“I’d like you to try, though. If we can find Amy, there might be some clue that will help us find the man who did this.”
“I tell you what: you send the sheriff to see me, and I’ll have a talk with him. If it suits him, I’ll do my level best to find her. But I have to speak to him first.”
“Why?”
“Professional courtesy,” I said, which was partly true, but, also, because I wanted to be sure she was who she claimed to be. City people usually do give me a fake name out of embarrassment, but I didn’t want to chance her being a reporter on the Amy Albright case, or, worse, someone on the killer’s side. Besides, I wanted to stay on good terms with Sheriff Spencer Arrowood. We go back a long way. He used to ride out this way on his bike when he was a kid, and he’d sit and listen to tales about the Indian times-stories I’d heard from my grandma-or I’d take him fishing at the trout pool in Broom Creek. One year, his older brother Cal talked me into taking the two of them out owling, since they were too young to hunt. I walked them across every ridge over the holler, and taught them to look for the sweep of wings above the tall grass in the field, and to listen for the sound of the waking owl, ready to track his prey by the slightest sound, the shade of movement. I taught them how to make owl calls, to where we couldn’t tell if it was an owl calling out from the woods or one of us. Look out, I told them. When the owl calls your name, it means death.
Later on, they became owls, I reckon. Cal Arrowood went to Vietnam, and died in a dark jungle full of screeching birds. I felt him go. And Spencer grew up to be sheriff, so I reckon he hunts prey of his own by the slightest sound, and by one false move. A lot of people had heard him call their name.
I hadn’t seen much of Spencer since he grew up, but I hoped we were still buddies. Now that he was sheriff, I knew he could make trouble for me if he wanted to, and so far he never has. I wanted to keep things cordial.
“All right,” said Evelyn. “I can’t promise they’ll come out here, but I will tell them what you said. Will you call and tell me what you’re going to do?”
“No phone,” I said, jerking my thumb back toward the shack. “Send the sheriff out here. He’ll let you know.”
She must have gone to the sheriff’s office straightaway after leaving my place. I thought she would. I wasn’t surprised at that, because I could see that she wasn’t doing much else right now besides brood about her loss. She needed an ending so that she could go on. I had tried to make her take a milk jug of herb tea, because I never saw anybody so much in need of a night’s sleep, but she wouldn’t have it. “Just find my girl for me,” she’d said. “Help us find the man who did it, and put him away. Then I’ll sleep.”
When the brown sheriff’s car rolled up my dirt road about noon the next day, I was expecting it. I was sitting in my cane chair on the porch whittling a face onto a hickory broom handle when I saw the flash of the gold star on the side of the car door, and the sheriff himself got out. I waved, and he touched his hat, like they used to do in cowboy movies. I reckon little boys who grow up to be sheriff watch a lot of cowboy movies in their day. I didn’t mind Spencer Arrowood, though. He hadn’t changed all that much from when I knew him. There were gray flecks in his fair hair, but they didn’t show much, and he never did make it to six feet, but he’d managed to keep his weight down, so he looked all right. He was kin to the Pigeon Roost Arrowoods, and like them he was smart and honest without being a glad-hander. He seemed a little young to be the high sheriff to an old-timer like me, but that’s never a permanent problem for anybody, is it? Anyhow, I trusted him, and that’s worth a lot in these sorry times.
I made him sit down in the other cane chair, because I hate people hovering over me while I whittle. He asked did I remember him.
“Spencer,” I said, “I’d have to be drinking something a lot stronger than chamomile tea to forget you.”
He grinned, but then he seemed to remember what sad errand had brought him out here, and the faint lines came back around his eyes. “I guess you’ve heard about this case I’m on.”
“I was told. It sounds to me like we’ve got a human sheep killer in the fold. I hate to hear that. Killing for pleasure is an unclean act. I said I’d help the law any way I could to dispose of the killer, if it was all right with you.”
“That’s what I heard,” the sheriff said. “For what it’s worth, the TBI agrees with you about the sort of person we’re after, although they didn’t liken it to sheep killing. They meant the same thing, though.”
“So Mrs. Albright did come to see you?” I asked him, keeping my eyes fixed on the curl of the beard of that hickory face.
“Sure did, Rattler,” said the sheriff. “She tells me that you’ve agreed to try to locate Amy’s body.”
“It can’t do no harm to try,” I said. “Unless you mind too awful much. I don’t reckon you believe in such like.”
He smiled. “It doesn’t matter what I believe if it works, does it, Rattler? You’re welcome to try. But, actually, I’ve thought of another way that you might be useful in this case.”
“What’s that?”
“You heard about the other murdered girl, didn’t you? They found her body in an abandoned well up on Locust Ridge.”
“Whose land?”
“National forest now. The homestead has been in ruins for at least a century. But that’s a remote area of the county. It’s a couple of miles from the Appalachian Trail, and just as far from the river, so I wouldn’t expect an outsider to know about it. The only way up there is on an old county road. The TBI psychologist thinks the killer has dumped Amy Albright’s body somewhere in the vicinity of the other burial. He says they do that. Serial killers, I mean. They establish territories.”
“Painters do that,” I said, and the sheriff remembered his roots well enough to know that I meant a mountain lion, not a fellow with an easel. We called them painters in the old days, when there were more of them in the mountains than just a scream and a shadow every couple of years. City people think I’m crazy to live on the mountain where the wild creatures are, and then they shut themselves up in cities with the most pitiless killers ever put on this earth-each other. I marvel at the logic.
“Since you reckon he’s leaving his victims in one area, why haven’t you searched it?”
“Oh, we have,” said the sheriff, looking weary. “I’ve had volunteers combing that mountain, and they haven’t turned up a thing. There’s a lot of square miles of forest to cover up there. Besides, I think our man has been more careful about concealment this time. What we need is more help. Not more searchers, but a more precise location.”
“Where do I come in? You said you wanted me to do more than just find the body. Not that I can even promise to do that.”
“I want to get your permission to try something that may help us catch this individual,” Spencer Arrowood was saying.
“What’s that?”
“I want you to give some newspaper interviews. Local TV, even, if we can talk them into it. I want to publicize the fact that you are gong to search for Amy Albright on Locust Ridge. Give them your background as a psychic and healer. I want a lot of coverage on this.”
I shuddered. You didn’t have to be psychic to foresee the outcome of that. A stream of city people in colorless cars, wanting babies and diet tonics.
“When were you planning to search for the body, Rattler?”
“I was waiting on you. Any day will suit me, as long as it isn’t raining. Rain distracts me.”
“Okay, let’s announce that you’re conducting the psychic search on Locust Ridge next Tuesday. I’ll send some reporters out here to interview you. Give them the full treatment.”