Resurrection Day

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Resurrection Day

There was a lot of false bravado displayed by the inmates on Death Row as the minister walked to Thomas' cell. Thomas himself showed only resignation, although there was a sheen of perspiration on his black skin.

"I know it, reverend." Thomas hadn't slept. Half an hour earlier, they had entered to shave his head and cut the legs of his pants. His last meal was untouched, growing cold on the plate.

"Reverend, sir; no disrespect, but I've done made my peace with The Almighty. I just can't understand why I'm in this predicament."

"I know, reverend. That's what bothers me. God was watchin' me get blamed for that Mr. Brent's killin', but he didn't do anything. I just don't understand."

Reverend Taylor shook his head. He almost believed Josiah. He believed in the judicial system, and believed in God's will even more. If the courts and God were right, then Josiah was lying. Or maybe, just maybe, Josiah had convinced himself that he was innocent. Josiah would still have to pay for his crime.

The guards entered through the door at the end of the hall. They walked to Thomas' cell.

Josiah got to his feet, amazed that his trembling legs supported him. The guard snapped handcuffs on Josiah's wrists.

"C'mon," ordered the guard. Even more amazingly, Josiah found that he could actually walk. Two guards got behind him, one in front, with the minister leading up the rear reading The Lord's Prayer. As they marched to the green door at the end, Josiah joined in.

"...Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. And give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us..."

The door opened, and they entered the room. Somehow, Yellow Mama seemed to draw all the attention to itself. Made of 4x4 posts set into the concrete floor, it sat under the spotlight on three legs. Stiff‑backed and sharp cornered, it was not designed with any idea of comfort. Of course, one never had to sit in it for long...

Josiah was marched to the electric chair, his cuffs removed, and he was strapped in the chair. Tall and thin, his knees stuck out, and they had to raise the headpiece as high as it would go. The electrodes were fastened on tightly, and, finally the hood was pulled down.

As the appointed time approached, the witnesses were brought in and ascended the "bleachers"; not meant to sit on, they were of staggered height so that those standing on the back row could get a good view.

The executioner watched the sweep second had of the "official" clock. Everyone quieted, except for the minister, who had switched to another prayer. Even Josiah's plaintive question had dropped only to an inaudible whisper.

Unlike the movies, there was no last‑minute reprieve from the governor. At 6:00 a.m., the executioner threw the switch.

But the minister slept poorly that night, dreaming that the ghost of Josiah Thomas came to him and told him yet again that he was innocent. Josiah stood over his bed, his skin split and charred, and told the minister that one day the truth would be known.

Fall in Azalea City is like anywhere else: a time of change. One of the changes is the weather. Summers, with their ninety‑degree temperatures and ninety‑percent humidity give way to sixty‑degree temperatures and ninety‑percent humidity. The change usually seemed to happen over night, leading many Azaleans to say that they have only two seasons: Winter and Summer, with a couple of foggy or rainy days in between to make life miserable. Granted, the temperature on Thanksgiving was often in the seventies (same as Christmas), but they did have fall. Fall was when the fog was at its’ worst.

The fog blew in this October evening thick, damp, and gray. Within an hour, everything was dripping wet, and water was falling under trees like it was raining. Signs and utility lines began to drip water too, and on the bottoms of awnings moisture began to form, and run down to the edges to run off. The streets were slick as though there had been a storm, and the worn concrete of most roads was doubly dangerous when wet.

Traffic on the river was almost a standstill, and the few cars on the streets crept along only slightly faster than a man could walk. At six o'clock, the airport closed, forcing the flight from Victoria to be canceled. One was due from Ironwood via Cahaba at eight the next morning, but unless things cleared up, it would be canceled too. No ships were due in until after midnight; they were standing offshore waiting for the tide to change. They, too, would be delayed unless things cleared up.

At the Azalea City Cemetery, they were getting ready to leave. They had finished filling in the grave of a deceased woman, and plans were being made for the gravediggers to come in early. There was a ten o'clock funeral that would need a ready grave.

Arthur Maddox was arguing with his gravediggers. None of them wanted to have to come to work in the thick, wet, obscuring fog at five in the morning. Maddox missed Josiah at times like this more than anything. Josiah had seemed to enjoy being a gravedigger, and he could talk the other three into coming in to work with him on emergencies or special cases. Now, Josiah went and killed that Brent fellah, and got himself executed, and he had to fire that no‑account Crawford. He needed at least one more gravedigger, preferably two.

"Mista Maddox, I just don' wan' to be wanderin' 'round in this fog that early in the morning," Cletus was saying.

"Do you want to be looking for a new job? That's what you'll be doing if you don't!"

"Well, then, I guess I'd better get my things outin’ the shed, 'cause I ain't gonna come in ifn it's so foggy like this. I don't like havin' to walk home in it, neither, but I sure don't want to be wanderin' around dark thirty in it."

Maddox thought furiously. "What if I let you take the pickup home, and you and Bobby can use it. The lights work, and it ought to have a full tank of gas."

Maddox threw up his hands in disgust. There was a limit to what he could do to the two men, and they knew it. If he fired them, he would have to find four new gravediggers, not two.

He called the mortuary near Virginia Street, and found someone that not only lived near Cletus and Bobby, but also knew how to drive. The fact that they would have to come in at five o'clock instead of six was offset by the fact that they wouldn't have to walk.

Cletus and Bobby went back to the caretaker's shack to get their stuff, and Maddox went around back to check out the pickup. Ten years before the truck was brand new, now it showed its age. The fenders were rusting out, and there were holes in the bed. The top was patched, but reasonably water resistant, and the running lights and windshield wipers worked. Maddox intended to check the fuel level, wanting to have some kind of reference when the truck came back tomorrow. Couldn’t have those boys joy-riding around Plateau and Richardson, could we?

As he rounded the maintenance building, he saw a curious thing: a strange form was near the pile of excess dirt left over from refilling the grave this evening. In the fog and gathering gloom, it was hard to make out the figure, even though it was less than forty feet away. At first, it looked like some kind of stick man, but Maddox suddenly realized that it was wearing a stovepipe hat. A stovepipe hat like the one Josiah Thomas wore. A shudder went through his body. He took a step closer, and saw that the man was taking handfuls of dirt and putting them in his pockets. The weirdness of the tableau sent a shiver up Maddox's spine.

The weird figure looked around; sighting Maddox where he stood paralyzed, and promptly walked right through the solid back wall of the building.

Maddox’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he fell down. Then everything went black.

Maddox woke up with Cletus, Bobby, and Barney from the Mortuary gathered around him. He was cold and wet, and the thick air made him wheeze.

Bobby went back and got a lantern. He brought it as Maddox got unsteadily to his feet.

"Whoever it was been in the shed. They gone and stole poor Josiah's old hat and coat."

Maddox took the lantern and lit it. Then he approached the pile of dirt. Casting the light across the surface, the marks of a man's hands were plainly visible.

Thus, Arthur Maddox became a part of the history of Azalea City by being the first to be involved in a Gravedigger sighting.

It was ten o'clock. The fog had thickened even more, so much so that it could almost be called rain. A wind had sprung up, blowing in off the Bay (and triggering a Jubilee on the Eastern Shore), and the fog could be seen billowing over the buildings as the streetlights wobbled back and forth. The last few stores had closed at nine, and most of the restaurants were closing now. Even the bars and dives along the waterfront, usually open until three, were beginning to close down due to a lack of customers. The policemen patrolling the streets wore their rain gear, but that was no protection from the fog; it billowed up the bottoms of their ponchos and made them feel damp through and through. None of them cursed the fog though; it made the weather so miserable that no one wanted to be out in it, for good or bad.

Kenny Douglas was an eight‑year veteran of the Azalea City Police Department. At thirty, he was a square, block of a man, with wide shoulders, a square face, and thick legs. His hat was sitting next to him on the desk, revealing dark brown hair starting to thin on top. Kenny had worked hard, and was pleased to be the Desk Sergeant. He was not pleased, however, to be on the three-to-eleven shift. Hopefully, he would get rotated to a better shift in the next week or two.

Things were slow this night. The fog seldom got as thick as it was right now, but when it did, it was almost as bad as when it snowed. Most people stayed home on a night like this.

"Cary" Blanchard walked in the door of the station house, shaking out his poncho, and pulling it over his head. He hung the poncho on a hook by the door, but left the plastic cover on his hat. Blanchard's first name was Franklin, but, due to a remarkable resemblance to a young Hollywood actor, no one had called him Frank in months.

"Well, sir, I was coming in to do some of the paperwork I've got backed up. There isn't much happening out there tonight."

"Could I get you to watch the desk for a minute while I use the john and get a cup of coffee?"

"Sure" was the ready answer. Douglas got up and Blanchard sat down. Douglas stretched his back a little before he went into the back of the station. All the way in the back, there was a little nook intended for something else. The officers had managed to fit a small table in it, and on the table were a hot plate, coffeepot and tin, and a sugar dispenser. As he poured the coffee into a disposable paper cup, Douglas smelled something. Something like freshly turned earth. He stepped back, and noticed that there was a kind of crunch under his foot. It was hard to see back in this corner, but it looked like there was dirt on the floor. He went back toward the front of the station. Every few feet, there was a little pile of dirt. The trail led to the stairs to the basement. Douglas ran to the front desk. Ben Parker had joined Blanchard, and they were shooting the breeze.

"Parker! You come with me. Blanchard, see if you can get another man in here quick! Something funny is going on."

Blanchard pressed the button on the desk that made lights on the police call boxes all over Downtown begin to flash. Parker followed Douglas, and drew his gun when Douglas did. The two men went down the stairs into the basement.

It was dark downstairs, lit by only a couple of small, dim bulbs. The basement had originally had some holding cells in it, but when the new wing was built, they were moved into it. Now it contained a couple of storerooms and the filing cabinets that threatened to fill the station. Chief Rich complained that the amount of paperwork was increasing, while the storage space available was constant. Current files were kept on the first and second floors of the station house, while closed cases were filed in the basement (and anywhere else they had the room). As the two men stepped on the basement floor, they distinctly heard a file drawer slide closed and latch. It came from the left. The two policemen carefully walked down the hall, ready to fire at anything. Douglas peeked around the corner of the hall, and he saw it! In the dim light, it looked like the figure of a man, wearing an overcoat and a stovepipe hat. Douglas motioned Parker forward, and both men covered the apparition with their weapons.

The figure spun around, giving the policemen a quick view of something on the thing's face, something white. It shoved the folder it had under its coat. Afraid that it would draw a gun, Parker fired. The men saw the bullet hit the thing's arm, but it began to run toward them. Later they would insist that after the first bullet, none of them had any effect on the creature. On the wall by the file cabinet, above a pile of fresh dirt, were several bullet holes. But then, as both men swore, the creature ran right through them, and ran to the stairs. At the desk, Blanchard saw the wild figure come running toward the front door. He got up and tried to stop it. He too, swore the thing was insubstantial and passed through him like a ghost. The weird being ran right through the doors, and down the steps. A couple of officers returning to the station after receiving Blanchard's call saw it run down the steps, and take off across the street. Then when it got the other side to the street, it ran through the blank wall of Harcourt’s Mercantile. Then Douglas and Parker came out of the station, and tried to surround the building, as much as four men could. They didn't find anything, nor did they see the strange apparition again that night.

At Lowin‑McGow hardware, night watchman Mike Pierce was the next man to see the Gravedigger. Mike would make his rounds, walking up the stairs, covering each floor of the massive building. At the top floor, he would get in the freight elevator and ride it down. Upon reaching the bottom, he would send it back up to the top. The elevator was a marvel of 1940 technology, with automatic buttons one could press that would take it to the exact floor. This meant they didn't need an operator, like the elevators at Merchant and Marine Bank a few blocks over, or at Van Ansons's. The only other places with elevators like this one, although much fancier, were Gilcrist Department Store and Harcourt's Mercantile.

Pierce was checking out the fifth floor when he heard the elevator start up. He moved quickly to the shaft, but the elevator stopped short of the top floor. Whoever it was had stopped on the fourth. Pierce went down the staircase to the floor below. He pulled his gun as he reached the bottom. Looking back and forth, he could see no trace of anyone. He did smell something, though. It smelled like freshly dug dirt. Some instinct told him where to go.

In one corner of the fifth floor, there was an area fenced off with expanded wire, and secured by a locked door. In this area ammunition was kept. Lowin‑McGow was renowned as being the one place on the Gulf Coast where you could get bullets for just about any gun made. Sportsmen from all over the coast bought their shells here.

As he approached, Pierce could see that the door was intact, and it looked like the lock was still in place. He also saw some dirt scattered around the area. Suddenly, from between the rows of shelves, came what looked like a man in an old overcoat and stovepipe hat.

The figure stopped a moment, then laughed. It kept on coming and Pierce watched in horror as it walked right through the door! Pierce wasn't paid enough to play with ghosts, so he decided to leave it alone. He ran back to the stairs, and headed down them. The horror behind him followed, still laughing. The laugh echoed around the open space.

Finally, Pierce reached the ground floor. He ran to the door, and fumbled with his keys. The thing was just reaching the bottom of the stairs. Pierce watched in horror as it walked straight ahead, and passed through the wall on the Royal Street side of the building. Then he fainted.

The fourth Gravedigger sighting never made it into the history books. Shanna Falk was a teacher at Carver High, the colored high school in Mauvilla County's separate‑but‑equal system. She was twenty‑four, and quite pretty. She was originally from New Orleans, and while she had been courted by quite a few of the local young men, she hadn't really found one she liked. Shanna was beginning to get a reputation as somewhat of a snob.

This night, she was home in her room at Etnyre's Cafe and Boarding House on Jarvis Avenue. Jarvis was the center of the "colored" section of Azalea City. Extending northwest from Broadway, it was lined with houses and businesses, theaters and schools, like a miniature city within a city. It was not exactly a ghetto, but it could easily become one. Shanna had gotten in bed at nine‑thirty and read until ten, when she turned out the light. She hated to; her book was a murder mystery by some guy called Earle Stanley Gardner, about an attorney named Mason who acted more like a hard‑boiled detective than a lawyer. She had devoured books by Hammet, Van Dyne, Christie, Doyle, and other mystery writers, not because she thought of herself as a detective (A colored, woman detective? Never in a million years!), but because she liked solving problems. She had a small shelf with several second‑hand issues of Detective Story Magazine, Detective Aces, Black Mask, and, her favorite, The Shadow. One day, she hoped to be able to afford real books, instead of getting them from the library, but that time was still in the future.

At first, the noise didn't really register on her subconscious mind. Then, she heard it:

Shanna hadn't intended to scream. If he so much as laid a hand on her, she would make him regret it. The youngest of seven children, the rest had all been boys. She could beat up nine out of ten men on the street, having excelled in sports in college, and made the women's track team. She looked at the absurd figure that stood at the foot of her bed. Illuminated by the diffused light coming in her window, it looked like a tall thin man wearing a tattered overcoat and a battered stovepipe hat. His face was covered with something. Bandages, maybe? He also stank of freshly turned earth.

"I need your help," he said. He extended his hand, and the manila folder it held. Shanna took it, wary that it wasn't a trick, then reached up and turned on the reading light attached to her bed. The man shifted so as to remain outside of the lighted area.

"Well," he began, then hesitated, "I never learned to read too good. You're a teacher, and you read books and stuff all the time."

Shanna sighed. The only reason she had finished school was that her older brothers had all dropped out and worked to help support the family; she didn't have to. She had won a scholarship to college, and that was the only reason she went beyond high school. Too many of her race were forced by economic necessity to drop out of school. She felt that the key to the economic and social advancement of her people was education. Unfortunately, few of her people seemed to believe her. School was considered a luxury to most of them, and the white Truant Officers never enforced the mandatory attendance rules where colored children were concerned.

"What is it to you?" she asked, looking at the first few pages. "It looks like they convicted this Josiah Thomas of the killing. He's probably been executed by now."

"His restless spirit cries out for justice," said the man in the shadow, "as well as that of Lucius Brent."

"I didn't used to," responded the other. "What I need is for you to read that file to me."

Shanna looked at the pages. "How about I read it myself, tomorrow, and you come back and I can give you an analysis. I have to be up early for school tomorrow."

"I'm sorry; I got this to you as soon as I could. I shouldn't be keeping you up. I had best better come 'bout this late tomorrow night, though."

"Good ni... " Shanna's words died in her throat when the man turned around and walked through the door... without opening it first!

The sightings only merited a small item below the fold on page one the next day. "Is Gravedigger's Ghost Haunting City?" asked the headline. The article below highlighted the experiences of Arthur Maddox and Sergeant Douglas. Maddox admitted that he wasn't sure what he saw exactly, while Douglas insisted that there were no such things as ghosts. Shanna saw the paper in the teacher's lounge, and managed to get her own during lunch. It had a short re‑hash of the Brent Murder case, and Shanna read it intently.

Brent was last seen at Pollard's Bakery at the corner of Virginia and Broadway at 8:30 on the night of April 8th, 1939. He was working the late shift at The Azalea City Pulley Works, and stopped there to pick up some donuts. The next morning, Brent's body was found in a ditch alongside Texas Street.

Shanna assigned the classwork to her students, then read through the police report. She had been sure that her visitor had stolen the file, so it was now in a different folder she used to keep track of papers she needed to grade. If anyone caught her with it, she would never be able to explain how she came by it, but they were unlikely to search her personal belongings without provocation.

The report didn't enlighten her much more than the paper. She learned that the gun used in the murder was a .45 automatic pistol, and three shots were missing from the clip (four, she told herself, if there had been one in the chamber). It had belonged to Brent's father, a souvenir of The Great War. Friends of the dead man said that he carried it with him when he was working the late shift. It was said to be either in the glove compartment of the car, or under a newspaper on the seat. Co‑workers said that Brent would bring the weapon into work, and lock it in his locker.

The autopsy showed that Lucius Brent had been shot twice, one bullet entering his groin, the other in his heart. There was evidence of his having been in a struggle before he was shot. The state of the contents of his stomach indicated that he was killed no later than 9:00. Shanna noted that he had eaten grits, fried egg, ketchup, and ham, washed down with coffee. Apparently, he had slept all day and ate "breakfast" upon awakening.

The "official" version of the murder was that as Brent drove down Virginia toward Michigan, he was flagged down by Thomas somewhere around Azalea City Cemetery (where Thomas worked). On some pretext, Thomas convinced Brent to give him a ride down Galil Street going south. At Texas Street, it was supposed that Thomas got Brent's gun from him, and made Brent stop. Then they got out of the car. At some point, Brent jumped Thomas, and they struggled for the weapon. During the struggle, the gun went off and the bullet struck Brent in the groin, cutting his femoral artery. It was then believed that Thomas panicked, and put a bullet in Brent's chest, killing him instantly. He took the dead man's wallet, tossed the body in the ditch between Texas Street and the railroad (Texas ran parallel to the railroad, about fifty feet north, and between them was a ditch, actually more of a re‑routed creek), and drove the car to Africatown. There, Thomas acquired a bottle of whisky, and drove away as he drank himself into a stupor. At 2:00 the next morning, a police car, cutting through the Delmarre Square neighborhood back to the station house, saw the car illegally parked in the street. Upon examination, Thomas was discovered in the back seat, in a state of intoxication. The arresting officer, Patrolman Edwards, believing that Thomas had no business in this neighborhood unless he was up to no good, decided to arrest the man. The officer flagged down another police car, and the two of them managed to load Thomas in his car and get him back to the police station. Thomas's belongings, including a wallet and handgun, were confiscated; he was dumped into the drunk tank, and forgotten. They noticed that it was the wallet of a white man, and figured that it was stolen. At 7:30 of the 9^th, the fireman on a passing train saw Brent’s body lying in the ditch. Since the train stopped just a few blocks ahead, he waited until they reached the switchyard to call it in. The police reached the scene of the crime to find a lot of kids poking around the site. They were on their way to school when one of their number found the body. It was taken in and tentatively identified as a “John Doe”.

At eleven that morning, the resident in front of whose house Brent's car was parked called and complained. A unit was dispatched to look into it, and the car was towed in. The license was checked, and Brent’s wife was notified. She gave a description of her husband that rang a bell with one of the officers. He asked Mrs. Brent to come down to the morgue to identify the John Doe. To her horror, Mrs. Brent discovered that the murdered man was, indeed, her husband. Edwards heard the report on the radio at home, and called in and told them about the drunk he had arrested. They rousted Thomas out of the drunk tank, examined his belonging in the property room, and discovered that the wallet was that of the murdered man. Examination of Thomas' person revealed blood stains on his shoes, yet Thomas himself had no wound to account for them.

There followed a period of questioning (which Shanna took to mean the infamous Third Degree), during which the suspect gave a jumbled, confusing story, but insisted that he didn't commit the murder.

His story was that he had stayed late at the cemetery, helping the groundskeeper unload some supplies, and then took his time leaving. The Groundskeeper building was near the corner of Virginia and DeSoto, and he walked to Virginia rather than cutting across the cemetery. His plan was to walk up Virginia to Broadway, and try to catch the last trolley heading north. At the corner of Galil and Virginia, he encountered two white men who seemed to have car trouble. One asked him to help, and hoping for a chance to make a little extra money, he agreed. He helped one of the men push the car, while the other popped the clutch. When the car started, the driver asked Thomas if he needed a ride. A ride wasn't as good as money, but it meant he wouldn't have to spend money for the trolley, or walk home, if the missed it. The man behind the wheel set the brake, and got out, insisting that the other man was the driver, and the other man came up behind Thomas. Suddenly, the man behind him grabbed him and covered his mouth and nose with a stinky piece of cloth, and the man in front grabbed his arms. He didn't know what was put over his face, but he soon passed out. That was the last thing he remembered until waking up in police custody the next day.

By the time school was over, Shanna had read the police report, the autopsy, and the statements of a dozen persons questioned in regard to the case. She had seen a copy of the affidavit Thomas signed, swearing his innocence. She wondered if he had died still proclaiming that he hadn't done it.

There was a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing at Josiah Thomas. He was found in the murdered man's car, with the murder weapon and the murdered man's wallet. He couldn't account for his whereabouts during the time of the murder; there was blood on his boots. It was also discovered that he was in a tight financial situation and needed money: his mother had died, and medical and funeral expenses were eating him alive.

On the other hand, he had never been in trouble before, not any. He was well liked by his friends, co‑workers, and neighbors, none of them could believe that he had really killed that white man. If you took his story as true, the whole thing had to have been a frame.

That night, after supper, Shanna went to her room, turned off the light, and waited. It wasn't long that she heard a tap at the window. She got up off the bed and opened the sash. A gloved hand grasped the sill, and a long, thin leg passed over it to the floor. The rest of the being the papers and the radio had been calling "The Gravedigger's Ghost" followed.

"Look, I know you aren't Josiah Thomas, but the fear created by the possibility that he has returned from the dead is the effect you are after, right."

"Well, you need to be prepared to be called `Josiah'. Don't answer to it, but give some kind of reaction... a start, a quick turn of the head, something."

"It says in the paper that you laughed at the night watchman in Lowin‑McGow; why was that?"

Shanna walked over to her shelf. Some of her Shadow magazines had no cover, but one had a very nice shot of the Shadow

"Well, if that don't beat all," he said flipping a couple of pages. "Wish I could read it."

"I could teach you to read. Read better, I mean; you said you could read a little."

"No," he said handing her the magazine back, "I'm causing you enough trouble as it is. Did you read the file?"

She talked quietly for several minutes, giving the man a capsule version of what happened, a description of the evidence, and reading Thomas' deposition. He asked a few questions so as to clear up details, then asked her "What do you think?"

"I don't believe he did it. I think he was telling the truth about what happened to him. One thing is missing from the report, and that is the name of the store he was supposed to buy the whiskey from. Most State stores close at eight, but it's always said the ones in Africatown have "flexible" hours. That is the only reason they have this trip out there. It is pretty certain that he didn't have it at work, he had nowhere to keep it. That would mean that the men who did the murder planned to do this. Given that there could have been no way for them to foretell that Thomas would have been working late, they must have been looking for someone, anyone to frame. Thomas was just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What I can't understand is how they think a colored man could go driving a car around the white parts of town without getting noticed. I think he was in the back seat while the white men who framed him drove around looking for a spot to dump him. They wouldn't get a second glance over around Church Street or Delmarre Square."

The man shook his head. "I didn't think about that. I didn't think he did it, and now that I think about it, I can't imagine him driving 'round those parts either. Could he even drive a car?"

"He could drive the truck that the cemetery uses,” answered Shanna, “ so he could probably drive a car. I learned to drive a truck, and have driven a car once or twice; they aren't that different."

The man sat and thought. "What I need to do, is find someone with a reason to kill Lucius Brent."

"He and Josiah had a lot in common; They were generally well-liked. Except for a rival of Josias, one that was in jail at the time of the killing, neither seemed to have an enemy in the world."

"True, but it looks like Mr. Brent had at least two. Well, I thank you, Miz Falk. If you give me the file back, I'll take it back to the police."

Shanna got the papers and the folder and handed them to the man. Suddenly she asked, "What do I call you?"

"Well, you aren't Josiah, I guess you don't want me to know your real name, so what do I call you?"

"Tell me something: what are you going to do after you find out who really killed Lucius Brent?"

"You really can walk through walls, can't you?" The man nodded. "What else can you do?"

"I can see in the dark pretty good. I heal up quick too. I'm a little stronger than bef... than normal, and don't get tired easy."

"Last night, I just sneaked in up the back way. Tonight, I climbed the tree outside your window. It's late enough, I'll try the back way when I go out."

Shanna sat back on the bed and thought. "We'll have to work something out, some kind of way to keep in touch."

They started at eight o'clock. Officer Albert Edwards had stopped at Toby's Drive In right at the City Limit between Azalea City and Richardson. After he drove away, he said he smelled something like fresh dirt, and he heard a voice come from his back seat. It said "The old Gravedigger just wanted you to know he don't hold a grudge against you, Officer Edwards. You treated him fair," then laughed. Edwards stopped the car and turned around. He saw a tall thin man walking away, so he got out of his car and ordered the man to stop. The man walked through the front of a closed store, and was gone.

At ten, District Attorney Lawrence Pace was going over some papers in his office in the Merchants Building. He heard a laugh coming from the reception room. Taking a gun from a drawer in his desk, he went out front. No one was there. Then, from behind him, in the office he just left, he heard a voice say "The old Gravedigger just wanted you to know, Mr. Pace, that he don't hold a grudge against you."

“I want you to know that I don’t hold a grudge against those good people on the jury, either. They just did what they thought was right. You tell ‘em that for me, okay?”

With that, the figure began to approach Pace. Without thinking, the frightened man fired his gun at the figure. The bullet was later dug out of the wall. The spectral figure laughed, and walked through the wall.

He wanted to say "What dear?", but what came out was unintelligible. Then he looked over at the chair in the corner and he saw the silhouette of a man wearing a stovepipe hat sitting there. In the man's hand was a gun.

"Jesus won't help you against the old Gravedigger, Mr. Lightner. I don't hold a grudge against the D.A. or that policeman, but you... you I'm mad at."

Gravedigger tossed the police file onto the bed. "I've learned to read in the hereafter. What this tells me is that you are a sorry excuse for a cop. Just 'cause the suspect was a colored man, he was automatically lyin'. I bet you didn't even check out the alibi."

"I... I... " Lightner stuttered in fear. Gravedigger was right; he hadn't seen any way to check out Josiah Thomas' story, so he hadn't even bothered.

Gravedigger stood up. Lightner had the impression that the gun was pointed right between his eyes.

"You're a lucky man, Detective," said Gravedigger, "because you're just sorry. I ain't gonna kill you, just haunt you a little. Those fellahs that really killed that Brent fellah, though, their days are numbered."

Gravedigger swung the gun down. As he did, Lightner swung the pistol he kept under his pillow up and fired. Two things happened: the bullet passed harmlessly through Gravedigger, smashing a picture on the wall, and the flash illuminated his face.

"Umph, umph, umph. Don't you know you can't kill a dead man, Detective? Now, I got places to go and people to haunt, so you take care of your missus. I'll be seein' you. Oh," he continued, "one thing you might do, is try and trace that liquor bottle. It's still downstairs at the police station in a box; the same box this gun was in. I don't think it came from Africatown."

The next day, Shanna read the reports in the paper and judged the success of her endeavors. An afternoon at the Jarvis Avenue Branch of the library had produced unexpected results. She had discovered how Hollywood makeup artist plied their trade, and learned how to create gum-soled shoes. Gravedigger now sported a corpse-like face and nearly silent shoes. She was still trying to figure out what to do about the graveyard earth he wanted to leave as a calling card. A hole in the pocket of his overcoat and a tear in the lining had resulted in his leaving a trail of dirt everywhere he went. Fortunately, it had all run out by the time he got around to seeing her.

She had traveled the length of Jarvis Avenue, acquiring some of the equipment that Gravedigger would use, as well as the materials for the makeup. She had found a couple of other coats similar to the one Josiah Thomas had, and one more hat. The idea was to hide them around town in places only someone who could walk through walls could get to. This would allow Gravedigger to appear and disappear without a trace. She was still working out the details.

Gravedigger had turned up with a lot of money the night after they made their pact. When asked where he got it, all he would say for sure was that he hadn’t stolen it, he just took it from those who wouldn’t be needing it any more. It didn’t make Shanna happy. The next day, she heard tell about several arrests. Some were involved with an illegal gambling operation over on Congress Street; another was part of a confidence racket, yet another was a fence for stolen goods on North St. Ann. One of the suspects insisted that he was being haunted by a ghost.

Paul Lightner didn't consider himself a sorry excuse for a detective. His record was above reproach, or so he thought. The thing was, this "Gravedigger" character was right about the alibi; he hadn't really checked it out. It was ludicrous.

Lightner didn't think that a ghost had visited him, anymore than he believed Josiah Thomas was innocent. The only way to get this maniac to leave him alone, however, was to double-check the case. Over breakfast, Lightner started to re‑read the file Gravedigger had given him, finishing it on the trolley on the way to work. When he arrived, he found a note on his desk to go see Police Chief Lockhart. Wondering what he had done wrong this time, Lightner walked up the stairs to the third floor, walked down to the chief's office. His secretary looked up, frowned, wrinkled her nose, and said, "Go right in." The exaggerated expressions were a code for "someone is in a bad mood, and he has company". Lightner steeled himself, and went into the chief's office.

Inside, besides the chief, were D.A. Pace and the mayor. Without preamble, Chief Lockhart asked him "Lightner, you were the investigator on the Brent murder, were you not?"

For a moment Lightner was speechless. then he washed his teeth with his tongue, and said, "I guess I'm not the only one being haunted."

The mayor said "We have to do something about this. Get an exorcism, or something. I'll call Bishop Carlisle and see what he can do," and with that, he walked out of the room.

"Well," said the chief, "now that he is gone, maybe we can figure out something that will really work."

"If we were dealing with a ghost, it might. I don't know what we are dealing with, but I don't believe in ghosts. It's got to be some kind of trick. I've a mind to start picking up some of the small fry up and down Jarvis Avenue and wring 'em dry. Someone must have an idea what is really going on."

"He didn’t talk to me," answered Chief Lockhart, "he just left a pile of stinky dirt on the front seat of my car, with a little cardboard tombstone stuck in it."

"I keep my car in a locked garage. This maniac seems to be able to get into places no one else can."

"Adam," said the D.A. "I saw him walk through a wall. If he isn't a real ghost, he's a pretty good imitation."

"Same thing at my house." said Lightner. "He held me at gunpoint, told me I was a sorry excuse for a detective, gave me the file on the Brent case, and told me he was going to haunt me."

"He said it was Brent's. I haven't checked yet, but he was probably telling the truth."

"Mr. Pace," said Lightner, "you say this Gravedigger character visited you; what did he say?"

"He said he just wanted to tell me that he didn't hold a grudge against me, of the jurors."

Lightner thought a minute. He believed he knew what Gravedigger was doing. He had more or less told everyone involved with the Brent murder case that he did not plan any reprisals against them. His own "haunting" didn't really seem like a threat, just an annoyance. Either he meant it, or he was throwing them a red herring.

This Gravedigger character must be a friend of Josiah Thomas. Either he wanted the police to waste their time trying to prove a closed case, or he was setting up everyone involved for some kind of revenge.

The chief dismissed him, and Lightner went back downstairs. Down in the basement, one of the cells had been converted into an evidence room. There were shelves loaded with cardboard boxes in turn loaded with things that had been entered as evidence in the various cases that the Azalea City Police had to deal with. There was a system of sorts, but it wasn't necessary to use it; the box Lightner sought was sitting on the floor in the aisle between the shelves. He picked it up and took it upstairs to his desk. Again, he looked at the boots and the whiskey bottle (the gun was not there), and the few other bits of evidence. Then he sat the whiskey bottle in the middle of his desk and looked at it. The fingerprint report on it stated that only the prints of Thomas and the tow‑truck driver were on it. There were a few smudges they had assumed were those of the storeowner were the bottle was bought. How on earth would he trace it?

There was a number molded into the glass on the bottom, some kind of curly‑queues on the haunch just below the neck... and a tax stamp.

The Alabama Beverage Control Board put tax stamps on all liquor sold in the state of Alabama. Lightner noticed that, although torn and somewhat tattered, the stamp on this one was clear enough to see the number on it. Was that number unique? He would have to find out.

He called the closest State Store, the one just down the street on Government across from the County Court House, and asked the manager. He told Lightner that the stamps were sequential, and that it might be possible to figure out which store or stores were the likely sellers of the bottle. Lightner thanked him and started the procedure to place a long distance phone call to the central office of the ABC in Cahaba.

Ed Bradley hated the night shift at the Azalea City Press. It was the most boring job in the world, even though he was a "crime reporter"; he usually just had to deal with the occasional break‑in, drunken brawl, or knifing down around the waterfront. He heard about the crime in the colored section, too, but company policy was that whatever happened around Jarvis Avenue was newsworthy only if it impinged on the white community.

Bradley lit one cigarette off the stub of another, and leaned back from his typewriter.

"It always is," Bradley responded, Then looked around. He hadn't heard anyone come in.

Standing about ten feet away was someone who looked like this Gravedigger character who was haunting the city.

"Well, I talked to the District Attorney and Detective Lightner, and left a little present for the mayor and police chief, but none of them seems to want anyone to know it. Would you tell people something for me."

"Tell them that I don't hold a grudge against anybody; not Patrolman Edwards, the D.A., the jurors, the judge, anybody. 'Ceptin' the men who really killed Lucius Brent. They're gonna join me on this side of the grave."

"No, just left him a little present. Maybe a little warning. I talked to Patrolman Edwards, the D.A., and Detective Lightner. I want you to tell everybody that they don't have anything to fear from the' ol' Gravedigger. But until I can find the real killers of Lucius Brent, I'm gonna be haunting up and down Jarvis Avenue and a few places in town. Folks up and down The Avenue are gonna have to clean up their act, or they just might get a visit from the' ol' Gravedigger. You tell them that for me, too."

"I told Johnny Snakeyes he needed to quit his protection racket. He didn't listen to me. Now he and two of his boys have joined me here in the afterlife. You want to know what it's like here?"

"It's cold. You gotta carry the burden of your sins hung around your neck like a millstone. there ain't no light or dark, just a kind of twilight. There's no rest, you just wander from place to place. Still, it's better than the alternative. Hadn't you better be writing this down?"

"Oh! Sorry," said Bradley, turning back to his desk for a pad and pencil, "I kinda got..." When he turned back, Gravedigger was gone.

The next day, the early edition of The Press had a headlined article outlining Bradley’s “interview” with Gravedigger. The radio stations picked it up, but they were still treating it like some kind of hoax, like the Oceala Lights or The Mauvilla River Monster.

At 10:00 that morning, Chief Lockhart walked into the city room and approached Lightner’s desk.

"Lightner," the chief said, breaking the detective’s chain of thought, "how is your case load?"

"How about giving them to McMurdy, and take a week or so to look back over the Brent killing."

"You remember the whiskey bottle? I called the ABC office in Cahaba and asked them to see if they can trace the tax stamp. It probably won't give us the exact store it was sold in, but it might give us something to go on."

"No sir, but I guess I'm going to have to prove it all over again if I'm going to get a good night's sleep ever again."

The chief thought. "What if we stake out your house and catch him when he comes out? To be able to move around in your neighborhood, he must have an accomplice, perhaps we can catch them."

"I don't think so. Chief, he can walk through walls. Even if we `caught' him, how would we hold him? Besides, he hasn't really threatened me with bodily harm. Last night, he surprised me outside, `so as not to disturb your good wife and fine family' he said." Lightner shook his head, "Chief, the only way we're going to get rid of this thing is to either come up with some kind of ghost trap or prove to this guy that Thomas was guilty."

"I... just call it a feeling. I really think this guy wants to us to re‑open the Brent case. I mean, I don't expect him to vanish into the afterworld if we prove Thomas innocent, but I just feel it in my gut that he's on the level about this."

"I hope that's all you feel in your gut," the chief said, sliding a folder toward Lightner, "read this. Carstairs and Arthur found Johnny Snipes dead in a store he didn't own over off Congress Street. His surviving boys say that the Gravedigger did it."

Lightner picked up the folder, and read the report. Carstairs and Arthur were the toughest cops on the force. Their beat was exclusively in the colored section of town.

"So? If he did it, it comes down to coloreds shooting coloreds; we gave up on trying to do anything about that years ago."

Lightner spent the rest of the day with McMurdy, going over the pawnshop killing case. While not spectacular, it was a tough case. The suspects had been narrowed down to a couple of junkies that were suspected of stealing stuff to pawn in order to have the dough to buy their junk. The pawn shop owner had filed a theft report the day before the killing, and Lightner suspected that the junkies had unwittingly tried to sell the pawnbroker his own property. It took until almost 5:00 to cover the case thoroughly.

When Lightner got back to his desk, there was a note waiting for him. He read it, then sat down.

He was still sitting there at eight o'clock, when the voice he had begun to recognize came from the shadows and said "You're working late tonight, detective."

“The tax stamp. I traced it through the number on the tax stamp. I found out what store the case that included that bottle was delivered to.”

"Hmmmm... interesting. So, what do you think would happen if a colored man went in there at eight thirty‑nine o'clock and tried to buy a bottle of whiskey?"

"It wouldn't happen; the store closes at eight. Besides, I doubt they would sell a colored man a bottle of whiskey at any time of the day; St. Catherine is in a white neighborhood. Everyone in the area would notice a colored man wandering around."

"I don't know what to think. I've been trying to come up with some way Thomas could have ended up with that bottle."

"His wife said so. Brent's father was a lush, came home from drinking and beat up on Brent and his mother. Brent swore off booze forever."

"I don't think so. My father was a lush, came home from drinking and beat up on mother, sister, and me. I swore off booze forever."

"I think you've earned a night of rest. I won't haunt you, but your conscience might. I can't do anything about that. You'd better go home detective; your wife will be worried. She might think the' ol' Gravedigger gotcha."

Lightner stood up. He saw no sign of Gravedigger; he didn't expect to. He grabbed his had and coat and went home.

Regardless of Gravedigger’s promise to leave him alone, Lightner found himself haunted all night anyway.

When the Greenfront on St. Catherine opened the next morning, Lightner was waiting. He entered the store when the man unlocked the door. He walked into the anteroom, with it's lighted cases displaying the beverages available and their prices, and stopped in front of the window. Like the front window and the door, green-painted wrought-iron bars protected the man behind the counter. It gave an impression like an old‑fashioned bank, instead of a liquor store. Lightner was uncomfortable in there. He showed his badge, asked to see the manager, and was let in through a steel‑backed door on the side. When he passed through, a steel bar was dropped into a slot behind him. Then manager's office consisted of a plywood nook next to a heavily fortified door on the back wall. Lightner showed his badge again to the manager. He was medium height, medium build, with reddish‑blonde hair.

Lightner placed the bag with the whiskey bottle on the man's desk. "I'm trying to trace this bottle."

O'Malley laughed. "Day before yesterday, I got a call from the central office. they asked me to look up the records on this bottle. I didn't know why."

"I don't drink. Beer, once in a while at a party, wine or champagne on special occasions, but not anything else."

"Good man. I don't drink much, either. A bottle of rum will last me several months. Try rum and cola, sometime, about one‑to‑five. It's almost like not drinking at all. Anyway, we have a record of the bottle's sale, but we can't tell you either the time it was sold, nor the person it was sold to. We make a note of each bottle as it is sold, marking down the number on the tax stamp. At the end of each day, the numbers are transferred to a master list, and then each bottle is marked off a tally that includes all the numbers from an individual shipment." O'Malley opened a drawer in his desk and took out a manila folder with several pages bound into it. He flipped several nearly identical pages back at once, riffled through a few more. "This is the final record for April 8th, 1939. You're lucky, in January we would have destroyed these records to make room for more."

"Okay, I have some stupid questions to ask, so bear with me. What's your closing time?"

"State law forbids us to stay open later than eight o'clock. We lock the door when the clock above the door says eight."

"If a colored man came in here, say around closing time, would you sell him any whiskey?"

"I might, depending on how he looked. If he looked too disreputable, or like he was drunk already, I'd throw him out. Hell, if he was white and I didn't like his looks, I'd throw him out. But you'll have to ask my other salesmen what they'd do.

"Almost never. They've got State Stores a lot closer to home, so why come in here? Sometimes get a maid or a houseboy in here buying liquor for his or her employer. At least, that's what they say. Usually, though, they have a list or something they hand the salesman."

"Three, besides myself. We work a kind of staggered pattern, usually working forty hours a week, six days a week."

Only two men were on duty, the other was supposed to come in at noon. The men who were there said they wouldn't sell liquor to a colored man that late, just because he didn't really have any business in the neighborhood after dark. O'Malley said he would get the other man to call the police station when he came in. Lightner thanked him, and left. He walked down to Delmar Street, to catch the trolley downtown, but while waiting at the corner of Delmar and St. Catherine, he changed his mind. He caught the outbound trolley instead, and rode on out to Mauvilla Street. The line turned down Mauvilla, crossed Shellbelt, and continued down to Delmar. At Fulton Road, there were two trolley tracks. One set went down Fulton to the Loop. Lightner got off at Fulton Road, and caught the Government Street Trolley as it passed. He rode through the Loop, past the Cannon, to St. Ann. It would have been closer to have walked down St. Catherine to Government, then to St. Ann, but the trolley, though farther, was quicker. It also gave Lightner a chance to sit and think. The line turned again at Robeson, and went back toward town, so Lightner got off there and walked the two blocks to the end of St. Ann. At the end was the Azalea City Pulley works, where Lucius Brent had been employed. Lightner went inside, showed his badge again, and met the plant manager.

Tim Curtis' family had founded Azalea City Pulley Works, but had to sell it at the beginning of The Depression. Tim had been kept on because the new owners needed someone who knew how to run the business. Curtis wasn't particularly bitter about it, since he continued doing what he had before, just didn't have a lot of the worries his father had. He met with Lightner in a plywood office constructed in the middle of the factory. As always, the October weather had been hot and humid, and the atmosphere in the huge building was like that of an oven. It had been the same way over a year ago, when Lightner investigated the first time around.

The two men exchanged greeting, and Lightner told Curtis he wanted to ask some questions.

"It's going around that someone claiming to be the ghost of that Thomas boy is haunting the police into re‑opening the case."

"As a matter of fact," said Lightner, "what has happened is that we have discovered new evidence and if it checks out, then we will re‑open the case."

Curtis didn't believe him, but he decided not to press it. "Okay, what do you want to know?"

"I asked last time if he had any enemies; did anything occur to you about that in the past year?"

"No, the answer is the same as when I was asked that over a year ago; no enemies."

"You questioned them last time, along with Davis, Morris, Clancy, and Thorogood. Jones quit back in February; I don't know where he is. Eklund is shop foreman next door in the Tool and Die Division."

"Eklund wasn't foreman at the time. As a mater of fact, I had originally intended to give the job to poor Lucius, but he was killed."

The gears in Lightner's mind began to turn. "I don't remember anything about that, either. How much better is the foreman's job than just working at a machine?"

"I don't think it's good enough to commit murder over. It means an additional ten cents an hour, but a whole lot more headaches. As a matter of fact, right now that division is nothing but headaches."

"Well, we're working on an order for precision gears for a munitions company, and we seem to have trouble getting them to test out to spec."

"The Bandler Arms Company. They are making a lightweight field piece for shipment to England or France or somewhere overseas. The gears are part of the aiming system that gives them precision targeting."

"I didn't know that. There's been times I might have killed for another four dollars a week, but I just can't see it these days. Not if it included a the kind of trouble you’re talking about."

"I hadn't told anybody about it, anyway, so there was no way to know Lucius was in line for promotion."

Lightner left the main factory, but stopped in the front office. He showed the Veronica Lake look‑alike at the front desk his badge, and asked to see the personnel files. Fifteen minutes later, he was on his way with an interesting bit of information: Eklund lived on North St. Catherine, just past Station Street. Although not exactly proof of anything, he could easily pass the Greenfront on St. Catherine on his way to or from work. He would have to ask Eklund a few questions.

At ten that evening, Lightner poured himself a cup of cold coffee from the pot in the back of the police station. He looked haggard and tired, dark circles ringing his eyes. As he downed half the cold, bitter brew, a shadow seemed to detach itself from the gloom, and walked over to the man.

"That damned bottle. It came from the Greenfront on St. Catherine. Besides the fact that Thomas was working until after the place closed, if he had come in there, sweaty, smelly, and covered with dirt, they would never have sold him any whiskey."

"I don't know what to think. I interviewed Brent's boss again, and thought I had a motive. Only, it doesn't seem like much of a motive."

Gravedigger tilted his head. The light fell across what looked like a partially rotted cheek. "Tell me about it," he said.

Lightner took another drink of coffee. "Brent was in line for a promotion. When he was killed, the promotion went to someone else. I thought that might be a motive, you know, more money, but the manager says the division Brent would have had is having troubles."

"They're making some kind of gear box to aim a little cannon the government is sending overseas. They can't seem to get the things right."

"I hear tell that Hitler fellah over yonder is spoilin' for a fight. I hear he hates just about everybody; colored folks, catholic folks, Jewish folks, Baptists... everybody."

Lightner shook his head. "There won't be any war. Hitler would have to be crazy to start a war. If he was that crazy, he would never have been able to become leader of a whole country like that."

"Get executed for a crime you didn’t commit, and you think twice about killing someone without being sure they're guilty."

"I know. I though about that. We would never be able to prove any connection in court."

At one time, the house on North St. Catherine was a huge, single‑family home, but now it was a boarding house.

The design of the house was common to the area: a big, three‑story rectangle, with a living room, formal dining room, and kitchen on one side, and two‑story foyer, study, and informal dining room on the other, separated by a hall. Upstairs, there had been three bedrooms along one side, two on the other. The spacious, master bedroom had been cut in two, and one rear bedroom had been turned into a bathroom. The attic had been converted into two bedrooms, although one had become a storeroom. Downstairs, the study and little dining room had become the owner's apartment. A shadowy figure was rummaging through a locked roll‑top desk in what had once been a study. Gravedigger was looking for something that would tell him which room belonged to Eklund. He was operating "blind" in a way; he was reaching through the top of the desk, and feeling around for stuff, and anything that seemed to be promising, he pulled out and looked at it. there was barely enough light coming in through the window to read. Shanna had been working with him for the last week; he had remembered some of what he had forgotten, and the phonetic system she was using was making him able to tie a word's appearance to it's sound.

Finally, he pulled an envelope out of the desk. On the outside was printed "Eklund‑Room 4". Inside was some money, probably rent. He put the envelope back, and walked back through the outside wall. He walked around the house to the back steps, went up to the door, and passed through it.

Originally, there had been a narrow, twisting staircase in the back, leading from the kitchen up to the end of the hall. It had been walled up at some point in the renovations, but Gravedigger was familiar with the general design of the house, and went looking for it. He was glad that it hadn't been removed when the house was converted over to a boarding house. Stepping through the wall, he ascended the forgotten staircase.

On the second floor, he stepped out into a closet that was made from the upper landing. Inside were towels and linens. He passed through them without disturbing them.

Standing at the end of the hall, he tried to figure out which room his quarry was in. He had hoped that the rooms would have a number on them, but they didn't. No lights showed under any of the doors, although there was a small night light in the bathroom. Since its' door was open, Gravedigger could immediately dismiss it. His best guess was that Room 4 would be the last room on the side with four rooms. He stepped through the door.

The room was furnished in a style that could be called Genteel Shabby. There was a single bed with an iron frame, a chair and lamp table, a dresser, and an armoire (the house had not originally had closets). There was a man in the bed, snoring gently.

Gravedigger saw the man's pants on the chair, so he walked over an gently felt the pockets. A few seconds later, he was holding the man's wallet. Much to his disappointment, the papers in it indicated that the man was named Clyde Purvis. He placed he wallet on the floor by the chair, and walked out into the hall again. Before he had gone two paces, he heard the rattle of a key in a lock. With mere seconds to decide, he removed his hat, and dropped to the floor near the wall. From the room next to the bathroom came a young woman. She turned to the back of the house, and entered the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Gravedigger got up and looked around. He didn't think he would get caught, but he didn't want to make a stir by being seen. He slipped down the hall, and settled in a particularly dark shadow near the top of the stairs. After a short time, Gravedigger heard the toilet flush, and the woman left the bathroom and returned to her own.

As long as he was there, he put his head through the wall to the front bedroom. It was better lighted that the back room, and he could see an elderly man sprawled out on the bed. Gravedigger frowned. Next time, he would have to find out what his target looked like. Still, the man looked to old to have been a close friend of Lucius Brent, much less put in a hard day's work at the Azalea City Pulley Works.

He stepped back, and walked to the next room, sticking his head through the door. The resident was another reasonably young man. Gravedigger entered. Again, the man's pants were on a chair, but there was no wallet in them. Gravedigger didn't think this was particularly strange, since he didn't carry a wallet, either. When the master bedroom was split in two, closets were put in the dividing wall. There was also a chest of drawers. He went to the chest of drawers first. The top offered nothing in particular, some change, a pocketknife, a pocket watch, a hairbrush and some hair tonic. He reached into the top drawer and began to feel around.

Almost without thinking, Gravedigger hunched over into the dresser and stepped into the next room. The elderly man still lay in the same position. Over the beating of his heart, he heard the door to the other room open, and footsteps in the hall. The steps stopped outside the door to this room, and waited.

Gravedigger walked back through the wall into the room he had just left. The light was on now. He was trying to decide what to do, when a sound in the hall decided him to roll under the bed. From this position, he saw a large, muscular, blond man wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt stalk past the door. In the man's hand was a strange-looking gun. The man didn't come back immediately, and Gravedigger noticed that there was a locked box under the bed with him. He placed a hand inside, felt some paper and metal, and pulled them out. The man was coming back. He walked in the room, and stood by his bed. Suddenly, he stooped, but Gravedigger dropped quicker, right through the floor.

When "ghosting", Gravedigger was lighter than normal. He couldn't exactly fly, but he fell slower. He had enough time to flip over and land lightly on his feet. Then he ran to the nearest outside wall and leapt though it.

Shanna sat at a concrete picnic table at Grogan Park, next door to the school where she taught. She had downed the sandwich as quick as possible, and was just about finished with her water, when the tall, thin man walked up and sat down.

"In a quandary," he answered, taking some paper and coins out of his pocket, and laying them on the table.

"`Deutschland'," she said, pronouncing it ‘Dee-ootsk-land’. "I don't know what that means."

She picked up the coins and looked at them. She had no idea what a Pfennig was, much less how to pronounce it.

"That was in a box under a man's bed. The man just might be involved in Lucius Brent's murder."

"Maybe. I'd be jumpy if I woke up and somebody was in my room. He had a gun, but he didn't fire it. He told me to hold it, and I walked through the wall into the next room. He went looking for me, I slipped back into his room, and hid under the bed. I went out through the floor, after taking this stuff."

"If he is involved, then the items in the newspaper and on the radio probably haven't made him feel very comfortable." said Shanna.

"We agreed that for Gravedigger to be really effective, he could only be seen at night. That way, people won't look for him during the day."

"He's about as miserable as a human being can be. He knows he was wrong, he's just having a hard time admitting it. He's probably wondering if he sent any other innocent men to their deaths."

Shanna sat there for awhile, sipping her water. This was the arrangement they had worked out. Gravedigger would meet her here during lunch, and they would sift through the information. She still didn't know the man's name, although she could see his face. His angular features were not matinee idol handsome, but he wasn’t hard to look at either. He was also smart, leaning so quickly in he past weeks he was reading at third grade level now. Shanna had gotten him a book of Sherlock Holmes stories from the library, as a kind of primer on detective work.

Chapter 13

Detective Lightner rode the trolley down to the City Garage, where he checked out a car. Since he might have to travel hither and yon today, he didn't want to depend on trolley schedules to get him there. The car was only a year old, and Lightner wished he could afford one like it. His wife brought him to work most days, and afterward he rode the trolley out to The Loop, walking a couple of blocks to his house.

First stop was Eklund's home on North St. Catherine. He found that it was a boarding house, which he had already suspected. He knocked on the front screen door, and a pleasant, plump, conservatively dressed woman of something like middle age answered. He showed her his badge.

"I'd like to ask you a few questions about one of your boarders," Lightner said.

Lightner followed the woman all the way to the back of the house, to the kitchen. Having once lived in a similar house on St Charles Street, the look and feel of the house was familiar to him. The smell of bacon and coffee hung in the air, making Lightner hungry all over again. The kitchen was big, but not for this house. A huge colored woman was washing dishes. Her hair was up in a bandana, and she wore a tablecloth-checkered apron over the biggest white dress Lightner had ever seen.

She poured Lightner a cup of coffee from a sterling silver pot, and they began to talk.

Eklund had been living there for two years. Before that, Mrs. Henderson didn't know where he lived. He was quiet, never made any kind of trouble and, except for his attitude towards the nice Mr. Goldstein, and seemed likable enough. When asked about that, she said that apparently Mr. Eklund didn't like Jews. The Negro woman, now drying the dishes, broke in and added that he didn't like colored folks, either. Mrs. Henderson had seen a couple of his friends at one time or another. All looked alike: big, blonde men. She knew that once or twice a week, Eklund went somewhere and stayed until almost eleven o'clock, but where that was she didn't know. Some kind of lodge meeting, she supposed.

Lightner thanked her, went out, got in the car, and drove to Azalea City Pulley Works. This time, he went to the Tool and Die division, and asked to see Mr. Eklund.

Eklund's "office" was a sheet-metal lean‑to, barely big enough for two men and a drafting table. It did have a big electric fan, however, to stir the air. Lightner was beginning to wonder if all big machine shops had similar structures.

"How can I help you, officer?" asked Eklund. He was big, six feet or so, and he had blond hair and the bluest eyes Lightner had ever seen.

"We have come upon some new evidence in the Brent murder. I'm checking up on a few details.”

“He probably did. We never got a confession, though. This kind of thing happens; something comes up and we just have to check it out. It keeps the chief happy.”

“Okay,” said Eklund, his arched eyebrow calling Lightner a liar, “what do you want to know.”

“I realize that it was a long time ago, but do you remember if you walked home the night of the murder, or did you get a ride or something.”

“I cannot remember exactly. Usually, I walk up to Robeson and ride the trolley round and round to Delmar and St. Catherine. Then I walk from there.”

“I just wondered if you might have seen Thomas around the Greenfront on St. Catherine the night of the murder.”

“That is the store that sold the bottle of whiskey we found in Brent’s car,” answered Lightner. “We traced it by the tax stamp. State liquor stores keep a record of what they sell.”

“I... well... yes. I have occasionally in that liquor store shopped. What I did that night I do not remember, but Josiah Thomas I did not see.”

“Oh, none, really. Well, if you say you didn’t see him, you didn’t see him.”

“I appreciate your time,” said Lightner, and with that, he tipped his hat and left.

For what it was worth, the brand name of the whiskey that had filled the bottle Lightner had traced to the Greenfront on St. Catherine was Old Mr. Bellvue. There was another thing that puzzled Lightner, though: when under stress, Eklund began to talk funny. Maybe it was just his imagination working overtime, but he thought again about what Gravedigger said about the possibility of sabotage. Who would be in a better position to gum up the works than the boss would? Just because Curtis didn’t tell Brent or anyone else about the promotion didn’t mean that no one else knew about it. Maybe, too, it was the feeling he had that Eklund was always talking down to him. It was thin, though.

That night was Friday night, and Gravedigger haunted The Avenue, as Jarvis Avenue was known. Friday and Saturday nights, The Avenue came alive. Shops stayed open until 10:00, and the bars until whenever. People who had worked hard all week wanted to have a little fun. The Booker T., Washington Carver, and Gem Theaters opened their doors early, and families thronged to the movies. In the back rooms of a couple of stores, stag films were shown. Restaurants did the majority of their dinner business Friday and Saturday nights and the bars and lounges always stocked up for the weekend.

Gravedigger patrolled up and down the street, gliding silently on the breeze between buildings, dropping noiselessly through the roofs, stepping through walls. Things were quiet, though, the word having gotten out that an avenging ghost was on the lookout for crime.

At 10:30, Gravedigger noticed that he was near Miss Falk’s boarding house. He decided to see if she was in, and what, if anything she had found out about that foreign money. Besides that, the clouds of the day had moved out, and now the air was growing colder. The light was on in her window, so he climbed up the tree and tapped gently on the glass. The light went out, and seconds later, the window opened. Gravedigger climbed in.

“We’ve got to come up with a better way to communicate,” Shanna said as soon as she had closed the window.

“There’s a pay phone downstairs, but the calls are limited to five minutes, and it is ‘way to public. I’ll think on it, though,” Shanna said.

“It turns out that it’s German. I know it doesn’t really prove anything, but I remembered what you said about sabotage.”

“It is curious, though. I think I’ll pay a call on Mr. Eklund again; see what else I can find.”

Chapter 14

Lightner sat in the unmarked police car at the end of the block Eklund lived on. He had been waiting for an hour, when a late-model Packard came around the corner, stopped in front of the boarding house, and honked its horn. Eklund came down the steps and got in the car. As they passed Lightner’s position, he slipped down into the car, and carefully glanced at the occupants. The car was filled with young, blonde men. As they went around the next corner, Lightner started his car, made a U-turn, and set off in pursuit.

The other car made one other stop on Mon Louis Street, then headed south on St. Catherine Street. They crossed Shell Belt, Spring Hill, and Delmar, then turned west on Government. Lightner followed behind, He would turn off his lights and run up close, then turn them back on, and drop back, trying to make them think that it was a different car.

The closer they got to The Loop, the more concerned Lightner became. Was it just a coincidence that they were heading toward his house?

Lightner breathed a sigh of relief when they passed Fulton Street, and turned down Hawthorne. Hawthorne was also Highway 90, and the way out of town. The detective stayed back a ways, since cars were getting fewer and fewer. The other car continued on toward the City Limit. Lightner knew they were almost there when he crossed Bankhead Street, and rounded the curve.

Lightner stopped in front of a BJ’s Grocery (“Nine to nine, every day but the Sabbath” proclaimed the sign out front).

From here, the road went straight for several miles, so he should still be able to see the car’s taillights. There wasn’t anything. A transfer truck came around the curve behind him, passed him, and continued on. He could still make out the truck clearly as it crossed Eslava creek, which was the official City Limit a few hundred yards on.

Lightner engaged the clutch, and began to slowly ride down the road. On the right, just past Iroquois Street, there was a driveway. The sign on the post outside said “Brenner’s Dairy”.

It was the only place they could have turned; on the other side was a fenced-off construction company.

Lightner pulled just past the driveway, and pulled off the road. It was close quarters, since the shoulder was very narrow, and the fence line to the dairy was overgrown. He walked back to the drive, and, hugging the shadows, crept toward its end.

The dairy stretched for a mile along the creek, up almost to the end of Government. A hundred yards off the road was the house and the barn. There were no electric lights to speak of (the house having been built before power lines were run this far away from town), and the moon was not yet up. A cold wind had sprung from out of the north, and it made Lightner’s breath fog.

The house looked empty, but there was a faint glimmer of light from the barn. Lightner wondered why it was so quiet; if this were a dairy, wouldn’t there be cows? It wasn’t too far from his house (nothing in the City was, really), but he didn’t remember anything about a diary around here.

Lightner sneaked up to the barn. His reward was both good and bad. Within he heard people talking, but didn’t understand a word they spoke. Once a voice he recognized as Eklund’s spoke Lightner’s name, but that was all.

Lightner decided to bring someone back who could speak foreign languages, and see if next time something could be made of it. He stood up…

“Do not move!” commanded a voice. Lightner made a guess from using the same trick himself that the light was strapped to a gun.

The men from the car came out of the barn. Eklund walked up to Lightner and grinned.

“Well, detective, we meet again,” he said, laughing in a way that Lightner didn’t like. From under his coat he pulled a weapon Lightner recognized as a Luger.

The man who had come up behind Lightner spoke a few words in his own language, then walked back toward the road.

Lightner cursed himself. He was so intent on following his quarry; he had ignored the possibility of guards.

Chapter 15

Gravedigger glided to a shadowy spot across the street from Miss Falk’s boarding house, then climbed up the building. Just as he worked his way up the street, he returned down the street. When he reached the end of Jarvis Avenue, he glided over to a big oak tree along the edge of Broadway. Ten minutes later, a trolley passed under the tree. Silent as, well, as a ghost, Gravedigger dropped to the top of the trolley. At Spring Hill Avenue, the trolley turned to the west, and went toward Christown. Gravedigger watched for the street he wanted. Just before he reached Saint Catherine, he stood up and leaped to the branches of another oak tree. Oaks overhung most of the major streets in the city, and they were proving invaluable in his efforts to come and go undetected. They were almost as useful as his knowledge of the city’s sewer and drainage system. From tree to interlocking tree, he climbed, stepped, and glided. Finally, he reached Eklund’s boarding house. A silent glide to a pecan tree in the back, an easy drop to the ground, and he was at the back door. No lights showed in the back, so he walked up the steps to the porch, and through the back door.

His whole trip investigation less than ten minutes. Eklund had apparently moved out.

Gravedigger had just exited the sealed back stairs, when the light in the kitchen flashed on.

Facing him was the biggest, blackest woman he had seen in a long time. She held a meat cleaver in a way that indicated a certain familiarity with the instrument. Gravedigger turned to run through the wall.

“He lit outta here awhile ago, like, well like the devil himself was after him.”

“No, Mista Gravedigger, neither would I. I’m Cassie Hurt, and I’ve got a nephew name of Titus Newton. He’s my sister’s son, and I’ve been raising him these last ten years since she died. Titus, he’s been messing around up on The Avenue with a lot of no-accounts and hoodlums. He was into Ustus Fairchild for a lot of money, and was trying to work it off as a bully-boy for Johnny Simms. Titus is the one who found what you left of Simms and his other no-accounts. You’ve put the fear of the Lord into him, and I’m much obliged.”

Johnny Simms was more commonly known as Johnny Snakeyes, one of Gravedigger’s lessons to the residents of The Avenue. He made a gesture of dismissal with his hand. “Don’t mention it,” he said.

“But I do. Mista Gravedigger, I can’t say for sure were that Eklund fella is, but I do know one thing: he’s at a dairy.”

“I was raised on a dairy farm in Mississippi, and I know cowshit when I see it. Whenever that Eklund fellah goes off with his friends, he comes back with cowshit on his boots. Then he expects me to clean it off. Not like it was my job, mind you, but because he’s so much better than me.”

“There must be several dairies around the city,” Gravedigger said, thinking himself about Brown’s Dairy on Delmarre Street and Freshville Farms on Moffatville Road.

“Yes, but my cousin works at Brown, and says he never seen Mista Eklund there. It’s gotta be close into town, because once he was gone less than an hour, it would take longer than that to go to Freshville,” said Mrs. Hurt, answering Gravedigger’s unasked questions.

“Down Hawthorne Street right at the City Limit there’s a dairy that is up for sale. They have only a few cows left, so not much is going on there. I think that’s were that Eklund fellah goes.”

Gravedigger considered. He had no leads whatsoever. A trip to the edge of the city wasn’t what he really wanted, but couldn’t see what it could hurt. What he really wanted to know was what Eklund was doing.

Gravedigger nodded. “I’ll look into it,” he finished. He turned and walked out through the door.

Mamma Hurt followed him onto the porch. The wind had started gusting, and oddly enough, Gravedigger noticed it would still ruffle his coat even when he was ghosting. He pulled his coat tighter around himself.

The woman said, “You wait here,” and took off across the yard toward the servant’s quarters at he back of the yard. Seconds later she returned, bearing a gift, which she handed to Gravedigger. He unrolled foot after foot of knitted wool scarf.

“I been working on that in my spare time for years; never knew when to stop. You take that to warm your… uh… bones.”

Gravedigger wrapped the scarf around his neck and lower face several times, and it still had plenty to tuck down and stick into the collar of his coat. It really was quite warm. In addition, it would help to hide his face. This last was good, because he wasn’t too adept at makeup yet. Miss Falk was looking into the manufacture of rubber masks.

Chapter 16

Paul Lightner was a cop, not a spy or a soldier. He really did not belong in this situation. The men tied his wrists together and pulled him up on tiptoes from a pulley overhead. Then they beat on him for a few minutes “to soften him up”. Eklund began to question him about what he knew. It was really quite an experience. He managed to laugh in their faces when they accused him of working with Gravedigger.

Eklund seemed to take the most pleasure out of striking him. He went for the kidneys and the solar plexus, with an occasional knee to the groin. Lightner had no idea what a sadist was, but he was beginning to realize that Eklund wasn’t just a spy: he was crazy.

Lightner was cut down and left to lie in the dirt for a moment. He kept telling his legs to spring up and surprise his captors, but for some reason they weren’t listening to him. He told his arms to get under him and help him up, but they refused. He was just starting to get angry when he threw up.

They picked him up under his arms, and dragged him out to a car. They stuffed him into the back and drove off across the pasture. Lightner hadn’t realized how painful riding on the floorboard of a car could be. After what seemed like a trip all the way to Mississippi, they stopped. One man sat in the car with him, while the others worked by the headlights of the car. Lightner had a chance to look at what he had been laying on. They were long thing sticks wrapped in wax paper. Dimly in his mind he wondered if it was dynamite.

Finally, Eklund came and ordered Lighter dragged from the car. The other men pulled him over to a short brick structure with a cast iron ring on it.

Lightner wanted to make some kind of snappy reply, but all he could do was spit up blood.

“Aufweidersehen,” and with that, the men holding Lightner shoved him head first down into the hole in the top of the structure.

Lightner nearly gagged from the smell before he hit the water. He was in a big septic tank.

Built along the creek, these processed the sewage from the neighborhoods and allowed the remains to trickle into the water. Lightner knew there was one at the end of his street, without really knowing anything about it. This one was ten feet wide, twenty feet long, and ten feet deep. At present it had eight feet of sewage in it.

The only thing he really worried about was how was Jenny ever going to get the smell out of his clothes.

The spies put the lid back on the manhole ring, and began to replace the bolts that locked it on.

Chapter 17

Gravedigger literally walked through the house at the dairy, finding no one inside. He walked to the barn and looked inside, On the floor he found straw matted with blood and vomit, scuff marks, and a length of rope.

Gravedigger heard the roar of a car as it passed the house. He was outside of the barn only in time to see the taillights vanish as the car went toward the road. They had been coming from the creek, he could see by the slowly drifting cloud of dust. An old memory stirred, and he headed that way too.

The spy who worked at the watchman at the dairy saw the weird form approaching him. Not taking a chance, he threw the wrench he carried at Gravedigger’s approaching form. It passed right through, only causing Gravedigger to pause a moment before he remembered he couldn’t be hurt.

“Ein Geist!” screamed the man, and he took off running. Gravedigger followed suit. It was an uneven race: Gravedigger’s longer stride and ability to pass through obstacles rapidly gained ground. The man did seem to follow the dictum not to look back, perhaps because he already knew something was gaining. The terrified man broke through the trees at the edge of the dairy and raced out onto Hawthorne Street, Gravedigger only paces behind. As Gravedigger reached out to grab his quarry, he was suddenly enveloped in darkness. Just as suddenly, he had a momentary glimpse of a man sitting in the seat of a truck, followed by a kaleidoscopic view of bovine anatomy and an ear-splitting screech. He turned around and ran back the way he came.

A few steps into the woods at the edge of the road, he turned around. Out on the street was a truck loaded with cattle, headed to market somewhere out of town. On the concrete pavement behind the truck was a long, red smear. Apparently his quarry had been hit, then dragged a ways. He looked down and noticed his hands were shaking. He wet his lips, and retraced his path on legs with unsteady knees.

At the point he had first seen the other man, Gravedigger stood. He was trying to imagine what things had looked like here twenty years ago. He headed toward the creek that marked the edge of the city.

Lightner was treading sewage barely. His breathing hurt and his arms were like lead.

Lightner was too weak to respond. Gravedigger reached out and touched him, and he went ghost-like.

“Hang onto my neck, and I’ll get you out of here.” Lightner’s answer was to pass out.

Gravedigger was realizing that making another person ghost-like wasn’t all that easy; he was tiring fast. He whipped off the scarf, and used it to tie Lightner to him. Then he “swam” through the sewage, the side of the septic tank, and into the ground. He couldn’t breathe underground, but he hoped it wouldn’t take too long.

It still seemed to take forever. Just about the time Gravedigger was sure he had gone the wrong direction, he was out into the air, and falling toward the creek bed. He made sure that Lighter was completely out of the ground, turned solid, and collapsed himself.

Half an hour later, Jenny Lightner heard the heavy tread of footsteps on the back porch. She was somewhat concerned, because if it were Paul, he would have called. She had picked up the phone and was about to say “Operator, get me the police”, when Gravedigger walked through he back door carrying her husband.

Jenny slammed the phone down and ran to the two men. She almost gagged at the smell.

“Ma’am, some very bad men just tried to kill you husband. I got him out of the fix he was in, but we need to clean him up and tend to his wounds. They could get infected and make him real sick.”

She showed him the way to the bathroom. Gravedigger put Paul in the tub, and stripped him by the simple expedient of “ghosting” his clothes off. He tossed off his hat and coat, and started the water.

Jenny took a bottle of peroxide from the medicine chest, and handed it to Gravedigger. He splashed it over the man’s face, keeping clear of his eyes. Then he started the shower. It was one of those that came up from the end where the faucet was and arced over the tub. He turned the water up as hot as he dared. Then he washed Lightner’s cuts and scrapes.

Jenny shoved Gravedigger to the side and grabbed her husband. Lightner managed not to scream when she hugged him. Gravedigger stepped out of the room.

A few moments later, Lightner limped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his middle. His torso was mottled with bruised and scrapes. Jenny Lightner ran after him pleading with him to take it easy.

He was as he walked out the door he was met by a partially dressed Lightner who asked, “Are you going with me?”

Lightner turned to his wife. “Call the station and tell them to meet me at the Pulley Works,” he said, then turned and went outside.

Gravedigger followed the limping man out to the garage, watching as Lightner put on a shoulder holster, then checked the action of the gun it had held. Need to get me one of those holsters, he mused.

“Those animals had dynamite in the back of their car. This whole thing is some kind of sabotage set-up. For what reason, I don’t know, but that’s it. They must be pulling out, so it stands to reason that they try and complete their job as quick as possible.”

“No,” Lightner answered, fumbling with the car door, “but can you drive?”

Lightner got the door open, and eased himself into the car. Gravedigger climbed into the other seat. Lightner started the car, backed out of the driveway, and took off as fast as he could go.

Chapter 18

Gravedigger considered ghosting several times during the ride to the pulley works. Lightner drove like a madman.

“How’d you know where to find me?” Lightner asked as they streaked up Houston Street.

“You know what Josia’s father did for a living?” asked Gravedigger in return.

“City Water and Sewer Department to be exact. ‘Bout twenty years ago, he built that septic tank, and I helped tote bricks and mortar.”

“Come see me some night; I’ll teach you how to drive. You any good with that gun?”

Lightner grunted as he whipped the wheel around and turned on Houston Street. He was afraid if he stopped he would stiffen up.

“Same place the police practice; I’ve been going down onto Three Mile Bayou and shooting the rats. People around there just figure it’s the cops, and ignore it.”

Dawn was minutes away when they roared into the alley between the office and the factory building. Lightner grimaced as the wheels bounced over the railroad tracks that ran there. Gravedigger leapt through the door as soon as the car stopped, and raced toward the factory. Lightner, moving as though he might break, followed as close behind as possible.

Just inside the door to the cavernous building, Lightner came across the body of a man in a uniform, apparently the night watchman. He was shot through the heart. More shots rang out, and a chilling laugh followed.

Gritting his teeth, Lightner set off at a run. He’d be damned if he was going to let Gravedigger have all the fun.

Eklund had gotten in merely by walking up the Mike the watchman and shooting him in the chest. Mike thought it was curious that Mr. Eklund should be here this time of night, but never suspected a thing. Eklund set Weissman to work setting the dynamite. They had determined that the best thing to do was blow up both the boiler and the steam engine that ran most of the equipment. All the small machines were run from rotating axles that ran along the long walls of the building. Blowing up both the boiler and engine would seriously curtail work here. After the rough financial time that the Depression gave the Pulley Works, something on this order might just finish it.

Weissman used blasting caps and a simple clock timer. He did most of the work right in the building, since no one would even be here until seven o’clock. Eklund had wanted to have the explosion around 7:30, so as to catch as many people in the disaster as possible, but with Lightner’s interference and Gravedigger stalking around, he had decided that property damage was sufficient. Weissman placed the dynamite at the points judged to be he most efficient, and joined his comrades splashing volatile fluids around. Acetone, alcohol, oil, all was poured on the floor and the machines.

“Ein Gheist!” shouted Schwartzwald. Everybody turned to see Gravedigger perched on top of one of the massive presses, gun in hand.

Two of the spies drew their pistols and fired, but the bullets passed harmlessly through their target. Gravedigger laughed and fired back. One man spun around and hit the floor. The other turned and ran…

… right into Lightner. Lightner hit him with all he had. The spy fell back, rolled to his feet, and raised his gun. Lightner’s service revolver was already pointed at the other man’s face. It caved in around the hole he blasted through the upper lip.

Eklund observed this from a position near the wall. He raised his gun, then shot the lock on the door to the outside. Without a backward glance, he threw open the door and raced into the dawn.

Gravedigger was hot on his heels. He raced through the wall, watching Eklund’s retreating figure race across the parking lot toward the Azalea City Cemetery. Gravedigger smiled.

The last spy shot at Lightner and missed. Lightner did not. Shooting human rats was easy compared to the four-footed variety. Lightner didn’t rest though; this scum was here for a reason. There was oil and stuff all over the place and the door to the boiler room stood open.

Several bundles of dynamite were placed around the face of the boiler. They were all wired together to a little clock-thing and batteries attached to the biggest bundle.

“Damn,” cursed Lightner. At that moment, he wished Azalea City was big enough and important enough to have a Bomb Squad like New York.

Gravedigger cut through the line of graves, just like he used to do as a kid. Eklund didn’t know it, but he was in Br’er Rabbit’s briar patch. Like he and Josia used to do as kids, he would listen to the steps and try to figure out were the other was going. Except this time, he could cheat. Gravedigger set off through the line of headstones instead of between them. The concrete and granite structures were no longer barriers, nor were the trees that grew here and there in the graveyard. Stopping next to a mausoleum to catch his breath, he listened to approaching footsteps. Someone was close by.

Gravedigger walked through the wall of the sepulchre. Inside it was hot and muggy, the stone holding the day’s heat and warming the air, warmer that the cool night air, anyway.

Gravedigger stuck just his face out of the mausoleum door. Eklund was looking around the corner of one of the monuments at an approaching policeman. Gravedigger stepped out onto the top steps, just beyond the wrought iron bars. He placed his hand on the door, and ghosted, taking the door with him.

The heavy, wet, warm air in the mausoleum flowed out through the door, hit the cool, moist air outside, and formed an artificial fog.

Eklund spun around and fired his pistol. His last four bullets passed through Gravedigger and the door of the mausoleum.

“You was the cause of me getting killed me once already. Don’t you know you can’t kill a dead man?” Gravedigger pulled the trigger. Eklund’s head jerked back as the bullet hit the bridge of his nose. His gun flew through the air, landing near Gravedigger’s feet.

“Damn!” he said, “Damn. It was too easy. You deserved worse, you bastard.”

Hearing the policeman coming, Gravedigger stooped to pick up Eklund’s gun, then quickly retreated back into the mausoleum.

The policeman rounded the corner at a run, almost tripping over Eklund’s body.

Lightner was running as fast as his aching body would let him while carrying enough dynamite to erase every trace of his existence. He met three policemen coming in as he was going out.

“Good morning, detective,” began Kowalski, “what’s-JESUS CHRIST! THAT’S A BOMB!”

Lightner raced to his car, and placed the bundle on the seat next to him. He started the car, shifted gears, and let out on the clutch. The car began to roll down the tracks. As Lightner had thought, the gauge of the railroad was only slightly narrower than the wheelbase of the car. It would travel down the tracks with little effort on his part to steer it. He set the throttle, and, just before the car reached the switch, he jumped out.

Lightner rolled into the ditch along side the railroad, and lay in the water resting for a moment. The car, meanwhile, hit the switch and the front wheels cocked to the side. It mounted the plate at the switch and bounded over the tracks, straight into the same ditch Lightner was in.

Lightner saw the car plunge into the ditch about fifty feet from him. To his dying day, he would never be able to say how he scrambled up the sided of the ditch, ran across the tracks, and plunged into the ditch on the other side as fast as he did.

Lightner limped along the tracks back to the factory. He had never felt so bad in his entire life.

Chapter 20

Shanna sat and ate her lunch. Her dinner companion wasn’t very talkative. Finally, she broke the silence.

“You probably saved a lot of lives by stopping the bombing of the Pulley Works. You saved that detective’s life. What more do you want?”

“I could have! If I’d known what I could do, I could have snuck into prison and carried him out. I just kept thinking… well… something would happen.”

“Life isn’t like the movies. Or even pulp magazines. Even if you had gotten Josia out of prison, you wouldn’t have proven him innocent; probably just the opposite.

“Look, you have gotten revenge for his death and cleared him name. All things considered, that is pretty good.”

“You will. Look, do you want to call this Gravedigger business off? Maybe postpone it for awhile?”

Gravedigger shook his head. “No, Mama Hurt showed me that I’ve already changed lives, made some things around here better. I think we’ve got to keep this going.

“Maybe… maybe I will take tonight off.” He hesitated. “Um… there is a new movie at the Booker T.. Uh… “

“I've been wanting to see that movie,” Shanna interrupted. “If you want to see it too, I’d be glad to go with you.”

“Tell you what, you be at the boarding house at six, and we can eat supper together.”

“I’ll be there,” he said, standing. “Well, I’ve got to go; I have a job interview.”

Paul Lightner sat at his desk. He was trying to write a comprehensible report about what happened to him the previous 24 hours. He was getting nowhere fast. Part of it was that he just didn’t know how to explain a lot of it, and part of it was that he felt like, well, shit. He thought he would smell the inside of the septic tank for the rest of his life.

“This is the detective’s room,” Fritz said. “You empty the wastebaskets once a day, but get the ash trays at the ten o’clock break, lunch, the three o’clock break, and once before you go home. They smoke more cigarettes than anyone else; it helps them think.”

Lightner looked closely at the young man. He pulled a file out of the top drawer of his desk. Then he riffled through it until he found what he was looking for.

“Ya! Sure detective Lightner.” To the young man he said “Go talk to the detective. I’ll check to see if they have the rest uff your papers ready.”

“Sorry, Mister Lightner, but I don’t think we’ve ever been introduced,” the young man responded.

“No, but I know you.” Lightner slid a mug shot over to the man. It was a front and side view of him.

“I admit I was in prison. I served my time, and got out. I hope this won’t hurt my working here. I told them all about it in the interview.”

“It won’t. Besides, it isn’t like this is a chemical plant you can blow up.”

“That' s not fair, sir. I was drunk and out of my head when I did that. I wasn’t ever in trouble before.”

Lightner picked up the mug shot, and walked to one of the other desks. From a lazy susan he took a box of matches, struck one, and set fire to the photo. After watching it burn to ashes in one of the ashtrays, he cleared his desk, and limped out of the office.

Gravedigger is dedicated to Raymond G. Ward (1907-2005 ) and R. B. Polenitz (??-1999). They were there