stardom.
I didn’t actually know any of this firsthand. Everything I knew about Tom Kitchings came from UT fans like Jeff and law enforcement colleagues like Art Bohanan, a criminalist with the Knoxville Police Department. Unlike every other sheriff in East Tennessee, Kitchings had never consulted me on a forensic case. Not that I minded. Judging by things I’d heard from Art, getting involved in Cooke County cases was a lot like snake-handling: it was an act of faith that violated all the dictates of common sense—and it entailed a damn good chance of getting snakebit. According to Art and others at KPD, it was not entirely clear which was more venomous in Cooke County, the bad guys in the battered pickups or the good guys in their SUVs and aircraft. Nothing was certain; anything was possible.
I had plenty of time to ponder these things as the Cherokee bored east on Interstate 40, traversing the broad valley of the French Broad River. Then, just before I-40 plunged into the heart of the Appalachians, Williams whipped the Jeep down an off-ramp, skidded left onto a county road, and began threading curves that made a corkscrew seem straight by comparison. The road had a solid yellow center line, but Williams drove as if both lanes were his alone, wandering from one edge to another. “Is this one way?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t, but hoping he might take the hint and stick to the right lane.
“One way?” He laughed easily. Now we were in his territory, not mine. “Naw, but you got to straighten these curves or you’ll never get where you’re going.”
By way of demonstration, he took both hands off the wheel, and the Jeep barreled straight ahead for a hundred yards, while the center line whipsawed beneath us. “It’s easier at night, when you can see the other cars coming.” He drifted left to hug the inside of a tight curve. “Unless they got their lights off. One or two nights a year, we get a bad head-on wreck long about here.”
I switched to pondering that for a minute, but as the road grew more tortuous, my pondering shifted to another alarming topic: how many more curves could I take before I threw up? Not many, I realized, as sweat began beading on my forehead and premonitory saliva filled my mouth. I rolled down the window and thrust my face out into the bracing air, panting like a dog. It helped, but not enough to offset our continuing roller coaster ride. I pulled my head back inside.
“Listen, I hate to do this,” I said, “but I’ve got to ask you to stop. I’m getting really carsick.”
He looked startled, as if he’d never heard anything so ridiculous. Carsick? On this fine road? It was the look a camel might give a parched human in the Sahara. Thirsty? Didn’t you drink some water just last week?
A pained expression worked its way from his mouth up to his eyes; then he shook his head once. “Sheriff said he needs you right away. Reckon we better keep on a-keepin’ on. Just hang out the window there and let fly if you need to.”
As if on cue, I did. Flecks of vomit spattered the gold star painted on the door. I pulled my head back in. “It’s not that simple,” I rasped. “It isn’t just vomiting. I’ve got Ménière’s disease — vertigo — and I’m about thirty seconds from getting a dizzy spell that’ll last for days. Trust me, if that happens, there’s no way I’ll be able to do whatever the sheriff needs me to do.”
He cursed under his breath, but he hit the brakes and we crunched to a stop on the shoulder beside the tumbling Little Pigeon River. Two minutes later, we were under way again. This time, we kept to our side of the blacktop, and the tires had ceased to squeal. That’s because this time I was driving.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Williams muttered. “Sheriff’s gonna be mad as hell.”
“Not as mad as he’d be if I had to lie down in a dark room for three days,” I said. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.” I rolled down the window to dispel the acrid scent of vomit.
Ten minutes later, we rounded yet another curve, and suddenly—for the first time since we’d dived off the interstate—I could see for more than a hundred yards ahead. The road ran straight and level for half a mile, bringing us into Jonesport, the county seat. The town occupied what must have been the one patch of level ground in all of Cooke County.
Hunkering in the center of the town square was the courthouse, a two-story structure that appeared designed to repel a military siege. Laid up in thick slabs of rough-hewn granite, its fa?ade was broken by only a few small windows, all of them barred, and by a mammoth ironclad door that could have shrugged off a medieval battering ram. I’d seen prisons that were flimsier. Prettier, too.
“That’s a mighty stout courthouse you’ve got there,” I observed.