Lords Of Twilight Read online

  How long’s it been since somebody put their arms around you?

  Marla’s memory came as a distraction, though not a pleasant one. Clyde Reeve had told him about Snead’s wife weeks before in passing, but he never suspected he’d actually go see her. In fact at the time he’d laughed it off, claiming he had no interest in prostitutes when Clyde gave him the address and said, “We all got needs, figured maybe you could use some company. Ashamed to say I go myself now and then. She’s not so bad, really.” Now not only had he gone through with it, he’d behaved like some pathetic fool, sitting on the bed next to her, holding her and crying like a child while she stroked his forehead and whispered everything would be all right. Even afterward, when his time had run out and she told him it was either time to go or pay for another thirty minutes, she seemed genuinely saddened for him. Imagine. She felt sorry for him. A woman pimped by her husband, who spent her days smoking meth and having sex with locals and strangers for money while their young daughter played just feet away.

  Lane was just about to turn from the window when a battered full-size pickup he recognized as Clyde’s came into view, pulled onto the property and slid in next to his truck. He hadn’t been expecting him but wasn’t surprised. With such a bad storm on the way it was just like Clyde to stop by, see if he needed anything and make sure Lane was properly prepared.

  Clyde Reeve was a tall and lanky man in his early fifties. With angular features, a thick salt-and-pepper mustache and a mane of shoulder-length silver hair, he had the look of an aging cowboy or a 70s porn star. Lane first met him through the real estate agent that sold him the house. The property was in need of basic repairs and the agent recommended Clyde as a reliable jack-of-all-trades who did good work quickly and affordably. They’d hit it off immediately, mostly because unlike near everyone else in Edgar, Clyde was not a native. Although he was accepted in the community as one of their own, he didn’t share the same guarded attitude toward outsiders. He’d lived there for years but had been born and raised in Oklahoma. He’d joined the Marines in his youth, and upon his discharge had married a woman originally from Edgar, settled there and raised two kids. Five years ago, he’d lost his wife to cancer. His children were grown and had both moved away a few years prior. Maybe it was their shared sense of loneliness, of loss, that had brought them together. Regardless, since moving to town, Clyde was the only person he considered even close to a friend.

  “Uncle Clyde’s here,” he told Vince. The dog looked at him, wagged his tail then resumed mauling his chew toy.

  He watched as Clyde hopped down out of his truck and sauntered across the yard to the front door, stopping twice to look up at the sky, eyes squinting against the onslaught of snowflakes. He had something bulky under his arm Lane couldn’t identify, and in his other hand was a small beef bone.

  Lane opened the door. “Didn’t expect to see you out in this mess.”

  “Nothing much to it yet.” Clyde stepped into the mudroom, closed the door behind him and held out a pair of wooden snowshoes. “Brought these over for you, figured you probably didn’t have a pair of your own.”

  “Snowshoes? Seriously?”

  “Hey, these storms up here are no joke.”

  “I know, but snowshoes?”

  Clyde brushed his snow-damp hair back and away from his face. “Trust me, if we get what they think’s coming you’ll need these to get around. Don’t suppose you’ve ever used them before.”

  “Nope, can’t say as I have.”

  “Want to strap them on and take a quick trial run?”

  “If I end up needing them I can figure it out. Not that complicated, right?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Lane accepted the shoes and set them down in the corner. “Thanks for thinking of me, I appreciate it. Come on in, have a seat and warm up.”

  He held up the small bone. “Where’s my boy?”

  “Doing unspeakable things to that poor duck of his.”

  Vince was still preoccupied with the chew toy but the moment Clyde stepped into the kitchen the dog saw him and charged, hopping and barking and licking him as if he hadn’t seen him in months.

  Dropping into a crouch, Clyde petted and played with the dog then handed over the bone. The puppy snatched it, ran to the corner and curled up with it.

  “Anybody ever breaks in, the best I can hope for is he licks them to death.” Lane motioned to the coffee pot on the counter. “Cup of coffee?”

  “Sure wouldn’t turn one down.” Clyde rose to his feet, removed his coat and slung it over the back of a kitchen chair. “Damnedest thing, Lane.”

  “What’s that?” From the moment Clyde had arrived Lane knew there was something bothering him. He had an unusually dark and concerned expression, and Lane had also caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath. Like Lane, he was a bit of a drinker, but not this early in the day. “Everything all right?”

  “Dwight Maynard,” he said sullenly, and then realizing Lane wasn’t sure who that was added, “fella owns the farm, sells blueberries.”

  “Oh yeah, right.” Lane knew of him, but didn’t know the man personally.

  “His wife found him dead this morning.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Were you good friends?”

  “Known him for years. Dwight was good people.”

  “He didn’t look that old.” Lane filled the coffee pot then poured it into the Mr. Coffee and switched it on. “What, early sixties maybe?”

  “Yeah, sixty-four.”

  “What a shame, that’s too young.” He pulled two mugs down from the cupboard as the coffeemaker gurgled to life. “What happened?”

  “That’s the thing, nobody’s sure, least not yet anyway. Like there wasn’t already enough crazy shit going on in town these days. The Staties are there now with an ambulance and some other mucky-mucks trying to figure things out. Tell you one thing, this snow ain’t helping. Jenny—that’s Dwight’s wife—she called a few of us this morning to let us know so we went over to see if there was anything we could do. Cops were still about half an hour or so out. I got over there right around the time the other fellas did. Pretty sure Jenny was in shock. Too calm, you know? She was in a haze, like a robot or something, no emotion at all. Said their dog Blue woke them up late last night making a fuss so Dwight got up and took him out. She didn’t think anything of it, rolled over and went back to sleep. This morning she woke up and Dwight wasn’t in bed. She goes downstairs and he’s nowhere to be found. But the dog’s crying and clawing at the back door. Poor thing’s paws were bleeding and he was scared to death. He’d taken damn near two inches off the bottom of that door. I figured Blue must’ve been scratching at it trying to get in for hours. But he never barked. Jenny said if he’d barked she would’ve heard him. So the three of us—me, Jed Hutch and Curly Briggs—all followed Jenny out to the back of the property. Blue wouldn’t budge. I’ve never seen an animal that scared in all my life. When we got out there, I started to understand why.” He stretched his long legs out across the floor, his boots dripping water as he did so. “Do me a favor. Throw a little something extra in that coffee, would you?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Lane found a bottle of whiskey in another cupboard, walked it over to the table and set it down. “You all right, Clyde?”

  “Just a little shook up is all.” He rubbed his eyes. “See, way at the back of the property there’s this big hill. Other side there’s nothing but forest. We get out there, and Dwight’s laying right at the top of this hill, on his back, arms out at his sides, eyes wide open. Naked as a newborn, didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. And his skin looked…Lane it looked burned. All red like a lobster, you know? In some parts it was so bad there was little blisters all around.”

  “Christ.”

  “Damnedest goddamn thing I ever seen.”

  As the coffee finished brewing, Lane poured some into both mugs then joined Clyde at the table. “Maybe it was from the cold. You know, frostbite can often look like—”

&nbs
p; “This wasn’t frostbite. I know frostbite and this wasn’t that.” He snatched up the bottle and poured a healthy amount into his mug. “Picture a really bad chemical burn and you’ll get an idea.”

  Lane nodded but wasn’t sure what else to say.

  “No other trauma or marks on him we could see, but didn’t nobody want to touch him or disturb the crime scene. You know, like they always say you ought not to on those CSI shows on TV.”

  “Do you think there was foul play involved?”

  “Something foul about the whole goddamn thing.”

  “Anything that pointed to murder though?”

  Using both hands, Clyde gripped the mug, slowly brought it to his mouth and took a long sip. “Not exactly, but here’s the thing. Jenny said when Dwight left the house he was wearing pajamas and a robe. His boots weren’t in the front hall where he always left them so she figures he slipped them on too. But none of his clothes were anywhere around.”

  “Strange.”

  “Gets stranger. Besides Jenny’s there weren’t any footprints out there. Not one. It’d been snowing, and there was already snow on the ground from the dusting a few days ago. There wasn’t enough accumulation of the fresh snow yet to cover tracks, even if they were made in the middle of the night, but she said there weren’t any footprints leading to the hill or going up the hill when she found him. How the hell could Dwight get up there without leaving footprints behind? And believe me when I tell you, I saw for myself, but for Jenny’s there were no footprints going up or down that hill and none around the base of it. Not one. Hell, Jenny’s prints only went about halfway up. She told me once she saw Dwight’s body there she knew he was dead so she turned and ran for the house. But you see what I’m saying here? It’s not possible for him to get to the top of that hill without leaving tracks.” He drank from the mug again. “Noticed something else too. The snow cover was pristine so it was easy to see that Dwight’s body was sunk down a ways in the snow. Almost like—I know this sounds crazy but—almost like he’d been dropped there.”

  Lane sipped his coffee. “Dropped.”

  “From above. Like from a helicopter or something maybe.”

  “A helicopter?”

  “Or something.”

  Lane watched him a moment then laughed lightly, nervously. “Oh come on, not more of this UFO and little green men nonsense.”

  “From everything I’ve ever read, they’re not green.” His face didn’t even hint at a smile. “I don’t know if you know this, but Dwight’s one of the people in town that reported seeing them lights in the sky. Couple days back I ran into him and asked him about it. He said they were out over his property at night a bunch of times, once for almost half an hour. Said he’d never seen anything like them.”

  “I bet not, but they could’ve been any number of—”

  “Said he was having bad dreams too, nightmares that didn’t make sense, said they were making him paranoid.”

  Clyde’s words caught him like a slap to the face but he did his best to appear unaffected. “That’s rough, I mean—it must’ve been terrible for him, I—”

  “Hell, I don’t know if I believe in all that UFO crap either, but it goes all the way back to even before the Bible, you know. Some people believe the little bastards have been coming here for thousands of years. Been recorded by every culture all over the planet throughout human history, including the oldest ever, the Sumerians, so who’s to know for sure? Lot of different theories out there—everything from spacemen to inter-dimensional beings to fallen angels—some even think they’re us, visiting from the future. I always liked that one.”

  Unsure of how to respond, Lane said nothing.

  “Government knows all about it. People like to roll their eyes and act like only nuts and fools believe in these things, but I’m telling you, there’s something to it. What exactly, I don’t know, but it’s not nothing.”

  “OK, so what about Dwight?”

  Clyde shrugged. “Don’t know for sure what happened, only know it don’t make any sense.”

  Lane tried to shift gears. “Does anyone around here own a helicopter?”

  “Company down in Portland leases them, but the only time you see one in these parts is during picking season. Cranberry growers hire them. During dry harvest, the growers dump the berries into these big bins. To save wear and tear on the bogs they use helicopters to lift the bins and put them down off to the side or on trailers and whatnot. Picking season ended a couple weeks ago, though, runs late September to early November in these parts. Either way, what the hell would Dwight be doing in a helicopter, especially in the middle of the night? And what’s more, if a copter was that close to the house Jenny would’ve heard it. Ever been near one? They ain’t exactly quiet, make one hell of a racket.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Just the same, something dropped him there. Unless Dwight learned how to fly there’s no other explanation I know of.”

  The whole thing sounded ludicrous, but Lane nodded kindly anyway. Clyde was a salt-of-the-earth, no-nonsense type of individual who didn’t spook easily or seem susceptible to flights of fantasy. If what he’d said about the lack of footprints was true—and Lane had no reason to believe it wasn’t—they were dealing with one hell of a mystery. “Were there any tracks from Dwight at all?”

  “Just leading from the front door out into the yard. They stopped about halfway across the property, same as the dog’s did. Then there were tracks showing Blue turning tail and running back for the house.”

  Despite the heat in the room, Lane shivered.

  “And what the hell could’ve burned Dwight like that?” Clyde asked.

  Lane considered the possibilities a moment. “Radiation maybe?”

  “Could be. Don’t know much about that.”

  “Could it have been a suicide? If he took all his clothes off and laid down he had to know he’d freeze to death.”

  “Dwight ain’t the type, but even if he did get undressed and lay down, where are his clothes and where are the tracks? How did he get up there?”

  “Did the cops have any theories?”

  “Staties were tight-lipped as ever.” He reached for the bottle again and added another splash of whiskey to his coffee. “Thing is them and the EMTs were only there a few minutes before these other fellas showed up. Suits. Looked like feds, all official and serious. One of them told me to stay put, that they wanted to talk to me. By this time me and the other guys and even Jenny were back at the house, the cops got us out of there right quick, let me tell you. After a few minutes the suits come back from the hill and start asking for names and addresses and questioning us about what happened and what we saw.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Told the truth. They wrote down what we said and went back out to where Dwight was. Then one of the Staties came around, said we could leave.”

  “Did these suits identify themselves?”

  “The one that questioned me said he was a federal agent.”

  “What, like FBI?”’

  “Not sure, never saw any ID.”

  “Did you ask for some?”

  “I figured he’d show me a badge or something but he never did.” Clyde stroked his mustache. “So I asked him why federal agents would be there and he said it was just procedure. When I told him plenty of people had passed in this town over the years but I never once saw the government show up to check it out, he said that was none of my concern. Pissed me off but I let it go because to be honest the guy gave me the creeps. Strange eyes. Dead eyes, like a doll, you know? Like there was nothing there once you got past them. So I answered his questions and got the hell out of there.”

  “Were they driving any kind of official vehicle?”

  “Big black SUVs. No markings on them. Government plates.”

  Lane thought a moment. “Was Dwight involved in anything he shouldn’t have been, or did he have any kind of past maybe no one knew about?”

  “A simple man, a good man, that’s all Dwi
ght Maynard was. Why the hell would the feds give a damn about some dead blueberry farmer in Edgar? And tell me this. The state cops got there about thirty minutes after Jenny called them. That’s normal unless they already happen to be in the area, which is rare. But they were only on the scene maybe ten minutes when the federal guys showed up. If the Staties called them, how the hell did they get there so fast? There aren’t any FBI offices anywhere near this part of the state.”

  “Seems to me if they were FBI agents they’d identify themselves as such.”

  “Well whatever the hell they were they got here awful fast.”

  “Maybe they were nearby working on something else and when the state cops requested federal involvement they got the call.”

  Clyde thought about it a moment. “Could be. Least that makes sense.”

  “You’re right though, that is one strange scenario all the way around.”

  “Awful lot of strange scenarios in this town lately. Too many, you ask me. Something’s not right with any of it. I can feel it.”

  Vince suddenly chomped on his chew toy and it squeaked, startling both men. Clyde forced a smile and absently scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Well, time will tell, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry about Dwight, hope they get to the bottom of it. Kind of creepy.”

  “That it is.” Clyde sat forward and gave the table a slap, indicating it was time for a new topic. “So, wanted to make sure you were all set. You got more than enough wood to get you through a few days. I’d suggest getting some gas into the generator and moving it up here into the mudroom before things get too messy out there. Might not end up needing it but if you do you sure as hell don’t want to be wheeling that sumbitch through two feet of snow.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I appreciate you looking out for me, Clyde.”

  “You just stay hunkered down and you’ll be fine. Soon as I can I’ll be over to plow you out.” He took another pull of coffee then stood up and stretched a bit. “Now let’s go see about that generator and get you battened down, I told the guys I’d head out for a while with them, maybe get a little hunting in.”