Bill Hopkins - Judge Rosswell Carew 02 - River Mourn

by Bill Hopkins

  Ollie said, “When you try to sound like me, you come off as a big gas bag.”

  A full moon hung in the midnight sky, hidden by thick clouds. The humidity must’ve been close to a hundred percent and the temperature had cooled only a fraction after the sun had set. Sweat dripped down Rosswell’s face. Driving in a night deprived of all light lulls a man into ignoring his surroundings.

  “Many lie in unmarked graves in unknown places,” Rosswell said. “When a woman you’ve made love with dies, part of you dies with her.”

  Ollie shifted in his seat and leaned toward Rosswell. “Speak up. I can’t hear you over the roar of this truck.”

  Rosswell didn’t realize he’d spoken the words he’d once read in some book. Oddly, for him, he couldn’t remember the name of the book. All he could remember were those depressing words.

  “Nothing. Talking to myself.” Hoping to distract Ollie from asking more questions about the quote, Rosswell let off the gas for a second and then floored it. The truck’s muffler made a sound like a dragster’s car out of a 1960s teenage flick. “The guy at the shop said the glass packs made it sound cool.” Rosswell could smell the stink of the exhaust through the open windows.

  “Very cool.” Ollie coughed but didn’t sound convinced. “Sounds better than those weird quotes.”

  Rosswell slowed as he passed River Heights Villa. “Most likely everyone’s asleep.” Orange sodium lamps burned on half a dozen poles. In the huge house, dim light showed from a couple of windows. None of the outbuildings was lighted.

  Ollie said, “Let’s hope your glass packs didn’t rouse them from their slumber.”

  A quarter of a mile down the highway, Rosswell pulled off onto a field road. He reversed the truck, pointing it toward the highway, and backed into a grove of trees. “This makes for a fast getaway.”

  “If we live through this, we’ll need a fast getaway. Tell me what we’re doing here.”

  “When you were in the alley asking Charlie where the cave with the dead woman was, he said, ‘There’s that big bluff with all the trees and shit on it. Look out—’ ”

  “Yeah, that was when the garbage truck arrived. And?”

  “But he didn’t say look out, he said lookout.”

  Ollie sucked in a deep breath and rubbed his head. “Not a verb but a noun!”

  “Exactly.”

  Ollie stretched his arm out, down the highway toward River Heights Villa, now hidden from their view by the trees. “That place has two towers. In other words, two lookouts.”

  “Let me return the favor, Ollie Groton. The cigar is in the mail.” Rosswell drew out two flashlights from the glove box and handed one to Ollie. “This has two AAA batteries and a little bitty light. I’ve got my grandfather’s radium dial watch tucked away in a lead lined box. That watch puts out more light than these do.”

  “It’s enough. We’re not filming a movie out here in the dark. All we need is enough light to keep from tripping over something.”

  Rosswell observed the mansion for a few moments. “There. The tower on the north end of the building, the one closest to us, is above the face of the bluff. That’s where we need to search, because if it were daylight, we could see the cave of one eye.”

  “No, we couldn’t.”

  “The cave of one eye holds treasure. Treasure needs to be guarded. The towers have guards. Below the towers is a cave with one entrance. One eye.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Ollie, that indeed is what I don’t know right now. But something is what I aim to find out.”

  Rosswell and Ollie, poised for action at the base of the dark cliff, inspected the antebellum chateau. Fortunately, no nasty critters (human or animal) had attacked them on their hike from the truck to the house.

  “Rosswell, this is not a good idea.”

  “We’ll just sniff around a little bit.”

  Keeping to the woods, they tramped up the backside of the cliff. Great caution was Rosswell’s byword. The last thing he wanted was to trip and sprain his ankle. If Ollie had to carry him back to the truck, he’d die from embarrassment, not to mention he loathed the thought of being up close and personal with Ollie. At one point on the climb, Rosswell heard the snuffling of a feral pig thrashing in a dead fall covered with kudzu. A wild pig is a treacherous animal to meet any time, but especially dangerous in the dark. When he shined his flashlight toward the noise, a reflection from beady eyes met his gaze. Rosswell flapped his arms and hooted. The beady eyes disappeared.

  Now, shoulder to shoulder with Ollie, Rosswell silently appraised their goal.

  “Judge, you know that place is loaded with burglar alarms.”

  “There’s a good way to trump a burglar alarm. A fire alarm.”

  “We’re going to start a fire? Now that sounds freaking frost brilliant.”

  A rhythmic whooshing noise overhead caused Rosswell to cringe. His breathing quickened while nausea conquered his stomach. But the noise wasn’t the faint sound of a helicopter in the distance that would bring death as it had during the war. Only an owl, flying overhead, answering Rosswell’s hoots.

  “I didn’t say anything about starting a fire. If we set off a burglar alarm, then we trip the first fire alarm we find. Everyone will run from the building and we’ll have five minutes to search before the fire department arrives.”

  “Search for what?”

  “An entrance to the cave inside the house.”

  The odor of rotting leaves underfoot mixed with the fragrance of new, rampant growth. A not unpleasant smell. The forest was a place where humans rarely visited. Between the farm fields below and the house on the cliff, the land belonged to wild animals and untamed vegetation. Humans were trespassers.

  Ollie tapped a finger on his lips. “You know for a fact that there’s an entrance to the cave in the house?” Ollie tapped his lips more rapidly.

  “No.”

  “Why’re we going in there then?”

  “I told you. To search.”

  “And how do we get into the house to trip these alarms?” Ollie commenced to wringing his hands, clearly demonstrating his reluctance to trespass.

  “We open the door. I doubt that the rules on residence homes allow locked doors.”

  Rosswell put his finger to his lips as they crept toward the house. In the illumination cast by a pole light, Rosswell saw Ollie nod.

  When they passed a large garage and reached the back of the house, Rosswell put his hand on the doorknob of a sunroom. This was it. Open that door and in they’d go. A simple flick of the wrist and the deed would be done.

  Locked.

  “Damn!” Rosswell whispered. “I guess they want the place locked up after all. Now what?”

  Ollie clasped him on the shoulder, making a motion with his thumb, jerking it backward, indicating his desire to leave. Rosswell mouthed, No, and pointed to a window next to the door. The windowpane was raised about three inches. Only a screen prevented Rosswell from reaching into the house and opening the door.

  Rosswell whispered into Ollie’s ear, “Do you have a pocket knife?”

  Ollie’s face grew pained and he again used his thumb to make the plea to leave.

  After searching his brain to remember what he could use to burgle, Rosswell removed the necklace that Maman Fribeau had given him. He felt the points of the star and nodded. The points were sharp as a new nail. Within a few seconds, he cut the screen enough to allow him to reach inside.

  Ollie whispered, “I’m pretty sure you just committed a felony.”

  Rosswell replaced the necklace and whispered back, “I’m pretty sure you’re right.”

  Snaking his hand through the slit screen, Rosswell turned the knob, pulled open the door, and jumped when a burglar alarm beeped a warning that it was fixing to blow its top. Enough glow from the pole light seeped through the windows to allow him to find a fire alarm. He pulled it.

  Both the fire alarm and the burglar alarm exploded into a rage at the same time,
shrieking up and down the scale. To Rosswell, the sound aroused memories of the screams he’d heard on television, watching the Twin Towers fall.

  Rosswell and Ollie hastened their butts to the garage and knelt behind a car.

  Within milliseconds, people poured out of the house from every exit, running as far away as possible once they cleared the doors. More than half of them wore pajamas. The rest had donned jeans and tee shirts. The noise level made it impossible for Rosswell to make sense of the shouting he heard. Most of the people screamed or cried, disregarding the directions of the staff to remain calm. At least twenty flashlights bobbed in the dark. Rosswell counted six women who resembled Tina and all were showing pregnant.

  One woman, stick thin and homely as a mud fence, couldn’t have been any older than Tina. She looked like an ugly stick. Rosswell had seen that woman before. Where? Had she been to court? Had he seen her in the shops? He didn’t remember. The concern flew away.

  Sirens whined in the distance. Disaster training was paying off. Everyone eventually fled to the same place far from the house.

  Except for one person.

  His arms akimbo, Nathaniel towered in the doorway of the sunroom. Rosswell watched as the white man with orange hair swept his gaze everywhere, scowling like a hawk searching for a mouse. Nathaniel stopped his survey of the pandemonium, peered down at the cut window screen, then swept his head left and right, obviously searching for someone who didn’t belong there. Someone who was the type of person who’d slit a screen.

  “That would be me, Nathaniel,” Rosswell said. “Me and my sharp star from Maman Fribeau.” Buried in a pit of noise, Nathaniel made no response to Rosswell’s words.

  Going around the house to another entrance was impossible. Too many people were in the yard surrounding the place. Nathaniel was blocking their only way in.

  Ollie cupped his hands around Rosswell’s ear and yelled, “You have a Plan B?”

  Chapter 18

  Friday Morning, continued

  Rosswell reckoned the red and blue flashing lights of the emergency vehicles distracted everyone enough to allow Ollie and him an escape. Fire trucks and ambulances draw attention to themselves, whereas two more guys running helter skelter would be deemed unremarkable. He motioned Ollie to follow him and they sprinted out of the garage toward the darkest area, which was the woods at the north end of the bluff.

  Rosswell signaled a halt when he figured they could talk without being heard, although with the uproar, no one could hear a small nuclear bomb exploding. Only after panting and drawing several deep breaths could he speak. “They won’t see or hear us now.”

  “Those words should be chiseled into our tombstones.”

  Rosswell concentrated on the confusion at the house. A firefighter approached Nathaniel gesturing and yelling, ordering him to stand aside. Nathaniel stiffened and didn’t move. The two of them punched the air with their forefingers. As the argument deepened, their faces pressed against each other, nose to nose.

  Ollie said, “Nathaniel doesn’t want the firefighters in the house.”

  “Good luck with keeping them out.”

  “He’s hiding something.”

  Rosswell said, “See? Didn’t I say you were a genius?”

  Gustave, his patrol car’s siren wailing, screeched to a halt and he hurtled out. When he joined the firefighter and Nathaniel, the ruckus escalated. Screaming back and forth at each other, Gustave whirled Nathaniel around, jerked his arms behind his back, and handcuffed him.

  Rosswell said, “Holy crap. Nathaniel’s busted.”

  “Yeah. And by Gustave? I thought they were in cahoots.”

  Gustave dragged Nathaniel aside, allowing firefighters to flood the house. The alarms silenced. Lights came on in every room. After fifteen minutes, the whole bunch of firefighters and EMTs sauntered back to their vehicles and left the scene. Gustave freed Nathaniel and, after an exchange of words accompanied by fists pumping in the air, Gustave jumped in his car and sped off.

  Ollie said, “Something tells me this isn’t the first false alarm they’ve had at that place.”

  “Sometimes recovering drunks get bored. Setting off a false alarm is great fun for bored boozers drying out in a rehab center.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Ollie, you didn’t.”

  “I’m taking the fifth. Amendment, not bottle.”

  Rosswell decided to man up. “This maneuver was a crummy idea. We didn’t find out anything.”

  “Then let’s hoof it. This pair of drunks needs to hustle on down that hill.”

  When they reached the bottom, Rosswell turned to look up. “How would that look during the day time?” He tilted his head first left, then right, trying to gain perspective. The clouds had thinned, then disappeared. The full moon had made it halfway through its circuit for the night.

  He and Ollie had positioned themselves at the bottom of the north face of the bluff where River Heights Villa lorded over the river plain below. The occasional car or truck driving south lit up the rock face briefly. One of the two towers occupied the edge of the cliff. Below the tower, as best Rosswell could make out in the headlights, the face of the bluff appeared to be skull-shaped. Where the two eyes should have been, he could see only one indentation. Rosswell imagined an outcrop below as the nose, and below that, a thin opening stretched across the base of the cliff, which could’ve served as a mouth.

  Ollie said, “I’m seeing a skull with only one eye socket.”

  “ ‘Cave of one eye have much treasure.’ We need to climb up there and search it. That’s where Charlie and Ribs dragged that poor woman.” Rosswell didn’t fancy climbing back up the cliff. There were too many critters (human and animal) roaming around in the woods. There were also too many strange sounds. Rosswell discounted the romantic notions of a forest at night. There was no romance in the midst of a bunch of trees, vines, and bushes where slithery things lived. “As much as I hate to say it, we can’t wait till daylight.”

  “Not so fast, Judge.” Ollie clamped a hand on Rosswell’s arm. “Let’s call Gustave. Tell him to come back out here. Tell him what Charlie said.”

  “No.”

  “That’s it? That’s your whole argument? No?”

  Rosswell flicked on his flashlight, then turned it off. “Gustave thinks we’re idiots. If we get him back out here again, Nathaniel will convince him we’re another couple of drunks calling in yet another false alarm in the middle of the night.”

  “And Nathaniel will pin the cut window screen on you.”

  “Not only that, but Gustave will put two and two together and arrest us for the first false alarm tonight. Not to mention my little felony of breaking and entering.”

  “What do we do if we find the woman’s body?”

  “Then we’ll call Gustave.” Rosswell pulled out his cell phone. “Fully charged. Three bars. We’ll send pictures of the body to Gustave. We’ll post a video to the Internet. He can’t argue with that.”

  “How are things going to be any different in the morning?”

  “Nathaniel knows something is up. He knows I cut that screen.”

  “How could he know that?”

  “Okay, I’ll bet I’m his number one suspect. How’s that?”

  Ollie made an okay sign with his thumb and forefinger.

  Rosswell said, “If it’s there now, the woman’s body will be gone by daylight.”

  “I can’t believe I’m going to be a party to this madness.” Ollie hung his head. “I’m going to prison.”

  “I’ve got a plan. ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.’ That’s what Lord Polonius said.”

  “And Hamlet murdered him.”

  The sound of crunching gravel under Rosswell and Ollie’s feet grew louder as they climbed for the cave.

  Rosswell cautioned Ollie. “Don’t walk so heavy. It’s been dry. There’s a drought on and everything has turned into tinder in the woods.”

  “Walking doesn’t start
fires.” Ollie indicated the tower above them. “If we’re making crackly noises, no one can hear us up there.”

  Within a few more minutes, they’d reached the mouth of the cave. Rosswell gave Ollie the keep-your-mouth-shut signal again. Ollie nodded several times.

  Rosswell stooped down, Ollie following his lead. Rosswell estimated that two or three minutes had passed. Maybe more. He heard nothing. The cave smelled of damp ground. There was a small spring-fed stream issuing from the mouth. A cool breeze wafted from the opening.

  “There’s got to be another entrance to the cave,” Rosswell said. “Otherwise, there wouldn’t be air coming out.”

  He risked flicking on his flashlight. Although it was a small light, hardly meant for cave exploration, he could tell there was nothing artificial around the mouth of the cave. No gates to trap them. No doors that would slam down, sealing them inside. That told him that Nathaniel never expected anyone to be foolish enough to climb the bluff and explore the cave. Otherwise, he would’ve built barriers to keep trespassers out, especially if the cave led to a passage under the house. Not to mention that if Maman was right, the cave held a corpse.

  Rosswell risked another sweep of the flashlight along the floor. No snakes. No bear prints. No evidence of a mountain lion. No bloody fur ripped off a poor rabbit or the bones of a feral pig. There still could be spiders and crawly things. Lizards. Salamanders. Yet the cursory glance allowed him to stamp safe on the situation.

  “Ollie,” Rosswell said in a low voice, “we’re safe and secure. There’s nobody, human or otherwise, in that cave waiting for us.”

  Standing behind them, Nathaniel said in the stage whisper of a man whose adenoids had shot craps, “Should I kill you here or inside?”

  Chapter 19

  Friday Morning, continued

  Nathaniel’s breath rattled when he talked. “Tie them up.” His raspy voice made him sound like the villain in a melodrama. “Gentlemen, I’m going to kill you slowly, painfully.”