Bloodlines

“Get your lard ass back here, then. You two have turned into a couple of butterballs, lying on your big bellies on the beach all day. I still have to take care of things myself if I want them done right, don’t I? Never know how much you two will fuck things up on your own.” He eyed me briefly, then asked Eric what the fuck was wrong with him, standing there with nothing but his flashlight in his hand? Eric turned red, then switched off the light and exchanged it for his gun.

“Now grab on to her,” Mitch ordered, “and put that gun right up against her head… Good.”He turned to Ethan. “Okay, smart boy, I’m going to promise you that once you are through that gate, you had better return in five minutes, or she’s dead.”

“That’s not long enough!”

“That’s how long you have. So Ian will cut you loose and give you a flashlight, and I had better be able to see where you are with that light every one of those five minutes-”

“Then we’ve come out here for nothing,” Ethan said. “The spare key isn’t hidden within sight of the gate, for God’s sake. It’s around the corner, on the other side of that maintenance shed. You won’t see me the whole time and I can’t do it in five minutes.”

Held by a beefy arm around my throat, feeling the painful press of cold metal on my temple, I couldn’t think very clearly, but I still managed to wonder if it was smart for him to be challenging Mitch in this way.

Then I saw Ian’s face, and the hint of amusement on it. Maybe Ethan was trying to undermine Mitch’s authority as much as he could.

“And why shouldn’t I just save myself a whole lot of time and kill you both? I’m trying to remember…”

“You think we did this not knowing who we were up against?” I said. “We made sure that if we were to vanish or to be found dead, the truth would come out.”

“Miss Kelly, I think you’ve watched too much television.”

“I haven’t had time for TV. I’ve been busy studying you for twenty years, you selfish old man. People have a habit of disappearing around you. Ian and Eric are too young to remember Gus Ronden or Betty Bradford, but-”

“I remember them,” Eric said. “What happened to them, Uncle Mitch?”

“We’re wasting time!” Mitch said. “Cut the smart aleck loose and let him get in there. And Eric, damn it, if she doesn’t keep her yap shut, shut it for her.”

Ian cut Ethan loose, and I watched Ethan wince as the circulation returned to his hands. Another moment passed before he had enough feeling in them to be able to hold the flashlight. Ethan walked to the gate, then held the flashlight out and said, “I’m going to tuck this inside my jacket. I won’t fit through the gates myself if I put it in my hip pocket. I just don’t want any misunderstandings.” He slowly tucked it in the pocket, making sure his hands stayed visible as he did it.

He pulled the gates apart and began to squeeze between them. I heard his breath catch on a small sound of pain as his bruised ribs were pressed against the metal supports of the gates.

A moment later, he was through, and the flashlight was out again. Ian took Eric’s flashlight and tried to position himself to fire on Ethan should he reappear with a weapon or some other surprise.

“Where are you?” Mitch called.

“On the other side of the shed,” Ethan called back.

“I don’t like this,” Mitch said. “I don’t like this at all.”

We all listened, ears straining for sound. Nothing could be heard over the rumbling and creaking of the oil well pumps.

As what seemed like two or three eternities passed, I began to wonder if I had fooled myself into thinking Ethan cared about what happened to me. What if he just hared off, jumping over a fence on the other side of the cemetery and leaving me and the Yeagers standing in our little semicircle? Or hid in there the rest of the night, or at least until the police showed up? I could be long past being able to tell anyone my version of events.

I told myself that would not be the worst possible outcome. In all likelihood, that was the best we could hope for. Maybe Ethan was practical enough to see that.

But even with Eric’s gun at my head and a cold feeling of certainty that I would not survive the night settling in on me, even knowing that Ethan had screwed up so many other times in his life and was a self-acknowledged liar and manipulator, I thought of how he toughed out those days at the paper and couldn’t bring myself to believe he was abandoning me. I was not cheered by this thought. I didn’t much want to die alone, but I wanted less for the two of us to die together.

In the next moment, he came back around the corner, his flashlight beam marking his progress as he returned to the gate. Fool, I thought, close to tears. You brave damned fool.

The Yeagers were relieved. I could feel Eric relax his grip slightly, and he eased the pressure of the gun away. A moment later, as Ethan fit the key into the padlock, Eric stepped back from me.

The chain fell free, and Ethan pulled the gates in. He looked toward me and said, “Welcome to my cemetery.”

67

H IS CEMETERY LOOKED AS IF IT HAD BEEN TOSSED. “Most of the grave robbing was done to the older ones,” Ethan said. “They figured no one who cared about these people would still be around. But they also went for a few of the newer ones.”

Mounds of dirt stood next to open graves, vaults were aboveground, and excavation equipment was parked here and there. The investigation had not yet extended into every corner of the cemetery, but where it was under way, it seemed doubtful the permanent occupants were resting in peace.

The odors were much stronger inside the cemetery. Rain had fallen during the weeks of investigation, and water collected in the bottom of the graves, intensifying the dankness and scents of decay. I could also smell traces of formalin and other chemical smells from embalming. Perhaps not in fact, but in my mind, the scent of human decay overrode all the others.

In a cemetery where no one had disturbed the burials, this rank smell would not have been present, but the practice of opening coffins and moving bodies from coffins into graves where more than one body was placed, or reburying bodies without coffins, had obviously made the soil here subject to saturation with it.

Ethan walked us past a few graves, then suddenly looked around, as if confused.

Not hiding his disgust, Mitch said, “You never found anything in Maureen’s belongings, did you?”

“Not exactly,” Ethan admitted.

“You son of-” Ian said angrily, but Ethan held a hand up.

“Irene got it from Betty. Betty stole it from your desk at the farmhouse. You know what I’m talking about?”

Mitch’s eyes narrowed. “The locket. That bitch. I always wondered…but that doesn’t prove shit, does it?”

“Oh, together with what we found among Maureen’s papers, yes, I think it does. Which is why we had to find a safe place for it.”

“Where is it?” Mitch asked. “Where’d you put it?”

“I have to find the right vault,” Ethan said, looking around again. “I was afraid of this-they’ve done more digging. I need to find the tombstone of Alice Pelck.” He spelled the last name.

“Who’s Alice Pelck?”

“Hell if I know, I just used her tombstone as the marker. It’s one of the big ones with an angel looking down from it.” We looked across the cemetery and saw about fifty angels. He used his flashlight to make his way over to the nearest one. “No, that’s not her.”

“Don’t go ru

Ethan said to me, “They moved the excavator that was parked near here, and now I can’t find her. Do you remember where she is?”

“I thought she was over there,” I said, pointing to a nearby section, one that was crowded with equipment, old trees, and at least two dozen stone angels. They must have been all the rage at some point in Las Piernas’s history.