Still Life with Crows

by Preston; Child

  “I think so.”

  “Excellent.”

  Corrie held her nose, took in a deep breath. Then she took the light, directed the beam as Pendergast indicated. The gloom was rapidly filling the air. A test tube had appeared out of Pendergast’s suit coat and now the agent was kneeling, putting invisible things into it with a pair of tweezers. Then another test tube appeared, and another, specimens going deftly into each one. He worked swiftly, moving around the body in ever narrower circles, every now and then murmuring low instructions about the placement of the light.

  She could already hear the faint siren of the sheriff’s car drifting over the corn.

  More quickly now, Pendergast was going over the body bit by bit, his face inches from the skin, plucking off something here, something there. The smell of rotting ham refused to go away, and she felt another twinge deep in her gut.

  The siren got louder and louder, then finally stopped. From beyond the fastness of corn, she heard a door slam, then another.

  Pendergast straightened up. All the paraphernalia had vanished, almost miraculously, into the folds of his well-pressed black suit.

  “Step back, please,” he said.

  They withdrew to the edge of the clearing just as the sheriff arrived, followed by his deputy. There were more sirens now and the sound of radios blaring in the corn.

  “So it’s you, Pendergast,” said the sheriff, coming over. “When’d you get here?”

  “I’d like permission to examine the site.”

  “As if you haven’t already, I’ll bet. Permission denied until we’ve completed our own examination.”

  Now more men were crashing through the corn: state troopers and grim-looking men in blue suits whom Corrie guessed were members of the Dodge City homicide squad.

  “Set up a perimeter here!” bawled the sheriff. “Tad, lay out some tape!” He turned back to Pendergast. “You can stand behind the tape, like the others, and wait your turn.”

  Corrie was surprised at Pendergast’s reaction. He seemed to have lost all interest. Instead, he began to steer an erratic course around the periphery of the site, looking for nothing in particular. He seemed to be wandering aimlessly off into the corn. Corrie followed. She stumbled once, then twice, and realized that the shock was still heavy upon her.

  Suddenly, Pendergast stopped again, between two rows of corn. He took his flashlight gently from Corrie and pointed it at the ground. Corrie peered, but could see nothing.

  “You see these marks?” Pendergast murmured.

  “Sort of.”

  “They’re footprints. Bare footprints. They seem to be heading down toward the creek.”

  Corrie took a step backward.

  Pendergast switched off the light. “You’ve done—and seen—more than enough for one day, Miss Swanson. I’m very grateful for your help.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s eight-thirty, still early enough for you to get home without danger. Go back to your car, go straight home, and get a good rest. I’ll continue here on my own.”

  “But what about driving you—?”

  “I’ll get a ride back with one of those fine, eager young policemen over there.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She hesitated, strangely unwilling to leave. “Um, I’m sorry I puked back there.”

  She could barely see his smile in the gathering dark. “Think nothing of it. The same thing happened to a close acquaintance of mine, a veteran lieutenant of the NYPD, at a homicide site a few years back. It merely proves your humanity.”

  As she turned to go, he spoke again. “One last thing, Miss Swanson.”

  She stopped, looked back at him. “Yes?”

  “When you get home, be sure to lock your house up tight.Tight. Agreed?”

  She nodded, then turned again, making her way quickly through the corn, toward the striped red wash of police lights, thinking of Pendergast’s words:it’s still early enough for you to get home without danger.

  Twenty-Two

  Shading his light carefully, Pendergast followed the bare prints into the darkness of the cornfield. The tracks were now quite distinct in the dry dirt between the rows of corn. As he walked, the noise of the crime scene fell away. When the field began to slope ever so slightly down toward the creek, he stopped to look back. The row of skeletal powerline towers stood silhouetted against the last light of the sky, steel sentinels, the stars winking into view above them. Crows, coming to roost in the towers, were cawing fitfully. He waited as the noise of the crows gradually settled for the night. Then there was no sound at all. The air was still and close as the air of a tomb, and smelled of dust and dry cornhusks.

  Pendergast slipped his hand into his jacket and removed his Les Baer custom .45. Carefully hooding his light, he examined the footprints again. They led straight on between the rows, unhurried, heading methodically toward the creek.

  Straight toward Gasparilla’s camp.

  He turned off the light and waited, allowing his eyes to adjust. Then, as quietly as a lynx, he moved through the rows of corn, a shadow gliding among shadows. The corn rows made a gentle bend as he approached the creek, and he could just make out where the passage of the killer had knocked a few dry stalks awry. He turned sideways and slipped through the gap himself, and in another minute had reached the edge of the cornfield.

  Below and beyond lay the bottomlands, the cottonwood trees along the banks throwing the creek itself into darkness. Pendergast moved forward along the edge of the cornfield, making the barest rustling noise, and in another minute gained the complete darkness of the trees.

  He paused. The sound of the creek purling over its bed was barely audible. He checked his weapon once again, assuring himself there was a round in the chamber. Then he knelt and, cupping his hands carefully, turned on the light. The faint pool of yellow illuminated the tracks, now even clearer in the sand. They were still angling toward Gasparilla’s camp. He knelt and examined the prints themselves. They were the same as before: male footprints, size eleven. But in the fine sand he could see that around the embossing made by the ball of the heel and the big toe there was a series of irregular impressions and cracks, as if the feet were unusually horny and tough. He made a few quick notes and sketches and then placed the tips of his fingers in one of the depressions. The prints had been made about twelve to fifteen hours before—just before dawn that same day. The pace had quickened a bit here: now the killer was moving at a good walk, not hurrying exactly, but rather moving with purpose. There was no sense of urgency or fear in the way he moved. He was relaxed. He was satisfied. It was as if he were going home.

  Going home . . .

  Gasparilla’s camp was straight ahead, no more than a few hundred yards away. Cupping his flashlight so that just enough light escaped to make out the prints, the agent crept forward with excruciating slowness.

  He paused, listening intently, then moved forward again. Ahead, all was dark. There was no fire, no light. When he was within a hundred yards of the camp, he turned off the tiny ray of light and approached blindly. The camp was silent.

  And then he heard it: a faint, almost indiscernible sound. He froze.

  A minute passed.

  There it was again, louder now: a long, drawn-out sigh.

  Pendergast left the trail and circled around to the right of the camp, moving with exquisite care. As he approached the downwind sector, he smelled no smoke or food. There wasn’t even a glow from a dying pile of coals.

  And yet there was definitely someone, or something, in the camp.

  The sound of exhaled air again. Wet, labored, almost a wheeze. Yet there was something strange about it: crude, animalistic, not quite human.

  Careful to make no sound, Pendergast raised his gun. The noise was coming from the middle of Gasparilla’s camp.

  The noise came again.

  Gasparilla—or whatever was making the noise—was no more than fifty feet away. The darkness was absolute. Pendergast could see nothing.


  He leaned down, picked up a pebble. He then tossed it to the far side of the camp.

  Tap.

  A sudden silence. And then a guttural sound, like the growl of an animal.

  Pendergast waited as a fresh silence stretched on into minutes. All his senses were on the highest alert, straining to determine whether or not anything was moving toward him. Gasparilla had already proven himself adept at moving through darkness. Was he doing it again?

  Slowly, Pendergast picked up another pebble, tossed it in another direction.

  Tap.

  Once again, an answering snort came back: short, very loud, and in the exact same place. Whoever—whatever—it was had not moved.

  Pendergast snapped on the light and squeezed the grip of his pistol simultaneously, activating the laser sight. The beam of the flashlight illuminated a human being lying on his back in the dirt, staring upward with huge bloodshot eyes. His face and head were completely covered in blood.

  The red dot of the laser jitterbugged across the hideous face for a moment. Then Pendergast holstered the gun and took a step forward.

  “Gasparilla?”

  The face jerked back and forth. The mouth opened, blowing a bloody bubble of saliva.

  In a moment Pendergast was kneeling over the man. It was unquestionably Gasparilla. Pendergast moved the flashlight across his face. All of the man’s glossy black hair and heavy beard were gone, ripped out along with the scalp; the margins of flesh showed the cut marks of some crude implement: perhaps a stone knife. Pendergast quickly examined the rest of his body. Gasparilla’s left thumb had been partly hacked through and then yanked off with a brutal tug that left behind a white nub of bone, a shred or two of cartilage. Beyond that and the hair, however, the man seemed physically intact. Except for the scalp, there was little loss of blood. The damage appeared not so much of the body as of the mind.

  “Uhmm!”Gasparilla grunted, heaving upward. The eyes were wild, insane. He blew a spray of bloody saliva.

  Pendergast bent closer. “It’s all right now.”

  The eyes roved wildly, unable to fix on Pendergast or anything else. When they paused, they seemed to quiver violently, then return immediately to roving, as if the mere act of focusing was unbearable.

  Pendergast took his hand. “I’m going to take care of you. We’ll get you out of here.”

  He leaned back, flashed the light around. There was the place of attack: forty feet away to the north of the camp. There was the scuffle, the riot of footprints mingling with Gasparilla’s own.

  Pendergast stood now and approached the spot, licking the flashlight across the ground. There was the spot where Gasparilla had fallen, and from where—over the course of fifteen hours—he had dragged himself, in rolling fits, across the dirt. And there, on the far side of camp, were the footprints of the killer in the wet sand, well defined, heading into the creek.

  The killer, carrying away his trophies.

  The sand told the story.

  Pendergast turned back and looked deeply into the wildly roving eyes. He saw nothing: no intellect, no memory, no humanity, nothing but the sheerest terror.

  There would be no answers from Gasparilla; not now—and maybe not ever.

  Twenty-Three

  Sheriff Hazen entered the basement laboratory and took an unwilling look around. There was the same old sour smell, made worse by the overlay of disinfectants and chemicals; the same cinderblock walls painted diarrhea-tan; the same buzzing fluorescent lights. Breathing through the mouth did no good—the surgical mask did nothing but introduce a smell of antiseptic paper to the mix. What he needed was a frigging gas mask.

  He summoned a variety of comforting sounds and images to mind: Hank Williams ballads; the taste of the first Grain Belt of an evening; going to the Harvest Festival as a kid with his dad and older brother. None of it helped. Sheriff Hazen shivered, and not just because of the smell of death.

  He moved toward the bright end of the lab, scrubs rustling. The medical examiner was already there, swathed like himself in blue, and Hazen could hear the murmur of voices. There was a second figure beside the M.E., and despite the softness of the voice he recognized the southern cadence. Pendergast.

  Pendergast had been right. It was a serial killer. And he was probably right that the killer was local. Hazen couldn’t believe it, hadn’twanted to believe it. He’d laughed out loud when he’d heard that Pendergast was spending hours closeted with Marge Tealander, knowing the old busybody would eat up his time and have him chasing down red herrings all over town. But now, in the wake of this new killing, he was forced to admit things did point to a local killer. It was damned hard to come and go from Medicine Creek without people noticing. Especially at night, when a set of car headlights in the distance was enough to send people to the window to see who was coming. No, this wasn’t the work of some drifter who killed and moved on. It seemed it was somebody who lived here in Medicine Creek. It was incredible, but there it was. Someone in town.

  That meant he knew the killer.

  “Ah, Sheriff Hazen, good to see you.” McHyde nodded politely, even deferentially.

  The guy had really changed his tune. No more Dr. Arrogant. The case was big now, and the M.E. could smell the publicity. This was a ticket out of western Kansas for anyone who wanted to hop aboard the train.

  “Sheriff Hazen,” said Pendergast, giving a little nod of recognition.

  “Morning, Pendergast.”

  There was a short silence. The body lay covered on the gurney. It seemed the M.E. had not begun his work. Hazen bitterly regretted arriving so early.

  The M.E. cleared his throat. “Nurse Malone?”

  A voice came from offstage. “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Are we ready to roll?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Good. Run the video.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  They went through the preliminaries, each one giving their name and title. Hazen could not take his eyes off the shrouded corpse. He had seen it lying in the field, of course, but somehow seeing it in this sterile, artificial environment was different. Worse.

  The M.E. grasped the cloth and slowly, carefully, raised the sheet. And there was Stott, bloated, the flesh literally falling off the bones.

  Quickly, Hazen averted his eyes. Then, feeling self-conscious, he slowly forced himself to face the gurney again.

  He had seen dead bodies in his time, but they sure as hell hadn’t looked like this. The skin had split across the breastbone and drawn back from the fatty flesh, as if it had shrunk. It had also split on the hips and across the face. Melted fat had dripped out in several places and run into little pools in the gurney, where it had congealed white and hard under refrigeration. Yet there were no maggots—strange, very strange. And there seemed to be a piece missing from the body. Yes: a ragged chunk, torn away from the left thigh, the teeth marks still visible. Dog, it seemed. Man’s best friend. Hazen swallowed.

  The M.E. began to speak.

  “We have here the body identified as that of William LaRue Stott, a white male thirty-two years old.” He droned on for the benefit of the camera while they all stood around the corpse. Mercifully, the initial recitation was short. The M.E. turned to Pendergast and asked unctuously, “Any comments or suggestions, Special Agent Pendergast, before we proceed further?”

  “Not at the moment, thank you.”

  “Very well. We performed a preliminary examination of the body earlier this morning and have noted several important anomalies. I will begin with the overall condition.”

  He paused, cleared his throat. Hazen saw his eyes flicker toward the videocamera positioned above the gurney.Yeah, you look great, Doc.

  “The first thing I noticed was the lack of insect activity on the body, and the fact that decomposition had barely initiated, despite the fact that the victim has been deceased for at least eighteen hours in temperatures not less than ninety-five degrees, and in full sun for no less than twelve hours.” He cleared his thro
at again.

  “The second anomaly is more obvious. As can be seen, the flesh at the extremities has begun to separate from the bone. It is most pronounced here around the face, hands, and feet—the nose and lips almost appear to have melted. Both ears were missing; one was recovered at the scene. Here, across the hips and shoulders, the skin has ruptured, separated from, and ultimately withdrawn from the fatty tissue below. There is a preponderance of a sebaceous, tallowlike substance consistent with melting and subsequent cooling. The hair and scalp are gone—evidently removed post-mortem and post-, er, processing—and the fatty tissue appears to have partially liquefied. All these and a whole suite of other anomalous characteristics can be explained by one simple fact only.”

  He paused and drew in some air.

  “The body was boiled.”

  Pendergast nodded. “Just so.”

  For a minute Hazen couldn’t quite grasp it.“Boiled?”

  “The body was apparently immersed in water, brought to a boil, and left in that state for at least three hours, probably more. The autopsy and some biochemical workups will pin down the duration a little more precisely. Suffice to say the boiling was long enough to cause the separations you see here at the maxilla, mandible”—he touched the open mouth with a finger, moving the cheek away from the bone underneath—“and here, on the foot, you will note that most of the toenails are actually missing, having sloughed off. And on the hand, here, the fingernails are likewise all missing, and the left second and third digits missing down to the medial metacarpals. Note how the capsule of the proximal interphalangeal joint is sloughed away, here and here.”

  Hazen looked on with increasing disbelief. Damned if it didn’t look just like a parboiled pig. “But, look—to boil a body like that would take days.”

  “Wrong, Sheriff. Once the temperature overall reaches one hundred degrees centigrade, an elephant will cook just as fast as a chicken. Cooking, you see, is essentially a process of breaking down the quaternary structure of the protein molecule through the application of heat—”