Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller Read online

  Lonnie parked in front of the house next to Blake’s F-150 at 8:10 a.m., got out, and shut the door quietly, as was his practice. He straightened his hat and walked with purpose and authority to the door at the center of the A-frame, and rang the doorbell.

  Blake sat on the sofa when the doorbell rang, having just finished a heated call with Nick to discuss the delivery Blake would make later in the day. He looked toward the door and exhaled deeply. Angelica, if you’ve locked yourself out..., he thought to himself with exasperation as he got up and walked to the door. As he reached for the handle he could see through the stained-glass door that it was not Angelica. The figure loomed large, with the morning sun casting a large shadow over its wide-brimmed hat. Blake’s throat dried and his pulse quickened as he opened the door.

  Lonnie gave a professional smile. “Mornin’ Blake.”

  “Mornin’ Sheriff. How can I help you?”

  Blake immediately wished he hadn’t said that. It was so formal, so distant. Not something you say to someone you know, someone you want to be friendly with, unless you want to appear uneasy. Blake had never been friendly with Lonnie. He was much older and Blake’s gang in high school, while not troublemakers, had always steered clear of the law. Lonnie tuned in to Blake’s demeanor and took the lead.

  “Well,” Lonnie began with a slow mountain drawl, “I just wanted to sit with you a minute and ask a couple of questions. That’s if you don’t mind, Blake.”

  In the second that it took Blake to respond, the worst thoughts raced through his mind. What does he want? What does he KNOW? Am I in trouble? What should I do? The rage began to boil within Blake as he knew that only someone who has something to hide would think such thoughts.

  “Sure Sheriff, come on in.”

  Lonnie walked in and, to Blake, appeared to notice nothing other than the bar stool he sat on. But Lonnie was a trained observer, both in the natural world and in the manmade one. He took a quick inventory of the environment before him, noting nothing unusual. A flat screen TV, a shotgun on the wall and a handmade walking stick leaning next to the sofa. Everything was in order, Lonnie surmised.

  “I’m looking for a couple of fellas that live around here, Blake. They’ve been missing for going on a month now and, well, I’m just asking around to see if anybody knows anything that might help.”

  “I ain’t seen ’em, Sheriff,” Blake blurted.

  “Seen who?” Lonnie asked.

  “Seen...whoever’s missing. I assume you’re talking about them boys I heard about.”

  “Well, what’d you hear?” Lonnie asked as he watched Blake wrench his hands.

  Blake was nervous and was sure the sheriff knew it. He shouldn’t have answered so quickly, so abruptly. He felt out of control, as if he was being interrogated in his own home. SETTLE DOWN! He told himself, the same way he used to when it was late in the game and he needed to lead a scoring drive.

  “I just heard at the coffee shop that some boys were missing,” Blake said. “Folks figured they ran off or something.”

  Lonnie nodded and reached into his shirt pocket, slowly retrieving a pen and note pad. He opened it and wrote a note reminding himself to stop by the hardware store on the way home. Blake watched the sheriff write and his pulse quickened even more. What is he writing? Blake realized he couldn’t just stare at the sheriff so he surveyed the room, noticing the empty coffee pot. He realized he should offer the sheriff some coffee.

  “Would you like me to make us some coffee, Sheriff?”

  Lonnie looked up from his pad, and then looked at his watch. “No, thanks anyway. I gotta be heading back. Got some other folks I need to talk to on the way.”

  Lonnie stood up and began walking to the door. Blake breathed a quiet sigh of relief, walked ahead and opened the door for the sheriff. Lonnie walked through, stopped in the middle of the opening and turned to face Blake, their faces only a foot apart.

  “Do you know them boys?” Lonnie asked. “Jesse Simmons and Shane Dixon?

  “No,” Blake said quickly and firmly.

  “Hmmm...” Lonnie said, and then stood silently, his nose inches from Blake’s.

  Blake thought about what, if anything else, he should say. The moment dragged out just as the sheriff wanted and just as Blake feared.

  “What?” Blake asked finally.

  “Well...it’s just that them boys don’t live too far from here. Jesse’s folks are dead and he lives with his uncle over on Sarah’s Creek. Shane lives over on Earls Ford Road. His folks said he was doing some work for a farmer up on Hale Ridge, or ’round them parts. Ain’t many folks that mess with farming up this way ’cept you, so I figured you might know ’em.”

  “I just deliver stuff for farmers and wineries to restaurants in Athens,” Blake said.

  “Yeah,” Lonnie said, looking Blake squarely in the eye. “So you don’t know them boys, then?”

  Blake couldn’t remember ever having felt so scared. Oh shit, he knows! But, knows what? What is there to know?

  “No,” Blake said.

  Lonnie walked on through the door and pulled out his pad again to scribble a note. He glanced to his left at a woman walking up the path.

  “Mornin’, ma’am,” Lonnie said as Angelica approached.

  Angelica was surprised to see the sheriff, but not alarmed. She was generally happy to see anyone and would never suspect, or dread, that she was in any trouble. “Good morning, Sheriff,” she said with genuine enthusiasm.

  Lonnie turned back to face Blake.

  “All righty then. Well, good talking with you, Blake.” Lonnie glanced at Angelica before looking back at Blake, making sure she also got the message. “Let me know if you hear anything about them boys, will you?”

  “Of course Sheriff,” Blake said. Now please LEAVE! He thought.

  Lonnie tipped his hat to Angelica, got in his car, and pulled away slowly.

  Blake turned and stormed into the house. Angelica stood in the driveway. The peace and calm she had felt while knitting and watching Ozzie and Tammy gave way to unease. Seeing the sheriff and watching Blake storm off brought her morning nightmare back to the foreground.

  She walked into the kitchen and closed the door. Blake sat on the sofa, his chin resting in the palms of his folded hands. His mind was elsewhere, unaware of her presence. Angelica turned on the water faucet, filled the coffee pot, and poured it slowly into the coffee maker. Opening the can of Maxwell House, she put two measured scoops into the filter and turned the machine on.

  Angelica stood in the kitchen and studied Blake, feeling in her gut that something was wrong but not sure how to approach him. He had become so distant, so irritable recently, that Angelica felt she had to tread cautiously when approaching him. Yet, at that moment, she realized how much she needed him. She didn’t work or have any way of producing income. Blake provided almost everything. Angelica did inherit some money from her parent’s death that she put alongside the money Blake’s lawyer won him for the car accident. Together it had been just enough to pay cash for the house, furnishings, land, and Blake’s truck. They had a great health care plan that would provide everything the baby needed if there was an emergency, but it was a plan that Nick provided to Blake by putting him on The Federal’s payroll for a nominal salary. Angelica had been thrilled, even proud of Blake, when he explained that Nick had agreed to it as part of Blake doing so much for him. With no mortgage, no car payment, and no health care costs, Blake only had to earn enough to pay utilities, a little bit of food, and minor expenses.

  But what if something’s wrong? Angelica thought while watching Blake. What if he’s in trouble? What will happen to the health care? To the money that he makes to pay the bills? What would I do? What would WE do when the baby comes?

  Blake sat in silence, fearing the worst for himself. Angelica stood fifteen feet away, in silence, fearing the worst for herself and for her baby. The coffee maker stopped dripping and Angelica took a cup, filling it with black coffee. She walked around the b
ar and stood before Blake before speaking softly.

  “Mornin’ sweetie. Here’s your coffee.”

  Blake looked up at the cup before him, at the woman before him. He saw what he had once seen, but had lost sight of. He saw an angel. He stared without expression into her eyes through the smallest of tears that threatened to flood his own eyes. How could I have lost sight of her? Of our baby? Of what’s important? What the hell is wrong with me? Blake was in shock, both at Angelica’s grace and beauty and at his own greed, his own stupidity. How had he gotten himself into this mess?

  “Blake?”

  He realized that Angelica was still holding the coffee.

  “Sorry, sweetie,” he said lovingly. It was all Angelica needed. She seemed to have no capacity to hold grudges, to stay angry. She had only the capacity to forgive, to comfort. To love. She smiled at the first truly kind words Blake had uttered to her in months. As she sat beside him, Angelica placed her left hand on his right knee. She wanted to know what the sheriff wanted but feared it would upset Blake if she asked directly, so she took another approach.

  “Is everything okay, hon?”

  Blake looked at her and quickly looked away. He felt himself losing control, tearing up, and didn’t think he could keep his composure by looking at her. In that moment it felt less like she was his wife and more like she was maternal, someone who would understand, would comfort and tell him that everything would be just fine. That’s all he wanted to hear, that everything would be hunky-dory but he knew that Angelica couldn’t make any of his troubles go away. Only he could.

  He sat beside her in silence and thought for a moment. He needed to tell her the truth and then to get out of the mess he felt he was in with Nick. To walk the straight path with her at his side, just as she wanted. She was right, he needed to go to church with her and he would, this Sunday, he told himself. Turning to Angelica, Blake took her left hand, opened his mouth, and prepared to tell her everything. To confess and give himself some peace.

  “Angelica, I have to talk to—”

  A series of loud knocks pelted the kitchen door, interrupting Blake. Blake and Angelica turned quickly to see the door rattle and to hear the voices of two little girls cry: “Auntie Angelica, Auntie Angelica!” Blake stood and pulled his suit of armor back on. Angelica put her hand on Blake’s shoulder.

  “Everything will be okay,” she said.

  Blake walked to the kitchen and poured his coffee into a travel mug as Angelica walked toward the door. He turned and said, “I have to make a delivery to Nick. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  Angelica opened the door and the girls rushed in, pink ribbons in their hair streaming. They nearly knocked Angelica down as she knelt to hug them. Blake walked past and out the door, seeing Rose walking in from the car.

  “Hi, Rose,” he said politely.

  “Hi, Blake. Where you off to?”

  “Athens,” he said. He continued walking before turning around at his truck. “Oh yeah...have a good vacation,” he added.

  Rose smiled, but said nothing as she walked inside.

  Chapter 17

  After leaving the isolation and dense forest cover that overhung most of Warwoman, the small town of Clayton emerged as something of a rural metropolis after Blake snaked through the morning fog along Warwoman Creek. Turning south on 441, he drove past Regions Bank, Bi-Lo groceries, Chick-Fil-A, the new Super Wal-Mart and Home Depot, thinking of all the businesses Clayton now had where he could likely get a job. Places he would never have considered working before. He always thought he was far too good for them then, wanted way more out of life than they could ever offer. Now, they dangled everything that he wanted. Stability, honesty, security. More than anything they could provide a place to hide, to blend in, and be somebody by being nobody.

  Blake drove under the nameless overpass that led southbound cars to Rabun County High School and recalled how he had once daydreamed that the overpass would be named after him. You’re now passing under the Blake Savage overpass, he said to himself in a mocking manner, realizing how foolish and insignificant a dream that had been.

  He continued on 441 past Tiger and Wiley, surveying all the businesses run by good, honest people. Respectable people. People doing what he now felt he should have done. But no, he had sought riches and glory. Fame.

  After he was forced to surrender his football dreams, he became intoxicated with the notion of becoming a celebrity farmer, a ridiculous notion that made Blake chuckle when Nick had first mentioned the idea to him. Nick had told the stories of how his own father was a famed charcuterier in Spain, as was his father before him. Both had raised the revered black-footed pigs in the mountains, fed them acorns and cured the highly prized Jamón Ibérico de Bellota hams in mountain sheds, letting them hang for two years. Even in Spain those hams can cost over one hundred dollars per pound, Nick had said. Lured in by Nick’s grand vision, Blake imagined doing in northeast Georgia what no one else was doing anywhere in America, creating what chefs across the country craved. Reproducing the mountain-cured hams from acorn-fed, black-footed pigs and selling to Nick’s line of exclusive restaurants. He knew that Nick would get the glory, but Blake figured he would still be in the game, so to speak. And richly rewarded. Nick was as fascinated by the idea as Blake was, partly because there were hordes of pigs that descended from the Iberian pigs, right here in Georgia.

  “When my people, the Spaniards, came through a few centuries ago,” Nick had explained to Blake, “they brought the black-footed pigs with them and left them on an island near Savannah. That way, the next wave of Spaniards would have something to hunt, something to eat. At some point we stopped coming, and the pigs took over the island and thrived. All you have to do is get some off the island, raise them in the woods, and cure them in the cool mountain air.”

  Nick had made it sound so easy. So seductive. And he was so persuasive, partly because he was willing to pay a lot to get the real thing, not the inferior industrial version that other restaurants were able to get. Once the USDA had approved the process of allowing some Spanish hams to be imported they had basically been ruined. Sure, they had the name Jamón Ibérico and were quite good compared to American hams, but comparing them to his father’s hams was like comparing drug store champagne to a bottle of vintage Louis Roederer Cristal. Both could claim to use the champagne method, but one taste of the latter would uncloak the former as mere toilet water. Nick wanted the absolute best for his restaurants and for his new 50-Forks club, and he was willing to pay for it to be made the right way. The way his father and his father before him made it, not the way the USDA would have it cooked and salted to death. But he needed an accomplice...someone to do the dirty work, Blake now realized. And Blake was only too eager once Nick did the math for him. Now, Blake began to do the math once again as he drove south, paying no attention to the SUV that had pulled into the lane behind him and now followed him.

  I’ve got 200 hams hanging now, about fifteen pounds each. That’s 3,000 pounds. Nick will pay me seventy dollars a pound when they’re ready, that’s just over $200,000, not counting the other parts...the shoulders, bellies and so on. Half the hams are ready now but they won’t all be ready for another six months at least. I gotta get Nick to take everything now, or maybe take some to other chefs... Blake was immersed in his thoughts as he approached the Tallulah River. Delivering hams for the 50-Forks dinner was just the beginning. Nick wanted hams cured the way his father had done it and on a regular basis. And he wanted to make sure that no other chef had access to those hams, those rare black-footed pigs. Blake exhaled as he tried to figure a way out of having to continue working with Nick.

  He glanced in his rear view mirror and saw a rack on the top of the car behind him. Blake looked more closely to see that the rack was actually the lights of the sheriff’s vehicle. Instinct forced him upright. He corrected his posture and lifted his left hand to the wheel at the 10:00 position to face his right hand in the 2:00 position. He caught his breath
and didn’t exhale, his throat instantly parched. What the hell do they want?

  The car stayed on Blake’s tail about one hundred yards back, keeping its distance precise. Blake slowed a little and continued south. The sheriff’s car slowed to match Blake’s speed and stayed behind him. A trail of cars now followed the sheriff’s car as no one dared pass, even though Blake was now driving five miles per hour under the speed limit. He looked at his speedometer and pushed the accelerator slightly, increasing his speed to fifty-five. The train behind him kept pace.

  Blake saw the fog rising from the Tallulah gorge ahead of him indicating that he was close to crossing the bridge, where he would leave Rabun county and enter Habersham County, out of the sheriff’s jurisdiction. JUST GET OFF MY TAIL! Blake screamed to himself. His pulse was rapid and his face was flush as he tried again to calm himself.

  What do I have to be afraid of? What have I even done? Even if something happened to those boys, how is that my fault? I didn’t do anything!

  Blake tried all the logic he could muster, but his rational thinking was no match for his inner voice.

  What about what’s in the back of your truck that you’re taking to Nick? How will you explain that if the sheriff asks?

  In the mirror, the sheriff’s car zoomed closer, right on his tail now as the bridge approached. Jesus! Blake crossed the bridge and entered the fog. He slowed and turned on his lights as the fog thickened. Slowly, he began the winding ascent up and around Tallulah gorge. Blake exhaled as he passed the sign for Habersham County and flicked his eyes to the mirror. The fog lights from the sheriff’s vehicle stayed tethered to his truck, matching it curve for curve.