by Glen Cook
“Is somebody?”
“I don’t know. He’s been doing it a long time. You know a way to do that?”
“What’s his color like?”
“His color?”
“Sure. There are poisons you could use in cumulative dosages. The color is the giveaway.”
“He’s kind of a sickly yellow. His hair is falling out in clumps. And his skin has a translucent quality.”
Morley frowned. “Not blue or gray?”
“Yellow. Like pale butterscotch.”
He shook his head. “Can’t tell you based on that.”
“He has seizures, too.”
“Crazies?”
“Like heart tremors, or something.”
“Doesn’t sound familiar. Maybe if I saw him.”
“I’d like that. I don’t know if I can arrange it. They’re all paranoid about strangers.” I gave him a rundown on the players.
“Sounds like a bughouse.”
“Could be. All of them, except Jennifer and Cook, spent at least thirty years in the Marines, mostly in the Cantard.”
He grinned. “I’m not going to say it.”
“Good for you. We all make the world a little holier when we resist temptation. One more thing. The old man thinks he hired me to find out who’s stealing the silver and his old war trophies.” I produced the list. Morley started reading. “I’ll pay legwork fees for somebody to make the rounds and see if any of that is moving through the usual channels.”
“Saucerhead needs work.” Saucerhead Tharpe is a friend, of sorts, in a line somewhere between Morley’s and mine. He has more scruples than Dotes and more ambition than me, but he’s as big as a house and looks half as smart. People can’t take him serious. He never gets the best jobs.
“All right. I’ll pay his standard rate. Bonus if he recovers any of the articles. Bonus if he gets a description of the thief.”
“On the cuff?” That was a hint.
I gave him advance money. He said, “I thank you and Saucerhead thanks you. I know you’re doing an old buddy a favor but it seems damned tame. Especially if the old guy is just dying.”
“There’s something going on. Somebody tried to off me.” I told him.
He laughed. “I wish I could have seen the guy’s face when he swung that ax and you bonged like a bell. You’ve still got the luck.”
“Maybe.”
“Why are they after you?”
“I don’t know. Money? That’s the one angle that makes this interesting. The old boy is worth about five million marks. His son is dead. His wife died twenty years ago. His daughter Jennifer gets half the estate and the other half goes to his Marine cronies. Three years ago he had seventeen heirs. Since then two died supposedly natural deaths, one got killed by a mad bull, and four disappeared. A little basic math shows that nearly doubles the take for the survivors.”
Morley sat down behind his desk, put his feet up, cleaned his pearly white teeth with a six-inch steel toothpick. I didn’t interrupt his thoughts.
“There’s potential for foul play in that setup, Garrett.”
“Human nature being what it is.”
“If I was a betting man I’d give odds that somebody is fattening his share.”
“Human nature being what it is.”
“Nobody walks out on that kind of money. Not you, not me, not a saint. So maybe you have something interesting after all.”
“Maybe. Thing is, I don’t see any way to tie it up in a package. If I find out who’s stealing—which makes no sense considering the payoff down the road—I’m not likely to find out who’s killing the old man. That doesn’t make sense for whoever is cutting down the number of heirs. He’d want the old man to hang on.”
“What happens if the daughter checks out before he does?”
“Damn!” A critical point and it hadn’t occurred to me. If everything went to the boys she’d really be on the spot. “The odd thing is, none of them act like they know what’s going on. They seem to get along. They don’t watch each other over their shoulders. I did, and I was only there one night.”
“A marvelous aspect of your species is that most of you see only what you want.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Maybe those guys are old buddies and only one of them realizes that throat-cutting can be profitable. Maybe nobody is suspicious because they all know their old buddies wouldn’t do something like that after all they’ve been through together.”
Could be. I’d kind of had that problem myself. I couldn’t picture me turning on anybody I’d been running with that long. “And the whole thing could be what they say it is. Three dead by explainable cause and four who couldn’t handle the life-style and walked because money didn’t mean anything.”
“And the moon could be mouse bait.”
“You have a dark outlook.”
“Supported every day in the street. The other night a thirty-six-year-old man knifed his mom and dad because they wouldn’t give him money for a bottle of wine. That’s the real world, Garrett. We’re our own worst nightmares.” He chuckled. “You’re lucky this time. You don’t have anything weird. No vampires, no werewolves, no witches, no sorcerers, no dead gods trying to come back to life. None of the stuff you usually stumble into.”
I snorted. Those things aren’t on every street corner, but they’re part of the world. Everybody brushes against them eventually. They didn’t impress me, though I was happy not to deal with them.
I said, “I could have seen a ghost.”
“A what?”
“A ghost. I keep seeing a woman that nobody admits is there. That nobody else sees. Unless they’re pulling my leg. Which they probably are.”
“Or you’re crazy. She’s a gorgeous blonde, right?”
“A blonde. Not bad.”
“You’re daydreaming out loud in your eyes. Your wishful thinking has gotten to you.”
“Maybe. I’ll know before I’m done. There was something else I wanted but it escapes me now.”
“Must not have been important.”
“Probably not. I’d better get back out there.”
“You take some equipment? Hate to think of you up to your ears in killers with nothing but your teeth and toenails.”
“I’ve got a trick or two.”
He grunted. “You always do. Don’t turn your back on anybody.”
“I won’t.”
As I started to close the door, he asked, “What’s the daughter look like?”
“Early twenties. A looker but not a talker. Spoiled rotten, probably.”
He looked thoughtful, then shrugged, got up, dropped down and started doing more push-ups. I shut the door. I can’t stand seeing a man abuse himself.
12
I headed south feeling smug. I knew my Morley Dotes. Curiosity would get him. He’d push his end beyond what I’d hired him to do. He’d go fishing amongst his contacts. If there was something going on involving the Stantnors, he’d find out.
The smugness disappeared after I walked out South Gate.
That’s when the drizzle started. That’s when I started cussing myself for my distrust of horses. Hell, if I couldn’t ride, I could hire a coach. I had a client. I could charge it to expenses. Expenses are wonderfully flexible—especially if the client fails the attitude test.
I got some wet before I reached my destination.
Odd. Most of those big country places have names. The Maples. Windward. Sometimes something that doesn’t make any sense, like Brittany Stone. But this one could have been a squatter’s hut. The Stantnor place. Ancient family seat and museum but not enough of a home for anybody to give it a name.
I was still a quarter mile off when Jennifer Stantnor flew out the front door, headed toward me. She hadn’t put a wrap on. Peters came after her, gaining but not looking like he was trying to catch her.
They reached me at the same time. Jennifer looked irked that Peters had come. Peters looked exasperated at her. I did my best to l
ook puzzled, which isn’t hard. That’s where I am most of the time. I raised an eyebrow way up. It’s one of my best tricks. Jennifer just stood there, panting. Peters, less winded despite being almost three times her age, said, “There’s been a hunting accident.”
I kept a straight face. “Oh?”
“Let’s get in out of the rain.”
I looked at the girl. I think she wanted to talk. Grimly, she said, “I don’t think it was an accident.”
It probably wasn’t, if someone had gotten killed. But I didn’t say that. I just grunted.
Peters talked while we walked. “We’ve had trouble with poachers. There are deer on the grounds. A fair herd.”
Jennifer interjected, “We put out feed. We don’t take many.”
“Three all last year,” Peters said. “Peasants . . . The animals make easy targets. They’re not so wary here. The past month we’ve had six intrusions. That we know of.”
Jennifer said, “Dad gets more upset about the trespassing than the poaching. He has a thing about boundaries. Like they’re lines of steel.”
“After the last incident,” Peters said, as we climbed the steps to the house, “the General ordered regular patrols. He wanted someone caught and an example made. Today Kaid, Hawkes, Tyler, and Snake had the duty. Hawkes apparently caught somebody in the act. He sounded his hunting horn.”
Jennifer said, “When the others got there, he was on the ground with an arrow in him. A gutted deer was hanging in a tree fifty feet away.”
“Interesting. And sad. But why tell me? Sounds like something you people can handle.”
Jennifer looked puzzled. Peters said, “This is going to sound silly. You’re the only scout around here. All these lifers and none of them can follow a trail.”
“Oh.” Maybe. “It’s been years. And I wasn’t that good.” I recalled my stumbling around during a few recent cases.
“Mediocre is better than what the rest of us are.” Peters looked at Chain, who was headed our way. “How is he?”
“I don’t think he’ll make it. He needs a surgeon.”
“You know the old man. No doctors in the house.”
“We can’t move him without killing him.”
Jennifer snapped, “Get a doctor! My father doesn’t have to know. He never comes out of his room.”
“Dellwood will tell him.”
“I’ll handle Dellwood.”
“Go,” Peters told Chain, and Chain got his carcass moving.
I said, “I take it Hawkes is still alive.”
“He’s fighting.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“He’s out. Way out. Not much chance he’ll come around unless Chain gets a cutter in time.”
“Show me where it happened before the rain wipes out the sign.”
I got to ride. Lucky me. The horse was hospitable all the way out, but I knew it had heard of me through the grapevine those monsters have. It grinned when it heard my name. It was waiting for a chance.
It was a good ride out. The Stantnors had a lot of land. We didn’t talk much. I took in the countryside, getting the lay, the landmarks. I might need to know them.
I’d developed the habit young. It was my apparent knack for knowing my way around that got me volunteered as a scout when the real Sexton vanished.
“Looks like Snake came back out,” Peters said as we crossed a rise and came to the scene.
I saw a man under an oak near a hanging animal carcass. “Sarge, I never knew any of these guys when I was in. Did any of them know Sexton?”
He looked at me funny. “I don’t think so.”
I dismounted, tied the reins to an oak sapling. My mount got a forlorn look. “Thought I’d just drop them and you’d scurry when I turned my back, didn’t you?”
“What?” Peters asked.
“Talking to the horse. I talk to horses. They make more sense than people.”
“Snake, this is Mike Sexton. Scouted for me in the islands. You probably heard he’s here.”
Snake grunted. He looked me over. I returned the favor.
If Chain had gone to seed, this one had gone a step beyond. His hair hadn’t been cut since he’d gotten out. His beard was a bramble patch. He didn’t change clothes or bathe very often. His pants were covered with curious colored stains. He said, “I heard.”
“You found anything?”
Snake grunted. It sounded negative.
I looked at the carcass. Wasn’t much to it. “Kind of puny, isn’t it?”
“Fawn,” Snake said. “Just lost its spots.”
Yes. A little rusty, Garrett. Why would a poacher take a fawn? If he was after the meat and the herd wasn’t spooky, he’d go for a bigger kill. I gave the carcass a closer look.
It was ten years since I’d done my own butchering, but this job looked amateurish. Like it had been done by someone who’d seen animals butchered but who hadn’t ever done it himself.
“This patrol this morning. Was there a set plan? Specific assignments?”
Peters said, “We had a routine, if that’s what you mean. Routes we’d figured so four men could cover everything.”
Not exactly what I wanted to know. I couldn’t be more specific without giving away more than I wanted. “Where was Hawke when he was hit?”
“Up here.”
I followed Peters. The spot was obvious once you got there. Hawkes had thrashed around after he’d fallen. He’d lost enough blood to draw flies too stupid to go for the bonanza in the tree. The spot was fifty feet from the deer. A blind archer could have made the shot.
I picked out what I thought was Hawkes’ back trail. I followed it, found a place where he’d stopped. “I’d guess this is where he sounded the horn. Then he went down and stopped again there.”
“And the poacher let him have it.”
Somebody did. “What time did it happen?”
“About nine.”
“Uhm.” That fawn had been dead a lot longer than that.
I walked back down. Snake still stood staring at the carcass. I asked, “You look around some?”
He grunted. “Why’d anybody want to do that to a little fawn?” An old buddy getting an arrow through the brisket didn’t bother him. The fawn did.
I took another look at the carcass. I couldn’t find its death wound. “Was there an arrow in it?”
“No.”
Snake wasn’t going to be much good for anything.
The tree where the fawn hung was a loner ten yards from the edge of a wood that followed a creek. That wood was only a hundred yards across. I headed downhill, swinging back and forth, looking for the poacher’s trail
I found it. Somebody in a big hurry had charged straight through the underbrush. Understandable, if you’ve just plinked some guy and you know he has friends coming.
Peters followed me. I asked, “Was there a set pattern to who rode where on these patrols?”
No way to keep him from wondering why I asked. He frowned. “No. We mixed it up so we wouldn’t see the same ground every time.”
Then the sniper hadn’t been after somebody in particular, just somebody. Assuming the arrow hadn’t come from the bow of a panicky poacher but someone who had laid a trap.
I was sure that when Hawkes stopped the second time, he’d seen whoever let him have it. That he’d been startled into halting. Otherwise, he’d have kept moving.
How much of that was Peters figuring out? The man wasn’t stupid.
“How do you get along with your neighbors?”
“We ignore them. They ignore us. Most of them are scared of us.”
I’d be scared if I had neighbors like them.
The sniper had become less panicky after fifty yards of flight. He’d turned onto an old game trail. There were too many leaves down for the ground to take good tracks but I could tell which way he had gone by the way they were disturbed. “Got any dogs? Or know where we could get some?”
“To track with? No.”
The game trai
l went down to the creek, split. One fork crossed over, the other ran along the bank. My quarry had taken the latter.
A hundred fifty yards along, that path dipped into a wide, shallow, sandy-bottomed section of creek. And didn’t come out the other side. I looked around. “I’ve lost it.”
“God damn it, look again.”
I looked, satisfied that he hadn’t noticed the horse apples in the shallow water. Whoever had come down here had ridden away, down the streambed. No big deal, since the water was never more than a foot deep.
How many peasants forced to poach deer could afford to keep a horse?
“Sorry. There’s nothing.”
“Then I’ll find some damned dogs.”
As we walked back uphill I asked, “Who takes care of the stables here?’
“Mostly Snake, with help from Hawkes and Tyler. I don’t get Snake. Takes care of the animals. Likes to. But you can’t get him on a horse to save his life.”
That made sense to me, though it was a little extreme.
I asked questions that got me curious looks but no answers. Unless they were liars and fast to boot—or in cahoots—none of the men on patrol could have dropped Hawkes. And Hawkes didn’t do it to himself. That narrowed the field of suspects, but not enough. I wanted rid of Snake and Peters so I could prowl down that creek to wherever the sniper had left it.
“Shit!” Black Pete exploded. “We’ve got our heads up our asses.”
“What?”
“What did we do every time we hit the Venageti on the damned island? What did I pound into you guys every damned day we were there?”
He’d gotten it. “Yeah. You don’t leave tracks on water.” Before a raid we’d always made sure we had an escape route crossed by a lot of water.
“The bastard walked down the creek. That’s why you couldn’t find anything.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go.”
“I’ll check it out. No need you taking any more time off.”
He looked at me hard, checked to see where Snake was. “What’re you thinking, Garrett? I’ve seen you like this before. I haven’t forgotten the stuff you pulled.”
“I’m doing my job the best way I know. Nothing personal, but everybody’s a suspect till I prove otherwise. No matter how well I think I know them.”