Still Life with Crows

by Preston; Child

  He switched his radio to the frequency of the county dispatcher.

  “Unit twenty-one to Dispatch,” he said.

  “Hiya, Tad,” came the voice of LaVerne, who worked the day shift. She was sweet on Tad and, had she been maybe twenty years younger, perhaps he might have felt the same way.

  “LaVerne, anything new?” he asked.

  “Someone at Gro-Bain just reported a vehicle parked by the side of the approach road. Seems abandoned.”

  “What’s the model?” Tad didn’t have to ask for the make. Except for Art Ridder’s Caprice and the police ’91 Mustangs, bought secondhand from the Great Bend PD, just about every car in town was AMC. It had been the only dealership within an hour’s drive. Like so much else, though, it had closed down years ago.

  “Hornet, license plate Whiskey Echo Foxtrot Two Niner Seven.”

  He thanked LaVerne before slipping back into more formal jargon. “Unit twenty-one, moving,” he said, replacing the radio.

  That would be Stott’s Hornet. No doubt the guy was sleeping in the back, like he had the last time his shitbox broke down outside of town. He’d curled up and made a nice little evening out of it, just the two of them, him and Old Grand-Dad.

  Tad put the cruiser in gear and pulled away from the curb. It was the work of fifteen seconds to leave the town behind. Four minutes later, he turned into the plant road. There was a huge semi-load of live turkeys lumbering ahead of him, laying down a stink of turkey shit on the road so thick you could almost see it. Tad overtook the semi as quickly as he could, glancing over at the stacked cages full of terrified turkeys, their eyes bulging.

  Tad’s job had carried him into the Gro-Bain plant a couple of times. His first visit was right before Thanksgiving, and that year he and his widowed mother had enjoyed a nice pork roast. It had been pork roast ever since. Tad was glad he had never seen a pig farm.

  There it was: Stott’s Hornet, parked by the side of the road, almost invisible in the shadow of the corn. Tad stopped behind it, switched on his flashers, and got out.

  The windows were open, the car was empty. There was no key in the ignition.

  The turkey truck blasted by, rocking the corn on either side of the road and leaving behind the stench of diesel and panicked poultry. Tad turned away with a wince. Then he pulled his radio from his belt.

  “Yeah?” came Hazen’s response when he called.

  “I’m here at Stott’s car. It’s parked on the access road leading to Gro-Bain. It’s empty, no sign of Stott.”

  “Figures. He’s probably sleeping it off in the corn.”

  Tad looked out into the sea of corn. Somehow, he didn’t think anyone would choose to sleep in there, even drunk. “You really think so?”

  “Sure I do. What else?”

  The question hung in the air.

  “Well . . .”

  “Tad, Tad. You can’t let this craziness get to you. Not every missing person turns up murdered and mutilated. Look, I’m out here at the dog. And guess what?”

  “What?” Tad felt a constriction in his throat.

  “It’s just a dog hit by a car. Still got its tail and everything.”

  “That’s good.”

  “So listen. You know Willie as well as I do. His car breaks down and he sets off on foot to wet his whistle at the Wagon Wheel. He’s got his usual hip flask in his back pocket, and he nips it until it’s gone. On the way, he decides to take a little snooze in the corn. And that’s where you’ll find him, hungover as hell but otherwise intact. Cruise back along the road slow, you’ll probably find him in the shade of the ditch. Okay?”

  “Okay, Sheriff.”

  “That’s a boy. You be careful, huh?”

  “Will do.”

  As Tad was about to get back in the cruiser, he noticed something gleaming in the dirt beside Stott’s Hornet: an empty pint bottle. He walked over, picked it up, sniffed. The smell of fresh bourbon filled his nose.

  It was just as the sheriff had said. Hazen seemed to know everything in town, almost before it happened. He was a good cop. And he’d always acted like a second father to him. Tad should be grateful to be working for a guy like that, he really should.

  Tad put the pint into a plastic evidence bag and flagged the spot. The sheriff appreciated thoroughness, even in the little things. As he was heading back toward his cruiser, another truck passed. But this was a refrigerated truck coming from the plant, full of nice, sanitized, frozen Butterballs. No odor, no nothing. The driver waved cheerfully. Tad waved back, lowered himself into his car, and started back down the road, looking for Stott.

  Two hundred yards later, he stopped. To the left, the cornstalks had been broken. And on the right-hand side the corn was broken as well, a few stalks angled sharply to one side. It looked to Tad like someone had pushed into the corn on the left, while someone else had come out and crossed the road from the right.

  He stopped the cruiser, his sense of unease returning.

  He got out of the car and looked at the ground under the corn on the left side of the road. There was a disturbance in the dry clods. A disturbance that suggested someone had walked—or, more likely, run—through the dirt between two corn rows. A little deeper in, Tad could see some broken stalks and a couple of dry cobs that had been torn away and were now lying on the ground.

  Tad pushed into the first row, eyes on the ground. His heart was beating uncomfortably fast. It was hard to make out marks in the clumpy, dry earth, but there were depressions that looked like footprints, scuffed areas, places where clods had been overturned, showing their dark undersides. He paused, suppressing an urge to call the sheriff. The trail went on, and here it broke through another row of corn, flattening five or six stalks.

  There seemed to be more than one set of blurred, incomplete tracks. Tad didn’t want to articulate, even to himself, what this was starting to resemble. It looked like a chase. Jesus, it was really looking like a chase.

  He continued walking, hoping it would turn out to be something else.

  The trail went through another row, ran along the corn for a while, then broke through yet another. And then Tad came suddenly upon an area where there had been some thrashing in the dirt. A dozen stalks were broken and scattered. The ground was all torn up. It was a mess. It looked like something violent, really violent, had happened here.

  Tad swallowed, scanning the ground intently. There, finally—on the far side of the disturbance—was a clear footprint in the dry earth.

  It was bare.

  Oh, God,thought Tad, a sick feeling rising in his stomach.Oh, God. And his hand trembled as he raised the radio to his lips.

  Twenty-One

  Corrie Swanson brought the shuddering Gremlin into the dirt lot of Kraus’s Kaverns, parking it amidst a swirl of dust that spiraled up and away. She glanced at the dashboard clock: six-thirty exactly. God, it was hot. She snapped off the blaring music, threw open her door and got out, scooping up her new notebook as she did so. She walked across the lot and mounted the steps to the old, decaying Victorian pile. The oval windows in the door revealed little of the gloom beyond. She raised the big iron knocker and let it drop, once, twice. The soft creak of footsteps, then Pendergast appeared at the door.

  “Miss Swanson,” he said. “Punctual, very punctual. We, on the other hand, are running late. I must admit to a certain difficulty adjusting to the early dinner hour of this town.”

  Corrie followed him into the dining room, where the remains of what looked like an elaborate dinner could be seen beneath the glow of candles. Winifred Kraus sat at the head of the table, wiping her mouth primly with a lace napkin.

  “Please sit down,” said Pendergast. “Coffee or tea?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Pendergast disappeared into the kitchen, coming back with a funny-looking metal teapot. He filled two cups with a green liquid, handing one to Winifred and keeping the other himself. “Now, Miss Swanson, I understand you’ve completed your interview with Andy Cahill.”


  Corrie shifted uncomfortably in her chair, laid her notebook on the table.

  Pendergast’s eyebrows shot up. “What’s this?”

  “My notebook,” said Corrie with a defensiveness she didn’t quite understand. “You wanted me to interview Andy, so I did. I had to write it down somewhere.”

  “Excellent. Let’s have the report.” The FBI agent settled into his chair, his hands clasped together.

  Feeling awkward, Corrie opened the notebook.

  “What lovely handwriting you have, my dear,” said Winifred, leaning just a little too close.

  “Thanks.” Corrie edged the notebook away. Prying old gossip.

  “I went to Andy’s house yesterday evening. He’d been out of town, a 4-H trip to the state fair. I told him his dog had died, but I didn’t say how. I kind of let him assume it was hit by a car. He was pretty upset. He loved that dog, Jiff.”

  She paused. Once again, Pendergast’s eyes had drooped to mere slits. She hoped he wouldn’t go to sleep on her again.

  “He said that for the past couple of days, Jiff had been acting kind of strange. He wouldn’t go outside and went whining and cringing around the house, had to be dragged out from under the bed when it was time for his dinner.”

  She turned the page.

  “Finally, two days ago—”

  “Exact dates, please.”

  “August tenth.”

  “Proceed.”

  “On August tenth, Jiff, er, took a dump on the living room rug.” She looked up nervously into the silence that followed. “Sorry, but that’s what he did.”

  “My dear,” said Winifred, “you should say that the dogdirtied the rug.”

  “But he didn’t just get the rug dirty, he, you know,crapped on it. Diarrhea, in fact.” What was this meddling old lady doing anyway, listening to the report? She wondered how Pendergast could put up with her.

  “Please continue, Miss Swanson,” Pendergast said.

  “So anyway, Mrs. Cahill, who’s kind of a bitch, got pissed off and kicked Jiff out of the house and made Andy clean up the mess. Andy had wanted to take Jiff to the vet but his mom didn’t want to pay for it. Anyway, that was the last he ever saw his dog.”

  She glanced over at Winifred and noticed her face was all pinched up. It took her a moment to realize it was because she had used the word “bitch.”

  “What time was this?” Pendergast asked.

  “Seven o’clock in the evening.”

  Pendergast nodded, tenting his fingers. “Where do the Cahills live?”

  “It’s the last house on the Deeper Road, about a mile north of town, not far from the cemetery and just before the bridge.”

  Pendergast nodded approvingly. “And Jiff was wearing his collar when he was ejected from the house?”

  “Yes,” Corrie said, concealing a stab of pride that she’d thought to ask the question.

  “Excellent work.” Pendergast sat up. “Any news on the missing William Stott?”

  “No,” said Corrie. “They’ve got a search going. I heard they were bringing a plane down from Dodge City.”

  Pendergast nodded, then rose from the table, strolled to the window, folded his hands behind his back, and looked out over the endless corn.

  “Do you think he was murdered?” asked Corrie.

  Pendergast continued looking out over the corn, his dark figure accented against the evening sky. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the avian fauna of Medicine Creek.”

  “Right, sure,” said Corrie.

  “For example,” Pendergast said, “do you see that vulture?”

  Corrie drew up to his side. She could see nothing.

  “There.”

  Then she saw it: a lone bird, silhouetted against the orange sky. “Those turkey vultures are always flying around,” she said.

  “Yes, but a minute ago it was riding a thermal, as it had been doing for the past hour. Now it’s flying upwind.”

  “So?”

  “It takes a great deal of energy for a vulture to fly upwind. They only do it under one circumstance.” He waited, staring intently out the window. “Now, observe—it’s made its turn. It sees what it wants.” Pendergast turned toward her quickly. “Come,” he murmured. “We don’t have any time to lose. We must get to the site—just in case, you understand—before the state trooper legions descend and ruin everything.” He turned toward Winifred and said, in a louder voice, “Excuse us, Miss Kraus, for the suddenness of our departure.”

  The old lady rose, her face white. “Not another—”

  “It could be anything.”

  She sat down again, wringing her hands. “Oh dear.”

  “We can take the powerline road,” Corrie said as she followed Pendergast out the door. “We’ll have to walk the last quarter mile, though.”

  “Understood,” Pendergast replied tersely, getting into the car and closing the passenger door. “This is one instance in which you can exceed the speed limit, Miss Swanson.”

  Five minutes later, Corrie was nosing the Gremlin down the narrow, rutted track that was known locally as the powerline road. She was familiar with this isolated, dusty stretch; this was where she came to read, daydream, or simply get away from her mother or the morons at the high school. The thought that a murderer might have lurked—mightstill be lurking—in these remote cornfields sent a shiver through her.

  Ahead, the vulture had been joined by a couple of others, and they were now circling slowly, lazily. The car bumped and scraped over the washboard ruts. The last glory of the sunset lay in the west, an orgy of bloody thunderheads rapidly fading to darkness.

  “Here,” said Pendergast, almost to himself.

  Corrie stopped and they got out. The vultures rose in the sky, apprehensive at their presence. Pendergast began to stride swiftly into the corn, and Corrie moved into step behind him.

  Abruptly, Pendergast stopped. “Miss Swanson,” he said. “You will recall my prior warning. We may well find something in the corn rather more disturbing than a dead dog.”

  Corrie nodded.

  “If you wanted to wait in the car . . .”

  Corrie fought to keep her voice sounding calm. “I’m your assistant, remember?”

  Pendergast looked at her inquiringly for a moment. Then he nodded. “Very well. I do believe you are capable of it. Please keep in mind your restricted SOC access. Touch nothing, walk where I walk, follow my instructions precisely.”

  “Understood.”

  He turned and began slipping through the rows of corn, silently and swiftly, brushing past ears that hardly rustled at his passage. Corrie followed behind, struggling to keep up. But she was glad of the effort; it kept her mind from thinking about what might lie ahead. But whatever it was, the thought of staying in the car, alone, in the gathering dark, was even less pleasant.I’ve seen a crime scene, she thought.I saw the dog. Whatever it is, I can take it.

  And then, suddenly, Pendergast stopped again. Ahead, the rows of corn had been broken and swept aside, forming a small clearing. Corrie froze at the agent’s side, the sudden shock rooting her in place. The light was dim, but not dim enough to spare her any of the horror that lay splayed just ahead.

  And still she was unable to move. The air lay still over the awful scene. Corrie’s nose filled with the odor of something like spoiled ham. She felt a sudden constriction in her throat, a burning sensation, a spasm of the abdominal muscles.

  Oh shit,she thought.No, not now. Not in front of Pendergast.

  Abruptly, she bent to one side and vomited into the corn; straightened; then bent and vomited again. She coughed, struggling upright, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Mortification, fear, horror all grappled within her.

  But Pendergast seemed not to notice. He had moved ahead and was kneeling in the center of the clearing, completely engrossed. Somehow, the sheer physical act of retching seemed to have broken her paralysis, perhaps even prepared her a little better for the awful sight. She wiped her mouth again, took a cauti
ous step forward, and stopped just inside the clearing.

  The body was naked, splayed on its back, arms thrown wide, legs apart. The skin was an unreal, artificial grayish-white. There was a sticky sheen to everything. The corpse lookedloose, somehow, as if the skin and flesh were liquefying, coming off the bones. And in fact theywere coming off the bones, she realized with a shudder. The skin of the face was hanging loose, separating from the jaw and teeth; flesh was sagging and splitting at the shoulder and white bone could be seen poking through. An ear lay on the ground, misshapen and slimy, completely detached from the body. The other ear was missing entirely. Corrie felt her throat constrict again. She turned away, closed her eyes briefly, consciously slowed her breathing. Then she turned back.

  The body was completely hairless. The masculine sexual organs had also fallen off, although again it looked as though an effort had been made to reattach them, or at least arrange them in the right place. Corrie had seen Stott around town, but if this was the body of the skinny drunk who ran the cleanup detail at Gro-Bain, there was no way to know. It didn’t even look human. It was as bloated as a dead pig.

  As the initial shock and horror began to ebb, she noticed other things about the site. Here and there, ears of corn had been arranged into strange geometrical shapes. There were a couple of objects fashioned in an extremely crude way out of corn husks. They might be bowls, or cups, or something else entirely; Corrie could not be sure.

  All of a sudden, she became aware of a loud droning sound, directly overhead. She looked up. A small plane was circling the site, flying low. She had not even heard its approach. Now the plane waggled its wings, veered away, and headed quickly north.

  She found Pendergast looking at her. “The search plane from Dodge. The sheriff will be here in ten minutes, and the state police shortly thereafter.”

  “Oh.” She could hardly work her mouth.

  Pendergast was holding his small flashlight in one hand. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Can you hold this light?”