Still Life With Crows

“Well . . .”

“Tad, Tad. You can’t let this craziness get to you. Not every missing person turns up murdered and mutilated. Look, I’m out here at the dog. And guess what?”

“What?” Tad felt a constriction in his throat.

“It’s just a dog hit by a car. Still got its tail and everything.”

“That’s good.”

“So listen. You know Willie as well as I do. His car breaks down and he sets off on foot to wet his whistle at the Wagon Wheel. He’s got his usual hip flask in his back pocket, and he nips it until it’s gone. On the way, he decides to take a little snooze in the corn. And that’s where you’ll find him, hungover as hell but otherwise intact. Cruise back along the road slow, you’ll probably find him in the shade of the ditch. Okay?”

“Okay, Sheriff.”

“That’s a boy. You be careful, huh?”

“Will do.”

As Tad was about to get back in the cruiser, he noticed something gleaming in the dirt beside Stott’s Hornet: an empty pint bottle. He walked over, picked it up, sniffed. The smell of fresh bourbon filled his nose.

It was just as the sheriff had said. Hazen seemed to know everything in town, almost before it happened. He was a good cop. And he’d always acted like a second father to him. Tad should be grateful to be working for a guy like that, he really should.

Tad put the pint into a plastic evidence bag and flagged the spot. The sheriff appreciated thoroughness, even in the little things. As he was heading back toward his cruiser, another truck passed. But this was a refrigerated truck coming from the plant, full of nice, sanitized, frozen Butterballs. No odor, no nothing. The driver waved cheerfully. Tad waved back, lowered himself into his car, and started back down the road, looking for Stott.

Two hundred yards later, he stopped. To the left, the cornstalks had been broken. And on the right-hand side the corn was broken as well, a few stalks angled sharply to one side. It looked to Tad like someone had pushed into the corn on the left, while someone else had come out and crossed the road from the right.

He stopped the cruiser, his sense of unease returning.

He got out of the car and looked at the ground under the corn on the left side of the road. There was a disturbance in the dry clods. A disturbance that suggested someone had walked—or, more likely, run—through the dirt between two corn rows. A little deeper in, Tad could see some broken stalks and a couple of dry cobs that had been torn away and were now lying on the ground.

Tad pushed into the first row, eyes on the ground. His heart was beating uncomfortably fast. It was hard to make out marks in the clumpy, dry earth, but there were depressions that looked like footprints, scuffed areas, places where clods had been overturned, showing their dark undersides. He paused, suppressing an urge to call the sheriff. The trail went on, and here it broke through another row of corn, flattening five or six stalks.

There seemed to be more than one set of blurred, incomplete tracks. Tad didn’t want to articulate, even to himself, what this was starting to resemble. It looked like a chase. Jesus, it was really looking like a chase.

He continued walking, hoping it would turn out to be something else.

The trail went through another row, ran along the corn for a while, then broke through yet another. And then Tad came suddenly upon an area where there had been some thrashing in the dirt. A dozen stalks were broken and scattered. The ground was all torn up. It was a mess. It looked like something violent, really violent, had happened here.

Tad swallowed, scanning the ground intently. There, finally—on the far side of the disturbance—was a clear footprint in the dry earth.

It was bare.

Oh, God,thought Tad, a sick feeling rising in his stomach.Oh, God. And his hand trembled as he raised the radio to his lips.

Twenty-One

 

Corrie Swanson brought the shuddering Gremlin into the dirt lot of Kraus’s Kaverns, parking it amidst a swirl of dust that spiraled up and away. She glanced at the dashboard clock: six-thirty exactly. God, it was hot. She snapped off the blaring music, threw open her door and got out, scooping up her new notebook as she did so. She walked across the lot and mounted the steps to the old, decaying Victorian pile. The oval windows in the door revealed little of the gloom beyond. She raised the big iron knocker and let it drop, once, twice. The soft creak of footsteps, then Pendergast appeared at the door.

“Miss Swanson,” he said. “Punctual, very punctual. We, on the other hand, are running late. I must admit to a certain difficulty adjusting to the early dinner hour of this town.”

Corrie followed him into the dining room, where the remains of what looked like an elaborate dinner could be seen beneath the glow of candles. Winifred Kraus sat at the head of the table, wiping her mouth primly with a lace napkin.

“Please sit down,” said Pendergast. “Coffee or tea?”

“No, thanks.”

Pendergast disappeared into the kitchen, coming back with a funny-looking metal teapot. He filled two cups with a green liquid, handing one to Winifred and keeping the other himself. “Now, Miss Swanson, I understand you’ve completed your interview with Andy Cahill.”

Corrie shifted uncomfortably in her chair, laid her notebook on the table.

Pendergast’s eyebrows shot up. “What’s this?”