“How does all this harassment help you catch the killer, Spencer?”
“This is not for publication, Rattler, but I think we can smoke him out,” said the sheriff. “We announce in all the media that you’re going to be dowsing for bones on Tuesday. We insist that you can work wonders, and that we’re confident you’ll find Amy. If the killer is a local man, he’ll see the notices, and get nervous. I’m betting that he’ll go up there Monday night, just to make sure the body is still well-hidden. There’s only one road into that area. If we can keep the killer from spotting us, I think he’ll lead us to Amy’s body.”
“That’s fine, Sheriff, but how are you going to track this fellow in the dark?”
Spencer Arrowood smiled. “Why, Rattler,” he said, “I’ve got the Sight.”
You have to do what you can to keep a sheep killer out of your fold, even if it means talking to a bunch of reporters who don’t know ass from aardvark. I put up with all their fool questions, and dispensed about a dozen jugs of comfrey and chamomile tea, and I even told that blond lady on Channel Seven that she didn’t need any herbs for getting pregnant, because she already was, which surprised her so much that she almost dropped her microphone, but I reckon my hospitality worked to Spencer Arrowood’s satisfaction, because he came along Monday afternoon to show me a stack of newspapers with my picture looking out of the page, and he thanked me for being helpful.
“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Just let me go with you tonight. You’ll need all the watchers you can get to cover that ridge.”
He saw the sense of that, and agreed without too much argument. I wanted to see what he meant about having the Sight, because I’d known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper, and he didn’t have so much as a flicker of the power. None of the Arrowoods did. But he was smart enough in regular ways, and I knew he had some kind of ace up his sleeve.
An hour past sunset that night I was standing in a clearing on Locust Ridge, surrounded by law enforcement people from three counties. There were nine of us. We were so far from town that there seemed to be twice as many stars, so dark was that October sky without the haze of streetlights to bleed out the fainter ones. The sheriff was talking one notch above a whisper, in case the suspect had come early. He opened a big cardboard box, and started passing out yellow-and-black binoculars.
“These are called ITT Night Mariners,” he told us. “I borrowed ten pair from a dealer at Watauga Lake, so take care of them. They run about $2,500 apiece.”
“Are they infrared?” somebody asked him.
“No. But they collect available light and magnify it up to 20,000 times, so they will allow you excellent night vision. The full moon will give us all the light we need. You’ll be able to walk around without a flashlight, and you’ll be able to see obstacles, terrain features, and anything that’s out there moving around.”
“The military developed this technology in Desert Storm,” said Deputy LeDonne.
“Well, let’s hope it works for us tonight,” said the sheriff. “Try looking through them.”
I held them up to my eyes. They didn’t weigh much-about the same as two apples, I reckoned. Around me, everybody was muttering surprise, tickled pink over this new gadget. I looked through mine, and I could see the dark shapes of trees up on the hill-not in a clump, the way they look at night, but one by one, with spaces between them. The sheriff walked away from us, and I could see him go, but when I took the Night Mariners down from my eyes, he was gone. I put them back on, and there he was again.
“I reckon you do have the Sight, Sheriff,” I told him. “Your man won’t know we’re watching him with these babies.”
“I wonder if they’re legal for hunting,” said a Unicoi County man. “This sure beats spotlighting deer.”
“They’re illegal for deer,” Spencer told him. “But they’re perfect for catching sheep killers.” He smiled over at me. “Now that we’ve tested the equipment, y’all split up. I’ve given you your patrol areas. Don’t use your walkie-talkies unless it’s absolutely necessary. Rattler, you just go where you please, but try not to let the suspect catch you at it. Are you going to do your stuff?”
“I’m going to try to let it happen,” I said. It’s a gift. I don’t control it. I just receive.
We went our separate ways. I walked awhile, enjoying the new magic of seeing the night woods same as a possum would, but when I tried to clear my mind and summon up that other kind of seeing, I found I couldn’t do it. So, instead of helping, the Night Mariners were blinding me. I slipped the fancy goggles into the pocket of my jacket, and stood there under an oak tree for a minute or two, trying to open my heart for guidance. I whispered a verse from Psalm 27: Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. Then I looked up at the stars and tried to think of nothing. After a while I started walking, trying to keep my mind clear and go where I was led.
Maybe five minutes later, maybe an hour, I was walking across an abandoned field overgrown with scrub cedars. The moonlight glowed in the long grass, and the cold air made my ears and fingers tingle. When I touched a post of the broken split-rail fence, it happened. I saw the field in daylight. I saw brown grass, drying up in the summer heat, and flies making lazy circles around my head. When I looked down at the fence rail at my feet, I saw her. She was wearing a watermelon-colored T-shirt and jean shorts. Her brown hair spilled across her shoulders and twined with the chicory weeds. Her eyes were closed. I could see a smear of blood at one corner of her mouth, and I knew. I looked up at the moon, and when I looked back, the grass was dead, and the darkness had closed in again. I crouched behind a cedar tree before I heard the footsteps.
They weren’t footsteps, really. Just the swish sound of boots and trouser legs brushing against tall, dry grass. I could see his shape in the moonlight, and he wasn’t one of the searchers. He was here to keep his secrets. He stepped over the fence rail, and walked toward the one big tree in the clearing-a twisted old maple, big around as two men. He knelt down beside that tree, and I saw him moving his hands on the ground, picking up a dead branch, and brushing leaves away. He looked, rocked back on his heels, leaned forward, and started pushing the leaves back again.
They hadn’t given me a walkie-talkie, and I didn’t hold with guns, though I knew he might have one. I wasn’t really part of the posse. Old Rattler with his Twinkies and his root tea and his prophecies. I was just bait. But I couldn’t risk letting the sheep killer slip away. Finding the grave might catch him; might not. None of my visions would help Spencer in a court of law, which is why I mostly stick to dispensing tonics and leave evil alone.
I cupped my hands to my mouth and gave an owl cry, loud as I could. Just one. The dark shape jumped up, took a couple of steps up and back, moving its head from side to side.
Far off in the woods, I heard an owl reply. I pulled out the Night Mariners then, and started scanning the hillsides around that meadow, and in less than a minute I could make out the sheriff, with that badge pinned to his coat, standing at the edge of the trees with his field glasses on, scanning the clearing. I started waving and pointing.
The sheep killer was hurrying away now, but he was headed in my direction, and I thought, Risk it. What called your name, Rattler, wasn’t an owl. So just as he’s about to pass by, I stepped out at him, and said, “Hush now. You’ll scare the deer.”
He was startled into screaming, and he swung out at me with something that flashed silver in the moonlight. As I went down, he broke into a run, crashing through weeds, noisy enough to scare the deer across the state line-but the moonlight wasn’t bright enough for him to get far. He covered maybe twenty yards before his foot caught on a fieldstone, and he went down. I saw the sheriff closing distance, and I went to help, but I felt lightheaded all of a sudden, and my shirt was wet. I was glad it wasn’t light enough to see colors in that field. Red was never my favorite.