The Vampire Files Anthology

by P. N. Elrod

  “Yeah,” I said, not wanting him to finish.

  “I can assume that this person came to be buried at the same time as Maureen. Whether it was by misadventure or was intentional is yet unknown.”

  “Laura had to do with this one too?”

  “I don’t think so. She did not mention anything the night I questioned her.”

  I’d questioned her, too, thoroughly. She’d only spoken of killing two people, not three. “Hand me that light.”

  He passed it over, and I gave the grisly thing a closer look. Part of an argyle sock remained, the rest had torn off. I also used my thumb and forefinger to turn it over, checking the sole and heel.

  “He didn’t buy this at Macy’s. Handmade. Might be able to track down who if there’s a maker’s mark inside.” I dropped the shoe back in the tool box and shut the lid. “But I’m not looking for it.”

  “I do not fault you for that, but—”

  “But nothing. You give this to the cops.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “You wanted my advice about this?”

  “Yes. I need to decide what to do next.”

  “You call the cops.”

  “But they will want to know why I was digging. Such labor is not something a gentleman does. They’ll hardly be satisfied that I was planning to build a guest house and doing the work myself.”

  “Then give them the evil-eye whammy and make them accept it.”

  “The what?”

  “Hypnotize ’em.”

  “It won’t last and you know it. There will be an investigation, gossip, and heaven knows what else. They could connect it to Maureen’s funeral and take it straight back to Emily and Laura—I want to live here. I can’t do that in peace if a pack of sensation-seekers start tramping over the property poking into my business. What if one of them breaks into my room during the day and finds me?”

  I waved the flashlight beam toward the hole. “The rest of him is still down there?”

  “He is.”

  “Then you put his foot back and bury him again.”

  He looked ready to spit with outrage. “An unmarked, unsanctified grave? That’s indecent!”

  “Then call the cops. You can whammy them into not talking to the press.”

  “No. I won’t risk it.”

  “Sounds like you didn’t need my advice after all.”

  Barrett snarled something while I looked down into the pit. I sniffed, catching the stink again. There was more down there, all right. “What?”

  “I said, you could help me find out who this poor devil is and how he came to be here.”

  Which was exactly what I did not want to do. “You’re kidding.”

  “You’ve more experience at this sort of thing than I.”

  He had me there. “Have you told Escott?”

  “This is not a subject one should mention in a telegram, and I don’t want to risk a letter. Once a tale is in writing, all sorts of mischief can ensue. Telephoning is out of the question; the long-distance operator might hear something she shouldn’t.”

  Too right. “Why didn’t you say something sooner about this?”

  “It would have been inappropriate. Seeing to Maureen was more important.”

  An old-fashioned guy with old-fashioned manners. They must have their uses.

  “Will you help me, Mr. Fleming? Please?”

  I wanted to say no, but knew Maureen wouldn’t have liked it. Besides, he’d said the magic word. “Okay, but only up to a point.”

  “What point?”

  “I’ll let you know when I reach it.”

  * * * * * * *

  * * * * * * *

  I’d been careful to not ask about or to imagine how Barrett had taken Maureen from that miserable hole. Unfortunately I found out firsthand as we spent the next few hours digging out the rest of body belonging to that detached foot.

  I’ll skip the details.

  We put the muddy, decomposed remains on the tarp in six pieces: legs (one with the foot still attached), trunk, arms, head, all of which were in gruesome condition and stinking despite the cold. Barrett and I had to inhale to talk, so we didn’t say much. I was positive I’d never get the stench out of my nostrils.

  Back when I was a reporter I’d seen my share of bodies, but had never been part of the actual recovery. A body this far gone didn’t get a picture in the paper, not the rag I’d worked for, anyway. I’d never covered a story about one this bad.

  Cops and reporters tend to ask the same questions, the first having to do with identity: who was this guy?

  I had on borrowed work clothes and gloves, which didn’t make going through the pockets an easy task. I found loose change and nothing else. His wallet and the other things a man usually carries were gone.

  He had no coat; we’d not found a hat or any other belongings. His shirt and summer weight trousers looked to be as expensive as his handmade shoes, but the labels had been cut away, which was significant. Barrett wanted to know why.

  Backing well upwind from the corpse I breathed in cleaner air to talk. God, I could taste the stink. I hawked and spat. It didn’t help.

  “Labels are a trail straight to a tailor, who might be able to identify the man,” I said.

  “How?”

  “The work some of those guys do is as individual as signing their name, but it would take a discouraging amount of legwork to track down which one just by this one pair of pants.”

  “There must be hundreds.”

  “More. It depends how exclusive the tailor is. The really good ones keep detailed records. If some bird went to the trouble of cutting off labels then chances are good it would have led to this guy’s name.”

  “What about the shoes?”

  I lifted a palm toward the deceased. “It’s your turn. Go ahead.”

  He wasn’t pleased, but to give him credit, he went back to the leg that still had an attached foot, and somehow removed the shoe.

  “Marnucci and Sons,” he read from the inside. “Manhattan.”

  I’d heard of them. “Marnucci’s is the cream of the footwear crop. Not a lot of people can afford that kind of stuff. You hear of any rich guys around here going missing seven years ago?”

  “No. That would have been in the papers.”

  “You never know, maybe a family wants to keep it quiet that someone knocked off Uncle Moneybags and put out that he took a trip. Instead he winds up here. We might learn something if Marnucci keeps records going back that far. Be glad the killer overlooked the shoes.”

  “I am inclined to think this fellow met with foul play, but what reason have you for that conclusion?”

  “Cleaned out pockets, no labels, broken ribs—”

  “That might have been caused by the weight of the earth on top of the body,” he pointed out.

  “I don’t think that would account for the broken arm and leg bones.” Those had been only held together by the remaining flesh. “They’re old breaks, not new ones caused from our digging. We’ve been too careful.”

  “Hm.”

  “Check the position of the breaks; they’re close to the joints. Bones are thicker there. It’s more likely for a bone to snap here”—I pointed to the middle part of my lower arm—“than here.” I indicated a spot just below my elbow. “I’m thinking someone beat the hell out of this guy before they killed him.”

  “Or he suffered a fall.”

  “Yeah, onto a bullet. There’s two holes in the head.” Barrett had dug it out, but I’d carried it up to the tarp. “The one in his temple is this big, and the one in the back you don’t want to know about. Entry and exit wounds were made by a slug of no small caliber.”

  “Good God.”

  “Someone aimed the gun here—” I put a finger an inch above my right eyebrow, pointing down toward the back of my head.

  “He might have shot himself.”

  “If he did, then he aimed it funny. A suicide is more likely to put the gun muzzle on the side at a ri
ght angle, pointing upward like this. If the bullet comes out it would be through the opposite temple or the top of his head. I’m not saying that he couldn’t have aimed it funny because of the broken arms, but a killer standing over him makes more sense.”

  “You are familiar with this sort of thing.”

  I turned away and spat again so he couldn’t see my face. My familiarity with how a suicide puts a bullet through his skull was not something of which I was proud.

  “We can look for this this cobbler and hope he can remember something helpful,” said Barrett. “Rather poor odds, I should think.”

  “It leads to Manhattan, but there’s a better trail to follow.”

  “Which would be?”

  I hooked a thumb at the pit. “Who did the original tearing down and carting away seven years ago?”

  “The same ones I rented the equipment from: Stannard Construction.”

  “Who had access to this area then?”

  “The household and whoever worked for Stannard. No one else was allowed through the gate. Mr. Mayfair diligently kept out the curious.”

  “Who in the household would have a gun and a violent grudge against a man in those kind of shoes?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “So we check the construction company and find out a thing or three about what they do under the table.”

  “They’ve been around for decades. If there was any spot on their reputation the whole town would know.”

  “Doesn’t have to be the company, just one person working for it. Say he has a body to get rid of, what better place than a site like this? Miss Francher’s well-known as a recluse so there’s not much risk that anyone will ever dig the wreckage up once it’s buried. He could have brought in our friend over there, dropped him in when no one was looking, and bulldozed.”

  “My God . . . ”

  “What?”

  “I wonder if Laura might have seen something of it. She could have gotten the idea to put Maureen . . . ”

  I put a hand up. “Knock it off. There’s no knowing, and it wouldn’t help anyway.”

  It took him a moment to get his mind back to current concerns. “Very well. We’ll speculate that some man associated with Stannard Construction did as you said. If that’s so, then why did they rent this equipment knowing I’d be doing the very thing they did not want?”

  “The one who dumped the body could be long gone. Who did you talk to?”

  “Mr. Stannard dealt with me personally now as he did seven years ago.”

  “I could ask if he acted suspicious, but—”

  “He was perfectly normal. Curious, of course, about my wanting to do the work myself this time.”

  “Which you whammied out of him?”

  “What a ridiculous word. I influenced him to mind his own business.”

  “And by doing that. . .”

  “Yes, I see. Even if he had the strongest objections to an excavation I’d have caused him to forget about them by default. Only I cannot see the fellow involving himself in such a illicit matter.”

  “You know anyone else in his company?”

  “No, why should I?”

  “Then we change that. Let’s visit Stannard, you do your evil eye influence on him, and get some answers.”

  “It’s far too late and much too early,” he said, looking up at the stars. “We’ve an hour and a quarter before dawn. I suggest we arrange lodgings for our poor friend there and get cleaned up. First thing in the evening tomorrow we will seek out Mr. Stannard.”

  I checked my watch, and damned if he wasn’t on the nose about the time. “Lodgings? What have you got in mind, more snow?”

  “There’s plenty about. Pack it around him and pull the tarp over all. It’s going to be cold tomorrow.”

  It seemed better to not ask how he knew that. He either had some internal instinct about the weather or had read the forecast in a paper. I just wanted this night to end with me washing off the stink and burning my work clothes.

  We got tin buckets previously used for hauling dirt, grabbed hand shovels, and mined nearby snow drifts. It was cleaner, faster work than our previous clawing around in the pit. In a short while the remains were under a couple feet of dingy white insulation. Barrett folded the tarp over.

  “Can’t keep him there,” I said.

  “I know, but there’s no deciding what to do about him until we learn more.”

  We went back to the edge of the pit to see if we’d missed anything. It was a dangerous place, slippery, with shards of broken wood and nails sticking out. More than once I’d gotten caught on a nasty, mud-coated surprise, getting bruised or drawing blood. I’d taken to vanishing down there and re-forming up here to avoid the perils in between. With a grim amusement, Barrett had done the same.

  “I hope that’s enough covering for the poor man,” he said. “It would be dreadful if some animal got—”

  * * * * * * *

  * * * * * * *

  I blinked, or thought I blinked. My world was black, painfully cold, and something hideously heavy pressed my body from every direction, holding me fast. I was unable to move. Bolts of agony shot through me when I tried. A vivid memory of being buried in cement flashed through my sluggish brain, and the blackness dissolved to a familiar, weightless gray as I vanished.

  Struggling to full waking, I felt around, encountering dense matter in every direction except for a collapsing cavity previously occupied by my once solid body. I didn’t know which way was up, then worked out the direction of the collapse and pushed toward it.

  There’s a reason why I slip through cracks under doors rather than forcing through wood or walls: it’s hard work and unpleasant, the discomfort not confined to one point, but all over, even in places I don’t normally think about. Imagine dragging sandpaper through your liver if you want an idea of how it feels.

  I moved too quick for claustrophobia to set in and oozed free, suddenly floating instead of fighting. The push of wind carried me a short distance before I resisted and made myself solid. I was spitting mad and didn’t care who saw it.

  Rocking on unsteady feet, I glared around for an explanation and found the landscape had changed. Drastically.

  The pit was gone, along with the equipment that dug it.

  The hole was filled in, not as smoothly as before, but the job was done. Gouges in the ground led toward the driveway, indicating heavy haulers had done their job and taken away the earthmovers. The tarp and its ghastly contents were gone.

  Barrett’s white Champion was also missing, as was Barrett.

  That son of a bitch!

  What the hell was his game? How did he think he could get away with this?

  A blast of freezing air cut my bare belly. That’s when I noticed my borrowed working clothes were full of holes, literally shot to rags and soaked with my blood. I goggled at the incongruity. I could think of only one thing that produced this kind of damage.

  I said what the hell again, several times, and tried to work out what had happened and why I’d missed it.

  “Damnation!” roared Jonathan Barrett, Esquire, who now stood a dozen yards away on the other side of what had been the pit. He was coated head to toe with dirt, mud, and blood, his working clothes in a similar ragged state. Apparently he’d been buried, too, and had escaped the same way. I quickly discarded the unfair conclusion I’d jumped to about him being behind things.

  “Damnation! Who would dare?” he demanded of no one in particular, as he’d not yet seen me. He staggered drunkenly a few feet, then dropped as his legs gave out.

  My own pins were none too steady. Weak and hungry, I took my time ambling over.

  Barrett stayed put. He was pissed as hell and visibly trembling. No one gets that mad without a profound fear to inspire it.

  “Fleming?” He suddenly noticed me. “What the devil happened?”

  I put a hand out to help him up. His grasp was icy and feeble. “Food first. Can you walk?”

  He could
and did, but leaned on me. It took a long time, or so it seemed, to reach the stables, then it was every man for himself. No fussing with teapots, cups, and saucers, we each picked a horse, bit into a vein, and fed.

  The animals were long used to this kind of thing and stood calmly for it. Just as well, I didn’t have the strength for a fight.