Without Mercy Read Free

were headed to Cooke County to work a case.
    This would be our seventeenth forensic case of 2016; that meant that the victim, whoever he or she might be, would be recorded and referred to—even if we managed to identify him or her—as case 16–17, the first number referring to the year, the second to the order in which the case had arrived. Now serving number 17 , I thought, visions of the Department of Motor Vehicles dancing in my head.
    As we headed to the Anthropology Department’s pickup truck, the back loaded with body bags, shovels, rakes, cameras, and anything else we might need to work a death scene, I felt a surge of energy—excitement, even—and for the moment, at least, I forgot to be morose about the prospect of Miranda’s graduation and departure.

CHAPTER 3
    LEAVING THE STADIUM, MIRANDA AND I TURNED ONTO Neyland Drive and paralleled the emerald-green Tennessee River for a mile, then took the eastbound ramp for Interstate 40. Now that we had a forensic case I felt downright cheerful, even though the case was situated in a rough-justice jurisdiction where many an outsider had come to grief.
    Cooke County was the best of counties and the worst of counties. By nature, it was a paradise: mountainsides blanketed with pines, tulip poplars, hemlocks, and rhododendron; deep valleys carved by the French Broad, Pigeon, and Nolichucky Rivers; tumbling mountain streams, brimming with trout. But by other measures—socioeconomically, ecologically, and legally—it was far from the Garden of Eden. Unemployment was high, income was low, gunshots were considered background noise, trash dumping was regarded as a constitutional right (revered only slightly less than the Second Amendment, judging by considerable roadside evidence), and crime had long been a chief source of revenue, both for Cooke County residents and for elected officials.
    A COUNTY OF BAD OL ’ BOYS read the headline of a Los Angeles Times story about Cooke County a few years ago. The subhead gave more specifics: BOOTLEGGING , BROTHELS , AND CHOP SHOPS . GUILTY SHERIFFS AND FEDERAL INVESTIGATIONS .
    Oddly, the article omitted mention of what was perhaps the most sensational black mark on the county’s reputation: the discovery, years before, by an undercover FBI agent, that the sheriff was trafficking in cocaine, and in a big way. The sheriff turned an empty field behind the county high school into a makeshift airstrip, and as his deputies guarded the perimeter, a plane loaded with coke landed on school property. “That sure puts the ‘high’ in higher education,” one of my FBI colleagues had remarked after the sheriff’s indictment.
    But that had been many years and several sheriffs ago. By all accounts—including the reckoning of the FBI, which continued to watch Cooke County closely—Sheriff Jim O’Conner had made great strides in rooting out official corruption, though Cooke County’s citizenry still had a penchant for pushing the boundaries of law and order. Common lore held that anyone driving a car with an out-of-county license plate was considered fair game after dark, and a year or so ago, a friend of mine—a Knoxville writer with more curiosity than common sense—made the mistake of driving a red BMW convertible into the heart of Del Rio, a Cooke County community whose main “industry” for decades was its massive cockfighting arena. A quarter mile after he turned onto Del Rio’s river road, three pickups—all equipped with loaded gun racks—pulled out of driveways and tucked in behind the BMW, following it closely until it made a U-turn and hightailed it out of there.
    Miranda and I would probably be fine in Cooke County,I figured. For one thing, we’d be in the company of law enforcement officers. For another, the UT pickup truck we were driving was old and battered, and therefore not particularly tempting to thieves or kidnappers. For yet