Past Dying (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  Past Dying

  An Alan Graham Mystery

  Malcolm Shuman

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  This book is for Dave Miller, M.D.,

  dedicated healer and faithful friend.

  PROLOGUE

  December 1833

  The man on the tan horse looked out over the river at the steep bluffs on the other side. The ferry that had taken him across was already halfway back to the east bank, where the failing sun had painted the clutch of hovels at the base of the bluffs a deceptive gold. Someone looking across could get the idea the riverside settlement was a promised land, the man thought wryly, instead of a trap where whores and card sharps picked a stranger’s pocket until he was lucky to get out with the clothes on his back.

  He’d been there many times, as well as in the mansions on the hills beyond the bluffs. He’d been wined, dined, had met the daughters of the gentry and had played cards with their fathers and brothers. They’d listened to his stories of land for the taking, in Louisiana, Arkansas, and, most recently, Texas, and some had invested in his schemes. They’d been awed by the stories of the brawl just upriver, on the sandbar, where, six years ago, he’d killed a man with his big knife, and by the tale of how he, his brother, and a few other men had outfought a band of savage Indians on the San Saba River in Texas. His brother had even published an account of the fight in a magazine called the Saturday Evening Post That, together with local accounts of the sandbar duel, had made the horseman a local legend. Just two years short of forty, and the son-in-law of the vice governor of the Mexican State of Texas y Coahuila, James Bowie should have been at the crest of his power and enjoyment of life.

  And yet, no sooner had he reached the United States on his trip east this summer than it had all turned to ashes.

  First he’d learned of the death of one of his brothers. Stephen’s life had been troubled and he had not gotten along well with his other brothers, but he was still blood and it hurt to know that Stephen was no more. Then, in New Orleans, his older brother, Rezin, who’d been with James on the San Saba, showed James the news of the Supreme Court decision: It had invalidated the Arkansas land claims James had so feverishly put together. The Court said they were forgeries and the people to whom he had sold them could not claim what was not theirs. In a flash James’s hope for a fortune had evaporated, leaving him not only with worthless paper, but with a reputation as a dishonest speculator. And if these were not enough, the steam mill machinery for Rezin’s plantation had never worked right, frost had killed the crop, and many of his brother’s slaves had died of cholera.

  If for no other reason than to leave the scene of disaster, James and Rezin had departed for the East shortly after his own arrival in Louisiana from Texas. They’d visited New York, where Rezin had been treated for his deteriorating eyesight, and then they’d gone down to the nation’s capital, and tried to convince people at the Treasury Department to assist them on a financial claim against the government. But it had not worked, and all that had come of the trip was the story in the Post.

  Perhaps it was his lowered resistance, or the effect of the old bullet and sword wounds from the sandbar fight, but soon after James got back to Natchez after his visit east he’d come down with malaria. In his delirium, as he tossed and turned, he called for his wife, Ursula, in faraway Texas, and gave incoherent orders for his last will and testament to be drawn.

  But despite the debilitating fever, despite the lung still weak from the sword wound, despite the recent defeats, one after the other, his fever had finally broken and he had survived.

  And it was on a dismal day early in November, while he lay in the house of his friend in Natchez, gradually regaining his strength, that the news came from Texas.

  His wife and her parents were dead, taken by cholera.

  He sank bank on his pillow, eyes closed, and willed death to take him.

  And death, smiling as always, refused.

  So he made plans to return to Texas.

  Stay, his friends had begged: Wait until your strength has returned.

  But he’d shaken his head and continued to pack his few things.

  At least take the steamboat to the mouth of the Red and then up to Natchitoches.

  But he’d told them there was a man he wanted to see in Lordsport, along the land route.

  Then start tomorrow, they’d advised: It’s too late in the day, and on the trail after dark even you could fall prey to robbers.

  He wasn’t worried. No wilderness could be as dangerous as the place he’d just been. And, besides, he was well armed: a pair of pistols in his belt and a heavy knife in a scabbard. If the gunpowder was wet or the flint failed to strike a sufficient spark, the blade wouldn’t disappoint him.

  So now he plodded forward on the wagon road. By dark he could make it to the inn on Tiger Bayou, and if there was no place for him inside, he could always sleep under the stars. He’d probably be more comfortable on the ground anyway, he thought, mindful of the vermin-infested lodgings that travelers had to endure along the Louisiana roads.

  The rocking saddle lulled him, only awakening him to pain when his mount stepped into a rut and jarred his body. He was dimly aware of the sunlight waning and the sudden onset of darkness. He was not as far along as he’d planned.

  Well, no matter. He could pitch camp wherever he wanted.

  He raised his head to the sky and counted the stars in the Dipper, then took in the broad band of the Milky Way. The Indians called it the Spirits’ Road. Sometimes, truth be known, he felt more at home among the savages than he did among the blue bloods of Natchez and the Creoles of New Orleans. You knew where you stood with Indians.

  And there was always that story about the tribe in Texas that guarded a mine full of gold. He’d failed once in finding it, but maybe if he set out again it would tear his mind away from the sorrows that weighed him down.

  Suddenly, as he stared into the blackness of the sky, a blaze of light illuminated the firmament. The horse started, gave a whinny of fright, and the man tugged the reins.

  It was a falling star, plummeting downward. As its flame extinguished the man tried to figure where it had touched earth. Maybe near Lordsport, on the Cane River. Or maybe even farther west, in the unclaimed land between the United States and Mexico. Or maybe in Texas itself.

  He’d seen many falling stars, but never one this bright, and though he was too hard-headed to have much room for superstition, he had to wonder if it was a sign: Was the star telling him that he was headed in the right direction? That his restoration, indeed, lay to the west? Or was it a message from the Dark One, who’d refused to take him so many other times: a signal telling him to come back to Texas, that this time he wouldn’t be refused.

  That’s how I imagined it over a century and a half later, after the woman called about the thing in the river and people started dying.

  ONE

  I told the Corps of Engineers I didn’t do UFOs.

  “Neither do we,” Bertha Bomberg said. She was the Corps representative who oversaw our archaeological services contract with the New Orleans Engineer District and in general made our lives miserable. “But this woman saw something and she’s called everybody in the world, from the sheriff to the Division of Archaeology to her congressman and now she’s calling the Corps of Engineers, because the thing fell into a bayou and she figures we ought to have some jurisdiction.”

  “I agree. Why don’t you go up to Lordsport and talk to her?”

  “Because, Alan, I would have to sign out a government car and explain to my supervisor in the Planning Division what I was doing and I wouldn’t get authorization because it’s in Vicksburg Distric
t, anyway.”

  “So you want me to go, instead.”

  “You’re working on that highway project just a few miles outside of town. I thought it would just be—”

  “—simpler for me to take time off and charge it to the Department of Transportation and Development,” I said. “Hey, that’s neat. Why didn’t I think of it?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Alan. Next year …”

  “I know. Our contract is being reviewed.”

  “I’m glad you understand. Besides …” She sighed. “I hate to see a taxpayer feel like they’re not getting any response. We’re here to serve the public and this lady can’t get anyone to listen to her.”

  Bertha Bomberg, public servant, was a face I hadn’t seen up to now.

  What else could I do but go?

  I left the next morning, enduring Marilyn’s tsking because I’d promised to try to hold down costs, and the highway department had already threatened an audit. I headed north up 61, to St. Francisville, recalling, as I passed familiar landmarks, the Tunica Treasure business that had brought Pepper and me together two years ago. Yesterday she’d laughed when I’d told her about Bertha’s strange request.

  “Just consider it a civic duty,” she said from the other side of the shower curtain as small droplets of spray found their way around the barrier to settle onto my face and arms.

  “I’m not feeling very civic-minded,” I told her over the sound of the shower. “Especially when I have to leave you alone here for two days and nights.”

  We’d grown appreciably closer since our initial less-than-promising meeting. I was, in fact, on the verge of getting her to give up her apartment for good and move in. Now I had to go do La Bombast’s work for her.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said with a laugh, stepping out of the shower. Before I could lick my lips she’d whipped a towel around her, and I sighed. “I have my courses to teach,” she reminded me.

  “And that’s another thing,” I complained. “You come back from a summer in Mexico, on a dig, and not three weeks later that so-called anthropology department at the university snaps you up to take the place of that historical archaeologist who took off in a huff.”

  “But I thought you’d be glad: Marilyn never felt comfortable having me around. I was threatening to her sense of power. And poor David never knew what to make of me. This way, I don’t compete with anybody.”

  “But that whole department is a nest of leches.”

  Her hand reached out to touch my face: “Poor Alan. Still insecure. What can I do …?”

  I told her and she did.

  Now I was thirty miles away, resenting the fact that tonight, and probably tomorrow night as well, I would be sleeping on a bunk in a houseful of raucous archaeological crew people instead of in my own bed with the woman who I was still worried might burst like a bubble if touched once too often.

  The season didn’t help: It was a dismal January day, three weeks after New Year’s, when everything from the sky to the very air is gray, and the excitement of the Christmas season has evaporated, leaving only a stack of greeting cards, a few pine needles on the floor, and the knowledge that ahead, at the end of the gray tunnel of winter, lies the furnace of summer. I hated summer almost as much as the dreary days after Christmas.

  And I hated all the nights I was away from Pepper.

  It was ten o’clock when I reached Natchez, and a fine rain was falling. Outside it was just above freezing and the weather forecast said the front extended west all the way to Texas. The crew would be inside today, processing artifacts, because it was too nasty to accomplish anything in the field.

  I passed the sign pointing to the Grand Village of the Natchez, now a state park, and a few minutes later, at the hospital, arced left, toward the river. Ahead, high on the bluff sat a Ramada motel, and at the base of the hill, at water’s edge, was a re-creation of Natchez Under the Hill, which, in the days before the Civil War, had been a sinkhole of depravity for river men, gamblers, and loose women. Nowadays, there were tourist joints and a gambling boat. These days losing your money didn’t require having your throat cut.

  Once over the bridge I was in Louisiana again, and into the flat floodplain of the Mississippi River, rich farmland that produced cotton and soy beans.

  By the time I reached Ferriday, twenty miles west of Natchez, the rain had become a drizzle and I had the heater turned up full.

  I hadn’t told David I was coming because I wasn’t sure how to explain what I was doing: UFOs weren’t exactly the kind of things we were in business to investigate. Better just to come, talk to the woman, and explain afterward.

  What had Pepper called it? A civic duty.

  The rain stopped just after eleven, in time for me to see the brooding, rugged hills that loomed over the Cane River plain and shadowed the tiny community of Lordsport. Ahead of me was the old truss drawbridge that marked the entrance to town. The bridge was the reason we were here to begin with: The state was going to build a new one to the south, bypassing the town, and there was a major archaeological site in the way. We were excavating the site, but I had to wonder what the bypass would do for the town itself: Once a thriving steamboat port, it had been left moribund by the development of roads in this century. Though it was still a parish seat, once a bypass was in place there would be little reason to go there at all.

  I slowed for the narrow bridge, with its bare two lanes, and glanced down at the water: gray as slate and as cold as Bertha Bomberg’s heart—except that I’d just experienced a kernel of heretofore unobserved humanity in said heart, which was why I was here.

  Then I caught myself: It wasn’t warmth—La Bombast just didn’t want to be bothered.

  Ahead, after a scatter of houses and shops, was the old brick, four-story courthouse that dated from 1930. I found a parking place next to a white sheriff’s cruiser and pulled in.

  I went up the brick steps and into the old building, passing the four cases of archaeological artifacts that had been salvaged from the various mounds and sites in the area. One of the cases was empty, and I supposed another display was being prepared. This was probably the only parish in the state that had a sheriff interested in prehistory. I knew this because he’d once worked for me. I took the elevator down to the basement floor, and went through a doorway with a painted sign that said SHERIFF’S OFFICE. A sixty-ish deputy was leaning over the counter, talking about deer hunting to a man in camouflage fatigues. When I asked for Sheriff Scully, the deputy straightened up from the counter and ambled into one of the offices at the side. A minute later Scully himself came out, a six-foot, two-inch, straw-haired man in his early thirties whose face broke into a grin when he saw me.

  “Alan. So she finally got you.” He laughed, sticking out a hand as the other two men watched idly.

  “She?” I asked.

  “Ethel Crawford,” he said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  I glanced at the two onlookers, who seemed interested in my answer. “I got a call from the Corps of Engineers.”

  “Course you did. She wouldn’t leave me alone so I told her to call the Corps, that maybe one of the archaeologists digging on the bypass would be able to help.”

  “That was thoughtful, Jeff.”

  Jeff Scully shrugged. “How the hell else was I gonna get to see you again? David said you’ve gone into hibernation, don’t hardly go to the field anymore at all.” He winked at the other men. “Something about some research you’re doing with a female archaeologist.”

  I cleared my throat. “David’s got a big mouth.”

  “Hey, I don’t blame you. If I could find a woman that would have me I’d stay at home, too.” He eyed my middle. “And she must be a pretty good cook.”

  “About this Mrs. Crawford,” I said, sucking in my stomach. “Why is this something the local sheriff can’t handle?”

  The two onlookers started to chuckle and it was Scully’s turn to sigh.

  “You don’t know Miss Ethel,” h
e said, lowering his voice. “She wants a scientist, not a cop. I couldn’t talk any sense to her.”

  He came around the end of the counter and grabbed his windbreaker from the coat stand.

  “I’ll be back in a while,” he said to the deputy and guided me into the hallway.

  “I saw one of your display cases was empty,” I said. “Getting ready for a new exhibit?”

  Jeff Scully shook his head. “Somebody ripped it off,” he growled. “From the damn courthouse, can you believe that? It was the only display we had about the history of the town. I put it together after you helped me assemble the cases with Indian artifacts.”

  “What was in it?” I asked.

  “Some old coins, a plat map of the town made by Judge McGraw, a replica of a Bowie knife …”

  “A Bowie knife?”

  “Yeah, some of the Bowie family lived in Cane River Parish a hundred and fifty years ago and Jim Bowie and his brother Rezin came through every once in a while, so we figured a Bowie knife was a good thing for the display.”

  “Was any of it worth anything?”

  “Not much,” the sheriff said, disgusted. “And what burns me is they broke in at night, when the only way in was the basement door. Whoever did it had to go right past the office with a deputy on duty. Naturally, nobody saw a damn thing. I fired the night deputy and said the next one I caught sleeping would go to jail for malfeasance. But that didn’t get the stuff back. Sometimes I don’t know why I even let ’em talk me into running for this office. I was happier before, as a horse doctor.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “Normally I’d be looking at Jacko Reilly. He used to account for ninety percent of the crimes in this town. But he did us a favor a couple of months ago and took off for greener pastures.”

  We went out through the back door, past a trusty in an orange jumpsuit, huddling inside for warmth. Scully pointed to a white, unmarked car.

  “Where to?” I asked.