The Appalachian Souls Duology: Appalachian Souls

By Bonnie Elizabeth

Would you risk your soul to save your town?

Would you risk your soul to save your town?Would you risk your soul to save your town?

Murder stalks the quiet, sleepy town of Corbin Meadow.

Two years ago, three women were murdered, the only clue a garden trowel.

Now, Zoe, the daughter of one of the murdered women returns to town and the murders begin again.

Chief of Police, Taran Rees realizes that Zoe may be the next victim. In order to protect her, he'll have reconsider everything he believes, including the existence of the supernatural.  If that's not bad enough, he needs to beg the ex-wife who dumped him to save Zoe, and possibly even the town.

If the three of them can find a way to work together, they'll have to make decisions that could try their souls.

If you love police procedurals, and the atmospheric thick, weighted heat of a good Southern mystery with a heavy dose of the supernatural, the Appalachian Souls duology is sure to please.

Omnibus version contains both Souls Lost and Souls Broken.

Souls Lost and Souls Broken.

• Language: English
• Publisher: My Big Fat Orange Cat Publishing
• Release date: Sep 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393040408

Bonnie Elizabeth

Bonnie Elizabeth could never decide what to do, so she wrote stories about amazing things and sometimes she even finished them. While rejection stung her so badly in person, she spent most of her young life talking to cats and dogs rather than people, she was unusually resilient when it came to rejections on her writing, racking up a good number of them. Floating through a variety of jobs, including veterinary receptionist, cemetery administrator, and finally acupuncturist, she continued to write stories. When the internet came along (yes, she’s old), she started blogging as her cat, because we all know cats don’t notice rejection. Then she started publishing. Bonnie writes in a variety of genres. Her popular Whisper series is contemporary fantasy and her Teenage Fairy Godmother series is written for teens. She has published in a number of anthologies and is working on expanding her writing repertoire. She lives with her husband (who talks less than she does) and her three cats, who always talk back. You can find out more about her books at her publisher, My Big Fat Orange Cat Publishing.

Book preview

The Appalachian Souls Duology

The Appalachian Souls Duology

Bonnie Elizabeth

My Big Fat Orange Cat Publishing

Appalachian Souls Duology is a work of fiction. All characters and events in the book are the work of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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The Appalachian Souls Duology

My Big Fat Orange Cat

Contemporary Fantasy, 2019

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Includes Souls Lost originally published as stand alone March 2018

Souls Broken, orginally published as stand alone April 2018

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Copyright 2018

Bonnie Elizabeth Koenig

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Cover image copyright © romancephotos, kopitin, cpjr1111 | Deposit Photo

Cover copyright © Bonnie Koenig

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My Big Fat Orange Cat Publishing

MyBigFatOrangeCat.com

Contents

Souls Lost

Souls Broken

About Bonnie Elizabeth

Also by Bonnie Elizabeth

Souls Lost

Souls Lost is a work of fiction. All characters and events in the book are the work of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Souls Lost

My Big Fat Orange Cat

Contemporary Fantasy, March 2018

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Copyright 2018

Bonnie Elizabeth Koenig

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Cover image copyright © cpjr1111, romancephotos | Deposit Photo

Cover copyright © Bonnie Koenig

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My Big Fat Orange Cat Publishing

MyBigFatOrangeCat.com

Contents

Chapter 1

2. Before

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

6. Before

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

10. Before

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

13. Before

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

18. Before

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

22. Before

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

26. Before

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

31. Before

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

42. Before

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 1

In that summer, the one two years or so ago that was so hot the air conditioning sales people ran out of product leaving people to suffer, there were three deaths not related to the heat. In large towns such deaths might have gone unnoticed, just another middle-aged woman dead in her garden, perhaps a heart attack or stroke, and boy wasn’t she too young to die like that. But not in a small town like Corbin Meadow.

There people talked, mostly in whispers, across the shiny white laminate tables that would have looked as at home in 1950 as they did in the retro diner over on Main sixty-plus years later. The fans on the ceiling, turning slowly, offering some slight relief from the heat that the air conditioner wasn’t quite able to keep up with—what with the grills and deep fryers all out and open to the main restaurant—made people feel as if they’d gone back in time. Many of them probably wanted to.

The whispers were about who the women were. Ordinary enough. But not so ordinary to the town. Bethany Shields was the secretary to the mayor. She was found first. The police searched high and low, but the only clue was the fact that she was out in her garden in her work clothing, lying on her side, a garden trowel nearby. There were no fingerprints on said trowel and no trace of injury—nor anything else more salacious.

Amanda Gregg was next. She, too, was in her garden in the afternoon, having come home from work. She’d taken off her shoes and walked barefoot into the yard, but there wasn’t any trace of injury to her either. She’d been on the tiny police force, in line for the chief of police once she’d gotten a couple more years under her belt. No one knew exactly what she had planned for the small garden trowel beside her. Amanda didn’t garden.

Finally, it was Jodie Mason-Hyer. Jodie, of course, was on the city council. Like Amanda and Bethany, there was no reason for her to be dead. But she was, a small garden trowel by her side.

No one had ever found a link or reason. The mayor and his office claimed to have nothing on the table that the women were either for or against. The gossips had no grist for their mills and gave up only to start again when Jodie Mason-Hyer’s daughter waltzed back into town.

Zoe Mason-Hyer Parker, as if anyone could believe a name like that, really, was thirty-three, married with no children, the summer her momma died. She was thirty-five when she returned to the town without her husband—as if being Jodie Mason-Hyer’s daughter wasn’t enough to start tongues wagging.

Zoe was, in the words of Clara, the waitress at the diner who suffered the not quite cool enough air conditioning year after year, looking scared. And lonely. And maybe a little bit regretful. Probably because, having left her momma and gone west to the Left Coast, there had been no one there to look after her and perhaps notice anything wrong in her life. You couldn’t actually count on a husband for those types of woman things, could you?

Don’t know about that, Clara, Taran said. Taran Rees was the new, but no longer shiny new, chief of police in Corbin Meadow. He sat on the stool next to the cash register where he always started his day. He’d done that for two years, ever since Frank Nilsen had retired as police chief shortly after letting the murders of the three women fall into the cold case files.

How would you know? Clara asked. She turned to Taran, a hand on her hip and staring him down. The register next to her was an old silver thing, purchased new a few decades after the diner had lost its first blush, and it looked like an antique, what with everyone going to computers.

Clara, too, was something of an antique, still wearing her silver gray hair big and bold, held up with a scarf tied around it, like you might have seen in 1970. The lines around her eyes and mouth mostly trended upwards, which told Taran she’d spent the better part of those forty odd years smiling and laughing with customers, not complaining like she’d have you believe.

Taran took a sip of his coffee, the mug plain beige but without a chip on it. His grandmother probably had some that looked exactly the same. He was nearing forty, happy enough with his lot in life. He’d been married once to a woman who’d lived in Corbin Meadow all her life but shortly after the murders—or perhaps it started during the murders—she’d decided the town was too dull. Perhaps she’d always said that and Taran had finally heard her when she began packing her stuff to move to the northern part of Virginia where she now lived just outside of D.C. A place where, she said, life actually happened.

His radio sputtered at him and Taran pressed a button, saying, Okay. Over. He was momentarily thankful to the person who had called in forcing him away from uncomfortable questions he might have to answer with Clara. She had a way of dragging information out of you that would likely get shared around the community as others came in—bless her heart, as his momma would say.

You gotta get there, Chief. Mattie, their new dispatcher, was practically in tears.

Taran needed to rethink having a local dispatch. Maybe they ought to go through dispatch out of Hickory or something, where you got folks with some real training who weren’t about to cry.

What and where? Taran was already standing, putting a few bucks on the counter for Clara.

Clara, for her part, was already picking them up, pressing the numbers into the register so he could get his change. Not that he needed any, not that morning. He’d been fortunate to come prepared.

It’s Ms. Wilcox, the librarian. She was found in her garden. Like… Mattie trailed off.

The advantage of living in a small town, Taran knew, was that he didn’t have to pull any more information from Mattie. He could have been and gone back to the Wilcox house in the time it would take him if he had had to do that, what with Mattie sniffling and crying and all, not that he blamed her if it was bad, like the words Mattie had left unspoken suggested.

He knew where Elaine Wilcox lived, over on Cedar across from the school, about half a mile from the library which allowed her to walk to work every day and get in a mile no matter the weather, which was generally nice. When weather was at its worst in January, and there were a few inches of snow on the ground for a few days, the town, like all towns in the Carolinas—even those on the fringes of the Appalachians—closed down and the kids played.

I’ll be there in three, Taran said as he reached his cruiser. Three minutes assumed some traffic and hitting the light on Main and Gardenia. If he missed both, and so far he was missing traffic as there was only one other car on the street going the opposite direction, he would be there in two.

The cruiser purred along through the green light and the roads remained clear, which meant Taran beat his three-minute estimate by a good forty seconds. He’d slowed when a child had poked his head out of the chain link gate on the side of the school as if he wanted to cross the street. Instead, he’d watched the cruiser, fascinated to see it driving past the school during morning recess.

The Wilcox home was a neat 1950s era ranch-style home, all red brick and white trim. At some point Elaine had removed the narrow concrete stoop that so many of them had and added a wood front porch partially shaded by angled two-by-fours. The garden in the front was framed by low boxwood shrubs that stood about knee high. A crepe myrtle tree stood in a far corner offering shade in the summer to what was probably a master bedroom. Lavender and rosemary cuddled in the corner closest to the sidewalk.

It suited Elaine Wilcox down to the garden gnomes she kept in her front garden, which were not, of course, quite typical gnomes as they all wore Starfleet uniforms. Taran remembered when she had found those online. She had crowed about them for days. Today they didn’t look funny and welcoming. They looked slightly ominous, unhappy with having to wear their Starfleet uniforms when everyone knew gnomes were creatures of the earth, not space.

The slam of the door as Taran got out of the cruiser was loud on the quiet street. Someone was playing the radio, an oldies station, music that reminded him of his early childhood and his momma dancing around the kitchen to Madonna.

Mary Jo Strand and Louella White stood hugging each other at the end of the driveway. Mary Jo was head of the library board and lived around the corner. Louella was a different matter. She was the principal of the high school and more importantly, in Corbin Meadow, she was black. In most of the world it was the twenty-first century, and while the racists were coming out of the woodwork they’d been hiding in, in Corbin Meadow the races hadn’t ever really mixed enough for the racists to get angry. Still, a white woman hugging a black woman wasn’t something you saw every day in Corbin Meadow. Not on a public street, anyway.

She’s back there. Mary Jo pointed with her finger, around to the back.

Which told Taran they were, indeed, the women who had found Elaine. Mary Jo, probably because she’d have noticed when Elaine didn’t come in. She’d have called Louella to walk with her in case she needed help, perhaps thinking Elaine had fallen and injured herself. The careers of the three women had intersected many times and they were a common sight to be seen, arguing as they walked downtown or in the park on the weekends. The hug might be a surprise, but the friendship was well known in Corbin Meadow. Mary Jo always was a hell-raiser, according to Taran’s daddy.

The location wasn’t a surprise to Taran. Hadn’t the others all been in the backyard, lying out there with that damned trowel next to them? He’d seen them all working with Frank. He should have been working with Amanda right now. Instead, he was working alone, leaving Johnny Andress on traffic duty. Johnny had been on night duty when the first murders occurred. He had no real experience in major crimes, nor had he been present when the first women had died. Taran couldn’t see a good reason to bring him in, not right then.

The driveway was a long, narrow cement path that ran next to the house back to the detached single garage that sat behind. Most of the neighbors had expanded the garage to a two-car building, but not Elaine. She’d lived there alone. Always had.

Taran wondered if she was old enough to have purchased the place new. Decided she wasn’t and continued around the back. There was no fence. Not even the tidy border of bushes like in the front. The yard was deep and only a few feet wider than the house. There was a kidney-shaped plot of grass that bent around a rounded brick patio. The corner angles of the yard were filled with another crepe myrtle, this one, Taran knew, bloomed pink to the front one’s white, though it was past the time when it would bloom, despite the unseasonable warmth. Other bushes that he wasn’t familiar with huddled in groups gossiping with each other from various corners of the yard. There were bird feeders beneath the tree. A bird bath sat close to the house where bathing beauty birds could be seen easily from the cushioned rattan chairs sitting on the patio.

There was a retractable awning overhead, now closed. It was late in the season, although still warm. The remnants of the hurricane brushing the coast would bring with it tropical weather, unseasonably warm, probably the next day. Along with winds. If the power went out, Taran didn’t know what he’d do.

His knees buckled but only slightly before he made himself stand upright, looking down at Elaine Wilcox. She was dressed as if on her way to work at the library in nice khaki slacks and a short-sleeved blouse in blue. She was on her side. The garden trowel close at hand, as if she had been out to dig bulbs or something.

Except Taran knew he wouldn’t find anything like that ready to be dug. Wouldn’t find that the trowel looked used at all. He wiped the sweat that had appeared from his forehead, as if he was already feeling the tropical heat. He did not want to have to deal with this.

2

Before

When winter still came bringing a foot or more of snow at least once, usually in January, when the summers were shorter, and when people were kinder and more easily excited, Dixie Fulton lived in a house on the edge of the town of Corbin Meadow with her parents. It was an older home, the rooms small and square, the wood floor scuffed and scraped from years of wear with only a thin washed-out rag rug to cover the living room floor. A small black and white television sat in a corner, the picture heavy with television snow despite rabbit ears being pulled out as far as possible.

When they all watched television in the evening, Dixie’s daddy often stood there holding onto the rabbit ears to get better reception. He didn’t do that all the time, of course. No one would. Television was still something of a luxury, at least in Corbin Meadow, so they were lucky they had one at all. Dixie was proud of that, proud of her family for having that just as she was proud that she knew things others didn’t, the way she knew about Emrys.

Dixie’s home, like so many in her area, was reached by narrow roads, some of them still dirt or gravel which wound around up the hillside, higher and higher into the Appalachians. When clouds were low, the homes were encased in silent fog, as if they were in another world, different even from Corbin Meadow, which was often mistaken, even then—or perhaps most especially then— for a world all its own.

Dixie loved cloudy days, and that Saturday, the last day of October, was shaping up to be one such day. She went to the edge of her momma’s vegetable garden and stared out at the trees that always seemed to walk closer to her in the misty fog. In the padded silence, she waited, listening.

Emrys, she whispered, her voice eaten by the clouds before the sound could carry even as far as the house, which was only a short run to the heavy wooden backdoor, something she’d probably left open a crack and that her momma would inevitably chastise her for.

Dixie closed her eyes after her call, settling herself on the edge of the stone planter that her father had built for the carrots and lettuce and the other small vegetables, like radishes, which Dixie hated. The corn wasn’t in a raised bed, because who needed to raise up corn? It was always tall.

This time of year the plants were mostly gone, the late peas near ready to harvest, but the rest of the vines, bare of their fruits, were curling back into their warm beds of soil and manure. The strong cowsy stink of it had long since dissipated into the lingering summer days, and decayed down into the soil it was there to nourish, leaving only a musky damp smell now, one that Dixie associated with pumpkins, something her momma didn’t grow.

Not enough room for something you only want for Halloween, her momma said. They didn’t get a pumpkin for Halloween because kids didn’t come that far up the hill. Dixie was going to her friend Helen’s again this year so she could trick or treat, there not being enough houses up on the hill to be able to walk door to door, not like in town where everyone lived practically in each other’s laps.

Emrys wouldn’t come if she wasn’t focused on him, Dixie knew, even with the low clouds and her wishes. She felt the solid stone of the planter, something her daddy had built with his own hands, mortaring each block in place so they’d stay solid and even long after he was gone, or so he said. He’d taken great care for the garden just like he took great care with everything. The silence and the smells washed over her again.

In her mind’s eye, Dixie saw Emrys standing there near the edge of the trees, watching, waiting, checking to be sure it was all safe and she hadn’t set a trap for him to be found out.

Not that you could touch me, Emrys said, laughing. He laughed a lot. Dixie liked that about him.

You came, Dixie murmured. She spoke aloud. Just thinking the words didn’t work. Emrys wouldn’t answer her then.

I came, Emrys said. You called so I came, as I am, as ever, yours to command, Child of the Blood.

Dixie didn’t understand what Child of the Blood meant, but she always liked the formality of Emrys’ speech. She didn’t remember how she’d come to know about him. It was something she just seemed to know. Maybe her momma?

But her momma laughed off her comments.

I used to play in the garden with the pixies and gnomes and elves, she’d said once. They seemed so real but when you get older, you’ll understand it’s all in your mind. There aren’t any such things as fairies.

Dixie was older now, almost ten, but she still saw Emrys. And he still came when she called.

And I will always come for the Blood, for you, your mother, your daughter…

Dixie giggled at the thought of herself so old that she could have a daughter and cook for her the way her own momma did the cooking and cleaning. What kind of a house would she have? Would she find something on the edges of Corbin Meadow or would she live in town?

Emrys gave her a smile and changed the subject back to what Dixie needed.

I wanted to say hello, Dixie said. And make sure you were all right.

I am always all right, so long as you are there to guard me, Emrys said. And you?

Okay, Dixie said. But I wish I could have a pumpkin for Halloween. Here at the house. But Mama says there’s never any reason because no one would see it, but I’d see it. And you.

Emrys smiled. Your wish, Child of the Blood, is mine to command.

Emrys disappeared.

Dixie waited for a bit before turning to go inside. She looked around the garden, hoping to see a pumpkin having grown there mysteriously, but there wasn’t one. Dixie sighed, wondering if her momma was right.

The door was open a crack and the kitchen was cold. Her momma was upstairs, probably sewing on Dixie’s costume. Her daddy would be home any time.

Dixie went to the living room, turned on the television, and expertly arranged the rabbit ears for the show she wanted to watch. There was still plenty of snow covering the picture but she could see the figures well enough and she settled on the couch. Her eyes flicked outside to the long front porch, captured by the large round orange thing that sat near the door.

Chapter 3

Zoe Mason-Hyer Parker watched the dark blue sedan that belonged to the chief of police cruising down the street. Taran Rees was driving quickly, probably over the speed limit, but he didn’t have his lights or siren on. An advantage of being in Corbin Meadow instead of in Portland, where he’d have to have used the flashers to go that fast down a through street.

Zoe watched as he passed the school and turned the corner on Cedar. She didn’t know where he went after that. She told herself she didn’t care, but she was getting one of her feelings, like she always got back in Corbin Meadow, which was why she’d fled as far as she could to get away from them. Not that she was like one of those women in urban fantasy books who ran away from power. She didn’t have power. She had feelings that never made any sense.

Why couldn’t she get a power that let her have revenge on her enemies, which would make the whole divorce thing as easy as casting off the name Parker would be when it went through? She’d at least like to know things, important things that maybe people didn’t want her to know.

Instead she got feelings. This one felt like she was standing under a deep dark shadow and something very, very bad had happened. The fact that the chief of police was riding around in his car, going faster than the posted speed—at least to Zoe’s untrained eye—could mean that a major crime had been committed. It might also mean he was taking a statement on a lost dog.

Deep down, she knew the police chief wasn’t on a call about a lost dog. It was something else. That feeling. Someone was dead. Zoe was as certain of that as she was that she was standing in her childhood home which hadn’t changed much except it wasn’t quite as tidy as it had been when her momma was there to supervise the housekeeper. It still smelled of lemon cleansers, though that had gone out of style long ago, and she suspected that the scent remained from when her momma polished the wood on the coffee table that now bore more than its fair share of nicks and scratches.

The grandfather clock ticked, loud in the otherwise silent house. Zoe turned from the front window, sighing, wondering what had possessed her to come back home. She’d felt such a pull to be there, but now that she was, she was wishing she was somewhere else.

Something bad had happened.

Zoe crossed the hardwood, scuffed from decades of her parents walking across it and a decade and a half of her running, hopping, skipping, and even dancing on it. She walked out of the front room to the kitchen and family room area. Everything was so cut up in the house, not like the modern homes. The appliances were still black, not yet into the modern stainless steel era, although her momma hadn’t liked stainless as it picked up too many fingerprints.

Her father didn’t care so long as things worked. Zoe curled up on the sofa that had been old when she’d been a child, a nondescript brown that would probably be the same color after ten years in the dump. There was a flat screen television, too large for the room, angled towards the sofa, but Zoe didn’t turn it on. The glass slider looked out at a covered patio, a child curled in the arms of its parent house the way the bedrooms stuck out further back on one side and the kitchen poked out on the other. Zoe didn’t even turn to look outside though the sun was still shining.

Her stomach was tied in knots that would impress even a fisherman—not that she knew any fishermen. Zoe tried to get a handle on the bad feeling, as a therapist had once suggested to her. The feeling was everywhere in her body, from the tips of her toes to the top of her head and in every cell in between.

It wasn’t as if she knew anyone living down the way Taran Rees had driven, not well, not any longer. Zoe breathed in, hoping to move the feeling out of her body, but like the air on a summer day, it sat there, refusing any and all attempts at creating a breeze. Like the summer air, it was waiting.

Zoe’s phone rang. She looked at the number, but it had no name attached to it. She considered ignoring it, but maybe talking would help.

This is Zoe, she said, trying to sound cheerful, wondering if there was any chance she’d succeeded, though perhaps the person on the other end was just there to persuade her that her computer had sent out a message that someone was trying to hack it and she could hang up.

Zoe? The slight Appalachian drawl that always reminded Zoe just a little of Dolly Parton gave away the speaker. Donna Winston, Zoe’s best friend through grade school, who remained a good friend even through high school, though Zoe’s need for higher education and wanderlust had meant they weren’t as close as they had been when they were children.

Donna? Why exactly hadn’t her name come up on the caller ID? Donna and Zoe had talked several times since she’d been home, had, in fact, talked even before she’d come. Donna had been the one to talk Zoe into coming out for a visit, to see how it felt as an adult, which is what Zoe liked to think she was doing.

I’m at Momma and Daddy’s, Donna said in response to Zoe’s unspoken question. While Donna had once lived two houses down—the reason for the start of the girl’s friendship—three years or so ago her parents had decided the house was too much upkeep and downsized to one of the new condominiums that had been built on the edge of Corbin Meadow.

If Zoe remembered correctly, the zoning for the condos to go through had been her momma’s idea, a plan for how the community could grow. That had been her fondest wish, to see the place grow rather than being a town so small and so far off the beaten path that no one except the residents ever seemed to find it.

What’s up? Zoe asked. Donna hadn’t just called from her mom’s phone instead of her cell because she was bored. Her momma was probably there listening.

Momma got a call from Mary Jo, Donna said, almost whispering. Mary Jo found Elaine Wilcox dead in her backyard.

Zoe tried to talk but only a squeak came out, her mouth too dry to force words out. The dread she’d been feeling was about Elaine. It had always been like that in Corbin Meadow. The feelings that something was wrong, and periodically that something was right, and then the call or the announcement of what had happened and the confirmation from her gut that this was what she had known.

Not enough to be worthwhile. Just enough to unsettle.

And it only happened in Corbin Meadow. Because even if no one else admitted it, Zoe knew that Corbin Meadow wasn’t normal, hadn’t ever been normal, nor would it ever be normal. But like her feelings, she just couldn’t pinpoint why.

Chapter 4

It wasn’t just Taran’s forehead that was sweating several hours later. He’d called the county sheriffs, something that Frank, the former chief and his former boss, hadn’t done when he’d been in charge of the police department. Frank had believed that what happened in Corbin Meadow should stay there and be worked by the people who loved and cared for the citizens.

Taran believed in getting justice for the deceased. It was his own way of caring for them, never mind that Frank might have thought otherwise. Still, even when the sheriffs had come in with their criminal investigators and their forensic people and the coroner, Taran had stayed, watching and contributing what he could.

He was across the street, leaning against one of the dark blue SUVs that been the first to arrive at the scene. Mary Jo and Louella had given statements and had been released to go back to work, though Taran was aware neither woman would be getting much of anything done. Kids at the school just a few blocks down had stood at the edge of the fenced field and watched officers or tried to see the officers from their vantage point. The teachers had done their best to keep them away, which meant they had had little success.

Around him, Taran heard the buzz of voices, a few birds, and the low moan of a lawn mower. Whoever had been playing music earlier had turned it off or down so low he couldn’t hear any longer. It was beginning to cloud up but the humidity remained high and the temperature was going up from where it had been that morning. The storm was getting closer.

The sheriffs knew the storm was coming, too, hurrying here and there, running sometimes, to grab this or that from a trunk or a passenger seat. Each man talked quickly, walked even faster, and didn’t pause to take questions even from someone like Taran, who really was one of them though he worked for a department in a town they had probably only ever seen on a map.

Finally, Blake Fellows, the county sheriff, came up to Taran and looked him over, sizing him up. Blake was tall, heavily built, like the one time football player he probably was, and so blonde the sun hitting his hair would blind you. He was a man as solid as the Appalachian mountains where he’d lived his life, and he looked as worn with his pale eyes and lined and creased skin.

Glad you called us this time, Blake said.

Taran let the implied insult to him roll off him. Blake knew as well as Taran that the last calls hadn’t been his to make.

I can get you the old files from the others, Taran said.

Four times, you might need the feds, Blake said. Just want to know before I go allocating man power if someone is coming in to take it off my hands.

He was right, Taran knew. He ought to call the feds, but for the moment he was reluctant to do it. He’d been reluctant to call Blake, too, but what was he going to do? Try and solve the case himself? He’d have had to justify it when he called in the forensic techs anyway. He’d decided to call in the big guns, even if it did feel wrong somehow, like airing dirty laundry for everyone to see. At least the sheriffs would know him, a little, and maybe keep him in the loop, which was something he couldn’t be certain would happen with the FBI.

Let’s start with you, Taran said. We can determine if this really is the same as the others or if it’s some copycat.

Blake nodded. Be a lot easier if y’all had called us in the first time.

Frank’s retired now, Taran said. Might want to take it up with him.

Blake nodded, smiling now that he’d gotten in his digs.

Taran shifted his weight a little, his arms never uncrossing from his chest while he talked to the other man. He respected Blake, wanted to like him, but for some reason here and now he didn’t like him. Wasn’t the way he usually felt about people either. Taran knew he usually liked all the folks he ran into when he wasn’t arresting them, at least at first.

You got people canvassing? Blake asked.

Your people don’t want that job? Taran was surprised. He’d expected the sheriffs to take over everything.

Half my folks hadn’t heard of Corbin Meadow. Three couldn’t get it to come up on their GPS. Had to direct them in via cell phone, which seems stupid considering you’re just off the highway. Town like this, bet they don’t get many outsiders. Probably less likely to talk to them, Blake said, still smiling, looking ready to pat Taran on the shoulder like they were pals when they most explicitly were not.

I’ll get on it, Taran said. He’d do it himself. Had he known, he wouldn’t have wasted time. You got an official from Louella and Mary Jo?

Two broads who found her? Blake clarified, almost emphasizing the word ‘broad’ as if he wanted to see how much he could get under Taran’s skin by insulting the people of his town.

Taran just nodded. He didn’t want to play that game. It was getting away from warm and into hot. He