and make Andersonville into a tourist attraction by making it look like it did during the Civil War. We’re on Church Street, which is the main drag. The train tracks running perpendicular to it are where the prisoners were brought in on their way to Andersonville Prison. It was the last trip many of them would ever make.”
“The prison is close by?”
Pine stopped the car and pointed to the street. “See all those footprints painted on the street? That represents the prisoners walking the quarter mile to the prison. Longest walk of their lives, probably.”
Blum shuddered. “How horrible.”
“The town put together a seven-acre area called Pioneer Farm, just off here. They have a smithy, a jail, a smokehouse, and a sugar cane mill, among other attractions. You can see the sign overhead from here that says, ‘Welcome to Andersonville Civil War Village.’”
Blum read it, nodded, and added, “And an RV park and restaurant.”
“About eighty thousand people visit a year, so I guess the mayor’s plan paid off. The really big event is coming up shortly.”
“What’s that?”
“Mock Civil War battles. Reenactments, they call them. There’ll be a parade and a marching band coming down this way. Soldiers in blue and gray. More bands playing, line dancing, clogging, lots to eat and drink. Quite the shindig. People selling uniforms and guns and flags and swords and quilts and other stuff. And only four bucks to get in.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s on that sign over there.”
The pair exchanged a quick smile.
“So all those tourists come here for that?” asked Blum.
“No, they also come because of the infamous Confederate prison that used to be here.”
“To visit a prison? That’s sort of weird.”
“Well, it was the most notorious prison in the Civil War. Around thirteen thousand Union prisoners died there. There’s a National Historic Site here and a huge military cemetery. And I read there’s some sort of prisoner of war center here too. The commandant of the prison, Henry Wirz, was hanged as a war criminal.” She pointed up ahead to a tall obelisk in the center of the street. “That’s the Wirz Monument.”
“Wait a minute, a war criminal gets a monument?”
“It was erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy. I guess they believed Wirz got a raw deal and was just used as a scapegoat.” She paused. “Tor knew about Wirz being hanged. He told me the first time I met him, when I said I was from the Andersonville area.”
“So he was here then?”
“He was operating in the state when my sister was taken. He committed murders in Macon, Atlanta, Columbus, and Albany. That was why it occurred to me that he might be involved in Mercy’s disappearance. But him knowing about Wirz might be because he read up on me before I visited him for the first time. He could have learned about it then.”
“You told me on the plane ride that he occurred to you as the abductor in your sister’s case after you’d gone to hypnotherapy?”
Pine nodded. “But there’s the chicken-and-egg problem. I obviously knew about Tor before I underwent hypnosis. So maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy that I think he did it. In fact, he pointed out that possibility to me at our last meeting. But I had already thought of it.”
Blum shivered. “I can’t imagine being in the same building with someone like that, much less talking to him.”
“He definitely has the ability to get under your skin. Turn things around that you say. Appear normal, logical even, though he’s a monster.”
“Creepy.”
Pine thought back to the giant of a man who had so cruelly and violently ended the lives of so many innocent people. “Actually, that term doesn’t come close to covering it.”
“So is that it for the town? They all work in tourism?”
“No. In the sixties a mine and refinery opened. They ship out thousands of tons of bauxite ore every week from here on the freight trains.”
“Bauxite?”
“It’s found in the kaolinite clay soil here. Mulcoa is the company that mines it here. It was once used to make aluminum. Now it’s used for abrasives and in hydraulic fracturing to get to oil and gas deposits. With all the fracking going on now, the bauxite business is pretty good.” She pointed to a storefront as they drove along. “Drummer Boy Civil War Museum. They have uniforms and flags and guns and other artifacts from the war.”
“Well, it’s nice to see that the Civil War can still be a benefit for some. I really didn’t