Deep Down (I)

  Jess said, “We’re really grateful for your help, Mr. Semple. Did she say anything about where she was going next when she left?”

  Looking uncomfortable again, Junior shrugged, then said, “Up by Sunrise, I think, but that’s a lot of land. Come on then, and walk behind me, right in my footsteps from here on up. Don’t want no one trampling a sang plant down.”

  Drew knew enough about sang to see that there were no plants in this immediate area, so he wasn’t sure why Junior was so touchy. Likely it was just his nature. Drew had had a fair-warning talk with him the first week he’d gotten here because Junior had gone far beyond leaving scarecrows around to frighten off possible poachers. He’d put out word of haints—spottings of spirits or ghosts—and even hung ghostlike sheets in the trees to scare off teenagers who had done some poaching. What Drew really feared, though, was how quick with the trigger-finger Junior could be. Sheriff Akers had said he’d been in jail for a month a couple of years ago for rigging shotguns to go off if anyone crossed a trip wire near his sang patches. He’d been a terrible prisoner, went berserk in his jail cell and was always yelling to get out.

  “So how has your crop been this year?” Jess asked him.

  “So-so,” he said, though Drew could tell the patch they were approaching had three-and four-prongers, which were mature, valuable plants. But Junior had brought them to a very small, ragged patch, and he wondered if this really was the one Mariah had visited. What if Junior still had a shotgun or two rigged around here, and she’d gotten off the path and one discharged? Would he just bury her to avoid trouble—and a long stay in a prison cell?

  “We heard you digging away,” Drew said. “Mind showing us exactly where?”

  Junior turned and frowned. Drew had the urge to pull Jess behind him again, but he could get to his .45 as fast as Junior could raise that rifle. “Tell you what,” Junior said, drawling his words more than ever. “I’ll give you the same demo I give Mariah.”

  In the same place? Drew wondered, but he decided not to press his luck. Junior led them around a large basswood tree and pointed to a sang patch atop a sharp, wooded hill with northern exposure. The creek ran through a rocky bed about twenty feet below. Sang plants, looking autumn-yellow with their small clusters of red berries, nodded in the breeze along the whole crest of the hill.

  “I was digging somewheres right about here while she counted,” he told them and pulled a homemade sang hoe out of the leafy ground. It sported a sharp, needle-nosed blade he must have cut and hammered out from a shovel. Actually, Drew thought, it made one hell of a makeshift weapon.

  “Damn poachers,” Junior went on. “They done cut a lot out of this site last month, then slid down the hill over yonder and hiked out by the creek bed.” He lifted the hoe, then stabbed it into the ground.

  Drew could see he had already started to cut around a sang plant. Diggers always gave the root plenty of room to avoid cutting off the little root hairs. You never knew how big the so-called limbs of the taproot itself would be.

  “Is this exactly where my mother did her count, just to get an idea of the rest of your patches scattered around here?” Jess asked, God bless her. He was right to bring her along. She knew when to keep her mouth shut and when to step in with a woman’s softer approach to a key question.

  “Right,” Junior muttered, not looking up.

  But Drew didn’t believe him. Why would he show Mariah a spot that had been poached—unless he was just complaining to her so he could continue to justify his illegal attempts to attack poachers? Junior might have planted this sang and kept an eye on it, but the forest floor, even this close to his property, was open land. Unless Junior caught them, or unless they tried to sell stolen sang and didn’t have a government license, poachers could get away with a fortune here. In the wilds like this, even if Junior slung the seeds and covered them up, the risk was all his.

  “Ever think of starting a real big cultivation of sang, like they grow in farms in Wisconsin or Korea?” Jess was asking.

  “Naw,” Junior told her with a shake of his shaggy head. “Everybody knows sang’s the most valuable nontimber plant you can grow in the woods. Even if the cultivated kind is easier to protect, wild sang’s worth more, Miss Jessie, you know that. Still, gotta admit, high fences would cut down on varmints like deer—human varmints, too. That’s the thing, and you both know it. When you’re raising a crop worth five hundred dollars a pound that’ll grow only in deep forest, you gotta do what you can to protect it. You understand that, don’t you now, boy—Sheriff?”

  Drew decided not to take the bait of another snide comment about his past. He knew Junior and others had no use for him, but he needed Junior now. But damn this old geezer for not volunteering the information about Mariah heading for Sunrise Mountain three days ago. Knowing that could have kept search parties from wasting time around Big Blue. But was Junior even telling the truth now, or was this just a way to give them a quick show-and-tell and then get them out of here?

  “This one’s prob’ly four, five years old,” Junior said. His voice had taken on a quickness; his hands on the hoe were actually shaking, and he’d put his rifle down on the ground, which made Drew feel a lot better. Maybe he was just overreacting to the scent of danger and duplicity here.

  The ball of soil Junior was cutting out was about a foot around, six inches out from the stem on all sides. Cautiously, he tipped the root-ball out, then knelt and started to break the soil away with his fingers, careful not to harm the side roots or even their tiny hairs.

  “I’ll count the growth scars to see how old it really is,” he told them. “Now lookie at this, good size! Dried, this root’ll go for twenty dollars or more at Vern Tarver’s, then end up with Peter Sung or that tall woman who buys for that power drinks company. Just think of that!”

  He held it up toward them with the red Appalachian soil still clinging to it. The root looked as if it was carved from old ivory, Drew thought, as Junior shook it cleaner. It had the shape of a twisted, crouching, many-legged beast. Seeing the sudden transformation in this man, from edgy and hesitant to eager and awed, Drew grasped the power of this valuable, strange plant people had lied and died for.

  “That’s it now,” Junior told them, putting the root carefully on the ground. “That’s what I did for Mariah—that’s all I know. Go on back down now, by the same path you come up on.”

  Drew not only smelled the rich, earthy scent of the sang but a rat. Junior Semple was hiding something, but no way he could force him to tell what or run him in for questioning, though he’d like to get a crack at him without Jess around.

  “Thanks for your time and the tip about Sunrise,” Drew told Junior, and took hold of Jess’s upper arm and firmly propelled her away.

  “All right now,” Junior called after them, all-too-obviously relieved they were going. “Just you watch your step on the path, ’cause it got some steep points.”

  “He’s nervous about something,” Jess said out of the side of her mouth. “He doesn’t want us off this path.” They started down until they were out of sight.

  “Stay here one sec and let me just glance down the other side of this rise,” he told her and put her on the far side of a big maple tree. “We’ll never find footprints in this leaf litter, but I just want to see if I can spot a bigger patch nearby where he might really have taken Mariah for a count.”

  He moved quickly away and looked down at the crooked stream rattling along below. Someone could have taken a tumble along this jagged path through broken foliage, ferns and saplings. This was where Junior had said poachers slid down a hill. Yet he felt something was wrong here.

  He walked back toward where he’d left Jess and saw her also looking over the edge of the rise. Maybe she’d found a clue, because she stooped and reached out for something protruding from the ground. At first he thought it might be a scrap of cloth. No, it was shaped more like a property line stake, though Semple’s property was nowhere near this high up.

&nbs
p; She heard him coming and turned his way, still reaching out toward the stake. “Drew,” she said, “this looks like a half-buried marker stake, kind of shaped like a firecracker or something like th—”

  Then he knew what it was, but the knowledge might have come too late.

  “No—don’t!” he shouted and threw himself at her, just as the thing went off.

  Chapter 7

  7

  A s Jessie reached her hand out to examine the short, strange-looking stake, it hissed. She heard Drew cry, “Hold your breath!” but his big body knocked the air from her. He rolled them both away as the stake sprayed something into the air. They tumbled over the edge of the hill above the creek, clutching each other, bumping, hitting.

  He did not try to brace them from going over; Jessie realized he wanted them away from the spray at any cost. At first, she thought they were in free fall, but they bounced downward against bushes that slowed them momentarily, then bent under their combined weight to release them again. Drew grabbed for branches; she tried to help.

  His strong thighs clamped her legs between his so he took the brunt of each roll. Still, they cracked into saplings, spraying leaves, tasting dirt.

  Dizzy. Would they roll clear down the hill to the creek bed? She banged her head against the ground, once, twice. Like so long ago, she was in his arms, spinning, wild.

  Partway down the embankment, they slammed into a sapling that held them. Her head whipped back; his forehead hit her chin, but they stayed put.

  “Wha—what was that?” she asked, clinging to him. His body felt as hard as the ground beneath them.

  “Varmint stick—poison gas,” he gasped out. “I’ll have that bastard’s head. Did you breathe any of it?”

  “I don’t think so. I heard it hiss, but then—then you—”

  “Yeah. Thank God.”

  He struggled to sit up, balancing their weight against the sapling and the slant of ground. Wet leaves made them slip together; the sapling shuddered and bent, but held. Her legs were spread on either side of his hips, while his back pressed against the tree. Jessie tasted blood; she’d bitten the inside of her lip, but if that was the least that had happened, she was grateful. They must both be bruised and cut. He tugged her jacket and sweatshirt down in back where it had ridden up above her bra.

  “You think Junior heard us?” she asked, clamping his shoulder with one hand and his bare waist with the other. His shirttail had come out; she touched skin over solid muscle. His back was wet, maybe cut. “Could he try to pick us off down here?” she asked and flinched instinctively. Both of them spoke with broken breath.

  He looked beyond her, back up the hill. “If so, we’d be target practice by now. He obviously didn’t want us to find that stake—or any others he must have planted to protect his sang patches.”

  “How poisonous is that stuff?” she asked to keep her sanity when she realized all this might imply. What if her mother had accidentally set off poison gas from a stake like that? And had not gotten away in time?

  “It’s deadly. The stuff’s used to kill wolves and coyotes that threaten livestock, but it can kill a person. Cyanide and something else in there. I’m gonna get him on assault with a deadly weapon, I swear I am. You’re sure nothing’s broken?” he asked. His free hand skimmed and squeezed her arms and legs, as if to assure himself she was in one piece. She hurt all over, but the jolt of his touch muted anything else.

  “If so, it beats breathing cyanide. You saved me, Drew. I should have known not to touch something like that, but I thought—”

  “It’s all right,” he said, squinting up past her again, then twisting to look below. “Either he didn’t hear us or did and hightailed it out of here.”

  “He said he wanted us to stay on the path. He said it was to avoid sang plants, but there wasn’t one in sight then. Drew, I’m so scared about my mother. What if she…”

  He hugged her hard, then said, “Damn, my gun’s gone somewhere in our roll in the leaves. I didn’t have the holster snapped shut. Gotta find it. When I do, I want you to stay put in my vehicle, then I’ll take a rifle to arrest him. If he runs, I might need the longer range.”

  Pulling away from her while she held to the tree, he climbed up a ways, clawing through leaves, balancing himself on other saplings until he spotted his pistol and reached for it. “I’m starting to think we’d do better to go down instead of up, then follow the creek back out to the hollow,” he told her, keeping it in his hand as he slid back to her. “You game?”

  “You bet I am. From thinking we didn’t have a lead, now we’ve got a couple. Junior Semple, Peter Sung and maybe Vern Tarver.”

  “Remember, Jess, you’re next of kin, not deputy sheriff.”

  “You think she’s dead!” she cried, seizing handfuls of his jacket and shirt as if she could shake something out of him. The sapling bent and shuddered under their weight.

  “I didn’t say that. Now sit down on your bottom, and we’ll scoot from tree to tree to the creek bed. I’ve got to go get Junior.”

  She blinked back tears and nodded. As crazy as it was, she would have stayed here longer with him, feeling safer than she had since she heard her mother was missing.

  Jessie waited in Drew’s locked Cherokee while he went back into the woods to arrest Junior Semple. He was obviously angry with himself as well as with Junior. Probably furious at her, too, but if she hadn’t seen and set off the exploding stake, Drew would not have had an excuse to arrest and question Junior further.

  While agonizing something awful had happened to her mother up in those woods and that something dire would happen to Drew, she used his first aid kit to doctor up the scratches on her face and arms. Looking in the rearview mirror, she picked leaves out of her hair, praying Drew would be safe and that Junior Semple would come clean about her mother. Or had he only been nervous that the sheriff would discover he had deadly devices—one at least and probably more—buried in public forest land around his sang patches?

  She kept glancing up the path beyond the holler, past the house and distant buildings. No Drew so far. Her stomach clenched. Had Junior resisted arrest? Laid a trap for him? Had Drew literally stumbled on another of those poison sticks?

  Someone rapped on the back of the vehicle. Twisting around, she gasped. It was not Drew but Junior.

  “Open up now!” he shouted, coming closer and knocking his knuckles on the front door. He bent down to look in the window and pulled at the locked door handle. “The sheriff’s been hurt, Miss Jessie. I need some help to cart him down here. The wife’s got our truck, so open up now!”

  Her pulse pounded. Was he lying? What if he was telling the truth? She shook her head and reached for Drew’s radio, though she wasn’t sure how to work it. She bent over it, pretending to talk into the mouthpiece.

  He lifted his rifle. For one moment, she was afraid he’d break the glass with the stock or shoot her right through the window, but he took off, loping toward his house. Dear God, she thought, what if Drew was really hurt and she didn’t help?

  As she kept an eye on Junior and desperately tried to turn the radio on, Drew jumped out from behind the corner of the house. When Junior lifted his rifle, Drew tackled him; they went down, flailing, swinging fists, but Drew managed to get on top of him, shove him facedown, yank his hands behind him and cuff him. At least she hadn’t opened the door for Junior. He must have wanted either the vehicle for escape or her for a hostage.

  Though her first instinct was to get out to help, she’d promised Drew she would stay put. She watched as he dragged the still-struggling man to his feet and hauled him toward the Cherokee. Considering Drew’s rock-hard muscles, his agility astounded her.

  Jessie unlocked the vehicle’s doors for them. “Watch your head, Mr. Semple,” Drew said, sounding amazingly in control, and put him in the caged-off backseat of the truck. “Jess, I’ve got to retrieve his weapon and mine,” Drew told her, matter-of-factly, then got something else out of the back storage area. Only s
lightly limping, he stalked back to the Semple house and stretched bright yellow crime tape across the front door. He returned, carrying both rifles and stowed them in the back of the vehicle.

  “Did Mr. Semple have anything to say just now?” he asked her as he got in.

  “Not a thing, though he’d earlier told me I had to open the door because you’d been hurt and needed help.”

  “Mr. Semple,” Drew said as he started the engine, “I didn’t know you were a fortune-teller. You must have meant you were about to be hurt and would soon need lots of help to avoid spending several years in jail.”

  Junior started ranting, but Drew ignored him for a moment and turned to her. He looked the worse for wear; she wanted to smooth his hair down and straighten his jacket and shirt, but just stared back at him. “I could use some patch-up work, too,” he told her, evidently noting she’d used antiseptic on her cuts. But whatever he said next was drowned out by Junior’s increasing tirade from the backseat.

  “Man’s got a right and a duty to protect his crop, Sheriff. The U.S. gov’ment’s the one gives those sticks out for protection. Agriculture department through the Wildlife Services, you can just check on that.”

  “Oh, I will. And exactly who was it who sold or gave you those?”

  “I said enough.”

  Jessie knew she should keep quiet, but she just couldn’t. It was bad enough to kill an animal with poison gas, but if her mother had triggered one of those, it would be manslaughter. Though her back and rib muscles ached, she twisted around to glare at Semple through the wire mesh. He suddenly reminded her of a caged animal.

  “You just about got us killed by that poison gas,” she accused. “So what about my mother?”