Daniel Faust 03 - The Living End by Craig Schaefer

Author:Craig Schaefer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780990339342
Publisher: Demimonde Books
Published: 2014-08-26T22:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

Sunset Rest was a one-stop shop for the dead. Wrought-iron fences curled along rolling lawns studded with monuments in marble and basalt, salt-and-pepper memorials to the fallen. Its sprawling chapel arch overlooked a tranquil pond. Tiled outcroppings and concealed pumps created perpetual miniature waterfalls that burbled in the dark. The polished granite walls of the mausoleum leaned in over the chapel’s shoulder, as if hungry for more bodies to stuff inside its endless niches.

Office hours ended at five, and the cemetery gates locked at sunset. Unless somebody was burning the midnight oil, I’d only have rent-a-cops to worry about. I parked the Altima on the street a block away and hopped the fence.

I moved low across the lawn, keeping it smooth and quiet. I didn’t expect a lot of resistance—professional grave robbing, as a career, was about a hundred years past its sell-by date—but I figured they’d have a few uniforms on the grounds keeping a lookout for kids and vandals.

The strobe of a distant flashlight caught my eye, and I got down fast, crouching in the grass behind a chiseled marble plinth. I peeked around the edge. Just one guy, strolling along and oblivious to the world, swinging his flashlight in time with the music pumping through his earbuds.

Private security could be tricky. A lot of these guys used to be on the job, and they still had cop instincts under the starched uniforms and cheap shoes. Any hired guard had an inherent weakness, though, and that was boredom. When you’re pulling a graveyard shift keeping watch over a place nobody in their right mind would want to break into, walking the same uneventful route for the fiftieth time that night, you become your own worst enemy pretty fast.

The guard strolled right past my hiding spot, singing under his breath. I gave him another ten feet and then darted past him behind his back. From there it was smooth sailing all the way to the chapel, where I skirted the edge of the burbling pond and let the tiny waterfalls cover the sound of my footsteps on the concrete walkway.

Finding the administrative office wasn’t hard. I just circled the building and peeped in windows as I went until I found a room with a tiny desk and enough filing cabinets to please the world’s most obsessive organizer. Getting in, that was the problem. The window was latched tight, and a telltale alarm cord ran from the base of the windowsill on the inside.

Another flashlight up ahead. This one sagged toward the ground. I got behind a tree and watched his movements, trying to work out his pattern. He headed for the chapel doors.

I crept along behind him, quieter this time. This guard was an older guy with a hangdog face and a comb-over, and he wasn’t wearing any headphones to block out the sound of my approach. I hovered at the edge of the chapel’s outside fluorescents, a shadow at the border of a blob of white light, and watched as he fumbled at his key ring and got the doors unlocked.

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