in front, chopped wood piled outside the door, smoke twisting from the stone chimney.
Where the hell was O’Dell firing from? Inside, outside? A bullet whistled by Tom’s head, glanced off a tree and sent shredded bark flying. He kept going, heard bullets hit farther away, aimed at Brandon. Through the trees Tom saw Brandon weaving his way upward. He was just a kid. If he got hurt, if he got killed— Tom shoved away thoughts of Brandon’s family, his girlfriend.
Keep moving.
Tom zig-zagged up the mountain from tree to tree. A couple of minutes passed before he realized the shooting had stopped. He paused and leaned against a tree to catch his breath. Every gasp of icy air made his lungs ache.
He’s just waiting for us
. O’Dell wanted them to get closer so he wouldn’t miss next time. With the right kind of rifle, he could blow their heads apart.
Tom approached the cabin from the right and Brandon closed in on the left. When they reached the edge of the small clearing, twenty feet from the cabin, Tom took cover behind a tree and gave Brandon a hand signal to stop. “Police!” Tom shouted. “Drop your weapon and come out with your hands up!”
No answer. All Tom heard was his own hoarse breathing.
“O’Dell! You’re surrounded. Come out now and you won’t get hurt.”
Silence from the cabin.
How long since O’Dell had fired a shot? Five minutes?
Tom waited another minute but no response came. He swung away from the tree and sprinted across the clearing to the cabin. He flattened his back against the wall next to the door. Brandon dashed forward, dropped into a crouch below the window. Tom rattled the door with his fist. “O’Dell! Come out now if you want to get out of this alive.”
Not a sound from inside. Tom’s bare fingers, wrapped around his pistol, felt like sticks of ice. Across from him, Brandon’s face twitched with excitement underlay by pure terror.
Tom banged on the door again. “Don’t make things worse for yourself.”
Long seconds, endless minutes passed.
“You think he’s even in there?” Brandon asked.
“He could’ve been outside when he saw his mother’s signal.” Tom scanned the woods. “He might be watching us right now. Come on, let’s go in, but take it slow.”
Tom reached sideways, turned the knob, pushed the door open.
God help us,
he thought.
God help us all.
Gripping his gun in both hands, he pivoted away from the wall to face the doorway. He heard the crack of a shot, but when the bullet hit, he was more surprised than anything, as if somebody had come up from behind and punched him hard on the arm. He staggered over the threshold and dropped to his knees inside the cabin.
“Captain!” Brandon rushed in and knelt beside him. “You’re hit. You’re bleeding— Your arm—”
A splinter from the plank floor pierced Tom’s knee, then he became aware of a greater pain, burning and throbbing at once, in his upper left arm. “Close the door, for God’s sake.”
Brandon scrambled to his feet and slammed the door.
His head buzzing, Tom holstered his pistol and examined his arm. Blood had already seeped through a ragged hole in the front of his jacket sleeve and saturated the wool fabric. The stain spread as he watched, fascinated and horrified. He’d never been shot before. He felt around and located a neater hole in the back of the sleeve. He stuck a finger in it, trying to judge the size of the entry wound. Deer rifle, maybe.
Damned lucky to be alive.
Pain pulsed outward until his entire upper body throbbed.
He glanced around the cabin’s single small room, hoping against reason to find a telephone he could use to call for backup. A kerosene lantern hooked to a ceiling beam cast a feeble light that feathered to darkness in the corners. On the iron bed, quilts and blankets formed a rumpled mound, topped by a potato chip bag. Heat radiated from a wood stove, and a jumble of food jars and boxes on a wooden table gave off a sour odor. No phone anywhere.
How the hell could they get out of here? What possessed him to charge up the mountain, Brandon in tow, after O’Dell started shooting? They should have retreated, gone for reinforcements. But, he reminded himself, they would have risked being shot in the back and O’Dell would have disappeared.
Brandon, on his knees, peeked left and right out the window. “Hey!” he yelled. “There he is! There he is!” Then Brandon was up and out the door.
“Come back here!” Cursing, Tom pushed to his feet and ran outside.
Brandon dashed around the cabin to the rear. Tom chased after him. Far ahead of them, a man with long red hair and beard jogged upward through the trees. Blue jays screamed alarm as the man passed, and a great horned owl, startled from sleep, glided away. Tom and Brandon lagged a hundred feet behind him when O’Dell vanished over the ridge. By the time they reached the top, O’Dell was nowhere in sight.
“God damn it.” Tom bent over, hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. His leg muscles burned. The pain in his arm spiked with each beat of his heart. “We don’t have a chance in hell of catching him.”
Brandon leaned against a tree and gasped, “He’s probably running straight to some kinfolk who’ll hide him.”
“Or help him get out of the county.” If O’Dell wasn’t guilty of murdering Pauline McClure, he’d picked an unconvincing way to protest his innocence. “We’ve got to start a search before it’s too late. The damned car radio won’t work out here. We need a phone, but something tells me Mrs. O’Dell won’t let us use hers.”
“Mrs. Turner’s right down the road. But, hey, we gotta get you to the hospital. You’re bleeding like crazy.”
Tom looked down. Blood soaked his jacket sleeve to the wrist. “It looks worse than it is.” He hoped. “We’re calling headquarters before we do anything else. Keep an eye out. O’Dell could’ve circled around to ambush us.”
All the way down the mountain Tom kept his pistol raised, at the ready. The woods had gone dead quiet, the birds shocked into silence by the ruckus. He smelled his own blood, mixed with the mold of decaying leaves underfoot, and the rank odor made him queasy.
Every few seconds he glanced behind him, searching for a glint of metal, a movement. A rustling noise made him spin around, gun up, finger on the trigger. He stared into the eyes of a gray squirrel that had leapt onto a nearby branch. Tom drew a deep breath, tried to make his heart slow down. The squirrel followed them, sailing from branch to branch overhead, as if it were escorting Tom and Brandon out of the woods.