Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

gaits were uneven and unsteady, making it difficult to aim precisely. At last, he saw his chance and let the arrow fly.
    It bit into a tree trunk after passing between the first two boys at shoulder height. They were walking so close to each other that they could have held hands if they’d been so inclined. The group turned in a single motion and fled, as Joe had intended. One of them paused and tugged at the arrow, as Joe had feared, but he couldn’t free it, so he escaped empty-handed.
    He heard them crank their boats and head for open water as he pulled his arrow from the tree. He pondered his options and saw only one: he had to leave Joyeuse, as soon as possible. He was endangering Faye’s home with his presence. Unless he left, more thrill-seekers would come looking for the Wild Man and, one day, he might accidentally hurt somebody when he was just trying to get them to leave.
    Being a man of action, not thought, Joe moved quickly to load his possessions onto his johnboat. Later, it occurred to him that he should have said good-bye to Faye.

    The smell of smoke from Joe’s ceremonial fire assaulted the nostrils of Deputies Claypool and Thornton, who had dutifully prowled the island all night long aided only by their flashlights. While some young lawmen easily rush into peril for the thrill of taking their quarry on its own turf, others are more sensible. Claypool and Thornton were two of the sensible ones. They wanted to survive the night, assemble the evidence, figure out who the killer was and get a warrant, then corner the creep with enough manpower and firepower to minimize the risk to themselves and their colleagues. Each of them silently welcomed the sunrise as an omen that they’d be living another day.
    The flickering light of Joe’s campfire was another omen, but not a welcome one.
    Good training and a couple of years working side-by-side had eliminated useless verbiage. Communicating as much with a nod and a pointed finger as with words, they decided that Thornton would cover Claypool, and Claypool would do the talking.
    Good training had not prepared them for the smell of herbs burning in a bonfire or for the torchlit sight of a dark-haired man sitting, eyes closed, beside the open grave. The man rose to his moccasined feet, and Claypool recognized him as the stranger who had appeared on Seagreen Island’s beach the day after Sam and Krista were killed.
    He drew his sidearm, knowing that Thornton had already taken aim at the stranger’s sternum, and barked, “Drop everything and, very slowly, show me your hands.” The stranger did as he was told and Claypool was slightly relieved. This was bad, because the relief brought on the head rush that so often struck when a crisis was over. This crisis wasn’t over, but now Claypool would have to fight his own body chemistry—the muscle shakes that made his gun waggle, the cold sweat that dripped in his eyes, and the dry throat that made his voice squeaky when he yelled, “Did you do this?”
    He gestured at the open hole where he’d watched people digging up pieces of a child, pieces of a man and a woman. “Did you do this?” he demanded again.

    Joe was a simple man with a literal mind. He looked at the ceremonial talismans surrounding the grave and knew that he certainly made them, so he said, in front of Deputy Claypool and a witness, “Yes. I did.”

    Deputy Claypool could have slapped himself, but his hands were busy. He had just failed, in front of a witness, to advise this guy of his Miranda rights.
    He chanted the mantra, the rosary, the creed, the TV script, the ever-familiar You have the right to remain silent , and all the rest of it, and he did it quickly. Then he asked again, “Did you do this?”

    Joe remained silent, not because he had just been advised that he had a right to do so, but because he was unutterably confused and he wasn’t sure exactly what the man in the uniform wanted him to say. He spent a quiet moment with his arms in the air, waiting for the men to put their guns away and tell him what to do. Even in such a situation, a part of him was aware of the wind’s strength and its direction. Some part of his ear was monitoring the pitch and rhythm of insect song and how frequently waves broke on the nearby shore. Joe wasn’t sure what the men with the guns were going to do with him, but his senses were telling him that something in the natural world was seriously off-kilter.

    Faye had skipped breakfast and