Still Life with Crows

by Preston; Child

“Thank you, Sheriff, for waiting,” said Pendergast.

  Hazen grunted.

  Another long gibbering moan, almost like the cry of a loon, came from behind the door.

  Pendergast knocked, and the door opened to reveal the attending physician and two nurses. Gasparilla lay in the bed, swathed like a mummy, only his black eyes and a slit for a mouth relieving the massive white swaddle of bandages. He had wires and tubes out the wazoo. All around, banks of machines ticked and blinked and chirped and buzzed like a high-tech orchestra. The smell was much stronger here; it hung in the air like a tangible presence. Hazen stayed near the door, wishing he could light up a Camel, watching as Pendergast strode across the room and bent over the prostrate form.

  “He’s very agitated, Mr. Pendergast,” the doctor said. “Asking for you continuously. We hoped your visit might calm him.”

  For several moments, Gasparilla went on moaning. Then, suddenly, he seemed to spy Pendergast. “You!” he cried, his body suddenly struggling under the bandages.

  The doctor laid a hand on Pendergast’s arm. “I just want to caution you that if this is going to overly excite him, you’ll have to leave—”

  “No!” cried Gasparilla, his voice full of panic. “Let me speak!” A bony hand, swathed in gauze, shot out from underneath the covers and clutched at Pendergast’s jacket, clawing and grabbing so frantically that a button popped off and rattled to the floor.

  “I’m having second thoughts about this—” the doctor began again.

  “No! No! Imust speak! ” The voice rose like the shriek of a banshee. One of the nurses quickly shut the door behind Hazen. Even the machines responded, with eager low beepings and a blinking red light.

  “That’s it,” said the doctor firmly. “I’m sorry. This was a mistake; he’s in no condition to speak. I must ask you to leave—”

  “Noooo!”A second hand grasped Pendergast’s arm, pulling him down.

  Now the machines were really going apeshit. The doctor said something and a nurse approached with a needle, stabbed it into the drug-delivery seal on the IV, emptied it.

  “Let me talk!”

  Pendergast, unable to escape, knelt closer. “What is it? What did you see?”

  “Oh, God!” Gasparilla’s anguished voice strangled and choked, fighting the sedative.

  “What?” Pendergast’s voice was low, urgent. Gasparilla’s hand had Pendergast by the suit, screwing it up, dragging the FBI agent still closer. The awful stench seemed to roll in waves from the bed.

  “That face,that face! ”

  “What face?”

  It looked to Hazen as if, lying on the bed, Gasparilla suddenly came to attention. His body stiffened, seemed to elongate. “Remember what I said? About the devil?”

  “Yes.”

  Gasparilla began thrashing, his voice gargling. “I was wrong!”

  “Nurse!” The doctor was now shouting at a burly male nurse. “Administer another two milligrams of Ativan, and get this man outnow! ”

  “Noooo!”The clawlike hands grappled with Pendergast.

  “I saidout! ” the doctor yelled as he tried to pull the man’s arms away from Pendergast. “Sheriff! This man of yours is going to kill my patient! Get him out!”

  Hazen scowled.Man of yours? But he strode over and joined the doctor in trying to pry off one of Gasparilla’s skeletal hands. It was like trying to pry steel. And Pendergast was making no attempt to break his grip.

  “I was wrong!” Gasparilla shrieked. “I was wrong,I was wrong! ”

  The nurse stabbed a second syringe into the IV, pumped in another dose of sedative.

  “None of you are safe,none of you, now thathe is here!”

  The doctor turned toward the nurse. “Get security in here,” he barked.

  An alarm went off somewhere at the head of the bed.

  “What did you see?” Pendergast was asking in a low, compelling voice.

  All of a sudden, Gasparilla sat up in bed. The nasogastric tubing, ripped out of position with a small spray of blood, jittered against the bedguard. The clawed hand went around Pendergast’s neck.

  Hazen grappled with the man. Christ, Gasparilla was going to choke Pendergast to death.

  “The devil! He’s come! He’s here!”

  Gasparilla’s eyes rolled upward as the second injection hit home. And yet he seemed to cling even more fiercely. “Hedoes exist! I saw him that night!”

  “Yes?” Pendergast asked.

  “And he’s a child . . .a child . . .”

  Suddenly Hazen felt Gasparilla’s arms go slack. Another alarm went off on the rack of machinery, this one a steady loud tone.

  “Code!” cried the doctor. “We’ve got a code here! Bring the cart!”

  Several people burst into the room all at once: security, more nurses and doctors. Pendergast stood up, disentangling himself from the now limp arms, brushing his shoulder. His normally pallid face was flushed but otherwise he seemed unperturbed. In a moment he and Hazen had been sent outside by the nurses.

  They waited in the hall while—for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes—there was the sound of furious activity within Gasparilla’s room. And then, as if a switch had been turned off, there came a sudden calm. Hazen heard the machines being shut down, the alarms stopping one by one, and then blessed silence.

  The first to emerge was the attending physician. He came out slowly, almost aimlessly, head bent. As he passed them he looked up. His eyes were bloodshot. He glanced at Hazen, then at Pendergast.

  “You killed him,” he said wearily, almost as if he had passed the point of caring.

  Pendergast laid his hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “We were both only doing our jobs. There could have been no other outcome. Once he had me in that grip, Doctor, I assure you there would be no escape until he had his say. He had to talk.”

  The doctor shook his head. “You’re probably right.”

  Nurses and medical technicians were now wandering out of the room, going their separate ways.

  “I have to ask,” Pendergast went on. “How exactly did he die?”

  “A massive cardiac infarction, after a long period of fibrillation. We just couldn’t stabilize the heart. I’ve never seen anyone fight sedation like that. Cardiac explosion. The heart just blew up.”

  “Any idea what caused the fibrillations to begin with?”

  The doctor shook his head wearily. “It was the initial shock of whatever happened to him. Not the wounds themselves, which were not life-threatening, but the profound psychological shock that came with the injury, which he was unable to shake off.”

  “In other words, he died of fright.”

  The doctor glanced over at a male nurse who was emerging from the room, wheeling a stretcher. Gasparilla’s body was now wrapped head to toe in white and bound tightly with canvas straps. The doctor blinked, passed the back of a sleeve across his forehead. He watched the body disappear through a set of double doors.

  “That’s a rather melodramatic way of putting it, but yes, that’s about it,” he said.

  Twenty-Seven

  Several hours later, and two thousand miles to the east, the setting sun burnished the Hudson River to a rich bronze. Beneath the great shadow of the George Washington Bridge, a barge moved ponderously upriver. A little farther south, two sailboats, small as toys, barely broke the placid surface as they sailed on a reach toward Upper New York Bay.

  Above the steep escarpment of Manhattan bedrock that formed Riverside Park, the boulevard named Riverside Drive commanded an excellent view of the river. But the four-story Beaux Arts mansion that stretched along the drive’s east side between 137th and 138th Streets had been sightless for many years. The slates of its mansard roof were cracked and loose. No lights showed from its leaded windows; no vehicles stood beneath its once-elegant porte cochère. The house sat, brooding and still, beneath untended sumacs and oaks.

  And yet—in the vast honeycomb of chambers that stretched out like hollow roots beneath the house—someth
ing was stirring.

  In the vaults of endless stone, perfumed with dust and other subtler, more exotic smells, a strange-looking figure moved. He was thin, almost cadaverously so, with leonine white shoulder-length hair and matching white eyebrows. He wore a white lab coat, from whose pocket protruded a black felt marker, a pair of library scissors, and a glue pencil. A clipboard was snugged beneath one narrow elbow. Atop his head, a miner’s helmet threw a beam of yellow light onto the humid stonework and rows of rich wooden cabinetry.

  Now the figure stopped before a row of tall oaken cabinets, each containing dozens of thin, deep drawers. The man ran a finger down the rows of labels, the elegant copperplate script now faded and barely legible. The finger stopped on one label, tapped thoughtfully at its brass enclosure. Then the man gingerly pulled the drawer open. Rank upon rank of luna moths, pale green in the glow of the torch, greeted his gaze: the rare jade-colored mutation found only in Kashmir. Stepping back, he jotted some notes onto the clipboard. Then he closed the drawer and opened the one beneath it. Inside, pinned with achingly regular precision to the tack boards beneath, were a dozen rows of large indigo moths. Upon their backs, the strange silvery imprint of a lidless eye stared up from the display case.Lachrymosa codriceptes, wingèd death, the intensely beautiful, intensely poisonous butterfly of the Yucatan.

  The man made another notation on his clipboard. Then he closed the second drawer and made his way back through several chambers, separated from each other by heavy cloth tapestries, to a vault full of glass cabinets. In the center, upon a stone table, a laptop computer glowed. The man approached it, set down the clipboard, and began to type.

  For several minutes, the only sound was the tapping of the keys, the occasional distant drip of water. And then a strident buzzing suddenly erupted from the breast of his lab coat.

  The man stopped typing, reached into his pocket, and removed the ringing cell phone.

  Only two people in the world knew he had a cell phone, and only one person had the number. The man lifted the phone, spoke into it: “Special Agent Pendergast, I believe.”

  “Precisely,” came the voice on the other end of the line. “And how are you, Wren?”

  “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”

  “That I sincerely doubt. Have you completed yourcatalogue raisonné of the first-floor library?”

  “No. I’m savingthat for last.” There was an undisguised shudder of relish in the voice. “I’m still assembling a list of the basement artifacts.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes, indeed,hypocrite lecteur. And I expect to be at it several more days, at least. The collections of your great-grand-uncle were, shall we say, extensive? Besides, I can only be here during the days. My nights are reserved for the library. Nothing interferes with my work there.”

  “Naturally. And you’ve heeded my warningnot to proceed into the final chambers beyond the abandoned laboratory?”

  “I have.”

  “Good. Any surprises of particular interest?”

  “Oh, many, many. But those can wait. I think.”

  “You think? Please explain.”

  Wren hesitated briefly in a way that his friends—had he any—would have called uncharacteristic. “I’m not sure, exactly.” He paused again, looked briefly over his shoulder. “You know that I’m no stranger to darkness and decay. But on several occasions, during my work down here, I’ve had an unusual feeling. A most disagreeable feeling. A feeling as if”—he lowered his voice—“as if I’m beingwatched. ”

  “I’m not particularly surprised to hear it,” Pendergast said after a moment. “I fear even the least imaginative person on earth would find that particular cabinet of curiosities an unsettling place. Perhaps I was wrong to ask you to take on this assignment.”

  “Oh,no! ” Wren said excitedly. “No, no, no! I would never forgo such a chance. I shouldn’t even have mentioned it. Imagination, imagination, as you say. ‘One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; such tricks hath strong imagination.’ No doubt it’s simply my knowledge of the, ahem,things these walls have borne witness to.”

  “No doubt. The events of last fall have yet to release their hold on my own thoughts. I’d hoped that this trip would in some measure drive them away.”

  “Without success?” Now Wren chuckled. “Not surprising, given your notion of getting away from it all: investigating serial murders. And from what I understand, such a strange set of murders, too. In fact, they’re so unusual as to seem almost familiar. Your brother isn’t vacationing in Kansas, by any chance?”

  For a moment there was no answer. When Pendergast spoke again, his voice was chill, distant. “I have told you, Wren,never to speak of my family.”

  “Of course, of course,” Wren replied quickly.

  “I’m calling with a request.” Pendergast’s tone became brisk and businesslike. “I need you to locate an article for me, Wren.”

  Wren sighed.

  “It’s a handwritten journal by one Isaiah Draper, entitledAn Account of the Dodge Forty-Fives. My research indicates that this journal became part of Thomas Van Dyke Selden’s collection, acquired on his tour through Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas in 1933. I understand this collection is now held by the New York Public Library.”

  Wren scowled. “The Selden Collection is the most riotous, disorganized aggregation of ephemera ever assembled. Sixty packing cases, occupying two storage rooms, and all utterly worthless.”

  “Not all. I need details that only this journal can provide.”

  “What for? What light could an old journal shed on these murders?”

  There was no answer, and Wren sighed again.

  “What does this journal look like?”

  “Alas, I can’t say.”

  “Any identifying marks?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Just how quickly do you need it?”

  “The day after tomorrow, if possible. Monday.”

  “Surely you jest,hypocrite lecteur. My days are taken up here, and my nights . . . well, you know my work. So many damaged books, so little time. Finding a specific item in that hurricane of—”

  “There would be a special remuneration for your efforts, of course.”

  Wren fell quickly silent. He licked his lips. “Pray tell.”

  “An Indian ledger book in need of conservation.”

  “Indeed.”

  “It appears to be a particularly important one.”

  Wren pressed the phone close to his ear. “Tell me.”

  “At first, I thought it to be the work of the Sioux chief Buffalo Hump. But further examination convinces me it is the work of Sitting Bull himself, most likely composed in his cabin at Standing Rock, perhaps during the Moon of Falling Leaves in the final months before his death.”

  “Sitting Bull.” Wren said the words carefully, lovingly, like poetry.

  “It will be in your hands by Monday. For conservation only. You may enjoy it for two weeks.”

  “And the journal—if indeed it exists—will be in yours.”

  “It exists. But let me not disturb your work any further. Good afternoon, Wren. Be careful.”

  “Fare thee well.” Replacing the phone in his pocket, Wren returned to his laptop, going over the physical layout of the Selden Collection in his mind, his veined hands almost trembling at the thought of holding, a day or two hence, Sitting Bull’s ledger book.

  From the pool of darkness behind the glass-fronted cabinets, a pair of small, serious eyes watched intently as, once again, Wren began to type.

  Twenty-Eight

  Smit Ludwig rarely attended church anymore, but he had the gut sense, as he rose that brutally hot Sunday morning, that it might be worth going. He couldn’t say why, exactly, except that tensions had risen to a fever pitch in the town. The killings were all that people could talk about. Neighbors were glancing sidelong at each other. People were scared, uncertain. They were looking for reassurance. His reporter’s nose told him that Cal
vary Lutheran was where they would seek it.

  As he approached the neat brick church with its white spire, he knew he’d been right. The parking lot was overflowing with cars, which also spilled out along both sides of the street. He parked at the far end and had to walk almost a quarter mile. It was hard to believe so many people still lived in Medicine Creek, Kansas.

  The doors were open and the greeters pushed the usual program into his hand as he entered. He eased his way through the crowd in the back and moved off to one side, where he had a decent view. This was more than a church service; this was a story. There were people in church who had never been inside the building their entire lives. He patted his pocket and was glad to see he’d brought his notebook and pencil. He removed them and surreptitiously began jotting notes. There were the Bender Langs, Klick and Melton Rasmussen, Art Ridder and his wife, the Cahills, Maisie, and Dale Estrem with his usual buddies from the Farmer’s Co-op. Sheriff Hazen stood to one side, looking grumpy—hadn’t seenhim in church since his mother died. His son was beside him, an irritable look on his puffy face. And there, off in a shadowy corner, stood the FBI man, Pendergast, and Corrie Swanson, all spiked purple hair and black lipstick and dangly silver things. Nowthere was an odd couple.

  A hush fell over the congregation as the Reverend John Wilbur made his fussy way toward the pulpit. The service began, as usual, with the entrance hymn, the prayer of the day. During the readings that followed, the silence was absolute. Ludwig could see that people were waiting for the sermon. He wondered just how Pastor Wilbur would handle it. The man, narrow and pedantic, was not known for his oratory. He larded his sermons with quotations from English literature and poetry in an attempt to show erudition, but the effect only seemed pompous and long-winded. The moment of truth had come for Pastor Wilbur. This was the time of his town’s greatest need.

  Would he rise to the occasion?

  The reading from the Gospel was complete; the time for the sermon had arrived. The air was electric. This was it: the moment of spiritual reassurance that people had yearned for, had waited for, had come to find.