Last Ghost at Gettysburg (22 page)

Warren blinked in surprise. “You
know
about this? How?”

“Well,” she said proudly, “as Mr. Elway’s top
employee, I’m in on most important matters to the business.”

“Really.”

“Oh yeah, plus, I found out some key
information for him regarding the ghost rider.”

“And how did you stumble upon this, Tiffany?”
he said kindly, tipping his hat back and smiling broadly.

“Well, I guess it’s okay to tell you, being
the police chief and all, ‘cause I know you guys are pretty
tight.”

“We are?”

She nodded. “According to Mr. Elway. Besides,
he told me he’s helping with the investigation.”

“Oh yeah, no question,” said Warren.
What
a self-important moron!

“So, I found out all this information from
this kid T.J. Jackson, Mike Darcy’s nephew. You know, the ranger.
Oh, and his sidekick, this dorky guy, Boatnacker or something.”

“They told you all this?”

“Well, uh, I kind of eavesdropped on them,
actually. But you guys do that, right?”

“Pardon?”

“You know, wire taps, surveillance and
such?”

“Well, yes, that’s correct, I suppose.
Tiffany, you could be a real help to this investigation if you’d
share with me what you told Mr. Elway.”

So she did.

* * * *

On his lunch break Mike Darcy hopped in his
truck and took the short ride to the park maintenance office where
he found Frank Staltaro helping one of his mechanics wrestle a lug
nut off a tractor tire.

“Coach Darcy!” he said, quickly wiping his
grimy hands on a shop rag. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

They shook hands and Mike said, “Got a
minute?”

“For you? I got all the time you need. Come
into the office where there’s some air-conditioning.” Darcy
followed the stocky, barrel-chested sixtyish boss into his office,
which was cluttered with work orders and maps.

“Sorry about the mess,” apologized Frank. “We
never have a dull moment except maybe in the dead of winter.”

“How’s Pat doing?” asked Mike.

“I gotta tell you, Coach,” said Staltaro, “I
had my doubts about him making it in college, especially juggling
football and the books. But he lettered all four years and got his
diploma on time! Married a nice girl he met up there and he’s
working for a marketing firm in Jersey City. And you had a lot to
do with getting him into Rutgers. So, what do you need? Name
it.”

“Okay, Frank. But what we say here has to
stay here.”

“Done.”

“Alright. When you guys are re-setting walls
or clearing land, do you ever find remains?”

“Well, more artifacts than remains. Bullets,
shrapnel, even a live shell every so often, which just ends up in
the Visitor Center Museum. But, yes, we have turned up bones. See,
there were a lot of soldiers who just got dumped into mass graves
in the days after the battle. You can’t believe what a mess this
place was, and the stench that hung over the whole area.

“They tried to leave markers, thinking the
bodies would be dug up and transferred later on, which most of them
were. But some were missed. It’s amazing that all these years
later, we’re still finding bones.”

“What happens to them?”

“Well, we call in the National Park Service
archeologists after we’ve discreetly sealed off the area and,
unless there’s any ID, which is almost never, the bones are quietly
interred in the cemetery.”

“Find any recently?”

“How recently?”

“Let’s say, early May?”

Staltaro pondered a moment, holding Darcy’s
icy stare, probably conflicted. “Yeah, Coach,” he said finally.
“Near the Emmitsburg Road we were doing some roadwork to reset a
drainpipe when we found a skeleton which they later determined was
a male in his thirties who died of a gunshot wound in the back.
There was a huge fracture in the spinal column or something. I
don’t know how they can tell all that so many years later, but
that’s what they came up with.”

“Could they determine if it was Union or
Confederate?”

“Nope. Big guy, though, for that time anyway.
Six-one or six-two.”

“Huh. Where’d they rebury him?”

“That’s just it. They didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Once the forensic archaeologists were done,
see, they put the remains in a box. The next day they go open the
box and—poof! Gone.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. They questioned everybody involved,
but all they got is an empty box. Say, I been hearing there’s some
monkey business going on in the park after dark. This got anything
to do with that?”

“I doubt it. I was just curious, you know. I
lead all these tours around the battlefield and I’ve often wondered
if there were any bodies they just... missed.”

“Well, Coach, I’m here to tell ya that
they’ll still be finding stuff here and there long after you n’ me
are gone. There were
thousands
of men unaccounted for at the
end of the battle. True, some just got blown to bits, but others
ended up in hastily dug graves or pits. Tell your lovely wife not
to dig too deep when she’s gardening. You never know!”

“Thanks, Frank, you’ve been a help,” Mike
said, rising.

“Anytime, Coach. My door’s always open,”
answered Staltaro as the two men shook hands.

* * * *

With Tiffany’s inside information dancing in
his head, Al Warren drove back to the station where he found two of
his officers lounging by the dispatcher’s desk, needling Rudy
Herzog, who had been placed there indefinitely until his nerves
settled down. Upon seeing the Chief the patrolmen vanished in a
hurry, leaving Herzog to his duties.

“Those guys giving you a hard time, Rudy?”
Warren asked gently, removing his Smokey hat.

“Not that bad, Chief,” he answered with a
reddening face. “It’s just that I seem to be in the wrong place
every time this cavalry character shows up or does something. Bad
karma, maybe. I really need to get off this desk, though. I’m going
crazy here.”

“Okay, I read you. Why don’t we return you to
active patrols day after tomorrow?”

“That’d be great.”

Warren sat on the edge of the desk. “Rudy,
you’re one of the best guys I have, maybe the best. But you’ve seen
a lot these past few weeks that would test anybody. I just want you
to know that you can talk to me anytime if it gets to you. There’s
no need for you to feel embarrassed if you feel overwhelmed.”

“It’s just tough, Chief,” complained Rudy. “I
mean, I come from this town and people know me, and I don’t want
them looking at me funny.”

“I understand,” said Warren. Then he paused.
“Rudy,” he began, “you went to the high school, right? I recall you
were a pretty good athlete.”

“Yeah. I lettered in football and wrestling
all four years.”

“Really? What position in football?”

“Safety. I was all-conference my senior
year.”

“So you played for Mike Darcy?”

A brief look of consternation passed over
Herzog’s face, and then it was gone. “Yeah, sure. He was our
defensive coordinator.”

“You two still close?”

“We talk.”

“Uh-huh. Well, Darcy’s a good ranger, from
what I’m told. Just remember, though, if you need to discuss
departmental matters with anyone, don’t hesitate to come to
me.”

“I won’t, Chief,” said Herzog, though the
look on his face made Al wonder if he’d spilled something to Mike
Darcy already.

* * * *

That night over a magnificent meatloaf
wrapped in bacon and accompanied by mashed potatoes and peas, the
Darcy clan compared the notes of the day, Aunt Terri listening
intently as she replenished empty plates.

“So,” said T.J., “there is a chance that it
was Hilliard’s remains that were accidently unearthed just before
he materialized.”

“Seems that way,” said Mike, sopping up some
brown gravy with a homemade biscuit.

“What’s weird,” mused Bortnicker, the light
glinting off his glasses, “is that here we had this guy who was
thought to be some kind of hell-bent swashbuckler in battle, but
they were left wondering if he deserted. Then you get this corpse
whose cause of death was a gunshot to the back. If you’re leading a
charge you don’t get shot in the
back
.”

“I’m sorry,” chimed in LouAnne, “but there’s
no way of getting around it. We have to go find Hilliard again. Or
rather, if you remember, he said he’d find
us
. I’m thinking
Pitzer’s Woods might be too close to civilization. Remember, we
almost got caught by that police car.”

“What do you have in mind, then?” asked
Mike.

“Daddy, how about this? You drop us near an
entrance behind Little Round Top and we make our way to Devil’s
Den, where Hilliard found Mike Weinstein. It’s secluded and if
we’re inside those rocks we could probably spend a good long time
with him and get to the bottom of this.”

Mike Darcy marveled at the chutzpah of his
daughter. “And where am I going to be while he’s maybe blowing your
heads off? Having a drink at the Battle Flag Tavern?”

“No, Daddy. Listen, I’ll have my cell phone,
and you could be there in a flash if there’s a problem. I’m sure
you know an out-of-the-way place near that park entrance where you
can hang out in the truck.”

“And when will this happen?”

“I’m off again tomorrow night,” she said
decisively. “What do you guys think?”

“Sounds good to me,” said T.J.

“Same here,” agreed Bortnicker.

“I think you’ve all gone mad,” was Terri’s
take.

“It’s settled then,” said LouAnne, brushing
back a wisp of blonde hair from her eyes and smiling sweetly. “Hey,
why don’t you two join me tonight in town? Then we can all walk
home together.”

Mike raised his hand in protest. “LouAnne
–”

“Daddy,” she said, cutting him off, “I swear
we’ll come straight home, right through town. No side trips.”

“Promise?”

“Daddy,” she said with a mock pout, “have I
ever lied to you?”

* * * *

After dropping the kids off at the Charney
House Mike drove around for a while, first scouting out areas where
he could lay low and fly to the rescue if they got in trouble. He
couldn’t believe he’d let them talk him into such an audacious
plan. Even more incredible was the fact that Terri was going along
with all this.

As he wove his way through the downtown area,
he realized that Gettysburg was taking on its yearly lead-up to
Reenactment feel. Excitement was in the air, from the tourists to
the shopkeepers. The town’s economy hinged on a successful summer
season, and Reenactment Week was its pinnacle.

Unbeknownst to the teens, he’d already agreed
to join his friends in uniform for their 2010 Reenactment. He knew
Matty and the others were always thrilled to have him along, though
Bruce Morrison only gave tacit approval. But what else could he
say? One of his own rangers was proudly displaying his love of
history over and above his daily workload.

Suddenly Mike’s truck jerked to a halt as a
ghost tour group jaywalked in his path. He realized he’d been so
lost in thought that he hardly noticed the hordes of pedestrians on
the streets. The only thing close was when he and a bunch of his
friends drove up to Cooperstown for the Hall of Fame induction of
the Phillies’ Mike Schmidt a few years back. Talk about a small
town bursting at the seams! There was not a motel room, table at a
restaurant or parking space to be had. They’d ended up driving home
the same day, getting in well after midnight. The difference was,
of course, that there was no huge battle reenactment involved in
the day’s festivities, just a sedate, if crowded, ceremony near the
Hall of Fame.

Reenactment Week, though it was only four
days, would feature a daily schedule of events from roughly 8:30
A.M. to as late as 8:00 P.M. There would be lectures, displays,
seminars and weapons demonstrations, hour after hour. The highlight
of each day, however, would be the “battle.” His unit would be
taking part in two of them, Saturday the Third’s
“Wheatfield-Harvest of Death” and the Fourth of July’s “Pickett’s
Charge” which was scheduled for 3:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. He fully
expected that it would be blazing hot and hoped it wouldn’t rain,
which would seriously screw things up, both for the reenactors who
waited all year for this event and the thousands of spectators who
would pay a pretty penny for the opportunity to sit or stand in the
broiling summer sun and watch the men in blue and gray recreate the
desperate and pivotal moments that changed the course of the Civil
War.

The 72
^nd
Pennsylvania regiment had
its own commander and officer. Mike and his buddies were common
infantrymen and preferred it that way. The officers, they felt,
sometimes got too much into character and became overly bossy, and
the guys were not especially pleased with some CPA by day ordering
them around to the point where it ruined the rush they got from
just participating in the spectacle. Mike likened it to covering
kickoffs back in his football days, but he’d gotten a little tired
of having to “stay in character” the whole time and rough it in the
tented camps. His daughter was right. He was kind of a wussy
reenactor when you came right down to it.

Anyway, Reenactment Week was bearing down on
them, and this whole ghost mess just added to his anxiety. He again
hoped he was doing the right thing with the kids.

After stopping off to pick up a pint of
Terri’s favorite black cherry ice cream, he slowly navigated back
to Seminary Ridge. It was dark now and the evening fireflies had
been extinguished. There was the smell of rain in the air, and he
noted he might have to pick up the kids anyway at the Inn. His poor
daughter would be exhausted, but at least she had her buddies to
keep her spirits up.

Mike was parking the truck in the driveway
when he saw the outline of a figure sitting on the porch swing in
the shadows. The light over his front door was out, or had it been
unscrewed? Never one to flinch, Darcy approached the porch
calmly.