The West Midland Trail out of Goshen twists along the Maury River, past lonely stretches of hilly wood and acres and acres of cattle farms.

We are here in rural southwest Virginia, my wife and I, alone together on a road trip for the first time in a decade. To celebrate my wife’s birthday and our anniversary, Valerie whisked me away to a location unknown, which turned out to be the marvelous Hummingbird Inn B&B in a teeny tiny railroad town called Goshen, smack up against the George Washington National Forest.

Unlike my normal, cell phone-jonesing self, I am happily out of range and glad to be traveling sans notebook or pen with my lovely wife at my side as we roll eastward toward Appomattox, where Lee surrendered to Grant, thus ending the Civil War, or, as they prefer down here, the War of Northern Aggression.

Needing nourishment, liquid refreshment and of course every local newspaper for the long, scenic jaunt, we pull up across from Kelly’s Corner, an old-fashioned general store where they sell hunting and fishing goods in addition to comestibles.

As Val admires the farmhouse up on the hill and the grazing cattle, which seem to outnumber people, I amble across the highway. Before I can make it inside, I notice an orange reward poster. A 44-year-old Maryland contractor named David B. Stack had been shot in the back just a few days earlier while turkey hunting on the opening day of gobbler season. The National Wild Turkey Federation was offering $1,000 for the identity of Stack’s killer.

The woman running the general store cannot quite come to grips with why I am so interested in Stack.

I explain that I am a newspaper editor from Philadelphia and I was just driving along, minding my own business, when I saw the reward poster. "It’s 25 years of hardwiring," I tell her. "I just can’t help myself."

"Well, it’s all a little sensitive," she says, not realizing she is only fueling my morbid curiosity.

This was the first time in anyone’s memory, she says, that a hunter in Virginia was shot and someone didn’t come forward to help and acknowledge responsibility. The shooting is not only a tragedy, she says, but it is also feeding a growing controversy over the use of rifles to hunt turkeys. Shotguns, she says, are more sporting, because they don’t render the birds inedible and are far less deadly. Because of this, she says, the National Wild Turkey Federation wants Virginia to ban rifles during gobbler season.

Being on a romantic retreat, I have nothing to write with or on. I grab a Virginia Lottery Pick 4 card and a Virginia Lottery pencil stub and begin furiously scribbling notes.

Stack was hunting in an area known as Saville Hill in the wee hours of Sat., April 12. When he hadn’t returned in 15 hours, his family reported him missing and a search ensued. He was found the next day, dead from a rifle shot.

Satisfied that I have squeezed every last bit of information out of this kind general store owner, I thank her profusely, grab the caffeinated beverages and the copy of the Rockbridge Weekly I have purchased and head back to the minivan, where my wife is waiting patiently, probably figuring that I have gone nuts over the fishing geegaws as usual.

Reading the look on her face as she reads the look on mine, I realize that we have both come to the same conclusion.

It is a long drive to Appomattox and -- in between discussing the merits of owning sheep versus chickens -- we wonder aloud who might have killed Stack and why.

Searching for clues, I flip through the pile of newspapers we have purchased and, right there on page one, the Rockbridge Weekly has a story about Stack, in which the writer quotes unnamed sources speculating about why it took the Stack family so long to report David Stack missing and announcing that, while Stack had recently won a large government contract, that fact probably had nothing to do with his death.

With little else to go on, we share some wild speculation, which, being just that, has no place in this story, because, after all, it is about a real-life tragedy.

I tell Valerie of a vision I have for a novel, about a big-city newspaper editor who heads south on vacation, only to stumble onto a southern-fried mystery, about an unsolved murder and the effect it has on the locals and the married couple on a much-needed retreat.

The oddity of this situation is confirmed to me days later by a state game commission spokeswoman, who calls the tale of David Stack "highly unusual."

"It is not uncommon for the victim to know the shooter," she says. "What typically happens is that the shooter tries to offer some assistance, uses a cell phone to call for help or runs to the residence. That is the track record. That didn’t happen."