by Tom Deitz
A quick search of his pockets confirmed it, and Calvin dragged out a nice stiff one and unbent it. He had just started to insert it into the keyhole when he noticed something that gave him a sudden chill. There was a smear of clay next to the doorknob, and beneath it the dirty handprint of a small-to-middling child. Calvin could see them both quite clearly in the glow of the back-porch light, but what gave him pause was that the mark showed no sign of fingerprints—and that the index finger seemed unnaturally long, though perhaps not the foot or so he had so recently observed. Well, that answered one thing: it settled Calvin’s curiosity about how accurate Spearfinger’s copies were: close, but no cigar.
He got a solution to another mystery almost as quickly, too, for with the screen open, his eye was drawn to a dark object lying atop the doorjamb. He picked it up curiously and noted, to his surprise, that it was a key. Not just any key, though: one made of stone. But even as he touched it, it crumbled into sand and slipped away between his fingers.
He wished he were as facile with magic; maybe he’d have better solutions to his problems than trying to break into other people’s houses. Maybe. Taking a deep breath, he returned to his work. The first tumbler fell almost immediately, the second followed quickly.
He had just poked and prodded his way to the third when he heard a twig snap behind him, but before he could even glance over his shoulder, a voice barked, “Boy, if I was you, I wouldn’t move even a muscle! I got a gun on you, and this time I ain’t gonna miss.”
Calvin’s heart almost leapt from his body. It was the sheriff, and he’d caught Calvin red-handed—literally, since his fingers were still trickling blood from the wire gouges.
He couldn’t run, either; two men were behind him and approaching at a steady trot, to judge by the increasingly loud clump of their footfalls. Calvin took token relief from their number because it sharply decreased the likelihood that either one was Spearfinger in disguise.
“Jus’ ease them hands right on up that door above your head,” the sheriff continued, “and just you spread them legs as wide apart as you can.”
Calvin obeyed, though he had to fight back disappointment so tangible it almost made him nauseous. He’d been so close to resolving this mess—either by confronting his quarry or by finding a weapon that might be better than anything he had against her—and now it was all for naught. Now he was going to jail and Spearfinger would be free to ravage the land.
But there won’t be anything you can do about it, a part of him insisted. If you can’t get at her, how can she be your responsibility?
That was true. It was also a world-class-cop-out.
Boots thumped onto the patio then, and an instant later, Calvin felt heavy hands clamp around his sides, then give him a thorough frisking: up his torso, down his thighs and calves, and then up again, even including his crotch.
The sheriff knew his stuff too, for he quickly found the knife at Calvin’s belt, which he appropriated, along with the bow and quiver. So thorough was he, in fact, that when he spun Calvin around to face them and cuffed his hands together, the sheriff even slipped the uktena scale over his head and stuffed it into a pocket. This possible procedural violation elicited a disquieting, green-toothed grin from his younger companion—the unsavory-looking whiny-voiced guy Calvin had seen before—but his superior simply grinned back and said something about not wanting any sharp objects around, nor any mumbo-jumbo.
The next few moments—when Calvin was being hustled across the yard—were muddled with confusion. The sheriff told him he was under arrest for suspicion of murder; Whiner mumbled through his rights, and then he was thrust into the backseat of one of the bronze Caprices that he’d foolishly failed to notice parked just beyond the trees at the western edge of the yard—the one quadrant he hadn’t closely investigated.
Calvin fell into the seat hard enough to jar his teeth, but though both officers climbed back in, neither made any move to crank the car.
And so Calvin had no choice but to slump against the cushions and feel utterly helpless and furiously pissed at himself for being so careless and not thinking ahead to this eventuality.
The officers up front weren’t going to any trouble to conceal information from him, either, though they’d said they’d put off any interrogation until they got to town, where they could, as they put it, “goddamn see.” From snatches of their conversation, Calvin was pretty much able to piece together what had happened.
Liza-Bet Scott had gone with her policeman beau to identify the body of her daughter—that much Calvin already knew. But evidently she’d gotten so hysterical they’d taken her on to town to await confirmation of cause-of-death and release of the body to the mortician. Apparently the coroner was insisting on performing an autopsy, though; which concept had sent Liza-Bet off all over again. Eventually, she’d calmed down enough to answer questions, and several of those had involved a certain Indian boy her son had been seen talking to down at the Magic Market. That much she’d remembered: how Don had gone on and on about this neat Indian he’d met, but she hadn’t paid him much mind—he was always doing things like that. Finally, though, she’d recalled that Don had asked the Indian to go camping with him and his buddy—that’d gotten through to even her.
And that, coupled with the fact that it was getting near dawn and Don would be coming home from that trip soon and would need to know what was going on, had been enough to make the guys put the house under surveillance. The current delay was for the reappearance of a second deputy, who was evidently scouring the woods for Don and his friend. Once he showed up, it was off to the slammer for Calvin.
He hoped. This far out in the sticks, and considering ethnic heritage, Calvin suspected that trial by jury was frequently more formality than fact.
“Here he comes,” the sheriff rumbled from the front seat, peering through the windows, though how he could see anything through the coating of white dust was anybody’s guess.
“’Bout time, too,” his companion allowed, aiming a disgusted glance at the nonfunctional LED clock in the dash.
“Jesus tit!” the sheriff exclaimed, rolling down his window to stare outside. “He’s got another goddamned body!”
“You’re shittin’ me!”
“You look.”
Calvin did, along with the two officers, and saw, just as he’d feared, that a second deputy—Adams again, as it happened—had emerged from the woods on this side of Don’s house, and that he held a body in his arms. He did not need to see it to know that it was the corpse of Michael Chadwick.
And he doubted anybody had bothered to check for footprints this time. Which was too bad, because they’d have found the tracks of someone who was supposed to be dead, and that might have saved Calvin’s ass.
“Critters was snoopin’ around,” Adams told his boss when he got within range of the car. “Didn’t have no choice but to move him.” He patted the radio at his hip proudly. “I already called for an ambulance.”
“Dead?” More a statement than a question.
“Yeah, and he ain’t got no goddamned liver, neither.”
“Shit,” the sheriff grunted, fixing Calvin with a glare that said he wished he could skin him alive with a hot knife right there.
Deep shit, Calvin thought, as the car rumbled to life. As if in reply, a single drop of rain splattered the windshield.
Chapter XX: Spyin’ on the Spied-upon
(Brock and Robyn’s camp—the wee hours)
“No!”
Brock’s shout of dismay cut through the night, but no one paused to listen. The big Chevy continued on its way without slowing, leaving only a vast cloud of white dust to mark its passage—a cloud that was quickly beaten into submission by the random patter of a sudden halfhearted shower. In less than a minute only the damp remained—that, and the erratic thrumming that had been getting on Brock’s nerves off and on for the past day now.
Hunched miserably in the shadow of the pine where he had taken shelter, Brock folded his arms
on his scrawny chest in disgust, oblivious to the occasional drops that continued to pepper his head and shoulders. A sort of blowing/whistling sigh escaped his lips as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, helpless with indecision.
Where to from here? he wondered.
Well, the cops had Calvin, and since he’d started out after Calvin—for no clearer reason than to prove to Robyn that he was correct about his friend’s integrity—it stood to reason that he should continue trailing the Indian, especially since it looked like his new friend was really in for it now and would probably need all the help he could get.
Trouble was, they were almost certainly taking Calvin back to town, and to jail—and Brock didn’t have a clue where the jail was or what the procedure for seeing prisoners was, much less for getting one free again.
But he had to try, never mind that he’d risk exposing himself and his sister in the bargain.
He really had no choice. Strange things were happening, and that was a fact: Calvin could change his shape by fooling with that scale-hickey around his neck, and Brock had seen him doing some ritual-kinda stuff twice—once right outside their camp—and had sensed an unpleasant tingling in his feet both times he’d sneaked out of the sinkhole. But Cal had also been accused of murder that he swore he did not commit. And far more troubling yet was the wild tale Don had told about Spearfinger. Brock wasn’t quite sure he believed it yet; but it fit the available facts, and something had sure as hell scared the bejesus out of Don, as well as making Calvin act like the devil himself was after him.
The thrumming in the ground strengthened abruptly, as if in response to the threatening storm. Brock shuddered, since he now knew what was causing those disturbing tremors. He wondered, indeed, about the wisdom of being out alone in the forest with that…thing…roaming around as well. But it was too late now. To admit he was frightened would be to admit defeat. It would also leave a mystery unresolved, and that he could not allow—not considering the amount of effort he’d put into spying out the truth already.
Sighing, Brock turned back into the forest, hunching his shoulders against the scattered but heavy drops, and as he jogged along he considered how remarkable it was that he had even made it here at all.
He hadn’t had much trouble keeping up with Calvin after he’d split camp, and had tailed him long enough to witness the end of that weird-ass bathing ritual. But when the Indian had started off again, he’d run like the very wind, and Brock’s shorter legs had not been able to follow suit. That he’d found himself at Don’s house at all was more or less an accident. He’d only heard the guy mention a general direction and something about railroad tracks and the river, so he’d simply struck off north until he found tracks and followed them, to arrive just in time to see a pair of Sheriff’s Department cars cruise up with their lights off right as Calvin came skulking around the opposite corner of the house.
He wished desperately that he’d been able to get close enough to really tell what was going on. As it was he’d seen the flash of the yard light on handcuffs and a pistol; and the sheriff confiscating Calvin’s bow and knife and even the scale from around his throat. Brock’s heart sank when he remembered that, because whatever Calvin had to accomplish almost certainly involved magic, and the one magical thing Brock knew absolutely he possessed was the scale.
And, Brock forced himself to admit, that was pretty damned scary, because once the novelty of Calvin’s shape-shifting had worn off, he’d set himself to some serious thinking about how the proof of one kind of magic more or less left it open for ’em all—like Don’s Spearfinger story. Suddenly he regretted not going to church, regretted making play-acting stabs at occult rituals he’d gotten out of nut-cult magic books—and regretted most deeply being in the woods when something magic was definitely afoot, something that was hostile, and which only Calvin had any chance of ever elucidating for him—or (troubling thought) saving him from.
And that clinched it. Rain or no rain, it would be town, but he really did need to let the sibling unit know what was going on.
Not that she could stop him from whatever he decided to do.
Not ever.
Not even when the ground was drumming.
*
Twenty nerve-wracking minutes later, a somewhat damper Brock pushed aside the prickly fronds of palmetto and hopped down into camp. The rain had followed him a way, but evidently had not reached here—which he feared was the end of his fortune.
Robyn was on her feet in an instant, leaping up from where she’d been leaning against her pack with one arm around Don, who raised an eyelid apprehensively at Brock’s approach. Brock suddenly wished he’d never told them about Calvin being a were-deer, much less anything else, because that had paved the way for Don to open up a really smelly kettle of fish which Brock felt obliged to poke around in—while Robyn did her damnedest to keep him away. It wasn’t their problem, after all.
Yeah, sure.
He hoped, from Robyn’s scowl, that he didn’t have a fight on his hands.
He hoped in vain.
“Where the hell have you been?” she raged at him, her voice so loud in the darkness that Brock flinched and made frantic shushing signs.
“After Calvin, of course.” Brock thought that should have been obvious.
“I know that,” Robyn snapped. “So where’s he gone?”
Brock flopped down in front of her and helped himself to another candy bar from the seemingly endless stash, not bothering to towel off. “He went to his camp and did some kinda ritual. And then he went to Don’s house, only I lost him for a while, so I didn’t get there until the cops was hustlin’ him away.”
“The cops! Shit!” Robyn rolled her eyes. “Dammit, I knew that’d happen. Well, that finishes it; we’re outta here come sunrise.” She whirled around and began stuffing gear into bags, oblivious to Don’s wild-eyed confusion and Brock’s outright disgust. He made no move to assist the packing, though, so that a moment later Robyn turned again and glared at him.
“He’s in trouble,” Brock said simply. “Lots of trouble.”
“So are we—and if we’re not extra careful, old Calvin’ll send the fuzz right back here!”
“No reason to.”
“No reason, hell! If it’s the kinda crap he was talkin’ about—murder and all—he’ll need somebody to account for his presence, and we can’t, only he might think we can, and then we’d really be up the creek.”
“So you’re just gonna let a friend down just like that?”
“I’m not really sure he is a friend,” she grumbled sullenly, “at least not anymore. He sure as hell hasn’t leveled with us!”
Brock glared at her. “He told us he had secrets and we told him we had some. That’s levelin’ in my book!”
“But not mine!”
“You mean you really think that he killed Don’s sister and then stole her shape and killed his best friend?”
“He might have. Lots of folks act nice and then turn out to be assholes.”
“Tell me about it,” Brock replied, cocking an eyebrow meaningfully. “But if that’s the case, why would he do all that stuff to hurt people, and still help us? Why would he threaten to kill Don and then look after him like a brother when he runs into him in the woods a little later? Why didn’t he kill him then, ’cause he sure could have if he wanted to and nobody woulda known any different! And don’t give me any of that b.s. about bringin’ in others, either; you know you don’t believe that!”
“She said something about fear seasonin’ my liver,” Don began, but his voice trailed off as he caught sight of Robyn’s face.
Robyn ignored him and regarded her brother seriously. “Damn, you’re good,” she chuckled. “You oughta be a lawyer when you grow up. Anyway, I’ll grant you that Calvin’s a nice guy—at least on the surface—and I’ll also accept that he helped us out. But we still didn’t ask him to do any of those things, he just did—and he’s got us in a heap of trouble because of it.”
�
�No, he’s protected us from trouble as best he could,” Brock countered desperately. “He understands what we’re into and all, he wants us to stay out of it. Problem is, he’s not sure it’ll stay away from us, so he has to look after us.”
“How’s he gonna do that from jail?” And then Robyn noticed her brother’s sudden grin, and appeared to realize she’d suddenly argued against her own case. “Brock, we can’t go there, they’ll ask questions, they’ll want names and addresses, IDs. They may have already heard the missing-persons reports on us, ’cause you know damned sure Dad’ll file ’em even if Mom won’t. Somebody’s bound to recognize us.”
“So you’re willin’ to leave a friend in deep shit and go on off to England to save your ass?”
“Don’t talk like that! Besides, it’s like I said. Calvin knows what we’re up against. He won’t expect us to hang around.”
“Yeah, but could you forgive yourself? I won’t!”
“I won’t either,” Don echoed quietly. “I don’t know, but…I reckon maybe Brock’s right. Yeah, there’s some stuff that points to Calvin possibly being involved in some murders. But he doesn’t feel like a murderer. I mean I met him yesterday—before you guys did, I reckon—and he didn’t act nervous or anything. Sure, he was kinda in a hurry-like, and sorta preoccupied and all, but…well…ain’t nobody that good an actor!”
Robyn frowned. “You don’t get a vote. Come sunrise we’re gonna go watch your house, and soon as anybody official shows up, off you march. They’re gonna be searchin’ for you in a few hours, anyway.”
“Uh-uh,” Don shot back hotly. “No way I’m goin’ back there! Not with that monster maybe hangin’ ’round! Only people I trust right now are folks that’ve had somebody with ’em every minute since this thing started!”
“That’s nobody,” Robyn pointed out with a touch of sarcasm.
“Yeah, but I could tell something was wrong with my sister by the way she was lookin’ at me. I don’t see that in either of you, and I don’t think y’all could hide it.”