Still Life With Crows

She shrank back, a sob rising involuntarily to her throat. The smell of something dirty, something indescribably foul, seemed to rise and envelop her. Was that noise she heard really the sound of her own breathing? It was: she was gasping with fear.

She gritted her teeth, blinked her eyes against the darkness, tried to regain control of her wildly beating heart.

The thing she had touched hadn’t moved. It was probably just another bump or ridge in the floor. If she stopped in horror at every little thing she touched, she’d never make it out of the cave.

She reached out to move forward, and brushed against it again. Itwas warm, there was no imagining that: but it must be some freakish thing, volcanic or something. She felt it again, lightly, letting her hand brush here, there . . .

She realized she was touching a naked foot, with long broken toenails.

Ever so slowly, she withdrew her hand. It was shaking uncontrollably and her breath came as a rasp, completely beyond her control to silence it. She tried to swallow but her mouth had gone dry.

And then a coarse, singsong voice, a caricature lisping of human speech, came from the darkness.

“Wanna pway wif me?”

Forty-Seven

 

Hazen sat back in the well-upholstered chair, fingertips pressed lightly against the polished wood of the conference table. He wondered yet again why Medicine Creek couldn’t afford a sheriff’s office with nice comfortable chairs, or a table like this one; but then it occurred to him that the Deeper sheriff’s office, like everything else in Deeper, was running on borrowed money. At least his department ran in the black, every year. Medicine Creek’s time would come, thanks in no small part to him.

The voice of Hank Larssen droned on in the background, but Hazen was barely listening. Better to let the Deeper sheriff talk himself out. He glanced surreptitiously at his watch. Seven o’clock. They’d come a long way today, made some great progress. He’d done a great deal of thinking, and in his mind the case was now almost complete. There was only one detail that still bothered him.

Larssen, it seemed, was winding down. “It’s just way too premature, Dent. I haven’t heard any hard evidence, just a lot of conjecture and supposition.”

Conjecture and supposition.Christ, Hank had been reading too many Grisham novels.

Larssen drew himself up with an air of finality. “I’m not going to cast a cloud of suspicion on one of Deeper’s leading citizens without firm evidence. I’m not going to do it, and I’m not going to allow anyone else to do it. Not in my jurisdiction.”

Hazen let the silence ripen, then turned to Raskovich.

“Chester? What do you think?”

Raskovich glanced at Seymour Fisk, the KSU dean, who had been listening intently in silence, a crease furrowed across his bald pate. “Well,” Raskovich said, “I think that what Sheriff Hazen and I found is enough to justify continuing the investigation.”

“All you’ve found out,” Larssen replied, “is that Lavender’s in financial trouble. A lot of people are in financial trouble these days.”

Again Hazen withheld comment. Let Chester do the talking.

“Well,” said Raskovich, “we found more than just financial trouble. He hasn’t paid real estate taxes on some properties in years. Why there haven’t been any tax seizures is something I’d be interested in knowing. And Lavender went around assuring everyone that the experimental field was coming to Deeper. He told everyone he had a plan. As if he knew something that nobody else knew. This ‘plan’ sounds pretty suspicious to me.”

“For heaven’s sake, it was justtalk to appease his creditors,” said Larssen, practically rising out of the comfortable Naugahyde to make his point.

This is great,thought Hazen.Now Hank’s arguing with the KSU guys. Larssen always had been a few beers short of a six-pack.

“It’s pretty clear,” Raskovich went on, “that if Dr. Chauncy had announced on Monday that the field was going to Medicine Creek, Lavender’s creditors would have moved in and he’d have been forced into bankruptcy. That’s a powerful motive.”

There was a silence. Larssen was shaking his head.

And now Fisk spoke at last, his reedy ivory-tower voice filling the office. “Sheriff, the intention is not to make accusations. The intention is merely to continue the investigation, looking into Mr. Lavender’s affairs along with whatever other leads develop.”

Hazen waited. It was politically important to “consult” with Larssen. Old Hank just didn’t seem to get the fact that it was all pro forma, that nothing he said would stop the investigation into Lavender.

“Mr. Fisk,” Larssen said, “all I’m saying is, don’t focus on a suspect too early. There are plenty of other avenues that should be explored. Look, Dent, we all know Lavender’s no saint, but he’s no killer either, especially notthat kind of killer. Even if he hired someone, how in hell did that person get from Deeper to Medicine Creek without being observed? Where’d he hide out? Where’s his car? Where’d he spend the night? That whole area’s been searched by air and on the ground, and you know it!”

Hazen exhaled quietly. This was precisely the point that still bothered him. It was the one weakness in his theory.

“It seems to me,” he went on, “that it’s more likely the killer’s a resident of Medicine Creek, a Jekyll and Hyde type. If it was an outsider, somebody would’ve seen something. You can’t come and go from Medicine Creek, time and again, unnoticed.”

“Someone could be hiding in the corn,” said Raskovich.