“I remember this,” he finally said, indicating a tomb with an angel striding forward, arm upraised, standing on a marble slab, its inscription largely eroded by time. “We stopped here. That was right before…” He paused, swallowed hard. “I think we went this way.”
He moved forward again, then stopped. “Just over there was where…where it happened. And then I ran.” He looked down and away. “I don’t want to go any farther!”
“And you won’t have to,” said Pendergast. “We shall halt here and not disturb the area. We’ve called in the local authorities and they will be here shortly. Now, if you could tell us, in as much detail as possible, what happened, and indicate your movements and Mr. Custis’s—pointing them out will be sufficient—I would be grateful.”
“Okay.” Manning was trembling and nervous but managed to keep it together. “Okay. I was walking in front, over by those tombs.” He pointed. “And Brock was behind me. He was singing and sort of dancing, around those tombs there.”
“What was he singing?”
“Um, some Stones song.”
“Stones?”
“‘Sympathy for the Devil.’”
Pendergast stared at Coldmoon with incomprehension. Coldmoon, who’d heard Manning croaking the same tune when they first encountered him, shrugged to indicate its lack of importance. You can’t make this shit up.
“Brock was behind me, and I heard the singing stop. Just like it was cut off all of a sudden.”
“Was there any other sound?” Pendergast asked. “A gasp, perhaps—or scream?”
“No, nothing. It went very quiet for a moment. But I felt this sort of pressure, like humid air, and…and a weird smell, like burnt rubber. And then I heard, farther away, the breaking of glass. The liquor bottle, I guess.”
“How far away?”
“How would I know?” the youth said, barely maintaining a grip on himself. He took a shuddering breath. “Maybe a hundred feet? Two hundred? I wasn’t paying attention, I was scared as hell. I called his name a few times, but there was no answer. And then—then there was a beating sound.”
“What kind of a beating, exactly?”
“Like…someone shaking out a rug. Slow and muffled. And there was another wash or gust of humid air, with that same awful smell. I just started running.”
“What direction did the sound come from?”
“Overhead.”
Something about the simplicity of this answer chilled Coldmoon.
“And the feeling of pressure, of humid air? Did that come from above, as well?”
Manning nodded.
“And you ran all the way back to Savannah? That’s got to be about four miles.”
“I ran, I walked, I ran again. I can hardly remember. I was drunk, freaked out.”
“Why not call for help on your cell phone?”
“I dropped it over there somewhere. I was using it as a flashlight. It must have broken against a tombstone or something, because the light went off.”
Now Coldmoon heard distant sirens from the direction of the cemetery entrance. Pendergast pulled out his phone to give Delaplane directions, and it wasn’t long before Coldmoon saw the CSI van easing its way down a pathway, with several squad cars and the M.E. van behind it. They were forced to park at some distance, and within minutes a whole mass of people were headed down the winding paths, converging on them.
Delaplane arrived first, leading the phalanx of specialists carrying their equipment.
“The area over there,” Pendergast said, “is where the incident occurred. To be safe, you should cordon off that half acre of ground between those two paths.”
Delaplane called for police tape to be strung around the indicated spot while the CSI team suited up and got to work. Sheldrake came over, nodded to Pendergast and Coldmoon. “Mind if I borrow your witness?”
“Be our guest.”
Sheldrake and Delaplane went off with the unhappy Manning, recorder in hand. Coldmoon turned to Pendergast. “What do you think?”
“I shall ponder the mystery while I take a walk. If you could remain here in case of any untoward events, I should be grateful.”
Coldmoon was used to this—the same thing had happened in a Miami cemetery. “Sure thing.”
Pendergast went off, hands behind his back, almost as if he were setting out on his daily constitutional. Not long after he vanished, Coldmoon heard a fresh commotion. Turning toward it, he saw a film crew arriving, with cameras and sound gear. It was that man Betts.