Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 924 & 925, September/October 2018

Defender of the Dead by Doug Allyn

Doug Allyn is one of the most celebrated crime-short-story writers of his generation — a two-time best-short-story Edgar winner and an eleven-time winner of the EQMM Readers Award. He is also an esteemed mystery novelist whose two most recent boobs are The Jukebox Kings (February 2017) and The Lawyer Lifeguard, cowritten with James Patterson (June 2017).

People lie to me. A lot. It comes with the job. I’ve been a cop a I dozen years, first in the army, then with Valhalla P.D. in northern Michigan. I should be used to it by now, but it still surprises me how often people blow smoke when the flat-ass truth would serve them better.

In an MP psych class, the instructor said lying is a reflex, triggered by the fight-or-flight syndrome. Bottom line? If your suspect gets spooked, the next thing out of their mouth will likely be a lie.

Good to know.

But not when you’re having lunch with your mom, and she’s obviously spooked about something.

We were lunching in my mother’s antique shop, Claudette’s Classics and Junque, nibbling Chinese from takeout boxes. Ma’s office sits atop a three-step dais that gives her a three-sixty view of her store — gleaming hardwood aisles, oaken shelves stocked with antiques and collectibles, floor to ceiling. Normally, lunch with my mom is a pleasure. We swap gossip; I trade cop scuttlebutt for updates on our extended family, which LaCrosse is in love, who’s headed for trouble. We don’t keep score, but it’s usually a fair trade, more or less.

Until today. Ma kept avoiding my eyes, pushing her food around with her chopsticks. I had a strong sense she was holding something back, something dark. Which was scaring the hell out of me.

Normally, you don’t have to wonder what my mother is thinking. She’ll tell you, ready or not. Which cousin is in the closet, games her current boyfriend plays in bed. She often tells me a whole lot more than I want to know. So? Enough with the suspense.

“What’s up with you, Ma? What’s going on?”

And for a split second, I caught a flash of deception in her eyes. And I wondered if the next thing out of her mouth would be a lie.

And it was.

“It’s... nothing, Dylan, really,” she said, glancing away. And that “nothing” was definitely a lie, because something was obviously wrong. Then she hastily changed the subject, which cranked my angst up another notch.

“When you were a boy, and I dragged you from estate sales to flea markets every weekend, do you remember the game we used to play?”

“You didn’t drag me, Ma, you schooled me on the difference between trash and treasure. I got pretty good at it, I think.”

“Let’s see how good you are,” she said, sliding a framed photograph across the table. “Look at this picture, Mr. Policeman. What do you see?”

I picked up the photo, looking it over very carefully. Something had to be up with it, if she was ready to lie about it.

I checked the frame first. Sterling silver with a copper Art Deco swoosh across the base, left to right. That made it Prohibition era, nineteen twenties, early thirties, a genuine collectible in its own right. It wasn’t original to the photograph, though. The picture was much older, printed on ivory pasteboard, roughly four inches by five, a stiffly posed family portrait. A mom, pop, and five kids, ranging in age from three to thirteen, give or take, plus an older woman, standing behind them. Nana? Or maybe an aunt?

The group was definitely a family; they shared a strong resemblance — long jaws, flat features. Probably Scandinavian — Swedes, Norwegians, maybe Finns. They were well dressed for the time, Mom and the girls in spotless frilly smocks, Dad and the boys in new suits. From their clothing and the quality of the print, I made it mid-Victorian era. After the American Civil War but not by much. Eighteen seventy to seventy-five, somewhere in there.

“Well?” my mother prompted.

“The frame is sterling silver, quite valuable by itself,” I said, buying time.

“Mmm,” she said, unimpressed. She’s an impressive woman, my mother. Claudette LaCrosse is in her fifties now, her raven hair showing a few streaks of silver. Our family is Metis, blended-blood descendants of French voyageurs and their First Nation wives, common as pine cones in northern Michigan. Ma’s features are too strong to be Hollywood pretty, but she’s still a strikingly handsome woman, and beyond beautiful to me.

She was dressed for work in north-country casual, an ecru skirt suit and matching embroidered blouse. Her skirt was mid calf, to show off her titanium limb.

My senior year in high school, a drunk driver veered over the center line, hit my folks head-on. My dad was killed instantly. Ma lost her left leg at the knee.

The drunk was a city councilman from Lansing, with money and political juice. He gamed the system, won a change of venue, got his record suppressed. The judge gave him a stern lecture... then gave him a walk. The miserable sonofabitch never served a day for the crash. That councilman is the reason I became a cop.

My mother owns a lifelike prosthesis that can easily pass for the real thing. She prefers the metal one.

“Men check out your face, your boobs, then your legs,” she says. “I hate to see the poor dears wondering where the real me starts.”

She often tells me more than I want to know.

Not this time, though. She was watching me like an owl on a bunny hutch, waiting for me to spot something important...

“The girl’s collar—” I began, then broke off, peering more closely at the picture. Realizing what was wrong with it.

“The little girl in the middle, with the big eyes? In the light blue dress?”

“Blue?” Ma frowned. “The photo’s black and white.”

“Her collar has a cornflower pattern,” I said, showing off now. “Cornflowers are blue, so I’m guessing her dress matches.”

“Oh... kay, you’re probably right,” she conceded. “Anything else?”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” I added. “The little girl.”

Ma arched an eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

“The group is posed in sunlight. The others are squinting against the glare, but the girl’s eyes are wide open, and her pupils are dilated. So...?”

“You’re right, she is dead.” My mother nodded. “The photo is a memento mori, a keepsake of death. Memento photos were common practice in the nineteenth century. In medieval times, funeral art often depicted loved ones as rotting corpses, or even skeletons. ‘As we are now, so ye shall be.’ ”

“A laugh a minute, those old-timers.” I reached for a bite of General Tso’s chicken, caught a flash of a rotting corpse, opted for a rice ball instead.

“Later, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wealthy families had likenesses of dead children done in oils, or engraved in silver or on a cameo. Then came the camera.”

“But posing with a corpse? A tad macabre, no?”

“No social media back then,” Ma said, with a Gallic shrug. “No Twitter, no tweets. The photo would be their only remembrance, so they made them as lifelike as possible. Photographers even provided stands to prop up the bodies more naturally. I sold an elaborate brass death stand to a collector a few years ago. Four-fifty. It would be more now.”

“But the girl’s eyes are staring, wide open. How did they manage—?”

“Pine resin, dabbed on her eyelids,” Ma said briskly, picking up the picture, frowning at it. “We live so much longer nowadays, death seems almost unnatural to us. It was normal to them. Half their children died before age twelve.”

“Life was brutish and short,” I conceded. “Still, pine pitch?”

“Every culture has rituals to keep death at bay,” she said. “First Nation Cree placed their dead on platforms in the forest, offering their bodies to the sky and the ravens. Dead presidents get hauled around on a gun carriage, like artillery. At police funerals, bagpipers play, like you’re all Scots. To me, that qualifies as weird.”

“So does playing a game we haven’t played in years. What’s the problem with this picture, Ma? What’s really wrong with it?”

“Not one damned thing,” she said bitterly. “It’s perfect. That’s what’s wrong with it.”

“Sorry, I’m not following.”

“Memento photographs were cheaper than rings or cameos, but they were still quite expensive. They were usually buried with the mother, as a treasured possession. To find a photo in pristine condition is... well. It’s very unusual, Dylan.”

“Got it,” I nodded, “the picture’s rare. Is it valuable?”

“There is an active collector’s market,” she admitted, still avoiding my eyes. “A photo of this quality could easily bring two thousand, perhaps twenty-five, to a motivated buyer. Five K and up for rings or medallions—”

“Rings?”

“Photos only date to the Victorians. Memento mori jewelry can be Georgian, or even older.” Opening the top drawer of her desk, she took out a small, blue, leather-bound box, flipped it open, and slid it to me.

It was a ring, gold, twenty-four carat, with an artfully carved skull. The engraving was so fine I had to squint to read it.

“Mathew Benoit, OB: 12 May 1721, AE: 1724. Plus a line of... Latin, right? What does it say?”

“OB means born,” she explained, “AE is anno expired. ‘Life is a vale of tears, death is a ransom.’ This ring’s worth seven-five.”

“And you’re damn well dodging my question, lady. Ma, what’s up? What’s the problem with the picture?”

“Occasionally, a death photo like this one will turn up in an attic, Dylan, usually faded, water-stained, chewed by mice. This one is as clear as the day it was taken, untouched by sun. I think it’s been sleeping in total darkness, for a very long time.”

I cocked my head, eyeing her curiously. Getting it at last. “In a grave, you mean?”

“That — didn’t occur to me till later.” She sighed. “Memento photos are so rare that I bought it, and listed it in my fall catalog for auction. But then the same picker brought me another one.” She slid me a second photograph. It was the same family, taken at an earlier time. The staring girl was still alive in this shot, standing beside her mother, who was cradling a baby in her arms. The child could have been asleep, but the anguish in her mother’s face told me she wasn’t.

Mom was misting up. “Look at her eyes,” she said, indicating the staring girl. “She looks so... haunted. As though she knows.”

“Knows what?”

“That her own death is coming soon. Look. She’s wearing the same dress she’ll be buried in.”

“She’s definitely uncheery” I conceded. “Who brought these to you?”

“A picker, a teenaged girl. Arlon Hatfield’s oldest, Selena. She’s sold me small items in the past.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. Arlon was born in trouble, Ma. He’s done hard time twice. If he’s mixed up in this—”

“I don’t know that he is, Dylan, but put the who aside for now. The real question is how? How did this girl come by them? That’s the big problem for me.”

“Did you ask?”

“Of course. She lied to my face. Said she found them Dumpster-diving behind Redbeard’s shop. I doubted that, but I let it pass. She’s a picker, I’m a dealer. You don’t ask a chef for her secret ingredient. But when she brought me the second mori picture, I checked with Red. He’d never had such pictures, and certainly wouldn’t throw them out.”

“Ma, if you think these photos were looted from a grave—?”

“No! I can’t believe this girl would do such a thing, but—” she continued, waving off my objection “—she has brought me two such pictures now, and the first one is already listed in my catalogue. If she looted them somehow, they’re contraband, and I’m already guilty of possession. And the faintest hint that I deal in stolen goods could destroy my business, Dylan. It’s a stain that doesn’t wash out. I could lose everything.”

“If the girl didn’t loot them, maybe Arlon did. I can talk to them.”

“The girl won’t tell me, so I send my son the policeman after her? No. You would only frighten her.”

“Ma, there’s a lot more at stake here than some kid’s delicate sensibilities. Looting a grave is a five-year felony. You need to back the hell away from this.”

“But I can’t just abandon her, Dylan. Her mother’s gone, and Arlon’s a surly drunk who — anyway, I may not be the only one involved. Auerbach’s Antiques has been listing pieces from the same era, some rings, a pocket watch, several cameos. Too many to be a coincidence, I think. I believe they’re from the same source.”

“Photographs?”

“No, but if someone’s looting graves, discarding the photos would make sense. They could be recognized, and the jewelry and memento pieces are much more valuable anyway. All the pieces are of the same era, though, late nineteenth, the lumber-baron days, and in pristine condition.”

“Do you think this girl is selling to Auerbach as well?”

“I don’t know what to think, Dylan, and it’s not something I can push her on. I’m all she has. I’m holding her money, forgodsake, almost five thousand dollars. If she took it home, Arlon would drink it up in a week. I’m trying to do right by her, but getting mixed up with contraband—?” She shook her head. “I’m in serious trouble here.”

“You could be,” I conceded. “Let me—”

“No,” she said, waving me to silence. “I’ve been giving this some thought.”

“Surprise, surprise,” I sighed, leaning back in my chair. “What did you come up with?”

“In the old days, when the Cree offered their dead to the sky? They raised their platforms in remote areas, but they didn’t abandon them. One warrior would be chosen as le protecteur des morts.”

“Say what?”

“Protecteur des morts. A... defender of the dead. It was a great honor.”

“For doing what? Tending graves?”

“No, the opposite. Le protecteur was a seasoned fighter. He would take vengeance on those who offended the dead.”

“And how do you offend a corpse, exactly?”

“The Cree laid their loved ones to rest with their favorite things, weapons, a calumet, fine beadwork. Even today we bury treasures, from teddy bears to jewelry. To rob the dead of those last, loving gifts is a truly vile crime. For the Cree, the punishment was death.”

“So you want me to murder the Hatfield girl?”

“Of course not. You said you remembered our weekends when you were a boy?”

“The yard sales and flea markets? Sure, Ma. I had a ball, actually.”

“So did I,” she agreed. “And this Selena reminds me of... well, you, Dylan, in those days. She is much as you were; hungry, eager to learn. I’ve made copies of the photographs,” she said, passing me two printouts. “Deal with this, but not as a policeman. Do it as un protecteur. The defender of the dead.”

“And if the girl’s guilty? Then what?”

“I’ll leave that to you.” She sighed, patting my wrist. “Good talk, son. Sorry to eat and run, but I see a customer in trouble.”

She bustled off to aid a plump matron, torn between two Beatles lunch boxes. One was four hundred bucks, the other three-fifty. The large lady bought ’em both. My mother is one helluva saleswoman.

She must be.

She’d just sold me a half share of a five-year felony.

Stepping out of my mom’s shop is like traveling back in time, and not because of the antiques on display in her windows. Claudette’s is in the heart of the Olde Town district of Valhalla, a six-block section lovingly restored to its nineteenth-century roots. Cobblestone sidewalks, globular streetlights, shops with their original facades. It’s a crock, of course: During the logging boom, these streets were mud and boardwalks, seasoned with horse hockey.

The retro look is working, though. In recent years, the village has been growing exponentially, from a quaint little harbor town dreaming on Michigan’s northern shore to a bustling resort mecca, a hundred thousand plus and climbing. The newbies are dot-com entrepreneurs, or downstaters fleeing the cities to get away from it all but bringing most of it with them. Vale County P.D. is a small-town force dealing with big-city crime now, from meth cookers to murder.

Normally, I’d race to a crime scene with lights and sirens, pedal to the metal. Not this time. The victims were in no hurry.

Valhalla Evergreen Cemetery has five separate entrances, wrought-iron gates elaborately marked for Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, Baptists, and Methodists. Once inside, the only divisions are the paved lanes between the rows, a democracy of the dead.

I followed a long driveway to the rear of the grounds, where a small fieldstone cottage houses the caretaker’s office.

The day was warm for November, and the door was ajar. I knocked anyway. Two old-timers playing checkers beside a wood stove glanced up as I stepped in.

“Help you?” the older one asked. He was tall, bald as a cue ball, had a beard like a prophet, faded golf shirt, khaki slacks. His buddy was built like a beer keg in coveralls.

“Dylan LaCrosse, Valhalla P.D.,” I said, showing them my ID. “Got a minute?”

“Sonny, I can spare twenty years, if you need ’em,” the graybeard grinned, offering a gnarled hand. “I’m Leon Chabot, the caretaker here. What can I do you for?”

“We’ve had a report of possible vandalism,” I said, which wasn’t a total lie. “Have you had any problems here? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Maybe one thing,” Chabot nodded. “A funeral director fainted dead away last Tuesday when a woman he’d just embalmed tossed a white rose on her own casket.” He waited.

“A twin?” I offered.

“Eye-dentical,” the old man nodded, chuckling. “Scared the livin’ bejesus out of ole Digger Don, though. That odd enough for ya?”

“Actually, I’m concerned with graves that may have been rifled or disturbed. Have you noticed anything amiss?”

“Sonny, we got fifteen thousand, seven hundred and forty-one loved ones in our charge as of Tuesday,” Chabot said proudly. “When I hired onto this job, we had more citizens under the ground than Valhalla had voters. Me and Bud here make our rounds every single day, and we note every pebble left on a stone to mark a visit. I guarantee you nothin’s been disturbed on our watch, and if we caught somebody at it, we wouldn’t trouble the law about it. They’d need an ambulance. Does that answer your question?”

“I believe so. Is this the only cemetery in the county?”

“We’re the largest by far, but there are a few old churchyards in the hills. I imagine the locals keep a pretty close eye on ’em, though. What kinda trouble you got, son?”

“This,” I said, passing him the duped photograph. “It’s possible it came from an old grave, turn of the last century or even earlier.”

“We got no residents that old here.” Chabot shrugged, massaging his beard. “This yard wasn’t laid out till nineteen and aught eight. Before that there were the churchyards, family plots on farms and estates, and the boot hills near the lumber camps, for fellas who got kilt loggin’. Dangerous work, that.”

“It was,” I agreed. “My father was a logger, grandpop too.”

“These pictures, though,” Chabot said, massaging his beard as he frowned at them. “They ain’t nothin’ a lumberjack could afford. They’d be more along the lines of — I don’t know — family graveyards? Like them lumber-baron mansions up on Sugar Hill. Most of them have family crypts. Even dead, they didn’t want to rub elbows with workin’ folks. Look down on the rest of us like buzzards.”

“They’re not as bad as all that.”

“No? Get a lot of invites up there, do ya?”

“Nope,” I admitted, “but that’s one of the perks of my job.”

“What is?”

“I don’t actually need an invitation.”

Chabot was right; the folks who lived on Sugar Hill were a breed apart. Old money, serious money, in a blue-collar county of a redneck state. I definitely didn’t belong up here, but there was a time...

In high school, my cousin Andre and I played hockey for the Valhalla Vikings. In theory we played defense, but we were really enforcers, thugs on ice. We’d had plenty of practice. Growing up, we’d roughed each other around almost daily.

Junior year the Vikes made the state finals, senior year we went all the way, erasing Grand Blanc in a three-game sweep. State champions, Class B.

And for one golden season, Dre and I were hometown heroes, welcome at any party. Even at the estates on Sugar Hill.

High school was a ways back, though. I doubted their memories were that long.

Driving into the hills that overlook the village was like motoring down a corridor draped in russet and gold. The Sugar Hill estates are ancient by American standards, built by lumber barons during the timber boom, from the late 1870s to the Roaring Twenties. Most haven’t been touched since. It’s tough to improve on splendor.

Sprawling, Gone With the Wind verandas, medieval turrets, carriage houses updated for limos and roadsters. Some have Olympic pools, tennis courts, servants’ quarters, all duded up with the gingerbread that epitomized the excess of the day. Back then they were considered nouveau riche. Old Money, now.

I drove down a curving lane that circled the Deveraux estate, with the autumn colors in full bloom. There was no address on the mailbox. Homes on Sugar Hill have names, not numbers. If you bought the estate and lived in it a hundred years, it would still be “the old Deveraux place.”

I rang the bell, half expecting to get the butler and a brush-off. Got the lady of the house instead, a tall gazelle of a woman in riding clothes — dressage boots, skin-tight breeches, and a competition silk blouse. She was slim as a riding crop, pushing fifty, her ash-gray hair trimmed short as a boy’s. Nothing boyish about her, though.

“Yes?” she said, frowning.

“Sergeant LaCrosse, ma’am, Valhalla P.D.” I held up my ID. “We actually met, some years ago. You taught History of Western Civ at Valhalla High.”

“I did,” she nodded, “but I’m afraid I don’t recall—”

“I wasn’t one of your students, but I played hockey with your son Mark. I was here several times, at parties? And I recall seeing a crypt on the grounds.”

“You came to a party here, but remember the crypt? Wow. I probably don’t want to know, do I?”

“We were looking for a quiet corner. It was — definitely quiet.”

“So this is what? A trip down memory lane?”

“No, ma’am, we’ve had a report of possible vandalism of old graves.”

“Here?”

“Not necessarily. But I need to start somewhere, so—”

“Gee, my day just got a lot more interesting,” Mrs. Deveraux said with a shrug. “This way.” She set off at a brisk pace. I fell into step beside her, circling the house to a rear corner. The crypt was built of the same fitted fieldstones as the house, massive, but not overpowering. It was surrounded by an ornate cast-iron fence, eight feet tall, every baluster topped with a spear point that looked sharp enough to draw blood. The crypt’s heavy oaken gate was slightly ajar, though.

“Is this door normally left open?” I asked.

“Why would we lock it? To keep people out, or keep them in?”

Mrs. Deveraux pulled it open without difficulty and I followed her into the crypt, a tall room of stone, roughly the size of a motel business suite. The sepulchers were stacked like bunks against the walls, three on one side, two on the other, with room for more, each with its own marble plaque.

Gerard Deveraux, beloved father, blah blah blah. Chantal Deveraux, beloved, and so forth. The tombs were covered with a light coating of dust. They clearly hadn’t been disturbed for quite some time.

“You can open one, if you like,” Mrs. Deveraux said, facing me, her arms folded. An amused twinkle in her eye.

“Why? What would I find?”

“Nothing. Not so much as a chicken bone. They’re empty, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. What are you talking about?”

“Do you remember studying the Great Fires in school? Eighteen seventies to nineteen ten?”

“Vaguely. Big forest fires, right? Leveled half the state. What about them?”

“Our original family estate was built several miles from here in what’s now state forest, near the logging camps. It was convenient then, construction lumber could be milled on the spot, and it gave my great-greats a short walk to work. Unfortunately, after logging off the timber, they left the slash behind. As it dried, it became tinder, flammable as gasoline. No one knows what started the fires, but they torched these hills like the Devil’s flamethrower. Do you recall the pictures?”

I shook my head.

“These hills looked like Hiroshima after the bomb. Miles and miles of nothing but gray powder. Houses and barns burned down to the dirt, heat so intense even the foundations crumbled to fly ash.”

“What about graves?”

“Graves?” she echoed, surprised at the question. “Sergeant, they couldn’t find the houses, or the roads that led to them. Grave markers were wooden in those days. They would have been erased as completely as the buildings.”

“But the graves would have remained intact, right?”

She eyed me curiously. “Actually, given the incredible heat, I suppose six feet under was the only safe place to be. But afterwards, they were lost along with everything else. And when the families rebuilt, they moved here, away from the devastation.”

“But if the bodies were lost, why build crypts?”

“They were remembrance, to honor the departed, so their names wouldn’t be forgotten. There have been a few burials over the years, but I don’t know of any that are occupied by the original barons. Their markers were lost, so were they.”

“I see,” I nodded, though I really didn’t. “And you have no idea where the original graves were?”

“None. Logging was a massive enterprise in those days, Sergeant, and the cuttings covered hundreds of square miles. During the Depression, Lansing claimed most of the burned ground as state land, eighty thousand acres, give or take. The original home sites could be anywhere out there, lost in a forest bigger than half the countries in the United Nations. What brings all this on, anyway?”

“This,” I said, handing her the picture of the staring girl. She glanced at it, then back at me, waiting for further explanation. Didn’t get one. Then looked at the photograph more closely, frowning.

“When was this taken?”

“I don’t know. From the clothing, eighteen eighties or thereabouts, but that’s a guess. Why?”

“I think I recognize this boy,” she said, indicating the lad standing beside his father in the photo. “Can’t swear to it, of course, but I think he might be one of the Cavanaughs. We’re second cousins. My aunt had her family tree displayed in her library. In the photos I’ve seen, he was a much older man, but there’s a definite resemblance.”

“How sure are you?”

“Not very, it’s been years since my aunt passed, but he does seem familiar.”

“You’ve got an amazing memory.”

“You need one to survive as a teacher. And if any tombs in my neighborhood have been vandalized, I’m sure I’d hear of it, but I can’t imagine why anyone would do such a thing. There’s nothing to steal. No one from those days is buried here, and they never were.”

I mulled her words over as I drove deeper into the back country beyond Sugar Hill. If the lady of the manse was right, the lost graves wouldn’t be on the current estates. They were all built years after the fires that devastated Michigan.

Payback.

The timber barons harvested the virgin forest like a field of wheat, and paid a terrible price for their arrogance.

And now it looked like somebody was harvesting them, looting the valuables they took to their graves. Maybe there was a trace of poetic justice in that, but it was still an ugly crime.

But if the barons abandoned the forest that made their fortunes, not everyone did.

With land dirt cheap, working men, loggers, immigrants, veterans of one war or another settled in the back country. I grew up in these hills.

In school, they called us wood-smoke kids. It’s a nicer term than white trash, and there’s some truth to it. Our homes were heated with wood scavenged from the state forest, and the smoke scent lingers on us like musk. I’m proud of my roots, but in Vale County, if you call somebody wood-smoke? You’d better smile.

If the back country has a queen, it’s Emmaline Gauthier, mama to seven boys, grandmother to a roughneck militia that could give the Mafia lessons in organized crime, north-shore style.

Her clan owns small holdings scattered around the state forest, mostly subsistence farms, twenty acres here, forty there, but total them up and they cover a lot of country.

Generations back, wood-smoke folks grew truck gardens and hunted year round, living off the land as they had for two hundred years. Not anymore. The DNR is tougher on poaching now, and cooking crank or growing weed pays a lot better than raising rutabagas.

Tante Emmaline’s farm rests atop a long rise, with a magnificent view of the rolling, forested hills, with a silvery sliver of the big lake glinting on the horizon. From her front porch, she can watch the morning sun rise out of the waves, and see it settle into the big pines at end of day. She can also see anyone approaching a half-hour before they pull into her yard.

She’d been watching me come, knitting on her porch in a white pine rocker hand carved by one of her sons. Or perhaps her great grandfather. Time is marked differently in the back country.

She appeared to be alone as I strolled up, but I noticed the hayloft door of her barn was ajar and I guessed someone was watching me from the shadows. Maybe had me in his cross hairs. Welcome to wood-smoke country.

I kept my hands in plain sight as I walked up the steps to her broad front porch. The rambling clapboard cabin could have been teleported from the great plains, along with its owner.

Tante Emmaline Gauthier has one of those timeless faces you see in tintypes: weathered, hawkish, carved from an ancient oak. Her ice-blue eyes look right through you. Her clothes were vintage Goodwill: faded flowered dress, a threadbare sweater, work boots.

“Good afternoon, Miz Gauthier.” I nodded as I reached the top step, “I’m—”

“Claudette LaCrosse’s boy,” she finished, glancing up from her knitting. “Dylan, right? How’s your mother?”

“She’s fine, ma’am.”

“Yes, she is. Some folks in town ain’t kind. Store clerks pretend I’m invisible, snotty brats snicker at my brogans. But when I visit your ma’s shop, she offers me coffee, shows me some nice pieces. We chat about the old days. I buy a trinket now and again, but not often. We both grew up in the back country, your ma and me. She ain’t wood-smoke no more, but she ain’t forgot her roots neither. Have you?”

“No, ma’am, but I’m not here to talk about my ma.”

“Should I call my lawyer, Sergeant LaCrosse?”

“It’s certainly your right, ma’am. If you feel the need.”

“I expect I can handle any static you brung, sonny. Is this about them black birds?”

“Birds?” I echoed, baffled.

“Lotta locals been jawin’ about aliens and black airships and the like. I’d write it off to meth-head nonsense, except even churchy folk been seein’ them things.”

“What things?”

“Can’t rightly say. They only fly at night, so nobody sees ’em good. Air machines of some sort is all I know. I thought it might be you fellas.”

“No, ma’am, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“DEA then. Or FBI. One of them alphabet posses.”

“Why would the DEA be interested in you, Tante Em?”

“You’d have to ask them. Feds don’t need no reason to snoop. Won’t be long till a drone bee tails you to the privy when you take a dump. But if you ain’t here about them birds, what is it you want?”

“I came to ask about this,” I said, handing her the photograph. Her eyes widened, then she all but threw it back at me.

“Is something wrong, Tante?”

“That’s vile, that dead child. Why show me a thing like that?”

“It came up in an investigation, looted from a grave. Ever seen anything like it?”

“Hell no. Why would I?”

“Because you’re kin to Arlon Hatfield. His name came up too. What’s he into these days?”

There was a long pause. Tante Em and I have a complicated relationship. She’s a shirttail relative of my dad’s, so we’re technically kin, and relationships matter in the mixed-blood Metis community. But it doesn’t outweigh self-interest. We work opposite sides of the street, so Tante will chat with me, but we seldom talk business. I’m not sure where the line is, but apparently my question was within bounds. Emmaline gave a curt nod of approval.

“I heard your ma’s took an interest in Arlon’s eldest, Selena. That’s good. She’s quick as a ferret, that girl. She needs to be out of that shack.”

“Why?”

“Arlon’s a bad ’un. Used to do sawmill work, but he’s been fired from every crew in the county, the last time for pulling a bowie on his foreman. His wife had the good sense to run off to Minnesota last time he got locked up. I thought he might wise up, but—” She shook her head. “He just wangled hisself a job in town with one of them newbie antiques dealers. Auerbach, I think.”

“What does Arlon know about antiques?”

“Must be a rougher game than we think, ’cause stomping folks is all Arlon’s good at. The man’s trouble, Dylan. If he thinks your ma is trying to steal his daughter away? You tell her to take good care, understand?”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.” I nodded.

“Then don’t let me keep ya,” she said, turning back to her knitting. “Or was there somethin’ else?”

“One other thing, but it’s a bit odd.”

“Odder than them birds?”

“Maybe. It’s about the graves.”

“Graves?” she snorted, looking up, bright-eyed as a sparrow. “Dead folks, Arlon, and now graves? My lord, son, you are full of surprises. What graves?”

“Old graves lost in the great fires, a hundred plus years ago.”

“Hell, everything was lost in them fires. Whole towns burnt down. So?”

“There were big estates in these woods back then, some of the same families that live on Sugar Hill now.”

“The barons.” She nodded. I could almost see the gears spinning behind her bifocals. I’ve no idea how old she is. Seventy? Eighty? More? No cobwebs, though.

“Well, if their graves were lost, sonny, I imagine whatever they held dear is still with them.”

“How do you mean?”

“Black walnut. Back in the big timber days, this area was famous for its black-walnut caskets.”

“Caskets? Why?”

“There was plenty of walnut in these hills back then. The tree’s natural oil makes it bug proof, so folks figured bodies would keep longer in a black-walnut coffin.”

“And did they?”

“How the hell would I know? Or anybody, unless they dug ’em up after a century or so. Is that what’s happening? Someone’s digging them old-timers up?”

“I don’t know, Tante Em. But if you hear anything...?”

“I’ll pass it to your ma, sonny. But my, she has raised herself a storyteller,” she said, shaking her head. “Black walnut, indeed. Who’d a thought?”

I left her, still chuckling to herself.

“Young LaCrosse?” she called after me. “While you got one eye out for them coffins, keep the other peeled for black birds, eh?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m on it.”

And I was. I wanted to know about the aliens haunting the deer woods as much as she did. They weren’t birds, and Tante Em damn well knew it. When she joked about the bees tailing me, she called them drones. Some bees are drones, of course, but that wasn’t her meaning.

Driving back to town, I hit speed dial to put a call in to the DEA’s metro Detroit office.

“Drug Enforcement Agency. How can—?”

“AIC Ken Tanaka, please. I’m Sergeant Dylan LaCrosse, Valhalla P.D.”

The operator asked for my badge number, and I gave it. A moment later, a familiar voice picked up.

“Tanaka.”

“Ken, it’s Dylan LaCrosse. I’ve got a question about ops going on in Vale County. Are we okay to talk on open line?”

“We can talk in the lobby of the Detroit News if you want. My agency’s got nothin’ shaking in your neck of the woods, Dylan. Zero, zip, nada.”

“Not even reconnaissance?”

“Recon? Ahhh, you mean the bird? Have you seen it?”

“Not personally, but I’m hearing things. What’s going on?”

“My best guess is, it’s a Predator drone, Dylan. Two of my guys were bowhunting whitetails last weekend, camped out on state land? One said he heard a drone cruise overhead in the dark. Said it was definitely a Predator. He’s an Afghan vet. He knows ’em.”

“So it’s military? But why would they be flying drones over the state forest? What are they looking for?”

“I thought ATF or the Feebs might be testing some new drug sniffer on the quiet, Dylan, but it turned out to be stranger than that.”

“Strange how?”

“You’ve probably read the Defense Department’s replacing the Predators with a shiny new unit called the Reaper. Bigger, faster, with five times the firepower—”

“—and costs ten times as much,” I Finished. “What’s the weird part?”

“You’re gonna love this, bro. Know what they’re doing with the retired Predators? They’re selling them off, as war surplus, high-tech gear and all, everything but the Hellfire missiles.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. GPS, infrared, ultra-violet, heat-sensitive cameras, ground penetrating radar. It’s nineteen eighties tech, but it all works.”

“I don’t understand. Who’d buy one?”

“You tell me. He’s in your jurisdiction.”

“Who is?”

“I traced the sale, Dylan. The only drone sold in your area went to a guy named Hans Auerbach. Ring any bells?”

“He’s an antiques dealer.” I nodded, still absorbing what he’d said. “Moved up here from Motown maybe eighteen months ago.”

“What’s a relic-seller doing with a drone?”

“No clue, Ken, but I plan to ask. What gear did he get with it?”

“Technically, you’d need a warrant to ask that, Dylan.”

“Technically, the next time your crew raids a meth lab in Vale County I’ll guide your guys into a swamp and leave ’em for the coyotes. I know damn well you checked, Ken, so? What equipment did Auerbach buy with that Predator?”

The Lakewinds Mall is barely a mile down the shore from Olde Town, but it’s newer by a hundred years. The shops are bright, shiny, and ultra modern. Blazing video billboards flash above the storefronts, displaying merchandise and messages in high-def images that flicker by so fast that only speed freaks can follow them.

Inside, Auerbach’s shop was equally sleek, the diametric opposite of my mother’s place. Stylish glass shelving, Eames chairs with canvas cushions, surreal lamps and mannequins. The walls were massive mirrored panels that virtually doubled the shop’s size.

A large display near the front of the main showroom was given over to high-end, high-tech smartphones, digital cameras, notebooks and laptops with iris-recognition technology.

“Interested in a phone?” a salesgirl asked. She was young, blond, and perky.

“No, I’m just surprised to see state-of-the-art gear in an antiques shop.”

“Mr. Auerbach loves his toys. If you have questions, I can page him,” she said, reaching for her phone. “I don’t know the first thing about all this.”

“No need,” I said, opening my jacket to show her my badge. “Just point me at him. It’ll be a surprise.”

“He doesn’t like being surprised,” she said nervously.

“I don’t much care. Where is he?”

She pointed, reluctantly, then hurried off like I was an Ebola carrier.

I made my way to the rear of the store, looking over the stock as I passed. I paused a moment at one elaborate display. Memento mori, railroad watches, several engraved rings, beautifully carved cameo brooches. Something written in Latin wreathed one face. Too small for the human eye, even if I could translate it. High-end goods, outrageously expensive.

Mementos aside, most of his stock consisted of overpriced collectibles. I spotted a few reproductions that weren’t labeled as such, weren’t labeled at all, in fact. What you’d pay would likely depend on whether you could tell the difference or not. It told me a lot about the owner.

The clerk’s directions led me to a mirrored door in the center of the mirrored rear wall, which was nearly invisible. It was locked. I rapped, and held up my badge. Someone buzzed me through.

Beyond it, a corridor ran through to the rear of the building with offices on either side, all of them mirrored, completely opaque.

A pudgy type, thirtyish, in shirtsleeves and a black sweater vest and khakis met me in the corridor beyond the door. Olive complexion, thick dark hair worn shaggy, and an expression of petty annoyance that you usually see on frat boys.

“Mr. Auerbach?”

“That’s me, sport, but if you’re selling something—?”

“I’m Detective Sergeant Dylan LaCrosse, Valhalla P.D. I understand you bought a Predator drone six weeks ago at a federal auction?”

“I... did, yeah. And I filled out all the proper forms and then some, sport. So what about it?”

“We’ve had nuisance complaints, about a drone being flown in the hills, spooking the locals. Would that be yours?”

“Or someone else’s,” he snorted, shaking his head. “The locals are a pack of inbred rednecks. What do you call them? Wood-smoke folks? God, I hate this place.”

“This place?” I said, glancing around. “What’s to hate? Your carpet cost more than my Jeep.”

“My family has three other stores, downstate. I wanted the Detroit location, or Royal Oak. Instead the old man dumps me up here in the boon-docks, says sink or swim. I don’t plan to sink. As for the drone, I’m totally within my rights. We fly well below the FAA’s ceiling—”

“We?”

“I have an — assistant.”

“Arlon Hatfield.”

He hesitated. I had his attention now.

“Why would that be police business?”

“Arlon’s an ex-con with a record for violence. Did you know?”

“No, and I don’t care. I believe in second chances, you know? He works the back country for me, buys folk art from local rubes who have no idea what it’s worth. They sell for cheap.”

“I’ll bet. Ever do business with Arlon’s daughter, Selena?”

“Who?”

“I’ll take that as a no? Why are you flying the drone over state land?”

“Where should I fly? Over the town?”

“Why not over the lake? Forty thousand square miles of open water, five thousand shipwrecks out there. With all that gear, maybe you’ll find a few.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid a layman—”

“Actually, I’m not a layman. I served three tours in the ’Stan, before I signed on here. Sport. Kabul, Helmand, Kandahar. We worked with drone pilots every day. They used heat sensors to spot snipers and ambushes, ground-penetrating radar to spot mines and IEDs—”

“IE—?”

“Improvised explosive devices. The radar doesn’t show the actual weapons, only anomalies, straight lines in amorphous soil. Symmetrical shapes where there shouldn’t be any. I’m very familiar with the tech, Mr. Auerbach. I’m just wondering what you’re doing with it.”

“The drone’s only a toy, Detective,” Auerbach said, trying to stare me down. “I can afford it.”

He was a better liar than most. Probably got lots of practice, peddling reproductions as originals.

He was staring at me.

“LaCrosse,” he said, nodding slowly, “I knew I recognized that name. Your mother owns that crappy little shop in Olde Town, doesn’t she? I heard her son was a cop. Is that what this is? Your wood-smoke mama send you to give me a hard time?”

“I’m here because of the drone complaints. And since I am—” I took the memento photocopies from my shirt pocket. “Do you recognize these?”

“No.” He barely glanced at them. “Why would I?”

“They’re antiques, Mr. Auerbach. You own an antique store.”

“We only stock high-end pieces here. Go peddle your pictures to your mother, sport, this shop is private property. So unless you have a warrant—?”

“No, no warrant.”

“Then we’re done. Get out.”

“No problem,” I said, turning to go.

“You probably felt right at home over there, didn’t you?” he called after me.

“What does that mean?”

“Raghead tribesmen in Afghanistan probably aren’t much different than the hicks in this backwater.”

“If you mean some families have their roots sunk deep in the north shore, you’re right. But for the record? I grew up in the back country, wood-smoke to the bone, which makes me one of the inbred rednecks you mentioned.”

He swallowed, but didn’t back off an inch.

“I’ll give you a pass on that, pal, write it off to ignorance. But if you ever mention my mother’s name in that tone again, I will drag your porky ass out to the alley, tear your arm off, and beat you to death with it. Are we clear?”

He started to crack wise, but read my eyes and thought better of it. Which was probably best, for both of us.

Halfway to the door, I turned back for a parting shot, but didn’t take it. Auerbach had his back to me, talking heatedly on the phone. I didn’t bother to eavesdrop. I had a fair idea who he was calling.

In the parking lot, I scrambled into my Jeep, matted the gas, and burned rubber out to the highway, headed into the Black River hills.

If I’d guessed right about what Auerbach was doing with his drone, they’d try to destroy the evidence now, as quickly as they could. With no hard proof, my only shot was to catch them at it.

I fairly flew off the main drag and the pavement ended soon after. Then I was on dirt roads that snaked through the hills like a rattler with a broken back.

I’d been to the Hatfield place a dozen times, busting Arlon or his brothers, so I knew better than to roll up on him. A half-mile from the final turn, I veered off the trail, plowing into a copse of cedars that folded over my Jeep like a camouflage net, concealing it from the road, and the sky.

Scrambling out of the Jeep, I checked my weapon to be sure I had a live round in the chamber, then I was off, sprinting cross-country through the brush, juking around the trees like a halfback, trying to make time without braining myself.

Ten minutes into my run, the aspens and birches started thinning out and I slowed my pace, not wanting to break into the open.

Suddenly, just ahead of me, I heard an engine roar to life. I dove for cover, rolling up behind a tangle of autumn olive bushes. Parting the branches, I wiped the sweat from my eyes and peered down a long slope to the Hatfields’ double-wide trailer, a rust-streaked, tumble-down junker held together by prayer and duct tape. Two battered pickup trucks were parked in the yard, one up on blocks, the other a daily driver. But Arlon wasn’t using either one.

He was busy strapping a shovel and a hoe onto the back of a four-wheeler, a John Deere Gator. And as soon as I saw the tools, I knew.

Gotcha.

Arlon disappeared into his rickety toolshed after more gear. I rose, and strolled down the slope toward the Gator, in no hurry now. I had him cold. Arlon was a hardcase who hated cops, but he was an ex-con country boy who hated cages even worse. Push came to shove, he’d trade in Auerbach for the chance to get clear of this.

Or so I thought.

Until he came out of that shed holding a rifle. An old Marlin ’95, aimed straight at my face. The gun was older than dirt, but it packed 45–70 government loads that would drop a buffalo. Or take my head off at the shoulders.

I stopped dead in my tracks, holding my hands out, away from my weapon.

“Freeze right there, LaCrosse,” Arlon growled. “Keep your hands where I can see ’em.”

“Slow your roll, Arlon,” I said. “You’re not into anything we can’t fix yet. But if you don’t lower that gun right now, you will be.”

“I ain’t the one jammed up here, Dylan. Toss your piece away. Slow. Left hand.”

I considered arguing, but Arlon’s eyes were bleary, his speech was slurred. He was half in the bag, which made him surlier than he was sober, touchy as a gut-shot bear. Crossing Arlon was risky business anytime, but in this condition? It could be a fatal mistake. He was wasted enough to kill me by accident.

Reaching across with my left hand, I gently lifted my old Beretta M9 automatic out of its holster with my fingertips and tossed it away. I had a backup Smith Airweight in an ankle holster, but it might as well have been on Mars.

“Now what?”

“I oughta tie you to a goddamn tree and gut you like a buck. Soon as a man gets two nickels to rub together, here’s Johnny Law with his hand out. Your problem is, you forgot it’s deer season, Dylan. Half a million city boys are chasin’ around these woods with rifles that shoot a mile. It’s amazin’ they don’t kill a hundred a day, accidental or a’ purpose. Stray rounds don’t give a damn who they cap, and if you ain’t off my place in the next ten seconds, you’re liable to stop one.”

“You do realize that threatening an officer of the law is a felony?”

“I ain’t threatenin’! I got a God-given Second ’mendment right to stand my ground. Now git! Before I change my mind.”

Actually, the Second Amendment doesn’t say squat about standing anything, but I wasn’t inclined to debate it with a wino waving a big-bore rifle.

I backed away, keeping my hands in the air, letting him run me off. He watched me go, not bothering to conceal his contempt. He even lowered the rifle to port arms. No need to threaten me now. He had the edge and we both knew it.

As soon as I crossed the tree line, I ducked behind a big poplar, reached down, pulled my backup piece, took a deep breath, and risked a quick glance back into the clearing.

Arlon was already on the move.

Slinging his rifle, he clambered into the open cab, revved up the Gator, and gunned it around, roaring out of his yard like his tail was on fire.

As soon as he disappeared, I was off, sprinting down the slope in hot pursuit, hoping to hell he wouldn’t stop to check his back trail. The Gator had disappeared into the trees, but I could still hear it ahead in the distance, and following its tracks was no problem. The ATV’s tires had a distinctive tread, a deep forward vee for busting through mud. I wasn’t worried about losing him now, so I slowed my run to a steady lope, one I could keep up all damn day.

My problem was, I had no idea how deep in the forest he was headed. I was gambling that it wouldn’t be too far, or he’d have taken his truck. All I could do was maintain a steady pace and hope to hell he wasn’t running for Canada.

He wasn’t.

A mile into the chase, the Gator’s tracks suddenly veered off the dirt trail and headed into the trees. Arlon was going cross-country now, busting through the brush. It was a lot slower for him, but no problem for me. All I had to do was stay on his tail.

And soon I was gaining ground. I could hear the Gator more clearly now, its sturdy thirty-horse engine snarling as it muscled through the scrub, then suddenly—

Silence. He’d stopped. Or maybe he’d decided to stake out his back trail. His rifle against my little .38? No contest. If he was waiting for me, I was outgunned, probably dead.

Ducking off the trail, I took cover, crouching behind a dead ash. Waited ten minutes, sweating bullets, but heard nothing, saw nothing moving.

Decided to take a chance. Keeping low and staying a full forty yards off his trail, I threaded through the trees, silent as a hunted buck.

I slowed, hearing voices. Had no idea what it meant. Was Arlon meeting someone out here or — and then the music started. Sweet Jesus, it wasn’t real, it was a radio. The idiot was listening to music while he was doing whatever it was.

And what he was doing was filling in a grave.

I eased out of the tree line, crouching low. Hatfield was below me now, in a clearing. A patch of sandy soil surrounded by a stand of jack pines, in what was clearly the remains of a family burial plot. Three open graves. One with the wreckage of a small casket scattered about it. A child’s casket. Likely made of black walnut. The girl in the cornflower dress? I had no idea. Arlon was kicking the pieces back into the hole as I watched, then shoveling the dirt in on top of it, erasing the evidence of what he’d done out here.

Insulting the dead.

I stood up, earing back the hammer on my Airweight. Hatfield’s rifle was leaning against the trunk of a pine. It was within easy reach. I didn’t care. I was half hoping he’d try for it.

“Hold it right there, you miserable son of a bitch!” I shouted, starting down the slope towards him. “Drop that freaking shovel now, or I’ll drop you!”

Arlon kept right on working. Didn’t even look up. The idiot couldn’t hear me over the Gator’s radio. Dammit! I cranked off a warning shot a few inches over his head! That got his freakin’ attention!

Arlon froze, then straightened up, still holding the shovel, red-eyed, half drunk, and mean as a wolverine with rabies. Nothing new about that. At sixteen he’d decked a remedial math teacher, at eighteen he’d sucker-punched a deputy sheriff over a speeding ticket. Did two years for it. Since then he’d been run in on a half-dozen charges, the hard way every time. Which was fine by me.

I was in the mood for trouble, totally zeroed in on Hatfield, wondering if he was dumb enough, or drunk enough, or just plain crazy enough, to try for his rifle.

I was so focused on Arlon, I never saw the pine root that noosed my boot and sent me sprawling down the slope, tumbling ass over teakettle until I slammed into a stump, hard. So hard I saw stars. And lost my damn gun!

Dazed, I was still frantically groping around for my .38 in the sand when Hatfield made his move. Snatching up his Marlin, he jacked a round into the chamber as he stalked toward me, the weapon at his shoulder, aiming right between my eyes. Then he stopped, maybe twenty feet away. He was definitely close enough. Wood-smoke kids grow up shooting squirrels in the head to save the meat. For a frozen moment, our eyes locked, and then his widened, and he fired!

He was so close, the muzzle blast slapped my face as the slug burned past my ear. Crazed and manic, Arlon racked in another round just as I found my weapon and raised it to fire, knowing I was already too late. Arlon fired again. Too soon! Missed me by a foot to the left, but before I could return fire he broke and ran, sprinting for the trees. I raised my revolver, aiming dead center between his shoulder blades, two-hand hold.

“Hold it right there! Stop, goddammit, or I’ll shoot!”

But I didn’t. I could’ve capped him easily. Maybe I should have. But I was still stunned and dazzled by the muzzle blast, my ears were ringing, my eyes watering.

I held my fire.

Arlon never slowed; he kept right on running, struggling upslope, plowing through the sand. He still had his rifle, but didn’t raise it again. At the crest of the rise, he risked a quick look back, but his eyes were so wild I’m not sure he saw me at all. Then he vanished into trees. I lowered my weapon, let him go without firing a shot.

I eased down slowly to my knees instead and drew a long, ragged breath. Desperately grateful that I wasn’t sucking air through a 45-70-sized chest wound. Simply glad to be breathing, still alive.

But utterly baffled as well. Sweet Jesus, I should be dead as the dirt, my headless corpse kicked into one of the open graves Hatfield had plundered, never to be seen again.

Yet somehow I wasn’t. I was alive and kicking and damned grateful to be. But not for long. My relief quickly faded, supplanted by a rising red rage. Not so much at Hatfield. Criminality was Arlon’s nature. He was a mean drunk, dumb as a box of rocks, in and out of trouble his whole miserable life. He was as much an animal as any brute in the forest. His time would come, and soon.

Arlon may have been born to lose, but he hadn’t become a ghoul until somebody set him on it. Auerbach. A rich prick who thought his money gave him license to do as he damn pleased.

It didn’t. And he was about to find that out the hard way. But even as I drove Hatfield’s Gator, backtracking to my Jeep, I couldn’t get the image of Arlon and his old rifle out of my mind.

Hatfield was hunting meat before he could cipher. He was a crack shot and we were barely twenty feet apart when he fired, point-blank range. How the hell had he missed me? He could have dropped me like a bad habit, and he damn well meant to. When he raised up, I could read the killing rage in his eyes. He meant to take me out.

So why was I still breathing?

Some say it’s better to be lucky than good, and there was no doubt I’d been damned lucky. Still... I couldn’t make it compute.

I called in a BOLO on Hatfield from my Jeep, but I wasn’t really worried about him. November nights get stone cold along the North Shore and Arlon was afoot without supplies. We’d stake out his place, grab him up when he came in.

But before that happened, I wanted a serious talk with the son of a bitch who set this whole sorry business in motion.

I roared into the Lakeside Mall with lights and sirens cranked up full blast, shrieked to a halt in front of Auerbach’s Antiques, and piled out of the Jeep, leaving the door open, the siren screaming. I wanted him to know I was coming for him. I wanted everyone to know.

Auerbach came storming out of his office to face me dead center of the showroom floor.

“What is all this?”

So I told him what it was. That I’d tracked Hatfield to the grave sites that had been looted of the valuable relics on display in his shop. That he’d located the grave sites for Arlon, using the drone’s ground-penetrating radar to spot the casket’s symmetrical outlines from the air.

He didn’t even blink.

“Let me get this straight. You think I’ve been... how did you put it? Looting century-old graveyards in the state forest? I can assure you, I’ve never set foot in—”

“—because you’re a city boy who couldn’t find your way past the first tree. That’s why you needed Hatfield. But if you expect him to take the fall for it, forget it. When we bring him in, he’ll give you up.”

“And it’ll be my word against a disgruntled former employee with a long police record. Who will file the complaint? The girl in the picture you showed me? Dead a hundred years?”

“Actually, everything on state land belongs to the state, including the graves, so I’ll be filing the charge. The value of the relics you looted makes it grand larceny, a year in jail, and a fine triple the value of property stolen.”

“You think the prosecutor will care about old grave sites? The dead can’t vote.”

“They don’t have to. They have me. Turn around, and put your hands behind you. You’re under arrest.”

“Are you out of your mind? I’ll sue you and this town for every cent you have.”

“You’ll have to do it from jail. No bail. You’re a flight risk.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“I doubt a local judge will think so. When you called us a tribal society, you were half right. The graves you robbed are kin to the families who’ve been running the north shore for a hundred years. Your lawyer can appeal, and maybe he’ll win. Eventually. But in the meantime, you’ll be locked in a cage watching your business go straight down the tubes. Your assets will be frozen, websites shut down, replaced by a court order explaining why. By the time you get sprung, people will spit when they pass you on the street.”

“Fine by me! My old man will give me one of our downstate shops and I’ll be back on top in a month. You think you’re jamming me up? Hell, you’re doing me a favor.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe I was.

Maybe not.

A week later, I delivered some paperwork to the county lockup. Auerbach’s petition for bail had been denied. His lawyer would appeal, of course, and a higher court downstate would likely find in his favor, but it might not matter a damn.

In the visiting room, I barely recognized him. The spit-shined frat boy looked haggard, unshaven, his hair awry. And the paperwork, which he should have expected, nearly sent him over the edge.

“No,” he said, his jaw quivering, “I can’t stay here. You’ve got to let me out!”

“Me? Why would I—?”

“You don’t understand,” he sobbed, “I can’t close my eyes. I’m afraid to sleep. She comes to me in the dark. Every damned night.”

“What are you saying? Who comes?”

“The girl! From that picture you showed me, with the staring eyes. As soon as I start to nod off, she’s there! By my bed, watching! Please, I’ll pay you anything! You’ve got to help me!”

“I’m the last guy you should ask, sport. Your lawyer—”

“I can’t wait for that! Those graves! When we opened them, we set something loose. I don’t know what she is, a ghost or — I don’t know! But she’s coming for me—” And he broke down completely, burying his head in his arms, wailing like a child.

The turnkey stalked over to us, glaring at me. Raising my hands in mock surrender, I beat a hasty retreat. But as I passed through the checkpoint and stepped out into free air, I felt no sense of triumph.

I’ve seen guys in some godawful situations. Maimed and dying, drowning in their own blood.

But I’ve never seen a more terrified shambles of a human being than Auerbach, completely undone by his own guilty conscience. Haunted by some imaginary horror that only he can see.

Textbook paranoia.

Except that — when I arrested him? He seemed more annoyed than guilty. I don’t think he felt any remorse at all for what he’d done.

He does now.

I almost pity him. But not much. Whatever’s stalking him, real or imaginary, he brought it on himself.

I’d write off his raving to an overwrought imagination, but...

I keep thinking back to Hatfield. A woodsman and a crack shot, who somehow missed killing me from twenty feet away.

I kept replaying that scene over and over in my mind, until it finally registered that I wasn’t actually facing his gun muzzle when he fired. Not straight on. It wasn’t dumb luck that he missed me. If he’d meant to kill me, I’d be dead. I think now he fired past me deliberately, fired again. Then broke and ran like a scalded dog.

He didn’t miss. He wasn’t shooting at me at all. He was trying to kill something else. Maybe the same... thing... that has Auerbach so terrified.

And whatever it is, it saved my life.

When my mother first laid this protecteur de les morts business on me, I dismissed it as First Nation superstition. Basically, laughed it off.

I’m not laughing anymore.

Like a shadow from the forgotten past, this task has come down to me. I didn’t ask for it, nor do I want it, yet somehow...?

Apparently, I’ve been chosen.

I am le protecteur, the defender of the dead.

But if so, there’s been a terrible mistake.

I’m not the man for this. I’m a rational guy, who functions just fine in the real world. I believe in hard facts and evidence. The supernatural is a show on TV.

But now? When I wake in the night, remembering the fear in Hatfield’s face as he fired past me? And the terror in Auerbach’s eyes?

I don’t know what I believe anymore.