Lovers came at night in the warmer months. Teenagers tended to shun the outdoors for their trysts, preferring cars and beds, but older people seemed more romantic and hiked among the flora to make love on the loamy earth. The cops left them alone. Embarrassed citizens could become both vituperative and litigious. There were no other cars in the parking area and Metzger pulled to the side and shut off his headlights. He put his head back against the seat and glanced at his watch. It was 3:40. In twenty minutes, at the top of the hour, his watch would beep and he would waken, if not truly refreshed, at least able to finish the shift.
Deep in the woods, Captain Luv had seen the sweep of the approaching headlights and had doused his flashlight before the beam came over him.
He saw the headlights vanish, then waited to hear the slam of a car door but heard nothing beyond his own breathing. Even the insects were still at this hour, their mating chorus long since finished. More mating going on in the car, Luv reasoned. He waited longer, making- sure the adulterers were preoccupied with each other, then switched his flashlight back on, resting it on the ground so its light stayed low.
The grave was only half dug, but he had been lucky in his choice of burial sites the ground was moist and easily penetrated. There was nowhere in Connecticut where stones didn't pepper the earth, but he had encountered no large rocks, nothing big enough to delay him. He moved the flashlight so that it perched on the edge of the hole. To secure it into place he shifted the trash bag, creating a cradle for the light amongst the mobile body parts.
Metzger awoke to the tinny beep of his wristwatch and saw a shaft of light in the woods shining straight up the trunk of a tree as if emerging from a rent in the earth. For a brief moment it resembled something from science fiction and Metzger thought crazily of aliens arriving. Then the light wavered before plunging abruptly earthward and disappearing. Metzger opened the car door and immediately cursed himself for not removing the key from the ignition first. The door alarm sounded annoyingly before he pulled the key loose. He heard the dull clink of metal on stone; then all was silent. Metzger reached inside and shut off the ceiling light that had gone on automatically when the door was opened. He looked toward the source of the sound and thought he saw a faint glow along the ground, almost as if a company of fireflies were massing. Then that light, too, was extinguished.
He stood beside the car for a long time as a growing sense of unease pervaded him. There were no other cars in the parking area. Whoever was in the woods must have parked somewhere and hiked in. That did not sound like lovers. Metal on stone did not sound like lovers either. It sounded like someone digging. After a long time Metzger started into the woods as silently as he could.
Luv heard the sound of the car alarm and saw the interior light. The lovers had gotten out of the car, perhaps to gain more legroom. Perhaps to venture into the woods, He turned off the flashlight and waited. He was not worried. If they came toward him, he would deal with it. He did not know how; he did not need to know how. Yet.
Luv had encountered a large stone in his digging. It lay two feet down, squarely in the middle of the grave, and seemed, as he groped around it searching for an edge, as spacious as a sack of potatoes. The loss of his orchard cemetery with the pretilled land was proving a more serious problem than he had thought.
He heard the footsteps coming slowly toward him. They were moving at an unnatural pace. Someone was trying to sneak up on him. Luv grinned at the idea. The idiots. Who did they think he was? He was Luv, too good, too smart, too inspired to be caught. He relished a challenge, didn't they understand that? That is why he did it in the first place.
Let them try to find him. He was the will-o'-the-wisp, the phantom lover, able to do whatever he liked and to vanish without a trace.
Suppressing a groan from the effort, he lifted Inge's corpse in his arms and moved deeper into the woods.
Metzger wished he had the dog with him. He felt as if he was going to bump into something with every step, and each sound that he heard made him think how vulnerable his back was. His fingers itched to turn on the eighteeninch flashlight, but he knew that to do so prematurely would ruin his chance of surprising whoever it was he was after.
When he reached the spot from which he thought the peculiar light had emanated, he stopped, listening. He did not delude himself that he had been all that quiet in his approach. He had stumbled a couple of times and gasped in surprise as he fought for his footing. Twigs had broken under his feet, leaves had rustled. Still, if someone had been digging, he would have been making enough noise on his own to cover Metzger's.
The problem was he had heard no indication of digging since the first rasp of shovel on stone-if that was what he had heard. He began to wonder if he had not simply awakened too early, dragging some part of a dream's illusion with him into consciousness. His apprehension sliding into embarrassment, Metzger stood still for as long as he could bear it, listening for any sign of another living thing. After a moment he saw a shape materialize in front of him over his head. The shape grew within the darkness, coming straight at him with speed, looming larger and larger. With a gasp, Metzger ducked and an owl swooped silently over him, winged death. As he stooped, his foot moved forward and suddenly lost its grip on the earth. Metzger stumbled, arms flailing, and fell into a hole. Even as he fell he could hear the squeal of something small giving up its life to the owl.
Back in the car, Metzger looked at the time. Dawn would be upon him in less than an hour and he could assess the damage to his uniform then.
The damage to his pride was already evident enough. He had gone down face first, breaking his fall with his arms, and with good fortune the flashlight had preceded him into the hole. He did not like to think about having to find the flashlight in the dark, crawling about on hands and knees in the dirt that had been piled up beside the hole, Metzger drove back down the winding dirt road leading away from the preserve. It was the sort of incident he was supposed to record on his activity report, and the kind of thing most cops would omit. There was little incentive to include material that made you look like ai ass. He could imagine how much unpleasant fun McNeil would have with the occurrence if he knew about it. On the other hand, someone had taken the trouble to dig a hole in the woods in the middle of the night. Before the discovery of the Johnny Appleseed bodies it would have been easy enough to shrug off. There were a lot of strange things policemen saw that were never mentioned and never explained. But now, since the bodies had been discovered, it might have an entirely different significance. Or not. Metzger shriveled when he imagined McNeil's nasty laugh.
Metzger drove a mile in each direction when he came back to the main road, making a note of every parked car. There were none along the side of the roadway, but there were several in driveways. It was unlikely that it meant anything, but he wrote down the license plates and the house addresses, thinking to match them up later when he had time. When no one else was around to ask him what he was doing. If it turned out there was no good reason to report his incident in the woods, his close encounter with aliens-that was the take McNeil would have on it, he realized. A light coming from a crack in the earth, an eerie glow like massed fireflies? McNeil would make him look like an idiot, and it wouldn't be hard. He already felt like one. No, if there was no good reason to report it, he would not, he decided. And if any of the license plates were where they shouldn't be, if the cars were stolen, if anything was out of the ordinary, then there would be time enough to report it. He would find a way to explain the delay. The chief was understanding.