“Get us some heavy machinery out here, a backhoe maybe,” said Chief Briggs to anyone within earshot. “It's my guess we got our own little Killing Field right here, Mr. Vietnam Vet.” He directed this comment at Stroud. “What do you think?”
Stroud swallowed the comparison without pointing out to Briggs that it would take literally hundreds of thousands of skulls the size of the one in Stroud's hand to begin to put this dark little plot of earth in the running with Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. “You can't go in there with a backhoe, Chief,” he said, “not until we know what we're dealing with. Suppose this is an Indian burial mound we've stumbled onto? It could be a major archeological find.”
“Give you something to do, huh? What other purpose would waiting serve?”
“It will give me time to determine the extent of the site and--”
“With a hand pick, on foot? Sorry, Professor but--”
“An important archeological find could mean a great deal to the history of the town, Chief.”
“History never was my favorite subject; besides we got men out here ain't seen their families in over twelve hours, men who've got jobs waiting. Now suppose somewhere in all this is that boy's body, and the other one before him? We got to know now.”
“But, Chief, these bones are old!”
He wasn't listening. Not a word more. He was off in another direction to give more orders to other deputies. Stroud watched him as he loped away, carrying his weight like excess baggage as if he had not had time to accustom himself to it. Briggs had been a basketball star at the local junior college, had gone on from there to the police academy, and had never been beyond Andover's limits except for the occasional excursion over to Springfield. He boasted of having traveled to St. Louis and Chicago once. He didn't particularly like or understand Abraham Stroud, and most likely agreed with Turnip's general assessment of the brooding former Chicago detective turned archeologist. Briggs, no doubt, could not understand why he'd given up the excitement of police work in a major city for the opportunity to dig holes in the ground.
Neither had Stroud gone out of his way to endear himself to the men of Andover. He never had a beer in a local watering hole. He was never seen doing anything beyond the gates of Stroud Manse where he preferred the company of the horses in the stable to that of most men. He'd never been seen on the arm of a woman in Andover. All strikes against him.
Briggs, by comparison, spent all-nighters chugging beer with friends and relatives at places like the Iron Horse Saloon, a place with a neon boot overhead and a fiberglass horse out front. It was located on a road--the old Combs Hill Road that ran alongside of the Spoon River for a stretch--that was morbidly referred to as Tombstone Highway for the number of drunk drivers killed going over a rail there.
Stroud picked among some of the additional bones that'd been uncovered. It looked to him like it was the work of some animal that had unearthed the remains. He was wishing again for more light when he found a long femur. It seemed too long to be a match for the skull, unless the youth had been exceptionally tall. He put aside the other bones and again studied the small skull up close. The eye sockets were huge and empty like the innocent look of a sad animal, like the living eyes of a South Vietnamese child he'd once seen in two parts. Her torso and brain were both still operating, as were her eyes, while at the same instant her soul was taking flight from war.
Stroud wanted to fling the damned skull away, but instead he doused the light, cradled the skull gently, and stepped back toward the trees that masked the squad cars and pickups on the roadbed. He wasn't aware that Carroll and some of the others watched him. Half of Briggs's people were here, the other half were out near Sagammon where another report had come from--a sighting of a boy alone walking the highway. Why didn't the same asshole who made the sighting bother to pick the boy up?
Abraham Stroud empathized completely with the lost boy wandering on the highway; the boy's situation pained him to his core. Abe's bones talked to him all the time--bones left broken and riddled with metal by a firefight that had left him a lost boy on a battlefield. He had lain in a field of dead in Nam; he had assumed he would die there. It had taken sixteen hours before someone on his side had found him amid the dead, and by that time he had spoken a long time with his bones and the bones of others. The little skull in his hands talked volumes which all amounted to a whispering complaint: “Desecration.”
He suddenly turned to Carroll, abruptly saying, “You don't just pick up little skulls in weed fields; they don't grow from the earth the way rocks do.”
Carroll nodded and muttered, “Agreed.”
“Don't you see, Mr. Carroll? Someone, earlier, this way came ... found this unusual rock and dug at it until it looked back at him. Curious, intrigued maybe, he picked it up, even carried it away from the other bones ... dropped it where we found it.”
“Got pretty far away before he tossed it aside.”
Stroud's eyes bore into Carroll's in the dark with the skull between them. Carroll felt the thought in Stroud's mind leap across the chasm between them. “Kids?”
“Group of them, maybe? With a dog, maybe?”
“A dog?”
Stroud was instantly sorry that he'd mentioned the dog. If the locals knew of a dog that'd been with Timmy Meyers, no one had made a particular point of it. Yet, here he was, a relative stranger to the area, telling Carroll that the missing boy was accompanied by a dog. Information he had garnered through a hazy and halting vision. He didn't want Carroll or anyone else thinking strange thoughts about him, so he quickly tried to cover himself, dispelling the nebulous vision of Timmy's cringing below the sight of his dead dog, by saying, “Kids and dogs go together, as natural as pie and cream; out for fun, they stumble onto this bone field. Maybe one of them was Timmy Meyers.”
“Lotta maybes....”
Stroud stood and stared at the fog-bound field, trying to envision the scene. Who would these kids be? Where were they now? Were they friends of the Meyers boy who lived on a farm not so far from here? Could the boy have ridden his bike down here, or caught a ride behind another kid on a bike? A series of questions that led to questions which in turn led to more. The search for a missing kid had turned into an investigation of foul play. You don't bury a kid's skull in a wood far from any roads just because you want to save on the cost of a pine box, although Abe had met some Andover folk who might think it the prudent thing to do.
A van with bright lights sped toward them and seeing it, Stroud groaned. Briggs went for the camera van like a bear on the scent of honey. It was an election year. “Here comes Eyewitness 2, Your Neighborhood Crime Watch Channel!” he said, repeating the tiresome television phrase.
“Suppose John McEarn'll be with 'em,” said Carroll flatly. “Went to school with the jerk. Guy's like an ant, the way he crawls over dead rats.”
“What the hell's he expect to get here now?”
“Teeth. Briggs'll show him a lot of teeth. And he'll want shots of the bones, of course. Ratings wet dream, that's what this is for McEarn.”
Stroud laughed lightly. It was the first time he'd so much as smiled this night. Carroll eased a bit himself now that he saw Stroud had lightened up. Someone among the searchers, all of whom had fanned out with lantern-size flashlights, shouted, “Over here! Some more! Over here.”
Briggs stared at Abe Stroud as if he were the Wizard of Oz. He could not believe there was yet another bone pile. None of them could. “Christ, Briggs, stands to reason,” said Stroud, marching off with Carroll who he took by the arm, directing the man toward his brand new four-by-four Jeep Cherokee. It had been his first purchase in Andover. Behind them they heard Briggs telling the newsman, McEarn, about the initial discovery of a single skull. Briggs made an ass of himself by stating for the camera that, “Hell, I thought it was just--you know--maybe a passin' hippie car from Arizona or someplace, just tossed it out with other trash.”
-3-
Stroud placed the skull on the seat of the Chero
kee and told Carroll to get inside beside it. Ray Carroll didn't know what Stroud had in mind, but he got inside anyway, checking out the Jeep's features, fascinated by it, saying he'd always wanted one, had promised himself he'd own one before he died. Stroud tore off into the ditch and up again on the other side, driving through the tree cover and out into the open field where all the others had raced to the new bone site. He hit his brights and flooded the field and the men on it, their shadows doing a dance of a distance of some fifty yards. “Throw some goddamned light on the subject,” he said curtly as Andover men scurried to get out of his way.
“Jesus! Goddamn!” they alternately swore and threw dirt clods at the Jeep. Behind and now beside Stroud came the news van, anxious to get in closer, the wheels kicking up twice the loose soil that the Jeep had.
When Stroud got out, he didn't have to push his way past the others. The ones remaining in his way eased back from him, allowing him entry without a word. None of them knew Stroud well, since he'd just taken up residence among them three months before but they did know he was a tough man. It wasn't something he'd done, or ever said, not even backing down Glen “Turnip” Turner. Until tonight Stroud hadn't ever had to display it. It was just accepted when another man looked into his face and those hard, cold eyes. His eyes told others that he had killed men.
The man who'd found the additional bones was Ray Carroll's brother-in-law, Mitch Campbell. Campbell was shaken; like others here, he was a man with kids of his own, a hefty wife, and an even heftier mortgage. He worked for the city, road work, Stroud had heard. Like Ray Carroll, he became a volunteer because he always volunteered. When Andover had a completely volunteer fire department, both men were on it, as were many of the other men present tonight. In old junkers and pickups, Jimmys and Jeeps equipped with CB radios, they came from out of the seemingly empty night on a moment's notice: Andover's Minutemen.
“What've we got, Professor?” asked Chief Briggs, playing to the camera now rolling as Briggs kneeled into sight of bones half in and half out of the earth.
“Back off a bit,” said Stroud. “Watch your step. Damn, whole area's covered with footprints. No way to reconstruct what went on here.”
“Back off,” Briggs repeated, “just a bit.”
Stroud's thoughts raced ahead of him. He didn't tell the Chief or the camera or the others that the bones had something to say. Stroud studied them for longer than was comfortable to the camera eye. He studied them until his legs complained with cramps. He sifted through the dirt and pulled some out and stared and hummed to himself until everyone present was also uncomfortable.
Finally, Briggs said, “Well, whataya think, Professor?”
In a near whisper into the microphone, McEarn, somewhere over Stroud's shoulder, told the listening audience at home who Professor Abraham Stroud was. Stroud said tonelessly, “Chief, you can't bulldoze this area until--”
“Backhoe, son ... backhoe. Don't intend to doze it over. Intend to dig and sift until we got the extent of the problem in our sights.”
This sounded good to everyone present who agreed with verbal soundings.
“Just give me until sundown tomorrow,” said Stroud. “I think this area is some sort of burial ground.”
Briggs only scratched behind his ear.
Stroud said to the gathered men, “Do any of you men know who Timmy Meyers played with, went to school with?”
“Be my boy, Joey,” said Carroll, “but--”
“Did you talk to him about the disappearance?”
“He came home late ... didn't eat ... wasn't feeling well ... went up to bed early.”
“Is it possible, Mr. Carroll, that he played with Timmy before dark? That he was the last person to see the boy?”
“We couldn't get him to say much when we asked him about it. Said he and Timmy weren't playing together anymore. You know kids.”
Stroud knew some kids, but he'd never had any of his own. Still, as a cop, he knew how their minds worked, particularly when they were scared. He'd interrogated a lot of frightened kids during his time in Chicago.
“Would you mind, Mr. Carroll--”
“Ray.”
“--Ray--if I talked with the boy?”
“He'll be asleep hours ago.”
“It could help.”
The insurance man nodded. “I guess ... maybe ... when I think it could be Joey out here missing ... well...”
The unspoken truth was that any boy lost in these woods could be dead by morning. “Get into the Jeep and we'll go together.”
Stroud began to make his way back around the Jeep when the TV floodlights hit him in the eyes, making him curse.
“What progress, Professor Stroud, has been made in locating the Meyers boy? What do the bone finds have to do with the boy's disappearance?”
Stroud grabbed John McEarn and lifted him against the side of the Jeep. “You have any idea what that kind of broadcast'll do to the boy's parents, you hemorrhagic ass?” Briggs and a deputy pulled Stroud away from the newsman before Stroud's fists got into the act. For a moment, Stroud felt like a cop again.
McEarn was shouting that he'd be sorry for his actions.
Stroud got into the Jeep and tried to calm down, taking a great breath of air.
“Rest of you men, we're not going to be able to do much here 'til daybreak when we can see what we're doing. Go on and finish your sweep for the Meyers boy. Leave any more old bones to us. Meanwhile, my deputies'll be with you,” Briggs was saying.
Stroud and Carroll tore off, the Jeep backing out at full tilt, lights picking up Briggs holding up a skull to the TV cameras. Stroud cursed under his breath and grabbed for the skull he had placed on the seat earlier, his large hand wrapping around it in a protective cocoon. He stopped the Jeep and drove forward again, whirling alongside the chief, kicking up dust and whirling dervishes into the camera and his face. Briggs's interview was stopped. Stroud shouted out to Briggs, “Whatever you do, Chief, hold off on the goddamned heavy equipment until I get back.”
Briggs was choking on dirt, wildly shaking his fist high over his head when Stroud's Jeep hit the pavement and raced down the tarmac. The black ribbon of the twisting highway had been neglected here for so long that even the center lines had become invisible. Stroud thought the road looked like the nearby river, two of a kind.
“Eerie, isn't it?” asked Ray Carroll of the bone field.
“Yeah, you might call it that.”
“Never seen the like of it ... outside the carcass room at the slaughter house.”
“Slaughter house?”
“Sure, Andover's biggest employer. We hold the policy.”
“What, like cattle? Beef?”
“Beef, yeah, but everything else, too. Sheep, pigs, veal when the season's on.”
“Lot of bones there, sure.”
“Bones are ground up for meal. Every so often somebody has an accident on the job. We cover the damages--workman's comp package, the whole shot. We have an inspection made once a year. Last time, I went along.”
“How old's your boy, ahhh?”
“Joey, he just turned thirteen. Quite a boy. Won MVP for soccer this year. He's a good kid. Gets in his share of trouble, but a good-hearted kid like him, you won't find another--”
“Think he understands the importance of our finding Timmy?”
“Sure ... sure he does.”
Then how could he sleep? Stroud wondered.
The insurance man and the hard-edged archeologist continued on in silence toward Carroll's house aside for an occasional question raised by Ray Carroll.
“What do you think my boy can tell you?”
“Don't know till we ask.”
“He won't know anything about the bones, I promise you.”
“He may not.”
“He likely doesn't know anything about the other boy's disappearance either.”
“Maybe not.”
“But you want to wake him in the middle of the night and ask him anyway?”
/>
“I do. You can tell me no, of course, bar me entrance at the door, if you like, Mr. Carroll, but so long as you do not, I'm going to wake the boy and ask him some questions.”
“I see.”
Stroud caught sight of the grinning skull that dirtied the seat between them when they passed under the street lamp. Make no bones about it, Stroud thought but did not say.
They arrived at the Carroll house where all lights were out. Ray Carroll made a loud entry, purposefully rousing first his wife and then the children. He had several kids, two younger than the boy Stroud wished to question. Mrs. Carroll had to be restrained by her husband. She didn't want her son “interrogated” in the middle of the night. When Carroll tried to explain to her who Stroud was, the fact he was a former cop upset her even more.
“Darling,” Carroll pleaded, “Abe's just trying to get at the truth.”
“Joey wouldn't lie to me.”
“No, I know that, but this isn't like cutting school.”
“If your child were missing, Mrs. Carroll, you'd want everyone to cooperate,” said Stroud firmly.
“You're that stranger that took hold of the Stroud place, aren't you?” she asked with a suspicious index finger pointed at him.
“I am the grandson, yes.”
She nodded, her stare summing him up. He was from Chicago, therefore he was a mobster in hiding, more likely related to Al Capone or Bugs Moran than to old Mr. Stroud. And even if he was who he said he was, old Mr. Stroud himself had been an eccentric oddball.
“It could save a life,” Stroud said.
Stroud was finally allowed a few minutes, but not alone with the boy. The mother and father stood nearby, staring pointedly at their son.
“Yeah,” he said sleepily, rubbing his eyes, “we were all of us playin' when we found the bones.”
“Now, listen, Joe,” said Abe Stroud, “those bones--did you kids dig them up?”
“We didn't ... sir, not all of us ... and not at first.”
Stroud studied the child's expression as he spoke and he believed the boy was telling the truth as best he might under the circumstances. “Joe, how did you boys first discover the bones?”
Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) Page 3
