Still Life With Crows

Lincoln Child dedicates this book to his daughter, Veronica.

Douglas Preston dedicates this book to Mario Spezi.

Acknowledgments

Lincoln Child would like to thank Special Agent Douglas Margini for his ongoing advice on both law enforcement matters and electric guitars. I would also like to thank my cousin, Greg Tear, and my friends Bob Wincott and Pat Allocco, for particularly sage advice on the manuscript. Victor S. was very helpful in providing certain necessary details. I’d like to thank the following people for helping make sure that the life of a writer need not be that of a monk: Chris and Susan Yango, Tony Trischka, Irene Soderlund, Roger Lasley, Patrick Dowd, Gerard and Terry Hyland, Denis Kelly, Bruce Swanson, Jim Jenkins, Mark Mendel, Ray Spencer, and Malou and Sonny Baula. Thanks to Lee Suckno for various and sundry ministrations. Most importantly, I want to thank my parents, Nancy and Bill Child, my brother, Doug, and my sister, Cynthia, my daughter, Veronica, and especially my wife, Luchie, for their love and support. I would also like to gratefully acknowledge my adoptive hometown of Northfield, Minnesota, which—in the nostalgic spyglass of memory—retains all the charms and graces of small-town America while somehow managing to avoid its limitations.

Douglas Preston would like to express his very great appreciation to Bobby Rotenberg for reading the manuscript and offering excellent suggestions. I thank my daughter Selene for her invaluable advice, especially with the character of Corrie. I am deeply indebted to Karen Copeland for her tremendous help and support. And I thank Niccolò Capponi for innumerable fascinating literary conversations and excellent ideas. My thanks goes to Barry Turkus for dragging me up and down the Tuscan hillsin bici , and to his wife, Jody. I also wish to thank some of my Florentine friends for providing a counterbalance to many solitary hours spent in front of the computer. They are Myriam Slabbinck, Ross Capponi, Lucia Boldrini and Riccardo Zucconi, Vassiliki Lambrou and Paolo Busoni, Edward Tosques, Phyllis and Ted Swindells, Peter and Marguerite Casparian, Andrea and Vahe Keushguerian, and Catia Ballerini. I am also most indebted to our Italian translator, Andrea Carlo Cappi, for his friendship and advocacy of our books and for giving us a piece of excellent advice on this novel in particular. And how can I help but acknowledge the incomparable Andrea Pinketts? Finally, I want to express my greatest appreciation to my wife, Christine, and my two other children, Aletheia and Isaac, for their constant love and support.

And, as always, we want to thank in particular those people without whom the novels of Preston and Child would not exist: Jaime Levine, Jamie Raab, Eric Simonoff, Eadie Klemm, and Matthew Snyder.

Although we have used southwestern Kansas as the location for this novel, the town of Medicine Creek, as well as Cry County and many of the other towns and cities mentioned in the novel, are either fictitious or are used fictitiously, as are the characters that populate them. We have not hesitated to alter the geography and agriculture of southwestern Kansas to suit our fictional purposes.

One

Medicine Creek, Kansas. Early August. Sunset.

The great sea of yellow corn stretches from horizon to horizon under an angry sky. When the wind rises the corn stirs and rustles as if alive, and when the wind dies down again the corn falls silent. The heat wave is now in its third week, and dead air hovers over the corn in shimmering curtains.

One road cuts through the corn from north to south; another from east to west. Where the two roads cross lies the town. Sad gray buildings huddle together at the intersection, gradually thinning along both roads into separate houses, then scattered farms, and then nothing. A creek, edged by scraggly trees, wanders in from the northwest, loops lazily around the town, and disappears in the southeast. It is the only curved thing in this landscape of straight lines. To the northeast rises a cluster of mounds surrounded by trees.

A giant slaughterhouse stands south of the town, lost in the corn, its metal sides scoured by years of dust storms. The faint odor of blood and disinfectant drifts in a plume southward from the plant, riding the fitful currents of air. Beyond, just over the horizon, stand three gigantic grain silos, like a tall-masted ship lost at sea.

The temperature is exactly one hundred degrees. Heat lightning flickers silently along the distant northern horizon. The corn is seven feet high, the fat cobs clustered on the stalks. Harvest is two weeks away.

Twilight is falling over the landscape. The orange sky bleeds away into red. A handful of streetlights blink on in the town.

A black-and-white police cruiser passes along the main street, heading east into the great nothingness of corn, its headlights stabbing into the rising darkness. Some three miles ahead of the cruiser, a column of slow-circling turkey vultures rides a thermal above the corn. They wheel down, then rise up again, circling endlessly, uneasily, rising and falling in a regular cadence.

Sheriff Dent Hazen fiddled with the dashboard knobs and cursed at the tepid air that streamed from the vents. He felt the vent with the back of his hand but it wasn’t getting any cooler: the AC had finally bit the dust. He muttered another imprecation and cranked down the window, tossing out his cigarette butt. Furnacelike air boiled in, and the cruiser filled with the smell of late-summer Kansas: earth, cornstalks. He could see the circling turkey buzzards rise and dip, rise and dip above the dying smear of sunset along the horizon.One ugly motherfucker of a bird, thought Hazen, and he glanced over at the long-barreled Winchester Defender lying on the seat beside him. With any luck, he’d get close enough to assist two or three of them into the next world.

He slowed and glanced once again at the dark birds silhouetted against the sky.Why the hell aren’t any of them landing? Turning off the main road, he eased the cruiser onto one of the many rutted dirt lanes that cut their way through the thousand square miles of corn surrounding Medicine Creek. He moved forward, keeping a watch on the sky, until the birds were almost directly overhead. This was as close as he was going to get by car. From here, he’d have to walk.

He threw the cruiser into park and, more out of habit than necessity, snapped on the lightbar flashers. He eased his frame out of the cruiser and stood for a moment facing the wall of corn, drawing a rough hand across his stubbled chin. The rows went in the wrong direction and it was going to be a bitch getting through them. Just the thought of shouldering through all those rows made him weary, and for a moment he thought about putting the cruiser in reverse and getting the hell back to town. But it was too late for that now: the neighbor’s call had already been logged. Old Wilma Lowry had nothing better to do but look out her window and report the location of dead animals. But this was his last call of the day, and a few extra hours on Friday evening at least guaranteed him a long, lazy, boozy Sunday fishing at Hamilton Lake State Park.

Hazen lit another cigarette, coughed, and scratched himself, looking at the dry ranks of corn. He wondered if it was somebody’s cow who’d wandered into the corn and was now dead of bloat and greed. Since when was it a sheriff’s responsibility to check on dead livestock? But he already knew the answer: ever since the livestock inspector retired. There was nobody to take his place and no longer a need for one. Every year there were fewer family farms, fewer livestock, fewer people. Most people only kept cows and horses for nostalgic reasons. The whole county was going to hell.

Realizing he’d put off the task long enough, Hazen sighed, hiked up his jangling service belt, slipped his flashlight out of its scabbard, shouldered the shotgun, and pushed his way into the corn.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the sultry air refused to lift. The beam of his light flashed through the cornstalks stretching before him like endless rows of prison bars. His nose filled with the smell of dry stalks, that peculiar rusty smell so familiar it was part of his very being. His feet crunched dry clods of earth, kicking up dust. It had been a wet spring, and until the heat wave kicked in a few weeks back the summer sun had been benevolent. The stalks were as high as Hazen could ever remember, at least a foot or more over his head. Amazing how fast the black earth could turn to dust without rain. Once, as a kid, he’d run into a cornfield to escape his older brother and gotten lost. For two hours. The disorientation he’d felt then came back to him now. Inside the corn rows, the air felt trapped: hot, fetid, itchy.

Hazen took a deep drag on the cigarette and continued forward, knocking the fat cobs aside with irritation. The field belonged to Buswell Agricon of Atlanta, and Sheriff Hazen could not have cared less if they lost a few ears because of his rough passage. Within two weeks Agricon’s huge combine harvesters would appear on the horizon, mowing down the corn, each feeding half a dozen streams of kernels into their hoppers. The corn would be trucked to the cluster of huge grain silos just over the northern horizon and from there railed to feed lots from Nebraska to Missouri, to disappear down the throats of mindless castrated cattle, which would in turn be transformed into big fat marbled sirloins for rich assholes in New York and Tokyo. Or maybe this was one of those gasohol fields, where the corn wasn’t eaten by man or even beast but burned up in the engines of cars instead. What a world.

Hazen bullied his way through row after row. Already his nose was running. He tossed his cigarette away, then realized he should probably have pinched it off first. Hell with it. A thousand acres of the damn corn could burn and Buswell Agricon wouldn’t even notice. They should take care of their own fields, pick up their own dead animals. Of course, the executives had probably never set foot in a real cornfield in their lives.

Like almost everyone else in Medicine Creek, Hazen came from a farming family that no longer farmed. They had sold their land to companies like Buswell Agricon. The population of Medicine Creek had been dropping for more than half a century and the great industrial cornfields were now dotted with abandoned houses, their empty window frames staring like dead eyes over the billowy main of crops. But Hazen had stayed. Not that he liked Medicine Creek particularly; what he liked was wearing a uniform and being respected. He liked the town because he knew the town, every last person, every dark corner, every nasty secret. Truth was, he simply couldn’t imagine himself anywhere else. He was as much a part of Medicine Creek as Medicine Creek was a part of him.

Hazen stopped suddenly. He swept his beam through the stalks ahead. The air, full of dust, now carried another smell: the perfume of decay. He glanced up. The buzzards were far above now, directly over his head. Another fifty yards and he would be there. The air was still, the silence complete. He unshouldered his shotgun and moved forward more cautiously.

The smell of decay drifted through the rows, sweeter by the moment. Now Hazen could make out a gap in the corn, a clearing directly ahead of him. Odd. The sky had flamed its red farewell and was now dark.

The sheriff raised his gun, eased off the safety with his thumb, and broke through the last corn row into the clearing. For a moment he looked around in wild incomprehension. And then, rather suddenly, he realized what he was looking at.

The gun went off when it hit the ground and the load of double-ought buckshot blew by Hazen’s ear. But the sheriff barely noticed.

Two

Two hours later, Sheriff Dent Hazen stood in approximately the same spot. But now, the cornfield had been transformed into a gigantic crime scene. The clearing was ringed with portable sodium vapor lights that bathed the scene in a harsh white glow, and a generator growled somewhere out in the corn. The Staties had bulldozed an access road in to the site, and now almost a dozen state cruisers, SOC trucks, ambulances, and other vehicles sat in an instant parking lot carved out of the corn. Two photographers were taking pictures, their flashes punctuating the night, while a lone evidence gatherer crouched nearby, picking at the ground with a pair of tweezers.

Hazen stared at the victim, sickness rising in his gut. This was the first homicide in Medicine Creek in his lifetime. The last killing had been during Prohibition, when Rocker Manning had been shot at by the creek while buying a load of moonshine . . . that was back in, when, ’31? His granddaddy had handled the case, made the arrest. But that was nothing like this. This was something else entirely. This was fucking madness.

Hazen turned from the corpse and stared at the makeshift road through the corn, cut to save the troopers a quarter-mile hike. There was a good possibility the road had destroyed evidence. He wondered if it was standard Statie procedure, or if they even had a procedure for this kind of situation. All the activity had an ad hoc air about it, as if the troopers were so shocked by the crime that they were just making it up as they went along.

Sheriff Hazen didn’t hold Staties in particularly high regard. When you got down to it they were basically a bunch of tight-jawed assholes in shiny boots. But he could sympathize. This was something beyond anyone’s experience. He lit a fresh Camel off the stub of his last one and reminded himself that it wasn’t really his first homicide. It wasn’t his case at all. He may have found the body, but it was outside the township and therefore outside his jurisdiction. This was a Statie job, and thank the risen Lord for that.

“Sheriff Hazen?” The towering Kansas state trooper captain came crunching over the corn stubble, his black boots shining, his hand outstretched, mouth tensed in what was supposed to pass for a smile. Hazen took the hand and shook it, annoyed by the man’s height. It was the third time the captain had offered him his hand. Hazen wondered if the man had a bad memory or if he was just so agitated that the handshaking was a nervous reaction. Probably the latter.

“The M.E.’s coming down from Garden City,” the captain said. “Should be here in ten minutes.”

Sheriff Hazen wished to hell he’d sent Tad out on this one. He would’ve gladly given up his weekend fishing—Christ, he would’ve even stayed sober—to miss this. On the other hand, he thought, perhaps this would have been too much for Tad. In so many ways he was still only a kid.

“We’ve got ourselves an artist here,” said the trooper, shaking his head. “A real artist. You think this’ll make theKansas City Star ?”

Hazen didn’t reply. This was a new thought to him. He thought of his picture in the paper and found the idea displeasing. Someone walking past with a fluoroscope bumped into him. Christ, the crime scene was getting to be more crowded than a Baptist wedding.

He filled his lungs with tobacco, then forced himself to look out over the scene yet again. It seemed important that he should see it one more time, before it was all disassembled and put into bags and taken away. His eyes played over it, automatically committing every hideous little detail to memory.

It had been set up almost like a scene in a play. A circular clearing had been made in the heart of the cornfield, the broken stalks carefully stacked to one side, leaving an area of dirt clods and stubble perhaps forty feet in diameter. Even in the terrible unreality of the moment, Hazen found himself marveling at the geometrical precision with which the circle had been formed. At one end of the clearing stood a miniature forest of sharpened sticks, two to three feet high, pushed into the earth, their cruel-looking ends pointing upward. At the precise middle of the clearing stood a circle of dead crows spitted on stakes. Only they weren’t stakes but Indian arrows, each topped by a flaked point. There were at least a couple dozen of the birds, maybe more, their vacant eyes staring, yellow beaks pointing inward.

And in the center of this circle of crows lay the corpse of a woman.

At least Sheriff Hazen thought it was a woman: her lips, nose, and ears were missing.

The corpse lay on its back, its mouth wide open, looking like the entrance to a pink cave. It had bleached-blonde hair, a clump of it ripped away and missing; the clothes had been shredded in countless small, neat, parallel lines. There was no sense of disorder. The relationship between the head and the shoulders looked wrong: Hazen thought her neck was probably broken. But there was no bruising on the neck indicating strangulation. If it had been broken, the act had been done by a single hard twist.

The killing, Hazen concluded, had taken place elsewhere. He could see marks in the earth going back not quite to the edge of the clearing, indicating the body had been dragged; extrapolating the line, he saw a gap in the corn rows where a stalk had been broken off. The troopers hadn’t seen it. In fact, some of the marks were being obscured by the comings and goings of the Staties themselves. He turned toward the captain to point this out. Then he stopped himself. What was wrong with him? This was not his case. Not his responsibility. When the shit hit, the fan would be blowing in someone else’s direction. The minute he opened his mouth the wind would shift his way. If he said, “Captain, you’ve destroyed evidence,” on the witness stand two months from now he’d be forced to repeat it to some asshole of a defense lawyer. Because whatever he said now would come up at the trial of the maniac who did this. And there would be a trial. A guy this crazy couldn’t get away with it for long.

He inhaled a lungful of acrid smoke.Keep it zipped. Let them make the mistakes. It’s not your case.

He dropped the butt, ground it beneath one foot. Yet another car was now bumping carefully along the access road, its headlights stabbing up and down through the corn. It came to a stop in the makeshift lot and a man in white got out, carrying a black bag. McHyde, the M.E.

Sheriff Hazen watched as the man gingerly picked his way among the dry clods, not wanting to soil his wingtips. He spoke to the captain and then went over to the body. He stared at it for a moment from this angle and that, then knelt and carefully tied plastic bags around the hands and feet of the victim. Then he drew some kind of device out of his black bag—it was called an anal probe, Sheriff Hazen remembered abruptly. And now the M.E. was doing something intimate to the corpse. Measuring its temperature. Jesus. Now there was a job for you.

Sheriff Hazen glanced up into the dark sky, but the turkey vultures were long gone. They, at least, knew when to leave well enough alone.

The M.E. and the paramedics now began packing up the corpse for removal. A Statie was pulling up the arrows with the crows, labeling them, and packing them into refrigerated evidence lockers. And Sheriff Hazen realized he had to take a leak. All that damn coffee. But it wasn’t just that; acid was starting to boil up from his stomach. He hoped to hell his ulcer wasn’t coming back. He sure didn’t want to toss his cookies in front of these characters.

He glanced around, made sure he was not being noticed, and slipped into the dark corn. He walked down a row, inhaling deeply, trying to get far enough away that his own piss wouldn’t be found and marked as evidence. He wouldn’t have to go far; these Staties were not showing much curiosity about anything beyond the immediate crime scene.

He stopped just outside the circle of lights. Here, buried in the sea of corn, the murmur of the voices, the faint hum of the generator, and the bizarre violence of the crime scene seemed far away. A breeze came drifting past, only a slight movement of the muggy air, but it set the corn around him swaying and rustling. Hazen paused a minute, filling his nostrils. Then he unzipped, grunted, and urinated loudly on the dry ground. Finally, with a big noisy shake that set his gun, cuffs, club, and keys rattling, he put everything back in and patted it into place.

As he turned, he saw something in the reflected glow of the lights. He stopped, shining his flashlight across the corn rows. There it was, in the next row over. He looked more closely. A piece of cloth, caught high up on one of the dry husks. It appeared to be the same as the material the victim was wearing. He shone his light up and down the row, but he saw nothing else.

He straightened up. He was doing it again. This wasn’t his case. Maybe he’d mention it; maybe he’d let the Staties find it on their own. If it really meant anything, anyway.

When he pushed his way back into the clearing, the trooper captain came forward at once. “Sheriff Hazen, I was just looking for you,” he said. He was carrying a handheld GPS unit in one hand and a USGS topographical map in the other, and his face was wearing a very different expression than it had just moments before. “Congratulations.”

“What’s that?” asked Hazen.

The captain pointed to the GPS device. “According to this reading, we’re inside the boundary of the township of Medicine Creek. Twelve feet inside the boundary, to be exact. Which means it’s your case, Sheriff. We’re here to help, of course, but it’s your case. So let me be the first to offer my congratulations.”

He beamed and held out his hand.

Sheriff Dent Hazen ignored the hand. Instead he plucked the pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, shook one out, pushed it between his lips, and lit it. He inhaled and then spoke, the smoke puffing out with his words. “Twelve feet?” he repeated. “Jesus Christ.”

The captain let his hand fall to his side.

Hazen began to talk. “The victim was murdered somewhere else and carried here. The murderer came through the corn over there, dragged her the last twenty feet or so. If you follow the row backwards from that broken stalk, you’ll come to a piece of caught fabric. The fabric matches that of the victim, but it’s caught too high on the stalk for her to have been walking, so he must’ve been lugging her on his back. You may see my footprints and the place where I took a piss in the adjoining row; don’t bother with that. And for God’s sake, Captain, do we really need all these people? This is a crime scene, not a Wal-Mart parking lot. I want only the M.E., the photographer, and the evidence gatherer on site. Tell the rest to back off.”

“Sheriff, we do have our procedures to follow—”

“My procedures are now your procedures.”

The captain swallowed.

“I want a pair of certified, trained AKC police bloodhounds here ASAP to get on the trail. And I want you to get the forensic evidence team down from Dodge.”

“Right.”

“And one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I want your boys to pull over any arriving press. Especially television trucks. Tie them up while we complete work here.”

“Pull them over for what?”

“Give ’em all speeding tickets. That’s what you boys are good at, right?”

The captain’s tight jaw grew even tighter. “And if they’re not speeding?”

Sheriff Hazen grinned. “Oh, they’ll be speeding, all right. You can bet your ass on it.”

Three

Deputy Sheriff Tad Franklin sat hunched over his desk, filling out reams of unfamiliar paperwork and trying to pretend that the unruly knot of television and newspaper reporters just outside the plate glass window of the Medicine Creek Sheriff’s Department didn’t exist. Tad had always liked the fact that the sheriff’s HQ was located in a former five-and-ten-cent storefront, where he could wave to passersby, chat with friends, keep tabs on who was coming or going. But now the disadvantages of the office had suddenly become obvious.

The fiery light of yet another hot August sunrise had begun spilling down the street, stretching long shadows from the news trucks and gilding the unhappy faces of the reporters. They had been up all night and things were beginning to look ugly. A steady stream came and went from Maisie’s Diner across the street, but the plain food only seemed to make them grumpier.

Tad Franklin tried to concentrate on the paperwork, but he found himself unable to ignore the tapping on the window, the questions, the occasional shouted vulgarity. This was getting intolerable. If they woke Sheriff Hazen, who was grabbing a few winks in the back cell, things might get even uglier. Tad rose, tried to put on as stern a look as possible, and cracked open a window.

“I’ll ask you once again to step back from the glass,” he said.

This was greeted with a muffled chorus of disrespectful comments, shouted questions, a general undercurrent of irritation. Tad knew from the call letters on the vans that the reporters weren’t local; they were from Topeka, Kansas City, Tulsa, Amarillo, and Denver. Well, they could just ride on back home and—

Behind him, Tad heard a door thump, a cough. He turned to see Sheriff Hazen, yawning and rubbing his stubbly chin, the hair on one side of his head sticking out horizontally. The sheriff smoothed it down, then fitted on his hat with both hands.

Tad closed the window. “Sorry, Sheriff, but these people just won’t go away—”

The sheriff yawned, waved his hand casually, turned his back on the crowd. A particularly angry reporter in the rear of the crowd shouted out a stream of invective, in which the words “redneck in miniature” could be heard. Hazen went to the coffee pot, poured a cup. He sipped it, made a face, spat the coffee back into the cup, hawked up a loogie, deposited it in the cup as well, and then poured everything back into the pot.

“Want me to get a fresh pot?” asked Tad.

“No thanks, Tad,” the sheriff replied, giving his deputy’s shoulder a gruff pat. Then he turned back to face the group through the glass once more. “These folks need something for the six o’clock news, don’t you think?” he said. “Time for a press conference.”

“A press conference?” Tad had never attended a press conference in his life, let alone been part of one. “How do you do that?”

Sheriff Hazen barked a laugh, briefly displaying a rack of yellow teeth. “We go outside and answer questions.” He went to the old glass door, unlocked it, and stuck his head out.

“How you folks all doing?”

This was greeted by a surge and an incomprehensible welter of shouted questions.

Sheriff Hazen held up an arm, palm toward the crowd. He was still wearing his short-sleeved uniform from the night before, and the gesture exposed a half-moon of sweat that reached halfway to his waist. He was short, but short like a bulldog, and there was something about him that commanded respect. Tad had seen the sheriff loosen the teeth of a suspect almost twice his size.Never get in a fight with anyone under five foot six, he told himself. The crowd fell silent.

The sheriff dropped his arm. “My deputy, Tad Franklin, and myself will give a statement and answer questions. Let’s all behave like civilized people. What say?”

The crowd shuffled in place. Lights went on, mikes were boomed forward; there was the clicking of cassette recorders, the fluttering of camera shutters.

“Tad, let’s give these good folks some fresh coffee.”

Tad looked at Hazen. Hazen winked.

Tad grabbed the pot, peered in, gave it a quick shake. Then he reached for a stack of styrofoam cups, stepped out the door, and began doling out the coffee. There were some sips, a few furtive sniffs.

“Drink up!” Hazen cried good-naturedly. “Never let it be said we’re not hospitable folks here in Medicine Creek!”

There was a general shuffling, more sipping, a few covert glances into the cups. The coffee seemed to have subdued, if not broken, the spirit of the group. Though it was barely dawn, the heat was already oppressive. There was no place to put down the cups, no trash can to drop them in. And a sign outside the door to the sheriff’s office readNO LITTERING: $100 FINE .

Hazen adjusted his hat, then stepped out onto the sidewalk. He looked around, his shoulders squared to the crowd as the cameras rolled. He then addressed the group. He told in dry police language of finding the body; he described the clearing, the body, and the spitted birds. It was pretty vivid stuff, but the sheriff managed to handle it matter-of-factly, throwing in a folksy comment here and there, in a way that neutralized most of the gruesome aspects. It amazed Tad how easygoing, even charming, his boss could be when he wanted to.

In the space of two minutes he was finished. A flurry of shouted questions followed Hazen’s speech.

“One at a time; raise your hands,” the sheriff said. “It’s just like in school. Anyone who shouts goes last. You begin.” And he pointed to a reporter in shirtsleeves who was enormously, spectacularly fat.

“Are there any leads or suspects?”

“We’ve got some very interesting things we’re following up. I can’t say any more than that.”

Tad looked at him with surprise. What things? So far, they had nothing.

“You,” said Hazen, pointing to another.

“Was the murder victim local?”

“No. We’re working on identification, but she wasn’t a local. I know everyone around these parts, I can vouch for that myself.”

“Do you know how the woman was killed?”

“Hopefully, the medical examiner will tell us that. The body was sent up to Garden City. When we get the autopsy results, you’ll be the first to know.”

The early morning Greyhound, northbound from Amarillo, came rumbling up the main street, stopping in front of Maisie’s Diner with a chuff of brakes. Tad was surprised; the bus almost never stopped. Whoever came or went from Medicine Creek, Kansas, anymore? Maybe it was more reporters, too cheap to provide their own transportation.

“The lady, you, there. Your question, ma’am?”

A tough-looking redhead poked a shotgun mike at Hazen. “What law enforcement agencies are involved?”

“The state police have been a big help, but since the body was found in Medicine Creek township, it’s our case.”

“FBI?”

“The FBI doesn’t get involved in local murder cases and we don’t expect them to take an interest in this one. We’ve put some pretty heavy-duty police resources on the case, including the special crime lab and homicide squad up in Dodge City, who spent the whole night at the site. Don’t you all worry that just Tad and me are going to try to solve this on our own. We’re good at hollering, and we’re going to holler loud enough to get what we need to solve this case, and quick, too.” He smiled and winked.

There was a roar as the bus pulled away in a cloud of dust and diesel fumes. The sound temporarily drowned out the press conference. As the fumes cleared, they revealed a lone figure standing on the sidewalk, small leather valise sitting on the ground next to him. He was tall and thin, dressed in dead black, and in the early morning light he cast a shadow that stretched halfway across downtown Medicine Creek.

Tad glanced at the sheriff and noticed that he’d seen the man, too.

The man was staring across the street at them.

Hazen roused himself. “Next question,” he said briskly. “Smitty?” He pointed to the well-lined face of Smit Ludwig, the owner-reporter of theCry County Courier, the local paper.

“Any explanation for the, ah, the strange tableau? You got any theory on the arrangement of the body and the various appurtenances?”

“Appurtenances?”

“Yeah. You know, the stuff around it.”

“Not yet.”

“Could this be some kind of satanic cult?”

Tad glanced involuntarily across the street. The black-clad figure had lifted his bag but was still standing there, motionless.

“That’s a possibility we’ll be looking into, for sure,” said Hazen. “We’re obviously dealing with a very sick individual.”

Now Tad noticed the man in black taking a step into the street, strolling nonchalantly toward them. Who could he be? He certainly didn’t look like a reporter, policeman, or traveling salesman. In fact, what he most looked like to Tad Franklin was a murderer. Maybethe murderer.

He noticed that the sheriff was also staring, and even some members of the press had turned around.

Hazen fished a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. He resumed talking. “Whether it’s a cult, or a lunatic, or whatever, I just want to emphasize—and Smitty, this will be important for your readers—that we’re dealing with out-of-town, perhaps out-of-state, elements.”

Hazen’s voice faltered as the figure in black stopped at the edge of the crowd. It was already well into the nineties but the man was dressed in black worsted wool, with a starched white shirt and a silk tie knotted tightly at his neck. Yet he looked as cool and crisp as a cucumber. The gaze from his silvery eyes was directed piercingly at Hazen.

A hush fell.

The black-clad figure now spoke. The voice wasn’t loud, but somehow it seemed to dominate the crowd. “An unwarranted assumption,” the figure said.

There was a silence.

Hazen took his time to open the pack, shake out a butt, and slide it into his mouth. He said nothing.

Tad stared at the man. He seemed so thin—his skin almost transparent, his blue-gray eyes so light they looked luminous—that he could have been a reanimated corpse, a vampire fresh from the grave. If he wasn’t the walking dead, he could just as easily have passed for an undertaker; either way, there was definitely the look of death about the man. Tad felt uneasy.

His cigarette lit, Hazen finally spoke. “I don’t recall asking your opinion, mister.”

The man strolled into the crowd, which parted silently, and halted ten feet from the sheriff. The man spoke again, in the mellifluous accent of the deepest South. “The killer works in the blackest night with no moon. He appears and disappears without a trace. Are you really so sure, Sheriff Hazen, that he is not from Medicine Creek?”

Hazen took a long drag, blew a stream of blue smoke in the general direction of the man, and said, “And what makes you such an expert?”

“That is a question best answered in your office, Sheriff.” The man held out his hand, indicating that the sheriff and Tad should precede him into the little headquarters.

“Who the hell are you, inviting me into my own damn office?” Hazen said, beginning to lose his temper.

The man looked mildly at him and answered in the same low, honeyed voice. “May I suggest, Sheriff Hazen, that that equally excellent question is also best answered in private? I mean, foryour sake.”

Before Sheriff Hazen could respond, the man turned to the reporters. “I regret to inform you this press conference is now over.”

To Tad’s absolute amazement, they turned and began shuffling away.

Four

The sheriff took up position behind his battered Formica desk. Tad sat down in his usual chair with a tingling sense of anticipation. The stranger in black placed his bag by the door and the sheriff offered him the hard wooden visitor’s chair that he claimed would break any suspect in five minutes. The man settled into it with one smooth elegant motion, flung one leg over the other, leaned back, and looked at the sheriff.

“Get our guest a cup of coffee,” said Hazen, with a faint smile.

There was enough left in the pot for half a cup, which was quickly passed.

The man accepted it, glanced at it, set it down on the table, and smiled. “You are most kind, but I am a tea drinker myself. Green tea.”

Tad wondered if the man was weird, or possibly a faggot.

Hazen cleared his throat, frowned, shifted his squat body. “Okay, mister, this better be good.”

Almost languidly, the man removed a leather wallet from his jacket pocket, let it fall open. Hazen leaned forward, scrutinized it, sat back with a sigh.

“FBI. Shit-fire. Might have known.” He glanced over at Tad. “We’re running with the big boys now.”

“Yes, sir,” said Tad. Although he’d never actually met an FBI agent before, this guy looked exactly the opposite of what he thought an FBI agent should look like.

“All right, Mr., ah—”

“Special Agent Pendergast.”

“Pendergast. Pendergast. I’m bad with names.” Hazen lit another cigarette, sucked on it hard. “You here on the crows murder?” The words came out with a cloud of smoke.

“Yes.”

“And is this official?”

“No.”

“So it’s just you.”

“So far.”

“What office are you out of?”

“Technically, I’m with the New Orleans office. But I operate under, shall we say, a special arrangement.” He smiled pleasantly.

Hazen grunted. “How long will you be staying?”

“For the duration.”

Tad wondered,For the duration of what?

Pendergast turned his pale eyes on Tad and smiled. “Of my vacation.”

Tad was speechless. Did the guy read his mind?

“Yourvacation? ” Hazen shifted again. “Pendergast, this is irregular. I’m going to need some kind of official authorization from the local field office. We’re not running a Club Med for Quantico here.”

There was a silence. Then the man named Pendergast said, “Surely you don’t want me hereofficially, Sheriff Hazen?”

When this was greeted with silence, Pendergast continued pleasantly. “I will not interfere with your investigation. I will operate independently. I will consult with you regularly and share information with you when appropriate. Any, ah, ‘collars’ will be yours. I neither seek nor will I accept credit. All I ask are the usual law enforcement courtesies.”

Sheriff Hazen frowned, scratched, frowned again. “As for the collar, frankly I don’t give a damn who gets the credit. I just want to catch the son of a bitch.”

Pendergast nodded approvingly.

Hazen took a drag, exhaled, took another. He was thinking. “All right, then, Pendergast, take your busman’s holiday here. Just keep a low profile and don’t talk to the press.”

“Naturally not.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I was hoping to receive the benefit of your advice.”

The sheriff barked a laugh. “There’s only one place in town, and that’s the Kraus place. Kraus’s Kaverns. You passed it on the way in, big old house set out in the corn about a mile west of town. Old Winifred Kraus rents out rooms on the top floor. Not that she has many takers these days. And she’ll talk you into a tour of her cave. You’ll probably be the first visitor she’s had in a year.”

“Thank you,” said Pendergast, rising and picking up his bag.

Hazen’s eyes followed the movement. “Got a car?”

“No.”

The sheriff’s lip curled slightly. “I’ll give you a lift.”

“I enjoy walking.”

“You sure? It’s almost a hundred degrees out there. And I wouldn’t exactly call that suit of yours appropriate dress for these parts.” Hazen was grinning now.

“Is it indeed that hot?” The FBI agent turned and reached for the door, but Hazen had one more question.

“How did you learn about the murder so quick?”

Pendergast paused. “By arrangement, I have someone at the Bureau watching the cable and e-mail traffic of local law enforcement agencies. Whenever a crime within a certain category occurs, I’m notified of it immediately. But as I said, I’m here for personal reasons, having recently concluded a rather strenuous investigation back east. It’s simply that I’m intrigued by the rather, ah, interesting nature of this particular case.”

Something in the way the man said “interesting” raised the hairs on the back of Tad’s neck.

“And just what ‘certain category’ are we talking about here?” The sarcasm was creeping back into the sheriff’s voice.

“Serial homicide.”

“Funny, I’ve only seen one murder so far.”

The figure gradually turned back. His cool gray eyes settled on Sheriff Hazen. In a very low voice he said, “So far.”

Five

Winifred Kraus paused in her cross-stitch to gaze at the very strange sight out her parlor window. She felt vaguely frightened. A tall man in black was walking down the middle of the road, carrying a leather valise. He was several hundred yards away, but Winifred Kraus had sharp eyes and she could see that he was ghostly-looking, thin and insubstantial in the bright summer light. She was frightened because she remembered, as a child many years ago, her father telling her that this was the way death would arrive; that it would happen when she least expected it: just a man strolling down the road, coming up the steps and knocking on the door. A man dressed in black. And when you looked down at his feet, instead of shoes you’d see cloven hooves, and then you’d smell the brimstone and fire and that would be it and you’d be dragged screaming into hell.

The man was approaching with long, cool strides, his shadow eating up the road before him. Winifred Kraus told herself she was being silly, that it was just a story, and that death didn’t carry a valise anyway. But why would anyone be dressed in black at this time of year? Not even Pastor Wilbur wore black in this heat. And this man wasn’t just wearing black, but a black suit, jacket and all. Was he selling something? But then where was his car? Nobody walked on the Cry County Road—no one. At least not since she was a little girl, before the war, when the drifters used to come through in the early spring, heading for the fields of California.

The man had paused at the spot where her rutted and dusty drive met the macadam of the road. He looked up at the house, right at the parlor it seemed, and Winifred automatically laid aside her cross-stitch. Now he was stepping into her lane. He was coming to the house. He was actually coming to the house. And his hair was so white, his skin so pale, his suit so black . . .

There was the low rap of the doorknocker. Winifred’s hand flew to her mouth. Should she answer it? Should she wait for him to go away?Would he go away?

She waited.

The knock came again, more insistent.

Winifred frowned. She was being an old silly. Taking a deep breath, she rose from the chair, walked across the parlor into the foyer, unlocked the door, and opened it a crack.

“Miss Kraus?”

“Yes?”

The man actually bowed. “You aren’t by chance the Miss Winifred Kraus who offers lodging to travelers? And, I’m given to understand, some of the most excellent home cooking in Cry County, Kansas?”

“Why, yes.” Winifred Kraus opened the door a little wider, delighted to find a polite gentleman instead of Death.

“My name is Pendergast.” He offered his hand, and after a moment Winifred took it. It was surprisingly cool and dry.

“You gave me quite a start, walking up the road like that. Nobody walks anymore.”

“I came by bus.”

Abruptly remembering her manners, Winifred opened the door wider and stepped aside. “I’m sorry, do come in. Would you like some iced tea? You must be dreadfully hot in that suit. Oh, forgive me, there hasn’t been a death in your family—?”

“Iced tea would be lovely, thank you.”

Winifred, feeling a strangely pleasant confusion, bustled back into the pantry, poured a glass over ice, added a fresh sprig of mint from the planter in her windowsill, placed the glass on a silver tray, and returned.

“There you are, Mr. Pendergast.”

“You are too kind.”

“Won’t you sit down?”

They sat in the parlor. The polite man crossed his legs and sipped his tea. Close up, Winifred could see he was younger than she’d first thought: what she had taken to be white hair was instead remarkably blond. He was quite handsome and elegant, too, if one didn’t mind such pale eyes and skin.

“I rent three rooms upstairs,” she explained. “You have to share the bath, I’m afraid, but there’s nobody presently—”

“I’ll take the entire floor. Would five hundred dollars a week be acceptable?”

“Oh, my.”

“I will pay extra, naturally, for my board. I’ll only be requiring a light breakfast and the occasional afternoon tea and dinner.”

“That’s rather more money than I usually ask. I wouldn’t feel right—”

The man smiled. “I fear you may find me a difficult boarder.”

“Well, then—”

He sipped his tea, placed it on the coaster, and leaned forward. “I don’t want to shock you, Miss Kraus, but I do need to tell you who I am and why I’m here. You asked me if there has been a death. In fact, as you probably know, there has. I am a special agent for the FBI investigating the murder in Medicine Creek.” He flashed his badge, as a courtesy.

“A murder!”

“You haven’t heard? On the far side of town, discovered last night. You will no doubt read all about it in tomorrow morning’s paper.”

“Oh, dear me.” Winifred Kraus felt dazed. “A murder? In Medicine Creek?”

“I’m sorry. Does that change your mind about taking me in as a lodger? I’ll understand if it does.”

“Oh no, Mr. Pendergast. Not at all. I’d feel much safer, really, having you here. A murder, how very dreadful . . .” She shuddered. “Who on earth—?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you as a source of information on the case. And now, may I examine my rooms? There’s no need to show me upstairs.”

“Of course.” Winifred Kraus smiled a little breathlessly as she watched the man climb the stairs. Such a polite young gentleman, and so . . . Then she remembered the murder. She rose and went to the telephone. Perhaps Jenny Parker would know more. She picked up and dialed the number, shaking her head.

After a swift inspection, Pendergast chose the smallest room—the one in the rear—and laid his valise on its princess bed. On the bureau stood a swivel mirror, in front of which was set a china washbasin and pitcher. He pulled open the top drawer, releasing the faint scent of rosewater and oak. The drawer was lined with shellacked newspapers from the early 1900s, advertising farming equipment. In a corner stood a chamber pot, the lid placed upside down in the old-fashioned way. The walls were papered in a Victorian flowered print, much faded; the moldings were painted green and the ceiling was beadboard. The curtains were hand-embroidered lace.

He returned to the bed, laid one hand lightly upon the bedspread. It had been needlepointed in a pattern of roses and peonies. He examined the stitching closely. Hand done. It had taken someone—no doubt Miss Kraus herself—at least a year.

Pendergast remained motionless, staring at the needlepoint, breathing the antique air of the bedroom. Then, straightening, he walked across the creaking floorboards to the old rippled window and looked out.

To his right and down, set back from the house, Pendergast could see the shabby low metal roof of the gift shop. Behind, a cracked cement walkway ran down to a depression leading to a rupture in the earth, where it disappeared into darkness. Beside the gift shop, a peeling sign read:

KRAUS’S KAVERNS

THEBIGGESTCAVE INCRYCOUNTY, KANSAS

MAKE AWISH IN THEINFINITYPOOL

PLAY THEKRYSTALCHIMES

SEE THEBOTTOMLESSPIT

TOURS AT10:00AND 2:00 DAILY

TOURGROUPS, BUSESWELCOME

He tried the window, found it opened with surprising ease. A muggy flow of air came into the room, carrying with it the smell of dust and crops. The lace curtains bellied. Outside, the great sea of yellow corn stretched to the horizon, broken only by distant lines of trees along the bottomlands of Medicine Creek. A flock of crows rose out of the endless corn and fell back in, feasting on the ripe ears. Thunderheads piled up to the west. The silence was as unending as the landscape.

In the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, Winifred Kraus replaced the telephone in its cradle. Jenny Parker wasn’t in. Perhaps she was in town, getting news. She’d try calling again after lunch.

She wondered if she should bring the nice man, Mr. Pendergast, a second glass of tea. Southerners were so well-bred; she believed they drank a lot of iced tea on big shady verandas and such. It was such a hot day and he’d walked from town. She went into the kitchen, poured a fresh glass, began mounting the stairs. But no—she should let him unpack, have his privacy. What was she thinking? News of the murder had her all in a tizzy.

She turned to descend the staircase. But then she stopped again. A voice had sounded from upstairs: Pendergast had said something. Was he speaking to her?

Winifred cocked her head, listening. For a moment, the house was still. Then Pendergast spoke again, and this time, she made out what he was saying.

“Excellent,” came the dulcet voice. “Most excellent.”

Six

The road was as straight as the nineteenth-century surveyor’s original line of sight, and it was flanked by two unmoving walls of corn. Special Agent Pendergast walked down the shimmering road, his polished black oxfords—handmade by John Lobb of St. James’s Street, London—leaving a row of faint impressions in the sticky asphalt.

Ahead, he could see where heavy vehicles had come in and out of the cornfield, leaving brown tracks and clots of dirt on the road. Approaching, he turned to make his way along the crude access road that had been bulldozed into the cornfield to the murder site. His feet sank into the powdery earth.

Where the access widened into a makeshift parking lot a state trooper cruiser sat, motor running, water dripping into the dirt from the AC. Yellow crime-scene tape blocked off the site, wound around tall stakes hammered into the earth. Inside the cruiser a trooper sat, reading a paperback.

Pendergast approached and rapped on the window. The man gave a start, then quickly recovered. Hastily putting the paperback aside, he got out and faced Pendergast, squinting in the hot sun, hooking his arms into his belt loops. A river of cool air flowed out.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded. The trooper’s arms were covered with fine red hair and the leather of his boots creaked as he moved.

Pendergast displayed his shield.

“Oh. FBI. Sorry.” The trooper looked around. “Where’s your car?”

“I’d like to take a look at the scene,” Pendergast replied.

“Be my guest. There’s nothing left, though. It’s all been carted away.”

“No matter. Please don’t allow me to disturb you further.”

“Quite all right, sir.” The trooper, with no little relief, climbed back into his cruiser and closed the door.

Pendergast moved past the car and gingerly ducked beneath the yellow tape. He advanced the last twenty yards to the original clearing. Here he paused, surveying the site. As the trooper had said, it was empty: nothing but dirt, crushed corn stubble, and thousands of footprints. There was a stain in the very center of the clearing, not particularly large.

For several minutes, Pendergast remained motionless beneath the merciless sun. Only his eyes moved as they took in the clearing. Then he reached into his suit jacket and removed a photograph of the body in situ, from close up. Another photograph showed the overall site, the spitted birds and the forest of sticks. Pendergast rapidly reconstructed the original scene in his mind and held it there, examining it.

He remained motionless for a quarter of an hour. Then at last he returned the photographs to his jacket and took a step forward, examining the stub of a cornstalk that lay at his feet. It had been broken, not cut. Moving forward, he picked up a second stub, then a third and a fourth. All broken. Pendergast returned to the edge of the clearing, selected a cornstalk that still stood. He knelt down and grasped it at the bottom, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not break it.

He ventured farther into the clearing itself. It hardly mattered where he put his feet—it could not be more disturbed. He moved slowly, crouching now and then to examine something in the riot of corn and dust. Once in a while he would pick up something with a pair of tweezers he’d removed from a suit pocket, look at it, and release it. For almost an hour he moved across the clearing in this fashion, bent over in the baking sun.

He kept nothing.

At last, he reached the far end of the clearing and moved into the dense corn rows themselves. There had been a few pieces of torn fabric found clinging to some of the cornstalks, and it wasn’t difficult to find the tags marking their locations.

Pendergast moved down the row, but there were so many footprints and dog prints that it was hopeless to try to follow anything. The report said that two different sets of bloodhounds had been put on the track but had refused to follow it.

He paused in the forest of corn to slip a tube of glossy paper from his pocket and unroll it. It was a photograph, taken at some unidentified point before the crime, showing the field from the air. The corn rows did not go in straight lines, as it seemed at ground level, but rather curved to follow the topography of the landscape, creating elliptical, mazelike paths. He located the row in which he stood and carefully traced its curve. Then, with difficulty, he forced his way into the next corn row, then the next. Once again he examined the aerial photograph, tracing the path of the current row. Much better: it went for a long distance across flat ground and then dropped down toward the bottomland near Medicine Creek, at a point where the creek looped back toward the town.

It was, in fact, the only row that actually opened onto the creek.

Pendergast walked down the row, heading away from the murder site. The heat had settled into the corn and, in the absence of wind, was baking everything into place. As the land gradually declined toward the creek, a monotonous landscape of corn revealed itself, stretching to an ever more remote horizon, oppressive in its landlocked vastness. The distant creek, with its clumps of scraggly, half-dead cottonwoods, only added to the sense of desolation. As Pendergast walked he would stop occasionally to examine a cornstalk or a piece of ground. Once in a while his tweezers would pluck something up, only to drop it again.

At long last, the corn row opened onto the bottomland along the creek. Where the cornstalks and field dirt gave way to sandy embankments, Pendergast stopped and glanced downward.

There were footprints, here in the firm sand: they were bare, and deeply impressed. Pendergast knelt, touched one print. It was from a size eleven foot. The killer had been carrying a heavy body.

Pendergast rose and followed the tracks to where they entered the creek. There were no corresponding tracks exiting on the far side. He walked up and down the creek, looking for a point of emergence, and found nothing.

The killer had walked for a long distance in the creek bed itself.

Pendergast returned to the corn row and began making his way back to the clearing. The town of Medicine Creek was like an island in a sea: it would be difficult to come or go without being seen. Everyone knew everybody and a hundred pairs of keen old eyes, staring from porches and windows, watched the comings and goings of cars. The only way an outsider could arrive at the town unseen was through this sea of corn—twenty miles from the next town.

His first instincts had been confirmed: the killer was probably among them, here, in Medicine Creek.

Seven

Harry Hoch, the second-best-performing farm equipment salesman in Cry County, rarely picked up hitchhikers anymore, but in this case he thought he’d make an exception. After all, the gentleman dressed in mourning was standing so sadly by the side of the road. Hoch’s own mother had been taken just the year before and he knew what it was like.

He pulled his Ford Taurus into the gravel just beyond the man and gave a little toot. He lowered his window as the man strolled up.

“Where you headed, friend?” Hoch asked.

“To the hospital in Garden City, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

Harry winced. The poor guy. The county morgue was in the basement. Must’ve just happened. “No trouble at all. Get on in.”

He cast a furtive glance as his passenger stepped into the car. With that pale skin, he was going to catch a wicked sunburn if he wasn’t careful. And he sure wasn’t from around these parts; not with that accent, he wasn’t.

“My name’s Hoch. Harry Hoch.” He held out his hand.

A cool, dry hand slipped into his. “Delighted to make your acquaintance. My name is Pendergast.”

Hoch waited for the first name, but it never came. He released the hand and reached over to crank up the AC. A frigid blast came from the vents. It was like hell out there. He put his car into gear and pressed the accelerator, shooting back onto the road and picking up speed.

“Hot enough for you, Pendergast?” said Hoch after a moment.

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Hoch, I find the heat agrees with me.”

“Yeah, okay, but a hundred degrees with one hundred percent humidity?” Hoch laughed. “You could fry an egg right there on the hood of my car.”

“I have no doubt of it.”

There was a silence.Strange fellow, Hoch thought.

His passenger didn’t seem inclined toward small talk, so Hoch just shut up and drove. The silver Taurus flew along the arrow-straight road at ninety, leaving a wake of swaying, trembling corn behind. One mile looked pretty much like the next and there were never any cops in this area. Harry liked to move fast on these lonely secondary roads. Besides, he felt good: he had just sold a Case 2388 Combine with a six-row corn head and chaff-spreader bin extension for $120,000. That was his third for the season and it had earned him a trip to San Diego for a weekend of booze and bumping uglies at the Del Mar Blu. Hot damn.

At one point the road widened briefly, and the car shot past a group of shabby ruined houses; a row of two-story brick buildings, gaunt and roofless; and a grain silo, its upper half listing over a weed-choked railroad siding.

“What is this?” Pendergast asked.

“Crater, Kansas. Or I should say,was Crater, Kansas. Used to be a regular town thirty years back. But it just dried up, like so many others. Always happens the same way, too. First, the school goes. Then the grocer’s. Then you lose the farmers’ supply. Last thing you lose is your zip code. No, that’s not quite right; last to go is the saloon. It’s happening all over Cry County. Yesterday, Crater. Tomorrow, DePew. The day after that, who knows? Maybe Medicine Creek.”

“The sociology of a dying town must be rather complex,” said Pendergast.

Hoch wasn’t sure what Pendergast was getting at and didn’t risk a reply.

In less than an hour, the grain elevators of Garden City began rising over the horizon like bulbous skyscrapers, the town itself low and flat and invisible.

“I’ll drop you right off at the hospital, Mr. Pendergast,” said Hoch. “And hey, I’m sorry about whoever it was that passed. I hope it wasn’t an untimely death.”

As the orange-brick hospital appeared, surrounded by a sea of shimmering cars, Pendergast replied, “Time is a storm in which we are all lost, Mr. Hoch.”

It took Hoch another half an hour of fast driving, with the windows down, to get the creeps out of his system.

Sheriff Hazen, wearing a surgical smock that was two sizes too big and a paper hat that made him feel ridiculous, stood and looked down at the gurney. A toe tag was dangling from the right foot, but he didn’t need to read it. Mrs. Sheila Swegg, twice divorced, no children, thirty-two years of age, of number 40A Whispering Meadows Trailer Estate, Bromide, Oklahoma.

White fucking trash.

There she was lying on the steel table, butterflied like a pork chop, organs neatly stacked beside her. The top of her head was off and her brain sat in a nearby pan. The smell of putrefaction was overwhelming; she’d been lying in that hot cornfield for a good twenty-four hours before he’d gotten there. The M.E., a bright, bushy-tailed young fellow named McHyde, was bent over her, cheerfully slicing and dicing away and talking up a storm of medical jargon into an overhanging mike. Give him five more years, thought Hazen, and the biting acids of reality will strip off some of that cheerful polish.

McHyde had moved from her torso up to her throat and was cutting away with little zipping motions of his right hand. Some of the cuts made a crackling sound that Hazen did not like at all. He fished in his pocket for a cigarette, remembered the no smoking sign, grabbed a nearby jar of Mentholatum instead and dabbed some beneath each nostril, and focused his mind elsewhere: Jayne Mansfield inThe Girl Can’t Help It, polka night at the Deeper Elks Lodge, Sundays with a six-pack fishing at Hamilton Lake State Park. Anything but the remains of Sheila Swegg.

“Hmm,” said the M.E. “Will you look at that.”

As quickly as they had come, the pleasant thoughts went away. “What?” Hazen asked.

“As I suspected. Broken hyoid bone. Make thatshattered hyoid bone. There were very faint bruises on her neck and this confirms it.”

“Strangled?”

“Not exactly. Neck grasped and broken with a single twist. She died of a severed spinal column before she could strangle.”

Cut, cut, cut.

“The force was tremendous. Look at this. The cricoid cartilage is completely separated from both the thyroid cartilage and the lamina. I’ve never seen anything like it. The tracheal rings are crushed. The cervical vertebrae are broken in, let me see, four places.Five places.”

“I believe you, Doc,” Hazen said, his eyes averted.

The doctor looked up, smiled. “First autopsy, eh?”

Hazen felt a swell of irritation. “Of course not,” he lied.

“Hard to get used to, I know. Especially when they start to get a little ripe. Summertime’s not good. Not good at all.”

As the doctor returned to his work, Hazen became aware of a presence behind him. He turned and jumped: there was Pendergast, materialized out of nowhere.

The doctor looked up, surprised. “Sir? Excuse me, we’re—”

“He’s okay,” said Hazen. “He’s FBI, working on the case under me. Special Agent Pendergast.”

“Special Agent Pendergast,” the M.E. said, with a new edge to his voice, “would you mind identifying yourself for the tape recorder? And throw on some scrubs and a mask, if you don’t mind. You can find them over there.”

“Of course.”

Hazen wondered how the hell Pendergast had managed it, without a car and all. But he wasn’t sorry to see him. It occurred to Sheriff Hazen, not for the first time, that having Pendergast on the case could be useful. As long as the man kept with the program.

Pendergast returned a moment later, having expertly slid into the scrubs. The doctor was now working on the victim’s face, peeling it away in thick rubbery flaps and clamping them back. It had been bad enough before, when just the nose, lips, and ears had been missing. Hazen stared at the bands of muscle, the white of the ligaments, the slender yellow lines of fat. God, it was gruesome.

“May I?” Pendergast asked.

The doctor stepped back and Pendergast leaned over, not three inches from the stinking, swollen, featureless face. He stared at the places, torn and bloody, where the nose and lips had once been. The scalp had been peeled back but Hazen could still see the bleached-blonde hair with its black roots. Then Pendergast stepped back. “The amputations appear to have been performed with a crude implement.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows. “A crude implement?”

“I would suggest a superficial microscopic examination with a comprehensive series of photos. And part of the scalp has been ripped off, as you no doubt have noted.”

“Right. Good.” The doctor sounded irritated at the advice.

Hazen had to smile. The Agent was showing up the Doc. But if Pendergast were right about this . . . He stopped himself from asking just what kind of “crude implement” Pendergast had in mind. He felt his gorge rising and immediately turned his mind back to Jayne Mansfield.

“Any sign of the lips, ears, and nose?” Pendergast asked.

“The police couldn’t find them,” said the M.E.

Hazen felt a surge of annoyance at this implied criticism. The M.E. had been at it all afternoon, making one snide comment after another about the shortcomings of Hazen’s report and, by extension, his police work. Fact was, by the time he stepped in, the state police had already royally fucked it up.

The doctor resumed cutting away at the earthly remains of Sheila Swegg. Pendergast began to circle the table, looking first at one organ and then at another, hands behind his back, like he was viewing sculpture in a museum. He got to the toe tag.

“I see you have an ID.”

“Yeah,” said Hazen with a cough. “Some cracker from the Oklahoma panhandle. We found her car, one of those Korean rice-burners, hidden in the corn five miles the other side of Medicine Creek.”

“Any idea what she was doing there?”

“We found a bunch of shovels and picks in the trunk. A relic hunter—they’re always sneaking around the Mounds, digging for old Indian artifacts.”

“This is a common occurrence, then?”

“Not around here so much, but yeah, some people make a living at it, driving from state to state looting old sites for stuff to sell at flea markets. Every mound, battleground, and boot hill from Dodge City to California’s been hit by them. They got no shame.”

“Does she have a record?”

“Petty shit. Credit card fraud, selling phony crap on eBay, nickel-and-dime insurance scams.”

“You’ve made excellent progress, Sheriff.”

Hazen nodded curtly.

“Well,” said the doctor. “We’re just about done here. Do either of you have any questions or special requests?”

“Yes,” said Pendergast. “The birds and the arrows.”

“In the fridge. You want to see them?”

“If you please.”

The doctor disappeared and came back a moment later wheeling another gurney, on which the crows had been neatly laid out in rows, each with its own toe tag.Or claw tag, maybe, Hazen thought. Next to them was a pile of arrows on which the birds had been skewered.

Pendergast bent over them, reached out, paused. “May I?”

“Be my guest.”

He picked up an arrow in a latex-gloved hand, turning it around slowly.

“You can pick those replicas up at almost any gas station between here and Denver,” said McHyde.

Pendergast continued turning it in the light. Then he said, “This is no replica, Doctor. This is a genuine Southern Cheyenne cane arrow, feathered with a bald eagle primary and tipped with a type II Plains Cimarron point in Alibates chert. I’d date it between 1850 and 1870.”

Hazen stared at Pendergast as he placed the arrow back down. “All of them?” he said.

“All of them. It was evidently a matched set. A collection of original arrows like this, in this superb condition, would fetch at least ten thousand dollars at Sotheby’s.”

In the ensuing silence, Pendergast picked up a bird and turned it gently around, palpating it. “Completely crushed, it seems.”

“That right?” The doctor’s voice had grown wary, irritated.

“Yes. Every bone broken. It’s a sack of mush.” He glanced up. “Youare planning to autopsy the birds, are you not, Doctor?”

The doctor gave a snort. “All two dozen of them? We’ll do one or two.”

“I would strongly recommend doing them all.”

The doctor stepped back from the gurney. “Agent Pendergast, I fail to see what purpose that would serve, except to waste my time and the taxpayers’ money. As I said, we will do one or two.”

Pendergast laid the bird back on the tray and picked up another, palpated it, and then another, before finally selecting one. Then, before the doctor could object, Pendergast plucked a scalpel from the surgical tray and made a long, deliberate stroke across the bird’s underside.

The doctor found his voice. “Just a minute! You’re not authorized—”

Hazen watched as Pendergast exposed the crow’s stomach. The agent paused briefly, scalpel poised.

“Put that bird down this instant,” said the doctor angrily.

With one swift stroke, Pendergast opened the bird’s stomach. There, pushing out from among rotting kernels of corn, was a misshapen, pinkish thing that Hazen abruptly realized was a human nose. His stomach lurched again.

Pendergast laid the crow back down on the tray. “I will leave the finding of the lips and ears in your capable hands, Doctor,” he said, pulling off the gloves, mask, and scrubs. “Please send a copy of your final report to me, care of Sheriff Hazen.”

And he walked out of the room without a backward glance.

Eight

Smit Ludwig sat at the counter of Maisie’s Diner, plate of cold meatloaf sitting barely touched in front of him, stirring his cup of coffee. It was six o’clock and he had a story due and he wasn’t getting anywhere with it. Maybe, he thought, the story was too big. Maybe he wasn’t up to it. Maybe, in all the years of writing about 4-H fairs and the occasional car accident, he’d lost the edge. Maybe he never had the edge to begin with.

He stirred and stirred.

Through the plate glass front of Maisie’s, Ludwig could see the closed door of the sheriff’s office across the street. God, how that pugnacious, butt-ignorant sheriff got under his skin. Ludwig hadn’t been able to pry any information from him. And the state police had told him nothing either. He couldn’t even get the M.E. on the phone. How the hell did they do it at theNew York Times ? No doubt because they were big and powerful, and not to talk to them was worse than talking to them.

He looked back down at his coffee. Problem was, nobody was scared of theCry County Courier. It was more like a local joke. How could they respect him as a reporter when he came by the next day selling ad space, and came by again the day after at the wheel of the delivery truck because his driver, Pol Ketchum, had to take his wife to Dodge City for chemotherapy?

Here was the biggest story of his career and he had nothing for tomorrow’s paper. Nothing. Course, he could always recycle what he had reported yesterday, work a new angle, hint about leads, play up the “no comments,” and produce passable copy. But the savagery and strangeness of the crime had aroused sleepy Medicine Creek, and people wanted more. And a part of him wanted to rise to the occasion, to do well by the story. A part of him wanted—now that he finally had the chance—to be a real journalist.

He smiled at himself and shook his head. Here he was, wife passed away, daughter long gone to greener pastures on the West Coast, paper losing money, and him nearing sixty-five.A real journalist. It was a little late for that. What was he thinking?

Ludwig noticed that the low susurrus of conversation in the diner had suddenly faltered. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a black form hovering outside Maisie’s. It was that FBI agent, examining the menu taped to the glass. Then the figure moved to the door and pushed it open. The little bell tinkled.

Smit Ludwig rotated slightly on his stool. Maybe all was not lost. Maybe he could get something out of the agent. It seemed unlikely, but it was worth a try. Even the tiniest crumb would do. Smit Ludwig could do wonders with a crumb.

The FBI man—what was his name?—slid into one of the banquettes and Maisie shoved off to get his order. There was no problem hearing Maisie—her booming voice carried into every corner of the diner—but he had to strain to hear the agent’s soft replies.

“The blue plate special today,” Maisie boomed out, “is meatloaf.”

“Of course,” the FBI man said. “Meatloaf.”

“Yup. Meatloaf and white gravy, mashed garlic potatoes—homemade, not out of the box—and green beans on the side. Green beans have iron, and you could certainly use some iron.” Ludwig had to suppress a smile. Maisie was already starting in on the poor stranger. If he didn’t gain ten pounds by the time he left, it wouldn’t be for lack of browbeating.

“I see you have pork and beans,” the man said. “What type of legumes, precisely, do you employ?”

“Legumes? No legumes inour pork and beans! Only fresh ingredients. I start with the best red beans, toss in some fatback, molasses, spices, then I cook ’em overnight, with the heat on low as a whisper. The beans just melt in your mouth. One of our most popular dishes. Pork and beans, then?”

This was starting to become entertaining. Ludwig swiveled a bit farther to get a better view of the action.

“Fatback, my goodness, yes, how nice . . .” the agent repeated vaguely. “And the fried chicken?”

“Double-dipped in Maisie’s special corn batter, deep fried to a golden crisp, smothered in white gravy. Goes great with our special sweet-potato fries.”

The man looked from the menu to Maisie and back again, a strangely blank expression on his face. Then he spoke. “You must have access to high-quality Angus beef in these parts.”

“We certainly do. I can cook a steak ten ways from Sunday. Fried, chicken-fried, grilled, broiled or pot-roasted or broasted. With Velveeta steak fries and green goddess salad. Rare, medium, or well done. You tell me how you want it and if I can’t do it, it don’t exist.”

“Would you happen to have a sirloin cut?” he inquired. The man had a silken, almost buttery voice that, Ludwig noticed, had at least half the diner listening raptly.

“You bet. Top sirloin, filet, New York strip, you name it, we got it.”

There was a long silence. “You say you’re willing to prepare steak in any fashion?”

“That’s right. We take care of our customers.” Maisie glanced over at Smit Ludwig. He smiled quickly. “Right, Smitty?”

“That’s right, Maisie,” he replied. “The meatloaf is heaven.”

“Then you better get to work and finish it!”

Ludwig nodded, still grinning.

Maisie turned back at the FBI man. “You tell me how you like it, and I’ll be glad to oblige.”

“I wonder if you would be so kind as to bring me out a well-trimmed top sirloin of about six ounces for my inspection.”

Maisie didn’t bat an eye at this request. If the man wanted to see the steak before she cooked it, the man would see the steak before she cooked it. Ludwig watched her go in the back and return with a nice filet. The best, Ludwig knew, she would save for Tad Franklin, who she had a soft spot for.

She angled the plate under the man’s nose. “There you are. And you won’t find its equal until you get to Denver, I promise you that.”

The man looked at the steak, then picked up his knife and fork and trimmed off the fat along one side. Then he handed the plate back to her. “I’d be grateful if you would run it through a meat grinder, set on medium.”

Ludwig paused. Run a filet mignon through a meat grinder? How was Maisie going to react now? He practically held his breath.

Maisie was staring at the FBI agent. The diner had gone very still. “And how would you like your, er, hamburger cooked?”

“Raw.”

“You mean very rare?”

“I mean raw, if you please. Please bring it back to me with an uncooked egg, in the shell, along with some finely chopped garlic and parsley.”

Maisie swallowed visibly. “Sesame or plain bun?”

“No bun, thank you.”

Maisie nodded, turned, and then—with a single backward glance—took the plate and disappeared into the kitchen. Ludwig watched her depart, waited a beat, and then made his move. Taking a deep breath, he picked up his coffee and strolled over, pausing in front of the FBI agent. The man looked up and fixed Ludwig with a long, cool gaze from a pair of extremely pale eyes.

Ludwig stuck out his hand. “Smit Ludwig. Editor of theCry County Courier. ”

“Mr. Ludwig,” said the man, shaking the proffered hand. “My name is Pendergast. Do sit down. You were at the press conference early this morning. I must say you asked some rather insightful questions.”

Ludwig flushed at the unexpected praise and eased his creaky and not exactly youthful frame into the banquette opposite.

Maisie reappeared in the swinging kitchen door. In one hand, she carried a plate mounded with freshly ground sirloin, in the other, a second plate with the rest of the ingredients, and an egg in an egg cup. She set both plates before Pendergast.

“Anything else?” she asked. She looked stricken—and who wouldn’t be, Ludwig thought, running a decent sirloin like that through a meat grinder?

“That will be all, thank you very much.”

“We aim to please.” Maisie attempted a smile, but Ludwig could see she was thoroughly defeated. This was something utterly foreign to her experience.

Ludwig—and the entire diner—watched as Pendergast sprinkled the garlic over the raw meat, added salt and pepper, cracked the raw egg on top, and carefully folded the ingredients together. Then he molded it with his fork into a pleasing mound, sprinkled parsley on top, and sat back to contemplate his work.

Suddenly, Ludwig understood. “Steak tartare?” he asked, nodding toward the plate.

“Yes, it is.”

“I saw somebody make that on the Food Network. How is it?”

Pendergast delicately lifted a portion to his mouth, chewed with half-closed eyes. “All that is lacking is a ’97 Léoville Poyferré.”

“You really should try the meatloaf,” Ludwig replied, lowering his voice. “Maisie has her strengths and weaknesses: the meatloaf is one of her strengths. It’s damn good, in fact.”

“I shall take it under consideration.”

“Where are you from, Mr. Pendergast? Can’t quite place the accent.”

“New Orleans.”

“What a coincidence! I went there for Mardi Gras once.”

“How nice for you. I myself have never attended.”

Ludwig paused, the smile frozen on his face, wondering how to steer the conversation onto a more pertinent topic. Around him, the low murmur of conversation had picked up once again.

“This killing’s really shaken us up,” he said, lowering his voice still further. “Nothing like this has ever happened in sleepy little Medicine Creek before.”

“The case has its atypical aspects.”

It appeared Pendergast wasn’t biting. Ludwig knocked back his coffee cup, then raised it above his head. “Maisie! Another!”

Maisie came over with the pot and an extra cup. “You need to learn some manners, Smit Ludwig,” she said, refilling his cup and pouring one for Pendergast as well. “You wouldn’t yell for your mother that way.”

Ludwig grinned. “Maisie’s been teaching me manners these past twenty years.”

“It’s a lost cause,” said Maisie, turning away.

Small talk had failed. Ludwig decided to try the direct approach. He removed a steno notebook from his pocket and placed it on the table. “Got time for a few questions?”

Pendergast paused, a forkful of raw meat halfway to his mouth. “Sheriff Hazen would prefer that I not speak to the press.”

Ludwig lowered his voice. “Ineed something for tomorrow’s paper. The townspeople are hurting. They’re frightened. They’ve got a right to know.Please. ”

He stopped, surprising even himself at the depth of feeling in his comments. The FBI agent’s eyes held his own in a gaze that seemed to last for minutes. At last, Pendergast lowered his fork and spoke, in a voice even lower than Ludwig’s own.

“In my opinion, the killer is local.”

“What do you mean, local? From southwestern Kansas?”

“No. From Medicine Creek.”

Ludwig felt the blood drain out of his face. It was impossible. He knew everyone in town. The FBI agent was dead wrong.

“What makes you say that?” he asked weakly.

Pendergast finished his meal and leaned back. He pushed his coffee away and picked up a menu. “How is the ice cream?” he asked, with a faint but distinct tone of hope in his voice.

Ludwig lowered his voice. “Niltona Brand Xtra-Creamy.”

Pendergast shuddered. “The peach cobbler?”

“Out of a can.”

“The shoo-fly pie?”

“Don’t go there.”

Pendergast laid down the menu.

Ludwig leaned forward. “Desserts are not Maisie’s strong point. She’s a meat and potatoes kind of gal.”

“I see.” Pendergast regarded him once again with his pale eyes. Then he spoke. “Medicine Creek is as isolated as an island in the wide Pacific. Nobody can come or go on the roads without being noticed, and it’s a twenty-mile hike through the cornfields from Deeper, the nearest town with a motel.” He paused, smiled faintly, then glanced at the steno book. “I see you’re not taking notes.”

Ludwig laughed nervously. “Give me something I can print. There’s one unshakable article of faith in this town: the killer and the victim are both ‘from away.’ We have our share of troublemakers, but believe me, no killers.”

Pendergast looked at him with mild curiosity. “What, exactly, constitutes ‘trouble’ in Medicine Creek?”

Ludwig realized that if he wanted information, he was going to have to give some in return. Only there wasn’t much to give. “Domestic violence, sometimes. Come Saturday night we get our share of drunken hooliganism, drag racing out on the Cry Road. Last year, a B-and-E down at the Gro-Bain plant, that sort of thing.”

He paused. Pendergast seemed to be waiting for more.

“Kids sniffing aerosols, the occasional drug overdose. Plus, unwanted pregnancies have always been a problem.”

Pendergast arched an eyebrow.

“Most of the time they settle it by getting married. In the old days the girl was sometimes sent away to have her baby and it was put up for adoption. You know how it is in a small town like this, not a lot for a young person to do except—” Ludwig smiled, remembering back to the days when he and his wife were in high school, Saturday night parking down by the creek, the windows all steamed up . . . It seemed so long ago, a world utterly gone. He shook off the memory. “Well,” he said, “that’s about all the trouble we ever get around here. Until now.”

The FBI agent smiled and leaned forward, speaking so softly Ludwig could barely hear him. “The victim has been identified as Sheila Swegg, of Oklahoma. A petty criminal and con artist. They found her car hidden in the corn five miles out on the Cry Road. It seems she’d been digging up at some Indian mounds in the area.”

Smit Ludwig looked at Pendergast. “Thank you,” he said. Now, this was much better. This was more than a crumb. It was practically a whole cake. He felt a surge of gratitude.

“And another thing. Arranged with the body they found a number of antique Southern Cheyenne arrows in almost perfect condition.”

It seemed to Ludwig as though Pendergast was looking at him intently. “That’s extraordinary,” he replied.

“Yes.”

They were interrupted by a sudden commotion outside, punctuated by a voice raised in shrill protest. Ludwig glanced across the street and saw Sheriff Hazen marching a teenage girl down the sidewalk, toward his office. The girl was protesting gamely, digging in her heels, lunging against her handcuffs, her black fingernails cutting the air. He knew immediately who she was; it was all too obvious from the black leather miniskirt, pale skin, spiked collar, Day-Glo purple hair, and the glint of body piercings. A shrieked phrase managed to penetrate the plate glass of Maisie’s Diner—“eclair-eating, fart-biting, cancer-stick–smoking”—before the sheriff manhandled her through the door of the office and slammed it behind him.

Ludwig shook his head in amused disbelief.

“Who is she?” Pendergast asked.

“Corrie Swanson, our resident troublemaker. I believe she’s what kids call a ‘Goth’ or something like that. She and Sheriff Hazen have a tiff going. Looks like he’s finally got something on her, judging from the cuffs.”

Pendergast laid a large bill on the table and rose, nodding to Maisie. “I trust we shall see each other again, Mr. Ludwig.”

“Sure thing. And thanks for the tips.”

The door jingled shut. Ludwig watched the dark form of Special Agent Pendergast as he passed by outside the window and moved down the dusky street until he merged with the falling darkness.

Ludwig slowly sipped his coffee, mulling over what Pendergast had said. And as he did so, the front-page story he’d been assembling in his head changed; he broke down the type, rewrote the opening paragraph. It was dynamite, especially the stuff about the arrows. As if the murder wasn’t bad enough, those arrows would strike a particularly unpleasant note to anyone familiar with the history of Medicine Creek. As soon as he’d gotten the paragraph right, he rose from the table. He was over sixty and his joints ached from the humidity. But even if he wasn’t the man he used to be, he could still stay up half the night, write a snappy lead with two scotches under his belt, slap together an impeccable set of mechanicals, and make deadline. And tonight, he had one hell of a story to write.

Nine

Winifred Kraus bustled about the old-fashioned kitchen, making toast, setting out a pitcher of orange juice, boiling her guest’s egg, and making his pot of green tea. Her busyness was an effort to keep her mind off the horrible news she had read that morning in theCry County Courier. Who could have done such a terrible thing? And the arrows they’d found with the body, surely that couldn’t mean that . . . She shook the thoughts from her head with a little shiver. Despite the strange hours Special Agent Pendergast kept, she was very glad to have him under her roof.

The man was quite particular about his food and his tea, and Winifred had taken pains to make sure everything was perfect. She had even gotten out her mother’s old lace tablecloth and had laid it, freshly ironed, on the breakfast table, along with a small vase of freshly cut marigolds to make everything as cheery as possible. Partly it was to cheer her own distressed state.

As she moved about the kitchen, Winifred felt her dread over the murder slowly supplanted by a sense of anticipation. Pendergast had asked to take the morning tour of the Kaverns. Well, he hadn’t asked exactly, but he’d seemed quite interested when she suggested it the night before. The last visitors to the Kaverns had been over a month ago, two nice young Jehovah’s Witnesses who took the tour and then had the kindness to spend most of the day chatting with her.

Precisely at eight she heard a light tread on the stair and Mr. Pendergast came gliding into view, dressed in the usual black suit.

“Good morning, Miss Kraus,” he said.

As Winifred ushered him into the dining room and began serving breakfast, she felt quite breathless. Even as a girl, she’d loved the family business: the different people from all over the country, the parking lot full of big cars, the murmurs of awe and amazement during the tours. Helping out in the cave, doing tours, had been one way she’d tried to earn the approval of her father. And although things had changed completely with the building of the interstate up north, she’d never lost that feeling of excitement before a tour—even if it was a tour of one.

Breakfast finished, she left Pendergast with that morning’sCry County Courier and went on ahead to the Kaverns. She visited the Kaverns at least once a day even when there were no visitors, just to sweep up leaves and replace bulbs. She now did a swift check and found that all was in tip-top order. Then she went behind the counter of the gift shop and waited. At a few minutes to ten, Pendergast appeared. He purchased a ticket—two dollars—and she led him along the cement walkway, down into the cut in the earth, to the padlocked iron door. It was another scorcher of a day, and the cool air that flowed from the cave entrance was pleasantly enticing. She unlocked and removed the padlock, then turned and launched into her opening speech, which hadn’t varied since her pa had taught it to her with a switch and ruler half a century before.

“Kraus’s Kaverns,” she began, “was discovered by my grandfather, Hiram Kraus, who came to Kansas from upstate New York in 1888 looking to start a new life. He was one of the original pioneers of Cry County, and homesteaded a hundred and sixty acres right here along Medicine Creek.”

She paused and flushed pleasurably at the careful attentiveness of her audience.

“On June 5, 1901, while searching for a lost heifer, he came across the opening to a cave, almost completely hidden by scrub and brush. He came back with a lantern and axe, cut his way down the slope into the cave, and began exploring.”

“Did he find the heifer?” Pendergast asked.

The question threw Winifred off. Nobody asked about the heifer.

“Why, yes, he did. The heifer had gotten into the cave and fallen into the Bottomless Pit. Unfortunately, she was dead.”

“Thank you.”

“Let’s see.” Winifred stood at the cave entrance, trying to pick up the thread once again. “Oh, yes. Right about this time the motorcar was making its debut on the American scene. The Cry Road started to see some motorcar traffic, mostly families on their way to California. It took Hiram Kraus a year to build the wooden walkways—the same ones we will walk on—and then he opened the cave to the public. Back then, admission was a nickel.” She paused for the obligatory chuckle, grew a little flustered when none was forthcoming. “It was an immediate success. The gift shop soon followed, where visitors can buy rocks, minerals, and fossils, as well as handcrafts and needlepoint to benefit the church, all at a ten percent discount for those who have taken the Kaverns Tour. And now, if you will kindly step this way, we will enter the cave.”

She pulled the iron door wide and motioned Pendergast to follow her. They descended a set of broad, worn stairs that had been built over a declivity leading into the bowels of the earth. Walls of limestone rose on both sides, arching over into a tunnel. Bare bulbs hung from the rocky ceiling. After a descent of about two hundred feet, the steps gave onto a wooden walkway, which angled around a sharp turn and entered the cavern proper.

Here, deep beneath the earth, the air smelled of water and wet stone. It was a smell that Winifred loved. There was no unpleasant undercurrent of mold or guano: no bats lived in Kraus’s Kaverns. Ahead, the boardwalk snaked its way through a forest of stalagmites. More bulbs, placed between the stalagmites, threw grotesque shadows against the cavern walls. The roof of the cave rose into darkness. She proceeded to the center of the cavern, paused, and turned with her hands unfolded, just as her pa had taught her.

“We are now in the Krystal Kathedral, the first of the three great caverns in the cave system. These stalagmites are twenty feet high on average. The ceiling is almost ninety feet above our heads, and the cavern measures one hundred and twenty feet from side to side.”

“Magnificent,” said Pendergast.

Winifred beamed and went on to talk about the geology of the chalk beds of southwestern Kansas, and how the cave had formed from the slow percolation of water over millions of years. She ended with a recitation of the names Grandfather Hiram had given to the various stalagmites: “The Seven Dwarves,” “White Unicorn,” “Santa’s Beard,” “Needle and Thread.” Then she paused for questions.

“Has everyone in town been here?” Pendergast asked.

Again, the question brought Winifred up short. “Why, yes, I believe so. We don’t charge the locals, of course. It would hardly do to profit from one’s neighbors.”

When no more questions were forthcoming, she turned and led the way through the forest of stalagmites and into a low, narrow passageway leading to the next cavern.

“Don’t bump your head!” she warned Pendergast over her shoulder. She entered the second cavern, strode to the center, and turned with a sweep of her dress.

“We are now in the Giant’s Library. My grandfather named it that because, if you look to your right, you will see how layers of travertine have built up over millions of years to form what looks like stacked books. And over on that side, the vertical pillars of limestone on the walls appear to be shelved books. And now—”

She stepped forward again. They were about to come to her favorite part, the Krystal Chimes. And then suddenly she realized: she had forgotten her little rubber hammer. She felt in the pocket where she kept it hidden, ready to bring it out to the surprise of the guests. It wasn’t there. She must have left it back in the gift shop. And she’d forgotten the flashlight, as well, always brought along in case the electricity failed. Winifred felt mortified. Fifty years of giving tours and she had never once forgotten her little rubber hammer.

Pendergast was observing her intently. “Are you all right, Miss Kraus?”

“I forgot my rubber hammer to play the Krystal Chimes.” She almost felt like crying.

Pendergast glanced around at the forest of stalactites. “I see. I imagine those resonate when tapped.”

She nodded. “You can play Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ on those stalactites. It’s the highlight of the tour.”

“How very intriguing. I shall have to return, then.”

Winifred searched her mind for the continuation of the talk, but could find nothing. She began to feel a rising panic.

“There must be a great deal of history in this town,” Pendergast said as he casually examined some gypsum feathers glinting in a pool of reflected light.

Winifred felt a glow of gratitude for this little rescue. “Oh yes, there is.”

“And you must know most of it.”

“I suppose I do know most everything,” she said. She felt a little better. Now she had a second tour to look forward to, and she would never forget her rubber hammer again. That dreadful murder had upset her a great deal. More than she’d realized, perhaps.

Pendergast bent to examine another cluster of crystals. “There was a curious incident at Maisie’s Diner last evening. The sheriff arrested a girl named Corrie Swanson.”

“Oh, yes. She’s a troublemaker from way back. Her father ran off, and the mother is the cocktail waitress at the Candlepin Castle.” She leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. “I think she drinks. And . . . seesmen. ”

“Ah!” said Pendergast.

Winifred was encouraged. “Yes. They say Corrie takes drugs. She’ll leave Medicine Creek, like so many others, and good riddance. That’s how it is nowadays, Mr. Pendergast: they grow up and leave, never to come back. Though there are some I could name that stick around whoought to leave. That Brushy Jim, for instance.”

The FBI agent seemed to be intently examining a dripstone mound. It was nice to see someone so interested. “The sheriff seemed to be rather enthusiastic in making Miss Swanson’s arrest.”

“I shouldn’t wonder. And yet that sheriff’s a bully. That’s what I think. And I’ll say it to anyone. Just about the only person he’s nice to is Tad Franklin, his deputy.” She stopped, wondering if she had gone too far, but Mr. Pendergast was looking at her now, nodding sympathetically.

“And that son of his is also a bully. He thinks having a sheriff for a father gives him the right to do whatever he pleases. Terrorizes the high school, I hear.”

“I see. And this Brushy Jim you mentioned?”

Winifred shook her head. “The most disreputable fellow you ever saw.” She clucked disapprovingly. “Lives in a junkyard out on the Deeper Road. Claims to be descended from the lone survivor of the Medicine Creek Massacre. He was in Vietnam, you know, and it did something to the man. Turned his brain. You just won’t see a lower specimen of humanity, Mr. Pendergast. Uses the Lord’s name in vain. Drinks. Never sets foot in church.”

“I saw a large banner being erected on the front lawn of the church last evening.”

“That’s for the fellow from Kansas State.”

Pendergast looked at her. “I’m sorry?”

“He wants to plant a new cornfield here. Some kind of experiment. They’ve narrowed it down to two towns, us and Deeper. The decision’s to be announced next Monday. The man from Kansas State’s due to arrive today and the town is laying out the red carpet for him. Not that everybody’s happy about it, of course.”

“And why is that?”

“Something about the corn they want to test. It’s been fiddled with somehow. I don’t really understand it, to tell you the truth.”

“Well, well,” Pendergast said, and then held out his hand. “But here I am, interrupting the tour with questions.”

Winifred remembered the thread. She bustled forward happily, leading Pendergast to the edge of a wide, dark hole from which even cooler air was rising. “And here is the Bottomless Pit. When Grandfather first arrived, he tossed a stone down andhe did not hear it land. ” She paused dramatically.

“How did he know the heifer was down there?” Pendergast asked.

She was thrown into a sudden panic. Once again, nobody had asked the question before.

“Why, I don’t know,” she said.

Pendergast smiled, waved his hand. “Do continue.”

They passed on to the Infinity Pool, where Winifred was disappointed that he did not make a wish—the collecting of tossed coins had once been a profitable sideline. From the Pool, the walkway looped back to the Krystal Kathedral where they had begun. She finished her lecture, shook Pendergast’s hand, and was surprised but pleased to find herself generously tipped. Then, slowly, she led the way back up the wooden stairs to the surface world. At the top, the heat struck her like a hammer. She paused again.

“As I mentioned, all tour members are allowed a ten percent discount from the gift shop on the day of their tour.” She hustled back into the shop and was not disappointed when Pendergast followed.

“I should like to see the needlepoint,” he said.

“Of course.” She directed him to the display case, where he spent a great deal of time poring over the work before choosing a beautiful cross-stitched pillowcase. Winifred was especially pleased because it was one she had done herself.

“My dear Great-Aunt Cornelia will adore this,” Pendergast said as he paid for the pillowcase. “She’s an invalid, you see, and can only take pleasure in small things.”

Winifred smiled as she gift-wrapped the parcel. It was so nice having a gentleman like Mr. Pendergast around. And how thoughtful to think of his elderly relation. Winifred was sure Pendergast’s great-aunt would love the pillowcase.