where Missy waited for him, and climbed in. He turned on the motor and then tugged the pistol out of his waistband and crammed it back into the glove compartment. Then he put the car into drive and in a spray of gravel, he spun wheels in the direction of the Guthrie farm.
Val ran as if all the evil things in the dark were at her heels.
Except for moments of crackling white light from the heavens, the darkness was absolute. Cornstalks stood up to whip at her, slapping her face, biting at her legs, tugging at her wrists. She fought them away as she ran, battering her way through the fields, running nowhere and anywhere.
She ran and ran and ran.
Her strong legs propelled her with great force, and her muscular arms crushed a path for her slim body as she surged forward. Then her sneakered foot came down on something wet and slippery and suddenly she was flying forward, hands coming up to meet the ground that rushed at her in the darkness. Her palms hit hard, sooner than she had expected, and the jolt raced up her arms and into her shoulders and something hot and white and loud seemed to detonate in her left arm just below the deltoid. The arm buckled, refusing to bear even an ounce of weight, and she twisted as she fell, landing with all her weight on the white-hot shoulder.
She didn’t want to scream, but she couldn’t help it. The pain was a storm of knives whirling around inside her. She had no idea how long she lay there, stunned to breathlessness by the sheer weight of the pain. She tried to roll off the arm, but the pain came with her. Her left arm absolutely refused to work. She could feel the fingers opening and closing, but from the elbow to the shoulder blade everything felt as if boiling oil had been poured over it.
“Crow!” she cried out into the swirling darkness. “Help me!”
But Crow wasn’t there. Only the darkness and the pain and the madman with the gun were in her part of the universe. The deep voice of the thunder mocked her pain. Val knew that she had to — absolutely had to — get up.
Get up and run or lie there and wait to be slaughtered.
That was when she heard the single sharp, cold gunshot. It was a small sound, almost lost in the moan of the wind.
It took half a second for her to process the sound, and then she screamed, “Dad!”
That got her up. How, she could never explain, but somehow she was on her feet. Her shoes were wet and sticky from the ears of corn she had slipped on, but she stayed steady on her feet, as steady as waves of nausea and vertigo would allow her to be.
“Dad…” she said, looking back into the utter blackness the way she had come.
She didn’t know what to do. Indecision born of terror polluted her resolve.
If she kept running, then the maniac might kill her father. Might
If she went back, she might be killed, too. What would happen to Mark and Connie?
Seconds burst around her like firecrackers and she didn’t know what to do.
She felt something brush against her cheek and she used her only living hand to try and brush it away. Her fingertips touched lips, a nose, a cheek.
Val screamed and spun, backpedaling and almost falling, flailing out with her good hand.
“
Val froze. She had a vague impression of a shape, black against the blacker shadows of the field.
“
“Wh…what?”
Lightning flashed overhead, and Val had the briefest glimpse of a tall man, gaunt and sad, stooped beneath some terrible weight, dressed in dirty black clothes, gray face streaked with mud. A guitar was slung down his back, the strap crossing his chest.
“Go back,” he whispered.
She
The lightning flashed again and for just a second the small silver cross that she wore around her neck burned as if it somehow had suddenly flared with inner heat. Then as quickly as the sensation had come, it was gone.
Val was alone.
She stood there, head swimming with pain and shock and terror, her fingers touching the cross, the skin over her heart still tingling from the burn.
“Go back…” she murmured to herself.
Then she turned. Limping, her damaged arm swinging painfully, tears streaking her face, she started back toward the house.
At that same moment, eight miles away, Crow was tooling along the upper reaches of A-32. Jed Davenport was singing “Mr. Devil Blues” from a mix CD, and Crow was singing along, his voice leaping at the note but never quite grabbing it.
A state police car came rocketing up behind, lights flashing, siren tearing holes in the night. Crow sighed and slowed down to something near the speed limit as the unit changed lanes and pulled abreast. The officer riding shotgun dazzled him with a flashlight for a moment, then clicked it off. The patrol car accelerated and passed, taking charge of the lane and barreling way ahead.
Crow was impressed with the speed of the unit. He felt he could top it with Missy, but getting into a pissing match with the state police held little attraction for him. He let them zoom out of sight before he let the speedometer climb back up into the low eighties.
Muddy Waters was now “Screaming and Crying,” and Crow sang along.
He only slowed long enough to turn onto Johnson Wells Road, the old farm track that led around the huge cornfields and would take him right to Val’s back door. The road was badly rutted and bumpy and not even Missy could safely take it at anything like her best speed. Crow slowed to fifty and grimaced with the teeth-rattling jolts.
The racing cop car stayed in Crow’s mind. Where was it going? What the hell else was out here this far down on A-32?
If a thousand volts of electricity had shot up through the seat into his spine he could not have more instantly snapped to a straighter position.
There was only one thing this far down on A-32.
“Val!” He shouted her name and kicked down on the gas. Bumps and ruts be damned. Missy hurtled forward. No answer to any of his calls.
The car shot along the old farm road, high beams plowing a path before him. Thunder rumbled again, way over beyond the Guthrie farm.
In the back of his mind he kept hearing one word over and over again:
“Oh my God!” he said out loud. “Val…”
Ferro carefully unwrapped a stick of Beechnut and laid it on his tongue until the surface sugar melted, then chewed it very slowly. He folded the wrapper neatly and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. For long minutes he had just stood there staring at the devastation, letting the horror burn into him and then burn out, letting the fires burn away all of the sensationalism and emotion until all that was left was a crime scene. Facts, data, evidence, and leads: nothing more.
Ferro looked up, not surprised to see that the moon had vanished behind featureless black storm clouds. “Yeah, Vince, we’re going to lose the scene before the lab crew can get here from Philly. I’m going to run through the preliminaries. You up to helping?”
LaMastra hoisted himself up off the ground, slapped dirt and crushed corn from the seat of his pants, and gave Ferro a vague nod.
“Good,” said Ferro. “Chief?” Bernhardt, who by now was standing on the far side of the car, well out of sight of the body, looked up. “Chief, can you arrange to get some kind of tarp? We need to protect the site as much as possible.”
