NIGHT WALKER

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Chapter Two: Dark Shadows

The full moon was playing hide and seek with the clouds coming over the Catalina mountains. When it decided to appear, it threw enough light to show the spray of dust rushing down Shadow Lane. An elderly man with long gray hair was clutching the old ford's pick-up truck's steering wheel so tight that his knuckles turned white. He stared ahead trying to remember where that damn mound was. He knew it was about five miles into the road but his speedometer hadn't worked for ten years. And the moon wasn't helping. He wished I'itoi cut him a break just this once.


He just turned eighty-two three days ago and his memory was slipping and he really didn't need this frustration, but he had a vision and it involved this woman's old home that was burnt down by someone. The whole point was to see if his vision were true. He looked out the cracked windshield and saw the twisted and still chard skeleton of an old Saguaro pass by, he slammed on his brakes but the truck slid another thirty feet in the loose gravel.


John Remone sat in his truck catching his breath. How stupid of me to daydream when I am looking for something he thought. He threw the truck in reverse and slowly backed up until he was at the mound. He had never come here at night so it was a little harder to find, he thought, using that as an excuse for passing it.


Grabbing his flashlight, he struggled to get out of the truck cursing his old bones for making him hurt so bad.


He walked around the mound mumbling that it had to be here. He noticed that there were several new potholes that someone made and he was worried that what he sought might have already been found. Hell he thought I'm not sure what I'm even looking for but when I find it I know I will be given a sign. For the past ten years He had struggled with this curse, an obsession to fulfill the vision he received. It had become sort of a hobby for him.


He would drive all the way out here from the reservation, over a two hour trip coming here at least once every two months. He would sit on the mound for an hour or so just staring and combing the ruins trying to find the answer. Damn, he thought, that's about sixty trips out here in ten years and still nothing. He didn't start digging around the place until a couple of months ago when he noticed that someone else was doing it. He figured they to were after the item that he wanted find, whatever the hell that was, he thought. He again walked the mound looking, searching, hunting but what he didn't see was the dark figure standing in an open black Jeep resting a high powered rifle on the roll bar sighting John through the night scope.


The dark figure aiming the rife followed John as he walked around. Noticing he was dressed like most old Indians from the reservation. The figure had seen this old man before and knew that he was after the same item. This old man was not part of the plan and had to be stopped, the figure thought, slowly squeezing the trigger. Overhead some desert bird let out a call but it didn't phase the figure sighting John.


John heard the call of the bird and looked up just in time to see the flash of light and to feel the explosion in his chest. He fell to the ground and knew that he was a dead man. With what little strength he had, he scratched two letters in the dirt but couldn't finish what was in his mind. He tried to take a deep breath and confess his sins, but death was stalking him he heard the approach of someone and tried to act like he was already dead.


The dark figure climbed down out of the Jeep and casually walked the twenty yards over to John's body. The dark figure looked at John and then stared around the mound, then looked at John again, that was when this person noticed a flicker in John's eyes and with no remorse, the hand reached into the black jacket and pulled out a thirty-eight snub nose. Putting it to John's head the black gloved finger pulled the trigger. The dark figure started humming and old tune and head back to the Jeep.


It took two days in the hot July weather for someone to notice the abandon truck on that dry dirt road. A man and his wife out exploring came across it and got curious. When they got a hint of the smell that only a dead body can make and the glimpse of a boot behind a bush they rushed back to Marana and reported their find.


Detective Russell of the Marana Police department sat at his desk looking at all the information on the crime scene. Who ever did this was a cold-hearted son of a bitch. The first shot was going to kill Mr. Ramone anyway, but to walk over and shot him again was just a thrill kill. They had found the tracks of the Jeep and the footprints leading to and from John's body but everything was so new it didn't really help. If it were worn tracks with identifying marks or shoes with a crack in the soul maybe it would help.


He looked over at Kirkland watching the younger man filling out paperwork. "I guess I'll stop in Tucson on my way to the Tohono O'odham Reservation and talk to Ms. Malone and see if she can give us any more info."


"Why drive all that way, just call them." Kirkland said not even looking up from the computer in front of him.


"It's almost quitting time and I feel like a drive." The kid just nodded his head and Russell got up and left. He thought, that kid is more interested in pushing paperwork around then being an on hands detective. He remembered the kid's reaction when he saw the body of Mr. Ramone. The dried blood and the back of his head missing with brain matter lying across the sand. Kirkland released everything he ate that morning and sat in the car waiting for Russell to return. He couldn't blame him, he acted the same way years ago and sometimes, depending on the victim he still felt his stomach turn.


He rushed down interstate ten heading to Tucson, it was almost three-thirty and he thought he would stop at Shari's hamburger stand on North First Ave. and get one of those burgers he really liked.


At four-fifteen he pulled up in front of Hattie's house and studied the old adobe home. He remembered Ms. Malone from the fire incident. He could never figure out why she moved to Tucson and just let her land sit by collecting more dust. She should have rebuilt it and enjoyed the isolation rather then the closeness of this neighborhood.


He still had a long day ahead of him. Stopping here for a few minutes just to ask a few questions then head back toward the reservation which was another hour and half away to check in with the Tohono O'odham Police Department in Sells. They requested that they see what we had so far and instead of faxing it, it gave Russell an excuse to get out of the office and away from his empty apartment that he hated since his wife left him.


Ms. Malone was standing at the door staring at Detective Russell as he walked up to the house. "Can I help you?"


"Hattie Malone, I haven't seen you in about ten years, yet you look the same." He had been the interviewing officer on the Molly's Miracle as it was called. He got to know Hattie quite well. "Don't tell me I have aged so much you don't remember me?"


Hattie adjusted her eyes and tried to take ten years off of and maybe thirty pounds from this man. "It's Officer Russell, right?"


"Yes it is, except I am a detective with the force now." She motioned him to come in. He walked into the living room and felt comfortable right in the beginning. She waved at the sofa as she sat in the overstuffed brown leather chair across from it.


"So what brings you here?" She leaned back in her chair and pushed aside a stray lock of hair covering her eyes. "I know the Marana Police are not concerned with someone trying to shoot me four days ago."


"Now that is strange." He thought that maybe he was right coming here after all. "We found a dead Native American at your old burned out mound."


"Please don't call it my mound, I didn't make it." She seemed to be a little upset. Russell wasn't sure if it was his news, or the way he put it.


"I'm sorry, anyway his name was John Remone. Does that sound familiar?" He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a small spiral note pad and wrote down a reminder to check with The Tucson Police about Hattie's shooting.


"No, not in the least." She shifted in her chair. "How did he die, Russell?"


"He was shot by a high caliber rifle right through the chest and then finished off with a thirty-eight slug to the head." Russell didn't know why he told her that, it must be the way Hattie is, so regal yet so down to earth that made him do it. "That's between us Hattie."
Hattie had a look of sorrow mixed with surprise. "I wonder what he was doing on my property?"


"We really don't know since it is really far from the reservation." He said. "Did the Tucson police indicate why someone shot you Hattie, was it a burglary?"


"No it wasn't a burglary." Hattie thought for a while. "He was hunting for something that I am sure of, but if he wanted something to steal, most of what you see here is worth a lot of money."


They sat there in silence and Russell knew that he wasn't going to get anything else out of Hattie. He did know that there was something strange going on but he already had his hands full with enough cases to hold him up in court for a month.


"Anyway, if you don't know him or can give me anything else I best get to the reservation, but I'll pass this information on to the Tucson police in case it ties together." He shook her hand and walked to his car.


Hattie watched as Detective Russell drove away. She thought about that night and how the man tried to make it look like a break in and burglary. She knew his real intent was to murder her. She also knew it had to do with her land and now they find an old Indian shot to death on her property.


This was becoming a real threat and a total mystery to her. There had to be a simple answer to this hidden in her past or in the rubble of her old house.


She looked around her house. Everything here is brand knew. She had nothing from the old place it was all lost in that damn fire she thought. Where was the connection?


For the past forty years she had lived her life alone. She enjoyed the seclusion of the desert and she could mingle with her peers at her call and not someone else's. In those forty years she never had any problems with petty thieves or mad gunmen, what had happened to change that. She sat in her favorite chair and ran her life through her mind trying to coordinate the past with the present. "Nothing." She said aloud.


She did know that John Remone must have died because of the same reason that her assailant tried to kill her. She was sad that something that involved her had caused the death of this man. She didn't know what kind of man John Remone was, but nobody that hasn't hurt anyone deserves to die like that.


Hattie wanted to just run outside and scream for an answer. She never thought that so much hate; anger and helplessness could creep inside her. She was an artist, a painter of landscapes and people of the region, not some rich bitch or famous person that holds treasures in a vault somewhere. She has always treated everyone she ever met with respect and kindness but now that was starting to fade away from her, never to come back.


Russell listened to the radio thinking that it would be after dark by the time he got to Sells and the Tohono O'odham Nation police office. But Sargent Garcia said he would wait. He liked Garcia, rough and yet soft-spoken. He also knew Garcia hated to not have all the answers. Garcia actually worked with him when they both were on the Phoenix police department. He laughed to himself, thinking of the time that Garcia tried to capture an out of control naked drunken woman that jumped on top of his patrol car.


His thoughts turned to the old man, bringing up images of the body lying there in that desert. He had only three more weeks until he could retire and call it quits. But now with his wife gone and being all alone he wasn't sure what he was going to do with his remaining years.


Three weeks to go and he has a murder on his hands. Not some crazy over the edge wife stabbing her husband or some spaced out doper killing someone for money, no, this one smelled like a real stone cold pro. Just what he needed before getting that gold watch.

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