Still Life With Crows

And he pushed the Rolls ahead even faster.

Fifty

 

Ever since he’d seen The Wizard of Oz as a child, Tad Franklin had been fascinated by tornadoes. It was a source of secret embarrassment that, living all his life in western Kansas, the very center of “tornado alley,” he had never managed to see one. He’d seen the aftereffects more often than he’d liked—twisted trailer parks, trees blasted into toothpicks, cars lifted and thrown across the road—but somehow he’d never seen an actual funnel cloud with his own eyes.

Tonight he felt sure that was going to change. All day long there had been weather advisories. Every hour, it seemed, the weather service alerts had grown in intensity: thunderstorm watch; severe thunderstorm warning; tornado watch. A brutal dust storm had come screaming through an hour before that had torn away placards and shingles, sandblasted cars and houses, knocked down trees, and reduced visibility to a few hundred yards. And then at 8:11 that evening, with Tad alone in the sheriff’s office, the news came: the whole of Cry County had just been placed under a tornado warning until midnight. F-scale tornadoes of magnitude 2 or even 3, with two-hundred- mile-an-hour winds and devastating force, were possible.

Ten seconds later, Sheriff Hazen was on the radio.

“Tad,” he was saying, “I’m in Deeper, about to head back.”

“Sheriff—”

“I don’t have a lot of time. Listen to me. We’ve made a lot of progress on the case. We believe the killer is hiding in Kraus’s Kaverns.”

“The killer—?”

“For chrissakes, let me finish. It’s most likely McFelty, Norris Lavender’s henchman. He’s been holed up in that moonshine room back of Kraus’s Kaverns. But we’ve got to move fast in case he decides to pull out under cover of the storm. We’re putting together a team to go in at ten o’clock. But we also just got word from the NWS about a tornado warning for all of Cry County—”

“I just got the call.”

“—and I’ve got to put you on the tornado side of things. You know the drill?”

“Sure do.”

“Good. You get the word out, make sure everything’s battened down in Medicine Creek and the outlying areas. We’ll be arriving around nine, and then all hell’s going to break loose—and I don’t mean the weather. Just be sure to have a couple strong pots of fresh coffee. You’re not going in with us, so don’t worry. Somebody’s got to hold down the fort.”

It was only when Tad felt himself relax that he realized hehad begun to get a little nervous. He didn’t mind handling a tornado alert—he’d done that often enough before—but the idea of going after a killer in a dark cave was something else.

“Right, Sheriff,” he said.

“Okay, Tad. I’m relying on you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tad hung up the radio. He knew the drill, all right. First thing, warn the citizenry. If there were any outside, get them indoors or into shelters.

He pushed out the back, careful to face away from the wind. The gusts, full of sand and grit, felt as if they had teeth. He opened the door to his squad car, slipped in, shook the dust from his hair and face, started the engine, and ran the wipers a few times. Then he started the siren and turned on his flashers. He slid out onto Main Street and cruised along, slowly, speaking into the horn. Of course, most of them would already have heard it over the radio, but it was important to go through the motions.

“This is the sheriff’s office. A tornado warning has been declared for all of Cry County. Repeat, a tornado warning has been declared for all of Cry County. All citizens should take shelter immediately, below ground or in concrete-reinforced buildings. Stay away from windows and doors. I repeat, a tornado warning has been declared for Cry County . . .”

He hit the edge of town, drove past the last houses, stopped, and looked down the dust-covered road. The few farms he could make out were already shuttered up tight, no activity anywhere. The farmers would have had their ears glued to the radio for hours already, and they knew what to do better than anyone: move livestock, especially the young, to sheltered areas; haul extra feed; make sure they were well stocked with provisions in case of a power loss.

The farmers knew what to do. It was the damn-fool townies one had to worry about.

Tad ran his eye down the road until it reached the level of the horizon. Above, the sky was black, intensely black; the sun must have set already, and what little light was left was completely blocked by the storm. The wind was gusting fitfully, pushing shreds of corn shucks and dust-covered stalks past his windows. To the southwest he could see a deep reddish flickering that looked more like the front of a war than lightning. In Cry County, tornadoes almost always moved from southwest to northeast. It was so dark that if a tornado were coming they couldn’t even see it. They wouldn’t know it was on them until theyheard it.

He turned around quickly and headed back into town.

The windows of Maisie’s were twin rectangles of cheerful yellow standing against the murk. Tad pulled up in front and got out, holding his collar against the wind. The air smelled of dry earth and tree roots. Fragments of corn sheaves peppered his jacket.

He pushed through the door and looked around. The place fell silent as they realized he wasn’t there for a cup of coffee.

Tad cleared his throat. “Excuse me, folks, but we’ve got a tornado warning in effect for all of Cry County. Force 2, even force 3, tornadoes possible. Time to head home.”