Fiddlesticks killed her with his razor. Slit her throat and then forgave her. Deep in the Appalachian woods stands the old Fiddlesticks cabin, the scene of a bloody double murder from decades past. Now the haunted cabin lures young thrill seekers who hope to hear the killer’s ghostly fiddle music. When a group of college students comes to call, Lisa Wilson—the daughter of a former North Carolina governor—is tragically murdered, and her flesh is mutilated with disturbing symbols. Pisgah County sheriff Jerry Cochran is in hot water when the ball-busting politician shows up, threatening to tear the county apart in search of his daughter’s killer. But Nick Stratton—the handsome raptor center specialist and Lisa’s boss—is in even hotter water when evidence points to him as the prime suspect. As Nick turns to attorney Mary Crow for help, it’s up to the Pisgah County native to discover the truth. Did Nick do it? Or is there a deranged mountain killer on the loose?
Praise for the Mary Crow series: “A top-notch thriller.”—P eople “A grim but well-written adventure that skillfully interweaves Cherokee lore and human nature at its best and worst.”—Booklist
Previous Mary Crow Thrillers: In the Forest of Harm A Darker Justice Call the Devil by His Oldest Name Legacy of Masks $14.99 US / $17.50 CAN ISBN 978-0-7387-3584-9
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Praise for Legacy of Masks “An amazing adventure … Fans of rich mystery will enjoy this book, as will anyone interested in the complexities of humanity.” —Fresh Fiction “Skillfully interweaves Cherokee lore and human nature at its best and worst.” —Booklist “[Mary Crow is] a kickass Atlanta prosecutor.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Mary proves a captivating protagonist. The mystery and suspense are eerily entrancing.” —Romantic Times “Readers will take a few deep breaths … A fascinating mix of Cherokee customs and folklore plays an important role … Sallie Bissell has created a set of characters that are realistic and full-bodied.” —Mystery Scene
Praise for Call the Devil by his Oldest Name “A deftly written thriller that grips you from beginning to end. Sallie Bissell’s protagonist, Mary Crow, is one of the toughest and sharpest investigators in the genre and totally captivating. A riveting read with a conclusion that shocks even the most intuitive reader.” —Nelson DeMille, New York Times best-selling author of Word of Honor “Call the Devil by his Oldest Name has it all—nail-biting suspense, poignant human drama, non-stop action, an intriguing locale, and no small doses of humor. Heroine Mary Crow’s spirit and guts make her impossible not to love. Once again, Sallie Bissell delivers herself a magnificent novel.” —Nancy Geary, author of Regrets Only “Ties with The Narrows by Michael Connelly as the best mystery of the year so far.” —Nashville City Paper “Tightly wound … offers a disturbing look into contemporary Appalachia; very well done.” —P.T. Deutermann, author of The Last Man
“Bissell’s strong writing and clever, didn’t-see-that-coming denouement will keep readers enthralled... She may soon be keeping company with the likes of Tami Hoag and Sandra Brown.” —Publishers Weekly “An extremely exciting crime thriller about an obsession taken to extremes … a pulse-pounding, adrenaline-pumping novel that the audience will remember long after finishing the last page.” —Midwest Book Review
Praise for A Darker Justice “[A] fast-moving story, elegantly told, in which Bissell … weaves a palpitating web of sinuously deadly suspense.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “For thriller fans who value action.”
—Booklist
“Bissell’s Mary Crow is one of the most intriguing characters in today’s mystery genre.” —Tulsa World “At the end of this book, I felt I had read a masterpiece.”—Deadly Pleasures
Praise for In the Forest of Harm “A top-notch thriller … the pressure builds steadily … [in] this taut debut … [a] solid page-turner.” —People “Hair-raising … harrowing.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Bissell tightens the screws slowly and expertly … A shrewdly imagined female actioner, tailor-made for audiences who would’ve loved Deliverance if it hadn’t been for all that guy stuff.” —Kirkus Reviews “In the mode of Patricia Cornwell … Bissell masterfully drives the plot with … gut-wrenching suspense.” —The Ashenville Citizen-Times
Music of Ghosts
The Mary Crow Series In the Forest of Harm A Darker Justice Call the Devil By His Oldest Name Legacy of Masks
Sallie Bissell A Novel of Suspense
Music of Ghosts
Midnight Ink
woodbury, minnesota
Music of Ghosts: A Novel of Suspense © 2013 by Sallie Bissell. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Edition First Printing, 2013 Book format by Bob Gaul Cover design by Lisa Novak Cover photo © Alex Stoddard Editing by Nicole Nugent Midnight Ink, an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bissell, Sallie. Music of Ghosts: a novel of suspense/Sallie Bissell.—First Edition. pages cm.—(Mary Crow; #5) ISBN 978-0-7387-3584-9 1. Crow, Mary (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women lawyers—Fiction. 3. Mystery fiction. I. Title. PS3552.I772916M87 2013 813'.54—dc23 2012043010 Midnight Ink Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive Woodbury, MN 55125-2989 www.midnightinkbooks.com Printed in the United States of America
For Carter Bissell, my fair-haired boy.
On e
Never had Lisa wanted to go to the haunted house. Saturdays they usually went clubbing in Asheville or hiked up to some hidden away waterfall. But Chris Givens had talked up the infamous Fiddlesticks cabin all week, ultimately persuading them that an overnight in a haunted house would be a nice break from cleaning up bird shit. “I’ll take my camcorder,” he told her, as they banded a fierce little sparrow hawk. “If we get any cool video, we can sell it to one of those ghost buster shows on TV.” “But Nick wants us at the sports park ceremony,” Lisa replied. “He’s going to fly Sequoia.” “Not til noon the next day,” said Chris. “You’ll be back in plenty of time to help Nick with that eagle.” So now she stood, along with the other five interns of Pisgah Raptor Rescue Center, breathless and sweaty in front of a small, dilapidated cabin that huddled at the end of a twisting, pineshrouded path. With broken windows and mildewed chink, the structure looked more sad than haunted; a beaten place where 1
light and energy had packed up one day and never returned. Though Lisa did not believe in ghosts, something about the place made her shudder. “So what’s the story up here?” asked Ryan Quarles, a blonde, broad-shouldered sophomore from Duke. “This is where the Fiddlesticks murders happened.” Chris pulled a video camera from his backpack. “Let’s go check it out before it gets dark.” Givens climbed up on the rotting porch and beckoned them forward. As he pointed his camera at them, they made their way up the disintegrating steps. Though Lisa longed to stay outside in the last slivers of daylight, she took a deep breath and climbed up to the rickety porch. She was the daughter of a governor, a prideful man. She dare not let anyone think she was scared. With Chris filming away, she lifted her chin and stepped over the threshold. Immediately a chilly dankness raised goose flesh on her arms, reminding her of mold and mildew and the pale, disgusting little toadstools that grew beneath fallen logs. As her eyes adjusted to the near darkness, she fully expected to see pentagrams carved on the walls, the bones of small animals offered up in sacrifice. Instead, she saw the detritus of expeditions much like their own. Beer cans and cigarette butts littered the floor while the walls bore the names and initials of the countless couples who’d come before them. In the dimness she saw that someone had spray painted “Class of ’77” on the ceiling; someone else had written “I love KISS” over the small fireplace. As stupid and lame as the ancient graffiti was, she found it comforting. The six of them were just part of a stream of people who’d spent the night here and then gone on with the rest of their lives.
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“What a place,” said Ryan. He surveyed the living room, stopping in one corner to lift a dust-covered beer bottle. “When did you last see a Schlitz beer?” “Never heard of it.” Rachel Sykes gaped at the graffiti on the ceiling. “But I think my mother graduated from high school in ’77.” They were staring at all the old tags when suddenly, Chris lowered his camera and cocked his head toward a dark room to the right. “Did you guys hear that?” “Hear what?” Rachel frowned. “That noise,” he whispered. “It sounded like someone groaned.” They turned and listened. All they heard was silence. “I think you’re imagining things.” A rising senior at Carolina, Abby Turner was their self-appointed skeptic. “No, I’m not,” said Chris. “I heard something. Come on!” Lisa followed as he led them into what turned out to be an old kitchen. Small and dirty, it had a rusty old-fashioned pump that once spewed water into a chipped iron sink. More beer cans littered the room, and their feet crunched desiccated animal turds and moth cocoons as they walked across a cracked linoleum floor. Though they heard no more groans, Lisa wondered if anybody else felt the oppressive coldness, or smelled that sick toadstool stink. “So tell us.” Tony Blackman ducked under a scrim of dusty cobwebs that drooped from the ceiling. “What were the Fiddlesticks murders?” “Fiddlesticks was the best fiddler in North Carolina,” said Chris, doing a slow pan of the room. “Years ago, he had a steady gig down in Jackson County, every Saturday night.” “How many years ago?” asked Abby. “Back in the 1950s,” Chris replied. “One Saturday in March they had a big wind storm, and the dance ended early. Fiddlesticks 3
got in his truck to come home, but a tree had blown across the road, so he had to park and walk. Usually, his wife left a candle on in the window for him, but that night, everything was dark. Scared that something had happened to her, he hurried to the cabin and opened the front door.” “Let me guess,” said Abby. “He found the devil inside, waiting to have a fiddle contest with him.” “He found his wife inside,” Chris said somberly. “Naked in front of the fireplace, screwing another man.” “Whoa, dude!” said Tony. Chris continued. “Anyway, Fiddlesticks went crazy—pulled out the straight razor he kept in his boot. Cut off the man’s balls, slit his wife’s throat. Then he sat down and played his fiddle while they bled to death.” Chris returned to the living room and pointed at some dark splotches on the floor. “Those are bloodstains. They say Fiddlesticks haunts the place—that some nights you can still hear the fiddle music. And the screaming.” For a moment they all stood staring at the floor. Lisa wished more than ever she’d stayed home. Though her father had always admonished her to be brave, a dark thing she could not name lurked here. It held its breath and listened while they talked, watched them through the cracks in the wall. “I’m going back outside,” she told Chris. “I’m really cold.” Chris turned his camera on her. “Awwww, is the governor’s daughter scared?” he asked, clucking like a chicken. “No,” she said. “Just cold.” “I’ll come with you,” said Rachel. “This house is gross.” The two girls walked back outside, shrugging out of their backpacks and huddling together on a fallen log beside an old fire pit. 4
“Maybe we should build a fire,” suggested Rachel. “Gather sticks and kindling.” Lisa cupped her hands and held them to her mouth, trying to generate some heat. “Let me get my hands warm first.” “Good idea,” said Rachel. “It’s about fifty degrees colder on top of this mountain.” Blowing on her own hands, she noticed Lisa’s fingers. “Hey, you didn’t lose your mom’s ring, did you?” “No, I left it in my room. I was afraid something might happen to it up here.” Rachel looked at her, her pretty brown eyes concerned. “You seriously are not enjoying this, are you?” Shaking her head, Lisa turned the collar of her jacket close around her neck. “I hate the forest at night. I hate camping. I hate Chris running around claiming to hear noises nobody else hears. But most of all, I hate that house.” Rachel frowned. “You think it’s haunted?” “I don’t know what it is,” said Lisa, watching as the setting sun made the jagged windows glow bright orange. “I’ll just be glad when this night is over.”
An hour later they sat around a sputtering pine-knot fire, built by Ryan and Tony. They’d eaten the sandwiches they’d packed back at the dorm, now Chris was filming them as they passed around a saltshaker and a bottle of Cuervo Gold. Though Lisa usually didn’t drink, she swallowed the fiery liquid eagerly, hoping it would turn the night benign. Ever since the sun went down, Chris had kept them on edge, hearing noises, seeing shadows, claiming to feel spots of cold clammy air. At first the tequila made it all seem 5
absurd and funny, but then the talk returned to what had gone on at the cabin. “Hey, Chris,” said Ryan. “What finally happened to this Fiddlesticks character?” “Nobody knows,” Chris replied, his face reflecting the glow of the fire. “He just walked into the woods and disappeared.” “Oh, please.” Abby rolled her eyes. “Don’t you think it’s odd that nobody ever knows what happened to the person who did the killing?” “That’s not the point, Abby,” said Rachel. “My anthropology professor said that ghost stories sprout up when someone breeches accepted behavior. They function like warnings about what not to do.” “But why does the maniacal killer always vanish?” Ryan took a swig of tequila and passed the bottle to Lisa. “I mean, didn’t the cops investigate? Did they ever catch this guy?” Chris shrugged. “Artie claims he’s still hanging around. Says he’s sees him sometimes at the bird barn, staring out from the woods.” “Just like that guy over there?” asked Tony softly, pointing to the dark pines that clustered on the other side of the clearing. They all turned, looked. A shadowy figure seemed to be standing there, staring at them. “Holy shit!” cried Chris. He pointed his camera toward the trees while everyone leapt to their feet. The girls huddled together, frightened. Tony and Ryan grabbed two thick limbs, previously destined for the fire. Everyone held their breath, waiting to see what the figure would do when, suddenly, it turned and dissolved into the woods. “Come on,” said Tony, holding his limb like a club. “Let’s go get him.”
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The two boys took off, heading for the trees, Chris following with his camera. “I knew something was wrong with this place,” Lisa whispered. “It’s okay.” Rachel put her arm around her. “It’s probably just Tony’s idea of a joke. He’s been drinking since way before supper.” “What if it isn’t a joke?” asked Abby. “Then we’ll deal with it,” Rachel said firmly. “There are six of us and only one of him.”
Ultimately, they chalked their ghost up to shadows. The three boys scoured the woods for the better part of an hour but came up with nothing. Then they watched Chris’s video of the event. From a distance, the shape did look human. But as Chris had run to get closer, he’d lost his focus on it, and the picture became a jerky montage of boys waving branches, running through shadowy trees. They returned to sit around the fire, but a light rain started, turning the glowing embers into a smoking, sizzling heap. “Come on,” said Chris, grabbing his gear. “Let’s get set up inside the house.” They followed him, scooping up their backpacks as they hurried inside the house. While he set up his camera on the mantel, everyone unrolled their sleeping bags in the living room—Rachel and Tony together, Abby opting to spread out near the kitchen. Her heart still thumping from seeing the shadow man, Lisa unfolded her bag beneath the front windows, as far away from those bloodstains as she could manage. Just get through the night, she told herself. Get through the night. At first light tomorrow morning, you can head back to the center. 7
“Want some company?” asked a voice behind her. “If we spread our bags out double, we can sleep together. We’ll stay warmer that way.” She turned. Ryan Quarles stood there, sleeping bag in hand. Lisa hadn’t planned on a bed companion, but after the dark woods and the bloodstained floor and the shadow man outside, she wasn’t going to turn one down. Though Ryan was no Nick, together they could stay warm, and maybe safe from whatever haunted this house. “Sure.” Gratefully, she unzipped her bag and spread it double, lying down on the side nearest the wall. He unzipped his bag, and laid it on top of her, like a blanket. He pulled off his boots and was lying down beside her when Chris Givens made an announcement. “Okay, we’re rolling,” he said. “This camera’s got a wide angle lens, so nobody do anything that you wouldn’t want seen on TV.” “Hi, Mom,” Tony sat up and waved at the camera. “Also no flashlights, or e-readers, or iPads,” said Chris. “We don’t want any electronic interference. And don’t say anything that you don’t want my EVP recorder to pick up.” Tony did a fair rendition of the Crypt Keeper laugh. “Goodnight everybody!” he said. “Pleasant dreams!” “You okay?” Ryan asked her as Chris turned off the last flashlight. “Yeah,” she said, her throat growing thick as she tried to gulp down her fear. “See you in the morning, then,” said Ryan, rolling over to turn his back to her.
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For a long time she lay awake listening, waiting for something to happen. Chris sneezed a couple of times; the rustling from Rachel and Tony’s corner indicated if not quiet sex, then at least some vigorous feeling-up. Finally, all the turning and bumping noises faded into sleepy moans and soft snoring. How good it will be to get home, she thought. Back to her own bed, back to her little sparrow hawk, back to Nick, the man she loved. As she thought of him, her eyes grew heavy. Soon she began to dream. She was back in their dorm. Nick was knocking on the door, full of sweetness, playing a tune for her on his fiddle. How sweet the music sounded! How lush his notes! Abruptly, she woke up. For an instant she didn’t know where she was, then everything grew clear. Nick wasn’t playing any fiddle for her—she was in this cold stink of a cabin, sleeping next to Ryan. Trying to re-enter her dream, she closed her eyes. Suddenly, she heard an odd noise. A high, lilting sound, almost like a birdcall. She cocked her head toward the window. For awhile she heard only silence, then the sound came again. This time it was closer—a high, cascade of notes. Someone was playing a fiddle, outside, in the trees beyond the house! It’s Chris, she told herself. Or Tony. Playing some stupid trick. But when she sat up to peer around the fireplace, she saw them both in the dim light, Chris beneath the other window, Tony with an arm wrapped across Rachel’s shoulder. Suddenly, the music came again—this time so strange and beautiful that the hair lifted on the nape of her neck. Parts of it sounded like a tune Nick sometimes played. But every time she thought she recognized it, the notes would change, making the tune discordant, yet somehow seductive. 9
Beside her Ryan gave a soft moan. She turned to look at him. He made a funny, chewing motion with his lips, but did not awaken. Trembling, Lisa looked at the other sleepers. Everyone lay still, undisturbed by the music.
She sat there, wondering if she was dreaming when suddenly, it all made sense. Nick had been the man Tony saw. Nick was sorry for the way he’d treated her and had come up here to make amends. What better way for a fiddle player to apologize than to serenade her out of her cabin? Trying not to wake Ryan, she eased out of the sleeping bag, picked up her hiking boots, and tiptoed toward the front door. She managed to open the thing with only one soft squeak, and she closed it behind her without making a sound. Padding down the rotting stairs, she stopped and put on her boots. The notes seemed to be coming from the woods, directly in front of the cabin. “Nick?” she whispered as loudly as she dared. “Is that you?” She heard no reply, just more notes. This time they teased and beckoned, pulling her forward. Her heart leapt. She squinted through the trees as thick clouds raced across the moon, turning the landscape first dark then amazingly bright. She took several steps forward in the light, thinking she saw him, but the clouds obscured the moon again, turning everything dark. “Where are you?” she called. “I can’t see.” She thought she heard a muffled laugh coming through the night, soft as an owl’s wing. Then the notes began curling around her legs
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like the tendrils of some hungry, night-blooming vine, pulling her step by step away from the cabin, deeper into the woods. She did her best to follow the music, but every time she thought she’d found it, it seemed to turn and come from a different direction. Nick’s teasing me, she decided as the night sky darkened again and she felt her way into a thick stand of pines. He wants me, but he doesn’t want the others to know. Still, she thought, this is awfully far away. She couldn’t even see the cabin anymore. “Nick?” she called, growing nervous. Again he answered musically, with notes that were sometimes lush as velvet; sometimes sharp with little teeth. She peered into the darkness, but the trees grew too thick, too close together. Then, suddenly, the music stopped. “Nick?” She looked around. “I can’t see you. Please come out!” For a moment, everything grew silent. Somewhere behind her, she heard a twig snap. She caught a flicker of motion in the corner of her eye as she felt something go around her throat. She tried to pull it off, tried to scream, but it was too tight. All she could do was suck air into her lungs, flail against rough hands that seemed to be everywhere—pulling her hair, tearing her clothes. As brilliant fireworks exploded behind her eyes, she realized that this was the thing inside that cabin. Now it was here. She was the one it wanted. She was the one Fiddlesticks was playing for tonight.
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T wo
“Jerrrryyy!” His mother’s voice came so suddenly up the stairs that he jumped, nicking himself as he shaved. He winced when his razor sliced into his upper lip; in the bathroom mirror he watched as his white shaving cream turned pink with blood. “Damn!” he cursed, eyes watering from the sting of the cut. He rinsed his face and looked at the damage. A deep nick, just below his left nostril. When it scabbed over, he would look like he had snot on his upper lip. Terrific, he thought. The most important day of my life, and I’ll look like I’ve been picking my nose. As he pressed a small bit of toilet paper against the cut, his mother bellowed again. “Jerryyyyy!” He jerked open the bathroom door irritated, thinking he was probably the only sheriff in North Carolina who shared a roof with his mother. “What, Ma?” “Get the phone! Boots Gahagan’s on the line.”
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“Aw, shit!” he whispered. Boots Gahagan worked the day shift in dispatch and called him at home only in an emergency. Already he had the governor coming at noon to open the new sports park—now Boots was going to pile something else on his plate. He hurried down the hall, picked up the phone beside his bed. “Hey, Boots.” He answered matter-of-factly, as if it was no big deal that his mother had called him to the phone. Though Eleanor Cochran was a widowed economics professor currently recovering from breast cancer, he knew a few of his staff members secretly snickered about their boss’s living arrangements. “What’s up?” “Just got a 911 about a possible homicide.” “A homicide?” He sat down on the bed. He didn’t need any dead bodies today—he had every available officer in dress blues, providing snappy, spit-and-polish security for the honorable Ann Chandler. “Where?” “East side of Burr Mountain,” Boots reported. “A camper. Friends found her, in the woods.” “You’re sure it’s not an accident? Somebody didn’t take a header off a waterfall?” “Didn’t sound like it. A college boy called, crying like a baby. Said some thing tore up a girl at the old Fiddlesticks cabin.” He felt a little catch in his gut. People had gone ghost hunting at Fiddlesticks for as long as he could remember. He had gone there himself, back in junior high. “Who’s on the scene?” he asked. “Saunooke. He just called for a detective. Whaley’s still on vacation and Tuffy Clark’s on crutches, so I called you.” Cochran rose from the bed and re-hung his elegant black dress uniform back in his closet. “Okay. Tell Saunooke I’m on my way.
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And call Tuffy Clark. See if he can hobble down to the station in case this turns out to be something.” “Ten-four.” Sighing, he hung up the phone and walked over to open the little blue velvet box on his dresser. Inside, a diamond ring glittered with icy fire. Not huge, but of excellent quality, according to the jeweler. He’d bought it last week, the first truly romantic act of his life. He thought his second romantic act would take place later today, when he planned to kneel in front of Ginger Malloy and ask her to marry him. Now, he had a bad feeling that Boots Gahagan’s phone call had just put his romance on hold. He hid the ring in the top drawer of his dresser and hurried back to finish shaving. As he re-entered the bathroom, he saw that his mother had remained at the bottom of the stairs, unabashedly eavesdropping on his conversation. She’d taken up mystery writing since he’d been elected sheriff, and she spent most of her mornings scribbling about a mother-and-son detective team. Much to his chagrin, a small press in Charleston had published her first novel, touting her as “the author who lives with crime every day.” “What’s going on?” she called up the stairs, full of curiosity. “Some kid found a body up at the Fiddlesticks cabin,” he replied. He never told his mother anything that she wouldn’t read in the paper—he just told her a day before it came out in print. “Oh my God,” cried Eleanor. “A homicide?” He hated it when she used police lingo. “Don’t know yet.” Re-lathering his face, he started to scrape the whiskers from the other half of his upper lip and thought of his own trip to the Fiddlesticks cabin. Butch Messer had heard that some high school boys kept a stash of condoms up there, and he wanted a share of them. “Pearl Ann Reynolds let me feel her tits after the last football game,” 14
Messer had confided, his tone both proud and nervous. “I’m gonna need some rubbers pretty soon!” They’d doubled up there on Messer’s Honda, their hearts brimming with the prospect of actually needing a condom. They’d approached the cabin cautiously, the tall dark pines around the place seeming to whisper all the old legends they’d heard growing up. They’d just inched their way inside the front door when a face popped up in one of the broken windows. It stared at them with hideously wide eyes, growling like a bear as it grinned a death’s head kind of rictus. Instantly, they forgot all about condoms and raced back to the Honda, terrified. When they finally got home, Messer got off his motor bike shamefaced, urine staining the crotch of his jeans. Cochran shook the memory away and called down the stairs. “Hey, Ma—what exactly went on up there?” “At the Fiddlesticks cabin?” Eleanor climbed the stairs to stand in the hall. “Yeah.” “Fiddlesticks was a man named Robert Smith, who came home one night and found his wife with another man. He cut them up with a knife and sat there fiddling while they bled out.” Pausing for a moment, she started clapping her hands in a kind of old jumprope rhyme. “Fiddlesticks killed her with his razor. Slit her throat and then forgave her.” “What does that mean?” “The police caught him while he was putting flowers on her grave. He may have killed her, but he still loved her.” “When did all this happen?” “Well.” She frowned. “I was in the fourth grade, so it must have been about 1958. All the boys in my class were terrified—they said
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if you walked through the woods alone, Fiddlesticks would come and cut off your tallywhacker.” Cochran frowned. “Your what?” “Tallywhacker. Fourth-grade slang for penis.” Cochran leaned against the doorjamb, grateful that his tallywhacker was safe beneath his bathrobe. “So they didn’t catch him right away?” “He hid out in the hills a good while. We weren’t allowed to leave our yards for weeks.” She ran a hand through the white, down-like hair she usually concealed with a blue Duke cap. “That was the first time everybody started locking their doors at night. Aunt Frankie slept with a shotgun under her bed for the rest of her life.” “What finally happened?” asked Cochran, trying to keep his mother on task. Gossip and memory could sidetrack her pretty easily. “They found him guilty of murder. Sent him to the gas chamber, as I recall.”
Ninety minutes later, Cochran pulled in behind Saunooke’s squad car, parking on what was locally known as Fiddler Road. It was no more than two ruts that snaked through the trees, overgrown on both sides with wild grapevine and thick tangles of rhododendrons. He got out of his cruiser and gazed at the path. Narrow, it twisted so that you could never see more than ten yards ahead of you. But even beyond that, an odd stillness hung here, as if everything from the birds in the sky to the lascivious red blossoms of the trumpet vines stood silent, watching to see what he would do. Just like that afternoon with Messer, whispered a voice inside his head. 16
He smiled at his edginess but still reached for the twelve-gauge pump Winchester that rode in the front of his car. “Up here, I guess I’m still thirteen,” he said quietly. “At least I’ve gotten past stealing condoms.” He kept the shotgun pointed at the ground as he hiked the last half mile to the cabin, watching for snakes and clambering over several trees that had fallen across the path. As the battered old place finally came into view, he made careful note of his first impressions. It was 11:41 a.m. and the sun had just begun to peek over the east side of the ridge, warming the cool, uncomfortably humid air. A family of crows perched high in a pine tree about fifty yards east of the structure, keeping a beady-eyed watch on Rob Saunooke, who stood talking to five young people clustered around the steps of the front porch. One girl wept into a boy’s arms, while another girl stood stony-faced between two other, taller boys. The college students all wore pricey outdoor clothing and kept their backs toward the crow-filled pine tree. Cochran observed them discreetly for a few moments, without announcing himself. Saunooke seemed to have everything under control, though he kept looking nervously toward the path. Deciding it was time to help the young officer out, Cochran made his presence known. “Saunooke,” he called. His most recent hire turned, looking relieved to see someone with a badge and a gun. “Yes, sir?” “A word.” Saunooke left the five standing in front of the cabin and hurried over to Cochran. “Hey, boss,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “What have we got?”
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“Big trouble, I think.” Saunooke solemnly handed him a driver’s license. Cochran studied the laminated card. It belonged to one Lisa Carlisle Wilson, a twenty-one-year-old white female, from 2339 Cleveland Mews, Raleigh, North Carolina. Though Lisa was a pretty, curly-haired girl with a pert little kiss of a mouth, it was her name that caught his attention. It sounded alarmingly similar to Jackson Carlisle Wilson, the former governor who’d long ago dragged Pisgah and the other western counties of the state into a reasonable semblance of the twentieth century. Cochran frowned at Saunooke. “This girl isn’t kin to old Governor Carlisle Wilson, is she?” Saunooke nodded. “His daughter, according to her friends. Usually just goes with Wilson as her last name though.” Cochran frowned at the five standing in front of the cabin. “Which one is she?” “She’s the victim,” Saunooke replied. “Are you kidding?” Saunooke shook his head. “Dear God.” Cochran looked at the girl’s driver’s license again, but this time saw her father—an old style, ball-busting politician who had, on more than one occasion, convinced the entire state that shit was Shinola. Carlisle Wilson would eat Pisgah County for breakfast once he found out about this. This must be my lucky day, Cochran thought. Not one but two governors to contend with. He took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said to Saunooke. “Tell me what you know.” “She was one of six summer interns at that raptor center on the other side of the mountain,” he replied. “They heard about the Fiddlesticks cabin and hiked over here yesterday afternoon. They were 18
making some kind of movie about spending the night at a haunted house.” Cochran winced, picturing the headlines in the paper. “Go on.” “Anyway, they stayed up late last night and woke up late this morning. One kid went to take a dump in the woods and found her body.” Saunooke pointed to the tall pine tree where the crows were perching. “Under that tree there.” “And nobody saw or heard a thing,” Cochran finished Saunooke’s account for him. He’d learned, over the past seven years, that whatever crime had transpired, never did anybody at the scene ever hear, see, or notice anything out of the ordinary. “Right. Well, they thought they might have seen someone last night, but they’d all been drinking.” Cochran again regarded the five who now huddled like refugees in front of the battered old cabin. “Did they sleep inside or outside?” “Inside. Lisa Wilson doubled up in her sleeping bag with one of the guys.” “Were they having sex or just sleeping?” asked Cochran. “Just sleeping, according to the boy,” said Saunooke. “He’s upset, but not girlfriend-upset, if you know what I mean.” Ginger Malloy’s strawberry-blonde hair flashed through Cochran’s mind. He knew well what girlfriend-upset meant. “Which one of them found her?” Saunooke glanced over his shoulder. “The dark-haired boy in the Duke sweatshirt.” “Is he the one she slept with?” “No, she slept with the blonde kid who looks like a wrestler.” “Okay.” Cochran looked at both boys, wondering if some love triangle had ended badly. “What else?” 19
“I was trying to sort things out when you arrived,” said Saunooke “They’re all scared, talking at once. They think a bear got her.” Cochran turned away from the interns, eyed the pine tree, hoping this might turn out to be just some errant sow protecting her cubs. “And did a bear get her?” Saunooke shook his head. “No bear that I ever saw.” “What do you mean?” asked Cochran. Saunooke had come up through the ranks of the highway patrol—he’d seen plenty of death and dismemberment on the highways. “You’ll have to go see for yourself, sir.” “Okay,” Cochran said “You confiscate all cell phones, cameras, anything these jokers have that might contain evidence or corroborate alibis. Then call Boots and get another squad car and the State Bureau of Investigation team from Asheville. I’ll go check out the girl.” “Have you had breakfast?” asked Saunooke. “Just coffee,” replied Cochran. “Good,” said Saunooke, turning back to his little group of suspects. “You’ll probably be able to keep that down.” Cochran kept the shotgun and headed toward the pine tree, steeling himself to see God only knew what. If a former highway patrol officer was blanching, then it must be bad. The ancient pine trees stood like massive sentinels, their thick branches turning warm air cool, daylight into perpetual dusk. Little underbrush grew around them, and cast-off needles from countless autumns past had turned the ground into a spongy orange carpet. The cloying, metallic odor of blood engulfed him as he pushed his way through some feathery branches, then suddenly, he saw her. “Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. He stopped, realizing why Saunooke had been so undone, why Boots Gahagan’s initial report was that some thing had torn a girl up. She lay naked in a small clearing, her 20
arms stretched out as if she’d been crucified. Ligature marks scarred her throat, bulging her once pretty eyes, protruding a darkened tongue. Gnats and flies were hovering in a cloud above her face; already a crow had pecked at one of her eyes. But the scavengers did not make Cochran gasp. What brought his coffee roiling back up his throat was the bloody mess some thing had made of Lisa Wilson’s body. Not only had the girl been stripped and strangled, but someone had turned her corpse into a scroll, carving hieroglyphic-like figures from her wrists all the way down to her pink-painted toes. For a moment he truly thought he might vomit. He turned his eyes away, looking into the trees, swallowing the saliva that flooded his mouth. When he looked back, he tried to focus on just one, single part of her. Piecemeal, he could pretend it was just a puzzle on puckered skin. If he looked at her whole body, he didn’t know if he could stand it. Brushing away the gnats and flies, he concentrated on the reddish brown characters carved into the flesh of her right shoulder. The first figure resembled a Greek delta, the second one, closer to her clavicle, looked like something from the Cherokee syllabary. Slowly, he read his way across her torso, trying to find some figure he recognized. When he dropped down to her breasts, he realized sickly that the lower figures were just as dark as the ones across her shoulders. The bleeding had continued for all the wounds. Which meant someone had sliced Lisa Wilson up while she was still alive. He backed away and began taking in deep breaths of the cool, pine-laced air. He’d seen a dozen homicides, a couple of real bear attacks. None of those came close to this. This was sick. This was territory he had no map for. Suddenly, he heard footsteps behind him. Tightening his grip on the shotgun, he turned. To his astonishment, Buck Whaley came 21
wheezing up through the trees, a toothpick lodged in the corner of his mouth, gold detective badge glinting from his belt. Quickly, Cochran cleared his throat. He didn’t want Whaley to catch him on the verge of puking. “Hidy, sheriff,” Whaley greeted amiably, sweat glinting through his brush-cut gray hair. “I hear we’ve got some trouble.” “I thought you were on vacation,” said Cochran. “Got back last night. Heard Boots on the scanner and thought I’d come help out. What’s up?” “Take a look.” Cochran stepped aside, revealing Lisa Wilson’s body. Whaley peered at the dead girl. “Holy fuck,” he whispered, his little pig eyes widening. “What the hell got hold of her?” “A bear, according to her friends,” said Cochran. “Yeah, and my granny’s a Green Bay Packer.” Whaley studied her face for a long moment. “She anybody we know?” “You might have heard of her father,” Cochran replied. “Jackson Carlisle Wilson.” Whaley removed the toothpick that dangled from his lip. “Are you serious?” Cochran nodded. “How’d that old fart get a daughter this young and pretty?” “I guess he had sex with her mother,” Cochran glanced at her driver’s license. “Twenty-one years ago.” “What the hell was she doing up here?” “She worked at that raptor center. She and her pals hiked over here on a ghost hunt. One of them found her this morning.” Whaley laughed. “Any of ’em see any ghosts?” “Nobody saw anything.”
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“What a pile of shit.” Moving closer, Whaley stood with arms akimbo, making a long, lingering appraisal of the girl’s body. “Man, she’s a peach.” Again Cochran thought of Ginger. A sudden protective rush surged through him, and he had to struggle not to push Whaley away from Lisa Carlisle Wilson’s nakedness. “I hadn’t noticed,” he lied. “I was looking at everything carved on her body.” “Yeah, right.” Whaley gave him a knowing wink. You looked, it said. I know you looked. We all look, every time. We can’t not look. “You want me to take over?” Whaley glanced at his watch. “You leave now, you can get back to town in time to schmooze with the honorable Governor Chandler.” “No,” said Cochran. “I’m taking this case.” Whaley’s brows lifted in surprise. “You?” Cochran nodded. “Me and Saunooke and you and Clark, if he can walk. We’ll work as a team. We’ve already got five suspects. You and Saunooke divide them up and take them downtown. You question the boys, let Saunooke take the girls. If Clark hobbles down there, he can help Saunooke out.” “What are you going to do?” demanded Whaley. “I’m going to wait here for the SBI. I’ll meet you downtown later.” Whaley opened his mouth to protest further, then, abruptly, changed his mind. “Okay,” he said still sounding vaguely miffed. With a final glance at Lisa Carlisle Wilson, he started to waddle off toward the cabin. Cochran called him back with a warning. “Don’t go ape, Whaley,” he said. “You work for me now, not Stump Logan. I don’t want any black eyes or forced confessions.” Whaley gave a deep chuckle. “You just be careful yourself, sheriff. I hear there’s ghosts up here.”
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Cochran remained under the tree, watching as Whaley conferred with Saunooke, then the two began to herd the suspects down the path to their cars. All of them, Cochran noted, walked with their heads down, their eyes averted from their fallen companion. When they disappeared from sight, he turned back to Lisa. Soon the SBI team would arrive with all their equipment. They would turn her into a number, a case, ultimately, a statistic. Right now, she still had a name, a face, was still a girl who people had loved. He would stay with her until that changed. It was the least he could do. Stooping down, he looked closer. Her nails were unbroken, though a circle of paler skin around her left ring finger looked as if someone might have removed a ring. Her nipples were intact and her pudenda looked unswollen by sexual assault. The pine needles on which she lay were scattered and blood-stained, ranging from deep brownish to a vibrant red-orange. “They killed you right here, didn’t they?” he whispered, speaking to her as if she might sit up and answer back. “But who? And why?” He wondered if it was some kind of version of the choking game gone wrong, but carving someone up like that indicated a monstrous anger toward the victim. That led him again to suspect a romantic breakup. Had one of those boys choked her and mutilated her body while she was still alive? “And then went back to sleep in the haunted house without waking a single soul?” he asked aloud. No, came the answer. It was either all of them, or none of them. Taking a different tack, he disregarded the five kids en route to questioning, and began to consider other possibilities. The Appalachians had their share of psychopaths—backwoodsmen who 24
slithered through the trees, stalking their prey along trails instead of truck stops, campgrounds instead of bars. Had one of them come across these kids at the cabin and decided to have a little fun? Possibly, he decided. But why kill one and leave five sleeping like babies? And why carve her up like a Dead Sea scroll? He stood up and gazed down at the cabin. It cowered beneath the trees like some beaten dog, in the middle of three hundred acres of thick forest, miles away from anything remotely resembling civilization. Even after all these years—even with a Winchester pump at his side—the place still gave him the willies. He felt like somewhere, in the midst of those three hundred acres, a man was looking at him with pale, wide eyes, and laughing. “Fiddlesticks killed her with his razor; slit her throat and then forgave her,” he repeated his mother’s rhyme in a whisper, thinking that if some places were truly cursed, then this was one of them.
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Three
Mary Crow looked up as the huge eagle made a slow, sweeping circle of the amphitheater. Wings stretched wide, the bird glided over the large crowd of citizens who’d gathered for the grand opening of the new sports park. By Pisgah County standards, the festivities had been vast. Lige McCauley and his string band had fiddled, the Cherokee Drum circle had drummed, and the Hartsville High marching band had presented a mini-concert, complete with fire batons. Now upturned gazes followed Sequoia as he winged through the air. Of equal interest to Mary was the raptor’s trainer, a man named Nick Stratton, whom she knew through three pre-festival phone conversations. From his crisp accent and straight-forward manner of speaking, she’d pictured him as a serious, bespectacled academic. That he was, in person, a rangy man who’d given her a funny little smile when he came out on the field, surprised her. Lately she was unaccustomed to any attractive man giving her any kind of smile, funny or otherwise.
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She turned her attention back to the eagle, which made two complete circles of the amphitheater, then made a sharp turn and headed straight for the stage. Mary fought an urge to duck as the bird bore down toward her with talons extended, but at the last second Nick Stratton stepped forward and slapped his gloved arm twice. Sequoia instantly feathered his approach and landed gracefully on the man’s arm. “Our national bird in flight, ladies and gentlemen!” cried Mayor Tom Burkhart, the master of ceremonies. “Let’s give Sequoia a hand!” Everyone cheered. Stratton tossed Sequoia what looked like a bloody chunk of raw liver before the pair stepped forward and took their bows. As Stratton turned to acknowledge the dignitaries on stage, Mary was able to get a closer look at the man. Light brown hair streaked with blonde, deep set eyes, handsome except for a deeply scarred upper lip, Mary decided that either Nick Stratton had a deformity that had been surgically corrected, or Sequoia had, at some point, mistaken his mouth for another chunk of liver.
The dedication continued, with the Reverend Rosemary Brown of the First Methodist Church giving the invocation. As she asked the Lord’s blessing on the park, Mary offered her own prayer of thanks, remembering what an uphill battle the Pisgah-Cherokee Sports Park had been. She’d spearheaded the project mostly to take herself out of a deadly dull stream of bankruptcies and estate planning, only to find that negotiating the project required the mediation skills of a diplomat. She’d had to wheedle and cajole tobacco farmers, land
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developers, swimming pool companies, and at one point, the governing body of the US Little League. After the Reverend Brown ended her prayer, the mayor rose. He welcomed everybody in English, then Chief John Oocuma hopped up and said basically the same thing in Cherokee. Mary sneaked a quick glance at the crowd, looking for Jonathan and Lily. They promised they’d sit in the first row, but she couldn’t find them anywhere. Suddenly, she turned, realizing that John Oocuma had switched from Cherokee to English. “Now, I’d like to introduce someone whose hard work made all this possible—a true friend to both tribe and county, Mary Crow.” She blushed as the crowd began to applaud. Usually she spoke only to juries in courtrooms. Never had she addressed a crowd of thousands, as a “friend to tribe and county.” Taking a deep breath, she clutched the notes she’d scribbled last night and walked to the podium. “A year ago, our children had to pursue their sports dreams elsewhere. They had to go to Sylva to swim, to Swain County to play baseball, to Waynesville for their soccer and tennis matches,” Mary said. “Today, all that is history. Today, we of Pisgah County can swim and compete on our home turf.” The crowd cheered. Someone blew a vuvuzela horn. Mary went on. “Though I appreciate the credit Chief Oocuma gave me, this park would not have happened without the hard work of the citizens of Pisgah County, and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. But even beyond all our good efforts, this time we had an angel in Raleigh who loosened the state’s purse strings and cut through several miles of red tape. We’re lucky to have her with us today, to open
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the Pisgah-Cherokee Sports Park.” As the crowd began to clap again, Mary turned to the dignitaries seated behind her. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my privilege to introduce the honorable Ann Chandler, governor of North Carolina.” The cheering grew to a thunderous crescendo. The last governor to set foot in Pisgah County was Jackson Carlisle Wilson, back when Gerald Ford sat in the White House. That the current chief executive would take the time to come and open their sports park had the county bursting its collective buttons. Mary stepped back from the podium as a diminutive blonde in a white linen pantsuit rose from her chair. Chandler waved to the crowd as she came to the microphone. Mary was about to re-take her seat, when the governor pulled her close. “Remind me again how to say ‘play ball’ in Cherokee.” “Doyust uhlskult dah dahnay zohn.” Mary whispered, hoping she could hear her above all the cheering. “Got it.” The governor winked at her and smiled. “Thanks.” Grateful to have finished her part of the program, Mary sat down. As the chief executive began her remarks, she again searched the crowd for Jonathan and Lily; again she could not find them. She guessed this was yet another example of Jonathan’s recent strangeness. He’d spent the past month in Oklahoma with Lily, on a courtordered visitation with his late wife’s parents. She’d missed them terribly, and when they finally rolled back down the driveway, she assumed that their lives would go on as before. That had not happened. Lily had returned moody and petulant, and Mary had felt a coldness in Jonathan’s kiss, as if something had disconnected his lips from his heart. As the weeks passed, she knew she should just ask him if he’d found someone younger or prettier in Oklahoma, but
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when an appropriate moment came, she always lost her nerve. She was thinking that today might be the day to ask that question when suddenly she heard the governor again call her name. “Mary?” Ann Chandler smiled at her. “You’re going to have to help me with this Cherokee again.” Mary hurried to the podium, ready to whisper the words in the governor’s ear, but Ann Chandler put an arm around her waist. “Let’s just say it together.” The two women leaned toward the microphone. “Doyust uhlskult dah dahnay zohn,” Mary said assuredly while the governor stumbled along. “Play ball, Pisgah County,” the governor added, grabbing the last word for her English-speaking constituents. “Have fun!” The biggest cheer yet went up from the crowd. The Hartsville High band struck up a spirited arrangement of “We Are the Champions.” Representatives from Harrah’s Casino released a huge flock of green and white balloons. Children in various team uniforms scattered to the playing fields while their parents surged toward the platform, eager to shake the governor’s hand. Mary returned to her chair, feeling hollow inside. Her family had apparently decided not to come. She grabbed her purse, hoping she could get a ride back to town with Tom Burkhart when she heard her name. There, beside one of the loud speakers, stood Jonathan and Lily—Lily in her red soccer uniform, Jonathan carrying the picnic basket she’d packed that morning. “Hey, you guys!” She smiled, surprised. “I was about to think you stood me up.”
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“We got stuck in traffic,” Jonathan complained. “Everybody in Pisgah County decided to come to this thing.” His hair had grown long as his waistline had shrunk in Oklahoma, giving him a lean, noble savage appearance. He looks incredible, Mary thought. He probably has a dozen women eyeing him up in Oklahoma. “Did you hear my speech?” she asked. He nodded. “Good job.” “You pronounced uhlskult wrong,” Lily informed her. “It’s oolskult.” “Sorry,” Mary replied. “Next time I’ll let you do the translating.” She looked over at the crowd around Ann Chandler. “Would you like to meet the governor?” “I’d rather go see the eagle.” Lily crossed her arms, pouty in the way of nine-year-olds. “Well, let’s go meet the governor first,” Mary said. “And don’t correct her Cherokee, Lily.” After waiting until the swarm of people surrounding the governor subsided, Mary stepped forward. “Governor Chandler, may I introduce my family? Jonathan and Lily Walkingstick.” “Hi, Jonathan.” Ann Chandler gave Jonathan’s hand a practiced pump, then reached down to greet Lily. “How proud you must be of your mother, young lady.” “She’s not my mother,” Lily snapped defiantly, pushing her glasses back on her nose. “Ooyohee!” Jonathan shushed her in Cherokee. Mary was stunned by the child’s rudeness, but Ann Chandler didn’t miss a beat. “Well, I know you must be proud of her, anyway. If it wasn’t for Mary, you wouldn’t have that nice new soccer field.” “If it wasn’t for Mary, I’d … ”
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“Lily!” Jonathan barked, his warning to the child clear. Lily stepped back, obviously re-thinking the comment she’d almost made. “Mary?” called another voice. Mary turned to see Ginger Malloy bustling on to the stage, her red hair glowing like a lit match in the bright sunlight. An older man followed her, an impressive camera around his neck. “Here comes our local press,” Mary laughingly warned the governor, grateful that Ginger had broken the awkward moment Lily had caused in their conversation. “Hey, partner.” Ginger gave her a hug. “Great speech, great job on the park! I can’t wait to hit the tennis courts with you.” “Thanks,” Mary said. Though Mary gave most reporters a wide berth, Ginger had become a friend. They played tennis regularly, belonged to the same book club, had even hiked a couple of short sections of the Appalachian Trail. Still, she knew Ginger’s present ebullience had less to do with the new tennis courts than getting an interview with Ann Chandler. “Something tells me this is not a strictly congratulatory embrace.” Ginger turned to the governor. “I was wondering if we could get a shot of you for the paper?” “I’d be delighted,” said Ann Chandler. She turned toward the photographer as Mary and Jonathan stepped back. “No, no,” she said, putting an arm around both Lily and Mary. “Everybody get in the picture. We’re having a party today.” They arranged themselves like stair steps—Jonathan, Mary, Ann Chandler, and Lily. Ginger stepped behind the man with the camera.
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“On three,” called the photographer. Mary smiled. He took three quick shots, then nodded at Ginger. “Thank you so much,” Ginger said to the governor. “I’ll send your press officer a copy.” “My pleasure,” replied Ann Chandler. Her official duties finally finished, she shook hands again with Jonathan and Lily. “Nice meeting both of you. I know you’ll enjoy this park for years to come.” “Thanks,” said Jonathan. Smiling, the governor turned back to Mary. “Could I possibly kidnap you for a few minutes?” Mary looked at the governor, puzzled. “My supporters are having a little reception for me. I’d love it if you could come. There’s something I’d like to ask you about.” Mary didn’t know what to say. As badly as she wanted to put on her bathing suit and relax for the rest of the day, turning down the governor seemed not the thing to do. “Certainly,” she said. “I’d be happy to.” “Then come with me.” The governor took Mary’s arm and again smiled at Jonathan. “Don’t worry. I’ll have her back in time for the soccer game!” Mary shot Jonathan a helpless look as the governor steered her toward a waiting bus. “See you in a few minutes,” she called. “Don’t forget our picnic with Jerry and Ginger.” She smiled, trying to convince herself that everything was all right between them. But she could tell by the expression on his face that it was a lie. Nothing was right between them at all. Lily’s outburst had proved that something was dreadfully wrong with their little family. She started to thank the governor and tell her she would have to take a rain check on the party, but just then Tom Burkhart
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and John Oocuma came up to express their own congratulations. By the time she got a clear view of the podium again, Jonathan and Lily were gone.
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