need replacements for them so we can keep the net as tight as possible. If we slacken at all, then Ruger and company will slip right through.”
Gus wheeled on him. “Crow? Now why’n hell’d you do that?”
Ferro and LaMastra exchanged a brief look. “Who’s he?” asked LaMastra.
“A local shopkeeper,” Terry said.
“He’s a drunken—” Gus began and Terry withered him with a glare.
“Crow has been sober for years, Gus, and you bloody well know it.”
“Once a drunk, always a drunk.”
“Maybe, but he isn’t drinking now. Come on, Gus, even you have to admit he was a darned good officer.” Terry almost said,
Gus grunted.
Ferro did not want to involve himself in the matter, but LaMastra asked, “What’s the beef? Did he drink himself off the force or something?”
“No,” said Terry, still glaring at Gus. “He quit drinking before he ever even put on a badge.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Gus opened his mouth to answer that, but Terry cut him off. “There is no problem,” he said slowly, putting firm emphasis on each word. Then he looked at Ferro. “Malcolm Crow was a superb cop. He might even have run for chief,” he said, intending the barb to hook itself in Gus’s flesh. “He had some issues from when he was a kid and got into the bottle for a while and, all right, he made a fool of himself for a year or two, but he also got himself sober. Started going to meetings and really turned things around. Became a decorated officer. Gus was opposed to a drunk working as a cop, but I vouched for Crow then and I vouch for him now. He’s been sober for years, as I said, and nowadays he’s a well-respected businessman, a cornerstone of our community, and”—again he focused his eyes on Gus—“a close personal friend of mine.”
In truth Terry did have doubts about reinstating Crow and halfway regretted having done it on the spur of the moment. Had he been less overwhelmingly exhausted and less off-kilter he might not have done so. Crow had been a very good cop, and had been sober and going to AA meetings without a break for years, but it had also been a long time since he’d worn a badge and — as much as Terry hated to admit it to himself — Crow was so much of a goofball that it was hard to imagine him even taking what was happening right now with the proper seriousness. But he didn’t see what good admitting it would do now. Especially not in front of Gus and these other officers.
Turning back to Ferro, he went on, “I reinstated him just temporarily so that he could go shut down our Haunted Hayride. It gives him double authority as a contract employee for the hayride and a law officer. That way he’ll have the clout to handle any arguments or protests that result. Tourists can get touchy, you know.”
“Mm. We saw the signs on the way into town. Chief Bernhardt tells me that you own it.”
“Yes, and I’m proud to say that it’s the biggest in the East Coast,” Terry said with one of his few genuine smiles of the day, “but it’s full of kids, and I felt it was best to shut it up for the night and send the kids home.”
“Very smart thinking, sir,” said Ferro. “Is this Mr. Crow the man for the job?”
“Crow,” said Terry firmly, “is the man for any job. Believe me.”
Gus, it was clear, did not, but Ferro and LaMastra saw the look in Terry’s eyes, and they both nodded. “Fine,” Ferro said, “can we keep him on after he’s done that job? Help us out until this thing is over?”
“I think he can be persuaded.”
“Good, good, anyone else?”
Gus cleared his throat. “I suppose we could make some calls. I don’t think we have enough uniforms and sidearms to go around, but we could issue badges and shotguns. Or have the replacements borrow the sidearms of the team going off-duty.”
“Well, sir,” said Ferro, “I’ll leave you to work that part of it out for yourself. For my own part, if we don’t get some action in the next few hours, I’m going to call in a request for additional officers from Philly, and we may be hearing from the FBI soon.”
“Why would the FBI bother with this?” asked Terry.
“Well, sir, according to your map there, A-32 cuts back and forth over the Delaware River just here, and again here.”
“Yeah? So?”
“Well, that side of the river is New Jersey, this side is Pennsylvania.”
“Again…so?”
“Ah,” said Gus. “Something about interstate flight?”
“Uh-huh,” said LaMastra. “Interstate flight is a federal rap, and that means the FBI can be asked to step in. But we probably won’t ask.” He directed this last comment to Ferro, who nodded.
“Federal involvement is seldom a good thing. But that doesn’t matter right now. My captain has promised us at least a dozen officers.”
“Get all the help you need,” Terry said. “I said it twice already, and I’m not joking, call in the National Guard if it’ll help. Let me be clear, Sergeant, I surely do not need Jack the Ripper slicing people up in Pine Deep. It’s bad for business, and it’s bad for me personally because I am friends with darn near everybody who lives around here. Please, do whatever — and I mean
Ferro smiled a tiny smile, and gave Terry a curt nod. “We will do our very best, Mr. Mayor.”
Terry nodded. Turning to Gus, he said, “C’mon, let’s get on the phone and see if we can’t raise some kind of posse.”
“Hi-yo, Silver,” Gus muttered sourly and followed his boss over to the desks.
Ferro and LaMastra stood looking at them, and then turned to stare up at the map, at the immensity of area that had to be covered in order to run Karl Ruger to ground. It was staggering.
“What d’you think, Sarge?”
Ferro shrugged. “Honestly?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think this town is hip deep in shit.”
“Yep. Pretty much how I would have put it.”
“Christ, you three look like a hockey team in the penalty box.”
It was true enough. Val sat with a dish towel full of ice cubes pressed to her forehead; her father sat next to her with a similar compress on his torn eyebrow, still flushed and slightly goggle-eyed from the blow to his solar plexus; and Connie was dabbing at her face with an antimacassar from the couch, sopping up the water Ruger had dashed in her face to wake her up.
Across from them, Ruger sipped a tall glass of Early Times.
“You do realize,” he said in his cold whisper, “that all of this was unnecessary. If you would just follow the rules of my little Q and A, we’d all get along. Can’t we all just get along?” he said, and laughed. The joke was lost on them, but he gave a fatalistic shrug and kept his own good humor. “So, I think by now the rules should be clear. I will ask each one of you a question, or perhaps questions, and that person will answer. No committees, no debating societies. Just questions and answers. That’s pretty simple, isn’t it?”
They stared at him, hating him, willing him death.
He said, “Isn’t it?” leaning into the words.
“Yes,” they each said.
“Nice.” He sipped the sour mash and hissed with pleasure at the burn. “Okay. Now, Miss Val, I believe you were about to tell me about your various boyfriends.”
Val swallowed what felt like a cantaloupe in her throat. “I…don’t have any boyfriends.”
“What? None at all? What about the one that lives in town?”
“No. That’s been over for weeks. There’s no one.”
Ruger smiled a slithery smile. “I find that kinda hard to believe, nice-looking piece like you. What’s the deal? Didn’t you give him enough?”
