Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers (26 page)

Pardee and Tony set up the private cell net for us on the front porch of the house, and then Pardee swept the house for bugs. He didn't find any. I asked Pardee and Horace to go back to Triboro, Pardee to get that surveillance gear for the house, and Horace to see if he could get a line on the bikers from Charlotte. One of them, maybe even the devastated husband, might know who had hired our late Doberman trainer. Horace asked if he should do that or casually mention it to his buddy in the Rockwell County office. Horace was thinking straighter than I was. He then asked what our plans were.

"Tony and I are going to start looking for coal," I said and then explained what I meant.

"Suppose you guys find him?" Pardee said.

I made that whistling sound from the spaghetti western. They all grinned, but I knew that had been a valid question. Assuming he didn't get me first, I needed to decide if I was going to hand him over to the cops or take care of business.

They left for Triboro. Tony and I went into town for something to eat and then up to Danville to get us some ground transportation. An hour later, the golf cart dealer followed us down the drive at Glory's End with a Club Car model 1200 XRT utility vehicle on a trailer. It was a four-wheel-drive number, complete with canopy, Plexiglas windshield, camo paint job, headlights, two rear-facing seats in the back in place of a dump box, and two outlets for charging cell phones or other equipment. It weighed about a thousand pounds and had a noisy gasoline engine and seriously knobby tires. I would have preferred all that with an electric drive motor, but only the smaller golf carts had electrics. One option would have to be special-ordered, and that was a couple of heavy square nylon netting panels that went on both sides of the cab, which would keep occupants in during rough-and-tumble off-road going. I wanted them to keep attacking
dogs from being able to jump into the cab long enough for us to get our weapons out.

Tony and I set out in our new chariot just after three, headed to the eastern ridge where the coal mine tunnel was supposed to be. I had the shepherds running ahead because I wanted them to be able to hear. Our own hearing was clobbered by the noisy engine, which put us at a tactical disadvantage. On the other hand, we could really cover the ground compared to being on foot. Tony drove while I watched the farm road ahead and what the shepherds were doing. If they stopped, we stopped. We went down that dirt road that went east-west across the center of the property, crossed the creek, climbed the ridge, and stopped in the gap overlooking the next valley. The brickworks were off to our left down by the river. With the engine off, we could hear a truck going by on the two-lane to our right, but it was out of sight behind the trees fronting the cropland.

The ridge lifted steeply about a hundred feet above the farm road on either side and then ran due north toward the river, dropping down to the bottomlands only at the far end. It was covered in trees and some good-sized rock outcroppings. The sun was behind us, headed for sundown in about three hours, so the eastern slopes of the ridge were already in shadow. The shepherds had gone on down the road but returned when they realized we'd stopped. Frick spotted the two seats in the back and hopped in; Kitty followed suit. No more running down the dusty trail for them--they were going to ride with the gentry. The doughnuts were taking their toll.

Tony had brought along Pardee's collage of aerial photographs. He looked up at the boulders and seams of granite hanging above us. "Great place for an ambush," he said. "So where's this coal mine?"

"Don't know, but I'm guessing the entrance overlooks this set of crop fields in front of us. Sheriff Walker wasn't too clear about the where, or even if the story was true."

"There's this one area, maybe two-thirds of the way to the river, which might be a tailings pile. Hard to tell with all these trees."

We drove down to the bottom of the hill, turned left on the dirt path that led down toward the river and the brickworks, and began to scan the hillside on our left. To our right were crop fields, overgrown with tall weeds and grass. The highest point of the ridge was above where the central road came through. From there it descended toward the river, devolving into wooded bluffs. While Tony drove I tried to match the aerials with the terrain, but it all looked pretty much the same. Then, about a quarter mile from the river, I saw what looked like a spur path leading off to the left and up the hill. It was more like two ruts in the dirt than a road, but I noticed that it was covered in large gravel.

Tony took the vehicle off the path and pointed it upward into the trees. We got maybe fifty yards and had to stop because of all the new-growth scrub trees in the way. The two ruts were still visible, and they led into those trees. We shut the vehicle down and took stock. Tony got out and scuffed the ground. The shepherds jumped out and began sniffing around.

"Something must have been up here," he said. "This gravel is two, maybe three inches deep, and hard-packed."

Frick suddenly stiffened and looked up the hill. Kitty stopped her examination of the ground and also looked.

"Down!" I ordered, and Tony hit the deck, rolling swiftly behind the vehicle, where I was already unlimbering my SIG. The dogs kept looking up into the trees, and I expected gunfire in the next few seconds.

Nothing happened. The sounds of the country intruded, birds, insects, a couple of crows raising hell about something in the distance, a jet flying high overhead, the ticking sound of the engine as it cooled in the late afternoon air.

"What ya got?" I asked the dogs. Frick looked back at me but then resumed her scan of the hillside. Somewhat to my surprise, Kitty
moved slowly to her left, away from Frick, and then began to creep up the hill. As she got about thirty feet up the hill, two black shapes came out of the trees above us.

The Dobermans.

This time, however, they weren't attacking. They were coming down the hill in a submissive posture, not quite slinking but displaying zero aggression. I heard Tony rack his weapon. I told him to wait, that something had changed. Frick went forward, hackles up, but Kitty did not seem alarmed. That confirmed to me that something had indeed changed.

The Dobermans came on down to the vehicle, with the shepherds closing in from both sides. They got to about ten feet from us and then sat down, ears back, heads down, their sleek bodies actually trembling. When they stopped, my dogs stopped.

I stood up and came out from behind the vehicle. "Watch the tree line above us," I told Tony.

I approached the Dobermans, who wouldn't look at me. They were a pair of males, beautifully conditioned, with cruelly cropped ears and shiny black coats. They were still wearing their collars. One of them was slightly larger than the other, and I spoke to him.

"Down," I said. No reaction. He still wouldn't look at me.

"Heel." Nothing.

I tried German. No response. I didn't know any Japanese.

So I sat down in front of the larger male.

"Boss," Tony said.

"I think they're here to surrender," I said. "I just don't have their language."

I put out a tentative hand, fingers down, to the bigger male's muzzle. Finally he looked at me, crept forward, licked my hand, and then lay all the way down. I massaged his head and rubbed his ears while making comforting sounds. The second one then approached for some of the same treatment, and then they were both alongside, pressing in as Dobes do, demanding affection and orders at the same time.

"What the fuck," Tony said.

"Their master has been killed. I'm guessing they saw it happen, and now they don't know what to do."

I continued to rub their heads and mutter sweet nothings to them. The words didn't matter as much as the tone of my voice and the feel of my hands. Finally I stood up. I called my dogs into the vehicle, and they both jumped in.

I told Tony to get in, and then, after he had turned the vehicle around, I called to the two POWs, and they dutifully followed us back down the hillside and all the way back to the big house.

Sheriff Walker and his animal control van showed up an hour later, and I explained what had happened. The animal control officer was a female, and I wondered if there was going to be some drama between her and the Dobes. Turned out she knew exactly what to do, and in five minutes, with the assistance of some dog treats and a few dominance maneuvers, she had them in the back of the van and was petting them through the access hole while they wolfed down some food.

"Nice work," I said.

"Piece of cake," she said. "Dobies are respectful of dominant females. These are really gorgeous dogs."

"You should see them with their game face on," Tony said.

"Yeah, I know," she said, "but I had a Dobie bitch one time? If you put both arms out in front of you with your palms up? She'd jump into them and lick you to death. A bad Doberman simply reflects a bad human."

"Those dogs have been trained to attack people," I said. "If they're going to the county shelter, they can't go home with just anyone."

"In that case," she said, "I may take them myself. Surprise the hell out of my asshole ex one day."

The sheriff and I watched her drive off with her prizes. "So maybe
your ghost didn't run those guys himself," he said. "Maybe the lady dog trainer was along for all the operations."

"Then why would he kill her?" Tony asked. "That cost him a real asset."

"Thanks be to God," I said. "I was more afraid of them than him."

"Two possibilities come to mind," the sheriff said. "Either he didn't kill the woman, or he did because they failed to nail your associate here, when they had him dead to rights at the springhouse. Your opening fire on the barns meant that those dogs, and by definition their handler, weren't up to the job."

Tony and I looked at each other. That was a sobering observation.

"Unforgiving ghost," I said.

"Very," the sheriff said.

It was almost sundown by the time the sheriff left. We still hadn't found the entrance to the abandoned coal mine, and neither of us was especially enthusiastic about going back up there in the dark. We were standing by my vehicle out in front of the big house, swatting at the year's first mosquitoes.

"So," Tony said. "We try it again? Hole up here tonight, see what happens?"

"He figured that out last time," I said. "Once the dogs came back without some meat scraps, then Pardee's headlights, and then my firing into the barns, he had to know we'd been waiting."

"So let's try a variation," he said. "I'll hole up in the cottage with the vehicles, you walk over here with the dogs and hide here, in the house this time. I've got some night-vision gear in my truck you could use."

"You're assuming he recons the cottage before he starts anything."

"I would," he said. "Or we missed a bug in the sweep and he simply interrogates it before making any moves."

"So, what then? We leave here, together, go back to the cottage,
settle in for the night, and talk whatever trash is required to set the stage that we're in for the night?"

"Right."

"What if he comes for you instead of me?"

"Bring it," he said. "Those dogs scared the shit out of me last night. I owe him one."

That became the plan, in the absence of any other brilliant ideas. I didn't like the fact that we were still reacting to whatever this guy might do. On the other hand, his Dobermans were off the board, and the Rockwell County Sheriff's Office was on his tail now instead of just us chickens.

I went out into the yard after dinner to use my cell phone and called Carol. I told her I needed her electrician to meet me at the house tomorrow so that we could rig some power on all the floors for Pardee's video surveillance system. She said she'd make it happen and asked how it was going. I told her that we'd made a little progress today and that the sheriff's office was now officially in the game, which ought to help. She wished us luck. I told her how much I'd enjoyed our time together the other night.

"I think I surprised myself," she said.

"Maybe just horny? I mean, did you still respect me the next morning?"

She said something rude, laughed, and hung up.

At a little after ten, I took the shepherds over to Glory's End. Once inside, I wrestled the mattress off the old lady's four-poster on the ground floor and humped it up to the second floor. I had brought one of my rifles as well as my SIG .45. Before securing myself upstairs I'd sent the dogs down into the lower level and then the basement just to see if they had any reaction. They did not, so I locked the doors, told the dogs to stay on the main floor, and went upstairs. There I set up a watch station at the back windows of the larger bedroom. I had a
night scope on a tripod, a thermos of coffee, and a blanket and pillow from the cottage. I'd been careful to show no lights once in the house, and I stayed back away from the windows in case my stalker had his own night-vision gear. Now it was a matter of waiting and keeping awake.

I failed the keeping awake part. I don't know when I fell asleep, but it was sometime after midnight. I'd gone down once to check on the dogs, who pretended to be wide-awake when I showed up. They undoubtedly went back to sleep as soon as I went back upstairs.