Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers (33 page)

"I've heard a bit about that," I said. "Let's do this: Let's go back to the very end of the Civil War, 1865. The following decade brought the carpetbaggers, and I understand that's where a lot of title problems begin. How's that sound?"

"I can certainly do that, and I'll start this week. I would request a three-thousand-dollar retainer to begin the work, if that's all right."

"That's fine," I said. "How about calling me next week so I can get an idea of what you're finding?"

He agreed to that and told me where his office was. I made a note to take a check by tomorrow. The clerk had said Mr. Lee worked slowly. Hopefully I'd have my stalker problem resolved before he got done.

I got out the collection of aerial photos. I didn't want to just go over there and bang around in the weeds until something happened. I had to assume that his little love note meant that we were done playing games and from now on any collisions would be for real.

He'd been messing around with a boat. That meant his base of operations might be across the river and not here. We now had the boat, which might also mean that he'd have to start using a vehicle. I focused on that ruined plantation house across the river. Behind it there was a two-lane road that paralleled the Dan. To the east and north was the regional airport complex. To the west that two-lane intersected a
four-lane highway maybe eight, ten miles upstream, and the four-lane had a bridge.

"Let's go hunting, dogs," I said.

The ruined house was actually bigger than Glory's End, but ruined was the operative word. There was a five-acre park of trees and grass surrounding the house. The trees, all huge, spreading oaks, were doing fine. The grass was four feet high and choking on itself. The driveway was dirt, not gravel, and there was a chain across it about twenty feet onto the property. I'd parked the Suburban in the high grass, stepped over the chain, and walked the third of a mile into the grounds. The shepherds stuck to the driveway with their noses down, while I followed them slowly into the gathering darkness.

The house had burned and essentially collapsed into itself. The facade was intact, as were two of the four big columns, but the remains of the roof were down in the underground floor. One chimney had kept one side of the house from falling in, but the other one stood all alone, the fireplaces for two floors gaping like empty wisdom tooth sockets in a long red jaw. I circled the house as quietly as I could. There was no way anyone could hide in the remains of the structure, because there was a large pile of burned debris, dirt, and weeds within the walls.

Out back were the familiar outbuildings of the era, a smokehouse, a summer kitchen, both of which were tumbling down, a large, covered well, and a carriage house with four stable doors. It was still intact. There were signs that amorous teenagers had been coming back in here for some time. I saw Frick stop, then retrace her steps around to the front of the house. Then she came back, obviously following a scent trail, and this time she went to the carriage house. She stopped again nearest the right-hand door, and Kitty joined her.

I crept up to the front of the building. Up close it didn't look quite so substantial. The lintels were sagging, and three of the stable doors
had been nailed to their frames a long time ago. Each door also had a separate chain and padlock stretched across it. The locks were antiques, and I suspected they were frozen with rust, but I wasn't ready to show a flashlight yet. I could hear cars coming and going down the two-lane out front, but I could no longer see their lights because of the high grass and all those oak trees out front.

I walked around the carriage house to see what was out back. There was still some afterglow on the western horizon, and the moon was rising across the river, which was a good half mile behind and below the burned-out house. The back of the carriage house had windows, but they were so covered in dust and vines that I couldn't see into the building. Frick went back around to the front and hovered around that right-hand-most door.

I examined the lock and chain and made a discovery: The hasp on the lock had been lifted out of its case and was resting right on top of the flat metal. More important, I could smell the familiar odor of WD-40. As quietly as I could, I twisted the hasp out of the way and took it off the two parts of chain, which I slipped down onto the dirt. I checked the hinges and found more WD-40, so I put my fingers into the crack and pulled gently. The door opened outward without a sound. I pulled it just far enough so that the shepherds could fit and then vectored Frick through the opening. I kept Kitty with me.

Frick was back in thirty seconds and didn't seem alarmed by anything, so I went in and pulled the door shut. Then I opened it again and grabbed that padlock before pulling the door shut again. I'd had enough of being trapped in confined places.

The carriage house was empty inside except for what I'd hoped to find there: an old pickup truck parked in the right-hand bay, its nose pointed toward the door. It was a full-sized Ford F-150, and the back had a low-rise camper shell in the bed. The sliding windows in the camper section were open and covered with fine screen against insects. I checked the plate. It was a Wilmington license with a current sticker. I wrote down the plate numbers. There was a pile of trash in
the corner indicating someone had been camping out back here, and I was pretty sure I knew who it was: my dedicated stalker, who was probably across the river right now, laying out the next ambush.

Well now
, I thought.
Two can play that game
.

I extracted one of the concussion grenades and went to work on that truck. As I set the booby trap, I wondered how he was getting across the river now that we had his boat. For that matter, with the current in the Dan as strong as it was, I wondered how he ever managed to get a flat-bottomed johnboat across the river without ending up two miles downstream of Glory's End.

When I was finished in the carriage house, I withdrew with the dogs and reset the fake lock and chains. It was much darker now, but I could discern a faint trail through the grass leading down to the river, so I decided to go down there and see what we'd find. Interestingly, the trail didn't go straight down to the water but angled to the right across a big, gently sloping field. Once we got down into the bottoms, I could see that it pointed at the old railroad abutment that faced the one across the way on Glory's End.

At the bottom of the stone pier-wall I found the answer to how he'd been getting across the river: There was a wire leading down into the water. The current was strong enough even here inshore that the wire, which resembled a metal clothesline, was leaving a small wake in the water. When I lifted it, I discovered that it was bowing downstream and probably lying quite close to the bottom. To get across, all he'd have to do was clip the boat onto that wire, pull hand over hand to the other side, and not lose any ground.

I used the flashlight on red beam to see if there were fresh prints near where the wire was anchored to a tree with a bolted pad eye but couldn't find any. I knew that the water level in the Dan rose and fell capriciously as a function of upstream hydro dams and passing thunderstorms. There could be plenty of footprint evidence six inches underwater right in front of me. I wanted to undo that wire rig but didn't
have any tools. The wire strengthened my conviction that I'd found the bad guy's hidey-hole. Finally.

The smart thing to do now would be to let the sheriff know what I'd found here, so he could liaise with the Virginia authorities and whoever owned this property to see if they could surprise him here. First, though, I wanted him to find my own little surprise, so I decided to simply back out and go back to the cottage. Let him prowl the grounds at Glory's End tonight if he felt like it, while I got a good night's sleep. Tomorrow I'd run that plate through Sheriff Walker's office, and maybe we could finally find out who this guy was and why he was determined to kill me.

Wilmington. Was there a connection there?

My guys and I had disrupted a sabotage effort at a nuclear power plant down near Wilmington, but there hadn't been any wives involved. Who could be in Wilmington who thought that I'd done something to his wife?

Back at the cottage, I parked my Suburban out behind the Laurel Grove barns. If he'd already taken a look at the cottage, I wanted him to think I was still out for the night. Then I set the two operational dogs up to watch outside, leaving Frack to sleep in the living room. I called Tony's cell and left him a message describing what I'd found and what I'd left behind. Then I got myself a Scotch and sat down to study those aerials some more on the dining room table. I chided myself for not having looked over there before this.

Round about ten, Frack lifted his head and whoofed quietly. I doused the reading light and went to a window. The moon had been waning, so there wasn't very much light outside, but there was enough to see the major walking his horse off the dam and up toward the house and barns. His head was down almost as if he were asleep, and the horse was just plodding along. Both outside shepherds were out
in the yard, sitting down but watching him go by. Once he'd passed, I turned the light back on and resumed my study of the aerials. Cubby had said they didn't want him going out at night, and the barn had been locked. He sure seemed to do it often enough, though, and why was he walking?

After looking through all the pictures for good ambush places, I realized that there were too many good sites. I decided that I'd move over to the big house on Glory's End and make him come to me. Time I had, and now that his base of operations had been busted, he'd have to do something. He'd also probably realize that I'd seen the license plate, which meant there was going to be an identification made. The local cops wanted him for a homicide, and that would make his capture a priority. He could either run tonight, and go back to Wilmington, or try to finish it in the next twenty-four hours. Having put so much effort into his campaign, I was expecting him to take one last hard shot. On the other hand, if he set off that concussion grenade tonight when he got back, he'd be in no mood for any hunting for several hours.

Tomorrow we would probably finish this matter, one way or the other.

I refreshed the Scotch and called Carol. She answered but sounded sleepy.

"Hey," I said.

"Back at you," she said. "Where are you?"

"In the cottage, surrounded by incompetent mutts."

"What's up?"

"He's probably out in the woods, beating the bushes for his target, but his target has decided to get a good night's sleep and deal with his evil ass manana."

"What if he doesn't want to wait?"

"My shepherds will eat him."

"Why don't you come here," she said. "In a manner of speaking."

I grinned. "Don't want to expose you to danger."

"Bring the shepherds."

"They make too much noise."

"I'll drown them out."

"That's not fair."

The next morning I called the Ops desk at the sheriff's office and gave them the plate number. I asked them to have Sheriff Walker call me as soon as he could. Then I went to retrieve my Suburban. I looked into the shop area for Cubby, but he wasn't there. I saw Patience hanging some sheets out to dry behind the big house and went up there. She said Cubby was still down with his ear infection and would probably be out for the rest of the week. As I walked back to the cottage, I wondered about Patience. She'd been unusually voluble, as if my inquiries were making her uncomfortable. I'd had earaches when I was a kid; they gave you some stuff and it usually went away in twenty-four hours. Now that I'd asked twice about Cubby, Patience was suddenly nervous.

I parked the Suburban and went into the cottage to check my cell phone. No messages yet. I let Frack run around in the front yard for a bit and had another coffee. Tony called, and I filled him in. Then I asked him to entertain a theory. When I was done he said he and Pardee would be out later this morning. I called the sheriff's office and asked if the boss was available yet. They told me the office was all spun up over a robbery-homicide out on the major east-west road through the county, where a couple of teenagers shot and killed a shop owner for the forty-two dollars in the register.

I asked for the sheriff's voice mail. The deputy said I was talking to it. I told him that my stalker had been holing up in the ruined house directly across the Dan River from Glory's End, and that his detectives had the guy's plate number for a possible ID. I gave the deputy my cell number as the callback. Then I piled the shepherds into the Suburban, and we went into town.

A couple of stops later, I was parked at the intersection of Mill Street and Main. Down the block, just beyond a row of small houses, was a large concrete warehouse. It had an old-fashioned water tower and a brick smokestack and was surrounded by truck parking lots and a chain-link fence. There was a rusting sign that read springmaid on a billboard above the factory. Behind the houses was a generous creek, which had probably supplied water and power to the mill way back when. The textile industry in this part of the world had long gone the way of most manufacturing in this country, that is to say to rice country, and the buildings had that abandoned look about them.

The town phone book had listed two sets of Johnsons on Mill Street, which was in what the locals openly referred to as the black part of town. Not knowing Cubby's real name, I couldn't determine which house was his, so I'd decided to just park across from the entrance into Mill Street and see what showed up. I saw some faces watching me after a while and figured that a white guy with dogs sitting in a Suburban was fairly shouting "cop" to the neighborhood, but no one came out and openly challenged me. The sheriff finally called while I was waiting.