first time I'd come in the week before. I was scared that once they found out I wanted to see him, they'd find some way to keep me from it. And I didn't even know who "they" were.
"Visiting hours are from two to three on Tuesday and Friday," she said, looking away from me as if I were too loathsome for her eyes to behold.
Since it was Tuesday, I could see him that afternoon. The relief was enormous. But until two o'clock, I didn't have anything to do. I was sick to death of that motel room.
I went out to the cemetery, the newer one. I wanted to have another visit with the rest of the Teagues, the deceased side of the family. This time I was able to park very close to the Teague plot, and I was bundled up pretty heavily, because the temperature was dropping. This was Arkansas in early November, so snow wasn't too likely; but in the Ozarks, it also wasn't out of the question. I had a red scarf wrapped around my neck and wore my red gloves. I was wearing a puffy bright blue jacket. I like to be visible, especially in Arkansas in hunting season. It was the first time I'd wrapped up quite so much this fall, and I felt as padded as a child being sent out to play in the snow for the first time.
I looked around me at the people-empty landscape. Across the county road, to the west, was a stand of forest. There was a small group of houses, perhaps twenty, to the north; they had half-acre lawns and sundecks and gas grills outside their sliding glass doors. No visible cars; everyone worked to maintain that slice of suburbia. The cemetery stretched south over the swell of a steep hill, part of a line that also blocked the view to the east. This was a peaceful place.
It was easy to locate the Teague plot. There was a large monument on a plinth in the center, with TEAGUE carved on it twice, once to the north and once to the south.
I moved through the Teagues, slowly working my way from grave to grave. They were not a family that had long lives, as a whole. Dell's grandfather had lived only until he was fifty-two, when he'd had a massive heart attack. Two of Grandfather's sibs were there, dead in infancy. Dell's grandmother had come from hardier stock. She'd been seventy-two, and she'd died just two years ago - of pneumonia, basically. I gave Dell a hello; his gunshot death brought the average down sharply, of course. I did the subtraction on his father's tombstone and found that Dell's dad had only been forty-seven when Sybil found him facedown on his desk.
Of course, Dick Teague had been my goal all along. When I stepped onto his final resting place, I felt an edge of anticipation, like you feel before you bite into a gourmet dessert. Down through the rocky soil my special sense went, making contact with the body below me. I examined Dick Teague with the careful attention he deserved. But I found the barrier of shoes and dirt and coffin were muffling my response. I needed more contact. I sank down in front of the headstone to lay my hands on the earth. Just as I did so, there was a cracking noise from the woods to the west of the cemetery, and something stung my face sharply enough to make me cry out.
I put my gloved hand to my cheek, and it came away with blood on it. My blood was a different red than the cheerful scarlet of the glove, and I looked at it with some bewilderment. I heard the same crack again, and suddenly I realized that someone was shooting at me.
I launched myself from squatting to prone in one galvanic motion. Thank God I wasn't in the Delta, where the land was so flat I wouldn't have been able to conceal myself from a fly. I crawled to take cover on the east side of the big monument in the middle of the plot. It wasn't as wide as me, but it was the best I could do.
For a miracle, I'd put my phone in my pocket, and I stripped off one glove and called 911. I could tell the person who answered was the woman I'd just talked to at the desk at the police station. "I'm at the cemetery off