More like the Indian Wars, Sam thought, but he kept his mouth shut.
"On the way," the voice said.
"I guess you guys didn't anticipate something like this happening while you were here," Carla said to Sam and Dean while they waited for the guard's report.
"You never know," Dean said. "We see some pretty strange things."
The radio speakers crackled. "I'm here. Don't see anybody in a uniform, though."
The guard sitting at the console brought up a view that showed the guard Sam and Dean had met in the parking lot striking out across the lot, toward the fringe of forest surrounding it. All the screen showed was his form against a background of black pavement marked with white lines. But as Sam watched, the image flickered again. One moment the guard was alone in the lot, and the next the soldier had appeared behind him. And he was drawing his saber from its scabbard.
"Johnny!" Lynnette shrieked into the radio. "Johnny, he's right behind you! Do you see him?"
Johnny started to turn, his face as blank as it had been earlier. He tucked his chin toward his chest, and Sam understood that he was talking into a microphone mounted at his collar. "I don't see—oh!"
"Johnny, be careful!" Lynnette cried.
Johnny said something else, but they couldn't hear him now, only see his mouth moving, in miniature, on the monitor in the dark, silent room where the smell of overheated coffee filled the air. The old soldier still flickered a little, as if he couldn't come entirely into view. The sword in his right hand looked long and deadly.
"Oh, God," Carla said softly. "This can't be happening."
You'd be amazed at what can happen, Sam thought. He slapped Dean's back. "Let's get out there."
"Right behind you," Dean said.
"Everyone report to the northwest parking lot!" Lynnette called into her radio. "Now! Suspect is armed and extremely dangerous!"
Sam and Dean burst through the security office door and out into the mall. Once they got there, Sam realized they still didn't know their way around well enough to pick the fastest route to the back parking area. They held back a moment and let the two male guards who had been watching the monitors go first, just long enough to lead them to a door that opened onto that lot.
Once they spotted the door, the Winchesters poured on the speed, passing the guards easily. They wanted to be first on the scene.
Not that it would help Johnny.
The last thing Sam had seen on the monitor, before racing out of the office, was the old soldier thrusting his sword through Johnny's gut, and the security guard—his eyes wide with fright, as he had at last seen his attacker—falling to his knees on the pavement.
Sheriff Jim Beckett wore the same sheepskin coat and white hat he had at the McCaig death scene. The paramedics arrived in what might have been the same van, roof lights flashing bright against low, leaden clouds. As far as Sam could tell, the only new player was the mayor of Cedar Wells, Donald Milner. He had a knee-length black coat on over a plaid blazer in maroon, white, and black, for which he might have mugged a real estate agent. His pants were sharply creased khakis and his loafers had tassels on them. They all stood around a bloody patch of blacktop, from which the paramedics had removed the body of the guard named Johnny. By the time Sam and Dean had reached him, the soldier was long gone—or simply invisible again. Out of sight, in any case.
"You boys aren't going to say anything about this before the opening, are you?" Mayor Milner asked, fixing Dean and Sam with an anxious glare. "I mean, you're not with the local press, right?"
"We have a long lead time," Dean said. "Don't worry about us."
"There isn't anyone else here from the media, is there, Jim?"
The sheriff glanced around. "Don't appear to be."
"If I were you, though," Sam said, "I'd give serious thought to delaying the opening."
Carla Krug blanched. Mayor Milner scowled and bunched his right hand into a fist, like he might start throwing punches. "We're not delaying the damn opening!" he declared. "This mall opens tomorrow no matter what. There's too much at stake not to. Not to mention all the advertising that's already been done."
"But if this, and the killing last night, are part of the forty-year murder cycle," Sam objected, "then it's not—"
The mayor cut him off angrily. "There is no forty-year murder cycle! That's nothing but an urban legend. Preposterous claptrap!"
Sam glanced about them. Except for the mall, nothing but deep woods in any direction. About as far from "urban" as one could get.
Dean turned toward Sam. "Great," he muttered. "Instead of Dawn of the Dead, we wind up in Jaws."
"Shark?" Sam replied. "I don't see any shark."
"Cedar Wells is perfectly safe," Milner went on. "Isn't it, Jim? You've got an APB or whatever out on that maniac, right?"
Beckett rubbed the side of his substantial nose.
"My people are out there combing the woods. We're keeping an eye on the roads too. If there's some nut in a military uniform around, we'll pick him up, don't you worry about that." Sam was more worried about the fact that they were all standing around on the crime scene, which had been photographed from a couple of angles but hadn't been given the precise search that might have led to the discovery of an actual clue or two.
"What if he's changed clothes?" Dean challenged.
"We'll find him, son," Beckett said. "Somewhere in these parts there's a lunatic with a bloody sword. Can't be that hard to track him down. You fellows are lucky you have the best alibi there is, because with two deaths since you came to town, you'd be my number one suspect. Numbers one and two, I guess."
"So you don't think the killer's a local?"
"Lynnette knows just about everyone in town, and she didn't recognize him."
"He's not from around here," Lynnette added. "I know that for a fact."
"So you've got someone who traveled here, presumably in a car, with an antique military uniform and a cavalry saber," Sam said. "Have you checked the motels?"
"You don't need to worry about how we do our jobs," Beckett said. "We may look like ignorant hicks to you, but we're professionals."
"I didn't mean to imply that you weren't," Sam said.
"Sammy really likes cops," Dean said. "If he didn't have any talents he might have become one."
Sheriff Beckett shot Sam a curious look, like he wasn't quite sure how to take that. Sam knew that his brother had a habit of getting on the wrong side of the law, although it wasn't always his fault.
Beckett apparently decided to let it slide. "Anyhow, we're on the case, Mayor."
"There you go," Milner said. "This mall opens on schedule, and there won't be any more discussion of that." His tone indicated that he meant it, that the matter was settled once and for all.
Maybe he was right.
Then again, if history was any guide, the murders were just beginning...
EIGHT
"If Mayor McCheese there has his way," Dean groused, "the whole town could end up shish-kabobbed, and as long as the mall opens on time he'll be happy."
"It's kind of his job to be a booster," Sam said.
"But not a moron. And I'm not sure Barney Fife is much smarter." Dean was back behind the wheel, tooling toward downtown Cedar Wells again. "So what do you think that was? Spirit?"
"That'd be my guess," Sam said. "Especially with the phasing in and out of visibility, and the old clothes."
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Which means we have to figure out why it keeps coming back at these forty-year intervals, and how to make it stop. Looks like we've got some bones to dig up and burn."
"If we can find out whose bones. There was nothing promising in the library that I saw."
"There's got to be someone around here with a long memory. Or a diary that hasn't been scrubbed."
"What are we going to do?" Sam asked. "Knock on random doors until we find one?"
Dean shot Sam an angry glare. Sometimes the old resentments cropped up—the resentments that Dad ha
d encouraged, it seemed, after Sam decided to go to college—and he suspected Sam of being a quitter, willing to stay in the fight as long as the going got easy but ready to bail when things were tough. In fact, he knew that wasn't true. There had been plenty of tough times since their reunion, plenty of chances for Sam to take off if he wanted to. The fact that Sam was still in the passenger seat, thumbing through his cassette tapes, meant that he was in this for the long haul. That certainty softened Dean's expression and his response. "If that's what we have to do," he said. "I'd rather find a more immediate solution, since I don't think the sheriff has much experience hunting spirits."
Any death from supernatural assault was too many, but Dean especially hated for victims to fall while he was in the area and on the case. Two had already happened while they'd been in Cedar Wells. If they didn't get a handle on the situation soon, who knew how bad it could get?
Brittany Gardner loved the snow. Not all the time, not every day, but a few good snowfalls a year made her feel like she was part of the world. All day, the sky had been thick with clouds, blocking out the sun and threatening (promising!) precipitation. The air had a crisp, cold, still quality, suggesting that if the clouds did open up, the snow would fall steadily for a good long while. She had moved to Arizona's high country from the Phoenix area because she wanted to feel snow on her face more than once every decade or so, and today she kept looking out the living room window of her small cottage hoping to see the flakes coming down. She worked at home, editing technical manuals on a freelance basis, but today the work paled in comparison to the snow she wished for, and she had barely made it through three pages in the last hour.
Beside her computer—far enough away that if she dumped it, the mess would flow elsewhere—she kept a cup of Lapsang Souchong tea. Every now and then she carried it into the kitchen to refill it or heat it up in the microwave. A jazz station played softly on her satellite radio, and the cottage was warm and cozy. A perfect morning—or it would have been if the white stuff would fall.
Brittany tried to work for twenty minutes straight. After thirteen minutes she gave up and went back to the window. The day had darkened, as more layers of cloud, she supposed, passed in front of the sun. Still nothing falling, but she was more convinced than ever that it would.
Turning to go back to her computer, movement attracted her attention. Someone passing through the trees across the street. She knew the people who lived in the little house over there, the Sawyers, an elderly couple who rarely ventured outside. The person in the trees was neither of them, but he seemed to be skulking toward their house. Brittany backed away from the window a bit, pulling the sheer curtain between herself and the man. He looked like an old guy, grizzled and stooped. His coat was leather, she thought, and he wore tall boots pulled up over his pants, and on his head he had one of those hunting caps with the earflaps you could pull down.
As she watched, he closed in on one of the Sawyers' windows. He looked old for a Peeping Tom, but then again she wasn't sure if there was a particular age range for that kind of thing. Either way, she didn't like the looks of him.
Then he turned a little and something in his right hand swung into sight. He was carrying a rifle!
Brittany released the curtain and dashed to her phone, beside her computer. She dialed 911. A moment later a dispatcher came on the line.
"There's an old man across the street, in the woods, and he has a gun," she said quickly. "By the Sawyers' house."
"Do you know the address, ma'am?" the voice asked.
"He's across the street, not here. I don't know their address offhand."
"I understand, ma'am. I have your address, and I'm dispatching a sheriff's officer out there right away. Has the man seen you?"
"I don't think so, no."
"Stay indoors, ma'am. Officers will knock on your door and identify themselves, but don't let anyone in until they do."
"Okay," Brittany said. "Don't worry, I won't."
"Do you want me to stay on the line?"
"That's okay," Brittany said. "I don't think that's necessary." Hands shaking, she put the phone down and cautiously returned to the window. When she got close, she lowered herself to her knees and crept the rest of the way, peering out with only her eyes and forehead exposed.
Snow had started to fall, big white flakes of it drifting slowly earthward.
It wasn't fair. She had been waiting for this moment, for the first falling snow, to go outside and revel in it.
Across the way, she couldn't see the man with the gun anymore. She hoped he wasn't already inside the Sawyers' house, terrorizing those nice old people. In the distance, she could hear an approaching siren. The sheriff's car, already on the way. She allowed herself a smile. They'd be here soon enough, and the whole thing would be over, a strange adventure, and she could go out and luxuriate in the day, more alive then ever.
A noise from behind startled her. Brittany spun around, rocking on her knees, barely able to keep her balance. Had he come into her place?
But no—there was someone inside her living room, but it wasn't the old man. The intruder looked like something out of a movie, an Indian, but old-fashioned, wearing leather leggings, bare-chested, with bands around his arms and legs and a red cloth wrapped around his head. He glowered at her through small, dark eyes.
The most disturbing part was not his fierce gaze or even the tomahawk clutched in his fist, but the gaping wound in his broad chest, as if he'd been cleaved open by his own weapon. The sides of the wound were pale, not red, as if the wound was old. No blood ran from it, although she could see what must have been bone and muscle inside.
A scream caught in her throat, and only the faintest squeak emerged. She could hear the sirens now, just outside. She had dropped to one knee, with one hand on the ground for support and the other clamped over her mouth, and she was frozen to the spot. The Indian walked toward her, stumbling a little, head lolling to the side. For an instant he seemed to change, to shift into something the same shape but made of glowing black light, then into a bone-and-muscle version of himself, but when she blinked he looked as he had at first. Brittany had the sense that he was already dead, that his wound was fatal, but he hadn't figured out that it was time to lie down.
"What do you... are you... ?" She couldn't figure out what to ask him, and her voice sounded distant, barely audible through the blood rushing in her ears. If he heard her, he gave no indication of it. She could hear wind whistling in and out of his chest wound as he breathed.
When he reached for her, Brittany finally thawed, trying to break and run. He surprised her with his quickness, though, and got a fistful of her curly red hair. He yanked on it. Her feet went out from under her and she sprawled on the hardwood floor of her living room, breathing fast now, working toward a really good scream, the kind that would raise the rafters of this old place and bring the police running. Either they'd shoot the Indian or tell her that she had gone insane, and at the moment that seemed the likeliest prospect, because only madness could explain what she faced.
The knee against her belly felt real enough, pressing her down against the floor, and the smell of the man, sour, like meat left too long in the sun, that was real too, and when he brought the tomahawk down against her chest, in the same place where his wound was, for just the briefest instant that felt staggeringly real too.
"This is a mess," Jim Beckett said. "A godawful mess, no two ways about it."
Deputy Trace Johannsen nodded soberly. "You're not kidding about that."
Beckett looked at Brittany Gardner's body again. She had suffered a massive chest wound, as if an unskilled doctor had cracked her open to perform emergency heart surgery but hadn't bothered to close her up again. Until her heart had stopped beating, it had pumped blood out through the gaping wound, soaking her sweatshirt and pooling on the floor.
Three bodies in less than twenty-four hours. He liked Cedar Wells because it was a quiet town, close to good hunting and fishing. The Grand Can
yon was a bonus, although he rarely visited it; simply knowing it was there was good enough.
Suddenly it wasn't so quiet. Instead it looked like Detroit during its worst days, or Washington, or maybe L.A. when the Bloods and Crips went at it with knives and guns. Beckett was old enough to remember the good old days when youth gangs armed themselves with little switchblades and bicycle chains. Not that this looked like a gangster killing, but there was a principle involved, and the principle was that people in his town shouldn't kill each other. Nor should strangers kill the locals, not near a national park that drew somewhere around five million visitors a year. He just wanted his old town back, the one where people rarely died violently.
"Dispatch said she reported a prowler across the street," Trace explained. He had already gone through the story once, but seemed compelled to tell it again, and listening to him was easier than thinking. "An old geezer carrying a gun. I checked over there, but the Sawyers hadn't seen anyone. I knocked over here to ask her about it, and she didn't answer. I knew she had been home just a few minutes before, so I looked in her window and saw her here."
"But no sign of an intruder?" Beckett asked. "No old man with a gun?"
"Nothing like that. Anyway, if he had a gun, why would he open her up like that? Why not just shoot her?"
"I wish I knew the answer to that. Did you find any footprints or anything, either here or by the Sawyer place?"
"Some over there, across the street. Good one right outside one of their windows, like someone raising up on tiptoes to look in."
"Figure that's our geezer?"
"That's my guess."
"I had a call on my way over," Beckett said. "Another sighting of the old man, less than a block away from here. I drove around for a couple minutes, didn't see anything, and I don't have enough bodies available for a full-on search."
"You think he's looking for another victim?"
"At this point, I don't necessarily like him for the murder at all. Like you said, he's got a gun. This lady wasn't shot. I don't know what opened her up, but that's no bullet hole."
Witch's Canyon Page 5
