In the Dark of the Night

Chapter 31

RUSTY RUSTON MOVED through the parade staging area in the Phantom Lake High School parking lot, keeping his eyes and ears open for anything that might be amiss.

An hour earlier he had deputized ten members of the volunteer fire department, briefed them not only on what had been found in Carol Langstrom’s shop yesterday, but on everything he knew about Riley Logan as well. “The main thing is to keep a low profile,” he’d told them as he handed each one a walkie-talkie. “The last thing we want is to panic anybody. So what I want you to do is stay alert and report anything you see that isn’t right. Anything.”

He’d placed Derek Anders at the parade destination, and assigned the rest to various points along the route. Once the parade was over, they’d move on to the park, where most of the town would gather for the rest of the day, staying right through until the fireworks went off an hour after sunset. The whole celebration needed to go off without a hitch, and Ruston fully intended to see that it did. It was going to be a long day, and the best he could hope for was that Logan had spotted him coming yesterday afternoon, been rational enough to know exactly what was up, and had taken off into the woods with every intention to keep on going. If that was the case — and Ruston’s gut was telling him it was — then he, Derek Anders, and the rest of the deputies would have nothing more serious to deal with than a couple of sunburns and maybe a few fingers scorched on sparklers by the time the fireworks display was over.

Up ahead, Misty Kennedy, who had coordinated the parade every year for the last three decades, was waving her arms at the high school band director, telling him to keep his musicians in line and shouting orders at the float drivers, demanding that they check their order one more time. And everyone was ignoring her, just as they had every year for the past three decades.

Ruston checked his watch: 9:55.

Five minutes to showtime.

He walked through the high school musicians as they finally began falling into what passed as a formation, adjusting their uniforms, chattering excitedly, and tuning their instruments to the best of their admittedly small ability.

Still, everyone loved the band, especially the parents of its members. The baton twirlers were warming up — only one flying out of control as Ruston watched — and the banner announcing the Phantom Lake High School Band was moving into place.

Then he began catching snatches of the kids’ conversations.

“…satanic ritual murder…”

“…picked up hitchhiking by some pervert…”

“…I miss him…”

“…he was a jerk, but still…”

“Do you think…?

“Did you hear…?”

“My mom said…”

So it wasn’t the parade the kids were talking about at all, and Ruston sighed as he realized he should have expected it. The kids — the whole town — was nowhere near over the shock of Ellis Langstrom’s death. Still, he’d hoped that today, at least, they’d be able to put their worry and grief aside long enough to enjoy the holiday for which Phantom Lake had been famous for almost a century. And judging from the size of the crowd, the rumors about what might have happened to Ellis Langstrom hadn’t spread too far, for it looked to Ruston as if half the people in the neighboring counties had come to join in the fun.

He pressed his thumb on the transmit button of his walkie-talkie. “Five minutes,” he said.

Each of the deputies responded with “all clears,” and Ruston began to relax.

Then he caught a glimpse of a ragged-looking guy with a shaggy head of hair on the other side of the Birthday Club float, and felt a shot of adrenaline squirt into his bloodstream. An instant later he was running, trying to keep the man in sight, dodging students, tubas, clowns, and bicycles.

He made an end run around the back of the drugstore’s float, which appeared to be intending to bribe the judges with hot dogs this year, but by the time he got to the Birthday Club, the man was nowhere to be seen.

Slowing his pace close enough to a walk that it wouldn’t unnecessarily alarm anyone, Ruston moved along the only route the man could have taken while keeping the float between himself and the sheriff.

There!

He had him now. He sped his gait just enough to close in on the man without panicking anybody else, but just as he was about to lay his heavily practiced, if rarely used, “law enforcement” hand on the man’s shoulder, followed by a spin that would end with the man pinned against the wall of the bank, the man turned around.

Fred Rawlins.

The manager of the very bank Ruston had been about to slam him up against.

Rawlins was wearing a shaggy wig and rags for some float — probably designed by his over-the-hill hippie wife — the point of which Ruston was certain would be lost on nearly everyone except Mrs. Fred, who had changed her name to Sunbeam Moonrise twenty years earlier, and had steadfastly refused to allow people to shorten it to “Sunny,” thus relegating herself to being known as “Mrs. Fred” ever since.

Fred himself now smiled and held out his hand. “Hell of an event again this year, Rusty,” he said, waving exactly the kind of small American flag his wife hated. “See you at the barbecue?”

Rusty Ruston shook the proffered hand, nodded, then stepped back as Fred climbed aboard his wife’s float, which seemed to be trying to draw attention to the plight of the homeless. Sunbeam Moonrise had struck again, and Ruston wondered what Rawlins’s superiors in Madison would say when they heard their bank had sponsored a float honoring the people they wouldn’t be caught dead loaning money to.

Not my problem, Ruston decided. His problem was to figure out some way to relax a little; he’d nearly spun the bank manager around and slammed him up against a wall, and he couldn’t stay that edgy all day or he’d wind up hurting someone.

He had to calm down.

He had to trust his deputies to be his eyes and his ears.

He checked his watch.

Ten o’clock on the dot.

The band was lined up, and the drum major held his baton high. He gave a short blow on his whistle, and the band began to march out of the parking lot, the drum major strutting smartly. As the band turned the corner onto Main Street, they broke into an enthusiastic rendition of “Strike Up the Band” that was only slightly out of pitch.

The parade was officially under way, and, as always, the crowd began cheering with far more enthusiasm than Ruston thought the parade truly merited.

But that, of course, wasn’t the point.

The point was for everyone to have a good time, and Ruston decided that the best way he, too, could have a good time would be to go back and stand next to Misty Kennedy while she stood at the curb with her clipboard and stopwatch, trying to control the pace of the floats. The drivers were getting themselves under way either when they felt like it or when they got their engines running, whichever came last.

Following the band was Summer Fun’s “Land of the Free” float, with Merrill Brewster’s daughter Marci as the Statue of Liberty, wearing a costume that was far better than any ten-year-old Miss Liberty had worn in years and standing proudly in the center of what was apparently supposed to be some kind of immigrant ship.

With any luck at all, Ruston decided, the rest of the day would turn out just as beautifully as Marci Brewster’s costume.

Finally, as “Land of the Free” cruised slowly by him with only a slight list to starboard, Rusty Ruston began to relax.