Drummer Boy: A Supernatural Thriller (26 page)

“Found it in the Hole,” Vernon Ray said.

“Fabric from the war would be long rotted by now,” Cindy said.

“Along with the meat that wore it,” Bobby added.

“So something’s making them real again,” Vernon Ray said.

“If we agree that these ghosts are somehow powered by emotional energy, whether it’s love or hate or pain or fear, then we need to restore balance.”

“Balance?” Vernon Ray said. He was picturing some kind of Star Wars machine, a monster-sized electronic zapper that could scramble the ghosts’ electromagnetic field and blast Col. Creep and his Raiders back to ether, where they could be sucked into a cosmic vacuum cleaner and stored until the end of time.

“If one escapes, they need to draw another soul back to the Jangling Hole,” Cindy said.

Shivers crawled up Vernon Ray’s neck as he recalled the cold hand gripping his wrist and tugging him toward the black bowels of the Hole.

“No escape,” Bobby said. “Even when you’re dead, you got to belong somewhere.”

Belong
. Vernon Ray wondered if he’d ever belong anywhere, on either side of the cemetery fence.

“So we’ve somehow got to lure Earley Eggers back to the Hole,” Vernon Ray said.

“Or they’ll take a replacement,” Cindy said.

The ensuing silence was broken by a mechanical whirring and clatter as the presses kicked in behind the cubicle wall, rolling out the afternoon’s edition.

Great
, Vernon Ray thought.
The good news just keeps getting better.

The Titusville Times
had downplayed the shooting death, just as Cindy had promised. The article had suggested a hunting accident, with Littlefield quoted as believing the shooter could have been miles away and not even been aware of the accidental target. He’d issued the usual call for anyone with more information to step forward, and besides the victim’s family ringing his phone off the hook, the public seemed content with the explanation.

As for the family, Littlefield had alluded to the possibility of suicide, and despite the shame he’d felt over the tactic, it worked: The survivors gathered among themselves and whispered about the possible shortcomings, debts, affairs, or mental defects Carter Harrison had hidden for all those years.

“The incident is still under investigation,” the sheriff said, quoting himself before tossing the paper on his desk.

Because Cindy had scooped the regional dailies, they took her story for the Associated Press wire and the mystery was safely blanketed. Littlefield was getting good at cover-ups, and he wondered what other lies he’d have to spin before he retired and how many more corpses he’d leave behind. He sipped his coffee and it was as cold and bitter as the hole in his chest.

Sherry waded through the door, making a rare sojourn from her dispatch desk. Movement was unnatural for her, as if her gelatinous flesh had never quite connected to her skeleton. Littlefield wondered how her husband handled her in bed, and turned his thoughts away before he got to the point of a Sherry-in-the-buff visual.

“Jeff Davis is here,” Sherry said. “The Living History group needs a permit for this weekend.”

Littlefield wondered why Sherry hadn’t simply pressed the intercom button as she usually did. As she made her way past his desk to the little refrigerator, he understood. Morton had left some Girl Scout cookies in the freezer and Sherry liked to raid the stash, taking two or three in the belief that nobody would notice.

She trusted Littlefield not to rat her out, and the sheriff liked to tease Morton about his inability to solve the crime. At least he had back in the days when cookie crumbs were the most important business of the day.

“I thought they got that through the town,” the sheriff said.

“That’s for use of public property,” Sherry said, stuffing a coconut cookie in her mouth.

The re-enactment events were usually held at Aldridge Park, a piece of donated land at the base of Mulatto Mountain. Littlefield wasn’t sure he wanted a few hundred people piled up within spitting distance of the Jangling Hole, and wondered if he could concoct some sort of problem that would allow him to change the location.

Maybe an anonymous threat of violence, somebody protesting the Confederate flag, or a Homeland Security alert. Feed people the image of a brown man with a bomb and you could pretty much get them to do anything you wanted.

“You got all the paperwork?” he said.

“Yeah, but he needs a permit for the guns. They use real guns in the event.”

“All right, send him in,” he said. “And thanks for keeping Morton’s weight down. He’s got his physical coming up.”

“My pleasure,” Sherry said, and Littlefield got the sense that cookies were one of her few pleasures besides crankiness. “I got some cherry jubilee for you to take to Perriotte.”

“Will do.” The deputy had made no progress, though his physical signs were stable and normal. Perriotte still manifested a strange form of waking coma, and though his eyes were open and he responded to some stimuli, he had not spoken since his admission.

The doctors were calling it a delayed form of post-traumatic stress disorder, probably caused by Perriotte’s tour of duty in Iraq. Littlefield hadn’t bothered to add his own theories to mix, but the discovery of Donnie Eggers at the Jangling Hole had caused him to form his own diagnosis.

Jeff Davis was wearing work clothes but he topped it off with a felt cavalier’s hat, a dandy peacock feather dancing from the headband.

“Don’t tell me they wore that in the Civil War,” Littlefield said. “Seems like the feather would make it easy for sharpshooters to pick off the officers.”

Jeff adjusted the hat. “Those were different times. Officers usually were at the front of the charge, sometimes carrying nothing but a sword. The days of paper-pushing captains didn’t come until later, when the military became a tool of the industrialists.”

Littlefield gave a salute and indicated an empty chair before Jeff could launch into a lecture. “You fellows are using Aldridge Park, I hear.”

“Yeah. We bivouac on Thursday, have open camp on Friday, and conduct the battle on Saturday.”

“And Sunday is for nursing hangovers and cleaning up?”

“This isn’t a party, Sheriff. It’s an educational event, and a chance to remember.”

“Sorry. Whenever I think about men, campfires, and tents, I form assumptions based on my personal experience.”

“I hope your drinking didn’t include firearms.”

“Right. I assume you guys are firing blanks, right?” Even though the guns were mostly replicas, they functioned and their powder charges simulated the noise of actual battle. State law and courtesy required advance notification, both to head off E-911 calls and make sure the horseless cowboys weren’t too reckless.

“Safety is our most important concern, and we’re fully insured. Every participant has a permit to carry, even though technically it’s not required if the weapons aren’t concealed.”

Littlefield had no doubt Jeff Davis knew the gun laws better than Littlefield himself did, and he wasn’t particularly concerned about the fine print. “You heard about the shooting Sunday?”

“Yeah. That’s a shame. Carter was a real decent guy. We were hoping to enlist him.”

“Well, don’t you think it might seem a little inconsiderate to hold a bang-up battle near the site of his accidental death?”

Jeff’s eyebrows lifted at the word “accidental,” and Littlefield wondered what sorts of rumors were circulating despite Cindy’s snow job. “The Civil War is still the bloodiest conflict in American history,” Jeff said, and Littlefield braced for the inner professor to emerge. “Hardly a square mile of territory was untouched by blood, misery, and sorrow, whether on the battlefield or the home front. When Stoneman and Kirk swept through here, there were plenty of atrocities that never made it into the books. Theft, looting, foolery with the women. Kirk had a stockade at Aldridge, and plenty of Confederate prisoners died there, whether from dysentery or the pistol of that crazy Union colonel.”

“I heard a few escaped, with the help of some guards who deserted and fled with them.”

Jeff smoothed his moustache. “The Jangling Hole, Sheriff. Quit pussyfooting.”

“Yeah. The Hole.”

“I focus on ‘living history,’ not the other kind.”

“Well, you got to admit, we’re all living history one way or another. Even if we make it up as we go along, it’s still getting made.”

“Legends get made, too. But I’ve never found any records to verify the legend. The Union Army kept diligent records most of the time, but the North Carolina mountains were largely rough frontier, and the Union soldiers were mostly bushwhackers and goons who were locally recruited. Kirk was a rogue from the Tennessee line who was only too happy to rile up his neighbors. Making him a colonel was like giving him a license to kill.”

Littlefield wondered how the colonel would view his license if he were dead and beyond punishment. “Well, my job is to keep the county safe and uphold the laws,” he said.

“We’re not breaking any laws. We’ve been doing this every year for a decade.”

“Yeah, but people are a little fidgety right now. A lot of peculiar things are going on.”

“We have a permit to assemble and we’ve got a standing agreement to hire off-duty deputies as security. We pride ourselves on running a family event.”

Littlefield glanced at the paperwork on his desk. “Real guns with fake ammo. Plenty of folks have been killed by guns they didn’t think were loaded’”

“I’ll tell you what, Sheriff. Why don’t you come on out for the bivouac and take a look around for yourself? I’ll be out there tomorrow with a few of the boys getting the grounds ready.”

Littlefield nodded. He would likely find something wrong that would give him authority to shut down the event in the interest of public safety. The re-enactors would piss and moan, the local business owners would bang their empty tin cups, and somebody would write cranky letter to the editor, but the action would buy him enough time to figure out what was going on at the Hole. And, whether the fake soldiers ever knew it or not, Littlefield might just be protecting them from an accident or two.

“Okay, then, come out tomorrow.” Jeff Davis stood, shoulders erect, chin tilted up. “The permit?”

The sheriff scrawled his signature and slid the paper to Davis, who carried it out the door. His hearty “So long, Honey” to Sherry was the last sound besides the slamming of the front door.

He reread Cindy’s article. He was three paragraphs into it when the phone rang. Expecting Perry Hoyle’s report, Littlefield snatched up the phone.

“Sheriff, it’s Barclay.”

Chairman of the county commission, a property lawyer with a hand in practically every square inch of disturbed dirt in Pickett County, and boyhood best buddy of Bill Willard. Just what Littlefield needed. “What can I do for you?”

“I heard from the Chamber of Commerce that you’re trying to shut down the Living History event.”

“That’s a slight exaggeration.”

“Do you know how many hundreds of people the re-enactment brings to town, and how many thousands of dollars they spend? They fill up the hotels, eat in the restaurants, and buy souvenirs in the shops. Some of them even look around, like the look and feel of the place, and decide to buy a mountain getaway, and that helps the local economy all the way down the line.”

All the way into your pocket.
“I can’t worry about profit margin. I’ve sworn to protect the public.”

“Don’t forget you hold elected office. The same people who put you in can take you back out.”

The next election was over a year away, and voters could drop old grudges and form new ones by then. “I like to think people put their trust in me because I always did what was best for the county,” Littlefield said.

“You don’t hear the talk,” Barclay said, his silver-tongued delivery as persuasive on the phone as in the courtroom. “Ever since what happened at the church in Whispering Pines, you’ve been damaged goods. I’ve been working behind the scenes to prop you up because I know you’re a good man. But don’t push your luck.”

First Willard and now Barclay. He resented being viewed as a puppet for Pickett County’s rich and powerful. “I only push when I get pushed,” he said.

In the ensuing silence, the scanner crackled and Littlefield missed the first few words. He moved the phone from his ear so he could hear Sherry speaking into the dispatch mike.

“10-32 at McAllister’s Bowling Alley,” Sherry said. “Suspicious person.”

“Got to go,” Littlefield said into the phone. “There’s a voter in trouble.”

“The chamber carries a lot of clout-”

Littlefield clicked Barclay cold and jogged through Sherry’s office, wincing as his knees creaked. “What’s the deal?” he said, not slowing.

“Some weird guy in rags, carrying a gun.”

Littlefield stopped at the door. “Weird guy?”

“That’s what Mac said, but you know how Mac is. He gets a little paranoid.”

As Littlefield headed for his cruiser, he hoped the weird guy didn’t arouse Mac’s suspicious streak. For one thing, Mac had a licensed handgun on the premises and had used it two years ago to ward off a robber. For another, Mac might actually put a hole in the guy, and then the whole town would be left to figure out why the victim not only walked away without a scratch, but left no blood on the floor.

He kicked on the strobe and siren, getting across Titusville in four minutes by ignoring red lights and forcing traffic to the shoulder. By the time he’d reached the bowling alley, Morton was already on the scene and rubberneckers were lined up outside, peering through the front doors.

Old Loretta Mains wobbled out of the neighboring drug store, pecking along the sidewalk with her cane, but when she saw the gathering and Littlefield’s cruiser, she straightened the hunch out of her spine and hustled to the action. A young man in a leather jacket obstructed Littlefield’s entry, noisily berating someone through a cell phone. Littlefield nudged past but the guy swung his elbow without looking.

“Hey, watch what you’re-” The guy’s mouth froze open when he saw he’d just committed what might pass for assault on an officer, and Littlefield counted three gold fillings in his molars.