Swamp Spook

by Jana DeLeon

  Carter studied me for a bit, then sighed. “And there’s something you need to do tonight that I’m safer not knowing. Is that it?”

  “I think it’s best if you slept in your own bed tonight. Alone.”

  “So I’m supposed to go home and go to sleep, while you and the Troublesome Twosome are out getting into God knows what?”

  “I’ll send you a text when I’m going to bed myself. How’s that?”

  “So I don’t have to worry all night, just part of it?”

  “That’s completely up to you. I can take care of myself, you know.”

  Carter nodded. “Oh, I know. But things have a way of happening, and we’ve got some crazy person out there carving up bodies. With the extra security on the morgue now, I can’t help but wonder if he might get desperate enough to create his own inventory.”

  “You think this could be a gateway crime?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. But it wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve heard. So yeah, you wandering around in the middle of the night, regardless of your capabilities, still makes me a bit nervous.”

  “I’ll have Ida Belle and Gertie with me. Trust me, there’s nothing on this earth that the contents of Gertie’s purse can’t handle.”

  “That is not the least bit reassuring,” he said as he rose from the recliner. “But I’ll respect your wishes and head home. You’ll text the instant you close that door and lock it.”

  I stood up and kissed him. “I promise.”

  “And if you run into any problems, call me immediately. My job isn’t worth something happening to you.”

  “What about something happening to Ida Belle or Gertie?”

  He grinned. “Let me think on that one.”

  He gave me another kiss, then headed out the door. I hurried upstairs and changed into black sweats and hoodie and completed the look with black tennis shoes. I retrieved my gloves and ski mask from the hidden storage in the master bedroom closet and grabbed a UV light while I was in there. If there were any fluids left in the maze after the storm, it would light them up.

  I turned off my porch light before they arrived, just in case the nosy patrol was up late with insomnia or knitting or whatever excuse they used to peer through the blinds at people. Ida Belle and Gertie walked over, figuring the SUV showing up at midnight would attract the kind of attention we didn’t need. We’d already decided that walking was the best way to approach the park, and my house was the best starting spot because it offered us the opportunity to be off the main streets.

  “Everyone got what they need for this?” I asked as we gathered in the kitchen.

  Ida Belle nodded. “Penlight, pistol, knife.”

  “I left my handbag on the coffee table,” Gertie said. “I’m going lighter since we’re hoofing it. She unzipped her fanny pack. “I’ve got—”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “You can surprise us.”

  If we got into the contents of Gertie’s fanny pack, neither of us would leave the house with her. We all donned our gloves and ski masks and headed out the back door. Off to solve a crime. And commit a crime.

  So status quo.

  The walk to the park went slower than I would have liked, but I was afraid to jog on the way over there because you never knew if we’d need that energy for running a bit later. The quickest way to the park from my house was the streets, but it was also the easiest way to be seen. So instead, we skirted the bayou through backyards until we reached the edge of the woods that surrounded one side of the park.

  The short hop through the woods went quickly and with no one tripping or attracting a skunk or a bear. Since there was no event planned for the park that night, and certainly not at midnight, the entire area was light-free except for the occasional moonlight when the storm clouds cleared. The dark made movement more difficult but also hidden. Thankfully the park also contained plenty of shrubs and large trees. Between Mother Nature and the booths erected for the festival, there were plenty of things to hide behind when the moon peeked out.

  We set off out of the woods, me in the lead, and crept from one hiding place to another when the moon was hidden. I didn’t think the state police were guarding the park but I wouldn’t put it past them to patrol by during the night. And all of the houses across the street had front-facing windows. Someone with insomnia could easily have been staring out and seen us if we just strolled through. Given everything that had transpired, I had no doubt if someone spotted us in the park at this late hour, their first phone call would be to the sheriff’s department, which would have no choice but to notify the state police that their crime scene might be compromised.

  It seemed to take forever, waiting for the cover of darkness to slip from one location to another, but finally, we arrived at the ticket booth for the maze.

  “The tape is still up,” I said. “So we’re officially breaking the law. Anyone want to back out?”

  “Are you kidding?” Gertie asked. “We almost burned down a doctor’s office today. This is quite literally a walk in the park.”

  “All right,” I said, “then follow me. I figure we should start in my scene and work our way outward.”

  I made a quick dash for the maze and ducked under the police tape, Ida Belle and Gertie right behind me. So far, so good. I headed into the stack of hay bales and worked my way through the design until I reached the head block.

  “Check the hay bales,” I said.

  “What are we looking for?” Gertie asked.

  “Structural problems,” I said. “If the body was tucked in one, the weight of the bales on top of it would cause it to sag a little now that the body is gone.”

  Ida Belle nodded. “If one of them was compromised, the outside would give if you pressed on it.”

  Three solid walls formed the bulk of the scene, so we each took a side and started our check, focusing on the bales that were no higher than our heads. I really didn’t think someone would risk stuffing the body higher than that. When I reached the corner, I bumped into Gertie.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Everything is hard packed.”

  “Nothing here either,” Ida Belle said.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “We’ll start checking bales on the way to the other scenes, tracking backward and forward. And we’ll need to check the bales on the dead-end stretches as well. I’ll go forward. Ida Belle, you go back. Gertie, take the dead-end offshoot here.”

  Gertie surveyed the area. “Celia helped us out a bit by running through some of them like a linebacker. I’ll think twice about getting in her way if she’s running.”

  “No, you won’t,” Ida Belle said. “You’ll just tase her, or light her on fire with a firecracker or something else from your bag of tricks.”

  “Fair enough,” Gertie said and started feeling up the hay bales.

  I worked my way toward the next scene, which was the mummy area. I checked all the bales down the tunnel to the scene, then pulled the tarps off the props to get a closer look. There were two coffins. One made of old wood was leaned in the corner and had a fake mummy with glowing red eyes in it. The second was the fake sarcophagus that Gertie had been in.

  As far as coffins go, it was pretty cool. The top part opened separately from the rest of the lid, and that’s the part Gertie threw back to pop up and scare the maze visitors. The entire thing was perched on a stand that was about two feet high, putting the casket just high enough where Gertie could reach out and grab someone if they got too close.

  The stand was covered with thick black canvas material. I lifted it up and pulled out my UV light and shone it underneath, but nothing registered on the hay beneath it. I supposed the storm could have washed away the evidence but with the cover, I figured at least one spot would remain. Odds were, nothing had been stashed under the coffin because it would have been too easily discovered.

  I stood back up and opened the sarcophagus. I don’t know why. Gertie had b
een inside, and I’m pretty sure she would have noticed if there had been another body tucked inside with her. The overwhelming smell of cedar assaulted me as soon as I lifted the lid. I scanned the empty enclosure and was about to shut it up again when I stopped. I leaned over, studying the side of the coffin, then raised up and looked inside again. I wasn’t crazy. The coffin structure was way deeper than what the inside reflected.

  “I checked three turns up.” Ida Belle’s voice sounded behind me. “There’s one more but you can see it from the entrance, so I don’t think it would be a good spot to hide anything.”

  “I struck out, too,” Gertie said. “I’ve checked every dead end between the first scene to here. All the hay bales are solid.”

  “Why are you frowning?” Ida Belle asked. “We still have more maze to check. Don’t give up yet.”

  “Hey, look at this,” I said. “The outside wall of the coffin is a lot taller than what the inside shows.”

  They both stepped up and looked at the coffin side, then inside it.

  “You’re right,” Ida Belle said. “There’s a good ten inches at least missing from the inside that’s accounted for on the outside.”

  “Maybe it goes up on the bottom side,” Gertie said.

  I dropped down and shone my penlight at the bottom of the coffin. “Nope. It’s solid all the way across.”

  “Then there must be a false bottom,” Ida Belle said. “I mean, why close in that space?”

  We started feeling around the edges, but the seam on the bottom felt solid.

  “Look,” Gertie said. “It’s here, about an inch up from the bottom of the coffin. My fingernail caught in it.”

  I leaned down farther and shone my light up the side from the bottom and then I saw what Gertie had pointed out. There was an almost invisible line circling the entire casket.

  “It must lift up,” Ida Belle said.

  “Finger holes,” Gertie said. “Look at the front where the head would go.”

  I moved to the front of the coffin and saw the indentions Gertie was shining her light on. I put my fingers in them and pulled, and the bottom of the coffin lifted up. When I had it high enough for some of it to clear the sides, Gertie and Ida Belle grabbed it and we lifted the entire piece out and put it on the ground next to the stand. Sure enough, the bottom that Gertie had been lying on had covered a hiding place that spanned the entire length and width of the coffin.

  I lifted my UV light and shone it inside. Several spots fluoresced.

  “Holy crap,” Gertie said. “That’s blood, right?”

  “It could be,” I said, struggling to control my excitement.

  “You mean I spent the night on top of a body and never noticed?” Gertie gave us both a look of dismay.

  “It was probably in a body bag, which is why there’s so little fluids,” I said. “The cedar masked the smell.”

  “So what’s the deal with this bottom?” Ida Belle asked. “Storage? I guess with the lining we never noticed.”

  Gertie perked up. “Magicians.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “I bet it’s one of those coffins that’s empty, then they shut the lid and the girl pops out,” Gertie said. “I mean, it’s really old-school, which is probably why the committee was able to buy it. But I’ll bet anything that false bottom fits right into the lid and holds there.”

  I circled around and checked the lid and sure enough, there was a lip at the foot of the coffin and black plastic latches at the head. “She’s right,” I said. “I bet someone hides in the bottom, then pushes the false bottom into the lid and secures it.”

  “That’s exactly it,” Gertie said. “I saw it on one of those documentaries. But like I said, this is old-school. All the new stuff has mirrors and cameras and who knows what else.”

  “And Garrett was small enough to fit in here, right?” I asked. I’d never seen him except for on the chopping block, and I hadn’t taken a hard look at his physique since I was a bit distracted by his flying head.

  Ida Belle nodded. “He wasn’t a big man. Kinda scrawny really. I mean, his head would have to be turned to the side, but dexterity wasn’t really a concern in this case.”

  “So what now?” Gertie asked. “Do we tell Carter?”

  “No,” Ida Belle said. “Even if the state police test the bottom, all it will tell us is that Garrett’s body was in here, which we figure is the case anyway. I say we move forward with the presumption that the body was put in the sarcophagus before it was transported to the maze.”

  “Where was it stored?” I asked.

  “The church, and before you ask, anyone and everyone had access,” Ida Belle said. “There are a million keys wandering around and the locks aren’t any better than the ones at the morgue.”

  “So someone could have hacked off the head and put the body in the sarcophagus Friday night,” I said. “Then left it to be hauled to the festival Saturday morning. But what about the weight? Wouldn’t someone have wondered why it was so heavy? Whoever put the body in there couldn’t be certain he’d be the one to transport it.”

  “Stuff is stored inside the coffins, so they’re fairly heavy,” Ida Belle said. “And I’m sure they used a dolly to move it and at least two men to lift it in place. The additional weight might not have registered, especially if they’d already been working a while and nothing felt light anymore.”

  Thunder boomed overhead and a streak of lightning shot through the sky.

  “Time to make our exit,” Ida Belle said. “We got what we came for, and I don’t want to get caught in round two of this storm system.”

  We put everything back in place and headed for the beginning of the maze. When we got to the last turn before the entrance, a light hit me square in the eyes.

  “State police!” Davies yelled. “Stop right there.”

  I don’t know how Gertie managed it. The only thing I could figure was that she was walking through the maze carrying one of those exploding firebombs and a lighter, but before I could even turn to run, a flaming ball of sizzling greatness flew past my face and exploded into the hay bales next to the cops.

  I didn’t even hesitate. I spun around and shoved Gertie and Ida Belle, and we took off running. They had guns, but we had an advantage—we knew how to get out of the maze. Ida Belle tore through the structure, making every turn at the precise location, with Gertie and me hot on her heels. I could hear the cops shouting behind me. We turned into the last scene before the exit—the hangman—and I started counting the steps to the woods. If we could just make the tree line, we could lose them.

  And that’s when Gertie Gertied.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Her foot caught on the edge of a hay bale as she entered the hangman scene and she stumbled to the right. She managed to regain her balance before falling but not before one of her outstretched arms went right through the hangman’s noose. I yelled but it was too late. She continued her run forward and yanked the entire stand holding the noose down on top of her. I leaped over the pile, then spun around and grabbed her arms, trying to pull her out from under the stand.

  And that’s when Davies and Sands caught up to us.

  Davies reached down to grab Gertie’s feet and she kicked him in the crotch with what must have been the strength of a bull, because he yelled and launched backward into the hay bales, sending them down on top of him. Sands took up the good fight and reached for Gertie but she’d had time to access her bag of tricks. She pulled out a can of what looked like Mace and directed it right at Sands’s face.

  I gave up pulling Gertie and reached for the four-by-four on top of her to shove it off. A second later, I heard Sands yelling and he bolted upright and sprang backward. I heaved the stand off Gertie and shoved it at Sands, knocking him over. Ida Belle pulled Gertie up from the ground, and we burst out of the maze and set off for the tree line at a dead run.

  We slowed as we entered the woods and Ida Belle took the lead. Without light, we couldn’t move
as quickly as we would have liked, but we didn’t want to signal our location, so we had to go with the limited moonlight available and Ida Belle’s memory. I could still hear the cops yelling behind us and then thrashing in the brush. I knew they were attempting to follow, but I put Ida Belle’s woodsman skills up against their flashlights and ignorance any day.

  As the seconds ticked by, the sounds of the cops got farther away and I started to relax a bit. Then suddenly we stepped out of the thick foliage and I realized we were standing on the trail we’d taken through the woods to the park.

  “You’re a genius,” I said.

  “I just know my turf,” Ida Belle said. “We better move. I can’t hear them but they might still be looking.”

  Lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the forest, and thunder boomed right afterward.

  “And it’s about to pour,” Gertie said.

  “Time for light,” Ida Belle said

  She pulled out her flashlight and set off down the trail at a good clip. Not quite a run but more than a slow jog. Gertie was second and I brought up the rear. We traversed the woods and reached the bayou in good time and set out across the edge of the backyards. We almost made it to my house when the bottom dropped out.

  It was as if God had poured a bucket of water directly on us. The rain came so hard and so fast that it was difficult to even see. It moved like sheets in the wind, seeming to wave like clothes on a line. We sprinted for the back door and collapsed in the kitchen, dripping wet and gasping for air. Well, some of us were gasping for air.

  Ida Belle was holding the counter and drawing in long, deep breaths, but she appeared to be in decent shape despite our mad dash. Gertie, on the other hand, had yanked off her ski mask, collapsed in a dining chair, and slumped over, face between her knees and wheezing.

  I bent over and tapped her shoulder. “Are you all right or do I need to do CPR?”

  “Might want to call the coroner,” Ida Belle said. “That one left me winded. Gertie probably blew a blood vessel.”

  Gertie’s right arm rose and she held up a shaky middle finger.