Still Life With Crows p-4

by Douglas Preston

  The man looked from the menu to Maisie and back again, a strangely blank expression on his face. Then he spoke. “You must have access to high-quality Angus beef in these parts.”

  “We certainly do. I can cook a steak ten ways from Sunday. Fried, chicken-fried, grilled, broiled or pot-roasted or broasted. With Velveeta steak fries and green goddess salad. Rare, medium, or well done. You tell me how you want it and if I can’t do it, it don’t exist.”

  “Would you happen to have a sirloin cut?” he inquired. The man had a silken, almost buttery voice that, Ludwig noticed, had at least half the diner listening raptly.

  “You bet. Top sirloin, filet, New York strip, you name it, we got it.”

  There was a long silence. “You say you’re willing to prepare steak in any fashion?”

  “That’s right. We take care of our customers.” Maisie glanced over at Smit Ludwig. He smiled quickly. “Right, Smitty?”

  “That’s right, Maisie,” he replied. “The meatloaf is heaven.”

  “Then you better get to work and finish it!”

  Ludwig nodded, still grinning.

  Maisie turned back at the FBI man. “You tell me how you like it, and I’ll be glad to oblige.”

  “I wonder if you would be so kind as to bring me out a well-trimmed top sirloin of about six ounces for my inspection.”

  Maisie didn’t bat an eye at this request. If the man wanted to see the steak before she cooked it, the man would see the steak before she cooked it. Ludwig watched her go in the back and return with a nice filet. The best, Ludwig knew, she would save for Tad Franklin, who she had a soft spot for.

  She angled the plate under the man’s nose. “There you are. And you won’t find its equal until you get to Denver, I promise you that.”

  The man looked at the steak, then picked up his knife and fork and trimmed off the fat along one side. Then he handed the plate back to her. “I’d be grateful if you would run it through a meat grinder, set on medium.”

  Ludwig paused. Run a filet mignon through a meat grinder? How was Maisie going to react now? He practically held his breath.

  Maisie was staring at the FBI agent. The diner had gone very still. “And how would you like your, er, hamburger cooked?”

  “Raw.”

  “You mean very rare?”

  “I mean raw, if you please. Please bring it back to me with an uncooked egg, in the shell, along with some finely chopped garlic and parsley.”

  Maisie swallowed visibly. “Sesame or plain bun?”

  “No bun, thank you.”

  Maisie nodded, turned, and then—with a single backward glance—took the plate and disappeared into the kitchen. Ludwig watched her depart, waited a beat, and then made his move. Taking a deep breath, he picked up his coffee and strolled over, pausing in front of the FBI agent. The man looked up and fixed Ludwig with a long, cool gaze from a pair of extremely pale eyes.

  Ludwig stuck out his hand. “Smit Ludwig. Editor of theCry County Courier. ”

  “Mr. Ludwig,” said the man, shaking the proffered hand. “My name is Pendergast. Do sit down. You were at the press conference early this morning. I must say you asked some rather insightful questions.”

  Ludwig flushed at the unexpected praise and eased his creaky and not exactly youthful frame into the banquette opposite.

  Maisie reappeared in the swinging kitchen door. In one hand, she carried a plate mounded with freshly ground sirloin, in the other, a second plate with the rest of the ingredients, and an egg in an egg cup. She set both plates before Pendergast.

  “Anything else?” she asked. She looked stricken—and who wouldn’t be, Ludwig thought, running a decent sirloin like that through a meat grinder?

  “That will be all, thank you very much.”

  “We aim to please.” Maisie attempted a smile, but Ludwig could see she was thoroughly defeated. This was something utterly foreign to her experience.

  Ludwig—and the entire diner—watched as Pendergast sprinkled the garlic over the raw meat, added salt and pepper, cracked the raw egg on top, and carefully folded the ingredients together. Then he molded it with his fork into a pleasing mound, sprinkled parsley on top, and sat back to contemplate his work.

  Suddenly, Ludwig understood. “Steak tartare?” he asked, nodding toward the plate.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I saw somebody make that on the Food Network. How is it?”

  Pendergast delicately lifted a portion to his mouth, chewed with half-closed eyes. “All that is lacking is a ’97 Léoville Poyferré.”

  “You really should try the meatloaf,” Ludwig replied, lowering his voice. “Maisie has her strengths and weaknesses: the meatloaf is one of her strengths. It’s damn good, in fact.”

  “I shall take it under consideration.”

  “Where are you from, Mr. Pendergast? Can’t quite place the accent.”

  “New Orleans.”

  “What a coincidence! I went there for Mardi Gras once.”

  “How nice for you. I myself have never attended.”

  Ludwig paused, the smile frozen on his face, wondering how to steer the conversation onto a more pertinent topic. Around him, the low murmur of conversation had picked up once again.

  “This killing’s really shaken us up,” he said, lowering his voice still further. “Nothing like this has ever happened in sleepy little Medicine Creek before.”

  “The case has its atypical aspects.”

  It appeared Pendergast wasn’t biting. Ludwig knocked back his coffee cup, then raised it above his head. “Maisie! Another!”

  Maisie came over with the pot and an extra cup. “You need to learn some manners, Smit Ludwig,” she said, refilling his cup and pouring one for Pendergast as well. “You wouldn’t yell for your mother that way.”

  Ludwig grinned. “Maisie’s been teaching me manners these past twenty years.”

  “It’s a lost cause,” said Maisie, turning away.

  Small talk had failed. Ludwig decided to try the direct approach. He removed a steno notebook from his pocket and placed it on the table. “Got time for a few questions?”

  Pendergast paused, a forkful of raw meat halfway to his mouth. “Sheriff Hazen would prefer that I not speak to the press.”

  Ludwig lowered his voice. “Ineed something for tomorrow’s paper. The townspeople are hurting. They’re frightened. They’ve got a right to know.Please. ”

  He stopped, surprising even himself at the depth of feeling in his comments. The FBI agent’s eyes held his own in a gaze that seemed to last for minutes. At last, Pendergast lowered his fork and spoke, in a voice even lower than Ludwig’s own.

  “In my opinion, the killer is local.”

  “What do you mean, local? From southwestern Kansas?”

  “No. From Medicine Creek.”

  Ludwig felt the blood drain out of his face. It was impossible. He knew everyone in town. The FBI agent was dead wrong.

  “What makes you say that?” he asked weakly.

  Pendergast finished his meal and leaned back. He pushed his coffee away and picked up a menu. “How is the ice cream?” he asked, with a faint but distinct tone of hope in his voice.

  Ludwig lowered his voice. “Niltona Brand Xtra-Creamy.”

  Pendergast shuddered. “The peach cobbler?”

  “Out of a can.”

  “The shoo-fly pie?”

  “Don’t go there.”

  Pendergast laid down the menu.

  Ludwig leaned forward. “Desserts are not Maisie’s strong point. She’s a meat and potatoes kind of gal.”

  “I see.” Pendergast regarded him once again with his pale eyes. Then he spoke. “Medicine Creek is as isolated as an island in the wide Pacific. Nobody can come or go on the roads without being noticed, and it’s a twenty-mile hike through the cornfields from Deeper, the nearest town with a motel.” He paused, smiled faintly, then glanced at the steno book. “I see you’re not taking notes.”

  Ludwig laughed nervously. �
�Give me something I can print. There’s one unshakable article of faith in this town: the killer and the victim are both ‘from away.’ We have our share of troublemakers, but believe me, no killers.”

  Pendergast looked at him with mild curiosity. “What, exactly, constitutes ‘trouble’ in Medicine Creek?”

  Ludwig realized that if he wanted information, he was going to have to give some in return. Only there wasn’t much to give. “Domestic violence, sometimes. Come Saturday night we get our share of drunken hooliganism, drag racing out on the Cry Road. Last year, a B-and-E down at the Gro-Bain plant, that sort of thing.”

  He paused. Pendergast seemed to be waiting for more.

  “Kids sniffing aerosols, the occasional drug overdose. Plus, unwanted pregnancies have always been a problem.”

  Pendergast arched an eyebrow.

  “Most of the time they settle it by getting married. In the old days the girl was sometimes sent away to have her baby and it was put up for adoption. You know how it is in a small town like this, not a lot for a young person to do except—” Ludwig smiled, remembering back to the days when he and his wife were in high school, Saturday night parking down by the creek, the windows all steamed up . . . It seemed so long ago, a world utterly gone. He shook off the memory. “Well,” he said, “that’s about all the trouble we ever get around here. Until now.”

  The FBI agent smiled and leaned forward, speaking so softly Ludwig could barely hear him. “The victim has been identified as Sheila Swegg, of Oklahoma. A petty criminal and con artist. They found her car hidden in the corn five miles out on the Cry Road. It seems she’d been digging up at some Indian mounds in the area.”

  Smit Ludwig looked at Pendergast. “Thank you,” he said. Now, this was much better. This was more than a crumb. It was practically a whole cake. He felt a surge of gratitude.

  “And another thing. Arranged with the body they found a number of antique Southern Cheyenne arrows in almost perfect condition.”

  It seemed to Ludwig as though Pendergast was looking at him intently. “That’s extraordinary,” he replied.

  “Yes.”

  They were interrupted by a sudden commotion outside, punctuated by a voice raised in shrill protest. Ludwig glanced across the street and saw Sheriff Hazen marching a teenage girl down the sidewalk, toward his office. The girl was protesting gamely, digging in her heels, lunging against her handcuffs, her black fingernails cutting the air. He knew immediately who she was; it was all too obvious from the black leather miniskirt, pale skin, spiked collar, Day-Glo purple hair, and the glint of body piercings. A shrieked phrase managed to penetrate the plate glass of Maisie’s Diner—“eclair-eating, fart-biting, cancer-stick–smoking”—before the sheriff manhandled her through the door of the office and slammed it behind him.

  Ludwig shook his head in amused disbelief.

  “Who is she?” Pendergast asked.

  “Corrie Swanson, our resident troublemaker. I believe she’s what kids call a ‘Goth’ or something like that. She and Sheriff Hazen have a tiff going. Looks like he’s finally got something on her, judging from the cuffs.”

  Pendergast laid a large bill on the table and rose, nodding to Maisie. “I trust we shall see each other again, Mr. Ludwig.”

  “Sure thing. And thanks for the tips.”

  The door jingled shut. Ludwig watched the dark form of Special Agent Pendergast as he passed by outside the window and moved down the dusky street until he merged with the falling darkness.

  Ludwig slowly sipped his coffee, mulling over what Pendergast had said. And as he did so, the front-page story he’d been assembling in his head changed; he broke down the type, rewrote the opening paragraph. It was dynamite, especially the stuff about the arrows. As if the murder wasn’t bad enough, those arrows would strike a particularly unpleasant note to anyone familiar with the history of Medicine Creek. As soon as he’d gotten the paragraph right, he rose from the table. He was over sixty and his joints ached from the humidity. But even if he wasn’t the man he used to be, he could still stay up half the night, write a snappy lead with two scotches under his belt, slap together an impeccable set of mechanicals, and make deadline. And tonight, he had one hell of a story to write.

  Nine

  Winifred Kraus bustled about the old-fashioned kitchen, making toast, setting out a pitcher of orange juice, boiling her guest’s egg, and making his pot of green tea. Her busyness was an effort to keep her mind off the horrible news she had read that morning in theCry County Courier. Who could have done such a terrible thing? And the arrows they’d found with the body, surely that couldn’t mean that . . . She shook the thoughts from her head with a little shiver. Despite the strange hours Special Agent Pendergast kept, she was very glad to have him under her roof.

  The man was quite particular about his food and his tea, and Winifred had taken pains to make sure everything was perfect. She had even gotten out her mother’s old lace tablecloth and had laid it, freshly ironed, on the breakfast table, along with a small vase of freshly cut marigolds to make everything as cheery as possible. Partly it was to cheer her own distressed state.

  As she moved about the kitchen, Winifred felt her dread over the murder slowly supplanted by a sense of anticipation. Pendergast had asked to take the morning tour of the Kaverns. Well, he hadn’t asked exactly, but he’d seemed quite interested when she suggested it the night before. The last visitors to the Kaverns had been over a month ago, two nice young Jehovah’s Witnesses who took the tour and then had the kindness to spend most of the day chatting with her.

  Precisely at eight she heard a light tread on the stair and Mr. Pendergast came gliding into view, dressed in the usual black suit.

  “Good morning, Miss Kraus,” he said.

  As Winifred ushered him into the dining room and began serving breakfast, she felt quite breathless. Even as a girl, she’d loved the family business: the different people from all over the country, the parking lot full of big cars, the murmurs of awe and amazement during the tours. Helping out in the cave, doing tours, had been one way she’d tried to earn the approval of her father. And although things had changed completely with the building of the interstate up north, she’d never lost that feeling of excitement before a tour—even if it was a tour of one.

  Breakfast finished, she left Pendergast with that morning’sCry County Courier and went on ahead to the Kaverns. She visited the Kaverns at least once a day even when there were no visitors, just to sweep up leaves and replace bulbs. She now did a swift check and found that all was in tip-top order. Then she went behind the counter of the gift shop and waited. At a few minutes to ten, Pendergast appeared. He purchased a ticket—two dollars—and she led him along the cement walkway, down into the cut in the earth, to the padlocked iron door. It was another scorcher of a day, and the cool air that flowed from the cave entrance was pleasantly enticing. She unlocked and removed the padlock, then turned and launched into her opening speech, which hadn’t varied since her pa had taught it to her with a switch and ruler half a century before.

  “Kraus’s Kaverns,” she began, “was discovered by my grandfather, Hiram Kraus, who came to Kansas from upstate New York in 1888 looking to start a new life. He was one of the original pioneers of Cry County, and homesteaded a hundred and sixty acres right here along Medicine Creek.”

  She paused and flushed pleasurably at the careful attentiveness of her audience.

  “On June 5, 1901, while searching for a lost heifer, he came across the opening to a cave, almost completely hidden by scrub and brush. He came back with a lantern and axe, cut his way down the slope into the cave, and began exploring.”

  “Did he find the heifer?” Pendergast asked.

  The question threw Winifred off. Nobody asked about the heifer.

  “Why, yes, he did. The heifer had gotten into the cave and fallen into the Bottomless Pit. Unfortunately, she was dead.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Let’s see.” Winifred stood at the cave en
trance, trying to pick up the thread once again. “Oh, yes. Right about this time the motorcar was making its debut on the American scene. The Cry Road started to see some motorcar traffic, mostly families on their way to California. It took Hiram Kraus a year to build the wooden walkways—the same ones we will walk on—and then he opened the cave to the public. Back then, admission was a nickel.” She paused for the obligatory chuckle, grew a little flustered when none was forthcoming. “It was an immediate success. The gift shop soon followed, where visitors can buy rocks, minerals, and fossils, as well as handcrafts and needlepoint to benefit the church, all at a ten percent discount for those who have taken the Kaverns Tour. And now, if you will kindly step this way, we will enter the cave.”

  She pulled the iron door wide and motioned Pendergast to follow her. They descended a set of broad, worn stairs that had been built over a declivity leading into the bowels of the earth. Walls of limestone rose on both sides, arching over into a tunnel. Bare bulbs hung from the rocky ceiling. After a descent of about two hundred feet, the steps gave onto a wooden walkway, which angled around a sharp turn and entered the cavern proper.

  Here, deep beneath the earth, the air smelled of water and wet stone. It was a smell that Winifred loved. There was no unpleasant undercurrent of mold or guano: no bats lived in Kraus’s Kaverns. Ahead, the boardwalk snaked its way through a forest of stalagmites. More bulbs, placed between the stalagmites, threw grotesque shadows against the cavern walls. The roof of the cave rose into darkness. She proceeded to the center of the cavern, paused, and turned with her hands unfolded, just as her pa had taught her.

  “We are now in the Krystal Kathedral, the first of the three great caverns in the cave system. These stalagmites are twenty feet high on average. The ceiling is almost ninety feet above our heads, and the cavern measures one hundred and twenty feet from side to side.”

  “Magnificent,” said Pendergast.

  Winifred beamed and went on to talk about the geology of the chalk beds of southwestern Kansas, and how the cave had formed from the slow percolation of water over millions of years. She ended with a recitation of the names Grandfather Hiram had given to the various stalagmites: “The Seven Dwarves,” “White Unicorn,” “Santa’s Beard,” “Needle and Thread.” Then she paused for questions.