A Living Grave (21 page)

“I wouldn't know,” I told him. “I wasn't involved.”

“So, is your vendetta over?”

“Vendetta?” I asked, and when I did I got up close to him. Dangerously close. I could see him tense up, ready to defend himself. “All I ever wanted was the justice I was due.”

“You got your justice. A full investigation—”

“I got you. And I got people like you following rules. Rules that are there to protect the Army, not the soldier.”

“You accused superior officers of crimes in a combat zone. They had alibis.”

“They had friends.” I was yelling in his face now. My hands were clenched hard at my side, and I had to consciously tell myself to keep them off my weapon. “The same friends that spread rumors and bile about every woman on base.”

“I did my job and I'm doing it now.”

“Maybe you did your job,” I said, getting my voice under control and quiet. “But you failed everyone who needed something more from you.”

“This isn't over,” he said. His voice was flat and overcontrolled.

“Believe me, I know it's not over. I got a message last night too. A call from Ahrens.”

Reach smiled slightly. Just enough.

“You did it,” I accused. “You gave him my phone number.”

“Not at all,” Reach answered. I could read the lie in his eyes and on his lips. “However . . . Contact with another party of the investigation—hostile contact, I can assume, given your history. Maybe that can be considered evidence of a conspiracy. What do you think?”

“I think I'm getting in this truck and driving away. If your ass is still on the fender when I do, I'm not responsible for the kind of ride you get.”

He tried to look mean but when I started the truck he jumped. After that he kept a cautious gaze on me as he went to his car. I don't think he trusted me.

* * *

It's a bad habit, I know. Like a poker player's tell, touching the scar around my eye displays my agitation. My therapist calls it self-soothing, like I'm a baby sucking my thumb. That made me madder than it should have, I guess since it was hard to argue with. As I drove that morning I was working it pretty hard.

There were a lot of things that I could be worried about. Even beyond the obvious personal turmoil, there were two people who I had beaten pretty badly, Reach trying to pin me to some bizarre revenge conspiracy, bikers lighting up the county like a free-fire zone, and RV gangsters taking over a club. Anyone would think I'd be glad to have an obvious and clean suspect in Angela Briscoe's murder. I wasn't. It didn't feel right in a strange way. It was like solving an empty puzzle box. You did everything right but there should be something more. Everything else was turning out to be about greed, money. I really didn't have any doubt that the case tying Figorelli to Riley Pruitt and the bikers would come together. They were a bunch of checkers players trying to compete in chess. The truth would come out in paperwork or a witness and then, with a little pressure, someone would talk.

Because things weren't fitting for me—in so many ways—I didn't go into the sheriff's office. I went back out to the scene of Angela's murder.

This time there was even more crime-scene tape and even more damage to it. After Danny's arrest and the details of what he and Carrie were doing out here got out, news crews and the curious had been all over the scene. It always worked that way. If I was there to look at evidence, I would have been pissed. I wasn't, though I wanted to be there to think.

Like everything else, wanting wasn't enough to make it happen. Nothing was clear and my thoughts were as tangled as the roots and branches I walked between. Not only was I not getting any answers, I couldn't even work up good questions.

Wandering beyond the place of Angela's death I came to the edge of the creek and looked down at the water. It was higher and faster than the last time I had looked. For a long time I just stood and watched the silver ripples running over rocks and eddying into the contours of the bank. There weren't any answers there, either. As I watched, though, the sound changed. That's not true. It didn't change: It was added to by voices. From somewhere downstream there were people talking and laughing. It was soft enough to blend in with the sound of the water and if I had been looking for it I would have missed it.

Following slowly, I stayed on the thin trail along the creek's edge, but kept my eyes watching inland. Kids. There were two young teens, a boy and a girl behind a catalpa tree. On first sighting them, I thought they were talking or making out under the tree. When I went off-trail and circled closer. I saw that she was watching him carve something into the soft wood bark with a large folding knife.

It was impossible, at least for me, to remain stealthy for long in the thick undergrowth and they saw me coming. As soon as they did the pair bolted, laughing as they went. I didn't try to chase them. I did go to the tree to see what they were inscribing. The tree had evidently been used as a message post for years. Old scars cut into the surface read
Class of '68
and almost every year since. There was a ragged and overgrown,
RD+MF
. I wondered who they were and how things went. The only fresh carving was a large L with arrows at the tips and the letters
e-e-c
. It looked like I had interrupted them before they could carve the entire word: Leech.

Again, that name had fooled me and slipped past my attention. Once I understood that Carrie had sent me on a goose chase, telling me Pruitt was Leech, I had all but dismissed it. My assumption had been that it was something made up by Carrie and Danny with meaning only to them. I had believed it was just another aspect of the secret game they were playing. Now it seemed that they weren't alone in the game.

B
illy was waiting when I got back to the road. His truck was parked next to mine, his arm out the open window and his head tilted back in sleep.

“I guess that answers my question,” I said once I got close.

“What question?” he asked without either opening his eyes or sounding surprised.

“I was going to ask when you slept. Between working overtime, playing songs in a bar, and fishing, I didn't see how you managed.”

He held up a huge plastic drink cup with the letters
XXXL
silk-screened on the side. For emphasis, he shook the cup, sloshing the liquid and ice inside. “Liquid energy,” he said.

“My God, I've never seen a drink cup that big. What is that, a gallon of soda?”

“I wish. What are you doing out here?”

“Trying to make some pieces fit,” I said. “What happened with the girl? And why aren't you at home sleeping?”

“She's going to be fine. There'll be a scar but she'll keep her arm. If she does the physical therapy it should work okay too.”

“Nothing fun about PT,” I said.

“I'm not at home because I'm still working,” Billy went on. “Sheriff had me over by the national forest keeping an eye on some things. And I'm here, looking for you.” He took another long drink from the cup.

“What kind of things?”

“That's what you want to know? Not why I'm looking for you?”

“Whichever you think I most need to know, then,” I told him.

Billy sort of half-smiled around his straw. It looked like he was stalling. “Before I tell you,” he finally said, “I want you to know that people talk; things get around.”

That's a sentence that can never sound good. I guess he
had
been stalling. “Spit it out,” I told him.

“I don't know what your relationship is with the painter,” he said in a way that told me he knew exactly what it was. “But I thought you might like to know there was a 9-1-1 from his house a while ago.” Before I could react or move he added, “It's over. He's fine. The call said there were motorcycles in his driveway making lots of noise. When the cruiser got there it was quiet. I just thought you should know.” I didn't say anything. Billy looked at my face and nodded. “I thought as much,” he said.

“I'm going to marry him,” I said instantly, wondering why I had.

“That was quick.”

“You have no idea.”

Billy nodded again and took a drink. Once he finished, he nodded his head, indicating the woods where Angela had been, then said, “So, did you learn anything new?”

I heard him but I didn't really
hear
him. I put my hand in my pocket and pulled my cell phone. “I'd better call him,” I said.

“Has he called you?”

“What?”

“Check your log. See if he called.”

I looked. Then I shook my head.

“If he hasn't called you, he won't want you to call and check up on him. Unless you want him to know you're keeping tabs.”

It made a kind of sense. A man's sense, I guessed. “You're not as dumb as they say,” I told him.

“I'll have you know I'm regarded far and wide for my wisdom.”

“Wisdom? That's what they're calling it now?”

“Wisdom and good looks. It's a package.”

I put away my phone and pulled my keys, ready to get back to work. I was also thinking that I'd call Nelson anyway, but do it on the road. Before I went though I asked, “Why didn't I know you were a medic until last night?”

Billy hid most of his face behind the big cup. It didn't cover the bit of smile that reached his eyes. After the drink he asked me, “Why would you have known?”

“We're friends.”

He laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“You,” he answered straight back. “You are. Friends—” He laughed again, then sucked at the soda.

“What's so funny about that?”

“What do you know about me? You didn't know about the medic thing and you didn't know I played at Moonshines. Tell me something you
do
know.”

I was blank. I asked, “What do you know about me?”

“A lot more than you've said, believe me.”

I did.

“Truth is,” Billy went on, “you play your cards a little close to have real friends.”

“That's not true—”

“Who do you trust completely in this world?”

My father and my uncle
. I thought it but didn't say it. “Whoever comes to mind, I bet you knew them before you were deployed,” he said as if he didn't really expect an answer.

“Are you trying to be a jerk?”

“Nope,” he said. “I'm trying to be your friend.”

I swear it was my intention to touch the scar beside my eye. Somehow I ended up pushing back my hair. When I caught myself I was completely self-conscious. I changed the subject. “While you were sitting here being wise and handsome, did you happen to see a couple of kids running out of the trees?”

“Yeah. They got in a car and left. I didn't pay much attention. Something up?”

“No. They were carving in a tree. I wanted to ask them about it.”

“Carving what?”

“Leech,” I said. “It's all over in there and I wanted to know about it.”

Billy sloshed the liquid around in his huge cup like he was making sure he had enough left for what he needed to do. Satisfied, he looked at me and began to recite.

“Leech waits in the woods to give his gifts,

“He lingers and waits with arrow and knives,

“To take what's his by hard sacrifice

“Unburdening lovers, killers and lost lives.”

He grinned at me after his little poem, then took a long, last pull, emptying his huge soda with a loud gurgle.

He was right. I knew nothing about him or, I suspected, any of the other people around me. “The hell . . . ?” I said.

For the next half an hour Billy told me the story of Leech.

It had begun as an anthropology project by a student at Missouri State University in Springfield. He had created a monster, a semi-human creature, eight feet tall with gangly limbs. Its hands were arrow points that pierced the bodies of victims and pulled them into the mouth, which was a gaping maw of knife-like teeth. It had no other face, just the bloody red knives within the wide mouth. Leech was said to have supernatural powers and would grant followers freedom from pain and suffering if the gifts they brought were good enough.

The idea of the project had been to show how quickly folklore and word-of-mouth culture could spread in the digital age. Once the creature was defined, the student posted stories about it online, along with blurry photos created by art students. In just a short time the stories and pictures, put up on two local web sites—one for paranormal investigations and the other focused on cryptozoology—had migrated and taken on a life of their own. In less than a year there were a dozen web sites dedicated to Leech with reported sightings and new photos. The most amazing developments were the addition of thousands of stories, poems, and songs by teenagers actively engaged in spreading the new mythology.

When he finished telling me what he knew, Billy rattled the ice in the bottom of his cup and sucked at the meltwater. “Time for a refill,” he said.

“How did you know all this?” I asked him. “Leech? I've never even heard of it until I saw the word carved on the trees.”

“I read,” he said with a smile. “But don't feel bad. Kids—middle-school, high-school—think of it as their culture. They like to keep it that way.”

Billy went off, either to refill his cup or empty his bladder. I called Nelson as soon as he was gone. We talked as I drove. I tried not to ask him about the 9-1-1 call, but failed. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I realized that Billy had been right. Nelson didn't want me checking up on him. I could feel it even on the phone, although he only said, “Everything is fine.”

Neither of us said anything about the proposal.

I was headed in to the sheriff's department but decided to take a swing by the hospital first.

 

Cotton Lambert looked like hell. His eyes were blackened and his jaw wired and swollen. He didn't want to talk to me. It was a reasonable feeling, I thought. His room was barren. All his personal effects were logged and taken. There were no flowers or cards, not even a get-well balloon. There was nothing to look at in the room but him. So I sat and looked at him while he glared at me.

“Do yourself a favor,” I finally said. “Get out from under this. Your boys are cooking meth. We're going to take them down. And we're going to get the lot of you for shooting up that RV. Depending on how it plays out it could be a reckless-endangerment charge or it could be attempted murder. You don't have to be a part of any of that.”

He ignored me pretty well, staring at blank walls while I hit him with questions. Not answering wasn't the same as giving me nothing. His eyes and his body reacted when I asked about the connection between the Nightriders and Moonshines. When I asked if they had an arrangement with Middleton to crush the local bootleggers, his surly look told me
yes
. When I asked again about the man who shot at Middleton, he looked away without any of the attitude. He was afraid of someone.

It went on like that for most of an hour, me asking questions and him reacting without words. In the end I asked one more time about Riley Pruitt and his involvement with Angela Briscoe.

Through his tightly-bound jaw he said, “
Uck ooo
.”

I believe I understood. Talking to some people is like a cat trying to cover his poop on the linoleum—a pointless waste of time. That's the job a lot of the time. He was afraid of something, probably Pruitt. I'd either need more leverage or he'd have to get more scared before he'd talk. I decided to let him stew, then try again later.

Once outside the door, I had to track down the deputy assigned to keep track of Cotton. He was drinking a soda and eating doughnuts at the nurses' station. It was Calvin, the same man I had put on Figorelli's driver the other night.

“Hey Hurricane,” he said when he saw me coming. “You come to finish the job on our guy? He can still walk, you know.” Calvin laughed at his own joke and sprayed crumbs as he did. Then he looked at the nurse he had been talking with when I came up. “This is the detective I told you about, Hurricane. She lives up to the name too.”

The nurse's eyes widened when she looked at me like she expected me do something strange and terrible.

Would smacking Calvin upside the head be very terrible?

“Has anyone been in to see him?” I asked after Calvin had stuffed the last of the doughnut into his mouth.

“Not since I got here,” he said around the fried artery clog.

“Why are you here? I thought you were on nights.”

“Switched,” he said, then started pouring soda into his still-f mouth. I left before the expected gastric explosion.

Walking out the doors of the hospital I caught a flash of turquoise and silver coming from the parking lot. It was the man I had seen at Moonshines wearing the Grand Ole Opry styles. Today, despite the heat, he was wearing a black polyester Western suit with appliques of cactus and wagon wheels. His tie was actually a kerchief with a huge turquoise stone set into hand-tooled silver. He wore matching bracelets and rings. Even the tips of his boots were dressed with silver toe caps. I stopped at the head of the stairs and waited for him.

“Hello there,” I said as he took the last few steps.

“Howdy do,” he answered while touching the brim of his Stetson. I noticed that he was still wearing the cold-weather felt rather than a summer straw.

He would have kept walking if I didn't ask, “Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

His motions put me in mind of a bird when he cocked his head my way and looked out from under the hat. “Well, they ain't no harm nor no law against askin',” he said in an accent as thick as the piney woods that it evoked. The smile he gave looked practiced. Like he wasn't sure why it was done, just that it should be done. All in all, the man gave an unwholesome impression up close, like meeting a buzzard fresh from eating a rotting carcass. Then he pulled off the Stetson and wiped his brow with a black handkerchief that looked like silk. Out from under the shade of the hat his face took on a new cast. His eyes didn't quite match in color; one dark brown, the other a light green. And the brim of the hat had taken focus from the protrusion of his nose. That crooked hook of cartilage completed the buzzard look.

While he wiped his brow, then replaced the hat, his smile held. I knew there was nothing casual about it. It would hold until he decided to change expression.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Well ma'am, who are you? I was always taught, the person askin' makes hisself know to the person approached. That's manners, you see.”

“I
do
see,” I said. “I'm Katrina Williams.”

“That is a lovely name, Miss Williams,” he said as he reseated the hat and began walking past me again. “You have a wonderful day, ma'am.”

“You didn't tell me your name.”

With a hand on the door handle he stopped and then turned back to look at me. The eyes were hard to focus on, like one was much farther distant than the other. “No, ma'am, I didn't.”

“Sir, I'm a detective with the Taney County Sheriff's Department. I'm asking your name.”