“How much scotch you got?” she replied.
“That much time,” I said. “Okay, let’s do the abridged version.”
When I’d finished, she nodded and sipped some scotch. “And now you’re private and working for the district court. What’s that like?”
“It’s not like being boss of the MCAT in Manceford County.”
“What’s the Park Service think about your being here?”
“Less and less,” I said. “Apparently their headquarters wanted this mess with the probationer all to go away. Bad for park business. After today, it’s probably going to reflash. So: M. C. Mingo?”
“Right,” she said. “M. C. Mingo. Sheriff of Robbins County for the past twenty-odd years. No opposition at election time. Ever. Related to the evil hag who runs most if not all of the drug trade in Robbins County.”
“That would be Vivian Creigh.”
“The one and only Grinny. Our intel is that she runs it like a Mafia don-stays up on Spider Mountain and controls every pound of meth, grass, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and even the damn ginseng. She has soldiers, and they work for a capo, her son, Nathan. Her father ran it before her and reportedly invited his three grown sons to settle who’d be in charge when he checked out. One brother died exploring an old gold mine, which caved in following a mysterious explosion. A second brother accused Grinny of having a hand in the matter, and then he died after being set upon by a pack of wild dogs.”
I nodded. “I’ve seen those bad boys.”
“Probably not,” she said. “This all happened when Grinny was eighteen. She’s fifty now, or thereabouts.”
“Then their descendants, maybe.” I told her about watching the dog pack take down the fat man. She whistled quietly.
“What happened to the third brother?” I asked.
“He became the sheriff of Robbins County.”
“Ah-ha!”
“Yes, indeed.”
“So-then there’s Nathan. Grinny was married?”
“Probably not. There’s Nathan and a daughter, Rowena, who are reportedly by different fathers, who have themselves long since gone into the cold, cold ground. A Creigh family tradition, apparently.”
“Spider Mountain. As in black widow.”
“That’s what some of the locals call it. Interestingly, nobody in law enforcement has ever seen her. We know where her place is, but that’s about it.”
“Why is that?” I asked. “I mean, you and the DEA guys seem to know a lot about the Creigh clan. Why hasn’t some state or federal task force gone in there and hauled the whole bunch in for questioning?”
She tinkled the ice in her empty glass, and I poured her a refill. “You know how it is,” she said. “The SBI comes in only when we’re invited in. M. C. Mingo declines to invite. The DEA prefers to work alone. The Bureau comes in only if it’s big enough and there’s positive PR potential. Right now they don’t consider western North Carolina as having positive PR potential, especially after the Eric Rudolph fiasco. Homeland Security is obsessing with grubbing out crazed Muslims. The state attorney general has his hands full with urban crime. The sheriff is related to the kingpin. That’s why not.”
“Amazing.”
She shrugged. “Personally, I don’t think anyone cared all that much until the meth epidemic began. Hillbillies running ‘shine, maybe some grass, whacking each other out with nineteenth-century rifles over some hundred-year-distant insult-big deal, as long as they kept it in the hollers.”
“But meth is changing all that?”
“Yes. There’s a river of the stuff coming out of these hills, all under the control of Grinny Creigh. We think. We just can’t prove it.”
“Big money?”
“At the retail end, yes. But we don’t believe it’s all about the money for her. I mean, hell, you’ve been to Rocky Falls. What would big bucks get you there-a double helping of grits? She lives on the side of a mountain in a log cabin with a privy, for crying out loud. No, it’s about control. The Creigh clan has run the dark side of things in Robbins County for decades. Grinny Creigh is a spider: Step out onto her web and here she comes, fangs and all.”
“So it’s the sheer quantity, not just the basic crime?”
“Yes. That’s supposedly why Greenberg and his crew are working up here.”
“Why do you say supposedly?”
“Because they don’t seem to do much. On the other hand, that’s a secretive bunch, so nobody really knows.”
“I met him the other day.”
“We heard,” she said. I thought I saw the ghost of a smile cross her severe face.
I grinned back. “They got uppity around my shepherds. What can I say?”
“Baby’s a city boy,” she said. “A little jumpy and aggressive. But as far as we know, he’s a good cop.”
“He’s a frustrated cop right now,” I said. “Says he can’t figure a way into Robbins County, either. He was interested in the fact that I might be able to go up there and shake some bushes.”
“Well, there you are,” she said. “Work a deal. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have some feds behind you.”
“Only thing is, I think they’d be way behind me,” I said, recalling Mary Ellen’s comment. “Besides, I didn’t come up here to solve the meth problem. I came to help Dr. Goode find out what happened to her probationer. And I think we got closer today.”
“Interesting that you’re helping her but not the Park Service.”
I nodded. “True, but they’re apparently scared shitless of getting into a blood feud with the Creigh clan, who probably know the park better than any ten rangers. I guess I can see their point.”
“I can’t,” she said. “You let a bunch of crooks, even colorful ones, know you’re scared of them, they get bolder and bolder. What we need up here is a SEAL team. Send them into Robbins County and let them start cutting some prominent throats in the night until all this meth crap stops. Unfortunately, they’re all otherwise engaged these days.”
I laughed. “Don’t remember ever meeting a bloodthirsty SBI agent before,” I said. “Usually you guys are all about the paper chase.”
She didn’t smile back at me. “There’s another thing,” she said. “One we don’t understand at all. The state police collared a guy for vehicular homicide in Robbins County. Basically, a case of serious road rage. Nudged a tourist minivan off a cliff with his pickup because they were going too slow. At one point he implied that they better not mess with him because he worked for Grinny Creigh.”
“The state guys just love to be intimidated.”
“It’s almost as good as resisting arrest. Anyway, long story short, their detective bureau tried to turn him, without success. In the process of questioning him, though, he dangled a tidbit, saying that Grinny was a ‘florist.’ The cops were baffled, and when this guy realized they didn’t understand the code, he stopped talking.”
“A florist? As in, say, hallucinogenic botanicals?”
She shrugged. “Who the hell knows? Street slang morphs daily. Nobody’s ever heard the term. But if you do get involved in Robbins County and hear that word, we’d love to know what kind of new and original evil shit that is.”
She fished in her pocket and produced a business card. “Keep this handy,” she said. “You find a hole in Robbins County that regular law enforcement can drive through, please call me. If I can’t talk my bosses into exploiting it, I’ll take some leave, come up here, and go after it myself.”
“That sounds like there’s a personal angle,” I said.
She looked right back at me. “Anything’s possible, Lieutenant. By the way, I haven’t informed the local law that I’m here. I’d appreciate your keeping that confidence. In the meantime, be careful. The hills really are alive and all that good stuff.”
After she’d left, I slipped on a jacket and took the dogs out for a last call among the defenseless trees. The cabins were mostly dark and the shepherds had ranged ahead down a creekside path. This was getting interesting, I thought. First a DEA agent, and now an SBI agent, both complaining about not being able to penetrate Robbins County, and both offering to partner up if I should succeed. And why should I succeed where law enforcement had failed? All I’d done was to prize some useful information out of the injured probationer. We’d found a body, but there was still no direct evidentiary tie to Janey Howard. I wondered if that “grinning hangman” business meant the guy in the lake, assuming it was a man, had been hanged. It certainly hadn’t been your usual park excursion.