Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers (37 page)

"Listen to me," I said. "You and your mother are accessories to murder. That means you will both get the same sentence he does for shooting that woman."

"What woman?"

"The one who provided the big black dogs," I said. "He shot her in the back of the head when the dogs fucked up."

"That's not true!" she shouted. "He sent her away, her and her dogs. She was useless!"

I went down on one knee so that I was right in front of her. "He sent her away, all right, but with a nine-millimeter pistol. She had a surprised expression on her face and a bullet pushing the skin out on the side of her head. He turned the dogs loose, and we captured them over by the brickyard. He's a homicide fugitive, Valeria, and if you've been harboring him, guess what? Now: Where. Is. He?"

"Not true," she muttered, wiping the dirt out of her hair. "None of it. You're lying."

"Why should I?" I asked.

She looked at me, blinked, but couldn't find an answer. At that moment I saw movement up on the path. Someone was coming. I hoisted Valeria off the ground just as Hester came to a stop halfway down the path, screamed out an unintelligible epithet, and then fired off that damned coach gun in our general direction.

She was at least a hundred feet away and the coach gun was probably more than a hundred years old, as probably was its ammunition,
which is what saved both of us. It didn't entirely save Valeria. I actually felt some of the pellets hit her, and she cried out and then slumped in my arms. Something tugged at my sleeve, and then I felt the sting along my upper right arm. The back of Valeria's head was suddenly all wet, and she was moaning.

"Where is he?" I asked her again.

"Who?" she asked in a faint voice. She was trying to stand up, but it wasn't happening.

"Callendar."

"Oh, him," she said. "He's in the bridge." Then her eyes rolled back as she fainted.

Up on the walk I heard the unmistakable sound of the coach gun's action being closed. She'd reloaded.

"Hester, you damned fool," I yelled. "You've shot Valeria. Put that goddamned thing down!"

"You lie, you godforsaken Yankee bastard!"

"Come see for yourself, Hester. Come see her body. Come see what you did!"

"Body?" Her voice changed all of a sudden, transitioning from banshee to mother. "Body?"

I heard the shotgun drop to the ground, and then she was there, an old lady now, immediately starting up with the hysterical wailing and crying. I actually didn't think Valeria was dead or, for that matter, even that seriously injured, given the range, but she'd been pincushioned pretty good and there was a lot of bleeding. As I backed away from the suddenly anguished mother, I heard a horse go blasting out of the barnyard paddock behind me. I whirled around and caught just a single glance, but the hat was unmistakable: The major was away.

Holy shit
, I thought. Had Valeria been just a decoy?

An hour later the grounds of Laurel Grove returned to some semblance of normalcy. The EMS crew had packaged Valeria up and
transported her to the hospital. One of the techs confirmed that she had mostly flesh wounds, with some of the pellets still visible right under her skin. Lots of pellets, though, so there'd definitely be some surgery and then some really good drugs required. I'd alerted the sheriff, and he now had Hester up in the big house for a combination of consolation and some embarrassing questions. My guys had come running when I'd fired the first shots and then had wisely taken cover halfway across the lawn once Hester opened up with that ten-gauge antique. The shepherds were cowering safely back under the apple tree, probably wondering why any of us ever left it. I realized I had yet another training issue: guns and their noise.

With the major on the loose, there'd be no chance of catching up with Callendar, if that's what he was doing. We pretty much had to assume now that they were all in on it. When we did catch this little shit, some prominent people were going to be in the dock with him. The problem now, of course, was catching him. At this juncture he had every motive to hit the bricks and get out of the county.

He's in the bridge
. Not at. Not by. Not on, but in? Not possible: There was no bridge.

"So what now, boss?" Tony asked. He was holding Hester's coach gun, which I reminded him was still loaded--and cocked. He gingerly let the hammers down, broke the action, and pulled out two ancient shells.

At the moment, I was fresh out of answers. I was hoping the sheriff could convince Hester to let him search the house, just in case our boy had gone to ground there and never left. If Valeria had been a decoy, then the major could be doing the same thing: riding around the countryside at night to make us think he was in contact with Callendar. Or, having heard gunfire, he could be chasing the ghosts of the Recent Unpleasantness across the empty fields of his aging brain.

Then we heard an interesting noise. It came from across the fields
of Glory's End and the Dan River, and it carried well on the night air: the satisfying sound of a concussion grenade going off with a truly authoritative boom.

Well now
, I thought.
Who set that off
?

A minute later we heard gunfire, the rapid-fire pop-pop-pop of an untrained shooter, interspersed with the steadier booming of a larger caliber gun being deliberately aimed and fired. There was a pause of about thirty seconds, and then it started up again. Finally there were four more shots from the big gun and then a growing silence from across the dark fields. It was amazing how sound carried out here in the peaceful countryside.

"Sounds like the OK Corral going down over there," Pardee said. The shepherds had heard the distant gunfire and decided to rejoin us.

Then the sheriff came hustling out of the house and onto the drive with his cell phone jammed to one ear. I thought I could hear radio traffic crackling from inside his cruiser, so we walked across the lawn to see what was up.

"Okay, I'll wait here," the sheriff said, then snapped the phone shut and turned to us. "Goddamn Hildy!"

"What happened?"

"Hildy is what happened," he said, shaking his head. "She made a command decision. Decided to go bust the carriage house. Bad guy had put some kind of booby trap in his truck, and it went off when she climbed in to search it."

"Booby trap?" I said with a straight face. He gave me a suspicious look, then remembered, and then grinned, despite himself.

"Anyways," he said. "One of the outside deputies thought he saw someone running down toward the river, so he yelled and then fired some warning shots. Boy runner sent three back at him and disappeared down by the bridge tower. By the time they all got down there, they thought they saw him swimming across, although it was pretty dark. He helped them decide by putting another couple rounds in their
general direction, so Willard, who's a crack shot, by the way, put four rounds from his .44 Mag all around the guy, and he disappeared."

"And of course they think they got him," I said.

"Of course."

"In fact . . ."

"We don't know jack shit," the sheriff finished. "He was using that wire you told me about, which explains how he could shoot and swim at the same time."

"Another Callendar disappears into the Dan River," I said. "Fancy that."

The next morning we met at the sheriff's office in town. I'd sent Pardee and Tony back to town and their day jobs, as the immediate threat seemed to be over. The sheriff had invited an ADA named Lee Davis from the county prosecutor's office to sit in. I'd left the shepherds in the car. I told them there wouldn't be any doughnuts, but I don't think they believed me, based on all the resentful looks. There were cops all around; had to be some doughnuts in there.

Captain Hildy showed up looking like a raccoon. She'd been wearing protective glasses when the concussion grenade went off, and they had imprinted their circular lens covers around her eyes, complete with dark rubber smudges. Everyone pretended not to notice, which was the safe thing to do. She arrived at the meeting carrying the expended grenade case. I suspected that she wanted to know how that little piece of police equipment had ended up in the bad guy's truck. The sheriff and I had entered into a mutual conspiracy of absolute omerta.

"Okay, people," he said. "Here's where we stand: Our prime on the Craney killing has apparently disappeared into the depths of the Dan River. He might be dead. He might be wounded and holed up. He might be down the road and gone. We have no way of knowing which until either we find a floater or he pops up on the radar again."

He looked through his notes for a moment before going on. "Subject Cubby Johnson remains in the ICU, unable to talk. The quacks say his infection is responding to treatment. Patience Johnson, his wife, states emphatically that she knows nothing about nothing, and she is obviously terrified that both of them are going to lose their jobs at Laurel Grove."

"Are they?" I asked.

"I tried to gloss over Cubby's role in this case when I talked to Ms. Hester. She was mostly focused on her daughter's condition and how she was going to get to the hospital. I offered to have one of my people take her, but she refused to ride in a cop car. I called out the pastor at Saint Stephen's, and he came and got her."

"It vas dis Hester voman who shot her own daughter?" Captain Hildy asked.

"Indeed it was," the sheriff said. "The current theory is that she was shooting at Lieutenant Richter here, but Valeria stood up at precisely the wrong moment. She has eleven puncture wounds in various parts of her anatomy, some of them fairly personal, but nothing life-threatening. The major damage seems to have been to her memory: Ms. Valeria also knows nothing about nothing, just like Mrs. Johnson. Lot of that going around out there."

"Except she does," I said. "She told me that Callendar sent the dog trainer lady away because she and her dogs were useless."

"Away?" one of the detectives asked.

"I explained that to her. She was in total denial about Callendar murdering the woman. But she's definitely part of this deal."

"Oh, man," the sheriff said.

"And the major?" I asked. "What happened when he came back?"

"He came back in at dawn in full regalia, saw the cops, told them there was Union cavalry afoot and that they should be extremely vigilant. Then he put up his horse and went inside, looking for breakfast."

"He knows nothing about nothing, too, right?"

"Absolutely," the sheriff said. "Just another pleasant night ride in the country."

"Vell, someone knows somezing," Captain Hildy said. "Zis vas no phantom explosive zat went off in zat truck. Zis is police equipment."

The sheriff eyed the raccoon circles. "What prompted you to go into that truck?" he asked. He had to raise his voice because she couldn't hear very well.

"Someone vas zere," she said. "Ve couldn't see him, but Deputy Barnes heard a noise in zere. I assumed he'd been varned and vas preparing to drive zat truck out of zere."

"How is the truck?" I asked as innocently as I could. Sheriff Walker seemed to be having trouble controlling his expression.

"No more vindows," she said, looking at me suspiciously. She just knew I had something to do mit zat.

"Sheriff," I asked, anxious now to change ze subject, "you got a look in the house at Laurel Grove?"

"A look is the right word," he said. "Not a search by any means. Hester maintained that the only people in the house were the family members: the major, Valeria, and herself. She showed me all the rooms. I also got to look into the attic, where there's nothing but old timbers. I didn't get into the basement, if there even is one."

"No signs of use in the guest rooms?"

"There aren't any guest rooms, best I could tell. Place is a damn museum. It's all late 1800s, the furniture, the bric-a-brac, lace doilies, stuff like that. Wall sconces with candles instead of lightbulbs. Portable lamps with glass chimneys. Fireplaces in every room, and all still in use, from the look of them."

"I wonder," I said. "Could Hester be telling the truth? Maybe Callendar never was in that house?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Well, look, that's not the same as saying Hester and this guy aren't mixed up in some scheme to acquire Glory's End, but it is possible that he's not physically been there."

"Then how are they communicating?" Hildy asked.

"That crazy old man who rides out night and day, and God knows where he goes."

"On horseback," the sheriff said, "he could go damn near anywhere."

That's what Carol Pollard had told me, I remembered. "Could he cross the river?"

"I guess he could swim the horse if the river was fairly quiet."

"Or," said one of the deputies, "there's one of those Civil War era fords. Some of 'em were natural shallows, some they made by layin' down slate and gravel so that cavalry could get away by crossing the river at secret locations."

"You think the major is in on this, then?" the sheriff asked. "You're the one who's really met him, talked to him."

"I do not," I said. "Not in the sense that he is a co-conspirator. I do think Hester could tell him that he had to meet one of Jeff Davis's spies down by the river and deliver a written message, and he'd do that."