P Deutermann: Nightwalkers

The graveyard was a collection of rectangular stone markers and stumpy white tombstones. A few were formally inscribed; others were just plain rocks with one smooth face bearing a name and life dates. Many of the markers were flat on the ground, and there was no fence or other enclosure. I counted twenty-nine graves that I could see. Wild cedars had sprung up everywhere over the years, now standing sentry duty over the remains of the slain guards. Mr. Oatley wiped his face with a handkerchief and pulled up a pant leg to see if he'd acquired any passengers.

"These are Confederate war dead," I said. "How come this place isn't state maintained?"

"They was ashamed, I reckon. This was gray killin' on gray, you know? The government up in Richmond had pretty much gone down, Grant had Lee's army by the throat over near Appomattox, lotta folks was runnin' for their lives. That's how the property got its new name, by the by. Used to be called Oak Grove. After this mess, right here, that's when they called it Glory's End."

"Highly appropriate, too," I said. I'd been moving closer to a decision about buying this property for some time now, ever since learning that it might be available. Surveying this poignant piece of history, I made up my mind.

"Okay. I'll buy it."

Mr. Oatley's perspiring face broke into a big smile. "Wonderful, sir. That's wonderful. You won't regret it, I can promise you that."

We drove back to town in his SUV. I'd already done quite a bit of research on the property before actually approaching a Realtor, including a flyover in a small plane for an aerial look. The plantation had just over a mile of river frontage on the Dan, five miles of road frontage on a two-lane highway, and about four hundred acres of rolling land laid out in abandoned crop fields and woods. The remaining three hundred acres was in forest. It was commonly stated that none of the prominent families in Rockwell County "ever" sold big parcels, but apparently their heirs did. The elderly lady who'd owned Glory's End had died the previous fall, and the two surviving "children," both in their sixties, had let the local Realtors know that they might be persuaded, reluctantly, of course, most reluctantly, to let it go for two point five mil to the right kind of people.

Besides the tragic history, the most interesting feature for me was the original plantation house, a redbrick, white-columned pile overlooking a long sweep of cleared ground down to the river bottoms. It dated from the 1830s or so, when Rockwell County was the single most prosperous county in North Carolina, supported, of course, by a slave-based labor force. It wasn't a huge building, as the real ones often weren't, but it was pretty much in its original configuration. There were none of the blighting additions I'd seen tacked on to other nineteenth-century houses in the area. I intended to restore it and then live in it.

My crew of retired cops at Hide and Seek Investigations, all city boys at heart, thought I'd gone senile. One of them even bought me a video of that movie The Money Pit just to make sure I knew what I was getting into. For me, however, it was time to make a change. I was tired of living in the ever-expanding suburban densepacks of the Triboro area. The peaceful old farm behind my house had been acquired by a developer, so now I got to watch them rape the hillside with giant yellow machinery in preparation for yet another mansion graveyard of million-dollar homes, shoddily built by heavily leveraged builders, a whopping twenty-five feet between them. I had known that all this was inevitable, so I'd been looking for some country property for a year or so before the big Caterpillars showed up.

I was also getting bored with herding court papers and the general tedium of missing persons cases that were the bread-and-butter jobs for our little company. There were some really interesting cases, but for the most part we chased down people who didn't want to be found and served them with paper they didn't want to see. When I sensed that I was getting on my guys' nerves, I decided that I needed a change of scene and a project. Glory's End looked like it would do.

We did the necessary preliminary paperwork, and I gave Mr. Oatley my banker's name and number to begin the money dance. His eyes really lit up when I said there would not be a mortgage. I did want a title search, a survey bring-up, and all the other usual due diligence normally required by a bank. He thought we could probably close in thirty to sixty days, barring complications. I asked what kind of complications.

"This is an old, rural county, Lieutenant," he said solemnly. "Titles can be complicated, depending on how far back they go and how long a family has owned it."

"Shouldn't that actually simplify it?"

"In the early days," he said, "the big cotton and tobacco planters would work the ground until it was exhausted. Then they'd abandon it and move on to new ground. Technically they still owned it, but if some small farmers moved in behind them, things could get murky."

"Well, time I've got," I said, "and, of course, the money to buy it."

"That should help considerably," he said, rubbing his hands together.

"One more thing," I said. "I would like permission to stay at the house from time to time. I'll rent it if that's what it takes."

"I'm sure that can be arranged," he said.

I drove back to my office downtown, where Pardee Bell told me there was an urgent message from a Mr. Ray Garrett.

"Dude says he's the TPC at Alexander state prison."

"What's a TPC?" I asked. Pardee had no idea.

I went down to my office and called Mr. Garrett. "Okay," I said, when he answered. "What's a TPC?"

"Transition placement coordinator," he said with a chuckle. "The new and improved name for the prisoner release paperwork guy. I started as a main pop screw, but now I've moved up to upper middle corrections management. Ain't that something?"

I agreed that it was most impressive and asked what was up.

"Back when you were on the job there with the Manceford County Sheriff's Office, do you remember sending up a bad boy named Breen? Billie Ray Breen?"

I searched my memory. "Yeah," I said. "Nasty little bastard. Got drunk, got mad, beat his common-law wife and her sister almost to death with a baseball bat one night. Gorped the sister, as I remember. The wife had to testify by blinking her one good eye yes or no. We took him down in some no-tell motel that same night with the MCAT. Crack-thin kid, rat faced, weird eyes."

"Well," he said, "that still describes him. He's done twelve on a twenty-to-life jolt in the red level here. That's the good news."

"Okay, and?"

"The bad news is he's getting early-released."

"How in the hell did that happen?"

"Don't ask, Lieutenant. Here's the thing: I think you're getting a ghost."

Oh, great, I thought. In cop parlance, a ghost was someone who got out of prison and then went after the cop who put him in. When I said we took him down, I should have said that I had personally taken him down when he shot one of my guys and tried really hard to shoot me. I'd put one through his right lung and two more into his plumbing, but, unfortunately, we were issued nines in those days, and, thin as he'd been, he'd survived, after soaking up a great deal of the taxpayers' money.

"He been talking trash?"

"Not so's we could bust him for it," he said, "but we have ears out there. Word is that he's gonna make you, by name, his new life's work."

"When exactly does he get out?"

He named the date.

"Parole supervision?"

"Three years, minimum. I'll get you his PO's name as soon as one's assigned. Since he was red level, it'll be weekly at first."

"Let's tell him I retired in Europe."

"Wish I could, but I'm betting he can find you the same way I did."