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Odetta’s version on her Lead Belly tribute album (2001) is one of the few in which, to my ear, the interrogator sounds caring. In this version I hear a tribute not only to Lead Belly, but to all the girls who have been interrogated so harshly in the song throughout its strange history:

You may hear it differently, of course.

As detectives, my fellow bloggers and I have an imperfect record. Sometimes we pull a fantastic Holmes, like Steve did last week with his investigation of “Fatal Flower Garden” – another song in which, as he describes it, the “sense of menace and mystery is the result of cognitive dissonance based on exclusion [that] comes not from the story but from what’s left out of it, and from the listener’s subsequent attempts to fill in those narrative gaps.” Steve then digs for the crime, and finds it.

With “In the Pines,” we fail. We can keep digging for clues, keep interrogating, but the song just stares back at us, unyielding. I mentioned above that listening to this song feels like stumbling onto a crime scene. But that’s not quite right.

If you are a fan of mysteries and thrillers, then you are familiar with the moment when the detectives enter the suspect’s room (sometimes it’s a bedroom, sometimes a basement or a shed) and find the walls plastered with grainy photos, newspaper clippings, creepy souvenirs, and other ephemera that serve as evidence not only of his guilt, but also of his depravities and obsessions. At this moment, the detectives know with certainty that they finally have their man, but also that they are just beginning to comprehend the depths of who and what he is.

Listening to “In the Pines” is a bit like peering into that room and lifting your foot to step across the threshold. You know you’ve found what you’ve been looking for, but you also know that you haven’t yet come close to knowing just what it is.