Bloodless

35

Morning light streamed through the cemetery, illuminating the last shreds of mist as the caretaker opened the gate for them. Coldmoon did not like cemeteries. The thought of all those dead slumbering in the dirt for eternity gave him a feeling of claustrophobia, even in a graveyard as huge as this: white graveled pathways extended in all directions past hundreds of tombs.

“Now, Mr. Manning,” said Pendergast. “Please take us to where the incident occurred.”

“We went this way, I think,” said Manning. But he didn’t take another step forward until Pendergast urged him on. Then he began shuffling down one of the pathways, moving as if his feet were iron weights.

Coldmoon had never seen tombs this elaborate before. Traditionally, the Lakota placed their dead in platforms perched in trees. At Pine Ridge, where he had grown up, that practice had been replaced by scattering a person’s ashes at some high point, like a mountaintop or butte, so they’d be closer to heaven. The idea of sticking the body deep in the earth when you wanted the soul to go up, not down, always seemed perverse to him. But this — these tombs were costly, large, even amazing. Did the dead think they’d find a better place in heaven by being buried in rich tombs like these? Or was it just another class thing, a way to put themselves above others, even after death?

The three continued down the lane for almost half a mile. Finally, Manning took a right, and then another right, into a far area of the cemetery, much overgrown, where the tombs were not nearly so elaborate and had in many cases fallen into disrepair. Here Manning got confused and they went down one path after another, looping back several times. It was obvious his struggle to remember was at war with his extreme unease at being back here.

“I remember this,” he finally said, indicating a tomb with an angel striding forward, arm upraised, standing on a marble slab, its inscription largely eroded by time. “We stopped here. That was right before...” He paused, swallowed hard. “I think we went this way.”

He moved forward again, then stopped. “Just over there was where... where it happened. And then I ran.” He looked down and away. “I don’t want to go any farther!”

“And you won’t have to,” said Pendergast. “We shall halt here and not disturb the area. We’ve called in the local authorities and they will be here shortly. Now, if you could tell us, in as much detail as possible, what happened, and indicate your movements and Mr. Custis’s — pointing them out will be sufficient — I would be grateful.”

“Okay.” Manning was trembling and nervous but managed to keep it together. “Okay. I was walking in front, over by those tombs.” He pointed. “And Brock was behind me. He was singing and sort of dancing, around those tombs there.”

“What was he singing?”

“Um, some Stones song.”

“Stones?”

“‘Sympathy for the Devil.’”

Pendergast stared at Coldmoon with incomprehension. Coldmoon, who’d heard Manning croaking the same tune when they first encountered him, shrugged to indicate its lack of importance. You can’t make this shit up.

“Brock was behind me, and I heard the singing stop. Just like it was cut off all of a sudden.”

“Was there any other sound?” Pendergast asked. “A gasp, perhaps — or scream?”

“No, nothing. It went very quiet for a moment. But I felt this sort of pressure, like humid air, and... and a weird smell, like burnt rubber. And then I heard, farther away, the breaking of glass. The liquor bottle, I guess.”

“How far away?”

“How would I know?” the youth said, barely maintaining a grip on himself. He took a shuddering breath. “Maybe a hundred feet? Two hundred? I wasn’t paying attention, I was scared as hell. I called his name a few times, but there was no answer. And then — then there was a beating sound.”

“What kind of a beating, exactly?”

“Like... someone shaking out a rug. Slow and muffled. And there was another wash or gust of humid air, with that same awful smell. I just started running.”

“What direction did the sound come from?”

“Overhead.”

Something about the simplicity of this answer chilled Coldmoon.

“And the feeling of pressure, of humid air? Did that come from above, as well?”

Manning nodded.

“And you ran all the way back to Savannah? That’s got to be about four miles.”

“I ran, I walked, I ran again. I can hardly remember. I was drunk, freaked out.”

“Why not call for help on your cell phone?”

“I dropped it over there somewhere. I was using it as a flashlight. It must have broken against a tombstone or something, because the light went off.”

Now Coldmoon heard distant sirens from the direction of the cemetery entrance. Pendergast pulled out his phone to give Delaplane directions, and it wasn’t long before Coldmoon saw the CSI van easing its way down a pathway, with several squad cars and the M.E. van behind it. They were forced to park at some distance, and within minutes a whole mass of people were headed down the winding paths, converging on them.

Delaplane arrived first, leading the phalanx of specialists carrying their equipment.

“The area over there,” Pendergast said, “is where the incident occurred. To be safe, you should cordon off that half acre of ground between those two paths.”

Delaplane called for police tape to be strung around the indicated spot while the CSI team suited up and got to work. Sheldrake came over, nodded to Pendergast and Coldmoon. “Mind if I borrow your witness?”

“Be our guest.”

Sheldrake and Delaplane went off with the unhappy Manning, recorder in hand. Coldmoon turned to Pendergast. “What do you think?”

“I shall ponder the mystery while I take a walk. If you could remain here in case of any untoward events, I should be grateful.”

Coldmoon was used to this — the same thing had happened in a Miami cemetery. “Sure thing.”

Pendergast went off, hands behind his back, almost as if he were setting out on his daily constitutional. Not long after he vanished, Coldmoon heard a fresh commotion. Turning toward it, he saw a film crew arriving, with cameras and sound gear. It was that man Betts.

The group approached the police cordon, and Coldmoon watched as Betts argued with some cops who stopped him. Betts was with the other guy Coldmoon remembered from their encounter in the county plaza: the tall, serious one. What was his name? The man had a suitcase with him and was already opening it, laying out a piece of black velvet and removing all kinds of weird contraptions. In the distance, more press were arriving.

It appeared word had gotten out, big time.

Coldmoon walked over to see what he could do to help the cops deal with the press.

The supernatural guy — now he remembered his name, Moller — had taken a silver dowsing stick out of a velvet bag. He began circling the police cordon with it, both film-crew cameras trained on him. “I sense,” he was saying in a deep voice, “I sense... a strong supernatural turbulence.” The silver stick was trembling, jerking, almost as if under a power of its own. “Very strong.”

What a load of čheslí, thought Coldmoon, although despite himself he had to admit it was a fairly impressive act. The cops along the cordon were certainly engrossed, although it was hard to tell whether they bought it or not.

“Something evil happened here,” Moller said, his voice climbing a notch as the silver contraption pointed toward the center of the roped-off area. “Happened very recently. The turbulence is fierce!”

“Stay behind the line, sir,” warned one of the cops.

The silver wand trembled and jerked. The man’s body was starting to twitch. The cameras closed in.

“It is here!” He moved toward the police tape and was again gently blocked by the cops.

“The evil! The evil!” he whispered fiercely.

Other press were arriving, but the show being put on by Moller was so absorbing that they had stopped to watch. Some were even taking notes and photographs of him, as if he, and not the scene of the crime, were the news.

Suddenly the silver wand flew out of Moller’s hands, as if yanked by an invisible string. It was a cute move, because to Coldmoon it really did look as if something invisible had pulled it away, instead of him throwing it through some sleight of hand. Moller, as if released from an unpleasant trance, halted, took a deep breath, seemed to slump, and then recovered, wiping his brow with a silk handkerchief. Retrieving the dowsing stick, he then retreated to his suitcase and removed a large box camera, which he set up on a tripod. He then took out a strange piece of smoked glass — upon closer look it appeared to be a slab of crystal, cut and polished — that he raised in front of his face and gazed through, peering here and there across the area being searched by the CSI squad.

“The evil, become visible,” he muttered. He began to tremble. One of the camera operators followed his movement, shooting close over his shoulder.

Coldmoon noticed that Betts had disappeared. He looked around and saw him deep in the vegetation, having used the diversion to slip inside the police cordon. He was with the second camera operator, filming something else.

“Hey!” Coldmoon cried, pointing and striding in Betts’s direction. “Get out of there! Back behind the tape!”

Several cops turned and began jogging over as Betts and the cameraperson scurried off into the undergrowth, ducking back under the police line.

Coldmoon walked over to where they had been filming but didn’t see anything of note beyond another old mausoleum with a broken door. The abandoned part of the cemetery continued into the overgrowth, the tombstones split and lying on their sides, the pathways so poorly tended as to have disappeared.

He returned to find Pendergast approaching at a brisk walk from an unexpected direction.

“Find anything?” Coldmoon asked as he came up.

“Nothing.”

“Too bad.”

“On the contrary,” Pendergast said as he adjusted his cuffs. “It was most edifying.”