P Deutermann - Nightwalkers

"Any idea of who or why?" I asked.

He shook his head. "This place been empty for a long time, 'cept for the old lady, Ms. Tarrant, and she bein' housebound and all. We got kids now, come out to the country, mess around on some of the big farms, but this here-this was nasty."

I started shivering, so I got up and walked around to restore my circulation. Nasty was the word, all right. If the dogs hadn't been with me I might have simply drowned down there once the cold water worked its lethal magic. Then all the trapper would have to do was pull the cover back over and declare victory.

Victory over what, though? The candlestick business had felt like the opening chapter in a head game of some sort. This was quite an escalation. I'm going to make you go away, interloper, one way or another. I got the message, but I couldn't think of anyone I'd met so far who'd been anything but friendly and encouraging about the project. Even the Auntie Bellums across the way seemed disposed to let me proceed without objection.

It was starting to get dark. It had been a spring day but not a warm day. I was cold, wet, and in my stocking feet. I had walked over from Laurel Grove, and now I was going to have to walk back on the gravel drive. I went over to the hatch cover and, with Cubby's help, tipped it end for end back over the dark hole in the ground. I put the ball cap in my belt. If nothing else, I'd acquired some physical evidence of my intruder. Tomorrow I would come back over here and see what the mutts could scare up in the way of a trail.

As we started back toward the house, I wondered if this could possibly be my hit-man-hiring ghost from Triboro. I didn't think so. Billie Ray did not have the resources to have found me out here this quickly. So either this was someone local, with a hate-on for strangers, or I had a new problem I didn't know about.

The back windows of the big house reflected the swaying branches of some of the bigger oaks, making it look like there were ghostly figures slipping past the windows inside. I think I would have preferred a couple of attic wailers to the sneaky bastard who had set the well trap.

My tracking exercise the next morning led to some interesting results. I followed the shepherds as they worked the barnyard area and then headed down toward the river bottoms. I had no way of knowing if they were on the scent I wanted them to follow, but we'd started with the ball cap, and Frick at least knew what I wanted. I had my trusty SIG. 45 with me this time, and if the trail happened to lead directly to an operational human I was going to introduce myself by shooting him.

Instead, the trail led down to the river. The dogs lost the scent at the junction of a creek coming down from my property and the main river. There was a tiny patch of sandy mud on the north side of the creek, a clear sign that a boat had been pulled up on the bank. There were muddy holes where footprints would have been.

This told me a couple of things. One, I hadn't been indulging in paranoia about the setup in the barnyard. Someone had come by boat, beached it here, gone up to the barnyard, set his trap, and then come back. Two, my stalker was comfortable in the field. The Dan River is not a trifling stream. It's a good-sized river, fed from the mountains, with powerful currents and treacherous sandbars along its length in this area. It claimed a half-dozen humans a year, mainly kids who went playing along its banks, fell in, and were never seen again. A city boy would have come by car or truck, parked discreetly, and walked over the fields. This guy had come by small boat, and probably not from right across the river. He'd come looking to set up a trap that an unalerted ex-cop who always traveled with his dogs would not see. In fact, he'd used the dogs to lead me to that well.

I stood there, looking across the river. Billie Ray Breen was a red herring.

This was either someone from my personal past, someone who wanted to fuck with me for a while and then-what? Go away and leave me wondering when he'd be back? Or show himself and explain what his beef was? It pissed me off, especially since one of the reasons for coming out to the country was to get away from this kind of crap. The other explanation was that this was someone new, someone with an agenda I didn't know about.

I turned the dogs around, and we went back up the way we'd come. I scanned the ground, hoping, but not very hard, that he'd dropped something with his name and address on it. Something did catch my eye, over on that western ridge. Only the top line of the ridge was visible across the fields and behind the old rail line, but there was my horseman again, clearly silhouetted. I gauged that it was almost a half mile from me to the ridge, but I called back the dogs and changed course, cutting across the knee-high weeds of plowed ground and heading for the ridge. As soon as I did, he turned and disappeared behind the trees. I'd figured he wouldn't wait around, but his tracks might.

It took us forty-five minutes of hard going over the plowed ground and through the weeds, up and over the banks of the rail line, down across a troublesome creek, and then up the ridge on the other side through fairly dense pine trees and underbrush. I'd selected a tall poplar as my landmark and came up on that tree to discover three large boulders in a semicircle, with the smoldering remains of a small campfire in front of them. One of the boulders was shaped vaguely like a throne, and sitting on the throne, legs crossed and boots gleaming, was a Confederate cavalry officer, sipping something from a battered tin cup.

The shepherds closed in on me but did not seem to be very excited, which told me that this man wasn't emitting large volumes of adrenaline into the air. He was tall, and he looked like Valeria Lee, with the same aquiline nose and arched eyebrows over deeply pouched gray eyes. His dark hair was going to gray, and he sported a full salt-and-pepper beard that almost reached his chest, a gray wool jacket with two rows of buttons over gray trousers that had a single yellow stripe down their length, knee-high leather boots, and a broad-rimmed hat complete with a ratty feather pushed into the band. His saber was propped up on the rock in its scabbard, the leather and brass attachment straps dangling. He had a leather holster on his right hip that contained what looked like a period cap-and-ball pistol. Two gray gauntlets lay carelessly on the ground next to his boots.

He nodded at me when I appeared out of the underbrush but did not get up, possibly in deference to the two large shepherds who were watching him, although he didn't seem upset by the dogs. I spotted his horse behind the big rocks, standing to a ground tie and contentedly munching grass. I saw his eyes take in my own pistol strapped to my right hip, but he didn't seem bothered by it.

"Well, good morning-Colonel, is it?" I said.

"Major, suh. Major," he replied, lifting his hat with his left hand. I guessed that he was about fifty, but he had one of those tight, sallow complexions that make age estimation difficult. "Major Courtney Woodruff Lee, at your service, suh. Those are handsome animals with you."

"I'm Cameron Hartoff Richter," I said, unconsciously matching his own formality with some of my own.

"Had a cousin named Cameron," he said with a sniff. "Lost at Gettysburg, we're told. Not recovered. He was an adjutant with General Pickett, you see."

"I believe I saw you up here a few weeks ago."

"I reconnoiter daily, suh," he said, apparently not terribly impressed with the recitation of all my names. "General Sherman is reported to be at large in the low country, and we expect him to join Butcher Grant any day now. Any day."

I thought for a moment that this guy had to be putting me on, but then I caught the briefest glint of true madness in his eyes. Major Lee. Was this the crazy brother rumored to be locked up in the attic at Laurel Grove, and, if so, who'd let him out?