Murder Mountain (26 page)

“CeeCee! Oh my God!” he shouted as he ran to me.

Holding onto a small tree for support, he grabbed around my waist to prevent me from falling before eventually scooping me up and carrying me to the motel.

“I’m getting you to a hospital,” he puffed, jogging while carrying me.

“No! No! I’ll be okay! Michael, please!” I whispered.

“Are they still here?” he asked, laying me on his bed and locking the room’s door.

“No,” I grunted, sitting up and feeling dizzy. “They left when they heard you calling for me. I was hiding in a tree.”

“I can’t fucking believe this shit,” Michael cursed (startling me a little) as he went to the bathroom, grabbed some towels and ran some water over them to use for cleaning up my wounds. “CeeCee, lay down! We need to get you to a hospital!”

I stayed upright. “Michael, calm down and listen. I’m okay. This is all superficial scratches from the woods and stuff. I don’t need to go to the hospital. I’m sore from a fall, and tired, but that’s it. I need some water,” I whispered, my voice still scratchy.

Michael retrieved a glass of water, and knelt down in front of me to begin wiping and disinfecting my scrapes and bruises as I slowly sipped my water and regained enough strength to talk in complete sentences. When he got to my face, he began gently pulling my hair back, and kissing my cheek and forehead, lingering there for awhile before whispering in my ear, “I love you, CeeCee.” I didn’t protest. I felt the tears well up in my eyes as I put my hand on Michael’s cheek, and it didn’t go any farther, but at that precise moment, I thought there was a part of me that truly loved him as well. Once Michael had cleaned me up to his satisfaction, he decided to take it upon himself to play doctor, since I was too stubborn to go to the hospital and be looked at.

“Where else do you hurt?” he asked quietly, as he put the twentieth band-aid on my arm.

“The right side of my ribs is sore.”

“All right; let me take a look.”

I pulled off my shirt, which was torn, dirty, and bloody. Holding my right arm up, Michael went down each rib, touching it gently until I cried out on the ones that hurt, which were several.

“I don’t think they’re broken, but they’re definitely bruised. There’s not much you can do for those.” He pulled one of his t-shirts out of his suitcase and handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I told him, “but I think I’m going to soak in the bathtub first, and I’ve got extra clothes.” I stood up and headed for the door to go back to my own room.

“No way are you going back to that room. You stay here tonight and I’ll keep watch.”

I wasn’t in the mood to argue, and frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to stay by myself, either. I went into Michael’s bathroom and took a long, hot bath. I was in quite a bit of pain, and the hot water felt good. I caught myself almost falling asleep more than once. Michael called Coop while I was in the bathroom and left him a message about what happened. He also called one of his FBI contacts and told him to have the West Virginia State Police meet us in Spencer late the next afternoon. Michael requested specifically that they be called from Charleston, and not a local post, just in case they were involved. I think his intentions were to have us escorted to the state line without being killed. He arranged for the FBI agents who were going to come from Parkersburg to meet us in Mansfield instead. Based on what had happened that night, the FBI would be taking over the case in its entirety, and I would only be assisting.

After I was out of the bathtub and dried, I put on fresh clothes and talked to Michael about our next course of action. Morning was only a few short hours away and neither of us expected to get much sleep. I knew the men who’d been after me earlier wouldn’t be back, at least not for now, and that bothered me to an extent. I might add that it was also difficult to stay with Michael in the same room and not be in the same bed.

“I’ve been thinking,” I told Michael. “I wonder why they were worried about you being back. They didn’t hesitate to kill a cop, or to try to kill me. Why do you think they don’t want to mess with you?”

“It’s their mentality. A cop is just the same as them, so they don’t sweat it, but a federal agent is important in their eyes, and they don’t want that kind of heat brought down. That shows you what kind of people we’re dealing with. They realize that killing a cop will get them the death penalty, but they don’t put it together that it could happen to them. They’re more worried about federal attention.”

“Michael, who is the Chatham County Sheriff? Did we ever find that out?”

Michael grabbed his briefcase and started looking through his files. From the amount of time it took him, I felt it was safe to assume we’d forgotten to check.

“Here it is: Garvin B. Conroy, Chatham County Sheriff; the king himself.”

“I’d like to get his Bureau of Motor Vehicles photo, if we could. I don’t know where we’ll find a fax machine here. We’re lucky they have cable TV.”

Michael said he would check on it, but we needed to get a couple hours of sleep. He would keep watch while I slept for two hours, and then vice versa. We’d already decided to make a pass on Murder Mountain again, and I wanted to drive by the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department for my own curiosity. We were not going to stay in West Virginia one more night, even I agreed to that. We would finish what we could the next day, meet the State Police, and be on our way.

Michael was on his second hour of sleep and I was packing my suitcase when I heard a light knock on the room door. Michael sat straight up and grabbed his gun off the nightstand while I grabbed mine off the bed, each of us scrambling to stand on opposite sides of the door.

“Who is it?” I yelled.

“Um? I’m lookin’ for the cops from Ohio? I, um, my name is Gina and I really need to talk to y’all. I’m not lookin’ for any trouble. It’s important. Please ...,” said a small female voice.

I looked at Michael and he stepped back to the window, slightly pulling the curtain back to see how many people were actually at the door. Holding up his index finger, indicating only one, he nodded towards the door for me to open it, our guns ready. I grabbed the doorknob and swung the door open, pointing my gun into the face of the small, dark-haired female standing in front of me.

“Show me your hands,” I ordered her, calmly.

“Please,” said the woman, holding her hands up and looking terrified, “I’m here to help ya; ya don’t know what yer dealin’ with.”

“Okay,” I barked the word out, “but first I need you to step inside here and put your hands on the wall. You alone?”

She nodded and complied with my commands.

“Good, I’m going to pat you down first. Do you have any weapons on you?”

“No, ma’am.” Her voice was quivering.

I patted her down. Satisfied that Gina wasn’t hiding a rocket launcher under her tank top, I motioned for her to have a seat on the edge of the bed while Michael closed and locked the room’s door. I kept my gun in my hand and went into interrogation mode: “Who are you, how do you know us, and what exactly do you want?”

Gina put her head down, and for a brief moment I thought she was going to cry, but she merely rubbed her eyes and then looked at me. She was an unattractive woman and had an unusually hard look to her. She was probably in her mid thirties, but appeared to be in her late forties, having clearly not kept many appointments with dentists or dermatologists.

“My name is Gina Reynolds, and my boyfriend is Timmy Carr? Y’all know him, I’m sure. I’m here because I don’t feel right about what they’re doin’, only if they knew I was here, they’d kill me and I got me a little girl. Anyway, the reason I’m here is to tell ya: y’all need to leave West Virginia, or they’re gonna gitcha.”

“Who is going to get us, Gina?” I asked softly, sitting down next to her.

“Y’all know who they are, and don’t make me say nothing more ...”

Realizing who she was, I interrupted, “You called and told us where to find Karen Cummings! You were in Ohio with Tim when he slashed my tires, weren’t you!” I stood up and faced her. “I recognize your voice from the tape of the phone call you made to our department.”

She hung her head and began to cry, “Yes! Don’t ya understand! They don’t care who ya are, they’ll kill ya just the same as me! They know everything you do! Ya kin’t help that dark-haired girl now, they’re gonna take care of her soon, and if ya stay any longer they’ll take care of y’all, too!”

“Gina, listen to me, please,” Michael began. “We can help you. We can take you and your daughter out of here and place you in protective custody where these people will never be able to find you again. We need you to talk to us.”

I thought this woman was taking a big risk talking to us just then, and at the rate things were going, she would probably be dead by nightfall. She’d indicated that Andrea Dean was still alive, an idea I had written off during the preceding 48 hours. I was sure they had killed her by now, but I knew one thing: this woman was not leaving the room until I had several questions answered.

“I kin’t talk to ya no more,” she sobbed. “I don’t wanna die!”

“Gina, you are not going to die,” I assured her, remembering a similar promise I’d made to Matt Hensley. “You came here today for a reason, the reason being you are a good person and cannot consciously sit back and watch this go on. Listen to Agent Hagerman. The FBI will help you and your daughter start a new life, away from here, and protect you. Whatever you tell us today may be enough to issue federal warrants and lock them up, anyway.”

She kept sobbing and shaking her head, “That cop!” she sobbed. “That cop; he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wasn’t there but I heard ’em talkin’ about it! I heard ’em talkin’ about the guy at the prison, too! I gotta go!”

Gina stood up and tried to go for the door, but Michael stood and front of it. I grabbed her arm. She was going to tell me about Boz if I had to threaten her life to do it.

“Wait! Gina, you are already in danger! You don’t think they know you’re here? You said yourself they know everything! Let’s go get your daughter and we’ll drive you out of town, now, and put you up until other arrangements can be made.” I stood there holding her by the shoulders, looking as deeply into her eyes as I could. “Please, I’m begging you. What happened to the officer they killed?”

She stayed at the door, turning from me to face it, while Michael walked to the window and peered out again, making sure we were still alone. “I heard ’em talkin’ one night when I was in the kitchen,” she told us. “They was all yellin’ because they were lookin’ at that girl’s house when that cop showed up and they had to take care of ’im. That’s all I heard. They try not to talk about things in front of me. I told ya where that other girl was buried ’cause they was talkin’ ’bout movin’ her last week and I hoped y’all would find some evidence to git ’em all away from me.” She seemed as if she was starting to calm down.

“Gina, how is the sheriff’s department involved in all of this? Who is running the show?” Michael asked.

Gina quit crying and straightened her posture, almost stoically, and smiled at Michael before she opened the door.

“I’m done talking. I kin get myself and my daughter outta here quicker than y’all kin, and that’s what I’ll do. I’ll tell ya two things before I leave. Find Laurie Kaylor, that’s Big Al’s woman. She’s on the inside. Second …,” she hesitated, then blurted, “The sheriff runs the county and keeps a tight leash on things ’round here; y’all just remember that.” Then she darted out the door.

I stared at the door and knew that when Gina left she just signed her death warrant. She had, however, given us the first acknowledgment regarding the local law enforcement’s involvement, but what we could do with that information, now that she was gone, was anybody’s guess. Boz had surprised them at Andrea Dean’s house, a confirmed fact, but how and why he’d driven to the woods was still unknown. Michael was already on the phone calling in Gina’s information, if that was her real name, and running a check on her.

“Andrea’s alive, Michael, and she’s here,” I said as he was hanging up the phone.

“Now, CeeCee, you don’t know that! We don’t know that anything this woman said was on the up and up, or whether it was bullshit. For all we know, she could be setting us up for something, and casually mentioning Andrea Dean’s name like that could be it.”

“I don’t think so, Michael. I think she was telling the truth. Why would they want us to know where Karen Cummings was buried? She called that in …”

“I don’t trust anyone here, that’s all. Let me get cleaned up, and then let’s get the hell out of this place. By the way, you still sore?”

I told him I was fine and I lay back on the bed while he took a shower and packed his things, thinking of the best, and quickest, way we might be able to find Andrea Dean. I wondered if they were keeping her at the trailer on Murder Mountain, but I didn’t think so. They knew we’d been there already, and if she had been there, they would’ve moved her by now. We needed a break, a big one, if we were going to find Andrea alive, and in my frame of mind at the time, I wasn’t optimistic. Our time to meet the State Police had been pushed back, so we still had a full day ahead of us. There was a little time left.

After checking out of our rooms (I think the clerk was glad to see us go), we stopped and grabbed something to eat before driving to the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department to do a simple but discreet drive-by. I wasn’t overly impressed by the department’s appearance. It was a small brick building with “Chatham County Sheriff” in white letters on the front, a bush on each side of the front entrance, and a small parking lot off to the left. There were two sheriff’s cruisers and three civilian cars parked in the lot.
Not a lot of business today,
I guessed. At my department, I consider myself fortunate if I can find a parking place within a five-minute walk of the building. Michael pulled into a small car dealership across the street and turned around, facing the department. Before he put the car in Park, I saw the front door open, and a deputy walked out with an older female.

“Michael, look!” I reached for my camera.