Good Lord, Deliver Us (25 page)

Z now had the boy propped up against an open
space in the wall.

Next, Z had brought over the lantern and the
tubby teenager's khaki knapsack, Z going through the boy's pack to
see what he could learn. Found the most interesting things inside:
like a number of sharpened wood stakes. Stakes? Stakes didn't go
with ghosts, they "fit" vampires .....

A silly thought.

Z also discovered a ball of twine in the
bag, a directional compass, hammer, blank notebook, a foot-long
ruler, and a cloth tape measure. Another pouch in the "old kit bag"
contained a small garden trowel, an icepick, and a putty knife.

After pawing through the boy's gear, Z had
collected the small paintbrush from where the kid had dropped it
near the trench, adding that to the carryall's collection of
seemingly unrelated components.

No doubt a common purpose
required these items, Z having to wait until the boy woke up to
discover what it was. (Thinking about the diverse articles Z
carried in
his
case, Z wondered what unifying principle someone would make
of
them
.)

Z had also gone through the kid's billfold
first thing; to learn some facts about him that Z could check
against the young man's story.

Just a baby. Nineteen. Fat. Soft. No threat
to anyone except people peddling diet books.

Chubby cheeks groaned again, eyelids
fluttering.

In one way, Z wished the
boy would wake up so Z could get on with it -- at the same time
dreading the completion of
this
part of the puzzle; for, make no mistake about
it, talking to the kid would produce nothing more than the final
piece in the puzzle's "border." What followed would be working with
the jigsaw's messy middle.

The boy's eyes opened, eyes that were
surprisingly red in the lantern light. (The pupils, not the
whites.) Fearful eyes that showed the disorientation of the
recently "blackjacked." It didn't matter if you'd been sapped, had
emerged from a drug overdose, were sobering up following an
alcoholic bender, or coming out from under anesthesia, it wasn't
fun waking up unable to remember who you were.

"What .....?"

"What's your name, son?"

"I ...." The kid needed
time to think, there being
no
easy answers after a rap on the head.

Brightening suddenly, the boy dredged up a
name. "Cliff Marlatt."

Bingo. That squared with the teenager's
driver's license.

"Clifford, you're where you're not supposed
to be," Z whispered, his voice truly shot after all that "Jamie
persuasion."

The kid looked around. Seemed to recognize
his surroundings. "I ... know."

"Why?"

"I ....."

Glancing about wildly, the boy was now awake
enough to be frightened -- as anyone with any brains would be. If
you can't be scared when an ugly mountain of meat is staring down
at you from the stratosphere, you're a hard case. "I wouldn't say
you were in difficulty -- yet. But I got to know why you're
here."

"I didn't mean to cause trouble," the boy
said, looking up at Z, trying to focus on Z's face. "I thought the
house was deserted. Going to be torn down."

An OK kid, was Z's early assessment, bearing
up as well as could be expected. "Right. But the neighbors reported
seeing a light."

"Oh. I guess I didn't think about that, all
the houses already torn down around here and all."

"I was sent to find out."

"You're from the college?" Like the rest of
him, the boy's face was pudgy, his features not improved by limp
blond hair, dark red eyes, faded-to-non-existent brows, and pasty
skin. In a dress, he could pass for a fat girl with a fix on face
powder.

The boy's question about the college was the
tip-off -- that, plus his college "uniform" of jeans and light
blue, short-sleeved shirt, to say nothing of having a college
cafeteria meal card in his wallet, a stub from a football game, and
a student I.D. good for cut-rate tickets at the movies. He was a
college boy from Bateman.

"Campus security."

"Oh." The boy touched his head. Winced. "I
heard ... fireworks ...?"

"Thinking you were dangerous, I had to pop
you. You saw stars."

"Yeah." That satisfied him.

"So what are you doing here?" Z prodded.

"An archaeology project."

If Z remembered right, archaeology had to do
with digging up Egyptian mummies.

"Tell me about it."

Squatting down, bracing
himself with his hands, Z sat back in the dirt, his stiff leg out
in front of him. It was time to appear as friendly as big-and-ugly
would allow. When questioning the innocent, first try
playing
good
cop.
The Zapolska code. If
that
failed, you could always switch to
....

"There's a dig this August in Arizona." The
boy was settling down; smart kid that he was, had figured that if Z
was going to kill him, he'd have done it by now. "Professor Quint's
co-leader. And, as usual, there's not much money, so only a few of
his students get to go. It's like a competition to see who
goes."

"They got mummies in Arizona?" It was
Clifford's turn to look puzzled. "That's what archaeologists do,
isn't it? Dig up mummies?"

The boy nodded that he'd understood.
"Partly. But a whole lot more. Archaeology is the study of ancient
cultures. Artifacts. People. In the Arizona dig, Professor Quint's
on the trail of the Anasazi."

"So, what's that got to do with here?"

"Oh. Well, I knew the school owned these
houses. That the whole area was going to be soccer fields. And that
would ruin it for a dig. So I went ... on an expedition of my own.
Found this house was empty. Found the back doors to the basement
open."

"What about the lock?"

"What?"

"The combination lock?"

"
I
put that on. So no one else with
the same idea could get in."

Nodding solemnly, the boy reached up with
predictably fat fingers to touch the swelling over his right ear.
Winced. Made a face. "I used the lock from my gym locker."

Figured.

"So last week, just before the first round
of exams, I came back. I didn't have time to do anything then, but
that was when I brought the padlock with me." Z nodded
encouragement. Though it was taking awhile, he was getting the
story bit by bit. "I also brought a probe."

"Probe?"

"A sharp, iron pole. Thin. Like a seven-foot
long nail." Z nodded as if he understood. "I got down here and
began probing, to see if I would hit anything solid under the dirt.
Like maybe someone tossed out an old jar that got buried. Or, maybe
there'd be the ruins of an older house under this one.

"That's all I had with me, the probe.
Because I couldn't do anything else since I had to study for the
first round of summer exams." The boy took a deep breath. "And I
found ... places, like broken foundations. Except, located
differently than I expected. Not in a continuous line, like a
foundation of concrete. Just long places. Here and there. But
definitely something."

"Go on."

"Then I had to study for exams. Tonight was
the first time I could come back." He seemed, suddenly, to have run
dry.

"In your pack?"

"Everything I needed for the dig." When he
saw Z didn't follow him, he explained. "The string and stakes are
for laying out a grid. Like graph paper, so anything you find can
be charted. Just where and at what depth it was found. The trouble
with archaeology is, it's the only science that destroys the
evidence as you find it. So you only have one chance to get it
right. That's why you keep such exact records. The compass tells
you direction."

"The brush?"

"When you think you're close to something,
you use delicate tools. Sometimes, a soft brush to remove dirt
around an artifact. Even a tiny pick."

"And all this leads .....?"

"I was going to write a paper on what I
found. Lay out how I'd planned the dig. The records I'd kept. Show
that I knew my business as an archaeologist. I hoped my paper would
impress Professor Quint so he'd recommend me for the Arizona dig in
August. I thought, since this place is going to be torn down anyway
....." He shrugged, the motion hurting his head.

Maybe this made sense and maybe it didn't.
Still, to dig for something in an old basement? "Do archaeologists
actually dig in basements?"

"Urban archaeologists do
it all the time. But that's not the point. I really didn't expect
to find anything down here, not anything important. I did think I
might find more than if I just dug outside somewhere. Maybe
something someone living in the house dropped. Or threw away. That
then got buried. Like an old coffee can. An early toothbrush,
maybe. You need to find
something
so you can show you know how to record
discoveries."

It could also be that the
kid was digging in a basement so no one would see him, just
in
case
what he
was doing wasn't all that legal. "No harm done," Z said.
"Yet."

Z meant exactly that --
"No harm done.
Yet
." It was just that Z didn't know how to keep the boy away
from here before damage
was
done. Damage to the boy.

The problem for Z was to find a way to make
the kid clear out of here without telling him the truth.
........

All Z could do was try. Might work. Might
not. "This house has been condemned. If you got hurt here, the
college, not the college's insurance, would be liable."

"I see."

"So you must leave immediately and not come
back. You would be arrested."

The threat of arrest didn't have the impact
Z thought it should. Maybe, if he tried ..... "Expelled."

That did it, the boy turning even whiter
than normal, the kid wanting nothing so much as to shine
academically. While he might risk arrest, he'd do anything to keep
from getting kicked out of college before the August project. Z had
guessed right (modesty making him admit it was easy to do). It
didn't take much in the brains department to figure out that
Archaeology was Cliffy's life.

"You won't tell .....?" Z shut him off with
a shake of his head. "I'm out of here!" A teenager's solemn pledge.
"And you don't have to worry; I won't be back."

"Good."

Moving as quickly as a thundering head would
allow, the boy packed up his stuff and took a hike, remembering at
the top of the concrete stairs to pick up his padlock. "Thanks!"
the kid called back before slamming shut the overlapping doors. And
was gone, never to be seen again. Not in these parts, anyhow.

As for thanks, the boy had no idea how
grateful he ought to be. No way a nice kid like that should get
tangled up with the nastiness to follow. The kid was studying to be
an archaeologist, Z now understanding archeology to be the
understanding of all kinds of long dead things.

No way a college kid
wanted to get tied to the
recently
dead past .........

The kid gone for good, it was time for Z to
........

Upstairs, Jamie was still thumping around,
still boxing things up, Z longing to join her now that he'd sent
the kid packing. And would ... after he'd gotten up the courage to
confirm what he knew he'd find a little lower in the boy's hole.
Knew what was there because, as Z stepped into the cellar to rush
the kid, the meaning of the basement's stronger smell had finally
clicked in.

A certainty that caused a reluctant Z to
pick up the old shovel and continue the boy's dig, Z finally
striking what the boy's probe had discovered to be there, the
"solid" something buried underground. One of ... many ... long,
solid somethings the probe had indicated were beneath the cellar
floor. Long, solid somethings that would have smelled worse if the
dryness of the dirt hadn't absorbed the ... liquid ......

Longing for the kid's brush, having to use
the big, blunt shovel instead, Z began to scrape as gently as
possible with such an inappropriate tool, until he'd cleaned away
the remaining dirt to get a clear look at what he'd struck.

It was Z's misfortune that the first thing
his shovel hit was the head. A ghastly gray and slimy head -- with
a severed penis in its mouth!

* * * * *

Getting maybe an hour's sleep, waking up
with the sweaty impression he'd been having nightmares (glad he
couldn't remember what they were,) Z holed up in his house for the
rest of Tuesday morning. (Seeing man's handiwork had killed what
small desire he had to mingle with the human race.)

After Z had chased off the
boy last night and covered up the ... head ... he'd used the flat
of the shovel and a piece of cardboard to dust out his and the
boy's tracks, going on to smudge any prints on the cellar's digging
tools. These precautions completed, he'd gone upstairs -- arriving
in time to do
some
of the heavy lifting; mostly, carrying boxes to finish
loading the truck.

The eastern horizon a bloody red by the time
he and Jamie were ready to leave for good (the sun unable, once
again, to keep from starting another depressing day.)

Jamie had kissed him as they stood in the
empty street in front of the empty house in the empty neighborhood.
Kissed him in her usually deep way, apparently unconcerned that he
was still a frog.

The question was, what to say to Jamie,
particularly since Detective Addison's prediction was about to come
true. That when Z took an interest in a case, all hell broke
loose.