A Festival of Murder (22 page)

“I patched you up.”

The answer, spoken
somewhat pugnaciously, didn’t really tell Nicholas much since he wasn’t
bandaged and couldn’t see how he’d been cared for in any way. He decided to let
it go rather than raise more of the man’s ire. He was in enemy territory now.
Best not to provoke.

“Thank you,” he
mumbled. He stood up, wincing as he did so from the strain in his back
resulting from being crammed into the circular wicker frame of the papasan.
Another pain immediately made itself known. He reached up with a groan and
rubbed at the vicious throb in his head.

“Got yourself a
whiz-banger of a hangover, I’ll reckon.” Captain Sam’s grin was arguably
gleeful. “I could smell the stink off you when I hauled you in.”

At least he hadn’t
claimed to have held his hair back as he’d vomited, Nicholas thought sourly. “How
long—?”

“Been sleepin’ it
off for about five hours now. Sun came up thirty minutes ago.”

The thought of
being unconscious and at Captain Sam’s mercy for five hours was enough to gray
Nicholas’s hair. “You could have left me where I was.”

“Coulda. But you
prolly woulda froze to death. What were you doin’ shovelin’ at night like that?”

“My hand was
guided by the gods of inebriation.”

A couple of slow
blinks showed that Captain Sam didn’t comprehend the comment any better after
turning it over a few times in his mind.

“I was drunk,”
Nicholas said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Eggnog is my mortal enemy.”

“You went to the
Gingerbear.”

Something in
Captain Sam’s tone raised Nicholas’s head. “What of it?”

“Lots o’ bad
things connected to that place.”

“You mean Rocky
Johnson’s murder.”

He received a
noncommittal grunt in return as Captain Sam dug through the piles of
electronics on the desk.

“You have
something you want to share with me,” Nicholas reminded him. “Now is as good a
time as any.”

“I been thinkin’ ’bout
it.” Captain Sam’s beady eyes held a nonverbal “but.”

“What’s the hold
up?”

“Not sure where
your loyalties are lately, Trilby. I seen you runnin’ around town talkin’ to
ever’body, includin’ the one you want, and ain’t no one been picked up by the
police. That makes me nervous.”

Nicholas thought
furiously. If Captain Sam was to be believed, Nicholas had recently spoken with
the murderer. The list of people with whom he’d had contact was small: Kevin,
the twins, Phoebe, Dennis, Horace, and Charles. The women he felt safe in
eliminating from suspicion. That left the men. Kevin: he couldn’t imagine Kevin
hurting anyone deliberately much less committing murder. Horace seemed more
intent on preparing for an alien invasion than covering his tracks if he’d
committed the crime. Dennis had a motive, but Nicholas couldn’t picture the
scrawny man overpowering and hefting Rocky Johnson’s body to the lake. Which
left one option: sweet, cherubic Charles as the murderer.

“Nonsense,”
Nicholas declared, annoyed that Captain Sam had wasted his time. “I don’t
believe you know anything. You merely want the attention.”

Captain Sam
bristled like a cornered porcupine. “Why in the world would I want that?”

“Because I’m the
only one up here who’s had an encounter with aliens. You’re jealous.”

“Ain’t jealous,”
Captain Sam mumbled as he shuffled away from Nicholas. “Aliens ain’t comin’
back anyway.”

The muttered
remark nearly prompted Nicholas to stick a finger in his ear and wiggle it
about. “Did I hear you correctly?” He waved at the mounds of communication
equipment. “I thought your entire life is based on the belief that aliens use
Earth as their rest stop on the way to other planets?”

“If that’s true,
why haven’t I seen ’em?” Captain Sam snapped. His dirty henley-covered
shoulders slumped as he stared at the topographical map. “All these sightin’s. Yet
no photos. No video. Why can’t anyone record ’em? Why can’t I pick ’em up on my
radios? I send out a signal twenty-four hours, did you know that, Trilby? If
they’re out there, they should hear me. Heck, NORAD prolly hears me. The boys
down in Colorado Springs prolly hate my guts for sendin’ all my alien crap
through the airwaves.”

He chuckled,
regaining some of his passion. “Scientists sent out that message, you know? It
told the aliens what our bodies are like and what kind of noises we make and so
on. No response. But they’re doin’ it all wrong. Aliens don’t want information
they already have. They know we’re here. They know exactly what kind o’
critters we are and how we think. No, what they want is to be welcomed. They
want a chance to share their technology with us, their culture. And you blew
it.”

“We’ve already
established that I was the worst person they could have sucked through the roof
of their cabin. What’s done is done, Captain Sam. Space isn’t the concern now.
We need to band together and clean up the menace that’s down here in our very
own neighborhood. We need to catch this killer.”

To Nicholas’s
frustration, Captain Sam shrugged and pulled out an aluminum folding chair with
a fraying fabric seat. He placed it beside the desk and dropped his weight into
it before picking up the battered earphones and slipping them on over his head.
His shaggy hair swallowed the ear cups.

“Bad juju messing
around with this murder business,” he said as he adjusted some dials on one of
the radios. “Mind your own is what I’ve always said, but this here—it’s dragged
me in, kickin’ an’ screamin’.”

“Then share the
burden. Tell me what you know and leave it to me to do something about it.”

“I saw some weird
goings-on around the time Johnson got his. Maybe might be important to someone.
Maybe to that Detective Canberry. Maybe not.”

Had they been in
an alley in a major city, Nicholas would have dug into his wallet and held out
some bills since it sounded like a shakedown. But he sincerely doubted that was
Captain Sam’s intent. He just liked dangling the carrot in front of Nicholas’s
nose.

“Do you intend to
tell me or have we started a game of Twenty Questions while I wasn’t looking?”

Captain Sam
pretended not to hear him as he continued fiddling with the knobs. “I was out
checkin’ on my traps, same as last night.”

“I wasn’t aware
that you were a trapper.” Nicholas looked uneasily to the kitchenette, afraid
he would find half-skinned raccoons and chopped up coyotes.

“Of course I am.
What the hell do you think I been doin’ all these years?” Captain glared at
him.

That’s when
Nicholas got it. “You mean you’ve been trying to trap
aliens
?”

“What else would I
be trappin’? You think I eat squirrel McNuggets or somethin’?”

Since that was
exactly what Nicholas had been thinking, he blurted, “Of course not!”

Captain Sam
harrumphed. “We don’t know that the aliens only travel by spacecraft. Well, the
rest
of us don’t. You got anything to contribute?”

“I have absolutely
nothing to contribute,” Nicholas assured him.

Captain Sam turned
back to his radios. “It was three nights ago. Friday.”

“The night Rocky
Johnson was killed.”

“I have a string
of traps out along the timberline behind Main Street. I figure the lights and
electronic vibration comin’ outta there might be attractive to the aliens. Same
thing happens to rodents.”

“Sounds
reasonable.”

“That string is my
third string out. I’ve got two more out in the woods in select places.”

Such as behind
Nicholas’s property, apparently. He realized that the sound that had driven him
into a panic last night had been the rumble of Captain Sam’s ATV passing by,
not a spaceship.

“The other strings
were a bust, same as usual. I wasn’t in too good of a mood goin’ out to check
the third string on account of all the ruckus from the stupid tourists that are
up here now.” Captain Sam muttered beneath his breath for a few seconds;
Nicholas was glad he couldn’t make out a word. “I wasn’t paying too much
attention,” the grizzled man went on, “but I—”

He broke off
suddenly, one hand flying to the right ear cup on his ear, his left hand frozen
on the dial of one of the radios.

“What is it?”
Nicholas asked, his panic rising. “Do you hear something?”

“Shut your trap. I’m
listenin’!”

Nicholas moved
quickly to one of the trailer’s small, capsule-shaped windows and peered out
into the gloom. He couldn’t remember if he’d seen neon lights or any lights at
all the night he’d been abducted, but he figured the aliens would be reasonably
easy to spot. They traveled by spacecraft, which tended to be big and shiny.

He didn’t see
anything outside but swirling snow. The trees barely moved, burdened by too
much drift. He crept back hesitantly to Captain Sam, who was now twisting the
dial this way and that.

“Anything?”
Nicholas asked in a hushed voice.

“I said I’m
listenin’.”

Captain Sam curled
around the desk like an armadillo, his nose nearly touching a bramble of red and
blue wires. With a touch as deft as a safecracker’s, he fine-tuned the radio
dial.

Nicholas unzipped
his parka, realizing he was sweating beneath it. “I can’t go back,” he heard
himself whisper. Ashamed, he glanced at Captain Sam, but the other man was
engrossed by the sound coming over the radio.

Nicholas stared
hard at the window again and startled when he saw a figure on a snowmobile
passing between the trees. A longer look showed that it was a coyote, its lean,
dark figure trotting swiftly through the forest, heading away from the trailer.
He thought of Winchester and hoped the goofy animal had sense enough to keep to
Nicholas’s fenced yard.

“What’s the
closest you’ve come to making contact?” he asked while staring out the window.

A few seconds
passed, filled with the sound of heavy breathing. He was about to repeat the
question in a louder voice when Captain Sam spoke up.

“Back when I was
fourteen. When they took my lil’ brother Jonah.”

Startled, Nicholas
turned. Captain Sam remained intent on the radio, his eyes all but buried
beneath a hedge of dark brow.

“He’d stole my
mitt that day. I knew he was gonna. He’d been eyin’ it ever since I used my
chore money to buy it. I just knew he was gonna try for it. It was too much
temptation. And sure enough, ’bout two weeks after I got it, he did it. He
snatched it outta my room before lunch. Thought he was clever but I dug it out
from under his mattress not an hour later. He didn’t even get a chance to use
it. Our daddy gave him a good whippin’ for it. Rightly deserved,” he added in a
low murmur.

“That night he
wanted nothin’ to do with me. He went off playin’ on his own. He was prolly too
young for it but he was stubborn. He headed for the town dumps where he liked
to dig around, harass the stray dogs. He didn’t come back for dinner.” Captain
Sam turned a dial, his gaze distant. “Didn’t come back ever again.” His dark
eyes flicked up to Nicholas. “‘Cuz they took ’im.”

Nicholas’s gaze
drifted to the walls of the trailer. Plenty of cheap printouts of fuzzy alleged
UFO sightings, dozens of magazine and newspaper clippings taped haphazardly
everywhere. No photos of family. No evidence of a life outside of the hunt for
extraterrestrials. He understood now why Captain Sam had been touchy about the
question of whether he was an only child.

“He wanted to be a
pilot like our daddy,” Captain Sam said. “Most likely why they took ’im. He
woulda been dangerous to them. That’s why I’m a secret weapon. Aliens think
just because I was rejected by the military I ain’t no threat to ’em. But I got
lots of motivation to find ’em. And I will. I promise you that, Trilby.”

Nicholas regretted
more than ever that he had been the one to make contact with the aliens first.
Every person who had come up to Hightop since had deserved it—or at least
desperately desired it—more than he did.

He cleared his
throat. “Any luck with the transmission?”

Captain Sam’s
broad shoulders twitched. “Just chatter or something from kids at CU.” He
dragged the headphones off his head and tossed them back onto the pile of
electronics. He looked abruptly old, perhaps mid- to late sixties. Nicholas
sincerely hoped he was younger than that.

He said, “Why don’t
you finish recounting what happened when you checked your traps.”

Captain Sam leaned
back on the back legs of his chair, making it whine piteously.

“I checked my
string of traps behind the Gingerbear the night of the opening party. Heard
some voices so I didn’t stick around.” His eyes glittered. “There was two
people behind the inn that night. One of ’em was Johnson.”

Nicholas hardly
dared breathe. “And who was the other?”

“I couldn’t finger
’em for certain. It was snowin’ and all, not to mention darker’n a mole’s shadow.
I only knew one of ’em was Johnson ’cuz one time he moved into the light comin’
out of the windows and I recognized his fancy yella jacket. Looked like he was
arguin’ with someone who was about his size. Maybe bigger. They was at the tree
line behind the inn.”