Still Life With Crows

Tad walked back out of the Wagon Wheel into the blast-furnace heat. So far, no luck, no Willie Stott sleeping it off in the back room. Still, Tad was mighty glad he’d taken the time to check. He popped a mint into his mouth—his second—to cover up any possible beer breath from the ice-cold Coors Swede had slipped him under the bar. It sure tasted good on a day as hot as this one. Swede Cahill was one hell of a nice guy.

Tad’s cruiser was sitting outside the sheriff’s office, baking in the sun, and Tad made a beeline for it. He slid inside and started the engine, careful to let the minimum amount of back and buttcheek come in contact with the blistering leatherette. If he could land a desk job in Topeka or Kansas City, he wouldn’t have to spend his days hopping in and out of the suffocating heat, forced to drive a cruiser that carried its own little hell around inside it.

He switched his radio to the frequency of the county dispatcher.

“Unit twenty-one to Dispatch,” he said.

“Hiya, Tad,” came the voice of LaVerne, who worked the day shift. She was sweet on Tad and, had she been maybe twenty years younger, perhaps he might have felt the same way.

“LaVerne, anything new?” he asked.

“Someone at Gro-Bain just reported a vehicle parked by the side of the approach road. Seems abandoned.”

“What’s the model?” Tad didn’t have to ask for the make. Except for Art Ridder’s Caprice and the police ’91 Mustangs, bought secondhand from the Great Bend PD, just about every car in town was AMC. It had been the only dealership within an hour’s drive. Like so much else, though, it had closed down years ago.

“Hornet, license plate Whiskey Echo Foxtrot Two Niner Seven.”

He thanked LaVerne before slipping back into more formal jargon. “Unit twenty-one, moving,” he said, replacing the radio.

That would be Stott’s Hornet. No doubt the guy was sleeping in the back, like he had the last time his shitbox broke down outside of town. He’d curled up and made a nice little evening out of it, just the two of them, him and Old Grand-Dad.

Tad put the cruiser in gear and pulled away from the curb. It was the work of fifteen seconds to leave the town behind. Four minutes later, he turned into the plant road. There was a huge semi-load of live turkeys lumbering ahead of him, laying down a stink of turkey shit on the road so thick you could almost see it. Tad overtook the semi as quickly as he could, glancing over at the stacked cages full of terrified turkeys, their eyes bulging.

Tad’s job had carried him into the Gro-Bain plant a couple of times. His first visit was right before Thanksgiving, and that year he and his widowed mother had enjoyed a nice pork roast. It had been pork roast ever since. Tad was glad he had never seen a pig farm.

There it was: Stott’s Hornet, parked by the side of the road, almost invisible in the shadow of the corn. Tad stopped behind it, switched on his flashers, and got out.

The windows were open, the car was empty. There was no key in the ignition.

The turkey truck blasted by, rocking the corn on either side of the road and leaving behind the stench of diesel and panicked poultry. Tad turned away with a wince. Then he pulled his radio from his belt.

“Yeah?” came Hazen’s response when he called.

“I’m here at Stott’s car. It’s parked on the access road leading to Gro-Bain. It’s empty, no sign of Stott.”

“Figures. He’s probably sleeping it off in the corn.”

Tad looked out into the sea of corn. Somehow, he didn’t think anyone would choose to sleep in there, even drunk. “You really think so?”

“Sure I do. What else?”

The question hung in the air.

“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?”

“My notebook,” said Corrie with a defensiveness she didn’t quite understand. “You wanted me to interview Andy, so I did. I had to write it down somewhere.”

“Excellent. Let’s have the report.” The FBI agent settled into his chair, his hands clasped together.

Feeling awkward, Corrie opened the notebook.

“What lovely handwriting you have, my dear,” said Winifred, leaning just a little too close.

“Thanks.” Corrie edged the notebook away. Prying old gossip.

“I went to Andy’s house yesterday evening. He’d been out of town, a 4-H trip to the state fair. I told him his dog had died, but I didn’t say how. I kind of let him assume it was hit by a car. He was pretty upset. He loved that dog, Jiff.”

She paused. Once again, Pendergast’s eyes had drooped to mere slits. She hoped he wouldn’t go to sleep on her again.

“He said that for the past couple of days, Jiff had been acting kind of strange. He wouldn’t go outside and went whining and cringing around the house, had to be dragged out from under the bed when it was time for his dinner.”

She turned the page.

“Finally, two days ago—”

“Exact dates, please.”

“August tenth.”

“Proceed.”

“On August tenth, Jiff, er, took a dump on the living room rug.” She looked up nervously into the silence that followed. “Sorry, but that’s what he did.”

“My dear,” said Winifred, “you should say that the dogdirtied the rug.”

“But he didn’t just get the rug dirty, he, you know,crapped on it. Diarrhea, in fact.” What was this meddling old lady doing anyway, listening to the report? She wondered how Pendergast could put up with her.

“Please continue, Miss Swanson,” Pendergast said.

“So anyway, Mrs. Cahill, who’s kind of a bitch, got pissed off and kicked Jiff out of the house and made Andy clean up the mess. Andy had wanted to take Jiff to the vet but his mom didn’t want to pay for it. Anyway, that was the last he ever saw his dog.”

She glanced over at Winifred and noticed her face was all pinched up. It took her a moment to realize it was because she had used the word “bitch.”

“What time was this?” Pendergast asked.

“Seven o’clock in the evening.”

Pendergast nodded, tenting his fingers. “Where do the Cahills live?”

“It’s the last house on the Deeper Road, about a mile north of town, not far from the cemetery and just before the bridge.”

Pendergast nodded approvingly. “And Jiff was wearing his collar when he was ejected from the house?”

“Yes,” Corrie said, concealing a stab of pride that she’d thought to ask the question.

“Excellent work.” Pendergast sat up. “Any news on the missing William Stott?”

“No,” said Corrie. “They’ve got a search going. I heard they were bringing a plane down from Dodge City.”

Pendergast nodded, then rose from the table, strolled to the window, folded his hands behind his back, and looked out over the endless corn.

“Do you think he was murdered?” asked Corrie.

Pendergast continued looking out over the corn, his dark figure accented against the evening sky. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the avian fauna of Medicine Creek.”

“Right, sure,” said Corrie.

“For example,” Pendergast said, “do you see that vulture?”

Corrie drew up to his side. She could see nothing.

“There.”

Then she saw it: a lone bird, silhouetted against the orange sky. “Those turkey vultures are always flying around,” she said.

“Yes, but a minute ago it was riding a thermal, as it had been doing for the past hour. Now it’s flying upwind.”

“So?”

“It takes a great deal of energy for a vulture to fly upwind. They only do it under one circumstance.” He waited, staring intently out the window. “Now, observe—it’s made its turn. It sees what it wants.” Pendergast turned toward her quickly. “Come,” he murmured. “We don’t have any time to lose. We must get to the site—just in case, you understand—before the state trooper legions descend and ruin everything.” He turned toward Winifred and said, in a louder voice, “Excuse us, Miss Kraus, for the suddenness of our departure.”

The old lady rose, her face white. “Not another—”

“It could be anything.”

She sat down again, wringing her hands. “Oh dear.”

“We can take the powerline road,” Corrie said as she followed Pendergast out the door. “We’ll have to walk the last quarter mile, though.”

“Understood,” Pendergast replied tersely, getting into the car and closing the passenger door. “This is one instance in which you can exceed the speed limit, Miss Swanson.”

Five minutes later, Corrie was nosing the Gremlin down the narrow, rutted track that was known locally as the powerline road. She was familiar with this isolated, dusty stretch; this was where she came to read, daydream, or simply get away from her mother or the morons at the high school. The thought that a murderer might have lurked—mightstill be lurking—in these remote cornfields sent a shiver through her.

Ahead, the vulture had been joined by a couple of others, and they were now circling slowly, lazily. The car bumped and scraped over the washboard ruts. The last glory of the sunset lay in the west, an orgy of bloody thunderheads rapidly fading to darkness.

“Here,” said Pendergast, almost to himself.

Corrie stopped and they got out. The vultures rose in the sky, apprehensive at their presence. Pendergast began to stride swiftly into the corn, and Corrie moved into step behind him.

Abruptly, Pendergast stopped. “Miss Swanson,” he said. “You will recall my prior warning. We may well find something in the corn rather more disturbing than a dead dog.”

Corrie nodded.

“If you wanted to wait in the car . . .”

Corrie fought to keep her voice sounding calm. “I’m your assistant, remember?”

Pendergast looked at her inquiringly for a moment. Then he nodded. “Very well. I do believe you are capable of it. Please keep in mind your restricted SOC access. Touch nothing, walk where I walk, follow my instructions precisely.”

“Understood.”

He turned and began slipping through the rows of corn, silently and swiftly, brushing past ears that hardly rustled at his passage. Corrie followed behind, struggling to keep up. But she was glad of the effort; it kept her mind from thinking about what might lie ahead. But whatever it was, the thought of staying in the car, alone, in the gathering dark, was even less pleasant.I’ve seen a crime scene, she thought.I saw the dog. Whatever it is, I can take it.

And then, suddenly, Pendergast stopped again. Ahead, the rows of corn had been broken and swept aside, forming a small clearing. Corrie froze at the agent’s side, the sudden shock rooting her in place. The light was dim, but not dim enough to spare her any of the horror that lay splayed just ahead.

And still she was unable to move. The air lay still over the awful scene. Corrie’s nose filled with the odor of something like spoiled ham. She felt a sudden constriction in her throat, a burning sensation, a spasm of the abdominal muscles.

Oh shit,she thought.No, not now. Not in front of Pendergast.

Abruptly, she bent to one side and vomited into the corn; straightened; then bent and vomited again. She coughed, struggling upright, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Mortification, fear, horror all grappled within her.

But Pendergast seemed not to notice. He had moved ahead and was kneeling in the center of the clearing, completely engrossed. Somehow, the sheer physical act of retching seemed to have broken her paralysis, perhaps even prepared her a little better for the awful sight. She wiped her mouth again, took a cautious step forward, and stopped just inside the clearing.

The body was naked, splayed on its back, arms thrown wide, legs apart. The skin was an unreal, artificial grayish-white. There was a sticky sheen to everything. The corpse lookedloose, somehow, as if the skin and flesh were liquefying, coming off the bones. And in fact theywere coming off the bones, she realized with a shudder. The skin of the face was hanging loose, separating from the jaw and teeth; flesh was sagging and splitting at the shoulder and white bone could be seen poking through. An ear lay on the ground, misshapen and slimy, completely detached from the body. The other ear was missing entirely. Corrie felt her throat constrict again. She turned away, closed her eyes briefly, consciously slowed her breathing. Then she turned back.

The body was completely hairless. The masculine sexual organs had also fallen off, although again it looked as though an effort had been made to reattach them, or at least arrange them in the right place. Corrie had seen Stott around town, but if this was the body of the skinny drunk who ran the cleanup detail at Gro-Bain, there was no way to know. It didn’t even look human. It was as bloated as a dead pig.

As the initial shock and horror began to ebb, she noticed other things about the site. Here and there, ears of corn had been arranged into strange geometrical shapes. There were a couple of objects fashioned in an extremely crude way out of corn husks. They might be bowls, or cups, or something else entirely; Corrie could not be sure.

All of a sudden, she became aware of a loud droning sound, directly overhead. She looked up. A small plane was circling the site, flying low. She had not even heard its approach. Now the plane waggled its wings, veered away, and headed quickly north.

She found Pendergast looking at her. “The search plane from Dodge. The sheriff will be here in ten minutes, and the state police shortly thereafter.”

“Oh.” She could hardly work her mouth.

Pendergast was holding his small flashlight in one hand. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Can you hold this light?”

“I think so.”

“Excellent.”

Corrie held her nose, took in a deep breath. Then she took the light, directed the beam as Pendergast indicated. The gloom was rapidly filling the air. A test tube had appeared out of Pendergast’s suit coat and now the agent was kneeling, putting invisible things into it with a pair of tweezers. Then another test tube appeared, and another, specimens going deftly into each one. He worked swiftly, moving around the body in ever narrower circles, every now and then murmuring low instructions about the placement of the light.

She could already hear the faint siren of the sheriff’s car drifting over the corn.

More quickly now, Pendergast was going over the body bit by bit, his face inches from the skin, plucking off something here, something there. The smell of rotting ham refused to go away, and she felt another twinge deep in her gut.

The siren got louder and louder, then finally stopped. From beyond the fastness of corn, she heard a door slam, then another.

Pendergast straightened up. All the paraphernalia had vanished, almost miraculously, into the folds of his well-pressed black suit.

“Step back, please,” he said.

They withdrew to the edge of the clearing just as the sheriff arrived, followed by his deputy. There were more sirens now and the sound of radios blaring in the corn.

“So it’s you, Pendergast,” said the sheriff, coming over. “When’d you get here?”

“I’d like permission to examine the site.”

“As if you haven’t already, I’ll bet. Permission denied until we’ve completed our own examination.”

Now more men were crashing through the corn: state troopers and grim-looking men in blue suits whom Corrie guessed were members of the Dodge City homicide squad.

“Set up a perimeter here!” bawled the sheriff. “Tad, lay out some tape!” He turned back to Pendergast. “You can stand behind the tape, like the others, and wait your turn.”

Corrie was surprised at Pendergast’s reaction. He seemed to have lost all interest. Instead, he began to steer an erratic course around the periphery of the site, looking for nothing in particular. He seemed to be wandering aimlessly off into the corn. Corrie followed. She stumbled once, then twice, and realized that the shock was still heavy upon her.

Suddenly, Pendergast stopped again, between two rows of corn. He took his flashlight gently from Corrie and pointed it at the ground. Corrie peered, but could see nothing.

“You see these marks?” Pendergast murmured.

“Sort of.”

“They’re footprints. Bare footprints. They seem to be heading down toward the creek.”

Corrie took a step backward.

Pendergast switched off the light. “You’ve done—and seen—more than enough for one day, Miss Swanson. I’m very grateful for your help.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s eight-thirty, still early enough for you to get home without danger. Go back to your car, go straight home, and get a good rest. I’ll continue here on my own.”

“But what about driving you—?”

“I’ll get a ride back with one of those fine, eager young policemen over there.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated, strangely unwilling to leave. “Um, I’m sorry I puked back there.”

She could barely see his smile in the gathering dark. “Think nothing of it. The same thing happened to a close acquaintance of mine, a veteran lieutenant of the NYPD, at a homicide site a few years back. It merely proves your humanity.”

As she turned to go, he spoke again. “One last thing, Miss Swanson.”

She stopped, looked back at him. “Yes?”

“When you get home, be sure to lock your house up tight.Tight. Agreed?”

She nodded, then turned again, making her way quickly through the corn, toward the striped red wash of police lights, thinking of Pendergast’s words:it’s still early enough for you to get home without danger.

Twenty-Two

Shading his light carefully, Pendergast followed the bare prints into the darkness of the cornfield. The tracks were now quite distinct in the dry dirt between the rows of corn. As he walked, the noise of the crime scene fell away. When the field began to slope ever so slightly down toward the creek, he stopped to look back. The row of skeletal powerline towers stood silhouetted against the last light of the sky, steel sentinels, the stars winking into view above them. Crows, coming to roost in the towers, were cawing fitfully. He waited as the noise of the crows gradually settled for the night. Then there was no sound at all. The air was still and close as the air of a tomb, and smelled of dust and dry cornhusks.

Pendergast slipped his hand into his jacket and removed his Les Baer custom .45. Carefully hooding his light, he examined the footprints again. They led straight on between the rows, unhurried, heading methodically toward the creek.

Straight toward Gasparilla’s camp.

He turned off the light and waited, allowing his eyes to adjust. Then, as quietly as a lynx, he moved through the rows of corn, a shadow gliding among shadows. The corn rows made a gentle bend as he approached the creek, and he could just make out where the passage of the killer had knocked a few dry stalks awry. He turned sideways and slipped through the gap himself, and in another minute had reached the edge of the cornfield.

Below and beyond lay the bottomlands, the cottonwood trees along the banks throwing the creek itself into darkness. Pendergast moved forward along the edge of the cornfield, making the barest rustling noise, and in another minute gained the complete darkness of the trees.

He paused. The sound of the creek purling over its bed was barely audible. He checked his weapon once again, assuring himself there was a round in the chamber. Then he knelt and, cupping his hands carefully, turned on the light. The faint pool of yellow illuminated the tracks, now even clearer in the sand. They were still angling toward Gasparilla’s camp. He knelt and examined the prints themselves. They were the same as before: male footprints, size eleven. But in the fine sand he could see that around the embossing made by the ball of the heel and the big toe there was a series of irregular impressions and cracks, as if the feet were unusually horny and tough. He made a few quick notes and sketches and then placed the tips of his fingers in one of the depressions. The prints had been made about twelve to fifteen hours before—just before dawn that same day. The pace had quickened a bit here: now the killer was moving at a good walk, not hurrying exactly, but rather moving with purpose. There was no sense of urgency or fear in the way he moved. He was relaxed. He was satisfied. It was as if he were going home.

Going home . . .

Gasparilla’s camp was straight ahead, no more than a few hundred yards away. Cupping his flashlight so that just enough light escaped to make out the prints, the agent crept forward with excruciating slowness.

He paused, listening intently, then moved forward again. Ahead, all was dark. There was no fire, no light. When he was within a hundred yards of the camp, he turned off the tiny ray of light and approached blindly. The camp was silent.

And then he heard it: a faint, almost indiscernible sound. He froze.

A minute passed.

There it was again, louder now: a long, drawn-out sigh.

Pendergast left the trail and circled around to the right of the camp, moving with exquisite care. As he approached the downwind sector, he smelled no smoke or food. There wasn’t even a glow from a dying pile of coals.

And yet there was definitely someone, or something, in the camp.

The sound of exhaled air again. Wet, labored, almost a wheeze. Yet there was something strange about it: crude, animalistic, not quite human.

Careful to make no sound, Pendergast raised his gun. The noise was coming from the middle of Gasparilla’s camp.

The noise came again.

Gasparilla—or whatever was making the noise—was no more than fifty feet away. The darkness was absolute. Pendergast could see nothing.

He leaned down, picked up a pebble. He then tossed it to the far side of the camp.

Tap.

A sudden silence. And then a guttural sound, like the growl of an animal.

Pendergast waited as a fresh silence stretched on into minutes. All his senses were on the highest alert, straining to determine whether or not anything was moving toward him. Gasparilla had already proven himself adept at moving through darkness. Was he doing it again?

Slowly, Pendergast picked up another pebble, tossed it in another direction.

Tap.

Once again, an answering snort came back: short, very loud, and in the exact same place. Whoever—whatever—it was had not moved.

Pendergast snapped on the light and squeezed the grip of his pistol simultaneously, activating the laser sight. The beam of the flashlight illuminated a human being lying on his back in the dirt, staring upward with huge bloodshot eyes. His face and head were completely covered in blood.

The red dot of the laser jitterbugged across the hideous face for a moment. Then Pendergast holstered the gun and took a step forward.

“Gasparilla?”

The face jerked back and forth. The mouth opened, blowing a bloody bubble of saliva.

In a moment Pendergast was kneeling over the man. It was unquestionably Gasparilla. Pendergast moved the flashlight across his face. All of the man’s glossy black hair and heavy beard were gone, ripped out along with the scalp; the margins of flesh showed the cut marks of some crude implement: perhaps a stone knife. Pendergast quickly examined the rest of his body. Gasparilla’s left thumb had been partly hacked through and then yanked off with a brutal tug that left behind a white nub of bone, a shred or two of cartilage. Beyond that and the hair, however, the man seemed physically intact. Except for the scalp, there was little loss of blood. The damage appeared not so much of the body as of the mind.

“Uhmm!”Gasparilla grunted, heaving upward. The eyes were wild, insane. He blew a spray of bloody saliva.

Pendergast bent closer. “It’s all right now.”

The eyes roved wildly, unable to fix on Pendergast or anything else. When they paused, they seemed to quiver violently, then return immediately to roving, as if the mere act of focusing was unbearable.

Pendergast took his hand. “I’m going to take care of you. We’ll get you out of here.”

He leaned back, flashed the light around. There was the place of attack: forty feet away to the north of the camp. There was the scuffle, the riot of footprints mingling with Gasparilla’s own.

Pendergast stood now and approached the spot, licking the flashlight across the ground. There was the spot where Gasparilla had fallen, and from where—over the course of fifteen hours—he had dragged himself, in rolling fits, across the dirt. And there, on the far side of camp, were the footprints of the killer in the wet sand, well defined, heading into the creek.

The killer, carrying away his trophies.

The sand told the story.

Pendergast turned back and looked deeply into the wildly roving eyes. He saw nothing: no intellect, no memory, no humanity, nothing but the sheerest terror.

There would be no answers from Gasparilla; not now—and maybe not ever.

Twenty-Three

Sheriff Hazen entered the basement laboratory and took an unwilling look around. There was the same old sour smell, made worse by the overlay of disinfectants and chemicals; the same cinderblock walls painted diarrhea-tan; the same buzzing fluorescent lights. Breathing through the mouth did no good—the surgical mask did nothing but introduce a smell of antiseptic paper to the mix. What he needed was a frigging gas mask.

He summoned a variety of comforting sounds and images to mind: Hank Williams ballads; the taste of the first Grain Belt of an evening; going to the Harvest Festival as a kid with his dad and older brother. None of it helped. Sheriff Hazen shivered, and not just because of the smell of death.

He moved toward the bright end of the lab, scrubs rustling. The medical examiner was already there, swathed like himself in blue, and Hazen could hear the murmur of voices. There was a second figure beside the M.E., and despite the softness of the voice he recognized the southern cadence. Pendergast.

Pendergast had been right. It was a serial killer. And he was probably right that the killer was local. Hazen couldn’t believe it, hadn’twanted to believe it. He’d laughed out loud when he’d heard that Pendergast was spending hours closeted with Marge Tealander, knowing the old busybody would eat up his time and have him chasing down red herrings all over town. But now, in the wake of this new killing, he was forced to admit things did point to a local killer. It was damned hard to come and go from Medicine Creek without people noticing. Especially at night, when a set of car headlights in the distance was enough to send people to the window to see who was coming. No, this wasn’t the work of some drifter who killed and moved on. It seemed it was somebody who lived here in Medicine Creek. It was incredible, but there it was. Someone in town.

That meant he knew the killer.

“Ah, Sheriff Hazen, good to see you.” McHyde nodded politely, even deferentially.

The guy had really changed his tune. No more Dr. Arrogant. The case was big now, and the M.E. could smell the publicity. This was a ticket out of western Kansas for anyone who wanted to hop aboard the train.

“Sheriff Hazen,” said Pendergast, giving a little nod of recognition.

“Morning, Pendergast.”

There was a short silence. The body lay covered on the gurney. It seemed the M.E. had not begun his work. Hazen bitterly regretted arriving so early.

The M.E. cleared his throat. “Nurse Malone?”

A voice came from offstage. “Yes, Doctor?”

“Are we ready to roll?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Good. Run the video.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

They went through the preliminaries, each one giving their name and title. Hazen could not take his eyes off the shrouded corpse. He had seen it lying in the field, of course, but somehow seeing it in this sterile, artificial environment was different. Worse.

The M.E. grasped the cloth and slowly, carefully, raised the sheet. And there was Stott, bloated, the flesh literally falling off the bones.

Quickly, Hazen averted his eyes. Then, feeling self-conscious, he slowly forced himself to face the gurney again.

He had seen dead bodies in his time, but they sure as hell hadn’t looked like this. The skin had split across the breastbone and drawn back from the fatty flesh, as if it had shrunk. It had also split on the hips and across the face. Melted fat had dripped out in several places and run into little pools in the gurney, where it had congealed white and hard under refrigeration. Yet there were no maggots—strange, very strange. And there seemed to be a piece missing from the body. Yes: a ragged chunk, torn away from the left thigh, the teeth marks still visible. Dog, it seemed. Man’s best friend. Hazen swallowed.

The M.E. began to speak.

“We have here the body identified as that of William LaRue Stott, a white male thirty-two years old.” He droned on for the benefit of the camera while they all stood around the corpse. Mercifully, the initial recitation was short. The M.E. turned to Pendergast and asked unctuously, “Any comments or suggestions, Special Agent Pendergast, before we proceed further?”

“Not at the moment, thank you.”

“Very well. We performed a preliminary examination of the body earlier this morning and have noted several important anomalies. I will begin with the overall condition.”

He paused, cleared his throat. Hazen saw his eyes flicker toward the videocamera positioned above the gurney.Yeah, you look great, Doc.

“The first thing I noticed was the lack of insect activity on the body, and the fact that decomposition had barely initiated, despite the fact that the victim has been deceased for at least eighteen hours in temperatures not less than ninety-five degrees, and in full sun for no less than twelve hours.” He cleared his throat again.

“The second anomaly is more obvious. As can be seen, the flesh at the extremities has begun to separate from the bone. It is most pronounced here around the face, hands, and feet—the nose and lips almost appear to have melted. Both ears were missing; one was recovered at the scene. Here, across the hips and shoulders, the skin has ruptured, separated from, and ultimately withdrawn from the fatty tissue below. There is a preponderance of a sebaceous, tallowlike substance consistent with melting and subsequent cooling. The hair and scalp are gone—evidently removed post-mortem and post-, er, processing—and the fatty tissue appears to have partially liquefied. All these and a whole suite of other anomalous characteristics can be explained by one simple fact only.”

He paused and drew in some air.

“The body was boiled.”

Pendergast nodded. “Just so.”

For a minute Hazen couldn’t quite grasp it.“Boiled?”

“The body was apparently immersed in water, brought to a boil, and left in that state for at least three hours, probably more. The autopsy and some biochemical workups will pin down the duration a little more precisely. Suffice to say the boiling was long enough to cause the separations you see here at the maxilla, mandible”—he touched the open mouth with a finger, moving the cheek away from the bone underneath—“and here, on the foot, you will note that most of the toenails are actually missing, having sloughed off. And on the hand, here, the fingernails are likewise all missing, and the left second and third digits missing down to the medial metacarpals. Note how the capsule of the proximal interphalangeal joint is sloughed away, here and here.”

Hazen looked on with increasing disbelief. Damned if it didn’t look just like a parboiled pig. “But, look—to boil a body like that would take days.”

“Wrong, Sheriff. Once the temperature overall reaches one hundred degrees centigrade, an elephant will cook just as fast as a chicken. Cooking, you see, is essentially a process of breaking down the quaternary structure of the protein molecule through the application of heat—”

“I get the picture,” Hazen said.

“The missing digits were not recovered at the scene of the crime,” said Pendergast. “Therefore, one must assume they became separated at the time of boiling.”

“That is a reasonable assumption. In addition, you will note what appear to be severe rope burns on the wrists and ankles. It suggests to me that the, ah,boiling might have started pre-mortem.”

This was too frigging much. Hazen felt his little world spinning out of control. Upstairs in the hospital lay Gasparilla, an eccentric but harmless old coot, with all the hair scalped not only from his head, but from his chin, upper lip, underarms, even groin; and here, downstairs, lay the second victim—boiled alive, no less. And he was looking at a hometown mass murderer who went around in bare feet, hacked and scalped his victims, and arranged them like a crèche.

“Where is someone going to get a pot big enough to boil a body in?” he asked. “And wouldn’t someone have smelled it cooking?”

He found Pendergast’s cool gray eyes settling on him. “Two excellent questions, Sheriff, suggesting two fruitful routes of inquiry.”

Fruitful routes of inquiry.Here was Stott, a guy he had lifted more than a few with at the Wagon Wheel.

“Needless to say,” the M.E. went on, “I will verify this hypothesis with tissue sections and biochemical assays. I might even be able to tell you how long he was boiled. And now, I direct your attention to the eight-centimeter diagonal tear on the left thigh. It is deep, going through the vastus lateralis and into the vastus intermedius, exposing the femur.”

Very unwillingly, Hazen looked closer at the bite mark. It was very ragged; the flesh, dark brown from the boiling, had been ripped away from the bone.

“A gross examination of this spot clearly reveals teeth marks,” said the M.E. “This body has been partially eaten.”

“Dogs?” Hazen could barely get the question out.

“I don’t believe so, no. The dentition pattern, although showing remarkably advanced dental caries, is definitely human.”

Hazen looked away again. No further questions came to mind.

“We’ve taken measurements and photographs and some tissue samples. The body was eaten post-cooking.”

“Most likely, directly after cooking,” Pendergast murmured. “Note that the first bites are small, exploratory, perhaps taken while waiting for the corpse to cool sufficiently.”

“Er, yes. Well. Hopefully we snagged some DNA from the saliva of the, ah, person who did the eating. Despite the very poor condition of the teeth there is nonetheless evidence of exceptionally vigorous masticatory action.”

The sheriff found himself studying the very interesting tile pattern of the floor, allowing Hank Williams’s “Jambalaya” to drown out the M.E.’s drone.Eaten.

The tune played in his head for quite some time. When it was finished and he finally raised his eyes, he found that Pendergast himself was now bending over the corpse, his face not three inches from the bloated, mottled skin. Hazen heard several loud sniffs.

“May I palpate?” Pendergast asked, holding out a finger.

The M.E. nodded.

Pendergast began prodding,prodding, the corpse with his finger, then rubbing his fingertip across the corpse’s arm, his face. He then looked at his finger, rubbed it against his thumb, smelled it.

This was too much. Hazen looked back down at the tile and mentally cued up “Lovesick Blues.” But just as the guitar intro began, he heard Pendergast’s voice. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Of course,” said the M.E.

“The skin of the body seems to have been coated in some oleaginous substance different from the liquefaction of human fat caused by the boiling. It almost seems as if the body has been coated deliberately. I’d recommend a series of chemical assays to determine the exact type of fats or fatty acids present.”

“We will take all that into consideration, Agent Pendergast.”

But Pendergast didn’t seem to hear. He was staring intently at the body. The room fell into silence. Hazen was aware that everybody, including himself, seemed to be waiting to hear what Pendergast would say next.

Pendergast looked up from the table. “In addition, I note a second substance on the skin,” he said, stepping back with an air of finality. “I would suggest testing for the presence of C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁.”

“You can’t possibly mean—?” The M.E. stopped abruptly.

Hazen glanced up. The M.E. looked astonished. But what in hell’s name could be more outrageous than what they’d already discovered?

“I’m afraid so,” said Pendergast. “The body, it appears, has been buttered and sugared.”

Twenty-Four

The Gro-Bain turkey plant squatted low and long in the great sea of corn that lapped right up to its corrugated metal walls. It was the same color as the corn, too: a dirty tan that rendered it almost invisible from a distance. Corrie Swanson pulled her Gremlin into the big parking lot. It was crowded with hot glittering cars and she had to park some distance from the entrance. Pendergast opened the passenger door, unfolded his black-clad legs, and emerged in a single, lithe movement. He looked around.

“Have you ever been inside, Miss Swanson?”

“Never. I’ve heard enough stories.”

“I confess I am curious to see how they do it.”

“How they do what?”

“How they turn a hundred thousand pounds of live turkey into frozen Butterballs each day.”

Corrie gave a snort. “I’m not.”

A large semi-trailer approached the plant’s loading dock, its air brakes squealing and squeaking as it backed up a huge load of stacked turkey cages. Beside the loading dock was an enormous bay, large black strips of rubber hanging over its mouth, like the ones Corrie had seen at the Deeper Car Wash. As she watched, the semi-trailer backed its load into the bay, the turkey cages disappearing five at a time between the rubber strips until only the cab of the semi remained in view. There was another chuff of brakes and the vehicle lurched to a halt.

“Agent Pendergast, can I ask what we’re doing here?”

“You certainly may. We are here to find out more about William LaRue Stott.”

“What’s the connection?”

Pendergast turned to her. “Miss Swanson, in my line of work I have discovered thateverything is connected. I must come to know this town, and everything and everyone in it. Medicine Creek isn’t just a character in the drama, it is theprotagonist. And here in front of us we have a business—a slaughterhouse, to be precise—on which the economic lifeline of the town depends. The place of employment of our second victim. This plant is the beating heart of Medicine Creek, if you will pardon the metaphor.”

“Maybe I should wait in the car. Dead turkeys are not my gig.”

“I should have thought this fit in well with yourweltanschauung. ” Pendergast gestured at the Gothic appurtenances that littered the car. “And they are not dead when they arrive. In any case, you are free to do as you wish.” And he set off cheerfully across the parking lot.

Corrie watched him for a moment. Then she yanked open the door of the Gremlin and hurried to catch up.

Pendergast was approaching a windowless steel door bearing a sign that readEMPLOYEE ENTRANCE—PLEASE USE KEY . He tried the handle but it was locked. Corrie watched as he began to reach into an inside pocket of his jacket. Then he withdrew his hand again, as if reconsidering.

“Follow me,” he said.

They walked along the concrete apron to a set of cement stairs. The stairs led directly onto the loading dock where the semi-trailer stood, its load of turkeys now hidden within the plant itself. Pendergast ducked between the wide rubber strips at the edge of the bay and disappeared. Corrie swallowed, drew in her breath, and followed.

Beyond, the loading dock opened into a large receiving room. A man wearing thick rubber gloves was yanking the turkey cages off the bed of the semi and popping them open. A conveyor belt ran overhead, steel hooks dangling from its underside. Three other men were grabbing turkeys out of the open cages and hanging them, feet first, from the steel hooks. Already so filthy from their ride as to be barely recognizable as birds, the turkeys squawked and struggled feebly as they hung head downward, pecking at empty air, shitting themselves in terror. The belt went clanking off, very slowly, disappearing through a narrow opening in the far wall of the loading dock. The place was air-conditioned down to polar levels and it stank. God, it stank.

“Sir?” A teenage security guard came hustling over. “Sir?”

Pendergast turned toward him. “FBI,” he said over the noise, flapping his identification wallet in the youth’s face.

“Right, sir. But no one is allowed in the plant without authorization. At least, that’s what they told me. It’s the rules—” He broke off fearfully.

Of course,” said Pendergast, slipping the wallet back into his suit. “I’m here to interview Mr. James Breen.”

“Jimmy? He used to take the graveyard shift but after the, the killing, he asked for a transfer to days.”

“So I’ve been told. Where does he work?”

“On the line. Look, you have to put on a hardhat and coat, and I have to tell the boss—”

“The line?”

“The line.” The youth looked confused. “You know, the belt.” He pointed upward at the row of dangling, writhing turkeys.

“In that case, we’ll simply follow the line until we reach him.”

“But, sir, it isn’t allowed—” He glanced at Corrie as if beseeching her for help. Corrie knew him: Bart Bledsoe. Dingleberry Bart. Graduated high school last year, D average, and here he was. A real Medicine Creek success story.

Pendergast set off across the slick cement floor, his suit coat flapping behind him. Bledsoe followed, still protesting, and together they disappeared through a small doorway in the far wall. Corrie ducked quickly in behind them, holding her nose, careful to avoid the turkey shit that was dropping like rain from the conveyor belt overhead.

The room beyond was small, and housed only a long, shallow trough of water. Several yellow signs were placed above it, warning of electrical hazard. The turkeys moved slowly through a fine spray until they reached the trough. Corrie watched from a safe distance as their heads slid helplessly below the level of the water. There was a buzz, then a brief crackling sound. The turkeys stopped struggling, and emerged limp from the water.

“Stunned, I see,” Pendergast said. “Humane. Very humane.”

Corrie swallowed again. She could guess what came next.

The line now proceeded through a narrow port in the far wall, flanked by two thick windows. Pendergast approached one of these windows and peered in. Corrie walked up to the other and gazed through it with trepidation.

The chamber beyond was large and circular. As the now-motionless turkeys moved slowly across it, a machine came forward and precisely nicked their necks with a small blade. Immediately, jets of blood shot out in pulsing streams, spraying the walls, which angled down toward what looked to Corrie like a lake of blood. A man with a machete-like weapon sat to one side, ready to administer the coup de grâce to any turkey the machine missed. She looked away.

“What is the name of this chamber?” Pendergast asked.

“The Blood Room,” Bledsoe replied. He had stopped protesting, and his shoulders hung with a defeated air.

“Appropriate. What happens to the blood?”

“Gets siphoned off into tanks. Trucks take it away, I don’t know where.”

“To be converted into blood meal, no doubt. That blood on the floor looks rather deep.”

“Two feet deep, maybe, this time of day. It gets backed up some as the shift goes on.”

Corrie winced. This was almost as bad as Stott in the cornfield.

And where do the turkeys go next?”

“To the Scalder.”

“Ah. And what’s your name?”

“Bart Bledsoe, sir.”

Pendergast patted the bewildered youth on the back. “Very well, Mr. Bledsoe. Lead on, if you please.”

They took a catwalk around the Blood Room—the smell of fresh blood was sickening—and went through a partition. All of a sudden, the building opened up around them and Corrie found herself in a cavernous space, a single enormous room with the conveyor belt and its hanging turkeys going this way and that, up and down, disappearing in and out of oversized steel boxes. It resembled some infernal Rube Goldberg contraption. The noise was unbearable, and the humidity was beyond saturation: Corrie felt droplets condensing on her arms, her nose, her chin. The place smelled of wet turkey feathers, shit, and something even less pleasant she couldn’t identify. She began to wish she had waited in the car.

The dead, drained birds emerged from the far end of the Blood Room, disappearing again into a huge stainless steel box from which issued a tremendous hissing noise.

“What happens there?” Pendergast asked above the roar, pointing at the steel box.

“That’s the Scalder. The birds get blasted with steam.”

At the far end of the Scalder the endless conveyor belt reemerged, now hung with steaming, dripping birds that were clean and white and partly defeathered.

“And from there?” Pendergast asked.

“They go to the Plucker.”

“Naturally. The Plucker.”

Bledsoe hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. “Wait here, sir, please.” And he was gone.

But Pendergast did not wait. He hurried on, Corrie following, and they passed through a partition that surrounded the Plucker, which was actually four machines in series, each sporting dozens of bizarrely shaped rubber fingers that whirred maniacally, plucking feathers off their appointed portions of the birds. Naked, pink-yellow corpses emerged dangling at the far end. From there, the conveyor belt rose up and turned a corner, disappearing out of sight. So far, everything had been automated; except for the man in the Blood Room, the only workers appeared to be people monitoring the machines.

Pendergast walked over to a woman who was watching some dials on the plucking console. “May I interrupt you?” he asked.

As she glanced at him, Corrie recognized Doris Wilson, a no-bullshit bleach-blonde in her fifties, heavy, red-scrubbed face, smoker’s hack, who lived alone in the same trailer park she did, Wyndham Parke Estates.

“You’re the FBI man?”

“And you are?”

“Doris Wilson.”

“May I ask you a few questions, Ms. Wilson?”

“Shoot.”

“Did you know Willie Stott?”

“He was the night cleaning foreman.”

“Did he get along well here?”

“He was a good enough worker.”

“I understood he drank.”

“He was a nipper. Never interfered with his job.”

“He was from away?”

“Alaska.”

“What did he do up there?”

Doris paused to adjust some levers. “Fish cannery.”

“Any idea why he left?”

“Woman trouble, I heard.”

“And why did he stay in Medicine Creek?”

Doris suddenly grinned, exposing a rack of brown, crooked teeth. “The very question we all ask ourselves. In Willie’s case, he found a friend.”

“Who?”

“Swede Cahill. Swede is best friends with everyone who drinks in his bar.”

“Thank you. And now, can you tell me where I can find James Breen?”

Her lips pointed down the conveyor line of turkeys. “Evisceration Area. It’s up there, just before the Deboning Station. Fat guy, black hair, glasses. Loudmouth.”

“Thanks again.”

“No problem.” Doris nodded to Corrie.

Pendergast moved up a metal staircase. Corrie followed. Ascending beside them, the conveyor line of dangling carcasses rumbled toward a high platform that was, finally, manned by people and not machines. Dressed in white, with white caps, they were expertly slicing open the turkeys and sucking out organs with oversized vacuum nozzles. The turkeys then jerked along toward another station, where they were blasted clean with high-pressure hoses. Farther down the line, Corrie could see two men lopping off the heads of the birds and dropping them into a big chute.

Thanksgiving will never be the same,she thought.

There was one black-haired fat man on the line, and he was talking loudly, relating a story at high volume. Corrie caught the word “Stott,” then “last to see him alive.” She glanced at Pendergast.

He smiled briefly in return. “I believe that is our man.”

As they walked down the platform toward Breen, Corrie saw Bart returning, his hair mussed, practically running. And ahead of him was Art Ridder, the plant manager. He was charging across the concrete floor on stumpy legs.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me the FBI was here!” he was shouting to no one in particular. His face was even redder than usual, and Corrie could see a wet turkey feather stuck to the crown of his blow-dried helmet of hair. “This is an off-limits area!”

“Sorry, sir.” Bart was all in a panic. “He just walked in. He’s investigating—”

“I know very well what he’s investigating.” Ridder climbed the ladder and turned to Pendergast, breathing hard, working to bring his trademark smile back onto his face. “How are you, Agent Pendergast?” He held out his hand. “Art Ridder. I remember seeing you at the Sociable.”

“Delighted to make your acquaintance,” Pendergast replied, taking the proffered hand.

Ridder turned back to Bart, his face losing its smile. “You go back to the dock. I’ll deal with you later.” Then he turned to Corrie. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m—” She glanced at Pendergast, waiting for him to say something, but he remained silent.

“I’m with him,” she said.

Ridder cast a querying glance at Pendergast, but the agent was now absorbed in examining a variety of strange equipment that hung from the ceiling.

“I’m his assistant,” said Corrie finally.

Ridder exhaled loudly. Pendergast turned and strolled over to where Jimmy Breen was working—he had shut up when the boss arrived—and began to watch him work.

Ridder spoke, his voice calmer. “Mr. Pendergast, may I invite you to my office, where you’ll find it much more comfortable?”

“I have a few questions for Mr. Breen here.”

“I’ll send Jimmy right over. Bart will show you the way.”

“There is no need to interrupt his work.”

“It’ll be much quieter in the office—”

But Pendergast was already talking to Jimmy. The man continued to work, sticking a nozzle into a turkey and sucking out the guts with a greatschloock! while he talked. He glanced at Ridder and then at Pendergast.

“Mr. Breen, I understand you were the last one to see Willie Stott alive.”

“I was, I was,” Jimmy began. “The poor guy. It was that car of his. I hate to say this, but the money he should’ve spent getting that crap-mobile fixed up he spent down at Swede’s instead. That hunk of junk was always breaking down—”

Corrie glanced at Art Ridder, who was standing behind Jimmy now, the ghastly smile once again fixed on his face.

“Jimmy,” Ridder interrupted, “the nozzle goesall the way up, not like that. Excuse me, Mr. Pendergast, but it’s his first day on this job.”

“Yes, Mr. Ridder,” said Jimmy.

“Up,like that. Up and in, as deep as it’ll go.” He shoved the hose in and out of the carcass a few times to demonstrate, then handed it back to Jimmy. “You following me?” Then he turned to Pendergast with a smile. “I started right here, Mr. Pendergast, in the Evisceration Area. Worked my way to the top. I like to see things done right.” There was a note of pride in his voice that Corrie found creepy.

“Sure thing, Mr. Ridder,” Jimmy said.

“As you were saying?” Pendergast kept his eyes on Breen.

“Right. Only last month Willie’s car broke down and I had to drive him to and from work. I’ll bet it broke down again and he tried to hoof it to Swede’s. And got nailed. Jesus. I requested a transfer the very morning he was found, didn’t I, Mr. Ridder?”

“You did.”

“I’d rather be sucking gibs out of a turkey than ending up gibs in a field myself.” Jimmy’s lips spread in a wet grin.

“No doubt,” said Pendergast. “Tell me about your previous job.”

“I was the night watchman. I was in the plant from midnight to sevenA .M., when the pre-shift arrives.”

“What does the pre-shift do?”

“Makes sure all the equipment is working so’s when the first truck arrives the birds can be processed right away. Can’t leave birds in a hot truck that ain’t moving while you fix something, otherwise you got a fine old truckload of dead turkeys.”

“Does that happen very often?”

Corrie noticed Jimmy Breen shoot a nervous glance at Ridder.

“Almost never,” said Ridder quickly.

“When you were driving to the plant that night,” Pendergast asked, “did you see anything or anyone on the road?”

“Why d’you think I asked for the day shift? At the time, I thought it was a cow loose in the corn. Something big and bent over—”

“Where exactly was this?”

“Midway. About two miles from the plant, two miles from town. On the left-hand side of the road. Waiting, like. It seemed to dart into the corn as my headlights came around the bend. Almost scuttling, like on all fours. I wasn’t sure, really. It might’ve been a shadow. But if so, it was abig shadow.”

Pendergast nodded. He turned to Corrie. “Do you have any questions?”

Corrie was seized with panic. Questions? She found Ridder looking at her, his eyes red and narrow.

“Sure. Yeah. I do.”

There was a pause.

“If that was the killer, what was he doing, waiting there? I mean, he couldn’t haveexpected Stott’s car to break down, could he? Might he have been interested in the plant, perhaps?”

There was a silence and she realized Pendergast was smiling, ever so faintly.

“Well, hell, I don’t know,” said Jimmy, pausing. “That’s a good one.”

“Jimmy, damn it,” Ridder suddenly broke in. “You’ve let that turkey get past you.” He shoved forward and grabbed a turkey as it was trundling away. With one great sweep, he reached inside and ripped out the guts by hand, flinging them into the vacuum container, where they were immediately swallowed with a horrible gurgling. Ridder turned back, shaking gore from his fingers with a savage snap of his wrist. He smiled broadly.

“In my day they didn’t have vacuum hoses,” he said. “You can’t be afraid to get your hands a little dirty on this job, Jimmy.”

“Yes, Mr. Ridder.”

He clapped Jimmy on the back, leaving a heavy brown handprint. “Carry on.”

“We’ve concluded here, I believe,” said Pendergast.

Ridder seemed relieved. He stuck out his hand. “Glad to be of assistance.”

Pendergast gave a formal bow, then turned to leave.

Twenty-Five

Corrie Swanson stood by the side of the road and watched, hands on her hips, as Pendergast pulled pieces of an odd-looking machine out of the trunk of her car and began screwing them together. When she’d picked him up at the old Kraus place, he’d been standing there by the road, waiting, the box of metal parts lying at his feet. He hadn’t explained what his plan was then, and he seemed disinclined to do so now.

“You really like to keep people in the dark, don’t you?” she said.

Pendergast screwed the last piece into place, examined the machine, and turned it on. There was a faint, rising hum. “I beg your pardon?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You never tell anybody anything. Like what you’re going to do with that thing.”

Pendergast switched the machine off again. “I find nothing more tiresome in life than explanations.”

Corrie had to laugh at this. How true it was; from her mother to the school principal to that dickwad of a sheriff,You’ve got some explaining to do, that’s what they all said.

The sun was rising over the corn, already burning the parched ground. Pendergast looked at her. “Does this curiosity mean you’re warming to the role of my assistant?”

“It means I’m warming to all the money you’re paying me. And when somebody makes me get up at the crack of dawn, I want to know why.”

“Very well. Today we’re going to investigate the so-called Ghost Warrior Massacre up at the Mounds.”

“That looks more like a metal detector than some kind of ghost-busting machine to me.”

Pendergast shouldered the machine and began to walk up the dirt track that led through the low scrub toward the creek. He spoke over his shoulder. “Speaking of ghosts, do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Believe in them.”

She snorted. “You don’t really think there’s some scalped, mutilated corpse wandering around up there, looking for his boots or whatever?”

She waited for an answer, but none came.

Within minutes, they entered the shade of the trees. Here, a faint, cool breath of night still lingered, mingling with the scent of the cottonwoods. Another few minutes brought them to the Mounds themselves, swelling gently out of the surrounding earth, rocky at the base, sparsely covered with grass and brush along the top. Pendergast paused to turn on the machine once again. The whine went up, then down as he fiddled with the dials. At last, it fell silent. Corrie watched as he slipped a wire out of his pocket, a little orange flag attached to one end, and stuck it in the ground at his feet. From another pocket, he took a thing that looked like a cell phone and started fiddling with it.

“What’s that?”

“A GPS unit.”

Pendergast jotted something down in his ever-present leather notebook and then, with the circular magnetic coil of the metal detector inches from the ground, began to slowly walk north, sweeping the coil back and forth. Corrie followed him, feeling a rising sense of curiosity.

The metal detector squawked sharply. Pendergast quickly dropped to his knees. He began scraping the soil with a palette knife, and within moments he had uncovered a copper arrow point.

“Wow,” said Corrie. Without even thinking, she knelt by his side. “Is that Indian?”

“Yes.”

“I thought they made their arrowheads out of flint.”

“By 1865, the Cheyennes were just beginning to switch to metal. By 1870, they would have guns. This one metal point dates the site quite accurately.”

She reached down to pull it up but Pendergast stayed her hand. “It stays in the ground,” he said. Then he added, voice low, “Note the direction it is pointing in.”

The notebook and GPS reappeared; Pendergast jotted some more notes; they disappeared once again into the jacket of his suit. He placed another little flag at the spot and then continued on.

They walked for perhaps two hundred yards, Pendergast sweeping as they went, marking every point and every bullet they found. It amazed Corrie how much junk there was under the ground. Then they returned to their point of origin and headed in another cardinal direction. Pendergast swept on. There was yet another squawk. He knelt, scraped, this time uncovering a 1970s-era pop-top.

“Aren’t you going to flag that historic artifact?” Corrie asked.

“We shall leave it for a future archeologist.”

More squawks; more pop-tops, arrow points, a few lead bullets, a rusted knife. Corrie noticed that Pendergast was frowning, as if disturbed by what he was finding. She almost asked the question, and then stopped. Why was she feeling so curious, anyway? This was just as weird as everything else Pendergast had done to date.

“Okay,” said Corrie, “I’m stumped. What does all this have to do with the killings? Unless, of course, you think the killer is the ghost of the Forty-Fiver who cursed the ground for eternity, or whatever.”

“An excellent question,” Pendergast replied. “I can’t say at this point if the killings and the massacre are connected. But Sheila Swegg was killed digging in these mounds, and Gasparilla spent a lot of time hunting up at these mounds. And then there’s all the gossip in town, to which you allude, that the killer is the ghost of Harry Beaumont come back for revenge. You may recall that they cut off his boots and scalped his feet.”

“Youdon’t believe that, do you?”

“That the killer is the ghost of Beaumont?” Pendergast smiled. “No. But I must admit, the presence of antique arrows and other Indian artifacts does suggest a connection, if only in the mind of the killer.”

“So what’s your theory?”

“It is a capital mistake to develop a premature hypothesis in the absence of hard data. I am trying my bestnot to develop a theory. All I wish to do now is collect data.” He continued sweeping and marking. They were now on their third leg, which took them directly over one of the mounds. There was a cluster of points at its rocky base. At several scattered places Pendergast nodded to some fresh holes in the dirt, which someone had made a feeble attempt to hide with brush. “Sheila Swegg’s recent diggings.”

They continued on.

“So you don’t haveany ideas about who the killer might be?” Corrie pressed.

Pendergast did not answer for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was very low. “It is what the killer isnot that I find most intriguing.”

“I don’t get it.”

“We’re dealing with a serial killer, that much is clear. It is also clear he will keep killing until he is stopped. What I find intriguing is that he breaks the pattern. He is unlike any known serial killer.”

“How do you know?” Corrie asked.

“At the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, there’s a group known as the Behavioral Science Unit, which has made a specialty of profiling the criminal mind. For the past twenty years, they’ve been compiling cases of serial killers from all over the world and quantifying them in a large computer database.”

Pendergast moved ahead as he spoke, sweeping back and forth as they advanced down the far side of the mound and into the trees beyond. He glanced over at her. “Are you sure you want a lecture in forensic behavioral science?”

“It’s a lot more interesting than trigonometry.”

“Serial killing, like other types of human behavior, falls into definite patterns. The FBI has classified serial killers into two types: ‘organized’ and ‘disorganized.’ Organized offenders are intelligent, socially and sexually competent. They carefully plan their killings; the victim is a stranger, selected with care; mood is controlled before, during, and after the crime. The crime scene, too, is neatly controlled. The corpse of the victim is usually taken away and hidden. This type is often difficult to catch.

“The disorganized killer, on the other hand, kills spontaneously. He is often inadequate socially and sexually, does menial labor, and has a low IQ. The crime scene is sloppy, even random. The body is left at the crime scene; no attempt is made to conceal it. Frequently, the killer lives nearby and knows the victim. The attack is frequently what is known as a ‘blitz’ attack, violent and sudden, with little advance planning.”

They continued moving on.

“It sounds like our killer is the ‘organized’ type,” said Corrie.

“In fact, he is not.” Pendergast paused and looked at her. “This is strong stuff, Miss Swanson.”

“I can take it.”

He gazed at her a moment, and then said, almost as if to himself, “I believe you can.”

There was a whine from the machine, and Pendergast knelt and scraped, uncovering a small, rusted toy car. She saw him smile fleetingly.

“Ah, a Morris Minor. I had a Corgi collection when I was a child.”

“Where is it now?”

A shadow passed across Pendergast’s face and Corrie did not pursue the question.

“Superficially, our killer does seem to fit the organized type. But there are some major deviations. First, there is a sexual component to virtuallyall organized serial killings. Even if it is not overt, it is there. Some killers prey on prostitutes, some on homosexuals, some on couples in parked cars. Some killers perform sexual mutilations. Some killers rape first and then kill. Some killers just kiss the corpse and leave flowers, as if they had finished a date.”

Corrie shuddered.

“These killings, on the other hand, have no sexual component whatsoever.”

“Go on.”

“The organized killer also follows a modus operandi, which forensic behavioral scientists call ‘ritual.’ The killings are done ritualistically. The killer will often wear the same clothes for each killing, use the same gun or knife, and perform the killing in exactly the same way. Afterwards, the killer will often arrange the body in a ritualistic fashion. The ritual may not be obvious, but it is always there. It is part of the killing.”

“That seems to fit our serial killer.”

“On the contrary, it does not. Yes, our killer performs a ritual. But here’s the catch:it’s a totally different ritual each time. And this killer doesn’t just kill people: he kills animals. The killing of the dog is completely mystifying. There was no ritual at all involved there. It has all the earmarks of the ‘disorganized’ type. He simply killed the dog and ripped off its tail. Why? And the opportunistic attack on John Gasparilla was similar—no ritual, not even an effort to kill. He just, ah, seems to have taken what he needed—the man’s hair and his thumb—and gone away. In other words, these killings share elements of both organizedand disorganized serial killers. This has never been seen before.”

He was interrupted by an explosive squawk from the metal detector. They had almost reached the end of the test line; ahead of them, the grassy slope descended through a fold of land to the great sea of corn below. Pendergast knelt and began to scrape away the dirt. This time he did not uncover anything. He placed the metal detector directly on the spot and adjusted some dials while the machine continued shrieking in protest.

“It’s at least two feet down,” he said. A trowel appeared in his hand and he began to dig.

In a few minutes, a sizable hole had been excavated. More carefully now, Pendergast trimmed the edges of the hole, going down scant millimeters at a time, until his trowel touched something solid.

A very small brush appeared in his hand and he began to sweep dirt from the object. Corrie watched over his shoulder. Something began emerging into view: old, twisted, curled up. A few more sweeps revealed it: a single cowboy boot with a hobnail sole. Pendergast lifted it out of the hole and turned it around in his hand. It had been neatly sliced down the back as if with a knife. He looked at Corrie and said:

“It appears Harry Beaumont wore a size eleven, does it not?”

There was a shout from behind. A figure was huffing his way out of the Mounds toward them, waving his hands. It was Tad, the deputy sheriff.

“Mr. Pendergast!” he was calling. “Mr. Pendergast!”

Pendergast rose as the red-faced, lanky figure came up to them, sweating and blowing.

“Gasparilla . . . in the hospital. He’s regained consciousness, and—” Tad paused, heaving. “And he’s asking for you.”

Twenty-Six

Hazen sat in one of two plastic portable chairs set up outside Gasparilla’s intensive-care room. He was thinking hard: about the first cool nights of fall; buttered corn on the cob; reruns ofThe Honeymooners; Pamela Anderson naked. What he tried very hard not to think about was the incessant moaning and the terrible smell that came from the room beyond, penetrating even the closed door. He wished he could go. He wished to hell he could at least head off to the waiting room. But no: he had to wait here, for Pendergast.

Jesus Christ.

And there was the man himself, in full undertaker’s getup as usual, striding down the hall on those long black-clad legs. Hazen rose and reluctantly took the proffered hand. It seemed as if where Pendergast came from they shook hands five times a day. Great way to spread the plague.

“Thank you, Sheriff, for waiting,” said Pendergast.

Hazen grunted.

Another long gibbering moan, almost like the cry of a loon, came from behind the door.

Pendergast knocked, and the door opened to reveal the attending physician and two nurses. Gasparilla lay in the bed, swathed like a mummy, only his black eyes and a slit for a mouth relieving the massive white swaddle of bandages. He had wires and tubes out the wazoo. All around, banks of machines ticked and blinked and chirped and buzzed like a high-tech orchestra. The smell was much stronger here; it hung in the air like a tangible presence. Hazen stayed near the door, wishing he could light up a Camel, watching as Pendergast strode across the room and bent over the prostrate form.

“He’s very agitated, Mr. Pendergast,” the doctor said. “Asking for you continuously. We hoped your visit might calm him.”

For several moments, Gasparilla went on moaning. Then, suddenly, he seemed to spy Pendergast. “You!” he cried, his body suddenly struggling under the bandages.

The doctor laid a hand on Pendergast’s arm. “I just want to caution you that if this is going to overly excite him, you’ll have to leave—”

“No!” cried Gasparilla, his voice full of panic. “Let me speak!” A bony hand, swathed in gauze, shot out from underneath the covers and clutched at Pendergast’s jacket, clawing and grabbing so frantically that a button popped off and rattled to the floor.

“I’m having second thoughts about this—” the doctor began again.

“No! No! Imust speak! ” The voice rose like the shriek of a banshee. One of the nurses quickly shut the door behind Hazen. Even the machines responded, with eager low beepings and a blinking red light.

“That’s it,” said the doctor firmly. “I’m sorry. This was a mistake; he’s in no condition to speak. I must ask you to leave—”

“Noooo!”A second hand grasped Pendergast’s arm, pulling him down.

Now the machines were really going apeshit. The doctor said something and a nurse approached with a needle, stabbed it into the drug-delivery seal on the IV, emptied it.

“Let me talk!”

Pendergast, unable to escape, knelt closer. “What is it? What did you see?”

“Oh, God!” Gasparilla’s anguished voice strangled and choked, fighting the sedative.

“What?” Pendergast’s voice was low, urgent. Gasparilla’s hand had Pendergast by the suit, screwing it up, dragging the FBI agent still closer. The awful stench seemed to roll in waves from the bed.

“That face,that face! ”

“What face?”

It looked to Hazen as if, lying on the bed, Gasparilla suddenly came to attention. His body stiffened, seemed to elongate. “Remember what I said? About the devil?”

“Yes.”

Gasparilla began thrashing, his voice gargling. “I was wrong!”

“Nurse!” The doctor was now shouting at a burly male nurse. “Administer another two milligrams of Ativan, and get this man outnow! ”

“Noooo!”The clawlike hands grappled with Pendergast.

“I saidout! ” the doctor yelled as he tried to pull the man’s arms away from Pendergast. “Sheriff! This man of yours is going to kill my patient! Get him out!”

Hazen scowled.Man of yours? But he strode over and joined the doctor in trying to pry off one of Gasparilla’s skeletal hands. It was like trying to pry steel. And Pendergast was making no attempt to break his grip.

“I was wrong!” Gasparilla shrieked. “I was wrong,I was wrong! ”

The nurse stabbed a second syringe into the IV, pumped in another dose of sedative.

“None of you are safe,none of you, now thathe is here!”

The doctor turned toward the nurse. “Get security in here,” he barked.

An alarm went off somewhere at the head of the bed.

“What did you see?” Pendergast was asking in a low, compelling voice.

All of a sudden, Gasparilla sat up in bed. The nasogastric tubing, ripped out of position with a small spray of blood, jittered against the bedguard. The clawed hand went around Pendergast’s neck.

Hazen grappled with the man. Christ, Gasparilla was going to choke Pendergast to death.

“The devil! He’s come! He’s here!”

Gasparilla’s eyes rolled upward as the second injection hit home. And yet he seemed to cling even more fiercely. “Hedoes exist! I saw him that night!”

“Yes?” Pendergast asked.

“And he’s a child . . .a child . . .”

Suddenly Hazen felt Gasparilla’s arms go slack. Another alarm went off on the rack of machinery, this one a steady loud tone.

“Code!” cried the doctor. “We’ve got a code here! Bring the cart!”

Several people burst into the room all at once: security, more nurses and doctors. Pendergast stood up, disentangling himself from the now limp arms, brushing his shoulder. His normally pallid face was flushed but otherwise he seemed unperturbed. In a moment he and Hazen had been sent outside by the nurses.

They waited in the hall while—for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes—there was the sound of furious activity within Gasparilla’s room. And then, as if a switch had been turned off, there came a sudden calm. Hazen heard the machines being shut down, the alarms stopping one by one, and then blessed silence.

The first to emerge was the attending physician. He came out slowly, almost aimlessly, head bent. As he passed them he looked up. His eyes were bloodshot. He glanced at Hazen, then at Pendergast.

“You killed him,” he said wearily, almost as if he had passed the point of caring.

Pendergast laid his hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “We were both only doing our jobs. There could have been no other outcome. Once he had me in that grip, Doctor, I assure you there would be no escape until he had his say. He had to talk.”

The doctor shook his head. “You’re probably right.”

Nurses and medical technicians were now wandering out of the room, going their separate ways.

“I have to ask,” Pendergast went on. “How exactly did he die?”

“A massive cardiac infarction, after a long period of fibrillation. We just couldn’t stabilize the heart. I’ve never seen anyone fight sedation like that. Cardiac explosion. The heart just blew up.”

“Any idea what caused the fibrillations to begin with?”

The doctor shook his head wearily. “It was the initial shock of whatever happened to him. Not the wounds themselves, which were not life-threatening, but the profound psychological shock that came with the injury, which he was unable to shake off.”

“In other words, he died of fright.”

The doctor glanced over at a male nurse who was emerging from the room, wheeling a stretcher. Gasparilla’s body was now wrapped head to toe in white and bound tightly with canvas straps. The doctor blinked, passed the back of a sleeve across his forehead. He watched the body disappear through a set of double doors.

“That’s a rather melodramatic way of putting it, but yes, that’s about it,” he said.

Twenty-Seven

Several hours later, and two thousand miles to the east, the setting sun burnished the Hudson River to a rich bronze. Beneath the great shadow of the George Washington Bridge, a barge moved ponderously upriver. A little farther south, two sailboats, small as toys, barely broke the placid surface as they sailed on a reach toward Upper New York Bay.

Above the steep escarpment of Manhattan bedrock that formed Riverside Park, the boulevard named Riverside Drive commanded an excellent view of the river. But the four-story Beaux Arts mansion that stretched along the drive’s east side between 137th and 138th Streets had been sightless for many years. The slates of its mansard roof were cracked and loose. No lights showed from its leaded windows; no vehicles stood beneath its once-elegant porte cochère. The house sat, brooding and still, beneath untended sumacs and oaks.

And yet—in the vast honeycomb of chambers that stretched out like hollow roots beneath the house—something was stirring.

In the vaults of endless stone, perfumed with dust and other subtler, more exotic smells, a strange-looking figure moved. He was thin, almost cadaverously so, with leonine white shoulder-length hair and matching white eyebrows. He wore a white lab coat, from whose pocket protruded a black felt marker, a pair of library scissors, and a glue pencil. A clipboard was snugged beneath one narrow elbow. Atop his head, a miner’s helmet threw a beam of yellow light onto the humid stonework and rows of rich wooden cabinetry.

Now the figure stopped before a row of tall oaken cabinets, each containing dozens of thin, deep drawers. The man ran a finger down the rows of labels, the elegant copperplate script now faded and barely legible. The finger stopped on one label, tapped thoughtfully at its brass enclosure. Then the man gingerly pulled the drawer open. Rank upon rank of luna moths, pale green in the glow of the torch, greeted his gaze: the rare jade-colored mutation found only in Kashmir. Stepping back, he jotted some notes onto the clipboard. Then he closed the drawer and opened the one beneath it. Inside, pinned with achingly regular precision to the tack boards beneath, were a dozen rows of large indigo moths. Upon their backs, the strange silvery imprint of a lidless eye stared up from the display case.Lachrymosa codriceptes, wingèd death, the intensely beautiful, intensely poisonous butterfly of the Yucatan.

The man made another notation on his clipboard. Then he closed the second drawer and made his way back through several chambers, separated from each other by heavy cloth tapestries, to a vault full of glass cabinets. In the center, upon a stone table, a laptop computer glowed. The man approached it, set down the clipboard, and began to type.

For several minutes, the only sound was the tapping of the keys, the occasional distant drip of water. And then a strident buzzing suddenly erupted from the breast of his lab coat.

The man stopped typing, reached into his pocket, and removed the ringing cell phone.

Only two people in the world knew he had a cell phone, and only one person had the number. The man lifted the phone, spoke into it: “Special Agent Pendergast, I believe.”

“Precisely,” came the voice on the other end of the line. “And how are you, Wren?”

“Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”

“That I sincerely doubt. Have you completed yourcatalogue raisonné of the first-floor library?”

“No. I’m savingthat for last.” There was an undisguised shudder of relish in the voice. “I’m still assembling a list of the basement artifacts.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, indeed,hypocrite lecteur. And I expect to be at it several more days, at least. The collections of your great-grand-uncle were, shall we say, extensive? Besides, I can only be here during the days. My nights are reserved for the library. Nothing interferes with my work there.”

“Naturally. And you’ve heeded my warningnot to proceed into the final chambers beyond the abandoned laboratory?”

“I have.”

“Good. Any surprises of particular interest?”

“Oh, many, many. But those can wait. I think.”

“You think? Please explain.”

Wren hesitated briefly in a way that his friends—had he any—would have called uncharacteristic. “I’m not sure, exactly.” He paused again, looked briefly over his shoulder. “You know that I’m no stranger to darkness and decay. But on several occasions, during my work down here, I’ve had an unusual feeling. A most disagreeable feeling. A feeling as if”—he lowered his voice—“as if I’m beingwatched. ”

“I’m not particularly surprised to hear it,” Pendergast said after a moment. “I fear even the least imaginative person on earth would find that particular cabinet of curiosities an unsettling place. Perhaps I was wrong to ask you to take on this assignment.”

“Oh,no! ” Wren said excitedly. “No, no, no! I would never forgo such a chance. I shouldn’t even have mentioned it. Imagination, imagination, as you say. ‘One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; such tricks hath strong imagination.’ No doubt it’s simply my knowledge of the, ahem,things these walls have borne witness to.”

“No doubt. The events of last fall have yet to release their hold on my own thoughts. I’d hoped that this trip would in some measure drive them away.”

“Without success?” Now Wren chuckled. “Not surprising, given your notion of getting away from it all: investigating serial murders. And from what I understand, such a strange set of murders, too. In fact, they’re so unusual as to seem almost familiar. Your brother isn’t vacationing in Kansas, by any chance?”

For a moment there was no answer. When Pendergast spoke again, his voice was chill, distant. “I have told you, Wren,never to speak of my family.”

“Of course, of course,” Wren replied quickly.

“I’m calling with a request.” Pendergast’s tone became brisk and businesslike. “I need you to locate an article for me, Wren.”

Wren sighed.

“It’s a handwritten journal by one Isaiah Draper, entitledAn Account of the Dodge Forty-Fives. My research indicates that this journal became part of Thomas Van Dyke Selden’s collection, acquired on his tour through Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas in 1933. I understand this collection is now held by the New York Public Library.”

Wren scowled. “The Selden Collection is the most riotous, disorganized aggregation of ephemera ever assembled. Sixty packing cases, occupying two storage rooms, and all utterly worthless.”

“Not all. I need details that only this journal can provide.”

“What for? What light could an old journal shed on these murders?”

There was no answer, and Wren sighed again.

“What does this journal look like?”

“Alas, I can’t say.”

“Any identifying marks?”

“Unknown.”

“Just how quickly do you need it?”

“The day after tomorrow, if possible. Monday.”

“Surely you jest,hypocrite lecteur. My days are taken up here, and my nights . . . well, you know my work. So many damaged books, so little time. Finding a specific item in that hurricane of—”

“There would be a special remuneration for your efforts, of course.”

Wren fell quickly silent. He licked his lips. “Pray tell.”

“An Indian ledger book in need of conservation.”

“Indeed.”

“It appears to be a particularly important one.”

Wren pressed the phone close to his ear. “Tell me.”

“At first, I thought it to be the work of the Sioux chief Buffalo Hump. But further examination convinces me it is the work of Sitting Bull himself, most likely composed in his cabin at Standing Rock, perhaps during the Moon of Falling Leaves in the final months before his death.”

“Sitting Bull.” Wren said the words carefully, lovingly, like poetry.

“It will be in your hands by Monday. For conservation only. You may enjoy it for two weeks.”

“And the journal—if indeed it exists—will be in yours.”

“It exists. But let me not disturb your work any further. Good afternoon, Wren. Be careful.”

“Fare thee well.” Replacing the phone in his pocket, Wren returned to his laptop, going over the physical layout of the Selden Collection in his mind, his veined hands almost trembling at the thought of holding, a day or two hence, Sitting Bull’s ledger book.

From the pool of darkness behind the glass-fronted cabinets, a pair of small, serious eyes watched intently as, once again, Wren began to type.

Twenty-Eight

Smit Ludwig rarely attended church anymore, but he had the gut sense, as he rose that brutally hot Sunday morning, that it might be worth going. He couldn’t say why, exactly, except that tensions had risen to a fever pitch in the town. The killings were all that people could talk about. Neighbors were glancing sidelong at each other. People were scared, uncertain. They were looking for reassurance. His reporter’s nose told him that Calvary Lutheran was where they would seek it.

As he approached the neat brick church with its white spire, he knew he’d been right. The parking lot was overflowing with cars, which also spilled out along both sides of the street. He parked at the far end and had to walk almost a quarter mile. It was hard to believe so many people still lived in Medicine Creek, Kansas.

The doors were open and the greeters pushed the usual program into his hand as he entered. He eased his way through the crowd in the back and moved off to one side, where he had a decent view. This was more than a church service; this was a story. There were people in church who had never been inside the building their entire lives. He patted his pocket and was glad to see he’d brought his notebook and pencil. He removed them and surreptitiously began jotting notes. There were the Bender Langs, Klick and Melton Rasmussen, Art Ridder and his wife, the Cahills, Maisie, and Dale Estrem with his usual buddies from the Farmer’s Co-op. Sheriff Hazen stood to one side, looking grumpy—hadn’t seenhim in church since his mother died. His son was beside him, an irritable look on his puffy face. And there, off in a shadowy corner, stood the FBI man, Pendergast, and Corrie Swanson, all spiked purple hair and black lipstick and dangly silver things. Nowthere was an odd couple.

A hush fell over the congregation as the Reverend John Wilbur made his fussy way toward the pulpit. The service began, as usual, with the entrance hymn, the prayer of the day. During the readings that followed, the silence was absolute. Ludwig could see that people were waiting for the sermon. He wondered just how Pastor Wilbur would handle it. The man, narrow and pedantic, was not known for his oratory. He larded his sermons with quotations from English literature and poetry in an attempt to show erudition, but the effect only seemed pompous and long-winded. The moment of truth had come for Pastor Wilbur. This was the time of his town’s greatest need.

Would he rise to the occasion?

The reading from the Gospel was complete; the time for the sermon had arrived. The air was electric. This was it: the moment of spiritual reassurance that people had yearned for, had waited for, had come to find.

The minister stepped up to the pulpit, gave two delicate little coughs into his balled hand, pursed his thin lips, and smoothed with a crackle the yellowed papers that lay hidden behind the elaborately carved wood.

“Two quotes come to mind this morning,” Wilbur said, glancing over the congregation. “One, of course, from the Bible. The other, from a famous sermon.”

Hope leapt in Ludwig’s heart. This sounded new. This sounded promising.

“Recall, if you will, God’s promise to Noah in the Book of Genesis:While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. And in the words of the good Doctor Donne,God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sheaves in harvest. ” Wilbur paused to survey the packed church from over his reading glasses.

Abruptly, Ludwig’s spirits fell, all the harder for having been falsely raised. He recognized these quotations all too well. Wilbur’s air of practiced improvisation had fooled him.Oh my God, he thought,he’s not going to do the harvest sermon again, is he?

And yet, beyond all understanding, that seemed to be Wilbur’s intent. He spread his arms with magisterial pomp.

“Here we are, once again, the little town of Medicine Creek, surrounded by the bounty of God. Summer. Harvest. All around us are the fruits of God’s green earth, God’s promise to us: thecorn, the stalks trembling under the weight of the ripe ears beneath the giving summer sun.”

Ludwig looked around with a kind of desperation. It was the same sermon Wilbur always gave at this time of the year, for as long as Ludwig could remember. There was a time, when his wife still lived, that Ludwig found Wilbur’s cycle of sermons—as predictable as the cycle of seasons—comfortable and reassuring. But not now. Especially not now.

“To those who would ask for a sign of God’s bounty, for those who require proof of His goodness, I say to you: go to the door. Go to the door and look out over the great sea of life, the harvest of corn that stands ready to be plucked and eaten, to provide physical nourishment to our bodies and spiritual comfort to our souls . . .”

“To be made into gasohol for our cars, you mean,” Ludwig heard someone nearby mutter.

He waited. Maybe the minister was just warming up and was going to get onto the real topic soon.

“. . . While Thanksgiving is the accepted time to thank God for the bounty of His earth, I like to offer thanks now, justbefore harvest, when the gift of God’s goodness is made incarnate all around us, in the fields of corn that stretch from horizon to horizon. Let us all walk, as the immortal bard John Greenleaf Whittier impels us to, ‘Up from the meadows rich with corn.’ Let us all then pause, and look out over the great Kansas earth covered with the harvest and give thanks.” He paused for effect.

The mood in the room remained one of suspension, of desperate hope that the sermon would take an unexpected turn.

“The other day,” the minister began in a more jocular tone, “I was driving to Deeper with my wife, Lucy, when our car ran out of gas.”

Oh, no. He told this story last year. And the year before.

“There we were, by the side of the road, completely surrounded by corn. Lucy turned to me and asked, ‘Whatever are we going to do, dear?’

“I answered, ‘Trust in God.’ ”

He chuckled, blissfully ignorant of the ugly undercurrent that was now beginning to ripple through the congregation. “Well, she got mad at that. Being the man, you see, I was supposed to have filled up the tank, and so it was my fault that we’d run out. ‘You trust in God,’ she said. ‘I’m going to trust in my two good legs.’ And she started to get out of the car—”

Suddenly a voice rang out: “and got the gas can out of the back and walked to the gas station!”

It was Swede Cahill himself who had completed the reverend’s sentence: Swede Cahill, the nicest man in town. But there he was, on his feet, red-faced.

Pastor Wilbur compressed his lips so hard they almost disappeared. “Mr. Cahill, may I remind you that this is a church, and that I am giving a sermon?”

“I know very well what you’re doing, Reverend.”

“Then I shall continue—”

“No,”said Cahill, panting heavily. “No, you will not.”

“For heaven’s sake, sit down, Swede,” a voice cried from somewhere.

Cahill turned toward the voice. “There’ve been two horrible murders in this town and all he can do is read some sermon he wrote back in 1973? No, this won’t scour. It won’t scour, I say.”

A woman had arisen: Klick Rasmussen. “Swede, if you have something to say, have thedecency to wait until—”

“No, he’s right,” interrupted another voice. Ludwig turned. It was a worker from the Gro-Bain plant. “Swede’s right. We didn’t come here to listen to a damn sermon about corn. There’s a killer on the loose and none of us are safe.”

Klick turned her short, furious bulk on him. “Young man, this is a church service, not a town meeting!”

“Didn’t you hear about what that man Gasparilla said on his deathbed?” Swede cried. His face had, if possible, grown even redder. “This is no joke, Klick. This town’s in crisis.”

There was a general murmuring of assent. Smit Ludwig scribbled madly, trying to get down Swede’s words.

“Please,please! ” Pastor Wilbur was saying, holding up two thin arms. “Not in God’s house!”

But others were on their feet. “Yeah,” said another plant worker. “I heard what Gasparilla said. I sure as hell heard it.”

“I did, too.”

“It can’t be true, can it?”

The murmuring of voices rose dramatically.

“Pastor,” said Swede, “why do you think the church is full? People are here because they’re frightened. This land has seen bad times before, terrible times. But this is different. People are talking about the curse of the Forty-Fives, the massacre, as if the town itself is cursed. As if these murders are some awful judgment upon us. They’re looking to you for reassurance.”

“Mr. Cahill, as the localtavern-keeper I hardly think you’re in a position to lecture me on my duties as a pastor,” said Wilbur furiously.

“Look here, Reverend, with all due respect—”

“And what about this freakish corn they want to grow here?” called out a very deep voice. It was Dale Estrem, on his feet, raising a hoe in a knotted fist. “What about that?”

He brought that hoe here as a prop,thought Ludwig, writing madly.He came prepared to make a scene.

“It’s going to cross-pollinate and pollute our fields! These scientists want to come here and play God with our food, Reverend! When are you going to talk aboutthat? ”

Now a far more hysterical voice rang out, trumping all. An old man, skinny as a rail, with a huge bobbing Adam’s apple that made his neck whiskers bristle like quills, had stood up and was shaking his fist furiously at Wilbur. It was old Whit Bowers, the recluse who managed the town dump. “The End Days are come! Can’t you see it, you blind fool!”

Swede turned. “Look, Whit, that wasn’t what I was—”

“You’re all a pack of fools if you don’t see it! The devil is walking among us!”

The man’s voice was shriekingly high, raspy, cutting like a knife through the babel.

“The devil himselfis in this church! Are you all blind? Can’t you see it? Can’t yousmell it?”

Pastor Wilbur was holding up his hands and shouting something, but his dry, pedantic voice could not compete with the general hubbub. Now everyone was on their feet. The church was in chaos.

“He’s here!”Whit shrieked. “Look to your neighbor! Look to your friend! Look to your brother! Is that the devil’s eyes staring back at you? Look well! And take heed! Have you all forgotten the words of Peter?Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking who he may devour!! ”

Others were shouting to be heard. People were milling in the aisle. There was a cry and someone fell. Ludwig lowered his pad, strained to see. There was Pendergast, still as death in his shadowy corner. There was Corrie beside him, grinning with delight. The sheriff was yelling and gesturing. There was a sudden backward movement of the crowd.

“You son of a bitch!” someone shouted. There was a violent motion, the smack of a landed fist. My God, it was a fight, right here in the church. Ludwig was stunned. He hastily climbed up on the pew to get a better view, notebook in hand. It was Randall Pennoyer, a friend of Stott’s, dusting it up with another plant worker. “Nobody deserved to die like that, parboiled like a hog!”

There was more confused shouting, and several men surged forward to separate the combatants. Ridder himself was now wading in, shouting, trying to reach the fight. Sheriff Hazen, too, was ploughing down the aisle like a bulldog, his head lowered. As Ludwig watched, Hazen fell over Bertha Blodgett and rose again, his face dark with fury. Horrified voices echoed off the vaulted ceiling. The people in the back had pushed open the doors and were exiting in a confused mass.

A pew came crashing down to the frightened screams of a woman.

“Not in the house of God!”Wilbur was shouting, his eyes bulging.

Above it all, the apocalyptic voice of Whit continued, piping out a shrill warning:“Look into their eyes and you will see! Breathe the air and smell the brimstone! He’s a crafty one, but you will find him out! Yes, you will! The killer is here! He’s one of us! The devil has come to Medicine Creek and he’s walking hand in hand with us. You heard it: the devil with the face of a child!”

Twenty-Nine

Corrie Swanson sat in her car beneath the shade of the trees in the little turnout by the creek, where Pendergast had—in his mysterious fashion—asked her to drive him. It had just passed noon, and the heat was suffocating. Corrie shifted in her seat, feeling the beads of sweat gathering on her forehead, on the back of her neck. Once again, Pendergast was acting strange. He’d simply reclined in his broken seat and closed his eyes. He looked asleep, but of course Corrie knew enough by now to realize he wasn’t sleeping. He was thinking. But about what? And why here? And whatever the hell it was, why had it taken half an hour, and counting?

She shook her head. He was a weird one. Nice weird, but weird all the same.

She picked up the book she was reading,Beyond the Ice Limit, found her dog-eared place at the beginning of chapter six, and began to read.

The sea horizon lay against the sky, blue against perfect blue, and it seemed to beckon the ship southward, ever southward.

She closed the book, put it down again. Not bad, but it lacked the punch of the original. Or maybe it was just that something else was on her mind. Such as what she’d just seen in church.

Her mother was not the church-going type, and Corrie had only been inside a few times. Even so, she realized that nobody in town, no matter how many times they’d set foot within Calvary Lutheran, had ever,ever seen anything like it. The whole town was falling apart. That Pastor Wilbur, who always passed her with his eyes averted and lips compressed in disapproval, had blown it big-time. What a self-righteous ass. She couldn’t help but smile afresh at the images that reeled through her head: crazy old Whit shrieking hell and damnation, Estrem up there waving his hoe, everyone fleeing out the back and falling down the stairs, the plant workers fighting and knocking over pews. So many times in her fantasies she had imagined earthquakes leveling the town, bombs dropping, huge fires consuming everything, riots in the streets, the high school being swallowed by a bottomless pit. And now, in a way, it had come to pass. She was still smiling at the images, but the smile had grown fixed on her face. The reality wasn’t quite so funny.

She glanced over at Pendergast and almost jumped. He was sitting there, at full attention, regarding her with his pale cat’s eyes.

“To the Castle Club, if you please,” he said quietly.

Corrie quickly composed herself. “Why?”

“I understand that Sheriff Hazen and Art Ridder will be lunching with Dr. Chauncy. As you know, Chauncy will make his announcement tomorrow as to which town will get the experimental field. No doubt citizens Hazen and Ridder are making a final pitch for Medicine Creek. Since Chauncy’s leaving the area tomorrow, there are certain questions I’d like to put to him first.”

“You don’t thinkhe’s involved?”

“As I’ve said, I am keeping my deductive faculties as quiescent as possible, and I’d advise you to do the same.”

“You really think they’ll be there? I mean, after what happened in church just now?”

“Chauncy was not in church. He may know nothing of what transpired. Regardless, the sheriff and Mr. Ridder will want to make a great show of normalcy. To reassure him, if need be.”

“Okay,” Corrie said, throwing the Gremlin in reverse. “You’re the boss.”

Although it galled her to do so, Corrie kept the car within the speed limit as Medicine Creek hove into view above the corn. In another moment they were pulling into the big parking lot of the bowling alley. It was almost empty, she noticed; but then, this was Medicine Creek, and emptiness was the norm.

Pendergast motioned her to precede him, and they entered the alley and made their way past the lanes to the glassed-in front of the Castle Club. Within, Chauncy, Ridder, and Hazen were seated at Ridder’s usual table. The rest of the place was deserted. All three stared as they entered.

Hazen rose and quickly moved forward, intercepting them in the middle of the dining room.

“Pendergast, what is it now?” he said in a low voice. “We’re in the middle of an important business meeting.”

“Sheriff, I’m very sorry to interrupt your luncheon,” the agent replied mildly. “I have a few questions for Dr. Chauncy.”

“Now is not the time.”

“Once again, I’m very sorry.” Pendergast brushed past the sheriff, Corrie following.

As they approached the table, Corrie noticed that Art Ridder, too, had risen, an angry smile frozen on his smooth, plump face.

“Ah, Special Agent Pendergast,” he said in a voice that almost managed to sound amiable. “Good to see you. If it’s about the, ah, case, we’ll be with you shortly. We were just finishing here with Dr. Chauncy.”

“But it is Dr. Chauncy I’ve come to see.” Pendergast held out his hand. “My name is Pendergast.”

Chauncy, failing to rise, took the hand and gave it a shake. “I remember you now, the fellow that refused to relinquish a room to me.” He smiled as if making a pleasantry, but irritation lurked in his eyes.

“Dr. Chauncy, I understand you will be leaving us tomorrow?”

“Today, actually,” said Chauncy. “The announcement will be made at KSU.”

“In that case, I have a few questions.”

Chauncy folded his napkin into a neat square, taking his sweet time, then laid it down beside a plate of half-eaten stewed tomatoes. “Sorry, but I’m running late as it is. We’ll have to have our chat some other time.” He stood, shrugged into his jacket.

“I am afraid that won’t be possible, Dr. Chauncy.”

Chauncy turned and raked him with arrogant eyes. “If this is about the killings, naturally I know nothing. If this is about the experimental field, then you are out of your jurisdiction, Officer, you and your, ah,sidekick. ” He cast a pointed glace at Corrie. “Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

When Pendergast spoke again, his voice was even milder. “I determine whether or not questioning a person is relevant.”

Chauncy reached into his suit coat, pulled out a wallet, took out a business card. He handed it to Pendergast. “You know the rules. I decline to be interviewed except in the presence of my attorney.”

Pendergast smiled. “Of course. And your attorney’s name?”

Chauncy hesitated.

“Until you give me the name and number of your attorney, Dr. Chauncy, I must deal with you directly. As you said, the rules.”

“Look, Mr. Pendergast—” Ridder began.

Chauncy snatched the card out of Pendergast’s hand and scribbled something on the back. He thrust it back. “For your information, Agent Pendergast, I am engaged in a confidential business of great importance to the Agricultural Extension at KSU, to Kansas, and indeed to the hungry people of the world. I will not be sucked into a local investigation of a couple of sordid murders.” He turned. “Gentlemen, I thank you for lunch.” He managed a brief pause before the word “lunch” that made it sound like an insult instead of a compliment.

But even before Chauncy had finished speaking, Pendergast had removed a cell phone from his suit and was dialing a number. This unexpected action caused everyone to pause. Even Chauncy hesitated.

“Mr. Blutter?” said Pendergast as he glanced at Chauncy’s card. “This is Special Agent Pendergast of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Chauncy frowned sharply.

“I am here in Medicine Creek with a client of yours, Dr. Stanton Chauncy. I would like to ask him a few questions about the killings that have occurred here. There are two ways we could proceed. One is voluntarily, right now; and the other is later, through a subpoena, issued by a judge for cause, in a public proceeding. Dr. Chauncy seeks your advice.”

He held the phone out toward Chauncy. The man grabbed it. “Blutter?”

There was a long silence and then Chauncy exploded into the telephone. “Blutter, this is pure harassment. It’s going to drag KSU through the mud. I can’t have any negative publicity. We’re at a delicate moment here—”

There was another, longer silence. Chauncy’s face darkened. “Blutter, damn it, I’m not going to talk to this cop—”

Another pause. Then “Christ!” He hung up and almost threw the phone back at Pendergast. “All right,” he muttered. “You have ten minutes.”

“Thank you, but I’ll take as long as I need. My very capablesidekick will take notes. Miss Swanson?”

“What? Yeah, sure.” Corrie was alarmed; she’d left her notebook in the car. But almost as if by magic a notebook and pen appeared in Pendergast’s hand. She took them and flipped the pages, trying to look as if this was something she did every day.

Ridder spoke again. “Hazen? Are you just going to stand there and let this happen?”

Hazen looked back at Ridder, his face an unreadable mask. “And what would you have me do?”

“Stop this farce. This FBI agent is going to ruin everything.”

Hazen’s reply was quiet. “You know very well I can’t do that.” He turned to Pendergast and said nothing, his face neutral. But Corrie knew Hazen well enough to read the look in his eyes.

Pendergast spoke cheerfully to Chauncy. “Tell me, Dr. Chauncy, when did Medicine Creek first come up as a suggested host for the experimental field?”

“A computer analysis produced the name last year. In April.” Chauncy spoke in a curt monotone.

“When did you first visit the town?”

“June.”

“Did you make contact with anyone here at that time?”

“No. It was just a preliminary trip.”

“Then what, exactly, did you do?”

“I fail to see—”

Pendergast held up the phone and said cheerfully, “Just hit redial.”

Chauncy made a huge effort to control himself. “I had lunch at Maisie’s Diner.”

“And?”

“And what? It was the most revolting lunch it has been my misfortune to consume.”

“And after?”

“Diarrhea, of course.”

Before she could stop herself, Corrie burst out laughing. Ridder and Hazen looked at each other, not knowing how to respond. Chauncy’s face broke into a mirthless smile; he seemed to be recovering his equilibrium, if not his arrogance. Then he continued. “I inspected a field owned by Buswell Agricon, the agricultural combine, who are our partners in this venture.”

“Where?”

“Down by the creek.”

“Where exactly by the creek?”

“Township five, Range one, the northwest quadrant of Section nine.”

“What was involved in the inspection of these fields? How did you proceed?”

“On foot. I took samples of earth, corn, other samples.”

“Such as?”

“Water. Botanicals. Insects. Scientific samples. Things you wouldn’t understand, Mr. Pendergast.”

“What day, exactly, was this?”

“I’d have to check my diary.”

Pendergast folded his arms, waiting.

Scowling, Dr. Chauncy fished into his pocket, pulled out a diary, flipped the pages. “June eleven.”

“And did you see anything unusual? Out of the ordinary?”

“As I’ve said, I saw nothing.”

“Tell me, whatexactly is this ‘experimental field’ going to experiment with?”

Chauncy drew himself up. “I’m sorry, Mr. Pendergast, but these scientific concepts are rather too complex for a non-scientist to comprehend. It’s pointless to answer questions along that line.”

Pendergast smiled in a self-deprecating way. “Well, then, perhaps you could simplify it in a way that any idiot could understand.”

“I suppose I could try. We’re trying to develop a strain of corn for gasohol production—you know what that is?”

Pendergast nodded.

“We need a strain that has high starch content and that produces a natural pesticide which eliminates the need for external pesticides. There’s the idiot explanation, Mr. Pendergast. I trust you followed it.” He gave a quick smile.

Pendergast leaned forward slightly, his face assuming a blank expression. He reminded Corrie of a cat about to pounce. “Dr. Chauncy, how do you plan to prevent cross-pollination? If your genetic strain escaped into this sea of corn around us, there would be no way of putting the genie back into the bottle, so to speak.”

Chauncy looked disconcerted. “We’ll create a buffer zone. We’ll plough a hundred-foot strip around the field and plant alfalfa.”

“And yet, Addison and Markham, in a paper published in the April 2002 issue of theJournal of Biomechanics, stated that cross-pollination by genetically modified corn had been shown to extend several miles beyond the target field. Surely you recall that paper, Dr. Chauncy? Addison and Markham, April—”

“I’m familiar with the paper!” Chauncy said.

“And then you must also know of the work of Engels, Traumerai, and Green, which demonstrated that the 3PJ-Strain 5 genetically modified plant produced a pollen toxic to monarch butterflies. Are you by chance working with the 3PJ strain?”

“Yes, but monarch mortality only occurs in concentrations greater than sixty pollen grains per square millimeter—”

“Which is present within at least three hundred yards downwind of the field, according to a University of Chicago study published in theProceedings of the Third Annual —”

“I know the bloody paper! You don’t have to cite it to me!”

“Well, then, Dr. Chauncy. I ask again: how are you going to prevent cross-pollination, and how are you going to protect the local butterfly population?”

“That’s what this whole experiment is all about, Pendergast! Those are thevery problems we’re trying to solve—”

“So Medicine Creek will be, in effect, a guinea pig location to test possible solutions to these problems?”

For a moment, Chauncy spluttered, unable to reply. He looked apoplectic. Corrie could see he had lost it completely. “Why should I have to justify my important work to a—a—a fuckingcop— !”

There was a silence as Chauncy breathed heavily, the sweat pouring off his brow and creeping through the underarms of his suit jacket.

Pendergast turned to Corrie. “I think we’re done here. Did you get it all down, Miss Swanson?”

“Everything, sir, right down to the ‘fucking cop.’ ” She slapped the notebook shut with a satisfying crack and jammed the pen into one of her leather pockets, then gave the group at the table a broad smile. Pendergast nodded, turned to go.

“Pendergast,” Ridder said. His voice was low and very, very cold. Despite herself, Corrie shivered when she saw the look on his face.

Pendergast stopped. “Yes?”

Ridder’s eyes glittered like mica. “You’ve disturbed our lunch and agitated our guest. Isn’t there something you ought to say to him before you leave?”

“I don’t believe so.” Pendergast seemed to consider a moment. “Unless, perhaps, it is a quotation from Einstein: ‘The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.’ I would suggest to Dr. Chauncy that in combination, the two qualities are even more alarming.”

Corrie followed Pendergast out through the darkened bowling alley and into the strong sun. As they climbed into the car she couldn’t hold herself back any longer and laughed.

Pendergast looked at her. “Amused?”

“Why not? You really ripped Chauncy a new one.”

“That is the second time I’ve heard that curious expression. What does it mean?”

“It means, well, you made him look like the fool he is.”

“If only it were so. Chauncy and his ilk are anything but fools and are, as such, decidedly more dangerous.”

Thirty

It was nine o’clock when Corrie got back to Wyndham Parke Estates, the mobile home community just behind the bowling alley where she shared a double-wide with her mother. After leaving Pendergast she had driven to her secret reading place on the powerline road to kill time, but as soon as the sun had set she got spooked and decided to head on home.

She carefully opened the shabby front door and closed it behind her with a silence born of years of practice. By now, her mother should be out like a light. It was a Sunday, her mother’s day off, and she would have started hitting the bottle as soon as she was up. Still, silence was always the wisest policy.

She crept into the kitchen. The trailer had no AC and was stiflingly hot. She eased open a cupboard, took out a box of Cap’n Crunch and a bowl, and carefully filled it. She poured in milk from the refrigerator and began to eat. God, she was famished. A second bowl disappeared before she felt sated.

She carefully washed the bowl, dried it, put it away, put away the cereal and the milk, and erased any sign of her presence. If her mother was really out cold, she might even be able to play an hour or two of the latestResident Evil on her Nintendo before going to bed. She took off her shoes and began to sneak down the hall.

“Corrie?”

She froze. What was her mother doing awake? The raspy voice that issued from the bedroom boded ill.

“Corrie, I know it’s you.”

“Yes, Mom?” She tried to make her voice as casual as possible.

There was a silence. God, it was hot in the trailer. She wondered how her mother could stand being in here all day, baking, sweating, drinking. It made her sad.

“I think you have something to tell me, young lady,” came the muffled voice.

“Like what?” Corrie tried to sound cheerful.

“Like your new job.”

Corrie’s heart fell. “What about it?”

“Oh, I don’t know, it’s just that I’m your mother, and I think that gives me a right to knowwhat’s going on in your life.”

Corrie cleared her throat. “Can we talk about it in the morning?”

“We can talk about it right now. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

Corrie wondered where to start. No matter how she put it, it was going to sound strange.

“I’m working for the FBI agent who’s investigating the killings.”

“So I heard.”

“So you already know about it.”

There was a snort. “How much is he paying you?”

“That’s not your business, Mom.”

“Really? Not my business? You think you can just live here for free, eat here for free, come and go as you please? Is that what you think?”

“Most kids live with their parents for free.”

“Not when they have a good paying job. Theycontribute. ”

Corrie sighed. “I’ll leave some money on the kitchen table.” How much did it cost to buy Cap’n Crunch? She couldn’t even remember the last time her mother had gone shopping or cooked dinner, except to bring home snacks from the bowling alley where she was a cocktail waitress during the week. Snacks and those miniature bottles of vodka. That’s where the money went, all those vodka minis.

“I’m still waiting for an answer to my question, young lady. What’s he paying you? It can’t be much.”

“Isaid, it’s none of your business.”

“You don’t have any skills, what can you possibly be worth? You can’t type, you don’t know how to write a business letter—I can’t imagine why he’d hire you, frankly.”

Corrie replied hotly, “Hethinks I’m worth it. And for your information he’s paying me seven fifty a week.” Even as she said it, she knew she was making a big mistake.

There was a short silence.

“Did you say sevenhundred and fifty dollarsa week? ”

“That’s right.”

“And just what are youdoing to earn that money?”

“Nothing.” God, why did she let her mother goad her into the admission?

“Nothing?Nothing? ”

“I’m his assistant. I take notes. I drive him around.”

“What do you know about being an assistant? Who is this man? How old is he? Youdrive himaround? Inyour car? For seven hundred and fifty dollars aweek? ”

“Yes.”

“Do you have acontract? ”

“Well, no.”

“No contract? Don’t you knowanything? Corrie, why do you think he’s paying you seven fifty? Or do you already know why—is that what it’s come to? No wonder you’ve been lying to me, hiding from me this little job of yours. I can just imagine what kind ofjob you do for him, young lady.”

Corrie held her hands over her ears. If only she could get out, get into her car, get away. Anywhere. She could sleep in the car down by the creek. But she was scared. It was night. The killer was out there, somewhere, in the corn. “Mom, it’s not like that, okay?”

“Not okay. Not okay. You’re just a high school kid, you aren’t worth anything, let alone seven fifty. Corrie, I’ve been around the block a few times. I know what’s what. I know aboutmen, I know what they want, how they think. I know what jerks they can be. Look at your father, look how he ran out on me, on us. Never paying a dime in child support. He was worthless, worse than worthless. And I can tell you right now thatthis man of yours is no FBI agent. What FBI agent would hire a delinquent with a record?Don’t you lie to me, Corrie. ”

“I’mnot lying to you.” If only she could get away, just this night. But tonight the whole town was as quiet as a tomb. Fallout from the riot at the church. Just driving home had really spooked her. Every house had been locked up and shuttered tight. And it was barely nine o’clock.

“If this is on the up and up, bring him here to me, then. I want to meet him.”

“I’d die before I ever let him see this dump!” Corrie shouted, suddenly white-hot with rage. “Oryou! ”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, young lady!”

“I’m going to bed.”

“Don’t you walk away while I’m talking to you—”

Corrie went into her room and slammed the door. She quickly put on some earphones and shoved a CD into her player, hoping that Kryptopsy would drown out the angry voice she could still hear yelling through the wall. The chances were good her mother wouldn’t get out of bed. Standing up brought on a headache. She’d eventually get tired of yelling and, if Corrie were lucky, wouldn’t even remember the conversation in the morning. But then again, maybe she would. She’d seemed alarmingly sober.

By the time the mangled thrashing of the last song had ended, all seemed to be quiet. She eased off the earphones and went to the window to breathe the night air. Crickets trilled in the darkness. The smell of night, of the corn just beyond the trailer park, of sticky heat, all flowed into the room. It was very dark outside; the streetlights on their lane had burned out long ago and had never been replaced. She stared out into the darkness for a while, wiping silent tears out of her eyes, and then lay down on her bed, in her clothes, and started the CD again from the beginning.Look at your father, her mom had said.He was worthless. As always, Corrie tried not to think about him. Thinking about her father only hurt more, because despite everything her mother said she only had good memories of him. Why had he left the way he did? Why had he never written her, not once, to explain? Maybe she really was worthless, useless, undeserving of love, as her mother had taken pains to point out many times.

She turned up the volume, trying to drive the train of thought from her mind. One more year. Just one more year. Lying on her bed in a dying town in the middle of nowhere, another year seemed like an eternity. But surely anyone could get through a year. Even her . . .

She woke up in blackness. The crickets had stopped trilling and it was now completely silent. She sat up, plucking off the dead headphones. Something had woken her. What was it? A dream? But she could remember no dream. She waited, listening.

Nothing.

She got up and went to the window. A sliver of a moon drifted from behind some clouds, then disappeared again. Heat lightning danced along the horizon, little flickers of dull yellow. Her heart was racing, her nerves strung tight. Why? Maybe it was the creepy music she’d fallen asleep to.

She moved closer to the open window. The night air, laden with the fragrance of the fields, came drifting in, humid and sticky. It was unrelievedly dark. Beyond the black outline of the trailer next door she could see the distant darkness of the cornfields, a single glowing star.

She heard a sound. A snuffle.

Was it her mother? But it seemed to have come fromoutside: out there, in the darkness.

Another snuffle, like someone with a bad cold.

She peered hard into the darkness, into the deep pools of shadow that lay alongside the trailer. The street beyond was like a dark river. She strained to see, every sense alert. There, by the hedge that lined the street: was there something moving? A shape? Was it just her imagination?

She placed her hand on the window and tried to draw it shut, but as usual it was stuck fast. She jiggled it, trying to free the mechanism with a feeling of rising panic.

She heard more snuffling, like the heavy panting of a large animal. It seemed very close now. But the act of listening caused her to pause for just an instant; then in a sudden panic she redoubled her struggle to get the window shut, rattling it in desperation, trying to free the cheap aluminum latch. Somethingwas moving out there. She could feel it, she could sense it—and now, yes now, she was sure she couldsee it: a lumpen, malformed shadow, a mass, black against black, moving ever so stealthily toward her.

Instinct took over and she fell away from the window, abandoning her attempt to close it in favor of reaching for the light and banishing the darkness. She fumbled, knocked the CD player to the floor, found the light.

The instant it went on, the room lit up and the window became an opaque rectangle of black. She heard a sudden grunt; a dull thud; a frantic rustling sound. And then, silence.

She waited, taking a few slow steps back from the black window. Her body was shaking uncontrollably, and her throat was very dry. She could see nothing outside now, nothing at all. Wasit there, in the window, looking at her? A minute ticked off, then another and another. Then she heard, in the middle distance, what sounded like a cough and groan: very low, but so replete with terror and pain that it chilled her to the marrow. It cut off abruptly, replaced with a strange wet ripping noise, and then a sound like someone dumping a bucket of water on the pavement down the street. Then, silence: utter, total silence.

Somehow, the silence was even worse than the noise. She felt a scream rising, unbidden, in her throat.

Then, all of a sudden, there was a snap, a gurgle, and a hissing sound, which slowly subsided to a steady swishing murmur.

She slumped, her body abruptly relaxing. It was just Mr. Dade’s sprinkler system coming on, as it did every morning at exactly 2A .M.

She glanced at her clock: sure enough, it read 2:00.

How many times had she heard that sprinkler system cough and splutter and gurgle and make all sorts of weird noises as it started up?Get a grip, she thought. Her imagination was really working overtime. Not surprising, given all that was going on in the town . . . and given what she’d seen, with Pendergast, out there in the cornfields.

She returned to the window and grabbed the latch, feeling a little sheepish. This time, a single, brutal thrust was enough to close it. She locked the window and climbed back into bed and turned out the light.

The sound of the sprinklers filtering through the glass, the caressing patter of raindrops, was like a lullaby. And yet it wasn’t until four that she was finally able to fall back to sleep.