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“That’s right,” said O’Conner. “He left the army under some sort of cloud, if I remember right.”
Waylon nodded. “Some kind of trouble in Afghanistan. Buncha villagers killed at what turned out to be a wedding. Way Shiflett tells it, the wedding was a cover for a Taliban get-together. He says the army’s done gone to the dogs—not lettin’ soldiers be soldiers. Lettin’ in all kinda riffraff—blacks and Hispanics and A-rabs. Course, them ain’t the words he used.”
“Sounds like a prince,” Miranda observed.
Waylon shrugged. “Shiflett says the real reason he got throwed out was for standing up for the white man. After he come back home, he took up with some of them militia folks over in North Carolina. I disremember the name of the group.”
O’Conner pondered this a moment, then posed a question to the deputy. “You think he’d come in peacefully if we called and said we wanted to talk to him?”
The big man’s face scrunched into an expression of disbelief. “Come in peaceful? Hell, no! He’d head for them hills like a scalded cat. He might be crazy, but he ain’t stupid. Long time ’fore that boy was a soldier, he was a hunter and a tracker, good as any I ever seen. If he gets wind we’re a-comin’, he’ll be gone just like that”—Waylon snapped his fingers—“and we won’t never catch sight of him no more.”
“What if he doesn’t get wind of us?” the sheriff persisted. “What if we just show up at his door with a warrant—will he put up a fight?”
Waylon guffawed. “Will a politician lie? Will a bear shit in the woods?” He shot a quick, abashed glance at Miranda. “Sorry for the language, Miss Miranda.”
“I hear worse all the time,” she said. “Mostly from my own mouth.”
“You could still bring in the feds,” I suggested. “Sure, they’d end up taking the case away and getting credit, but they also have the resources to do it.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, Doc,” said Waylon, shifting his enormous frame, “but if Jim and me can’t bring him in, I don’t reckon the FBI can. Look at how long it took ’em to nab Eric Rudolph.”
It was interesting to hear Rudolph come up again so soon after our meeting in Montgomery. “And he survived up in the mountains for, what, five years?” I asked.
Waylon nodded. “Says he got by on acorns and salamanders, Dumpster scraps, that kind of thing. But word on the street is, he also got help from some Carolina militia folk. Them, and his crazy family.”
“Crazy how?” asked Miranda.
Waylon snorted. “His brother cut off his own hand with a power saw—on purpose—and sent it up to the FBI. ‘A message,’ he called it.”
I had either missed or forgotten that piece of the story. “And the message,” I said, “was, ‘we’re all nuts here’?”
“I’m guessing the FBI got it,” said O’Conner, “loud and clear.”
I wanted to get back to the case at hand. The problem at hand. “But y’all think there’s a high risk our suspect, Jimmy Ray Shiflett, could cut and run.” Waylon and O’Conner both nodded. “Or put up a serious fight?”
“Hell, he’s probly got enough guns up there at his place to start a war,” Waylon said. “Dynamite and such, too.”
“Well,” I pointed out, “that could be an argument for bringing in the FBI.”
O’Conner shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “Yes and no,” he said. “Here’s my issue with the FBI. I don’t give a rat’s ass who gets credit for bringing him in, if he did this. What worries me is, there’s a lot of distrust of the federal government up here. Some of it goes back eighty years. Some families are still pissed off about the park.” I nodded; Great Smoky Mountains National Park was America’s most heavily visited park, but its creation had taken a toll on hundreds of hardscrabble mountain families, forced off their land for the sake of a park for tourists. “I’m just imagining a convoy of FBI armored vehicles rolling in here,” the sheriff continued. “I hate to say it, but I’m afraid things could get ugly; spiral out of hand. You’d be surprised how many folks up here believe the stories about jackbooted soldiers and black helicopters and the New World Order. I’d hate to see this turn into some sort of Waco.”
I had an idea. “Would they be less freaked out by Knoxville police? KPD has a great SWAT team. They serve a lot of high-risk warrants, and this guy Shiflett sounds about as high-risk as they come.” O’Conner drummed his fingers, pondering the suggestion. “Sure, they’re outsiders, too,” I conceded, “but they’re East Tennessee outsiders. Some of them probably have kinfolk up here.”
O’Conner pondered further, then looked inquiringly at his deputy. Waylon answered the unspoken question with a fine-by-me shrug. “Sold,” said the sheriff. “I’ll make the call.”
I took out my cell phone, searched my contacts for “KPD Decker,” then slid the phone across the desk. “Captain Brian Decker. The SWAT team commander. He’s a good guy.”
O’Conner looked mildly surprised, then smiled, took the phone, and pressed the “call” button. After three rings, I heard Decker’s familiar voice spooling from the tiny speaker in a thin thread of sound, faint but distinct. “Hey, Doc. Everything okay?”
“Captain Decker, this is Jim O’Conner, the sheriff up in Cooke County. Not to worry—everything’s fine. Dr. Brockton just loaned me his phone to call you, since he’s got your number in his contacts.” He put the phone closer to his ear, muffling Decker’s words. “Sure, I’ll hand the phone back to Dr. Brockton in just a second. He suggested I call and see if your SWAT team might be able to help us serve a warrant on a fellow we think might not come quietly. . . . Murder suspect. . . . He’s ex-military. Possible militia member. White supremacist. Permanently pissed off. . . . Exactly, one helluva nice guy.”
They talked a while longer, then made a plan for Decker and two of his men to come to Cooke County later in the day to reconnoiter and formulate a plan.
O’Conner handed me the phone so Decker and I could finish the call. “Talk to me, Deck,” I said. “What’s the word on Satterfield? Any progress?”
“Well, hell,” he said. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
What was the line from The Princess Bride, that tongue-in-cheek fairy-tale movie my grandsons had made me watch a dozen times when they were younger? Oh, right: “Get used to disappointment.”
MOST OF THE DRIVE BACK TO KNOXVILLE WAS A grim, bleak blur. Miranda did not give me her ACLU lecture, although under the circumstances, a liberal rant about protecting civil liberties would have been a lot more pleasant than the dark fears and memories swirling in my mind.
Finally, as we approached the eastern outskirts of the city—about the time we passed the spot where Satterfield had killed several of his victims—Miranda spoke. She sounded as if she were far away—perhaps she’d been trying to get my attention for some time—and if I’d ever heard her voice so tentative, I couldn’t remember when. “Excuse me? Dr. B?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was somewhere else. Didn’t mean to ignore you.”
“I didn’t take it that way. And maybe I should just leave you alone.”
“No, please,” I said. “I’d appreciate some distraction.”
“Well, if you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.” I waved away her concern, and she went on. “Satterfield—that all happened before my time.”
I nodded. “You were probably in first grade,” I said. “Twenty years ago? No, more than that—it was 1992. Bill Clinton was running for president. Clinton and Al Gore. Running against Bush the Elder.” When I put it in those terms, it sounded as if several lifetimes had passed since Clinton first ran. “Wow. Elections were a lot more civilized back then, seems like. Now, campaigning’s turned into a reality TV show. Survivor meets Jerry Springer or something.”
“With some cage-fighting thrown in,” she added. A pause. “I know Satterfield tried to kill you.”
“Not just me. My whole family—Kathleen and Jeff and Jenny, who was Jeff’s girlfriend at the time. They were in high schoo
l. Actually, Jeff was still in high school; Jenny had just graduated. Satterfield snuck into the house at dinnertime. He had come to UT and hidden in the back of my truck. I drove him right into our garage. Like inviting a vampire to come in, though I didn’t know it, of course. We had just sat down at the kitchen table, the four of us, when he came up the stairs. The uninvited dinner guest from hell. If it hadn’t been for Decker, and Tyler . . .” I trailed off, picturing the astonishing way our salvation arrived: a three-foot concrete statue of the archangel Michael, flying through the sliding glass door from the patio, his outstretched wings and raised sword pinning Satterfield to the wall.
“Tyler was your assistant?”
“He was. Tyler Wainwright, my first assistant.” I looked at her. “My second-best assistant. Jeff and Jenny’s son—the first one—is named for him.”
“I remember you saying that once, when you introduced me to them at a cookout. One thing I never understood, though. Why did Satterfield come after you in the first place? He was a serial killer, preying on women. Prostitutes, right?” I nodded. “So why come after you—a professor—and your family?”
