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Nashville, Tennessee, was originally built to take advantage of the Cumberland River. It was established as Fort Nashboro and a reconstructed facsimile with ramparts stands as a tourist attraction, a few short blocks down the hill from Nashville’s greater tourist attraction, the original Grand Ole Opry. That building is in turn a few blocks down the hill from the federal courthouse, where, sharing the floor with the federal prosecutor’s offices, the Drug Enforcement Agency is located.
Special Agent in Charge, Rainey Lee, had been a DEA agent since just after leaving college and had led the DEA/DSF for four years. The DSF was an elite branch of the agency, and its cloak of secrecy was a large part of the appeal it held for men like Rainey Lee. He had gone straight to work at the DEA when it was formed from several branches of the Justice Department. At six feet five Rainey Lee was the tallest agent in the organization, and at forty-eight had packed sixty additional pounds around his basketball player’s frame since college, when he had played for Duke University.
When he received the call from the sheriff’s office in eastern Tennessee informing him that his son was missing, presumed abducted, he requisitioned an agency plane and was on site in the mountains ninety minutes later. He arrived still wearing his suit, though he had changed into a pair of boots he kept in the trunk of his car.
Forty searchers were already at Schooner Rock, where the scout and the leader had last been spotted. Twin bloodhounds and a small-framed German shepherd were dancing in place, twisting their nylon leads around each other. A deputy held George’s scout cap to the animals so they could separate the boy’s scent from the others’. After a few seconds the dogs circled wide and struck out up the trail.
The bloodhounds were kept on leads while the shepherd was allowed to run ahead, alone. They ran directly up the trail, often as not pulling the handler through dense brush beside the trail for half a mile, then stopped beside the shepherd, who was standing with his front paws on the railing of the overlook, barking at the sky. The bloodhounds moved a few feet on up the trail, then turned abruptly, agreeing with the shepherd, and sat shifting their gazes from the gathering of men to the open view and back.
Then the shepherd jumped back, looked around for a few seconds, investigated a large brown circle in the grass beside the path, and launched himself off into the woods. He stopped suddenly and barked. The rescue team ran toward the animal with Rainey leading, his gun drawn.
Ruth Tippet’s body was on its back, her face aimed at the sky. The leaves had been pushed out of the way where she had been dragged. The single bullet had entered her forehead above the open left eye and exited through the back of her head.
Rainey turned and ran back to the railing where the handler was holding the bloodhounds. He leaned out over the railing but couldn’t see directly down because the overlook they were standing on formed a shelf out over the sheer rock wall.
“She smells the boy, all right,” a deputy offered.
Rainey’s heart dropped.
A thin deputy anchored himself by hooking a rope rig to a tree opposite the railing and extended, almost horizontally, out over the ledge. He gazed down at the large rocks piled at the base of the wall where something bright had been splashed in a wide circle. The emptied husk that had been George Lee was hardly more than the dark blue center of that stain.
“Sir,” the deputy said, “I’m real sorry. We’ll have to go in from below.”
The sheriff said, “I think you might want to return to the camping area. We’ll get him out. You can’t do anything more.”
Rainey Lee was among the first to scramble over the rocks to the body. After he had seen what lay there among the jagged edges and flat plates, he sat down on a nearby rock. He opened his mouth and, for what seemed to the deputies and rangers a long time, there was no sound. Then his scream dropped to a pitch they could hear. The noise was like the sound of an animal being eaten alive.
Doris Lee was in the kitchen thinking about her husband.
Rainey had been uncharacteristically silent since their daughter’s funeral three months earlier and wouldn’t speak to the minister or a psychologist no matter how Doris pleaded. She had done all she could. She had talked to her minister, the agency-approved psychologist, and a support group of grieving parents who met once a week at the Episcopal church. She was drinking half a fifth of vodka daily just to keep her nerves evened out She planned to quit drinking soon. Rainey, never overly religious, blamed God, she thought.
Her mind was on her husband and George. Because there had been a rash of accidental deaths of family members in the DEA, Rainey had not wanted George to go on the trip, but she had insisted on it. She had learned from the other people in her survivors’ support group that it was irrational to let fear and the projecting of possible disaster rob them of the future. You couldn’t fold up your tent and hide from life, and it wasn’t fair to George to keep him under virtual arrest. Until George had gone on the trip with the scouts, until he had actually stepped into Ruth’s van and driven off down Maple, at least one of them had kept him in their sights at all times, except when they left him at school. She knew that it was because of the other deaths over the past few years. Accidents to other children. Wives of Rainey’s old associates. Eleanor’s death, surely an accident, had unleashed something in Rainey. He had changed in some basic way. It was as if someone different were possessing her husband’s body.
Doris hated it when Rainey was late. She had game birds in the oven that would be ready in a few minutes, but once he knew he was late, he didn’t seem able to hurry along. They both needed time away from the horror; the thought of her daughter running out of the garage-of the flames consuming Eleanor’s clothing-of Rainey rolling her in the grass-her skin coming off in sheets-of the emergency room-the screams that went on and on for days. And Rainey’s eyes as he sat beside the bed with his hands in his lap because there was no part of her either of them could touch. The thoughts took the breath out of her.
Doris stood, straightened her skirt, wiped the tears away with her fingers, and poured herself a glass of vodka. As it was, she’d had too much already, but, she rationalized, George was in the mountains and-then her mind seized an image of Eleanor’s inflated face set against white hospital linen, looking as though she had been barbecued for a giant’s dinner. Doris tipped the glass furiously, throwing several ounces of the clear liquid down her throat in one gulp, and gripped the edge of the sink as it burned back. She took a breath and decided that she had to stop drinking soon.
Rainey had a major bust about to come down, a bust he had worked on for two years, and after that pressure was off, she would stop. Now they’d get through their weekend, and George would be home with or without poison ivy, which he was highly allergic to, and they could finally get back to being a normal family.
They would get over the loss of Eleanor. Never completely-but they had to go on for George’s sake. And they could have more children in time. But we’ll never forget you, Eleanor. We love you, baby-so much. So much. She took another sip directly from the bottle and put it away in the cabinet. She heard the Cherokee stop in the driveway and took a lemon wedge from the refrigerator, chewing the bitter pulp from it to cleanse her breath.
She heard the front door close and familiar footsteps on the tile. She listened for the closet door to close after he’d hung up his shoulder rig and his jacket. Then he would… That’s strange, she thought. He didn’t open the closet.
She stopped and pushed her hair back and braced herself into a smile. “Honey? Rainey?” she called in a high chirp, feeling about as good as she could feel.
He was walking toward the kitchen, his boots against the parquet. His boots are muddy-men!
“Rainey, do you want a martini? Dinner will be ready in a few minutes,” she said. When she looked up from the boots into his face, the breath escaped her in a low hiss.
Rainey’s face might have been crafted from wet dough, his lips twisted in on themselves, the jaw quivering. The set of his mouth and his glazed eyes told her that some catastrophe had befallen him. The air around him was sour, malignant, charged with dark electricity. It was even money whether he’d collapse in a heap or put his fist through the wall.
“My mother?” she said. Her mother had suffered a stroke, and her blood pressure had been up and down on a seesaw for months.
He sat in the chair and stared at the table.
