confirmed my suspicion.
“Our people did some damage after the photos were taken,” he told me, “but the tree was already ripped up on that side, probably by your client’s truck when he dumped the body.”
“Was there damage to Mister Worthington’s truck? Chipped paint, scratches?”
A pause. “I don’t see any photos or mention of it.”
“In your opinion, if his truck was scratched, would the paint contain traces of the tree’s DNA?”
“Well, I’m not a lab technician, Miz McCone, but I’ll hazard a guess that it would.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”
Jeb Barkley’s house was on a quiet side street in Big Pine: a small stucco bungalow on a small lot with a patch of lawn out front. A sprinkler was throwing out lazy arcs of water, and light glowed behind blinds in the windows. Barkley’s Outback stood before the closed doors of a single-car garage. I parked down the block and waited until it was fully dark before I approached.
Armed with a paint scraper and one of the plastic bags I’d earlier purchased at a hardware store, I crept up to the passenger side of the car. I switched on my pencil flashlight and, holding it between my teeth, began removing flecks of paint from the scratched area on the door. When I had a respectable amount, I sealed the bag.
I glanced at the house. No visible activity there. Slowly I began to move around the car, shining the beam over it. Nothing distinctive about the tires-and the sheriff’s people hadn’t been able to take any impressions at the scene, anyway. A few more scratches on the front panel, nothing lodged under the bumper.
The outside vent below the windshield, maybe. He would have removed anything obvious that was caught there, probably had washed the car, but deep down inside…
Yes!
I glanced over at the house. Still no activity. I fumbled in my bag for the pouch where I keep miscellaneous objects-chopstick, nail clippers, tweezers for the splinters I’m always getting. Took out the tweezers and fished around in the vent, until I found a slender wood fragment.
Ten to one it came from the bristlecone pine. There was another fragment lodged down there, but I’d leave it for the sheriff’s technicians.
I slipped back to the Jeep, headed for the substation.
Overconfidence, I thought, that’s what always brings them down. Jeb Barkley hadn’t counted on anyone looking into his past and discovering his connection with Darya Adams. He hadn’t bothered to have his car repainted because who would suspect him-a small-town real-estate agent, and Tom Worthington’s friend-of killing anyone? He hadn’t even bothered to conceal from me his knowledge of where things were kept in the cabin.
All of that, and irrefutable DNA evidence as the clincher.
Glenn Solomon was going to love this. Maybe he’d even pay a bonus for my getting results in record time.
The Carville Ghost A John Quincannon Story
Sabina said: “A ghost?”
Barnaby Meeker bobbed his shaggy head. “A strange apparition of unknown origin, Missus Carpenter. I’ve seen it with my own eyes more than once.”
“In Carville, of all places?”
“In a scattering of abandoned cars near my home there. Floating about inside different ones and then rushing out across the dunes.”
“How can a group of abandoned horse-traction cars possibly be haunted?”
“How, indeed?” Meeker said mournfully. “How, indeed?”
“And you say this apparition fled when you chased after it?”
“Both times I saw it. Bounded away across the dune tops and then simply vanished into thin air. Well, into heavy mist, to be completely accurate.”
“What did it look like, exactly?”
“A human shape surrounded by a whitish glow. Never have I seen a more eerie and frightening sight.”
“And it left no footprints behind?”
“None. Ghosts don’t leave footprints, do they?”
“If it was a ghost.”
“The dune crests were unmarked along the thing’s path of flight and it left no trace in the cars…except, that is, for claw marks on the walls and floors. What else could it be?”
Quincannon, who had been listening to all of this with a stoic mien, could restrain himself no longer. “Balderdash,” he said emphatically.
Sabina and Barnaby Meeker both glanced at him in a startled way, as if they’d forgotten he was present in the office.
“Glowing apparitions, sudden disappearances, unmarked sand…confounded claptrap, the lot.” He added for good measure: “Bah!”
Meeker was offended. He drew himself up in his chair, his cheeks and chest both puffing like a toad’s. “If you doubt my word, sir…”
“Three days ago I would have agreed with you. But after what I’ve seen with my own eyes…my own eyes, I repeat…I am no longer certain of anything.”
Sabina stirred behind her desk. Pale March sunlight, slanting in through the windows that faced on Market Street, created shimmering highlights in her upswept black hair. It also threw across the desk’s polished surface the shadow of the words painted on the window glass: CARPENTER AND QUINCAN-NON, PROFESSIONAL DETECTIVE SERVICES.
She said: “Others saw the same as you, Mister Meeker?”
“My wife, my son, and a neighbor, Artemus Crabb. They will vouchsafe everything I have told you.”
“What time of night did these events take place?”
“After midnight, in all three cases. Crabb was the only one who saw the thing the first time it appeared. I happened to awaken on the second night and spied it in one of the cars. I went out alone to investigate, but it fled and vanished before I could reach the cars. Lucretia, my wife, and my son Jared both saw it last night…in one of the cars and then on the dune tops. Jared and I examined the cars by lantern light and again in the morning by daylight. The marks on walls and floor were the only evidence of its presence.”
“Claw marks, you said?”
Meeker repressed a shudder. “As if the thing had the talons of a beast.”
Quincannon said: “And evidently the heart of a coward.”
“Sir?”
“Why else would it run away or bound away or whatever it did? It’s humans who are afraid of ghosts, not the converse.”
“I have no explanation for what happened,” Meeker said. “That is why I have come to you.”
“And just what do you expect us to do? Missus Carpenter and I are detectives, not dabblers in paranormal twaddle.”
Again Meeker puffed up. He was an oddly shaped gent in his forties, with an abnormally large head set on a narrow neck and a slight body. A wild tangle of curly hair made his head seem even larger and more disproportionate. He carried a blackthorn walking stick, which he held between his knees and thumped on the floor now and then for emphasis.
“What I want is an explanation for these bizarre occurrences. Normal or paranormal, it matters not to me, as long as they are explained to my satisfaction. If they continue and word gets out, residents will leave and no new ones come to take their place. Carville will become a literal ghost town.”
“And you don’t want this to happen.”
