Buried Dreams (5 page)

I nodded, finding it hard to talk.

Diane turned and went back into Jon's house. I stood on the street, hands in my coat pockets, and waited in the growing darkness, waited until my feet hurt and my stomach growled, waited until my throat hurt from being thirsty, waited until there was some movement from the firefighters and they went into the house with a collapsible gurney and came out a few minutes later with a shrouded shape on the wheeled stretcher that had once been my friend.

Then I left.

I started walking past the grass and Paula Quinn came up to me, smiling and then giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. "You okay?"

"Not particularly."

She motioned with her reporter's notebook. "I'll do a good write-up on him, don't you worry. It'll be in Monday's paper. Do you have anything you want me to put in the story?"

Something sharp started making its way around my tongue and lips, and then I forced myself to stop. Paula was just doing her job, was doing what she did best, and I smiled and said, "No, not really. I'll trust your good judgment."

Paula said, "All right, but if you change your mind, call me before ten a.m. on Monday, before deadline. Okay?"

"Fine," I said, and then Diane Woods made her way over and said, "Tough day."

"You got that," I said.

"I'd like to have a couple of words with you, if you don't mind."

"For you, detective, name the place and time."

She said, "All right. How about in an hour, at Jon's house?"

"For real?"

"Yes, for real. I've got a couple of more questions for you. And something else."

"Like what?"

Diane looked over at a man standing by himself under an oak tree. "Let's just say we need to come to an understanding. All right?"

"Sure."

Diane went over to her unmarked police cruiser, and I went over and joined the solitary man, Felix Tinios, wearing a long black cloth raincoat, a tweed driving cap, and some kind of boots that looked like they cost about as much as my monthly food budget. Felix shrugged as I got closer and said, "Tough thing, going through a funeral like this. Practically alone."

I stood next to him and watched as the workers did their job, tossing dirt into the open hole. I flinched as I heard the wet slapping sound of the dirt hitting the wooden surface of the casket.

"Some were here," I said.

"But not much. Back home in the North End, a guy this old, a funeral would last all afternoon, and the line of cars would be going out the gate and out to the street."

"Yeah."

I noticed Felix staring straight ahead, and then he shifted his weight from one foot to another. "You looking for help?"

"I am. How much?"

"Please. This one is gratis. What do you need?"

"I need to find his younger brother. It looks like he's the one who did it."

"Okay," Felix said. 'What are you going to do once I find him for you?"

"Let nature take its course," I said.

Felix looked over at me, the stubble on his face blue-black against the dark skin. "You mean, give him a fair trial and then kill him?”

"Sounds good to me."

Felix turned back to the open grave, slowly being filled. "No argument from me."

"Thanks," I said.

"Don't mention it," Felix said.

Chapter Three

I went home quickly after the burial and got changed into dry clothes, and then drove back over to Jon's house. Diane's unmarked cruiser was in the driveway and I felt a bit irritated, as if it didn't belong there. I pulled in on the street, got out, and walked up to the house. Every other house in this stretch of suburbia had its lawn cleared of leaves, save this one, and that bothered me as well. I would have to take care of it. I looked at the house and saw that the shades were drawn, and it struck me as appropriate. A house where someone lived and breathed and was then murdered should always hide its insides from the shame.

Diane met me at the door, held it open for me as I went in. The door frame was dirty, covered with the dark gray dust of fingerprint powder. The living room was lit up, but everything looked wrong for me, out of place, and I figured it out in just a moment. The furniture had all been moved around by Diane and her fellow officers, and the pieces had not been put back in their proper places. She sat down on a couch and I took a chair, and she said, "This has been tough for you. I'm sorry."

"Thanks," I said.

"Now, I'm going to say something, and you're not going to like it."

"Okay."

"Leave it be."

"Excuse me?"

She managed a smile. "We've known each other for a long while, my friend, and I know what drives you. You're the one who gets wound up over friends of yours who get hurt or get cheated or who are otherwise harmed. That's one of your many charms."

"If that's true, then my charm hasn't worked well with you."

"Then blame genetics," she said. "And I'm going to have to blame your genetic makeup as well. You have this drive for justice. So do 1. And you and I both have the same goals, and that's to bring the shooter in. Okay? And if the shooter is going to be appropriately punished, it's going to happen because the case I have against him is rock solid, with a long string of good evidence, none of it tainted by a vengeful magazine writer whose history and background will be so much raw meat for any half-wit defense attorney. Have I made myself clear?"

"Perfectly."

"Good," she said.

"Have you found the brother yet?"

She shook her head. "No, but we're running him down."

“Is he the lead suspect?"

Diane crossed her legs. "Look, you're getting right into it, all right? Let's say this. He's someone we want to talk to, very badly."

"You got anything besides what I've told you about their history together?"

She moved one leg back and forth. "Last answer from me. Okay?"

"Fine."

"Next-door neighbor saw the brother come to the house the day of the shooting."

"What time?"

"Just after five p.m."

I nodded. "Right after Jon called me."

"Exactly."

I looked around the living room, recalled the times I had spent here with him, talking and drinking and discussing town gossip or the latest news, but always, always, the conversation would veer back to history, the history of the town, the state, the country. And, of course, once we started talking history, we would always end up discussing his obsession, the evidence that his Norse ancestors had walked the same soil that he did. Just last month, each of us drinking a Molson Golden Ale, he clenched his fist and tapped it on the couch's armrest: "I'm close, Lewis. God, I am so close. And when I get that evidence, a lot of people are going to eat crow, and I'm going to be right there to serve it."

"The Vikings," I said.

"Yeah, the Vikings," Diane said. "You know, the few homicides I've investigated in Tyler have all revolved around the big two: love and money, and of those, I prefer money. Usually the love is an obsessive love, like some creep boyfriend who can't take no for an answer. Money is so straightforward. Somebody has something valuable that somebody else wants to take, and wouldn't mind killing to do it."

Then she uncrossed her legs and stood up. "But I've never had a homicide that might have something to do with thousand-year-old visitors to Tyler Beach. Look, can you do me a favor?"

"Sure."

"You've been here before," she said. "Can you tell me if anything's missing, anything out of the ordinary that we might have overlooked?"

The inside of my mouth was starting to feel pasty. "I guess that means going into his office."

Diane came over to me. "You up to it?"

"Yeah," I said. "I am."

"Okay," she said. "Let's do it."

The walk was short but my heart rate went up about ten percent with each step that took me closer to Jon's office. The lights were on and I tried to ignore the desk in the center of the room, which was about as easy as ignoring the proverbial elephant in the living room. Oh, what the hell, Jon would have laughed at seeing how queasy I had become ---“most of history is written in blood and violence, no way to get around it” --- and so I stared at the desk. The bloodstains had turned to a crusty red, and there was spatter on the hood of the nearby lamp. The chair had been moved back, and there was a fresh stain in the leather, and the sadness of it all just struck me there, that poor Jon had soiled himself after being killed, after the sphincter muscles let loose.

"How do you think it happened?"

Diane said, "Best guess is that he knew the shooter. His body was found in his chair, his head and shoulders were on the desk. Looked like the shooter got him with two shots to the back of the head. A nine-millimeter round, it looks like. No spent cartridge casings on the floor, so our shooter was careful."

"And nobody heard the shot?"

"That's right."

I found that I was breathing pretty fast, so I forced myself to slow down and then look at the shelves, on both sides of the desk, remembering why Diane had brought me in here. I went up one shelf and down the other, seeing all the old things, all the old things that had been handled and owned by dead people, and I had another flash of realization, that the circle had come right back again. These possessions once owned by people dead and gone were now once again owned by the deceased. I looked to Diane and said, "I'm not a hundred percent positive, but it looks like shere. The coins, the brasswork.... it doesn't look like anything's been taken."

Diane had been standing there, arms crossed. "True. Everything does look like it hasn't been moved- --- there’s dust in and around the shelves that hasn't been disturbed- --- there's one thing missing from this house."

Oh, Jon, I thought. Taken away from you so soon.

"The Viking artifacts," I said. "He told me on the phone message that he was going to put them in a safe place."

Diane nodded. "Maybe he did, but Lewis, we've gone through everything in this house, in his car, and out in the yard. If the artifacts were here, they're gone."

"Then the shooter has them," I said.

"Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?"

“Yeah," I said.

As we went back out to the living room, Diane said to me, "Besides the brother, is there anything else you can offer me?"

I stopped, thinking about just that question, and I said, "No, I can't. His brother has done time, up in Concord. I saw the two of them have a violent disagreement over Jon's artifacts, and his hunt for the Vikings. Besides that... Just find him, Diane, all right? Just find him."

Then there was a flash of steel behind those calm brown eyes, and I didn't envy the next few weeks of Ray Ericson's life. "You can bet the house on that, Lewis. You surely can."

Outside a wind had come up, but at least the rain had stopped. I walked Diane over to her cruiser and I said, "How's Kara?"

"Kara is fine," she said, opening the door. "You two moving in any time soon?"

She laughed. "Nice to know you're so concerned about my love life. How about you?"

"Excuse me?"

"The lovely Miss Quinn of the
Chronicle
. You still going to let the town lawyer have full dibs on her?"

"Mister Mark Spencer? I don't think I have a say in it. It's Paula's choice."

Diane sat down behind the steering wheel. "If you say so. But I think it's your decision as well, and by not doing anything, well, you've already made your choice. Correct?"

I gently closed the door on her, my last words: "Forget my love life and go find a killer."

I'm not sure if she heard me, but at least she was smiling as she drove away. Then she halted in the street, backed up, and lowered her window. "One more thing."

"Yes?"

"Remember what I said. Leave it be."

I nodded. "I remember."

"Good."

And when the cruiser was out of sight, I said in a low voice, "I remember, but I didn't promise anything, Diane. Not a damn thing."

I was heading back to my Explorer when I saw the two boys in the front yard of a house just two down from Jon's place. They were working on the lawn, moving about rakes that were about as tall as they were. They looked up at me and I saw that they were brothers, maybe a couple of years apart, wearing baggy jeans and thin down vests. The smaller of the two had a runny nose.

"Hey, there," I said.

"Unh-hunh," the older one said. "You guys good with those rakes?"

The older one kept quiet but his brother said, "Dad says we spend more time playin' with the leaves then rakin' 'em."

"Tell you what," I said, taking my wallet out. "You know Mister Ericson's house, up there?"