Authors: Jonathan Maberry
Vic picked up the pistol. “You think I won’t?”
Ruger smiled and Vic could definitely see that. Rows of jagged white teeth. Crow had kicked his front teeth out, but already they were starting to grow back—though they were keeping their jagged ridges. It made Ruger look like a cannibal. “If the Man wanted me dead he could reach out and snuff me out just like that. You know it and I know it.” Now it was Vic’s turn to be silent. “So, if I’m still alive—and if he sent you and my ol’ buddy Boyd to go and hijack me from the hospital—then I’m thinking the Man doesn’t think I’m all that much of a screwup.”
“Maybe,” Vic said grudgingly, “but it sure doesn’t mean that you’re employee of the month, either. To me you’re as useful as Gertie here.” He waggled the pistol. “And I think we can get along fine without you.”
Ruger gave a short, cold bark of a laugh. “You think you’re king shit, but you’re no more on the policy level than I am. We’re all fingers on the Man’s hand, and we should bow down and kiss the ground every time we even
think
of his name. Instead you’re second-guessing him. I find that very interesting.”
“Smooth talk for a screwup, sport.” But Vic shifted in his seat as he said that.
“By dawn tomorrow I’ll have done more for the Man than you’ve managed in thirty years, so the next time you want to blow smoke about something, just blow it up your own ass.” He took a small step forward. “Remember—there’s a lot more of
us
now than there are of
you
.” He jerked his chin toward the pistol. “I’ll bet you don’t even take a shit without that next to you these days. Getting scary out there, isn’t it?”
“Don’t try that Bela Lugosi crap on me, sport. I was running with the Man before you figured out which hand to use to jerk off with.” He sat back against the leather cushions. “I’m still waiting to hear this grand plan of yours for Crow and that Guthrie bitch. You pretty much blew your chance to make it look like an act of vengeance from a man on the run—which was the plan as I recall—so you’d better not be planning something too crazy. We want tourists in town, not more cops, you dig?”
“I have something low key in mind for them. Y’see, I planted a
seed
.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“At the hospital, I put a worm in Crow’s brain and I think the little bastard is going to come to us. Well…he’s going to come to the Man.” Ruger’s smile faded but there was still laughter in his red eyes. He turned away and bent to the peephole again. “And that should be a real treat.” He grinned at Vic. “Something the Man suggested. You don’t need to worry about it. The thing you got to do is figure a good way for us to introduce Val Guthrie to my ol’ buddy, Boyd.”
“Boyd? Why, you afraid to do it yourself?”
“Time’s not right for me to risk being seen around the Guthrie place, or don’t you agree? I mean, hell, you went to such great pains to get me out of the hospital—made sure Boyd was seen hauling my ass out of there. Everyone
knows
I’m dead, but Boyd’s in the catbird seat right now. He’s the man of the hour. I think we need to have him pay the Guthrie slut a visit, maybe give her the standard
recruitment
speech.”
Vic thought about it, then gave Ruger a grudging nod. “You want to fry Crow’s grits for him. Make him hurt first, am I right?”
“That’s exactly what I want. Nice to be on the same page.”
“It’s nasty and devious—much as I hate to say it, I like it. Be careful, though. Boyd going after those cops wasn’t any part of the Plan. He was supposed to get lost until those Philly cops left town, and I even drove his ass out of town, but he went off the reservation and came back to where he last saw you. Who the hell knows why. Guy’s brains are mush, so, even though the man gave him a tune-up, I think you’d better have a talk with him, too, just to be sure he follows the playbook. You want to
turn
Guthrie, not have Boyd scatter her pieces all over the county. That’s no good to us. That’s shock, not hurt, and if you want to hurt Crow that won’t get you the best bang for the buck.”
“I’ll handle Boyd.”
“Point is, because of Boyd’s screwup the Plan is starting to change. We have more police attention than we need, and we have the wrong kind of media buzz. We need to do everything on the sly now, especially as far as Crow goes. Now we have to be more careful about how and when we take him off the board. He’s one of the only two people who can keep all the big Halloween celebrations going at full tilt. Him and Terry Wolfe. Wolfe’s looking pretty shaky lately—and we both know what
that’s
about—so if he has a breakdown, or
turns
, then Crow will have to stay alive and in play. So…hands off him until we know what’s happening with Wolfe.”
“What about Guthrie?”
“It’s a good plan, but let it wait a couple days. Maybe save it for Little Halloween. Hurrying’s not going to help us right now. Besides, you’ve got plenty of other work to do.”
Ruger looked at the wall clock and his body shuddered as if in climax. “Sundown. Time to go out and play.”
(1)
The shades were up and the curtains pulled back to allow as much morning light as possible to wash over them. Both of them were propped up on pillows with coffee cups steaming on the bedside tables. Crow had his arm around Val and she was resting the unbruised side of her face against his chest. They had learned the routines of cuddling while avoiding bruises and stitches and sore places. Across the room the TV was on with the sound muted as a petite blond read the weather on Channel 6. Sarah had brought them coffee a few minutes ago, told them Terry was still out at the hospital, and then left them to deal with the day that lay ahead of them.
“You can still back out,” Crow said softly, stroking Val’s shoulder. “Terry and Sarah would let us stay here. Or we could just shack up at my place. The cats would love to have you visit.”
“No,” she said firmly, then smiled a bit. “Thanks, honey, but…no.”
Crow let it go. Last night, as they were climbing into bed, Val had told him that she wanted to go home, but Crow had wondered what kind of ghosts would be there. Would they be able to feel Ruger’s toxicity? Certainly they would feel the utter loss of the presence of Henry Guthrie. If it was up to Crow, he would have her sell the damn place and they could buy a town house somewhere on Corn Hill, but Val wouldn’t even listen to that kind of talk. Guthries had always lived there and by God Guthries always would. “I won’t be chased out of my own house,” she said. “I won’t be chased out of my own life. Besides, Ruger’s already taken enough away from me.”
He kissed her hair as they sat in the window bay watching geese mill around in the yard.
Val said, “Crow?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“About our getting married?” He tensed. “Are you sure?”
Crow laughed. “No, it was just a whim.”
She smacked his chest lightly. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do,” he admitted.
“When you proposed at the hospital…you knew I needed something real to anchor myself to. It was so wonderful, so sweet of you, but I don’t want to think that you did it just to make me feel better. Like some kind of distraction therapy.”
He laughed again, harder. “Yeah, you found me out. You see, I found it pretty useful carrying around a two-carat Asscher-cut engagement ring just in case some random woman needs a little emotional pick-me-up. It’s worked dozens of times.”
Val raised her head and studied him with her dark blue eyes. “I’m not joking, Crow.”
His eyes still twinkled with humor. “You are possibly the dumbest smart woman in the world if you don’t know how much I love you. I love you more than anything else in the universe, Valerie Guthrie, and I’ve been planning to pop the ol’question for some time now but couldn’t find just the right moment. Though in retrospect proposing while I was whacked out on morphine may be a questionable interpretation of ‘the right moment,’ it seemed to work out okay.”
Val kissed him, sweetly and softly, careful of the stitches in his lips and mouth. “My God! It was
so
much the right time. But tell me—tell me right now, right here, looking me in the eyes—are you
sure
?”
Crow pulled her closer and kissed her lips and her eyes and buried his face in the fragrant softness of the side of her throat. “My sweet love, I am more sure of that than anything else in my life. I have to be with you, now and forever. I love so much that if I even think about living a second without you I think I’d go nuts. I’m babbling, I know…but I don’t know how else to say it. I want to be with you, I want to marry you, and I want to have everything with you. Life, house, two-point-five kids, dog, station wagon, PTA, crab-grass, and middle-age spread—the whole enchilada.” Her eyes closed and a single tear leaked out of her bruised eye. He didn’t see it, but when it fell on his chest, he pushed her gently back so that he could see her face. “Hey…are you crying?”
“Of course I’m crying, you idiot.”
“Val, I—”
“Crow…I have to tell you something and if you want to take back your ring, if you want to back off, I will understand, but I
have
to tell you.”
Crow’s heart turned to a block of ice. “You are scaring the shit out of me here.”
“God, I hope not.” Her face was serious, but there was a bright light there, sparkling in her eyes like spring sunlight on late winter snow.
“Then tell me,” he said, and braced himself.
“Crow…my love…I’m pregnant.”
Crow could actually feel his mouth drop open like a trap-door. If he was still breathing, he wasn’t aware of it, though he knew that his heart was still beating—it was right there in his throat. He saw the look of desperate hopefulness in her eyes begin to change into a look of broken-hearted fear…and he wanted to say something smart, something pithy.
Instead he just yelled. A great big whooping bellow of pure joy.
Val felt herself yanked forward and Crow crushed her to his chest. They both howled in pain and then they both laughed, and a moment later they were both crying and kissing each other. Crow kept saying: “Babybabybabybaby…” but Val didn’t know if he was using an endearment for her or just trying out the new implications of the word. Either way, she felt the knot that had been wrapped around her heart split apart and her whole chest seemed to be filled with warm helium. She wanted to leap into the air with him, and she was sure that they would both float.
Feet pounded on the steps and Val turned her head—which made Crow miss her face and land a big noisy kiss on her ear, which hurt, but who cared?—and the door burst open and Sarah Wolfe was there, looking shocked and desperate. “Oh my God,” Sarah yelled, fear in her eyes, “what’s going on, who’s hurt, did you fall…?”
Val wrapped her arms around Crow’s neck and pulled his face to her chest and spoke over his tousled hair, pitching her voice high over Crow’s constant
Yee-haws
. “We’re having a baby!”
Sarah stopped, mouth in a perfect O, her inability to process this registering on her face. “A…baby?” And then she was hugging them both.
(2)
Frank Ferro sat at the head of the conference table with Vince LaMastra to his right. At the far end sat Terry Wolfe and to his left was Gus Bernhardt. Filling out the rest of the big oak town council table were two FBI agents—Agent Henckhauser and Special Agent in Charge Spinlicker, from the Philadelphia Field Office—and three state troopers—Sutter, Wimmer, and Yablonski. Everyone had coffee cups in front of them except SAC Spinlicker, who had a Diet Pepsi in a can. This was the first meeting with the FBI and was intended as a preliminary assessment to see if the Bureau felt it was necessary and appropriate to take over the case. The room looked like what it now was: a war room. Maps of Pine Deep were tacked to the walls, notes and photos were taped haphazardly on every available surface, dry-erase boards stood on easels, and reams of computer printouts were stacked on the floor.
The SAC leaned forward and steepled his fingers, fixing Ferro with a steely and openly accusatory look. “You checked
everywhere
?”
Ferro’s reaction was to lean back in his chair and smile at Spinlicker. “Well, Agent Spinlicker, clearly if we had searched
everywhere
we’d have found him.”
“You implied—”
“What I
said
was that one hundred and sixty-three men, six teams of dogs, and two spotter airplanes have spent the last several days combing every inch of the Guthrie farm and much of the surrounding woods. We’ve broadened the search to include ninety other farms, the grounds of the Haunted Hayride, the campus of Pinelands College, a large portion of Pinelands State Forest, and the canals. My assessment, Agent Spinlicker, is that Kenneth Boyd is not in any of the areas we’re searched.”
“And found jack shit,” LaMastra summed up.
Spinlicker shared a glance with his partner, and smiled ever so faintly. To Ferro he said, “And Kenneth Boyd has managed to elude all of your efforts.” There was just the slightest emphasis on the word “your.”
In the stiff silence that followed Bernhardt cleared his throat. “In all fairness, sir, the area they searched is pretty dense.”
“It also comprises less than an eighth of the entire borough,” said Trooper Yablonski. “The village itself may be small, but the borough of Pine Deep is pretty damn big. There are a lot of places for one man to hide.”
The SAC let silence be his comment on that, and on the handling of the operation as a whole. He picked up a folder from the table, opened it, and riffled through the papers, occasionally making a small and dismissive “hmm” sound. “Quite frankly, Sergeant Ferro, it makes me wonder how well you—”
Then there was a sound like a gunshot and everyone jumped in their seats and spun toward Terry, who had just slammed his palm down hard and flat against the table. “Agent Spinlicker,” he snapped, “if you think there is a problem in the way things have been handled then come out and say it.” He glared at the SAC and at that moment Terry Wolfe seemed to fill the room.
Spinlicker hedged. “I didn’t say that, sir.”
“I know. You’re pussyfooting around it. If you have a problem with the way Sergeant Ferro’s handled things come out and say it right now.”
The air between them crackled like the charge between two poles. Spinlicker said, “No, sir.”
Terry’s face remained hard as a fist. “Then sit there and shut the fuck up.”
Henckhauser gasped audibly and the Staties exchanged startled looks. Gus was shocked at the language he was hearing from Terry; Ferro was staring at the mayor, and LaMastra was grinning. Terry saw the smile and wheeled on him. “And you can wipe that shit-eating grin off your face, Detective. I’m not saying that you guys have done such a great job either.”
That wiped LaMastra’s face clean.
Addressing the whole table, Terry said, “This is my town, gentlemen, but this is
not
my mess. It’s yours. Now clean it up!” Again his palm came down on the table hard enough to make everyone jump. “One of my closest friends is dead. My
best
friend just got out of the hospital along with his fiancée, whom I’ve known since kindergarten. One of my cops is dead, and so is an officer loaned to me from a neighboring town. I have a hospital worker in intensive care with a split skull, a woman who was nearly raped, her husband who had his face kicked in, shots fired in my hospital, two other cops down with injuries, and now a body stolen from the morgue. Every reporter in the world is here and according to the news stories I’m starting to see, this town—
my
town—is becoming a joke in terms of safety. I heard this town mentioned on the
Daily Show
last night, and on Leno. As a goddamn
punchline
. So, when I tell you that I am one hundred percent fed up with this bullshit you had best believe I’m serious. About the last thing I want to hear or see is you lot getting into a jurisdictional pissing contest. Am I getting through to you on this?”
“Loud and clear, sir,” Ferro said. Spinlicker and the others just nodded. Gus was staring at Terry with a look of fascinated awe.
“Then let me make something else clear. October is the biggest income month for this town. We’re already reeling from the crop blight and a lot of local farmers are likely to lose their farms. If you—” he fished for an appropriately savage word but only came up with an acid-laced version of “
officers of the law
, working together, cannot find one man—one injured man, mind you—then we are likely to lose the entire tourist season. That means Pine Deep is going to go into the tank.” He leaned forward, his blues eyes as hard as gunmetal. “If, on the other hand, you can manage to find this guy, then there is still a chance we can pull off enough of a season to stay afloat. That, gentlemen, is a very real concern and I want to know right now that this is going to happen.” He made eye contact, brief but penetrating, with each man at the table, one after the other. “Make me believe that this is going to happen.”
(3)
Ferro and LaMastra lingered with Gus after Terry and the others left. They stood at a window that looked down at the parking lot, watching SAC Spinlicker and Agent Henckhauser get into their car. Even through the soundproof glass the watching officers could feel the vibration as the FBI agents slammed their doors. Their car laid an eight-foot patch of burned rubber across the asphalt.
“So,” Gus said dryly, “I guess we won’t be sharing the case with the feds.”
“So it seems,” Ferro agreed. His face still wore its funeral director moroseness, but there was a drop of humor in his voice. “Nice that they said they would keep in touch and advise. Very helpful of them.”
“Funny thing is,” LaMastra said, “that if you told me that a small-town mayor could bitch-slap a couple of feds like that I’d have called you a liar.” Ferro just nodded at that.
“So we’re on our own again,” Gus said.
“Once this thing starts winding down,” LaMastra said, “I expect we’ll see those two again. Right around the time when someone gets to take credit.”
“Mmm-hm,” Ferro said, smiling faintly.
(4)
After a long and rather giggly breakfast with Sarah and Val, Crow showered and dressed and began packing the few belongings he’d brought from the hospital. In ten minutes Sarah was going to drive them out to the farm and he knew that would pretty much be the end of the incredible feeling of joy that was still bubbling inside of him.
A baby.
His
baby. His and Val’s, which was even better. Son of Crow—he’d already decided that it was going to be a boy for no reason more mature than hoping that the kid would like science fiction, blues, jujutsu, and gory horror flicks. He couldn’t quite see “Daughter of Val” grooving on any Rob Zombie films side-by-side with ol’ dad. On the other hand, Daughter of Val would probably be smarter and better looking than Son of Crow, so there was that. On the
other
other hand, the kid could be Grandson of Henry, in which case he’d be smart, good-looking, tough as nails, and a lot taller than Son of Crow.