Ghost Road Blues pd-1

by Jonathan Maberry

  Boyd turned slowly to face Ruger. Boyd’s face was washed clean of any emotion, though something moved behind his eyes.

  “You’re a total piece of shit, Ruger.”

  Ruger shrugged. “And that’s a news flash to whom?”

  Boyd spat on the ground between them and walked heavily to the car.

  It took them five minutes to split the bundles of bloodstained money and the plastic bags of half-cut cocaine into two oversized backpacks. It was a very tight fit. Boyd tried to wipe away the blood that soaked the tightly wrapped bundles of used bills, but Ruger told him not to bother. “We don’t have time. It’s all stained. We’ll find a washing machine somewhere. I hear cold water’ll take the stains out.”

  Boyd looked at him in amazement. Karl’s voice was so calm, so offhand that it chilled him.

  Ruger winked. “Let’s do it.”

  Ruger helped Boyd strap on one pack, buckling it carefully around the limp and useless arm; then he shrugged himself into his own pack and adjusted the straps. Without a single backward glance at the car or Tony’s slumped form, Ruger set off into the cornfield. Boyd tarried a moment longer, staring at the silent shape huddled over the steering wheel.

  “Sorry, man,” he said softly, and then turned to follow Ruger.

  The tall stalks of corn closed around them.

  (4)

  Long minutes passed with no sound except the dry rustle of the corn. Then softly, faintly, “Boyd…help me…”

  Then silence.

  Chapter 5

  (1)

  After Terry left, Crow stood looking at the closed door for several long minutes, processing everything that had just happened. In the space of a few minutes he’d been faced with the outrageous idea of armed gunmen in Pine Deep, been reinstated as a cop — although a very temporary one — and been assigned the job of closing down the hayride.

  None of this exactly fit the way he’d planned to spend the rest of the evening. It was seven-thirty and he’d intended to close at eight, catch the AA meeting at the Methodist church — tonight was a fifth-step night — and then drive out to Val’s, sample her cooking — hoping that it wasn’t as bad as Mark and Henry predicted — and then at the earliest possible convenience bundle Val off to bed. Then he was going to spring the idea of a weekend at a New Hope bed-and-breakfast on her, which would in turn lead up to his master plan of finally proposing. He’d been working out the details of this plan for about five years and so far it involved a ring, dinner, and a hotel stay. He was hoping for some last-minute inspiration to make the event really memorable. It didn’t help any that everyone in town already assumed they would get married, so the proposal wouldn’t be much of a surprise. More than once, when he’d stopped by to take Val out to dinner somewhere particularly nice her father and brother had grinned and winked at him, assuming that he was going to propose. Even Mark’s wife, Connie, who was as dim as Coop, knew that Crow was going to ask her, which meant Val definitely knew.

  So how to make it a surprise? That was the real puzzle, and so far he’d come up with exactly nothing; though a nice cozy dinner with her at her place, and an early bedtime, would give him time to probe for hints of what she would really like. Crow had already bought a ring — a 1.8-carat Asscher-cut diamond with smaller diamonds filling in a channel-cut platinum band. Crow knew that people considered him an affable goof, but no one could accuse him of being cheap. The question was how to present it. Val was not a flowers and candy sort of woman, and traditionally romantic gestures were somewhat lost on her. Crow needed something unique and very, very smart.

  Instead…he now had to go fetch his gun and play cops and robbers again. Val would just love that.

  Crow locked up the shop and switched off the lights, then went into the storeroom and through the doorway that led to his apartment. Like him the place was small and messy and filled with a lot of strange things. The front end of a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle (Crow’s very first car) had been converted into a jukebox and was parked in one corner of the living room. His coffee table was a snowboard on cinder blocks. His clock was a replica of Dali’s melted timepieces. Every inch of the walls was covered with head shots of Crow’s actor friends, interspersed with some very badly painted watercolors Val had done during one of her infrequent artistic phases.

  His three cats, Pinetop, Muddy Whiskers, and Koko, flocked around him, rubbing against his legs and mewing for their supper.

  “Hi, kids. Miss me?”

  Pinetop made his usual, weird little ak-ak-ak-ak sound and walked significantly in the direction of the kitchen. Crow followed dutifully and popped open two cans of aromatic glop, divided it into three equal portions, and laid out their plates. The trio promptly ignored him and set to their feast.

  Humming to himself, he wandered into the kitchen, drank a Yoo-Hoo by the open refrigerator door, peering pointlessly at the various Tupperware containers of mystery meat, mystery pasta, and mystery sauce that lurked on each shelf. One vaguely tumescent shape lay swaddled in Saran Wrap. Crow thought it might have been a zucchini, but he just wasn’t sure. He was afraid of it and didn’t want to touch it. He found a piece of celery that didn’t look too hideous and took it over to a large glass aquarium where a rather absurd-looking guinea pig named Professor Longhair sat meditating on a rock. Crow lifted the top and set the celery down next to the guinea pig, who opened one eye, regarded the limp celery with obvious disdain, and returned to his contemplations. Crow went back to the fridge and had another bottle of the chocolate drink, staring once more at the scientific wonders evolving in there among his bottles of Yoo-Hoo, Red Bull, and Gatorade. He shut the door and was wondering why he was stalling rather than getting his ass in gear when the phone rang.

  Scooping up the receiver he said, “I’d like to order a large pizza, mushrooms and extra cheese, and an order of fries.”

  “For God’s sake,” said a voice, soft, laughing.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, the person you have reached is not a normal person. Please hang up and try your call again.”

  “Okay, fine. Bye.”

  “No! Wait! Hey, baby.”

  “Hello, idiot.”

  “You always say the nicest things.”

  “True,” Val agreed, “but not to you.”

  “Mm. So…what’s cooking?”

  “Me.”

  “Don’t I know it?”

  “No, I mean food. Supper. Turkey soup, to be precise. You are still coming over, aren’t you?” There was a brief moment of silence. “Don’t tell me you aren’t coming over, Malcolm Crow.”

  “Well—”

  “Damn it, Crow…”

  “Hey, babe, duty calls.”

  “Duty? What duty? Do you have a rush order for rubber vomit? Is there a desperate need for glow-in-the-dark dog poop?”

  “No, nothing nearly as important as that. Just three psychos on a killing spree.”

  “Seriously, why can’t you make it? I’ve been cooking since five o’clock. I have actually worked up a sweat.”

  “Are you covered in turkey blood and gristle?”

  “No, but I do have a spot of gravy on my good blue shirt.”

  “You have to learn to control these domestic urges before they become an obsession.”

  “Ha,” she said dryly, “ha, ha.”

  Crow had a powerful visceral image of her standing in the bathroom that morning, naked and glorious.

  “Actually, sweetie, I actually do have some important civic duties to perform.” Briefly, he told her about the manhunt and what Terry had asked of him. There was a considerable silence on the far end of the line. After a while Crow said, “Uh…Val?”

  The silence positively oozed out of the phone. Finally, Val muttered, “So, you agreed to go gunslinging for Gus Bernhardt. Isn’t that special?”

  “Well, not for Gus. Terry asked me, but it’s not like I’m actually going back on the department. Terry wouldn’t ask me to do anything like that. He just wants me to go close down the hayride
for the night.”

  “Carrying a gun.”

  “Would you rather I went out there without a gun?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t go out there at all.”

  “Someone has to.”

  “You know, there’s this marvelous new invention, maybe you’ve heard of it? Called a telephone?”

  “We already tried calling Coop. No answer. He must be out with the kids, or walking the grounds, or maybe he really is too stupid to use a phone…and anyway I don’t want to leave that kind of a message on his answering machine. Can you imagine Coop trying to organize things all by himself?”

  Val had to concede that point. George Cooper was pretty good at running the Haunted Hayride, but when it came time for any real decisive action, he was as useful as a freshly beheaded chicken. Terry had once said that Coop was the only guy who could cause a panic in an empty room. “Okay, so maybe someone does have to go. Why you, though?”

  “I’m the only guy around. All the local blues are busy being actual cops for a change. Terry needed a gofer who didn’t have his head up his ass.”

  “Again I ask, why you?”

  “Oh, we’re just a laugh riot, aren’t we, Miss Guthrie?”

  There was another silence, briefer, less bitter. “Okay, okay,” Val said softly, “but please be careful for a change?”

  “Me? Careful? Hey, careful is my middle name.”

  “I’m serious, Crow.”

  He sobered. “Okay, okay, baby, I promise. No screwing around, and no heroics. And why? ’Cause there won’t be any need for heroics. Just there and back, lickety-split.”

  “Good.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then you’ll come over here?”

  “For leftovers?”

  “No one has ever called me ‘leftovers,’ pal.”

  “I was thinking of my belly, woman.”

  “I was thinking of something just south of there.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I see. Well then, I guess I had better get my ass in gear. Sooner I get those kids out of there—”

  “…The sooner you get to come over here and taste my goodies.”

  “Gad, woman, you are in a bold and licentious mood this evening!”

  “Call it an incentive program to make sure you get here as safe and as soon as possible.”

  “Whoosh. If you count to three and turn around I’ll probably be already there.”

  She called him a nitwit and hung up on him. He looked at the phone for a moment, leaned over and lightly banged his head on the wall a couple of times, then slowly set the receiver down.

  “Yes, well,” he said aloud as if to counter a return of his desire to stall rather than do what Terry wanted, “let us get a move on, then.”

  He went into his bedroom, jerked open the closet door, and fished around on the top shelf until he found a heavy object wrapped in a towel. This he carried over to the bed and carefully unrolled it. Inside the towel was a second cloth smelling faintly of gun oil, and inside this was a Beretta 92F 9mm automatic pistol and several clips. Crow sat down on the side of the bed for a few moments, holding the gun in his right hand, turning it over, weighing it, considering it. He hadn’t worn the gun since he’d quit the department, and even though he’d gotten off the sauce long before he’d turned in his badge, just the sight of the pistol was a link to unhappier times. His drinking had been so bad that Val had broken up with him for two years and wouldn’t start dating him again until after he’d been well into his first year of sobriety. Crow wasn’t one to take a lot of pride in being sober — instead he remembered what it felt like to be a pathetic figure in the eyes of the town, and in Val’s eyes. He never wanted to let her down again, not in any way big or small, no matter how much he really wanted a drink.

  Sighing, he hefted the gun and worked the slide, making sure the breech was clear. He located his box of shells in the closet and methodically loaded the clip. He never kept the clips loaded as the constant stress on the clip’s springs could fatigue the metal, and it had been a long time since he’d fired the thing. He slapped the clip into the grip and double-checked to make sure the safety was on.

  “Yippee-yi-yo,” he said out loud as he stood and jammed the pistol into his waistband, then danced a little jig as the cold steel burned his skin like a block of ice. “Yikes!”

  He pulled off his shirt, put on a T-shirt with an R. Crumb painting of Son House on it and tucked it in, then put the gun back into the waistband of his pants and pulled his flannel shirt over it.

  At the door he paused and glanced at the three cats that were now performing their post-dinner ablutions, licking their paws and using them to wash their faces.

  “Don’t stay up too late…and no more cable porn.” He wagged a finger.

  Pinetop was the only one who looked at him, and his expression was pitying. Crow pulled the door closed and locked it.

  (2)

  Terry hurried up Corn Hill toward the chief’s office, which shared the first floor of the township building with the county court. As he walked briskly through each patch of brightness his shadow seemed to lunge and pounce, springing with lupine speed at his own heels and then vanishing as he moved into a different alignment of light and reflection.

  Cars swept up and down the hill, gleaming with polished chrome and tinted glass, complicated antennae sprouting expensively as the cars braked and swept along the immaculate street. Terry glanced at a few of them, once or twice giving the driver a curt wave and nodding to others. He was usually expansive, ready to stop and talk, to shake hands and swap familiar jokes and discuss the day’s business, doing his mayor shtick with élan and a natural affability, but lately his good mood had begun to slip and any trace of good humor seen on his face was put there by effort and held in place by sheer will.

  He felt as though the walls of his life were starting to crack and he was terrified of what would pour through once the cracks split wide enough. His depression and stress had begun at the end of summer, when the first traces of the crop blight had turned the summer wheat into rancid weeds that had to be burned. That hadn’t been too bad because wheat was not the town’s staple crop, and for a week or so everyone breathed sighs of relief when the corn crop had looked pretty healthy. Then the blight struck nine corn farms in two days, and since then more than half of the town’s corn crop was infected. The pumpkins were next to go, and they were hit even harder. Cabbages, apples, and berries, too.

  That’s about when the dreams started.

  Terry had always been prone to nightmares — ever since age ten, when he’d been in a coma for weeks following the death of his sister — but these dreams were new and they were maddeningly persistent. They took two forms, though there was one theme that overlapped them both. In the first set of dreams he was wandering through Pine Deep as it burned — moving past heaps of dead bodies, hearing explosions rip the night apart. Everywhere there was death and pain. Everyone he knew and loved lay strewn about, their throats savaged and bloody, their dead eyes staring accusingly at him, and as he staggered along he would occasionally catch glimpses of his own reflection in cracked store windows. The reflections always showed him not as himself — but as something twisted and bestial. When his dreaming self would try and look closer, as the image became clearer, Terry would come yelping out of the dream, sweating and panting and utterly terrified.

  The second type of dream — and by far the most persistent — involved Terry lying in bed next to Sarah and feeling his body begin to change, to reshape, into something horrifying, but horrifying in a way that was not clear to Terry, and no matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t get any sense of what the dreams meant.

  Sometimes he had the dreams two or three times a night, and he was feeling the drain on his system. He had told his psychiatrist about them, but the doctor had passed them off as stress-dreams inspired by the local ambience of spookiness and exacerbated by the growing financial troubles of the farmers. The psychiatrist also told Terry that, as ma
yor, he was taking on too much responsibility for things over which he had no control. Added to it were the constant demands on him by the business owners as the town geared up for its annual Halloween celebration, the biggest event in the year for Pine Deep. Terry was averaging fourteen-hour days at work, and cruising on about four or five good hours of sleep a night. Terry had listened to what the doctor had to say, and all the advice to find some way of calming down — meditation, yoga, anything — nodded his understanding, and then held his hand out for his prescriptions: antipsychotics and antidepressants and antiaxiomatics. The three staples of his current diet.

  And now there was the phone call from Gus Bernhardt. That call had jolted him into an entirely different frame of mind.

  Criminals?

  In Pine Deep?

  Half of him wanted to laugh out loud at the very thought, and the other half of him was already feeling moths fluttering in his stomach. Halloween less than a month away. Already a third of the stores in town had their windows done up for the coming season, and all of the plans for the costume parade had long ago been finalized. There were still a million details to see to. Terry had managed a magnificent coup of signing David Boreanez and James Marsters to be co — grand marshals of the parade for a lot less money than he was prepared to pay, and Good Morning America was going to do a Halloween morning broadcast from Town Hall. He was talking with Regis Philben’s people about doing a spot at the hayride. School buses were bringing hundreds of kids to the farms each week to visit with the pumpkin growers (though some of the farmers had actually had to import clean and nondiseased pumpkins from Crestville and Black Marsh to keep up appearances), and the Pine Deep Authentic Candy Corn was going to be dropped in half the trick-or-treaters’ bags from New York to Baltimore.

  Despite the crop blight it was a busier year than most, and Terry was already feeling the pressure weighing him down as he balanced the financial crisis of the farmers with the amazing boom for the in-town businesses. Now this: a carload of big-city criminals with guns was something Terry Wolfe and his haunted little town did not need, thank you very much. The very thought of how this craziness might affect business had Terry grinding his teeth and sweating bullets at the same time. The more he thought about it, the faster he walked. His big fists were white-knuckled tight as he climbed the hill.