Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [84]
And then he froze: A hundred yards ahead, between two oak trees, someone was at McKenna’s grave.
“What’s wrong?” asked Vince, sensing his vibe.
“Wait here,” said Chuck.
He started toward the grave, moving quickly between the tombs—much faster than he could have with Vince following behind him. The going was getting tougher, however, as he moved into the oldest part of the cemetery. Tombs were so crowded together that he had to put one foot directly in front of the other to walk between them. He was about fifty yards away when he noticed that it was a woman at McKenna’s grave. She was on her knees, clearing away weeds around the marker. But she wasn’t dressed like a maintenance worker. Her head was covered by a large scarf, hijab style.
Chuck picked up the pace until he was almost at a jog, but with his eyes riveted on the woman who was wearing the hijab scarf, he tripped and knocked over a porcelain vase. It crashed into pieces against the concrete base of a tomb.
The woman at McKenna’s grave looked up. Just thirty yards separated them, and Chuck’s gaze cut like a laser over the ragged rows of tombs. The scarf covered her hair, but she wore no veil or sunglasses. She stared back at him for a moment—and then she sprang to her feet and ran.
“Stop!” Chuck shouted. He started after her, but the tight spaces between tombs made it impossible to gather speed. The north end of the cemetery had no fence, and the woman was getting away.
“Wait!” Chuck shouted, but the gap between them was widening. Meaning no disrespect to the dead, Chuck hopped up on a tomb and ran at full speed, leaping from one to the next the way superheroes leaped from building to building. The woman was doing the same, but she was much lighter on her feet. Chuck was losing ground.
Come on, Mays, faster!
He picked up the pace, but the older crypts were spaced so irregularly that it was hard to hit his stride. He hopped from a white tomb to a silver one, and then to a crumbling marker for a pioneer unknown. He was keeping one eye on the woman, who was pulling away, when he caught sight of trouble. Vandals had destroyed the next tomb in his path. The lid was a pile of rocks, and the empty tomb lay open. Chuck reached for another gear and soared right over the battered tomb. He landed hard—all 240 pounds of him—on the next tomb over. It was a century old, however, and it couldn’t support his weight. Chuck crashed through the lid like a human cannonball. He was almost up to his knees in a smashed tomb, but the pain made the horror of it almost irrelevant.
“My leg!”
Chuck pulled himself out, rolled onto the adjacent tomb, and lay on his back. Surely the woman in the hijab scarf was long gone, and even if she weren’t, giving chase was out of the question. His only hope was that he hadn’t destroyed his ankle. He was staring up at the sky, trying to bring the pain under control, when he heard Vince approaching with his guide dog.
“I heard you yelling at someone,” said Vince, “and then a crash. What happened?”
Chuck groaned, then fed Vince his own line: “Either I tripped over a tomb or a dead guy jumped out and kicked me in the shin.”
“I’m serious,” said Vince. “Were you chasing after someone?”
Chuck was winded from the chase and needed to catch his breath. He listened for a car engine or other sound of the woman’s getaway, but the streets around the cemetery were quiet, and he was still trying to understand what had just happened.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” said Chuck.
“I already think you’re crazy.”
Chuck would have laughed under any other circumstances. Instead, he sat up, scratched his head in disbelief, and said, “I think I just saw Shada.”
Chapter Forty-one
Andie spent Sunday morning coloring her hair. Luckily, raven black looked best all one shade, no highlights, so it was easy enough to do it herself, given the time constraints. Losing the blond was for Jack, but she also hoped her boss would like it. Or more