Still Life With Crows

Thirty-One

Tad rolled over so hard that he fell out of bed. Staggering to his knees, he passed a hand across his face, then reached blindly for the ringing telephone. He found it, fumbled with it, lifted it to his face.

“Hello?” he mumbled. “Hello?” Through the sleep-heavy bars of his lashes, he could see that outside the bedroom window it was still dark, the stars hard in the sky, only the faintest streak of yellow on the eastern horizon.

“Tad.” It was Hazen, and he sounded very awake indeed. “I’m over on Fairview, near the side entrance to Wyndham Parke. I need you here. Ten minutes.”

“Sheriff—?” But the phone was already dead.

Tad made it in five.

Although the sun had yet to rise, a crowd from the nearby trailer park had gathered, clad mostly in bathrobes and flip-flops. They were strangely silent. Hazen was there, in the middle of the street, setting up crime-scene tape himself while talking into a cell phone propped beneath his jaw. And there, too, was the FBI man, Pendergast, standing off to one side, slender and almost invisible in his black suit. Tad looked around, an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. But there was no body, no new victim; just a lumpy, irregular splotch in the middle of the street. Sitting next to it was a canvas bag, full of something. The uneasy feeling gave way to relief. Another animal, it seemed. He wondered what all the hurry was.

As he walked closer, Hazen snapped his phone shut. “Get back, all of you!” he shouted, waving the phone at the crowd. “Tad! Take over with this tape andget these people back! ”

Tad moved forward quickly, grabbing the end of the tape. As he did so, he got a much closer glance at the pile on the street. It glistened redly, pearlescent, steaming in the predawn light. He looked away quickly, swallowing hard.

“All right, folks,” Tad began, but his voice didn’t sound quite right and he stopped, swallowing once more. “All right, folks, back up. More. More. Please.”

The crowd huddled back, silent, their faces pale in the gloom. He strung the plastic tape across the road and tied it to a tree, wrapping it several times, completing the square that Hazen had begun. He saw that Hazen was now talking to the Goth, Corrie Swanson. Pendergast stood beside her, silent. Behind was her mother, looking like hell as usual, her thin brown hair plastered to her skull, a stained and frayed pink bathrobe wrapped tightly around her. She was chain-smoking Virginia Slims.

“Youheard something?” Hazen was repeating. His voice was skeptical, but he was taking notes nevertheless.

Corrie was pale, and she was trembling, but her mouth was set in a hard line and her eyes were bright. “I woke up. It was just before two—”

“And how did you know what time it was?”

“I looked at my clock.”

“Go on.”

“Something woke me up, I wasn’t sure what. I went to the window, and that’s when I heard the sound.”

“What sound?”

“Like snuffling.”

“Dog?”

“No. More like . . . like someone with a bad cold.”

Hazen jotted notes. “Go on.”

“I had this sense there was something moving out there, right beneath my window, but I couldn’t really see it. It was too dark. I turned on the light. And then I heard a different sound, like a groan.”

“Human?”

Corrie blinked. “Hard to tell.”

“Then?”

“I shut my window and went back to sleep.”

Hazen lowered his notebook and stared at her. “You didn’t think to call me or your, ah, boss?” He nodded at Pendergast.

“I—I figured it was just the sprinkler system, which goes on every night around two. It makes weird noises.”

Hazen put away his notebook. He turned to Pendergast. “Some assistant you got there.” Then he turned to Tad. “All right, this is what we’ve got. Somebody dumped a pile of guts on the road. Looks like cow to me, there’s too much there for a dog or sheep. And that sack sitting next to it is full of ears of corn, freshly picked. I want you to check around all the local stock farms, see if anyone’s missing a cow, pig, any large livestock.” His eyes flitted back toward Corrie before returning to Tad. He lowered his voice. “This whole thing is starting to look more and more like a cult of some kind.”

Over Hazen’s shoulder, Tad watched Pendergast step forward and kneel before the pile of offal. He reached forward, actually prodded at something with his finger. Tad averted his eyes. Then he reached over and with one finger lifted the mouth of the canvas bag.

“Sheriff Hazen?” Pendergast asked without rising.

Hazen was already back on the cell phone. “What?”

“I would suggest looking for a missing person instead.”

There was a shocked silence as the implication sunk in.

Hazen lowered the cell phone. “How do you know these are . . .” He couldn’t quite bring himself to finish the sentence.

“Cows don’t normally eat what appears to be Maisie’s meatloaf, washed down with a glass of beer.”

Hazen took a step forward and shined his light into the glistening pile. He swallowed hard. “But why would the killer . . .” He paused again. His face was dead white. “I mean, why take a body and leave the guts behind?”

Pendergast rose, wiping his finger with a handkerchief of white silk. “Perhaps,” he said grimly, “to lighten his load.”

Thirty-Two

It was eleven o’clock before Tad finally returned to the sheriff’s office. The sweat was pouring off his brow, and his uniform was soaked to the cuffs. He was the last to return: the state troopers and Hazen, who had also been conducting searches, were there before him. The inner office had been turned into a command center, and a large group of Staties were standing around, talking on cell phones and radios. The press, naturally, had gotten wind of it, and once again the street was lined with TV vans, reporters, and photographers. But they were the only people in sight: all the residents had shut and locked themselves in their houses. The Wagon Wheel was closed and shuttered. Even the shift at Gro-Bain had been sent home for the day. Except for the hungry gaggle of media, Medicine Creek had become a ghost town.

“Any luck?” Hazen said immediately as Tad came through the door.

“No.”

“Damn!”The sheriff pounded his fist on the desk. “Yours was the last quadrant.” He shook his head. “Three hundred and twenty-five people, and every damn one of them accounted for. They’re canvassing Deeper and the surrounding farms, but nobody’s come up missing.”

“Are you sure the, um, guts were human?”

Hazen looked sideways at Tad, his eyes red, rimmed by dark circles. Tad had never seen the sheriff under so much pressure. The man’s muscular hands were balled into fists, the knuckles white.

“I wondered that, too. But the remains are now up at Garden City, and McHyde assures me they’re human. That’s all they know so far.”

Tad felt sick to his stomach. The image of the meatloaf, poking out of that ragged tear in the ruined guts, the beer foam mixing with the blood—that was going to stay with him the rest of his life. He never should have looked. Never.

“Maybe it was someone passing through,” he said weakly. “What local person would be out alone at that time of night, anyway?”

“I thought of that, too. But where’s the car?”

“Hidden, like Sheila Swegg’s?”

“We’ve checked everywhere. We’ve had a spotter plane up since eight.”

“No circle cut in a cornfield?”

“Nothing. No hidden car, no circle, no dumped body, nothing. No footprints this time, either.” Hazen wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and sat down with a heavy thump.

It was hard to concentrate, the state police were making so much noise with their radios and cell phones in the inner office. And worse, the press was camped right outside, a battery of cameras aimed point-blank at them through the glass door.

“Could it have been a traveling salesman?” Tad asked.

Hazen jerked his head toward the inner office. “The Staties are checking all the area motels.”

“What about the sack of corn?”

“We’re working on it. Christ, we don’t know if it was left by the killer or if the victim was carrying it. But why the hell would someone be carrying a sackful of corn in the middle of the night? And each ear was tagged and numbered in some kind of weird code, to boot.” He glanced at the sea of cameras beyond the front door. He started to rise, sat down, rose again. “Get me that can of whitewash and the brush from the storeroom, okay?”

Tad knew exactly what Hazen was going to do. When he returned, Hazen took the can from his hands, tore off the lid, dipped in the brush, and began to paint the glass.

“Bastards,” he muttered as his arm swept back and forth, the paint running down and puddling on the doorsill. “Bastards.Photograph this and see how you like it.”

“Let me help,” Tad said.

But Hazen ignored him, slopping the paint up and down in big strokes until the door was covered. Then he shoved the brush in the can, jammed the lid back on, and sat down heavily again, closing his eyes. His uniform was flecked with white paint.

Tad sat down beside him, worried. Hazen’s square face had a gray sheen to it, like a dead piece of fish. His sandy hair lay limp across his forehead. A vein pulsed in his right temple.

Suddenly, the sheriff’s eyes popped wide open. It happened so fast that Tad jumped.

Hazen’s lips parted, and he muttered just one word:

“Chauncy!”

Thirty-Three

Around noon, Sheriff Hazen decided he’d watched the dog-handler, Lefty Weeks, struggle with the dogs for just about as long as he could stand. Weeks was one of those types that really got on Hazen’s nerves: a little man with white eyelashes, big ears, long thin neck, red eyelids, a wheedler and whiner who never stopped talking, even if his audience was a pair of useless dogs. The air under the cottonwood trees was hot and dead and Hazen could feel the sweat springing out on his forehead, the nape of his neck, his underarms, his back, leaking and running down through every fold and crease, even the crack of his ass. It must be over 105 frigging degrees. He couldn’t smoke because of the damn dogs, but it was so hot he didn’t even feel a craving. Nowthat was saying something.

Once again the two dogs were whining and cringing about in circles, their tails clamped down hard over their assholes. Hazen glanced at Tad, then looked back at the dogs. Weeks was yelling at them in a high-pitched voice, swearing and jerking ineffectually at the leashes.

Hazen went over, gave one of the dogs a swift kick in the haunch. “Find that motherfucker!” he shouted. “Go on. Get going.”

The dog whined and crouched lower.

“If you don’tmind, Sheriff—” Weeks began, his red ears backlit and flaming in the heat.

Hazen spun on him. “Weeks, this is the third time you’ve brought dogs down here and every time it’s been the same thing.”

“Well, kicking them isn’t going to help.”

Hazen struggled to control his temper, already sorry he had kicked the dog. The state troopers were now looking at him, their faces blank, but no doubt thinking that he was just another redneck hayseed sheriff. He swallowed hard and moderated his voice. “Lefty, look. This is no joke. Get those dogs to track or I’m putting in a formal complaint up to Dodge.”

Weeks pouted. “I know they’ve got a scent, Iknow it. But they just won’t track.”

Hazen felt himself boiling up all over again. “Weeks, you promised medogs this time, and look at them, groveling like toy poodles in front of a mastiff.” Hazen took a step forward at the dogs. This time one of them snarled.

“Don’t,” Weeks warned.

“She’s not afraid of me, the bitch, although she should be. Give her another go, damn it.”

Weeks took out the plastic bag holding the scent—an object retrieved from the second killing—and opened it with gloved hands. The dog backed away, whining.

“Come on, girl. Come on,” Weeks wheedled.

The dog slithered back and forth almost on its belly.

Weeks crouched, the thin travesty of a goatee bobbing on his chin while he held the bag open invitingly. “Come on, girl. Scent it! Go!” He shoved the bag up to her nose.

The quivering, crouching dog let loose a stream of piss onto the dry sand.

“Oh, Christ,” said Hazen, turning away. He crossed his arms and looked up the creek.

They had been up and down it now for three hours, dragging the unwilling dogs the whole way. Beyond, in the cornfields, Hazen could see the state police teams moving. Farther down, the SOC teams were on their hands and knees, combing the sandbeds along the creek for something,any thing. Above droned two spotter planes, crisscrossing back and forth, back and forth. Why couldn’t they find the body? Had the killer taken off with it? There were state police roadblocks up, but the killer could have escaped during the night. You can drive a long way in a Kansas night.

He glanced up and saw Smit Ludwig approaching, notebook in hand.

“Sheriff, mind if I—”

“Smitty, this is a restricted area.” Hazen had just about had it.

“I didn’t see any tape, and—”

“You get out of here, Ludwig. On the double.”

Ludwig stood his ground. “I have a right to be here.”

Hazen turned to Tad. “Escort Mr. Ludwig to the road.”

“You can’t do this—!”

The sheriff turned his back on the entreaty. “Come on, Mr. Ludwig,” he heard Tad say. The pair of them disappeared in the trees, Ludwig’s protests increasingly muffled by the muggy air.

The sheriff’s radio crackled. He hoisted it.

“Hazen here.”

“Chauncy’s been missing from his hotel since yesterday.” It was Hal Brenning, state police liaison officer, down in Deeper. “Didn’t return last night. Bed wasn’t slept in.”

“Hallelujah, what else is new?”

“He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing, where he was going. Nobody up here knows anything about his itinerary.”

“We checked into that,” Hazen replied. “Seems he had car problems, left his Saturn over at Ernie’s Exxon. Insisted it be fixed that day, even though Ernie told him it was a two-day job. Chauncy was last seen eating a late dinner at Maisie’s. Never picked up the car, though. Looks like he went into the cornfields and was doing a little last-minute research on the sly, collecting and labeling ears of corn.”

“Collecting corn?”

“I know, I know. Insane, with a killer running loose. But this Chauncy liked to play his cards close to his vest. Probably didn’t want anybody prying, asking awkward questions.” Hazen shook his head, remembering how upset Chauncy had become at Pendergast’s talk of cross-pollination.

“Well. Anyway, we’re looking through Dr. Chauncy’s papers now with some of Sheriff Larssen’s boys. It looks like he was going to make some kind of announcement today at noon.”

“Yeah. The experimental field project which Medicine Creek wasn’t going to get. Anything else?”

“Some dean from KSU’s coming down with their head of campus security. Should be here in half an hour.”

Hazen groaned.

“On top of that, we’ve got a dust storm brewing. There’s a weather advisory out for Cry County and the eastern Colorado plains.”

“When?”

“The leading edge could come as early as tonight. They say it might be upgraded to a tornado watch.”

“Great.” The sheriff punched the radio off, holstered it, and glanced up. Sure enough: thunderheads, darker than usual, were piling up to the west, as if a nuclear war was being fought somewhere over the horizon. Any Kansan with half a brain knew what clouds like that meant. There was more than a dust storm coming. At the least, the creek would be up, scouring the whole creek bed. The fields would get drenched, maybe flooded. There’d probably be hail. And there would go all their clues. They’d get nothing more to go on until . . . until the next killing. And if there were indeed tornadoes, it would shut down the whole investigation while everyone dove for cover. What a frigging mess.

“Weeks, if those dogs aren’t going to track, then get them the hell out of here. Your dragging them up and down the creek is just wrecking the site for everyone else. This is a disgrace.”

“It’s not my fault.”

Hazen stalked off down the creek. It was a ten-minute walk to the spot where his cruiser and a dozen other vehicles, marked and unmarked, glittered alongside the road. He coughed, spat, breathed through his nose. There was definitely that curious stillness in the air that precedes a storm.

And there on the gravel shoulder was Art Ridder, getting out of his idling vehicle, standing and waving. “Sheriff!”

The sheriff walked over.

“Hazen, I’ve been looking all over creation for you,” said Ridder, his face even redder than usual.

“Art, I’m having a bad day.”

“I can see that.”

Hazen took a deep breath. Ridder might be the town’s big shot, but there was only so much crap he was going to take.

“I just got a call from a guy named Dean Fisk, up at the Agricultural Extension. KSU. He’s on his way down with an entourage.”

“I heard.”

Ridder looked surprised. “You did? Well, here’s something I’ll bet youdon’t know. Listen, you’re not going to believe this.”

Hazen waited.

“Chauncy was going to announce today thatMedicine Creek had been awarded the experimental field.”

Just when he thought he couldn’t get any hotter, Hazen felt a sudden flush burn its way through him. “Medicine Creek?Not Deeper?”

“It was going to be us all along.”

Hazen just stared, stupid with heat and surprise. “I can’t believe it.”

“He may have hated the town, but that didn’t change the fact that it’s a perfect place for their field.” Ridder wiped his greasy brow, tucked the soiled handkerchief back into his breast pocket. “We’re a dying town, Sheriff. My house is worth sixty percent what it was twenty years ago. Sooner or later the turkey plant’s going to lose another shift, maybe even close down. Do you know what this field would have meant for us? Genetic engineering, Hazen. One field would’ve just been the beginning. There’d have been more fields, a computer center, accommodations for visiting scientists and faculty, maybe a weather station. There would have been construction opportunities, real estate opportunities, more business for everyone, work for our children.” His voice rose into the dead air. “That field would havesaved our town. ”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Art,” Hazen said woodenly, still stunned.

“You’re a fool if you don’t see it! But do you think we’re going to get it now? Now that their man just had his guts ripped out in the center of our town? Huh?”

Hazen felt an immense weariness settling on his shoulders. He began to walk past Ridder. “I don’t have time for this, Art. I’ve got a body to find.”

But Ridder blocked him. “Look, Sheriff. I’ve been thinking.” He lowered his voice. “Have you looked into this guy Pendergast? Think about it. He showed up in town awfully goddamn fast after that first killing. We only have his word that he’s FBI. How do you knowhe isn’t involved? Thathe isn’t the psycho? He’s at every killing, poking his albino nose everywhere—”

But Hazen barely heard. Suddenly Ridder’s voice seemed to have gone far away.

Hazen had an idea.

Ridder was right: Deeper would get the experimental field now, by default. But by rights it should have gone to Medicine Creek. Right on the eve of Chauncy’s announcement—the very eve—he comes up murdered. And now Deeper would get the field.

Deeper would get the field . . .

It was suddenly coming together.

He tuned out Ridder’s droning voice, trying hard to think. The first killing, Sheila Swegg, had occurred three days before Chauncy’s arrival. The killer struck again the day after he arrived. In both cases, the killer had left all kinds of clues and bizarre shit behind, arrows and bare footprints and what-not, as if he were trying to capitalize on the legend of the Ghost Warriors, the curse of the Forty-Fives. But the strategy didn’t work. Chauncy didn’t pay a lot of attention to the murders, and he could care less about legends and curses. He wasn’t even reading the papers. He was a scientific man looking at things long-term. Ghosts and murders might scare the residents of Medicine Creek, but they just didn’t register with Chauncy.

And then, the night before Chauncy was to announce Medicine Creek got the field, he himself comes up dead.

Could it be any clearer? This wasn’t a serial killer. And it wasn’t someone local, like Pendergast believed. It was someone who had a lot to lose if the experimental field went to Medicine Creek. Someone from Deeper. Art was right: there was a shitload of money at stake here, maybe even the future of the town—eithertown. Deeper was hurting, too. Christ, in the last thirty years they were down fifty percent in population, worse than Medicine Creek. They were bigger, they had farther to fall, and they didn’t even have the turkey plant.

It was kill or be killed.Deeper.

“You following me?” Ridder was shouting.

Hazen looked at him. “Art,” he said abruptly, “I’ve got some important business to take care of.”

“You haven’t heard a goddamn word I’ve said!”

Hazen placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to solve these murders, and maybe even get that field back for Medicine Creek. You just wait.”

“And how the hell do you plan to dothat? ”

But Hazen was already walking back to his car. Ridder followed, waiting for an answer. Hazen paused, his hand on the door handle. “And another thing. You’re right about that FBI agent. He’s the source of the whole problem.”

“He’s the killer, you mean!”

The sheriff opened the door. “Art, don’t be an idiot. He’s no killer. But heis the one who’s screwed everything up. He’s the one who came roaring in here, insisting it was a serial killer. Insisting it was someone local. He got the investigation off on the wrong foot right from the get-go. Got me so confused I wasn’t thinking straight. Made me doubt my own instincts.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”

“See what?”

Hazen grinned, gave Art’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze. “Let me take care of this, Art. Trust me.”

Hazen swung into his cruiser, unhooked the radio. Pendergast had shown up without a car and driver, no backup, and he hadn’t liaised with the local Dodge office. The son of a bitch was freelancing. It was time to put an end to that, once and for all.

Hazen punched the radio, spoke into it. “Harry? Sheriff Hazen here from Medicine Creek. Listen, this is important. It’s about the killings. You know anyone in the FBI field office in Dodge who’s in a position to do me a favor? Yeah, I need to call in a big one.” He listened for a moment, nodded. “Thanks a lot, Harry.”

As he hung up the radio, Ridder leaned in the window, his face rashy from the heat. “I hope to hell you know what you’re doing, Hazen. The future of Medicine Creek is at stake here.”

Hazen grinned. “May all your dreams come true, Art.”

He gunned the engine and pointed the big cruiser east, toward Dodge.

Thirty-Four

Smit Ludwig sat disconsolately at Maisie’s counter, displaced from his usual corner booth by a loud group of AP reporters, or maybe they wereNational Enquirer orWeekly World News. It hardly mattered. The diner was full of reporters and townspeople, who seemed to have gravitated there as the place to go, to gossip, to get reassurance, to share news and speculate. Each new murder had brought more reporters, and each time they’d stayed a little longer. But it wasn’t just reporters who were choking the usually quiet eatery. There was Mrs. Bender Lang and her gaggle of blue-rinsed beauties; there was Ernie the mechanic at another table with his buddies; there was Swede Cahill, who’d kept the Wagon Wheel closed for the day; there was the Gro-Bain contingent, workers at one table, management at the other. The place was full, the noise level like a New York City club. The only one who seemed to be missing was Art Ridder himself.

Where, Ludwig asked himself, was he going to turn for the rest of the story? He’d had a taste of being a real reporter—just a little taste, true, but he found himself liking it nevertheless. He’d recounted the curse of the Forty-Fives, he’d written up the Ghost Massacre, he’d covered all the gossip in town along those lines. The scalping of Gasparilla with some kind of primitive knife, on top of the arrows left with the Swegg corpse, had really gotten the rumor mill in high pitch. He had written up the killings and the church riot and he had the story on Chauncy’s disappearance in the can. But he wanted to take it one step further. He needed something new and he needed it for tomorrow.

A real reporter wouldn’t be sitting in a diner nursing his coffee. A real reporter would be out in the field talking to the cops, getting the lowdown. That bully, Hazen: there must be some kind of complaint he could make. What did you do if the police didn’t cooperate, if they threatened to arrest you just for doing your job?

For the first time in his life, Ludwig had gotten a story between his teeth. It was real, and it was big. He had broken it and he was in the best position to finish it. My God, he’dearned that, at least. At sixty-two years old, it would be nice to go out with a bang. His grandkids could look over the yellowing issues of theCourier, turning the pages like precious parchment, and say, “Remember those murders back in ’03? Our granddad covered them. Boy, he was some reporter.”

This pleasant little daydream faded as a man climbed onto the stool next to his. Ludwig turned to find the man sticking out his hand in greeting. A young, fresh, eager face filled his field of view. There was the stubble, the butt hanging off the lip, the mussed-up hair, the skewed tie, but despite all the affectation he still looked like a kid trying to be a reporter.

Smit took the hand.

“Joe Rickey,Boston Globe. ”

“Howdy-do.” Smit shook the hand, a little surprised.Boston Globe ? He was a long way from home.

“Smit Ludwig, right?Cry County Courier ?”

Ludwig nodded.

“Hot enough for you?”

“I’ve seen it hotter.”

“Yeah? Well, I haven’t.” The man plucked a paper napkin from the dispenser, dabbed it across his temples. “I’ve been here for two days and I can’t get dick on this story. I promised my editor something different, you know; a little piece of Americana. That’s my column: ‘Americana.’ People in Boston like to read about stuff that goes on in the rest of the country. Like these killings here, a man boiled, buttered, and sugared.” He shuddered with pleasure.

Ludwig looked at the kid. In an odd way he reminded him of himself, forty years ago. TheBoston Globe ? The kid must have talent. He looked J-school, smart and eager but without real-life reporting skills.

“Anyway, that redneck sheriff of yours and those state police storm troopers won’t give me the time of day. But you, you’re local, you know where the bodies are buried. So to speak. Am I right?”

“Sure.” Ludwig wasn’t about to tell the kid he was in the same boat.

“I’m going to be in deep shit, after all theGlobe paid to send me out here, if I come back empty-handed.”

“It was your idea?” Ludwig asked.

“Yeah. It took a lot of persuading, too.”

Ludwig felt for the kid. It could have been himself, if he’d taken that scholarship to Columbia instead of the copy-boy job at theCourier, back when it was more than a one-man paper. A fateful decision, but one that curiously enough he’d never regretted making. Especially as he read the desperation, the ambition, the fear and hope in the young man’s eyes.

The man leaned closer, dropping his voice. “I was just wondering. Is there anything you might like to share with me? I swear, I’d hold it back until you publish first.”

“Well now,” Ludwig paused. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Rickey—”

“Joe.”

“Well, Joe, I don’t really have anything new at this point myself.”

“But surely you could get something?”

Ludwig looked at the kid. In a way he even looked like himself, forty years before. “I could always try,” he said.

“I’ve got to file by eleven tonight.”

Ludwig glanced at his watch. Three-thirty.

At that moment the door burst open and Corrie Swanson came barging into the diner, tossing back her purple hair, all the little chains and doohickeys pinned to her tank top astir.

“Two large iced coffees to go,” she said, “one black, one with double cream and sugar.”

Ludwig watched her, palm resting on her hip, elbow jutting out, tapping her change impatiently on the counter, ignoring everybody in the place. She was working for Pendergast, his girl Friday. And here she was, getting two coffees to go.

To go where?

But even as he asked the question, Ludwig guessed the answer. Once again, Pendergast would come to his rescue.

Maisie delivered the coffees. Corrie paid and turned away.

Ludwig gave Rickey a quick smile and stood up. “I’ll see what I can do.” He started to take out some money but Rickey stopped him. “Coffee’s on me.”

Ludwig nodded and was up and out the door after her. As he left, he heard Rickey’s voice: “I’ll be here, Mr. Ludwig. And thanks. Thanks a lot.”

Thirty-Five

All FBI buildings look the same,Hazen thought as he squinted up at the white, slablike facade with the smoked windows, burning in the afternoon sun: brick-shithouse ugly. He tucked in his shirt, straightened his tie, ground out his cigarette on the asphalt, and adjusted his hat. Then he passed through the double doors into a blast of cold air that, had it been wintertime, would have caused an uproar of complaint.

He paused at the desk, signed in, got directions, clipped a temporary ID to his lapel, and headed down the polished linoleum hall for the elevator.Second floor, second right, third door on the left . . . He repeated the directions in his head.

The elevator opened onto a long hall, decorated with government bulletins and typed lists of esoteric directives. As he walked along it, Hazen noticed that every door was open, and inside each office sat men and women in white shirts. Jesus Christ, there weren’t enough crimes in the entire state of Kansas to keep this bunch busy. What the hell did they do all day?

Hazen threaded the hallways, finally locating an open door labeledPAULSON, J., SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE . Within, a woman in cat’s-eye glasses was pecking away at her computer with robotic precision. She glanced up, then nodded him past into an inner office.

This office seemed as sterile as the rest of the building, but there was at least a framed photo on the wall of its occupant riding a horse, and another picture on the desk of the guy with his wife and kids. The man himself pushed his chair back from his desk, rose, and held out his hand.

“Jim Paulson.”

Hazen grasped it and was just about crushed. Paulson indicated a seat, then settled back into his chair, threw one leg over the other, and leaned back.

“Well, Sheriff Hazen, what can I do for you?” Paulson said. “A friend of Harry McCullen is a friend of mine.”

No bullshit, no small talk. Here was Mr. Straight-Shooter, crew-cut, fit, dressed in a decent suit, blue eyes, even dimples when he smiled. Probably had a dick as big as a bargepole. A wife’s dream.

Hazen knew just how to play it. He was the small-town sheriff, just trying to do his job.

“Well, now, Mr. Paulson, it’s right kind of you to see me—”

“Jim, please.”

Hazen smiled a self-deprecating little smile. “Jim, you probably don’t know Medicine Creek. We’re a town down Deeper way.”

“I’ve sure heard of it, what with the recent killings.”

“Then you know we’re a small town with solid American values. We’re a close-knit community and we trust each other. And as sheriff, I’m the embodiment of that trust. You know that better than I. It’s more than just law enforcement. It’s abouttrust. ”

Paulson nodded sympathetically.

“And then these killings happened.”

“Yes. Tragic.”

“And being a little town, we can use all the help we can get.”

Paulson smiled, dimpled. “Sheriff, we’d love to help you with this case, but we need evidence of interstate flight or other interstate or terrorist activity—well, Sheriff, you know when the FBI can justify involvement. Unless there’s something I’m not aware of, my hands are tied.”

Perfect,thought Hazen. He feigned surprise. “Oh, but Jim, that’s just it. We’re already getting help from the FBI. Right from the beginning. You didn’t know?”

Jim Paulson’s smile froze on his features. After a moment, he shifted position. “Right. Of course. Now that you mention it.”

“That’s what I’m here about. This Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI. He’s been on the case since day one. You know all about him, right?”

Paulson shifted again, a little uneasily. “I have to tell you I wasn’t fully aware of this man’s activities.”

“You weren’t? He says he’s out of the New Orleans office. I thought he’d liaised with you. Isn’t that the usual courtesy?”

He paused. Paulson was silent.

“Anyway, Jim, I’m sorry. I justassumed . . . ” he let his voice trail off.

Paulson picked up the phone. “Darlene? Pull me the jacket on a Special Agent Pendergast, New Orleans office. That’s right,Pendergast. ” He hung up.

“Anyway, the reason I’m here is that, with all due respect, I wanted to ask the FBI to withdraw him from the case.”

Paulson tilted his eye at him. “Is that so?” A reddish blush was creeping up his well-shaven neck.

“I told you that Medicine Creek can use all the help it can get. And, normally, that’s true. Now, I know I’m just a small-town Kansas sheriff, but we’ve got help from the Dodge forensic unit and the state police, and—well, to tell you the truth, Special Agent Pendergast has been . . .” His voice trailed off, as if he was reluctant to criticize one agent to another.

“Has been what?”

“Just a little heavy-handed. And not respectful of local law enforcement.”

“I see.” Paulson was looking more pissed by the minute.

Hazen leaned toward the desk, lowered his voice confidentially. “To tell you God’s own truth, Jim, he goes around in expensive suits and handmade English shoes quoting poetry.”

Paulson nodded. “Right.”

The phone buzzed and Paulson picked it up with alacrity. “Darlene? Great. Bring it in.”

A moment later the secretary came in, a long computer printout trailing from one hand. She gave it to Jim, who touched her hand lightly in response.

Secretary’s dream,revised Hazen, his eye falling on the picture on the desk of Paulson with his wife and kids. Cute wife, too. Nice to have two of them.

Paulson was scrutinizing the printout. A low whistle escaped his lips.

“Quite a guy, this Pendergast. First name Al—Al . . . Christ, I can’t even pronounce it. FBI All-National Pistol-Shooting, First Place, 2002; FBI Bronze Cluster for Distinguished Service, 2001; Gold Eagle for Valor, 2000 and 1999; Distinguished Service Cluster, ’98; another Gold Eagle in ’97; four Purple Heart Ribbons for injuries received in the line of duty. It goes on. Done a lot of casework in New York City—figures—and there’s a bunch of earlier, classified assignments in here, with classified decorations to boot. Military, by the look of them. Who the hellis this guy?”

“That’s what I was wondering,” Hazen said.

Jim Paulson was really mad now. “And who the hell does he think he is, coming into Kansas like some kind of hot shot? The case isn’t even FBI purview.”

Hazen sat tight, saying nothing.

Paulson slapped down the printout. “Nobody in this office authorized him. He didn’t even have the courtesy to stop by and present credentials.” He picked up the phone. “Darlene, get me Talmadge in K.C.”

“Yes, Mr. Paulson.”

A moment later the telephone rang. Paulson picked it up. He glanced at Hazen. “Sheriff, if you wouldn’t mind waiting in the outer office?”

Hazen passed the time in the outer office getting a better look at Miss Cat’s Eyes. Behind those silly glasses was a pert little face; below them was a nice twitchy figure. It wasn’t a long wait. Within five minutes, Paulson emerged. He was calm again, smiling. The dimples were back.

“Sheriff?” he said. “Leave your fax number with my secretary.”

“Sure thing.”

“In a day or two we’ll be faxing you a cease-and-desist order, which you will be asked to serve on Special Agent Pendergast. Nobody in the New Orleans office knows what he’s up to. All the New York office would say is that he’s supposed to be on vacation. He has peace officer status here, of course, but that’s it. It doesn’t appear he’s actually broken any rules, but this is highly irregular, and these days we have to be exceptionally careful.”

Hazen tried to maintain the look of grave concern on his face, although he could hardly keep himself from shouting for joy.

“This guy has got some big-time friends in the Bureau, but it seems he also has some big-time enemies. So just wait for the order, say nothing, and deliver it with courtesy when it comes in. That’s all. Any problems, here’s my card.”

Hazen pocketed the card. “I understand.”

Paulson nodded. “Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Sheriff Hazen.”

“Think nothing of it.”

Another flash of the dimples, a glance and wink at Miss Cat’s Eyes, and the head of the field office withdrew.

A day or two,Hazen thought as he glanced at his watch. He could hardly wait.

It was now three o’clock. He had a trip to make to Deeper.

Thirty-Six

Corrie maneuvered her Gremlin over the dirt track at a crawl, one-handed, balancing the two iced coffees in her lap to keep them from spilling. The ice was mostly melted already, and her thighs were wet and numb. The car jounced over a particularly deep rut, and she winced: her muffler had been dangling rather loosely under the chassis lately, and she didn’t want it torn off by one of these murderous gullies.

Ahead, the low shoulders of the Mounds reared above the surrounding trees, the light of the afternoon sun turning the grass along their crests into halos of gold. She got as close as she dared, then threw the car into park and eased her way gingerly out of the driver’s seat. Coffees in hand, she climbed the grade into the trees. Bronze thunderheads loomed in the north, already covering a third of the sky, great towering air-mountains with dark streaks at their base. The air was dead, totally dead. But that wouldn’t last long.

She entered the sparse scattering of trees and continued along the path toward the Mounds. There was Pendergast, dark and slim, looking around, his back partly to her. “Looking” really wasn’t the word, she realized: more like staring. Intently. Almost as if he was trying to memorize the very landscape around him.

“Coffee delivery!” she called out, a little too cheerfully. Something about Pendergast sometimes gave her the shivers.

He slowly turned, his eyes focusing on her, then he smiled faintly. “Ah, Miss Swanson. How kind of you. Alas, I drink tea only. Never coffee.”

“Oh. Sorry.” For a moment she felt disappointed, somehow, that she hadn’t been able to please him the way she’d hoped. She shook the thought away: now she could drink both coffees herself. As she looked around, she noticed there were topographical maps and diagrams of all kinds spread out on the ground, held down with rocks. Under another rock was an old journal, its weathered pages full of spidery, childlike script.

“You are kind to think of me, Miss Swanson. I’m almost finished here.”

“What are you doing?”

“Reading thegenius loci. And preparing myself.”

“For what?”

“You shall see.”

Corrie sat on a rock and sipped her coffee. It was strong and cold and as sweet as ice cream: just the way she liked it. She watched as Pendergast walked about the area, stopping to stare for minutes at a time in seemingly random directions. Occasionally he would pull out his notebook and jot something down. At other times he would return to one of his maps—some of them looked old, at least nineteenth-century—and make a mark or draw a line. Once Corrie tried to ask a question, but he quietly raised his hand to silence her.

Forty-five minutes passed as the sun began to sink into a swirl of ugly clouds on the western horizon. She watched him, mystified as usual, but with a perverse kind of admiration she didn’t really understand. She was aware of feeling a desire to help him; to impress him with her abilities; to gain his respect and trust. In recent years no teacher, no friend, and certainly not her mother had ever made her feel useful, worthwhile, needed. She felt that way now, with him. She wondered what it was that motivated Pendergast to do this kind of job, to investigate horrible murders, to put himself in danger.

She wondered if perhaps she wasn’t just a little bit in love with him.

But no, that was impossible: not someone with those creepy long fingers and skin as pale as a corpse and strange blond-white hair and cold silver-blue eyes that always seemed to be looking a little too intently at everything, including her. And he was soold, at least forty. Ugh.

Finally Pendergast was finished. He came strolling over, slipping his notebook into his jacket pocket. “I believe I’m ready.”

“I would be, too, if I knew what was up.”

Pendergast knelt on the ground among his maps and documents, gathering them carefully together. “Have you ever heard of a memory palace?”

“No.”

“It is a mental exercise, a kind of memory training, that goes back at least as far as the ancient Greek poet Simonides. It was refined by Matteo Ricci in the late fifteenth century, when he taught the technique to Chinese scholars. I perform a similar form of mental concentration, one of my own devising, which combines the memory palace with elements of Chongg Ran, an ancient Bhutanese form of meditation. I call my technique a memory crossing.”

“You’ve totally lost me.”

“Here’s a simplified explanation: through intense research, followed by intense concentration, I attempt to re-create, in my mind, a particular place at a particular time in the past.”

“In the past? You mean, like time travel?”

“I do not actuallytravel in time, of course. Instead, I attempt to reconstruct a finite location in time and space within mymind; to place myself within that location; and to then proceed to make observations that could not otherwise be made. It gives me a perspective obtainable in no other way. It fills in gaps, missing bits of data, that otherwise would not even beperceived as gaps. And it is frequently in these very gaps that the crucial information lies.” He began removing his suit coat. “It’s especially relevant in this particular case, where I have made absolutely no progress through the usual methods, the offices of the good Mrs. Tealander not excepting.”

Pendergast carefully folded his suit coat and laid it across the gathered maps, charts, and journal. Corrie was startled to see a large weapon strapped beneath one arm.

“Are you going to do it now?” Corrie said, feeling a mixture of curiosity and alarm.

Pendergast lay down on the ground, like a corpse, very still. “Yes.”

He folded his hands on his chest.

“But . . . but what am I supposed to do?”

“You are here to watch over me. If you hear or see anything unusual, wake me. A good hard shake should bring me back.”

“But—”

“Do you hear those birds? Those chirping grasshoppers? If you hear themstop, you must also awaken me.”

“Okay.”

“Finally, if I do not come back in one hour, you must wake me. Those are the three circumstances under which I am to be awakened. No others. Do you understand?”

“It’s simple enough.”

Pendergast crossed his arms over his chest. If Corrie had been lying there like that, there was no way she could have thought of anything but the hard ground and the stubble underneath her. And yet he seemed to be becoming sostill.

“So what time are you going back to?”

“I am going back to the evening of August 14, 1865.”

“The Ghost Massacre?”

“Precisely.”

“But why? What does this have to do with the serial murders?”

“The two are connected, that much I know.How they are connected is what I hope to discover. If there is no key to these new killings in the present, then that key must lie in the past. And the past is where I intend to go.”

“But you’re not really going anywhere, are you?”

“I assure you, Miss Swanson, the journey I make is strictlywithin my own mind. But even so, it is a long and dangerous interior journey to terra incognita, perhaps even more dangerous than a physical journey would be.”

“I don’t . . .” Corrie let her voice trail off. Any more questions would be useless.

“Are we ready, Miss Swanson?”

“I guess so.”

“In that case, I shall now ask for your absolute silence.”

Corrie waited. Pendergast remained absolutely still. As the minutes went by, he seemed even to have stopped breathing. The afternoon light poured through the trees as usual, the birds and grasshoppers chirped, the thunderheads continued to rear above the trees. Everything was as before—and yet, somehow, she herself could almost hear a faint whisper of that same late afternoon 140 years before, when thirty Cheyenne had come galloping out of a swirl of dust, bent on a most terrible revenge.

Thirty-Seven

Sheriff Hazen pulled into the big parking lot at the Deeper Mall, sped across the nearly empty blacktop, and slid his cruiser into one of the “Law Enforcement Only” spaces outside the Deeper sheriff’s office. Hazen knew the Deeper sheriff, Hank Larssen, well. He was a regular guy, decent, if a little slow on the uptake. Hazen felt a twinge of envy as he walked through the hushed outer office with its humming computers and pretty secretaries. Christ, in Medicine Creek they couldn’t even afford to recharge the AC in the squad cars. Where did these guys get the money?

It was almost five, but everyone was still busy propping up the decrepit Lavender empire. Hazen was well known here, and nobody stopped him as he made his way through the building toward Larssen’s office. The door was shut. He knocked, and then, without waiting for a reply, opened.

Larssen was sitting in his wooden swivel chair, listening to two guys in suits who were both talking at once. They broke off when he entered.

“Perfect timing, Dent,” Larssen said with a quick smile. “This is Seymour Fisk, dean of faculty at KSU, and Chester Raskovich, head of campus security. This is Sheriff Dent Hazen, Medicine Creek.”

Hazen took a seat, giving the two KSU people the once-over. Fisk was a typical academic, bald, jowly, reading glasses dangling from his neck. Chester Raskovich was a type, also: brown suit, heavyset, sweating all over, with close-set eyes and a handshake even more crushing than Agent Paulson’s had been. A cop wannabe if he’d ever seen one.

“I don’t have to tell you why they’re here,” Larssen went on.

“No.” Hazen genuinely liked Hank and he was sorry about what he was going to have to do. He had done nothing but think about his theory, and it amazed even him how beautifully it came together.

“We were just talking about the ramifications for Medicine Creek and Deeper. Regarding the experimental field, I mean.”

Hazen nodded. He was in no rush. Perfect timing, indeed: it was a major stroke of luck the KSU people were there to hear what he had to say.

Fisk leaned forward, resuming what he had been saying before Hazen entered. “The fact is, Sheriff, this tragic killing changes everything. I just don’t see how we can proceed with Medicine Creek now as the site for the field. That leaves Deeper, by default. What I must have from you, Sheriff, are assurances that the negative effects won’t spill over here. I can’t emphasize enough that publicity will be intolerable. Intolerable. The whole point of locating the field in this, ah, quiet corner of the state was to avoid the kind of circus atmosphere and excess publicity generated by those with irrational fears of so-called genetic engineering.”

Sheriff Larssen nodded sagely, his face a mask of seriousness. “Medicine Creek is twenty miles away and the crimes are strictly confined to that town. The authorities—and Sheriff Hazen will confirm this—believe the killer is local to Medicine Creek. I can assure you in the strongest terms that there will be no spillover to Deeper. We haven’t had a homicide here since 1911.”

Hazen said nothing.

“Good,” said Fisk, with a nod that set his jowls shaking. “Mr. Raskovich is here to assist the police”—he nodded toward Sheriff Hazen—“in finding the psychopath who committed this horrendous crime, and also in finding Dr. Chauncy’s body, which we understand is still missing.”

“That is correct.”

“He’s also going to interface with you, Mr. Larssen, in making sure the publicity and security environment of Deeper is appropriately maintained. Of course, any announcement of the new location of the field has been put off until this situation settles down, but just among us I can say it will be Deeper. Any questions?”

Silence.

“Sheriff Hazen, any news on the investigation at your end?”

This was what Hazen had been waiting for. “Yes,” he said mildly. “As a matter of fact, there is.”

They all leaned toward him. Hazen settled back in his chair, letting the moment build. Finally, he spoke.

“It appears that Chauncy went down near the creek and collected some last-minute corn samples, which he tagged and labeled. They say he was waiting for the corn to get ripe or something.”

All three of them nodded.

“The other news is the killer isn’t local. Local to Medicine Creek, that is.” Hazen said this as casually as possible.

This perked everybody up.

“It also appears that these killings aren’t the work of some psychopathic serial killer, either. That’s what they weremeant to look like. The scalping, the bare feet, the hint of a connection to the old Ghost Massacre and the curse of the Forty-Fives—all that’s just window dressing. No: these killings are the work of someone with a motive as old as the hills—money.”

Now hereally had their attention.

“How so?” Fisk asked.

“The killer struck first three days before Dr. Chauncy’s scheduled arrival. Then he struck again the dayafter Chauncy arrived. Coincidence?”

He let the word hang in the air a moment.

“What do you mean?” Larssen was getting worried.

“The first two killings didn’t have the desired effect. And that is why Chauncy had to be killed.”

“I’m not following you,” Larssen said. “What desired effect are you talking about?”

“To persuade Chauncy that Medicine Creek wasn’t the right place for the experimental field.”

He had dropped his bombshell. There was a stunned silence.

He continued. “The first two killings were an attempt to convince KSU to forgo Medicine Creek and site the field in Deeper. But it didn’t work. So the killer had no choice but to kill Chauncy himself. Right on the eve of his big announcement.”

“Now wait—” began Sheriff Larssen.

“Let him finish,” said Fisk, placing his tweedy elbows on his tweedy knees.

“These so-called serial killings were nothing more than a way to make Medicine Creek look unsuitable for a sensitive project like this—a way to make sure the experimental field went to Deeper. The mutilations and Indian crap were all designed to stir up Medicine Creek, get everyone talking about the curse, make us all look like a bunch of superstitious yahoos.” Hazen turned to Hank. “If I were you, Hank, I’d start asking myself: who had the most to lose with the field going to Medicine Creek?”

“Now hold on here,” the Deeper sheriff said, rising in his chair. “You’re not suggesting that the killer is from Deeper, I hope.”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

“You haven’t a shred of proof! What you’ve got is nothing more than a theory. Atheory! Where’s the evidence?”

Hazen waited. Better to let Hank blow off a little steam.

“This is ridiculous! I can’t imagine anyone here brutally murdering three people over a damn cornfield.”

“It’s a lot more than a ‘damn cornfield,’ ” said Hazen coolly, “as I’m sure Professor Fisk can tell you.”

Fisk nodded.

“This project is important. There’s big money in it, for the town and for KSU. Buswell Agricon is one of the biggest agricultural companies in the world. There are patents, royalties, laboratories, grants, you name it, up for grabs here. So Hank, I’ll ask you the question again:who in Deeper had the most to lose? ”

“I’m not going to open an investigation on the basis of a crackpot theory.”

Hazen smiled. “You don’t have to, Hank. I’m in charge of the case.I’ll open the investigation. All I ask is your cooperation.”

Larssen turned to Fisk and Raskovich. “Here in Deeper, we don’t habitually send law enforcement off on wild-goose chases.”

Fisk returned his gaze. “Frankly, what Sheriff Hazen is saying makes sense to me.” He turned to Raskovich. “What do you think, Chester?”

When Raskovich spoke, the sound came from deep within his barrel chest. “I’d say it’s definitely worth looking into.”

Larssen looked from one to the other. “We’ll look into it, of course, but I sincerely doubt the killer is going to turn up here. This is premature—”

Hazen broke in smoothly. “Dr. Fisk, with all due respect, I think you should keep your options open as to where the field should be sited. If the killer’s been trying to influence your decision . . .” He paused significantly.

“I certainly see your point, Sheriff.”

“But the decision’s already been made,” Larssen said.

“Nothing is engraved in stone,” said Fisk. “If the killer’s from Deeper—and I have to say the theory stacks up nicely—then, frankly, this is thelast place we’d want to site the field.”

Larssen shut up. He was smart enough to know when to do that, at least. He gazed at Hazen, his face dark. Hazen felt sorry for him. He wasn’t a bad guy, really, even if he was a little short on both brainsand imagination.

Hazen rose. “I have to get back to Medicine Creek—we’ve still got a body to find—but I’m coming back first thing tomorrow to start my investigation. Hank, I hope we can work together in a friendly way.”

“Sure we can, Dent.” Hank had to choke out the words.

Hazen turned to the KSU men. “Nice to meet you. I’ll keep you posted.”

“We appreciate that, Sheriff.”

Hazen plucked a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and fixed an eye on Raskovich. “When you get to Medicine Creek, come by my office. We’ll see about getting you temporary peace officer status. It’s the modern-day equivalent of being deputized. We’re going to need your help, Mr. Raskovich.”

The campus security chief nodded as if this were the most normal thing in the world, his face a mask of stolidity, but Hazen knew he had just scored big with Chief Campus Doorshaker Chester Raskovich.

Thirty-Eight

The discipline of Chongg Ran, invented by the Confucian sage Ton Wei in the T’ang dynasty, was later transported from China to Bhutan, where it was further refined over a period of half a millennium at the Tenzin Torgangka monastery, one of the most isolated in the world. It is a form of concentration that marries utter emptiness with hyperawareness, the fusion of rigorous intellectual study with pure sensation.

The first challenge of Chongg Ran is to visualize white and blacksimultaneously —not as gray. Only one percent of adherents are able to move beyond this point. Far more difficult mental exercises await. Some involve simultaneous, self-contradictory imaginary games of Go, or more recent studious pastimes such as chess or bridge. In others, one must learn to fuse knowledge with nescience, sound with silence, self with annihilation, life with death, the universe with the quark.

Chongg Ran is an exercise in antitheses. It is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. It brings with it the gift of inexplicable mental powers. It is the ultimate enhancement of the human mind.

Pendergast lay on the ground, maintaining acute awareness of his surroundings: the smell of dry weeds, the feeling of sticky heat, the stubble and pebbles pressing into his back. He isolated every individual sound, every chirp, rustle, flutter, whisper, down to the faint breathing of his assistant sitting some yards away. With his eyes closed, he proceeded to visualize the surrounding scene exactly as if he were seeing it with his own eyes, spread out below him:sight without seeing. Piece by piece he assembled it: the trees, the three mounds, the play of shade and light, the cornfields stretching out below, the towering thunderheads above, the air, the sky, the living earth.

Soon the landscape had taken complete form. And now, having isolated each object, one by one he could extinguish them from his awareness.

He started with scents. He removed, one by one, the complex perfumes of the cottonwood trees, humidity, ozone from the approaching storm, the grass and leaves and dust. Then, sensation: he proceeded to extinguish, one at a time, every feeling impinging on his consciousness: the pebbles under his back, the heat, the crawling of an ant over his hand.

Next came sound. The trillings of the insects disappeared first, then the rustling of the leaves, the desultory tapping of a woodpecker, the fluttering and calling of the birds in the trees, the faint movement of air, the distant rumble of thunder.

The landscape still existed, but now it was a tableau of absolute silence.

Next, he suppressed in himself the very sensation of corporeality, that innate feeling of having a body and knowing where that body is in space and time.

Now the real concentration began. One by one, Pendergast removed each object in the landscape. He stripped it away, in the reverse order of its arrival. First the road disappeared, then the corn, then the trees, the town, the grass, the rocks, then the very light itself. A mathematically pure landscape was left: bare, empty, dark as night, existing only in form.

He waited five minutes, then ten, holding this empty fractal perfection in his head, preparing himself. And then, slowly, he began to put the landscape back together; but it would not be the same landscape he had just stripped away.

First the light returned. Then the grass rolled over the landscape, virgin tallgrass prairie dotted with prairie aster, wild poppies, cornflowers, rocketweed, and lupine. Then he piled back the bronze mountains of cloud, the rocky outcrops, the shady creek wandering free across the Great Plains. Now other things began to take shape: a herd of buffalo in the far distance; shallow water pans blazing silver in the late afternoon light; and everywhere an infinite array of wild grasses, undulating from horizon to horizon like a great rippling sea of green.

A thread of smoke came up from below. There were black dots of people moving about, a few ragged tents. Fifty horses were grazing the bottomlands by the creek, their noses in the grass.

Slowly, Pendergast permitted first the sounds, and then the smells, to return: voices laughing and cursing; fecund humidity; the whiff of woodsmoke and roasting buffalo steaks; the distant whinny of a horse; the jingle of spurs and the clank of cast iron cookware.

Pendergast waited, watchful, all senses alert. The voices became clearer.

Didier’s buckskin come up lame again,said a voice.

The chunk of wood on fire.Chuck’s about ready.

That boy wouldn’t know where to piss less’n his mammy aimed his dingus for him.

Laughter. Men were standing around, battered tin plates in hand. The scene was still vague, tremulous, not yet fully formed.

I can’t wait to get to Dodge and strip off this goddamned dust.

Use this to clean out what’s in your throat, Jim.

The late afternoon sun refracted through a bottle and there was the sloshing of drink. There was a clank, the sound of an iron lid settling. A gust of wind swept up a skein of dust, settled back down. A piece of wood popped in the fire.

When we get to Dodge I’ll introduce you to a lady who can clean the dust off another part.

More laughter.

Whiskey over here, amigo.

What’s this you’ve been feeding us, Hoss, boiled sheepshit?

No tickee no washee, Crowe.

Whiskey over here, amigo.

Gradually, the scene crystallized. Men were standing around a fire at the base of a mound. They were wearing greasy cowboy hats, frayed bandannas, ragged shirts, and pants that looked so stiff from dirt and grease they almost crackled as they walked. All had scraggly beards.

The hill was a dusty island in the sea of grass. Below, the land swept away, open and free. The thick scrub that then covered the base of the mounds cast long shadows. The wind was picking up, rippling the grass in restless, random waves. The clean scent of wildflowers drifted on the air, mingling the sweet smell of cottonwood smoke, simmering beans, unwashed humanity. In the lee of one mound the men had unrolled their bedrolls and upended their saddles, using the sheepskin linings as headrests. There were a couple of pitched pole tents, badly rotted. Beyond, partway down the hill, stood one of the pickets, alert, carrying a rifle. Another picket was on the far side.

As the wind picked up, more clouds of dust swirled upward.

Chuck’s ready.

A man with a narrow face, narrow eyes, and a scar across his chin stood lazily and shook out his legs, causing his spurs to jingle. Harry Beaumont, the leader.You, Sink, get Web and go relieve the pickets. You eat later.

But last time—

Any more out of you, Sink, and I’ll fish the crik with your balls.

There was some muffled laughter.

Remember back at Two Forks, that Lo with the giant balls? The javelina sure did fight over those, remember?

More laughter.

Musta had some kind of disease.

They’re all diseased.

You didn’t worry ’bout that when you went for the squaws, Jim.

Mind shutting the hell up while I eat my chuck?

From one side, a man began to sing in a fine low voice:

Feet in the stirrups and seat in the saddle,

I hung and I rattled with them long-horn cattle,

Last night I was on guard and the leader broke ranks,

I hit my horse down the shoulders, I spurred him in the flanks,

The wind commenced to blow, the rain began to fall,

Hit looked, by grab, like we was going to lose ’em all.

The two pickets came back and propped their rifles on their saddles, then came over with their plates, shaking the rising dust from their shirts and leggings. The cook ladled the beans and stew meat and then went and sat cross-legged in the dirt.

Damn you, Hoss, this stew is half dirt!

Aids the digestion.

Whiskey over here, amigo.

A broad sweep of prairie rippled now with the wind. The wind could be seen as it approached, pressing the grass down, exposing its paler side, a wave of lighter green. It struck the bottom of the mounds, picking up dust, swirling it up into a curtain. The sun, sitting on the horizon, dimmed abruptly.

There was a stasis, a suspended moment, and then the sudden pounding of hooves.

What the hell?

The horses, something’s spooked the horses.

Those ain’t ours.

Cheyenne!

The guns get your guns get the guns.

Instant chaos. The cloud of dust, rising higher, parted and a white horse, painted with blood-red handprints, appeared, followed by another and another. A cry arose. The stream of horses divided, one on either side of the scrambling men: horses that, quite literally, had appeared out of nowhere.

Aieeeeeeeeeee—!

A sudden hissing in the air. The arrows came from two directions, followed by a tattoo of thuds. Screams, groans, the rattle of spurs, the sound of bodies hitting the ground.

The dust had now rolled over them, enveloping them in a fog through which could be dimly glimpsed the shapes of men running, falling, spinning. There was a shot, then another, disorganized. A horse fell heavily against the ground. A vague figure fired point-blank into the head of the Indian atop it, sending up a small cloud of dark matter.

The dust rose and fell in cascading sheets; the wind moaned and muttered; the wounded screamed and choked. The sound of beating hooves faded, stopped momentarily, then resumed.

They’re coming back.

Back, they’re turning back, get ready men.

The ghostly shapes of the riders appeared again, a second dividing stream.

Aieeeee-yip-yip-yip-aieeeee!

Now there was a coordinated volley of shots from those still alive, kneeling on the exposed ground, taking careful aim. Another terrible twanging and hissing of death on the air, the sound of a hundred arrows thudding into dirt and bodies, more falling horses, the crash and clink of bridle and spur, men clawing at their clothes, more firing. A man suddenly appeared out of the dimness, staggering, gargling, trying to pull an arrow from his mouth; another spun around and around with four arrows in his chest; then, abruptly, three more emerged like magic from his back. A horse, standing absolutely still, head hanging, its guts in a steaming pile beneath.

Another pass, a turn, then another. The smell of blood rose, rivers of it running from the dead horses and men.

A fifth pass. Now only sporadic shots, quickly silenced by the hiss of arrows. A field in which groaning, wailing, writhing men moved feebly between inert forms. This time the Indians reined in their horses, dismounted, and began walking casually among the wounded, knives out. They became dark forms, bending over dark shapes on the ground. Shrieks, begging, weeping; the wet sound of scalps being ripped away; and then silence.

A man, lying on the ground, faking death, was dragged to his feet. His pleading cut through the dust and the dying moans: Harry Beaumont. The dark forms of the Indians clustered about him, silent, wraithlike, unhurried. The pleading rose in pitch, incomprehensible. He was grasped firmly, his head pulled back. A flash of a steel knife against the dust; a scream. A piece of flesh tossed aside. The Indians worked on the man’s head, arms making short sharp movements as if carving a piece of wood; the screams became hysterical, choked. More red pieces discarded. Another wet ripping sound, more protracted than the others. Another scream. Two final movements, two more pieces dropping to the ground. Another, shorter scream.

And then, with ropes and poles hooked to their saddles, the Indians were dragging their dead horses away into the curtains of dust, heaping their dead warriors on travois and dragging them away as well. In less than a minute, they had disappeared completely into the dust from which they came.

Only one man was left, staggering through the dust, crying. Harry Beaumont. He dropped to his knees at the center of the mounds. He had no face left: no nose, lips, ears, or scalp. Just an oval of raw, red meat where his features had once been.

Rounded.

He rocked on his knees, head drooping, the blood pooling around his ruined jaws and chin and dripping into the ground. A dark hole opened in the bloody oval and a shriek arose:

Thon of a bith I curth thith groun I curth thith groun may it forever be damned may it rain blood for my blood guth for my guth damn thith evil groun—

He fell slowly, gargling and twitching in the bloody dust.

As the wind abated, as the dust settled and vision slowly returned, nothing remained but dead white men. The Cheyenne dead, the dead horses, all were gone. Only the endless grass now, stretching from horizon to horizon. And then a lone figure could be seen rising from a brushy fold in the earth a hundred yards downhill—a boy, previously hidden, who now staggered up in terror and ran across the empty prairie, his little figure fading into the orange glow of the horizon until he could be seen no more.

And then, silence.

Corrie jumped as Pendergast’s eyes flew open, silvery and luminous in the twilight. The hour was up, and she had been about to rouse him. She’d almost woken him earlier, when the birdsong suddenly stopped; but within a minute or two it had resumed and her anxiety had faded. She stood, unsure for a moment what to say. It was now dark under the trees and the muggy night air was filled with the sound of rasping insects.

“Are you all right?” she finally asked.

Pendergast rose, brushing the leaves, dust, and grass off his coat and pants. His face looked drawn, almost as if he was ill.

“I am fine, thank you,” he answered. His voice was toneless.

Corrie hesitated. She desperately wanted to know what he had seen or discovered, but she found herself afraid to ask.

Pendergast checked his watch. “Eight o’clock.”

He swiftly collected his documents, papers, and notes, and began striding down the track toward the car. She followed, stumbling in her effort to keep up. He was already in the passenger seat, waiting, when she reached her own door and fumbled in the twilight with the handle.

“Please take me back to the Kraus place, Miss Swanson.”

“Right. Okay.”

The car engine turned over, turned again, rattled and shook into life. She turned on the headlights and crept back down the bumpy track.

After a few minutes, she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Well?” she asked. “How’d it go?”

Pendergast’s eyes turned to her, glistening strangely in the night.

“I saw the impossible,” was all he said.

Thirty-Nine

The light faded and twilight crept into the air. The silent leaves disclosed, in the open area between the mounds, infrequent glimpses of the man and the girl. They had been talking, their low voices a murmur at this distance, but now there was only silence. The man had lain down and the girl was now sitting on a rock maybe twenty yards away, once in a while getting up to look around. The light had died in the west and only a faint glow lay over the landscape, rapidly turning to night.

The cornfields, dark and still, stretched out beyond the copse of trees. A star had appeared. From his place of concealment, the watcher looked for another star, found it. Then another, and another.

His eyes turned back to the figure on the ground. What in the world was Pendergast doing? Lying there, silently, like a corpse. Two hours had passed—two hours, wasted. It was well after seven o’clock. And now thatGlobe reporter, Joe Rickey, was soon going to be coming up against his deadline. Not to mention Ludwig’s own deadline for the next edition of theCourier. Was this some kind of psychic crap? New Age communication with the spirits? Perhaps therewas a story here after all, only it wasn’t the story he was after. Still, it was the only story around, and he wasn’t going to move until he saw it through.

Smit Ludwig shifted his cramped limbs, yawned. The night crickets stopped chirping at the movement, then resumed: a peaceful, familiar sound. The whole landscape was familiar to him. He had spent his boyhood up at these mounds, playing Cowboys and Indians with his brother or swimming down in the creek. They’d even camped up here a couple of times. The tale of Harry Beaumont and the Forty-Fives, the fact that the Mounds had a sinister reputation, only added to the boyish sense of adventure. He could remember one night in August, camped here, watching the shooting stars. They’d counted to a hundred and then quit. His brother had left Medicine Creek, was now a retired grandfather in Leisure, Arizona. That was a different era back then. Mothers never thought twice about letting their kids run off and play all day long out of sight. Today it was different. The ugly modern world had come to Medicine Creek, bit by bit. And now, these killings. A part of him was glad Sarah hadn’t lived to see this. Even if they found the killer, the town would never be the same.

Ludwig peered again through the gloaming. Pendergast was still lying on the ground, totally motionless. Even a sleeping person shifted once in a while. And nobody slept like that, perfectly straight, legs together, hands folded on the chest. Christ, he was still wearing his shoes. It was very bizarre.

He cursed under his breath. Should he just stand up and interrupt them, ask them what was going on? But somehow he couldn’t do that. He’d waited this long, he’d wait to see what happened when—

Abruptly, he saw Pendergast rise and dust himself off. Ludwig quickly shrank back into the deepest shadows. There was a murmuring of voices, then without further ado the two started walking back toward their car.

Ludwig swore again bitterly. It had been utter folly to follow Corrie: a self-delusion, born of an attempt to help a cub reporter and to find his own new angle on the story. Now the story was gone, the kid would be in trouble, and next day’sCourier would be left high and dry.

He waited for them to leave, bitterness continuing to rise. What was the hurry? There was no story to write up, nobody to go home to. He might as well just sit here all night. Nobody would miss him or his paper . . .

But Ludwig’s tolerance for self-pity was limited, and before long he, too, had risen. He’d hidden his car well behind Corrie’s, down the road and in the corn, where he knew they would not see it on their way out. He dusted himself off and looked around. The light was now completely gone and the wind had started to pick up—wind at dusk was a sure sign of a coming storm. The leaves started to rustle above his head, then thrashed under a sudden gust. It was very dark, the moon now covered by quick-moving clouds.

He saw a flash of lightning and waited, counting. A faint rumble reached him after almost half a minute.

The storm had a ways to come still.

Hunching forward against the rising wind, he walked toward the spot where Pendergast had lain. There might be something there, some clue as to what he was doing. But there was nothing, not even a faint impression. Ludwig drew out his notebook to jot down a few notes, but then stopped himself. Who was he kidding? There was no story here.

Suddenly, the air seemed full of sound: rustling grass and leaves, sighing branches, swaying trees. The smell of humidity and ozone came to him, mingled with the scent of flowers. Another faint rumble of thunder.

He’d better hurry back and break the bad news to the kid.

It was so dark now that he wondered briefly if he could follow the old track. But he’d been down it a thousand times as a child, and childhood memories never died. He walked down the path, huddled against the wind. Leaves blew past him and a flying twig got caught in his hair. The rush of wind was almost pleasant after the weeks of heat and stillness.

He paused, aware of a new sound to his right. The rustle of an animal, perhaps.

He waited, took a step, another—and then he heard the distinct crackle of dry leaves underfoot.

But not underhis foot.

He waited, hearing nothing but the whisper of leaves, the rising wind. After a minute or so, he turned and continued walking quickly.

Immediately he could hear footsteps to his right again.

He stopped. “Who is it?”

The wind blew, the cottonwoods creaked.

“Pendergast?”

He resumed walking, and almost immediately he could hear, he couldfeel, that he was being paced. A chill hit him.

“Whoever it is, I know you’re there!” he said, walking faster. He tried to sound loud, angry, but he was unable to keep the quaver from his voice. His heart was pounding in his chest.

The unknown thing kept pace.

Unbidden, the words old Whit had quoted in church that Sunday came back to Ludwig, here in the darkness:. . . the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking who he may devour . . .

He felt breath come snorting through his nose, and he fought hard against a rising panic. Soon, he told himself, he’d be out of the trees, back between two walls of corn. From there it was only two hundred yards to the road, and only another two hundred to the car. The road, at least, would be safe.

But, oh God, those horrible, plodding, crunching footfalls . . . !

“Get the hell out of here!” he yelled over his shoulder.

He hadn’t meant to yell: it had burst out from some instinctual place within him. Just as instinctual was the dead run that he now broke into. He was too old to run, especially all-out, and his heart felt like it would break loose in his chest. But even if he’d tried he could not have stopped his feet.

In the darkness beside him, the thing kept pace. Now Ludwig could hear the breathing—short rhythmic grunts in time to each thudding footfall.

I could run into the corn, lose him,Ludwig thought as he dashed out of the trees. Before him, the dark sea of corn was being tossed by the wind, roaring and rattling. Dust stung his eyes. There was a brief flash of lightning.

Muh!The sudden bark, alarmingly near, sent terror breaking in waves over him: it seemed human, and yet at the same time so very inhuman.

“Get away from me!”he screamed, running even faster now, faster than he dreamed possible.

Muh, muh, muh,the thing grunted as it ran alongside.

Another flicker of lightning, and in the pale flash he could see the shape pacing him through the corn. He saw it very briefly, but with brutal distinctness. For a moment, he almost stumbled in shock. It was mind-warping, impossible. Oh, dear Jesus, that face,that face—!!

Ludwig ran. And as he ran, he heard the figure keeping pace effortlessly.

Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh.

The road! The flash of headlights, a car just passing—!

Ludwig rushed out into the road with a banshee wail of terror, screaming and running down the center line, waving his arms at the receding taillights. His cries were swallowed by another rumble of thunder. He stopped, sagging forward, palms on his knees, feeling as if his lungs would rupture. Completely spent now, he waited, limp and defeated, for the sudden blow, the white-hot lance of pain . . .

But there was nothing, and after a moment he straightened up and looked around.

The wind tossed and agitated the corn on both sides of the road, drowning all sound, but in the dimmest light Ludwig could see the monster was gone. Gone. Frightened away by the car, perhaps. He looked about more wildly now, heaving, coughing, and trying to suck in air, dazed by his own good fortune.

And his own car was only two hundred yards down the road.

Half stumbling, half running, Smit Ludwig went wheezing, gasping down the middle of the road. His heart hammered with a wild abandon. Just one hundred yards now. Fifty. Ten.

With a final gasp he staggered into the turnaround where he had hidden the car. With a surge of relief so strong it threatened to buckle his knees, he could see the faint gleam of its metal side, within a ragged patch of volunteer corn. He was safe, thank the risen Lord, he was safe! With a sob and a gasp he seized the door handle, pulled open the door.

From the dark semicircle of surrounding corn, the thing launched itself out at him with a rising bellow.

MuuuuuuuUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Ludwig’s gargling scream was swallowed by the shrieking of the wind.

Forty

From his suite of rooms on the second floor of the old Kraus place, Pendergast watched a dirty red dawn break along the eastern horizon. Distant lightning had flickered and rumbled all night. And the wind was still rising, rippling the fields of corn, causing the “Kraus’s Kaverns” sign to swivel and shiver on its weatherbeaten post. The trees along the creek, half a mile away, were tossing in the gusts, and dusty sheets rose from the dry fields, carried aloft in rolling folds before disappearing into the dirty sky.

He lowered his eyes from the window. For the hundredth time he went over the memory crossing in his mind, re-creating the preparation, the setting of the scene, the mental deconstruction and reconstruction of the Mounds region, the past events that had followed. It was the first time a memory crossing had failed him. Having had no luck in his investigation into present-day Medicine Creek, he had made the crossing in an attempt to understand the events of the past: to solve the riddle of the curse of the Forty-Fives, to understand what really happened on that day in 1865. But it was as the legends held: the Indians really had appeared out of nowhere, and then vanished back into nowhere.

Yet that was impossible. Unless it was at last time to contemplate a possibility he had always resisted: that there were, in fact, extra-natural forces at work here, forces that he neither apprehended nor comprehended.

It was a most frustrating turn of events indeed.

There was a faint droning sound to the southeast. Raising his head, Pendergast saw the dot of a plane coming in high over the corn. It grew in size, flying across his field of vision, resolving into a Cessna crop duster. As it receded again toward the opposite horizon, it banked and came back—the spotter plane, still looking for Chauncy’s body.

A second drone came from out of the lightening horizon, and Pendergast saw a second plane arrive to work the cornfields, flying back and forth at the other end of the landscape.

From downstairs came the rattle of a kettle being placed on the stove. Moments later, the aroma of percolating coffee reached him. Winifred Kraus would also be making his tea, in the exacting manner he had taught her. It wasn’t easy to make a satisfactory cup of King’s Mountain Oolong, getting the temperature of both the water and the pot precisely right, knowing the correct quantity of leaves to add, the right amount of time to let them steep. Most important was the quality of the water. He had quoted to her at length from the fifth chapter of Lu Yu’sCh’a Ching, the holy scripture of tea, in which the poet debated the relative merits of mountain water, river water, and spring water, as well as the various stages of boiling, and Winifred had seemed to listen with interest. And, to his surprise, the tapwater of Medicine Creek had proven fresh, cool, pure, and quite delicious, with a perfect balance of minerals and ions. It made an almost perfect cup of tea.

Pendergast thought about this while watching the two planes move back and forth, back and forth. And then, rather suddenly, one began to circle.

Just like the vultures had done, not so many days before.

Still thoughtful, Pendergast slipped his cell phone out of his coat pocket and dialed. A voice answered, thick with sleep.

“Miss Swanson? I will expect you here in ten minutes, if you please. It would appear we’ve found the body of Dr. Chauncy.” He snapped the phone shut and turned from the window.

There would be just enough time for tea.

Forty-One