Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (31 page)

“Come on, Sammy, get his feet,” Casey says as he scoops his arms under Dusty Mike’s shoulders. “I’ll go first.”

So I hold the flashlight with my mouth, and we struggle him up the steps, one by one. And we’re about halfway up, turning a corner, when we hear someone barking, “Sammy! Sammy, where are you?”

“In here!” I shout past the flashlight. “Call an ambulance!”

Of course it comes out sounding like, “Wa-wa! Wa-wa-wawawa!” but the next thing you know Officer Borsch is in the crypt, helping Casey carry Dusty Mike.

“Is he alive?” Officer Borsch asks when we’re outside.

“Barely,” I tell him. “We need an ambulance.”

Officer Borsch has his weapons belt on over a button-down shirt and slacks. It looks ridiculous, but I’m just glad he’s able to snatch his radio off his belt and call for help.

“They’re on the way,” he says when he switches off. “They should be here fast.” He picks up Dusty Mike under the arms again and says, “Let’s get him down to the road.”

So Casey and Officer Borsch carry him while I shine the light and ask, “Did you arrest the other two?”

“The other two?”

“Yeah! Ted’s trapped in the grave and Courtney’s tied up in the office.”

“They’re
what
?”

“Didn’t Holly and Marissa explain?”

“They were talking a mile a minute and I couldn’t understand anything they were saying. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“So are other cops arresting them?”

“What other cops?”

“We called 911!”

“So why aren’t they here?”

“Don’t ask me. It’s
your
department!”

He shakes his head. “Sammy, I got your message and you sounded … scared. In all the wild messes you’ve gotten yourself into I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sound scared. So I just wanted to find you. I really have no idea what’s going on here.”

“Well, you might want to call for backup,” I tell him, “ ’cause we’ve got serial killers trapped in the graveyard.”

“You’ve got
what
?”

The ambulance is already coming through the gate, so I flash my light on and off at them to let them know where we are. “It’s a long story,” I tell him. Then I grin and say, “With lots of sidetracks.”

He gives a rare smile back, and in his face I see something soft. Almost sweet. “That’s all right,” he says, and I swear there’s a little catch in his voice. “I want to hear every word.”

Courtney was so glad to get the filthy sock out of her mouth that right away she started talking. She swore she hadn’t killed anybody or touched any of the bodies—that it had been all Ted and that he was forcing her to help him, threatening that if she didn’t she would lose her daughter.

The daughter she’d apparently snatched from her ex when she and Ted had fled from Wisconsin on embezzlement charges.

And when they hauled Ted out of the grave and over to a police car and he heard Courtney flapping her lips, he blew a fuse. “You backstabbing liar! You took half of everything!”

So they started screaming at each other, and it came out that they weren’t the killers—that they’d “taken delivery” on bodies and made them disappear.

At twenty thousand dollars a pop.

So Officer Borsch tried to find out who
had
been killing people, and that’s when the fighting stopped and they both demanded lawyers.

I knew sorting things out would take a long time, and at this point I was worried about two things: (a) whether
Dusty Mike was still alive and (b) how dead I was going to be when I got home.

We were
all
worried about being grounded for the rest of our lives, but somehow we each managed to sneak back home without being missed.

Even Marissa.

And the next day, instead of meeting Casey at the graveyard after school, I went to the hospital to visit Dusty Mike. I brought his hoe, and since he was sleeping I just sat next to him for a while, watching the heart monitor bleep.

I went back on Friday and found him awake. “Hi, Mike,” I said softly. “How are you feeling?”

He just nodded. “They told me what you did,” he said hoarsely. Then he opened his hand and tried to smile. “Thank you.”

His hand opening reminded me of being in the crypt.

Of the matches falling out.

Of the feeling that he was passing something over.

Not matches, not life … some sort of
gift
.

Something I still didn’t quite understand.

So I took his hand and smiled back and what came out of my mouth was, “Tell me about your parents. I want to know all about Landon and Anna Belle Poe.”

He gives me a very weak version of the dusty raven look, then says, “They were gentle. And kind. And they taught me to feel the spirits.”

And with a little prodding he told me all about how his dad had been a grave digger and his mom had kept house and watched after him, their only child. He talked about how his mom sang like an angel and how his dad could
whistle bird calls, and that the two of them would sing and whistle while they washed the dinner dishes together.

He also explained that he’d suspected for some time that something was wrong at the graveyard—and that he had a bad feeling about Ted. He told me how he’d been caught eavesdropping on Ted and Courtney discussing a payoff and how Ted had chased him down, taken his keys, and forced him into the crypt.

“Good thing I had matches for the candles, and the blanket I keep down there.” He closed his eyes. “I dreamed I died.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” I told him softly. “The graveyard needs you.”

He gave a small smile, but his eyes stayed closed so I left to let him get some sleep. But I came back later with Elyssa and Mrs. Keltner and just stood to the side as they talked. And when it was time to go, Mrs. Keltner invited him to come over for dinner when he was back on his feet and feeling better, and he said he’d like to.

Then on my way out I ran into Gordon and the Vampire in the hallway.

“Wait,” Gordon said, “don’t run off.”

I turned around. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry we cut through the graveyard on Halloween, I’m sorry we messed up your windshield wiper and dented your roof, I’m sorry we snooped through the funeral parlor and violated the dead guy’s privacy—we thought you were bad guys, okay? But we didn’t vandalize anything. We were just trying to figure out about the skulls, but it turns out you weren’t after them at all.”

“Skulls?” the Vampire says. “What skulls?”

I shake my head. “Never mind. The point is, we did some things we shouldn’t have, but nothing, you know, malicious.” Then I look right at Gordon and tell him, “But how could you have fired Mike? He knew something was going on at the graveyard—that’s why he was eavesdropping on Ted and Courtney. He’s worked there his whole life—his
dad
worked there
his
whole life—and you
fire
the guy?”

Gordon looks down. “I’m here to make that right.”

So I felt good about all of
that
, and then on Tuesday Officer Borsch tracked me down on my way home from school and told me that they’d brought in special equipment—infrared or X-ray or I don’t know what—that allowed them to see through the ground, past the coffin and the body that was
supposed
to be there, clear to the body hidden underneath.

“They’re there, Sammy. And I’m sure they’re the people we’ve been looking for. We’ll need to exhume the graves and recover the bodies, but first they’re examining all the graves that have been filled since those two started working there.” He eyes me as he sucks on a tooth, then says, “I also had them examine Ofelia Ortega’s grave.”

“You did?”

He grunts, which I know in Borsch-speak means yes.

“And?”

“And Ofelia Ortega’s bones are all laid neatly together except for the skull. It’s gone.”

I slap him across the arm. “See!”

“I know, I know—I shoulda listened.” He shakes his
head. “But come on, Sammy. Even after reading about it online, it’s still unbelievable.”

“Yeah, but they probably think it’s unbelievable that we pump people full of chemicals.”

We’re both quiet a minute, and then I ask, “So what are you going to do about it?”

He sighs. “I don’t know. He’s long gone by now. I called the Roggazini ranch to get some information on Ofelia Ortega, but the answers I got were pretty sketchy. My guess is she was an illegal who died suddenly. The Roggazinis probably didn’t know anything about her roots, greased some hands to get the paperwork through and avoid any legal hassles, and had her buried here.” He shrugs. “So where’s the actual crime? In this country it’s illegal to desecrate a body, but she shouldn’t have been buried here. She should have been returned home where apparently digging up your relatives’ skulls is something done out of respect and honor.” He takes a deep breath. “So what am I going to do? Nothing. I’ve got my hands full with this double-burial nonsense.”

“How are you doing on arresting the actual killer?”

He frowns. “The feds have taken over.”

“The feds?”

“Turns out we’re dealing with organized crime. Our three missing people seem to be part of a much bigger story.” He gives me a stern look and says, “Organized crime, Sammy.” He shakes his head. “Why did I think I could take a night off and go to dinner and a movie with Deb?”

I laugh. “Tell her I’m sorry!”

He frowns. “You have a way of messin’ up our dates, you know.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“In my wildest dreams,” he grumbles, but under all the gruff he’s smiling. Then he says, “One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Danny Urbanski’s hearing was yesterday.”

“And?”

“And that young man is fortunate he’s not three months older. If he was fifteen instead of fourteen, things would not have gone so easy for him. I can honestly say, though, that he’s showing remorse. I’ve never seen a grown boy do so much crying.”

“So what’s going to happen to him?”

“The court set him up with probation and community service, and his parents will be paying for Reverend Pritchard’s medical expenses.” He raises an eyebrow. “Reverend Pritchard also requested ‘a discourse about the Lord’ with him. Of course the courts couldn’t order that, but Danny’s parents have agreed.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. We’ll see how that goes.”

So after that the only thing that was still really
un
settled was Casey and me. Not
us
, but how to deal with his mom’s rules about us. We had been talking pay phone to pay phone at school, but other than that, I hadn’t seen him since the showdown at the Crypt Corral.

Grams totally stuck by her guns about it, too, but being a local news junkie, she did eventually piece together that
the “minors who unearthed the serial killer’s dumping ground” included Casey and me. I played everything
way
down, but it caused some sort of shift in her. I couldn’t tell what it was, exactly. At first I thought she was mad, or worried in hindsight, but I really couldn’t tell. She was just … quiet. I’d catch her staring at me as I was doing my homework, and when I’d ask her, “What?” she’d just shake her head and go back to reading her book or fixing dinner or whatever.

But then last night she picked up the phone and dialed a number like she was on a mission and nobody better get in her way. And when someone on the other end answered, she said, “Candi? … Yes, this is Rita Keyes, Samantha’s grandmother? I’d like to invite you and Heather and Casey to join Samantha and me on a picnic tomorrow.…”

I look at her with huge bug eyes and she gives me one of her prim old lady looks and puts a hand up like, Don’t mess with me!

“Mmm-hm,” she says after a short pause. “Well, I was hoping we could start over. Get to know each other a little bit.” There’s another short pause and then all of a sudden Grams pulls the phone away from her ear, so even
I
can hear Candi screeching on the other end. Then the line goes dead and Grams stares at the phone a second before hanging it up.

“That went well,” I tell her with a grin.

“The
language,
” Grams gasps, and slowly she goes from pale to flushed. “How dare she!”

“Welcome to my world,” I tell her.

She storms around the kitchen for a little while, then
pops a fist on her hip and says, “If you want to break her house rules, you go right ahead!”

“Thank you!” The next day was Saturday so I might have just had Billy relay a message to Casey to meet me for a picnic at Sassypants Station, but all of a sudden I get a flash of a different idea.

A
better
idea.

I want Grams to be there, too.

Her and Hudson and the zombies!

So I call Holly and tell her, and at the last minute I tell her to invite Meg and Vera, too. And then I call Marissa and tell her to bring Mikey, and I call Billy—because I’ve finally got his number—and tell him about the picnic and to get Casey to come.

And while I’m at it, I call Officer Borsch and tell him to bring Deb and Dusty Mike and Elyssa and Mrs. Keltner.

“At the graveyard?” he asks. “You want to picnic at the graveyard?”

“High noon tomorrow! Bring a blanket and a side dish. Be there!”