Assassin's Blood (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “I guess you have a point.”

  Dr. Childe put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “I was in anatomy lab when I heard.”

  “Pardon?”

  “About the president being shot: I was in anatomy lab. I was in premed. The bell rang, and I went out into the hall. It was two o’clock. Somebody came up to me in the hall and said, ‘The president’s been killed.’ I didn’t believe it at first. Then somebody else came up and said, ‘They got Johnson, too.’ For a little while it looked like they’d killed everybody. Of course, only the first story turned out to be true.”

  He exhaled slowly and then reached into his desk drawer and came up with a cigar. He held it toward me, but I shook my head, so he lit up.

  “You know, I don’t remember much more about that year,” he said.

  I looked out of the window and imagined I saw boys at play, rolling in the dirt.

  “Mr. Graham?”

  I looked back at the doctor. “Yes?”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. I was just remembering something. Funny, I hadn’t thought about it for years.”

  “Yes, these epochal events tend to blot out the more trivial memories sometimes. Or sometimes they reach out and protect us from them. From the look on your face, it must have been something you considered important at the time.”

  I managed a smile.

  “Just a fight I had with another boy that year. His name was Ernie Slagle.” I shook my head. “I hadn’t thought about him for years.”

  “What were you fighting about?”

  “That’s the funny thing: I can’t even remember. I just remember I wanted to kill him at the time. I can’t remember ever having felt that way about anybody.”

  “Well, children have strong emotions. When we get older, most of us learn how to handle them.”

  “Yes.”

  I got up.

  “Thanks for your time, Doctor. I just had an itch and I needed to scratch it.”

  “No problem. Let me know if you find anything on that stretch you’re surveying. I’ve hunted that land a good bit and I never saw anything archaeological, but then I’m just a headshrinker, not an archaeologist.”

  He followed me to the door, where I turned.

  “By the way, Dr. Childe, do you know a man named Clyde Fontenot?”

  Childe nodded gravely. “Yes.”

  “How would you characterize his ideas?”

  The doctor took his cigar out of his mouth and exhaled blue smoke. “Different. Nice meeting you, Mr. Graham.”

  I walked down the cool hallway and out of the old building, feeling the shadows of all who had ever been interned there reach out and clutch at me. When I reached my Blazer, I sat there breathing heavily for a few seconds and then started the motor.

  Halfway to the survey area the image of that childhood fight sprang back into my consciousness, and I jerked the wheel to keep from leaving the road.

  In my memory I was on the playground with him, pounding his face with my fists, and he was laughing at me with that sardonic, supercilious sneer.

  But it wasn’t the face of Ernie Slagle, it was the face of someone else, someone I had never met.

  It was the face of the assassin, Lee Oswald.

  TEN

  It was noon when I got back to the project area. I crossed the creek to the Devlin property and found both crews seated in the shade of an oak tree, having lunch. The day had stayed cloudy, and I was glad to see that no one looked like a case of heat exhaustion.

  “Anything interesting?” I asked.

  David reached into his shirt pocket and held out a plastic Ziploc bag.

  “One chert flake so far. Indians didn’t like this place. Must’ve been too far from the road.”

  I smiled. “Nothing else?”

  “Lots of beer cans. Looks like plenty of hunters have used this land. There’s a deer stand about a half-mile north of here, but there’re piles of trash all over the place. Of course, some of it may have floated up during high water, but most of it’s too high up for that. And it looks like the locals heard about us, because somebody’s been pothunting. I found a bunch of fresh holes we didn’t make.”

  I shook my head. It was the old story: Once people heard you were searching an area, their imagination ran to gold and silver and pirate treasure.

  “Dr. Graham …” It was Meg speaking now, her voice so low I wasn’t sure she’d said my name. “Will everybody laugh if I say something?”

  “Probably,” Frank said, and a couple of the others smiled,

  “What is it, Meg?” I asked, squatting on the ground.

  “Well, I was down by the creek, at the end of my transect, and I kept getting a funny feeling.”

  “Oh, oh,” Frank said. “Was it like things crawling up your legs?”

  “Let her talk,” David shushed. “What do you mean?”

  She gave him a nod of gratitude. “I can’t explain it. It was like somebody, or something, was watching me from up on the other side of the hill, across the creek. When I turned around to go back uphill, I felt like there were eyes on my back. A couple of times I turned around and I thought I saw the bushes move …”

  “Wild pigs,” Frank said. “You’re just about a mouthful for them.”

  “Shut up,” David said. “But he’s right. It could’ve been hogs. Or deer.”

  “I don’t know. Somehow it felt … well, I can’t describe it.”

  Frank rolled his eyes and started humming the theme from the Twilight Zone. The others chuckled.

  David said, “I’ll take your transect after lunch. You switch with me.”

  “That isn’t necessary,” she protested.

  “It’s okay.”

  I got up slowly, remembering that I hadn’t eaten yet. My sandwich was in the cooler in the Blazer, and I started back for it. As I did, I saw a blur of movement through the windshield of the vehicle, someone who’d been behind it, on the trail. I started forward at a trot.

  “Hey!”

  I heard noise ahead and feet pounding along the path. I stopped and ran back to the Blazer. Maybe I should’ve got one of the others, but there wasn’t time. I got into the vehicle, started the engine, and turned around. But the track was narrow, and it took me thirty seconds, and by that time I heard the noise of another motor starting down the trail toward the road. I urged the Blazer forward over the ruts in time to see a thin pall of dust floating toward me over the tracks.

  It was another couple of minutes before I reached the highway, and when I did, I saw the vehicle in the distance, headed south. I couldn’t make out the license, but I could see the color, red, and the fact that it was a truck with a camper.

  Blake Curtin.

  There was no sense in killing myself on the highway, so I held myself to a sedate fifty and drove back to Jackson, where I stopped at the post office. A frowning Adolph Dewey watched me enter.

  “You look all het up. What you people do, hit a gold mine out there?”

  “Can you tell me how to get to Blake Curtin’s place?”

  “Curtin?” He scratched his jaw. “Sure. But you may not want to. Man ain’t all there. Might be dangerous.”

  “The sheriff said he was harmless.”

  Dewey snorted. “Yeah, well, what does he know? He was one of them drug agents before he got elected here.” He leaned toward me over the counter. “Matter of fact, he got elected because he broke up a drug ring. Old sheriff resigned and Staples come in a special election a year and a half ago.”

  “I seem to remember hearing something about that.”

  “Had a big Shootout, killed the main man, so I guess nobody’ll ever know all that was going on. They figured a lot of folks was involved, though, because they had a warrant and they was checking all the mail for a while going to this particular party.” He sighed. “That’s the trouble with Staples. Does everything like in the city. Out here people don’t go for all that legal crap. Old sheriff would’ve got t
o the bottom of it without warrants.”

  “Well, if I was crazy enough to want to find Curtin, where would I go?”

  “It’s your neck. He’s on Highway 68 about a mile south of the intersection. Trailer on the right.”

  I thanked him and drove to the intersection, then went south along the narrow two-lane. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to say to Blake Curtin. But so far he hadn’t been willing to face me, and I had a feeling the sheriff was right about his not being dangerous.

  The trailer sat on a little knoll in the middle of a chicken yard. The pickup was outside, but there was no sign of the driver. I turned in and got out of the Blazer, watching for dogs. A couple of hens pecked the dirt and some ducks waddled around in the backyard. The trailer had seen better days, and one window was taped where the glass had cracked. Trash of various kinds had been tossed underneath, and as I neared the steps, a brindled cat slouched away into the shadows. I figured the area under the trailer was a good place for mice.

  I went up to the door and knocked.

  “Mr. Curtin.”

  No answer, but I heard the reedy sound of a radio somewhere inside playing country music.

  I knocked and called out again. Again no answer.

  Maybe, I thought, he hadn’t heard, so I pulled the door and it opened outward.

  A smell of rotting food assailed me and I flinched. Mixed with it was the odor of dirty clothes and tobacco smoke.

  “Mr. Curtin, are you in there?”

  Sudden dread enveloped me and my head swam. Suppose he was inside, hurt or dying? I didn’t know the man, had no reason to intrude upon his living quarters. But I remembered the story of Doug Devlin lying beside the stream, and how Curtin had run away from me twice, as if he knew something dangerous.

  I stepped inside the dark trailer, trying to breathe through my nose.

  “Mr. Curtin, my name is Alan Graham. May I come in?”

  No answer, only the radio.

  As my eyes adjusted, I looked around.

  Pots and pans crowded the sink and roaches scurried away. A pair of blue jeans lay in the middle of the corridor leading to the sleeping compartment at the rear. The radio seemed to be coming from there.

  I started down the narrow hallway, my hand outstretched.

  “Mr. Curtin?”

  I came to the sleeping cubicle, but it was empty. The bed was unmade. The radio was an old Channelmaster with shortwave and FM capability. It sat on a shelf along with a couple of magazines and a half-empty bottle of Evan Williams.

  That was when my eyes hit on the small framed photograph beside the bed.

  An old man with a white mustache posed holding up the head of a five-pronged buck, while another, younger man stood on the other side. The old man wore a checkered shirt and padded vest, but the younger one had on a fatigue cap of the kind marines wear and an olive field jacket and I could barely make out his name on the front: CURTIN. I picked up the photograph and slid it out of the frame. There was an inscription on the back: Timothy and Blake, 1/15/ 62.

  Timothy Devlin, the father of Doug and Buck.

  But Doug wasn’t in the photo, which meant he had probably taken it.

  I slipped the picture back into the frame and stuck the frame back onto the shelf. I started back down the hallway, aware now that there was no dead man here, no one in need of my help, and I was intruding.

  I was almost to the door when I heard the noise outside and froze.

  The door opened, and suddenly I was looking into the eyes of Blake Curtin. His hair had gone gray and his skin had tightened over his face, but there was no mistaking the features. For an instant his mouth hung half open, and then he slammed the door and I heard him running. I opened the door in time to see him turning his truck around in the front yard, and by the time I got to my own vehicle he was gone.

  I returned to the survey area, crossed the creek, and was halfway up the hill when I heard yells in the woods and wondered what was going on. Then the bushes parted in front of me and David stepped out, his eyes excited.

  “Alan, you’re just in time. We found a site. Probably Archaic, from the scrapers and points. I was just coming back to get some more plastic bags. Looks like it may be pretty undisturbed.”

  The news drove thoughts of Blake Curtin out of my mind.

  “That’s good.” It was always exciting to find a site, and an Archaic site, dating four to eight thousand years ago, was especially interesting. Nor could the business side be ignored: There was always the chance of getting a modification of the delivery order, allowing us to add money for excavation.

  I followed him downslope, across the creek, and up the hillside, then through the bushes and along a game trail. The clouds had burned away somewhat with the afternoon, but there was still a chance of rain, and I wanted to make sure we didn’t get involved in something we’d have to shut down because of lightning.

  The site was on a little knoll, where a feeder stream trickled down toward the creek. The crew was sitting around in the shade, waiting for David, and they stood as I approached.

  “Actually, Meg found it,” David explained. “I can’t understand, either. I put in a test hole not ten feet away. Then she hit some flakes, and when we started to make our testing grid I hit a deposit not two feet from where I’d just dug.”

  “Luck,” Meg smiled.

  “Woman’s luck,” Frank said sourly.

  “Well, whoever’s luck, it’s a good find.” I examined a projectile point. It was a kind called Gary, which popped up through much of the prehistoric period, but as I looked over the scraping tools and tiny stone awls, I realized David was probably right about their age.

  For the rest of the afternoon we whacked bush with machetes so we could see what we were doing and then worked to define the site, which meant digging holes at specified intervals until we stopped finding artifacts. David set out taking photographs from several angles, and when he’d finished Frank asked me when we were going to put in test units.

  “Later,” I told him. “The site’ll keep. The important thing just now is to define its boundaries and then finish the survey. Otherwise we could get bogged down in something that turns into a major project and find ourselves behind on what they sent us here to do.” And, I didn’t need to add, lose money in the process.

  His face fell and so did the faces of some of the others, but Meg seemed cheerful enough.

  “Where should we pick up our survey?” she asked.

  I glanced over the maps and then checked my watch. It was two-thirty, which meant another couple of hours, if the weather held. I pointed to the northeast sector of the Devlin tract.

  “Let’s see if we can finish that part today,” I said. Meg rose, and I saw a couple of the guys exchange alarmed looks. It was clear she could go forever. Even though it was near the end of the day, I didn’t want to wear them out. There would be a need for them tomorrow. Besides, a crew member who outshone the others could cause trouble.

  “Meg, you stay here,” I said. “You can help David and me finish up the site map.”

  She shrugged. “Whatever, boss.” The others melted away down the trail, and I smiled to myself. There was no mistaking their secret relief. David took out his clipboard and tossed me the measuring tape.

  “Here.” I let Meg have one end and watched her pace to the end of the shovel holes. I looked down at the number on the tape and called out a reading, which David transferred to the map. By three o’clock we’d gotten enough for a sketch map. We loaded our packs with the plastic artifact bags and took them back across the creek and up the other side of the valley to the vehicles and carefully placed the bags in a crate in David’s Land Rover.

  Then I remembered we’d left our shovels.

  “I’ll go get the tools,” I said.

  David and Meg started forward, but I shook my head.

  “Let Meg come with me. I’d rather somebody stayed here with the vehicles, especially since we’ve got artifacts in them.” I thought o
f Blake Curtin. I wasn’t at all sure he had anything to do with cutting my tires, but he’d certainly been acting suspiciously.

  David shrugged. “Sure. I’ve got some field notes to finish.” As Meg and I started back down the track, I heard the distant rumble of thunder. I looked up. The fluffy clouds had given way to darker bolls. We were going to have a summer squall before much longer.

  We splashed across the creek and started up the hill, and I heard more thunder, nearer this time.

  “I think we’re going to get wet,” Meg quipped.

  I nodded and puffed to keep up with her.

  “The rain won’t melt me,” I said, “but I don’t like lightning.”

  We reached the site and set about to gather up the shovels. There were only a couple of them, hers and David’s, but there was also a soil probe and a bush ax and the two hand screens, which were wood frames with window mesh tacked to the bottom, used for sifting dirt.

  “I think this is it,” I said, giving a last look around. An explosion of thunder shook the valley then, accompanied by a flash.

  I dropped a shovel and swore as I reached to pick it up. At the same time, a patter of raindrops pelted down. We stumbled along the trail, the rain blowing against us. The lightning came at quicker intervals now, the flash and the sound simultaneous. I thought of the others and hoped they had found a safe place to crouch, away from the hill crest.

  The trail had turned slick as the rain mixed with the clay, and I watched Meg do a balancing act. Several times she dropped tools, but each time she managed to pick them up and keep going. I fell down once behind her and was glad the noise of the storm kept her from hearing. We lurched into the forest, where the rain sifted down in a fine spray. A branch crashed to the ground ahead of us, and Meg jumped.

  Ahead was a clearing, and we came out into it and stopped. The cabin loomed ahead of us, lonely in the storm.

  There was no time to worry about ghost stories.

  I pointed to it and we raced for its shelter.

  ELEVEN

  When we reached the cabin, my pants were smeared with red clay, and water had seeped into my boots.