And what in the world was this “florist” stuff? The druggy world came up with more interesting code names for their addictions than even the government. But I’d come up to find out what happened to Janey Howard, not to chase druggies. I think that chasing druggies has become a form of white-collar welfare for law enforcement. As far as I’m concerned, drugs ought to be decriminalized and sold at government outlets for tax revenue. Let the addicts shoot up and die if they want to-meth, heroin, ‘ludes, coke, tranks, ups, downs, you name it, they are all just manifestations of Mr. Darwin’s theory of natural selection. I just wanted to quit finding the miserable bastards climbing through my basement windows.
The dogs had gone out of sight down the creek banks. My boots were crunching through pea gravel, so I knew I must still be on the lodge grounds. I noticed a side path that branched away from the main path to my right. I wondered what personal connection the handsome SBI agent had with Robbins County and the Creighs, and I made a mental note to check that out before I called her, if I ever called her. Her not checking in with the local sheriff’s office was not only unusual but outside of standard procedure. The SBI was usually called in by local law, but occasionally they were investigating said local law.
Then I saw the two men standing on the path, pointing shotguns at me.
I stopped in my tracks, just barely restraining myself from saying something stupid like What do you want? Both of them wore dark pants and shirts, and they were sporting full beards. No black hats, but definitely a pair of faces born to decorate a wanted poster. One of them stepped forward and motioned with his shotgun for me to come with them. I hesitated, hoping the dogs would reappear, but when the second man reversed the shotgun in his hands to form a club, I said all right and went with them. Both of them looked perfectly capable of clubbing me senseless and then dragging me to wherever it was we were going.
We walked quickly down the narrow path toward a pickup truck, with one of them in front and one behind me. Their clothes smelled of wood smoke and pine needles. I thought of a dozen different escape moves, but none of them stacked up well against shotguns at three feet. If they’d meant to kill me, they could have already done that and then thrown my body into the fast-moving creek.
Once we got out to the parking lot, one of them got in on the driver’s side while the other motioned for me to get into the bed of the truck. The man jumped up behind me, told me to lie down on my belly, and then clipped my wrists and legs to chain manacles welded to the corners of the bed of the truck. He prodded me in the back with the shotgun.
“Lookin’ to go see the Baby Jesus?” he whispered. His accent was mountain, but not tree-stump ignorant. The pine scent from the man’s clothes was really strong up close. Which was why the dogs had missed them, I realized. It was an old deer hunter’s trick. They’d double back eventually and then go nuts when they couldn’t find me.
“Not especially,” I said.
“Then keep still,” he growled.
Thirty minutes and a gear-grinding climb later up a very dark mountain road, the truck slowed, turned so hard I thought we were going to tip over, bounced over some serious ruts and then choked to a stop. I felt tenderized after all that time on the steel bed of the truck, and I had no idea of where we were, except that it was up. They got me out of the bed and marched me along a crooked path leading still farther up, one of them again leading, one behind. I stumbled a few times as I worked the kinks out, but they didn’t restrain me. After a ten-minute walk through the trees and out across a mountain meadow, I saw dim lights above, where a long log cabin was perched on the hillside.
They marched me up the slope to the cabin, where I could see two people sitting in rockers on the front porch, flanked by lanterns hanging on the front wall. One of them had to be Grinny Creigh. She was a heavy woman, with short, graying red hair cut in a surfer bowl, a broad forehead, a round, florid, double-chinned face, narrow-set eyes, a down-turned, thin-lipped mouth, and a pug nose. She wore a shapeless black dress to cover her ponderous body. There were massive fat rolls on her upper arms, but plenty of muscle, too. Her ankles had cuffs of fat above them and were indistinguishable from her calves, but she had small feet. In her left hand she held an old-fashioned paddle fan with which she was keeping her face cool. Her right hand held a sweating glass of what looked like tea.
Sitting next to her on the porch had to be Nathan, Grinny’s son. Even sitting, he was very tall, well over six feet, with elongated arms and legs, massive hands, and an oversized, bony head. He had a pale, square forehead and a long-bearded lantern jaw that made him look like a caricature of Frankenstein’s monster. His beard was long enough to rest on his chest. He wore loose-fitting blue denim overalls over a long-sleeved white cotton shirt and canvas-topped, size really-large Army surplus tropical combat boots. There was a deerskin bag at his feet from which the handles of several knives projected. He watched me with calm eyes while whittling on a piece of wood.
Standing just inside the front screen door was another woman, whom I recognized as the buxom hottie I’d seen at M. C. Mingo’s office. The two lanterns cast enough light to shadow the interior of the cabin, so I could barely see her expression, but I thought she recognized me. Now here’s an unholy trinity, I thought. For a moment I thought I saw some other faces, smaller, pale ovals bobbing around in the interior shadows behind the young woman, but I couldn’t be sure. I heard some noises off to either side of me and realized that there were other people out there in the shadows. Good deal. I heard some dogs stirring behind a fence made out of solid sheets of galvanized tin roofing nailed vertically to posts and boards.
“This him?” the fat woman asked.
“He’s the one,” said the girl from behind the screen door. She pressed her front up against it, creating two white circles against the screen in the shadow of the doorway. I’m sure I was supposed to get all hot and bothered.
Grinny Creigh leaned forward in her chair, making it and the porch floorboards creak. “Where you from, mister?” she asked.
“Manceford County,” I said. I’d decided not to waste energy protesting my abduction, hoping that, if I acted calmly, none of them would get violent.
“You been nosin’ around, askin’ questions down’ere in Rocky Falls?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I did talk to the sheriff.”
“You the one found that deader in the lake yonder?”
“That’s right.”
“How’d you know where to go lookin’?”
“I’m an investigator. I investigated.”
Grinny leaned back in her rocker and gave me an annoyed look. My sarcasm was apparently not much appreciated.
“Got a smart mouth on him,” Nathan said softly. His voice was high-pitched and nasal, like M. C. Mingo’s.
Grinny tilted her head fractionally, and I sensed the man behind me raise his fist to smack me on the head. I bent forward and whirled to his left, blocking the blow with an upraised left forearm and clubbing him in the groin with my stiffened right forearm. The man gasped as he doubled over, but instead of quitting, he bared his teeth and tried to bite my arm. I drove my right elbow into his temple, dropping him like a stone. My second captor, much older than the first, hadn’t moved yet, so I kicked him in the shin as hard as I could. He yelled, dropped his shotgun, and collapsed over his splintered shin. I extended my knee as he went down, catching him right under the chin in a tooth-clicking crack that knocked him cold. It all took less than fifteen seconds. I turned around to face the people on the porch and found myself looking into the bores of a double-barreled ten-gauge held by Nathan. The girl behind the screen was staring openmouthed at me. My left arm ached.