Death & the Gravedigger's Angel

by Loretta Ross

  “That’s a good point,” Jackson admitted. “Hey! Didn’t I hear one of the Keystone kids talking about finding a car out in one of the outbuildings?”

  “An old Impala,” Randy said. “But that’s not the one you’re looking for. It’s been there for years.”

  “Besides,” Death put in, “the bridge over the creek was gone and there were saplings growing in the Hadleigh House driveway. He’d have had no way to get a car up there.”

  Randy looked around at the other three adults and lowered his voice like he was telling a ghost story around a campfire.

  “Maybe,” he said, “maybe he didn’t steal the uniform from the body of a dead man. Maybe … he was the dead man!”

  “Okay,” Jackson said. “I know an idiotic theory when I hear it being born. I’m probably going to regret this, but go on. What you got?”

  “Maaaybee,” Randy said, “the uniform that Wren authenticated belonged to the actual Civil War soldier who was killed by his horse on the Vengeance Trail. When the current dead guy died and was buried in it, the ghost of the original dead guy raised him from beyond the grave so they could steal a horse and recreate the original dead guy’s final ride.”

  seven

  “Sir, what’s your business here?”

  “What’s yours?” Death countered.

  The gravel parking area at Warriors’ Rest was jammed with police vehicles. In addition to the Rives County Sheriff’s Department, there were cars from East Bledsoe Ferry and from the Highway Patrol. There were also vehicles from Kansas City, almost a hundred miles away, which told Death that this had something to do with Anthony Dozier.

  “Death? What brings you out here?”

  “You know this guy?” the state trooper asked.

  East Bledsoe Ferry chief of police Duncan Reynolds came over from the direction of the office building. He was stocky and solid, an older man, his black hair and eyebrows grizzled with silver. “Yeah, I know him. He’s a friend.”

  Waving the younger officer away, Reynolds led Death back toward Death’s Jeep.

  “Aren’t you a little out of your jurisdiction?” Death asked him.

  “It’s all hands on deck for a murder investigation.” Reynolds waved his hand around, indicating the wide variety of police cars present. “I didn’t know you were involved with this place,” he said when they were alone. “Is it helping you any?”

  Since returning from Afghanistan, Death had struggled with the aftermath. The euphoria of finding Randy alive had driven down the depression he’d been fighting, but he was still aware of its presence, lurking like a dark, tentacled monster under the surface of a sunny pond. Under certain circumstances stress could trigger frighteningly realistic flashbacks. He still tended towards hyper-vigilance and still sometimes imagined armed insurgents in glimpses out of the corner of his eye.

  He was afraid to sleep in the same room with Wren after she’d tried to awaken him from a nightmare and he’d nearly broken her neck.

  Reynolds was one of the few people Death had spoken frankly with about his problems. The older man reminded Death of his own grandfather. He was stolid and down-to-earth, listening without passing judgment and offering advice without condescending.

  Death shook his head and waved away his friend’s concerns.

  “It’s not like that,” he said. “Kurt Robinson has asked me to help investigate the murder charges against Anthony Dozier.”

  “Ah.” Reynolds nodded and glanced toward the office building.

  Death followed his gaze. Through the window he could see the massive bulk of the Rives County sheriff, Casey “Salvy” Salvadore. Salvy was listening and nodding to someone. The big man looked unusually grave.

  “Robinson called you?” Reynolds asked.

  “No, Wren did. She’s working up in the old Hadleigh House and she saw all the brouhaha from an upstairs window.”

  “Oh.” Reynolds turned and waved at the distant plantation house and Death fired off a quick, jaunty salute in that direction himself.

  “So,” Death said, “search warrant?”

  “Yep. KC brought it down and we’re helping to execute it.” Reynolds looked off to his right and Death saw an older officer standing beside one of the Kansas City police vehicles with a map spread out across the hood and a radio up to his mouth. A much smaller and, unfortunately, more familiar figure hovered right next to him.

  “Farrington’s out here? I thought he was just a jail guard.”

  “He is. The detective from the city force was rude to me, so I assigned Farrington to be his personal liaison.”

  “Wow. That’s harsh.”

  “Never mess with a small-town cop. We know crazy people and we’re not afraid to use them.”

  Death laughed and Reynolds leaned back against the Jeep’s bumper, scrubbed one hand through his hair, and tipped his face up to the sky.

  “The insanity plea isn’t going to fly,” he said reluctantly.

  Death leaned against the car beside him and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You don’t think?”

  “I know you probably haven’t been following the news too closely, what with the goings on with your brother and all. What have they told you about this case?”

  Death shrugged. “Dozier’s wife was killed in a car accident. The CAC protested at her funeral and Anthony clashed with some of them. The next day he was found in KC with the victim’s dead body in his back seat. He thought he was back in the war zone.”

  “He claims he thought he was back in the war zone,” Reynolds countered. “But there are a few things that don’t add up. I’m guessing Robinson didn’t brief you on the inconsistencies?”

  “So enlighten me.”

  “Okay, well, first of all, when the CAC protested at Zahra Dozier’s funeral, the victim wasn’t with them. He hadn’t been seen in public with the group in almost eight months, and during the interim he’d dyed his hair and grown a heavy beard. Dozier’s confrontation at the funeral was with Tyler Jones, the victim’s father. Even without the facial hair, there was very little resemblance between the two men, so how did Dozier know who August Jones even was?”

  “Maybe August Jones confronted him separately?”

  “Maybe. There’s a bit more to it than that, though.”

  “Oh?”

  “There’s a very good chance that Dozier did know August Jones personally, though he may not have known who he was. We know for a fact that they’d met at least once.”

  Death tipped his head toward the police chief and raised one eyebrow.

  “The reason August Jones hadn’t been seen with the church lately,” Reynolds said, “was because he was ‘undercover.’ Tyler Jones had sent his son to infiltrate a mosque up in the city, to do an expose on their ‘ungodly depravity and dissolution.’ His words, not mine.”

  “That’s why August dyed his hair and grew a beard? He was trying to pass himself off as a Muslim?”

  “No, he wasn’t quite that stupid. The hair and beard were to conceal his identity, but he introduced himself as a journalist who was doing a story on religion in America. He’d been attending worship and interviewing the members for months.”

  “And I’m guessing Zahra Dozier was one of those members?”

  “Yeah.” Reynolds sighed. “I’m afraid so.”

  He took a moment to study the activity at the camp. Officers were going from building to building like a swarm of tan-clad bumblebees, returning to the senior officer’s vehicle from time to time with bagged evidence of one sort or another.

  “Look, the CAC are horrible people, and I’m not saying August didn’t do something to push a grieving husband too far. But the insanity defense just doesn’t hold water under the circumstances. I’m sorry to shoot down your theory.”

  “Oh, you’re not shooting down my theory,” Death said easily. “You’re shooting down the defense attorney’s theory. I already told her she was crazy.”

  Reynolds leaned away and looked up at Death, eyebrows rais
ed. “Really?”

  “Have you met Anthony Dozier?”

  “No, have you?”

  “Yeah, and there’s no way in hell that man killed anyone.”

  Death waited for Reynolds to shoot him down, like everyone else involved in the case had, but the chief of police knew him better than most.

  “So what do you reckon happened then?”

  “Just what Dozier said happened. He found the victim beside the road and it triggered a flashback. He mistook the knife wounds for shrapnel, bandaged him up as best he could, and went looking for an army base.”

  Reynolds nodded a little, looking off to one side and pinching his lower lip.

  “You’re not calling me crazy. So far everyone else I’ve said this to has called me crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy. And you’re a pretty good judge of character. If you don’t think Dozier killed anyone, I’m at least willing to entertain the idea. But do you think that Dozier could still be faking the flashback?”

  “Why?”

  “To cover for the real killer. There’s a reason we’re out here searching this property.”

  “What is it?”

  “August Jones had a cell phone that he habitually used to record conversations. It wasn’t registered under his name, so it took a while for the officer in charge of the investigation to find out about it. The battery is apparently dead now, but before it died they were able to ping the location.”

  “And?”

  “And that cell phone is, or was, somewhere on this property.”

  _____

  “If I were you, I’d be taking a closer look at this guy,” Eric Farrington said, giving Death a slantwise, suspicious leer.

  “Why’s that?” The Kansas City detective was named Stottlemeyer. He was a tall, clean-cut man in his mid-thirties with dark hair, strong Roman features, and a muscle jumping at the corner of his left eye. Death wondered if he’d always had that particular tic or if it was the result of having Eric Farrington follow him around for three hours.

  “He’s nuts. He’s got that post-war trauma crap. You know, he pointed a gun at me. Right at my head. He’s not stable at all.”

  “Really?” Stottlemeyer looked more closely at Death, reevaluating him as a possible suspect perhaps.

  “He disarmed you after you pointed a gun at him,” Reynolds corrected Farrington. “Besides, he was in St. Louis the night Jones was killed.”

  “You got any witnesses to support that?” Stottlemeyer asked Death.

  Death shrugged. “The fire department and the police department and a bunch of television and newspaper reporters.”

  “There was an incident,” Reynolds said shortly. “Google it. You finding anything out here?”

  “Not so far. We’re impounding the Robinsons’ cell phones and electronics. The afternoon before the murder, someone called Jones from an unregistered cell phone. We haven’t been able to trace the phone itself, but the call originated from a cell phone tower less than five miles from here. And the last time we pinged Jones’ phone before the battery died, it showed up somewhere in those woods.” He pointed past the stable and pasture, to the woods that separated the camp from Hadleigh House.

  “But you haven’t found it?”

  “Not yet. We have dogs on the way.”

  Even as he spoke, a vehicle drove up. A middle-aged man and a teenage girl got out and opened the back door to release a pair of long-nosed bloodhounds. The man turned to meet them as they walked up and offered his hand to Stottlemeyer.

  “I got a call that you needed a couple of extra noses on the job?”

  Death squatted in front of the dogs. “They do have noses, all right! Is it okay if I pet them?”

  “Yes, certainly. That’s Sherlock on your left and Mycroft on the right.”

  “Tell them your name, Dad,” the girl urged, grinning.

  The dog handler rolled his eyes. “Hi. I’m John Watson.”

  Death looked up at him, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

  “What? It’s not that unusual a name, you know. This brat is my daughter, Penny, by the way.”

  “I appreciate your coming on such short notice,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “You didn’t just bring in a K-9 unit?” Death asked.

  “We’re looking for the site of Jones’ murder,” Stottlemeyer said. “A corpse will always leave behind traces. Blood and bodily fluids. These are special dogs, trained specifically to search for humans or human remains.”

  “They are indeed,” the handler agreed. “And bloodhounds have the most sensitive noses in the animal kingdom. They can detect a body in a running stream or buried under ten feet of concrete. Though I should warn you that the boys are still pretty young and not entirely trained yet. They’re excellent at finding things, just not so good at differentiating between different sorts of targets. Shouldn’t be a problem, though, as long as you haven’t had any extra dead bodies lying around recently,.”

  Death and Reynolds exchanged a look.

  “That could be a problem, actually.”

  _____

  “No, they did great,” Reynolds was saying as they walked back toward Warriors’ Rest. The two young bloodhounds led the way, pulling at their leashes and sniffing the underbrush eagerly. The chief walked behind them with Watson and his daughter, while Stottlemeyer, still trailed by Eric Farrington, stomped along in their wake.

  Death was waiting for them beside his Jeep. Watson looked glum, his daughter looked creeped out, and Stottlemeyer looked like he’d been sucking on lemons.

  “Let me guess,” Death said. “They found where the dead guy fell off his horse?”

  “Went right to it,” Reynolds agreed. “We tried taking them through the woods, but they just kept going back there.”

  “That wasn’t part of our search warrant,” Farrington piped up, as if Death had challenged them. “But once the dogs alerted on the woods, we had probable cause to enter the property.”

  Death ignored him. “Considering what the dead guy was wearing, there must be enough residue there for it to stink to high heaven for these guys. Don’t tell Wren I said that, though.”

  “Wren?” Stottlemeyer asked.

  “My girlfriend.”

  “The redhead who waved at us from the house up there,” Reynolds added.

  “She live there? Have we talked to her?”

  “She works for an auction company,” Death explained. “They’re getting the house ready for a sale. I don’t like to remind her of the dead guy on the path. Wren gets creeped out by dead guys.”

  “I can think of at least one guy who’d be less creepy if he were dead,” Penny muttered with a dark look at Eric.

  “And there my Wren would agree with you,” Death said with a grin.

  “We’re going to find that phone,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’ve been holding off on sending searchers into the woods because I didn’t want to confuse things for the dogs, but that’ll be the next step. We’ll set up a grid pattern. We’re not going to stop until we have something.”

  A state trooper came out the near door of the stable and immediately both young bloodhounds set to baying. Stottlemeyer perked up and nodded at Watson to let the dogs proceed.

  Death and Chief Reynolds exchanged a look and tagged along after them.

  The stables were empty—the horses had all been turned out into the pasture. The dogs stopped and alerted at the entrance to the first stall.

  “This looks promising,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “Do you want to tell him or shall I?” Death asked.

  “Tell me what?”

  Reynolds sighed. “You know the dead guy on the path? The one who fell off a horse? Well, this is the stall that he stole the horse out of.”

  “Well, God damn!”

  Watson leaned down to pet his hounds and let them pull him into the stable. They were fixated on an object on the floor.

  A can.

  A beer can.

  “What do you bet my dead guy is th
e one who left that there?” Reynolds asked.

  “You know what?” Farrington broke in excitedly. “I bet if we took that can in, we could get his fingerprints off it and run them to find out who he was.”

  The chief gave him a weary side glance.

  “We have his fingerprints, Eric. We have his body. His fingerprints are on his fingers, which are part of his body.”

  “Oh. I didn’t think about that.”

  eight

  “This is the best thing I’ve ever found for insect bites, provided you’re not allergic and you’re just looking for something to take away the sting.”

  “Yeah. I think I’ve used it before.” Kurt Robinson stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against the front of his desk, watching Randy Bogart pack supplies into the camp’s first aid kit. “I do appreciate your help with this.”

  “Hey, man. Anything I can do, I’m glad to do it.”

  “Well, we thank you.”

  Randy closed the box and set it back on its shelf, and for a long moment the two men lingered in a not-entirely-comfortable silence. It was the morning after the police search and Robinson’s office had been put back in order, but the empty space where a computer should sit and the presence of a new, cheap cell phone showed that his life was still far from normal.

  “So, I understand you’ve had a pretty weird last year or so,” Robinson said finally.

  “Yeah.” Randy scrubbed his palms on his jeans. “Ha. Yeah, you could say that.”

  “You doing okay?” Robinson went around behind the desk and sat down, and Randy accepted the implied invitation to drop into the chair across from him. “I’m thinking the kind of thing you went through could leave some marks.”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” the younger man said dismissively. “No, really,” he said when Robinson made a short, disbelieving sound. “I don’t even really remember it mostly. I spent most of the time in a kind of drugged stupor. It’s like, did you ever get really, really tired? And you’d fall asleep and when you woke up you didn’t know what time it was or what day it was or anything? It’s pretty much like that. I remember going into the fire, and then I remember finding myself in this big fancy house and not knowing who I was or how I got there. And that was only about a week or so before Death found me.”