Leave No Trace Read online

  “It looks like you got the master bedroom,” Webb commented, noting the private balcony and the huge bathroom with a whirlpool tub that could easily fit two. “How did you swing that? Did you and Brian have to arm wrestle?”

  “Apparently all I had to do was save his life.” Meg opened one of the wide glass doors to step out onto the small balcony that held two comfortable chairs with a small table between them. “I told him we could flip a coin. He insisted. I gave up fighting him. I do think he got the short end of the stick, though. He saved my life and he got a fraction of a bottle of red wine.” She threw her arms wide, encompassing the view. “I save his and get this. Granted, I’m on a case, so I won’t get much of it, but still.”

  Webb came up behind her, wrapping his right arm around her stomach to snug her against him as he rested his chin on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll enjoy it for you when you’re out working like a dog and I’m here relaxing with my feet up.”

  She could hear the teasing smile in his voice and gave him a gentle elbow to the gut in retribution. He gave an exaggerated grunt of pain and she laughed. “I’m glad you came. I might not have seen you for weeks otherwise. Who knows how long this case will take?” She turned in the circle of his arm and wound hers around his neck. “I admit I felt guilty about leaving you like that, two days after thinking I was going to lose you. Especially since you decided to go back to your apartment. Cara would have taken care of you, you know.”

  “I know. But it would have been weird without you there. And, really, by that point I didn’t need watching anymore. I don’t need anyone to crack the whip to keep me on schedule with my exercises and rehab. No one wants me back in my turnout gear more than me. Being useless is frustrating.”

  “You’re a firefighter and a paramedic; helping is part of your personality. Being forced to sit on the sidelines is uncomfortable.”

  “It really is. A vacation is one thing. If I was needed, I could spring into action at any moment. Right now, I can’t. But I also can’t rush it or I could extend being on the DL.”

  Meg ran one careful hand over his shoulder. “When was the last time you iced it?”

  “I’m past icing it. Now I’m at the point where heat helps to loosen the muscles because they’re tightening up. I treated it this morning because it’s pretty tight first thing, but could use another treatment after the flight.”

  “Time for another round, then. Go out and sit on the porch while you treat it. I want to grab a fast shower before I get into clean clothes; then I’ll be right down.”

  When Brian and McCord returned, their arms overflowing with bags of food, they found Meg and Webb on the back porch, enjoying the view while Webb used a heated shoulder wrap.

  Bracing her hands on the wide arms of the Adirondack chair, Meg levered herself up to stand. “Stay here,” she said to Webb, “and get a few more minutes in. I’ll give them a hand and then we’ll get organized on lunch.” She stepped into the house and followed the men into the kitchen, where they dumped the bags on the counter. She stared openmouthed at the sheer volume of food. “Just how long do you think we’re going to be here?”

  “I have no idea,” McCord said, “but we’re going to eat well while we are.”

  “I also picked us up some extra supplies for our packs,” Brian said, pointing at one of the bags.

  “Good thinking.” Meg peeked into the bag and nodded her approval. “Let’s get this put away and then have lunch. If we can find a place for it all, that is.”

  “We got stuff for sandwiches.” McCord pulled out several loaves of crusty bread and bags of fresh-cut deli meat. “And while we’re eating, I can bring you up to speed on my historical research. Now that I’m here, I’m going to start diving into the players.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the group gathered around the patio table on the porch, their plates loaded with fat sandwiches. McCord’s laptop sat open beside his place setting, a long, text-filled document on-screen.

  McCord waggled his beer at Webb. “Brian says he can’t have one while he’s on duty. You sure you don’t want one?”

  “Oh, I want one.” Webb saluted McCord with his glass of ginger ale before taking a sip. “But I better lay off it for a couple of weeks while I’m recovering from the concussion. Nothing is getting in the way of my getting back on duty.”

  “Can’t blame you for that. I’ll have to enjoy it for you, then. Okay, ready to catch up?”

  “We are,” Meg said. “You said historical research. Of the area?”

  “Of the area, though really it was of a much bigger area than this geographically, but I think you’re going to see that what happened nearly two hundred years ago is maybe setting the stage for some of what is happening today.”

  “The Trail of Tears?” Webb asked.

  “Or, as one of the Choctaw chiefs more accurately dubbed it, ‘the trail of tears and death.’ That got softened into the Trail of Tears, probably by whites to make themselves feel better.” McCord stopped to take a long draw from his beer bottle.

  Webb studied McCord over his glass. “You sound pissed.”

  “Hard not to be. I don’t know . . . maybe it’s modern moral sensitivities. Maybe it’s knowing how we royally screwed over the Native Americans, but the more I got into this, the more disgusted and angrier I got. Take the political wrapping off and it’s nothing short of an ethnic cleansing of indigenous people.” Another swig of beer and his bottle thumped down on the table. “Okay, let’s all get on the same page.

  “Up until the Revolutionary War, populated settlements of Europeans and their descendants were pretty much concentrated along the East Coast. But after the war, and with the establishment of the United States as a country, Americans started moving west. Cities were filling up, and the population was increasing at a substantial rate, going from 2.5 million people in 1776, to 5.3 million in 1800, to nearly 13 million in 1830. All those people had to go somewhere, so they went west, right into the lands occupied by the five eastern tribes—the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole. The existing structure of the tribes—thousands of chiefs with no common voice—played against them in dealing with the US government because there was no centralized leadership. The US government could bargain for what they wanted, or just take it. The tribes eventually came to the conclusion that they had no choice but to assimilate into the Colonial way of life to preserve their lands. They were forced to live in both worlds, and part of that was learning to speak English. That’s why you will also hear them described as the ‘Five Civilized Tribes.’ ”

  “It sounds like they did what they had to do to survive,” Brian said. “They were outmaneuvered and outnumbered. It was a peaceful way to compromise.”

  “Some saw it that way; some saw it as a betrayal of their ways and traditions. That’s going to be a common theme in this story. Compromise and betrayal and how what some saw as one, many saw as the other. All five tribes were affected, but for simplicity’s sake let’s stick with the Cherokee since they were involved specifically in Georgia and are relevant to this particular area. They had their own written language, their own constitution, even their own newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, first published in February 1828. The Cherokee read the writing on the wall and did everything they could to preserve their way of life and their lands. When they wrote their constitution in”—McCord turned to his laptop and scrolled down his notes—“1827, they clearly dictated they were a sovereign nation and, as such, would not cede any of their land to the US government. In return, Georgia’s state legislature passed ‘harassment laws,’ decreeing what the Cherokee could and could not do on their own land. The Cherokee objected to the power grab, but Georgia had a militia to back up their laws, and did so, to the detriment and death of the Cherokee.”

  Webb swallowed a bite of his sandwich. “Sounds like they were trying to make life so hard for the Cherokee, they’d leave.”

  “That’s absolutely what they were trying to do. When that didn’t work,
they moved onto the land lotteries. Georgia sent in surveyors to map Native American land, and then the government of Georgia seized it and divvied it up into parcels. White male settlers could register for a chance to win a plot of land in the lottery, only paying fees that covered running the lottery itself. Essentially the land was free. As you can imagine, it was popular, especially for people who had nothing. In 1832, 85,000 people registered for about 18,000 parcels of land.”

  “They were raffling off land that didn’t belong to them,” Meg stated.

  “That’s right. But think about the geography. We all know the end of this story, that they moved the Native Americans out. Then what happened to their lands?”

  Brian snapped his fingers and then pointed at McCord. “Cotton. It was all about the cotton trade.”

  “That was most of it. There was also a small but significant gold rush in Lumpkin County, just south of here, but it was cotton that affected the entire state. The cotton trade was already lucrative, but it became an economic juggernaut with those additional lands and eventually evolved into the world’s biggest economy, especially when combined with the slave trade. When you think about it, the Trail of Tears and the history behind it were responsible for what might have been the largest forced migration the world has ever seen—Native Americans to the west and African slaves to North America. It’s clear that white Americans would, and did, kill to possess that land. And Andrew Jackson, who wanted every East Coast Native American gone beyond the Mississippi, was happy to oblige that desire for land with the Indian Removal Act in 1830. John Ross, Principal Chief of Cherokee Nation, however, had other ideas.”

  “John Ross?” Brian pushed away his empty plate and sat back in his chair. “That name seems so . . .”

  “British?” McCord supplied. “It sure does. Ross was one-eighth Cherokee, the son of a Scottish father and a one-quarter Cherokee mother. He became a wealthy landowner, cultivating tobacco with slave labor, and a respected lawyer who worked for years in DC. He even founded the city of Chattanooga. But that didn’t matter to the settlers. The Native Americans weren’t white; that was all that mattered. So John Ross took Georgia to court. All the way to the Supreme Court, in fact. And won.”

  Webb whistled. “That must not have gone over well.”

  “It really didn’t. More importantly, the judgment invalidated the Indian Removal Act passed by Jackson. But Jackson didn’t care and ignored the ruling. After all, he had an army standing behind him to do whatever he wanted. That’s when some Cherokee in the Treaty Party, including the influential Ridge family with Major and John Ridge, decided the only way to ensure the Cherokee Nation would survive was to sign the treaty, turn over their lands, and head for the land promised to them in Oklahoma by the US government. That was the Treaty of New Echota, signed in 1835. In it, they traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi for five million dollars.”

  “And the Cherokee agreed with them in signing the treaty?” Meg shook her head in disbelief. “They were giving up everything they’d known.”

  “They didn’t all agree. Many Cherokee felt the Ridges had betrayed them. A petition was created and the majority of Cherokee signed it, but Congress never acknowledged it. They just went right ahead with removal. They gave the Cherokee two years to vacate their lands, but many of them refused to leave. Those who didn’t were removed after the two years at gunpoint and were held in concentration camps with deplorable conditions, sometimes for months. The first Cherokee to make the trek were dispatched in the middle of the summer heat during a drought. So many died during the march they didn’t send the next group until the fall. But that meant the later groups walked through what turned out to be one of the worst winters on record. It was a nightmare. Sixteen thousand Cherokee left to be relocated. At least four thousand of them died en route.”

  For a moment there was only silence as everyone absorbed those numbers.

  “A trail of tears and death, indeed,” Brian said quietly.

  “That number also doesn’t account for any deaths that happened after they arrived, even if it was from the strain of the journey or disease caught on the way. And their arrival wasn’t a peaceful one, either. The US government promised them land west of the Mississippi. But once they got there, many of them found there were western tribes occupying that land. The US government had granted them lands it didn’t own.”

  Meg braced her elbows on the table and knit her fingers together, watching McCord pensively over them. “The displaced Native Americans must have had a bone-deep hatred of the US government and the settlers.”

  “Not only for the government and the settlers, but also for the Treaty Party members responsible for New Echota. The party members paid for that treaty with their lives.”

  “You mean literally paid?” Webb asked.

  “Literally. John Ridge was pulled from his bed in the middle of the night and beaten to death. His father, Major, was ambushed riding home the same day and shot. They were killed by people seeking vengeance for the deaths of their loved ones and for violating Cherokee Blood Law. But now let’s get into how the Trail of Tears has impacted modern times. In the 1830s, when the Cherokee were forcibly removed from their land, approximately eight hundred Cherokee remained behind.”

  “I don’t get it,” Brian said. “They let some of them stay?”

  “Not on purpose. For instance, one of the leaders objected and hid out in the mountains in a cave with his family, avoiding removal. Slowly, word spread among the remaining Cherokee, and those who also wanted to stay joined the growing band of resisters. They stayed in the mountains, living off the land. Finally, the leader made an agreement with the US Army pursuing them—his life for the safety of his whole group. He was executed, but the rest of the group survived by giving up their tribal affiliation and becoming American citizens. Today’s Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians are descendants of those resisters. They’ve been relegated to a small parcel of land called the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina.”

  “And now they want their land back,” Meg stated.

  “Can you blame them?”

  “Absolutely not. But I don’t have a personal stake in this. For those who do, those landowners whose descendants possibly occupy that land, they’re not going to look at it the same way. As far as they’re concerned, that land is theirs.”

  “Especially when my research shows a lot of the land raffled off in the lotteries is still owned by the original families.”

  “Which means they’ll be bonded to that land.” Meg sat back in her chair and gazed out over the hills as they slid down to the deep blue waters of Blue Ridge Lake. “That would make for a powerful motive to kill.”

  “The same could be said for the Eastern Band of Cherokee,” Webb said. “The ones who moved west lost their land but kept their identity. The ones who stayed in the east lost both their land and their identity, at least initially.” He swiveled to McCord. “Do they own Qualla Boundary, or is it reservation land?”

  “It’s not a reservation. They bought the land and the federal government holds it in trust for them. They’re a sovereign nation with their own government, laws, courts, schools, and police force, even including one of the few SWAT teams in western North Carolina that works in conjunction with other local law enforcement bodies when they require assistance.”

  “And they have an eye to taking back what’s theirs.”

  “They’ve already had some success at it, too. They recently acquired seventy-six acres of historic Cherokee land in Tennessee that holds a number of Cherokee memorials. And now they’re looking at Georgia.”

  “Except the TVA is getting in their way,” Brian said. “You have to wonder what one of the EBCI might do to stop the dam project.”

  “And what retribution they would consider fair game in the name of Cherokee Nation when it comes to the past.” Webb met Meg’s eyes. “Considering the toll of the Trail of Tears, you have to know at least some of them would consider a life for a life entirely
justified.”

  A handful of lives to make up for four thousand?

  If that was who was responsible, Meg had to wonder how many lives would satisfy that kind of killer.

  CHAPTER 12

  Coevolution: Social, psychological, and cultural changes that occur in individuals and groups as different cultures learn to coexist.

  Thursday, April 11, 4:26 PM

  Lake View Cabins

  Blue Ridge, Georgia

  “Hey, Meg! Torres is here,” Brian called from his room. Situated on the east side of the cabin, his room had windows facing three directions, one overlooking the driveway.

  Meg glanced at the time on her fitness tracker. “If he needed us, he could have called and we’d have gone into town. He didn’t need to come all the way out here.” She grabbed a fleece jacket from the end of the bed and shrugged into it. “You okay?”

  Webb cracked one eye open from where he lay on the bed. “Absolutely. Go on. I’ll stay quiet and out of sight so he doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “You’re not the one I’m worried about. I haven’t even run McCord past Torres yet. I’d like to introduce him to the idea of McCord before introducing him to the man himself.”

  “Don’t worry, McCord won’t endanger a story. He’ll stay out of sight until you give him the green light.”

  “You’re probably right, but I think I’ll go remind him, anyway.”

  When Meg passed by McCord’s room, she found him seated at a compact desk, working at his laptop. She simply put a finger to her lips. He gave her a salute in acknowledgment and she headed downstairs. She just reached the landing when she heard Brian greeting Torres at the front door. She came down the stairs to find Torres carrying a briefcase and surrounded by dogs. “Hawk, Lacey, let Agent Torres get in the door.”

  Torres paused in the middle of petting Lacey. “Not to worry. I love dogs. And call me Sam. We may be on the case for a while; no need to stand on ceremony.”