Val kissed him, sweetly and softly, careful of the stitches in his lips and mouth. “My God! It was so much the right time. But tell me—tell me right now, right here, looking me in the eyes—are you sure?”
Crow pulled her closer and kissed her lips and her eyes and buried his face in the fragrant softness of the side of her throat. “My sweet love, I am more sure of that than anything else in my life. I have to be with you, now and forever. I love so much that if I even think about living a second without you I think I’d go nuts. I’m babbling, I know…but I don’t know how else to say it. I want to be with you, I want to marry you, and I want to have everything with you. Life, house, two-point-five kids, dog, station wagon, PTA, crab-grass, and middle-age spread—the whole enchilada.” Her eyes closed and a single tear leaked out of her bruised eye. He didn’t see it, but when it fell on his chest, he pushed her gently back so that he could see her face. “Hey…are you crying?”
“Of course I’m crying, you idiot.”
“Val, I—”
“Crow…I have to tell you something and if you want to take back your ring, if you want to back off, I will understand, but I have to tell you.”
Crow’s heart turned to a block of ice. “You are scaring the shit out of me here.”
“God, I hope not.” Her face was serious, but there was a bright light there, sparkling in her eyes like spring sunlight on late winter snow.
“Then tell me,” he said, and braced himself.
“Crow…my love…I’m pregnant.”
Crow could actually feel his mouth drop open like a trap-door. If he was still breathing, he wasn’t aware of it, though he knew that his heart was still beating—it was right there in his throat. He saw the look of desperate hopefulness in her eyes begin to change into a look of broken-hearted fear…and he wanted to say something smart, something pithy.
Instead he just yelled. A great big whooping bellow of pure joy.
Val felt herself yanked forward and Crow crushed her to his chest. They both howled in pain and then they both laughed, and a moment later they were both crying and kissing each other. Crow kept saying: “Babybabybabybaby…” but Val didn’t know if he was using an endearment for her or just trying out the new implications of the word. Either way, she felt the knot that had been wrapped around her heart split apart and her whole chest seemed to be filled with warm helium. She wanted to leap into the air with him, and she was sure that they would both float.
Feet pounded on the steps and Val turned her head—which made Crow miss her face and land a big noisy kiss on her ear, which hurt, but who cared?—and the door burst open and Sarah Wolfe was there, looking shocked and desperate. “Oh my God,” Sarah yelled, fear in her eyes, “what’s going on, who’s hurt, did you fall…?”
Val wrapped her arms around Crow’s neck and pulled his face to her chest and spoke over his tousled hair, pitching her voice high over Crow’s constant Yee-haws. “We’re having a baby!”
Sarah stopped, mouth in a perfect O, her inability to process this registering on her face. “A…baby?” And then she was hugging them both.
(2)
Frank Ferro sat at the head of the conference table with Vince LaMastra to his right. At the far end sat Terry Wolfe and to his left was Gus Bernhardt. Filling out the rest of the big oak town council table were two FBI agents—Agent Henckhauser and Special Agent in Charge Spinlicker, from the Philadelphia Field Office—and three state troopers—Sutter, Wimmer, and Yablonski. Everyone had coffee cups in front of them except SAC Spinlicker, who had a Diet Pepsi in a can. This was the first meeting with the FBI and was intended as a preliminary assessment to see if the Bureau felt it was necessary and appropriate to take over the case. The room looked like what it now was: a war room. Maps of Pine Deep were tacked to the walls, notes and photos were taped haphazardly on every available surface, dry-erase boards stood on easels, and reams of computer printouts were stacked on the floor.
The SAC leaned forward and steepled his fingers, fixing Ferro with a steely and openly accusatory look. “You checked everywhere?”
Ferro’s reaction was to lean back in his chair and smile at Spinlicker. “Well, Agent Spinlicker, clearly if we had searched everywhere we’d have found him.”
“You implied—”
“What I said was that one hundred and sixty-three men, six teams of dogs, and two spotter airplanes have spent the last several days combing every inch of the Guthrie farm and much of the surrounding woods. We’ve broadened the search to include ninety other farms, the grounds of the Haunted Hayride, the campus of Pinelands College, a large portion of Pinelands State Forest, and the canals. My assessment, Agent Spinlicker, is that Kenneth Boyd is not in any of the areas we’re searched.”
“And found jack shit,” LaMastra summed up.
Spinlicker shared a glance with his partner, and smiled ever so faintly. To Ferro he said, “And Kenneth Boyd has managed to elude all of your efforts.” There was just the slightest emphasis on the word “your.”
In the stiff silence that followed Bernhardt cleared his throat. “In all fairness, sir, the area they searched is pretty dense.”
“It also comprises less than an eighth of the entire borough,” said Trooper Yablonski. “The village itself may be small, but the borough of Pine Deep is pretty damn big. There are a lot of places for one man to hide.”
The SAC let silence be his comment on that, and on the handling of the operation as a whole. He picked up a folder from the table, opened it, and riffled through the papers, occasionally making a small and dismissive “hmm” sound. “Quite frankly, Sergeant Ferro, it makes me wonder how well you—”
Then there was a sound like a gunshot and everyone jumped in their seats and spun toward Terry, who had just slammed his palm down hard and flat against the table. “Agent Spinlicker,” he snapped, “if you think there is a problem in the way things have been handled then come out and say it.” He glared at the SAC and at that moment Terry Wolfe seemed to fill the room.
Spinlicker hedged. “I didn’t say that, sir.”
“I know. You’re pussyfooting around it. If you have a problem with the way Sergeant Ferro’s handled things come out and say it right now.”
The air between them crackled like the charge between two poles. Spinlicker said, “No, sir.”
Terry’s face remained hard as a fist. “Then sit there and shut the fuck up.”
Henckhauser gasped audibly and the Staties exchanged startled looks. Gus was shocked at the language he was hearing from Terry; Ferro was staring at the mayor, and LaMastra was grinning. Terry saw the smile and wheeled on him. “And you can wipe that shit-eating grin off your face, Detective. I’m not saying that you guys have done such a great job either.”
That wiped LaMastra’s face clean.
Addressing the whole table, Terry said, “This is my town, gentlemen, but this is not my mess. It’s yours. Now clean it up!” Again his palm came down on the table hard enough to make everyone jump. “One of my closest friends is dead. My best friend just got out of the hospital along with his fiancée, whom I’ve known since kindergarten. One of my cops is dead, and so is an officer loaned to me from a neighboring town. I have a hospital worker in intensive care with a split skull, a woman who was nearly raped, her husband who had his face kicked in, shots fired in my hospital, two other cops down with injuries, and now a body stolen from the morgue. Every reporter in the world is here and according to the news stories I’m starting to see, this town—my town—is becoming a joke in terms of safety. I heard this town mentioned on the Daily Show last night, and on Leno. As a goddamn punchline. So, when I tell you that I am one hundred percent fed up with this bullshit you had best believe I’m serious. About the last thing I want to hear or see is you lot getting into a jurisdictional pissing contest. Am I getting through to you on this?”
“Loud and clear, sir,” Ferro said. Spinlicker and the others just nodded. Gus was staring at Terry with a look of fascinated awe.
&nbs
p; “Then let me make something else clear. October is the biggest income month for this town. We’re already reeling from the crop blight and a lot of local farmers are likely to lose their farms. If you—” he fished for an appropriately savage word but only came up with an acid-laced version of “officers of the law, working together, cannot find one man—one injured man, mind you—then we are likely to lose the entire tourist season. That means Pine Deep is going to go into the tank.” He leaned forward, his blues eyes as hard as gunmetal. “If, on the other hand, you can manage to find this guy, then there is still a chance we can pull off enough of a season to stay afloat. That, gentlemen, is a very real concern and I want to know right now that this is going to happen.” He made eye contact, brief but penetrating, with each man at the table, one after the other. “Make me believe that this is going to happen.”
(3)
Ferro and LaMastra lingered with Gus after Terry and the others left. They stood at a window that looked down at the parking lot, watching SAC Spinlicker and Agent Henckhauser get into their car. Even through the soundproof glass the watching officers could feel the vibration as the FBI agents slammed their doors. Their car laid an eight-foot patch of burned rubber across the asphalt.
“So,” Gus said dryly, “I guess we won’t be sharing the case with the feds.”
“So it seems,” Ferro agreed. His face still wore its funeral director moroseness, but there was a drop of humor in his voice. “Nice that they said they would keep in touch and advise. Very helpful of them.”
“Funny thing is,” LaMastra said, “that if you told me that a small-town mayor could bitch-slap a couple of feds like that I’d have called you a liar.” Ferro just nodded at that.
“So we’re on our own again,” Gus said.
“Once this thing starts winding down,” LaMastra said, “I expect we’ll see those two again. Right around the time when someone gets to take credit.”
“Mmm-hm,” Ferro said, smiling faintly.
(4)
After a long and rather giggly breakfast with Sarah and Val, Crow showered and dressed and began packing the few belongings he’d brought from the hospital. In ten minutes Sarah was going to drive them out to the farm and he knew that would pretty much be the end of the incredible feeling of joy that was still bubbling inside of him.
A baby. His baby. His and Val’s, which was even better. Son of Crow—he’d already decided that it was going to be a boy for no reason more mature than hoping that the kid would like science fiction, blues, jujutsu, and gory horror flicks. He couldn’t quite see “Daughter of Val” grooving on any Rob Zombie films side-by-side with ol’ dad. On the other hand, Daughter of Val would probably be smarter and better looking than Son of Crow, so there was that. On the other other hand, the kid could be Grandson of Henry, in which case he’d be smart, good-looking, tough as nails, and a lot taller than Son of Crow.
Crow…my love…I’m going to have a baby. If there had ever been a more beautiful set of—and here Crow had to count on his fingers—nine words, he had never heard them and could not imagine them. Son of Crow. Sounded great. Very heroic, very comic book superhero. “Wait till I tell…everyone!” he said aloud. As he packed he started singing, “I am a daddy,” to the tune of “I’m in the Money.”
Crow sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled his cell phone out. There were only two bars so he got up and moved around the room until he got four of them. Getting a clear cell phone signal in Pine Deep was always a crapshoot. He had to sit in the window seat and wedge his shoulder into the corner to get enough bars to make his calls.
The first person he called was Terry Wolfe. Terry answered on the second ring with a terse, “Go.”
“Terry…it’s me.”
“Crow? What’s up, everything okay there?”
“Yeah, man. You in the middle of something?”
“Not really. I just wrapped up a meeting with the cops.”
“Are they anywhere with this?”
“No,” Terry said, and his voice sounded like all the weariness in the world. “And no one has floated a useful theory as to why Boyd would risk breaking into the morgue just to steal Ruger’s corpse.”
“Sounds like Boyd is off the rails,” Crow offered. “Maybe there’s no one in the driver’s seat anymore.”
“Who knows. There’s another wrinkle in this, too.”
“Jeez, Wolfman, I’m not sure how many more wrinkles this town can take.”
“Now you’re singing my song. Keep this between us, okay?”
“Lips are sealed, bro.”
“We think Boyd has at least one more accomplice.” Terry told him about the hospital door being opened and the alarm disabled. “He had to have inside help.”
Crow chewed on that for a minute. “I find that hard to buy. If there was an inside man, why didn’t he just dump Ruger onto a gurney and wheel his ugly ass to the back door? That way Boyd would never have been spotted at all.”
“Saul Weinstock raised the same concern, but Ferro said that the inside man may have known about the security camera. The hallway surveillance camera has been broken since the middle of September, so anyone who went into the hall to unlock the doors would not have been spotted. Only if he’d actually entered the morgue would the tape have picked him up.”
“Okay…I can see that, but that means that this inside guy had to know all of this. The broken camera, the morgue camera, everything, and he’d need access to the keys.”
“Right. They checked out everyone who was on duty last night and got nowhere. Just dead ends and no leads.”
“This doesn’t make me feel too good, Terry.”
“Me, neither, but at least you’re out of it.”
“And I’m happy as hell about that, too. So’s Val.” Then he slapped his forehead—and winced all the way down to his toes. “Geez, Terry, I am the world’s biggest idiot.”
“Not a news flash there.”
“No, I mean I forgot to tell you why I called.”
“If this is more bad news I’m going to go lay down in traffic.”
“Terry…Val and I are going to have a baby!”
There was a silence followed by a sound that Crow was absolutely sure was a sob. Just the one, and then more silence. Finally, in a strange, choked whisper Terry said, “Thank God.” And then without warning he hung up.
Crow looked at the phone in his palm. That was certainly not the kind of answer he expected to get. “Weird,” he said, and then punched in a new number.
(5)
Saul Weinstock stood in the small morgue office, watching the cleaning staff put the finishing touches on the room. The forensics teams had finally left and the last streamers of crime scene tape had been torn down and stuffed into trash cans. Ferro had given him an all clear to reopen for business, and with three autopsies still pending, it was going to be a long day. All of this should have been done ages ago, and Weinstock didn’t like how much the delay made him look like the top idiot at Dumbass Rural Hospital. His cell phone rang; he saw it was Crow and answered, “Hey, buddy.”
“You sound chipper,” Crow said,
“I’m not, but thanks for your lack of perception,” Weinstock said with a grin. “How are you doing? How’s Val?”
“That’s what I was calling about,” Crow said and went into a two-minute rant about impending fatherhood. By the time he reached the point where he was planning to coach Little League, Weinstock was laughing.
“I know already, you chucklehead. Oh, don’t act so surprised—she’s my patient, I’m her doctor, remember? Confidences become fast and loose in such circumstances. You don’t want to know the details—they’re so sordid.”
“How long have you known?”
Weinstock paused a bit before answering that one. “Since, um, last Saturday. When you guys were brought in after all that happened. She asked me not to say anything until she had a chance to tell you first, for reasons that should be obvious even to someone of limited intelligence, such a
s yourself.”
“Thanks, bro.”
“Got your back, man. In any case, when you guys were brought in Val told me that she’d taken an EPT that morning and came up positive. She said that she was going to tell you that night, but then Ruger showed up and everything went to hell in a handbasket. Now that she has, and having heard your plans to be the most annoying parent in history, can I assume that you’re happy about this? You didn’t ask for your ring back, did you?”
“Geez, Saul, what kind of a dork do you think I am?”
“Should I answer that or would you prefer a long awkward pause?”
“Bite me.”
“Anyway…I do want to congratulate you, Crow, and to tell you, all kidding aside, how happy I am for you and Val. With all the crap that’s been happening around here it’s sure as hell nice to have something really good happen. Mazel tov!”
“Thanks, and corny as it sounds, it’s like a fresh start. Shame Henry’s not here to see his grandkid. Or his daughter get married.”
Weinstock moved across the room to allow the cleaners to mop where he was standing, and he lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. “Remember yesterday when I said that I wanted to keep Mark and Connie here for a bit longer? Well, between you and me, I think Connie is in some deep shit. This morning I talked with the staff psychologist and the news just isn’t encouraging. Long story short, Connie is exhibiting all of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder consistent with having been the victim of a completed rape, which we both know was not the case. If I were a superstitious man I’d say that Ruger put some kind of hex on her, but since I’m not a superstitious man, I’m going on the assumption that Connie may have had some preexisting psychological problems. Point is, she’s not responding to the treatments—and even this short-term there’s always some kind of forward movement, at least to the professional eye, but my people say no—and the meds we’re giving her to ease her stress are just making her retreat into sleep. She goes hours and hours without talking, and then she’ll break down into hysterical tears for no visible reason.”
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