By the time Holland made it to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, Andy Griffith had already cut the man loose. According to Rodriguez, Walter Freeman was one step removed from the men responsible for every gram of heroin moving through western North Carolina. The DEA had likely been within a month of making their move, and the local law cut him free like a town drunk gone sober.
The way Freeman lawyered up, odds were they wouldn’t have stood a chance at turning him anyways. But the bigger question was how a man winds up hog-tied with a kilo of powder heroin and enough crystal to open a rock shop sitting in his lap like a basket of Easter eggs. There was backwoods justice and then there was this. In all Holland’s years, he’d never seen anything like it, but here he was picking up the pieces.
A receptionist led Holland down the hall and the deputies went quiet as he passed. Holland didn’t know whether their silence was fear or contrition. Sometimes they were scared you were the hand that held the ax, and other times it was an unspoken middle finger to let you know you were stepping on their toes. Holland didn’t care one way or the other. He held eye contact until they looked away or lowered their heads, their slack faces passing in the periphery like mile markers along the highway.
The clop of his chukkas against the linoleum was suddenly overcome by a high-pitched shrill that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. The receptionist twisted her face and jammed her fingers in her ears, nodding her head toward an open door to indicate this was as far as she’d take him.
Sheriff John Coggins looked like he was about to tip over. He was leaned back in a black leather office chair with his feet propped on his desk. A silver flattop squared off his head and a thick mustache flared around his nostrils from how he held his lips pursed. Unlike most sheriffs, who opted for suit and tie, he wore a black uniform like he still worked patrol. There was some sort of wooden box rested on his stomach and he had the paddle handle of the lid scissored between two fingers. The sheriff made a slight motion with his hand and that same piercing sound Holland had heard in the hallway yelped through the room so loud that he was sure his eardrums had split in half.
Holland stretched his mouth to pop his ears.
“That’s walnut over butternut.”
“What?”
“What gives it that raspy sound. You just don’t get that kind of rasp out of poplar. I like butternut or limba for the box to get that old hen on the back end. You turkey hunt?”
“No.”
“You from Georgia, ain’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“And don’t turkey hunt?” Sheriff Coggins yanked his feet down and pulled in tight to his desk. He set the box call on top of a large desktop calendar that was muddied with pen marks and doodles. “That bird right there went twenty-seven pounds.”
Holland looked over his shoulder to where the sheriff had nodded. A giant bird was mounted on the wall with one wing down, one bent toward the ceiling as if frozen mid-flight. Holland smelled like talcum powder. When the call came in that morning, he’d been in the middle of a haircut and he wasn’t even certain whether or not the barber had finished.
“I shot that bird up Chadeen Creek. Chastine’s how you’d say it. That’s how it’s spelled. Right above the old Shuler place. Come down off the roost within ten yards. He was sleeping up there in the tree I was sitting under and I didn’t have a clue. I just heard wings and there he was. Never even had to make a call.”
The sheriff looked at Holland like he was waiting on him to speak, but Holland didn’t have a clue what in the hell he was talking about.
“Life’s funny like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like the way you can just be sitting there minding your business and all of a sudden the world drops a gift right in your lap.”
“Is that how you think of it? Like a gift?”
“Well, I don’t know what else you’d call it.”
“A goddamn mess is what I’d call it.”
“A gawm.”
“A what?”
“A gawm,” Sheriff Coggins said again. “That’s what I’d say.”
“You can call it whatever you want. All I know is that someone just made my job a whole lot harder than it was yesterday.”
“I didn’t even know you were working a case up here.”
“Is that what this is about? You think we’re shitting on your doorstep? I didn’t drive up here to intrude, Sheriff, but I’m not going to apologize either.”
“Look, I know you think I’m just some dumb hick sheriff, and you might be right, but the fact is that pile of dope just come like a godsend on this department. There’s probably eighty grand in the heroin alone. Between that and the meth and the cash, I’m looking at a pretty good payday. You know how something like that affects the bottom line? We get that money back from the state and all of a sudden my budget ain’t near as tight as it was yesterday.”
The sheriff opened one of his desk drawers and took out a small rectangular picture frame. He flipped out the stand on the back and stood the photograph up so that Holland could see it. The picture was of a K9, a regal-looking bloodhound with her chest out and ears framing her face.
“That’s Lucy. And let me tell you she was probably the smartest dog I’ve ever seen. That one dog got more dope out of this county in the ten years we had her than every deputy I’ve got combined. She died about a year ago. Kidney failure. Makes you wonder what’s coming out of that water fountain out there in the hall. But do you know what it costs to replace a dog like that? Between the dog and the training and sending a handler down east for eight weeks, things get expensive in a hurry. Ain’t like raising a cur pup. Anyhow, what I’m getting at is that between all of that dope coming off the street and all of the dope we’ll wind up finding because of it, what was a bad day for you was a fine one for me.”
The sheriff picked up a manila folder and handed it across the desk.
“I had one of my deputies put the surveillance footage on a CD for you. If you don’t got a computer that takes CDs, just let me know and I’ll have him email it.”
“Did the camera catch anything?”
“Not really. I mean, you can see two people dragging the old boy up through the parking lot and tying him up to a light pole out there, but it’s too fuzzy to make heads or tails of. Maybe y’all can clean it up and get something out of it. My resources aren’t exactly top of the line. This ain’t exactly the Pentagon.”
“We might be able to do something with it.”
“I’ll take you down the hall and introduce you to the detective, but I’d say right now you know about as much as we do. Probably more. All we’ve really got is that this Walter Freeman’s from Cherokee. Lieutenant Fox has a call in with the tribe here in a few minutes and you’re more than welcome to sit in on that call if you want.”
“I’d prefer we keep a lid on things for now.”
“And why’s that?”
“My agents have reason to believe that there could be some people on the inside.”
“In my department?”
“Tribal police.”
“All right. We’ll play it however you say.”
“For now I’d like to keep the fact we’ve been watching him within this department. It’s fine if the tribe knows we’re here. Something like this happens, they know we’re going to show up, but as far as us having any prior knowledge of Walter Freeman, I need that to stay within this building. Can we do that?”
“Yeah, I’d say we can do that.” The sheriff stood, put his hands on his waist, and leaned back to stretch. “Anything you need from us, you just ask, and I mean that. Whatever you need, if we got it, it’s yours.”
“I appreciate that, Sheriff.” The sheriff made a funny face that Holland couldn’t make sense of. “What is it?”
“Looks like your barber missed a spot there on the side right above your ear.” Sheriff Coggins reached into his pocket and unfolded the spey blade of a tarnished old trapper. He pressed the edge against his thumb like he was peeling an apple. “Lean over here, son, and I’ll fix you right up.”
The motel where Rodriguez had been staying was less than a mile from the sheriff’s office. The old courthouse stood on a hill overlooking downtown Sylva, and off toward the creek a little one-story strip building offered weekly rates to anyone who had the cash to pay.
Every evening around quitting time the concrete walkway in front of the rooms filled up with migrant workers drinking tallboy Estrella Jaliscos. They worked ag fields and construction, made up landscaping teams and road crews. When the work dried up in one place, they followed it on to the next, all of them living as cheaply as they could in order to send what little they earned back home.
Rodriguez’s room smelled like stale cigarette smoke. The bed was neatly made and Holland wasn’t sure whether that was Rod’s military background or whether he’d been sleeping on top of the comforter for fear of what might be hiding beneath the sheets.
“If a man wanted to get eat up with bedbugs I’d say this right here’s the place.”
“Yeah, they take good care of us, don’t they? Luxury accommodations,” Rodriguez said. He was sitting in an armchair across the room, leaned forward with his hands dangling between his knees. All the lights were off, but there was just enough sun filtering through the windows behind Holland to make out his face.
“You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel so good.”
“You’ve been going a long time,” Holland said. “If you weren’t tired I’d swear you were on dope.”
“This is more than tired.” Rodriguez rubbed his face hard with the heels of his hands. He stretched his eyes wide and clawed at his throat. A pack of cigarettes sat on the floor between his feet. He lit one and blew the smoke toward the ceiling, stood up and walked over to a small counter where a coffeepot was plugged into the wall. “You want a cup of coffee?”
“I think I’ll pass,” Holland said. He could tell Rodriguez needed a break, but he also knew a vacation was something he couldn’t offer. They were too far along now. Too close to the end for him to come up for air.
Rodriguez stood in the doorway to the bathroom. He turned on the exhaust fan and blew the smoke from his cigarette toward the shower.
Holland had always been a hard-as-nails, no-nonsense kind of boss, and he knew that could take its toll. He also knew what it was like to be standing where Rodriguez was standing—months into an undercover operation, no way to dig yourself out of the darkness you’d created, no end in sight. He’d worked similar cases for similar men. He’d been stuck in an office for years now, but those types of memories never seem to fade. He recalled having thought at the time that things would get better once he rose in the department, but standing there now he wasn’t so sure.
“You’ve done a hell of a lot of good work on this, Rod. Don’t lose sight of that.”
“And most of it just went right down the drain.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Tell me how the fuck that happens? What kind of Hollywood superhero kind of horseshit is that? I keep looking out the window waiting for the goddamn Batmobile to come whizzing through town.”
Holland shook his head and laughed. He walked across the room and poured a shot of coffee. Whatever the hell Rodriguez had in that pot tasted like asphalt.
“The thing is, Rod, even Walter Freeman was small potatoes. He was the ticket into the aquarium, but those taps you got us, the conversations we’ve recorded from that one source, have taken us to some big fucking fish.”
“Yeah, and what do you think the odds of them going back to talking like that are now?”
“I’d say pretty good.” Holland nodded. “The way they’ve talked, it’s like they feel absolutely untouchable. We’ve got one of the highest-ranking officers in the Cherokee Police Department on the phone telling Walter Freeman when things were going to move. Don’t lose sight of that. Don’t lose sight of all the work you’ve put in. I can see the end of the game, friend, and it’s not playing out but one way.”
Holland slapped Rodriguez on the shoulder and it seemed to snap him out of his exhausted trance. Rodriguez wiped his nose with the back of his hand, took a sip of coffee and a long drag from his cigarette. Holland was absolutely certain they were two or three moves away from checkmate. Rod couldn’t see it, but they were almost home free. One more slipup and the walls would come tumbling down.