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 another, the truck had a feature that was sure to repel almost any ne’er-do-well: the cargo bed and camper shell reeked of death and decay, thanks to the countless bodies and bones the truck had ferried over the years. The truck was like a four-wheel version of Charon’s boat, ferrying the dead across the river Styx—in this case, though, ferrying the dead across the Tennessee River to the Body Farm. Perhaps I should have felt morose about being Death’s ferryman, but I didn’t. Instead, I felt curious and eager as I contemplated getting to know my latest passenger—the newest resident of the Body Farm.
But my good mood didn’t last long. Less than ten miles outside of Knoxville, a ghost—in the shape of a highway billboard—reared its haunting, taunting head. COMFORT INN read the faded sign, a message I always found deeply ironic on this particular billboard.
“Crap,” I muttered to Miranda. “Remind me to take a different route next time.”
“What? Why?” She glanced at me, then followed my grim gaze to the billboard. “Oh. Right.” She grimaced. “You’d think they’d take that down. But I guess not too many people know about it or remember it.”
“It” was the series of murders Nick Satterfield had committed, two decades before, on the wooded hillside directly behind the billboard. A sadist who preyed on prostitutes, Satterfield would pick up his victims on Magnolia Avenue, Knoxville’s de facto red-light district, and bring them out here to Cahaba Lane—a short cul-de-sac that was a dead end in the worst possible way. After parking directly beneath the Comfort Inn billboard, Satterfield would lead the women up a trail into the woods, where he would do brutal and lethal things to them.
“It still blows my mind,” I said. “His car was parked right there, in plain sight, while he tortured and strangled those women. I still wonder if anybody driving past ever heard anything.”
Miranda lowered the window and cocked her head toward it, as if listening for the echo of a long-ago scream drifting from the woods that flanked the freeway. “Lotta noise,” she said doubtfully. “Even with the windows down, hard to hear anything but the wind. Though if you were stopped to change a tire . . .” She made a face. “Yuck. Yeah, next time let’s take a different route.”
We rode in silence for the next half hour. Then, just before the freeway began corkscrewing its way through the Great Smoky Mountains, we got off. I felt my mood lift again as we wound alongside the Pigeon River, which we followed upstream all the way into town.
Jonesport was Cooke County’s seat of government and its largest town, not that the competition—from the likes of Allen Grove, Del Rio, Tom Town, Wasp, and Briar Thicket—was all that stiff. Fronting the town square was the courthouse, a brooding, fortresslike building, assembled from rough-hewn slabs of granite, its windows gridded with bars, its front doors sheathed in iron. As we approached, Miranda gave a low whistle. “Geez,” she said. “That place could repel a third world army.” After a moment, she added, “Although from what I know of Cooke County, a band of local outlaws is lots more likely than a foreign army.”