Until last night, all of those blows—blows beyond counting—had been slaps. Hard, yes, painful, yes, but open-handed. Now all that had changed. Last night Mike, at the ripe old age of fourteen-going-on-never-grow-up, had graduated to the fist.
It had started after Mike had been late delivering the last of his newspapers and had been hurrying home along the darkened stretch of A-32 when a monstrous wrecker had come barreling down the road and had very nearly run him down. To save himself from being ground to roadkill under the twenty-four-inch wheels, Mike had swung his bicycle off the road with an agility and speed that was a surprise to him even while it was happening. The wrecker had missed him by inches and Mike had gone ass-over-heels into a pumpkin patch, cracking a rib, bruising his skin, and banging his head. It wasn’t the most graceful landing, but it was a landing, and you know what they say about landings you walk away from.
By the time Mike had peeled himself up from the ground and struggled his wheezing way to the road, the wrecker had gone and Mike was even further behind Vic’s curfew. He’d been picked up (actually, almost run down again) by Malcolm Crow, the guy who owned the store where he bought his comics and model kits, and had tooled around with him for a while, winding up all the way out at the Haunted Hayride. Crow had called his friend, Mayor Wolfe, who had in turn called Vic to come pick him up. Vic drove out to get him and when Mike had opened his mouth to greet Vic, his stepfather had silenced him with a punch to the stomach that was so hard—so shockingly hard—that Mike thought that his guts were being smashed against his spine. Then Vic grabbed him by the hair and the back of his belt and had flung him into the car and driven home. That alone would have been bad enough, but once they were inside the door, Vic had really gone to work on him. That first blow to the stomach was followed by an encore of punches to just about every part of Mike that Vic could reach. He beat him from the front hallway all the way into the kitchen and when Mike was tucked into a corner Vic had dragged him out into the open and continued beating him.
It was right about that point where something very odd had happened to Mike, and in the space of a heartbeat Mike felt everything change. It was as if he just stepped outside of his body and stood apart, indifferent to the blows that rained down on him, separated from the pain and terror as surely as he was separated from the flesh and nerve endings that were under assault. It was the weirdest feeling in his life. He was aware of an actual physical shift as his consciousness lifted and moved to another place, just a few feet away, watching Vic as he grunted and sweated and hit. He watched Vic and saw the man’s muscles bunch and roll, saw his hands move up and down, saw him shift to put power behind each blow. It was fascinating, like watching a machine on an assembly line, and he found that he could study it with a total lack of emotional involvement. The hands rose and snapped down, sometimes as slaps, sometimes as punches, and as he watched, Mike saw something else, too. He saw Vic’s face grow steadily more red, saw sweat burst from his pores, saw his hands redden with tissue damage each time a blow struck one of Mike’s elbows or his forehead, saw the labored heave of his chest as the beating took its toll on Vic. Mike saw Vic, the forty-seven-year-old man, not Vic the indestructible machine.
As revelations went, it was a monster. All night long Mike worked it out. Vic was forty-seven. Mike was fourteen. If he lived—if—then in ten years he would be twenty-four and Vic would be fifty-seven. Vic was getting older and from now on he wouldn’t be getting stronger; Mike, on the other hand, would. Though Mike often doubted that he would really live to be twenty-four, knowing that he could outlive and outlast Vic was enough. Of course, the thought that he might die was an equal comfort, because Vic couldn’t do much to him then, either. The key was that if he lived long enough, he would outlast Vic Wingate. One day Mike would be a fully grown adult man and Vic would be—old. All Mike had to do was endure. Vic was human. It was Mike’s version of a win-win scenario.
That was the first part of the revelation and it wasn’t until dawn this morning that Mike had gotten the second wave of the revelation, which was equally comforting but in an entirely different way. Or, perhaps it was comforting to an entirely different part of Mike Sweeney—for, truth to tell, there were a lot of different parts to that boy.
At dawn he’d gotten up and had staggered on wobbly legs into the bathroom to piss blood. He didn’t bother to turn the light on. There was a faint dawn glow coming in through the frosted glass of his bathroom window, but he knew the smell. Uric acid mixed with copper. It wasn’t the first time he’d pissed blood strong enough to smell it. Vic was a treat to live with. He finished urinating, washed his hands, and as he turned to go back to bed he rubbed his hand across his stomach, probing at the mound of the massive hematoma that had blossomed from Vic’s punch. It was gone. His probing fingers pushed into the pale skin of his belly and found no hard swelling at all. He stopped in the doorway and pressed harder. Ah, yes, it was there, but smaller, deeper. An older pain, like a wound that was going away.
Mike stopped and turned, reaching out for the light switch, flooding the bathroom with a blue-white glow that made his mirrored image look as pale as a ghost. He closed the door and stood before the full-length mirror on the inside of the door, squinting at his reflection. In pajama bottoms and no shirt, he was a mass of bruises, to be sure, and the ones on his face were the worst. One eye was puffed nearly closed and there were blood crustings under both nostrils, more of it under his left earlobe that had been torn by a punch, and a ridge of knuckle marks on his jaw and lips. He turned and looked at his side, where he’d landed on a pumpkin, and the bruise glowed a fierce purple over the cracked rib. All of that was as it should be, as he expected. Nevertheless the bruise on his stomach, which was the worst of all the injuries, was now nothing more than a faintness of red, like a blush, not even as scarlet as the red from a belly flop into a pool. Last night—not eight hours ago—it had been a swelling mound, a volcano about to blow with a dark purple fist-size core surrounded by every shade of blue and red. Now it was almost gone.
Mike Sweeney stared at the bruise—at the absence of a bruise—and then looked into the mirror image of his own blue eyes. He looked and looked, searching for answers in those familiar eyes—and then just like that flick of a switch that had made him step out of his body last night, those eyes were not familiar at all. One second he was looking into the eyes of Mike Sweeney, fourteen going on fifteen, teenage paperboy and favorite punching bag of the town’s meanest son of a bitch and the very next second he was looking into the eyes of someone he didn’t know at all. These new eyes were older, deeper, stranger. The blue was the same shade but it was flecked with red as if tiny drops of blood were sprinkled throughout each iris. The pupils were huge, like a cat’s at night, and the whites were veined with red. The face was different, too. Still bruised, but now the bruises looked superimposed over a different face, which was also older, with a stronger jaw and skin that was gaunt and stretched over brow and cheekbones. The lips of this stranger’s mouth were thin and hard as if he was fighting a grimace of pain, and the upper lip was cut by a thick white scar. The hair had, indeed, turned reddish brown.
Mike Sweeney stared at this face for a long time and the longer he stared the clearer the image in the mirror became, and the less clear the look in the flesh-and-blood face was. Those eyes, his real eyes, dulled into glass as if they were the eyes of a mannequin. Anyone looking at those eyes would have said that there was no one home.
At fourteen, Mike had never heard the expression fugue state before. Had he been in any way cognizant of what was happening at that moment—which would be a paradoxical impossibility—he would have seen a true fugue state. For the moment, however, Mike Sweeney was indeed not home. At that moment there was no Mike Sweeney. There was something else. Call it a chrysalis.
He turned and went back to bed, his body functioning with reflexive efficiency even to the point of turning out the bathroom light. He climbed into bed, pulled the covers up, and lay there, st
aring up at the ceiling and seeing absolutely nothing. Certainly he didn’t see the ghostly figure of a gray-skinned man with a guitar sitting on the chair of his computer table.
When he woke later that morning, he would remember nothing at all about what he had seen in the mirror, and the thought that the bruise on his stomach had healed too fast would not even enter his mind.
As the boy slept, the figure sitting on the chair sat and stared at him, leaning forward, elbows on knees, eyes intent on the lines of the boy’s face, wondering if he should be filled with hope or despair.
It was a toss-up.
(5)
Detective Sergeant Frank Ferro of the Philadelphia Police Department’s narcotics division was a tall middle-aged man with dark hair going gray, dark brown skin, and a face that generally looked as dour and lugubrious as a funeral director’s. Exhaustion was painted on his features and evident in the droop of his broad shoulders. It had been a long couple of days since he and his partner, Vince LaMastra, had followed Ruger’s trail to Pine Deep and had stayed to oversee the manhunt. Hours of grueling work as well as exposure to the killer’s grotesque handiwork had burned Ferro down to a weary, shambling shadow of himself. He had only recently come back to his hotel room after the incident at the hospital, and was heading into the bathroom to take a shower, when his cell phone rang. When you’re a cop, a call before dawn is never going to be good news, and he paused for just a moment, giving the cell phone an accusatory glare as if it was a friend who had kicked him when he was down; then he bent and scooped up the phone from the bedside table and flipped it open. “Ferro.”
“Frank?” It was Vince LaMastra, sounding tired but stressed. “I just got a call from Chief Bernhardt…those two officers we left at the Guthrie Farm to maintain the crime scene…?” He ended it like a question.
“What about them?”
“Frank…they’re dead. Both of them.”
“What?”
“I don’t have the details, Frank. Got to be Boyd, though. There’s no one else…”
“No…” he breathed, squeezing his eyes shut against the immensity of the news and against his own tottering weariness. He took a deep breath. “Two minutes, Vince. In the lobby.” He disconnected and stared at the middle distance for a long moment.
“Jesus Christ,” he said and reached for his gun.
Chapter 2
(1)
“Hi, is this Lois Wingate?”
“Yes?”
The voice on the phone was soft, cautious, and Crow could picture her pale and timid face, the eyes that always looked afraid. No wonder, he thought, being married to Vic Wingate must be a real treat. “Lois, this is Malcolm Crow. You remember me from high school? I own the—”
“Yes. That store where Mike gets his comics.”
“Right, and sorry for calling so early. I don’t know if Mike told you yet, but I offered him a job at my store starting tomorrow.”
“He has his paper route.”
“I know, but I think I can pay him a bit better than what he makes delivering papers, and he’ll get a discount at the store. Plus,” and here he was careful not to let any of his contempt for Vic into his voice, “he won’t be out as late.”
There was a pause and Crow knew she was making the connection. Crow suspected that Lois had probably felt the back of Vic’s hand more than once, and shared awareness might work in Mike’s favor.
“That would be fine,” Lois said at last. “Do I need to sign something…?”
“Work papers, yeah, and I’ll send some home with Mike.”
There was another pause. “I heard about you on the news last night. And about your friend, Val Guthrie. I was sorry to hear about your troubles.”
“Thanks. I’ll pass that along to Val.”
A final pause. “I’ll pray for you.” She hung up quietly.
Crow looked at the phone for a bit, touched by that last comment, as hurried as it was. “Right back atcha,” he said softly.
His second call was to Terry Wolfe, but all he got was voice mail. He called Terry’s office, his home, his cell, and even his wife Sarah’s cell. Nothing. He tapped the cover of his cell phone with his thumb, thinking; then he dialed the numbered for the deputy mayor, Harry LeBeau, a fussy little man who had taken the unpaid job only because no one else wanted it. LeBeau answered on the third ring. “Harry? It’s Crow.”
“Crow! Dreadfully sorry to hear about—”
Crow cut him off. “Thanks, Harry…look, I’m trying to find Terry. Any idea where he is?”
“Heavens, no. I’ve been trying to get him since last night. Gus has been calling me every fifteen minutes since—well, since what happened to you at the hospital—but no one’s seen hide nor hair.”
“Crap. Look, if he gets in touch have him call me on my cell.” He closed his phone and mulled that over. Where the hell was Terry?
(2)
Four floors below where Crow sat in bed making calls, Dr. Saul Weinstock leaned back in the creaking wood swivel chair of the morgue attendant’s office, hefted his legs to prop his sneakered heels on his desk, crossed his ankles, and stirred six packets of raw sugar into the coffee that he steadied on his thigh. Starbucks Venti dark roast, and piping hot. A bag with two chocolate croissants lay on the desk by his feet and the office CD player was tinkling with a live recording of Jim West at the Maiko II. Carefree stuff, improvised and witty. Weinstock was constructing the moment to be as casual and relaxed as the piano jazz that filled the air, consciously stage managing his own mood because the alternative was to run screaming through the halls, and he did not think that would be good for his patients.
His cell phone chirped and he pulled it from its belt clip, saw that it was his wife, and flipped it open with a smile. “Good morning, sweetie.” He looked at the wall clock. Six-fifty-four. “What are you doing up this early? The kids okay?”
“They’re fine. I just couldn’t sleep, thinking about Val and Crow.” Rachel sounded tired. “How are they?”
“Sleeping, which is a mercy.” He filled her in on Val and Crow’s injuries and the prognosis, though he didn’t tell her that Val was pregnant—something only he and Val knew—and that because of it she was having to tough out the pain with nothing stronger than Tylenol. “They’ll be okay, though. The real thing is that I have to schedule two autopsies.”
“On Yom Kippur?” Rachel said, and Weinstock winced, then flicked a glance at the calendar. He had totally forgotten.
“I’ll be done long before sunset, honey,” he said quickly. “But even so, with all that’s going on, I don’t think God is going to single me out for punishment if I don’t atone enough. I think he’s concentrating on the entire town at once.”
“Are you fasting at least?” she asked just as Weinstock reached for a chocolate croissant, and he yanked his hand back as if he’d been burned.
“Sure,” he said.
“Saul…?”
“Well, fasting-ish, anyway. Just coffee.” He reached over and folded the bag closed, considered, and then put a file folder over the bag to hide it.
“Saul, my folks are expecting us at schul this evening. Can I tell them you’ll be there?”
“Rachel, honey…with what’s going on in town…I’m just not sure I can make that promise. Like I said, I have two autopsies to do today, and both of them are important to this police thing that’s going on.”
She made a sound like she had tasted something nasty. “Henry and that Ruger character?”
“Uh huh, and I don’t mind slicing Ruger, but I have to tell you, honey, I just can’t bring myself to take a scalpel to Henry Guthrie. It’d be like cutting up my Uncle Stanley.” Weinstock set his cup down and rubbed his eyes. “It’s weird…I never thought of what I do as gruesome before, but the thought of cutting open Henry is just plain creepy.”
“Then don’t do it,” Rachel said. “Let Bob Colbert handle it. He didn’t even know Henry.”
He sipped his coffee. “This is just all to
o crazy, Rache. Just too frigging weird for Pine Deep.” The real kicker had been the autopsy he had performed the day before on the body of Tony Macchio, one of Ruger’s accomplices. For some reason the cops had not been able to discern Ruger had first shot Macchio and then tore him apart. Literally tore him apart, apparently with his bare hands. And his teeth. Weinstock had never seen anything like it, even in medical texts, and outside of slasher films he had never even heard of anything like it. Ruger was a monster, and one that was scarier than anything that Crow had ever cooked up for the town’s famous Haunted Hayride. No fangs, no bat wings or bug-eyes, and seeing his handiwork, actually being wrist deep in the bloody leavings, had shaken Weinstock to his core. He knew it, too, hence the stage dressing to affect an air of calm before starting today’s postmortems. He closed his eyes and sighed. “You’re right, honey, Bob can do it.”
“Good. No sense putting yourself through anything more if you don’t have to.”
“Okay, sweetie, let me go make some calls. Give Abby and David a kiss for me. Tell them I’ll be home later, and, honey, I promise I’ll be there in time for synagogue. Hand to God.”
“I love you,” Rachel said, a lot of meaning in her voice.
“Me, too, sweetie. Bye.” He snapped the phone shut, took a long sip, and sat there with his eyes closed for a while listening to the music, letting the notes play over his nerves like a masseuse’s fingers. He opened his eyes and stared at the file folder that hid the croissants, pushed it aside, grabbed the bag and opened it, and stared into it with naked longing. Then he scrunched the bag up and threw it in the trash can, uttering a string of expletives that would require some heavy-duty atoning.
Dead Man's Song pd-2 Page 4
