Stuart Woods - Palindrome

"You pushed too hard on your hunches when everybody else knew we had our man. I'll tell you the truth, Lee, that's why you don't have a partner at the moment. The attitude around here-I think it's unjustified-but the attitude is that nobody wants to be made to look bad by a guy who depends too much on hunches. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yeah, Cap, I understand it." It killed him to admit it, though.

"And now you want to go to LA to poke around. I expect you know that would involve a fax from me to the LA chief of detectives, letting him know I've got a man on his turf, and, of course, a copy of that would have to go to our own beloved chief, one of whose personal bugaboos is unnecessary travel during investigations."

"I hadn't thought that far ahead."

"Well, I have to." Haynes stared at the ceiling. "Looking at it as a detective, which I no longer am, of course, I'd say you've got a pretty good hunch."

Williams leaned forward. "Thank you, Ed."

"Then again, looking at it as the commander of the homicide squad, which I currently am, and which I would like to stay, I'd say I want something more from you."

"Such as?"

"A single piece of evidence; a collapsed alibi; another murder of somebody else Ramsey knows, who was breathing the same air at the time of expiration."

"And what if he does kill somebody else, Cap? How're you going to feel then, after what I've told you?"

Haynes stood up, walked to the door, and opened it. "You haven't told me a thing, Lee. This was just an informal chat about a hypothetical case. Have a nice day."

Williams got up and walked out of the office.

"Lee?" Williams stopped and turned. "If there's room on some of your plastic for an airline ticket, and you want to take a couple of vacation days on the West Coast, well, who's to stop you? And then, if you can get a clean collar out of your little vacation, I might see my way clear to reimburse you out of discretionary funds."

Williams grinned from ear to ear. Now he had a chance-a slim one, maybe, but a chance-to pull himself out of this hole with his colleagues. He needed one heavy bust, and this could be it.

Liz walked down the path toward the graveyard, and, as she approached, the murmur of voices reached her through the trees. There was the scrape of a tool on earth. The disinterment had begun. She had expected to see somebody knee deep in a grave, shoveling for all he was worth-a daylight version of a scene from some old horror movie. Instead, she found Dr. Blaylock and his students on their knees, scraping at the earth with small tools and their hands. Blaylock looked up, saw her approaching, and rose to meet her. "I didn't mean to disturb you, Doctor," she said. "I just wanted to watch for a bit."

"You're not disturbing me, Miss Barwick," he said. "In fact, I wanted to speak with you."

"Oh?"

"Yes, I understand that there's a black man on the island who is over a hundred years old."

"That's right; his name is Buck Moses."

"It occurs to me that it might be useful to speak with him. An old retainer like that who's probably attended a lot of family burials-maybe even dug a few graves-might tell us something about the materials the coffins were made of."

"Perhaps he might," she agreed.

"We don't have a vehicle here, and I wonder if I might intrude on your good nature to the extent of asking you to see Mr. Moses and, perhaps, bring him here to talk to me."

"I'll be happy to, Dr. Blaylock," she said. "I'll drive up to the old slave settlement, but I should tell you that Buck could be just about anywhere on the island. He has an old pickup truck, and he gets around."

"Well, perhaps you could leave him a note."

"I'm not even sure he reads. Let's leave it this way: I'll go up there now, and if I'm not back in an hour, just assume I didn't find him. He'll turn up eventually, though."

"That's very kind of you."

Liz indicated the digging. "You're making delicate work of this, I see."

"Oh, we're approaching this as an archaeological dig-partly because of the site's age, and partly so my students can have the experience. Mr. Drummond was interested in having it done that way, too. If he had simply wanted the graves moved, a few careful men with shovels could have done the job. This graveyard goes back to the eighteenth century, at least; Mr. Drummond tells me the site was an old Indian burying ground before that, so there's no telling what we'll turn up." He frowned. "We'd be moving a bit faster if my toolboxes hadn't disappeared the other night."

"Dr. Blaylock," a girl called out.

Liz and the doctor turned to see one of the students holding up a broken clay pipe. "You see what I mean?" The doctor smiled. "That will make their day." He returned to the digging.

Liz got back into her Jeep and drove up the north-south road that bisected the island. She took the fork for the slave settlement, and, shortly, pulled up before the church and stopped. "Buck?" she called out. "Buck Moses?" She was greeted with silence. She walked among the old frame cottages, peering into a window here and there. All were empty but Buck's, which he shared with his grandson. She opened the front door of the church and stepped in. It was a tiny building, with a few benches and a rudely constructed pulpit.

It could never have held more than twenty people, even if most of them stood. Did Buck Moses read? There was no way of knowing, but she decided to leave a note anyway. She found a pad and pencil in the Jeep, wrote down her message, and walked to Buck's little house. She was looking for a way to wedge the note in the door, when she leaned on it and it swung open. She put her head inside. "Buck?" The cabin was neatly kept, with a wood stove and an old settee. In back there was a bedroom. As Liz was about to close the door, her eye fell on two objects resting near the stove. On the floor, partly behind a stack of wood, were two large, gray, metal toolboxes. She stepped back and closed the door, and, as she did, James Moses rode slowly into the clearing on a large horse. He threw a leg over the saddle and slid down. "Hey, Miz Elizabeth," he said, smiling handsomely. "You come to see us?"

"I came to see your grandfather," Liz said, holding up the paper. "Will you give him a note for me?"

"Sure, I will."

"Dr. Blaylock wants to talk to him down at the Drummond family cemetery at Dungeness, wants to ask him about some of the burials." James's smile disappeared. "Granddaddy ain't going down there," he said. "He don't hold with messing up that graveyard; he told me so."

"Oh. Well, I said I'd pass on the message, and I have." She turned toward the Jeep, then stopped. "James, did you have anything to do with scaring those college kids down at their campsite the other night?" James poked at something on the ground with a toe. "Grand-daddy says those folks got no right poking 'round that graveyard, says there's spirits going to be mad about it. Maybe it was the spirits."

"Well, Dr. Blaylock has been missing two toolboxes since that night. There was nothing much of value in them, just things he needs to do his work."

"Yes, ma'am," James said. "I heard about that."

"Do you know anything about it?" she asked gently.

"You'd have to talk to my granddaddy about that," James said, and he didn't seem inclined to say more.

"I see," Liz said.

"Miz Elizabeth," James said slowly, "Granddaddy says things going to change around here soon; says a big wind coming, going to change everything." He looked back at the ground. "I think he don't want it to change while he's still alive. I think he wants to keep it like it is right now."

"Well, that's understandable," Liz said. "Still, everything changes sooner or later."

"He's worried about it," James said. "I haven't seen him worried about much before, but he's worried about this, keeps talking about it."