“I think Mr. Crow gets the point.”
“Yeah, Terry Wolfe said something,” Crow agreed. “So, why’d he do it?”
Ferro shrugged. “It’s possible there was a power struggle over who was going to lead the group and Ruger flipped out on his partner.”
“Sounds thin.”
“It is thin, and it’s just a guess. Another guess is that there was some kind of dispute over the money and drugs, which is an idea I can more easily live with. We’re talking about a lot of money, and a very large amount of very expensive cocaine. People have killed each other for just a snort of coke, let alone a fortune in it.”
Crow grunted and shook his head. He felt himself losing interest in the criminal aspect of the case. He believed — knew — that he’d shot Ruger and that the bastard was dead or next to it somewhere in the fields or in the forest just beyond the Guthrie farm. Probably the latter, and in that case his bones would turn to dust before anyone found him. The forest around Dark Hollow was dense, largely impassible, and it seldom gave up its dead. Just to be polite, he said, “So what’s next on the agenda for you guys?”
Ferro waved a hand. “Oh, the investigation is proceeding. We’re pursuing various leads. We have teams out checking all the likely routes of escape….”
“Meaning you have bubkes.”
“Meaning,” Ferro nodded slowly, “that we have bubkes.”
Crow sniffed. “You know you’re never going to find him.”
“Rest assured, sir,” added Ferro, “if Karl Ruger is still in Pine Deep — we will find him.”
Crow open his eyes and studied the cop. “There’s some bad woods out there, Mr. Ferro. You sure about that?”
LaMastra shifted uncomfortably in his seat, coughed, and brushed a fleck of lint from his mud-spattered cuffs. Ferro smiled thinly at Crow. “I am very damn sure about that, Mr. Crow.”
Crow closed his eyes, settled back against the pillow, looked up into his own interior darkness, and thought: Bullshit. You’re never going to find him.
Chapter 21
(1)
Dr. Saul Weinstock snapped the cuff of the latex glove against his wrist, adjusted his surgical mask, and strolled into the autopsy suite in the Pinelands Hospital morgue. The CD player was playing John Hammond’s “Wicked Grin,” which Weinstock always considered good cutting music. Also on the changer were two Elvis Costello albums, Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, and the second greatest hits album by the Eagles. It was going to be a long morning.
There were three autopsies stacked. One was a little girl from Crestville, almost certainly a SIDS case, and the other two were tied into what was going on in town. Poor Henry Guthrie, whom Weinstock was going to leave for a colleague to do. His family had been friends with the Guthries since his grandfather’s time, and Weinstock didn’t very much relish imposing the necessary indignities of an autopsy on a man he greatly admired. It felt ghoulish and rather rude.
The third case was before him on a stainless steel table, still in the dark gray zippered body bag, fresh from the crime scene on A-32.
Weinstock took the clipboard off the hook on the side of the table, switched on the tape recorder by stepping on the treadle positioned under one corner of the table.
“This examination is dated September thirtieth, beginning at 1035 hours. This autopsy is carried out by Saul Weinstock, M.D., deputy chief coroner for Bucks County and senior staff physician for Pinelands College Teaching Hospital, and performed under the authority of Judge Evan Doyle, justice of the peace for the Township of Pine Deep. The name of the decedent is believed to be…” He consulted the clipboard, “…one Anthony Michael Macchio, age thirty-seven, a resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”
That said, he pulled down the zipper and parted the plastic folds.
Saul Weinstock stood there and stared as the tape rolled on, beholding the handiwork of Tow-Truck Eddie, the Sword of God.
“Holy shit!” he said, and it forever became part of the permanent record of the case.
(2)
When Vic got back to Shanahan’s the place was deserted. There should have been five mechanics on shift, including himself. One was down with a cold, one had just not shown up that day, one, Sammy, was out road-testing a car and probably parked somewhere with a sandwich and a cold beer, and the other guy had been called in to the chief’s department for some kind of reinstatement bullshit. It pissed Wingate off, because there were four jobs that absolutely had to be done that day, and one was a valve job that was a real prick. Sammy should have been there working on it, not tooling around in Dr. Crenshaw’s BMW. Road test, my ass, thought Vic. He glanced at the wall clock. Half past two. Shit! There was no way that he was going to get out of there any earlier than six, and maybe not that early.
With the backpacks full of bloodstained cash still locked in his truck, he was uneasy. He wanted to get it home, clean it up, count it, and then start spreading it around where it would do the Man — and himself — the most good, but he couldn’t blow off his job because he absolutely did not want to do anything that would give him a high profile. His name had already been on the lips of the mayor and that jerk, Crow — all because of Mike — and he wanted to drop completely off the radar.
Grumbling, he snatched up the worksheet on the pissant little Saturn in bay two and glowered at it. Brake job. Well, that wasn’t too bad, time-consuming but easy. He found the keys in the office and moved the car onto the ramps of the lift, put on the emergency brake, and hopped out. The old hydraulics wheezed as they lifted the bright red car six and a half feet off the grease-spattered floor. Vic hooked a droplight on the chassis and set to work with an impact wrench. As he worked, he thought about the kid. Fucking kid. Fucking four-eyed little sissy piece of shit. Vic hated Mike, had hated him ever since he’d first seen him sucking on Lois’s tit. Scrawny little shit-heels. Vic found it nearly impossible to believe that Mike was actually the son of…well, the offspring of someone so powerful.
He wondered if the kid would have grown up different if he’d known who his dad really was, instead of growing up thinking he was the son of that jackass John Sweeney, the fucking loser Lois had married before. Maybe if the kid had known who his real father was he’d have grown up with some brick in his dick. But no…the Man didn’t want the kid to know. He wanted things kept quiet for reasons Vic could certainly understand, but it still rankled him. A kid should be brought up to respect the father. Honor the father. Someone like the Man deserved to be honored, especially by his own son. But no, the Man just wanted the kid raised and protected — at all costs protected. At least, Vic thought with grudging approval, the Man did not require a hands-off policy for the little shit. The Man couldn’t care less if Vic pounded the piss out of Mike morning, noon, and night as long as no life-threatening harm ever came to him. Personally Vic thought the Man worried too much about the kid. The no-balls little punk could never be a threat to the Plan. Never. Vic firmly believed that, no matter what the legends said. Kid was only a useless piece of meat. But…
He sighed, thinking about it, about the Man, about the Return, about the kid. It really torqued his ass that the kid always had his nose in a goddamn book. Thought he was so smart — but he didn’t know squat. Couldn’t even hold a football let alone throw one. Had posters of superheroes up all over his room. Vic shook his head. When he’d been fourteen, Vic had had posters of Farrah Fawcett and Barbara Carrera all over his room, not Green-fucking-Lantern and that faggy-looking Cyclops. Real women from the real world, not some dorky superjocks. When he’d been fourteen, he’d had a stack of Penthouse magazines a yard high in his closet. When he’d been fourteen he was buying a pack of Trojans every week or so. He doubted if that puke kid even knew how to put one on, let alone what to do with it afterward.
Goddamn! Why did the kid have to be such a pain in the ass? Why did he have to push it all the time? Like giving him that spooky smile last night. All it did was make more trouble for him, for Vic, who tried to set some
kind of an example of how to grow up to be a man, even if the Man didn’t tell him to. The kid pushed it, though. He always pushed it; and when he pushed it, Vic just plain had to slap the kid back into place. How else was the little shit going to learn any damn thing about life? If the little idiot had any kind of brains, then maybe he’d understand that Vic was just trying to set him straight, make him tough, teach him to be strong. After all, he was the Man’s only human son. Vic just couldn’t stand to see his son grow up to be a wimp-ass piece of shit. Did the kid ever get it? Fuck no! All he did was cry like a little girl. Last night, well, that was the topper, wasn’t it? Having the fucking mayor call him and tell him to go pick the kid up, at the Haunted Hayride no less. God! Vic wondered if the kid still had any idea of how dangerous that had been. Probably not. How could he? He had no idea what was in the woods out beyond Dark Hollow.
Vic paused in his reflections and allowed himself a smile. Well, it wouldn’t be long before the kid did find out. Soon, they’d all find out.
Still smiling, he set about the brake job, pleased with the way the future was spreading out before him. Vic worked in silence, unaware of the bright blue sky beyond the half-closed garage doors, and the golden, enriching sunlight. Unaware, also, of the tall, gray-skinned phantom who stood across the road and watched him from the shadow of a skeletal old maple tree. The stiff breeze whipped at the Bone Man’s clothes and carried away flecks of dried graveyard mud.
Then abruptly Vic straightened and looked up — not across the street to where the image of the Bone Man was fading into illusion like a sun dog, but instead he looked inward, his head cocked as he listened.
Vic lowered his wrench and let it dangle from his greasy fingers as he heard the voice speak to him in a soft, secret whisper. Vic smiled a very ugly smile and set down his wrench. Screw the workload. He quickly cleaned his hands, shut off the lights, hung a CLOSED sign in the window, and locked the door on his way out. He climbed into his pickup and for the second time that day headed out of town toward the abandoned farm that bordered Dark Hollow. He never stopped smiling.
(3)
Terry hid in a bathroom stall for half an hour, fighting a case of the shakes that was so bad that he had uncontrollable diarrhea. Trousers down around his ankles, head bowed and held tightly in both hands, he waited it out until the Xanax finally kicked in. Each pill took longer to work and did less, but at least the shakes finally eased up.
When he was sure the bathroom was empty he left the stall, washed in the sink, combed his hair, and straightened his clothes as best he could. Then he went to meet Gus in the doctors’ lounge.
“Ah, there you are,” Gus Bernhardt said. He was sitting on the couch over by the coffee station.
Shit! Terry thought, the use of the expletive not even hitting a speed bump in his brain. For one crazy second he considered fleeing, but then he spotted Ferro and LaMastra as well, sitting in chairs that flanked the couch. Son of a bitch.
“Your Honor,” Ferro said mildly. “We were just discussing our options with the media. The chief here wants to go public with the story and my partner and I feel it would be best to keep things low-key. No sense exciting the citizens and drawing rubberneckers.”
“Yeah,” LaMastra agreed, “a manhunt is worse than a fire for bringing out every idiot with a video camera for fifty miles around.”
Still standing half in and half out of the door, Terry looked from one to the other and felt like screaming. Were they all crazy? Who the hell cared what the media thought? Or the tourists? Or any of this? He just wanted to get out — to crawl out of his own skin and just run. His best friend was in the hospital, along with every surviving member of his girlfriend’s family. Henry Guthrie, one of the most respected and influential farmers in the area, was dead. Madmen were having their way with the residents, and not twenty-four hours ago Terry’s little sister — his dead little sister — had called him up on the phone. He couldn’t give a rat’s ass for what did or did not make the papers.
But old habits die hard, so by reflex his face assumed an approximation of his Mr. Mayor facade and he cleared his throat, entered the room, and sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs.
“Let’s play it your way, Sergeant,” Terry said curtly. “I don’t want to have to go on TV and explain it fifty times. Not now.”
“I fully agree” Ferro began but Terry cut him off.
“In fact I don’t want to release anything to the press until we have actually accomplished something,” he said with a touch of asperity.
LaMastra gave a surreptitious little silent whistle and raised his eyes significantly to Ferro, whose face had become wooden.
“As you say, Your Honor.”
Terry rubbed his red-rimmed eyes and sighed. In the back of his mind Mandy’s voice was whispering to him over the phone. The force necessary to keep a bland smile on his face was immense.
Ferro opened his mouth and was about to add something else when the lounge door opened and a very weary-looking doctor came in, his green skullcap and surgical scrubs stained with unpleasant splotches of various colors and viscosities. He sketched a weary wave, lumbered bleary-eyed over to the coffee station, and poured himself a cup of very strong black coffee in a chipped ceramic mug that said: #1 DAD.
Sipping the coffee, he ambled over and sank wearily down onto the couch beside Gus. He crossed his ankles and rested them on the coffee table, and Terry could see that the soft paper scrub booties he wore over his shoes were spattered with dark drops of dried Betadine. The doctor looked bleakly at the gathered faces, sipped his coffee, and sighed.
“Doc, have you met Detective Sergeant Ferro and Detective LaMastra?” Terry said, and the doctor gave them small nods.
“Yeah, but last night things were a little too busy to be social.” The doctor toasted them with his mug. “Saul Weinstock.” He tugged the green skullcap off, stared for a moment at the sweat stains that darkened the soft papery material, and then tossed it onto the table. Weinstock was thirty-five, looked thirty, and had a face that looked remarkably like a younger, tougher Hal Linden. A chai on a gold chain glittered from within the tangle of curly black chest hair.
Terry said, “Dr. Weinstock is the administrator here at Regional, as well as the chief surgeon and county coroner.”
“In small towns we wear a lot of hats,” Weinstock said with a small grin. “I also double as the mailman and the fire chief.”
“Uh…really?” LaMastra asked.
“No,” said Weinstock.
“Oh.”
The doctor glanced at Terry. “Christ, you look like shit.”
“Been a long couple of days, Saul,” Terry said. “So, where do we stand?”
“Well, that’s a loaded question. Which do you want first, the good news, the so-so news, the bad news, or the really bad news?”
“How about in that order?”
“Okay, the good news.” Weinstock had a clipped but affable voice. “Officer Rhoda Thomas is an exceptionally hardy and fit young lady. We removed two 9-millimeter bullets from her last night, and she is doing very well. She’s conscious and aware.”
“Prognosis?” asked Ferro.
Weinstock shrugged. “She’ll be fine. No truly life-threatening damage, except for the collapsed lung, and we fixed that. She gets the right P.T. and she’ll be playing tennis in the spring, no problem. In a couple of months, you’ll have to be a damn close friend to even see the scars.”
“Good,” Terry said. “And Crow?”
“Oh, also good news there. I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself for taking up bed space. Pissant little wounds both of them. If he didn’t eat at McDonald’s so much he probably wouldn’t have had big enough love handles for the bullets to graze. He’ll be out of here tomorrow.”
“What about his face?”
“Jeez, have you seen it?” Weinstock asked with a malicious grin. “Looks like something out of a Frankenstein movie, but that’s just bruising, couple lacerations. Piddling st
uff. He’ll have a couple of scars, sure, but nothing that will spoil his looks.”
“What about his girlfriend?” asked LaMastra.
“Val? Well, that’s the so-so news. She has a couple of cracked ribs, some torn cartilage, a helluva lot of facial bruising, and assorted minor lacerations. Her shoulder was wrenched, but that’s just a sprain, nothing to worry about. We shot her up with some cortisone, and I had our sports med guy take a look at her and he said she’d be doing cartwheels in a few weeks. In short, the body trauma is in no way debilitating, so all that will heal.” He blew across the surface of his cup and then took a careful sip. “The real issue is the emotional and psychological trauma. I mean, she was threatened by a madman, was injured while fighting for her life, she more or less saw her father get gunned down, and saw her boyfriend get shot. That’s one hell of a lot to take in one night.”
“Val’s as tough as iron, Saul,” said Terry.
The doctor nodded. “I agree. I’ve known Val forever. Hell, my uncle David delivered her…she used to babysit my sister and me. I know she’s tough, and I think if anyone could recover from the psychic trauma of this, then she’s the one. This morning I had a long talk with her, and she’s tearing herself up with guilt.”
“Guilt?” asked Gus. “For what?”
“For leaving her father to die out in the field while she went to help her brother and sister-in-law, then for being too traumatized to help him after all the fireworks were over. No, no, don’t say it. We all know that that’s just grief talking, but grief coupled with this kind of trauma can really do a number on a person. Seen it too many times.”
“So,” asked Terry slowly, “will she recover? I mean, in your medical opinion?”
Weinstock sipped the steaming coffee, then paused and stared into the middle distance. “It is my considered medical opinion that it beats the hell out of me. She’ll need a good therapist, probably.”
“Swell,” grunted Terry. “What about Connie?”
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