Double up on the mountain was an obvious suspect to follow—drug dealer, connected to the victim—but he knew better than to go into some desolate holler without someone watching his back.

  Not to mention that the snow was accumulating, which to a person living in the South was the most bloodcurdling thing that snow could ever do. Cars would be abandoned. Children would be locked behind doors. Grocery stores would be purged of milk, bread, kerosene, toilet paper, and Cheetos—all the vital necessities.

  Anna Ruby Falls was half an hour drive and a quick hike into the Chattahoochee National Forest. The kid at the Shussel had said Double and his family lived on Millar Road. Second trailer on the right. American flag. Double’s neighbors would be watching out the windows. They might be involved in the family business, or making money off not being involved. Around these parts, crack was the new moonshine. The same people you saw in church on Sunday were the same people dealing on Monday.

  He tried to turn on the wipers. The motor sent back a pained groan over the weight of the snow. He cut the engine and looked at his key, making sure the jimmied lock hadn’t damaged it. He could see white breaths in the air in front of his face.

  The radio clock read 4:01.

  The roads would be locked up by sundown, not because of the snow, but because even when it was cold, it always got warm enough in the afternoon to melt the snow, then it got cold enough to freeze it and come rush hour, people who thought they were driving home in the snow realized that they were sliding across sheets of ice.

  All this talk about snow made him think of something.

  He reached down and pulled the trunk release. He got out of the car, shivering like a beat-down dog as the wind cut open his skin. He had to squint his eyes almost closed as he walked to the back of the Mustang and pushed up the trunk.

  The guns were still there.

  The brick of coke was still there, but there had to be more than one brick of coke, otherwise, why bother?

  “Shit,” he mumbled.

  He didn’t have to think hard about how this had gone down. The chief, freaking out about the murder, the death notification, the hit to his budget, the risk to his department’s reputation, had run off to make phone calls, but not before telling Officer Paulson to secure the car. Paulson had put up the tape thinking that no one would violate the sacred words that beseeched all good citizens to DO NOT CROSS. Then he’d clapped his Jolly Green Giant hands together and ho-ho-ho’d off thinking job well done.

  “Shit,” he repeated.

  He would have to call A. Fuller and tell her to come get the coke and the guns. And then he would have to listen to her tell him that Alabama was going to be ranked number one or two this year, depending on where Florida State fell.

  “What have we got here?”

  He turned around.

  The question had been posed by a guy with a northern accent who stood like a cop, legs apart, shoulders relaxed. He had a sidekick, another cop, a little younger, with a Glock in hand.

  Police issued, it seemed.

  The sidekick said, “Looks like we’ve got a guy with a bunch of guns and some coke in his trunk.”

  The older guy said, “At least he’s put on some pants.”

  4:04 P.M.

  “HOLSTER THE SIDE ARM,” JOE told Lincoln Perry.

  Joe had heard decent things about Detective Jeffrey Tolliver of Birmingham, Alabama, already from the DEA, and the surveillance video had proven beyond question that he hadn’t killed anyone today. But more important, Tolliver hadn’t packed up his shit and headed home once they kicked him loose from the holding cell. Joe had an idea that he was going to like the reason why.

  “How long you been out of that cell?” he asked.

  “Less than an hour.”

  “And you’re here nosing around the car. Why?”

  There was a little spark in the other man’s eyes that Joe liked an awful lot when Tolliver said, “A woman was gut shot in an alley and left to die. They never charged me, never searched me or my room or my car, and never asked me why I was here or what I was doing. The fact that I was locked up until the second shift came on—which consists solely of the chief’s wife—leads me to believe that the locals aren’t all that good at the detecting business.”

  “So you came back here to work,” Joe said, which was exactly what he’d have done in Tolliver’s shoes.

  Or shoe, as it were.

  Tolliver nodded. “It’s been made clear that my help isn’t wanted, but it seems like they could use it.”

  Joe said, “Okay. Here’s what I’d like to suggest. You close that trunk before we compromise the scene any more than already has been done, which would take some real effort.”

  Tolliver closed the trunk with his elbow.

  “We’ve got a surveillance video that will clear you completely, if they’re still talking about charges,” Joe said. “But we’ve also got a few questions. We came down here from Ohio to serve a warrant on the guy who did shoot the girl. What we’ve been told is that you think she stole your car. But this isn’t your car.”

  Tolliver told him about the shaved tumblers, his theory about Antonio going to get a cup of coffee at the wrong place at the wrong time. He ended with, “Nora probably saw the Mustang on my key, thought she had the right ride, and ended up making the last mistake of her life.”

  “The first cop who was on scene. What did you think of him?”

  “Paulson?” He didn’t look impressed. “Young. Built like a radio antennae. Real jittery.”

  “Jittery because he’s young, or jittery because he was scared?”

  “Both, I guess.” Tolliver cocked his head and studied Joe through the falling snow. “Why’re you asking?”

  Joe blew on his hands to warm them and then said, “Why don’t we talk in the car. Our car. We’ll drive, you ride, we’ll talk.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’ve got three possible addresses in the mountains for a guy named Double Simpson, who may have been waiting to inherit a stolen Mustang from his sister this morning.”

  “I can pin that down for you. Millar Road near the falls. Second trailer on the right. I heard he’s a small-time pimp, wannabe big-time pusher. Runs his own sister. And mother.”

  Joe winced. “Terrific. I was cautioned that the mother was the type who’d come out shooting if she saw a strange car pulling into the drive. You good to ride along with us? I’d like you to, and we can’t stand here in the snow chatting. Got to move.”

  “You’re acting like a guy who knows more than he’s saying.”

  “I am,” Joe said. “One reason is up there.” He pointed at the gunmetal sky that was spitting snow. “And the other reason is that to my understanding the same police who managed to confuse a white cop from Alabama for a black gangbanger from Cleveland and neglected to review security cameras that were sitting right on top of the damned crime scene are due back in town any minute. At which point, I suspect my chance to get out of here without their escort diminishes dramatically. And based on the surveillance videos I saw, I do not want to be escorted into the hills by those boys. But we need to hear what you’ve got to say, Detective. Now, you want to ride along, or you want to stick here, or go on home and take a shower and get some sleep? I won’t fault you that, with the day you’ve had.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Tolliver said, and Joe smiled.

  He liked this guy just fine.

  The debate about who was going to drive began before they even reached the rented Malibu. Tolliver said he should, because he knew the area. Joe wanted to drive because he held rank in the situation, out of state or not. He was the man with the warrant and the instructions from the DEA. Lincoln Perry, on the other hand, wanted the wheel because of the weather and his supposed skill in such conditions.

  “It’s coming down hard and only going to get worse,” Perry said. “My father was an ambulance driver in Cleveland. I learned how to handle snow and ice. I’m not letting some southerner who probably gets gun-shy at the first flurry drive me off a mountain, and based on the way you rode the brake on the way up here, Joe, we’ll take six hours to get six miles.”

  “Wouldn’t have gotten here at all, if I’d been reckless.”

  “Christ,” Tolliver said. “Give him the keys, if it’ll shut him up.”

  Joe didn’t love that. He hated to ride; the passenger seat always gave him an uneasy feeling. But he did want to talk to Tolliver while they traveled, and he couldn’t take notes and drive at the same time.

  He tossed Perry the keys. “Just don’t pull a Barney Oldfield on us, now.”

  “Who’s that?” Perry and Tolliver asked in unison.

  Joe sighed.

  Kids.

  By the time they were ten miles out of town, two things were clear. Jeffrey Tolliver was a good cop plagued by a god-awful taste in women, and this storm was serious business.

  The flakes fell from the sky the way only a hard rain should, more thundershower than snowstorm, and the accumulation rate was staggering. They passed only one home-brew utility truck, which consisted of an old guy sitting on the open tailgate, spreading sand and salt from five-gallon buckets. The roads were mostly empty, all the locals hunkering down to wait it out. That was about the only good thing that could be said of their conditions. The weather was bad, the road worse. They just kept climbing, winding up, up, up into the snow-covered mountains that suddenly looked as if they belonged to the Rockies, not north Georgia. Perry had turned the radio on and the announcer seemed in disbelief as he read the latest report.

  “The National Weather Service is predicting an expected twenty inches in the Cleveland and Rome area, with heavier accumulations locally. Now, the same paper in my hand says that the all-time record is twelve inches, so that should speak for itself. Stay off the roads tonight.”

  Perry clicked off the radio. “It occurs to me that it might not have been a bad idea to let one of the locals know where we are going, no matter how dim-witted they seem to be. If we end up running into trouble with Double—Lord, did I really just say that?—if we end up having problems up here, it’ll be a while before anyone can get to us.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Joe said.

  “That’s what the Donner Party told each other.”

  A gust of wind buffeted the car.

  The Malibu fishtailed, but Perry steered it into the skid and kept his foot off the brake and the car corrected. Still, Joe had grabbed the armrest and moved his own foot toward an imaginary brake like a jumpy driver’s ed instructor.

  He should have insisted on driving.

  “You just keep your eyes on the road, and let the Donners fend for themselves,” he said, but he was regretting the rush out of town now, himself. The rush had been planted by that seed of distrust the DEA had shared, unwilling to tell him what cops in Georgia were dirty, but just that they suspected some of them were. Between that and the way the locals had handled the scene the only person with a badge he trusted down here was, ironically, the one who’d just been kicked loose from a cell.

  No, there was more than that.

  It was also the idea that Antonio Childers was close at hand. They’d come all this way and into this storm for the singular purpose of picking Childers up with their existing warrant, but what they had now—that surveillance tape of the shooting—was something that had eluded Joe for too long. Courtroom gold. Evidence that would not just put Childers in prison, but keep him there.

  If he was still alive.

  From the back, Tolliver cleared his throat. He clearly had too much pride to stick his head between the front seats like a dog. Joe was beginning to wish he’d given Tolliver the wheel. Perry had a lead foot and too much confidence.

  “Listen,” Tolliver said, “since we’re all in this together, why don’t you tell me a little bit more about this Antonio Childers. Are you thinking he’s your bad guy, or a hostage?”

  “Both,” Perry said.

  “Maybe both,” Joe corrected. “Surveillance footage shows him coming and going fast, but if our local source was right, he came and went with Nora Simpson’s brother. All the interesting dynamics of that family relationship aside, we’re starting to believe that Double Simpson might not have been pleased to see his sister murdered.”

  “If nothing else, she was an earner for him,” Tolliver agreed. “So you’re telling me that we are heading into a potential hostage rescue wherein we’re looking for a murderer and revenge-seeking sadist. Plus no one knows where we are and we’ve got three guns to our names. Let’s hope we don’t run into any Wampas.”

  Perry said, “I’ll take three guns over a nervous Tauntaun.”

  Joe said, “Were those local Indian tribes or something? Or some sort of Civil War thing? I don’t know the history of this part of the country that well.”

  Perry turned to exchange a shocked stare with Tolliver.

  Tolliver shook his head in disbelief. “He hasn’t seen Star Wars?”

  Before they could push that dialogue further, the wind rose to a howl and the Malibu shuddered and shivered, the back tires sliding again.

  Perry dropped the speed.

  “Why don’t you watch the road instead of thinking about Star Trek,” Joe said.

  “Wars. Star Wars.”

  “They’re different?” Joe asked, and he was legitimately surprised to learn this, thinking that it explained a lot of confusion over the years.

  Headlights rose behind them.

  Joe was hoping for a plow, but the headlights were set too low for that. And coming on too fast.

  “Son of a bitch,” Perry said. “This asshole is really going to try to pass me, in this weather?”

  “Then let him,” Joe said, and right then the vehicle behind them turned on its police flashers, painting the white landscape with red and blue light.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” Perry said as he eased to a stop. There was no shoulder left to pull onto, only snowbanks, so he just stopped in the road.

  “Just get your badge out,” Joe said, but the police car behind them didn’t stop, it just passed by. For an instant, they were side by side with it in the whirling white snow and fading gray day. It was still light enough to read the logo on the car’s door panel.

  Helen Police Department.

  Then the car was by and the flashing lights went off. The driver had just turned them on to goose the Malibu out of his way. The driver was keeping up a hurrying speed, like he had places to get and people to see, weather be damned.

  “Seems like we’re outside of Helen’s jurisdiction,” Perry said.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” Tolliver said from the backseat. “That giant stick behind the wheel was Paulson. He’s the kid who stuck his gun in my face in the alley this morning. Didn’t it seem like he was in a bigger rush to get up the mountain than we are?”

  Perry looked at Tolliver, then at Joe. “Follow him?”

  They both nodded.

  The wind rose in the same proportion as the road, both of them crawling steadily higher. Perry was driving faster than Joe would have liked, but he had to do it to keep the Helen police car in sight.

  “Any idea where we are?” he asked Tolliver.

  “Not sure, but I’d say we’re in the park.”

  “What park?”

  “Unicoi State Park, which is inside the Chattahoochee National Forest, which is where Anna Ruby Falls is located.” He looked out the window. “I would say pay attention to your surroundings, but everything is white.”

  “We didn’t pass through any gate,” Perry said.

  “There aren’t any gates. You just drive in.”

  Brake lights came on ahead of them.

  The Helen police car was pulling to a stop.

  “Drive past,” Joe instructed.

  His hand had crept to the butt of his gun.

  As they drove by, the Malibu’s headlights pinned two vehicles in the relentless snow. The Helen cruiser and a Ford pickup that was idling, the engine running to keep the heater going, probably. It was covered with snow, but the hood was warm enough to have left melted streaks across it that showed traces of the paint.

  “Black, not blue,” Joe said, disappointed. “Has a roof rack of lights, too. That’s not the one from the surveillance video.”

  “I was told that Double Simpson drives a new black Ford,” Tolliver said. “That one fits the bill.”

  “So what do you want to do?” Perry asked as he drove around a curve and the road plummeted down, the other vehicles falling out of sight in the mirrors. “Go back in the car, or go back on foot? If it’s just Paulson and Simpson sitting there, with no sign of the blue truck, we’re going to have to explain—”

  His words faltered as the Malibu caught black ice and slid, the car drifting sideways as if the steering wheel was an unimportant thing. Perry spun it and slammed on the brake. Neither effort made any impact. They turned in a near 360, the spinning headlights illuminating snow-laden limbs, and then there was a muffled thump and a jarring impact as the back of the car smacked into a snow-covered bank. Perry slammed the gearshift into first and hit the gas.

  The tires spun without catching.

  “Kill those headlights,” Joe said. “Kill it all, actually.”

  Perry shut off the lights and the engine.

  The stillness was eerie, no sounds save the wind and the whisper of falling snow on the glass.

  “I guess that answers your question,” Tolliver said from the backseat. “We’ll be going back on foot.”

  “For the record,” Joe said, “Barney Oldfield was a race car driver who couldn’t hold a curve. Maybe you’ll remember him now.”

  He popped open his door and had to push hard to keep the wind from slamming it shut on him. Somewhere in the distance was a crashing, thundering sound that had to be the roar of the falls that Tolliver mentioned. In this weather it wouldn’t be long before that water would ice into spikes and daggers. Cleveland, Georgia, had gotten confused with Cleveland, Ohio, today. He thought about the dumb-shit remark he’d made that morning to Luisa, the DEA agent, about how they wouldn’t be troubled by the snow.