“Either way, technically not Hayes’s problem, either.”
“Not his jurisdiction,” she corrected. “He’s mad as hell about it, and they did more than they had to. It’s just-”
“Right,” I said. “Some cases are just no-win for anybody. So you guys want to hire me? Is that it?”
She put a hand to her mouth in surprise. “Us? The Park Service? Oh, no, we can’t do that. I mean-”
I grinned at her. “I know that. I was just teasing. Besides, my name isn’t exactly enshrined in a place of honor here. I thought I was going to have to call for the dogs, the way that ranger was looking at me.”
“You’ve brought them along?”
“Don’t go anywhere without them,” I said. I saw the alarm flicker in her eyes again and mentally kicked myself. “Why don’t we have dinner,” I said. “We can talk about it some more. I may have some ideas for you.”
She appeared to think about it. “I don’t know if that would be such a good idea,” she said finally. “Marionburg is a very small town. And, well-“ She stopped.
And my being here has resurfaced some very bad memories, I thought. Which she was not, apparently, able to expunge. No wonder the rangers were still mad at me. Before the cat dancers case she had been the brightest object at the station.
“Well,” I said, getting up. “I’m assuming there’s still only the one decent place to eat in Marionburg. I’ll be there around eight if you change your mind. Otherwise, I’ll check around a little and then give you a call. Okay?”
She nodded quickly. Too quickly, I thought. I sensed that she wanted me out of there, and that now would be nice. Plus, she was probably embarrassed. I’d driven almost four hours from Triboro, and now she was probably thinking that her call had been a mistake. “Thank you,” she said in a small voice, again not quite looking at me. “And I’m sorry for being such a drag.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Mary Ellen,” I said gently. “It takes some time. You getting help?”
She nodded. “And you?” she asked. This time she did look at me. The fear was still visible in her eyes. If anything, brighter.
“Scotch at night, the gym during the day, and lots of quality time on the firing range. I’ll be in touch. You stop worrying.”
As I headed out to my Suburban I heard a voice behind me calling my name.
“Lieutenant Richter? A word, please?”
I thought it was the hostile ranger I’d run into when I first arrived, so I turned around very quickly, ready to quash any more bullshit from the hired help. But this ranger was older, and the title on his nameplate read CHIEF RANGER. He stopped abruptly when I spun around.
“Yes?” I said in as official a voice as I could muster. For the record, I’m sixone and I hadn’t been kidding about spending much of the last two years in the gym. The older man had to look up to speak to me.
“I’m Bob Parsons, chief of the station here. My people told me you’d come to see Mary Ellen Goode.”
“That’s right,” I said. I could see two sets of German shepherd ears outlined against the back window of my Suburban. The vehicle’s windows were open and they’d heard my tone of voice. I was about to add that she had called me, but then decided against it.
“My predecessor told me the story,” Parsons said. “About what happened up here and what happened to Mary Ellen.” He paused. “Look, Lieutenant-”
“I’m not a lieutenant anymore,” I said. “I took early retirement from the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office. And I suspect you didn’t get the whole story about what happened.”
Parsons nodded. “Right,” he said quickly. “She said you were a private investigator now.” He hesitated again. “Look,” he said again. “I’m sure there’s stuff I don’t know, and probably don’t need to know. But what I do know is that Mary Ellen is pretty fragile these days. Is it absolutely necessary for you to be here? Can maybe one of us help you instead?”
I considered the question. The chief ranger sounded sincere. “That’ll be up to her, Mr. Parsons,” I said. “For the record, I’m intimately familiar with what she went through. I was there for part of it. And the last thing I want to do is to upset her.”
“Up to her?” Parsons asked, and then he understood. “Ah-she called you?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Then this is about Janey Howard, isn’t it.”
“Why don’t you ask her, Mr. Parsons. Or you can wait for her to tell you. That actually might be the kinder course of action.”
Parsons shook his head. “The Howard case is complicated, Lieutenant. Very complicated. It involves more than just the Park Service.”
I pretended to be surprised.
Parsons sighed. “We’re not sure where the attack took place. Whether it was in the park or in Robbins County.”
“You are sure about the attack, though?”
“Oh, yes. God, yes. That girl’s lucky to be alive.”
“So. You jailed any bad guys for it?”
Parsons frowned. I suspected he probably did that a lot. “Um, no,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean people have stopped trying.”
“People?”
Parsons avoided the question. “Like I said, it’s complicated. Politically sensitive within the Park Service. I guess what I’m trying to say is you’d be doing everyone a favor if you just went back east. Really, you would.”
“Nice to meet you, Chief Ranger Parsons,” I said. I turned away from the ranger and walked to my vehicle. Parsons stood there for a moment, shook his head, frowned some more, and then walked back into the ranger station.
I took my shepherds for a quick nature walk and then left to find my motel. I wondered how long it would take Parsons to get on the telephone to talk to those mysterious “people,” and how long before they would get in touch with me.
I went into Marionburg and stopped at a grocery store to pick up some supplies for the cabin. Then I drove around the area for half an hour, refreshing my bearings and making sure I remembered where the restaurant was. There was actually quite a bit of traffic. Marionburg was the county seat of Carrigan County and had maybe eight thousand permanent residents. There was one main drag with mostly tourism-oriented shops and restaurants, a center square with the county offices, and rustic-looking residential neighborhoods.
It being early fall, rooms on short notice had been very scarce anywhere near the Smoky Mountains National Park, so I’d ended up acquiring the so-called bridal suite at the Blue Mountains Lodge on the south side of town. It was available because it cost a small fortune to rent it, but since money wasn’t something I had to worry about anymore, I said yes. When I’d told the reservations clerk that I might want the cabin for an entire month, there had been no objections. Weekly rate times four, bride not included.
The lodge featured a standard, two-story motel building next to the road and several outlying cabins in the back for guests who wanted extended stays. The complex was situated on a low bluff overlooking a wide, tree-lined mountain stream. I checked in at the front office at five thirty and then drove around the motel building into the lower parking lot. The cabins were stair-stepped along the creek, and according to the diagram, the bridal suite was at the very end of the left-hand row of cabins. The lower parking lot was almost empty. I surmised that the rest of the guests were still out whitewater rafting, hiking, trail riding, fishing, or even gambling over on the Cherokee Reservation.
I nosed the Suburban into the curb and was about to shut down when another vehicle slid close in alongside mine, so close that I could not have opened my door more than about four inches. It was another Suburban, as big as mine, and there were three men inside. The dogs were alarmed and I gave them a down command. The two windows on the other vehicle’s right side slid down. I lowered my driver’s-side window and looked over at the man in the right front seat. He was middle-aged and extremely hairy-beard, mustache, and a wild mop of grayish black hair on top folded into a ponytail behind. He wore a multicolored hippie headband and dark glasses on a neck rope. He was fox-faced and reminded me of some of the lawyers I’d encountered out riding their weekend Harleys when I’d been a cop. This guy’s coolly superior expression told me they were probably federal drug agents.