Pendergast carefully folded his suit coat and laid it across the gathered maps, charts, and journal. Corrie was startled to see a large weapon strapped beneath one arm.
“Are you going to do it now?” Corrie said, feeling a mixture of curiosity and alarm.
Pendergast lay down on the ground, like a corpse, very still. “Yes.”
He folded his hands on his chest.
“But . . . but what am I supposed to do?”
“You are here to watch over me. If you hear or see anything unusual, wake me. A good hard shake should bring me back.”
“But—”
“Do you hear those birds? Those chirping grasshoppers? If you hear them
“Okay.”
“Finally, if I do not come back in one hour, you must wake me. Those are the three circumstances under which I am to be awakened. No others. Do you understand?”
“It’s simple enough.”
Pendergast crossed his arms over his chest. If Corrie had been lying there like that, there was no way she could have thought of anything but the hard ground and the stubble underneath her. And yet he seemed to be becoming so
“So what time are you going back to?”
“I am going back to the evening of August 14, 1865.”
“The Ghost Massacre?”
“Precisely.”
“But why? What does this have to do with the serial murders?”
“The two are connected, that much I know.
“But you’re not really going anywhere, are you?”
“I assure you, Miss Swanson, the journey I make is strictly
“I don’t . . .” Corrie let her voice trail off. Any more questions would be useless.
“Are we ready, Miss Swanson?”
“I guess so.”
“In that case, I shall now ask for your absolute silence.”
Corrie waited. Pendergast remained absolutely still. As the minutes went by, he seemed even to have stopped breathing. The afternoon light poured through the trees as usual, the birds and grasshoppers chirped, the thunderheads continued to rear above the trees. Everything was as before—and yet, somehow, she herself could almost hear a faint whisper of that same late afternoon 140 years before, when thirty Cheyenne had come galloping out of a swirl of dust, bent on a most terrible revenge.
Thirty-Seven
It was almost five, but everyone was still busy propping up the decrepit Lavender empire. Hazen was well known here, and nobody stopped him as he made his way through the building toward Larssen’s office. The door was shut. He knocked, and then, without waiting for a reply, opened.
Larssen was sitting in his wooden swivel chair, listening to two guys in suits who were both talking at once. They broke off when he entered.
“Perfect timing, Dent,” Larssen said with a quick smile. “This is Seymour Fisk, dean of faculty at KSU, and Chester Raskovich, head of campus security. This is Sheriff Dent Hazen, Medicine Creek.”
Hazen took a seat, giving the two KSU people the once-over. Fisk was a typical academic, bald, jowly, reading glasses dangling from his neck. Chester Raskovich was a type, also: brown suit, heavyset, sweating all over, with close-set eyes and a handshake even more crushing than Agent Paulson’s had been. A cop wannabe if he’d ever seen one.
“I don’t have to tell you why they’re here,” Larssen went on.
“No.” Hazen genuinely liked Hank and he was sorry about what he was going to have to do. He had done nothing but think about his theory, and it amazed even him how beautifully it came together.
“We were just talking about the ramifications for Medicine Creek and Deeper. Regarding the experimental field, I mean.”
