Littlefield

by Scott Nicholson

  “That’s downtown, isn’t it? It’s Maroney’s jurisdiction.”

  “Yeah, but I got a feeling he wouldn’t know how to handle it.”

  Though Water Street was in the opposite direction from the cabin he’d bought near the gas-station-and-post-office community of Simms, it was only four blocks from the hospital, and besides, Sherry would keep bugging him until he checked it out.

  “What did Morton report?”

  “That’s the thing. He said he was checking it out but didn’t request backup.”

  “He left his cruiser?”

  “Either that or he’s fast asleep in the back seat and not answering. Harrington and Greer are patrolling Taylor Lake and Markowitz is doing the paperwork on a drunk and disorderly.”

  “Where’s Wally?”

  “He had a flare-up so he’s on foot patrol at the high school. His rump’s so swollen he can’t sit down in a patrol car.”

  That was about as much as Littlefield cared to know about one of his officer’s rectal tissues. “I’ll swing by, but I told you not to bother me unless something crawled out of the Hole.”

  “If Wally gets any worse, might be something crawling out of a hole that none of us wants to see.”

  “Thanks for that visual, Sherry.” Littlefield eased out of the parking lot, amazed at how much it had expanded and at the dozens of cars that filled it. Dying was a growth industry, and since the hospital had tacked on a cancer wing, business was booming. Littlefield figured there was a joke hiding somewhere in that observation, but he was too weary to parse it out.

  After a pause, the radio static cut out and Sherry’s voice came on. “How’s J.R.?”

  “He was in and out, not much new. The doctors said there was no sign of serious injury but they wanted to keep him under observation for a few days.”

  “Did you tell him about the pie?”

  Littlefield had forgotten, but he said, “Sure. He perked up and I swear there was some drool running out the corner of his mouth.”

  At least he hadn’t lied about the drool.

  “Good thing I’m around or this department would fall to pieces.”

  “You got that right, Sherry. I’m switching channels to see if I can raise Morton. What’s that 10-20?”

  “Between the lumber yard and the old depot. Where the hippies opened that coffee shop with all the books in the windows. What’s it called?”

  “The Depot.”

  “Damned smart-aleck hippies.”

  “10-10, I’ll check back later. Keep monitoring.”

  “Aye-aye, boss.”

  Littlefield saw no reason to turn on his flashers, especially since he was invading another department’s bailiwick. No doubt Sherry was jittery because of all those legends about the Jangling Hole, and because one of the hen’s chicks had been injured, but it was unlike her to send Littlefield on minor calls. Littlefield had never asked for special treatment, but he felt his officers should be trusted to use their own discretion in their duties.

  Morton, despite the incident at the Jangling Hole, had been scheduled to work a double shift. Though Littlefield had offered him the chance to skip out, Morton said they might be shorthanded for a while since J.R. was down. The department was under a tight budget ever since the Democrats had retaken the county commission in the last election. Calling in an extra officer would have padded the overtime line item.

  Even though it was Saturday night, traffic was dead downtown. Titusville was in the middle of an identity crisis, with the banks, the hardware store, and the general store that had sprung up during the railroad heyday finally closing or moving out to the boulevard strip that linked the town with Barkersville, Westridge University, Hickory, and then on down to Charlotte.

  Now the town was revitalizing as a series of craft shops and art galleries, with three coffee houses to keep the clientele juiced. Though town voters had approved beer-and-wine sales, most of the drinking was done in Beef O’Brady’s and the other chain restaurants clustered around Walmart. The downtown had been inherited by business owners, even those with sandwich shops, who liked to be home in time for dinner.

  Littlefield turned onto Water Street, conducting casual surveillance. The abandoned railroad bed ran parallel to the street, which featured the backsides of old brick buildings. The depot stood by a bridge, its rough-cut porch timbers still blackened from the coal smoke of long-gone steam locomotives.

  Morton’s cruiser was wedged off the road and against the chain-link fence that girded the lumber yard. Though the wood business had shriveled up with the railroad’s demise, long dark sheds still dotted the property. Dunes of gray sawdust made the shadowed lot resemble the surface of an inhospitable alien planet.

  Littlefield parked behind Morton’s car and tucked a long flashlight in his belt. Though Morton’s bar lights were off, his engine was running, which meant he either didn’t expect the errand would take long or he’d made an abrupt exit from his vehicle. Littlefield checked the padlock at the main gate. It was rusted shut.

  Littlefield circumvented the fence, passing behind the depot and its smell of scorched Folgers and bran muffins. The streetlights didn’t reach beyond the bridge, so Littlefield switched on his flashlight and headed for the back of the lot. He found a rip in the seam of wire fence and ducked through. Once inside the lot, he played the light around the stacks of warped lumber.

  A darker shadow stood beside a rusted hulk of milling machinery.

  “Morton?”

  The shadow was still. Annoyed, Littlefield headed toward it. A vagrant or trespasser would at least have had the decency to flee and let Littlefield know he should give chase.

  He raised the light and though the shadow didn’t move, couldn’t have moved, the beam revealed only the metal skeleton of dead equipment, its wheels, gears, and bands frozen in time.

  Shit, where did he go?Just what I need, another goddamned invisible suspect.

  He wanted to wrap up the 10-32 and get to bed before it became a more serious set of numbers. He doubted if he’d get any sleep—memories of Sheila Story and Archer McFall would erase any hope of that, not to mention whatever stirred in the Hole—but he was a man of habit, and six hours spent restlessly wrinkling the sheets seemed like the best way to cap off the day. Mulatto Mountain was miles away, and though its solid black form dominated the western horizon, whatever mysteries it harbored had no reason to touch the town.

  Littlefield circled the shed, the decaying sawdust muting his footsteps. Anyone fleeing wouldn’t have made a giveaway sound.

  Assuming they fled by foot.

  The flashlight beam dodged over dented sheet metal. The wind picked up and as it cut through the shed, it whined and moaned, carrying the scent of the creek and rotted wood and the pungency of rust. The bandsaw blade was still on its pulley, straddled by a flat steel table where logs once slid into the jagged teeth. Littlefield came to a steel ladder that led up to a glassed-in cab where operators could run the big bandsaw with minimal risk.

  The cab would offer a good vantage point to survey the grounds. If Morton were in the lumber yard, Littlefield would be able to see him, assuming the deputy carried a flashlight. The steel rungs were cold under his palms as he climbed. A flutter of motion erupted to his left and brushed his cheek, nearly causing him to fall.

  Littlefield regained his balance and leaned against the rungs, catching his breath. The creature flapped into the night then dipped into the glow of a security light where moths swarmed in random patterns.

  Fucking bat.

  He studied the backs of the buildings on Water Street, some of the windows glowing yellow but most boarded up or covered by curtains. Many of the upper floors had been converted to apartments, with slum lords doing a booming business in rodent reproduction.

  Littlefield surveyed the lot, though the scattered stacks of lumber shielded his view of some sections. Nothing.

  Littlefield finished his ascent, now 20 feet above the ground. He steadied himself with the
light tucked under his arm as he reached for the cab door. The latch was either locked or rusted shut. He yanked once more, the light bobbing up.

  A face pressed against the glass.

  Littlefield almost fell a second time. He braced his legs and directed the beam toward the face, but it was gone, just like the shadow earlier.

  “Screw this cat-and-mouse crap,” he said.

  Whoever was in the cab had no other way down, so it was simply a matter of waiting until the perp came down. If it was indeed a perp. By now, Littlefield was determined to slap a charge on the person, out of annoyance if nothing else. Besides trespassing and loitering, he could probably tack on obstruction of justice and delaying an officer. Those charges were usually dropped by the District Attorney during plea negotiations, but they sure were satisfying to write on the arrest report.

  Littlefield banged the glass with the bottom of his fist. “Come on out,” Littlefield said. “I just want to ask you some questions.”

  Like “Where in the hell is my deputy?” and “How did you get in there through a locked door?” and “By the way, have you seen any invisible people?”

  He tried to reform the face in his mind. It was haggard and pale, with a sparse brush of beard, but the glimpse had been too brief to offer much more. Certainly nothing a sketch artist could work with, if it came to that.

  Jeez, Sheriff, a little melodramatic, don’t you think? Morton’s probably sitting in the coffee house right now, talking up some college coed and hoping she digs a man in a uniform. Pushing his luck. But the biggest risk he’s facing is a lap full of warm coffee at four bucks a cup.

  Littlefield peered through the bottom pane on the cab door, shining his light into the dim interior. It featured a seat like that of a tractor, and a series of gear levers protruded from the floor. An instrument panel featured a few dials and buttons, but obviously predated the era of microelectronics. Dirty rags littered the floor, and a length of rusty chain was coiled in the floorboard like a sleeping snake.

  Otherwise, the cab was empty.

  Littlefield fought an urge to ram the butt of his flashlight into the glass. Before the McFall incident and his latest failure, he would have figured himself for a head case on the verge of a breakdown. The shrinks would say it was only natural, a delayed post-traumatic reaction to the death of his younger brother when they were children.

  Just a little guilt trip catching up with him, nothing to worry about, take a few weeks off and it should clear up on its own. With a little intensive therapy, of course, and possibly a little medication to keep the brain wires firing toward a desired result. All in the name of returning to normal.

  But there was something shrinks would never acknowledge: once you’ve peered into the black heart of hell, once you’d ridden the nightmare rainbow all the way down, “normal” no longer existed.

  And disappearing faces no longer were mere figments of his imagination.

  Just like the footprints on Mulatto Mountain that had faded into thin air…

  He glanced down into the milling area, where large steel claws arched upward. Years ago, they had sunk their jagged tips into oak and poplar and cherry, pushing their prey into the grinding, chewing jaws of the saw blade. Now they flexed open like the upturned palms of a metal martyr. Chains dangled from the rough-cut rafters, clinking softly as they swayed in the October breeze.

  A pile of slabs, covered in ragged gray bark, lay to one side of the sawmill bench. Littlefield ran his light over them. He spotted a pair of eyes and steadied his beam, only to find a couple of knots protruding from a warped hardwood burl.

  Then one of the slabs separated from the pile and moved into the orange circle of his beam. It approached him.

  “Morton!” Littlefield scrambled down the ladder, feeling a little silly at his relief. He was able to dispel the vision of the face a little more with each rung, and by the time he reached the bottom he had convinced himself the incident had never happened.

  As he jogged toward the end of the long steel saw table, he called to his deputy. “Did you see anybody?”

  Littlefield stopped short, almost losing his balance and pitching into the raw teeth of the saw blade. It wasn’t Morton after all, not with those black eyes that soaked up the light and the scruffy beard that swayed in the wind like dried corn stalks. It was the man from the cab, probably the one who’d cast the silhouette he’d seen as he’d entered the lumber yard. The man was undeniably solid, though he was gaunt, checks sunken, ragged clothes draped on his body as if someone had hastily dressed a scarecrow.

  “Who are you?” Littlefield said. Thank God for vagrants and trespassers, safe, normal, everyday bums and creeps.

  The gaunt-faced man stood at the end of the saw table, looking around as if not recognizing his surroundings. Littlefield had a chance to study him in profile now that he was relatively motionless. He had the drawn cheeks of a meth addict and looked like he’d missed a few turns at the soup kitchen. His dark brown hair ran just past his collar, and when he grimaced, there were black gaps between his yellow teeth.

  His clothes appeared to be natural fiber, dusty and stained, the cuffs of his shirt frayed. He wore a vest that was pocked with holes, and his gray cotton trousers had a rip in one knee. The leather boots were dusty and cracked, the heels coming loose and the toe of the right one lolling open like the mouth of an exhausted hound.

  On his head was a peculiar cap that seemed two sizes too small and looked as if it had been mashed lopsided.

  Since the man had not acknowledged Littlefield’s challenge, the sheriff took three steps toward him and spoke again. “This is private property.”

  “Churr,” the man said, and it was almost like a question.

  “You been drinking?” The encounter was moving back onto familiar footing and Littlefield gained confidence. His right hand, which had reached to the butt of the pistol holstered on his belt, now relaxed.

  The man finally stared into the burning glare of the flashlight, not squinting or blinking. The eyes appeared to swell with darkness, and the light didn’t glint off them, as if they were bone dry and as dusty as his boots.

  Where the hell is Morton?

  Littlefield was not just concerned about his deputy, he didn’t like the idea of being alone with this weather-beaten scarecrow of a man. If it weren’t for Sherry’s dispatch record of the call, Littlefield would have been tempted to just mosey back through the gash in the fence and drive away.

  The lumber yard offered little satisfaction for vandalism, and as a decent sleeping quarters for Titusville’s scattered homeless, it rivaled the Living Waters Mission’s stiff steel cots. And, the sheriff reasoned, if the department made a precedent of rousting one wino, Sherry’s 9-1-1 hotline might be flooded with reports of other emaciated and hollow-eyed wanderers.

  Chickenshit rationalization. The same justifications that had led him to past mistakes, some that ended with a shovel, flowers, and a preacher’s solemn eulogy.

  “Churr,” the man repeated, turning and walking toward the back of the lot.

  “Stop, or I’ll…” Littlefield let the threat trail off because he didn’t know exactly what to say. He certainly wasn’t going to shoot, and he didn’t think the suspect was making what could be called a high-speed attempt at escape. In fact, Littlefield wasn’t even sure the man had heard or seen him. His reaction to the light might have been the instinctive response of a mindless animal.

  The man walked with the stiffness of a scarecrow, as if his limbs had been long unused. He moved between two dunes of decaying sawdust, clothes swathed against a skeletal frame.

  “Churrrrr,” the man said then rolled the syllable into “rrrrain” as if learning a new language.

  The sound was as slow as everything else about the strange man, and Littlefield followed, slogging through the mix of wood chips and mud. That’s when he noticed the man’s boots left no prints.

  “Stop!” Littlefield shouted, and now he wasn’t even sure he wanted the m
an to stop or if he’d simply fallen back on professional protocol when faced with the extraordinary.

  The gray scarecrow didn’t heed, if it had heard in the first place, and just kept flopping its broken boots toward the fence.

  Littlefield drew his gun and steadied the flashlight beam against the Glock until the circle of light was centered on the man’s back. The vagrant was carrying a haversack, slung low and dangling with old equipment.

  “Churr-rain,” the man said, a little faster this time, as if a termite-riddled tongue had learned to speak.

  Train?

  Littlefield’s finger tickled the trigger, but he knew he wouldn’t shoot. For one thing, his hands were shaking and the light bobbed up and down, and a stray bullet might zing through the chain-link fence and ricochet toward the run-down section of Titusville, where houselights and flickering televisions glowed behind the kudzu-draped trees. The town’s few Mexicans, employed in the Christmas-tree fields because of their willingness to work hard and ignore warning labels on pesticide containers, were clustered in the clapboard shotgun shacks, and a random shooting promised a flood of Charlotte news crews. On the other hand, one more non-arrest on a suspicious-persons call would flush into the ocean of forgotten paperwork.

  Thank God Morton was still nowhere to be seen, because Littlefield didn’t want to explain why he holstered his weapon. Unable to totally neglect his duty, he gave half-hearted pursuit, maintaining a distance of 30 feet.

  When the man approached the chain-link fence, where the rusty and abandoned railroad track ran parallel to Norman’s Creek, Littlefield was left with a skipped heartbeat at the thought of the man’s turning and staring into the flashlight.

  But, as might be expected of something that had probably tromped across Mulatto Mountain and eventually given up the need for footprints, the man didn’t pause when he reached the steel fence. Instead, he passed through it and stopped in the middle of the tracks, looking both ways as if listening for a distant steam whistle.