Still Life With Crows

The man shivered at the sound of his voice, then looked up. Two red eyes peered uncomprehendingly out of a face completely covered with blood. The man’s black jacket sported the yellow insignia of the Kansas State Police K-9 squad. His lips trembled above a wispy goatee, but the only sound that emerged was more incoherent sobbing. His pale eyelashes trembled.

Pendergast performed a quick examination. “It seems you’re unhurt,” he said.

The stammering reply did not succeed in reaching the level of intelligibility.

They were wasting time. Pendergast grabbed the man by the collar of his K-9 suit and hauled him to his feet. “Get a grip on yourself, Officer. What’s your name?”

The sharp tone seemed to stun the man into sensibility.

“Weeks. Lefty Weeks. Robert Weeks.” His teeth chattered.

Pendergast released his hold; Weeks staggered but managed to stay upright.

“Where did the blood come from, Officer Weeks?”

“I don’t know.”

“Officer,” Pendergast said, “I don’t have a lot of time. There’s a killer in here who’s kidnapped a girl. It is vital that I find her—before your friends get her killed.”

“Right,” said Weeks, swallowing.

Pendergast retrieved the night-vision goggles, found them broken and inoperative, dropped them again. “You’re coming with me.”

“No! No, please—”

Pendergast grabbed his shoulders and gave him a shake. “Mr. Weeks, youwill conduct yourself like a police officer. Is that clear?”

Weeks swallowed again, struggled to master himself. “Yes, sir.”

“Stay behind, follow my lead, and keep quiet.”

“My God, no! No, don’t go that way . . . please, sir.It’s there.”

Pendergast turned and looked carefully into the man’s face. He looked traumatized, ruined. “It?”

“It. That, thatman. ”

“Describe him.”

“I can’t, Ican’t! ” Weeks buried his face in his hands as if to blot out the image. “White. Huge. All bunched up, like. Cloudy, cloudy eyes. Big feet and hands—And . . .and the face! ”

“What about the face?”

“Oh, lord Jesus, the face—”

Pendergast slapped the man. “What about the face?”

“The face of a . . . oh, God, of ababy, so . . . so—”

Pendergast cut him off. “Let’s go.”

“No!Please, not that way—!”

“Suit yourself.” Pendergast turned and strode off. With a yelp, the man scrambled to follow.

Leaving the tumult of broken columns, Pendergast moved into a broad limestone tunnel littered with huge yellow mounds of dripstone. Weeks stayed behind, cringing and whimpering to himself, afraid to follow Pendergast, but still more afraid to remain alone. Pendergast’s light roamed from dripstone to dripstone, once again following a trail.

And then he stopped. His light remained fixed on one mound that looked strikingly different from the others. Its deep yellow was heavily streaked with red, and at its base lay a pool of bright red water. Something was floating in the water: about the size of a human, but the shape was all wrong.

Weeks had fallen silent.

Pendergast played his light around the cavern wall that rose behind the dripstone mound. The dark rock was decorated in arcs of crimson, and gobbets of white, red, and yellow hung dripping here and there. His light finally came to rest on the giant forelimb of what could only be a dog, lodged in a crack about halfway up the wall. A piece of a lower jaw was wedged nearby, and something that might have been part of a muzzle had struck the sloping wall with enough violence to stick.

“One of yours?” Pendergast asked.

The man nodded dumbly.

“Did you see this happen?”

The man nodded again.

Pendergast turned, raising his light to the man’s face. “What, precisely, did you see?”

Officer Weeks choked, stammered, and finally got the words out. “Hedid it.” He paused, swallowed. And then his voice broke.“He did it with his bare hands!”

Sixty-Three