Ghost Road Blues pd-1

by Jonathan Maberry

  “More of a presence, you understand,” said Terry. “It helps everybody to see a warm body in a uniform. Shoot, I’ve even worn a badge a couple of times — back before I became mayor, of course.”

  “I see,” said Ferro. He pursed his lips. “Any chance we could reactivate some of these people?”

  “‘Reactivate’?” Gus echoed.

  “Yes. If this manhunt goes on longer than twelve hours, the officers on shift now are going to get tired. We’ll need replacements for them so we can keep the net as tight as possible. If we slacken at all, then Ruger and company will slip right through.”

  That would suit me, thought Terry. Aloud, he said, “Well, I more or less reinstated one fellow tonight. Malcolm Crow.”

  Gus wheeled on him. “Crow? Now why’n hell’d you do that?”

  Ferro and LaMastra exchanged a brief look. “Who’s he?” asked LaMastra.

  “A local shopkeeper,” Terry said.

  “He’s a drunken—” Gus began and Terry withered him with a glare.

  “Crow has been sober for years, Gus, and you bloody well know it.”

  “Once a drunk, always a drunk.”

  “Maybe, but he isn’t drinking now. Come on, Gus, even you have to admit he was a darned good officer.” Terry almost said, Crow was the only good cop this town ever had, but didn’t want to appear unkind in front of the Philly cops.

  Gus grunted.

  Ferro did not want to involve himself in the matter, but LaMastra asked, “What’s the beef? Did he drink himself off the force or something?”

  “No,” said Terry, still glaring at Gus. “He quit drinking before he ever even put on a badge.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  Gus opened his mouth to answer that, but Terry cut him off. “There is no problem,” he said slowly, putting firm emphasis on each word. Then he looked at Ferro. “Malcolm Crow was a superb cop. He might even have run for chief,” he said, intending the barb to hook itself in Gus’s flesh. “He had some issues from when he was a kid and got into the bottle for a while and, all right, he made a fool of himself for a year or two, but he also got himself sober. Started going to meetings and really turned things around. Became a decorated officer. Gus was opposed to a drunk working as a cop, but I vouched for Crow then and I vouch for him now. He’s been sober for years, as I said, and nowadays he’s a well-respected businessman, a cornerstone of our community, and”—again he focused his eyes on Gus—“a close personal friend of mine.”

  In truth Terry did have doubts about reinstating Crow and halfway regretted having done it on the spur of the moment. Had he been less overwhelmingly exhausted and less off-kilter he might not have done so. Crow had been a very good cop, and had been sober and going to AA meetings without a break for years, but it had also been a long time since he’d worn a badge and — as much as Terry hated to admit it to himself — Crow was so much of a goofball that it was hard to imagine him even taking what was happening right now with the proper seriousness. But he didn’t see what good admitting it would do now. Especially not in front of Gus and these other officers.

  Turning back to Ferro, he went on, “I reinstated him just temporarily so that he could go shut down our Haunted Hayride. It gives him double authority as a contract employee for the hayride and a law officer. That way he’ll have the clout to handle any arguments or protests that result. Tourists can get touchy, you know.”

  “Mm. We saw the signs on the way into town. Chief Bernhardt tells me that you own it.”

  “Yes, and I’m proud to say that it’s the biggest in the East Coast,” Terry said with one of his few genuine smiles of the day, “but it’s full of kids, and I felt it was best to shut it up for the night and send the kids home.”

  “Very smart thinking, sir,” said Ferro. “Is this Mr. Crow the man for the job?”

  “Crow,” said Terry firmly, “is the man for any job. Believe me.”

  Gus, it was clear, did not, but Ferro and LaMastra saw the look in Terry’s eyes, and they both nodded. “Fine,” Ferro said, “can we keep him on after he’s done that job? Help us out until this thing is over?”

  “I think he can be persuaded.”

  “Good, good, anyone else?”

  Gus cleared his throat. “I suppose we could make some calls. I don’t think we have enough uniforms and sidearms to go around, but we could issue badges and shotguns. Or have the replacements borrow the sidearms of the team going off-duty.”

  “Well, sir,” said Ferro, “I’ll leave you to work that part of it out for yourself. For my own part, if we don’t get some action in the next few hours, I’m going to call in a request for additional officers from Philly, and we may be hearing from the FBI soon.”

  “Why would the FBI bother with this?” asked Terry.

  “Well, sir, according to your map there, A-32 cuts back and forth over the Delaware River just here, and again here.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Well, that side of the river is New Jersey, this side is Pennsylvania.”

  “Again…so?”

  “Ah,” said Gus. “Something about interstate flight?”

  “Uh-huh,” said LaMastra. “Interstate flight is a federal rap, and that means the FBI can be asked to step in. But we probably won’t ask.” He directed this last comment to Ferro, who nodded.

  “Federal involvement is seldom a good thing. But that doesn’t matter right now. My captain has promised us at least a dozen officers.”

  “Get all the help you need,” Terry said. “I said it twice already, and I’m not joking, call in the National Guard if it’ll help. Let me be clear, Sergeant, I surely do not need Jack the Ripper slicing people up in Pine Deep. It’s bad for business, and it’s bad for me personally because I am friends with darn near everybody who lives around here. Please, do whatever — and I mean whatever—it takes to nail these three guys and get them the heck out of my backyard.”

  Ferro smiled a tiny smile, and gave Terry a curt nod. “We will do our very best, Mr. Mayor.”

  Terry nodded. Turning to Gus, he said, “C’mon, let’s get on the phone and see if we can’t raise some kind of posse.”

  “Hi-yo, Silver,” Gus muttered sourly and followed his boss over to the desks.

  Ferro and LaMastra stood looking at them, and then turned to stare up at the map, at the immensity of area that had to be covered in order to run Karl Ruger to ground. It was staggering.

  “What d’you think, Sarge?”

  Ferro shrugged. “Honestly?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I think this town is hip deep in shit.”

  “Yep. Pretty much how I would have put it.”

  (2)

  “Christ, you three look like a hockey team in the penalty box.”

  It was true enough. Val sat with a dish towel full of ice cubes pressed to her forehead; her father sat next to her with a similar compress on his torn eyebrow, still flushed and slightly goggle-eyed from the blow to his solar plexus; and Connie was dabbing at her face with an antimacassar from the couch, sopping up the water Ruger had dashed in her face to wake her up.

  Across from them, Ruger sipped a tall glass of Early Times.

  “You do realize,” he said in his cold whisper, “that all of this was unnecessary. If you would just follow the rules of my little Q and A, we’d all get along. Can’t we all just get along?” he said, and laughed. The joke was lost on them, but he gave a fatalistic shrug and kept his own good humor. “So, I think by now the rules should be clear. I will ask each one of you a question, or perhaps questions, and that person will answer. No committees, no debating societies. Just questions and answers. That’s pretty simple, isn’t it?”

  They stared at him, hating him, willing him death.

  He said, “Isn’t it?” leaning into the words.

  “Yes,” they each said.

  “Nice.” He sipped the sour mash and hissed with pleasure at the burn. “Okay. Now, Miss Val, I believe you were about to tell me about
your various boyfriends.”

  Val swallowed what felt like a cantaloupe in her throat. “I…don’t have any boyfriends.”

  “What? None at all? What about the one that lives in town?”

  “No. That’s been over for weeks. There’s no one.”

  Ruger smiled a slithery smile. “I find that kinda hard to believe, nice-looking piece like you. What’s the deal? Didn’t you give him enough?”

  Val just looked at him.

  “C’mon, I’m interested. Why’d you break up?”

  She managed what she hoped was a casual and dismissive shrug. “Just didn’t work out.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ruger’s dark eyes glittered like the glass eyes of a stuffed shark. “So nobody new, huh?”

  “No.”

  Val tensed, almost as afraid of more questions as she was of Connie blurting out the truth and screwing them all. She wasn’t entirely sure why she denied Crow’s existence, but some instinct had triggered her words when she had spoken. No boyfriend, no husband, no attachments that could somehow be used against her, or who could be hurt if she were to be used against them. Keep the man’s thoughts away from that kind of thinking. It was bad enough that Connie had mentioned Mark, Val’s brother, who was due home sometime soon.

  “Okay, you get two points for answering all your questions.” He winked at her. “Okay, Pop. Your turn. What kind of car do you have?”

  “A Bronco.”

  “Oh yeah? What year?”

  “Ninety-six.”

  “Any good?”

  For some reason, Guthrie felt a brief flash of cockiness. He said, “It gets lousy gas mileage in the city, the clutch sticks, and it has a shimmy when you get it above sixty.”

  Ruger blinked, and then he laughed. “Well, well.” He raised his glass to toast Guthrie and took a heavy knock of the whiskey. “Where are the keys?”

  “On a hook by the back door.”

  “Where is it parked?”

  “Right out back. Just outside the door.”

  “What color?”

  “Dark green.”

  “Any vanity plates?”

  Guthrie looked at him for a moment, uncomprehending.

  “I mean do you have one of those stupid plates that say 2-FAST or BIG BUX or any of that shit?”

  “No…no, just regular tags.”

  “Registration and inspection up to date?”

  “Of course.”

  “‘Of course,’” Ruger repeated, shaking his head. “I break into your house, kick your ass, and am planning to steal your car, and you sound offended when I ask if your inspection is up to date.”

  “The car’s fine. Why don’t you take it and go?”

  “I will, I will, but not yet. There’s just a few things I got to do yet.”

  The phone rang, but Ruger made no move to answer it. He merely let it ring itself out. He finished the drink and set the glass down primly on the side table. Val was amazed: he must have poured five fingers’ worth into the tall milk glass and he’d downed it all in six or eight gulps. How much whiskey was that? A quarter pint? What would he be like when the whiskey hit his system?

  “Okay, next question, Mr. Guthrie,” Ruger said with no trace of a slur in his voice. “Do you have a stretcher?”

  “A stretcher?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. A stretcher? Why would I have a stretcher?”

  “You got anything I could use as one?”

  Guthrie frowned. “I guess you could take a door off its hinges and use that. Who’s hurt?”

  “Hey, hey, now, I didn’t say you could ask any questions.”

  “Okay,” Guthrie said in a soft, placating voice. “Sorry.”

  “Okay then. How ’bout a wheelbarrow?”

  “Sure. We have a couple of those.”

  “Where?”

  “In the shed. Small yellow building next to the barn.”

  “Is it locked?”

  “No.”

  “No?” Ruger chuckled. “Aren’t you afraid of thieves?”

  Guthrie looked at him coldly. “Not usually much of an issue way out here.”

  Ruger just shook his head. “Okay, and how about rope? Or that gray tape, whaddya call it?”

  “Duct tape?”

  “Yeah, duck tape. You got any duck tape?”

  Guthrie nodded. “Couple rolls.”

  “Where?”

  “In the cellar.”

  “Rope?”

  “Some in the barn. Washing line, bailing twine in the cellar.”

  “Good, good.”

  Ruger rocked in his rocker for a little while, again pursing his lips, the smile coming and going, and his reptile eyes staring blackly at them. “Okay, then,” he said at length, “here’s the plan. Val, you are going to go fetch me some rope and some of that duck tape. You go fetch it and come right back.”

  Val’s heart hammered in her chest as she thought about all the things in the cellar. She stood up quickly and turned to go, but immediately Ruger was on his feet, too. He grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and looked into her eyes. She didn’t know what he was seeing there, but his face seemed angry at first, and then his smile crawled back. He slowly shook his head. “Uh-uh, honey. You sit your pretty ass back down. I was born at night, darlin’, but it wasn’t last night. Sit down.”

  She let her gaze fall away and slowly crept back to the couch and sat down. Her father handed her the ice pack she had dropped and she pressed it back it place. Connie was staring at her with a total lack of understanding.

  “I think,” said Ruger, reaching out with the toe of his shoe and nudging Connie’s knee, “that I’ll let the Stepford Wife go.”

  “M…me?”

  “Y…yes,” Ruger mocked, “y…you.”

  “Down the cellar?”

  “No, I want you to run down to the drugstore and fetch me a bottle of baby aspirin. Yes, the fucking cellar. Don’t you pay any attention?”

  “For rope?” Connie said in a five-year-old’s voice.

  “And tape. You get them and then hustle your white bread ass right back up here. No tricks, no stalling. Just get the stuff and come right back.”

  “By myself?” Connie seemed to be having a hard time grasping the specifics of her mission.

  Ruger rolled his eyes. “Jeez, can you really be this fucking dumb?” He looked at Val and Guthrie, who were studying the pattern of the rug on the floor. He sighed. “Okay, so you probably are this fucking dumb. Whatever. Just go and get the stuff and come right back.”

  Connie backed away from him, nodding numbly. She reached the entrance to the hallway, bumped against the door frame, half spun, and then fled down the corridor. Ruger saw her open the door at the far end and listened to her feet clattering on the wooden steps. He leaned against the door frame and called out, “Remember, darlin’, no games. Just find the stuff and hustle back.” Turning to Guthrie, he said, “She isn’t too bright, is she?”

  “She’s just scared.”

  “What about you?” he said to Val. “Are you scared?”

  “Of course I am,” she said bitterly.

  “Maybe, but you aren’t scared stupid like your sister.”

  “I’m scared enough, mister.” The image of the EPT test kit upstairs in the medicine cabinet flashed into her brain, unbidden and immediate. Her eyes wavered and fell away, down to her hands twisting in her lap.

  Ruger looked at her, measuring her. “Good,” he said after a slow moment.

  In the cellar, Connie tramped down the last steps, walked blindly past the gun cabinet, past the workbench with its collections of awls and screwdrivers and utility knives, past the wall phone, and made a hectic beeline for the closet where the clothesline was kept. She snatched up two plastic-wrapped fifty-foot lengths, and from a lower shelf she took a huge roll of dark gray duct tape. For some reason she clutched them to her chest as if they were sacred objects, spun on her heel, and fled back upstairs. She turned off the light and bathed all of the actual obj
ects of salvation in useless darkness.

  “Good girl, now go sit down.”

  Connie went obediently to the couch, turned, and sat down, smoothing her skirt around her. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, ankles together, eyes downcast. Ruger looked at her as if she were something from another planet, which, in a way, she was, if he was typical of the world that he came from. The bundles of rope lay on the coffee table, but Ruger held the roll of tape, tossing it lightly into the air and catching it one-handed.

  Val glanced at Connie, feeling sorry for her sister-in-law. It was apparent to Val that Connie had retreated — fled — into herself. Beyond the last name she’d taken in marriage she shared absolutely nothing in common with Val. Connie had grown up wealthy, soft, and sheltered. She was middling intelligent, good-hearted, truly loved Mark, aspired to no heights beyond maintaining a household, and apparently spent very little time in her own thoughts. Generally her chatter was borderline inane and Val routinely tuned it out when she could, and for the most part didn’t really like Connie very much. Now, though, she loved her and wanted to hug her and shelter her.

  She was also assessing Connie, wondering if maybe she had placed a 911 call downstairs, or had secreted a knife somewhere in her clothes, but as wonderful as that would be, Val doubted if it was true. Connie just wasn’t like that. As far as Val could see, if Connie had strength of any kind — either wit or courage — it was so deeply submerged that she was unaware of it.

  “Now,” said Ruger, pouring another finger of bourbon, “anyone want to guess why I had Miss Polly Purebred fetch this stuff?” He took a sip, then knocked it back. “No guesses? Well, I can see it in your eyes. If you think that I’m gonna tie you up, that’s right. That should tell you something, shouldn’t it?”

  Val shook her head.

  “I think he means,” said her father, “that he wouldn’t bother tying us up if he meant to kill us.”

  Val looked expectantly at Ruger. “You father’s on the ball, and he’s right, too. I didn’t come here to waste your sorry hillbilly asses. If I wanted to do that, I’d have done it already. So, maybe I’m not as much a bad guy as I seem, huh?”

  Val almost let loose a derisive snort, but caught herself.