Nightwalkers cr-4

by P. T. Deutermann

  At that moment there was some frantic thrashing in the darkness upstream from our tree trunk, and then two deer came bounding awkwardly out of the darkness, headed downstream. Frick held. Kitty, unfortunately, did not. She bounded off the tree trunk and went after the deer before I could grab her. Worse, she barked. The next thing I heard was the wasp noise of bullets in the air punctuated by repeated bangs from a gun somewhere in front of me. I went flat against the tree trunk, swung the shotgun out, looked for and caught a dim red flash in the trees ahead, and fired three times at a point just above the flash. I thought I heard a muffled cry, and then I definitely heard a loud splash.

  I slid down off the tree trunk, followed by Frick, who'd been startled by the shotgun blast and was pressing hard against my leg. I shoved some more rounds into the shotgun and began to scan the surface of the river. If I'd hit him and he'd gone into the main river channel and not the creek, he'd be coming by almost immediately. Every time I looked directly at the water, all I could see was the bloom of the shotgun blasts. If I looked sideways, I could just make out the surface. Kitty and the deer were long gone, which was a separate problem because a deer can run an inexperienced dog to death.

  There. Something.

  No. My eyes were playing tricks.

  I looked away, then back. Something. Metal. Shiny metal.

  A boat. Thirty feet away, at most.

  I lifted the shotgun and fired into the boat. It was close enough that I could hear the loads shredding metal sides. When my vision recovered, the boat had disappeared. Then I saw blue strobe lights approaching as two cruisers arrived at the brickworks behind me in search of the firefight they'd heard from up on the ridge.

  I'd been tired when the previous evening had begun, and now, at 2:00 A.M., I was well and truly whupped. I'd tromped over to the brickworks to meet the deputies, who came out with guns drawn until they saw Frick. They'd given me a ride back to the cut through the ridge, where we'd met the sheriff coming down off the hill.

  Turned out they'd sent three roped climbers down the side of the gorge opposite where our ghost had dropped into the gloom. At the bottom was a tiny creek running through a space no more than one man wide. Uphill was a crack in the rock from which water was weeping, and downhill the gorge widened until the brook joined the larger creek on the western slope. No cave, no tunnels, no secret entrances. Flashlights had revealed fresh footprints leading down the hill, not into the mountain. A careful search of the top area near the rope anchor had produced two motion detectors, each with tiny transmitters. The rope had indeed been bait.

  While I debriefed the sheriff and his people on what I'd been doing down by the river, Kitty came bounding out of the woods with white deer tail hairs stuck to her muzzle. She seemed to be no worse for wear, and I was too tired to reprimand her for her egregious breach of discipline. The deputies took us back to the stone cottage. When I went inside I found out why there'd been a delay between when we'd heard the oar clank on the boat and when my stalker had shown up on the hill. There was another of those white-face pictures pinned to the couch, only this one had a note. Frack was watching me with his one good eye when I picked up the piece of paper. He'd been left in the cottage when I went out, which meant he'd let the guy in. That should mean something, I told myself, but my brain was too dulled by fatigue to bring it up.

  The note said simply, It's been fun.

  Fine with me, I thought. Then I went to bed. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered if tonight's gunfight had changed my stalker's schedule.

  The following morning I took my utility vehicle over to Glory's End to meet the sheriff. Once it was daylight, he had sent a full forensics team up into the crack in the ridge from where it opened on the lower creek. They confirmed that there were no hidden entrances or other signs of tunnels or ventilation shafts. Rock sides, sand bottom, a spring-fed brook leading down, and, of course, my stalker's roping gear. They took one footprint cast out of the creek sand that didn't seem to match with the SWAT guys' footgear, the stalker's climbing equipment, and the two motion detectors back to the lab for a workup.

  "You think you hit him?" the sheriff asked again.

  "I fired three shells, heard what sounded like a grunt, and then a big splash," I said.

  "So he could have just been real surprised and made a noise when he jumped into the water?"

  "That's possible, and what I saw of the boat as it went by was a peripheral image. I know I hit the boat."

  "So that should still be out there," he said.

  "That'll depend on the current, but yeah, if it was inshore, it should still be there."

  He raised some deputies on the radio, and we went down in his car to take a look. I left the shepherds up at the main house, not wanting any more deer chases. One of the deputies found the boat a hundred yards downstream from where I thought I'd been last night. He'd climbed a tree and looked down into the water, where he spotted the glint of metal. It took all four of us to grapnel the thing onto the riverbank. We confirmed that I had definitely hit it with the shotgun. There were seven holes along its starboard side and six more on the other where the shot had gone all the way through. There were no traces of blood or anything else in the boat, nor was there a boat license with my stalker's name and address, either. I felt relieved that we'd found some physical evidence from the night before to back up my story of a gunfight down here, but there was no way to tell if he'd been in the boat or had just lost it to the current.

  "Let's go check the bank upstream of that cross creek," the sheriff said, and we did. Either the river had come up during the night or no one had been running that way. We found nothing but the usual riverbank debris.

  "Well," said the sheriff, "we might get lucky and get a floater in a couple of days, but right now, besides the boat, this here looks like another dead end."

  We went back to the main house. At the sheriff's request I took some of his detectives through the house, pointing out the two escape routes and showing them the smokehouse and the springhouse exits. We walked the barn complex, where I showed them the abandoned well. I didn't see fit to tell them about my encounters with the major, as I didn't believe that had anything to do with my night stalker. We discussed the events in Summerfield and the pictures of the mask taped to my windows at the stone cottage. They speculated as to the meaning of the latest picture postcard, but I pointed out he'd said something like that before and we were all still playing fuck-fuck. Horace down in Triboro still hadn't come up with anything useful. We went back out to the front porch.

  "Well, damn," one of the detectives pronounced, as we tramped up the brick walk behind the house. "What do we have?"

  "One dead Guatemalan hit man, one dead biker skank, and one dead ex-con," I said. "Rifle rounds in my woodwork, a flashbang on my porch, scary faces taped to my windows out here, a climbing rope hanging on a cliff to nowhere, and now a love note hinting that the fun and games are over."

  "You want protection?" he asked.

  "I want to kill the sumbitch," I said. "With any luck I got a start on that last night."

  We kicked it around some more on the porch, and then I said I planned to go to town, get some lunch, go back to the cottage and get a nap, and then come over here tonight with guns and dogs and see what or who showed up.

  "We can assign some people here," the other detective said. "Give you a little backup."

  "You know," I replied, "I think at this juncture I'd just like to see if I can flush him out and get it done. No offense, but so far, as long as I've had help, he keeps putting off the showdown."

  "That may be no accident," he said. "You know, keep jerking your chain until you finally lunge-into something bad."

  "I've hunted humans before," I said and watched their expressions change. "Sometimes you simply have to go into the woods and stir shit up. He's out there, somewhere on these seven hundred acres. He's mobile, he's got sensory equipment, he's got weapons, and apparently he has a demanding motive. It's time."

>   They shrugged and said they'd report that back to the sheriff. They warned me he might have a different take on the matter, the biker woman's murder having taken place in his sandbox.

  "I'll take him alive if that's possible," I said.

  "Or he'll take you."

  "That's also possible."

  "Oh, by the way," the first detective said. "Sheriff said to tell you he saw a box, back where you were sleeping last night."

  I thanked him. Once they'd left, I walked back to the barns and began looking. I nearly missed it, because he'd put it up in the tractor seat where I'd waited the night before. It was a metal U.S. Army ammo box, olive drab, the size of a shoebox turned on its side, with all sorts of army serial numbers, marks, and mods stenciled on it. Inside were two concussion grenades, which were far more powerful than flashbangs.

  Set some traps, the sheriff had said. These would do nicely.

  Before setting out for Glory's End, I walked up to the barn area looking for Cubby. He wasn't around, which wasn't too surprising since it was the end of the working day. I eased around to the horse barn to see if the major's horses had been put up for the night and the tack room locked, which they were. As I was headed back toward the cottage, I spotted Patience Johnson apparently leaving for the day. I intercepted her and asked if Cubby was still here. She told me he hadn't come to work today because he was home sick with an ear infection that was driving him and everyone else crazy.

  "Old fool's gonna learn one day," she said. "Somethin' you need?"

  "I'd asked to speak to Ms. Valeria. He said he'd relay the request to you."

  "You asked Cubby?"

  "I did."

  "Didn't tell me nothin' about it. I'll speak to Ms. Valeria first thing in the morning if that's all right."

  "That'll be fine," I said. I went back to the cottage to gather up the dogs and my weapons. When I got into the cottage, my cell phone was ringing. It was Hiram Whatley Lee, Esquire.

  "Mr. Lee," I said. "Pleased to meet you, if only telephonically."

  "Mr. Richter," he said. "Hope I'm not intruding at this late hour."

  I sat down on the couch. "Not at all," I said. "How can I help you?"

  "I was calling to see if you really wanted a title search of the Glory's End property, and by that I mean all the way back to the original land grants."

  "I need a title search that will satisfy me that I'm not buying into a nest of liens and that the heirs of Mrs. Tarrant have a legal right to sell it. You know, that she left it to them in her will, and the will passed probate, and so on."

  "I see," he said. "I'm glad you mentioned wills, because therein lies a possible sticking point."

  My heart fell. "How's that?"

  "Well, nowadays, wills are recorded, if the people making them know enough to do so. In the distant past, that wasn't always the case. This means we have two collections of wills at the courthouse, the ones done by attorneys and duly recorded, and the others."

  "Others?"

  "Yes, like when an individual passes away and his heirs or family go through his files and then hand over deeds, mortgage paperwork, trusts, and other important-looking paperwork to an attorney. They get deposited but not necessarily recorded."

  "I would have thought that stuff like that wouldn't ever be orphaned, so to speak."

  "Nowadays, with most everything being recorded, it's rarely an issue, but I'm talking about the nineteenth century, and, of course, the effects of the war. Whole families were destroyed, sometimes thrown off their properties, and these documents don't resurface until years later when someone finally ventures into the attic."

  "Okay," I said. "I can see that."

  "It bears on your request because I can do a fairly simple title search of the recorded papers. That would reveal any lurking liens or judgments. Or I can do the full Monty, which would entail archaeology in the special records."

  "You know, counselor, the clerk warned me to be careful what I wished for in that regard. What do you think about that?"

  "I think he knows more than anyone else in this county what's been gathering dust for decades in that courthouse. He may have a point there, Mr. Richter. Plus, of course, it will be pretty expensive if I have to go into the special collections. Did he mention title insurance?"

  "Mr. Oatley did, and I haven't yet done the math to see if the premium for a two point five mil price tag is less or more than a title search."

  "That might be worth investigating, for two reasons. First, the money. Second, we don't know what might be in the special collection. There could be things in there, especially considering the history of that property, that could undo any chances you have of acquiring it, at least in the short term."

  "Sounds like you know more than you're letting on, Mr. Lee."

  "Not at all, sir," he said. "It's just that I do know a thing or two about the two families whose history is intertwined with that property, and not always in a pleasant manner."

  "I've heard a bit about that," I said. "Let's do this: Let's go back to the very end of the Civil War, 1865. The following decade brought the carpetbaggers, and I understand that's where a lot of title problems begin. How's that sound?"

  "I can certainly do that, and I'll start this week. I would request a three-thousand-dollar retainer to begin the work, if that's all right."

  "That's fine," I said. "How about calling me next week so I can get an idea of what you're finding?"

  He agreed to that and told me where his office was. I made a note to take a check by tomorrow. The clerk had said Mr. Lee worked slowly. Hopefully I'd have my stalker problem resolved before he got done.

  I got out the collection of aerial photos. I didn't want to just go over there and bang around in the weeds until something happened. I had to assume that his little love note meant that we were done playing games and from now on any collisions would be for real.

  He'd been messing around with a boat. That meant his base of operations might be across the river and not here. We now had the boat, which might also mean that he'd have to start using a vehicle. I focused on that ruined plantation house across the river. Behind it there was a two-lane road that paralleled the Dan. To the east and north was the regional airport complex. To the west that two-lane intersected a four-lane highway maybe eight, ten miles upstream, and the four-lane had a bridge.

  "Let's go hunting, dogs," I said.

  The ruined house was actually bigger than Glory's End, but ruined was the operative word. There was a five-acre park of trees and grass surrounding the house. The trees, all huge, spreading oaks, were doing fine. The grass was four feet high and choking on itself. The driveway was dirt, not gravel, and there was a chain across it about twenty feet onto the property. I'd parked the Suburban in the high grass, stepped over the chain, and walked the third of a mile into the grounds. The shepherds stuck to the driveway with their noses down, while I followed them slowly into the gathering darkness.

  The house had burned and essentially collapsed into itself. The facade was intact, as were two of the four big columns, but the remains of the roof were down in the underground floor. One chimney had kept one side of the house from falling in, but the other one stood all alone, the fireplaces for two floors gaping like empty wisdom tooth sockets in a long red jaw. I circled the house as quietly as I could. There was no way anyone could hide in the remains of the structure, because there was a large pile of burned debris, dirt, and weeds within the walls.

  Out back were the familiar outbuildings of the era, a smokehouse, a summer kitchen, both of which were tumbling down, a large, covered well, and a carriage house with four stable doors. It was still intact. There were signs that amorous teenagers had been coming back in here for some time. I saw Frick stop, then retrace her steps around to the front of the house. Then she came back, obviously following a scent trail, and this time she went to the carriage house. She stopped again nearest the right-hand door, and Kitty joined her.

  I crept up to the front of the buildi
ng. Up close it didn't look quite so substantial. The lintels were sagging, and three of the stable doors had been nailed to their frames a long time ago. Each door also had a separate chain and padlock stretched across it. The locks were antiques, and I suspected they were frozen with rust, but I wasn't ready to show a flashlight yet. I could hear cars coming and going down the two-lane out front, but I could no longer see their lights because of the high grass and all those oak trees out front.

  I walked around the carriage house to see what was out back. There was still some afterglow on the western horizon, and the moon was rising across the river, which was a good half mile behind and below the burned-out house. The back of the carriage house had windows, but they were so covered in dust and vines that I couldn't see into the building. Frick went back around to the front and hovered around that right-hand-most door.

  I examined the lock and chain and made a discovery: The hasp on the lock had been lifted out of its case and was resting right on top of the flat metal. More important, I could smell the familiar odor of WD-40. As quietly as I could, I twisted the hasp out of the way and took it off the two parts of chain, which I slipped down onto the dirt. I checked the hinges and found more WD-40, so I put my fingers into the crack and pulled gently. The door opened outward without a sound. I pulled it just far enough so that the shepherds could fit and then vectored Frick through the opening. I kept Kitty with me.

  Frick was back in thirty seconds and didn't seem alarmed by anything, so I went in and pulled the door shut. Then I opened it again and grabbed that padlock before pulling the door shut again. I'd had enough of being trapped in confined places.

  The carriage house was empty inside except for what I'd hoped to find there: an old pickup truck parked in the right-hand bay, its nose pointed toward the door. It was a full-sized Ford F-150, and the back had a low-rise camper shell in the bed. The sliding windows in the camper section were open and covered with fine screen against insects. I checked the plate. It was a Wilmington license with a current sticker. I wrote down the plate numbers. There was a pile of trash in the corner indicating someone had been camping out back here, and I was pretty sure I knew who it was: my dedicated stalker, who was probably across the river right now, laying out the next ambush.