“Maybe she heard something up here on the fire lane,” I said, “but there’s no sign of what it was.”
We continued uphill for fifteen minutes and then retraced our steps, passing where we’d come out of the pines and going down the fire lane an equal distance. We came to a switchback in the lane that widened out into a small plateau. A huge old oak stuck thick limbs out over the bend, but again, there were no recent vehicle signs. The sun was slanting down toward the western mountains, whose ridgelines were backlit by an increasingly orange sky. The trees were starting to throw long shadows, and the shepherds flopped down along the side of the fire lane, panting.
“This happened a month and a half ago?” I asked.
She nodded, knowing what I was thinking. Looking for tracks was pointless.
We went back up to the point in the pine woods where we’d first come out and started back down toward the lake. I kept looking for any signs that the probationer had come this way, but there were none. The woods were thick enough to be getting dark, and I wondered what might be watching us. Halfway down through the woods, Mary Ellen stepped into a stump hole hidden by the pine needles and turned an ankle, so we had to stop and let her rub the soreness out for a few minutes. I held her hand while she hobbled the rest of the way to the edge of the trees, but when we stepped out onto the hillside, she pointed excitedly down at the lake.
“Look,” she said. “Red rocks.”
I saw what she was talking about. Where a spine of the big ridge came down into the lake, there were three large boulders about twenty feet offshore. The setting sun was painting them dark orange, if not red.
“Okay,” I said. “But what are we looking for?”
“Beats me, but let’s go down there,” she said. “I’m ready for some flat ground.”
The two shepherds started down with us but then stopped and looked back up into the woods. I noticed and turned around. Both dogs were looking intently into the tree line, but the advancing shadows made it impossible for me to see anything. I called them to come on, and they turned around and rejoined us, albeit reluctantly.
When we finally reached the rocks, they weren’t really red anymore, even though the western sky was. They were just three twenty-foot-high boulders that had rolled down the slope ten thousand years ago and stopped here, probably many years before the lake had been created by the TVA dam at the other end. A dead tree created a bridge of sorts from the shore out to the first rock, and I, using my stick for balance, went out on the trunk to look into the water.
Where something glinted on the bottom. I bent down to see what it was and then swore softly.
“What?” Mary Ellen called from the shore.
“This lake belongs to the power company, right?” I asked. “Not Robbins County?”
“Right,” she said. “What do you see?”
“I think it’s a body,” I called back to her. “All wrapped up in chains.”
I got back to the lodge just after ten o’clock that evening. I let the dogs run around for a few minutes while I fixed myself a scotch and then called them back in. Carrigan County deputies had been the first responders to our report of a body in the lake, followed by the Park Service. Mary Ellen and I had managed to extract ourselves from the fun and games around eight. We’d had a quick dinner in town, and then she’d gone home. I had the sense that discovering the body had upset her, and that I’d resumed my role as harbinger of death and destruction. She hadn’t said anything, but I’d felt it.
Sheriff Hayes had given me a head-shaking look when he arrived on scene. Typhoid Mary’s older brother was back in town. No one had recognized the body, because the fish had been at it for a while, so identification was going to take some time and applied organic chemistry. The sheriff hadn’t been happy when he found out why we’d gone up there looking. Mary Ellen hadn’t quite understood that, until I pointed out that our getting the girl to talk and then reveal a solid lead might just possibly make the Carrigan County Sheriff’s Office look bad. I had called Bobby Lee Baggett back in Triboro to tell him what we’d found. Bobby Lee pointed out that if the girl had witnessed a murder, then discovery of the body put her in danger. I hadn’t thought of that, but I got Mary Ellen to say something to Sheriff Hayes. It turned out that he had thought of that, so now Mary Ellen was on his shit list as well. I called Baby Greenberg’s number and told the voice mail what we’d found and where. I decided not to add to my reputation by telling Sheriff Hayes what I’d witnessed on the road to Rocky Falls.
The single malt was a welcome relief, and, as best I could tell, the shepherds weren’t mad at me. I walked out to the screened porch that stuck out over the creek bank. The night was cool and clear. A million tree frogs were chirring in the darkness, and the creek splashed pleasantly under the cabin. I was about to sit down when the shepherds woofed from the front porch. Then someone knocked on the screen door.
I hadn’t left any lights on, but there were some solar sidewalk lights out front and I could see that a slender, dark-haired woman was standing out there. The shepherds were sitting up, but they’d been trained not to execute a canine feeding frenzy display just because a stranger showed up at the front door. They made their presence known, and that usually took care of the Bible salesmen and prospective intruders.
“Yes?” I said from behind the screen door.
“Lieutenant Richter?” she said in a husky, low-pitched voice. I couldn’t see her features. “I’m Carrie Harper Santangelo, SBI. Sheriff Baggett made a call? If you can turn on a light I can show you my ID.”
I laughed and opened the screen door for her. “I would but I don’t know where the switch is. Come on in. Don’t mind them-they’ve been fed.”
“That’s good,” she said, eyeing the two big shepherds as she came in. “I’m told that it’s the ones who don’t go nuts when the doorbell rings that bear watching.”
“All dogs bite,” I recited. “I’m having a scotch on the back porch-care to join me?”
“Sure,” she said. She was five-seven or -eight, jet black hair, with a classical, aquiline nose. She was of either Italian or American Indian descent. She was wearing jeans, a white blouse, and a loose-fitting, lightweight blue blazer. Once in the kitchen she presented her creds, which I dutifully examined. I got her a drink, and we went out onto the back porch. I brought the bottle. I saw her eyeing all the wedding suite accoutrements.
“Which office?” I asked.
“Raleigh. I’m an inspector in the professional standards division at headquarters. I drove out today. If this is the bridal suite, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“All I could get on short notice. Plus, if I drink too much, a bed’s never farther than about five feet away.”
“You don’t look like a man with a drinking problem,” she said. Her complexion was very smooth in the light spilling out of the kitchen. She had dark, almost black eyes, and she looked right at me when she spoke. Professional standards work, known as internal affairs in some jurisdictions, encouraged the direct approach.
“No, I guess not,” I said. She kept her blazer buttoned even though she was sitting down. I could make out the lump of a shoulder rig just under her left shoulder.
“So,” she said. “M. C. Mingo. I understand you’ve met?”
“Today,” I said. I then explained what I was doing up here in Carrigan County, my prior relationship with the Park Service and Mary Ellen Goode, and why I’d touched base with Bobby Lee. She listened without interrupting. I had the impression that some part of that dark-eyed brain was recording my every word. Or the other lump in her pocket was a voice-activated recorder.
“Tell me something, if you don’t mind,” she said, when I’d finished. “What was the deal with your not testifying in that mountain lion case?”
I sighed. Inquiring minds always wanted to know, especially if they were cops. “How much time you got?” I asked warily.