Still Life With Crows

Pendergast paused, listening. He heard the sounds echoing through the galleries of stone, distorted beyond recognition. He waited, straining to hear, but it was impossible to make out anything beside a whisper of sound, so altered by the acoustical properties of the caverns that it seemed almost like distant surf, or wind among trees.

He redoubled his pace in what seemed the right direction, dodging over and between enormous toppled stalactites. At the end of the cavern, where the trails divided, he stopped again, listening.

The sounds continued.

Now he consulted his map, found his approximate location. He was in the middle of a particularly labyrinthine section of the cave system, riddled with multilevel cracks, passageways, and blind holes. Locating the sound within such a fiendish maze would be difficult. And yet he knew that in caves such as this, sound usually followed the flow of air. Pulling a slim gold lighter from his pocket, Pendergast lit it and held it at arm’s length, carefully scrutinizing the direction in which the flame bent. Then he pocketed the lighter again and continued on, upwind, toward the sound.

But now, the sounds had ceased. The cave had returned to dripping silence.

Pendergast went on, through galleries and tunnels. With the absence of sound, he went back to following the map toward what appeared to be the central part of the cave system. At the end of a particularly narrow gallery he stopped, shining his light upon a far wall. There was one narrow vertical crack here, not on the map, that looked like it might give way onto another cavern on the far side. If so, it would cut off a considerable distance. He went to the crack and listened.

Once again, he heard faint sounds. The rush of water, overlaid by a human voice. At least, it appeared to be human, and yet it was so distorted that it was impossible to make out any words—if indeed there were any.

Shining his light on the ground before his feet, he noticed that he was not the first person to have taken this shortcut.

He edged into the crack, which soon widened enough for him to walk normally. Gradually the bottom of the crack dropped away and a crevasse opened below; yet the walls remained narrow enough that he could continue forward, one foot on either side of the crevasse, squeezing his torso through a narrow slot. It was a position that gave, strangely, the sensations of both claustrophobia and acrophobia at the same time.

Ahead, the crack opened into the blackness of space. He was standing on a narrow ledge almost a hundred feet up the wall of a domelike cavity. A stream of water plunged from above and feathered down toward the base far beneath his feet, filling the cavern with the echoing splash of water. A billion winking lights—reflections of feathery gypsum crystals—filled the cavern like fireflies.

Pendergast’s flashlight beam could only barely reach the bottom.

There had been footprints at the entrance to the crack: that meant there must be a way down.

Below the lip of rock on which he stood, his light caught a series of hand- and footholds. Intermittent sounds came from below, clearer now.

Had Hazen and the troopers reached the killer and Corrie? The thought was almost too unpleasant to contemplate.

Pendergast crouched on the narrow ledge, shining his light into the blackness below. He could see nothing but a massive jumble of fallen stalactites, torn from the ceiling by some long-ago earthquake.

He took off his shoes and socks, tied the laces together, and draped them around his neck. He turned off his flashlight and slipped it into a pocket: it would be of no help now. Then, reaching down into the darkness, he grabbed the first handhold again and swung out into space, his bare feet finding slippery purchase. Five minutes of cautious climbing brought him to the bottom. He put on his shoes in complete darkness, listening.

The noise was coming from the blackness at the far end of the cavern. Whoever was making that sound had no light. It rose and fell in a strange, babbling way, but there could be no mistake: it was a man, and he sounded injured.

Turning on the flashlight again and pulling out his handgun, Pendergast moved forward swiftly.

A flash of color, and something flickered across the dim cone of light; he swung the beam around and saw something yellow on the ground, behind a fractured boulder.

He leapt catlike onto the rock, gun and light pointing downward together. He peered into the cavity beneath the boulder. And then, after staring for a moment, he holstered the gun, dropped down the far side, and laid a hand on the man who was curled in a fetal position in the lee of the rock. He was a small man, soaking wet, gibbering to himself. Lying next to him was a regulation-issue set of night-vision goggles and a helmet with an infrared spotter.

At the touch of Pendergast’s hand the man crouched farther, covered his head, and squealed.

“FBI,” said Pendergast quietly. “Where are you hurt?”

The man shivered at the sound of his voice, then looked up. Two red eyes peered uncomprehendingly out of a face completely covered with blood. The man’s black jacket sported the yellow insignia of the Kansas State Police K-9 squad. His lips trembled above a wispy goatee, but the only sound that emerged was more incoherent sobbing. His pale eyelashes trembled.

Pendergast performed a quick examination. “It seems you’re unhurt,” he said.

The stammering reply did not succeed in reaching the level of intelligibility.

They were wasting time. Pendergast grabbed the man by the collar of his K-9 suit and hauled him to his feet. “Get a grip on yourself, Officer. What’s your name?”

The sharp tone seemed to stun the man into sensibility.

“Weeks. Lefty Weeks. Robert Weeks.” His teeth chattered.

Pendergast released his hold; Weeks staggered but managed to stay upright.

“Where did the blood come from, Officer Weeks?”

“I don’t know.”

“Officer,” Pendergast said, “I don’t have a lot of time. There’s a killer in here who’s kidnapped a girl. It is vital that I find her—before your friends get her killed.”

“Right,” said Weeks, swallowing.

Pendergast retrieved the night-vision goggles, found them broken and inoperative, dropped them again. “You’re coming with me.”

“No! No, please—”

Pendergast grabbed his shoulders and gave him a shake. “Mr. Weeks, youwill conduct yourself like a police officer. Is that clear?”

Weeks swallowed again, struggled to master himself. “Yes, sir.”

“Stay behind, follow my lead, and keep quiet.”

“My God, no! No, don’t go that way . . . please, sir.It’s there.”

Pendergast turned and looked carefully into the man’s face. He looked traumatized, ruined. “It?”

“It. That, thatman. ”

“Describe him.”

“I can’t, Ican’t! ” Weeks buried his face in his hands as if to blot out the image. “White. Huge. All bunched up, like. Cloudy, cloudy eyes. Big feet and hands—And . . .and the face! ”

“What about the face?”

“Oh, lord Jesus, the face—”

Pendergast slapped the man. “What about the face?”

“The face of a . . . oh, God, of ababy, so . . . so—”

Pendergast cut him off. “Let’s go.”

“No!Please, not that way—!”

“Suit yourself.” Pendergast turned and strode off. With a yelp, the man scrambled to follow.

Leaving the tumult of broken columns, Pendergast moved into a broad limestone tunnel littered with huge yellow mounds of dripstone. Weeks stayed behind, cringing and whimpering to himself, afraid to follow Pendergast, but still more afraid to remain alone. Pendergast’s light roamed from dripstone to dripstone, once again following a trail.

And then he stopped. His light remained fixed on one mound that looked strikingly different from the others. Its deep yellow was heavily streaked with red, and at its base lay a pool of bright red water. Something was floating in the water: about the size of a human, but the shape was all wrong.

Weeks had fallen silent.

Pendergast played his light around the cavern wall that rose behind the dripstone mound. The dark rock was decorated in arcs of crimson, and gobbets of white, red, and yellow hung dripping here and there. His light finally came to rest on the giant forelimb of what could only be a dog, lodged in a crack about halfway up the wall. A piece of a lower jaw was wedged nearby, and something that might have been part of a muzzle had struck the sloping wall with enough violence to stick.

“One of yours?” Pendergast asked.

The man nodded dumbly.

“Did you see this happen?”

The man nodded again.

Pendergast turned, raising his light to the man’s face. “What, precisely, did you see?”

Officer Weeks choked, stammered, and finally got the words out. “Hedid it.” He paused, swallowed. And then his voice broke.“He did it with his bare hands!”

Sixty-Three

At a nexus of branching tunnels, Hazen waited for the state troopers and Larssen to catch up. Five minutes passed, then ten, as his labored breathing returned to normal. It seemed that either they hadn’t followed the sound of his voice, or they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Hazen swore, spat. Raskovich was gone, bolted like a rabbit. Although Hazen had briefly given chase, he’d been unable to find the guy. The way the man had been running, he was probably halfway back to KSU already.

Hell.If he couldn’t regroup with Larssen and the troopers, he’d have to go after Lefty and the dogs alone. And that meant returning to the limestone forest, for a start.

But now, as Hazen looked back the way he had come, he wasn’t sure just which of the branching tunnels he’d come out of. He thought it was the one on the right. But he wasn’t sure.

Hazen swallowed, cleared his throat. “Lefty?”

Silence.

“Larssen?”

He cupped his hands in the direction of his backtrail and bellowed, “Hey! Anybody! If you can hear me, sing out!”

Silence.

“Anybody there? Respond!”

Despite the chilly air and the incessant wetness, Hazen felt a prickly sensation along his spine. He looked back the way he had come; looked around; looked ahead. The night-vision goggles gave everything a pale, reddish, unreal look, like he was on Mars. He checked his belt and confirmed what he already feared: he’d lost his flashlight during the chase.

The whole operation was fucked up. They’d gotten separated. Raskovich was lost, the whereabouts of Larssen unknown, the condition of Lefty and the dogs uncertain. At the very least, McFelty knew they were there. If he was dead, or injured . . . Hazen figured he had enough to deal with without dreaming up a lot of hypotheticals.

The thing to do was to get everyone back together, get a situation report, take stock.

Shit, it was hard to remember which of those holes he had come outof. . .

He examined the cave floor for footprints or marks, but it seemed as if each of the tunnels had been heavily trafficked. And that alone was very strange.

He ran over what had happened in his mind, trying to recall landmarks. It was all vague; he’d been concentrating on catching the fleeing Raskovich. Still, on balance it seemed to him that he’d most likely come from that passage on the right.

He walked down it about fifty feet. There were some broken stalactite pieces scattered here, like teeth. He didn’t remember those. Had he just run past them too fast?

Son of a bitch.

He went farther, but still nothing looked familiar. With a curse he returned to the pillared cave and took one of the other tunnels. He proceeded slowly, straining to remember, feeling his heart starting to beat a little fast. Nothing looked familiar. The dripping rocks, the feathery crystals, the banded, glossy humps—it all looked strange.

And then he heard a sound. Someone up ahead, humming.

“Hey!” He broke into a trot, turned a corner, paused at a fork in the passage.

The humming had stopped.

Hazen spun around, calling out. “Larssen? Cole?”

Still no sound.

“Answer me, goddamn it!”

He waited. Couldn’t they hear him? He’d heard the sound as clear as a bell; why couldn’t they hear him?

More humming, high-pitched and farther away, coming out of the left tunnel.

“Larssen?” He unshouldered his shotgun and walked down the left tunnel. The sound was louder, higher, closer. He moved more cautiously now, his senses on alert, trying to control his heart, which seemed to be pounding way too hard in his chest.

There was a flash of something at the periphery of his vision and he stopped and spun around. “Hey!”

He got just the briefest look before it darted away into the blackness. Brief as the glance was, it was enough to leave no doubt at all that it wasn’t one of his team.

And it sure as hell wasn’t McFelty.

Sixty-Four

Chester Raskovich turned a corner and stopped, the grotesque sight before him arresting his headlong flight. He stared, his mind reeling. Crouching in front of him, blocking his path, was a ragged, wispy-haired figure, staring up at him with hollow eyes, mouth yawning open as if to bite, teeth drawn back.

Raskovich leaned back with a neigh of terror, wanting to run and yet unable to do so, waiting for the thing to leap up and pounce on him. It was like a nightmare: his feet frozen to the ground, paralyzed, unable to flee.

He gulped in air—again, and then again—and, gradually, paralysis and fright ebbed and reason began to return. He leaned closer. It was nothing more than the mummified body of an Indian, sitting on the floor, bony knees drawn up, mouth open, shriveled lips drawn back from an enormous row of brown teeth. Placed around him was a semicircle of pots, each with a stone arrowhead in it. The mummy was wrapped in stringy rags that at one time might have been buckskin.

He looked away, swallowed, looked back again, and let his breathing slow to a semblance of normality. What he was looking at was a prehistoric Indian burial. He could see the remains of beaded moccasins on the twisted feet, next to a painted parfleche and some tattered feathers.

“Fuck,” said Raskovich out loud, ashamed at his panic, just now realizing what he’d done. He’d blown it. His first job as a real cop and he’d lost it completely, right in front of Sheriff Hazen. Running like a rabbit. And now here he was, lost in a cave, with a killer on the loose, and no idea which way to go. He felt a wave of shame and despair: he should’ve stayed at KSU, keeping kids off the water tower and giving out parking tickets.

Suddenly, he lashed out in rage and frustration, aiming a savage kick at the mummy. His foot connected with a hollowthock and the top of the head exploded in a ball of brown dust. A boiling stream of white insects came skittering out—they looked like albino roaches—and the mummy toppled sideways, the jaw coming loose and rolling a few turns across the ground before coming to a halt among broken pieces of skull. An ivory snake, hidden beneath the rags, uncoiled with a flash and shot off into the darkness like a thin ghost.

“Oh,shit! ” Raskovich shouted, skipping back. “Goddamn it!”

He stood there, breathing hard, hearing the sound of air rattling in his throat. He had no idea where he was, how far he had run, where he should go.

Think.

He looked around, shining his infrared lamp around the damp surfaces of rock. He had been running through a narrow, tall crack with a sandy floor. The crack was so high he could not even make out the top. He could see his own footprints in the sand. He listened: no sound, not even water.

Retrace your steps.

Giving one last glance at the now-desecrated burial, Raskovich turned and walked back along the crack, keeping his eyes on the ground. Now he noticed what had been ignored in his headlong flight: almost every niche and shelf on both sides of the crack was piled with bones and other objects: painted pots, quivers full of arrows, hollow skulls rustling with cave life. It was a mausoleum, an Indian catacomb.

He shivered.

To his relief, he soon left the burials behind. The crack widened and the ceiling came down, and he could make out cruel-looking stalactites overhead. The sandy bottom gave way to shallow terraces of water, layered in strange accretions like rice paddies. As the sand fell behind, so did the trace of his footsteps.

Ahead were two openings, one tall and partly blocked with fallen limestone blocks, the other open. Which way now?

Think, asshole. Remember.

But for the life of him Raskovich could not remember which way he had come.

He thought of shouting, then decided against it. Why attract attention? The thing the dogs had found might still be around somewhere, looking for him. The cave was far bigger than it was supposed to be, but he could still find his way out if he took his time and didn’t panic again. They would be looking for him, too. He had to remember that.

He chose the larger opening and felt reassured by the long tunnel ahead of him. It looked familiar somehow. And now he could see something else, an indistinct reddish blur in the goggles, up on a shelf of rock beside a dark hole. An arrangement of objects. Another burial?

He approached. There was another Indian skull, some feathers and arrowheads and bones. But these were arranged in a very unusual pattern on the shelf of rock. It was disquieting, somehow, like nothing he’d seen in books or museum displays. There were non-Indian objects, too: strange little figures made of string and twine; a broken pencil; a rotting wooden alphabet block; the fragmented head of a porcelain doll.

Jesus Christ, the little arrangement gave him the creeps. He backed away.This wasn’t old. Somebody had taken the old bones and rearranged them with these other things. Raskovich felt a shiver convulse his back.

There was a grunt from the darkness over his shoulder.

Raskovich did not move. There were no more sounds: the silence that descended again was complete. A minute went by, then two, while Raskovich remained frozen, as the uncertainty and terror continued to mount within him.

And then the moment came when he was unable to stop himself from turning. Slowly—very slowly—he twisted around until he saw what had made the noise.

Raskovich fell still, paralyzed once again, not even a whisper of breath escaping his lips.It stood there, grotesque, misshapen, hideous. The sight was so terrible that every detail etched itself into his brain. Was that really a pair of handmade shorts and suspenders on those giant, twisted legs: suspenders decorated with rocking horses? Was that shirt, hanging in tatters from the roped and matted chest, really patterned with comets and rocket ships? And, above them, was that face really,really, so very . . .

The horrible figure took a step forward. Raskovich stared, unable to move. A meaty arm lashed out and swatted him. He fell to the cave floor, the night-vision goggles flying.

The blow broke the spell of terror, and now, finally, he was able to move his limbs. He scrambled backward, blind, a loud keening sound issuing from his throat. He could hear the monster shuffling toward him, making sucking noises with his mouth. He managed to get to his feet and retreated a few steps, the final step dropping into nothingness. He lost his balance and toppled backward, tensing, expecting to land heavily against the hard stone floor of the cave, but there was nothing, nothing at all, just a great rush of wind as he hurtled into a dark void, endlessly down, down—

Sixty-Five

Hank Larssen turned to face Cole and Brast. The troopers looked like goggle-eyed monsters in the reddish light.

“I really don’t think this is the way they went,” Larssen said.

The sentence fell away into silence.

“Well?” Larssen looked from Cole to Brast. The two state troopers almost looked like twins: fit, wiry, crew-cut, taut jawlines, steely eyes. Or rather, once-steely eyes. Now, even in the pale wash of the night-vision goggles they looked confused and uncertain. It had been a mistake, he realized, to leave the huge cavern of limestone pillars looking for Hazen. The barking of the dogs had gone suddenly silent, and they’d taken off down one of the countless side passages in what seemed like the direction of retreating footsteps. But the passage had divided, once, then twice, before turning into a confusing welter of crisscrossing tunnels. Once he thought he’d heard Hazen calling out his name. But there had been no more sounds for the last ten minutes, at least. It was going to be a real chore just to find their way back out.

He wondered how he’d become the de facto leader of this happy little picnic. Cole and Brast were both part of the much-vaunted “high-risk entry team” and had trained for special situations like this. At the state police HQ they had a gym, workout facilities, a pool, shooting range, special training seminars, and weekend retreats. Larssen sure hoped he wasn’t going to have to hand-hold these guys.

“Wake up, you two. Did you hear me? I said, I don’t think this is the way they went.”

“I don’t know,” said Brast. “It seems right to me.”

“It seems right to you,” Larssen repeated sarcastically. “And you, Cole?”

Cole just shook his head.

“All right, that settles it. We turn around and get out of here.”

“What about Hazen?” Cole said. “Weeks?”

“Sheriff Hazen and Officer Weeks are trained law enforcement personnel who can take care of themselves.”

The two troopers just looked at him.

“Are we all in agreement on this?” Larssen asked, raising his voice. Damned idiots.

“I’m with you,” Brast said with evident relief.

“Cole?”

“I don’t like leaving people down here,” said Cole.

A real hero,thought Larssen. “Sergeant Cole, it’s pointless to wander around down here any longer. We can go for backup. They could be anywhere in this maze. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were already on their way out.”

Cole licked his lips. “All right,” he said.

“Then let’s go.”

They had been circling their way back toward the limestone forest for five minutes and had reached an unfamiliar-looking crossroads when Larssen first heard the sound. The others must have heard it, too, because they spun around with him. It was faint, but unmistakable: the sound of running footsteps, approaching at high speed. But not human, no: the tattoo of heavy footfalls was too rapid for that.

It was something big.

“Weapons!” shouted Larssen, dropping to one knee and raising the riot gun to his shoulder. He took aim down the intersecting tunnel.

The running came closer, accompanied by a metallic clanking. And now a big reddish form materialized out of the darkness. Whatever it was, it was huge.

“Ready!”

The thing bore down on them with terrible speed. It tore through a shallow puddle, raising a curtain of droplets in its wake.

“Wait!” Larssen said abruptly. “Hold your fire!”

It was one of the dogs.

The animal hurtled toward them, utterly heedless of their presence, the wide wild eyes staring fixedly ahead. The only sound it made was the drumming of its huge paws against the stone. As it flashed past, Larssen saw that the animal was covered with blood, and that one of the ears was torn away, as well as part of the lower jaw. Big black lips and tongue flapped loosely, dripping foam and blood.

In another second it was gone, the sound of its flight fading away. Then silence returned. It had all happened so quickly that Larssen almost wondered if he’d imagined it. “What thefuck? ” Brast whispered. “Did you see—?”

Larssen swallowed, but no moisture came. His mouth felt dry as sawdust. “He must’ve slipped, fallen.”

“Bullshit,” said Cole, his voice unnaturally loud in the confined space. “You don’t lose half your jaw in a fall. Someone attacked that dog.”

“Or something, ” Brast muttered.

“For chrissakes, Brast,” said Larssen, “show some backbone.”

“Why was he running like that? That dog was scared shitless.”

Larssen said, “Let’s just get out of here.”

“No argument there.”

They turned back, Larssen keeping his eyes on the damp tracks of the dog. They could probably follow those with confidence; that would make things a whole lot easier.

Brast spoke into the silence. “I heard something.”

They paused once again.

“Something splashing through that puddle back there.”

“Don’t start again, Brast.”

Then Larssen heard it, too: the faint splash of a footfall in water, followed by another. He stared down the dark tunnel behind them, the cavern walls a red wash in his goggles. He could make out nothing.

“Just dripping water, probably.” He shrugged, turned back to follow the dog tracks.

Muh!

Brast gave a yell, and at the same time Larssen felt a sudden brutal shove from behind that sent him sprawling to the ground, his night-vision goggles flying. Brast was still yelling, and Cole gave a sudden, sharp scream.

Larssen was blind. In desperation he crawled around on his hands and knees, feeling the ground, and then with enormous relief felt his hands close on the goggles. He slipped them back onto his head with thick stupid fingers and looked around.

Cole was on the ground, yelling and clutching his arm. Brast was on his hands and knees against the cavern wall, scrabbling around for his goggles just like Larssen had been a second before, cursing and gasping.

“My arm!” Cole screamed. A spear of bone protruded from his arm at a strange angle and hot blood poured from the wound, almost white in the sheen of the goggles.

Larssen tore his eyes from the sight and looked around wildly for whatever had attacked them, shotgun at the ready, but there was nothing—nothing but the grim artificial glow of the cavern walls.

A single sound, like a hoot of laughter or perhaps triumph, came from the darkness somewhere. Larssen tightened his grip on the shotgun. Exactly where it had come from was impossible to tell.

He was sure of only one thing: it was close.

Sixty-Six

Corporal Shurte of the Kansas Highway Patrol fingered his shotgun and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. He checked his watch: eleven-thirty. Hazen and the rest had been gone for over an hour. How long did it take to corner McFelty, cuff him, and drag his ass out? It was unnerving, standing out here without any contact. Part of it, of course, was the weather. He’d lived in this part of Kansas all his life but he couldn’t remember ever seeing a storm like this one. Usually, the really ugly weather came and went pretty quick. But this had been going on for hours, it seemed, and it was only getting worse. Unbelievable wind, pelting rain, lightning like to split the sky. Before radio communications had finally gone down there’d been early reports of an F-3 tornado chewing toward Deeper, all hell breaking lose, FEMA trying to get in, the highways blocked.

And the power: usually you’d get one grid segment, maybe two, down at a time. But tonight it had been like a giant hand pulling the plug on one tiny town after the next. After Medicine Creek it had been Hickok, DePew, Ulysses, Johnson City, Lakin, and finally Deeper, before his radio had stopped working altogether from the loss of repeater stations. Shurte was from Garden City and he was glad the other side of the county seemed to be taking the worst of it. Still, he worried about his wife and kids. It was a hell of a night to be away from home.

The hooded propane lamp they’d set up cast a faint glow around the mouth of the cave. Williams, standing on the far side of the cut, looked like a zombie, hunched against the rain, big dark hollows where his eyes should be. The only thing that made him look remotely human was the glowing cigarette that dangled from his lower lip.

Another bolt of lightning cracked the sky, tearing almost from horizon to horizon. Beyond the cave, it flashed a brief image of the big old Kraus mansion, all alone and dilapidated, darkened by the rain.

He glanced over at Williams. “So how long are we going to stake out the entrance? I mean, I’m getting soaked.”

Williams dropped his cigarette, ground it under his boot, shrugged.

There was another flash. Shurte glanced at the dark slot that led down into the cave. Maybe they had the perp holed up and were trying to persuade him to come out . . .

And then from the mouth of the cave, over the sound of the wind, he heard the heavy galloping of feet.

He took a step forward, raising his shotgun. “You hear that?” he began sharply.

A dark form suddenly came hurtling up the passage toward them: a huge dog, running like mad, chain twitching and lashing behind like a whip, feet drumming.

“Williams!” Shurte shouted.

The animal blew out of the cave mouth and into the open. Just then there was another terrific rip of lightning, followed instantaneously by an earth-shaking crash. The dog hesitated, confused, turning around and around, snapping at the air, eyes rolling and wild. In the livid lightning Shurte saw that it was bright red, wet and glistening.

“Holy shit,” he breathed.

The dog crouched toward the light of the lantern, still trembling violently—all without making a sound.

“Son of abitch, ” said Williams. “You see his mouth? Looks like he caught a load of buckshot.”

The dog staggered, the blood pooling underneath him, and then righted himself, massive limbs shaking uncontrollably.

“Catch him,” said Shurte. “Grab his chain.”

Williams crouched and slowly picked up the end of the chain. The dog just stood there, still now, trembling with pain and terror.

“Easy, boy. Easy. Good dog.”

Williams slowly lifted the end of the leash toward the only suitable tie spot: a protruding pin on the door hinge of the cave. Suddenly the dog, feeling the gentle tug on his neck, whirled with a screech of fury and slashed out at Williams. The man went down with a howl, dropping the leash, and in a second the dog was gone, a black shape hurtling away into the cornfields.

“Son of a bitch bit me!” Williams cried, holding his leg.

Shurte rushed over and directed his flashlight at the fallen trooper. The pants were torn and blood welled from a gash in his thigh.

“Jesus, Williams,” Shurte said, shaking his head. “And to think he did that with only half a jaw.”

Sixty-Seven

Larssen bent over Cole, who was sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth and whimpering to himself. It was an ugly compound fracture, the jagged end of bone sticking out just above the elbow.

“I can’t see!” said Brast loudly from somewhere behind him. “I can’t see!”

“Cool it,” Larssen replied. He looked around, scouring the ground with his own set of goggles. They had all lost their goggles in the attack. He saw one of the sets lying in a puddle of water, one of its lenses broken. The other set was nowhere to be found. Was he the only one still able to see? It seemed so.

“Help me find my goggles!” Brast cried.

“They’re out of commission.”

“No,no! ”

“Brast? Cole’s hurt. Pull yourself together.”

Larssen took off his shirt and tore it into strips, doing his best to ignore the chill dampness of the cave. He looked around for something that would do as a splint but saw nothing usable. Better to bind the arm to the torso and leave it at that. The important thing now was to get the hell out of there. Larssen wasn’t particularly frightened—he’d never had quite the right imaginative equipment for fear—but he perfectly understood the seriousness of their situation. Whoever attacked them, it was someone whoknew the cave inside out. Someone who’d been down here a very long time. Someone who could come and go at will, and very quickly. He’d seen his outline: big, shambling, with a hunched back from years of living under low ceilings . . .

Hazen had only been half right. The killer was in the cave, but it sure as hell wasn’t McFelty—or anyone connected with Lavender, for that matter. This was something a lot weirder and deeper than that.

He forced himself back to the problem at hand. “Cole?” he asked.

“Yes?” Cole’s voice was weak and he could see the man was sweating. Shock.

“I don’t have anything to splint your arm with, so I’m going to immobilize it by tying it to your chest.”

Cole nodded.

“It’s going to hurt.”

Cole nodded again.

Larssen tied two of the strips into loops and hung them around Cole’s neck to form a sling, and then, as gently as possible, took hold of his arm and slid it in. Cole winced, cried out.

“What was that?” Brast shouted in a panic. “Ishe back?”

“It’s nothing. Just stay calm, keep quiet, and do what I tell you.” Larssen tried to make his voice sound reassuring. He would almost rather have ended up with Hazen. The sheriff might be an asshole, but nobody could accuse him of cowardice.

Larssen tore another couple of strips from the shirt and tied them around Cole’s torso, binding up and immobilizing the broken arm. The broken bones grated against each other, and Cole winced. He was sweating profusely now, and shaking.

“Can you stand up?”

Cole nodded, rose, staggered. Larssen steadied him.

“Can you walk?”

“I think so,” he grunted.

“You’re not going, are you?” cried out Brast, groping for Larssen in the darkness.

“We’re all going.”

“But what about my goggles?”

“As I said, they’re broken.”

“Let me see them.”

With a hiss of irritation Larssen picked them out of the water and handed them to Brast. The man felt them frantically, tried to turn them on. There was a spark and a hiss. He hurled them away, his voice high and panicky. “Sweet Jesus, how are we ever going to get out of—”

Larssen reached out and grabbed a fistful of Brast’s shirt, gave it a good screw. “Brast?”

“Did you see it?Did you see it—? ”

“No, and neither did you. Now shut up and do what I tell you. Turn around, I’ll need to get at your pack a moment. I’m going to make a lifeline with your rope. I’ll tie it around my waist and then pass it back to you and Cole. You hang on with one hand and help Cole along. Got it?”

“Yes, but—”

Larssen gave Brast a hard shake. “I said,shut the hell up and do what I tell you. ”

Brast fell silent.

Larssen reached into the pack, found the rope, and tied it around his own waist. That left about ten feet or so of slack, and he made sure Brast and Cole grasped it tightly.

“Now we’re getting out of here. Keep tension on the rope, don’t drop it, and for God’s sake keep quiet.”

Larssen began moving slowly back through the long black passage. A trembling that had little to do with the chill air had settled into his bare limbs. Brast’s desperateDid you see it? ran through his head despite his best efforts to block it. The truth was, Larssen had gotten just a glimpse; just a glimpse, but it had been enough . . .

Don’t think about it. The important thing is to get out.

Behind him Cole and Brast, both blind, shuffled and stumbled. Once in a while Larssen would murmur warnings about obstacles, or stop to help the troopers through some tricky place. They moved slowly, and agonizing minutes passed before they reached the next fork in the tunnel.

Larssen examined the fork, noticed the direction of the bloody paw prints. They set off again, moving a little faster now. The floor was covered in rills and shallow pools, and the sound of their splashing echoed in the cave. The prints grew few and far between here. If they could just find their way back to the big cavern with the limestone pillars, they’d be all right; he was pretty sure he knew the way from there.

“Are you sure we came this way?” Brast asked, his voice high and tense.

“Yes,” said Larssen.

“What the hell attacked us? Did you see it?Did—? ”

Turning and reaching past Cole, Larssen backhanded Brast sharply across the face.

“I saw it! I saw it!I saw it! ”

Larssen didn’t answer. If Brast didn’t shut up soon, he thought he might kill him.

“It wasn’t human. It was some kind of Neanderthal. With a face like . . . oh, dear God, like a big—”

“I said, shut up.”

“Iwon’t shut up. You need to hear this. Whatever we’re up against, it isn’tnatural —”

“Brast?” It was Cole, speaking through gritted teeth.

“What?”

With his good arm Cole aimed his riot gun down the dark tunnel and pulled the trigger. It erupted with a deafening crash. A shower of pebbles dislodged by the vibration danced off their shoulders while the sound echoed and reechoed crazily, rolling back and forth in the deep spaces.

“Jesus, what the fuck was that!” Brast fairly screamed.

Cole grabbed for the rope and waited for the echoes to die down. Then he spoke again. “If you don’t shut up, Brast, the next one’s for you.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Come on,” Larssen said. “We’re wasting time.”

They continued on, stopping briefly at another intersection. The set of bloody dog prints led to the right, and they followed these into another low passageway. A few minutes later the tunnel opened up into a huge cavern, draped on two sides by curtains of limestone and filled with massive pillars. Larssen felt immense relief. They’d found it.

Cole stumbled, grunted, then half sat in a puddle of water.

“Don’t stop,” said Larssen, grabbing his good arm and helping him rise. “I know where we are now. We’ve got to keep going until we’re out of here.”

Cole nodded, coughed, took a step, stumbled, took another.He’s going deep into shock, thought Larssen. They had to get out before he collapsed entirely.

They made their way through the forestlike cavern. Several tunnels led away from the far wall, looking like yawning mouths in the pink wash of the goggles. Larssen didn’t remember seeing that many tunnels. He looked on the ground for the dog tracks, but the shallow flow of water on the ground here had erased any trace.

“Wait,” he said abruptly. “Quiet.”

They stopped. There was a sound of splashing from behind that could not be explained by the echoes of the gallery. After another moment, it, too, stopped.

“He’s behind us!” said Brast in a loud voice.

Larssen pulled them behind one of the trunklike pillars, readied his shotgun, then peered out with his goggles. The cavern was empty. Could it have been just an echo, after all?

Turning back, he saw Cole leaning unsteadily, half conscious, against the limestone pillar.

“Cole!” He hauled him to his feet. Cole coughed, swayed. Larssen quickly leaned him over, head between his legs.

Cole vomited.

Brast said nothing, trembling, his eyes wide with fear, uselessly searching the darkness.

Larssen reached down, cupped some water, splashed it over Cole’s face. “Cole? Hey, Cole!”

The man sagged to one side, eyes rolling into the back of his head. He had passed out.

“Cole!” Larssen patted some more water into his face, gave him a few light slaps.

Cole coughed, retched again.

“Cole!”Larssen tried to keep the man on his feet, but his limp form felt like a sack of cement. “Brast, help me, goddammit.”

“How? I can’t see.”

“Feel your way along the rope. Do you know the fireman’s carry?”

“Yeah but—”

“Let’s do it.”

“I can’tsee, and besides, we don’t have time. Let’s leave him here and get help from—”

“I’ll leaveyou here,” said Larssen. “How would you like that?” He found Brast’s hands and locked them together with his in a basket grip. Larssen guiding, they stooped together, embraced Cole’s sagging form, tried to rise again.

“Christ, he weighs a ton,” Brast said, gasping.

At that same moment Larssen heard a distinct splash, then another: heavy footfalls in the shallow pools they had come through just moments before.

“I tell you, there’s something behind us,” Brast said as he strained desperately to lift Cole. “Did you hear it?”

“Justmove. ”

Cole slumped backward, threatening to slide out of their grip. They maneuvered him into place again and moved forward painfully.

The splashing continued from behind.

Larssen looked back but saw only indistinct washes of pinks and reds. He looked forward again, chose a narrow passage in the far wall that looked like it might be the right one, made doggedly toward it. If he could get to a defensible location, he could hold the thing off with his gun . . .

“God,” said Brast, his voice breaking. “Oh God, oh God . . .”

They ducked into the low passage, carrying Cole between them as quickly as they could. Larssen staggered as the rope caught his ankles; he straightened up, went forward again. After a short distance, the ceiling rose toward a weird formation of a thousand needlelike stalactites, some as thin as threads.

Oh God, I don’t remember that,thought Larssen.

Another splash from the darkness behind them.

Suddenly, Brast tripped against a rock. Cole slumped from their grasp and fell heavily onto his broken arm. He groaned loudly, rolled over, and lay still.

Larssen let him go, fumbling with his gun, aiming into the darkness.

“What is it?” Brast cried. “What’s there?”

At that moment a monstrous shape came hurtling out of the darkness. Larssen cried out, firing as he stumbled backward, while Brast stood in terror, feet rooted to the ground, his arms clawing at the darkness. “Jesus, don’t leave me—!”

Larssen grabbed his hand, yanked him away. As he did so, the shape fell upon the supine form of Cole. The two figures blurred together, a reddish tangle in the goggles. Larssen staggered backward again, tugging at Brast while at the same time struggling to get his gun back up. He heard a rending sound like a drumstick being wrenched off a turkey. Cole screamed abruptly: a terrible falsetto squeak.

“Help me!” cried Brast, clutching at Larssen like a drowning man, knocking him back and spoiling his aim. Larssen savagely shoved him away while trying to raise the shotgun, but Brast was all over him again, sobbing, clutching at him like a drowning man.

The gun went off but the shot was wide, sending long needles of limestone crashing to the ground, and then the shape was up and facing them. Larssen froze in horror: it was holding Cole’s severed arm in one fist, the fingers still pulsing spasmodically. Larssen fired again, but he had hesitated too long and the shape was rising toward them, and all he could do was turn and flee down the dank tunnel, Brast yelling incoherently and blindly at his back.

Farther behind, Cole was still screaming.

Larssen ran and ran.

Sixty-Eight

For a long time Corrie lay in the wet dark, confused and dreamy, wondering where she was, what had happened to her room, her bed, her window. And then she sat up, her head pounding, and with the return of the pain came the memory of the cave, the monster . . . and the pit.

She listened. All was silent save the dripping of water. She finally stood, swaying slightly, the pounding in her head subsiding. She reached out and her hands encountered the slick, smooth wall of the pit.

She made a circuit, running her hands up and down the wet wall, seeking handholds, cracks, anything she might use to climb out. But the walls were of the slickest stone, smoothed by water, impossible to climb. And what would she do once she got out? Without a light she was as good as trapped.

It was hopeless. There was no way out. All she could do was wait. Wait for the monster to come back.

Corrie felt overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness and misery so powerful it made her physically sick. Her despair was all the worse for the hope that had been raised in her brief dash to escape. But here, in the pit, there was no hope left. No one knew where she was, that she’d gone into the cave. Eventually the thing would come back. Ready toplay.

She sobbed at the thought.

It would be the end of her miserable, useless life.

Corrie leaned against the slick wall, sank to the ground. She began to cry. Years of bottled-up misery came pouring out. Images flashed through her mind. She remembered coming home from fifth grade, sitting at the kitchen table and watching her mother drink miniature vodka bottles, one after another, wondering why she liked them so much. She remembered, two years ago, her mother coming home at two o’clock in the morning on Christmas Eve, drunk, with some man. No stockings, no presents, nothing that Christmas. It was a late, rise-at-noon, hungover morning like any other. She remembered the triumphant day when she was able to buy her Gremlin with the money she had earned from working at the Book Nook before its demise—and how furious her mother had been when Corrie brought it home. She thought about the sheriff, his son, the smell of the high school halls, the winter snowstorms that covered the stubbled fields in unbroken blankets of white. She thought about reading books under the powerlines in the heat of summer, the snide whispered comments of the jocks passing her in the halls.

He was going to come back and kill her and it would all be gone, every miserable memory now crowding her head. They’d never find her body. There’d be a halfhearted search and then everyone would forget about her. Her mother would tear apart her room and eventually find the money taped to the underside of her bureau drawers, and then she’d be happy. Happy that it was now all hers.

She cried freely, the sound echoing and reechoing above her head.

Now her mind wandered further back, to her early childhood. She remembered one Sunday morning getting up early and making pancakes with her father, carrying the eggs around and chanting like the soldiers inThe Wizard of Oz. All her memories of him seemed to be happy: of him laughing, kidding around, squirting her with the hose on a hot summer day or taking her down to swim in the creek. She remembered him polishing his Mustang convertible, polishing and polishing, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, his blue eyes sparkling, holding her up so she could see her reflection in it, then taking her for a ride. She remembered effortlessly, as clear as if it had been last week, how the cornfields parted with their passing; the exhilarating sensation of acceleration, of freedom.

And now, in the silence, in the absolute final blackness of the pit, she felt all the protective walls she had carefully built for herself over the years start to crumble, one by one. In this moment of extremis, the only questions that remained in her head were the ones she had rarely ever allowed herself to ask: Why had he left? Why had he never come back to visit? What was so wrong with her that he’d never wanted to see her again?

But the darkness would allow no self-delusion. She had another memory, not all that distant: of coming home and finding her mother burning a letter in the ashtray. Had it been from him? Why hadn’t she confronted her mother? Was it out of fear that the letter wasn’t, in fact, what she hoped it was?

This last question hung in the blackness, unanswered. There could be no answer, not now. It would soon end, here, in this pit, and the question would be moot. Maybe her father would never even know she was dead . . .

She thought of Pendergast, the only person who had ever treated her like an adult. And now she’d failed him, too. Stupidly going into the cave without telling anyone. Stupid, stupid,stupid . . .

She sobbed again, loudly, painfully, giving full vent to her feelings. But the sound echoed so horribly, so mockingly, around and above her that she swallowed, choked, and fell silent.

“Quit feeling sorry for yourself,” she said out loud.

Her voice echoed and died away and then she caught her breath. There was a distinct whisper in the dark.

Washe coming back?

She listened intently. There were more sounds now, faint sounds, so distant and distorted they were impossible to make out. Voices? Yelling? Screaming? She strained, listening.

And then there was a long, echoing sound, almost like the roar of rolling surf.

A gunshot.

And suddenly she was on her feet, crying out,“Here I am! Help me! Over here! Please! Please! Please! Please!”

Sixty-Nine

Weeks struggled to keep up with Pendergast as the FBI agent hurried through the cave. The way the man flicked his flashlight around, Weeks wondered if he missed anything. Probably not. It felt a little reassuring.

The air of purpose that radiated from the agent had helped steady Weeks’s shattered nerves. He even felt some vestiges of his old aggrieved self returning. And yet he could not get out of his mind the image of the dog being ripped limb from limb by that . . .by that . . .

He stopped.

“What’s that?” he asked in a high, quavering voice.

Pendergast spoke without looking back. “Officer Weeks? I expect you to follow my lead.”

“But I heard something—”

Pendergast’s slender white hand landed on his shoulder. Weeks was about to say more but fell silent as the pressure on his shoulder grew more intense.

“This way, Officer.” The voice spoke with a silvery gentleness, but it somehow chilled Weeks to the bone.

“Yes, sir.”

As they proceeded, he heard the sound once again. It seemed to come from ahead, a drawn-out, echoing noise that reverberated back and forth through the endless caverns, impossible to identify. A scream? A shotgun blast? The one thing Weeks felt sure of was that, whatever the sound might be, Pendergast was going to head directly for it.

He swallowed his protest and followed.

They moved through a narrow warren of passages whose low ceilings were covered with glistening crystals. Weeks scraped his head against the needle-sharp crystals, cursed, and ducked lower: this wasn’t the way he’d come with the dogs. Pendergast’s light moved back and forth, exposing nests of cave pearls clustered together in chalky pools. The sounds had finally died away, leaving only the faint plash of their own steps.

Then Pendergast halted suddenly, his light shining steadily on something. Weeks looked. At first he couldn’t make out exactly what it was: an arrangement of objects on a shelf of flat stone, clustered around some larger central object. It looked like a shrine of some kind. Weeks leaned closer. Then his eyes widened with shock and he stepped back. It was an old teddy bear, furred with mold. The bear was arranged as if it were praying: hands clasped before it, one beady black eye staring out from creeping tendrils of fungus.

“What thehell —?” Weeks began.

Pendergast’s light shifted to what the bear had been praying to. In the yellow glow of the flashlight, it was little more than a mound of silky mold. Weeks watched as Pendergast bent over and, with a gold pen, carefully pulled away the mold, exposing a tiny skeleton underneath.

“Rana amaratis,”Pendergast said.

“What?”

“A rare species of blind cave frog. You will note the bones were broken peri-mortem. This frog was crushed to death in somebody’s fist.”

Weeks swallowed. “Look,” he ventured one last time, “it’s insane to keep going deeper into the cave like this. We should be getting out of here, getting help.”

But Pendergast had returned his attention to the objects around the teddy bear. With care he exposed more small skeletons and partially decomposed insect bodies. Then he went back to the teddy bear, picked it up, brushed off the mold, and examined it carefully.

Weeks looked around nervously. “Come on, comeon. ”

He shut up as the FBI agent turned toward him. Pendergast’s pale eyes were distant, focusing on some inner thought.

“What is it?” Weeks breathed. “What does it mean?”

Pendergast returned the bear to its place and said merely, “Let us go.”

The FBI agent was moving faster now, stopping only infrequently to check the map he was carrying. The sound of water was louder now, and they were now wading almost constantly. The air was so chill and damp that their breath left trails. Weeks tried to keep up, tried to keep his mind off what he’d seen. This was insane, where the hell were they going? When he got back—ifhe got back—the first thing he’d do was put in for disability leave, because he’d be lucky if post–traumatic stress syndrome was all he got from—

Then Pendergast halted suddenly. His light disclosed a body lying on the cave floor. The figure lay on its back, eyes wide open, arms and legs flung wide. The head was strangely elongated, like it had expanded and flattened, and the back of the skull had burst open like an overripe pumpkin. The eyes were bugged out, looking in two different directions. The mouth was wide open—toowide. Weeks looked away.

“What happened?” he managed to say, struggling to hold back the terror.

Pendergast raised his light toward the ceiling. There was a dark hole in the roof of the cavern. Then he let it fall once again to the body. “Can you identify him, Officer?”

“Raskovich. The campus security guy from Kansas State.”

Pendergast nodded and looked back up into the narrow hole overhead. “It would seem Mr. Raskovich had a great fall,” he murmured, almost to himself.

Weeks shut his eyes. “Oh, my God.”

Pendergast motioned him forward. “We must go on.”

But Weeks had had enough. “I’m not going one step more. Just what do you think you’re doing, anyway?” The panic elevated his voice louder and louder. “The dog’s dead, Raskovich is dead. You’ve seen them both. There’s a monster down here. What more do you want?I’m the one that’s still alive.I’m the one you should be worrying about right now.I’m —”

Pendergast turned back. And Weeks stopped in mid-rant, involuntarily, at the steady, contemptuous gaze of the FBI agent.

After a moment, Weeks averted his eyes. “Anyway, what I’m saying is, we’re wasting our time.” His voice cracked. “What makes you so sure this girl is still alive, anyway?”

As if in answer, he heard a response: faint, distorted, and yet unmistakable. It was the sound of someone crying for help.

Seventy

Larssen ran like hell, Brast behind him, holding on to the rope, careering from rock wall to rock wall, somehow managing in his blindness to keep up. It had been a couple of minutes since the screaming had stopped but Larssen could still hear it in his mind, playing over and over again like some infernal recording: the final scream of Cole ending abruptly in the sound of cracking bones. Whatever had done that—whatever was pursuing them now—wasn’t completely human. It really was some kind of monster.

It couldn’t be true. But he’d seen it. He’dseen it.

He paid no attention to where he was going, what tunnel he was in, whether he was heading back toward the surface or deeper into the caverns. He didn’t care. All he wanted to do was put distance between himself and thething.

They came to a pool, pale, shimmering red in the goggles, and Larssen waded in without hesitation, the icy water eventually reaching his bare chest before shoaling. Brast followed blindly, as best he could. On the far side, the ceiling of the cave became very low. Larssen moved forward more slowly, sweeping his gun back and forth, breaking off the sharp stalactites that hung before his face. The ceiling dropped still farther, and there was an ugly noise, followed by a desperate curse, as Brast hit his head against it.

Then the ceiling rose again, revealing an odd, broken room with cracks leading off in myriad directions. Larssen stopped, looking up and down and sideways, and felt the scrabbling Brast blunder into his back.

“Larssen?Larssen? ” Brast clutched at him as if to make sure he was real.

“Quiet.” Larssen listened carefully. There was no sound of splashing behind them. The thing was not following.

Had they gotten away?

He checked his watch: almost midnight. God knows how long they had been running.

“Brast,” he whispered. “Listen to me. We’ve got to hide until we can be rescued. We’ll never find our way out, and if we keep wandering around we’ll just run into that thing again.”

Brast nodded. His face was scratched, his clothes muddy; his eyes were dumb, blank with terror. Blood was running freely from a nasty gash in his crew-cut scalp.

Larssen looked forward again, shining his infrared headlamp around. There was a crack high up on the wall, larger than the others, vomiting a frozen river of limestone. It looked just big enough to admit a person.

“I’m going to check something. Give me a hand up.”

“Don’t leave me!”

“Keep your voice down. I’ll only be gone a minute.”

Brast gave him a fumbling hand up, and within moments Larssen was into the high crack. He looked around, bare arms shivering in the chill air. Then he untied the rope from around his waist and dropped one end back down to Brast and hissed for him to climb up.

Brast fumbled and pulled his way up the slippery rock wall.

Larssen led them deeper into the crack. The floor was rough and strewn with large rocks. After a few yards, it became a tunnel that opened up enough for them to proceed in a crouched position.

“Let’s see where it leads,” Larssen whispered.

Another minute of crawling brought them to the edge of blackness. The tunnel simply ended in a sheer drop.

Larssen put a steadying hand on Brast. “Stay there.”

He peered carefully out over the edge of the hole but could see no bottom. He reached for a pebble, lobbed it in, and began to count. When he reached thirty, he gave up.

Overhead was a sheer chimney, with a thin thread of water spiraling down at them through space. There was no way the thing could come at them from that direction. He could come up only from the crack through which they’d just come.

Perfect.

“Stay here,” he whispered to Brast. “Don’t go any farther, there’s a pit.”

“A pit? How deep?”

“As far as you’re concerned it’s bottomless. Just stay put. I’ll be right back.”

He returned to the crack’s entrance and, lying on his stomach, began dragging over the surrounding rocks and fitting them into the hole. In five minutes he had piled the rocks high enough to completely seal off the crack. The killer, if he even got to the broken-up cavern below, would see only rock. No opening. They had found the perfect hiding place.

He turned to Brast, speaking very quietly. “Listen to me. No sound, no movement. Nothing that could betray us. We’ll wait here for a real SWAT team to come down and clear that bastard out of the cave. In the meantime, we stay put, and keep quiet.”

Brast nodded. “But are we safe? Are you sure we’re safe?”

“As long as you keep your mouth shut.”

They waited, the silence and darkness growing ever more oppressive. Larssen leaned back against the wall, shutting his eyes and listening to his own breathing, trying not to dwell on the madman roaming the caverns beyond.

He heard Brast next to him, restless, shifting. He felt irritated: even the smallest noise might betray them. He opened his eyes, adjusted the goggles, and looked over.

“Brast! No!”

It was too late; there was a briefscritch and a match flared into light. Larssen smacked it out of his hand, and it dropped to the ground with a hiss. The sulfurous smell of the match lingered in the darkness.

“What the hell—?”

“You son of a bitch,” Larssen hissed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I found matches.” Brast was weeping openly now. “In my pocket. You said we were safe, that he couldn’t find us. I can’t take this darkness any longer.I can’t. ”

There was a faint scratching noise, then another match flared into light. Brast sobbed with relief, his eyes wide and staring.

And suddenly, Larssen, half-naked and shivering, realized he didn’t have the will to douse the friendly yellow glow anymore. Besides, he had piled the rocks pretty deep. The feeble light from a tiny match surely wouldn’t leak out into the cave beyond.

He pushed the goggles onto his forehead and looked around, blinking his eyes. For the first time, he could see things in crisp, clear detail. Tiny as it was, the flame gave out a welcome glow of warmth in this awful place.

They were in a small, compartmentlike space. Five or six feet beyond, the sheer drop began. Behind them and past the low ceiling was their exit, blocked with rubble. They were safe.

“Maybe I can find something we can burn,” Brast was saying. “Something to give a little warmth.”

Larssen watched as the state trooper felt among his pockets. At least it kept Brast quiet.

Brast cursed under his breath as the match burnt his fingers. As he lit a third, there was a faint sound from behind Larssen: the clink of a rock being moved. Then the sound of falling, rolling; first one rock, then another.

“Put it out, Brast!” he hissed.

But Brast had turned and risen with the match in his hand, and was now looking behind Larssen, his face slackening with fear. For a terrible moment, Brast did not move. And then, very suddenly, he turned and ran blindly, mindlessly, off the edge into the pit.

“Noooo—!” Larssen cried.

But Brast was already gone, into the abyss, the burning match that had been in his hand dancing and flickering on an updraft before winking out.

Larssen waited for what seemed forever, heart hammering, listening in the pitch blackness to the rough breathing that echoed his own. And then, with numb fingers, he slowly put his goggles on and turned inexorably to stare, himself, into the face of nightmare.

Seventy-One

Rheinbeck sat in the darkened parlor, rocking back and forth, back and forth in the old, straight-backed chair. He was almost glad the house was so dark because he felt ridiculous: sitting here in his blacked-out raid wear, Kevlar vest, and bloused BDU pants, surrounded by lace antimacassars, crochet work, and frilly doilies. Assignment: little old lady.

Shit.

The big old house still groaned and creaked under the howling of the storm outside, but at least the shrieks of the old lady from the basement tornado shelter had subsided. He had double-locked the massive storm door and it was pretty clear she wasn’t going anywhere. She’d be safe down there, a lot safer than him if a tornado came along.

It was well past midnight. What the hell were they doing down there? He watched the feeble glow of the propane lantern, turning over various scenarios in his mind. They probably had the guy trapped and were negotiating him out. Rheinbeck had seen a couple of hostage negotiations in his time and they sometimes went on forever. Communications were down, trees lay across most of the roads, and nobody was going to respond to his call for an ambulance and doctor for the old lady: not with Deeper shredded and the whole county under a Force-3 tornado alert. This was a medical situation, not a law enforcement one; and damned awkward at that.

Jesus God, what a shitty assignment.

There was a shriek and the sudden pop of glass. Rheinbeck sprang to his feet, chair tilting crazily behind him, before he realized it was just whipsawing tree branches and another window getting blown out by the wind. Just what the place needed: more ventilation. Now that the cold front had passed over, it was remarkable how chilly the air had grown. The rain was already pouring in one broken window, puddles running across the floor. He righted the chair and sat back down. The boys back at HQ would never let him live this one down.

The propane lantern guttered and he looked over at it, scowling. It figured: some jackass hadn’t bothered to screw in a fresh canister, and now the thing was about to go out. He shook his head, rose, and went to the fireplace. A fire was laid and ready to go; above the hearth, on the stone mantelpiece, he noticed an old box of kitchen matches.

He stood for a minute, thinking.Hell with it, he decided. As long as he was stuck in this creepy old place, he might as well make himself comfortable.

He ducked his head into the fireplace and made sure the flue was open. Then he reached for the box, removed a match, struck it, and lit the fire. The flames licked up the newspaper and immediately he felt better: there was something reassuring about the warm glow of a fire. As it took, it threw a nice yellow light into the parlor, reflecting off the framed embroidery, the glass and porcelain knickknacks. Rheinbeck went and turned off the propane lantern. Might as well conserve its last few minutes of light.

Rheinbeck felt a little sorry for the old lady. It was tough having to lock her in the basement. But there was a major tornado warning out, and she’d been uncooperative, to say the least. He settled back in the rocker. It couldn’t be easy for an old woman, having a bunch of strangers with guns and dogs descending on your property in the middle of the night, in a terrible storm. It would be a shock for anybody, especially a shut-in like old Miss Kraus.

He leaned back in the rocker, enjoying the warmth of the flickering firelight. He was reminded of the Sunday afternoons he and the wife occasionally spent visiting his mother. In the winter, she’d make a pot of tea and serve it by a fire just like this one. And with the tea would always come cookies: she had an old family recipe for ginger snaps she kept promising to give his wife, but somehow never did.

It occurred to him that the old lady had been down in the cellar for almost three hours without any kind of nourishment. Now that she’d calmed down, he should bring her something. Nobody could accuse him later of having starved the old woman or allowing her to dehydrate. He could make a pot of tea. There was no power, but he could boil the tea water over the fire. In fact, he wished he’d thought of it earlier.

He roused himself from the chair, turned on his flashlight, and went into the kitchen. The place was remarkably well stocked. There were boxes of funny-looking dry goods stacked up along the walls: herbs and spices he’d never heard of, exotic vinegars, pickled vegetables in jars. On the counters were silver canisters covered with Japanese lettering, or maybe Chinese, he wasn’t sure which. Finally he found the teakettle, set near the stove between a pasta maker and some contraption like an oversized steel funnel with a crank. He rummaged in the cabinets, located some good old-fashioned tea bags. He hung the kettle on a hook above the fire, then returned to the kitchen. The refrigerator was also well stocked, and it was the work of a few minutes to arrange a little tray with cream and sugar, tea cakes, jam, marmalade, and bread. A lace doily and linen napkin with spoon and knife completed the refreshment. Soon the tea was ready, and he put the kettle on the tray and started down the stairs.

He paused at the storm door and, balancing the tea tray on one hand, tapped lightly. He heard a stir within.

“Miss Kraus?”

No sound.

“I have some tea and cakes here for you. It’ll do you good.”

He heard another rustle, and then her voice came through the door. “Just a minute, please. I need to arrange my hair.”

He waited, relieved by how calm she sounded. It was amazing, the propriety of the older generation. A minute passed, and then the old lady spoke again. “I’m ready for you now,” came the prim voice.

Smiling, he slipped the big iron key out of his pocket, inserted it in the lock, and eased open the door.

Seventy-Two

Sheriff Hazen could feel the sweat running off his hands and down the dimpled stock of his riot gun. He’d heard a welter of distant noises over the last ten minutes: gunshots, screams, cries—it sounded like a major confrontation. They’d seemed to come from one general direction, and Hazen was heading toward it as quickly as he could. Others might have run like rabbits, but he was personally determined to bring the guy out.

In the sandy floor he could now make out footprints: the bare ones he’d seen before.

He straightened. The bare feet of the killer.

He realized he’d been wrong about McFelty. The glance he’d had of the killer, brief as it was, had assured him of that. And maybe he was even wrong about Lavender’s connection. But he was right about the most important thing: the killer was holed up in the cave. This was his base of operations. Hazen had made the connection and he was determined to follow through and bring the son of a bitch out.

Hazen followed the footprints in the sand. Who could he be? A question to be answered later. Find the guy, get him out. It was as simple as that. Once they had him, all else would become clear: whether he was connected to Lavender; the experimental field; whatever. All would become clear.

He turned a sharp corner, following the footprints. The walls and roof suddenly pulled back, stretching away into vastness, their outlines dim in the infrared beam of his light. The ground was littered with huge, glittering crystals. Even with the monochromatic goggles, Hazen could tell they were all different colors. The cave was gigantic, a lot bigger and more spectacular than the miserable three-room tourist trap that Kraus had opened up. With the right management, it could be turned into a major tourist site. And the Indian burials he’d seen—they’d draw archeologists and maybe even a museum. Even if Medicine Creek didn’t get the experimental field, this cave was big enough to attract people from all over. It occurred to him, distantly, that the town was saved. This was better than Carlsbad Caverns. All this time the town had been sitting on a goldmine and they never knew it.

Hazen set the musings aside. He could dream about the future once this creepy bastard was behind bars. One thing at a time.

Ahead yawned a hole in the rock floor, from which came the sound of rushing water. He stepped cautiously around it and continued on, following the prints in the sand.

They were clear. And they looked fresh.

He sensed he was drawing closer to his quarry. The tunnel narrowed, then widened again. Hazen was noticing more and more signs of habitation: strange designs scratched into the walls with a sharp rock; moldering Indian fetishes arranged with care inside niches and atop limestone pillars. He tightened his grip on the shotgun and moved on. The freak, whoever he was, had been down here a long time.

Ahead, the tunnel widened into another cavern. Hazen turned the corner cautiously, then stopped dead, staring.

The cavern was a riot of ornamentation. Countless odd figures of twine and bone had been lashed together, and were hanging by strings from a thousand stalactites. Mummified cave creatures had been set together in little dioramas. Human bones and skulls of all shapes and sizes could be seen: some lined up along the rock walls; others laid along the floor in intricate, bizarre patterns; still others piled in rough heaps as if awaiting use. Ancient lanterns, tin cans, rusted turn-of-the-century gadgets, Indian artifacts, and detritus of all sorts lay along makeshift shelves. It looked like the den of some madman. Which, in fact, was exactly what it was.

Hazen turned slowly, aiming his infrared beam at the spectacle. This was weird; seriously weird. He swallowed, licked his lips, and took a step backward. Maybe it was a mistake, coming blundering in here like a single-handed posse. Maybe hewas being too hasty. The exit to the cave couldn’t be that far away. He could return to the surface, get reinforcements, get help . . .

And it was then that his eye fell on the far wall of the cave. The rocky floor was particularly uneven here, sloping down into deeper darkness.

Someone was lying, motionless, on the floor.

Raising the barrel of his shotgun, Hazen moved forward. There was a rough table of stone nearby, littered with moldy objects. Nearby were some empty burlap bags. And beyond, sprawled across the floor, was the figure, maybe asleep.

Shotgun ready, he approached the stone table with the utmost care. Now that he was closer, he realized that the objects on the table weren’t covered in mold after all. Instead, they appeared to be dozens of little knots of black hair: dark tufts of whiskers; curly locks, bits of scalp still attached; kinky clumps of hair and God only knew what else besides. The image of Gasparilla’s scalped and stripped head came to mind. He pushed it away, focusing his attention back on the figure, which on closer inspection didn’t look asleep after all. It looked dead.

He crept forward, tension abruptly knotting as he realized the body was gutted. Where the belly should be, there was a hollow cavity.

Oh, my God. Another victim.

He approached, hands slippery on the butt stock, stiff-legged with horror. The body had been arranged, its clothes mostly torn away, only a few ragged pieces left, its face covered with dried blood. It was gangly, not much more than a kid.

His arm shaking almost beyond his ability to control it, Hazen stopped and, taking his handkerchief, wiped the blood and dirt off the face.

Then he froze, handkerchief on the cold skin, a storm of revulsion and overwhelming loss erupting within him. It was Tad Franklin.

He staggered, felt himself sway.

Tad. . .

And then everything burst out of him at once, and with a howl of grief and fury he began turning, around and around and around, pumping the shotgun in every direction, while he raged at the darkness, the fiery blasts punctuated again and again by the sound of the shattering stalactites that fell like showers of crystal rain.

Seventy-Three

“What was that?” Weeks asked, screwing up his face, blinking rapidly against the dark.

“Somebody firing a twelve-gauge.” Pendergast remained still, listening. Then he glanced at Weeks’s gun. “Have you been trained in the proper use of that weapon, Officer?”

“Of course,” Weeks sniffed. “I got a Distinguished Shooting in my unit at Dodge Academy.” As it happened, there had been only three cadets in the K-9 unit at the time, but Pendergast didn’t have to be told everything.

“Then chamber a round and get ready. Stay on my right at all times and pace me exactly.”

Weeks rubbed the back of his neck; humidity always gave him a rash. “It’s my informed opinion that we should get some backup before proceeding further.”

Pendergast spoke without bothering to look over his shoulder. “Officer Weeks,” he said, “we’ve heard the crying of the killer’s intended victim. We’ve just heard shooting. Is it really yourinformed opinion we have the time to wait for backup?”

The question lingered briefly in the chill air. Weeks felt himself flushing. And then another faint cry—high, thin, clearly female—echoed faintly through the caverns. In a flash Pendergast was off again, moving down the tunnel. Weeks scrambled to follow, fumbling with his shotgun.

The crying seemed to rise and fall as they moved on, becoming fainter from time to time before growing louder again. They had entered a section of the cave that was drier and more spacious. The level floor was partially covered by large patches of sand, riddled with bare footprints.

“Do you know who the killer is?” Weeks asked, unable to completely hide his querulous tone.

“A man. But a man in form only.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Weeks didn’t like the way the FBI agent always seemed to speak in riddles.

Pendergast bent briefly to examine the footprints. “All you need to know is this:identify your target. If it is the killer—and you will know it, I can assure you—then shoot to kill.Do not trouble yourself with any niceties beyond that.”

“You don’t have to be nasty.” Weeks fell silent when he saw the look that Pendergast darted at him.

A man in form only.The image of that, thatthing —it hadn’t looked much like a man to him—raising one of the thrashing dogs and tearing off its limbs came unbidden into Weeks’s mind. He shivered. But Pendergast paid no attention, moving ahead with great swiftness, gun in his hand, only pausing infrequently to listen. The sounds seemed to have died away completely.

After a few minutes, Pendergast stopped to consult the map. Then, under his guidance, they retraced their steps. The sounds returned briefly, then faded away once again. Finally, Pendergast dropped to his knees and began examining the tracks, moving back and forth for what seemed an interminable length of time, peering closely, his nose sometimes mere inches from the sand. Weeks watched him, growing more and more restless.

“Below,” Pendergast said.

Pendergast squeezed through a crack along the edge of one wall, then dropped into a narrow space that descended steeply. Weeks followed. They inched along for a while, arriving shortly at a veritable ants’ nest of natural boreholes in the cave wall, some with frozen rivers of flowstone erupting from their mouths. Pendergast played his light across the honeycombed face for a moment, selected one of the holes, and then—to Weeks’s consternation—crawled into it. The opening was dank and wet-looking, and Weeks considered protesting, but decided against it as Pendergast’s light abruptly vanished. Scrambling after Pendergast down the sharply descending passage, Weeks half jumped, half tumbled into a tunnel so heavily used that a trail had been worn in the soft limestone of its bed.

He clambered to his feet, brushing the mud from his clothes and checking his shotgun. “How long has the killer been living down here?” he asked, staring at the track in disbelief.

“Fifty-one years this September,” said Pendergast. Already, he was moving again, following the trail down the narrow corridor.

“So youknow who it is?”

“Yes.”

“And just how the heck did you figurethat out?”

“Officer Weeks, shall we save the colloquy for later?”

Pendergast flew down the passageway. The crying had stopped, but now the FBI agent seemed sure of the way . . .

And then, quite suddenly, they came to a standstill. Ahead, a huge curtain of crystallized gypsum flowed from a rend in the ceiling, completely blocking the passageway. Pendergast shone his light onto the floor of the passage, and Weeks noticed that the heavy track had disappeared. “No time,” Pendergast murmured to himself, angling his light back down the tunnel, up over the walls and ceiling. “No time.”

Then he took a few steps back from the curtain of gypsum. He seemed to be counting under his breath. Weeks frowned: maybe he’d been right the first time and Pendergast wasn’t such a good choice to be tagging along with, after all.

Then the agent paused, moved his head close to the wall, and called out, “Miss Swanson?”

To Weeks’s surprise, there was a faint gasp, a sob, and then a muffled shout: “Pendergast? Agent Pendergast? Oh, God—”

“Be calm. We’re coming to get you. Ishe around?”

“No. He left . . . I don’t know how long ago. Hours.”

Pendergast turned to Weeks. “Now’s your chance to be useful.” He moved back to the curtain of gypsum, pointed. “Direct a shotgun blast at this spot, please.”

“Won’t he hear?” said Weeks.

“He’s already close.Follow my orders, Officer.”

Pendergast spoke with such command that Weeks jumped. “Yes, sir!” He crouched, aimed, and pulled both triggers.

The blast was deafening in the enclosed space. Pendergast’s light exposed a pall of glittering gypsum dust and, beyond, a great hole in the diaphanous stone. For a moment, nothing further happened. And then the curtain broke apart with a great crack, dropping to the floor and sending glittering crystal shards skidding everywhere. Beyond was another passageway, and beside it the narrow dark mouth of a pit. Pendergast rushed to the edge and shone his light within. Weeks came up behind and peered cautiously over his shoulder.

There, at the bottom, he saw a filthy girl with purple hair, staring up with a muddy, blood-smeared, terrified face.

Pendergast turned to look at him. “You’re the dog-handler. You must have a spare leash in your pack.”

“Yes—”

He found himself, in one swift movement, relieved of his pack. Pendergast reached inside and pulled out the spare, a length of chain with a leather strap. Then he fixed the chain end around the base of a limestone column and threw the other end into the pit.

From below came the clank of the chain, the sobbing of the girl.

Weeks peered over again. “It doesn’t reach,” he said.

Pendergast ignored this. “Cover us. Ifhe comes, shoot to kill.”

“Now, wait just a minute—”

But Pendergast had already disappeared over the edge. Weeks hovered at the top, one eye on the passageway and the other on the pit. The FBI agent clambered down the chain with remarkable agility, and when he reached the end he hung from it, free arm down, offering the girl his hand. She reached for it, swiped, missed.

“Stand aside, Miss Swanson,” Pendergast said to the girl. “Weeks, nudge some of those boulders into the pit. Try not to brain one of us. And keep a careful eye on that tunnel.”

With his foot, Weeks pushed half a dozen large rocks over the lip of the pit. Then he watched as the girl, who understood immediately, stacked them against the wall and clambered to the top. Now Pendergast was able to grab her hand. He hoisted her upward, planted his free arm beneath her shoulders, brought the hand back to the chain, and slowly climbed up the stone face. Pendergast looked scrawny enough, but the strength it took to climb up that chain while carrying another person was remarkable.

They emerged from the pit and the girl immediately fell to her knees, clinging to Pendergast, sobbing violently.

Pendergast knelt beside her. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he gently wiped the blood and dirt from the girl’s face. Then he examined her wrists and hands. “Do they hurt?” he asked.

“Not now. I’m so glad you came. I thought . . . I thought—” The rest of the sentence was lost in a sob.

He took her hands. “Corrie? I know what you thought. You’ve been very brave. But it’s not over yet and I need your help.” He spoke gently but rapidly, in a low, urgent whisper.

She fell silent, nodded.

“Can you walk?”

She nodded, then broke into a sob once again. “He wasplaying with me,” she cried. “He was going to keep playing with me, until . . . until Idied. ”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “I know it’s difficult. But you’re going to need to be strong until we get out of here.”

She swallowed, eyes down.

Pendergast stood and briefly examined his map. “There might be a quicker way out. We’re going to have to risk it. Follow me.”

Then he turned to Weeks. “I’ll go first. Then Miss Swanson. You cover us from the back. And I meancover, Officer: he could come from anywhere, above, below, beside, behind. He will be silent. And he will befast. ”

Weeks licked dry lips. “How can you be so sure the killer will be coming after us?”

Pendergast returned his gaze, pale eyes luminous in the darkness. “Because he won’t give up willingly his only friend.”

Seventy-Four

Hazen moved fast, pausing only briefly to reconnoiter at the twists and intersections of the cavern, not bothering to conceal the noisy sounds of his passage. He gripped his twelve-gauge with white knuckles, fingers resting against the dual triggers.

This bastard was as good as dead.

He passed another little arrangement, then another, tiny crystals and dead cave animals placed on a rock ledge. A psychopath. The cave was where he’d practiced his craziness before going topside to do it to real people.

The son of a bitch was going to pay. No Miranda rights, no call to a lawyer, just two loads of double-ought buck in the chest and then a third to the brainpan.

There was such a confusing welter of footprints that Hazen wasn’t sure what trail he was following anymore, or even if it was fresh. But he knew the killer couldn’t be far away, and he didn’t care how long it took or where he had to go to find him. The corridors couldn’t go on forever. He’d find him.

The rage prickled his scalp and made his face feel hot and flushed despite the clammy air of the cave.Tad . . . It was like he had lost a son.

His grief was checked, at least for now, by a tidal wave of anger. He felt tears streaming down his cheeks but didn’t feel the emotion behind them. All he felt was hatred. He was crying with hatred.

The tunnel suddenly ended in a rocky cave-in. There was a black hole above from which the boulders had fallen. His infrared beam revealed a little trail, winding up through the debris and disappearing into what looked like an upper gallery.

Hazen charged his way up the debris slope, head down, shotgun pointed ahead. He came out into a soaring vertical space. Overhead, feathery crystals hung on long ropes of limestone, swaying slightly in an underground current of air. Passageways wandered off in all directions. He scanned the ground, fighting to get his breathing and his emotions under control; found what looked like a fresh track; and began following it again, threading his way through a maze of tunnels.

After a few minutes he realized something was wrong. The tunnel had curved back on itself somehow, and returned him to where he’d started. He set off down another tunnel, only to find that the same thing happened. His frustration grew until the red wash of his goggles seemed to dim from sheer rage.

After returning to the chamber yet a third time, he stopped, raised his shotgun, and fired. The blast rocked the room, and feathery crystals tinkled gently down on all sides like giant broken snowflakes.

“Motherfucker!” he screamed. “I’m here, come show your face, freak!”

He fired a second time, and a third, screaming obscenities into the darkness.

The only answers that came back were the echoes of the blasts, rolling insanely through the honeycomb of chambers, again and again.

The magazine was empty. Breathing raggedly, Hazen reloaded. This wasn’t helping, hollering and shooting like this. Just find him. Find him.Find him.

He plunged down yet another passageway. This one looked different: a long, glossy tunnel of limestone, little pools of water dotted with cave pearls. At least he had escaped the merry-go-round of endless returning passageways. He could no longer remember where he had been or where he was going. He simply plunged on.

And then, off to one side, he saw a dark, hulking figure.

It was the merest glimpse, just a shadow flitting across his goggles; but it was enough. He spun, dropped to one knee, and fired—long practice at the range paying off—and the figure dropped, tumbling to the ground with a crash.

Hazen followed immediately with a second shot. Then he scuttled forward, ready to pump out the final round.

He stared down, the red glow of the night-vision goggles revealing not a dead body but a lumpy stalagmite, cut in half by his gun, lying shattered on the cave floor. He resisted the impulse to curse, to kick the shattered pieces away. Slowly and calmly, he raised the shotgun and continued down the echoing tunnel. He came to a fork, another fork, and then he paused.

He saw movement ahead, heard a faint sound.

He moved forward more carefully now, gun at the ready. He swung around a rocky corner, dropped to his knee, and covered the empty tunnel ahead; and in doing so he never did see the dark shape that approached swiftly out of the shadows behind him until he felt the sudden blow to the side of his head, the brutal wrenching twist, but by then it was too late and black night was already rushing forward to embrace him and he didn’t have enough air left in his lungs to make any sound at all.

Seventy-Five

Perhaps, Corrie thought, it was all just a dream: this breathless, desperate dash through an endless gallery of caverns. Perhaps Agent Pendergast had never arrived and she hadn’t been rescued, after all. Perhaps she was still down at the bottom of the pit, in a nightmarish half-doze, waiting to be awakened by the return . . .

But then, the ache in her wrists and ankles, the throbbing pain in her temple, would remind her that this was, in fact, no dream.

Agent Pendergast raised his arm, signaling for them to stop. His flashlight bobbled as he consulted the strange, soiled map. This hesitation seemed to greatly agitate the man who was accompanying them. It had taken Corrie several minutes, in her near-stuporous state, to even notice that somebody besides Pendergast had been running along with them. He was a little man with a high voice, sandy hair, and a scraggly goatee. His police fatigues were splattered with mud and clotted pieces of something else she didn’t want to think about.

“This way,” Pendergast whispered. Corrie roused herself to follow, feeling as she did so the vague, dreamlike sensation return.

They passed through a low, chilly cavity that took a series of turns, first to the left, then to the right. And then quite suddenly, the ceiling rose into blackness. Corrie sensed, more than saw, that a large chamber lay ahead. Pendergast hesitated once again at its mouth, listening. When he had satisfied himself that there was no noise besides their own, he led the way forward.

One step, then another, as the walls fell away from the beam of Pendergast’s flashlight. Despite her shock and exhaustion, Corrie looked wonderingly around at the extraordinary space that was revealed, in bits and pieces, by the FBI agent’s flashlight. It was an immensely tall chamber, of blood-red stone so wet and slick that it appeared in places almost to be polished. Pools of shallow water dotted the floor. Near the top of the chamber, the rock face was broken by a series of horizontal cracks, through which the long seeping action of water had built up veils of calcite. These immense white veils, draped over the red stone, gave the uncanny appearance of a richly appointed gallery in a theater.

The only problem was there wasn’t any exit at the far end. The dazed sense of relief that had been settling over Corrie was suddenly lost beneath a fresh wash of fear.

“Where now?” the man in uniform said, panting. “I just knew it. This shortcut of yours led us to a dead end.”

Pendergast peered at the map another moment. “We’re no more than a hundred yards from the public area of Kraus’s Kaverns. But a portion of that will be along the Z-axis.”

“The Z-axis?” the man said. “The Z-axis? What are you talking about?”

“Our route lies up there.” Pendergast pointed to a small arched opening that Corrie had not noticed before, situated about forty feet up one of the curtains of stone. A stream of water poured from it, splashing down the huge masses of flowstone and disappearing into a yawning crack at the cavern’s base.

“Just how are we supposed to get up there?” the man asked truculently.

Pendergast ignored him, searching the wall above with his beam.

“You don’t expect to climb that, do you? Without a rope?”

“It’s the only choice left us.”

“You call that a choice? With that huge gaping hole at the bottom? One slip, and we’re as much as—”

Pendergast ignored this, turning to Corrie. “How are your wrists and ankles?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I can make it.”

“I know you can. You go first. I’ll follow and tell you what to do. Officer Weeks will come last.”

“Why me last?”

“Because you need to provide cover from below.”

Weeks spat to one side. “Right.” Despite the chill damp air, the man was sweating: rivulets that traced clean lines through the muck that covered his face.

Quickly, Pendergast glided toward the cave wall, Corrie following close behind. She felt her heart begin to beat hard and fast again, and she tried to keep her eyes off the rock face above them. They stopped a few yards short of the wide fissure in the floor. The spray of falling water formed a curtain of mist that coated the already slick rock. Without allowing her time for second thoughts, Pendergast gave her a boost, directing his light toward the initial footholds.

“I’m right behind you, Miss Swanson,” he murmured. “Take your time.”

Corrie clung to the rock, trying to suppress the pain in her hands and the still greater burden of her fear. To reach the opening overhead they had to climb diagonally, out over the yawning fissure. The ribbed limestone offered plenty of good hand- and footholds, but the rock was wet and smooth. She tried to think of nothing, nothing except raising first a hand, then a foot, and then pulling herself up another six inches. From the noises below, she could tell that both men were now on the rock face and climbing as well. Pendergast murmured directions, once in a while using his hand to direct her foot to one ledge or another. It was more frightening than it was difficult—the handholds were almost like the rungs of a ladder. Once she looked down, saw the top of Weeks’s head and the gulf that now lay directly beneath them. She paused and shut her eyes, feeling a reeling sense of vertigo. Again, Pendergast’s hand steadied her, his smooth, gentle voice urging her along, urging her to look ahead, not down . . .

One foot, one hand, the other foot, the other hand. Slowly, Corrie crept up the rock. Now, blackness yawned both above and below, barely pierced by the glow of Pendergast’s flashlight. Her heart was racing even faster now, and her arms and legs were beginning to tremble from the unaccustomed effort of climbing. Somehow, perversely, the closer she got to the lip of the passage overhead, the more desperate she felt. She did not dare look up anymore, and had no idea if there were five feet, or thirty feet, still to go.

“There’s something down here!” Weeks suddenly shouted from below, his voice pitched high. “Something moving!”

“Officer Weeks, brace yourself against the rock and provide cover,” Pendergast said. Then he turned back to Corrie. “Corrie, just another ten feet. Pretend you’re climbing a ladder.”

Ignoring the pain that shot through her wrists and fingers, Corrie grabbed the next handhold, found another foothold, pulled herself up.

“It’shim! ” she heard Weeks shout. “Oh my God,he’s here! ”

“Use your weapon, Officer,” Pendergast said calmly.

Desperately, Corrie grabbed a fresh handhold, found a higher ledge for her foot. It slipped and her heart almost froze with terror as she lurched away from the wall. But Pendergast was there once more, his hand bracing her, steadying her, guiding her foot to a better hold. She stifled a sob; yet again, she was so frightened she could barely think.

“He’s gone,” Weeks said in a tight voice. “At least, I can’t see him.”

“He’s still there,” said Pendergast. “Climb, Corrie.Climb. ”

Corrie, gasping with the effort and pain, pulled herself up. Peripherally, she was aware that Pendergast, with a lithe maneuver, had turned himself around on the ledge to face outward. His flashlight was in one hand and his gun in the other, its laser sight scanning the cavern below.

“There!” cried Weeks.

Corrie heard the deafening blast of his shotgun, followed by another. “He’s fast!” Weeks screamed. “Too fast!”

“I’m covering you from above,” Pendergast said. “Just hold your position andfire with care. ”

There was another blast from the shotgun, then another. “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,” Weeks was saying, over and over, sobbing and gasping.

Corrie ventured a glance overhead. In the dim glow of Pendergast’s flashlight she could see that she was now just five feet below the lip of the archway. But there did not seem to be any more handholds. She felt around, first with one hand, and then with the other, but the stone was smooth.

Another scream, another wild shotgun blast.

“Weeks!” Pendergast rapped out. “You’re firing wild!Aim your weapon. ”

“No, no,no! ” The shotgun went off yet again. And then Corrie heard the clatter as Weeks threw his empty gun down in a panic and began climbing furiously.

“Officer Weeks!” Pendergast shouted.

Once again, Corrie reached out with her hands, fingertips splayed, looking for a purchase. She could find none. With a sob of terror, she looked down toward Pendergast, appealing for help. And then she froze.

A shape had flashed out of the darkness below, leaping upon the rock wall like a spider. Pendergast’s gun cracked but the shape kept coming, scrambling up after them. For a moment, Pendergast’s light fell directly on it, but it gave a grunt of rage and ducked away from the beam. And yet it was enough for Corrie to see, once again, that great moonlike face, inhumanly white; the wispy trailing beard; the little blue eyes flecked with blood, staring out from below long, effeminate lashes; that same strange, intent, fixed smile: a face that seemed as ingenuous as a baby’s, and yet so very alien, rent by thoughts and emotions so bizarre as to scarcely seem human.

Even as she watched, the figure ascended the rock with terrible speed.

Pendergast’s gun cracked again but Corrie saw that Weeks, climbing desperately, had come directly between him and the monster and the FBI agent no longer had a shot. She lay against the rock face, her heart like a hammer in her chest, unable to move, unable to look away, unable to do anything.

The killer reached the frantically climbing Weeks, brought his pistonlike arm back, and smashed the man in the back, cracking him like a bug. With a scream of pain Weeks peeled off the rock and began to slide. The massive arm cocked back again and this time struck a sideways blow that rammed Weeks’s head against the rock. Corrie watched in frozen horror as Weeks simply dropped, down the wall and into the great fissure below, his body making no sound as it plunged out of sight through the veil of mist into the unguessable depths beneath.

Then immediately there came another shot from Pendergast’s gun, but the man, with a great apelike leap, dodged sideways and once again began scuttling up the rock face with almost unbelievable agility. Before she could even draw breath he was on top of Pendergast. There was a blow and the agent’s gun fell away, clattering onto the cavern floor below. Then the thing’s hammerlike fist drew back to deliver another, fatal blow and Corrie, finding her breath, screamed, “No!”

But when the fist came down, Pendergast was no longer there, having jumped sideways himself. Now the agent raised his hand, fingertips curled tightly in against themselves, and thrust the meat of his palm violently up into the man’s nose. There was a cracking sound and a jet of crimson blood. The man grunted in pain and lashed out again, knocking Pendergast roughly from the wall. The agent teetered, slid, then managed to halt his fall, reestablishing a grip on the stone several feet below.

But it was too late. The thing, bloodied and frothing, had gotten past Pendergast and was now scrambling up the rock face toward Corrie. She was helpless; she could not even release a hand to defend herself; it was all she could do to cling to the cliff.

He was on top of her in a heartbeat and the great callused hands closed once again around her throat, with no hesitation now, no humanity in his dead eyes, nothing but a sense of anger and the desire to kill. And the sound of her gagging was drowned out by his own brutal roar.

Muuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Seventy-Six

The wind was blowing even harder now, and Shurte and Williams had retreated into the shelter of the cut leading down into the cave. It wasn’t exactly where the sheriff had ordered them to be, Shurte knew, but the hell with it: it was past one in the morning, and they’d been standing in the cold and rain for over three hours already.

He heard Williams groan, then swear. He glanced over. Williams was huddled farther down the cut, holding the propane lantern. Shurte had dressed his partner’s bite, using the first-aid kit from the cruiser. It was an ugly wound, but not nearly as bad as Williams was making it out to be. The real problem was their situation. The police-band radios were silent, the power was out everywhere; even the few commercial radio stations that reached this far into the boondocks were off the air. As a result, they had no information, no orders, no news, nothing. Three hours Hazen and the others had been in the cave, and the only one to come out had been one of the dogs with half his jaw ripped off.

Shurte had a very bad feeling.

The cave exhaled a smell of dampness and stone. Shurte shivered. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way the dog had come tearing out of the darkness, trailing blood. What could have ripped a dog apart like that? He glanced at his watch again.

“Jesus, what the hell are theydoing down there?” Williams asked for the tenth time.

Shurte shook his head.

“I should be in the hospital,” Williams said. “I might be getting rabies.”

“Police dogs don’t have rabies.”

“How do you know? I’m getting an infection, for sure.”

“I put plenty of antibiotic ointment on it.”

“Then why does it burn so much? If this gets infected I’ll remember who dressed it,Doctor Shurte.”

Shurte tried to ignore him. Even the banshee-like moaning of the wind across the mouth of the cave was preferable to his whining.

“I tell you, I’ve got to get medical help. That dog took a chunk out of me.”

Shurte snorted. “Williams, it’s a dog bite. Now you can put in for a Purple Heart Ribbon for being wounded in the line of duty.”

“Not until next week I can’t. And it hurtsnow, damn it.”

Shurte looked away. What a jerk. Maybe he should request a rotation. When the going got rough Williams had crapped out. A dog bite. What a joke.

A bolt of lightning tore the sky in half, briefly painting the mansion a ghostly white. The huge drops of rain were propelled like bullets in the howling wind. A river of water was running down the ramp into the cave.

“Fuck this.” Williams got to his feet. “I’m going up to the house to relieve Rheinbeck. I’ll take a turn watching the old lady and send him on down here.”

“That wasn’t our assignment.”

“Screw the assignment. They were supposed to be in and out of the cave in half an hour. I’m injured, I’m tired, and I’m soaked to the skin. You can stay out here if you want, but I’m going up to the house.”

Shurte watched his retreating back, then spat on the ground. What an asshole.

Seventy-Seven

The roar of the monster was suddenly drowned out by a second roar, sharp and deafening in the confines of the cavern. Corrie felt the horrible weight of the brute suddenly slam against her, pressing her cruelly into the rock face. He was roaring violently in her ear as if in pain, the bellowing filling her nostrils with the smell of rotten eggs. The great paw around her neck loosened, then released, allowing her to turn her head and gasp for air. She had a brief glimpse of a face inches from hers: broad, unnaturally smooth, pasty white, little eyes, bulbous forehead.

There was another blast, and this time she heard the slap of buckshot against the rock face nearby. Corrie gulped in air, clinging hard at the slippery purchase. Someone was firing a shotgun at him from below.

The monster slid away from the rock, then regained his hold, scrabbling frantically and roaring like a bear in the direction of the blast.

Vaguely, she heard Pendergast’s voice from below. “Corrie! Now!”

Corrie struggled to clear her head. She released one hand, gave a desperate reach upward, and found the handhold that had been eluding her. Crying and gasping, she pulled herself up by her arms, moved her foot—and felt a viselike grip close around her ankle.

She screamed, trying to shake her leg free, but the brute tugged fiercely at her, trying to peel her away bodily from the rock face. She struggled to maintain her hold but the pull was too strong. Her fingers, already swollen and bleeding from her struggles in the pit, grew too painful to endure. Corrie cried out in fear and frustration, feeling her grip give way, her nails scraping across the stone.

There was another shotgun blast and the terrible grip abruptly relaxed. Corrie felt a sharp sting in her calf and realized that one or more of the shotgun pellets had hit her.

“Hold your fire!” Pendergast shouted down.

But the monster had fallen abruptly silent. The roar of the shotgun, the shrieks of pain and rage, echoed and fell away. Corrie waited, frozen in terror against the rock face. Almost against her will, she found herself looking downward.

He was there, the broad moon face now a mask of blood. He stared up at her a moment, his face horribly twisted, grimacing, his eyes blinking rapidly. Then his hands spasmodically released their holds. His eyes remained on hers as he swayed back, as if in slow motion, from the rock face. Then he gradually fell backward, his countenance serene as his huge body dropped away into space. Corrie watched in sickened horror as he hit the rock wall a dozen feet below, bouncing with a great smack and a spray of blood, then turning once and landing heavily at the mouth of the fissure. He lay still for a moment, and then another shotgun blast roared out, catching him in one shoulder and turning him over violently, swinging his body partway over the abyss. A man holding a shotgun stepped forward: Sheriff Hazen. He aimed it point-blank at the man’s head.

For a moment, one of the monster’s great hands clung to the edge. And then it relaxed and the thing slid down out of sight, dropping like a stone into the void. Corrie waited, listening, but there was nothing more: no splash, no cry of ultimate pain to mark the thing’s final passing. He had disappeared, claimed by the dark bowels of the earth. The sheriff stood there, not having fired the final shot.

The first to speak was Pendergast.

“Easy does it,” he said to Corrie, his voice low and firm. “Let one hand follow the other. I can see the rest of the path from here. The handholds are good, and the top is only a few feet away.”

Corrie gasped, sobbed, her entire body shaking.

“You may cry when you reach the top, Miss Swanson. Now, you must climb.”

The businesslike tone broke the spell of terror that froze her against the rock. She swallowed, moved a hand, found another handhold, secured it, moved a foot. And when she reached up again, her hand found the lip of the precipice: she had made it to the top. In another moment, she had pulled herself up and over. She stretched out on the cold floor of the passageway, face down, and gave herself over to sobbing.She was alive.

For a minute, maybe two, she remained alone. And then Pendergast was kneeling over her, his arm around her, his voice low and reassuring. “Corrie, you’re fine. He’s gone now, and you’re safe.”

She couldn’t speak; all she could do was cry with relief.

“He’s gone now, and you’re safe,” Pendergast repeated, the cool white hand stroking her forehead—and for a moment the image of her father returned, so strong it was almost a physical presence. He had comforted her this way once, when she had been hurt on the playground . . . The memory was so vivid that she swallowed the next convulsive sob, hiccuped, and struggled to sit up.

Pendergast stepped away. “I have to go down for Sheriff Hazen. He’s badly hurt. We’ll be right back.”

“He—?” Corrie managed to say.

“Yes. He saved your life. And mine.” Pendergast nodded, then was gone.

Corrie leaned back against the stone floor. And only now the true storm of feelings flooded through her: the fear, pain, relief, horror, shock. A breeze came wafting down from out of the darkness, stirring her hair. It carried with it a familiar, horrible smell: the smell of that cauldron, in the room where the killer had first grabbed her. But along with it was the faint smell of something else, something almost forgotten: fresh air.

Perhaps she fell asleep then, or perhaps she simply shut down. But the next thing she remembered was the ring of footsteps against rock. She opened her eyes and saw Agent Pendergast looking down at her, gun once again in his hand. Beside him, leaning heavily against the FBI agent, was the sheriff: bloody, clothes ripped, nothing but a knot of gristle where one of his ears had once been. Corrie blinked, stared. He looked as tired and battered as a human being could be and still remain standing.

Pendergast spoke. “Come. We’re not far now. The sheriff needs both our help.”

Corrie staggered to her feet. She swayed a moment and Pendergast steadied her. Then they began moving slowly down the tunnel. And as the smell of fresh, sweet air began growing stronger, Corrie knew for sure that they were finally on their way out.

Seventy-Eight

Williams toiled up the path, the bite smarting with each step. The corn in the fields along the road had been ripped to shreds, husks gone, ears scattered across the path, broken stalks rustling crazily against each other. He cursed extravagantly at the rain and the wind. He should’ve packed it in an hour ago. Now he was soakedand injured. Great combination for pneumonia.

He struggled up onto the porch, his feet crunching over broken glass from a window blown out by the wind. Now he could make out a faint glow from inside.

It was a fire in the fireplace. Nice. Rheinbeck, it seems, had been taking it easy up here while he and Shurte were down in the storm, guarding the cave entrance. Well, now it was his turn at the fire.

Williams stopped, leaning on the door and catching his breath. He tried the handle, found it locked. The firelight flickered through the leaded panes, making warm kaleidoscopic patterns in the glass.

He gave the knocker a few raps. “Rheinbeck! It’s me, Williams!”

No response.

“Rheinbeck!”

He waited one minute, then another. Still no response.

Christ, Williams thought, he was probably in the bathroom. Or the kitchen, maybe. That was it. He was in the kitchen eating—or drinking, more likely—and couldn’t hear with all the wind.

He went around the flank of the house and found another broken window panel in the side door. He put his mouth to it and shouted, “Rheinbeck!”

Very strange.

He pushed out the rest of the glass in the panel, reached inside to unlock the door, then eased it open, nosing his light ahead of him.

Inside, the entire house seemed to be alive with the creaking, groaning, and muttering of the storm. Williams looked around uneasily. It looked solid enough, but old places like this were sometimes full of dry rot. He hoped the whole structure didn’t come crashing down on him.

“Rheinbeck!”

Still no answer.

Williams limped forward. The door from the parlor to the dining room was half closed. He pushed through, looked around. All was in order, the dining table covered with a lace tablecloth, a vase of fresh flowers in the middle. He shone his light into the kitchen, but it was dark and there was no smell of cooking.

Williams returned to the parlor entrance and stood there indecisively. Looked like Rheinbeck had left with the old woman. Maybe an ambulance had finally come. But why hadn’t they notified him and Shurte? It was only a five-minute walk to the cave mouth. Typical Rheinbeck, looking after himself and to hell with everyone else.

He glanced over at the fire, at the cheery yellow glow it threw over the parlor.

Hell with it,he decided. As long as he was stuck in this creepy old place, he might as well make himself comfortable. After all, he’d been badly injured in the line of duty, hadn’t he?

He hobbled over to the sofa and eased himself down onto it. Now this was more like it: there was always something reassuring about the warm glow of a fire. He fetched a contented sigh, noticing the way the firelight reflected off the framed embroidery, the glass and porcelain knickknacks. He sighed again, more deeply, then closed his eyes, still seeing the flickering warm light through his eyelids.

He awoke suddenly, wondering for a wild moment where he was. Then it all came flooding back. He had dozed off for a moment, it seemed. He stretched, yawned.

There was a muffled thump.

He froze for a moment before figuring it must have been the wind, coming through another broken window. He sat up, listening.

Another thump.

It sounded like it was inside the house. Down below, in the basement. And then Williams suddenly understood. Naturally, Rheinbeck and the old lady were down in the cellar because of the tornado warnings. That was why the house seemed deserted.

He exhaled with irritation. He should go down there, just to report. He rose from the comfortable sofa, cast a regretful eye on the warm fire, and hobbled toward the door to the cellar stairs.

At the top he hesitated, then began to descend. The treads protested under his weight, squeaking frightfully over the fury of the storm outside. Halfway down he paused, craned his neck to see into the pool of darkness.

“Rheinbeck!”

There was that thump again, followed by a sigh. He fetched a sigh of his own. Christ, why was he bothering? He was injured, damn it.

He shone his light down and around, the banister rails throwing alternating bars of yellow and black in the cluttered space. At one end, a huge storm door had been set into the stone wall. That was where they must be.

“Rheinbeck?”

Another sigh. Now that he was closer, it didn’t really sound like wind coming in a broken window, after all. It sounded forced, soundedwet somehow.

He took another step down, and another, and then he was at the bottom. The door was straight ahead. He hobbled over to it, and slowly—very slowly—pushed open the door.

A candle guttered on a small worktable, where tea for two had been set up with a pot: cups, cream, tea cakes, and jam all neatly arranged. Rheinbeck was sitting in a chair facing the table, slumped over, hands hanging at his sides, blood pouring into his mouth from a terrible gash in his skull. A broken porcelain statue lay in pieces on the ground around him.

Williams stared, uncomprehending. “Rheinbeck?”

No movement. A muffled boom of thunder shook the foundations of the house.

Williams could not move, could not think, could not even reach for his service piece. For some reason, all he could do was stare in disbelief. Even down here the old house seemed almost alive with the fury of the storm, groaning and swaying, and yet Williams could not pull his eyes away from the tea tray.

Another thump behind him abruptly broke the spell. Williams turned, the flashlight beam spinning across the walls as he groped for his gun, and as he did so a figure seemed to come out of nowhere, rushing toward him, boxes and packing crates falling away in a blur: a wild ghostly woman in white, her arms upraised, her tattered nightgown streaming behind her, her gray hair wild, Rheinbeck’s commando knife in one of her upraised fists. Her mouth was open, a pink, toothless hole, and from it issued a shriek:

“Devils!”

Seventy-Nine

The rain and wind had risen to such a furious pitch that Shurte began to worry that a new line of tornadoes might be making for Medicine Creek itself. The water was now pouring down into the cave, and he had just retreated into the cave entrance when he heard the sounds from within: footsteps, slow and shuffling, and coming his way.

Heart pounding, silently cursing Williams for leaving him alone, Shurte positioned himself to one side of the propane lantern and aimed his shotgun down the steps.

Silent, indistinct figures began materializing out of the gloom. Shurte remembered the dog and felt his skin crawl. “Who’s that?” he called out, trying to keep his voice from quavering. “Identify yourselves!”

“Special Agent Pendergast, Sheriff Hazen, and Corrie Swanson,” came the dry reply.

Shurte lowered his gun with overwhelming relief, picked up the propane lantern, and descended to meet them. At first he could hardly believe his eyes at the bloody spectacle that greeted him: Sheriff Hazen, barely distinguishable under all the blood. A young girl, bruised and mud-spattered. Shurte recognized the third figure as the FBI agent who had sucker-punched Cole, but he didn’t have time to wonder how the man had gotten himself into the cave.

“We need to get Sheriff Hazen to a hospital,” the FBI agent said. “The girl also needs medical attention.”

“All communications are down,” Shurte said. “The roads are impassable.”

“Where’s Williams?” Hazen slurred.

“He went up to the house to, ah, to relieve Rheinbeck.” Shurte paused, almost afraid to ask the question. “What about the others?”

Hazen merely shook his head.

“We’ll send down a search-and-rescue team as soon as communications are restored,” Pendergast said wearily. “Help me get these two into the house, if you please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Shurte put an arm around Hazen and gently guided him up the last of the steps. Pendergast came behind, helping the girl. They exited the cave mouth and bent into the fury of the elements, the rain coming horizontally down the cut, lashing and whipping against them, pelting them with broken cornstalks and husks. The Kraus mansion loomed ahead, dark and silent, just a faint light flickering in the parlor windows. Shurte wondered where Williams and Rheinbeck were. The place looked deserted.

They moved slowly up the walk and mounted the steps to the porch. He watched Pendergast try the front door, find it locked. And then Shurte heard it: a muffled crash from inside, followed by a scream and the sound of a gunshot.

In one smooth motion, Pendergast’s gun was in his hand; a second later, he had kicked in the door. Gesturing for Shurte to stay with Hazen and the girl, he darted inside.

Shurte peered around the doorframe, shotgun at the ready. He could see two figures struggling in the hall at the top of the basement stairs, Williams and somebody else: a hideous figure in a bloody white nightgown, long gray hair wild. Shurte could hardly believe it: old lady Kraus. There was another scream, this one shrill and almost incoherent:“Baby killers!” Simultaneously, there was another flash and roar of a gun.

In three leaps Pendergast had reached and tackled the woman in white. There was a brief struggle, a muffled shriek. The gun skittered across the floor. The two rolled out of Shurte’s view and Williams darted down the stairs. Perhaps thirty seconds ticked by. And then Pendergast reappeared, carrying the old woman in his arms, murmuring something in her ear. Moments later, Williams came up the basement steps, his arm around Rheinbeck, who was staggering and holding his bloodied head.

Shurte entered with Corrie and the sheriff, passing through the front hall into the parlor, where the flickering light Shurte had noticed from outside proved to be a fire. There, Pendergast arranged the old lady in a wing chair, still murmuring soothing indistinct words, cuffing her loosely. He rose and helped Shurte lay the sheriff down on the sofa in front of the fire. Williams took a seat on a sofa as far from the woman as possible, shivering. The girl had fallen in the chair on the other side of the fire.

Pendergast’s gaze darted about the room. “Officer Shurte?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get a first-aid kit from one of the cruisers and see to Sheriff Hazen. He has an aggravated excision of the left ear, what looks to be a simple fracture of the ulna, pharyngeal trauma, and multiple abrasions and contusions.”

When Shurte returned a few minutes later with the medical kit, he found that the room had been lit with candles and new logs laid on the fire. Pendergast had draped an afghan around the old woman, and she peered out at them balefully through a tangle of iron-gray hair.

Pendergast glided toward him. “Take care of Sheriff Hazen.” He went over to the girl and spoke to her softly. She nodded. Then, taking supplies from the first-aid kit, he bandaged her wrists and doctored the cuts on her arms, neck, and face. Shurte worked on Hazen, who grunted stoically.

Fifteen minutes later, all had been done that could be done. Now, Shurte realized, they just had to wait for emergency help to arrive.

The FBI agent, however, appeared to be restless. He paced the room, his silver eyes moving among its occupants. And yet again and again, as the storm shook the old house, his gaze came back to rest on the bloodied old woman who sat motionless, handcuffed to the wing chair, her head bowed.

Eighty

The warmth of the fire, the steam rising from the cup of chamomile tea, the numbing effect of the sedative Pendergast had administered: all conspired to create in Corrie a feeling of growing unreality. Even her bruised and battered limbs seemed far away, the pain barely noticeable. She sipped and sipped, trying to lose herself in the simple mechanical action, trying not to think about anything. It didn’t help to think, because nothing seemed to make sense: not the nightmare apparition that had chased her through the cave, not the sudden homicidal rage of Winifred Kraus, nothing. It was as senseless as a nightmare.

In a far corner of the parlor, the state troopers named Williams and Rheinbeck sat, the latter nursing a bandaged head and leg. The other trooper, Shurte, stood by the door, gazing through the glass down the darkened road. Hazen reclined on an overstuffed couch, his eyes half open, battered and bandaged almost beyond recognition. Beside him stood Pendergast, looking intently at Winifred Kraus. The old woman stared back at them all from her wing chair, looking from one to the next, malevolent eyes like two little red holes in her pale, powdered face.

At last, Pendergast broke the long silence that had settled over the parlor. His eyes remained on the old woman as he spoke: “I am sorry to tell you, Miss Kraus, that your son is dead.”

She jerked and moaned, as if the announcement was a physical blow.

“He was killed in the cave,” Pendergast went on quietly. “It was unavoidable. He didn’t understand. He attacked us. There were a number of casualties. It was a matter of self-defense.”

The woman was now rocking and moaning, repeating over and over again, “Murderers, murderers.” But the accusatory tone seemed almost to drain from her voice: all that remained was sorrow.

Corrie stared at Pendergast, struggling to understand. “Herson? ”

Pendergast turned to her. “You gave me the crucial hint yourself. How Miss Kraus, when she was young, was known for her, ah, free ways. She became pregnant, of course. Normally she would have been sent away to have the baby.” He turned back to Winifred Kraus, speaking very gently. “But your father didn’t send you away, did he? He had a different way of dealing with the problem. With theshame. ”

Tears now welled out of the old woman’s eyes and she bowed her head. There was a long silence. And in that silence Sheriff Hazen exhaled loudly, as the realization hit him.

Corrie looked over at him. The sheriff’s head was swathed in bandages, which were soaked red around his missing ear. His eyes were blackened, his cheeks bruised and puffy. “Oh, my God,” he murmured.

“Yes,” Pendergast said, glancing at Hazen. “The father, with his fanatical, hypocritical piety, locked her and her sin away in the cave.”

He turned back to Winifred. “You had the baby in the cave. After a time, you were let out to rejoin the world. But not your baby. He, the sinful issue, had to remain in the cave. And that’s where you were forced to raise him.”

He stopped briefly. Winifred remained silent.

“And yet, after a time, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea, did it? Completely sheltered from the wicked world like that. In a way, it was a mother’s dream come true.” Pendergast’s voice was calm, soothing. “You would always have your little boy with you. As long as he was in the cave, he could never leave you. Never would he leave home or fall into the ways of the world; never would he leave you for another woman; never would he abandon you—as your mother once abandoned you. You were doing it toprotect him from the opprobrium of the world, weren’t you? He would always need you, depend on you, love you. He would be yours . . . forever.”

The tears were now flowing freely down the old lady’s cheeks. Her head was swaying sadly.

Hazen’s eyes were open, staring at Winifred Kraus. “How could you—?”

But Pendergast continued in the same soothing tone of voice. “May I ask what his name was, Miss Kraus?”

“Job,” she murmured.

“A biblical name. Of course. And an appropriate one, as it turned out. There, in the cave, you raised him. He grew to be a big man, a strong man, enormously strong, because the only way to move about in his world was by climbing. Job never had a chance to play with children his own age. He never went to school. He barely learned how to talk. In fact, he never evenmet another human being for the first fifty-one years of his life except for you. No doubt he was a boy with above-average intelligence and strong creative impulses, but he grew up virtually unsocialized as a human being. You visited him from time to time, when it was safe. You read to him. But not enough for him to learn more than rudimentary speech. And yet, in some respects, he was a quick boy. A desperately creative boy. Look what he was able to learn by himself—lighting a fire, making clever things with his hands, tying knots, creating whole worlds out of little things he found in the cave around him.

“Perhaps at some point you realized you were doing wrong by keeping him in the cave—away from sunlight, civilization, human contact, social interaction—but by then, of course, it would have seemed too late.”

The old lady remained bowed, weeping silently.

Hazen exhaled again: a long, pent-up breath. “But he got out,” he said hoarsely. “The son of a bitch got out. And that’s when the murders began.”

“Exactly,” said Pendergast. “Sheila Swegg, digging at the Mounds, uncovered the ancient Indian entrance to the cave. The back door. Which also happened to be used by the Ghost Warriors when they ambushed the Forty-Fives. It had been blocked off from the inside, when the warriors went back into the cave and committed ritual suicide after the attack. But Swegg, digging in the Mounds, found it. To her sorrow.

“It must have been a monumental shock for Job when Swegg wandered into his cave. He had never met another human being besides his mother. He had no idea they evenexisted. He killed her, in fear, no doubt unintentionally. And then he found the freshly cut opening Swegg had made. And for the first time, he climbed out into a vast and wondrous new world. What a moment that must have been! Because you never told him about the world above, did you, Miss Kraus?”

She slowly shook her head.

“So Job emerged from the cave. It would have been night. He looked up and saw the stars for the first time. He looked around and saw the dark trees along the creek; heard the wind moving through the endless fields of corn; smelled the thick humid air of the Kansas summer. How different from the enclosing darkness in which he had spent half a century! And then perhaps, far away, across the dark fields, he saw the lights of Medicine Creek itself. In that moment, Miss Kraus, you lost all control of him. Just as happens to every mother. But in your case, Jobwas over fifty years old. He had grown into a powerful—and transcendentally warped—human being. And the genie could not be put back in the bottle. Job had to come out, again and again, and explore this new world.” Pendergast’s voice trailed off into the chill darkness.

A small sob escaped from the old lady. The room fell silent. Outside, the wind was slowly dying. A distant rumble of thunder sounded, like an afterthought. Finally, she spoke: “When the first lady was killed, I had no idea it was my Job. But then . . . Then hetold me. He was so excited, so happy. Hetold me about the world he’d found—as if he didn’t know I already knew of it. Oh, Mr. Pendergast, he didn’t mean to kill anyone, he really didn’t. He was just trying to play. I tried to explain to him, but he just didn’tunderstand —” She choked on a sob.

Pendergast waited a moment and then continued. “As he grew, you didn’t need to visit him as often. You brought him his food and supplies in bulk once or twice a week, I imagine, which would explain where he got the butter and sugar. By that time he was almost self-sufficient. The cave system was his home. He had taught himself a great deal over the years, skills that he needed to survive in the cave. But where he was most damaged was in the area of human morals. He didn’t know right from wrong.”

“I tried, oh, how Itried to explain those things to him!” Winifred Kraus burst out, rocking back and forth.

“There are some things that cannot be explained, Miss Kraus,” Pendergast said. “They must be observed. They must belived. ”

The storm shook and rattled the house.

“How did his back become deformed?” Pendergast finally asked. “Was it just his cave existence? Or did he have a bad fall as a child, perhaps? Broken bones that healed badly?”

Winifred Kraus swallowed, recovered. “He fell when he was ten. I thought he would die. I wanted to get him to a doctor, but . . .”

Hazen suddenly spoke, his voice harsh with disgust, anger, disbelief, pain. “But why the scenes in the cornfields? What was that all about?”

Winifred only shook her head wonderingly. “I don’t know.”

Pendergast spoke again. “We may never know what was in his mind when he fashioned those tableaux. It was a form of self-expression, a strange and perhaps unfathomable notion of creative play. You saw the scratched wall-etchings in the cave; the arrangements of sticks and string, bones and crystals. This was why he never fit the pattern of a serial killer. Because hewasn’t a serial killer. He had no concept of killing. He was completely amoral, the purest sociopath imaginable.”

The old lady, her head bowed, said nothing. Corrie felt sorry for her. She remembered the stories she had heard of how strict the woman’s father was; how he used to beat her for the merest infraction of his byzantine and self-contradictory rules; how the girl had been locked in the top floor of her house for days on end, crying. They were old stories, and people always ended them with a wondering shake of the head and the comment, “And yet she’s such anice old lady. Maybe it never really happened that way.”

Pendergast was still pacing the room, looking from time to time at Winifred Kraus. “The few examples we have of children raised in this way—the Wolf Child of Aveyron, for example, or the case of Jane D., locked in a basement for the first fourteen years of her life by her schizophrenic mother—show that massive and irreversible neurological and psychological damage takes place, simply by being deprived of the normal process of socialization and language development. With Job it was taken one step further: he was deprived of theworld itself. ”

Winifred abruptly put her face in her hands and rocked. “Oh, my poor little boy,” she cried. “My poor little Jobie . . .”

The room fell silent except for Winifred’s murmuring, over and over again: “My poor little boy, my little Jobie.”

Corrie heard a siren sound in the distance. And then, through the broken front windows, the lights of a fire truck striped their way across the walls and floor. There was a squealing of brakes as an ambulance and a squad car pulled up alongside. Then came the slamming of vehicle doors, heavy footsteps on the porch. The door opened and a burly fireman walked in.

“You folks all right here?” he asked in a hearty voice. “We finally got the roads cleared, and—” He fell silent as he saw Hazen covered with blood, the weeping old woman handcuffed to the chair, the others in shell-shocked stupor.

“No,” said Pendergast, speaking quietly. “No, we are not all right.”

Epilogue

The setting sun lay over Medicine Creek, Kansas, like a benediction. The storm had broken the heat wave; the sky was fresh, with the faintest hint of autumn in the air. The cornfields that had survived the storm had been cut, and the town felt freed of its claustrophobic burden. Migrating crows by the hundreds were passing over town, landing in the fields, gleaning the last kernels from among the stubble. On the edge of town, the spire of the Lutheran church rose, a slender arrow of white against the backdrop of green and blue. Its doors were thrown wide and the sound of evening vespers drifted out.

Not far away, Corrie lay on her rumpled bed, trying to finishBeyond the Ice Limit. It was peaceful in the double-wide trailer, and her windows were open, letting in a pleasant flow of air. Puffy cumulus clouds passed overhead, dragging their shadows across the shaved fields. She turned a page, then another. From the direction of the church came the sound of an organ playing the opening notes of “Beautiful Savior,” followed by the faint sound of singing, Klick Rasmussen’s warble, as usual, trumping all.

As Corrie listened, a faint smile came to her lips. This would be the first service by that young new minister, Pastor Tredwell, whom the town was so proud of already. Her smile widened as she recalled the story, as it had been described to her when she was still in the hospital: how Smit Ludwig, shoeless, bruised, and battered, had come shambling out of the corn—where he had lain, unconscious and concussed, for almost two days—and right into the church where his own memorial service was being held. Ludwig’s daughter, who had flown in for the service, had fainted. But nobody had been more surprised than Pastor Wilbur himself, who stopped dead in the midst of reciting Swinburne and collapsed in an apoplectic fit, certain he was seeing a ghost. Now Wilbur was convalescing somewhere far away and Ludwig was healing up nicely, typing from his hospital bed the first chapters of a book about his encounter with the Medicine Creek murderer, who had taken nothing but his shoes and left him for dead in the corn.

She set her novel aside and lay on her back, staring out the window, watching the clouds go by. The town was doing its best to return to normal. The football tryouts were beginning and school would be starting in two weeks. There was a rumor that KSU had decided to site the experimental field somewhere in Iowa, but that was no loss. Good riddance, in fact: Pendergast seemed to feel Dale Estrem and the Farmer’s Co-op had a point about the perils of genetic modification. Anyway, people could hardly care less, now that the town was alive with National Park people, cave experts, a team ofNational Geographic photographers, and hard-core groups of spelunkers, all of whom were anxious to get a glimpse of what was being called the greatest cave system to be discovered in America since Carlsbad Caverns. It seemed the town was standing at the edge of a new dawn that would bring wealth, or at least prosperity, to all. Time would tell.

Corrie sighed. None of it would make the slightest difference to her. One more year and then, for better or worse, Medicine Creek would become ancient history for her.

She lay in bed, thinking, while the sun set and night fell. Then she got up and went to her bureau. She slid open the drawer, felt along the bottom, and carefully peeled off the bills. One thousand five hundred dollars. Her mother still hadn’t found the money, and after what had happened she’d stopped harping about it. She had even been nice to Corrie for the first day after she’d come back from the hospital. But Corrie knew that would not last long. Her mother was now back at work and Corrie had little doubt she’d return with her purse rattling with its usual quota of vodka minis. Give it a day or two and she’d bring up the money and everything would start all over again.

She turned the bills over thoughtfully in her hands. Pendergast had stayed in town the last week, working with Hazen and the state police to wrap up the evidentiary phase of the case. He had called to say he was leaving tomorrow, early, and said he wanted to say goodbye before he left—and collect his cell phone. That was what he really wanted, she knew, the cell phone.

He’d already been by the hospital several times to see her. He had been very solicitous and kind; and yet, somehow, she’d hoped for more. She shook her head. What did she expect—that he’d take her with him, make her his permanent assistant? Ridiculous. Besides, he seemed increasingly eager to leave, citing some pressing matter waiting for him back in New York. He’d taken several calls on his cell phone from a man named Wren, but then he’d always left the room and she’d never caught what was said. Anyway, it didn’t really matter. He was going away, and in two more weeks high school would begin again. Senior year, her last in Medicine Creek. One last year of hell.

At least there wouldn’t be any more trouble from Sheriff Hazen. Funny, he’d saved her life and now he seemed to have taken some kind of almost paternal interest in her. She had to admit he had been pretty cool when she’d visited him that day she left the hospital. He’d even apologized—not in so many words, of course, but still it just about floored her. She had thanked him for saving her life. He’d shed a few tears at that, said he hadn’t done nearly enough, that he’d done nothing. The poor man. He was still really broken up about Tad.

She looked down at the money. Tomorrow, on her way out, she’d tell Pendergast what she planned to do with it.

The idea had formed slowly, over those days she’d spent in the hospital. In a way, she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it before. She had two weeks before school, she had money, and she was free: the sheriff had dropped all charges. Nothing was keeping her here: she had no friends to speak of, no job, and if she stuck around, her mother would wheedle the money out of her sooner or later.

Not that she had any illusions, not even when the idea first came to her. She knew that when she found him he’d probably turn out to be one of those guys who couldn’t seem to get it together: a loser. After all, he’d married her mother and then split, leaving both of them in the lurch. He’d never paid child support, never visited, never written—at least, that she could be sure of. He wouldn’t exactly be a Fred MacMurray.

It didn’t matter. He was her father. In her gut, this seemed like the right thing to do. And now she had the money and the time to do it.

It wouldn’t be hard to find him. Her mother’s endless complaints had the unintentional side effect of keeping her informed of his progress. After bouncing around the Midwest he had settled in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he worked doing brake jobs for Pep Boys. How many Jesse Swansons could there be in Allentown? She could drive there in a couple of days. The money Pendergast had paid her would cover gas, tolls, motels, with a nice cushion in the very likely event that some unexpected car repairs came up.

Even if he turned out to be a loser, her memories of him were good memories. He wasn’t a jerk, at least. When he was there he’d been a good father, taking her out to the movies and miniature golf, always laughing, always having fun. What did it mean, anyway, to be a loser? The kids at school thought she was a loser, too. Hehad loved her, she felt sure . . . even if he did leave her alone with a horrible drunken witch.

Don’t get your hopes up, Corrie,she reminded herself.

She folded the bills, stuffed them into her pants pocket. From beneath her bed she pulled out her plastic suitcase, plopped it on the bed, opened it up, and began throwing clothes in. She’d leave first thing in the morning, before her mother woke up, say goodbye to Pendergast, and be on her way.

The suitcase was soon packed. Corrie shoved it back under her bed, lay down, and in an instant was asleep.

She awoke in the stillness of night. All was dark. She sat up, looking around groggily. Something had awakened her. It couldn’t be her mother, she was working the night shift at the club, and—

From directly outside her window came a gurgle, a chattering noise, a soft thump. Instantly, the grogginess went away, replaced by terror.

And then there was a splutter and a hiss, and a patter of drops began falling lightly against the side of the trailer.

She glanced at the clock: 2A.M. She sank back on the bed, almost laughing out loud with relief. This time, it reallywas Mr. Dade’s sprinkler system.

She rose to shut the window. She paused for a moment, drinking in the cool flow of air, the fresh smell of wet grass. Then she went to slide the window shut.

A hand suddenly reached in from the darkness and caught the window’s edge, stopping it from closing. It was bloody, with broken nails.

Corrie dropped her hands from the window and backed away wordlessly.

A white, moonlike face now appeared in the window: bruised, cut, streaked with filth and blood, with a wispy beard and a strange, childlike puffiness. Slowly the terrible hand pulled the window open until it would go no more. A terrible stench—all the more terrible for the memories that it stirred—flowed in and filled her nostrils.

Corrie backed toward the door, numb fingers feeling in her pocket for the cell phone. She found it, hit the send button twice, directing the phone to call the most recently dialed number. Pendergast’s number.

With a jerk the huge hand ripped out the cheap aluminum window frame, shattering the glass.

Corrie turned and ran from her room, tearing down the hall in her bare feet, racing across the living room toward—

With a crash, the front door was flung open. And there stood Job: Job, still alive, one eye ruptured and weeping yellow liquid, his oversized child’s clothing torn and filthy, crusted with blood, hair matted, skin sallow. One arm hung, useless and broken, but the other was reaching toward her.

Muuuh!

The arm was reaching out, clawing at her, andhe took a step forward, his face distorted with rage, filling the room with his stink.

“No!” she screamed. “No, no, get away—!”

He advanced, slashing and roaring incoherently.

She turned and raced back down the hall to her room. He was after her, blundering down the hall. She slammed the door and shot the bolt home, but he came through with a shuddering crash that flattened the flimsy plywood against the wall. Without pausing to think, she dove out the window headfirst, rolled over the broken glass and wet grass, stood up, and began sprinting toward town. Behind came a crash; a roar of frustration; another crash. Lights were going on in the trailers around her. She glanced back to see Job roaring, literally clawing his way out the window, smashing and tearing.

If she could get to the main road, she might have a chance. She raced through the trailer park. The gate was just a few hundred yards ahead.

She heard a roar and glanced sideways to see the bent and wounded figure running crablike across the grass with horrible speed, cutting off her route into town.

She strained, gulping air, but now he was angling back toward her, leaving her no choice but to veer toward the back of the trailer park, toward the darkness of the naked fields. She jammed her hand into her pocket and pulled out the phone, pressing it to her ear as she ran. There was the voice of Pendergast, speaking calmly.

“I’m coming, Corrie, I’m coming right now.”

“He’s going to kill me, please—”

“I’ll be there as soon as possible with the police. Run, Corrie.Run. ”

She ran for all she was worth, jumping the back fence and flying into the field, the sharp corn stubble lacerating her bare feet.

Muh! Muh! Muuuuuh!

Job was behind her, closing in with a strange, brutal, apelike gait, loping ahead on the knuckles with his good arm. She kept going, hoping he might tire, might give up, might find the pain too much—but he kept on, roaring in agony as he went.

She redoubled her effort, her lungs burning in her chest. It was no good. He was gaining, steadily gaining. He was going to catch her. No matter how fast she ran, he was going to catch her.

No. . .

What could she do? There was no way she’d reach the creek. And even if she did, what then? She was running directly away from the town, into the heart of nowhere. Pendergast would never arrive in time.

Muuuh! Muuuh!

She heard a distant siren. It just confirmed that Pendergast was way too far away. She was on her own.He was going to catch her, grab her from behind and kill her.

Now she could hear feet pounding like a frenzied accompaniment to his agonized cries. He couldn’t be more than ten yards behind. She called up every ounce of energy but could already feel herself faltering, her legs weakening, her lungs almost bursting from the effort. And still he kept coming, closing the gap. In a second he would be on her. She had to do something. There had to be some way to reach him, to make him understand, to make him stop.

She turned back.“Job!” she yelled.

He came on, roaring, oblivious.

“Job, wait!”

In another instant she felt the blow, the terrible blow that threw her backwards into the soft dirt. And then he was on top of her, roaring, spittle spraying into her face, his great fist raised to smash in her skull.

“Friend!” she cried.

She closed her eyes, turning away from the anticipated blow, and said again: “Friend! I want to be your friend.” She choked, sobbed, repeating it over and over. “Your friend, your friend, your friend . . .”

Nothing happened. She waited, swallowed, and opened her eyes.

The fist was there, still raised, but the face looking down at her was completely different. Gone was the rage, the fury. The face was twisted into some new, powerful, and unfathomable emotion.

“You and me,” Corrie croaked. “Friends.”

The face remained horribly twisted, but she thought she could see hope, even eagerness, shine from his one good eye.

Slowly the great fist uncurled. “Fwiend?” Job asked in his high voice.

“Yes, friends,” she gasped.

“Pway wif Job?”

“Yes, I’ll play with you, Job. We’re friends. We’ll play together.” She was babbling, choking with fear, struggling to get a grip on herself.

The arm dropped. The mouth was stretched in a horrible grimace that Corrie realized must be a smile. A smile of hope.

Job lumbered off her awkwardly, managed to stand unsteadily, grimacing with pain but still smiling that grotesque smile. “Pway. Job pway.”

Corrie gasped and sat up, moving slowly, trying not to frighten him. “Yes. We’re friends now. Corrie and Job, friends.”

“Fwiends,” repeated Job, slowly, as if recalling a long-forgotten word.

The sirens were louder now. She heard the distant screech of brakes, the slamming of car doors.

Corrie tried to stand, found her legs collapsing underneath her. “That’s right. I won’t run away; you don’t need to hurt me. I’ll stay here and play with you.”

“We pway!”And Job squealed with happiness in the dark of the empty field.

2

The Rolls-Royce stood in the parking lot beside Maisie’s Diner, covered with dust, its once-glossy surface sandblasted to dullness by the storm. Pendergast was leaning against it, dressed in a fresh black suit, his arms in his pockets, motionless in the crisp morning light.

Corrie turned off the road, eased her Gremlin to a stop beside him, and threw it into park. The engine died with a belch of black exhaust and she stepped out.

Pendergast straightened. “Miss Swanson, I’ll be driving through Allentown on my way back to New York. Are you sure you won’t accept a ride?”

Corrie shook her head. “This is something I’d like to do on my own.”

“I could run your father’s name through the database and give you advance notice of anything, shall we say,unusual in his current situation?”

“No. I’d rather not know in advance. I’m not expecting any miracles.”

He looked at her intently, not speaking.

“I’m going to be just fine,” she said.

After a moment he nodded. “I know you will. If you won’t accept a ride, however, you must at least accept this.”

He took a step closer, withdrew an envelope from his pocket, and handed it to her.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Consider it an early graduation present.”

Corrie opened it and a savings account passbook came sliding out. The sum of $25,000 had been deposited in an educational trust account in her name.

“No,” she said immediately. “No, I can’t.”

Pendergast smiled. “Not only can you, but you must.”

“Sorry. I just can’t accept it.”

Pendergast seemed to hesitate a moment. Then he spoke again. “Then let me explain why you must,” he said, his voice very low. “By chance, under circumstances I’d rather not go into, last fall I came into a considerable inheritance from a distant and wealthy relation. Suffice to say, he did not make his money via good works. I am trying to rectify, if only partially, the blot he left on the Pendergast family name by giving his money away to worthy causes. Quietly, you understand. You, Corrie, are just such a cause. A most excellent cause, in fact.”

Corrie lowered her eyes for a moment. She could make no answer. Nobody her whole life long had ever given her anything. It felt strange to be cared about—especially by someone as remote, as aloof, as unlike her as Pendergast was. And yet the passbook was there, in her hand, as physical proof.

She looked at the passbook again. Then she slid it back into its envelope.

“What does it mean, educational trust?” she asked.

“You have another year of high school to get through.”

She nodded.

A twinkle appeared in Pendergast’s eye. “Have you ever heard of Phillips Exeter Academy?”

“No.”

“It’s a private boarding school in New Hampshire. They’re holding a place at my request.”

Corrie stared at him. “You mean the money isn’t for college?”

“The important thing is to get you out of here now. This town is killing you.”

“But aboarding school? In New England? I won’t fit in.”

“My dear Corrie, what’s so important about fitting in?I never did. I’m certain you’ll do well there. You’ll find other misfits like yourself—intelligent, curious, creative, skeptical misfits. I’ll be passing through in early November, on my way to Maine; I’ll drop in to see how you’re getting on.” He coughed delicately into his hand.

To her own surprise, Corrie took an impulsive step forward and hugged him. She felt him stiffen and, after a moment, relax and then gently disentangle himself from her embrace. She looked curiously at him: he seemed distinctly embarrassed.

He cleared his throat. “Forgive me for being unused to physical displays of affection,” he said. “I was not raised in a family that . . .” His voice stopped and he colored faintly.

She stepped back, feeling a confusing welter of emotions, embarrassment foremost among them. For a moment he continued looking at her, a faint, cryptic smile slowly gathering once again on his face. Then he bowed, took her hand, brought her fingers close to his lips, and quickly turned and got into his car. In another moment the Rolls had turned onto the road and was accelerating toward the rising sun, the light winking briefly off its curved surface before it vanished down the long, level stretch of macadam.

Corrie waited a moment and then got into her own car. She looked around—at the suitcase, the tapes, the small pile of books—making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. She put the envelope with the passbook into her glove compartment, wired it closed. Then she started the Gremlin, let the engine rev a bit, giving it gas until she was sure it wouldn’t stall. As she eased out of Maisie’s parking lot, her eye fell on Ernie’s Exxon across the street. There was Brad Hazen. The sheriff’s son was filling the tank of Art Ridder’s powder-blue Caprice, one hand on the gas nozzle, the other on the trunk. His jeans had slipped down and she could see faded, grayish underwear, the line of a butt crack beginning just above the belt. Brad was staring, gape-jawed, in the direction Pendergast’s Rolls-Royce had vanished. After a minute, he turned away, shaking his head wonderingly and reaching for the squeegee.

She felt a sudden pity for the sheriff. Strange what a decent man he’d turned out to be. She’d never forget him lying in his hospital bed, his bulletlike head resting against the crisp pillow, his face looking ten years older, tears coursing down his cheeks as he talked about Tad Franklin. She looked back at Brad, wondering if perhaps, deep down, there was a spark of decency buried within him, too.

Then she shook her head and accelerated. She wasn’t going to stick around to find out.

As the road rose up to meet her, she wondered where she would be next year, in five years, in thirty years. It was the first time in her life that such a thought had ever occurred to her. She had no idea of the answer. It was both a wonderful and a scary feeling.

The town dwindled in her rearview mirror until all she could see were stubbled fields and blue sky. She realized that she could no longer hate Brad Hazen any more than she could hate Medicine Creek. Both had moved from her present into her past, where they would gradually dwindle into nothingness. For better or worse she was off into the wide, wide world, never to return to Medicine Creek again.

3

Sheriff Dent Hazen, head still heavily bandaged and one arm in a cast, was standing at the end of the short corridor, talking to two policemen, when Pendergast arrived. He broke away and came over to the FBI agent, offering his left hand to shake.

“How’s the arm mending, Sheriff?” Pendergast asked.

“Won’t be able to fish again until after the season ends.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“You heading out now?”

“Yes. I wanted to stop by one last time. I was hoping I’d find you here. I wanted to thank you, Sheriff, for helping to make this a most, ah, interesting vacation.”

Hazen nodded abstractedly. His face was deeply lined and full of bitterness and anguish. “You’re just in time to see the old lady say goodbye to her bundle of joy.”

Pendergast nodded. He had come to see that, as well. Although he did not expect anything from the visit, he hated to leave a loose end,any loose end, behind him. And this case still had one remarkably large unanswered question.

“You can view the tender parting through the one-way glass. All the shrinks are there already, clustered like flies. It’s this way.” Hazen led Pendergast through an unmarked door and into a darkened room. A lone window, a long rectangle of white, was set into the far wall. It looked down into the “quiet room” of the locked unit of Garden City Lutheran Hospital’s psychiatric wing. A group of psychiatrists and medical students were standing before the one-way glass, talking in low voices, notebooks at the ready. The room beyond was empty, its lighting dim. Just as Pendergast and Hazen stepped up to the window a set of double doors opened and two uniformed policemen wheeled Job in. He was heavily bandaged over his face and chest, and one arm and shoulder was in a cast. Despite the dimness of the room, Job blinked his one good eye against the light. An oversized leather belt was snugged tight around his haunches, and the handcuff for his wrists ran through a ring in its front. Both legs were shackled to the wheelchair with leg irons.

“Look at him, the bastard,” said Hazen, more to himself than to Pendergast.

Pendergast watched intently as the policemen parked Job in the middle of the room, then took up positions on either side.

“I wish to hell I knew why the guy did what he did,” Hazen went on in a quiet, dull voice. “What was he doing in those clearings out there in the corn? The crows arranged like that, Stott cooked like a pig, the tail sewed up in Chauncy . . .” He swallowed hard. “And Tad. Killing Tad. What the hell was going through that fucking head of his?”

Pendergast said nothing.

The doors opened again and Winifred Kraus came in, leaning on the arm of a third policeman. She was in a hospital gown and moved very slowly. A tattered book was tucked beneath one arm. Her face was pale and sunken, but as soon as she saw Job it brightened and her whole appearance seemed to transform.

“Jobie, dearest? It’s Mommy.”

Her voice came into the darkened observation room through a loudspeaker above the window, sounding harsh and electronic in the sudden silence.

Job raised his head, his face grimacing into a smile.

“Momma!”

“I brought you a present, Jobie. Look, it’syour book.”

Job let out an inarticulate sound of joy.

She came over and pulled up a chair next to her son. The policemen tensed, but neither Winifred nor Job took any notice. She seated herself beside him, put one frail arm around his bulk, pulled him close. She began to hum softly while Job beamed, leaning against her, his calflike face illuminated with joy and happiness.

“Christ,” Hazen muttered. “Look. She’s rocking him like a baby.”

Winifred Kraus placed the book in his lap and opened to the first page. It was a book of nursery rhymes. “I’ll start at the beginning, shall I, Jobie?” she crooned. “Just the way you like it.”

Slowly, with a singsong, infantile voice, she began to read.

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye;

Four and twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing;

Wasn’t that a dainty dish,

To set before the king?

Job’s big head nodded to the rhythm of her voice, his mouth making anooooooo sound that rose and fell with the cadence of her words.

“Jesus Christ,” said Hazen. “The freak and his mother. It gives me the creeps just watching.”

Winifred Kraus finished the rhyme, then slowly turned the page. Job beamed, laughed. And she began again.

Davy Davy Dumpling,

Boil him in a pot;

Sugar him and butter him,

And eat him while he’s hot.

Hazen turned and grasped Pendergast’s hand. “I’m out of here. See you in purgatory.”

Pendergast took the hand without responding, without noticing. His eyes were fixed on the scene in front of him, the mother reading nursery rhymes to her child.

“Look at the pretty picture, Jobie. Look!”

As Winifred Kraus held the book up, Pendergast got a glimpse of the illustration. It was an old book, and the page was torn and stained, but the picture was still discernible.

He recognized the image instantly. The revelation hit Pendergast so suddenly that it was like a physical blow, staggering him. He backed away from the glass.

Job beamed and wentooooooooo, his head rolling back and forth.

Winifred Kraus smiled, face serene, and turned another page. The unnatural, electronically amplified voice of the mother continued to crackle through the loudspeaker.

What are little boys made of, made of?

What are little boys made of?

Snakes and snails and puppy dogs’ tails,

That’s what little boys are made of . . .

But Pendergast had not remained to hear any more. The cluster of psychiatrists and students at the glass did not even notice the dark, slender presence slip away, they were so busy discussing just where the diagnosis would be found in theDSM-IV manual—or if, indeed, it would ever be found there at all.