Free The red church by Scott Nicholson Page B

route."
    "Ten-four," said the dispatcher. The scanner re-turned to broadcasting its ambient hiss. The sheriff looked at Storie. She stood and stretched. "Well, I'd better get out to the church and see if I missed anything yesterday," she said.
    She was at the door, with her hand on the knob, when Littlefield spoke. "The woman he got pregnant brought flowers to his grave. They say that three days after the hanging, she came running out of the woods with tears in her eyes, her clothes torn by the tree branches. She said, 'Praise God, the stone's been rolled away.' "
    Detective Storie didn't turn around. The sheriff continued, his words spilling over each other, as if he were experiencing an attack of nausea and wanted it to pass. "When she said that, the church bell started ringing. Only the bell had no rope. And no-body was in the church at the time." Storie turned. "So that's why you told me all this. That'll really stand up in court." She dropped her voice into a low, professional delivery. " 'Your Honor, I would like to submit as state's evidence thirty-two a tape recording of church bells ringing, made on the night of Mr. Houck's death.' " Littlefield stared into the black pool of his cup of coffee. "Maybe all that has nothing to do with Boonie's death. I sure as hell hope not. A psycho might be able to hide out in the woods for a few weeks, but the bloodhounds would get him sooner or later. Same with a mountain lion. But I hear that one of McFall's descendants is back in town."
    "So you expect me to believe in coincidence?" she said. "They didn't teach paranormal investigation at the academy. As for Reverend McFall's ghost, I'll be-lieve it when you can prove it in court."
    "I've got an eyewitness for you," he said, his voice tired now, an old man's defeated voice.
    "Who?"
    He glanced at the Officer of the Year award, glint-ing dully in the morning sun that sliced through the parted blinds. Storie approached his desk. She leaned over it in a position of superiority, like a teacher berating a daydreaming student.
    "Who?" she repeated. "Who's going to testify that a ghost committed murder?"
    "Me."
    SIX
    "You?" Storie shook her head.
    Littlefield sat back, feeling twice his forty years. The good thing about the past was that you left it farther and farther behind each day. The bad thing was that you also got closer to the day when you could no longer hide from the past. A day of reckoning and judgment.
    "I was seventeen," he said, his flesh cold. "It was Halloween night. Back then, and probably still to this day, getting drunk and driving over to the red church was the thing to do on Halloween. Me and a few of my high school buddies loaded into a pickup I bor-rowed from my dad. Well, my kid brother Samuel, he was eleven at the time, saw the beer in the bed of the pickup and said he was going to tell on me." Littlefield rubbed his eyes. He wasn't going to let himself cry in front of a woman or another cop. He cleared his throat. "So I told him he could come along if he'd keep his stupid little mouth shut. We went out to the church—we only lived about two miles away, up near the McFalls at the foot of Buck-horn—and parked in the trees off to one side of the graveyard. We drank the beer and dared each other to go inside the church, you know how teenagers will do."
    "Sure I do," Storie said. "I just never expected you to have been such a scofflaw." Littlefield wasn't sure if her sarcasm was designed to provoke him or encourage him to continue. But he'd kept the story bottled up for too long. He'd never had anyone to confide in.
    "Naturally, we were all too scared to do it. Like I said, the ghost stories were pretty well known in these parts. Which was funny as hell, because that's where most of us went to church on Sundays. During the day, with all the people there and the sun in the windows, it wasn't scary at all. But at night, with the dark shadows of the woods, your imagination had a lot of room to play.
    "So then we got