Catawba Falls

By WF Ranew

Does a killer roam the Western North Carolina mountains?

Red Farlow travels to Camp Ridgemont for Boys for a reunion with his summer camp friends. On arrival, he discovers two camp counselors have been found in the woods, hacked to death. Red’s investigation soon widens with more mysterious deaths, one of them a close friend.

Far-right extremist Troy Unsworthy knows the hills and hollows after a lifetime of growing up in these mountains. Red soon learns all the victims are connected to Unsworthy in the years leading up to a deadly auto accident which put him in prison.

When he learns Unsworthy was released just before the counselors’ deaths, Red goes into the mountains. His trek requires sure-footedness over rocky terrain and old-growth forest as he explores caves with endless tunnels, shafts, and deep-water pools searching for his suspect.

But, did Unsworthy really murder these people, or should Red turn his attention to other suspects?

Red treads a treacherous path on his quest to find the killer and bring him to justice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tirgearr Publishing
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215717035

WF Ranew

W.F. Ranew is a former newspaper reporter, editor, and communication executive. He started his journalism career covering sports, police, and city council meetings at his hometown newspaper, The Quitman Free Press. He also worked as a reporter and editor for several regional dailies: The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The Florida Times-Union, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Ranew has written two previous novels: Schoolhouse Man and Candyman’s Sorrow.He lives with his wife in Atlanta and St. Simons Island, Ga.

Book preview

Chapter One

Death visited late in the day. I came upon the human tragedy the following morning.

Near Kitsuma’s summit, a steady breeze rustled trees and bushes hugging the mountainside. Spring in North Carolina meant comfortable temperatures during daylight. Standing there, I felt the night’s lingering chill.

Years had passed—fifty or more—since I’d tramped the mountain’s footpaths.

Two dozen of us searched the area late the previous evening but had gotten nowhere near the summit. We resumed our task along the rigorous trail on the Old Fort side well before dawn.

Our group, split into twos and threes, made our way farther toward the top by driving to an access point halfway up the mountain. Others had started at the base. We covered areas unreachable in the previous night’s outing. Two hours later, I came upon the campground, forty yards down a side trail and near a cove of rhododendron and mountain laurel.

The scene’s horror struck deep, painted in strokes of surreal hues. The blood, in the dim light, bore a black pigmentation. One young man’s skin tone paled to a faint glow reflecting his orange rain parka.

Two light-green pup tents stood side by side. One caved in toward the back; the other seemed undisturbed.

I looked around for the second camp counselor. Raking the mountainside, my gaze focused on something resembling a yellow night safety vest. I made my way downhill.

Soon enough, I came across another grisly scene. The young man’s head cocked at a strange, unnatural angle as he sprawled belly down in the bushes and leaves. The blood wasn’t as apparent with him as the fluid had seeped into leaves and pine needles beneath him.

Something tilted out of his left hand—a cell phone.

I stood there, observing, before heading back to the campsite. A helicopter droned not far away, and I remembered the other ground searchers.

Ward Jefferson, an old friend and search party member, descended the hill and walked up beside me. I pointed out the victims, and he slowly approached, paused, and observed each one before coming back to me. Oh my God, he said. Who would do that to Jeff Collins and Wally Durrand? Ward, tall and gray-haired, gave the impression of a strong, aging man. His lips quivered, and his hand shook as he scratched his right cheek. He started crying.

I put an arm around Ward’s shoulder and tugged. He turned and stepped away for a moment.

You knew both these young men, Ward?

He looked off in the other direction as if he could remove himself to a safer part of the mountain, one undisturbed by the horror before us. Yes, but it’s a long story, Red. Can’t talk about it now. I witnessed it all years ago. But these two went through hell once already. Now this.

The breeze caressed the silence. The light green of new spring leafing on some trees contrasted with the mature evergreen shades.

The sound of voices emerged from down the main trail.

Over here, I shouted. My voice tore through the quiet and rippled across the mountainside.

Searchers, led by a sheriff’s deputy, walked up behind us. Many others were probably two or three miles away.

Soon, several searchers congregated around Ward and me. Their chatter calmed to silence upon seeing the death scene.

I announced they should stay away from the campsite to preserve evidence for the crime scene team.

I called the sheriff on my walkie-talkie and gave him the coordinates. Then I spoke to the deputy. Both young men are dead. No one could have survived what appear to be deep gashes and loss of blood. They camped off the main trail. I’m keeping people out of the area. Also, tell your crime scene folks there’s a cell phone with the body down the hill.

I moved the group back. Sheriff said he’d be up the trail shortly, I told them.

The deputy reached into his backpack and, with a roll of crime scene tape, encircled the area in ten-yard stretches, wrapping the yellow ribbon around trees and across each side of the trail.

I walked back over to him.

Ward shook his head. Two fine young men.

The helicopter found us, its engines roaring and whirring prop rustling the trees and bushes.

Standing outside the taped boundary, I took photos of the two pup tents and Collins’ body. Several yards from Durrand’s body, I shot several more pictures on my phone.

My eyes caught the blade stuck in a sweetgum tree trunk as I turned. It was a bloody tomahawk of the type used in throwing contests.

Several more photos.

* * *

I’d driven up for a board meeting and reunion at Camp Ridgemont for Boys and checked into a small inn called the Creekside Resort in Old Fort, North Carolina.

The camp fell in the long shadow of Catawba Falls, a popular destination for all ages to hike and camp out under the rushing waters of the hundred-foot cascade.

Death found an efficient spot to cast humans off the high rocks upon the boulders and water below. Few survived the flight off the top of Catawba Falls.

Kitsuma Mountain wasn’t far from the falls.

* * *

Traveling from Savannah the previous day, I phoned the camp director, a Baptist minister named Damien Richards, and invited him to go fly fishing. We’d planned to head out the following day.

After I arrived in Old Fort that afternoon, my cell phone buzzed.

Red, I have information that may require your professional expertise, Damien said. His voice quivered.

I asked what had happened.

I just spoke with Sheriff Buck Bedford of McDowell County. He paused momentarily. One of our senior counselors, a college kid named Wally Durrand, made a distress call to the emergency line. He was frantic and running from a man who’d attacked the two at their campsite. The other kid is Jeff Collins.

I thought about how to offer my services to Sheriff Bedford, whom I did not know. Someone else I knew could help with an introduction—Ward, my longtime friend and a successful lawyer. He knew everyone who was anyone all around Asheville, Buncombe County, and surrounding municipalities.

Ward served on the boys’ camp alum board with me.

Dames, does Ward know about this?

He’s the next person I’m calling, the director said. Could help us a great deal. The sheriff organized a search party and sent up a helicopter. Hold on, and I’ll try to reach Ward and conference him in.

Ward picked up the call immediately.

Damien explained what was happening, although we only knew a 911 call had been made at six forty-eight from somewhere on Kitsuma Mountain in the Pisgah National Forest.

He told us he talked to the students earlier in the afternoon. They’d planned to mountain bike the Kitsuma trail before hiking to its summit and camping.

* * *

That phone conversation led to my involvement and the discovery of the two camp counselors, slain by an unknown hand. My conviction of one killer seemed logical.

My mind swirled with that possibility. No, the likelihood consumed me with the immediate crime scene flurry and meetings with Sheriff Bedford, his deputies, and a detective.

That afternoon at three, the sheriff held a news conference in Marion, the county seat. Plenty of journalists showed up, including a national bureau reporter from Atlanta. Just the facts. That’s all he discussed. After his opening statement, the sheriff took several questions, which he answered in his original comments.

The sheriff organized a search party the night before after techies pinpointed the 911 call near Kitsuma Mountain’s summit. The pair hiked the longer and more challenging trail from the Old Fort side and set up their camp fifty yards from the mountaintop. They’d left their bikes secured on Durrand’s four-by-four near the eastern trailhead.

A savvy reporter from the Asheville newspaper approached me for comments. The diminutive young woman, Cecily Bass, had short black hair and wore a bulky sweater, blue jeans, and a red barrette with the word Press in her hair. The barrette fastened a single mocha-colored braided strand of hair, which descended to her neck on the left side. I surmised by her well-worn pair of high-end hiking boots, she enjoyed tramping around Western North Carolina’s mountains. She introduced herself as the Asheville Record’s crime reporter.

And you are?

Farlow. Red Farlow. Private investigator.

You found the bodies, Mr. Farlow? she asked.

With that question, I knew my presence might complicate things. The sheriff was the spokesperson. I looked across the room before answering, but already knew he didn’t care for my company once he discovered my experience in law enforcement. Sheriff Bedford cooled from an initial handshake as soon as Ward informed him about my career with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and current occupation. Bedford huffed upon hearing that and added, We don’t care too much for private investigators up here.

I answered Cecily’s question and a couple more. I tried not to contradict what Sheriff Bedford had said moments earlier. She asked for my card, handed me hers, and strolled toward the sheriff. But I knew what was next. As soon as she wrote her story, more questions would arise. I expected a follow-up phone call.

Meetings and phone calls consumed the afternoon and evening. I grabbed a barbecue plate on my way to Old Fort and my inn room. Exhausted to numbness, I showered and fell into a deep sleep. Nothing would wake me.

Except something did.

Motion and muted noise outside my door. I reached for my handgun, kept the place dark, and sat up. Someone was in the hallway from the shadowy movement under the door. The room’s electric clock glowed two forty-five.

I eased out of bed, clad only in white boxers. I slid my feet into boat shoes. My gripping the gun steadied my bleariness.

I stepped lightly toward the door, stood there momentarily, and listened.

Something down the hall sounded like a shadowy wind buffeting trees from an unknown storm. Far off in the distance, in another world.

I held the doorknob and carefully slipped off the security chain. I quickly pulled the door opened and stepped out into the hall.

No one.

Then I heard another sound.

I looked at the hall end by the stairs.

A dark figure dressed in a hooded oil-cloth parka came out of an alcove. The person stood there a moment and stared right through me. Oddly, I saw no eyes, no face, only a blackness under the hood. The figure moved quickly and disappeared down the stairs.

I followed, but didn’t get far in boat shoes and boxers. At the end of the hall, I glanced down the steps but saw nothing.

Someone opened the inn’s front door and slammed it shut.

Back in my room, I looked down into the darkness and the street fifty yards from the window. At first I saw very little detail, as only a lone streetlamp lit the scene. A dark figure walked out of the shadows. A vehicle appearing to be an old Army truck sat on the curb a block away. The figure got in on the passenger side. The driver cranked the vehicle up and sped away into the dark silhouette of the mountains rising above Swannanoa Creek.

The room softly glowed when I flipped on the bedside lamp. I dressed, then considered there was no way I could track down the truck. Unlikely, at least. I disrobed and went back to bed with my handgun nearby.

* * *

Two questions bounced around my brain the rest of the night. No, three.

Who was the intruder?

And who was his accomplice/driver?

Was the person a killer?

* * *

Later, as the sunlight broke, I got up and looked at the clock. Too early, I forced myself out of bed and to the bathroom.

I dressed and considered my mental to-do list. Where to start?

The sheriff, deputies, and crime scene specialists had completed their initial fieldwork. Two men from a local mortuary moved the bodies to the medical examiner’s office around three o’clock.

I’d call the sheriff to catch up with him. I also needed to speak with Damien Richards, who’d be grieving his dead counselors.

But all of that flew beside the road when I picked up my wallet. Beside it, a smooth stone washed for ages in the rushing water of a river or stream sat atop the chest of drawers.

Someone had etched a strange face design onto its surface on one side. The face behind the hood? Who left it there?

Chapter Two

The next day, I drove to Chimney Rock. Beau Furman, a former camp counselor, lived there. Over the years, we’d lost touch, so I was ready to reconnect with my old friend.

After Beau graduated from the University of Ohio, he sold the family’s dry-cleaning business in Dayton. He moved to a small farm in the shadow of one of North Carolina’s most famous natural attractions—Chimney Rock. Beau loved the mountains from his time at camp as a boy and wanted to live there.

Beau set up an accounting practice and did pretty well over the years, picking up business from several local manufacturers and handling individuals’ needs for financial advice and tax services. I hadn’t talked to Beau since my previous year’s adventure in the Catawba Falls area. After that debacle, which had led to another old friend’s death, I needed solace from my past. He provided it at the time.

I called ahead of my visit. We spent the afternoon talking about times past, mostly good and others not so much. But during our boys’ camp days, there were no bad times.

Beau was the easygoing influence—a friend from my salad days when the carefree life of a boys’ camp counselor intersected with budding adulthood. There is something pointless about nostalgia to some people, but I needed its balm that day. Too much from the past slithered into my life again.

I felt a rush seeing him again after so many years. Beau, the eighteen-year-old, stood about five-eleven, had the build of a high school football player he’d been, and a lock of black hair hanging down over his forehead. Most women called him knock-down gorgeous, with his heavy black eyebrows and piercing blue eyes. I thought he had a welcoming smile.

He hadn’t changed much over the years. Still fit, his hair had flecked with gray here and there, but not too much. He was my age. Couldn’t tell it.

We also talked about someone who could help me with the murder investigation. That proved the trip’s worth.

* * *

Tell me, old friend, Beau said. You traveled up here for the camp alumni board meeting. How did you get pulled into this double murder investigation?

His secretary, a young woman named Beth, placed a tray of coffee and snacks on the table between our chairs. She poured, her low-cut blouse falling open to reveal her breasts of lovely white roundness as she leaned over. I thought of cantaloupes, but the term seemed too trite to describe such natural perfection. She looked at me and smiled.

I sipped the coffee as she left the room and closed the office door.

I filled Beau in on the double murder on Kitsuma Mountain, a place both of us could relate to, as we’d taken campers there several times.

I intended to call you on the drive north but figured we’d see each other tomorrow anyway, I said. I talked to Richards and asked if we could wet a few trout flies. Later, he called and informed me about the distress call the sheriff had gotten from one of his counselors. I joined the search.

You found the bodies?

Afraid so. Death seems to follow me everywhere.

Beau laughed. Don’t bring it here. This is one of North Carolina’s leading tourist attractions.

I looked around Beau’s office as we talked. He had a framed photo of Ridgemont campers and staff from 1966. I saw a much younger image of myself on the far left in the back row.

Ralph Cremmons, the wag he always was, could be seen standing next to me. He became a ghostly blur while rushing down to appear next to the camp director in the right corner.

Someone did this every camp photo session. The photographer used a panorama camera, which he slowly rotated—from left to right—to capture the group’s width of a hundred twenty boys of various ages, counselors mostly in college or seminary, the nurse, admin staff, and director. The camera moved slowly enough for someone to sprint the distance from one side of the group to the other, thus appearing at least twice in the photo.

Cremmons made it his goal at every session to accomplish this feat. The only time he failed was when another counselor tripped him on the way, sending Ralph into a stumble with arms flailing and legs scrambling to regain footing.

We hiked Kitsuma often, I reminded Beau. Both from the shorter Ridgecrest assembly approach and the longer, more rigorous hike from Old Fort. Except, I haven’t been up in fifty years. Still popular with the Baptists visiting here, I guess.

Indeed, it is, he replied. But many turn around before they hit the halfway point.

Really? Not that bad on the western slope. But the Old Fort side is another matter. Still, I could use a mountain man or woman to remind me of the side trails. The killer knew the mountain well to escape around nightfall.

Beau sat up as he turned his chair and pointed to McDowell County’s map, primarily covered in a pale green signifying the Pisgah Forest.

Look at that, he said. Who knows that area better than anyone else?

I waited for him to answer. Instead, he studied the map from across the room.

Beau finally eased back in his chair. I’ll tell you, Red. Do you remember Joey Earle?

The name echoed through me.

Authorities falsely accused Earle of murdering a young woman in the late eighties. She was the daughter of a friend.

How’s he doing?

I see him occasionally, Beau told me. He’s tended his father’s horse farm all these years. Now, he works as an outdoor guide.

He suffered pretty badly being wrongly accused, I said. That would change anyone’s life.

Yes, it would. But Joey comes from rock-solid Presbyterian stock.

After his Army stint, Joey came home with a GED and enrolled in St. James College, where he graduated with a biology degree.

He established an outdoor adventure company in Old Fort, Beau said. Knows more about the mountains, rivers, and streams around here than anybody. Except maybe the moonshiners and others who use these mountains to hide from the law.

The summer of eighty-nine rose like a ghost in my brain. Bad things happened that year to my friend’s family and Joey Earle.

Then an idea occurred.

I asked for Joey’s work address, and Beau directed me to a mountain road out of Old Fort.

I thanked him and left.

* * *

As I drove back to Old Fort, I looked for a place to eat. I also kept an eye out for the four-wheel-drive vehicle from the night before. As dark as the street was, I could barely make out the truck, but it appeared to be an older model.

I pulled into the Broken Arrow Bar and Grill for a burger.

Walking back to my ride afterward, I glanced around the parking area. Many cars, pickups, four-wheel drives, and motorcycles sat idle. A dark military-green vehicle sat in the far back corner of the lot. The evening had turned dark enough that I almost missed it. But there it was.

I looked inside the spartan interior right out of a war zone. Then it struck me. The vehicle was British-made, with the steering wheel on