“So this is where you meet the county to pay them off,” Kurt said.

  Bard didn’t laugh. Instead he hitched his belt up over a belly that made Kurt think unhesitatingly of beach balls. Sweat glistened on the chief’s balding head; his mustache twitched. “What do you know about Cody Drucker?” he spat out to Kurt.

  “Not much besides the common fact that he was a cantankerous old prick.”

  “You know anyone who didn’t like him?”

  “Yeah, about half the town. What happened? Did someone take a dump on his stone?”

  Bard looked abruptly back to Higgins. “But how the fucking damn… Where the fuck would they—”

  “Hey, Chief,” Kurt interrupted. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or am I supposed to guess?”

  “Show him,” Bard said.

  Higgins led Kurt through the cemetery gate. There was no path, just a foot-trodden trail showing exposed roots. From grave vases rotting flowers drooped forward like heads before the blade.

  Unease itched up Kurt’s back. What was wrong with Higgins? It was more than just the place. Higgins was thought of by most as simply the coolest guy in the world, easygoing, laid-back, quick to joke even on the worst days. He was the kind of guy who’d turn the dullest shifts into a breeze, just by being himself, just by being Higgins. He carried an aura of good humor and high spirits anywhere he went, and never a trace of the trade nihilism that eventually got to most cops. Today, though—now—he seemed as pallid as the air, robbed of his attractive vitality by some worldly grimness, his spirit crushed. He walked ahead like a man betrayed—by insight or self-concept, by faith in his fellow man? It scarcely mattered. He merely led on, saying nothing.

  And for the first time then, Kurt felt afraid.

  The cemetery lay back, sinking slightly: an odd divide amongst trees which stood deformed and immense. Nets of pale, sickly weeds grew riotous up through the rungs of the surrounding rusted fence. Gray, dead light shifted overhead through laden branches and boughs. Many of the tombstones stood tilted; some had fallen flat. Farther back a number of the inscriptions were too old to be read.

  “Hey, Mark. What gives?”

  “I wish I knew,” Higgins said. “Or at least I think I do. Sometimes…sometimes you just don’t want to know. It makes you wonder about people. It makes you stop and think. Know what I mean?”

  “I’m not quite reading you.”

  Higgins looked straight ahead as he guided on, his trimmed mustache a morose line. “All I can say is someone in this town has a lame sense of humor.”

  Underfoot, the ground between the graves crackled and sank; Kurt wondered how many faces he was walking on. Beyond, the interior woods grayed further, to the point of appearing unreal.

  Then Higgins stopped. He pointed to the plot. Kurt didn’t need an explanation.

  The new granite stone reflected like a mirror, spelling DRUCKER in fine, crisp chiselwork. Before it stretched an oblong hole. Loose soil and clumps of sod lay scattered in a wide curve.

  Kurt stared into the open grave. The liner was wrenched off, its top cracked, and the coffin, planted there only yesterday, was gone. It had been unearthed and carried away.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Go on,” Glen said. “You’re shitting me.”

  “No lie. Someone dug up Cody Drucker and ran off with him, coffin and all. I swear, it’s the truth.”

  It was ten o’clock at night now, a full twelve hours since the disturbing discovery at Beall Cemetery; but for some reason, it seemed much later. Through the woods came the hush of the dead, abandonment and fathomless silence like 4:00 a.m. Glen’s head tilted curiously out the window of his truck, a white and blue-rocker Toyota pickup, diesel, with a yellow revolving light on the roof, and an off-brand shotgun displayed in the rear window. White adhesive letters on the rocker panels read SECURITY, but several of the letters had come off. This was the vehicle Glen used to make his security patrols of Belleau Wood. Glen himself wore a semblance of a uniform—dark brown summer-weight jacket, khaki pants and shirt, steel-shank snakeproof boots, and his reaction to what Kurt had just told him was one of chin-dropping astonishment. The town cruiser was parked outside the entrance chain, and Kurt leaned against the truck’s front fender as he reported the town’s latest, and weirdest, news.

  Glen poked his head further out the window. “Who would steal a corpse out of a graveyard?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d sure like to find out. Bard’s pulling his hair out over this, what little he has.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “I’m thinking maybe Drucker had some valuables on him when they put him in the ground, jewelry or something.”

  “Cody Drucker?” Glen emphasized. “The only valuables he owned are in the pawn shop on West Street; that old sod would sell anything for a bottle. And even if he did have something on him, how come they didn’t just open the coffin right there instead of carrying the whole thing away?”

  “Maybe they couldn’t open it right there,” Kurt said, hunting for a cigarette. “Coffins are built to last these days. Getting into one takes more than a screwdriver and a little elbow grease. I was just reading the other day, D.C. Police had to exhume a body for an old murder case and they needed a damn acetylene rig to get it open. Said the lid had locking pins… Anyway, who knows? Any possibility is ridiculous.”

  Kurt lit his cigarette and shivered; spring fever had helped him forget that the nights would still be chilly for a while. Nipping air cut through the fabric of his shirt and made him break out in gooseflesh. The night was crisp and lavender. Stars winked keenly, as if vacillating, and the wind slipped like a whisper through the great shadow of the access road. Toward the north end of the property, atop the high hill, Belleau Wood mansion stood still and clear, the moon cutting its shape sharp as cracked glass against the sky.

  Kurt stared at the far-off house. He could see a window lit. “Tell me about your boss,” he said, and even as he smoked and flicked ashes, he did not move his eyes away from the mansion’s black, cut-out shape.

  “Dr. Willard? Not much to tell. Average guy, I guess—for rich. Well, maybe a little stuck up. I don’t see him much, nobody does.”

  “What the hell does the guy do with his time?”

  Glen shrugged. “He doesn’t work, if that’s what you mean. I guess he just sits around and counts his money. He’s no skinflint, though. Pays twenty an hour, double time for anything over forty. Last year he slipped me a five-hundred-dollar bill for Christmas.”

  “A five-century note? I didn’t know they made them. Who’s on it?”

  “I don’t know. McKinley, I think, or Grover Cleveland— some no-dick, shithouse president like that. All I saw was the numbers. Willard’s one generous son of a bitch. Maybe he’ll give me a G-note this year.”

  “What kind of doctor is he?”

  “Retired, and I don’t know much beyond that. About the only time I see him is when I gotta report some security violation, trespassers, poachers, that kind of shit, which is only about once every couple of weeks. His wife usually gives me my paychecks.”

  Kurt expertly jettisoned his cigarette to the middle of the road, where it burst into a spatter of orange sparks. “Any kids?”

  “Nope. Willard hates kids, calls them the spawn of hell.”

  “What’s his wife look like?”

  “Brunette, cute, decent bod. You’ve probably seen her around. He married her when he moved into the mansion, right after he hired me, as a matter of fact. I was the only one who went to the wedding; they needed a witness. I think she’s around mainly for the squeeze, you tell me. She’s thirty, and he’s just over fifty. She spends most of her time going on trips by herself, Ocean City, Virginia Beach, Vegas.”

  “And Willard doesn’t go with her?”

  “Nope. He doesn’t like to travel that much.”

  “But he’s rich. He must take a vacation sometime.”

  Glen shook his head. “His idea of fun is reading the New England Journal of Medicine and watching Discovery Channel. Since he’s been at Belleau Wood, I seriously doubt that he’s even crossed the state line. Oh, sure, he goes out to eat a lot with Nancy—that’s his wife—and every week or so, he’ll drive out to McKeldin Library or the public research place at N.I.H.”

  The more Kurt was told, the less he understood. “Wait a minute. If he’s not a practicing doctor, why does he go to medical libraries?”

  “I don’t know. I guess he just likes to keep up with the trade.”

  Whetted, Kurt fired up another smoke, leaned closer to the truck window. “And you’ve known him…since he bought Belleau Wood?”

  “He didn’t buy Belleau Wood; it was his to begin with. He’s the last of a loaded family—the Willard holdings include property all over Maryland and Virginia, lots of logging land and raw materials. His father supposedly hit the jackpot in ore round about World War II, bit the hoagie six or seven years ago. That’s when Willard moved back to Belleau Wood.”

  “Where did he live before that?”

  “Got no idea. You’d have to ask his wife.”

  “Speaking of his wife,” Kurt said, unable now to stop with questions that didn’t concern him, “how did he get involved with her in the first place? You said he married her shortly after he moved here.”

  “That’s right. In fact, I’ve known Dr. Willard a little bit longer than she has. She was a research technician at N.I.H.; that’s where he met her. He’d only known her about a month before they got hitched.”

  “That sure sounds pretty screwy,” Kurt said. He glanced quickly over his shoulder at the house. “I’ve heard of love at first sight, but that’s a bit much.”

  “Well, I admit Willard’s not what you’d call every girl’s summer dream, more like a well-educated stick in the mud. I think his bank account had more to do with it than anything else.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but even so, don’t you smell a rat in there somewhere?”

  Glen touched his lower lip, searching. “No. Should I?”

  “Look, here’s what we got,” Kurt said, spreading his hands out in front of him. “First we got this eightball doctor who nobody knows or even sees. Next we got this girl who practically marries him before she learns his name, and who used to be into medical research. Lastly we got a fucking hole in the ground where Cody Drucker’s body is supposed to be.”

  Glen grinned openmouthed within the darkness of the cab. “Are you trying to say… You mean, you think…”

  “Well, what the hell? Maybe he’s got some kooky experiment going, and he needed a cadaver.”

  Glen broke out laughing. “Jesus, Kurt. His name is Willard, not Frankenstein. Yeah, I can just see it, him and Nancy sneaking onto Beall with picks and shovels. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you’ve been drinking some of that panther piss they make back in the hills. That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

  “Well,” Kurt said, “it was just a thought.”

  ««—»»

  At midnight, Kurt’s shift came to an official end. He parked at the town police station, a converted white-stucco cottage at the end of a quarter-mile gravel road which neared Tylersville’s southernmost boundary. There, he turned over the cruiser, keys, and portable radio to Doug Swaggert, the midnight-to-eight man. Swaggert was the most seasoned officer on the force, having learned the ropes walking a beat in Baltimore for years. Kurt wasn’t sure why Doug had transferred to T-ville, but he guessed that bad timing might be a factor. “It’s hard to really get into police work when you’re on administrative leave six months out of the year,” Swaggert had told him once. “But don’t worry, they were all good shoots.” Swaggert was a hard cop, with hard rules, and also respected by the populace more than any of the others. Kurt didn’t know whether this was good or bad; at times it seemed that when Swaggert didn’t have trouble to tend to, he’d go looking for it, and when he couldn’t find any, he’d make some of his own. He fit the mold almost too well; short, dark hair, a face that belonged on a recruiting poster, and a look in his eyes that could make a pack of pissed-off mountain gorillas turn around and jog on home. The G. Gordon Liddy mustache didn’t help, and neither did the unbroken string of pistol championships and the fact that he could do more one-armed pull-ups than anyone else could do two-armed. In the long and short of it, Doug Swaggert was the kind of guy who carried his balls around in a bushel basket.

  “I guess you’ve heard the latest,” Kurt said, when he stepped into the front office.

  Swaggert turned away from his wall locker, snapping on the last leather belt spacer. “Yeah, Bard told me about it over the phone. I’ll tell ya, I’ve seen some weird hobnobbing in my days, but I’ve never heard of anyone stealing a dead man out of a graveyard.”

  ”A lot of strange folks in this world,” Kurt conceded, “and nine out of every ten of them probably live in Maryland.”

  “Put ’em all on a boat and send them to the Bermuda Triangle, I say. But getting on to far more crucial things, what happened to the coffee machine? If Bard thinks I’m gonna work night shifts without coffee, he better get his head examined.”

  “The coil burned out, there’s a new machine on order. So, friend, for the next seven to ten days we’ll have to settle for coffee at the Jiffy-Stop.”

  Swaggert made a face. “Jeez, that’s worse than drinking out of a crankcase.”

  Kurt placed the big key ring and Motorola portable on the desk, then scribbled his IN mileage in the DOR and signed out. “Say, Doug, do me a favor and tell Higgins to call county animal control in the morning. I forgot to do it today. All kinds of dead possums and shit on 154.”

  Swaggert jotted down the reminder in a pocket pad, said, “Gotcha,” and hooked the keys on his belt. Then he went back to the wall locker and took out his pair of Kale knuckle saps— black leather gloves with sand in the knuckles. The index finger of the right sap was nylon, so that he could fire his pistol without having to remove the sap. “Almost forgot my mitts,” he said. “I never know when I’m gonna have to punch through somebody’s front door.”

  “Or somebody’s face,” Kurt added. He’d always regarded knuckle saps as cruel and unusual, something for the Mafia, not the town police. “Three cheers for our favorite sadist. Have you ever actually hit anyone with those things?”

  “Couple of times. They do the job, and let me tell you, if you’d ever busted your hand open on some rube’s jaw, you’d own a pair yourself.”

  Swaggert’s matter-of-fact view of mayhem sometimes made Kurt shudder. “Let me ask you something, Doug. A guy like you I figure’s been in a lot of fights.”

  “Sure. Dozens.”

  “Have you ever gotten your ass whipped in any of them?”

  “No.”

  Kurt believed him. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll meet your match one of these days?”

  “My only match is Clark Kent, and as far as I know, he doesn’t live in this town.”

  Kurt left the station, smiling and shaking his head. That was one thing he’d always admired about Swaggert, that clear and overwhelming sense of confidence. That’s what it all boiled down to, Kurt knew. That’s what made Swaggert tick—confidence.

  But what Kurt didn’t know was that all the confidence in the world wouldn’t help Swaggert that night. Nor could he have known that he had just spoken to Swaggert for the last time.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Vicky could never decide what she hated most about the Anvil. Poor tips, terrible, infantile music, or lights that flashed hot and mad and drove lancets of pain through your head. But she supposed it was the heart of the place more than anything else. She was only a waitress, but that did not justify that she worked in a strip joint.

  The night groaned on, waning. She performed her duties as if recently summoned from the crypt. Running tabs, dumping out heaped ashtrays, clearing empties away by the armful. She’d done it a million times in the past, waiting on derelicts in this derelict place; it was routine now. When it got busy, the din often rose to crush her, a maelstrom of noise—she couldn’t think. Faces melted into lumps of sameness, drinking, smoking, staring without expression. She felt her force of life being wrested out and wasted as she hurried back and forth, night after night, toting beer and an apron heavy with change. Sometimes she would work her tables for hours and not even know it, days and weeks passing slowly as grueling dreams.

  Overhead hung rows of multicolored spotlights that aimed down and lit up the dance stage like an inferno. The stage floor was raised three feet off the ground and covered with Plexiglas under which more lights throbbed. Ceiling-high mirrors formed the front and rear walls, creating an illusion of space that transformed the Anvil into a dark, endless gallery full of doppelgangers. Vicky knew that one day she would see her reflections marching about independently, and that would be the end.

  Tables and chairs faced the stage from three sides; there were some padded booths along the far wall, but no one ever sat in them. Red candle orbs glowed eerily on each table—these Vicky especially detested because it was her job to light them every day, only to have a bunch of fat saps immediately blow them out and fill them with peanut shells and cigarette butts. The jukebox blared hard rock and country and western, exclusively, and was wired to an absolutely terrifying sound system that made the Anvil shake like a seismic tremor. Often Vicky worked with cotton balls in her ears, but even they did not block out the landslide of sound.

  Weekdays were her relief; there were only ten or twelve customers just then. She took another round to a group of construction deadbeats sitting front and center. “Hey, hon,” one of them said. He had road tar on his arms and shirt. “Wanna go home with the man of your dreams?”

  “If you’re the man of my dreams, then all my dreams must be nightmares.” She smirked at the junk-stuffed candle orb and noticed tobacco juice in some of the empties, which she gathered up with great care. “My oh my, what fine tailfeathers,” another one said. Vicky told him that he must be an expert on tailfeathers, since he smelled like a henhouse.