Jan Burke - Bloodlines

He pulled the gates apart and began to squeeze between them. I heard his breath catch on a small sound of pain as his bruised ribs were pressed against the metal supports of the gates.

A moment later, he was through, and the flashlight was out again. Ian took Eric’s flashlight and tried to position himself to fire on Ethan should he reappear with a weapon or some other surprise.

“Where are you?” Mitch called.

“On the other side of the shed,” Ethan called back.

“I don’t like this,” Mitch said. “I don’t like this at all.”

We all listened, ears straining for sound. Nothing could be heard over the rumbling and creaking of the oil well pumps.

As what seemed like two or three eternities passed, I began to wonder if I had fooled myself into thinking Ethan cared about what happened to me. What if he just hared off, jumping over a fence on the other side of the cemetery and leaving me and the Yeagers standing in our little semicircle? Or hid in there the rest of the night, or at least until the police showed up? I could be long past being able to tell anyone my version of events.

I told myself that would not be the worst possible outcome. In all likelihood, that was the best we could hope for. Maybe Ethan was practical enough to see that.

But even with Eric’s gun at my head and a cold feeling of certainty that I would not survive the night settling in on me, even knowing that Ethan had screwed up so many other times in his life and was a self-acknowledged liar and manipulator, I thought of how he toughed out those days at the paper and couldn’t bring myself to believe he was abandoning me. I was not cheered by this thought. I didn’t much want to die alone, but I wanted less for the two of us to die together.

In the next moment, he came back around the corner, his flashlight beam marking his progress as he returned to the gate. Fool, I thought, close to tears. You brave damned fool.

The Yeagers were relieved. I could feel Eric relax his grip slightly, and he eased the pressure of the gun away. A moment later, as Ethan fit the key into the padlock, Eric stepped back from me.

The chain fell free, and Ethan pulled the gates in. He looked toward me and said, “Welcome to my cemetery.”

H IS CEMETERY LOOKED AS IF IT HAD BEEN TOSSED. “Most of the grave robbing was done to the older ones,” Ethan said. “They figured no one who cared about these people would still be around. But they also went for a few of the newer ones.”

Mounds of dirt stood next to open graves, vaults were aboveground, and excavation equipment was parked here and there. The investigation had not yet extended into every corner of the cemetery, but where it was under way, it seemed doubtful the permanent occupants were resting in peace.

The odors were much stronger inside the cemetery. Rain had fallen during the weeks of investigation, and water collected in the bottom of the graves, intensifying the dankness and scents of decay. I could also smell traces of formalin and other chemical smells from embalming. Perhaps not in fact, but in my mind, the scent of human decay overrode all the others.

In a cemetery where no one had disturbed the burials, this rank smell would not have been present, but the practice of opening coffins and moving bodies from coffins into graves where more than one body was placed, or reburying bodies without coffins, had obviously made the soil here subject to saturation with it.

Ethan walked us past a few graves, then suddenly looked around, as if confused.

Not hiding his disgust, Mitch said, “You never found anything in Maureen’s belongings, did you?”

“Not exactly,” Ethan admitted.

“You son of-” Ian said angrily, but Ethan held a hand up.

“Irene got it from Betty. Betty stole it from your desk at the farmhouse. You know what I’m talking about?”

Mitch’s eyes narrowed. “The locket. That bitch. I always wondered…but that doesn’t prove shit, does it?”

“Oh, together with what we found among Maureen’s papers, yes, I think it does. Which is why we had to find a safe place for it.”

“Where is it?” Mitch asked. “Where’d you put it?”

“I have to find the right vault,” Ethan said, looking around again. “I was afraid of this-they’ve done more digging. I need to find the tombstone of Alice Pelck.” He spelled the last name.

“Who’s Alice Pelck?”

“Hell if I know, I just used her tombstone as the marker. It’s one of the big ones with an angel looking down from it.” We looked across the cemetery and saw about fifty angels. He used his flashlight to make his way over to the nearest one. “No, that’s not her.”

“Don’t go running off,” Mitch said, ordering Eric to hand over his gun and stay close to Ethan and Ian. Mitch would stay with me. I didn’t like that much-I had been hoping we could separate the brothers.

Ethan said to me, “They moved the excavator that was parked near here, and now I can’t find her. Do you remember where she is?”

“I thought she was over there,” I said, pointing to a nearby section, one that was crowded with equipment, old trees, and at least two dozen stone angels. They must have been all the rage at some point in Las Piernas’s history.

Moving the flashlight in a sweeping motion, spotlighting grave markers here and there, Ethan walked toward the area where I had pointed, Eric close behind. Ian held both flashlight and gun and began to run the light over tombstones, joining the search for Alice Pelck. Eric, although far from helpless, now had no gun and no light. Glancing uneasily around him, he jumped when a breeze stirred the shadows of the tree branches over the tombs. He ordered Ian to give him the flashlight. Ian refused. “Uncle Mitch-” Eric called back to us in complaint.

“Damn it, Ian, give him the light,” Mitch shouted. “Never mind looking at the graves, keep an eye on the smart boy there.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Fucking morons.” He waited to see that Ian obeyed him.

With Mitch staying near me, I gradually started drifting farther away from the others, supposedly to find dear Alice. “Try that one,” I would say, and while he bent closer, I’d move to the next one.

I gradually lured him into a place with more treacherous footing, a muddy spot between two open graves. I could smell the stagnant water that lay along the bottom of each.

Despite his instructions, Ian got caught up in finding Alice Pelck’s grave now, distracted by reading the tombstones Ethan illuminated, not paying close attention to Ethan himself. Eric was nervously darting his flashlight all around, peering into empty graves and pulling back with distaste.

“I think I see it!” I shouted, moving closer to one of the open graves, blocking Mitch’s view of its monument.

Ian turned toward us. Mitch moved forward to try to read the tombstone, telling me to get out of the way. Eric turned his light toward us, but Mitch was now between me and Eric. Eric’s beam of light fell on Mitch just as he bent over me, and just as I rose and shouldered into him with all my might.

I lost my footing on the slippery ground and fell face first into the mud, but Mitch was off-balance and fell backward into the stinking open grave. I heard him hit bottom with a splash as I hurriedly scooted myself behind the cover of the tombstone.

Ian fired at me, his bullet striking the wing of the stone angel above me. A shard of stone flew off and struck me on the cheek, but I ignored its sting and rolled to my feet. Eric came running toward me. Ian shouted at Eric to get the hell out of the way. I glanced back in time to see Ethan take his chance-while Ian and Eric started toward me, Ethan used his flashlight to deliver a cracking blow to Ian’s head.