“Does that qualify as a joke, sheriff?” Pilate was in no mood. His head ached, his car was in a ravine, and the asshole who’d knocked him off the road hadn’t even bothered to help him.
“Close as I’m gonna get tonight.” Scovill spat out a toothpick. “Mr. Pilate, from the tracks in the gravel, it looks like you tried like the devil to stay on the road. If you will indulge me in a breathalyzer, we can take your report.”
Pilate aced the breathalyzer and shivered with cold. “Get in,” Scovill demanded more than offered.
“What about my car?” Pilate looked at its silhouette in the ravine. “It’s screwed,” Scovill said. “Now get in.”
Pilate couldn’t argue. At least it was warm in the sheriff’s truck, and this time he got to sit in the front seat. He hoped there would be no farting.
The sheriff produced a weathered ticket book and notepad from a torn vinyl seat pocket. He looked at his watch and then called in to the station. “Lenny, this is Scovill. Come back,” he said into the mic.
The static-ridden voice of his deputy replied. “Got ya loud and clear, Sheriff. Go ahead.”
“Lenny, I have Mr. John Pilate. We got an 11-8-2 up by Monticello Cemetery. Has a nice knock on the head, but I think he’s okay.”
“He drunk?” Deputy Lenny said.
“Nope. He passed. I’ll be back in shortly,” he said. “Out.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.” Pilate wanted a smoke, but he
thought better of asking.
“Not disappointed, Mr. Pilate.” Scovill started filling out the incident report. “But do you mind telling me what you were doing out here this late?”
“Just trying to clear my head,” he said.
“Mm-hmm. And where were you previous to this?” Scovill scribbled on the report in the dim light of the truck’s dome.
“Dinner in Goss City, with a colleague,” Pilate said as blandly as possible. “You have an aspirin, by chance?”
“No. Which colleague?”
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything, but I was with Kate.”
Scovill looked up from his notebook. “Nathaniel?” “Yes,” Pilate said, looking him in the non-squinting eye.
“Shit. No wonder you need an aspirin,” he said, a smirk growing across his rugged face.
“Can we get to the incident?” Pilate’s head pounded. “Incident or accident?”
The words hung in the air a second before Scovill said, “Okay, sure.”
Pilate related the time and details of the incident to Scovill, who quietly transcribed the information in block-lettered handwriting to the report form.
“What kind of vehicle made you swerve?”
“Not sure. It was big though—either a large truck or SUV. It’s so damn dark on these freaking roads.”
“That’s why most people with sense tend to avoid this road after dark, Mr. Pilate.”
Pilate noted Scovill’s frequent spasms of certain country wisdom paired with an attitude of what he could only call common-man supremacy. It was really irritating.
“So you can’t tell me what vehicle, but you know the driver was a guy?”
“Well,” Pilate said, “I mean, I can’t be sure. All I really saw was a large shape for a split second. I was much more worried about watching the road than I was about the jackass who knocked me off it. If I find that asshole, I am going to rip him a new one.”
“Easy, killer.” Scovill scribbled some more notes.
“Sheriff, as you can see, I wasn’t drinking. I was doing nothing wrong,” Pilate said.
“Just minding your own business, huh?” He snorted. “Well, technically, you owe Charlie Forster for damages to his barbed wire fence, which you smashed through halfway down the ravine,” he said, pointing with his ballpoint pen.
“Great.”
“Hey, be glad that fence was there. It slowed you down before you hit the tree. You coulda been killed. Looks like you were going about forty-five. The crash woke Charlie and Marie up—well, the crash and your thick skull hitting your horn.”
As if on cue, a scraggly-bearded older man appeared in the headlights, wearing a hunting jacket and cap that he’d hastily thrown on over pajamas. He ambled over to the sheriff’s window and tapped on the glass with a boney knuckle.
Scovill rolled down his window. “Hey, Charlie.”
“He okay?” the old man said, quaintly tipping his hat to them both.
“Yeah, just hit his head,” Scovill said.
Pilate leaned toward the sheriff and Charlie and said, “Thanks for calling for help. I’m sorry about your fence. I’ll pay for the damages.”
Charlie’s expression of weariness hardened. “Damn right you will, mister!“ An awkward silence held for a moment until Charlie’s face morphed into mirth. “Naw, forget about it. I’m just glad you’re okay.” Then he clapped Scovill’s shoulder.
“Thanks. I’ll get the car out of there tomorrow,” Pilate said.
“Yup. Goodnight.” Charlie walked back down the road
toward a beaten-up mailbox by his driveway and disappeared into the darkness.
“Charlie’s a good ol’ boy,” Scovill said. “Wouldn’t pay seventy-five cents to see Jesus Christ in person, but he’s still a good fella. You gave him a little excitement.”
“My pleasure.” Pilate rubbed his head. “So, any idea what you’re going to do about this?”
He threw his truck into gear. “Not a hell of a lot, considering you can’t identify the vehicle or the driver.”
“Great,” Pilate said.
“We’ll ask around. Meantime, call Jimmy’s Towing tomorrow to get your car out,” Scovill said. “And you better hope Jack Lindstrom doesn’t hear about this. I hate to say it, but you really aren’t making a very good impression on your boss, Mr. Pilate.”
“It just gets better and better,” Pilate said.
Scovill dropped Pilate at his apartment with a squinty-eyed admonition to stay off the roads after dark.
Pilate took three Tylenol and collapsed, fully clothed, into bed.
In spite of his awful night, he managed to teach his classes the next morning. No one said a word to him about the accident. Kate wasn’t in the office; she only had an afternoon class.
Drinking coffee and chewing aspirin he’d bummed off a student between his eight-thirty and ten-thirty classes, Pilate called Jimmy’s to arrange for his car to be pulled from the ravine.
Jimmy audibly spat out a wad of tobacco and said he was available right away. He also offered to give the car a onceover after it was out of the ditch. He promised to pick Pilate up at noon on the road beside the oval.
Hanging up, Pilate rubbed his forehead a moment. He jumped when the phone rang a scant ten seconds later.
“Pilate? Trevathan,” the dean barked. “Heard you cracked up your car last night. Come talk to me this afternoon.”
Pilate explained he had to go fetch the car at noon.
“Then get over here soon as you’re done,” the line clicked. “Goddamn it,” Pilate muttered, patting his pockets for a cigarette.
He stood on the edge of the ravine as Jimmy attached a towline to the rear bumper of his car and gently pulled it out.
“It don’t look too bad,” he said, giving the engine and frame a onceover, as he’d promised. “I’ll take it back to the shop just to be sure.”
“Thanks, Jimmy,” Pilate said, scanning the gravel road for signs of the truck that had derailed him.
“Hey, there’s the sheriff,” Jimmy said, gesturing toward Scovill’s now familiar truck that was heading toward them. From that angle, it looked a lot like the truck that had run Pilate off the road.
Scovill stopped in front of Jimmy’s truck and climbed out of his own. He zipped up his coat, leaving the butt of his Glock peeking out a slit in the side, then walked over to the pair. “Bad?” he asked.
Pilate shrugged. “Anything new on the case?”
Scovill regarded him with his squinty eye. “You
could say that.”
“Oh?” Pilate said.
Scovill cut his eyes to Jimmy, who took the hint and went about the business of preparing to tow the car into town.
“When you were up at Monticello last night, did you see anything unusual?”
Pilate shuddered inside at the sudden change in temperature from the sheriff. “I never made it to the cemetery, Sheriff. Remember?”
The sheriff looked into Pilate’s face as if his eyes were some kind of lie detector. “Oh yeah. I forgot.” Scovill’s demeanor relaxed. He looked over his shoulder at Jimmy.
“Why? Is something wrong at the cemetery?” Pilate said. “No,” Scovill said, taking a cinnamon toothpick from his
pocket, “not unless you count grave robbing.” And with that, he slipped the cinnamon toothpick into his mouth and arched his eyebrow at Pilate.
Scovill pulled into the cemetery, inching past the main yard slowly until he parked next to his deputy’s truck. It rested at the mouth of a path that was too small for most cars. He put the truck in park, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and looked at Pilate. “Well, come on,” he said. “You can see what happened up here last night.”
Pilate slid from the truck seat and walked with Scovill down the path. Standing a few hundred yards away next to a series of crypts was Lenny, his deputy.
Lenny was a paunchy, bearded man. Pilate had not spoken to him much, but he’d seen him in town here and there—usually at the grocery store, where Lenny went to pick up a suitcase of beer.
“Anything new?” Scovill asked Lenny.
The deputy shook his head, his beefy frame leaning against the largest of the crypts, his bulk obscuring the names of the dead inscribed on the outside.
Pilate observed that the old door of the crypt had been ripped almost completely from its hinges and crumpled inward.
“Crowbar?” Scovill asked.
Lenny pointed at the lock, where telltale signs of a crowbar or pry bar of some sort still existed.
“Uh-huh,” Scovill said, peering closer. “You concur, Mr.
Pilate?”
Pilate smiled mildly and nodded. “You think it was kids?Vandals, just messin’ around?”
“Coulda been.” Lenny handed Scovill a plastic Ziploc bag. Scovill held it up and peered inside it at a red and white Cross College Cougars spirit ribbon, the kind worn on letter jackets and sweatshirts at pep rallies and basketball games. He then handed the bag back to Lenny and pulled a heavy flashlight from a loop on his belt and switched it on. “Come on, Mr. Pilate. Let’s see if there are any tales from this crypt.”
“Um, isn’t this a crime scene?” Pilate sputtered. “I mean, shouldn’t I stay out of there?”
Scovill turned his head halfway. “Well, yes, Mr. Pilate, you would generally be correct, except when the duly-elected sheriff of the county invites you into the crime scene, I suppose it’s okay.”
“Well, uh…why? I mean, thanks for thinking of me, Sheriff, but I really don’t know why you want me in there.”
Lenny poked Pilate’s shoulder, more than a gentle nudge.
Pilate held his hands up in a gesture of contrition and followed Scovill into the crypt.
“Watch your step,” Scovill said.
Pilate followed Scovill down four steps into a room that looked to be about twenty feet long and about twelve feet wide. The air was stale and still and smelled of the wet, moldy burlap sacks his brother used to push him into one summer in their grandparents’ root cellar.
Scovill shone his light around until he found a Coleman lantern hanging on a hook beside the door. He lit and hung the hissing lantern from a hook on a rusty chain that dangled down in the center of the room.
When Pilate’s eyes adjusted, he whispered, “Welcome to Castle Dracula.”
Scovill grunted.
Lining each side were three large ledges that held the coffins lengthwise, one coffin per ledge. Three of the coffins looked extremely old, as if they’d seen at least seventy or eighty years. The three others looked newer, though exactly how new was hard to determine since they’d been smashed open. Actually, one was moved, but not opened.
A crumbling body lay on its face, spilling out of the coffin where it had been dragged off the ledge onto the floor. The perpetrators had apparently hacked away at the lid until it opened. The dead man’s final suit was split up the back; Pilate had read once that morticians often cut the clothing of the deceased to make the job of dressing the corpse easier. The corpse’s skin looked like old parchment, hanging off the ribs and backbone in dusty, webby hunks.
“Jesus,” Pilate said, startled. “What the fuck?”
“Easy,” Scovill said. He pointed his flashlight at the coffin across from the damaged one.
That casket, too, was open, though it still rested on the ledge. The corpse appeared to be that of an old woman. Steel-gray hair clung to the skull, with a thin layer of skin stretched over it; the eye sockets had long ago sunken in. Her decomposition was less advanced than the man’s.
“Oh God. It’s an old lady,” Pilate said, gagging.
“Yup.” Scovill examined the other coffins, which appeared undisturbed beyond the dust being wiped from the nameplates affixed to the sides. “Looks like they were looking for someone in particular.”
“What do you mean?” Pilate said, straining to read one of the nameplates.
“Well, they apparently wiped the layers of dust off of each coffin, looking for a specific one. See?” He shone his Maglite on the nameplates. “They didn't mess with Rick's.” The sheriff bowed his head.
Pilate cleared his throat; his gag reflex was kicking in. “What for? Did they molest the corpses or something?”
Scovill looked at him as if he were an alien.
“Well, what I mean is, was it like a corpse desecration—a revenge kind of thing—do you think?”
“I have no idea, Mr. Pilate.”
“Sheriff, you can call me John if you want,” Pilate said.
Scovill lowered himself down on his haunches over the corpse of the man. “Lenny?”
Lenny leaned in.
“You call the county medical examiner?” Lenny nodded.
“Grief?”
He nodded again.
A man of few words.
“Good man.” Scovill reached toward the body. “Mr. Pilate give me a hand. I want to look under the body.”
“Oh, hell no! I can’t do that,” Pilate said, taking a step back.
“Look, I need help here,” he said patiently.
“Well, what about Lenny?” Pilate said, his voice almost comically lowered so Lenny would not hear. “I mean, all he’s doing out there is fantasizing about rabbits and beans with ketchup.”
Scovill stood fully erect, facing Pilate, his flashlight shining under his face. “Mr. Pilate, these people are Lenny’s relations. I can’t hardly ask him to help me with this, now can I?”
“Shit. Sorry. I suppose it makes sense why he’s staying outside then.”
“Yeah, out of respect. He don’t want to see them this way.”
“You’d think people would be smart enough not to mess with a deputy sheriff’s family,” Pilate said.
“Well, first off, they have a different last name. Second, they’re probably only third cousins,” Scovill said. “You can’t swing a dead cat in this county without hitting someone related to Lenny anyway.”
“Nice,” Pilate said. “Quite the metaphor.” “Meta-what?”
“Nothing. Let’s do it.” Pilate sighed and bent down over the body with Scovill. He gingerly placed his hands on the sides of the corpse’s shoulders, where a living person’s biceps would be.
“Okay, gently now, damn it. Pull the body toward you, and I’ll have a look underneath,” Scovill said.
To his relief, the corpse didn’t have much of an odor. It felt like the straw scarecrow his grandparents used to haul out every planting season. It was still substantial, but it was light and not too difficult to move. “Uh…”
Pilate said, encouraging the sheriff to hurry up.
“I’m looking,” Scovill said, his head to the floor, with his light shining around underneath the corpse.
“Anything?”
“Uh-uh. Looks like somebody went through the pockets though. The shirt is untucked.” Scovill whistled.
“What?”
“Well, the shirt’s been unbuttoned too—torn open, like somebody was searching the body,” he said.
“For what?” Pilate asked, disgusted.
“No idea, but you can put him down now.”
Pilate eased the body down, rubbing his hands furiously on his pants.
“Don’t worry. I don’t think you got any zombie cooties on you,” Scovill said.
Both heard a voice from outside the crypt.
“Sounds like Grief’s here,” Scovill said, walking up the stairs. “He’s not gonna take this well.”
“Well, at least it’s repeat business,” Pilate said, trying to lighten the mood.
“Mr. Pilate, I’m sorry if this whole thing spooked you a little, but that remark was really uncalled for.” Scovill’s jaw clenched around every syllable.
Before Pilate could reply in apology, a tall, thin silhouette filled the doorway. “Mom? Dad? Oh no. Oh no!“ he said, his voice quivering.
“Grif, I’m so sorry,” Scovill said.
Before Pilate exited the crypt, he took in the sorry surreal sight of Grif Nathaniel weeping quietly, gingerly cradling his father’s corpse in his arms.
Outside, Pilate looked at Lenny as he walked a few feet away from Pilate, revealing the name “NATHANIEL” carved in the side of the crypt. Pilate stepped a few feet in the opposite direction and lit a cigarette, inhaling and exhaling the smoke into the cold air. The sun averted its gaze behind gray clouds.
He spied a white marble stone a few feet away, crooked and cracked, the name worn away by the elements and the passing of time. He glanced at his watch. Shit. I’ve still gotta go see Dean Trevathan.
Scovill appeared in the crypt doorway, zipping up his jacket. He put a hand on Lenny’s shoulder, said something in his ear, and then walked over to Pilate. His squinty eye gazed past Pilate toward the college, which looked like a toy town from a train set in the valley below. “Thanks for your help in there.”
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