Free Deadfall by Robert Liparulo

Declan modeled his town-taking on Nazis— What do you think they did to keep the townsfolk in line? —chances are he’d make examples out of anyone who helped Tom.
    He kept a pistol and a rifle in his office, but they could just as well have been at the bottom of the ocean.Years ago, the rear of the substation had been retrofitted with a holding cell, which had hosted more drunks than felons. Consequently, there was no rear door and the rear window was barred. Going through the front window opening, as Kyrill had done, was too risky, especially with his hunters making the street outside his office their de facto base of operations. If he did make it in and they converged on him while he was inside, he’d have no place to go. There would be a standoff, and they’d probably wheel out whatever it was that had gotten Roland, and that would be the end of that.
    He also kept a second pistol in his home. As much as he wanted that weapon and, more important, as much as he yearned to see Laura and Dillon, to hold them and warn them, he could not risk leading the killers there.
    So now he rested on damp sod, his back pressed against a cold headstone in the cemetery behind St. Bartholomew’s. He was less than a hundred yards from Provincial, only two blocks from where Declan had used Roland Emery to announce his invasion of Fiddler Falls.Tom didn’t know what to do.
    Black spruce surrounded the cemetery. A few had bravely marched in to stand among the gravestones. Their scraggly branches and needles dappled the sunlight, casting the area in a gloomy twilight despite the midmorning hour.Tom thought the atmosphere was perfect for the setting. The only element missing was tendrils of fog. A light breeze hummed softly through the trees. It was peaceful here, and Tom felt his blood pressure ease a bit. He pulled in a deep breath, let it out slowly.
    Having been flayed alive before his crucifixion, Saint Bartholomew is considered the patron saint of trappers and tanners. In Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, Bartholomew holds the knife of his martyrdom, along with his own skin. The Fiddler Falls church bearing his name was constructed in 1923, as the town grew from a Denesuliné First Nation village into a bustling burg of supply stores, saloons, and brothels. Back then the town serviced primarily miners, trappers, and adventurers intent on exploring the vast wilderness to the north, as far as the Artic. The fur and leather trade was so profitable and animals so abundant that outside every business were racks of drying furs and skins. But as far as anyone knew, none as hideous as poor Bartholomew’s. Over the years, the church had closed and reopened four times, reflecting the citizenry’s waxing and waning spiritual interests. It now hosted two Sunday morning services: Catholic Mass at eight and a nondenominational Protestant service at ten. Its cemetery continued to accept new residents, though their plots extended farther from the church each year.
    Tom sat near its center. The headstone directly across from him bore a date from 1965:
    Here lies John Wood
    Enclosed in wood
    OneWood
    Within another.
    The outer wood
    Is very good:
    We cannot praise
    The other.
    He had never strolled the graveyard, reading last words and pondering long lost lives, as Laura sometimes did. He was surprised to find so much wit here. Another headstone proclaimed:
    Oh, NOW you come and visit me!
    And if not wit, then poignant solemnity. One epitaph marked the resting place of an eight-year-old girl:
    The Gardener cried,
    â€œWho picked my most precious Rose?”
    The answer came,
    â€œThe Master took it Home.”
    Funny that he should begin to understand the appeal of ambling among the buried dead when it appeared he was so close to becoming one himself. He wondered what his epitaph would be.Was that something he was supposed to have already selected, or did that task fall to