Cold Dark Places (Cady Maddix Mystery Book 1) Page 2

But Eryn knew things weren’t fine. Rolling Acres Resort had been her home far longer than the sprawling Pullman Estate had. Her childhood home held few pleasant memories. And though she couldn’t say she’d been particularly happy in the residential setting here, she’d become content enough.

  Dr. Steigel nattered on a bit about change and opportunity. Eryn tuned out because she’d heard it all before. She’d been told leaving Rolling Acres Resort for good—if she was “successful”—qualified as both.

  If was the operative word.

  “Hasn’t this drop in temperatures been horrid?” Rosalyn chattered from the front seat. “Of course, one expects November is going to get colder, but my blood just isn’t ready for it.” She gave a tinkling laugh. “And wouldn’t you know, the furnace wasn’t running properly, either. Alfred forgot to check to make sure it would be in working order, as if he didn’t know how unpredictable autumn can be in North Carolina. You’d think the man hadn’t spent his entire life here.”

  There was more, but Eryn let the words rise and fall around her like the background noise it was. Rosalyn considered silence a void it was her duty to fill, and she’d keep up a running litany for the entire drive. Eryn had faced the window at her side, counting the disappearing landmarks as they rolled by them. Past the bench beneath the drooping willow where she liked to sketch on warm mornings. Down the curving drive lined with crape myrtles and hydrangeas that exploded with color in the summer months. Stopping at the first gatehouse, where Uncle Bill lowered his window to hand a stamped pass to the two employees who’d exited the small structure and conducted a discreet search of the vehicle. Then the car crept by the now-dormant flower beds and the fountains turned off for the winter. They slowed again for another search at the next guardhouse. Her chest hollowed out when the towering iron gates slowly opened to allow their exit. Each successive mile that grew between them and Rolling Acres Resort had bat wings of panic fluttering. The reaction had nothing to do with leaving something precious behind and everything to do with the enormity of change stretching before her.

  Seeking distraction—any distraction—she refocused on the conversation in the front seat. When Rosalyn took a breath, Eryn inserted quickly, “I’ve been wondering . . . when I get home . . . if I could change bedrooms.”

  The quick glance shared by the couple had Eryn’s heart sinking. “Mine is small, and I thought Mama’s room would be large enough to serve as a bedroom and studio. Those two big double windows let in the early afternoon light . . .” Her voice tapered off. Eryn’s favorite childhood memory had been the time spent in the room for art lessons with Mama. Sometimes they’d both work side by side, Mama with her painting and Eryn with her sketching. The voices in her head were always muted then, and the hours were as peaceful as she’d ever known in the house.

  The uneasy silence stretched another moment or two until Rosalyn turned around as far as her seat belt would allow, a cheerful smile on her face. “Well, now you’ve gone and ruined the surprise. I’ve just been frantic the last few weeks getting some redecorating done for your arrival. Jaxson even helped me. He’s as excited as we are about having you home.”

  The mention of Bill and Rosalyn’s seven-year-old son drifted by her. “Did you change Mama’s room?” Again, a surreptitious exchanged look between the two. One of Eryn’s hands clenched where she had it resting on the seat beside her. Consciously, she uncurled her fingers.

  “We recently updated your bedroom, honey. I didn’t get rid of anything,” the woman hastened to add. “Just packed things up and put them in the closet for you to go through yourself. I wanted to surprise you with new rugs, comforter, and curtains. Something more suitable for your age. Of course, if there’s anything you don’t like, it can be changed. I’d welcome a chance for us to go shopping together. Wouldn’t that just be the most fun? We could go to Asheville and make a day of it, just the two of us.”

  Eryn didn’t care about the room. In recent years, she’d been allowed brief trips home for holidays and the occasional weekend. Her old bedroom hadn’t represented a haven but a curious spot caught in a time warp since her childhood. Eryn was more concerned with what wasn’t being said. “But Mama’s room would still be free, right? To use as a studio?”

  “The thing is, Eryn . . .” Uncle Bill hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Rosalyn renovated the space for her sitting room a few years back. We decided it just wasn’t healthy to keep it in disuse. Time goes on, and we have to put the past behind us. We all have to make painful changes to adjust.”

  A few years back. Eryn mentally reeled at the words. Each time she’d been home, the door to the room had been locked. She’d pressed her face against it, imagining it the way Mama had kept it. The bed neatly made by Mary Jane. The shades raised and the sheer curtains draped back to allow in the sunlight. Mama’s current work on an easel near the windows. Her paints on a small, scarred table within reach. A stretched blank canvas leaning against the wall. On a good painting day, Mama would let Eryn look at her progress. But more often than not, she’d be in a snit about her work and she’d whitewash it for Eryn’s later use and prepare to start fresh in the morning.

  A piercing sense of loss stabbed through her. She wasn’t certain she could bear to see the alterations made to the space.

  “William, what is that up ahead? What do those people think they’re doing? They’re blocking our drive.”

  “I see them.” Bill’s voice was terse as he slowed the vehicle to a crawl. He uttered an oath and said, “Pay them no mind, Eryn. They’re ignorant troublemakers who’d be better off tending to their own business.” He picked up his cell phone and spoke quietly and urgently into it as he brought the car to a complete stop.

  “Don’t let them upset you,” Rosalyn added. “Just a few unchristian cranks who should spend more time reading the Bible.”

  Eryn stared at the small crowd. It was comprised of no more than a dozen people chanting and waving signs. They formed a human wall blocking the entrance to the private drive leading up to the estate’s gate.

  She couldn’t make out the words coming from the group, but her gaze was drawn to the signs like metal filings to a magnet.

  AN EYE FOR AN EYE!

  KILLERS BELONG IN PRISON!

  MURDERERS GO TO HELL!

  One woman broke from the group and rushed to the car, pounding on Eryn’s window. She shrunk away, as if there wasn’t a barrier between them, and the stranger pressed her sign against the window, screaming the words over and over.

  MATRICIDE IS MURDER!

  The last word had been written with red paint, which had been allowed to drip and run down the sign.

  Apparently, Eryn wasn’t the only one having trouble letting go of the past.

  Ryder

  When the jacked-up cherry-apple-red dually truck roared past him doing an easy eighty, Haywood County Sheriff Ryder Talbot flipped on his light bar and accelerated down the blacktop. The driver of the truck was well known to him, and ticketing Frances “Gilly” Gilbert could be considered a part-time occupation for his office. Mostly because Gilly was a congenital dumb-ass, the by-product of a disgracefully shallow gene pool. And when he had a few beers in him, little things like speed limits and noise ordinances completely went out of his head.

  The mobile radio crackled from its position on the console beside him. “Ryder, you done with the regional task force meeting yet?” Wilma Young, substitute department dispatcher, asked.

  Ryder kept an eye on the truck he was gaining on as he picked up the transmitter. “Been done. I’m on my way back to town after I deal with a speeding motorist.”

  “Well, if it’s Gilly Gilbert, Lord knows he’ll keep ’til another day. Everyone’s tied up or on the other side of the county, and I just took a call from William Pullman. He’s got an ugly situation brewing out at his place. He needs someone for crowd control. Donny’s closest, but he’s still twenty minutes out.”

  Crowd control? The Pullman place was in a rural area o
n the eastern part of the county. The closest thing to a crowd the property would ever see was a group of bicyclists going by. “I’m ten minutes away.” Ryder turned off his flashers and slowed, waiting for an opportunity to make a U-turn as Wilma continued.

  “It seems some people in the area aren’t too happy ’bout . . .”

  All too aware of the number of residents in the vicinity with scanners, Ryder interrupted the overly chatty substitute dispatcher. “Fine, Wilma. I’ve got this.” As he headed toward the Pullmans’, he reflected this was another reason for the updated encrypted communication system he needed to purchase. It wasn’t just nosy civilians wanting to know what was going on throughout the county he had to worry about. Criminals were getting savvier about monitoring the whereabouts of his deputies. Another thing to put on his wish list when it came budget time. Three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan hadn’t prepared him for the bureaucratic nightmare of the reams of paperwork that consumed too much of his job.

  Of course, it would also help if he could avoid using Wilma to fill in when his regular dispatchers were unavailable. The woman had retired from the office nearly ten years ago and was a product from another era.

  He passed a white van with a satellite dish on its roof. Noted the familiar logo on its side. For the first time since he’d gotten the call, trepidation pooled in his gut. Ryder would like to think it was just chance he was heading in the same direction as the vehicle from the local news station. But he’d never believed in coincidences. Unconsciously, he pressed more firmly on the accelerator and wished he hadn’t been so quick to cut Wilma off.

  The front of the gated property was bordered by blacktop. At the rear of the large estate was a man-made pond a Pullman ancestor had built and stocked, the story went, with largemouth bass and walleyes to indulge his favorite pastime. The same progenitor had later drowned in the pond when he’d toppled dead drunk from his fishing boat. It’d been the first of a series of tragedies to curse the family over the generations.

  That hadn’t curbed developers’ interest in the five-hundred-acre estate. The house was set back a hundred yards from the road, at the end of a winding private drive lined with carefully spaced towering pines interspersed with massive oaks and hickories. The trees effectively shielded the property from the public eye, even in the winter months, which seemed to suit the reserved family.

  He slowed to a stop behind a black town car with tinted windows idling at the side of the blacktop. Getting out of his vehicle, Ryder skirted the other car’s rear bumper to stride beyond it to the small scattering of people blocking the gated entrance to the drive. At his appearance, they congealed into one group, forming a human chain against the closed wrought-iron gates, shaking their signs while they shouted.

  “Murderers belong behind bars!”

  “Sheriff, do your job!”

  Ryder spotted the reporter making a beeline for him a moment before he noticed the shiny white van parked on the shoulder across the road. An Asheville news station. Swallowing an oath, he scanned the knot of protestors and headed toward the man in the center of them, who was shouting the loudest.

  “Sir, you and your group are on private property. Remove yourselves or you’ll be arrested for trespassing.”

  “We have a legal right to protest this gross miscarriage of justice,” the stranger bellowed. “You can’t deny us our First Amendment rights. Now’s your chance to do what your daddy didn’t. Lock the young murderer up.”

  The man could only be talking about Eryn Pullman. Ryder resisted an urge to toss a glance toward the town car. He’d left home before the most recent Pullman tragedy, but he knew the details. Pitching his voice above the man’s, Ryder addressed the rest of the group. “As long as you’re standing on this drive, all of you are guilty of second-degree criminal trespass. That’s punishable by twenty days in jail. You need to move. Now.”

  A woman with frizzy blonde hair screamed, “You threaten us? A body isn’t safe with a murderer running around loose! Think people in these parts have forgotten what the girl did?”

  Ryder pulled the handcuffs from his belt and held them up. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

  “This is what the law stands for round here, looks like.” The leader of the group was addressing the television camera rolling behind Ryder. “The rich get special protection while the rest of us have to worry ’bout getting our throats slit in our beds. The sheriff ain’t no better at his job than his daddy was before him.”

  Ryder reached out and, with one hand on the man’s shoulder, spun him around midsentence. He cuffed him and steered him toward the department vehicle in a matter of seconds. Over his shoulder he said to the rest of the protestors, “I’ve got more handcuffs in the vehicle. When I return, anyone still on private property will be wearing a pair.”

  “I know my rights!” the man sputtered in fury as Ryder propelled him to the county vehicle. “The First Amendment protects my freedom of speech!” They came up alongside the official SUV. Ryder opened the back door. “If you aren’t familiar with the Constitution, you don’t belong in your position.”

  “Watch your head.” Ryder guided the man inside, securing the door behind him. He went to the trunk for several pairs of flex-cuffs and headed back to the drive. The rest of the people had shifted but still stood on the road, blocking the drive.

  “You can’t prevent us from protesting!” It was the frizzy-haired woman again, her broad forehead glistening with perspiration. “We’re standing right here until we’re heard! Something must be—”

  “Ma’am, you are currently blocking access to private property. You and your friends can protest to your heart’s content.” The watery overhead sunlight was stronger than it appeared. Ryder could feel a trickle of sweat beginning to pool at his nape. Stabbing a finger toward the road he continued, “May I suggest you all do it safely from the shoulder of the blacktop or the ditch. I’d hate to see any of you hit by a passing motorist. We’ve got more than a few careless drivers in these parts.” He thought fleetingly of Gilly Gilbert, who probably thought he’d won the daily Pick Three when Ryder had given up the chase.

  “We aren’t causing any trouble . . .” The woman’s words trailed off when he raised an index finger. A pair of flex-cuffs dangled from it.

  “Last chance.”

  It took only a moment for her to decide. “C’mon,” she screeched to the others. “Across the road.”

  “Sheriff, would you care to respond to—”

  “No comment.” The reporter looked vaguely familiar. Blonde. Plastic face. Practiced sober expression. Maybe he’d caught her a time or two on a newscast. He indicated the area where the group of protesters had re-formed. “For your own protection, you may want to join them over there on public property, ma’am.” He walked back a few yards and waved for the driver of the town car to pull into the drive. The gates swung open as the vehicle inched by him. When Ryder turned to watch its progress he almost tripped over the reporter who’d followed him.

  “Surely you can’t dismiss the fear expressed by these concerned citizens, Sheriff.” The reporter’s smile warmed, and she lowered the microphone, making a surreptitious gesture behind her back to summon the news crew standing a short distance away. “Anyone would be spooked by a crazed killer returning to their area. You could do your department a world of good and make a statement to your public. Assure them of their safety.”

  “You want a statement?” Beyond her, he saw one of his deputies pulling up. “I do have a brief public safety announcement.” He reached up to remove his mirrored sunglasses. Eagerly the woman raised the microphone again. “Your station’s van is partially blocking a public roadway, creating a safety hazard. Please have it moved before it causes an accident.”

  Ten minutes later Ryder left his deputy to supervise the arrestee and protesters and strode toward the house to join William Pullman where he waited in the open doorway, watching the scene. “I appreciate your assistance, Sheriff.” There was no gratitude
sounding in the man’s stilted tones. Leading Ryder down a shadowy marbled hall lined with portraits, William waved him into a spacious office outfitted in gleaming oak and hickory. Closing the double doors behind them, he continued to the inlaid panel desk and then stood next to it, as if uncertain what to do next. Ryder made the decision a little easier by slipping in to a butter-soft leather armchair the color of melted toffee. After another moment, William rounded the desk and sat down in the oversize chair, which matched the other furniture. The chair dwarfed him. The man was no more than five eight, one sixty. If not for the creases beginning to line his face, he’d look like a little kid playing executive.

  Ryder surveyed the glassy-eyed row of trophy heads lining the wall above the other man. Lingered on the massive grizzly. “Impressive souvenirs.” He nodded to the display. “Any of them yours?”

  William looked blank for a moment before glancing behind him, as if he’d forgotten the decor. “No, my grandfather’s. With my great-grandfather it was fish, but Grandpa traveled all over North America hunting big game. I’m not much of an outdoorsman myself.”

  But William, a nonhunter, kept the place just as his grandfather had left it. Interesting.

  “Listen, Sheriff . . .” William turned to face him again, his expression growing pained. “As I’m sure you ascertained from the commotion outside, we brought my niece, Eryn, home from the Rolling Acres Resort today. Hopefully for good.”

  “Because the doctors say she’s cured?”

  William seemed to choose his answer carefully. “Her doctors no longer consider her a threat to herself or others. It’s our hope a return to her childhood home will provide the necessary tranquility for her continued recovery.”

  Ryder was less familiar with the residential facility Pullman mentioned than he was with the other structure sharing its property. Miles away from Rolling Acres, carefully situated far from the public eye, sat North Carolina’s only federal facility for the criminally insane. Haywood County had one resident there who’d claimed to be possessed by Satan when he slaughtered his entire family twenty years earlier.