Still Life with Crows

by Preston; Child

  Smit Ludwig shifted his cramped limbs, yawned. The night crickets stopped chirping at the movement, then resumed: a peaceful, familiar sound. The whole landscape was familiar to him. He had spent his boyhood up at these mounds, playing Cowboys and Indians with his brother or swimming down in the creek. They’d even camped up here a couple of times. The tale of Harry Beaumont and the Forty-Fives, the fact that the Mounds had a sinister reputation, only added to the boyish sense of adventure. He could remember one night in August, camped here, watching the shooting stars. They’d counted to a hundred and then quit. His brother had left Medicine Creek, was now a retired grandfather in Leisure, Arizona. That was a different era back then. Mothers never thought twice about letting their kids run off and play all day long out of sight. Today it was different. The ugly modern world had come to Medicine Creek, bit by bit. And now, these killings. A part of him was glad Sarah hadn’t lived to see this. Even if they found the killer, the town would never be the same.

  Ludwig peered again through the gloaming. Pendergast was still lying on the ground, totally motionless. Even a sleeping person shifted once in a while. And nobody slept like that, perfectly straight, legs together, hands folded on the chest. Christ, he was still wearing his shoes. It was very bizarre.

  He cursed under his breath. Should he just stand up and interrupt them, ask them what was going on? But somehow he couldn’t do that. He’d waited this long, he’d wait to see what happened when—

  Abruptly, he saw Pendergast rise and dust himself off. Ludwig quickly shrank back into the deepest shadows. There was a murmuring of voices, then without further ado the two started walking back toward their car.

  Ludwig swore again bitterly. It had been utter folly to follow Corrie: a self-delusion, born of an attempt to help a cub reporter and to find his own new angle on the story. Now the story was gone, the kid would be in trouble, and next day’sCourier would be left high and dry.

  He waited for them to leave, bitterness continuing to rise. What was the hurry? There was no story to write up, nobody to go home to. He might as well just sit here all night. Nobody would miss him or his paper . . .

  But Ludwig’s tolerance for self-pity was limited, and before long he, too, had risen. He’d hidden his car well behind Corrie’s, down the road and in the corn, where he knew they would not see it on their way out. He dusted himself off and looked around. The light was now completely gone and the wind had started to pick up—wind at dusk was a sure sign of a coming storm. The leaves started to rustle above his head, then thrashed under a sudden gust. It was very dark, the moon now covered by quick-moving clouds.

  He saw a flash of lightning and waited, counting. A faint rumble reached him after almost half a minute.

  The storm had a ways to come still.

  Hunching forward against the rising wind, he walked toward the spot where Pendergast had lain. There might be something there, some clue as to what he was doing. But there was nothing, not even a faint impression. Ludwig drew out his notebook to jot down a few notes, but then stopped himself. Who was he kidding? There was no story here.

  Suddenly, the air seemed full of sound: rustling grass and leaves, sighing branches, swaying trees. The smell of humidity and ozone came to him, mingled with the scent of flowers. Another faint rumble of thunder.

  He’d better hurry back and break the bad news to the kid.

  It was so dark now that he wondered briefly if he could follow the old track. But he’d been down it a thousand times as a child, and childhood memories never died. He walked down the path, huddled against the wind. Leaves blew past him and a flying twig got caught in his hair. The rush of wind was almost pleasant after the weeks of heat and stillness.

  He paused, aware of a new sound to his right. The rustle of an animal, perhaps.

  He waited, took a step, another—and then he heard the distinct crackle of dry leaves underfoot.

  But not underhis foot.

  He waited, hearing nothing but the whisper of leaves, the rising wind. After a minute or so, he turned and continued walking quickly.

  Immediately he could hear footsteps to his right again.

  He stopped. “Who is it?”

  The wind blew, the cottonwoods creaked.

  “Pendergast?”

  He resumed walking, and almost immediately he could hear, he couldfeel, that he was being paced. A chill hit him.

  “Whoever it is, I know you’re there!” he said, walking faster. He tried to sound loud, angry, but he was unable to keep the quaver from his voice. His heart was pounding in his chest.

  The unknown thing kept pace.

  Unbidden, the words old Whit had quoted in church that Sunday came back to Ludwig, here in the darkness:. . . the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking who he may devour . . .

  He felt breath come snorting through his nose, and he fought hard against a rising panic. Soon, he told himself, he’d be out of the trees, back between two walls of corn. From there it was only two hundred yards to the road, and only another two hundred to the car. The road, at least, would be safe.

  But, oh God, those horrible, plodding, crunching footfalls . . . !

  “Get the hell out of here!” he yelled over his shoulder.

  He hadn’t meant to yell: it had burst out from some instinctual place within him. Just as instinctual was the dead run that he now broke into. He was too old to run, especially all-out, and his heart felt like it would break loose in his chest. But even if he’d tried he could not have stopped his feet.

  In the darkness beside him, the thing kept pace. Now Ludwig could hear the breathing—short rhythmic grunts in time to each thudding footfall.

  I could run into the corn, lose him,Ludwig thought as he dashed out of the trees. Before him, the dark sea of corn was being tossed by the wind, roaring and rattling. Dust stung his eyes. There was a brief flash of lightning.

  Muh!The sudden bark, alarmingly near, sent terror breaking in waves over him: it seemed human, and yet at the same time so very inhuman.

  “Get away from me!”he screamed, running even faster now, faster than he dreamed possible.

  Muh, muh, muh,the thing grunted as it ran alongside.

  Another flicker of lightning, and in the pale flash he could see the shape pacing him through the corn. He saw it very briefly, but with brutal distinctness. For a moment, he almost stumbled in shock. It was mind-warping, impossible. Oh, dear Jesus, that face,that face—!!

  Ludwig ran. And as he ran, he heard the figure keeping pace effortlessly.

  Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh.

  The road! The flash of headlights, a car just passing—!

  Ludwig rushed out into the road with a banshee wail of terror, screaming and running down the center line, waving his arms at the receding taillights. His cries were swallowed by another rumble of thunder. He stopped, sagging forward, palms on his knees, feeling as if his lungs would rupture. Completely spent now, he waited, limp and defeated, for the sudden blow, the white-hot lance of pain . . .

  But there was nothing, and after a moment he straightened up and looked around.

  The wind tossed and agitated the corn on both sides of the road, drowning all sound, but in the dimmest light Ludwig could see the monster was gone. Gone. Frightened away by the car, perhaps. He looked about more wildly now, heaving, coughing, and trying to suck in air, dazed by his own good fortune.

  And his own car was only two hundred yards down the road.

  Half stumbling, half running, Smit Ludwig went wheezing, gasping down the middle of the road. His heart hammered with a wild abandon. Just one hundred yards now. Fifty. Ten.

  With a final gasp he staggered into the turnaround where he had hidden the car. With a surge of relief so strong it threatened to buckle his knees, he could see the faint gleam of its metal side, within a ragged patch of volunteer corn. He was safe, thank the risen Lord, he was safe! With a sob and a gasp he seized the door handle, pulled open the door.

  From the dark semicircle of
surrounding corn, the thing launched itself out at him with a rising bellow.

  MuuuuuuuUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

  Ludwig’s gargling scream was swallowed by the shrieking of the wind.

  Forty

  From his suite of rooms on the second floor of the old Kraus place, Pendergast watched a dirty red dawn break along the eastern horizon. Distant lightning had flickered and rumbled all night. And the wind was still rising, rippling the fields of corn, causing the “Kraus’s Kaverns” sign to swivel and shiver on its weatherbeaten post. The trees along the creek, half a mile away, were tossing in the gusts, and dusty sheets rose from the dry fields, carried aloft in rolling folds before disappearing into the dirty sky.

  He lowered his eyes from the window. For the hundredth time he went over the memory crossing in his mind, re-creating the preparation, the setting of the scene, the mental deconstruction and reconstruction of the Mounds region, the past events that had followed. It was the first time a memory crossing had failed him. Having had no luck in his investigation into present-day Medicine Creek, he had made the crossing in an attempt to understand the events of the past: to solve the riddle of the curse of the Forty-Fives, to understand what really happened on that day in 1865. But it was as the legends held: the Indians really had appeared out of nowhere, and then vanished back into nowhere.

  Yet that was impossible. Unless it was at last time to contemplate a possibility he had always resisted: that there were, in fact, extra-natural forces at work here, forces that he neither apprehended nor comprehended.

  It was a most frustrating turn of events indeed.

  There was a faint droning sound to the southeast. Raising his head, Pendergast saw the dot of a plane coming in high over the corn. It grew in size, flying across his field of vision, resolving into a Cessna crop duster. As it receded again toward the opposite horizon, it banked and came back—the spotter plane, still looking for Chauncy’s body.

  A second drone came from out of the lightening horizon, and Pendergast saw a second plane arrive to work the cornfields, flying back and forth at the other end of the landscape.

  From downstairs came the rattle of a kettle being placed on the stove. Moments later, the aroma of percolating coffee reached him. Winifred Kraus would also be making his tea, in the exacting manner he had taught her. It wasn’t easy to make a satisfactory cup of King’s Mountain Oolong, getting the temperature of both the water and the pot precisely right, knowing the correct quantity of leaves to add, the right amount of time to let them steep. Most important was the quality of the water. He had quoted to her at length from the fifth chapter of Lu Yu’sCh’a Ching, the holy scripture of tea, in which the poet debated the relative merits of mountain water, river water, and spring water, as well as the various stages of boiling, and Winifred had seemed to listen with interest. And, to his surprise, the tapwater of Medicine Creek had proven fresh, cool, pure, and quite delicious, with a perfect balance of minerals and ions. It made an almost perfect cup of tea.

  Pendergast thought about this while watching the two planes move back and forth, back and forth. And then, rather suddenly, one began to circle.

  Just like the vultures had done, not so many days before.

  Still thoughtful, Pendergast slipped his cell phone out of his coat pocket and dialed. A voice answered, thick with sleep.

  “Miss Swanson? I will expect you here in ten minutes, if you please. It would appear we’ve found the body of Dr. Chauncy.” He snapped the phone shut and turned from the window.

  There would be just enough time for tea.

  Forty-One

  Corrie tried not to look, but somehow not looking seemed even more terrible than the real thing. And yet, every time she looked, it was worse.

  The site was simple: a clearing carved in the corn, with the body and paraphernalia carefully arranged. The earth around the body had been painstakingly smoothed and patted down, and a many-spoked wheel had been drawn in the dirt around the corpse. Gusts of wind rattled the corn and raised a mantle of dust that stung her eyes. Angry-looking dark clouds gathered overhead.

  Chauncy lay on his back at the center of the wheel, naked, arms carefully folded across his chest, legs arranged. His eyes were wide open, filmed over, pointed at unnervingly different angles toward the sky. His skin was the color of a rotten banana. A ragged incision ran from his chest to the base of his gut, and his stomach bulged obscenely where it had been crudely sewn up again with heavy twine. Something, it seemed, had been stuffed inside.

  Why the huge wheel? Corrie stared at the body, unable to take her eyes off it. And was it her imagination, or was something actuallymoving inside the sewn-up belly, causing the skin to bulge and subside slightly? There was something alive inside him.

  Sheriff Hazen had gotten there first, and was bending over Chauncy’s body with the medical examiner, who’d arrived by helicopter. It was odd: Hazen had actually smiled at Corrie when they arrived and had greeted Pendergast with a hearty hello. He seemed a lot surer of himself all of a sudden. She glanced at him sidelong, chatting confidentially with the M.E. and the SOC crew, who were combing the dirt for clues. There were the usual bare footprints, but when they were pointed out to the sheriff he’d only chuckled knowingly. An SOC guy was bent over one of them now, making a plastic mold from an imprint.

  Pendergast, on the other hand, hardly seemed to be there at all. He had barely spoken a word since she’d picked him up, and now he was gazing off into the distance, toward the Mounds, as if his thoughts were far away. As she stared, he seemed at last to rouse himself. He stepped closer.

  “Come, come,” said the sheriff in a hearty voice. “Have a look, Special Agent Pendergast, if you’re interested. You too, Corrie.”

  Pendergast stepped closer, Corrie trailing behind.

  “The M.E.’s about to open him up.”

  “I would advise waiting until the laboratory.”

  “Nonsense.”

  The photographer took some photos, the flashes blinding in the dim light of dawn, and then stepped back.

  “Go ahead,” Hazen said to the M.E.

  The M.E. removed a pair of scissors and carefully worked one point under the twine.Snip. The belly bulged, and the twine began to unravel from the pressure.

  “If you’re not careful,” Pendergast cautioned, “some of the evidence might, ah,abscond. ”

  “What’s inside,” said the sheriff cheerfully, “is irrelevant.”

  “I should say it’s most relevant.”

  “You can say it all you like,” said the sheriff, his good humor adding insolence to the comment. “Cut the other end.”

  Snip.

  The whole belly flopped open, and a collection of things came tumbling out, spilling across the ground. A foul stink rose up. Corrie gasped and backed away, holding her hand over her mouth. It took her a moment to take in what it was that had slid steaming into the dirt: a crazy-quilt assortment of leaves, twigs, slugs, salamanders, frogs, mice, stones. And there, among the offal, a slimy circlet that appeared to be a dog’s collar. A wounded but still living snake uncoiled from the mass and sidewinded painfully into the grass.

  “Son of abitch, ” said Hazen, backing up, his face slack with disgust.

  “Sheriff?”

  “What?”

  “There’s your tail.”

  Pendergast was pointing at something protruding from the mess.

  “Tail? What are you talking about?”

  “The tail ripped from the dog.”

  “Oh,that tail. We’ll be sure to bag and analyze that one.” Hazen had recovered quickly and Corrie caught him winking at the M.E.

  “And the dog collar.”

  “Yup,” Hazen said.

  “May I point out,” Pendergast continued, “that it appears the abdomen was cut open with the same crude implement previously used for the Swegg amputations, the cutting off of the dog’s tail, and the scalping of Gasparilla.”

  “Right, right,” said the sheriff, not listening.
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  “And if I am not mistaken,” Pendergast said, “there is the crude implement itself. Broken and tossed aside.” He indicated something in the dirt to one side.

  The sheriff glanced over, frowned, and nodded to the SOC man, who photographed it in situ, then picked the two pieces up with rubber tweezers and put them in evidence bags. It was a flint Indian knife, lashed to a wooden handle.

  “From here I’d say it was a Southern Cheyenne protohistoric knife, hafted with rawhide to a willow-wood handle. Genuine, I might add, and in perfect condition until it was broken by clumsy use. A find of particular importance.”

  Hazen grinned. “Yeah, important. As another prop in this whole bullshit drama.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  There was a rustle behind them, and Corrie turned. A pair of glossy-booted state troopers were pushing their way out of the corn and into the clearing. One was carrying a fax. The sheriff turned toward the newcomers with a big smile. “Ah. Just what I’ve been waiting for.” He held out his hand, snatched the fax, and glanced at it, his smile broadening. Then he handed it to Pendergast.

  “It’s a cease-and-desist, Pendergast, straight from the FBI’s Midwestern Divisional Office. You’re off the case.”

  “Indeed?” Pendergast read the document carefully. Then he looked up. “May I keep this, Sheriff?”

  “By all means,” Hazen said. “Keep it, frame it, hang it in your den.” All of a sudden, his voice grew less affable. “And now, Mr. Pendergast, with all due respect, this is a crime scene and unauthorized personnel are not allowed.” His red eyes swiveled toward Corrie. “That means you and your sidekick.”

  Corrie stared back at him.

  Pendergast folded the sheet carefully and slipped it into his suit coat. He turned to Corrie. “Shall we?”

  She stared at him in outrage. “Agent Pendergast,” she began, “you aren’t just going to let him get away with that—?”