Issues from recent years were not yet on microfilm, and by mid-afternoon I was able to switch to hard copy. But the headache had already escalated from a minor disturbance to major pain that swirled across my frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes and pulsed at an epicenter behind my right eye.

Final stretch. The tough get going. Bring it home. Remember the Gipper.

Shit.

I was flipping through papers from the current year, scanning headlines and photographs, when a name caught my eye. George Adair. The missing fisherman.

The coverage of Adair's disappearance was detailed, giving the exact time and place of the fatal fishing trip, a description of the victim, and an itemized account of what he was wearing, right down to his high school ring and St. Blaise medal.

Another childhood flashback. The parish priest. The blessing of throats on St. Blaise Day. What was the story? Blaise was reputed to have saved a child from choking on a fish bone. The medal made sense. Crowe said Adair complained of throat problems.

Adair's companion was interviewed, as were his wife, friends, former employer, and priest. A grainy picture was printed beside the story, the pendant clearly visible around his neck.

Who was Crowe's other missing person? I searched my pounding brain. Jeremiah Mitchel. February. I moved back almost eight months and began a more careful perusal.

Smal things began to connect.

Jeremiah Mitchel's disappearance was reported in one short paragraph. On February 15 a seventy-two-year-old black male left the Mighty High Tap and walked into oblivion. Anyone having information blah, blah, blah.

Old ways die hard, I thought, feeling a prickle of anger. White man goes missing: feature story. Black man goes missing: blurb on page seventeen. Or maybe it was station in life. George Adair had a job, friends, family. Jeremiah Mitchel was an unemployed alcoholic who lived alone.

But Mitchel had once had kin. A folow-up appeared in early March, again a single paragraph, seeking information and citing the name of his maternal grandmother, Martha Rose Gist. I stared. How far back had I seen that name?

I returned to the boxes, jumping the microfilm weeks at a turn. The obituary appeared on May 16, 1952, along with six inches in the arts column. Martha Rose Gist had been a potter of local fame. The article included a picture of a beautifuly decorated ceramic bowl, but none of the artist.

Damn!

Checking to be sure the overflow room was empty, I clicked on my cel. Six messages. Ignoring them, I dialed Crowe's number, muffling the beeps with my jacket.

'Sheriff Crowe.'

I didn't bother announcing myself.

'Are you familiar with Sequoyah?' I asked in a loud whisper.

'Are you in church?'

'The Bryson City library.'

'Iris catches you, she'l rip off your lips and feed them to her shredder.'

I assumed Iris was the lilac-haired dragon I'd met at the entrance.

'Sequoyah?'