Ghost Road Blues

by Jonathan Maberry

Page 37

 

  Looking at the map, with the surrounding expanse of greenery from the forestland and the farms, the town of Pine Deep seemed small and remote. Certainly it was no metropolis. The population of the town, counting farmers from the most distant spreads, was just a little under twenty-?five hundred, but considering how much square mileage the town covered, the people were pretty thin on the ground. Most of them lived in the town proper, on a handful of quaint cobble-?stoned streets. Downtown, as it was apocryphally known, was actually situated on a high saddle between two higher peaks, and though the peaks made the town look like it was in a valley, it was nearly a thousand feet higher than some of the farms.

  Downtown was where all the “action” was. That was where the tourists flocked in the thousands from the first moderately tolerable day in late March until after the Christmas sales. Antique buyers came from as far west as Ohio and as far north as Boston; rug merchants drove all the way up from Florida to sell truckloads of Seminole quilts, or mock Navajo blankets. Every fifth store sold Pennsylvania Dutch woodcrafts, from plain and sturdy tables to elaborate porch swings with amazingly delicate scrollwork. Amish baked goods from Lancaster scented the air by six o’clock each morning, and in the evening, the breeze blowing past Winifred’s Incense gave the place an aroma of magic. Almost everywhere were the delicate tinkles of wind chimes, the rattle of rain sticks, the clack-?clickety-?clack of hand-?carved weather vanes. Windows were filled with rare books, exotic music from faraway places, crystals for healing, and crystal balls for seeing into any reality of choice, improbable varieties of cheeses, and the largest selection of family chateau wines in the region. One tiny store sold nothing but Pine Deep souvenirs and oddities such as the Fireballs, a kind of bright red pinecone unique to the area; countless books detailing, either in lurid prose or scholarly wordiness, the ghost stories of the region; calendars with twelve months’ worth of magnificent photos bursting with the incredible colors of Pine Deep in autumn, the wild freshness of spring, the deep green of the summer forests, or the stark and ancient beauty of the snow-?swept winters; and the fifty-?odd varieties of locally put-?by jellies, jams, and preserves, including a famous spicy cinnamon-?pumpkin butter that had been touted by the Frugal Gourmet one year and had caused a run on the local supply.

  In all that vastness of land, with the millions of tall, full-?leafed plants, the hedgerows and groves of fruit trees, the undeveloped forest land and the fields left fallow, the estates overgrown and gone wild, the cliffs and caves and hollows, there were three men and one car hiding from the eyes of the law.

  Terry stared at the map and sighed, rubbing at his eyes and half smiling at the enormity of it all, wishing the three psycho-?bastards had chosen somewhere else to ensconce themselves. He drew in a long breath, held it, and then sighed again. It was going to be a very, very long night.

  Terry looked away from the map to see Sergeant Ferro and Detective LaMastra standing at his elbow. “Where do we stand?” Terry asked.

  “Well,” the detective said, “with all of your people, sir, and with the officers loaned to this jurisdiction from the surrounding townships, we were able to put more than twenty cars on the road, each with two officers apiece. I split the teams up so that most of the cars that are actually patrolling within the town boundaries have at least one Philly officer. I felt that it would be unduly risky to require the local officers to try and apprehend Ruger and his buddies without experienced help. ”

  Terry nodded. He could tell from Ferro’s expression that he was trying hard not to give offense, but at the same time make clear the point that the local cops were rubes and this was work for real professional law enforcement. Had Terry lived in any other town in Bucks County he might have been offended, but in Pine Deep Ferro’s estimation was right on target. Gus Bernhardt was a rube, and because of him the police department was little better than the Keystone Cops. Terry loved his town, but he really had no opinion of the department Gus had built. Look at who Gus had hired. Shirley O’Keefe, who looked like a skinny twenty-?two-?year-?old Meryl Streep, got sick to her stomach every time she had to help with a bad traffic accident. Officer Golub was smart but had no balls. Jim Polk was an alcoholic and was as likely to arrest pink elephants as criminals, and his crony, Dixie MacVey, was on the force just so he could pull traffic duty outside the high school, giving him a legal reason for watching all the teenage girls bounce along. The rest were just as useless.

  Until now there hadn’t really been any desperate need to change that, which gave Gus his comfortable stranglehold on the job, but this whole thing had Terry thinking about initiating some changes around here. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about putting up some money to try and attract one of these Philly officers to try their hand at rural law enforcement.

  “So I think we’re as well deployed as we can be,” Ferro said. “Unfortunately for those of us here in the office it’s kind of a hurry up and wait situation. Until we have more to go on, there’s not a whole lot more we can do. ”

  “Fine, fine. That’s excellent, Sergeant. ” Terry picked up the coffee cup, looked into its emptiness, sighed again, and set it down. “Is there any more of this, Ginny?”

  “Well…” she said doubtfully. “I could make a new pot. ” She made no move to do so.

  Terry favored her with a smile. “Would you mind?”

  “We do have some instant…. ”

  “Why don’t you get the big urn and make enough for everyone?”

  “The instant would be easier. ”

  “Yeah, but I think the officers would appreciate brewed coffee, what do you say?”

  “Tastes the same to me. ”

  “Please?” Terry implored, manfully resisting the impulse to strangle her.

  Gus tapped her chair with a thick toe. “Shift your ass, Gin. Make some coffee. ”

  Ginny stood up, and with all the self-?sacrificing grandeur of Sydney Carton mounting the guillotine steps, she turned and headed for the kitchen.

  The four men watched her go. When she was out of earshot, Terry said to Gus, “I’m telling you, Gus, one of these days I’m going to shoot her. ”

  “I’ll load your gun for you. ”

  “She’s a royal pain in my butt. ”

  “Mine too, but we’re stuck with her. Who else could do her job?”

  “A trained monkey?”

  “Maybe, but where you gonna find one that’ll work for what we pay her?”

  LaMastra cracked up but, catching sight of Ferro’s unsmiling face, turned the laugh into a cough and then busied himself with adjusting his tie.

  Reaching up, Ferro tapped the map with a knuckle. “The main idea is to go up and down A-32 in a kind of squeeze pattern, checking both sides of the roads for any place where they might have pulled off the main drag. You know, fire access road, farm road, that sort of thing. ”

  “Uh-?huh. ”

  “Chief,” the sergeant asked, “how many officers are scheduled for the next shift?”

  Gus looked at him with bovine blankness. “Well—” he began, but Terry cut him off.

  “Sergeant, every officer we have is on the clock right now. Gus called in all the off-?duty people before you guys even got here. ”

  Ferro’s face became wooden.

  Gus nodded. “That’s right, sir. We only keep a couple of one-?person cars rolling at a time. ” He shrugged. “Don’t need more. ”

  “Haven’t until now,” Terry amended.

  “Yikes,” said LaMastra quietly.

  “Do you have any reserves?” Ferro asked.

  “Not as such, no,” hedged Gus. “A lot of men in town, and a handful of women, have been local officers at one time or another, especially those who did co-?op work while they were in law classes at Pinelands. Plus there was a town watch for a while, so a few of those guys had a basic course. Sometimes we’ll hire them on during the week of Halloween and all during the Christmas s
eason, you know, to cut down on shoplifting and stuff like that, and make some extra pay. ”

  “More of a presence, you understand,” said Terry. “It helps everybody to see a warm body in a uniform. Shoot, I’ve even worn a badge a couple of times—back before I became mayor, of course. ”

  “I see,” said Ferro. He pursed his lips. “Any chance we could reactivate some of these people?”

  “‘Reactivate’?” Gus echoed.

  “Yes. If this manhunt goes on longer than twelve hours, the officers on shift now are going to get tired. We’ll need replacements for them so we can keep the net as tight as possible. If we slacken at all, then Ruger and company will slip right through. ”

  That would suit me , thought Terry. Aloud, he said, “Well, I more or less reinstated one fellow tonight. Malcolm Crow. ”

  Gus wheeled on him. “Crow? Now why’n hell’d you do that?”

  Ferro and LaMastra exchanged a brief look. “Who’s he?” asked LaMastra.

  “A local shopkeeper,” Terry said.

  “He’s a drunken—” Gus began and Terry withered him with a glare.

  “Crow has been sober for years, Gus, and you bloody well know it. ”

  “Once a drunk, always a drunk. ”

  “Maybe, but he isn’t drinking now. Come on, Gus, even you have to admit he was a darned good officer. ” Terry almost said, Crow was the only good cop this town ever had, but didn’t want to appear unkind in front of the Philly cops.

  Gus grunted.

  Ferro did not want to involve himself in the matter, but LaMastra asked, “What’s the beef? Did he drink himself off the force or something?”

  “No,” said Terry, still glaring at Gus. “He quit drinking before he ever even put on a badge. ”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  Gus opened his mouth to answer that, but Terry cut him off. “There is no problem,” he said slowly, putting firm emphasis on each word. Then he looked at Ferro. “Malcolm Crow was a superb cop. He might even have run for chief,” he said, intending the barb to hook itself in Gus’s flesh. “He had some issues from when he was a kid and got into the bottle for a while and, all right, he made a fool of himself for a year or two, but he also got himself sober. Started going to meetings and really turned things around. Became a decorated officer. Gus was opposed to a drunk working as a cop, but I vouched for Crow then and I vouch for him now. He’s been sober for years, as I said, and nowadays he’s a well-?respected businessman, a cornerstone of our community, and”—again he focused his eyes on Gus—“a close personal friend of mine. ”