"Building more coffins?"
"Always. But be quick. I need him outside soon."
"Of course. Lot 126?"
His mouth was about to drop open until he looked at the stack of papers in front of him. "You're good, Spinoza. Anyway, don't be long."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Chapter Sixteen
The man must have been busy.
There were easily three or four more of the generic coffins stacked along the near wall. Boyd himself was examining a length of wood when I entered the room. He looked up, saw me, and frowned. I get that a lot. Some people are happy to see me. Others, not so much. I casually shut the door behind me.
He leaned the long plank against a workbench and turned to face me. His overalls were covered with dirt. Where the dirt came from, I didn't want to know. His blond hair was slightly askew and he could have been Gary Busey's slightly more stable-looking brother. He was a big guy, with a thick chest and muscular arms. The kind of muscles one acquires from years of hammering and digging. Not all graveyard work, I suspected, was performed with backhoes.
"We need to talk," I said.
He kept looking at me. I decided then that he wasn't entirely there. Maybe it was the way his left eye seemed to not look directly at me, or the way the corner of his mouth kept twitching. Something was off about the man. Then again, he worked in a graveyard, building generic coffins all day. I think off was a given.
Since he hadn't spoken and the twitching in his mouth seemed to only have gotten worse, I decided to continue on. As I spoke, I kept the work bench between us.
"I know what happened," I said.
He tilted his head slightly, like a dog catching a far-off sound. I was suddenly all-too aware of the various armaments hanging from his tool belt. Most notable was the hammer and hand saw. The Batman utility belt for psychos.
I kept talking since he kept staring. His wandering right eye seemed to catch up, but that could have just been my imagination, or the shadows in the shop. I said, "It happened a few months ago. Or maybe even last year. You heard knocking. Perhaps you heard it in during your morning rounds. Or nightly rounds. Or anytime, really. Perhaps someone reported it. Either way, it all started with the knocking."
He took a small step to the right, and I took one to the left, keeping the wide bench between us.
I continued, "You did what anyone would have. Well, most anyone. Probably most people would have reported it to their bosses. But you decided to act alone. Maybe out of curiosity. Maybe out of fear. Maybe for a reason I never want to know. But one night, with the park closed and the knocking persisting, you secretly dug up the grave."
Something was going on with Boyd the coffin maker. He wasn't looking so intimidating. Suddenly, he looked scared. The color had drained from his face and his eyes were now resting somewhere near my navel. Or, at least, one of them was.
I went on, "You kept digging as the knocking grew louder, as more and more earth was removed. No doubt you were terrified. I would have been, too. Anyone would have been. I would have shit my pants, truth be known. Many times over. I mean, something inside a buried fucking coffin was knocking."
And now Boyd spoke for the first time, and his soft, timorous voice was as chilling as I expected it to be. "Do not use the Lord's name in vain."
"My apologies," I said. But I continued on, finishing up a tale that Boyd had yet to deny. "And so you dug up the casket, using the backhoe in the middle of the night. You were risking your job. But your sanity was more important. So you dug and dug, and the deeper you got, the louder the knocking became. Perhaps you even began hearing a woman's voice, screaming for help. You probably didn't need to lift the casket out. In fact, I suspect the moment most of the dirt had been removed and the weight lifted from it, the lid was thrown open and a woman sat up."
I waited for him to laugh. I waited for him to deny it. I waited for him to wield his handsaw like a psychopathic knight.
Instead, he sat heavily on a nearby stool - collapsing on it, actually - and covered his face with his hands.
Chapter Seventeen
I stopped by my apartment in Los Feliz before I headed out to the mansion.
My heart was racing. Sitting next to me was an-honest-to-God crossbow. Sitting next to it was a leather quiver containing three silver-tipped bolts. I happened to know first hand that these bolts were the real deal. Nothing silver-plated here.
With only a few slight variations to my story, Boyd had confirmed the crazy details. He had watched in stunned silence as the woman climbed awkwardly out of the casket and up to the surface. Her clean clothing was filthy by the time she stood on shaky legs. She had stared at Boyd blankly, and then she turned and stumbled through the graveyard, looking pale and impossibly thin. By Boyd's estimation, she had been in the grave for three months.
It was mid-morning as I headed up Los Feliz Blvd. I considered calling Hammer, except I knew he would never believe me. I even considered calling the old man, Arron King, but I didn't want to endanger him.
Boyd, an expert groundskeeper as well, had shut the now-empty coffin, recovered it with the soil, and then carefully replaced the grass as well. This had happened 18 months ago, and he had never told another living soul his story.
My heart was beating steadily, loudly. Adrenaline was flooding my blood stream. A good thing, because I suspected I was going to need all my strength.
Traffic on Los Feliz was sick, but I knew some short cuts, and after winding my way through some back streets that bordered some truly impressive homes, I soon pulled up in front of the mansion. The same mansion I had been in just a few days earlier.
Where I had seen a woman who had looked like Evelyn Drake's younger sister or cousin.
Only I was now certain she hadn't been Evelyn's younger sister.
I was certain it was her.
Evelyn Drake.
Back from the dead.
Chapter Eighteen
So how does one hide a crossbow in plain site?
Very carefully. The crossbow in question was smaller than most, designed to shoot shorter bolts. It had come into my possession last month after I had dealt with an author who not only wrote about the undead, but was also one of them. Method acting, as my theater friends would call it. Method writing, perhaps?
So I grabbed the emergency blanket I always kept folded on the back seat and wrapped it around the crossbow. At least no one would be calling the cops on the crazy guy walking up to the mansion carrying a medieval weapon.
At the door, I took in some air, listened to the all-pervasive silence, and then rapped loudly on the frosted glass.
I gripped the crossbow under the blanket while I waited.