Buried Dreams (36 page)

The cruiser came close, my left foot was firm on the brake pedal, and ---

Like I said. The cop had two choices. The lane behind me, or the lane next to me, which meant a left-hand turn to the uptown section of Tyler. He took that lane and came to a full and complete stop next to me. Hendricks said, "Keep your eyes straight, Cole."

And I was thinking of what I could say, what I could do, when the light turned green and the Tyler police cruiser made a left. Hendricks laughed as I slowly made the right turn. "I guess this just isn't your day."

"Yeah," I said. "I guess so."

In the space of the next three minutes, we passed through another traffic light, made a left-hand turn by the same church where the services were held for Jon Ericson, all those days ago, and my memory came back as I made another series of turns, and came up on Meetinghouse Green. There. The Tyler town museum, lights off and quiet.

"Pull in the back," she said. "I don't want anybody to see us."

I turned in and drove around to the back. There were three windows in the painted green clapboards, a rear door leading inside, and two trash barrels. I pulled up and put the Explorer in park.

"Kill the engine," she said, "and the lights."

I did just that, and with the heater off, I quickly started getting cold again. Hendricks looked around us. Trees and high shrubbery hid us from most of the surroundings, and a utility pole at the other end of the small parking lot offered some illumination.

"This place have an alarm system?"

"Nope."

"You sure?" she asked.

"Christ, yes," I snapped. "The place pretty much is run on donations and volunteer help. Damn place will probably be shut down because you killed the best guy they had to run the place."

"When I sell the movie rights to my book," she said, and her voice sounded quite serious, "then I'll make an endowment or some damn thing. Time to get out. You first."

I undid the seat belt and opened the door, and I was able to get my injured leg outside without passing out. I leaned against the front left fender and Hendricks came around to me, pistol still in her hand. I thought the damn thing was so heavy she'd holster it or something, but she must have been operating on some crazed energy this evening.

"Let's go," she said. "Rear door."

I walked to the door, Hendricks behind me, and I tried the doorknob. Locked, of course.

"Key?" she asked.

"Not a clue."

"Hold on. Keep looking ahead. Don't move."

I kept still, my mind still racing, evaluating, thinking. What could I do once we got inside the building? Where could I hide? How could I get help?

She came up behind me, thrust a rock in my hand. "Break one of the windowpanes, and make it snappy. I want to get in there, and now."

I took the rock and, without hesitating, rapped it sharply against one of the lower windowpanes. The window snapped quickly and I reached in and undid the deadbolt and the lock. Without seeing if she wanted me to do it, I opened the door and stepped in, and Hendricks was behind me once again. Her breathing quickened, and I wondered if it was excitement, or nervousness, or both. Our feet crunched on the broken glass as we entered the museum.

She shut the door and said, "What's the layout?"

"Office and storage to the left. Display cases in the main room. That's about it."

"We'll start with the office."

She pushed me ahead, and I went into the small office --- about the size of a large closet --- and she seemed to like the fact that there were no windows. We went in and she closed the door behind me and turned on a desk lamp. "Stand in the comer," she said. "And be still."

I leaned back against the door as she went through the drawers of the desk, and it was like she was talking to herself. "Four coins. Three statuettes. A grinding wheel. And an axhead. Small enough to hide but not too small to hide that well. Damn it, where did you put it?"

All of the desk drawers were opened and closed. There was a closet that she rummaged through, going through cardboard boxes and brown shopping bags. Nothing. My leg throbbed and my head hurt and my hands and feet were cold, and I was still thinking hard, still looking ahead.

She turned to me. "Nothing."

"Not my fault."

"Of course. Exhibit area next. Get a move on."

I opened the door and she turned off the light, and we made the short walk to the exhibit area. The shades were open and there was light coming in from the utility pole out by the parking lot, and Hendricks walked over --- still limping, and that's when I wished I had severed an artery in her damn leg --- and fussed with the shades, and then closed them. On the walls were framed proclamations, old prints, and a couple of Civil War swords. Then she switched on one bank of lights, and the glass cases and the framed works on the walls came into sharper view. There was still that musty odor of old things brought into the present, and Hendricks went around and said to me, "There's no place for them to be."

"Excuse me?"

She raised up the pistol. "This was a damn waste of time, you fool. There's nothing here."

I closed my eyes and actually laughed, which I think angered her severely. I laughed and laughed and she said, "Damn you, what's so funny?"

"You," I said. "You haven't even looked yet. And for a college professor, you know crap about hiding things. You forget your Poe."

"My what?"

"Your Edgar Allan Poe. 'The Case of the Purloined Letter.' How best to hide something?"

"You... oh. Oh, my."

And she went up and down the glass cases, like a dog sniffing for a hidden treat, and then she gasped and held a hand to her face. "Oh, there they are. Just like that fool said. Right here. Oh, look at that, will you."

Hendricks looked over at me. "Here they are. In a display case for Native American artifacts. Like he was making one last joke. Hunh. I guess the laugh is on him again, right?"

I said nothing.

She raised her pistol. "Well, time to use this again."

Chapter Twenty-One

She turned the pistol around in her hand, and brought the base of the grip down on the glass case. The case shuddered. She brought the pistol up again, and down again, harder, and the glass top shattered.

I said, "Is that the approved way of excavating a site? Breaking your way through?"

She peered into the display case. "Why? Were you hiding a key or something?"

"No, I wasn't."

Hendricks reached in with her free hand and then said, "Ouch!" and drew her hand out. "Cut myself on the glass. Damn it!"

She shook her hand and said, "Come on. Make yourself useful. Get over here and get this stuff out of the case."

I looked around me, at the paltry little collection of display cases, of the history that they were preserving for the future, and I thought I was in the presence of an ancient Goth or Vandal, working her way through the streets of Rome, shattering and destroying anything she didn't want or need. I limped over and she backed away, pistol still in my direction, and then I had my first glance at what Jon had been fighting to find, all these years, and which caused his death and so much heartache.

Among the broken glass and a leather belt with beadwork and a collection of stone arrowheads and some pottery shards were four coins, lined right up in a neat row. Behind the coins were three little statues, maybe three or four inches tall, carved from stone and showing faces that were bearded and definitely not Indian. To one side of the statuettes was a round stone that I remembered was used as a grinding stone, and to the other side was a rusty triangle of metal. Despite all that had gone on and what was about to go on, I felt so proud of Jon. Good job, my friend, I thought. You really did it. Good job.

"Stop wasting my time," she said. "Get in there and get them out." I gingerly reached into the top of the broken display case, picked up each metal coin and laid them down on an adjacent glass case with its top still unbroken. Hendricks looked down and examined each one of them with a close eye, looking through her glasses. "Hmmm. Without a doubt. Norse coins, at least a thousand years old."

Next came each little statue, which I stood up next to the coins.

Hendricks tone softened a bit, as she said, "See these statues? Probably a religious Significance. Perhaps a saint, perhaps an old god, like Odin or Thor. The Norse at that time were Christian, but they still held on to their old beliefs, their old rituals. The church at the time just grafted on their own set of beliefs onto the old ones."

"What are you going to do with this?"

"Do? Young man, I intend to take them home and take a blowtorch to the coins, break up the statues, and drop the grinding stone and axhead in the middle of the ocean. Do you think I'm going to allow these... these pieces of pollution to ruin everything?"

"Some professor," I said. "Joining the ranks of the fools who burned down the library at Alexandria, blew up the Parthenon, and destroyed those statues of Buddha because they were an affront to Islam."

"Yes," she said sharply in return. "Some professor, ensuring that the right history gets noticed, the correct history gets the attention it deserves. Now, come along. You're almost done."

Sure, I thought. Almost done.

I reached in with both hands and winced as I scraped one wrist against a piece of broken glass, and then picked up the grinding stone. It was heavy and I let it drop some on the top of the glass case. The vibration caused the three statues to topple over, Hendricks looking at them for a moment, and that's when I went back into the case, grabbed the axhead and took it out and slammed it against her face.

I think I broke her nose. I wasn't sure.

But I was sure as she howled and fell back that I broke her glasses.

And I wasn't going to stick around to find out any more than that. I dropped to the floor and rolled under the display cases, coming up against the near wall. Hendricks whipped around, looked for me, just as I crawled along the base of the wall, gritting my teeth against the pain in my left leg, and I reached up and switched off the lights.

And waited. Breathing in the darkness, trying to keep my mouth up against a coat sleeve, to muffle the noise.

"Cole? You little piece of nothing. I'm going to put a whole clip into you. Just you wait."

No glasses, I thought. She has no glasses. And she told me before she had bad eyesight. I moved again and there was an ear-splitting bang as she shot at the wall, about five feet away from me. Voices inside of me were screaming to get up and make a run for it, and I told those voices to shut up. I had two choices. Front door or rear door. Which way?

"Cole... damn it, you broke my nose. Shit! It's bleeding. If you think you're getting away... "

Back door was open. But it was on the other side of the building, and I'd have to pass close to her. And even if she was half blind with her glasses gone, I was sure she'd see me making my way over there.

And the front door was right here.

But it was locked. And trying to undo the locks would make noise. A lot of noise in this quiet building.

I reached up with my hands, against the wall, trying to remember what was there, and my hand grabbed onto something metallic. I felt the curved shape and lifted it off the wall and sat back down again.

A sword. Sure. What could be said about a writer who brought a sword to a gunfight? "Cole, it's just a matter of time."

Another explosion of a gunshot, and in the reverberations of that report, I drew the sword out of scabbard.

There.

In the dim illumination from the outside, I could see Hendricks moving down the line of display cases. It looked like she was heading in the direction of the short corridor that led to the office and to the rear parking lot.

Now.

I tossed the scabbard in that direction, and Hendricks turned to the sound of the noise as it fell on the floor and fired again, and I got up, sword in hand, and made the three or four steps to the door. Hendricks was shouting something, was moving back there, and the hysterical voice inside my head said, work the locks, work the locks, ignore what was going on out there, and I undid a deadbolt, an interior lock, and all praise to the gods of history, I got the door unlocked.

I threw the door open and was immediately rewarded by more light than I needed, and damn it, I was now silhouetted. I ducked and moved through the door, followed by another snappy gunshot from Hendricks, and I saw the lawn back there, and a distant line of trees, and I started moving as fast as I could, using the sword as a cane, to relieve the thumping pain in my left leg, the treeline calling to me as a place of sanctuary.

How long could it take to get to the treeline before the half-blind and fully mad professor behind me could shoot again?

Pretty damn long.

I hadn't gone more than a half-dozen feet when I heard the screech of her voice behind me, another gunshot, and I turned and tripped and fell right on my ass.

Hendricks was there, running at me. Running right straight at me.