Graveyard Fields Read online

  The rubber band snapped—I threw my coffee cup across the kitchen, where it shattered against the refrigerator. I stood up and stared down at the old man with the droopy face and wrinkled uniform, and for a second I thought about how just a few hours earlier an entirely different type of lawman had been standing in the same room washing vomit out of his uniform shirt.

  “That’s probably the best way to drink instant coffee,” Byrd said. He then slung his cup toward the refrigerator, where it settled into shards next to the remains of my cup.

  Shit, I thought. I was going to have to mop the kitchen for the second time in two days.

  I sat back down, and Byrd watched me closely. My anger had diminished. I had to hand it to him; the old man was good. Throwing his cup was a pattern interrupt. He’d seen my anger getting out of control and had done something unexpected to shock me and stop the flow. I wished I knew how to do that to myself. Having that capability would be helpful.

  “I know why you’re here,” I said.

  “Good. So let’s talk about it.”

  * * *

  I told Byrd how I’d gone up to the parkway to try to get close to Cold Mountain.

  “For inspiration,” I said. “I parked at Black Balsam and walked on the trail for about a hundred yards. I stepped off to take a leak and saw the keys sitting under a bush. No one was around, so I took them to Dale’s house.”

  Byrd sat with his arms crossed and watched me carefully.

  “Dale told me to take them to the ranger station at Mount Pisgah. We went up there together the next morning.”

  “Why did Deputy Johnson go with you?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but it was probably so he could talk to this ranger named Joanne. She’s … well, she’s kinda busty.”

  Byrd nodded as if he understood perfectly.

  I continued, telling Byrd how Joanne had recognized one of the keys and how that had led us to Graveyard Fields and to the red BMW and blue Land Rover.

  “No one was around, so I opened the door to the BMW with the key Joanne had picked out. I was looking for a registration or anything that might tell me the name of the owner, but I didn’t find anything other than some receipts for beer and gardening supplies.”

  Byrd leaned forward.

  “Then what did you do with the keys?”

  I told Byrd how I should have taken the keys back to the ranger station immediately, but Dale was in a hurry and I’d decided to drop them off later when I could talk to the rangers about my book.

  “But the day got away from me,” I said.

  Byrd nodded again, and I wondered what he’d gleaned from that comment.

  “Dale came over the next day and said he’d run the license plate of the BMW and that the car was registered to someone named Lester Cordell. I did an internet search but didn’t find anything. That was the same day I had lunch with you.”

  Byrd nodded in agreement.

  “The next morning I drove up to the parkway to see if the BMW was still parked at Graveyard Fields. It was, but the Land Rover was gone. Then I drove to the ranger station and saw the Land Rover in the parking lot.”

  I told Byrd about talking to the hipster couple and how they’d acted suspicious.

  “The girl was calm and friendly,” I said, “but the guy seemed anxious and uncomfortable. He told me they had just gotten up to the parkway, but I knew he was lying, since I’d seen their vehicle two days before at Graveyard Fields. After they left, I went into the ranger station and talked to Terry. He told me the couple asked if anyone had turned in a set of keys.”

  I went through the rest of the story. How I’d gone back up to Graveyard Fields the next morning and noticed the BMW was still there. How Dale had asked me to bring the keys to the sheriff’s department. How I’d given the keys to Barbara and how Dale’s cousin Floppy came in while I was there. And about how Dale told me the keys were missing the next day.

  “Dale thought Floppy had probably walked off with the keys,” I said. “So I went up to his garage to look for them, which was a massive waste of time. Then I went back to the sheriff’s department to talk to Barbara to see if she had any idea of what had happened to the keys. While I was there, the couple came in. They were just as suspicious then as they were when I talked to them up on the parkway. When I asked them about Cordell, they clammed up and headed for the door.”

  I told Byrd how Dale had gotten the name of the couple and how I didn’t have much luck trying to find out about them online.

  “So by this time you thought something was really amiss,” Byrd said. “And you went out searching for Mr. Cordell.”

  “That’s right. Dale gave me the Florida address Cordell’s car was registered to. I dug around online and got a phone number. I called the number from Dale’s phone because I don’t have service up here. The woman who answered said she was Cordell’s aunt and that Cordell had moved to North Carolina. She gave me his phone number and local address. I used Dale’s phone to call, but it went right to voice mail.”

  “So you and Deputy Johnson then drove to the address Mr. Cordell’s aunt had given you?”

  “Yeah. We parked at a restaurant a few hundred yards from the house, and I walked up to see what I could find. The BMW wasn’t out front, so I went around to the back of the house. That’s when someone started shooting at me. I ran and hid in a garage. The Land Rover was parked there. It was locked, but I saw a metal detector on the back seat. I finally got away and met Dale near the restaurant. I wanted him to investigate, but he shrugged the whole thing off. He said if you go snooping around someone’s house in the middle of the night, you shouldn’t be surprised if they take a few shots at you.”

  Byrd nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “And you assumed this house was owned by Mr. Cordell?”

  I paused for a moment, wondering where Byrd was going with that question. “Well, it’s where his aunt said he lived. I didn’t really think about whether he owned it or not.”

  “See, a good detective would have run a property search to find the owner’s name. We have a very good online mapping system here in this county. Just click on an area of the map and it will tell you who owns the land, when they bought it, how much they paid for it. Technology amazes me sometimes.”

  Byrd was right. I had done a property search on the Florida address but not one on the house in Maggie Valley.

  “So Cordell doesn’t own that house?”

  Byrd shook his head.

  “So who does?”

  Byrd’s grin made me think about the speech he’d given me in his office. The one about how evil can manifest itself in anyone.

  “I do.”

  Byrd unhooked his holster and placed his gun on the table.

  “Now where are those keys, son?”

  30

  When I saw Byrd’s gun, I immediately thought of Diana. I don’t know why she popped into my head. Maybe it was because I thought I might die in that kitchen. Or maybe I thought my temper would explode and I’d strangle Byrd before he could get off a shot. Either way, I was probably never going to see her again.

  I looked at Byrd’s gun, then raised my eyes and stared directly at the old man’s face. The quintessential bad southern sheriff, I thought. I should’ve seen it coming. The way he’d distrusted me from the beginning. The way he’d warned me to not go around asking questions.

  Byrd was still unreadable. His face gave nothing away. He looked at me like a mannequin staring out through a store window.

  “Do you want some more coffee?” I asked.

  “I don’t much care for your coffee,” Byrd said. “No offense.”

  “None taken, but honestly, the gun is offensive enough. Mind if I make a cup?”

  Byrd shrugged and tilted his head toward the kettle. He watched me closely as I got up and stepped over to the counter. With my back to Byrd, I filled the kettle and put a scoop of instant coffee into a fresh mug. The water boiled quickly, and after I filled the mug, I turned around. Byrd was now h
olding the gun in his hand, pointed at my chest.

  “If you’re thinking of throwing that coffee in my face, don’t.”

  The thought had actually occurred to me. Someone pointing a gun at your chest makes your mind go in interesting directions.

  I resumed my place at the table while Byrd kept the gun pointed in the general direction of my heart. I wondered where my anger was. The fight-or-flight response should have kicked in by now, but I was calm. It was a strange feeling. It was different from feeling numb, and I kind of liked it.

  “I was never a good detective,” I said. “But I knew there was a mystery surrounding those keys. I guess I had what you’d call a gut feeling.”

  Byrd shifted in his chair. I could tell the gun was getting heavy in his hand.

  “And what is your gut telling you now?” he asked.

  During the night I’d thought about the dots I’d collected: the BMW, the locked trunk, the receipt for garden tools, the metal detector in the back of the Land Rover. Knowing now that Byrd owned the house where Cordell was living was another dot that seemed to connect perfectly. Suddenly my silly theory didn’t seem so silly anymore.

  “It’s telling me somewhere, somehow, those keys unlock a bunch of gold,” I said. “The same gold that dropped out of the sky onto Cold Mountain seventy years ago.”

  Byrd propped his arm on the table—the gun was definitely getting heavy. I thought about what kind of damage that gun could do at this close range. Plenty and enough were the only two answers I could come up with.

  “I think Cordell and that hipster couple found some of that gold,” I said. “Maybe on purpose but most likely by accident. Dale said you know everything that goes on in this county, that you have your finger in everyone’s pies. And if you own that house in Maggie Valley, you must have rented it to Cordell. You’d certainly know what he was up to. You knew he was taking that gold off the mountain and storing it somewhere. Probably storing it in the house he was renting, the house you own. You were going to wait until he’d found all he could find, and then you’d help yourself to it. But something happened between Cordell and that couple. I’d guess there was a fight and Cordell’s keys came off during the struggle. One of those keys, or maybe several of them, lead to the gold. Without the keys, the hipster couple was stuck. And now so are you.”

  Byrd looked at me like I was speaking gibberish.

  “You’ve been suspicious of me from the beginning because you thought I was here searching for the gold,” I said. “I’d been researching Cold Mountain for a book, and you figured I’d come up here from Charleston because I believed there was ‘gold in them thar hills.’ It was dumb luck that the waitress at El Bacaratos mentioned it when we had lunch together. But you were quick to put me off the idea. You know, there’s a man who swears you stole that gold from his grandfather years ago. You didn’t steal it then, but you’re trying to steal it now.”

  Byrd put his gun back in his holster.

  “You’re right about one thing,” he said. “You’re not a very good detective.”

  Byrd’s two-way radio suddenly crackled to life.

  “Sheriff, it’s Skeeter. Come back.”

  I bristled at the sound of my archenemy’s voice.

  Byrd pulled his radio off his belt and put it in front of his droopy face. “This is Byrd. Go ahead.”

  “Sheriff, I’m at Mr. Cordell’s residence. You need to get up here. We’ve got two more bodies.”

  Byrd’s face finally cracked. He was shocked, and it showed.

  I was surprised too. If those two bodies belonged to Jeff and Becky Ingram, the couple who’d been trying to get the keys, and Byrd didn’t know they were dead, then someone else was involved in this mess. Byrd was probably thinking that someone was me.

  It didn’t take Byrd long to regain his composure.

  “I’m on my way,” he said into the radio.

  “Are you going to tell me not to leave town?” I said. “Am I a person of interest?”

  Byrd ignored me and spoke into his radio. “Tommy, I need your assistance. We’re going to take Mr. Reed in for questioning.”

  31

  Deputy Tommy was a big guy, roughly the size of Dale but all muscle. He put the handcuffs on a little too tight and pushed me a little too hard into the back of the patrol car. Then he drove a little too fast down the winding gravel driveway. He hadn’t bothered to put my seat belt on me, and with my hands cuffed behind my back, I bounced around the back seat of the patrol car like a tennis shoe in a dryer. Tommy was turning out to be a prick, but at least he was a consistent prick.

  When we reached the bottom of the driveway, the deputy made a quick turn onto 276, and I fell completely over onto the back seat. Lying down was actually more comfortable than sitting upright with the handcuffs gouging into my spine, but two thoughts forced me to push myself up. One, the many asses that had been on that seat, and two, the old law enforcement adage that a guilty man relaxes once he’s been caught. Arrest an innocent man and he’ll pace for hours in his cell. Put a guilty man in that cell and he’ll lie down and sleep like a baby, relieved the chase is finally over. I sat up and acted nervous. Sitting up was hard; acting nervous wasn’t.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later we pulled into the back of the Haywood County Sheriff’s Department. I hadn’t seen this side of the building before. Tommy parked near a set of double doors and next to the same black GMC Yukon that had been parked out in front of El Bacaratos the day I met Byrd for lunch. Tommy pulled me out of the patrol car with the same enthusiasm he’d shown while pushing me into it.

  “Don’t bother with the formalities,” Byrd said to Tommy. “Put him in the interview room, and I’ll deal with him when I get back.”

  Byrd walked over to his SUV while Tommy jerked me by the arm through the double doors. We walked down a short hallway to another set of double doors next to a keypad attached to the wall. Tommy pressed a few numbers on the pad, and the doors slowly opened inward.

  “How many murders do you have in this county each year?” I asked Tommy as we walked down another hallway and past several closed doors that I assumed were offices and conference rooms.

  Tommy didn’t answer.

  “Seriously,” I said. “What is it? Like one or two at most?”

  Tommy remained silent. When we reached the end of the hallway, he opened a door and yanked me into the squad room where I’d sat at Dale’s desk a couple of days earlier. The room was empty. I figured all the deputies and detectives were at either Graveyard Fields or Cordell’s house in Maggie Valley. I didn’t need Tommy’s verification; I knew three murders in this county was big news.

  “If you wanted to rob a bank in Haywood County, today would be the day to do it,” I said.

  Again Tommy had no response. He was doing a good job of ignoring me. Which was fine. He was jerking me around like a rag doll, but at least he wasn’t Skeeter.

  We went through to a door on the far side of the squad room that opened into a small interview room. When we were inside, Tommy shoved me into a metal chair that sat next to a small table. I leaned forward so Tommy could unlock my cuffs, but he left the room and closed the door without showing me that consideration.

  I sat in the interview room for about an hour, thinking about how long it had been since I’d had a pill and wondering if I’d misplaced the pill bottle, which was unlikely, or if Diana or Dale had taken it. That didn’t seem likely either. Then I wondered about Xanax withdrawal. For several years I’d taken at least six pills a day, chasing them with large quantities of alcohol. There had to be some kind of comedown after that type of long-term abuse. I hoped I’d be back on the cabin deck before I found out. I had some beer in the fridge, but I’d still have to find some pills. I needed to call Dr. Landry.

  After a while I started thinking about Perry. Sitting in a law enforcement interview room made it hard not to. I wondered how I would interview him if he were sitting across from me. What could I possibly ask him othe
r than Was it you?

  I thought about the gray Audi and how much a car like that cost. Could Perry afford something like that on his detective’s salary? What about his golf club membership? I had no idea what one of those cost. And what about the fishing boat he had complained about?

  If Perry was living beyond his means, it meant he either was deep in debt or had other means at his disposal. Maybe the kind of means that came from a small-time drug business. And why had he not responded to my email? Any other time I’d emailed him with a question, his response had come within a few hours.

  I was considering these thoughts when the door to the interview room opened. I wasn’t surprised to see Tommy enter the room, but I was shocked when Diana followed him and took a seat across the table from me.

  “The sheriff will be in soon,” Tommy said, as he reached behind me to unlock my cuffs.

  “I thought you were mute,” I said. “Guess it just takes you a while to warm up.”

  With the cuffs off, I rubbed my wrists to try to get some feeling back in my hands. Tommy walked out without saying another word and closed the door behind him. I looked over at Diana. I wasn’t sure why she was there. If I was under suspicion, I wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, be allowed to speak to anyone other than law enforcement officials or maybe my attorney, which I didn’t have, at least not yet. The attorney line seemed like a good opener.

  “Are you my representation?” I said.

  “No,” Diana said. “But I am your savior.”

  “That might be a full-time job.”

  “A detective came by the brewery this morning looking for information on someone named Lester Cordell,” Diana said. “I told him I didn’t know the man and then used a bit of charm to get him to tell me what he knew. He told me Lester was dead and that a young couple had been found murdered in the house Lester was renting in Maggie Valley. He also told me a suspect was in custody. He wouldn’t give me a name but he said it was a funny coincidence because the suspect was renting a cabin in Cruso that was owned by a deputy.”