UnderCover

by David R Lewis

  Titles by David R Lewis

  Nosferati Series (2)

  BLOODTRAIL

  BLOODLINE

  Crockett Series (8)

  FEAR OF THE FATHER

  GRAVE PROMISE

  SITUATIONAL FLEXIBILITY

  ABDUCTED

  WITNESS REJECTION

  UNDERCOVER

  Trail Series (7)

  DEER RUN TRAIL

  NODAWAY TRAIL

  CALICO TRAIL

  PAYBACK TRAIL

  OGALLALA TRAIL

  KILLDEER TRAIL

  CUTTHROAT TRAIL

  Stand Alones:

  COWBOYS AND INDIANS

  ONCE UPON AGAIN

  INCIDENTS AMONG THE SAVAGES

  ENDLESS JOURNEY (nonfiction)

  UnderCover

  (The Haunting of Martha McGill)

  By

  David R. Lewis

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2010 David R Lewis

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally; and any resemblance to people, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  All Rights Reserved

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. No portion of this book may be reproduced without the consent of the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  PROLOGUE

  Martha McGill had been dead for slightly over two hours before she realized she’d passed away. She was sitting on the ground behind her home on a late spring morning, near her beloved fish pond. Although she felt fine and solid enough, she noticed her right hand, resting against the lawn at the end of the arm supporting her shoulder and the tilting burden of her trunk, was not bending the blades of grass. As she was absently studying this curious phenomenon, the memory of her death came flooding back. Pain returned to her left arm in a rather distant way, a knife-edged ache that seared down the inside of her nearly paralyzed limb from just below the bicep to the inside of her elbow and on into the wrist and hand. The pain also flashed upward into her neck and jaw, bringing toothaches to her lower teeth, teeth that had been replaced by man-made products nearly four decades before.

  Martha observed the recollection in an innocent bystander sort of way, unable to turn from the scene before her, but far too full of the memory of pain to participate in the process again. Next came the cramping in her upper chest and she felt herself fall to the grass with it, slightly stunned by the power of the malfunction. The roaring in her ears, the uselessness of her arm, the rigidity of her diaphragm, the ragged cacophony of her heartbeat as it was bone conducted to her middle and inner ears all revisited her with clarity. She knew she was reliving what had happened just a short time before. Martha sat, nearly frozen in position, waiting for the fear she knew had to come with her passing, but it did not. Confused by her lack of panic and slightly frightened by how calm she seemed, she prepared herself to rise.

  She, as with almost all elderly people, was no stranger to death. Noble, her husband, had been gone for well over a decade. She’d been through the loss of her grandparents and parents. Her son, Macon, and his wife Cindy, had been killed in an auto accident while on vacation in Montana. Martha, who had volunteered to keep their son Paul while they went on their trip, had reared the boy as her own. Her older brother and sister were also gone, as was her spinster daughter, Verna, to cancer when she was only fifty-one. Martha had suffered the bereavement of abandonment, dealt with her own status as an orphan and a widow, and come through it all with an appreciation of inevitability that, in its way, was balm for the wounds of time. There was a peace about her some people said, and that was how Martha preferred to view eternity. A time of peace.

  She still attended church when she could, a less than fanatical Baptist who found more pleasure in the association with the congregation than she did solace in the interpreted words of a one-time carpenter from Nazareth turned political activist and thorn in the establishment’s side. She was as much Christ’s savior as he was hers, and she knew it. That very attitude of shared responsibility also brought her peace that was noticed by those around her, and she was often admired for what others assumed to be the steadfastness of her faith. Martha found it a bit amusing and let them have their illusions, for without illusion faith of any kind is impossible.

  As Martha prepared for the effort of rising, she found herself on her feet. Stunned by the ease of it all, she concentrated on keeping her balance and was further surprised by the lack of need for such concern. For the first time since she found herself sitting in the grass, she felt a tingle of fear. How could this be? She had gotten to her feet without getting to her feet. There had been no exertion. No careful levering of herself away from the earth. No precise positioning of her body. No vigilant attention to her hips and back. No pain in the straightening of her spine. No acclamation to the upright whatsoever. She was sitting and then she was standing, without even the fluidly and awkward grace of a child.

  This was remarkable. As a test, she began to lay down in the yard again and was suddenly on her back, her cotton and rayon housedress immodestly above her knees, the toes of her sensible black shoes pointed skyward, her arms out flung from her sides. Not only had there been no effort in assuming the position, it was a position that her body had denied her for years. Here she was, at her age, splayed out in the back yard as if she were preparing to make an angel in the snow. Oh, my!

  This was what people feared? This was what caused them to rush to both religion and judgment? This was the truth that was so simple as to be unbelievable and unacceptable? If this was death, and that binding and restrictive eighty-seven years from which she had just escaped had been life, the terms life and death needed radical revision. No wonder so few seemed to grasp the nature of it all. No wonder that dogma seemed to be such a human imperative. No wonder people were so prone to huddling in their little enclaves and sneering at the rest of those misguided fools who had it all wrong. Where was the distant beckoning light? The hordes of waiting virgins? The savior on the other side of the river? The nothingness in preparation for the second coming? The rapture? The agony of purgatory? The thousand burning Christmas trees into which sinners would be plunged? Where were the streets of gold behind pearly gates, administered to by Saint Peter and his massive book of admittance?

  Martha McGill, feeling younger than youth in her old age, more alive in death than she had ever felt in life, lay on her back and giggled with the effortlessness of it all.

  *****

  CHAPTER ONE

  David Allen Crockett poured a splash of cream in the mug of Blue Kona and stepped onto his porch in the twilight just before dawn. It was still early enough in the spring for the air to be chilly, and he cinched his oversized terry robe a bit tighter as he sipped his first coffee of the day. A mockingbird started up in the distance, as it had for the past few mornings, intoning a medley of other bird’s calls. Crockett had counted seventeen of them, avian impressions that came in the same order every day. He eased himself onto the porch swing, took another sip of coffee, and lit a Sherman MCD, one of ten or so he would smoke before the day was over.

  Moving into the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods and wildlife, had been the smartest thing he had ever done. His past few years had been rife with emotional and physical ups and downs: Rachael�
��s murder, the loss of his leg, his encounter with the Amazing Disappearing Woman, the rescue of the lad, Zeke, from the separatist enclave, Ruby’s abduction down on the Spring River in Arkansas, the threat to Carson Bailey, and Ruby’s subsequent death during the armed attack at Ivy’s home in Barrington Hills. That had left him with little more than the desire to put it all behind him and find some tranquility for a change. He’d stopped looking for happy endings by the time he was thirty, but some peace was wonderful. He sat, listening to the mockingbird and attempting to visualize how the bulldozed draw in front of his cabin would look when full of water.

  Movement toward the distant dam caught his eye, and he smiled as Dundee, his Cattle Dog/Australian Shepard mix came sniffing her way in his direction, busily attending to her self-imposed duties as property inspector. In her wake was Nudge, Crockett’s immense tomcat, stepping slowly through the undergrowth, a slight limp from the arrow wound inflicted on him by the Boggs Brothers coloring his gait. Crockett gave a low whistle. Dundee froze, glanced toward the porch, grinned, and broke into a run, heedless of the soft and gooey terrain between her current location and her desired destination. Nudge ignored the entire display and continued his deliberate stroll, carefully avoiding anything that might soil his buff-colored coat or his coaster sized paws.

  Carrying enough clay for a pottery class on each of her four limbs, Dundee, scattering mud in every direction, galloped up the steps, across the once clean deck, and, despite his protests, plopped her front feet onto Crockett’s lap as she strained to cover his face in dog spit.

  “Quit it! Dundee, I just got this robe out of the dryer. Get down!”

  The dog’s butt hit the floor, her bobbed-tail vibrating madly; and she looked at him, her entire body in motion from the violence of the wag.

  “You are a worthless animal and I despise you completely.”

  Dundee’s reply was quiet and intense.

  “Boof!”

  “Oh yeah? Look at this porch. You’re grounded, young lady. No TV or internet for a week. And you can forget about going to the mall.”

  “Boof!”

  “And don’t argue. There’s military school, too, y’know.”

  Unable to restrain herself, the dog put a forepaw on his knee.

  “Oh, hell,” Crockett said, taking the dog’s head in his hands and roughing her up. “You win.”

  As the dog crouched to jump onto the swing, Crockett heard the sliding door open behind him. The dog barked again and disappeared under the porch swing on her way to the door. Satin Kelly’s voice cut through the still morning air.

  “Dammit, Dundee! I just got this robe outa the dryer.”

  “Won’t help,” Crockett said, not turning around. “I told her the same thing. Didn’t do a bit of good.”

  Battling the excited dog, Satin worked her way around the swing and flopped beside Crockett as Nudge, daintily avoiding the globs of mud, attained the top of the steps and sat by the edge of the deck, regarding everyone with slitted eyes and owled ears. Dundee, the gathering of the entire pack achieved, lay down by the railing in front of the swing and began to chew on her paws to get the clay out from between her toes. Crockett, careful to avoid the mud spatters, patted Satin on her terry-covered thigh.

  “Mornin’ honey lamb,” he said, his tone less than sincere.

  “Good coffee,” Satin said, taking a sip from Crockett’s cup.

  “Want some of your own, sweetie-pie?”

  “Naw. I’ll just have some of yours.”

  “More coffee in the kitchen. Got a mug or two in there that would flatter your eyes.”

  “This is fine,” Satin said, taking another sip.

  Sighing, Crockett lurched upright and limped inside. When he returned he was carrying a large dragon flagon he’d gotten years before at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. A sickly yellowish green in color, the mug featured a three-dimensional, wart-covered dragon whose head thrust outward from the front of the vessel, peering at the world through bloodshot eyes. One curved and taloned paw made up the handle. Satin hated the thing.

  “I hate that thing,” she said.

  “Want a sip?”

  Satin grunted and disappeared inside with his original cup. When she returned, she kissed him on the back of the neck and took a seat.

  “Coffee of your own?”

  “Bite me,” Satin said, and snuggled into his right side as the sun cast its first golden shafts through the trees from the direction of the unseen dam.

  It was several minutes before either of them said a word. At length, Crockett spoke up.

  “I want an island,” he said.

  “You want an island?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Aw,” Satin said, “that’s just a fantasy.”

  “A small island.”

  “If it’s small enough, you could get it covered in real Corinthian leather, Ricardo.”

  “Why do you always step on my dreams?”

  Satin’s voice became thin and scratchy. “Da plane, boss,” she said. “Da plane!”

  “And,” Crockett said, “I want a boat.”

  “A boat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You could set a course for adventure, your mind on a new romance.”

  Crockett forged ahead. “As with the island,” he said, “just a small one. One of those little bitty pond boats.”

  Satin batted her eyes. “Captain Stubing, have I ever told you how much I love a man in uniform?”

  “If there’s one thing worse than a smart ass,” Crockett said, “it’s a smart ass who’s stuck in the past.”

  “Is Gopher up on the Lido deck?”

  “I really hate it when you behave like this,” Crockett said.

  Satin nuzzled his ear. “How ‘bout when I behave like this?”

  “I don’t hate it as much.”

  “I’d do almost anything for a man with his own boat and island.”

  “No shit?”

  “Nearly none.”

  Crockett tossed his dragon flagon over the railing and onto the ground in front of the porch, peered at Satin, and bumped his eyebrows.

  “Oh, hell,” she said. “I feel so cheap.”

  A little over an hour later, as Crockett whipped eggs for French toast, Satin, dressed in loafers, jeans, and a threadbare flannel shirt, walked into the kitchen and headed for the coffee pot. Crockett grinned at her.

  “Since you’re still here,” he said, “I assume you don’t work today.”

  Satin put her cup into the microwave. “You think I’d be here if I had anything else to do?”

  “Silly me.”

  “Well, I would,” Satin said, moving behind him and putting her arms around his waist. “I’m down to just three days a week at the Café. Gives me more time to keep you on the straight and narrow.”

  “You think I need to be looked after?”

  “I think you need a keeper. You know, constant supervision so you don’t injure yourself or something.”

  “Recalling our recent amorous encounter,” Crockett said, “if I hurt myself, it will probably be because of your efforts, not in spite of them.”

  “Not my fault if you can’t keep up, old man.”

  “Your compassion is underwhelming.”

  Smiling, Satin removed her cup from the microcave. As she formulated a reply, the distant strains of Yankee Doodle wafted in from the living room. “That’s my cell,” she said, and departed the area.

  Crockett had the bread soaking and the skillet warming before she returned.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “That was my kid.” Satin still clutched her cell phone but didn’t seem to notice.

  “Your daughter?”

  “The only kid I got.”

  Crockett raised an eyebrow and waited.

  Satin’s eyes vacillated between anger and fear.

  “The asshole is threatening her again.”

  *****

  After a time, Martha got to her feet a
nd looked around the yard. The sight of her own body lying a short distance away made her flinch and close her eyes. Her fear of seeing what she really looked like, especially in death, made her stand that way for a moment before she marshaled the fortitude to actually look at herself.

  She was smaller than she had believed herself to be, an actual little old lady. In her mind came Johnathan Winters’ wonderful character, Maudie Frickert, who rode a Harley, lived in a nursing home, and enjoyed listening to her fellow inmates digest their dinners. She found herself a little shocked by her cavalier attitude toward her own dead body, but she felt so much better than she had in so long that the freedom from what she had been far outweighed the loss of the husk that remained in the yard.

  Her body lay on its left side, knees drawn up to nearly a fetal position, the head tucked down toward the chest. Her right hand still clutched at the left arm, just below the bicep, no doubt a reaction to the pain. Her face, however, appeared relaxed and at rest. Although Martha vividly remembered the heart attack, she could not recall her actual death. Looking at her calm face, she believed she must have had an inkling of what was to come that made her smile. Perhaps the promise of relief had aided in her passing.

  She moved to the body and was attempting, unsuccessfully, to smooth the skirt down in a more modest manner when her neighbor of six or seven years, Mary McClugen, exited the back door of her home to place a sack of kitchen trash in the covered barrel that resided on her tiny patio. Mary froze in the middle of the chore and, dropping her bag to the cement, uttered a small cry and came running, literally vaulting the four-foot chain link fence that Martha’s late husband, Noble, had insisted they install. Mary slid to a stop on her knees beside the body, shouting Martha’s name. Martha answered her, standing as she was, less than three feet away, but Mary could not hear or see her. Mary shouted Martha’s name a few more times and even lightly slapped the body’s cheek, but to no avail. After a moment or two, the obviously stricken woman sank back on her haunches, straightened the body’s rumpled skirt, drew a cell phone from her pocket, and made the inevitable call.