by George Wier
As I got into Julie’s SUV, I noted that we hadn’t spent any time covering the topic in which Julie had initially seemed most interested, apart from her initial Evanston-wants-you-to-not-move-to-Austin-because-of-the-Ghost-killer-thing spiel. She had blurted it out to Sheriff Renard with abandon. “The Ghost Killer,” she had said. Cathy Baha hadn’t touched upon it either. It made me wonder, for all of a split-second, but by that time I was at the wheel and we were moving through the dark and dusty roads of Anahuac back towards the heart of town.
“Are you still upset?” Julie asked me.
“I am not upset,” I replied.
“Okay,” she said, clearly not believing me, “just checking.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve been played.”
“Uh huh.”
I retraced our route back by the combination Sheriff’s Office and Police Station and saw Sheriff Renard standing by his cruiser, as if he’d been waiting for us.
I slowed and stopped behind his car, made the window do a disappearing act.
“How was she?” he asked, and walked over to us.
“She was all right,” I said. “A little odd, but who isn’t.”
“Right.”
“Heard any more screeches?” Julie asked.
“Not yet. We’ll hear one or two more, but it’ll be some time after midnight.”
“There’s a frequency to them?” I asked. “A pattern.”
“Sure. Everything has a pattern, eventually. You folks need me to show you to the hotel?”
“I do believe I’ll take you up on that,” I said.
“Fine, go ahead and back up. I’ll lead the way.”
“It’s awfully neighborly of you, Sheriff.”
“Just doing my job,” he said.
*****
We followed Sheriff Renard one last time that night. He led us to one of the old downtown buildings, a three-storied brick affair that had once lived a previous incarnation as a hardware store, as evidenced by the faded letters over which the much smaller hotel sign was mounted. A red neon sign told us all we needed to know: VACANCY.
The sheriff waved and cruised on off into the night. I suppose that’s what lawmen do—cruise the night. I had once wanted to live that life, but had found another, more lucrative field instead.
We piled out into the night—three travelers, two of them on two tired legs and one on four aging legs. Franklin moved slowly. He was getting old. It was then that I wondered whether I would have any trouble with bringing a dog into the hotel. Some places are very discriminatory against the four-legged.
The hotel lobby was quaint but clean and smelled of old paint, even older wood, and resin. The floor beneath us was hardwood, polished to a shiny lustre. I took the front desk clerk to be the owner of the establishment. She was a rather large lady in her late sixties with dyed brownish hair overdue for a color treatment, a little too much makeup, and a saccharine-sweet smile.
“One room,” I said.
“That’s all we have left,” she said.
“Is the dog okay?” I asked.
“Dogs are welcome, just so long as he doesn’t leave a mess anywhere and doesn’t bark and keep other folks awake.”
“That’s good.”
“Are you two archaeologists?”
I remembered Sheriff Renard’s reference to the dig going on southeast of town and realized this must be the only hotel in town, so therefore there would be academic types staying the night until the dig was complete.
“No ma’am,” I said. I noticed her nametag read: Noreen. Of course it did. She looked like a Noreen.
Noreen nodded. “Are you Bigfoot hunters?” she asked.
One of Julie’s eyebrows shot up.
“No ma’am,” I replied.
“Where’s a good place to get breakfast around here?” Julie asked.
“There’s only the one place,” Noreen said. “That’s Dixie’s. They have a Special. It’s your best bet.”
“Thanks,” Julie said.
We got our room keys and proceeded upstairs, luggage in tow. The hotel had no elevator, and I wondered how they had gotten away with that in this enlightened age of disability awareness.
A woman knows how to stuff a week’s worth of clothing and toiletries into two or three bags. I’ve always found this amazing. I watched as Julie gave a nod to unpacking and then we hit the sack. We talked about the events of the day. I put my hand on Julie’s stomach and felt for the baby when she indicated he was kicking. At least I hoped it was a ‘he’. By my watch it was forty-five minutes till midnight. Somewhere in there we both went to sleep with Franklin taking his third of the bed out of the middle.
I awoke at three in the morning so suddenly and completely that it shook me. I had heard something from inside my dreams that couldn’t have been from that shadowy realm. Was it a scream? A screech?
I quietly donned my clothing, grabbed the leash and put it on Franklin, and took my key and made sure the door was locked behind me. We went downstairs.
Noreen wasn’t on duty. There was a lamp on behind the front desk, but otherwise the place was deserted. The front door was unlocked. I opened it and made sure the outside knob would turned freely for when I was ready to come back inside.
I yearned for a cigarette, even though I’m not a smoker.
The night was cool and the downtown lights were nearly nonexistent.
I noticed there was someone not far away, standing at the corner.
Franklin let out a suppressed woof!
“Did you hear it?” he asked.
“I heard it,” I admitted.
“Every night,” he said.
He walked towards me and came into the dim light. He was a middle-aged fellow of about fifty years of age, which is to say, close to my own age. He wore a suede leather fedora hat over his straight, gunmetal-steel hair, and a brown cardigan. His eyebrows were dark and curled up dramatically.
“You’re one of the archaeologists,” I said.
“That’s right. The name’s Randall. Randall Marshall. My friends call me Randy.” He offered his hand and I shook it.
“Bill Travis,” I said. “What do you make of the screeches, Randy?”
He turned back to face the town and moved his head to and fro, as if attempting to penetrate the far darkness. “At first I thought they were some bird, like an owl or something. Peacocks can screech like that, you know, although I haven’t seen any around here. Who knows. Maybe a wild cat of some kind.”
“You don’t believe that, though,” I said.
“I don’t believe anything. I’m not in the believing business.”
I nodded.
“What are you doing in Anahuac, Mr. Travis? It’s a nice town, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not exactly a closely guarded secret get-away spot.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. That is, since you’re not in the believing business,” I countered, and he laughed.
“Please don’t tell me you’re in league with Wolf.”
“What or who the hell is Wolf?” I asked.
“Wolf is a guy. He’s a Bigfoot hunter.” The disdain in his voice was dreadfully apparent.
“I’ve never met a Bigfoot hunter, and I thought I’d met all kinds of Homo sapien.”
“He’s an innocuous enough fellow,” Randy said. “You know, I wish I had a cigarette. My wife...helped me to quit. I miss it so.”
“Yeah. What is a Bigfoot hunter doing in Anahuac?” I asked. “And where is he this time of night?”
“He has one of the rooms here, but he mostly sleeps during the day. I’ve given him permission to camp out at the dig, particularly after what happened there the other night.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“The place got all torn to hell, is what happened. Some of our tools and equipment was thrown around and busted up, including the seismograph and side-scanning sonar we were about to use to get a good solid image of the interior of the mound. We finally got the
seismograph working again, and have been able to get some useful data, but nothing that could have compared with the images we could have gotten had not the sonar been wrecked.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “Why scan a Caddo mound?”
“Not Caddo. Karankawa. I’m almost certain of that.”
“I thought you weren’t a believer,” I said.
Randy Marshall sighed. By this time I was certain that he was the head of the project and that there was a big ‘P’, a little ‘h’, and a big ‘D’ after his name whenever it was written out on the heading of a published research paper. “In science, we look for data that predicts other data. Then when we look for and find the other data as predicted, it lends more weight to the original hypothesis.”
“I know all about the scientific method. There’s one thing, though, that I have found that pretty much steals the thunder of science.”
“Nothing steals the thunder of science,” Randy said. “But go ahead. What is this mystical anomaly?”
“The unexplained and unexplainable.”
“You’re one of those,” he said, and laughed.
“No,” I said. “I’m one of a kind. One you apparently haven’t run across yet. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe with your own eyes.”
“I doubt it.”
“That sort of proves my point.”
“I doubt that too,” Randy Marshall, likely Ph.D. intoned.
“No. It does. How can you test for a thing if it’s not in the realm of your own hypothesis?”
“Hmph.”
We watched as Franklin paid special attention to the nearby lamppost.
“Tell you what,” I said. “What if I told you that I could put into doubt one of your most closely-held theories with only a few words, On the subject of, say, the theory of gravity?”
“I’d like to see you try,” he said.
I reached in my pocket and removed a quarter. I held it up where he could see it and then dropped it. It fell to the sidewalk with a loud, tinny clatter and rolled off into the street.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Gravity,” Randy said.
“Okay. Now, please tell me what that would be if we were not standing on the surface of a gigantic and live electromagnet spinning in space?”
“I don’t follow.”
“How do you know that what you were observing was not the effects of electromagnetics, simply and only? They say all emanations in the observable universe are somewhere on the electromagnetic spectrum, but they don’t put gravity on that spectrum, now do they? Instead they say it’s the weakest of the nuclear forces and let it go at that. But none of them know what it is. Everyone who has ever observed this thing called ‘gravity’ has done it while standing on an electromagnet. Even the Apollo astronauts.”
Randy smiled. “I have a friend who is a Jesuit priest who talks like you do. He would argue with Satan and probably convince him to return to heaven.”
“I have a Jesuit priest friend as well. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always supported Notre Dame football. Nobody can argue both sides of a question so well.”
Randy laughed. “Me too.”
“Now, as a scientist you’re not supposed to like your theories. In fact, you’re supposed to try to disprove them.”
“I get your point,” he said. “The truth is, I don’t know for sure that it’s a Karankawa mound. I believe it to be a Karankawa mound and not Caddo.”
“Might I stop by your dig tomorrow?” I asked.
“Certainly. We’re ten feet into the mound. Within the next few days we’ll be at the center, and we will have found him.”
“Him?” I asked.
“The Karankawa Chief,” Randy said.
“That’s an interesting hypothesis,” I said. “I’ll try to find my way out there. That is, if my wife isn’t ready to head back to Austin.”
“We’ll hear the screech again tonight at some point,” Randy said.
“That’s what the Sheriff said.”
“What do you think of him?” I asked.
“The Sheriff? Nice enough fellow. He tends to believe there’s a ghost out there somewhere, and that the cries in the night are a ten-foot tall sasquatch.”
“Well,” I said. “That could be because there’s some kind of ghost haunting the area and there’s a ten-foot tall sasquatch dogging its trail.”
Randy laughed again.
“You’re an Austin man, huh?”
“Austinius bullshittus,” I said.
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Travis?”
“Now that you wouldn’t believe if I spent ten years writing it all out for you. Good night, Randy Marshall, man of science.”
“Good night, Bill Travis, man of mystery.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next morning Julie and I went looking for breakfast and the rumored Dixie’s Restaurant or Cafe or whatever it was supposed to be. It wasn’t difficult to find. The majority of the folks out on the sidewalk seemed to be walking one direction—north. We followed them. The place was a block down and around the corner, and there was a bit of a wait for a table.
“Smells good,” Julie said.
I nodded. There was an earthquake-like rumble going on south of my short ribs, and I needed coffee and protein, and plenty of both.
There was a full table close by at which sat Dr. Randy Marshall and his grad student crew. His back was to me, so he wasn’t aware of me yet. I scanned the room and saw a fellow sitting at a small table in the corner by himself sipping his coffee. I figured this was the Wolf Dillard guy that Marshall had mentioned last night. I found myself wanting to talk to him, but I figured we’d meet soon enough.
Sheriff Renard came into the line behind us.
“Sheriff,” Julie said.
“Mr. and Mrs. Travis,” he said, removed his stetson and hung it on a wall peg.
“By the way, Sheriff,” I said, “is there any chance of me getting to see that mummified fellow?”
“Sure. I’d suggest waiting until after breakfast, though. By, say, an hour.” I thought he was going to give me a cheesy grin, but he was being matter-of-fact about it.
The wait was ten stilted minutes of almost no conversation. We got a table and we realized that Sheriff Renard was going to have to wait, so Julie did what Julie does. “Sheriff, you’re welcome to sit with us.”
“Much obliged,” he said, took a menu and followed us to the table.
We ordered coffee all around and Julie took her time with the menu. I folded mine up. All it took was a glance and I knew what I wanted. The Sheriff did likewise.
“When are you folks headed home?” Sheriff Renard asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Julie gave me a searching look. “You have to know my husband,” she said. “When he gets something stuck in his craw, then it doesn’t take much to—” she stopped abruptly when I nudged her leg with my foot.
“After I see the body,” I said. “I just want to know how much of the bullshit I’ve heard is true.”
Sheriff Renard nodded. “What about the dig? Are you going to check it out?” He turned and looked toward Randy Marshall, who noticed and abruptly stood up and came over our way.
“Oh shoot,” I said.
“Sheriff,” Randy said, “it looks like we may get to the heart of the mound today, or if not today, then tomorrow. Will you be stopping by?”
“I haven’t consulted my calendar,” Sheriff Renard said and looked up at Randy.
“Well, you should. It’s getting downright exciting around here.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I have a few appointments after breakfast. I may stop by sometime late this afternoon. You aren’t expecting any, uh, trouble, are you?”
“The vandals won’t come around when there are plenty of people about. I think we’ll be safe.”
“Vandals,” Sheriff Renard said.
“That’s right. That’s what they were. Vandals. Had to be. There�
�s no other rational explanation.”
“Of course not.”
Randy Marshall looked at me and at Julie.
“Folks,” Sheriff Renard said, “this is Dr. Randy Marshall. He’s the archaeologist running the dig I told you about south of town. Dr. Marshall, this is Bill Travis and his wife...”
“Julie,” Julie reminded him.
“Julie. They’re out-of-towners, taking in the local culture.”
“Huh,” Randy sniffed. “Culture. Mr. Travis and I met last night.” He stuck out his hand toward Julie, “I’m happy to meet you, Julie Travis.”
Julie shook his hand.
“Bill, what did you do to deserve such a beautiful wife?” he asked.
“I’ve been wondering that ever since she said ‘yes.’ ” This time it was Julie’s turn to kick me under the table.
“Don’t encourage him, Dr. Marshall,” Julie told him. “He tries to embarrass me in public about my looks every chance he gets.”
“I’m sure it’s pure admiration.”
“Thank you,” Julie said.
“You two are welcome out at my dig.”
“I might come out that way with the Sheriff,” I said, “but I’m sure my wife wants to do a little shopping today before we head back home.”
Julie cocked her head at me. “Yes. Shopping.”
Randy noticed that the waitress was unloading plates at his table and made his apologies for a hasty retreat. “I’ll leave you folks to your breakfast. Hopefully, I’ll see all of you later.”
We nodded as he left.
“Strange fellow, that,” Sheriff Renard said.
“I think he’s cute,” Julie said.
“You would,” I said.
*****
Outside the restaurant after breakfast, I shook hands with Sheriff Renard.
“When do you want to see the body?” he asked.
“How about now?”
“Mrs. Travis? Do you want to come along?”
“I’ll pass this time. You’ve seen one mummy, you’ve seen them all.”
Sheriff Renard’s eyebrows furrowed.