An Unsettled Grave

by Bernard Schaffer

  “Well I’m not,” J.D. said, glaring at his uncle. “I just came here to see Hope.” He reached up and touched his neck, where it was raw. “You didn’t have to grab me and yell at me like that.”

  “Okay, all right?” Ollie said. “You want to help me?”

  “Help you how?”

  Ollie ran his hand through his hair, brushing it out of his face. “I’ll take anything at this point. The parents don’t know squat. They said Hope had dinner with them, then went into her room to do her homework. They haven’t seen her since.” He looked at J.D. “Where were you supposed to meet up with her?”

  “Around back,” J.D. said. “There’s a clearing in the woods where she goes.”

  “Show me,” Ollie said, heading back toward the house until he realized J.D. wasn’t following him. “Hey, I thought you wanted to help.”

  J.D. was too ashamed to lift his eyes from the ground. “Why did you think I had something to do with it? Do you think I’d ever do something like that?”

  Ollie went back and knelt to look the boy in the face. “No, not in my heart. I could never think that, kiddo. You’re my nephew, my blood, and I love you. But look at me.” He raised J.D.’s chin. “Hey. Look at me. With a case like this, I have to shut all that out and do whatever it takes to find this little girl. Do you understand?”

  They walked around the back of the house, through the Pughs’ backyard toward the woods. Every so often, Ollie turned his head to look at the back of the house, judging how far away it was, and how dark it would be at night. “These woods go all the way up into the mountains,” Ollie said. “If she decided to go walking, she could have gotten lost. Do you think she tried going to your house?”

  “No,” J.D. said. “She knows I don’t want her coming there. It’s not a good place.”

  Ollie followed him into the woods. It was getting dark, with the lowering sun trapped in the canopy of trees. If he squinted, he could make out the profile of a small brick chimney through the cluster of trees. J.D. waved him on, but Ollie held the boy back. “Hang on a second. I want to get a look at this before we go trampling around.”

  They inched forward until Ollie could see the green army blanket spread out across the ground in front of the chimney. He walked around the blanket’s edge, with J.D. following close behind. Sticks and leaves were scattered across the blanket and the mud was dug up all along the sides of it, but that could have been from anything. There weren’t any discernable footprints in the mud, not even from animals. It was probably too cold for the ground to be soft enough to show tracks, especially at night. Ollie pulled his flashlight from his belt and looked down at where they’d been walking. Nothing.

  “Oh no, look!” J.D. said, thrusting his hand forward.

  Ollie raised his flashlight to where the boy pointed, seeing a small, curled-up sock, and beside it, a stuffed animal. J.D. raced to grab the bear, but Ollie snatched him by the schoolbag, holding him back. “Hang on,” Ollie said, pulling J.D. away from the blanket.

  “But that’s her favorite thing,” J.D. said, panicking. “She’d have never left it out here. Never!”

  “All right, just calm down,” Ollie said, scratching his chin as he looked the items over. “If something did happen, we don’t want to mess up any evidence. You stay put right here.” Ollie shined his flashlight over the rest of the blanket and area surrounding it, making one wide circle around the area, until he was almost back to where J.D. was standing, when he saw something on the ground. It was hidden by leaves, but its metal mirrored surface flickered in the fading light. He covered it with his boot to keep it hidden, standing awkwardly as he tried not to push it into the ground.

  J.D. stared at Ollie in confusion as he tried to balance himself.

  “What?” Ollie asked, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Nothing,” J.D. said, looking back at the blanket. “I’m telling you, Uncle Ollie, she wouldn’t have left that bear out here. Something happened to her. Something horrible.”

  “Now, don’t go leaping to conclusions,” Ollie said. “A lot of things could have happened, but it won’t do us any good to lose our heads.” He fished in his pocket for his car keys and tossed them to J.D. “Go to my police car and get me my camera, a big paper bag, and a few plastic ones. They’re in the trunk. Can you do that?”

  J.D. repeated the items back to his uncle. Ollie nodded, saying, “Hustle up, now. We’re losing light.”

  He waited for the boy to vanish into the woods before lifting his boot. He bent down on his knees and looked up, making sure no one was watching, and turned his flashlight on. There, half embedded in the mud, was a switchblade knife with a cheap black handle, its blade still extended.

  Ollie reached into his back pocket and pulled on one of his wool winter gloves to pry the knife out. He held it under his light. It hadn’t been outside long. No rust or wear showed on any of the parts. He turned back toward the blanket, wiggling the knife between his gloved fingers, looking at the bear and little girl’s sock and the wide expanse of woods behind this secluded place so near to her home and yet so far, and he muttered, “Aw fuck.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Ollie opened his eyes into the harsh glare of the emergent sun, which blinded him, spreading light and heat across his face. He turned away, scowling, waiting for the spots behind his eyelids to dissolve so he could get his bearings. He was parked on a trail that ran along the mountainside. It was flat enough to drive, so he’d driven it all night long, high beams on, alley lights from the sides of his light bar on, using the powerful spotlight mounted to his window frame. He’d seen deer and possum and foxes, but no sign of any little girls. He’d meant to pull over for only a little while. Half an hour, tops. Long enough to keep from crashing the police car into a tree or rolling it down a ravine.

  Someone was walking toward the police car. A weathered old man dressed in a hunter’s coat and thick plaid hat. It was the farmer Franklin Hayes, and from the bemused look on his face, he’d been watching Ollie sleep. When Hayes realized he’d been spotted, he came toward Ollie’s car with such a pronounced limp he almost fell over.

  Ollie wiped his face and rolled down his window, smiling with embarrassment. “How you doing this morning, Mr. Hayes?”

  “I’m good, young fella. What you doing all the way out here asleep in your police car? You get kicked out by your woman?”

  “No, sir,” Ollie said. “I was out all night looking for the Pugh girl. She went missing yesterday. I guess I fell asleep. You didn’t see any kids wandering around by any chance, did you?”

  Hayes’s jaws clapped together, wrinkling the flabby sides of his cheeks, like he was chewing the question there. “No,” he said. “Weren’t no children out. I did see something that caught my eye, though.”

  “You did?” Ollie asked, laying it on. “What’d you see?”

  Hayes eyed him, turning his head sideways, muttering as he ground his toothless gums together. “Well, I don’t reckon I ought to tell you.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t truck much with no law ever since you all shot me.”

  “Well, that makes sense,” Ollie said. “I’d be mad too. But you understand, they didn’t shoot you on purpose. That was an accident.”

  “Careless, is what it was,” Hayes said.

  “I’m not saying otherwise,” Ollie said.

  “I still got a limp, you know,” Hayes said, pointing at his leg. “Can’t hardly walk on it to this day.”

  “I can see that. I’m astonished you made it all the way up here without falling down.” Ollie scratched his chin and looked at himself in the mirror. It had been days since he’d shaved and his face was starting to itch. The old man hadn’t moved away yet. Ollie took that as a good sign. “Hey, I heard you kept that bullet. That true?”

  “I got it right here,” Hayes said, patting himself on the chest.

  “Can I see it?”

  Hayes dug into his shirt and pulled out the long strand o
f leather he wore tied around his neck. Dangling from the center of the necklace was a small clump of misshapen lead. He pointed at the center of the wad and said, “I told the doctor to save it for me, then I drilled a hole through it after I got home from the hospital.”

  Ollie whistled in admiration. “I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen bullets smaller than that cut people in half. You must have been some kind of badass back in the day. Bet you had legs the size of tree trunks from working the farm all those years. Must have been what saved you.”

  Hayes grinned. “Clean living. That’s what it was. A hard day’s work and good food. Real food, not like the poison people eat nowadays. Back then, we’d just kill it and eat it.”

  “Those were the days,” Ollie said. “Well, I sure do appreciate you showing me that bullet.” He stepped on the brake and dropped the transmission into drive. “You ever change your mind about what caught your eye, you let me know.”

  Hayes pulled back from the car, turning his head to each side, to see if anyone was coming. He leaned down toward Ollie, nearly sticking his head through the car’s window. “You don’t tell anybody I told you this, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “I saw them bicycle riders coming and going all over town, you know which ones I mean? With the loud engines?”

  “Motorcycles.”

  “That’s what I said,” Hayes said. “I kept hearing their damn engines after dark, somewhere back behind my property. I went out there this morning to make sure none of those bicycles is tearing up my land.”

  “Were they?” Ollie asked.

  “No, and it’s lucky for them too. I had my shotgun.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I seen their hideout,” Hayes said. “Some kind of cabin they built way out in the back of the woods where nobody could see what they was up to. And that’s not all,” Hayes said. He lowered his voice. “They were carrying something into it.”

  “Could you see what it was?”

  “Some kind of trunk. Heavy enough that it took two of them to carry.”

  “How big?” Ollie asked.

  “About yea big,” Hayes said, holding his arms out wide. “Big enough to hold that little girl, now that I think on it.”

  * * *

  Ollie took the long way down the mountain trail, winding around the Hayes farm and parking in the state game lands just beyond it. Franklin Hayes had stapled DO NOT TRESPASS and NO HUNTING signs on every tree at the border. Knowing Hayes and his shotgun, he was sure anybody who violated that border would feel the hot wind of bird shot sailing over their heads.

  It would have been easier to park on the Hayes property and walk down, but Ollie didn’t trust the old farmer. Besides being trigger-happy, he was a gossip, and forgetful. If you wanted to spy on an enemy encampment, the fewer people who knew about it, the better. Ollie couldn’t risk the Disgraced finding out he knew where they were if they had Hope Pugh. They’d move her in the dead of night and he’d lose her forever.

  He walked for an hour, until sweat was seeping down his back and cooling the sides of his face. The sun was high but it was cold in the shadows beneath the trees. He walked quietly in the woods, careful to avoid branches and dry leaves, out of a habit taught from an early age. Don’t disturb the animals around you, because if you kick up a flock of birds, the enemy will know you’re coming. His father had taught him and Ben that as kids. Move silent, so the Nazi bastards can’t hear you, their old man always said. Everybody was a Nazi to him. The mechanic who wanted to charge too much money to fix their car was a Nazi. The tax man was a Nazi. The factory foreman who caught the old man drinking in the locker room and fired him was the biggest Nazi of all.

  Christ, he was always so drunk he probably saw Nazis everywhere he looked, Ollie thought.

  Ben had taken the brunt of the old man’s rage, always holding him off so Ollie could escape. They practically lived in the woods as kids, trying to stay away.

  He came to the edge of a creek that ran through the game lands and wound down through the Hayes farm. It separated Liston and Patterson Boroughs, and no bridges spanned it for miles. Where he stood no slope went down into the creek. Just a steep drop-off into cold, rushing water, five feet below. The creek ran deeper in some places and shallower in others. He knew because he’d fished it. In some pockets the bass would run fishing line so far down he thought he might reach the end of his spool. Others were shallow enough to walk across and barely get the bottom of your pants wet.

  Jumping off the edge into the water, he decided, was too risky. It would be stupid to break his ankles on any rocks hidden beneath the surface. Even stupider to jump down and sink into one of those bass holes, bogged down by the weight of his clothes and gun belt, and drown.

  He spied a gravel bed on the other side of the creek. If he could get down there, he could walk along that until he found somewhere to lower himself into the water. Ollie walked along the ledge, until he ran out of it, surrounded by thick bramble bushes with thorns the size of snake fangs. A tall tree loomed overhead, its stout branches draped in thick vines. Ollie wound several of them around both his hands, pulling to see if they’d hold. They seemed like they would.

  “Here’s goes nothing,” he said.

  He stood with his boots dangling over the earthen edge, clutching the vines, and took his first step down, digging his toes into the roots and dirt wall hanging above the water. He took his time lowering his other foot down, now suspended over the creek with nothing but the vines wrapped around his hands. They were straining and cutting his flesh, but they held.

  Ollie took another step down, and his foot slipped on the slick mud, sending him skidding. The vines helped control his fall, keeping him upright, but he landed in a tremendous splash, knee deep in freezing-cold water. He unwrapped his hands and slogged through the creek, making his way toward the other side.

  * * *

  His boots squirted water through their sides every time he took a step. “Waterproof, my ass,” Ollie muttered, lifting them up one by one to inspect their soles. After an hour walking along the embankment, they were caked in mud and small rocks were wedged in their rubber treads. His pants were soaked. The bottom of his holster was soaked. His feet ached from the cold and the wet. He could feel sand between his toes and grinding against the sore, shriveled flesh of the soles of each foot. And, of course, the moment he came up from the creek, the wind kicked up, cutting through his clothes like they were tissue paper.

  Ollie leaned back against the nearest tree, collecting himself. Using a small stick, he scraped the bottom of his boots clean and pried out the rocks. He untied their laces and took them off, shaking out as much water and dirt as he could. He pulled off his socks, shivering on the cold mud, and wrung them out. When he slid them back on and got his feet back inside the boots they were still wet, but he told himself it wasn’t as bad as before, and somehow, it wasn’t.

  He smelled the place before he saw it. Burning logs inside a woodstove. He followed the unmistakable scent through rows of dense trees, bent low, moving from tree to tree, using them for cover as he leaned his head out just enough to peer around.

  A truck was parked a hundred yards ahead of him, and an old, beat-up station wagon sat next to it. Both had New York state license plates, but he was too far away to make out their numbers. He saw a small shed near the truck and lowered himself to the ground, creeping toward it.

  As he worked around the trees, he found the cabin Franklin Hayes had spoken of. It had a narrow column of smoke coming out of its chimney. On the grass in front of the cabin’s entrance were five motorcycles.

  The cabin was poorly assembled, with rotting walls and a dilapidated roof. The windows along the front and sides were obscured by what looked like old bath towels hung up behind them, probably just nailed into the window frames or even the walls themselves. There were two cables strung to the roof that vanished into the trees. A hunting lodge this far out with electricity and telephone service, Ollie
thought. Now that’s damn peculiar.

  The door burst open and the bald biker they called Orange emerged. He spun back toward the entrance and yelled, “I heard you the first five fucking times, Wombat. We’ll drive like little old ladies going to church.”

  Ollie dove for the back of the shed and pressed himself against it. He could hear footsteps coming toward him. Orange’s voice again, saying, “Hang on, it’s a long way to New York. I gotta hit the head.”

  The shed’s door creaked open and shut again, and Ollie could hear someone on the opposite side of the wall unbuckling his pants. He held his breath to keep from making a sound.

  “That’s a good idea. I better go too,” a second biker said.

  “You gonna be waiting a long-ass time,” Orange said. “Them grits I had at Ruby’s are tearing my guts up inside. Swear that old bitch put something in them.”

  Ollie was close enough to hear what was happening inside the shed and cringed as the smell hit him. He lowered his face into his fist, trying to use his fingers as a makeshift filter.

  “Hurry up, man, I gotta take a piss,” the other biker said.

  “You dumb motherfucker, go piss in the woods and leave me alone. Bad enough I gotta shit in this cold-ass outhouse.”

  The other biker was coming around the shed right toward him. Ollie scooted around the side as fast as he could behind the wall and braced himself against it, listening. The other biker had stopped walking. Probably wondering what the hell is hiding behind the shed, Ollie thought. He wrapped his hand around the handle of his pistol.

  A stream of piss hit the ground right next to him, steaming in the cold air, splashing off the ground at his boots. Ollie grimaced and raised his face away as much as he could, telling himself he was going to shoot someone if any piss hit him on his bare skin.

  “What time are we going to be back?”

  “Couple hours, each way, give or take,” Orange called out.