Sheriff Rome parked his truck in the driveway of his yellow-brick house in the Smoky Mountains town of Barter Ridge. Through the windshield he spotted a brown package on the front porch. “There it is.”
He grabbed his hat from the passenger seat and slid his rugged five-foot-ten body from behind the wheel before placing the hat on his thinning black hair. He swept the door closed and hurried up the walkway to the ten-inch-squared box with the familiar smiling arrow logo. Tucking the box under his arm, the sheriff pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and flipped through until he found the one with a white thumbprint from when he painted the split-rail fence around the property.
As soon as he opened the door, Sophie squeezed through the crack to greet him. The white French bulldog stood on her hind legs and clawed at his pants for attention. “Sophie, I love you, but I have to hurry before your mama gets home.” Sheriff Rome gave the dog a quick pat on the head before stepping inside. “Go pee. I’ll leave the door open for you.” While Sophie bolted for the overgrown grass on the other side of the walkway, the sheriff hightailed it to the kitchen.
Sheriff Rome placed the box on the kitchen table and sliced it open with his housekey. He removed from it a smaller box labeled Ingtec Bug and Hidden Camera Detector. “I hope you work like in the video.” He reached two fingers inside and pulled out a device about the size of a garage door opener with a silver antenna. “Are you charged?” He pressed the power button and jerked his head back when the device squelched. “Now you’re supposed to only go off when you detect something giving off electromagnetic signals… Oh.” The sheriff removed the radio from his belt and placed it on the table, along with his hat before stepping back a few feet. The squelching diminished. “Well, I guess you work then. Let’s take you for a spin.”
Sheriff Rome took the device to Emory’s old room, where an intruder had entered their house the previous month. He’d assumed the blame for the open window, not telling his wife he found the telltale signs it was pried open from the outside. Nothing had seemed to be missing, though, so he had no idea why anyone would’ve gone through the trouble. Later, when his son told him he had found a bug in his apartment, the sheriff wondered if that might’ve been the reason for the break-in.
Sheriff Rome scanned the entire room with the bug detector, but it never squelched above normal levels. “Of course. Why would anyone bug this room? It’s a museum.”
He retreated back to the hallway and scanned the walls on the way to the living room. He scanned the furniture and the lamps before his eyes fixed on the fireplace. “We haven’t used it since February.”
He knelt on the brown-brick hearth and stuck his head inside the fireplace. The sheriff raised the device toward the flue. The low squelching grew louder, and he was certain it wasn’t just from the sound echoing within the metal firebox. “Who would put a bug—”
“What are you doing?” a voice asked from behind.
Sheriff Rome jerked up his head, hitting it on the lintel. He spun himself around to sit on the hearth. “You startled me.”
Lula Mae Rome stood before him in full uniform. “I didn’t mean to.” She reached to the back of his head to rub it. “Are you okay?”
The sheriff looked up at his wife, who was a ranger for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and he spotted the radio in her belt. He moved the bug detector closer to it. “That’s what it was.”
Lula Mae backed up and raised her fingertips to her ears. “What on Earth is that, and why’s it making that awful noise.”
Sheriff Rome hit the power button on the device. “It’s something for work. I was just testing it.”
“And you had it delivered here? I saw the box on the kitchen table.”
The sheriff chuckled. “Sometimes I think we should’ve switched jobs.” He scooted over and patted the space next to him. “Have a seat. I need to talk to you.”
Lula Mae joined him on the hearth. “What is it?”
“You remember Emory showing us that bug he found in his apartment?”
“How could I forget. The TBI planted it to get some sort of information on him and force him to drop his lawsuit against them. But that’s past now. He’s not suing them anymore.”
“Well, that bug’s the same type of device the TBI uses, but he didn’t know for certain they were the ones listening to him.”
“Who else would it be?”
“I don’t know, but it got me thinking that whoever it was might’ve bugged our house too.” The sheriff held up the device. “That’s why I got this bug detector.”
“Why on Earth would anyone want to bug our house?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why do you think it?”
Sheriff Rome exhaled a sentence devoid of words.
“What?” asked Lula Mae. “What is it?”
“You found the window to Emory’s room open a few weeks back.”
“You said that was you!”
The sheriff shook his head. “It wasn’t.”
“Then why would you say that?”
“I was just trying to protect you.”
Lula Mae stood and threw her hands up. “I don’t need your protection. I need your honesty.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” Sheriff Rome pushed himself up and placed an arm around her. “We’re a team.”
Lula Mae nodded toward the detector. “You think that thing can find the bug?”
“If there even is one.”
“You think there’s another reason someone would break in? Nothing was taken.”
The sheriff waved toward the sofa. “Sit. I need to show you something.”
“What is it?”
“I’ll be right back.” Sheriff Rome exited the house to retrieve two plastic baggies from his truck’s glove compartment. When he returned to the living room, he found his wife standing with her arms crossed, eyes fixed on him.
“What’s that?”
He handed one of the baggies to her. “It’s a picture of Emory when he was a boy. You can see Crescent Lake behind him.”
“Ooh, that is old.” Lula Mae scrutinized the bag’s contents. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this picture. What does this writing on the back mean? Who bears the iniquity of the son?”
“I’m not sure. That picture was in his granny’s house before it burned.”
“It survived the fire?”
“Emory didn’t have it on him, and that house completely burned down. I remember walking through it for clues, and there was nothing. The only other person who made it out of the house, besides Emory, was Carl.”
“But he’s dead.”
“I know. I’m figuring either the TBI found it among Carl’s possessions and took custody of it, along with everything else after… the incident on the mountain, or he gave it to one of the people with him at the time. Whoever’s hands it ended up in, someone is now using it to try and rattle Emory. Now take a look at the envelope.”
Lula Mae inspected the other baggie, and saw a blank envelope bearing a thin red border and a small tornado icon on the flap. “This looks familiar.”
“It should. Remember when we went to Sedona for our twenty-fifth anniversary?”
“Of course.” Lula Mae gasped. “This is my stationery!”
“If not, it’s a big coincidence. It was slipped under Emory’s apartment door the night he was let go from the TBI. It was a month before the open window here.”
“What are you saying?”
“I think someone’s broken into the house twice.”
“Twice?!”
“The first time, they took the stationery—”
“But why take stationery, and how would they even know I had any?”
“I imagine they were just looking for something that would’ve let Emory know they could get to us. The second time – when they left the window open – was either to plant a bug or for some reason we haven’t thought of yet.”
“You shouldn’t have kept this from me.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“We need to get busy.” Lula Mae headed for the living room door. “While you’re scanning for bugs, I’m going to scour the house, looking for anything that’s gone missing, no matter how small.”
Almost an hour later, Sheriff Rome found his wife sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the cell phone in her hand. “Lula Mae?”
She jumped at the sound of his voice. “Nick. Did you find anything?”
“This house is clean. Did you?”
“I noticed an empty space on the shelf in the armoire, where I keep my books.”
“They stole a book?”
“It was Emory’s journal – the one the psychiatrist had him keep when he first came to live with us.”
“I remember that book. It was as big as the Bible.”
“He wrote in it for three years. He was going to throw it away when he went to college, and I told him he’d regret it and to just let me hold onto it. I had to promise not to read it.”
“And you’re sure it’s gone.”
“Positive.”
“Well maybe he took it with him the last time he was here.”
“That’s what I was thinking. I’m certain it was there when we did our big cleaning for the church sale, right before he came down last. I would’ve noticed it missing, but I haven’t looked on that shelf since. Something else I was thinking. Why break in twice? Why not take the journal when they were here the first time taking the envelope?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t know about the journal the first time but somehow found out about it and came back for it. The only way to know for sure it was actually taken is to ask Emory.”
“I was going to text him to ask, but what if he didn’t take it? What would that mean? I don’t want him to panic.”
“We can’t keep it from him.”
“You’re right.” She held up her phone. “Here goes.”