Music of Ghosts (9 page)

“That's your prerogative, sir,” said Cochran.

“Damn straight it is! Until you get Lisa's killer behind bars, you're going to have reporters crawling up your nose and out your ass.” The old man struggled to his feet and wagged a gnarled finger at him. “I built this little pissant county up, son. And believe me, I can take it down just as fast. You want your tourists to keep coming, your rich Yankee retirees to keep planting their know-it-all asses up here, then you'd better find out what the fuck happened to my little girl!”

Ten

It was just past
dawn when Mary Crow finally pulled back into her own driveway. Night had morphed into a colorless light that turned green trees gray, red roses black. She'd hoped to find Jonathan still drinking coffee before his trout fishing gig, but both he and his truck were gone.

“Where's Daddy?” asked Lily, who'd slept in the backseat all the way home.

“He's taking some clients fishing,” said Mary.

Lily yawned. “Why do they always go so early?”

“Because that's when the fish bite.” Mary opened the kitchen door. “Go on to bed. I'll take you to camp a little late today.”

Mumbling something that sounded vaguely like “okay,” Lily trudged up the stairs, leaving Mary alone in the kitchen. She looked around the room. Jonathan had, apparently, just left. The coffee pot was half-full, the iron skillet warm to her touch.

“We used to get up together,” she said aloud, her voice ringing in the empty room. Unless she was knee-deep in some case, she would wake up with him, fix breakfast while he loaded his gear. They would eat, and then he would kiss her good-bye. She'd always loved those mornings—just the two of them sitting in a quiet house, drinking coffee at first light.

“See you later,” he would say, his arms strong around her. “Save me a seat.”

They'd used that old code phrase for the past twenty years—ever since they'd been sixteen, and in high school. He had not uttered it once since he'd returned from Oklahoma.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table, again wondering what had hijacked their lives into this alien terrain. A younger woman? A prettier woman? A woman who would totally devote herself to him and Lily? She didn't think so—he'd never been that self-centered a man. But something or someone had ridden back from Oklahoma with him, and they weren't letting him go.

“You can end this with six words,” she reminded herself for the umpteenth time.
Jonathan, have you found someone new
? But those six words scared her—who knew what other words they might evoke? Sometimes she wanted to laugh at the irony of it. For years she'd questioned defendants mercilessly, dogged in pursuit of an answer. Now, every time she thought of uttering that simple six-word question, she felt sick to her stomach. The question itself wasn't so bad—it was the answer that terrified her.

“You need to end this,” she told herself, her eyelids drooping despite the coffee. “Ask him tonight, after Lily goes to bed. Whatever he says will be better than not knowing.” She put her head down on the table and closed her eyes, imagining all the ways the conversation might go.
I'm so sorry, but I've found someone new … I'm so sorry, but I'm just not attracted to you anymore … I'm so sorry, but I've decided to raise Lily by myself.
She was thinking of how she might respond to that when suddenly the telephone broke the silence of the kitchen.

“Hello?” She grabbed the receiver, hoping it was Jonathan.

“Ms. Crow?”

“Yes.”

“This is Leonora Blackman, from Carmichael, California. I got your number from my cousin James Blackman, who lives in Sylva?”

Mary frowned. Why would a woman in California be calling her at six o'clock in the morning? “How can I help you?”

“I've never made a call like this, so I'm not really sure what to say, except that my son Tony just called me, and he's in jail! One of his friends was murdered last night and the sheriff thinks Tony did it. I'm just desperate to get some help for him, and James says you're the best lawyer in town. Won't you please take his case?” The woman's voice dissolved in tears.

Mary straightened in her chair and peered at the clock over the stove. 9:47. She blinked, unbelieving, wondering how she'd lost almost three hours of time. Then she saw the cup of cold coffee in front of her, her car keys tossed on the table. When she'd put her head down to think about Jonathan, she must have fallen asleep.

“Ma'am, where is your son in jail?” she asked the woman.

“Right there in Hartsville! They think he killed the governor's daughter, but he swears it was a ghost!”

Mary realized she was going to need a cup of hot coffee to deal with this. “I'm not in my office right now, Mrs. Blackman, but if you'll give me your name and number, I'll call you back as soon as I get downtown.”

“You won't take any of the others, will you? Remember, I called first!”

Mary wrote down the woman's number, then reheated her coffee in the microwave. As she sat back down to make sense of everything, she turned the TV to the Asheville station. After five minutes of commercials, a mini-news break started. The lead story was that early yesterday morning, former governor Jackson Carlisle Wilson's daughter, Lisa, had been found strangled to death.

“We are questioning several persons of interest in this case,” said Jerry Cochran, his bleary-eyed face suddenly filling the screen.

That's why he didn't show up at the dedication yesterday,
thought Mary, remembering the lone empty chair on the stage. Her incredulity grew as the news continued.

“Lisa Wilson had been appointed to one of the coveted internships at the Pisgah Raptor Rescue Center,” said a pretty blonde reporter. “She was specializing in raptor rehabilitation with Dr. Nicholas Stratton.”

“Nick Stratton?” Mary almost choked on her coffee. “Dr. Lovebird?”

She watched, unbelieving, as a video of the sports park ceremony came on, showing Stratton flying Sequoia, the big bald eagle.

After that, the news skipped on to happier topics—new parking meters in downtown Asheville, Henderson County's burgeoning apple crop. Mary turned off the TV, stunned. Not six hours ago Stratton treated a wounded owl in a darkened kitchen. Now they were showing him on television, in connection with a murder.

“No wonder he acted odd last night,” she said, remembering his strange laughter at her business card. At the time she'd chalked it up to fatigue, to his being awakened in the middle of the night with a bird emergency. But it wasn't that at all, she realized as she put a slice of bread in the toaster. One of his students had just been murdered. The guy was probably in shock.

“At least he appreciated the irony,” she said. “The night after his intern gets bumped off, a lawyer shows up at his front door, hurt owl in hand.”

She'd considered just taking the day off but then decided she'd better go into the office. Her partner, Sam Ravenel, was settling an estate in Charleston and she'd long ago learned that it was good for one of them to be on duty when something big broke in town. After dragging a cranky Lily to Camp Wadulisi, Mary arrived at her office. The Wilson murder story had grown like a crop of kudzu, and the town was now jammed with network TV vans uplinking to NBC, ABC, and a couple of BC's she didn't even recognize. Dodging three news crews clustered around the entrance of Sadie's coffee shop, she walked up the stairs to Ravenel & Crow. She headed immediately to her desk, where her answering machine blinked with fifty-six new messages.

“Wow,” Mary whispered. Usually she got fifty-six messages a week rather than in a single morning. Sitting down at her desk, she punched the retrieve button and listened as voice after agitated voice filled the room. All were parents of the surviving interns, all were near panic, all were totally convinced of their child's innocence, and all wanted her to represent their offspring as soon as possible.

As Mary listened to their weepy desperation, she sat back in her chair and stared at the list of prospective clients. All of them sounded like intelligent, caring parents who never dreamed that the children they'd sent to learn about raptors would wind up as suspects in a murder investigation. She gave a wistful sigh. As much as she longed to call one of them and say she'd be happy to represent their child, she knew she could not do it. Long ago she'd promised Jonathan no murder cases. Right now they were travelling a bumpy enough road on their own. Defending a homicide charge might push them beyond the point of no return.

She'd just picked up the phone to call Mrs. Blackman in California, when suddenly she heard a loud speaker start blaring from the courthouse steps. Intrigued, she left her desk and went into the conference room, the one room that had a spectacular view of Main Street. The courthouse, the hotel, the chamber of commerce—the core of Hartsville spread out before the tall Palladian windows.

She walked over to a window and looked out. A tall man with a shock of white hair stood behind a makeshift podium, facing at least fifty reporters and three times as many citizens.

“I'll be damned!” she whispered aloud. “That's Carlisle Wilson.”

Wilson thumped the end of the mike a couple of times, then started to speak. “I want to thank everyone for coming and being so supportive of an old guy like me.” He began humbly, with an aw-shucks attitude.

“I don't know how many of you know this, but yesterday, my little girl Lisa was murdered. Right here in Pisgah County. I got the call last night in Wilmington.”

His voice began to wobble. He stepped back from the microphone and wiped his eyes with a white handkerchief. A moment later, he spoke again.

“I guess I still can't believe something like this would happen in Pisgah County,” he said, his tone choked. “I've always known it to be a county of good people, law-abiding citizens, the sons and daughters of pioneers who've led quiet, decent lives for generations. You've helped me out on election day many times in the past and I'm hoping that today, you'll find it in your hearts to help me out once more.

“Now you've got a good man as sheriff. Jerry Cochran's young and smart and his police department is working on this full-time. He's called in the SBI and the FBI and a bunch of folks in Washington. But you know, sometimes local folk do the best police work. Remember that Eric Rudolph? Them fancy federal guys spent years looking for him and came up empty every time. A mountain boy from Murphy found him, digging food out of a trash bin.”

The crowd applauded, justifiably proud of one of their own. Mary smiled. The old politician really knew what buttons to push.

“Anyway—I'm convinced that somebody in this county knows something about what happened to my little girl. That's why I'm going to stay right here in Hartsville until I find out. And I'm putting my money where my mouth is—today I'm offering a reward to anyone who has information about Lisa's murder.”

A low murmur went through the crowd. “No!” Mary whispered, fighting an urge to run down there and clamp a hand over the old man's mouth. She knew that a reward would muddle the case beyond all hope.

“How much of a reward?” someone called eagerly.

The governor's eyes blazed with a dark fire that promised to char anybody who dared stand in his way. “I'm offering one million dollars for any information that will bring my daughter's killer to justice.”

A young man in jeans and a white tee shirt spoke up. “What if we bring him to justice ourselves?”

“Bring 'em in alive, the money's yours!”

The crowd gave a collective gasp.

“Shut up!” Mary cried, almost banging on the window. “You're going to turn every stupid redneck in the county into a bounty hunter!”

But the governor went on, now fielding a question from a reporter from NBC as a CNN guy jostled for another microphone. Mary finally turned away, disgusted.

“Poor Cochran,” she groaned, feeling a wave of sympathy for her old friend. Murder investigations were tough enough. Having a million dollars and a crazy man riding on this one was not going to make things any easier.

Eleven

“Hey, Sheriff! How's it
going?”

Cochran looked up from a photograph of Lisa Wilson's left clavicle to see Ginger Malloy peeking around his office door. A pleasurable jolt ran through him—though it had only been about twelve hours since he'd last seen her, it felt to him like several years had passed.

“May I come in?” she asked. “Geneva thought it might be okay.”

Cochran turned the photograph over and grinned. “It is absolutely okay.”

She slipped into his office, closing the door behind her. She wore a green dress that revealed long, well-shaped legs, and she carried a signature paper sack from Sadie's, Hartsville newest coffee shop.

“Brought your favorite—apple strudel,” she said as she came over to the desk. Turning his chair toward her, she kissed him in a way that zinged electricity all the way down to his toes.

“Wow,” he said, breaking the kiss only when he began to feel the insistent beginnings of an erection. “You take supporting your local sheriff to a whole new level.”

“How's it going?” she asked, wiping a smudge of lipstick from the corner of his mouth.

“Not so hot,” he replied.

“Have something to eat.” She pulled the strudel from her paper sack, slyly casting a glance at the evidence files that lay on his desk. “I started over here with three of these, but Jessica Rusk stole one on the way over.”

Cochran bit into the flaky, still-warm pastry. “Who's Jessica Rusk?”

“This utter bitch I used to work with at the
Richmond Times
. She's climbing her way to the top via the dead and dismembered.”

Cochran thought of the sea of reporters who now clogged Main Street. “Why is the
Richmond Times
covering this?”

“They aren't. Rusk quit the
Times
to work for the Snatch.”

Cochran blinked. “The Snatch?”

“The name real reporters have fondly given to
The Snitch
.”

“That tabloid thing? What the hell are they doing here?”

“A politician's daughter getting murdered at a haunted cabin is huge. Add some famous pol like Wilson ponying up a million bucks and they get orgasmic. I'm surprised Jessica's eyes didn't roll back in her head when he announced it.”

Cochran went cold inside. “What million dollars?”

“Didn't you know? Wilson just held a press conference in front of the courthouse. He offered a million-dollar reward for his daughter's killer and gave out your phone number.”

“My phone number?” cried Cochran.

“The department's number.” Ginger shook her head. “I figured a former chief executive would know that rewards only muddy the water of an investigation, but apparently not.” Again she glanced at his evidence file, now under the sack from Sadie's. “Any new developments?”

Cochran didn't reply. Instead, he was thinking that he needed to call Tuffy Clark. Clark was already on the phone, interviewing Lisa Wilson's college pals, now he would have to field all the crackpot tips this million-dollar purse would generate.

“Wilson didn't elaborate on her actual murder, did he?” Cochran thought if that old fart had revealed that his daughter had been mutilated, he would go strangle him on the spot.

Ginger frowned. “What do you mean her actual murder?”

“I mean did he give details?”

“What details are you talking about?”

“None in particular,” said Cochran. “I'm just asking my local reporter what he said.”

“And your local reporter is asking you what details you're talking about. I have a job to do, too, Jerry. A story to cover.”

He sighed. He didn't want to be accused of favoritism, just because he and Ginger were together. But he might need Ginger if Carlisle Wilson truly began his threatened ball-roast. He decided to give her the tiniest scoop. “I can't release any details about the murder, but I can tell you that all the interns are retaining counsel.”

“So they've gone from persons of interest to suspects?”

“Not necessarily.”

Ginger whipped out her notebook, ready to take notes. “Any one you like better than the others?”

“No. Anyway, we're looking at other people beyond these five students. They just happen to be the closest thing we've got to eyewitnesses.”

“Do you think this murder might be politically motivated? Wilson made a lot of enemies while he was in office.”

“He doesn't think so,” said Cochran. “But I'm still looking into it.”

She started to ask him something else when his cell phone beeped. He pulled it out. Whaley had texted him.
Found something interesting in the Givens movie.
Please God,
thought Cochran.
Anything interesting would be good, at this point
.

“Gotta go,” he said, snapping his cell shut. “Duty calls.”

“I know.” Ginger put her notebook back in her purse. “I've got to get down to the paper.” She leaned forward and kissed him again. “Will you call me later? If you find out anything?”

He laughed. Even while kissing she still thought of the story. “I'll try my best. Thanks for the strudel.”

“Just be careful, okay?” she called over her shoulder as she walked toward the door. “And if a skinny blonde in a white Armani suit shows up, I strongly urge you to run the other way.”

Cochran frowned. “Why?”

“Because it will be Jessica Rusk, the great succubus of trash journalism.” In a chilling gesture, Ginger comically drew one finger across her neck. “Once she gets her hooks in you, it's all over.”

“Thanks.” He smiled. “I'll keep that in mind.”

After Ginger left, his thoughts returned to Carlisle Wilson.

“Fucking asshole,” he whispered. He couldn't believe the old bastard had been in town for less than three hours and had held a press conference and offered a million dollar reward. With the current economy, that could make for an awfully dicey situation. People already had far too many assault rifles in this county—add a rich reward and a killer running loose, and things could get tragic fast.

Disgusted, Cochran locked his office and walked up one flight of stairs to the “war room”—a large room they used for special investigations. He swiped his ID through the lock and the door opened, revealing Buck Whaley gazing at an oversized computer screen, a pile of empty Mountain Dew cans under his chair. He looked up when Cochran entered.

“What's the matter?” Whaley asked. “You look like you just ate a shit sandwich.”

“Wilson held a news conference. Put out a million-dollar reward.”

“Are you kidding me?” Whaley's mouth drew downward. “My dad hated that fucking old socialist. Said he wanted the government to run everything.”

“Well, he apparently wants to run this investigation,” said Cochran. “What did you find in that movie?”

“Sit down and I'll show you.”

Cochran pulled a chair up next to Whaley.

“The first couple of hours are just kids farting around that cabin,” the big man said. “I'll start where it gets interesting.”

Cochran waited. In a moment, Chris Givens's ill-shaven face filled the screen.

“We're back inside the Fiddlesticks cabin.” Givens spoke into the camera with a hushed voice, trying to sound serious over some ill-concealed giggling in the background. “We're going to bed now, but I'm keeping the camera rolling, in case Fiddlesticks comes in the night.”

The picture fluctuated wildly, finally panning around the room to show the indistinct lumps of bodies on the floor. One of them lifted a hand, waved at the camera, calling “Hi, Mom!”

“Great picture,” Cochran said, impressed by the sharp images in the dim light. “But I don't see anything other than kids in sleeping bags.”

“Hang on,” said Whaley.

Cochran watched as the campers settled down to sleep. Then the angle changed as Givens put the camera on the mantel. The sleepers were no longer visible, only a wide shot of a seemingly empty room, alternating between near dark and a hazy gray twilight.

“Why's the lighting so weird?” asked Cochran.

“High mountain clouds,” Whaley replied. “I checked the weather. A front moved through, dumped a little rain up there.”

Whaley fast-forwarded the video. “This is fifty-six minutes after they go to bed.”

For a moment, Cochran still saw an empty room, then suddenly, someone's head appeared at the far right of the screen. Cochran recognized Lisa Wilson's curly blonde hair immediately. She tilted her head toward the window, a moment later lifted up on one elbow. Cochran leaned forward, holding his breath as he watched the murdered girl peer out into the darkness, then look around the room. A moment later she stood up, her boots in one hand, and started tiptoeing toward the door. She opened it slowly, looked around the room once more, and then stepped outside, closing the door behind her.

“That's it.” Whaley stopped the film. “She never comes back. Until 5:32 a.m., all we see is an empty room.”

“What happens at 5:32?”

“The batteries in the camera die.”

“Play it again,” Cochran ordered.

For the next two hours, they dissected Givens's movie, frame by frame, timing it, making notes. At 2:44 a.m., Lisa Wilson wakes up. She looks out the window, around the room, out the window again. At 2:48 a.m., the girl who reputedly fears the forest at night gets up and tiptoes into the darkness, alone.

“What do you make of that?” asked Whaley.

Cochran tapped his pen on the yellow sheet of notes he'd taken. “I don't know. We can't tell what anybody else in that room is doing. Are they all there? Have they all gone out to play a trick on her? We only see Lisa.”

“Pretty clever of Givens, to put the camera like that,” said Whaley.

Cochran nodded. “Run it again.”

Once more the two men bent close to the computer monitor. At 2:45, as Lisa turns from the window for the first time, Cochran stopped the film to study the girl's face. “You think she looks scared there?”

“Maybe.” Whaley squinted at the screen. “But maybe excited, too.”

“That's what I thought,” said Cochran. “Bright-eyed, anyway.”

Frame by frame they watched as Lisa Wilson looked around the interior of the cabin.

“She doesn't seem scared there,” said Whaley.

“I know,” Cochran agreed. “So her pals must be there. She would look scared if they'd left her alone.”

“Unless she just thinks they're there.” Whaley smirked at Cochran. “Didn't you ever pull sheets over your pillows so you could sneak out at night, when you were a kid?”

Cochran grunted, unwilling to admit that he'd never done such a thing. He'd spent most of his boyhood nights under the covers, reading by flashlight. “I don't think five kids could sneak out of that cabin without waking her up. They said she'd had the least to drink. She would have been the lightest sleeper.”

Cochran re-started the film. He leaned close to watch Lisa Wilson gaze out the window, then he turned to Whaley and frowned. “Are you hearing a buzz on this machine? A high-pitched kind of whine?”

Whaley shook his head. “I can't hear shit anymore. Fired my pistol too many times.”

“Never mind, then. Let's keep watching.”

Once more, they studied the last moments of the girl's life.

“She doesn't call to the others,” Cochran noted. “She doesn't want to wake them up.”

“For a scaredy-cat like her, that's huge,” Whaley said.

“Unless she's not scared at that point,” replied Cochran. “Maybe she sees somebody she knows outside. Somebody she trusts.”

“Like loverboy Nick Stratton?” asked Whaley.

“Possibly,” Cochran agreed. With Lisa Wilson gone, they saw nothing but frame after frame of an empty room. Growing annoyed by the hiss of the machine, Cochran reached to turn the speakers off when abruptly, the extraneous noise stopped on its own. Cochran ran the video for another three minutes, but the noise never returned.

“Wait a minute.” He turned to Whaley. “Back it up.”

“Where to?” asked Whaley.

“To where she wakes up.”

Whaley did as Cochran ordered The two men leaned forward as the movie started again, but this time Cochran turned the speakers up full blast. He put his ear to one as Lisa Carlisle Wilson woke up, looked around the room, and then tiptoed out the door to her death.

“Holy Fuck!” cried Cochran.

“What?” asked Whaley.

“Back it up five minutes!”

Whaley backed the video up even farther, to where there was nothing but an empty room on the screen. With one ear pressed to a speaker, Cochran nodded for him to start the video. He listened for a moment, then held up his hand.

“There!” he said, pointing at the clock/counter in the right corner of the screen. “It's starts at 2:39 a.m.” He kept listening until Lisa Wilson left the cabin. “And it fades away at 2:54!”

“What starts?” cried Whaley, his face red with frustration. “What the fuck are you hearing?

“Exactly what you're supposed to hear up there.” Cochran gave Whaley an odd look. “Fiddle music.”