Yet somehow I wasn’t. I was alive and kicking and damned grateful to be. But not for long. My relief quickly faded, supplanted by a rising red rage. Not so much at Hatfield. Criminality was Arlon’s nature. He was a mean drunk, dumb as a box of rocks, in and out of trouble his whole miserable life. He was as much an animal as any brute in the forest. His time would come, and soon.
Arlon may have been born to lose, but he hadn’t become a ghoul until somebody set him on it. Auerbach. A rich prick who thought his money gave him license to do as he damn pleased.
It didn’t. And he was about to find that out the hard way. But even as I drove Hatfield’s Gator, backtracking to my Jeep, I couldn’t get the image of Arlon and his old rifle out of my mind.
Hatfield was hunting meat before he could cipher. He was a crack shot and we were barely twenty feet apart when he fired, point-blank range. How the hell had he missed me? He could have dropped me like a bad habit, and he damn well meant to. When he raised up, I could read the killing rage in his eyes. He meant to take me out.
So why was I still breathing?
Some say it’s better to be lucky than good, and there was no doubt I’d been damned lucky. Still... I couldn’t make it compute.
I called in a BOLO on Hatfield from my Jeep, but I wasn’t really worried about him. November nights get stone cold along the North Shore and Arlon was afoot without supplies. We’d stake out his place, grab him up when he came in.
But before that happened, I wanted a serious talk with the son of a bitch who set this whole sorry business in motion.
I roared into the Lakeside Mall with lights and sirens cranked up full blast, shrieked to a halt in front of Auerbach’s Antiques, and piled out of the Jeep, leaving the door open, the siren screaming. I wanted him to know I was coming for him. I wanted everyone to know.
Auerbach came storming out of his office to face me dead center of the showroom floor.
“What is all this?”
So I told him what it was. That I’d tracked Hatfield to the grave sites that had been looted of the valuable relics on display in his shop. That he’d located the grave sites for Arlon, using the drone’s ground-penetrating radar to spot the casket’s symmetrical outlines from the air.
He didn’t even blink.
“Let me get this straight. You think I’ve been... how did you put it? Looting century-old graveyards in the state forest? I can assure you, I’ve never set foot in—”
“—because you’re a city boy who couldn’t find your way past the first tree. That’s why you needed Hatfield. But if you expect him to take the fall for it, forget it. When we bring him in, he’ll give you up.”
“And it’ll be my word against a disgruntled former employee with a long police record. Who will file the complaint? The girl in the picture you showed me? Dead a hundred years?”
“Actually, everything on state land belongs to the state, including the graves, so I’ll be filing the charge. The value of the relics you looted makes it grand larceny, a year in jail, and a fine triple the value of property stolen.”
“You think the prosecutor will care about old grave sites? The dead can’t vote.”
“They don’t have to. They have me. Turn around, and put your hands behind you. You’re under arrest.”
“Are you out of your mind? I’ll sue you and this town for every cent you have.”
“You’ll have to do it from jail. No bail. You’re a flight risk.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“I doubt a local judge will think so. When you called us a tribal society, you were half right. The graves you robbed are kin to the families who’ve been running the north shore for a hundred years. Your lawyer can appeal, and maybe he’ll win. Eventually. But in the meantime, you’ll be locked in a cage watching your business go straight down the tubes. Your assets will be frozen, websites shut down, replaced by a court order explaining why. By the time you get sprung, people will spit when they pass you on the street.”
“Fine by me! My old man will give me one of our downstate shops and I’ll be back on top in a month. You think you’re jamming me up? Hell, you’re doing me a favor.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe I was.
Maybe not.
A week later, I delivered some paperwork to the county lockup. Auerbach’s petition for bail had been denied. His lawyer would appeal, of course, and a higher court downstate would likely find in his favor, but it might not matter a damn.
In the visiting room, I barely recognized him. The spit-shined frat boy looked haggard, unshaven, his hair awry. And the paperwork, which he should have expected, nearly sent him over the edge.
“No,” he said, his jaw quivering, “I can’t stay here. You’ve got to let me out!”
“Me? Why would I—?”
“You don’t understand,” he sobbed, “I can’t close my eyes. I’m afraid to sleep. She comes to me in the dark. Every damned night.”
“What are you saying? Who comes?”
“The girl! From that picture you showed me, with the staring eyes. As soon as I start to nod off, she’s there! By my bed, watching! Please, I’ll pay you anything! You’ve got to help me!”
“I’m the last guy you should ask, sport. Your lawyer—”
“I can’t wait for that! Those graves! When we opened them, we set something loose. I don’t know what she is, a ghost or — I don’t know! But she’s coming for me—” And he broke down completely, burying his head in his arms, wailing like a child.
The turnkey stalked over to us, glaring at me. Raising my hands in mock surrender, I beat a hasty retreat. But as I passed through the checkpoint and stepped out into free air, I felt no sense of triumph.
I’ve seen guys in some godawful situations. Maimed and dying, drowning in their own blood.
But I’ve never seen a more terrified shambles of a human being than Auerbach, completely undone by his own guilty conscience. Haunted by some imaginary horror that only he can see.
Textbook paranoia.
Except that — when I arrested him? He seemed more annoyed than guilty. I don’t think he felt any remorse at all for what he’d done.
He does now.
I almost pity him. But not much. Whatever’s stalking him, real or imaginary, he brought it on himself.
I’d write off his raving to an overwrought imagination, but...
I keep thinking back to Hatfield. A woodsman and a crack shot, who somehow missed killing me from twenty feet away.
I kept replaying that scene over and over in my mind, until it finally registered that I wasn’t actually facing his gun muzzle when he fired. Not straight on. It wasn’t dumb luck that he missed me. If he’d meant to kill me, I’d be dead. I think now he fired past me deliberately, fired again. Then broke and ran like a scalded dog.
He didn’t miss. He wasn’t shooting at me at all. He was trying to kill something else. Maybe the same... thing... that has Auerbach so terrified.
And whatever it is, it saved my life.
When my mother first laid this protecteur de les morts business on me, I dismissed it as First Nation superstition. Basically, laughed it off.
I’m not laughing anymore.
Like a shadow from the forgotten past, this task has come down to me. I didn’t ask for it, nor do I want it, yet somehow...?
Apparently, I’ve been chosen.
I am le protecteur, the defender of the dead.
But if so, there’s been a terrible mistake.
I’m not the man for this. I’m a rational guy, who functions just fine in the real world. I believe in hard facts and evidence. The supernatural is a show on TV.
But now? When I wake in the night, remembering the fear in Hatfield’s face as he fired past me? And the terror in Auerbach’s eyes?