Still Life With Crows p-4 Read online

  As the place cleared out, Tad went into the back, looking for Maisie.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Maisie waved her hand dismissively. She looked more haggard than he remembered ever seeing her. “Tad, I don’t know if I should mention this, but Smit’s missing.”

  “I kinda wondered about that.”

  “There was a reporter who waited for him until closing last night. Smit wasn’t here for breakfast or lunch. It’s not like him to stay away like that, not without saying something. I called his home and the paper, but there’s no answer.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Tad said.

  Maisie nodded. “Probably nothing.”

  “Yeah. Probably nothing.” Tad went back out into the restaurant, shuttered the windows, then made for the door. Hand on the knob, he turned back. “You get in that basement now, Maisie, okay?”

  “On my way,” Maisie’s voice came drifting back from down the stairs.

  Just as Tad returned to the sheriff’s office, the call came from the county dispatcher. Mrs. Fernald Higgs had called. Her boy had seen a monster in his room. When he screamed and turned on the light, the monster ran away. The boy was hysterical and so was Mrs. Higgs.

  Tad listened incredulously until the dispatcher had finished.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

  “She wants the sheriff out there,” the dispatcher ended lamely.

  Tad could hardly believe it. “We’ve got a serial killer loose and a frontful of tornadoes on their way, and you want me to check out amonster? ”

  There was a silence. “Hey,” said the dispatcher, “I’m just doing my job. You know I have to report everything. Mrs. Higgs says the monster left a footprint.”

  Tad lowered the radio momentarily.Jesus Christ.

  He looked at his watch. Eight-thirty. He could be out to the Higgs place and back in twenty minutes.

  With a sigh, he raised the radio once again. “All right,” he said. “I’ll check it out.”

  Fifty-One

  By the time Tad arrived at the Higgs residence, old man Higgs had returned home and whaled his boy, and the kid was sitting angrily in the corner, eyes dry, little fists clenched. Mrs. Higgs was flitting about in the background, worried, wringing her hands, her mouth compressed. Higgs himself sat at the kitchen table, face set, eating a potato.

  “I’m here about the, ah, report,” Tad said as he came in, taking his hat off.

  “Forget the report,” said the old man. “I’m sorry you were bothered.”

  Tad went over to the boy and knelt down. “You okay?”

  The boy nodded, his face flaming red. He had blond hair and very blue eyes.

  “Hillis, I don’t want any more talk of monsters, hear?” the farmer said.

  Mrs. Higgs sat down, got up. “I’m sorry, Deputy Tad, do you want a cup of coffee?”

  “No thanks, ma’am.”

  He looked at the kid again and spoke softly. “What’d you see?”

  The kid said nothing.

  “Don’t be talking about any monsters,” growled the farmer.

  Tad leaned closer.

  “Isaw it,” said the boy defiantly.

  “What’d you say?” the farmer roared.

  Tad turned to Mrs. Higgs. “Show me the footprint, if you will, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Higgs rose nervously.

  The farmer said, “He ain’t talking about monsters still, is he? By jingo, I’ll whale him a second time. Calling the police about a monster!”

  Mrs. Higgs brought Tad through the small parlor to the back of the house and scuttled into the boy’s room. She pointed at the window. “Iknow I shut the window before I put Hill to bed, but when he screamed and I came in I saw it was open. And when I went to shut it I saw a footprint in the flowerbed.”

  Tad could hear Higgs’s voice raised in the kitchen. “It’s goddamned embarrassing, having the sheriff come calling over a bad dream.”

  Tad raised the window. The moment he did so, the wind came shrieking in, grabbing the curtains and tossing them wildly around. Tad put his head out the window and looked down.

  In the faint light from the room he could see a bed of carefully tended zinnias. Several of them had been roughly flattened by a large, elongated mark. It might be a footprint, but then again, it might not be.

  He went back through the parlor, exited the side door, and walked around the edge of the house, leaning toward the clapboards for cover, until he’d reached the boy’s window. Snapping on his flashlight, he knelt by the flowerbed.

  The impression was smudged and had been eroded by the storm, but it did, in fact, strongly resemble a footprint.

  He straightened up, angling his flashlight away from the house. There was another mark, then another and another. With his flashlight, he followed their direction. About a quarter mile distant—beyond the frenzied, tossing sea of corn—were the faint lights of the Gro-Bain plant. The storm warnings had shut the plant down early and it now lay empty.

  As he watched, the lights abruptly winked out.

  He turned. The lights in the Higgs house were out, too. But the glow of light from Medicine Creek was still visible.

  Blackout.

  He trudged around the side of the farmhouse again and went in the door.

  “It appears there may, in fact, have been an intruder,” he said.

  The farmer muttered angrily but didn’t say anything. Mrs. Higgs was already lighting candles.

  “We’re also under a tornado warning. I’m going to ask you to shut and lock your doors and windows. Head for the basement the moment the wind gets any worse. If you have a battery-powered radio, keep it tuned to the emergency channel.”

  The farmer grunted acknowledgment. He didn’t need anybody telling him what to do in case of a twister.

  Tad got back in his car and sat for a moment, thinking. The big cruiser rocked back and forth to the gusting of the wind. It was nine o’clock. Hazen and his team would be in town by now. He unhooked the radio and called in.

  “That you, Tad?”

  “Yeah. You back at the station, Sheriff?”

  “Not yet. Storm blew down a tree on the Deeper Road and knocked out a couple of repeater stations.”

  Tad quickly explained the situation.

  “Monsters, huh?” Hazen chuckled. There was an awful lot of noise in the background.

  “You know 911, they have to report everything. I’m sorry if I—”

  “Don’t apologize. You did right. What’s the upshot?”

  “It appears there may have been an intruder. The kid’s scream might have startled him. He seems to have headed away in the direction of the Gro-Bain plant. Which, by the way, just lost power.”

  “Probably that Cahill kid and his friends again. Remember that egging last month? We don’t want those boys out on a night like this. They take advantage of a blackout to go helling around, they could end up getting skulled by a flying tree. As long as you’re out there, why don’t you check out the plant? There’s still time. Keep in touch.”

  “Right.”

  “And Tad?”

  “Yes?”

  “You haven’t seen that man Pendergast, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Looks like he blew town after I served him with that C-and-D.”

  “No doubt.”

  “We’re going to hit the cave at ten. Get back by then to cover the office.”

  “Got it.”

  Tad signed off and started up the car. He felt a certain relief. Now he had an even better reason not to go into the cave after the killer. As for Gro-Bain, they hadn’t had a night guard since the last one started working days. He would just check the entrances: as long as they were all locked, and there was no sign of activity, his job would be done.

  He pointed the car south, toward the dark, low outline of the plant.

  Fifty-Two

  Tad eased his squad car into the plant’s parking lot. Heavy gusts blasted across the empty asphalt,
carrying with them bits of straw and ruined husks of corn. Ribbons of rain cascaded here and there, coming and going in sudden sheets. A line of fat raindrops passed over the cruiser, from front to back, with a machine-gun cadence. Beyond the parking lot, he could hear waves of wind ripping through the cornfields surrounding the plant. He peered out at the blackness over the corn, half hoping for, half dreading, the sight of a daggerlike funnel cloud. But he could see nothing.

  The sheriff had said he suspected Andy Cahill and his friends of terrorizing the Higgs homestead. Privately, Tad thought Hazen’s own son Brad and his gang were the more likely suspects. Scaring little kids, egging buildings, was more their style. The son would never be the man his father was. Tad wondered what he’d do if he ran into the sheriff’s son outside the plant. Now, that could prove to be more than a little awkward.

  He eased the car up to the low outline of the plant and stopped, engine idling. Even through the closed windows, the wind screeched and moaned like a beast in pain. The plant was dim against the murk, sunken in the corn, dark and deserted.

  Looking at the low, sinister building, what had seemed like a routine check was beginning to seem less appealing to Tad. Why the heck hadn’t Gro-Bain hired another night watchman? It wasn’t fair that the burden of private security fell on the sheriff’s department.

  Tad passed a hand through his closely cropped hair. No help for it now. He’d just do a quick check to make sure none of the doors had been forced, then he’d check Smit Ludwig’s place and head on back to the station.

  He cracked the cruiser door open, and the wind pushed it back at him with an angry howl. Pulling his hat down and raising his collar, he pushed harder at the door, then ducked out, face against the storm, making for the loading docks. As he ran, he could hear something banging in the wind. Reaching the shelter of the building, he pushed his hat back on his head and switched on his flashlight, then made his way along the cinderblock wall. The banging got louder.

  It was when he reached the top of the loading dock stairs that his light revealed an open door, swinging and banging on broken hinges.

  Shit.

  Tad stood there, the beam of the flashlight playing over the shattered lock and mangled hinges. Somebody had really done a number on it. Normally, he would call for backup. But where was he going to get backup on a night like this? Any law enforcement officers that weren’t going into the cave after the killer would be out working the tornado watch. Maybe he should just forget about it, come back in the morning.

  He imagined explaining that decision to the darkening face of Sheriff Hazen and decided it was not an acceptable option. Hazen was constantly harping on him that he needed more pluck, more initiative.

  This was nothing, really, to be concerned about. The killer was safely bottled up in the cave. Kids like Brad Hazen were always breaking into the plant for fun, even when the night watchman was there. It had happened several times before, most notably last Halloween—half a dozen hoodlums from Deeper who thought it would be fun to T.P. their rival town’s major employer.

  Tad felt a wash of irritation. It was a hell of a night to pull crap like that. He pushed through the broken door, making as much noise as possible, and shone his light around the receiving area.

  “This is the police,” he called out in his sternest voice. “Please identify yourselves.”

  The only answer was the echo of his own voice coming back at him from the blackness.

  Moving forward carefully, letting his light drift from left to right, he exited the loading bay and walked along the catwalk leading into the plant proper. It was very dark and smelled strongly of chlorine, and as he walked beneath a partition he felt, rather than saw, the ceiling suddenly rise to a great height. He paused to run the beam of his light along the conveyor belt that snaked through the plant like an endless metal road, back and forth, up and down, on at least three different levels. Emerging first from a small, tiled room attached to the stunning area, the “line” ran through several freestanding structures within the plant, buildings within buildings: the Scalder, the Plucker, the Box Washer. Tad remembered their names from his previous visits. It was the kind of thing you didn’t forget too quickly.

  He shone his light back toward the tiled room. This small structure, the first within the plant, was the Blood Room. Its door was ajar.

  “This is the police,” he rapped out a second time, advancing a few more steps. Outside, the shriek of the wind answered faintly.

  Transferring his flashlight to his left hand, Tad unsnapped the leather guard on his service holster, let his palm rest lightly on the handle of his piece. Not that there would be any call for it, of course. But it felt reassuring, just the same.

  He turned and shone his light around again, licking the beam off the gleaming assembly line, off the tubes and pressure hoses that snaked up the gray-painted walls. The plant was vast, cavernous, and his light penetrated less than a third of it. But the place was silent, and what he could see looked decidedly empty.

  Tad felt a certain relief. The kids had probably run for it at the first sign of his cruiser.

  He glanced at his watch: almost quarter after nine. Hazen would be at the sheriff’s office by now, preparing for the ten-o’clock raid. He’d followed through, and found nothing. Any further time here would be wasted. He’d check out Smit Ludwig’s place, then get back.

  It was as he turned to leave that he heard the noise.

  He paused, listening. There it was again: a kind of giggle, or wet snicker. It seemed to come from the Blood Room, queerly distorted by the stainless steel floor and tiled walls.

  Christ, the kids were hiding in there.

  He shone his flashlight at the open door of the Blood Room. The conveyor belt emerged from a wide porthole above the door, dangling hooks winking in his beam, throwing cruel misshapen shadows over the entrance.

  “All right,” he said, “come out of there. All of you.”

  Another snort.

  “I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t come out you’ll be in serious trouble, and that’s a promise.”

  This was ridiculous, wasting his time like this in the middle of a tornado warning. He was going to throw the book at those kids. Deeper scum, he was sure of it now.

  “One.”

  No response.

  “Two.”

  He waited, but there was nothing but silence from the half-open door.

  “Three.” Tad moved swiftly and purposefully toward the door, his boots echoing on the slick tile floor. He kicked the door wide with a hollow boom that echoed crazily around the vast interior of the plant.

  Feet set apart, he swept the Blood Room with his light, the beam shining off the polished steel, the circular drain in the middle of the floor, the gleaming tile walls.

  Empty. He walked into the middle of the room and stood there, the smell of bleach washing over him.

  There was a rattle overhead, and Tad quickly angled his light upward. A sudden furious sound, a clashing of metal. The hooks dangling from the conveyor line began to bounce and swing wildly, and his light just caught a dark shape scuttling along the line, disappearing out the porthole above the door.

  “Hey! You!” Tad ran back to the door, stopped. Flashed his light. Nothing but the swinging and creaking of the line as it moved away into blackness.

  No leniency, no soft touch, this time: Tad was going to lock these kids up, teach them a lesson.

  He let the beam of his light linger on the line. It was still swinging and creaking, and it looked as if the kids had climbed along it through a curtain of plastic flaps into the next structure, an oversized stainless steel box. The Scalder.

  Tad moved forward as silently as he could. The plastic flaps covering the entrance to the Scalder were still swinging slightly.

  Bingo.

  Tad circled around to the other end of the Scalder. The thin black shape of the line emerged here, but the plastic flaps on this end weren’t swinging.

  He ha
d trapped the kids inside.

  Tad stepped back, bobbing his light back and forth between the Scalder’s entrance and exit points. He spoke, not loudly, but firmly. “Listen: you’re already in big trouble for breaking and entering. But if you don’t come out of there right now, you’re going to be charged with resisting arrest and a lot more besides. No probation or community service, you’ll do time. You understand?”

  For a moment, silence. And then, a low murmur came from inside the Scalder.

  Tad leaned forward to listen. “What’s that?”

  More murmuring, turning into a kind of singsong sound. There was a strange wet lisping to it all, as if of a tongue being razzed against protruding lips.

  The kids were mocking him.

  In a burst of anger and humiliation, Tad kicked the side of the Scalder. The steel wall let out a hollow boom that rolled and echoed back into the unseen vastness of the plant.

  “Get out here!”

  Tad took one breath, then another. And then, quickly, he ducked through the plastic flaps covering the entrance to the Scalder, careful not to bang his skull on the hooks that dangled from the line overhead. As he licked his flashlight around the insides of the metal box, he got a peripheral glimpse of a figure scrambling along the conveyor belt and out the slot in the far wall. It looked surprisingly big and ungainly: probably the overlapping image of two running boys. But there was nothing ungainly about the speed at which the image scurried away from him. In the blackness just beyond vision, the shape leapt from the line; there was a thump, then the quick patter of feet running toward the rear of the plant.

  “Stop!” Tad cried.

  He ran around the Scalder and took up the pursuit, the yellow pool of his flashlight bobbing ahead of him. The dark form bypassed the Plucker and went shooting up an emergency ladder toward the Evisceration Area, running along the elevated platform and disappearing behind a thick cluster of hydraulic hoses.

  “Stop, damn you!” Tad yelled into the darkness. He climbed the ladder, gun now drawn, and charged down the metal catwalk.