I froze in the chair, conscious of the fact that I'd never heard them coming and that now was not the time to jump up and run for the front door. They came over to my rocker and sat down about three feet away. Their coats glistened, as did their teeth. They didn't so much menace me as just make it clear that I should stay seated and not reach for anything, say, like my SIG, which was hanging on my field belt over on the railing. They were alert but not poised to attack. Yet. That's the big difference between a Dobie and a shepherd: German shepherds are typically friendly animals who can and will defend if their human charge is threatened. They're bred for defense. A Doberman was bred for offense. A shepherd can be taught to attack on command, but they don't take to it like a Doberman does. I was really interested in who might be nearby with the authority to issue that command. Then I heard the front door of the house squeak open behind me and found out.
"Don't turn around, Lieutenant," a man said. The voice sounded like my flashbang caller.
"Wouldn't dream of it," I said. "Not with these two lovelies in my face."
"They're not in your face," he said. "You wouldn't be talking if they were. As long as you sit still, nothing will happen."
"Got it," I said. "So what's the deal here, mystery man? Why are you and me at war?"
I heard another rocker being dragged over to a position right behind me, and then the sounds of someone sitting down. He was close enough that I could have kicked myself over backward and probably landed right in his lap. The Dobermans read my mind and inched closer, peering intently into my face. They were both wearing red collars with what looked like ball bearings embedded in the fabric. I could see tiny clips where a muzzle could be attached to the collars. I heard the sounds of a cigarette being lit up.
"You don't know me," he said finally, exhaling his first drag. "I'm not James Marlor, by the way."
Now I knew why he'd broken into our offices. The thirty-aught round had been a distraction. He'd been there to place an audio bug or three, and he'd obviously listened to our entire conversation.
"Okay," I said, "and you're not Billie Ray Breen."
"That's right," he said. "Now, I want you to turn your head to the left as far as you can. Not your shoulders or your torso-just your head. Slowly, please."
He had something of a southern accent, but it sounded educated, not the sometimes nasal twang of the Piedmont. I complied, mindful of the sudden tension in the dogs' bodies as I moved. I kept my arms down on the chair's arms, my hands gripping the old wood harder than was probably necessary. I turned my head as far around as I could, and then he leaned forward in his chair so I could see his face.
I almost jumped. There was no face.
Instead there was an oval sheet of what looked like thin white rubber, stretching right up over his head. He looked like what happens when the Mafia ties a guy up and then puts a dry-cleaning bag loosely over his head, tapes it tight around his neck, and lets him slowly suffocate. The facial features were vague protuberances, but where I expected eyeholes there weren't any. The material simply thinned down to the consistency of semitransparent cling wrap. I could just barely see pupils behind the fabric. The material made his eyes look like they were equipped with nictitating membranes, like the eyelids on an alligator. The eyes were strangely immobile, looking past me with perfect parallax. I couldn't see how he'd be able to breathe or talk through that second skin, but then he moved his face out of my line of sight and told me to turn back around. The mask reminded me of one of those Roman marble death masks.
"How do you breathe with that thing on?" I asked.
"It's even harder to talk," he said. "Now, sit still. I'm going to put something over your head and around your neck. It won't hurt you." Then he spoke a sharp command in what sounded like Japanese, of all things, and both dogs stood up and leaned in my direction.
"Close your eyes," he said. I did.
What felt like a steel noose dropped down over my head and face and settled on my collarbones. I didn't care what he said-it felt like a garrote, but with those two Dobes hoping and praying that I'd so much as twitch, I remained still. I heard a latch click, and then I felt the full weight of the device. It apparently had a chain attached, because he tugged on it and pulled my head backward a few inches. It was a collar, not a wire. I was leashed.
"Here's the deal," he said.
"Finally," I said, still trying to keep my cool.
"You are responsible for the death of my wife. Responsible but, so far, never accountable. I'm going to rectify that problem."
My mind was racing, trying to figure out what I was going to do next, and then searching my memory for any case in which I'd done something fatal to a woman. With the exception of one woman up in the mountains, I came up blank, and this guy didn't sound mountain to me.
"Don't remember?" he asked.
"No," I said. "Sure you got the right guy?"
"Very," he said.
I shook my head slowly. It was hard to do with that collar on, and the Dobes were not pleased when I moved. One growled, and the other flashed its teeth, probably on signal from my captor. "Was this a cops and robbers deal?" I said.
"It'll come to you. As will I. What happened to her is going to happen to you, in a manner of speaking."
"I'm still confused," I said. "If I wanted revenge for something like that, some guy kills my wife, and assuming I couldn't hand the case over to the cops, I'd go find him and just do it."
"Would you?" he asked, tugging on the chain again just a little. "Just 'do it'? Or would you play it out a little, make your target suffer, experience some of the terror that she did? Make him go to bed at night wondering, when was it coming, how was it coming?"
I didn't answer. It was weird enough to be having this conversation in broad daylight, with a masked man holding me by the neck with a chain and two killer Dobes poised to share an eyeball appetizer. When I thought about it, though-well, yes, I just might drag something like that out.
"That's what I thought," he said as if he'd read my mind this time. "Either way, I don't care. I'm coming for you. We can have this little contest out here in the country, or downtown, or in Summerfield, or wherever. If you involve other people, they will share your risk. Make sure they know that."
"When did all this happen?" I asked. "I mean, I'm drawing a real blank here."
He ignored my question. "What do you think of my associates?" he asked.
"They do look competent."
"You have no idea. That's what's taken me so long to come for you. I needed something to balance out your shepherds."
My shepherds might be in big trouble if they had to go up against these two, I thought. "So what's the timeline? When do we start?"
"Sometime soon," he said.
"In other words…"
"In other words, you'll know it when you see it coming. If you see it coming. Remember, if you run, you'll just be putting off the inevitable."
He stood up behind me and dropped his end of the chain on the floor. There was a lot more chain than I'd realized.
"Stay right there," he said. "We're leaving. Me first, then my friends there. If you reach for that gun, they'll take a hand, so to speak."
"You walking or driving?" I asked, still trying for a little cool.
He laughed. "I'm going to vanish into thin air, smart-ass. The next time you see me, that's where I'll be coming from. Where we'll be coming from."
I heard him walk back toward the front door of the house, open it, go inside, and close it behind him. The Dobes did not move a muscle, and neither did I. He'd obviously given them another hand signal, which meant he knew what he was doing as a dog handler. Not good.
We sat that way for about two minutes, with me thinking furiously about what had just happened, and the Dobes still thinking about lunch. Then their cropped ears quivered and they both turned and ran down off the front porch and around the side of the house, probably in response to a dog whistle. I sat there, collecting my wits for a moment. I fin
gered the collar. It felt like hammered iron, a heavy metal but not smooth like steel. There was a latch at the back where the chain joined, and it was set tight enough so that I could not rotate it around my neck. I gathered up the chain and found out it was six feet long.
I wanted to get my gun and go into the house, but he'd probably just gone straight through and out into the back area, called for his dogs, and walked away. He had assumed I wouldn't try to chase him, certainly not with a dog collar on. He had assumed correctly.
So the game had begun. There was no point in my trying to run, unless I wanted to go overseas and disappear in some big city, like Rome. He'd already demonstrated enough in the way of sophisticated surveillance for me to know that running would simply delay the inevitable, just as he'd said.
I looked around the plantation, taking in the dormant crop fields, the budding woods, a few zillion bugs, birds, and squirrels starting up the new year out on the front lawns. What the hell, I thought. This place was as good as any. Now all I had to do was prepare myself. There was still a chance he had the wrong man, but as I got up and started back to the cottage, chain in hand, I had this bad feeling that he didn't.
Cubby was on a car mechanic's creeper, working under a tractor. He saw me come into his workshop, but since he was looking into the sun, he didn't see the collar right away.
"Hey, there, Lieutenant," he called. "Devil's been askin', where them brave dogs of yours?'
"Reflecting on their latest lessons learned," I said. "Don't ever let that cat wander out into the open, though."
"Oh, that cat? He'll ride one of 'em with his front legs and hook the snot out of the other with the back ones." Then he finally saw the collar, and his eyes widened. "Whoa!" he exclaimed. "Where did you get that damned thing?"
I was about to explain when the door at the other end of the shop opened and Valeria Lee stepped through. She had walked down the trellised brick rose walk from the big house and come in through the barn complex. She stared at the collar as she walked up to me.
"If that's supposed to be a joke, Mr. Richter, it's in exceedingly bad taste."
"Couldn't agree more, Ms. Valeria," I said. "It's certainly not my idea of a joke. In fact, I can't see exactly what it is."
She looked at me for a second and then understood. "Oh," she said. "Forgive me. It's a slave collar, of course. For runaway slaves. The pursuers would chain a group of them together to prevent further escapes."
That explained the hank of rusty chain hanging down my back. "I came to see if Cubby here could get this thing off."
Cubby had by now climbed out from under the tractor. He was clearly embarrassed by all this talk of runaway slaves but very much interested in the collar, especially the latch on the back. "Yass'm," he said to Ms. Valeria. "I do believe I can fix this," he said. "Hold on a minute."
I saw a cutting torch rig in one corner and was about to protest, but instead he left the shop and headed down between the outbuildings toward what looked like an old log cabin. Valeria stepped closer to examine the collar, and once again I detected the scent of lilacs and perhaps something more subtle in the way of perfume. She stood right in front of me, and her complexion was flawless, as was her makeup. The major might be in his sixties, but she was early forties, tops. I bent my neck so that she could look at the latch, and this had me staring down her bodice. She was amply endowed, and I was suddenly aware of her. I think she detected that sudden awareness, as mature women always do, and shifted herself slightly to my left side.
"Where did Cubby go?" I asked as her fingers lingered on my neck near the sharp edges of the collar latch.
"To the collection," she replied, then let go of the collar and stepped back. She had dark brown eyes and a long straight nose, and her lips were parted just ever so slightly. She was wearing another one of those period dresses that draped down to the floor, and I would have sworn I heard the creak of whalebone stays when she moved. "Cubby keeps a collection of relics he has discovered on the plantation over time. I believe he has gone to find a key."
Now that was interesting. A black man who had not only recognized a slave collar but who also thought he knew where a key might be. "This is somewhat embarrassing," I said.
"I should think so," she said with just the barest hint of a smile. She held her hands together in front of her, and I noticed how square her shoulders were. "It's a good thing you did not encounter the major wearing that device."
I nodded and hurt my jaw. "He calls me the overseer," I said. "This would have confused him even, um, well, I mean…"
She gave me a droll look. "Even more than he already is?"
I let out a deep breath. "It is pretty surreal when he appears out of the woods in that getup and goes on about Sherman and the inbound Yankee hordes."
"Surreal," she said. "What a charming way to put it."
I think she was going to say something further, but Cubby came back into the shop bearing a large, rusty iron key. "Yass'm, I believe this'll do it," he announced. He wasn't bowing and scraping, but he was definitely laying on some Uncle Tom.
The key was a cylindrical affair with what looked like a corkscrew on the end. He stood behind me, put it to the latch, and rotated the cylinder a couple of times until the collar suddenly dropped away and hit the floor with a surprisingly loud clang. Cubby picked it up and handed it to Valeria, who turned it over in her hands with visible distaste. The thing looked handmade, as did the chain.
I rubbed my neck and looked at Cubby, who was studiously looking at the ground. I thanked him and asked if he wanted the collar for his collection.
"Got three just like it," he said. "I'll hang it out there, though, you don't want it."
"I definitely don't want it."
Valeria handed it back to Cubby and turned to me. "I assume you will want to deal harshly with the individual who put that hateful thing on your neck, Mr. Richter?" she asked.
"Harshly being the operative word, Ms. Valeria."
"I should think so," she said. "Mr. Richter, will you be so kind as to join us for tea this evening? At five, if that's convenient?"
"Yes, I can do that," I said, looking at my watch. First I needed to make some calls.
"Thank you," she said. She turned away in a swish of skirts and headed back up the walk to the big house.
"Yass'm?" I said to Cubby once she'd gone.
He sighed. "Got's to get in character when the main players come down to the barn," he said, tugging an imaginary forelock. "It's a job, Lieutenant."
"Thanks for getting that damned iron collar off me."
Cubby hefted the black metal object. "This thing here?" he said. "This isn't a real one. It's a new one."
"A fake, you mean?"
"Well, yes and no. It's handmade, and the smith knows his business. Cast iron, hammered true. The chain, handmade, too. The iron's too light, though. This here's modern metal." He handed it back to me.
"And you know this how?"
He smiled. "I'm a fair hand with a forge," he said. "Got to be, working here. Who you messin' with over there on that place?"
"A ghost," I said. "A bad one, too. Wears a white plastic mask and has dead eyes. I think I will keep this, after all. Maybe I can put it back on him one day."
"Somebody tryin' t' tell you somethin'."
"Perhaps," I said. "Or just a passing ghost, bored with life in the country."
"Ghosts," he said. "On the other hand, what's one more, I guess."
I started to leave and then turned around. "Yass'm?"
"Go on now," he said. "Don't make me sic Devil on you."
"This is a no-brainer," Horace said. "Just get your ass out of there. Learn Spanish, then go to Argentina. There's lots of Germans down there. They'll love the dogs."
I had the gang of three on a speakerphone downtown at H amp;S. I'd told them what had happened. None of them could make a connection with my killing someone's wife.
"Horace is right," Pardee said. "This guy's been watching and planni
ng for some time. You go one on one with him, he'll take you down, especially out there in the bushes of Rockwell County."
"He did pretty well in Summerfield, too," I said. "But I see your point."
"Exactly," Horace said, "and he's a killer. I'll bet he's the guy who took out Billie Ray. Has to be, which means he's got it in him."
"So what was all that shooting through the windows shit? And why a barrio bang stick instead of doing it himself?"
"Who knows with these psychos?" Pardee said. "The point is, he's a sick bastard, and you need to get out of his line of fire."
"Well, supposedly whatever's going down is about to start. I'm not disposed to run, just yet. I just got here, remember?"
"Okay, boss," he replied, "but shouldn't some of us be out there? You bring a crowd, it may slow him down some. Complicate his planning."
"He mentioned that," I said. "Bring help, he said, and they'll get to play."
"Well, shit," Tony piped up. "You're not the only one bored with all this paperwork. Be fun to shoot somebody again."
"You brief the Rockwell County sheriff yet?" Horace asked.
"Very next call," I said. "Although he'll probably invite my young ass to get out of Dodge, too, especially if the Lee ladies weigh in and want me gone. I guess I wouldn't blame 'em."
"You need to listen to all those folks telling you to boogie," Horace said. "That's the best near-term option. Give us time to find out what he's mad about, regroup, and go chase his ass."
"I'll think about it," I said. "Lemme call the sheriff here, see what he says, and then I'll get back to you. First, though, I have to go to tea up at the big house with my Auntie Bellums."
"Tea?"
"Personal invitation. The hell of it is, I've got nothing to wear."
"Simplify your life," Tony said. "Go nekkid."
Sheriff Walker echoed the consensus from downtown. He still sounded friendly, but naturally he was concerned with the impact my stalker problem might have on his little county kingdom.
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