Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers

by P. T. Deutermann

  He touched the brim of his big hat in my direction, gathered up his cavalry accoutrements, kicked some dirt into the ashes, and went over to the horse. He mounted in one easy, graceful movement, clucked quietly to the horse, and moved off into the trees. In a moment his broad, ramrod-straight back disappeared into the Virginia pines without a sound.

  I blew out a long exhalation. Then I took the dogs over to where the horse had been standing, just to make sure I hadn't been hallucinating. There were definitely tracks. I went back to the campfire and kicked some dirt of my own onto it, because the countryside was extremely dry. The well-blackened stones indicated it had been used before. As I looked around, I noticed that several of the nearby trees had been blasted by lightning over the years and recognized what southerners call a lightning patch. Something in the ground, a concentration of iron, perhaps, invited lightning to make repeat appearances, and the trees nearby caught absolute hell.

  I was pretty sure about who my horseman was, and either he was a consummate actor who enjoyed dressing up and doing some horseback reenacting, or he actually believed he was a Confederate cavalry officer living back in those dark days just before Appomattox and the end of the Glorious Cause. The latter would fit right in with the Hester and Valeria household, but not with deathtraps set in the barnyard. I'd have to ask Cubby Johnson about the major.

  "Okay, muttskis," I announced. "Let's go down to the river and recapture Eliza."

  I caught up with Cubby Johnson after lunch in the barns behind the Laurel Grove house. The outbuildings were similar to the ones across the road, but in much better shape. Cubby was head deep in the inner workings of a round baler when the dogs and I showed up. He seemed ready to take a break. I told him about my encounter with the major.

  He smiled, shook his head, and then explained that the major was something of an open secret in the local neighborhood. He was surprised that the rider had spoken to me, as he had a reputation for not acknowledging the presence of other humans he encountered.

  "He's related to the ladies up there?" I asked, indicating the big house.

  He nodded. "Been like that since Patience and I've been here. He don't bother nobody, closes farm gates behind him, that sort of thing, but he's well and truly gone around."

  "This the crazy relative supposedly locked away in the attic I've heard about?"

  "Yep, although he ain't locked up anywhere. Comes down of a morning, right after breakfast, all decked out, saddles up Henry, and then rides off into the back pastures, scoutin' for them Yankee rascals. Usually stays right here on the place, but sometimes, like this morning, he rambles."

  "What happens when he encounters modern times, say, like a semi on the road?"

  "Pretends he don't see it, I s'pect. Folks around here humor the man. He used to go out at night sometimes, but we put a stop to that after he rode across the road right in front of a state trooper."

  "How'd you stop it?"

  "Locked up the tack room at sundown," Cubby said. "Major won't ride without his cavalry rig. He complained some, but Ms. Valeria told him there was too much Union infantry abroad at night, and he settled right down."

  "Wow."

  He shrugged. "It's harmless, all this playactin'," he said. "They don't bother other folks, and there's plenty enough real craziness in this county if folks want somethin' to worry about."

  I knew all about that. The seemingly peaceful countryside of most southern states presented a deceptively bucolic vista to travelers hustling by on the interstates. Go down to the very end of most dirt roads and you'll find dilapidated, rusting trailers and all the junk that goes with them, animate as well as inanimate. Far too many country folk, black and white, are indulging in the dangerous trades of marijuana, moonshine, and methamphetamine production, with all the attendant disasters of imprisoned parents and either addicted, brain-dead, or starving urchins left behind. North Carolina was no exception, as any county sheriff would be quick to tell you. They work it hard, but there's not much law enforcement can do about the resulting human wreckage. One politely demented southern gentleman riding around in costume paled by comparison.

  I told Cubby about finding the signs of a boat landing down on the river, and my suspicions that it might be connected to my little "accident" in the well. He said that it was certainly possible, but there were lots of fisherman out on that river behind Glory's End. Sometimes there were calls of nature that couldn't be answered out on the river. I thanked Cubby for his insights, took the dogs back to the cottage, and then drove into Triboro to see what was shaking with my prison ghost and the investigation into the dead hit man.

  As I had anticipated, the investigation had migrated to the way-back burner at Manceford County. The shooter had been eliminated, his identity and past verified, and the main suspect who might have hired him had an alibi, weak as it was. I'd been cleared by the DA's office. You know how it is, the detectives told me, and I surely did; they always had bigger and more urgent fish to fry. With the shooter in the ground, everyone was moving on to the next crisis of the day.

  Everybody except me, of course. For one thing, I'd heard a car decamping right after the shooting, so there was at least one loose end still hanging out there. I sat down with some of my guys to brainstorm. We kicked around the idea of snatching up Billie Ray and squeezing him in ways the cops couldn't. Tony was enthusiastic; he said he wanted to see what this waterboarding business was all about. Horace and Pardee, however, were made of saner stuff. They reminded me of what I already knew, namely, that vigilante action would inevitably backfire and could get us all thrown in jail.

  It was just a thought.

  They were sympathetic but told me to concentrate on my Tara project, while they kept the occasional eye on Billie Ray Breen between their own cases. Business was brisk, and I sensed that they thought this thing was over, too.

  I spent the night at my house in Summerfield. I met with the neighborhood dog-sitter to pay her for taking care of old Frack, who was increasingly quite content to lie about the empty house, dreaming of his action-filled past. Some of my neighbors were outside when I got there, and I asked around to see if anyone had anything on the mystery vehicle. Two people said they heard the rifle shots, but no one had noticed a strange car. I tried to reassure them that the incident was over and made sure they knew I'd taken up temporary digs somewhere else, although I left the somewhere rather vague. I got the sense that they were relieved. Two shooting incidents in the neighborhood had people worried and talking, and the newspaper article hadn't helped.

  That night I sat out on the screened-in part of the back deck with Frick and Kitty alongside. Frack was down in the basement. My deck used to have a lovely view of my long backyard and the old, abandoned apple orchard on the other side of the creek. The orchard was now piled up in a nasty-looking heap of uprooted trees at the bottom of the field across the way. I'd wanted to sell my place once the moonscaping started, but a Realtor friend had told me to wait until the subdivision was in place. That would take at least a year.

  My old-fashioned glass sat next to the SIG .45 on the metal table. I didn't think there'd be any more shooting through windows, but I was a bear for paying attention to recent history. I was trying out a new single malt whiskey and finding it most agreeable. Summerfield was growing up, with ever more development, mostly in the form of small, gated communities. Pretty soon the new people would be demanding that the state four-lane all our scenic country roads, and then it would be annexed by Triboro so that we could all take up our fair share of the eternal inner-city tax burden. I was mulling over how much of my stuff to move out to the stone cottage when the phone rang.

  I picked up my portable and looked at the caller ID. PRIVATE CALL, it said unhelpfully. I answered. The male voice on the other end was definitely not Billie Ray Breen but possibly an older voice, disguised by some kind of sound filter.

  "Nice shooting, Lieutenant," he said.

  "What do you know about that?" I asked, figuring this
was either a crank call, precipitated by the newspaper article, or a neighbor unhappy with nocturnal gunfire right down the street.

  "I might know who sent him," he said.

  "Well, ducky," I said. "You gonna tell me?"

  "I just did," he said. "Relearned an old lesson, too. Never send a boy to do a man's work."

  "Murdering someone with a rifle from behind a bush is hardly man's work," I said. "The word coward comes to mind. Was that you in the getaway car?"

  "Probably," he said. "Salvo knew that was a balloon he was looking at, by the way. That really was supposed to be another scare shot. Our mistake was not thinking through what the balloon really meant."

  He had my attention now. Either this was some sicko cop with an old grudge who had access to the file, or this was my real ghost.

  "Balloon didn't survive," I said.

  "Shit happens."

  "So what's the beef?" I asked, unconsciously picking up the SIG.

  "It's one of those eye-for-an-eye deals, Lieutenant. You owe somebody a death."

  "Somebody? We all owe God a death, or so I'm told. You claiming to work for God?"

  "Not hardly," he said. I was glad he was willing to keep talking. I couldn't do a trace, of course, but the sheriff's office had tagged the line for record keeping and maybe we'd get lucky. "But you're gonna think so, time we're done with you."

  "You got a mouse in your pocket there, sport? You keep saying 'we.'"

  "Nah," he said. "I just keep saying that to make you think I've got lots of help. What I've really got is lots of time and dedication. Serious dedication."

  "Dedication or commitment?"

  "What?"

  "Well, which is it, dedication or commitment?"

  "What's it matter?"

  "There's a difference," I said. "A chicken is dedicated to the production of eggs. A pig is committed to the production of bacon."

  "Oh," he said. "Then I'm definitely committed, just like you."

  "Well, shit," I said. "Go up against a guy with a long gun, it's just a matter of time. Not exactly a contest there."

  "If I just wanted to kill you, you'd be in the ground already. That's not my objective."

  "Careful," I said. "You forgot to say 'we.'"

  "Well, so I did," he replied.

  I didn't say anything. I just sat there, fingering the grips on my SIG.

  "So aren't you curious? About my real objective?"

  "Actually," I said, "I'm getting bored. 'Bye now."

  "Wait!" he said.

  "What now?"

  "You color-blind, Lieutenant? Can you see red and green?"

  "Last time I checked."

  "See the red spot on your chest, do you?"

  I didn't bother to even look. I lunged sideways out of the chair practically on top of Frick. Just as I hit the deck I heard something snap and then what sounded like a cannon going off in my face. It was so loud and the flash so bright that I was literally immobilized, unable to even put hand and brain together long enough to fire back with the gun in my hand. The shepherds appeared to be equally paralyzed, if not more so.

  It took a good ninety seconds for me to collect my wits about me. My ears were ringing, and my night vision was a maze of bright lights and floating green spots. I thought about getting up from the floor and letting off a few rounds into the darkened backyard, but that would be pointless. The stink of burned explosives filled the porch, overlaid with another, sweetish smell I couldn't recognize.

  I found the portable phone by feeling around on the floor, but it was dead. No surprise there. Then I realized what had happened. He'd fired off a flashbang, one of those sensory disruptors we used to use in the SWAT world when entering a hot zone. I sat there on the floor with the dogs, blinking my eyes and trying to clear my ears. I finally saw the perforated grenade case lying in a corner. Then I thought I heard a cop-car siren, possibly two, coming down the street out front. An exasperated neighbor had called 911. They were probably getting tired of the war zone that had erupted around my house.

  Me, too.

  The next morning I sat in Sheriff Baggett's office in downtown Triboro.

  "Thought you'd moved," he said as he read through the patrol reports from the previous night.

  "I did."

  "So how's this guy know you're there in Summerfield? And where's he getting a flashbang?"

  "All good questions," I said.

  "This business has gone a little bit beyond Billie Ray Breen, don't you think?"

  "That's a fair assumption, but still an assumption."

  He nodded. "I used to have a rule about assuming."

  "Which you shared frequently, as I recall."

  He grinned. "How's about this: we'll pull the string on the flashbang casing, and how he set it off remotely. Plus, I've already sent one of my surveillance nerds out front to sweep your vehicle. Your job is to come up with a motive. Tell me who might be doing this shit. We have to stop scaring the upstanding and increasingly vocal citizens of Summerfield."

  "I sympathize," I said. I was probably shouting a little bit, as the ringing in my ears hadn't quite gone away. "I'll clear permanently out of my house there today or tomorrow, and then you can find me in the countryside. Can you brief Sheriff Walker?"

  "I will, but I think we'd better be circumspect about all the lurid details--your new neighbors may ask you to leave. Rockwell County doesn't handle urban drama very well."

  There was a knock on the door, and Maggie, Sheriff Baggett's secretary, announced that the surveillance tech was back. He told her to send him in.

  Her in, as it turned out. She was a petite blonde who looked like she was at least fifteen. She was wearing plastic gloves, a hairnet, and a blue jumpsuit that bore signs of crawling around under a car in the parking lot. She was holding the frame from a license plate, which I presumed had come off my Suburban. Like most Americans, I couldn't tell you my license plate number if I tried.

  "Sat-com," she said. "Same rig they use on semitrailers with sensitive cargo. GPS track report every ten minutes, location to fifty feet. Commercially available, or swiped at a truck stop. If that's what they did, they'd need RFID programming capability."

  The sheriff frowned. "This isn't amateur's night."

  "No, sir," she said. "Although it isn't rocket science, either. It's a matter of having the right gear and a little bit of specialized knowledge." She handed him the frame.

  "For you, maybe," the sheriff said, turning the frame over in his hands. He looked over at me to see if I had any questions.

  "On the off-chance that that thing is rough, did you look for smooth?" I asked.

  She blinked and then shook her pretty blond head. The sheriff pointed to the door, and out she went.

  "Hmmm," he said. "A flashbang, a penny-ante, semidisposable hitter from the barrios of Charlotte, and now this. What's all that sound like?"

  "Someone in law enforcement, with a grudge," I said promptly.

  "Yeah," he said, nodding slowly. "We'll have input from the phone company in a few days, but I'm not holding my breath. Your line was disabled at the street box, by the way, not up at your house. Not cut, but switched off."

  "More specialized knowledge."

  "Unfortunately, given the tag, they have to know about Rockwell County."

  "He said I owed someone a death," I said. "Inferring that I got someone killed, and now it's payback time. Except I think he, or they, want to play cat and mouse first."

  "I think you'll have a better chance out there in the country," he said. "Summerfield's like any other bedroom community. People get up in the dark and come home in the dark. Don't notice anything until Saturday morning, and then they mow their grass. New faces appear in the country, on the other hand, the locals notice and they talk."

  He was telling me to plug into the local network as fast as I could, but that presented some problems. I was a new face, and if I was bringing trouble into the county, prospective helper bees might not want the hassle. I was very muc
h still on trial out there. Maybe the major could keep an eye out, as long as I described my problem in Union cavalry terms.

  "Keep close to Hodge Walker," he said. "He's good people, been sheriff a long time, and he'll know the ground out there in the sticks. Just lost his wife to some kind of cancer, I'm told. We'll work what we can here in town."

  I thanked him for his help, while acknowledging the obvious: If Sheriff Baggett's people couldn't protect me from an ambush in Summerfield, they couldn't protect me at all out in Rockwell County. I left the building to go see what Blondie had come up with, if anything.

  My stalker had been pretty good at his work. He'd been able to get into the house, or, now that I thought about it, the back porch, rig a flashbang for remote detonation, and then position himself where he could put a laser spot on me in the dark, which suggested night-vision gear. He'd been able to disable my phone remotely as well, because there was no way he could have gotten from his lasering position to the box on the curb in ninety seconds, unless of course he did have a mouse in his pocket, or a helper up on the street--and he'd disabled my phone but still made a call.

  My license plate was lying on the pavement between two legs sticking out from under the Suburban. Two shepherds were trying to see what she was doing under there from the backseat.

  "Any luck?" I asked.

  "Not yet," she said. "I was looking for induction power supplies near the wheels."

  "Can you say that in English?" I asked the legs.

  "Tiny generators. You place them on the suspension, close to a wheel, and then use the rotation of the wheel to induce a current by placing a magnet on the rim. The generator then powers the tracking device transmitter, usually by charging a battery embedded in the plate."

  "Sweet."

  She hauled out from under the car on a mechanic's creeper and spit some dust out of her face. In the sunlight, she had aged somewhat. Seventeen, maybe. Two deputies walking by were giving me the once-over even as they said hey to her.

  "Did that license plate thing go off the air when you took it off the vehicle?"