Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(51)

“It must have been tough on your mother, not having any children!” she brayed at his retreating back, shaking the twenty at him like a badge of shame.





35



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

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

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

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 At Pine Ridge, where he had grown up, that practice had been replaced by scattering a person’s ashes at some high point, like a mountaintop or butte, so they’d be closer to heaven.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

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

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

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

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

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

“What was he singing?”

“Um, some Stones song.”

“Stones?”

“‘Sympathy for the Devil.’”

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

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

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

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

“How far away?”

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

“What kind of a beating, exactly?”

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

“What direction did the sound come from?”

“Overhead.”

Something about the simplicity of this answer chilled Coldmoon.

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

Manning nodded.

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

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

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

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

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