Ghost Road Blues pd-1

by Jonathan Maberry

  So, not being able to do anything about the problem, Crow tried to tackle at least one of the symptoms and had befriended Mike, treating him like a real person, which was the case anyway, and once in a while trying to work into conversation some of the values Crow himself found useful in life. He had even shown Mike a few jujitsu moves, hoping the kid would get hooked on martial arts the way he had. It had helped Crow stand up to his own abusive father — maybe it would help Mike do the same. Predators generally don’t like prey that shows its own claws and teeth.

  The kid was looking at him through the window, no longer smiling. Crow shrugged elaborately and pointed at the phone. Mike nodded. Crow had stepped out of the car to make the call, not wanting the boy to hear about the manhunt. The kid looked like he’d been through enough already.

  “Crow?” Terry’s voice came over the phone with no warning, making Crow jump.

  “Terry? Yeah.”

  “Oh man, Crow, tell me nothing happened at the hayride.”

  “Huh? Oh no, I haven’t gotten there yet.”

  There was a brief silence on the line; then in a controlled voice, Terry said, “You, ah, haven’t even gotten there yet? I see.”

  “No, you don’t. I’m not dodging it, it’s just that something else came up.”

  Another silence. “Something ‘else’ came up? Crow,” Terry said, “you do remember we have a crisis going on around here?”

  Crow walked another couple of paces from the car. “I have Mike Sweeney with me.”

  “Who, may I ask, is Mike Sweeney?”

  “Kid who delivers the paper.”

  “Okay. And you’re what — learning his route?”

  “No. Actually I almost ran him over. Don’t panic, it was just by accident, though…I wasn’t aiming for him.”

  “I should hope not.”

  “But someone else tried to do it intentionally.” Silence. Crow said, “Terry?”

  There was a sigh at the other end of the line. “Tell me that again. Someone else tried to…”

  “…Run him over, yeah. The kid was pedaling along A-32 when this tow-truck comes zooming down the road and tries to run him over.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Crow, the guy probably didn’t see him. Kid on a bike out on the highway. Like I said, the trucker probably never saw him. You just said you almost did the same thing.”

  “Kid says that the tow-truck went out of its way to chase him down. The kid was in the oncoming lane, crowding the shoulder, and the truck swerved into the lane and accelerated toward him.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I believe he’s telling the truth, Terry.” For just a moment Crow thought about the incident from a different perspective. Mike’s stepfather was Vic Wingate, who was widely believed to be physically abusive to the kid; and Vic worked for Shanahan’s Garage, and Shanahan owned a tow-truck. Could it have been Vic behind the wheel? He thought about that for a second and then dismissed it as fanciful.

  “Crow, we really do have more important fish to fry than some trucker, probably drunk, who may or may not have even seen the kid. I mean, really.”

  “Kid got hurt.”

  A pause. “Hurt? How bad? Do you need an ambulance?”

  “No, nothing like that. Busted rib or two, some bruises. Got a bit of a knock on the head, though. I think he should go to the emergency room. At least have a doctor look at the rib and his head.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “On A-32, on the service pull-off near Shandy’s Curve. I can’t lug the kid all the way to the hayride with me, though, and if I take him over to the hospital, I won’t get to the hayride until well after eleven.”

  “That’s too late.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can’t you call his folks? Have them pick him up at the hayride?”

  “Mm. I guess so….”

  “Try it.”

  “Maybe. Guess who is stepdad is? Vic Wingate.”

  There was a thick silence on the line. “Oh. Great.”

  “Uh-huh.” Everyone in town knew Vic Wingate. Those who weren’t downright afraid of him merely loathed him. “Because of the accident, the kid’s really late. Vic has this thing about being home on time….”

  “Vic’ll probably give the kid a hiding for having the temerity to have his ribs broken.”

  “That would be my call,” Crow agreed.

  “So, what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to call him, actually. Tell him that Mike was run down by a reckless driver and is going to be needed as a material witness.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “We’ll never find whoever tried to run him down. The kid’ll never be called as a witness, you know that.”

  “Sure. I know it, and you know it, but Vic Wingate doesn’t know it. But if he thinks that the cops are going to want to talk to Mike occasionally, he might be a little less likely to slap the kid around. At least for a little while.”

  “I just don’t know….”

  “Oh, come on, Terry. You’re a politician, lie to the man. It’s no skin off your nose, and it might keep the kid from having some of his skin belted off.”

  “Oh…okay, okay. Whatever. Darn it, Crow, one of these days all that spillage from your bleeding heart is going to drown you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ll make the call or not?”

  “Yeah, I’ll make the call, but listen, Crow, you get your behind out to that hayride. We’ve got to get those kids out of there. The smelly stuff is really flying around here tonight.”

  “They still haven’t caught the psychos yet?”

  “No, and I’m hip-deep in Philly cops. It seems,” Terry said, dropping his voice, “that these psychos are the real deal. Not just some clowns running from a stickup at a Wawa. These are some serious bad boys, m’man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Terry’s voice dropped even lower. “One of the guys is some madman named Karl Ruger.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  “No, I—”

  “Ever heard of the Cape May Killer?”

  “Yeah. Who hasn’t?”

  Terry said nothing, letting Crow work it out. It didn’t take long. “Oh my God!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I mean…oh my God!”

  “Yep.”

  “Christ, Terry, are you sure?”

  “He was ID’d by the Philly cops.”

  “Oh. My. God.”

  “Yeah. So,” said Terry, “did you remember to bring your gun?”

  “Huh? Oh…yeah, I got it.”

  “Is it loaded?”

  “Of course it’s loaded.”

  “Then keep it close, my brother, ’cause Halloween’s come to town early this year.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “There are monsters out there tonight,” Terry said, but despite his flippant words, there was little humor in his voice.

  Crow switched off the phone and frowned into the shadows for a few moments; then he hit speed-dial for Val’s cell phone, but it rang through to her voice mail. He left a message for a callback, ended the call, walked back to the car, got in, and sat behind the wheel staring out at the night for a long time. Beside him, Mike sat patiently, waiting in silence. Finally, Crow turned to him and said, “I just spoke with the mayor. He’s going to call your mom and, uh, Vic, and have them pick you up out at the Haunted Hayride.”

  “At the hayride? How come?”

  “Well, it’s complicated,” Crow began, “and I’m trusting you to keep your mouth shut about this. Okay?” Mike nodded and Crow gave him an abridged version of the facts. By the time he was done, Mike’s eyes were very large and for the moment he looked more like a kid than ever. He licked his lips nervously.

  “Jeez-us!”

  “My feelings exactly.”

  “In Pine Deep?” Mike said wonderingly. “Did the mayor really make you a cop
again?”

  “Seems so.”

  “Wow.”

  “Mm.”

  “Well,” said Mike.

  “Well,” agreed Crow.

  They looked at each other for a dark minute, and then Mike said, “Crow…there’s something else I have to tell you. But…I don’t want you to think I’m whacked or something.”

  “Too late,” Crow said with a grin; then he caught the look on Mike’s face. The kid was serious. “Um, sure, Mike…fire away.”

  So, Mike told him about his encounter with the white stag. He described the animal and how it moved, what it looked like — and how it had growled at him. The only part he forgot to mention were the skid marks, which was unfortunate.

  Crow leaned against the car door and looked at him. A variety of thoughts ran through his head, chief among them a concern on whether Mike had hit his head hard enough to have caused some kind of hallucinations. The kid seemed pretty lucid, though, and even with his youth coloring the description it had been a pretty straightforward and orderly account.

  Mike asked, “Have you ever seen anything like that? I mean…isn’t that pretty weird?”

  This whole flipping night is pretty weird, thought Crow. He said, “Yeah, Mike, that’s off the hook.”

  Mike winced and touched Crow’s arm. “Crow — the whole slang thing? Grown-ups never get that kind of thing right.”

  Crow gave him a look. “Do you know what ‘precocious’ means?”

  “No.”

  “It’s Gaelic for ‘pain in the ass.’”

  Mike grinned. “So, what do you think?”

  “I think I haven’t a clue about that whole deer thing. I mean, if we were in the Middle Ages I’d say, okay, white stag or white hart — sign of impending doom. But we’re not in the Middle Ages and this is Pine Deep and I think you just saw an albino deer who was acting pretty funky.”

  “Are deer supposed to act like that?”

  “What am I, Animal Planet? I don’t know from deer. I sell rubber rats and fright masks. What I’ll do, though, is tomorrow I’ll call Nate Holland, he’s a park ranger, and I’ll ask him. Who knows? Maybe the deer is sick or something and that’s why it was acting so funny.”

  “Maybe,” Mike said, but it was clear he didn’t agree.

  Crow looked at his watch. “I really have to get out to the hayride, kiddo. You game to go with me, Iron Mike?” he said with a grin.

  “Fire up the converters, R2, we’re about to make the jump to light speed.”

  Crow chuckled. “Okay, but you’re R2D2, I’m Luke.”

  “No way.”

  “Hey, who’s driving?”

  “Hunh. Well, if you’re Luke Skywalker, where’s your light saber?”

  Crow’s smile dwindled slightly and his eyes took on a strange, distant quality. Then he leaned across the seat, thumbed open the glove compartment, and took out the Beretta. He eyed it to make sure the safety was on and then tucked it in his waistband, where it once again felt like a block of sinister ice against his skin.

  “That enough of a light saber for you?”

  Mike swallowed the watermelon in his throat. “It’ll do,” he said.

  Crow turned the key and Missy sprang to life. With barely a squeal of tires he pulled the car back onto the road and headed toward the hayride at a sedate eighty-five miles an hour.

  (3)

  Terry hung up the phone with a sigh, knowing it was going to be a very long night. Around him, the station house was in full furor, with officers coming and going, phones ringing, chatter filling the air. For a stretch of moments, Terry just stood by the desk, fingertips still resting lightly on the curved back of the phone, lost in musings. He thought how odd it was that Crow had encountered Mike Sweeney. It bothered him for some reason that he couldn’t quite touch. There was something about that kid that had always bothered Terry. Every time he saw him pedaling down Main Street with his canvas bag of papers it always gave him a weird feeling in his gut. Not something he could put his finger on, just a little flicker of the creeps. Weird kid, he thought, then shook his head to clear his thoughts. He had enough things to worry about, primarily the organization of a real honest-to-God manhunt in Pine Deep. Lord, he thought, this is all I need, and Halloween just a month away.

  He went into the men’s room, closed the door, and locked it. From an inner pocket he took out his bottle of Xanax and popped one, washing it down with handfuls of water from the tap. His morning dose of clozapine had kicked in, and he could feel his bowels cement shut. Though he didn’t get the drowsiness his shrink had warned him of, he hadn’t had a good bowel movement since he’d started the antipsychotic. With the Xanax on top of the other drug he felt he might be able to get through the rest of the day.

  He washed his face, pressing cupped hands full of cold water to his face for a long moment, patted himself dry, straightened his tie, and went back out to the squad room.

  Detective Sergeant Ferro was talking earnestly with Gus Bernhardt, but the chief glanced up and waved him over. “D’you have a minute?”

  “Sure,” Terry said, but as he began to move he caught sight of himself reflected in the large picture window across from the desk. The darkness without and the bright fluorescents within transformed the glass to a dark and opaque mirror. Terry saw himself reflected in the polished-coal surface, saw his own size and brawn, he saw his red beard and red hair, but the darkened glass distorted things, shaded his hair to black and deepened the wells of his eyes so that his reflection looked like that of a bearded skull without eyes or expression, a scowl devoid of humor or compassion. He stood and stared at the distorted reflection, remembering his dreams of the last few nights. The beast reflected in the store windows of a burning town. Then he made a face of self-disgust at his own ridiculous paranoia and turned away to join the others.

  As he left, the mirrored glass surface of the window was wiped clean for a moment, but then another image gradually appeared. It seemed to come forward toward the light, like someone stepping out of deep shadows into pale lamplight. If anyone had been watching, the image might have just seemed like someone stepping out of the darkness beyond the glass to a point of nearness where the glass once more became transparent; but anyone on the other side of the glass would have known this wasn’t true: there was no one outside the chief’s office, no one in the street at all. Yet the image remained. Not a figure outside, not a reflection of anyone inside, for inside the station there was no little girl with bright red curly hair and bright blue eyes and a dark green dress. That image appeared only in the darkness of the glass. A pretty little girl, with an oval face and a stuffed rabbit clutched in the child’s hand. A lovely face, even though streaked with blood; a pretty dress once, but which hung now in blood-soaked tatters.

  The little red-haired girl watched the big red-haired man move away, watched with troubled eyes as he went over to the policemen and began to talk. A tear like a single pear-shaped diamond appeared on her cheek. It paused for a moment, and then rolled slowly down her face, tumbling over the streaks of blood, becoming tainted with red, metamorphosing into a tear of blood as it wended its way down to her chin. By the time it reached the point of her chin, the image in the darkened window had faded and was gone.

  (4)

  Val Guthrie stared into the black eye of the pistol, her face blank except for a small half smile on her lips.

  “What?” she asked softly.

  Karl Ruger’s smile swelled like a hammer-struck thumb; his dark eyes fairly twinkled with wit and gentlemanly charm. He stepped forward and pressed the barrel into Val’s stomach and like a storm wind, pushed her backward into the house. Without looking he hooked a heel around the edge of the door and swung it shut. It closed with a mild click.

  The absurdity and total shock of this man with the feeble-looking little gun still held Val in a bemused thrall. She looked down past her breasts to where the hard metal of the gun made a soft dent in her midriff.

  “What…?” she asked
again. Her mouth worked, trying to say more, but her brain possessed no adequate vocabulary for this kind of thing.

  “Val? Who is it?” Her father’s voice floated from the kitchen with amiable curiosity, but it might have been the howl of a banshee for the effect it had on Val’s befuddled mind. As if a strong wind had blown sharply across her brain, her wits cleared and abruptly she was back in her own consciousness. There was a gun pressing against her stomach and the smiling man was pushing her backward into her own house.

  “Dad!” she cried out in a sharp, shrill voice, and a moment later something struck her face so hard and fast that her newly returned awareness was swept from the saddle. She reeled away and slammed into the wall, only dimly aware that it was a hand that had struck her, not a bullet. The hand had been so fast that she hadn’t seen it even twitch, let alone have time to duck the blow. The whole right side of her face burned as if the man had splashed her with boiling water, and tears sprang into her eyes.

  “Val?” she heard her father call. “Jesus Christ! Who the hell are—”

  Val couldn’t see a thing; stars swirled with firework frenzy before her eyes, and before she could shake her head clear, something clawed at her hair and then wrenched her backward with horrible force. She staggered and fell back against a firm yet yielding surface. A body. She could feel fingers snarled in her hair and then something that was cold-hot pressed into the soft flesh below her right ear. Something very hard, small, and round.

  A whispery voice spoke and all around her the world froze.

  “Stop right there, old fella, or I’ll blow this bitch’s brains all over the wallpaper and all over you, too. You want that? No? Then just stand right there.”

  Val’s eyesight cleared and she saw her father standing just inside the hallway, face shocked and pale, body held unnaturally straight. Behind him, farther down the hall, was the silhouetted form of Connie, standing with both hands pressed against her mouth.

  “Who the hell are you?” demanded her father, his eyes blazing, fists balled at his sides.

  “The bogeyman,” said Karl Ruger with his graveyard whisper voice. “Now shut the fuck up.”

  Guthrie shut up, but he looked desperately at Val. Val’s eyes were streaming with tears of pain, and her heart felt as if it were going to kick its way out of her chest.