Dead Man's Song

Chapter 3

(1)

“Let’s go inside. I’m freezing my nuts off out here, Frank,” complained LaMastra, shivering in his light blue PHILA PD windbreaker. Ferro didn’t seem to mind the cold as much, or at least had more discipline and didn’t show it, but he offered no argument when LaMastra repeated his suggestion. They moved into the Guthrie farmhouse, which was already crowded with cops of various kinds. Most of the officers looked expectantly at Ferro, but one glance told them that he had nothing new to say. The detectives went into the kitchen and the local officers seated at the table cleared out as soon as LaMastra gave them The Look. Ferro sat down and sipped his coffee; LaMastra strolled over and peered into the big pot that stood on the stove. The turkey soup was two-days cold and there was a thin film of grease congealed on the surface. “I’ll just heat this up a bit,” he said, looking at Ferro for approval. “Shame to let it go to waste. Think it’s still good?”

Ferro was too tired to care either way, so LaMastra stirred the soup vigorously, replaced the lid and sat down across from his partner. Vince LaMastra was a big blond ex-jock who had played wide receiver for Temple University before entering the police academy. At thirty he still had the narrow hips, broad shoulders, and bulky muscles of a college ballplayer, but now there were the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of his bright blue eyes and laugh lines etched around his mouth. Not that he was laughing at the moment as he sat hunched over, forearms on the table, frowning at Ferro. “Gus was right—this case is getting away from us, Frank.”

Ferro snorted. “We never really had our hands on it. This was a runaway train from the first.” Frank Ferro was older and more battered than his partner, his dark brown skin marked here and there by faded pink scars—souvenirs from his days walking a beat in North Philly. His manner was quiet and refined, but his eyes were cop’s eyes. Quick and hard.

“Not what I mean,” LaMastra said, shaking his head. “These killings, Frank…they bother me—and don’t give me that look. I’m not talking about how it makes me feel, ’cause I’m just like every other cop here. It makes me sick and angry and I would give my left nut to have five minutes in a locked room with Kenneth Boyd—if he’s actually the prick who did this. No, what I’m saying, Frank, is that I just don’t get why Boyd would have done this.”

“Maybe he hung around Ruger too long. Perhaps homicidal mania is contagious. I don’t know.”

“How sure are you that Boyd is the killer here? You yourself said this wasn’t like Boyd. A guy like Boyd shouldn’t even have been at that drug bust that went south. I think Ruger probably planned to screw the deal and then take the money so he could split. He must have found out somehow that Little Nicky suspected that Ruger’d killed his grandparents down in Cape May. The mob’s not big on due process, so Ruger figured that a suspicion alone is more than enough wind up on a meat hook somewhere. So since he had to get the hell out of Dodge anyway he set up the drug buy and then deliberately jacked it so that he and his crew could wipe out the Jamaicans and keep the money all for themselves. Main reason to support this is Boyd being there for that buy. He’s not a soldier, he’s a travel agent. The only reason on earth that Ruger would drag him along is to help him get out of the country afterward. Nothing else makes sense. Boyd’s a tool, not a killer. That’s one of the things that just doesn’t fit.” He got up and began stirring the soup.

Ferro shrugged and rolled his coffee cup between his palms, staring at the liquid as it agitated. “Apparently we underestimated Boyd. Maybe he and Ruger partnered because they were cut from the same cloth. Both of them…just plain crazy. Just because it’s not in Boyd’s jacket doesn’t mean we really have insight into who he is.”

“Let’s look at that.” LaMastra put the lid back on the pot, turned, and leaned a hip against the counter as he began ticking items off on his fingers. “First, we got Karl Ruger’s car breaking down here in Pine Deep. Okay, that makes sense, anyone can have a breakdown. Two, we got Ruger having a serious dispute with Tony Macchio. Who knows why? Maybe he’s really, really pissed at Macchio, or maybe he’s just a sick psycho son of a bitch and tearing people up is how he unwinds. Either way, he focuses on Macchio and tears him up. Spoils him. Eats him, for Chrissakes.”

“Perhaps I’ll pass on the soup.”

“Now, maybe he’s trying to scare the living piss out of Boyd at the same time. You know, make a point? Scare him so bad that he won’t ever think about double-crossing him.”

“But maybe Ruger overdid it,” Ferro offered. “From what we were able to get out of Valerie Guthrie, Ruger believed that Boyd broke his leg in a gopher hole and was cooling his heels out in the cornfield, waiting for Ruger to come back with a stretcher. According to her, Ruger was really torn up when he found that Boyd had bugged out, but that whole thing might have been a dodge. Boyd might have pretended to be injured so he could slip away from Ruger.”

“Maybe. Point is Ruger’s royally pissed and starts blasting away to vent his anger. Shoots Guthrie, beats the shit out of everyone else. Then he dances with that guy Crow and unexpectedly gets his ass handed to him. Okay, so, that leaves Boyd missing. That leaves the money missing.”

“And the coke.”

“And the coke, right. It also leaves Karl Ruger all messed up and it leaves him as one very pissed-off individual. He goes psycho and maybe he figures that Val Guthrie and Crow are the reasons why his life has suddenly turned to shit, sneaks into the hospital for a little payback, but it turns out bad for him and he gets shot to shit. Exit Karl Ruger from the equation.”

Ferro smiled thinly. “Okay, so what is the part you don’t like?”

“I’m coming to that. So, Boyd, no matter how crazy he may or may not be, has to be aware that he is being chased down by half the cops on the eastern seaboard. Logic would dictate that he would just cut his losses and split. Which, apparently, he did ’cause he’s spotted in Black Marsh heading away from Pine Deep.”

“Without the money or the coke,” Ferro observed. “Witnesses say he wasn’t carrying anything. No bags, nothing.”

“Right, because the area is too hot, and no amount of money is going to do him much good in jail or in the morgue. Probably just stuffed his pockets with as much as he could carry and he’s gone. Except that he isn’t gone.” He stirred the soup some more. “Now we’ve got two dead cops and the only criminal in this whole area who has any connection to this place is Boyd. Which is the part I don’t like. Think about it, Frank. He comes back to the farm—why?”

“Well, for one thing he probably doesn’t know Ruger is dead. That hasn’t made the papers yet. Maybe he and Ruger had worked out a rendezvous thing. You know—if we get separated meet me at such-and-such place at such-and-such time. Boyd could have been on his way back to the farm thinking that Ruger was going to meet him.”

“He’d have to be a complete moron to think that there wouldn’t be a police presence at the farm after everything that happened.”

“I thought we already agreed Boyd was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

“Still don’t buy it, though.”

“Another thought is that maybe he hid the money somewhere around here.” LaMastra opened his mouth to speak but Ferro held up a hand. “Consider this, Vince…maybe Boyd let himself be seen in Black Marsh just to establish that he had left Pine Deep. Take the heat off, get us looking in the wrong place. We can assume he knew Macchio was dead, and maybe he witnessed Crow shooting Ruger at the farm the other night and figured that Ruger was dead, too. With the two of them out of the way, and him establishing to witnesses that he was leaving town, then the Pine Deep manhunt is over. Boyd slips back into town to recover the money and drugs he’d hidden.”

“Okay, that’s a better possibility, though he’d still have to be an idiot to believe it. But why attack the cops? How could that possibly work for him in any scenario?”

“Why not? Maybe they saw him when he came back for his stash?”

“Maybe,” LaMastra said and started ladling the soup into a couple of bowls. “But killing two cops? Does that make any sense? Up till now Boyd’s been along for the ride and there aren’t any murder warrants on him. Even in the video from the shoot-out with the Jamaicans it was clear he didn’t even try to hit anyone. Most he’s looking at is drug trafficking and flight to avoid. A good lawyer’d have him out in five even without a plea. Why on earth would he want to up the ante against himself by killing two cops? Does that make any sense?”

“Not if he’s sane, no. Maybe he’s been huffing coke by the handful ever since he hooked up with Ruger. But if Boyd’s that wired and desperate, who knows to what extreme he’ll go?”

“Okay, but does it make sense to tear them to pieces?” He reached over and placed a bowl in front of Ferro.

“Again, not if you’re sane…but when it comes right down to it, do we really know that much about Boyd and his psychological makeup?” Ferro shook his head. “Almost everything we have on him is supposition based on known history.”

LaMastra sat down with his bowl and for a few minutes he and Ferro said nothing as they started in on the soup, which was a rich turkey stock with lots of chunky vegetables and plenty of meat. The fact that it had been sitting on the stove for two days didn’t bother either of them. They’d had much less savory food over the years they’d been on the job.

Ferro nodded. “I don’t have a backup plan here, Vince.”

LaMastra swallowed and said, “I still don’t like it, Frank, because every time I think of it the situation gets worse. I mean, Castle emptied a whole magazine out there. What the hell was he shooting at if not Boyd, and if it was Boyd, how come he missed? And don’t try to sell me any bulletproof vest nonsense, because even with a vest at that range that many shots would have broken just about every one of Boyd’s ribs.”

“Right, and if he didn’t miss,” Ferro said glumly, “how come Boyd isn’t sitting there with a bunch of holes in him? If he was wounded, why was there no visible blood trail leading from the scene?” He sighed. “Maybe we were too hasty about blaming Macchio’s death on Ruger.”

LaMastra looked at him, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Jeez-us Christ.”

“Just a thought. We know what Ruger was capable of because of Cape May, so we just assumed he’d murdered Macchio, but after what we saw this morning…I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either. It’s—” LaMastra sucked his spoon for a moment, trying to phrase it, but only came up with, “It’s weird.”

Ferro thought about that. He finished his soup, got up, walked over to the stove, and stirred the pot for a few moments. “I had thought we’d be heading home today, Vince.”

LaMastra looked at the wall as if he could see through it and through the timbers of the house and out into the cornfield. “Those poor bastards. That’s no way for cops to go.”

“No way for anyone to go.”

LaMastra grunted and repeated, quietly, “No way for cops to go.”

(2)

Outside the house, on the other side of the kitchen window, Willard Fowler Newton crouched in the shadows cast by the side of the house. He was flushed from nervousness and the cold wind. He had been leaning against the wall for ten minutes listening to Vince LaMastra and Frank Ferro try to work through the killings. His arm ached from holding a small tape recorder up to the window.

As he crouched there he was trying to make sense of what he’d heard, matching it with the info he’d gotten from that kid, Mike Sweeney, last night. The kid had said something about the man who was the center of the police dragnet being the same guy known in the papers as the Cape May Killer, a mass murderer who was the most wanted man in the country. Newton had been excited at first, but when none of the official press releases had even hinted at the connection, he’d dismissed it. Now, however, what he was hearing from these cops was going off like fireworks in his brain.

Willard Fowler Newton was about to break the biggest story of his career, and he knew for sure that it was going to be a total scoop. No one else had a clue about this stuff. No one.

(3)

The Bone Man perched like a crow on a slender branch that reached out from the big oak nearest to the house. All the other branches were filled with night birds, their black-on-black feathers rustling drily in the shadows thrown by the house.

The conversation inside the house ended as the two cops got up and headed back to the crime scene and the reporter crabbed sideways along the house, keeping to the shadows until he could make a break and spring for his car parked out on the road. The Bone Man watched him all the way, and then watched the little car cough and sputter its way up the hill and over; then he stood up, featherlight on the branch, which did not even creak under his weight, and leapt down to the ground. He moved in the opposite direction from Newton, deeper into the corn, past policemen who did not see him and the search dogs who did not smell him—though the oldest of them shivered a bit as he passed, heading deep into the field, and then beyond it to the forest. The stink of blood was overwhelming, and he turned in a full circle, his unblinking eyes penetrating the shadows beneath the trees until he found what he was looking for.

The thing that had once been Kenneth Boyd sat on the rotted trunk of a fallen tree, jaw sagging loose, lips rubber, streamers of flesh caught between misshapen teeth, staring stupidly at the smears of dried blood on its hand, eyes as blank as a doll’s. The Bone Man stood still for a long time, staring at the thing, then as he moved a step forward the creature raised its gory head and looked around slowly until it saw him step into the sunlight. Instantly the vacuous expression transformed into one of feral hate and appalling hunger. Boyd bounded up and lumbered toward the newcomer, staggering on one broken and twisted leg but showing no flicker of pain. Ragged hands that were tipped with black claws reached out toward him as his mouth opened in a guttural scream of rage and hunger.

The Bone Man said nothing, did nothing, just watched as Boyd rushed at him, watched as he swayed from side to side in a parody of drunkenness. Boyd launched forward with unnatural speed, slashing at him with its claws, snapping at the air with his jagged teeth, rushing forward to try and bowl him over, drag him down, overwhelm him with a savage animal rage. The Bone Man did not try to step aside or run; he merely waited as Boyd leapt the last few yards, snarling with fury—and passed straight through him. The Bone Man turned to see the arc of Boyd’s leap end with a bone-snapping impact on the cold ground. Two nails on Boyd’s outstretched right hand were torn from their roots, and the creature made no attempt at all to break his fall. Boyd’s face smashed into the ground, crunching the cartilage in his nose into pulp and driving a tiny twig deep into the iris of his right eye.

The Bone Man smiled the smallest, thinnest smile. “You thirty years too late trying to kill me, you ugly piece of shit,” he said in a voice that was a whispery echo.

The creature bounded forward again, claws tearing the air, and again he passed through the Bone Man as if he were smoke. The monster tumbled to the ground and once more scuttled around to face him again, mouth wrinkled like a dog’s muzzle, eyes blazing with hate. Boyd rose slowly to its feet, standing in a hunchbacked crouch, glaring at him.

“We can keep this shit up all day,” the Bone Man said. “I’m a ghost, you dumbass.”

Then Boyd froze, head cocked in an attitude of listening, but the Bone Man heard nothing. Boyd sniffed the air with his broken nose, paused and sniffed again. Then as if some unseen hand had reached into his mind and dialed down a rheostat the predatory light went out his eyes and his snarling mouth drooped again into the slack-jawed hang of emptiness. It took two aimless steps backward, turned first to the right and then to the left, both motions apparently without purpose, and after swaying in the sunlight for a full minute, he tottered off across the road back toward the cornfields. The Bone Man watched him go and stood quietly for a long time until even the faintest sounds of his lumbering passage through the corn had faded. He sighed and then sat slowly down on the rotted log, pulling his guitar around so that as he sat it lay across his bony thighs. His long fingers stroked the strings, and as the breeze returned to stir the tips of the tall corn he began to play and sing. It was the old prison blues song, “Ghost Road Blues.” The air above and around him seemed heavy and oppressive as it loomed above the farms and forests of Pine Deep. In the clearing near the cornfields where four people had now died, the Bone Man played blues to lament the dead and to preach the gospel of the dark times. Not times coming at the End of Days, but of the darkness here at hand—an October darkness, abroad and hungry.

(4)

It was a Sunday morning and Mike Sweeney slept late, lost in a dream that played and replayed. In his dream the wrecker that had chased him on Route A-32 didn’t miss him; in his dream the huge black truck with its demonic driver and the ugly gleaming hook caught up with him as he raced along the asphalt. The driver wore Vic’s sneering face, though even in the dream Mike didn’t think Vic was truly at the wheel. He pedaled his bike faster and faster, his legs pumping insanely, the rubber of the thin tires screaming in a high-pitched wail, the cold wind slicing at him as he fled, but the wrecker kept getting closer and closer. Mike risked a look, daring to glance over one shoulder and there—right there!—was the huge silver grille of the truck. He could hear the roar of the engine as it chased him. No, not a roar—it was a growl. Deep, angry, hungry—not at all the sound of a machine but the hunting snarl of a beast. A monster.

“No!” he cried and the sound of his own voice was whipped out of his mouth and blown past him to be gobbled up by the teeth of that gleaming grille. He leaned forward over the bars, his butt up in the air, trying to add more weight and power to his pumping legs and at the same time cut the wind resistance. He flicked another glance over his shoulder and saw that he was pulling away. Inches…feet…yards. He kept it up, trying to make it to the entrance of the farm just down the road. If he could make that…just a few hundred yards now…he would be safe. It was Val Guthrie’s place. Crow would be there. He’d be safe with Crow and Val.

His chest was an oven that burned up the air as soon as he gasped it in and then set to burning the flesh of his lungs, and still he raced on. Sweat burst from his pores and ran down his face and chest before freezing against his skin, and still he raced on. The growl of the wrecker’s engine diminished ever so slightly as he pulled ahead, and still he raced on. Pinwheels of fire exploded in his eyes, and still he raced on. His heart was slamming against the walls of his chest and felt like it was ready to burst, and still he raced on.

Less than a hundred yards now and he began angling wide so that he could make a fast, hard turn left and shoot onto the entrance road. Suddenly there were people lining the side of the road. Silently watching the race as they stood in the shadows. Even in the dark, even at that speed, he could see their faces and read their expressions.

First he passed Terry Wolfe, the mayor, who smiled at him with kindly blue eyes and then reached up to rip his own face off in a sudden splash of blood, revealing beneath the mask of flesh a monster’s face, with bloody fangs and blazing eyes.

Mike raced on.

Then he sped by a tall, stick-thin black man in a dirty black suit that was streaked with mud and rainwater. The black man’s smile was genuine, and he played a few notes on a beautiful old guitar, picking the notes with the fingers of one hand and stretching those notes out with a gliding touch of a bottleneck slide. The black man said something but his voice made no sound.

Mike raced on.

At the end, as he was about to make his turn, he saw a tall blond man with heavy features and furious eyes step out into the road and grab at his handlebars with both hands. Mike tried to twist free, tried to veer around him, but one powerful hand clamped around the fork tube just below the handles and the bike stopped as surely as if he’d slammed into a wall, and his own momentum sent him flying over the handlebars. He rolled in midair, trying to land on his feet, needing to land running, but he kept turning and slammed onto his back with so much force that he could hear bones break all along his back. He skidded along the blacktop, his hooded jacket shredding, and then his shirt…and then his skin. By the time he stopped the long slide, there was a ten-foot smear of red painted on the blacktop. Mike cried out in agony and raised his head to see where the truck was and how much time he had, trying at the same time to read his body to see how badly he was hurt. He raised his head and looked down the length of his body and there, framed between the upturned toes of his sneakers, was the wrecker.

Three feet away.

It would have been some small comfort to Mike if that had been the point at which he woke up from the dream, but it wasn’t. He felt the wheels all the way up his body; he felt and heard each bone splinter and snap, felt the searing pain as his groin and stomach were ground flat under the immense weight of the wrecker, tasted the coppery blood as it burst in a torrent from his screaming mouth, felt every part of him explode into bloody fragments until the rolling wheels smashed his awareness into utter black agony.

Then he woke up, covered in sweat, his body still screaming from every pore, from every nerve ending. His curly red hair hung in seaweed twists down from his bowed head, and his freckles were as dark as bullet holes against his pale skin. His heart was beating so hard in his chest that it hurt, lances of pain shot down his left arm, numbing his fingers. Fiery lights danced in his blue eyes and he bent forward, gagging, almost vomiting. Then…it eased. Like a great wave the pain reached its peak and then slid back into the vast sea of his dreams, leaving him awake and alive. Even so, he trembled and shuddered. Mike had once read that the body had no memory for pain, but he knew that wasn’t true.

As the dream—and the ghost pain—eventually faded and he settled back against the sweat-soaked sheets, he feared to return to sleep, just as much as he feared being awake in this house. Vic Wingate here in the real world, the wrecker lurking on the black roads of his dreams. At fourteen, Mike Sweeney had cultivated a precise understanding of the nature of hell and an absolute belief in its reality. It was called “his life.”

(5)

When the door opened, Crow expected it to be Terry Wolfe, but it was Saul Weinstock. The doctor wasn’t smiling, which was rare for him, and his face showed the same haggard look everyone involved in the Ruger affair seemed to be wearing. A team moroseness tinted by extreme exhaustion. He held a clipboard in one hand and had a folded newspaper under his arm. Tow-Truck Eddie looked up from his reading as Weinstock slouched in.

“Can I have a couple of minutes, Eddie?”

Using a finger to bookmark his place in Revelations, the officer stood, towering head and shoulders above Weinstock, and left without a word. When the door was closed, Weinstock dragged the guest chair nearer the bed and sprawled in it, looking over his shoulder at the closed door. “He’s an odd duck,” he observed.

Crow grunted agreement. “Always has been.”

“Ever have a real conversation with him?”

“I don’t know if anyone has. Maybe God. He was on the cops full time when I was, but aside from work-related stuff I doubt we ever said ten words to one another. No, that’s a lie. He once asked me if I’d accepted Jesus as my personal savior.”

Weinstock looked amused. His features were a dead ringer for Hal Linden in his Barney Miller days, a show that Crow remembered watching and Weinstock didn’t. “What’d you tell him?”

“Told him I’d think about it, and left it there. He never asked again.”

“I’m shocked. I can’t imagine you missing the chance for a smartass comment.”

“Uh, Saul, have you looked at the size of that sumbitch? He could bench-press Iowa. Guess he never asked you about JC?”

Saul snorted. “Haven’t you heard? We Jews are all going to hell. We have a special section, a gated community. Right next door to the Buddhists, the Hindus, and the pro-choice lobby. It’ll be a party town.” He glanced back at the closed door. “Seriously, though, that guy spooks me a little. I’ve never met anyone with less of a sense of….” He groped for the word.

“Humor?”

“No. Humanity, I guess. It’s just hard to believe that he does ordinary things like watch MTV, eat Fruit Loops, or fart.”

“I’ve done all three at the same time.”

“You, Crow, are all too human. Granted, you have a supernatural tendency to be a pain in the ass, but you’re human enough. Which reminds me, say ahhhh.”

Crow opened his mouth and Weinstock set the newspaper down and leaned forward with a tongue depressor and a penlight, flicked the light back and inside Crow’s mouth, sniffed once, and sat back, tossing the depressor into the trash can. “Looks like the ladies’ sewing circle threw a kegger in your mouth.”

“Gee, doc, everything you says just paints a picture.”

“How do you feel? How’re the aches and pains? Any double vision? Blood in your urine? Pins and needles anywhere?”

“Nope. Just your garden-variety every-molecule-in-my-body-hurts kind of pain. Just what you’d expect after getting the shit kicked out of you—twice—and getting shot. Twice.”

Weinstock rolled his eyes. “Don’t even start with that ‘getting shot’ bullshit. Both slugs barely grazed you.”

“That’s as may be, but as far as the shit-kicking went—”

“That I’ll grant you.” He reached over and picked up Crow’s bandaged wrist, gently probing it with his fingertips. “This hurt?”

“Only when some ham-fisted quack is poking it.”

Weinstock set it down. “I saw the X-rays before I came in. Nothing broken, but you have a lot of pretty serious bruising. Be careful, ’cause the first time you even tap that thing against something you’re going to cry like a five-year-old girl.”

“Excuse me? But I never cry like anything less than a ten-year-old.”

They grinned at each other, comfortable with the banter, each knowing that it was a splendid way of not really talking about last night even though it was right there in each other’s eyes. Crow said, “How’s Val?”

“Still sleeping, thank God. On top of what she must be feeling about her dad, that eye socket is going to hurt like a son of a bitch. A migraine is not out of the question. Better to keep her under as long as we can. The MRI can wait until this afternoon, if she’s up to it, or tomorrow.”

Crow nodded. “Thanks.”

Weinstock slapped Crow’s thigh. “You’re going to have to be her support, buddy-boy, because she’s going to have to deal with a lot of pretty hard stuff over the next couple of days. Henry’s funeral arrangements, for one, and running the farm. The house is probably a wreck, what with the mess Ruger made and then a zillion cops tramping through it. Anything you can do to get some of this taken care of so she doesn’t have to will lighten her load.”

Crow nodded. “I called Diego, the farm foreman. Asked him to see to the house and the farm. He’s a stand-up guy, been with Henry forever. You’ve met him.”

“Yep.” Weinstock frowned. “We all know Val’s tough as nails, but nobody’s invulnerable and you have to remember that if she has a strong support system then it’ll be easier for her to remember her strength, you dig?”

Crow cocked his head and studied the doctor. “It’s strange,” he said, “but everyone keeps saying you’re a heartless bastard. I think they may be wrong.”

Weinstock ignored that and picked up the newspaper he’d been carrying, the Crestville Observer. “You see this yet? You’re famous.” He spread it out and Crow glanced at the headlines: MONSTERS IN SPOOKTOWN: MANHUNT ENDS IN SHOOTINGS, DEATH. The article ran through the events at the farm and highlighted Crow’s fight with an “unnamed assailant,” then chucked in a lot of backstory about Crow’s better days as a Pine Deep cop. It was lurid stuff, poorly written and overly dramatic.

Crow made a rude noise and pushed it away. “Typical. Long on hysteria, short on details.”

“Well,” Weinstock said, “there’s still a manhunt going on. Can’t expect them to give away too much info. Crooks read papers, too.”

“No self-respecting crook would read the Observer.”

“Good point.”

“I notice, though, that there’s nothing about the Cape May Killer.”

Weinstock shook his head. “I think there’s about fifteen people in the whole town who know about that, most of them cops, and none of them better talk to the press. Gus would have their balls.”

“The hell with Gus—that guy Ferro’d have their balls. He’s a lot scarier than Gus.”

“Yeah, he can be intense. Do him some good to smile once in a while.” He looked at his watch. “Better get my ass in gear. I got to do the autopsy on your sparring partner.”

Crow felt the skin on the back of his neck contract like wet leather left out in the sun. “You’re going to do an autopsy on Ruger?”

“Yep. Want me to save you a souvenir? His heart’s probably small enough and hard enough to make a good watch fob.” Weinstock’s grin turned into a frown. “Crow…you just went about four shades of green. Sorry,” Weinstock said, patting Crow’s knee. “Guess it’s too soon to make those kind of jokes.”

“Just a bit.”

Weinstock cleared his throat and looked at his watch. “Anything I can get you? Something you want brought in?”

“Yeah, how about wheeling Val into see me…or cutting me loose so I can visit her.”

Weinstock sucked his teeth. “If you behave, I’ll have an orderly wheel you down to her room later so you can sit with her. She’s sleeping now, but as the day wears on she’s going to need you there.”

“I know,” Crow said. “Thanks. You know I proposed, right?”

“You told me about twenty times.” Weinstock said, thinking that Val would be very lucky if all the physical and emotional trauma she’d undergone in the last forty-eight hours didn’t cause her to miscarry. He was pretty sure Crow didn’t yet know that Val was pregnant.

Crow asked about Connie and Mark, Val’s brother and sister-in-law. Weinstock looked dubious. “She’s pretty rocky, though physically she’s okay. The shrinks are with her now, and will be seeing her off and on all day. I’d rather keep her, and Mark, a couple more days. We had some difficulties with Mark’s avulsed teeth, but we were able to clean the sockets and reseat both teeth. They’re ligated to the adjoining teeth, and he’ll have to be careful for a couple of months. He’s on antibiotics and will need root canal to restore the blood supply, but we can get that done, either here or he can see his oral surgeon, though he’ll want to check in with an endodontist fairly soon as well. That’s all fairly routine. Our residents reseat teeth after every hockey game at the college and twice on Friday nights after the bars let out. Psychologically, though, he might be as shaky as Connie, and the next few days are going to be very tough for them, which is why I’d rather have them here. He has very real grief to deal with, but he also has Connie to attend to. She was very nearly raped, as you know, and neither of them is coping with that very well. They’re both acting as if she was raped, and Mark’s withdrawn from her a bit. Doesn’t say much to her, doesn’t even ask about her. Connie is even worse, and without Mark’s support….”

“Yeah,” Crow said softly, “Mark’s not Henry.” Which said it all.

“Few people are. I’m not a big believer in hell, as you know, but I think Ruger should burn for killing Henry.” His cell phone rang and he plucked it out of the pocket of his white lab coat, flipped it open, and said, “Weinstock. Yeah, Bob, what is it?” He listened for over a minute without saying anything, but as Crow watched the doctor’s face aged ten years and turned gray. Finally he said, “Okay. Thanks.” He sighed heavily and laid the cell phone in his lap.

“What was that all about?”

Weinstock cocked his head at Crow. “You know Nels Cowan and Jimmy Castle?”

“Sure. Why?”

Weinstock rubbed his eyes. “That was Bob Colbert on the phone. You know him. Teaches at the college, fills in for me as ME sometimes.”

“I don’t like where this is going, Saul. Did something happen to them? Nels and Jimmy?”

“Yeah,” Weinstock said wearily. “Something happened.”

(6)

Once the sun was above the corn and the bodies of Officers Cowan and Castle were zippered into black plastic body bags and taken away by ambulance, it became easier to search the crime scene and surrounding fields for the blood trails that Ferro and LaMastra knew had to be there. It was LaMastra who ultimately found the line of footprints leading deep into the corn, though there was little actual blood along the wandering path.

Earlier, after they had first viewed the scene, Ferro had put the call out through Gus that they needed a lot more men on the ground, and the request—fueled by early news stories of the manhunt and the killings—flashed through jurisdictions on both sides of the Delaware. By the time LaMastra had picked out the front yard of the Guthrie place was a parking lot, and more cars lined the service road and both sides of the verge on A-32 for a hundred yards north and south. Gus took names and badge numbers from every cop, and LaMastra divided up the teams while Ferro and a ranger from the State Forest Commission pored over regional maps. Cell phone reception was spotty so officers with high-powered walkie-talkies were assigned to each group. Gus Bernhardt made some calls and brought in a dozen men he knew to be top hunters or hunting guides, and he deputized them on the spot, mostly to enforce a confidentiality decree. Three teams of hunting dogs were brought in—the same ones that had failed to track Ruger through the rain two nights ago—and at 9:15 the search began in earnest.

Before the teams headed out, Ferro made it very clear that this was a search and apprehend job designed to locate Boyd and/or his stash of money and cocaine, but there was not one officer there who wasn’t reading the situation as a search and destroy. Ferro and LaMastra both knew it. Spotter planes were in the air before the first teams had covered half a mile and they crisscrossed the fields all morning. There was nothing they could do about the forest—the great Pinelands State Forest was too dense for any aerial surveillance, so when they’d swept the Guthrie fields a dozen times they refueled at Doylestown Airport and flew back to start a spiral search that used the Guthrie farmhouse as ground zero.

Ferro stayed at the farmhouse to coordinate, but LaMastra wanted to be out in the fields. He carried a Mossberg Bullpup shotgun with a twenty-inch barrel and an eight-shell clip, and there was nothing in his expression that suggested “cuff-and-arrest.” The same hard lines were cut into the faces of every man with him. It had become a blood hunt, and everyone there wanted a taste.

(7)

They let Crow in to sit with Val later that afternoon, but he had to have his police guard with him—a sullen Sergeant Jim Polk had the afternoon shift. The officer stationed in Val’s room was a fierce-looking female cop from Philly named Coralita Toombes, and she showed great tact by pulling her chair outside to allow Crow some privacy. Polk also left, looking pleased to be out of Crow’s company. Their dislike of each other went back years. For the next few hours Crow sat by Val’s bedside, holding her hand, watching her sleep and praying to God that she was not dreaming. They had been having some particularly nasty dreams lately—both before Ruger’s arrival in town, and after.

Val was swathed in bandages and hooked up to machines that beeped and pinged. A bag of saline hung pendulously above her, dripping steadily. The liquid was so clear that it seemed to exemplify purity, and that somehow comforted Crow. Nothing else these days seemed very pure, from the blighted crops to the pollution spread by Ruger and his crew. He hated it that so much of this muck had invaded Val’s life, he hated seeing her diminished like this. Val was the strongest person he’d ever known; she was as tough as her father, and to know that she’d been manhandled, pawed at, chased, shot at, and then nearly murdered by Ruger filled Crow with a rage so white-hot that it was, in itself, an example of purity. At that moment he would have gladly traded his life to roll the clock back a couple of days so that he could have made the choice to go out to the Guthrie farm instead of doing Terry’s errand out at the Haunted Hayride first. Had he done so he would have gotten there before Henry had been gunned down. This knowledge was a worm gnawing at his guts.

Crow bent forward and kissed her hand, but she didn’t stir. Her face was shrunken by the depth of her sleep and her right eye was covered by a thick gauze pad held in place by a circlet of bandages, but even with all that she was beautiful. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, clear brow. Her nose was a little askew from a motorcycle accident—the same one that had given her scars on her knees, breasts, and belly. Scars Crow knew very well from close study. Val’s black hair was fanned across the pillow like a raven’s wings. Her left hand was hooked to the IV, her right held in Crow’s hands, and both of them looked strong despite the slackness of sleep. Not girlie hands like Connie’s, but the tanned, strong, clever hands of a woman who owned and managed the biggest farm in the region. Hands that could be so gentle and yet could turn a wrench or hit a tennis overhand that could chip paint from the foul line.

Crow had loved Val off and on since third grade, even though she was more or less a “rich kid” and Crow was anybody’s definition of “wrong side of the tracks.” They’d met when Crow and his big brother, Billy, had gone to work for the summer at the Guthrie farm, earning comic book money by picking corn and pumpkins, filling wheelbarrows full of apples, gathering basketsful of strawberries. At nine, Val Guthrie was as tough as a hickory stick and smart as a whip, and her father put in charge of all the kids hired from around the town. Her best friend at the time was another rich kid, Terry Wolfe, and it was pretty clear that Terry was sweet on Val. Crow and Billy had become friends with them and throughout that summer and into the grim Black Autumn that followed they ran as a pack, often with little Mandy Wolfe running along behind to catch up. When that season started it was always Val who called the shots even though Billy was older. Then things turned bad and by the end of that season Billy was dead, Mandy was dead, and Terry was in a coma, all victims of the Pine Deep Reaper. That left Val and Crow together during those last days before the Reaper was himself cut down. Now, thirty years later, Val and Crow were going to be married—just as another Black Autumn was burning its way through their lives.

Ubel Griswold sends his regards.

In his mind he could have sworn he heard the cold whisper of Ruger’s laughter. He realized that he was still squeezing Val’s hand too tightly and as he relaxed the pressure he nearly jumped as her fingers curled around his as if refusing to let go. He froze, not wanting to wake her and yet willing her to wake. Her one visible eyelid trembled for a moment and her brow furrowed as if she were puzzling out the nature of being awake. Then that eyelid opened and she looked right at him with one single dark blue eye.

All afternoon he’d been rehearsing something witty and clever to say when she finally woke up, but his throat went as dry as sand and he couldn’t say a thing.

Instead, Val said, “You look horrible.”

He swallowed, smiled, and said, “Whereas you are the most beautiful woman in the world.” He kissed her hand.

“Oh, please.” She pulled her hand gently out of his and reached up to touch her face, probing the thick bandage over her eye. “Ow. How’s this look?”

He peeked under the gauze. “Like an eggplant on a hot summer day, but hey, a few pounds of makeup and nobody’ll ever notice.” He took a cup of water from the bedside table and handed it to her. She sipped once through the straw, took a breath, and took a longer sip before handing the cup back, her face thoughtful. Crow could imagine the tape machines in her head replaying everything that had happened. He said softly, “Ruger’s dead.”

“For sure this time?” Equal parts edge and uncertainty in her voice, echoing what he had asked Jerry Head.

“For double damn sure.”

“Good,” she said and it was very nearly a snarl. She touched her chest, feeling for her little silver cross, but it wasn’t there; the nurses had taken it off. Crow opened the drawer of the bedside table and fished it out. He clumsily managed to place it around her neck and attach the clasp. She seemed to relax a bit more once it was on.

“How are Mark and Connie?

Crow gave it to her straight, repeating verbatim what Saul Weinstock had said. Val listened and then gave a single curt nod, but he knew she was processing it. “There’s more,” he said, taking her hand again. He took a deep breath and then told her about the new killings out at the farm. He could see the hurt register on her face, but she didn’t break.

“Those poor men,” she said, her voice hollowed out by shock. “Did they have families?” When he nodded, she shook her head. “My God!”

“They’ll catch Boyd soon, though. I saw the news earlier and they have state troopers, forest rangers, every kind of cop…even dogs and planes out there.”

Her mouth was as hard as a knife blade. “They ought to gun him down and bury him in an unmarked grave. Right next to Ruger.” Crow nodded, staring down at her hand, feeling the harshness of her words, but not finding any fault with her sentiments.

A few moments later she squeezed his hand and when he looked at her there were tears in her eyes. “I just want it to end, Crow!” she said, and her chest hitched with the first sob. “I just want it to be over.” She started to cry then—deep sobs that made her body spasm and jerk. Crow reached for her and tried to comfort her with his nearness, whispering meaningless words as he held her. When he heard her say, “Daddy!” between the sobs, Crow lost it, too, and they clung together in grief.

(8)

Sunday was the only day Dick Hangood got to sleep in and he usually didn’t crawl out of bed before four in the afternoon, so when his phone rang at three, he leaned over and stared bleary-eyed at the caller ID, saw that it was Willard Fowler Newton, and almost didn’t answer. The only reason he even bothered was because Dick’s lover, Anton, was still asleep and the phone would wake him up. He slipped out of bed, took the portable phone, and clicked it on as he went into the living room. He slouched down into a leather armchair and immediately his dog leapt into his lap.

“You have one minute and then I’m going back to sleep, Newt, and unless this involves Brad Pitt and gratuitous nudity, I am probably going to fire you. Just so you know.” Dick Hangood was the editor and co-owner of the Black Marsh Sentinel, a small paper that came out three times a week in the town just south of Pine Deep.

Willard Fowler Newton said just fourteen words: “The guy Malcolm Crow shot and killed last night was the Cape May Killer.”

Dick Hangood sat up in the chair so fast he sent his Pomeranian flying off his lap and onto the hardwood floor where—in a fit of pique—he began savaging Anton’s socks, which were lying atop his shoes by the sofa. “Newton,” he said tiredly, “if you are jerking my chain—”

“Dick…I interviewed someone who was involved in what happened the other night.” He was stretching that. Mike Sweeney had told him about the Cape May Killer connection, but Mike was on the periphery of what had happened.

For Hangood shifting gears into true newsman mode was an effort, but he managed it. “Who else knows about this?”

“No one.”

“I mean, what other papers are there?”

“I’m serious—no one. The cops have been keeping this hush-hush. What I mean is…some other reporters know about the cop killings, but no one else knows about the Cape May Killer angle. I’ve been following the story all day,” Newton said urgently.

Hangood was still trying to find sense in this. “But the chief already issued a statement about the shooting at the Guthrie place. No one said anything about it being related to Cape May.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why this is what we in the news business call a scoop.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Newt.”

“Wake up, Dick…this is the real thing. We have to go to press right now. We have to get this out in a couple of hours. We’ll never have another chance—”

“Shut up and let me think.”

“There’s more…”

“More?”

“Early this morning two police officers were murdered out at the Guthrie farm. I saw the bodies, Dick. I have pics. Long range, sure, but pics. And I, um…overheard some conversations between the two lead cops. I know the whole story, Dick, and how it ties back in with the Cape May thing. I have it all.”

Hangood felt like the floor was tilting under him. His mouth moved like a Kissing Gourami for several seconds before he managed to say, “Newt—if this is on the level, if this is what you say it is—then this story is going to be picked up on every news service in the world. You could get a Pulitzer for this.”

Newton said nothing. He was hyperventilating.

(9)

“I gotta take a leak,” Polk said to Toombes and ambled off down the hall. She barely shrugged. He went down past the men’s room, looked over his shoulder to make sure Toombes was out of his line of sight, and then cut into the fire tower. He closed the door and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, punched in a number, and waited. Vic Wingate answered on the third ring.

“Vic, it’s Jim.”

“You get yourself switched like I told you to?”

“Yeah, they got me guarding Crow all day.”

“He talk to anyone?”

“Just the doctor. Saul Weinstock.”

“What did they talk about?”

“I wasn’t in the room then, but it couldn’t have been much of anything.”

“So you don’t know when they’re going to do the autopsy?”

“Actually, Vic, I do. It’s scheduled for this afternoon.”

There was silence at Vic’s end. “That soon, huh? Shit.”

“It’s an ongoing criminal investigation. Has to be done fast. That a problem?”

“Of course it’s a problem, numb-nuts. We can’t let Ruger get sliced up.”

“Why not, Vic? He’s dead, I don’t see how he’s important to the Man at this point. He’s out of the game, far as I can see.”

Vic laughed. “Yeah, well, you’ve never been too swift at the best of times, Jimmie, my boy. Trust me when I tell you that Ruger is not out of the game.”

“But, I don’t get it—”

“No. You don’t get it, and you’d better wake up every day from now on and pray thanks that you continue to not get it. Now shut up for a second and let me think. We have to find a way to get that Jew doctor to postpone the autopsy for at least a full day. You understand me, Jimmie? A full day.”

“Why?”

“Because I damn well said so. And because the Man wants it that way—or is that not enough of a reason for you?”

“No, sure, it’s cool. I was just asking—”

“Well, don’t. Look, they’re bringing in some new stiffs for the doctors to play with. If this goes the way I want it to, then they’ll autopsy them first.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll be part of an active investigation. Ruger’s old news, as far as they’re concerned. When these other bodies come in they’ll be shifting gears—but it might take the better part of the day before that happens, so I need you to stall the Jew.”

Polk licked his lips. “Yeah, okay, Vic. I’ll think of something.”

“Don’t get caught, either. You may be be a dickhead, but for the moment you’re useful. You get caught, then you’re no use to me—or to the Man. No damn use at all, you reading me?”

“I hear you, Vic.”

“Good, now get your ass in gear.” He broke the connection.

Polk leaned against the cold cinder block wall of the fire tower and stared at nothing for two whole minutes, then he pushed himself away and straightened his clothes.

“Mother of God,” he breathed and went back into the hall, but a bad plan was already forming in his head.