Wings to the Kingdom

by Cherie Priest

Page 41

 

  He looked like he was going to press the issue, but I put him off with a moment of inspiration. “Let us catch up to Dana and see if we caught anything interesting with our equipment. There were cameras and digital voice recorders, so you never know. We might even turn up something we could fork over to your station. ” Whatever it took to get him off our case.

  He leaned back with suspicion. “Didn’t the cops keep that stuff? I know they’ve got at least the tape from Charlie’s camera. He ditched it at the scene. ”

  “They didn’t take mine. And they didn’t take the camera I had, either. ”

  “And if you find anything, you’ll give me first dibs?”

  “You’ve got the scoop if you’ll leave us alone for now. Come back in another few days and I’ll see what I can do. No promises,” I added with a warning finger. “No promises. But I’ll try. ”

  “Fucking-A. Seriously?”

  “Swear to God. ” I offered him my hand, and we shook on it. He pressed a business card into my palm, and I took it as a means of facilitating his departure.

  I couldn’t believe it was that easy to get rid of him, but then again, the news around here is slower than molasses more often than not. Nick didn’t talk like he was from around here; maybe he was looking for a little pizzazz to boost him into a big-city broadcast. I didn’t think for a moment that I could give it to him, but if he was willing to bargain for it, I was willing to fake it.

  Benny and I waved him and his cameraman away, standing on the stoop like two of the lesser-known Beverly Hillbillies. When the Channel 3 SUV pulled out of the driveway and into the street, we both relaxed and stepped back inside.

  Dave had emerged into the living room behind us.

  “You may end up wishing you hadn’t promised him that,” he said, brandishing the envelope.

  “What’ve you got there?”

  “Your pictures. Or my pictures, from my camera—however you choose to look at it. ”

  “Let’s say they’re ‘our’ pictures, and call it a draw. ”

  He slid his thumb underneath the sticky seal. “For the sake of argument, then. But if they sell to the Enquirer, profits are going sixty-forty in my favor. At least. ”

  “But I bought the film!” I argued, mostly joking. “What’s on those prints, anyway?”

  “Much weirdness. Some of it’s going to have to go to the cops, I think. I don’t know what they’ll be able to get out of it, but I wouldn’t want them to accuse you of withholding evidence. They don’t need to know I had doubles made, though. ”

  He slapped a short stack of pictures into my hand. Benny swooped in close to look over my shoulder. Together we withdrew to the couch and began shuffling through the prints.

  The first three or four were exactly what you’d expect—dark blobs upon dark blobs. But then shapes began to appear, including the very distinct outline of a human being in a loose-fitting jacket. He was carrying something, maybe two somethings. From one hand hung a baggy teardrop bag, and over his other shoulder there was something long and thin.

  “A rifle?” Benny asked, poking the edge of the outline with his finger.

  “Maybe, I don’t know. ”

  Dave held the photo out at arm’s length. “What did it sound like he was shooting with?” he asked.

  I knocked him with my shoulder. “As if I have any frame of reference to answer that question. It sounded like he was shooting with a gun. That’s the best I can tell you—except he had to keep reloading it. It held six shots—I’m almost sure of it. But I couldn’t tell you what kind it was. ”

  Lu joined us, leaning herself against the doorway and sipping on a beverage she’d retrieved while we were seeing the newsmen off. “That shouldn’t be too hard to find out, should it?”

  “How you figure?” I wondered aloud.

  “That Marshall fellow got shot, right?”

  “Oh, yeah. ” Benny snapped his fingers and aimed them at her with an excited waggle. “There’s a bullet in him. Once they dig that out, they’ll be able to tell what kind of gun he was using. ”

  “But that’s not to say the police will share that information with us,” I felt compelled to point out.

  Lu nodded to concede the possibility, and came over to sit beside me on the arm of the couch. She peered over my shoulder at the photos, her hair falling almost down into my face.

  Dave moved on to the next picture. “Right. So let’s guess for guessing’s sake that he’s carrying a revolver and the long thing is something else. And he’s also got a tote, or a sack or something. ”

  “Could be anything at all,” I said, and everyone agreed.

  “The question is, is he bringing stuff to the battlefield or is he there to take things away from it? There’s no telling. ” The next picture wasn’t too much more enlightening. The same warm shape in the dark, posed in a crouch as if he was picking something up—or, as Dave had suggested, perhaps he was putting something down.

  Benny ducked his head in close and said, “Look at that. ”

  Lu swept her hair over her shoulder and off the back of my head. “It’s someone’s profile, pretty clear. That’ll be something to hand the police. It’s too bad you didn’t zoom in closer on him. ”

  “I didn’t know how close I needed to zoom. I couldn’t see anything at all. ”

  “It’s not a bad job, for a shot in the dark. ”

  “Thanks, Dave. ”

  “The profile’s not what I meant,” Benny corrected us. “I meant beside his face. Look at that. You can barely make it out but it’s there. ”

  We all squinted at the print. “What is that, an arm? A shoulder? Is there someone else with him?” Lu asked.

  “Not someone else—something else,” Benny announced. “We’ve got proof. Evidence, even, of life beyond the grave. That, my friends, is a ghost. ”

  Lu performed her notorious shrug of indifference. “Looks like an arm to me. ”

  “It’s a ghost’s arm. Check it out—look how it’s not registering hot like the man with the bag is. It’s incomplete, but it’s there. See, there’s an outline of a leg down here, and a boot. He’s wearing boots. It’s a ghost. ”

  The rest of us kept quiet, not wanting to argue with him. It would have been difficult to argue, since it appeared he might be right; but as I’d said going into this amateur investigation, I never set out to prove the existence of the supernatural. I already knew about it. Proof was superfluous.

  “This is the clearest shot of the shooter,” Dave said. “It really needs to go to the authorities. ”

  “But you said you had doubles. ”

  “In fact, I do. And you can have one. Here. ” He fished it out of the back of the pile and presented it to Benny, who beamed like a halogen bulb.

  “What about the negatives?”

  “We’ll see what the police have to say. Take what you can get, Mulder. ”

  “Fine. ” He said it with a breath of a sulk, but the sulk was distracted by his new evidence. “And thanks. This is—this could be awesome. Are there more?”

  “A couple. I didn’t look through these that closely; I just glanced through them when I picked them up. Oh look, a stunning shot of Eden’s shoe. And a stick. ”

  “There were a lot of sticks. ”

  “I’m sure there were. ” Lu tagged Dave’s wrist to make him keep shuffling.

  He complied and moved onto the next somewhat-clear image. Here we saw the man again, more nebulous than before. He was looking at or away from the camera, and his head was just a fuzzy oval. His chin was angled down though, looking at the earth; and whatever he’d had slung over his shoulder now hung from his hand.

  “I think he’s there to steal things, not hide them. Look at that,” I said, taking the picture and shifting it to remove a bit of glare. “He’s hunting for something on the ground. He’s out there to find something specific. I wonder what he want
s. ”

  “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Lu murmured, lifting the photo from my hand and holding it up to the light. “Benny, I believe there may be more ghostly outlines in this one, darling. Tell me, does that look like a face to you?”

  “It does!” he cried happily, and Dave retrieved the double before he could even ask for it. “Are there any more?”

  “Just the one, and I have to assume that this was just before all hell broke loose. Check it out—he’s closer in this one, walking forward. Not exactly towards you, but in your general direction. ”

  I touched the glossy edge of the picture. “He was headed for Dana and Tripp. Christ, they were sitting ducks out there. We tried to warn them, but they didn’t get it until it was too late. ”

  “There wasn’t much you could’ve done,” Lu assured me, patting my back.

  “I know,” I said, and I did know it, too. But that didn’t make me feel any less bad for Dana, who was now a widow. And we’d only done the least that could be expected of us. It felt very insufficient.

  “Things could’ve been much worse. You were very lucky,” Lu reminded me, in a maternal sort of way that only annoyed me because it fed my guilt.

  I didn’t respond, even though she was right, and she meant well.

  Benny and I caught up to Jamie on the roof of the Pickle Barrel around three that afternoon. We took a table at the farthest tip of the triangle-shaped seating area that gave us a good view without permitting anyone to see us well. Word was getting around, fast and furious. No secrets in the South except our secrets.

  Everyone’s secrets.

  For all my intention of keeping a low profile, I had gone and gotten myself mixed up in the biggest story in the Tennessee Valley for the last eighty years. I appear to have a gift for it, much as it pisses me off.

  The funny thing about Southern gossip is the way it stacks and builds, story upon story. It’s like accumulating experience points in a video game; every new event gains you status and ability. The more people hear your name connected with local lore, the more they believe you’re capable of, and the more narrative credit you’re given.