Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers

by P. T. Deutermann

  I waited for Tony to elaborate, but nothing came.

  I'M BEHIND YOU ON THE RIVER, I texted. WILL COME TO SPRING.

  No reply.

  BRICKS OR HOUSE? came in from Pardee.

  He would have to turn up and over that eastern ridge to get to the house, and there would be no cover at all once he came down from that ridge and got out into the cropland.

  BRICKS, I texted back. NO ACTION, RETURN TO ROAD.

  GOT IT.

  I gathered Frick back from the riverbank, and we turned uphill toward the house. I had the same problem Pardee would have: no cover if I went directly up that long, grassy slope that provided such a magnificent view from the house. There was a single line of smallish trees along a field boundary that led back up to the barn area, but I had to backtrack along the river terrace to get to it. I kept watching my cell screen for anything from Tony, but there was nothing. He wouldn't actually have much cover up there at the springhouse unless he got down into the cooling pool itself. The exterior walls of the springhouse were lattice boards, and the stone foundations stood in two feet of icy water.

  I hurried along the river. Once I turned left and started up that tree line, I'd have to proceed very carefully--and quietly. Hopefully, someone in the house didn't automatically mean Dobermans on the grounds. If it wasn't my stalker, then who else would be in the house this late at night? The major? Sex-starved teenagers?

  I got to the river end of the tree line, where it merged into the general scrubland along the banks. I turned left, uphill. I kept Frick close in, worried now as much about loose Dobes as making noise. When I got to a tractor break in the line, I hunched down and texted Tony.

  STATUS?

  No answer.

  Not good.

  I had a frightening vision of him fighting off two Dobermans in the springhouse while my ghost watched from the lawn. Should I create a distraction? Fire off a gun?

  Then the phone vibrated. It was Pardee.

  WHERE TONY?

  NOT ANSWERING. GOING TO SPRINGHOUSE.

  NOTHING HERE. I'LL MAKE NOISE ON DRIVEWAY--DRIVE HIM INTO YOU.

  AGREED.

  Pardee had the right idea. He'd always been the tactician on our MCAT cell. If he came up the driveway in my Suburban, lights on, gunning it up the hill, whoever was in the house might bolt in my direction.

  Along with his toothy friends?

  I took a deep breath. Well, somebody has to deal with them, I thought. I patted Frick on the head and then scooted across the tractor break and back into the cover of the tree line, which now featured a tumbled-down stone wall. It wasn't a fancy wall, more like an organized pile of unwanted field rocks, but I got on the side away from the house for additional cover.

  When I finally made it to the top of the hill, and about fifty yards from the springhouse, I tried texting Tony again. Still no answer. The springhouse was just a dark blob on the lawn under the big trees. The lattice showed gray in the moonlight. The tiny brook generated by the spring passed under the stone wall right in front of my feet. I waited. If Pardee thought no one was out there, he would make much faster time getting back to the Suburban.

  Ten minutes later, I heard a vehicle out on the two-lane. It slowed down and then accelerated noisily onto the gravel driveway. Pardee had the high beams on and was coming as fast as the rutted road allowed. I chose that instant to make my dash for the springhouse, hoping that whoever was in the house would be looking out the front windows or headed for the basement.

  The basement, where we'd left that door unlatched.

  I veered away from the springhouse and ran across the back lawn to the smokehouse. Just outside was a stone bench next to a sundial garden. I dropped behind the bench and pulled Frick in close to me. I sighted my .45 at the smokehouse door and waited.

  Pardee arrived at the front of the house and shut down the engine but kept the high beams pointed into the windows on the ground floor. The light was strong enough that I could see right through the house.

  I texted him: STAY PUT, SEE WHAT HAPPENS.

  Then I waited.

  Absolutely nothing happened. No one came bursting out of the smokehouse door. There were no shadows moving in the house. Tony still wasn't answering. I got a whiff of road dust as the cloud Pardee had generated swept around the house in the night breeze.

  Where was Tony?

  I turned around slowly, keeping my back firmly against the stone bench, so that I could examine the utility buildings and barn area behind me. There were no black torpedoes headed my way, and Frick seemed relatively relaxed, although alert to the tension I was exhibiting.

  I texted Pardee: GONNA SHOOT, SEE WHAT MOVES.

  R, for roger.

  I made Frick lie down and then pointed the SIG at the barns. I fired four careful rounds, aiming low at each building so as to blow wood bits onto anyone hiding back there. My ears rang when I was finished, and I had to pat Frick on the head again. She hated gunfire.

  Then from the area of the springhouse I heard someone making the noise of a submarine Klaxon. A moment later, a dripping wet Tony climbed out of the springhouse and called my name.

  We regrouped at the cottage a half hour later. Tony sat in the living room in a bathrobe while the ancient dryer restored his clothes to usefulness. He had a glass of some kind of horrible dago grappa, while Pardee and I had Scotch.

  Tony had filled us in on his excellent adventures. He'd seen a dark shape move past one of the windows in the back of the house, on the main floor. He'd gotten off that last text message and then moved to one end of the springhouse to get a better look.

  "You said they'd come fast, but you failed to define fast," he'd said. "Those bastards came in like bullets."

  "And everything I told you went right out of that pointy little head."

  "No," he said. "It went right out my bunghole. Thought I heard something. Turned my head around. Saw two sets of teeth coming through the darkness about a foot above the ground. Coming from the house. Point and shoot, you said. My grommet did just that. I damn near fainted."

  What he'd actually done was to push backward through one of the lattice panels and fall into the spring pool. Fall was the wrong word: Reverse belly flop was more like it, as the pool was only three feet deep, at most. He'd heard the Dobes slam into the lattice, and then the whole panel disintegrated and fell into the pool on top of him. He lay on his back in the pool, gripping the lattice with his fingertips to keep his nose and mouth above water.

  "Guess what?" he said. "They don't like water. They knew I was down there, and I sure as hell knew they were up there, but they ran back and forth along the stone edge, whining like frustrated puppies."

  "No bad guy?" Pardee asked.

  "Fortunately, no. I had my gun out by then, but I wasn't sure if the barrel was clear. The dogs stayed around for a minute, then both of them looked across the yard at something and took off in the direction of the house. I stayed at periscope depth until I heard you shooting."

  "Water cold, was it?" Pardee asked.

  "That's an icehouse, not a springhouse. Considering the alternative, though, it felt wonderful."

  The dryer buzzed, and Tony went into the laundry alcove to retrieve his clothes.

  "Well," I said. "It's good to know they don't like water."

  "It's not so good to know that he was out there tonight, with his assassins, and in that house."

  "He seems to be comfortable in that house," I said.

  "Yeah, he does."

  "So maybe the thing to do is to set up some kind of trap in there."

  "Or at least some kind of surveillance system. Some minicams on a twenty-four-hour loop, maybe."

  "Can those be detected electronically?"

  "Only if we make them wireless. Hardwire the network, and he'd have to dig around in the woodwork to physically find them."

  I'd put all three dogs outside when we got back to the cottage. One of them whoofed from the front porch. Pardee turned off the standing light b
y the couch while I went to the window. Tony came back into the sitting room with his gun drawn.

  Out on the dam a familiar sight materialized. The major on his horse came at a slow trot across the dam, passing the cottage without so much as a glance, and then disappeared up toward the manor house.

  "Awfully late for that theater, isn't it?" Pardee said softly.

  "I'll bet he knows that property over there like the back of his hand," Tony observed.

  "And that house, too," Pardee said.

  I didn't know what to say. It surely was quite a coincidence that the major was out and about this late at night, just an hour after Tony saw someone in the house and then was attacked by the pair of Dobermans. Cubby had said they didn't let him out at night, hadn't he?

  "It doesn't compute," I said finally. "I saw that masked face--wrong shape. I heard his voice. Wrong voice. That wasn't the major."

  "Maybe somebody working for the major, or the whole family?" Pardee said. "Don't want you there. Don't want anyone there. They like things as they are and as they always have been."

  "That computes, sort of," I said, "but then why let me stay here? Why encourage me to proceed with the purchase?"

  "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?"

  I pulled away from the window and went back to the couch. The timing didn't quite work to support that theory. I'd had guys shooting at my house before I'd gotten involved with Glory's End. Then I thought about it: Was that true? I had already walked the ground with Mr. Oatley on the day they'd called me about my prison ghost. I'd been looking at the place for two months before that. I hadn't met the Lees before then, but Oatley could have been talking in town. When had I taken that house tour with Valeria? The very next day?

  Pardee was yawning, which got me started.

  "There's a couple beds in that room over there," I said. "Let's declare victory and call it a night."

  "Works for me," Pardee said. "Should we set a guard?"

  That's what those guys are for," I said, pointing to the front door.

  The next morning we teleconferenced with Horace down in Triboro to see if he'd found out anything. No progress. He'd searched Manceford County records using search strings for female homicides or suicides in the police records statewide. No hits that could be connected to me or the MCAT.

  Pardee talked to his wife and was reminded of soccer games this weekend, so I told him to go on home and take care of family business. Tony didn't care one way or the other what he did for the weekend, and my stalker problem seemed more interesting than his current girlfriend. I did ask Pardee to get some surveillance cameras together for installation at Glory's End. Then I called Carol Pollard and asked if she could meet us at the house later that morning with her structural reconstruction expert. I still wanted to find that second passageway, assuming there was one.

  Tony and I went over to the house after making breakfast. I took all three shepherds. We put Frack in the house. He couldn't do much, but he would bark if something or someone showed up. We did a quick sweep of all the rooms and floors, including the attic, and then deployed the two shepherds out back while we searched the grounds. We began at the springhouse, and the dogs caught a scent, probably of those two Dobermans.

  "Which way did they come from?" I asked Tony.

  "Don't know," he said. "They came so fast I didn't have time to look. I thought it was from the house, but . . . I was too busy diving into that water." He shivered, remembering how cold it was.

  From the springhouse, which was about fifty feet down the hill from the main lawn, we had a clear view of the old barn area and all the outbuildings closer into the house, such as the smokehouse. I cast the two shepherds out on a big loop to see if they cut the dog scent between the outbuildings and the house, but they didn't seem to react. Then I sent them out toward the barns in an expanding loop, looking for any trails coming from that direction. I hoped there weren't any more wells out there along that farm road leading to the back buildings.

  It was a clear, sunny morning with a promise of some heat later on. I asked Tony to check the close-in buildings one by one, especially to see if the fire pit in the smokehouse had been disturbed. I went toward the back, passing the stone bench next to the sundial. I had my SIG out, and Tony had his Glock. I wasn't really expecting trouble, either human or canine, but it was better to be ready. Then I realized I hadn't reloaded since last night when I fired those four rounds. I stopped, extracted that magazine, and replaced it with my spare. I made a mental note to clean the weapon once I got back to the cottage. This was no time to be sloppy about my firearms.

  I checked the two barns that faced the house. I'd aimed low last night, mostly to ensure I didn't send 230-grain bullets out into the night and injure some fisherman out on the river. The barn on the right had the ancient farm machinery parked inside, on mostly flattened tires. I recognized some of it, but not much. I found what looked like a fresh bullet hole on the back wall, round on the entry side, splintered on my side. The boards were old and dry as paper. Then both Kitty and Frick barked.

  I turned around and saw them backing away from the other barn. Kitty was growling, but Frick was more upset than alerted, based on her body language. I moved carefully across the barnyard road to the nearest edge of the barn, SIG at the ready. Both dogs were staring inside. Kitty was showing impressive hackles, and Frick had her ears flattened. I waited for a moment to see what, if anything, would happen. Tony was not visible, and I didn't want to call out.

  Finally I crouched low and swung around the corner of the barn pointing the gun where I was looking. Inside this barn there were five bays, separated by steel farm gates. The first and nearest bay held a moldering stack of hay or straw. The one next to that contained an antique tractor that was a solid mass of rust. The dogs were looking into the third bay.

  "If somebody's in there, I need to see you right now," I called.

  No response. Kitty barked again. It was an impatient bark, not a warning. As in, get over here.

  I stood back up and walked across the front of the first two bays, stopping at the edge of the third. This one was a workshop with several benches, vises, a table saw, a drill press, and the body of a woman sitting up against the back wall on an overturned wooden crate. She had a big hole just under her left cheekbone and a small lake of blood between her legs.

  I called for Tony, and he heard me on the third try from inside the smokehouse. I walked over to the body, careful where I put my feet. I knelt down in front of her to feel for a pulse, but it was pretty clear she was gone. There was the one black entry wound, extensive bleeding from the mouth, and a skin bulge high on the other side of her head where the bullet had almost exited.

  She was just sitting there, with a surprised expression on her face. There was a scoped hunting rifle on the ground next to her, but her hands were empty and her fingers curled in, as if she'd been holding it when she was shot. I could not guess her age, but her face was leathery and seamed with too many years of cigarettes, whiskey, and hard, lean living. She could have been anywhere from fifty to sixty-five. She was wearing a long-sleeved tan Carhartt shirt, tight faded jeans, and plain cowboy boots. She had a utility hunting belt that carried a small canteen, some ammunition pouches, a first aid kit, and a fair-sized knife. Tony arrived.

  "Whoa," he said.

  "You got your phone?"

  He did.

  "Call 911, report a shooting with one fatality. Tell 'em who you are, and our location behind the big house."

  "Shit, boss--you do this last night?"

  "Sure looks like it," I said. "I was firing low to keep the rounds down, and I fired into these barns. She must have been hiding in here."

  "With a thirty-aught and a shooting hole," he said, pointing to a hole in the back wall I hadn't noticed. It had been recently gouged out, based on the splinters on the ground. "Not your basic peeping Tammy."

  "Make the call," I said, standing up. "We need to back out of their scene."

>   We sat on the front porch of the house while the incident response team did their thing back in the barn. Tony had stayed with them; the sheriff and I plus one detective had gone to the house so I could make a statement. The detective had produced a recorder and had me sign the appropriate warnings and waivers, and then I told them the entire history of this mess from the day that the first shot had come through my window back in Summerfield.

  The detective asked an occasional question for clarification but otherwise simply let me tell it. The sheriff sat there in a rocking chair with his head resting on his left hand and his eyes closed. He looked asleep, but I knew he wasn't. When I was done, the sheriff looked over at the detective, who nodded, then turned off the recorder and got up to take a smoke break out on the front lawn.

  "You've closed on this property?" he asked.

  "Not yet. Waiting on the title search and a survey."

  "So, technically, you're not the owner."

  I nodded again. He sat there for a long minute, staring out at the front lawn. The shepherds were on the porch with us, watching. I felt this cold pool of guilt growing in my belly. I've shot people before, but always in the course of a hot pursuit or a gunfight. There's always a sense of revulsion when you see the results, but it's usually tempered by the knowledge that you're standing and the other guy isn't, which typically isn't what he intended. This was different.

  "I can play this a coupla different ways," he said finally, "but, on the face of it, before any forensic reports are made, the county prosecutor is probably going to charge you with reckless endangerment and involuntary manslaughter, for starters."

  I couldn't think of anything constructive to say.

  "I mean," he said, "you don't own the property. You have been threatened with murder. You were searching the grounds for intruders. There were intruders, at least in the form of two killer Dobes, who attacked one of your helpers in the night. You fired four rounds as a distraction, and one by terrible chance caught the human intruder, who was armed with a long-range rifle, in the head. Serious gray area there."