Dead Man's Song pd-2

by Jonathan Maberry

  Chapter 20

  (1)

  Two days earlier, on October 7, Willard Fowler Newton had gone out to the Guthrie farm to interview Malcolm Crow and Val Guthrie. The interview had been going really well until Crow had said something that had caused Newton to break one of his promises. After that, things had gone very badly indeed.

  Crow had said, “I think Ubel Griswold was a monster.”

  It sounded so silly. It was a nonsensical thing to say, and Newton had actually laughed out loud when Crow had said it, taking it as one of Crow’s many jokes. Crow was not joking. Instead his face had gone dark and he had said, “Remember our agreement, Newt.”

  One of the terms of that agreement had been that Newton had to promise not to laugh in Crow’s face—and he had done just that. He had laughed out loud and jabbed Crow in the shoulder in a that’s a good one gesture, but Crow had slapped his hand away and then that small, affable guy, Crow the jokester, Crow the town chucklehead, had vanished and Newt was staring into the eyes of Crow the man who had faced down the Cape May Killer—twice!—and had beaten him. Had, in fact, killed him. The change was that abrupt. One minute Crow looked like a sawed-off Greg Kinnear with vulnerable eyes and an easy grin, and the next second—the next split fragment of a second—he was a cold-eyed stranger with no trace of humor at all in his face, and Newton could actually feel all of the warmth leak out of the moment like water from a cracked jug. Newton’s laughter had died in his throat and he looked away from those eyes over to Val, and saw the coldest blue eyes in town staring back at him.

  Newton said, “Oh, come on!”

  “Perhaps you’d better leave,” Val said, setting her cold coffee cup down. “I think we’re done here.”

  “Jesus, Crow…Val…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean….”

  Crow just waved it off. “Thought I could trust you, Newt. Sorry I was wrong.”

  Crow got up from where he’d been sitting on the step and went inside the house. After a full minute—an unending minute while Newton stood there and endured Val’s coldly disappointed stare—it became clear that Crow was not coming back out.

  He tried to explain to Val, to apologize, but she just stood up and regarded him coolly for a moment. “Go on,” she said, “get out.” Then she followed Crow into the house and closed the screen and storm doors both. The sound of the lock clicking was huge in his ears.

  Newton had gone home, too. Halfway home he had used his cell to call Crow, but there was no answer. Caller ID was a bitch. The following day was the funeral for Val’s father and Newton almost went out there, hoping to apologize, but he just couldn’t make himself intrude into Val’s grief, not even to get himself off the hook.

  Newton had been dismissed before. He was a reporter and that meant he was used to slammed doors and closed mouths—and certainly he’d made no friends with Terry Wolfe after breaking the cover-up story—but somehow this felt worse, and it was more than losing a major source for the feature he was researching. He had liked Crow, and there had been a look of hurt in the man’s eyes that was damn near unbearable.

  When the phone rang at quarter to five in the morning of October 10, it startled him and he cried out before snatching at the bedside phone. “Hello?”

  He expected it to be Dick Hangood, but it wasn’t. “Okay, Kermit, here’s the deal.”

  Newton paused. “Crow?”

  “No, it’s Tickle Me Elmo—now, you listening?”

  He sat up, kicking the blankets to the floor. “Yes!”

  “Val thinks I should kick your nuts up into your chest cavity, but I’m willing to give this a second chance.”

  “Um…okay…Thanks?”

  “So, if you still want that story—and if you can keep your reactions on a short leash—”

  “Yes! Crow, I’m sorry. You just caught me off guard.”

  “We’ll kiss and make up later. For now I have a new condition to add to our arrangement.”

  “Sure! Anything!” He said, meaning it.

  “Here’s the deal, on Friday morning I’m going to go on a little field trip, and I want you to go with me. I’m going to go out to Ubel Griswold’s old farm, and I want you to go with me.”

  “Sure,” Newton said at once, and then what Crow said caught up with him. “Did you say—?”

  “Yeah. Sound like fun to you? Me neither, but you meet me outside my store at seven-thirty Friday morning. Dress for the woods and pack a lunch. We’re going to have to hike in. See you then,” he concluded and then hung up before Newton could reply.

  Newton lay in bed and stared up at the shadows on the ceiling and wondered just what the hell he had agreed to.

  (2)

  “But he hasn’t been home for three days!”

  Officer Jim Polk spread his hands, sighed and said, “Look, Andy, there’s not much we can do. Ritchie is over eighteen and you yourself said he took a lot of his stuff with him. Clothes and such.”

  “Which means he’s run away!” stressed Andy McClintock, tapping his thick index finger firmly on Polk’s desk.

  “But at eighteen he’s allowed to run away,” Polk said. “According to the law, at eighteen he’s old enough to leave home without parental permission, so there’s really nothing we can do. Hell, at eighteen I was in the Corps and carrying a gun. Eighteen is a lot different from fifteen, and that’s what you’re not seeing.”

  “He didn’t even leave a note. Nothing, not a damned word. Just up and goes one night.” Andy McClintock was a big bear of a man, tall and stocky, tending toward fat but still strong from long hours working his dairy farm. He had callused hands and a permanently sunburned face. His eyes were filled with worry and it bubbled out of him as anger.

  “I’m sure you’re scared, and pissed off, but listen to me, Andy, ’cause I don’t know how many more times I can say this—there isn’t anything I can do. If he was sixteen I’d have his name and description sent out to every agency in the tristate area, but I’m not even allowed to do that with an eighteen-year-old.”

  Andy McClintock straightened himself to his full height of six feet and glared at the seated Polk. He opened his mouth to say something very biting, and Polk could all but smell the acid forming on Andy’s tongue, but the moment of anger passed and Andy’s shoulders sagged, his face looking both confused and helpless. “Jim…he’s my only kid….”

  Polk rose, came around the desk, and put his hand on Andy’s beefy shoulder. “Look, I’ll ask around anyway, okay? Let a few of the other guys know, too, talk to some of my buddies in Black Marsh and Crestville. Unofficial. Maybe we’ll hear something from someone. If we do, I’ll let you know first thing.”

  “You promise?”

  “Absolutely. First thing. But,” he said as they stood in the open doorway, “just give the kid a little time. Let him blow off some steam, get laid, get drunk. He’ll get it out of his system and come crawling home. Hell, we all did that at least once.”

  Andy nodded and shook Polk’s hand and left. Polk watched him get in his car and drive out of the lot, then he turned and pulled the door shut behind him. The office was empty except for Ginny, who dozed at her desk, a Danielle Steele novel open and resting against her bosom. Quietly, unhurriedly, Polk walked over to the farthest desk and lifted the handset of the phone. He punched in a number and waited until someone picked up.

  “Shanahan’s Garage.”

  “Let me speak to Vic,” Polk said. “Tell him it’s Jim Polk.”

  “Minute.”

  Polk waited for nearly three minutes, then a voice at the other end said, “What do you want? I’m in the middle of a valve job.”

  “I just had Andy McClintock in my office, came to report him missing.”

  There was a brief silence. “Yeah? And?”

  “I told him what I told all the others.”

  “How many’s that? How many have actually been into the office to make reports?”

  “Six, so far. That’s a lot for just a few days, Vic.”

  “How ma
ny of them does Gus know about?”

  “Maybe two. I’ve been doing the day work, so I’ve been taking almost all of the reports, and the ones I don’t take usually come across my desk at some point. The only two I couldn’t intercept were filed with someone else when I was off shift, but I can get into the computer and fix those.”

  “Has Gus said anything?”

  “Nope. Far as he knows, it’s just a couple missing persons. I’ve been inputting vacation notices for some of them, too. That way our guys are even doing drive-bys to make sure no one breaks in while the residents are away. I got all of this nailed down. Gus never checks, and I mean never. It’s why he made me sergeant in the first place, because he knows I like to handle all the reports and shit. We’re building a nice smokescreen, and public panic is helping. At least a dozen families have left town anyway because of the manhunt, and a lot of people have pulled their kids out of school. That’s stuff that happened without us doing anything, so it’s working as a nice cover. We’re covered here, Vic, but if this thing goes on longer than a couple more weeks then it’s going to get hard to fudge it. For right now, though, no one knows shit and that goes double for Gus.”

  “You’d better make sure you keep it that way, ’cause I don’t want him even getting so much as a whiff of this. Not until the Man says so.”

  “No sweat. Gus ain’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.” He cleared his throat. “Even so, Vic, I think it would be a good idea to have Ritchie call his dad, maybe say that he’s down in Atlantic City, or up in New York. Someplace he’d go with his buddies. Better for Andy to hear from him than to start a fuss.”

  There was a short silence before Vic said, “That’s a pretty smart idea, Jimmy-boy.”

  “We should have some of, um, them, make some calls to relatives or friends—and especially to their jobs. Call in sick, or say they have to go out of town for some reason. Have Carby and the other parents write notes to the schools saying the family’s going to visit relatives somewhere. Y’know, settle things down, make it look normal, otherwise people are going to start talking, and then they’ll starting wondering…”

  “I get it,” Vic said. “And you’re right, that’s a good plan. I’ll get some of the others to make calls, or send some e-mails. Good friggin’ call.”

  “Great, that’ll help calm things down. Otherwise who knows who might start putting two and two together.” Polk paused and braced himself before heading off onto a new tack. “Look, Vic…this stuff you got me doing is pretty risky….”

  “And you’re getting paid, so what’s your point?”

  “That’s just it…I’m not sure I got paid enough for this sort of thing. This stuff can get me a federal rap, let alone state time. You have no idea the kind of risks I’m taking. I just think what you’re asking me to do is worth more than you’ve given me so far.”

  Vic’s voice was soft and wintry. “Am I hearing this right? Are you putting the squeeze on me? Is that what I’m hearing? Maybe you’d like me to come over and deliver it personally. Kiss your ass, too, to show my respect since you’re doing such a stellar job.”

  “Vic, I—”

  “Maybe you want to bang my wife, too? Would you like that? A little roll in the hay with Lois just to show my appreciation for all your hard work? Maybe a tidy little thank you blow job. How ’bout that? Just my way of saying thanks for being supercop.”

  “C’mon, Vic, I was just—”

  “Or maybe,” Vic said, his voice becoming even colder, “maybe you’d like one of them to deliver it? How ’bout that? Would you like that? Hey…I can have Ritchie himself bring you your cash. Bring you your reward.”

  Polk’s throat seized shut. Blood roared in his ears and he could feel his gut knotting like a fist.

  “Maybe even Karl himself? How would that be? Would you like Karl to hand deliver your blood money? That way you could explain to Karl how valuable you’ve been to us. I’m sure he’d be very impressed. You know how much Karl likes cops anyway. I’ll bet he’d think you were the cat’s ass, Jim. Yeah, maybe that’d be good. You and Karl. I could have him drop by tonight. Bring you a token of our esteem.”

  Only strangled sounds wormed their way out of Polk’s throat.

  Vic snorted with disgust. “Listen to me, asshole—you got your money, and you’ll get more—but I’ll be the one to decide what you get and when you get it. Do you understand me?” Polk gurgled something and Vic snapped, “I didn’t quite hear that, Jim.”

  “Y…yes…!” Polk gasped.

  “Good. Now you go and you do your frigging job and don’t you ever dare try and put the squeeze on me again. Don’t even dream about it. You just do your job and you’d better do it right, or so help me God I’ll arrange a whole party at your place. Karl and Ritchie and all of them. I’ll bet they could make it last a long time for you, and you really wouldn’t like that, Jim, no by God you would not.”

  Vic disconnected abruptly at the other end. For a horrible frozen span of seconds Polk stood there, clutching the phone to his head, eyes bulging with terror, heart hammering in his chest. Then he slammed the phone down and made it into the bathroom at a dead run, just barely slamming his way into a stall before he vomited.

  (3)

  “I know it’s cool and all that,” Mike said, “but why do I have to learn how to use a sword? How is that going to help me in a fight? I mean…I can’t exactly pull out a samurai sword next time Vic gets in one of his moods.”

  Crow grinned. “Though that would be kind of cool…take a sword and cut a few pounds of ugly off that son of a bitch.” He held a sheathed sword in his hands, admiring it fondly. The scabbard was finished in a matte black, rough and cool to the touch, and the knuckle guard, or tsuba, was a round plate of wrought iron in the pattern of a small flock of crows flying from tree to tree. By contrast, the sword Mike held was carved from a single piece of oak, with only a line cut like a channel running around the shaft to indicate the break between handle and blade. “I told you I was going to shortcut the process for you,” Crow said, “but at the same time I need you to have some idea for where it comes from and how it works. Jujutsu is science and art kind of blended together.”

  In a fair approximation of Obi Wan Kenobi, Mike said, “A lightsaber is the weapon of a Jedi—not as clumsy or random as a blaster.” He slashed it back and forth and made electrical humming noises on each pass.

  Crow grinned at that. “I’ll give you some books on the samurai, Mike…and you can look up some stuff on the Net. They were among the greatest warriors in history, and to them the sword was emblematic of their soul. In fact they believed that their sword was a physical manifestation of their soul.”

  Mike looked at his wooden sword and then at Crow’s beautiful weapon and then cocked an eyebrow. “So…my soul is a beat-up piece of wood and yours is a work of art?”

  “Well, of course, that’s obvious,” Crow said straight-faced, then smiled and shook his head. “No, the difference between the two weapons is like the difference between what you are and what you can become.” When he saw that Mike wasn’t following him, he tried it another way. “You look at the two swords and see the difference between us, or at least what you perceive is the difference between us, but in fact the difference is that your sword is blunt. Just like you right now. Now, consider Vic for a moment…he’s dangerous, but he isn’t sharp. He isn’t refined. He’s the perfect definition of blunt force.” He saw Mike glance suddenly down at the wooden sword as if he wanted to spit on it and throw it away. “Whereas you may be starting blunt and unrefined you are not going to stay that way. Are you?”

  Mike hefted the wooden sword and considered its weight, and then glanced at Crow’s sword. He shook his head.

  “So, I’m going to show you some things to do with the sword because the sword teaches us so much.”

  “Like what?”

  “Glad you asked,” said Crow, and winked. “Kenjutsu, the Japanese art of swordplay, may not be practical on the s
treets of the twenty-first century, that I’ll grant you, but the process of learning the sword is. Very much so, because it teaches focus, balance, precision, timing, control. You see, there’s a paradox in swordplay that is at the heart of its appeal. You know what a paradox is?”

  “Dude, how many science fiction novels have I read? Of course I know what a paradox is.”

  “I stand corrected. Well, the paradox at the heart of kenjutsu is that there is no way to achieve perfection in swordsmanship. No matter how good you are, there is always a level of skill beyond where you are.”

  “So…what’s that mean? That it doesn’t matter how good you are?”

  “Not exactly. What it means is that it only matters that you are striving to be better than you are.” Crow let Mike chew on that for a moment.

  Mike rolled his eyes. “Is this one of those ‘the journey is the destination’ things?”

  “Yep, and if you’re about to dismiss that concept just because you’ve heard it before—don’t. In this case it’s especially important because in learning the sword we aren’t just learn to be good at it…we’re discovering that each time we train we’re better at it, and that the more we concentrate on it and the harder we train, the more subtle and deft we become. You see, when the samurai trained all those thousands of hours in swordplay, only part of it was to sharpen their skills in case they had to fight. What they were really doing was sharpening their souls.” He paused. “They were refining who they were. Cutting away at the elements of their personalities that did not advance them forward in spirit.”

  “You’re starting to go all Yoda on me here.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Crow sucked his teeth for a minute, assessing his own words. “Tell you what…let’s just do some training with the sword and then we’ll see if you’re getting anything out of it. Is that simple enough?”

  Mike shrugged. “I guess.”

  Crow walked over and flipped open the top of the plastic cooler that was set on the back step of his building, fished around in it, and then brought out an apple. “I’m going to throw this at your head,” he said casually. “Try to knock it out of the way with your sword.”