Still Life With Crows p-4 Page 4

  The killer had walked for a long distance in the creek bed itself.

  Pendergast returned to the corn row and began making his way back to the clearing. The town of Medicine Creek was like an island in a sea: it would be difficult to come or go without being seen. Everyone knew everybody and a hundred pairs of keen old eyes, staring from porches and windows, watched the comings and goings of cars. The only way an outsider could arrive at the town unseen was through this sea of corn—twenty miles from the next town.

  His first instincts had been confirmed: the killer was probably among them, here, in Medicine Creek.

  Seven

  Harry Hoch, the second-best-performing farm equipment salesman in Cry County, rarely picked up hitchhikers anymore, but in this case he thought he’d make an exception. After all, the gentleman dressed in mourning was standing so sadly by the side of the road. Hoch’s own mother had been taken just the year before and he knew what it was like.

  He pulled his Ford Taurus into the gravel just beyond the man and gave a little toot. He lowered his window as the man strolled up.

  “Where you headed, friend?” Hoch asked.

  “To the hospital in Garden City, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

  Harry winced. The poor guy. The county morgue was in the basement. Must’ve just happened. “No trouble at all. Get on in.”

  He cast a furtive glance as his passenger stepped into the car. With that pale skin, he was going to catch a wicked sunburn if he wasn’t careful. And he sure wasn’t from around these parts; not with that accent, he wasn’t.

  “My name’s Hoch. Harry Hoch.” He held out his hand.

  A cool, dry hand slipped into his. “Delighted to make your acquaintance. My name is Pendergast.”

  Hoch waited for the first name, but it never came. He released the hand and reached over to crank up the AC. A frigid blast came from the vents. It was like hell out there. He put his car into gear and pressed the accelerator, shooting back onto the road and picking up speed.

  “Hot enough for you, Pendergast?” said Hoch after a moment.

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Hoch, I find the heat agrees with me.”

  “Yeah, okay, but a hundred degrees with one hundred percent humidity?” Hoch laughed. “You could fry an egg right there on the hood of my car.”

  “I have no doubt of it.”

  There was a silence.Strange fellow, Hoch thought.

  His passenger didn’t seem inclined toward small talk, so Hoch just shut up and drove. The silver Taurus flew along the arrow-straight road at ninety, leaving a wake of swaying, trembling corn behind. One mile looked pretty much like the next and there were never any cops in this area. Harry liked to move fast on these lonely secondary roads. Besides, he felt good: he had just sold a Case 2388 Combine with a six-row corn head and chaff-spreader bin extension for $120,000. That was his third for the season and it had earned him a trip to San Diego for a weekend of booze and bumping uglies at the Del Mar Blu. Hot damn.

  At one point the road widened briefly, and the car shot past a group of shabby ruined houses; a row of two-story brick buildings, gaunt and roofless; and a grain silo, its upper half listing over a weed-choked railroad siding.

  “What is this?” Pendergast asked.

  “Crater, Kansas. Or I should say,was Crater, Kansas. Used to be a regular town thirty years back. But it just dried up, like so many others. Always happens the same way, too. First, the school goes. Then the grocer’s. Then you lose the farmers’ supply. Last thing you lose is your zip code. No, that’s not quite right; last to go is the saloon. It’s happening all over Cry County. Yesterday, Crater. Tomorrow, DePew. The day after that, who knows? Maybe Medicine Creek.”

  “The sociology of a dying town must be rather complex,” said Pendergast.

  Hoch wasn’t sure what Pendergast was getting at and didn’t risk a reply.

  In less than an hour, the grain elevators of Garden City began rising over the horizon like bulbous skyscrapers, the town itself low and flat and invisible.

  “I’ll drop you right off at the hospital, Mr. Pendergast,” said Hoch. “And hey, I’m sorry about whoever it was that passed. I hope it wasn’t an untimely death.”

  As the orange-brick hospital appeared, surrounded by a sea of shimmering cars, Pendergast replied, “Time is a storm in which we are all lost, Mr. Hoch.”

  It took Hoch another half an hour of fast driving, with the windows down, to get the creeps out of his system.

  Sheriff Hazen, wearing a surgical smock that was two sizes too big and a paper hat that made him feel ridiculous, stood and looked down at the gurney. A toe tag was dangling from the right foot, but he didn’t need to read it. Mrs. Sheila Swegg, twice divorced, no children, thirty-two years of age, of number 40A Whispering Meadows Trailer Estate, Bromide, Oklahoma.

  White fucking trash.

  There she was lying on the steel table, butterflied like a pork chop, organs neatly stacked beside her. The top of her head was off and her brain sat in a nearby pan. The smell of putrefaction was overwhelming; she’d been lying in that hot cornfield for a good twenty-four hours before he’d gotten there. The M.E., a bright, bushy-tailed young fellow named McHyde, was bent over her, cheerfully slicing and dicing away and talking up a storm of medical jargon into an overhanging mike. Give him five more years, thought Hazen, and the biting acids of reality will strip off some of that cheerful polish.

  McHyde had moved from her torso up to her throat and was cutting away with little zipping motions of his right hand. Some of the cuts made a crackling sound that Hazen did not like at all. He fished in his pocket for a cigarette, remembered the no smoking sign, grabbed a nearby jar of Mentholatum instead and dabbed some beneath each nostril, and focused his mind elsewhere: Jayne Mansfield inThe Girl Can’t Help It, polka night at the Deeper Elks Lodge, Sundays with a six-pack fishing at Hamilton Lake State Park. Anything but the remains of Sheila Swegg.

  “Hmm,” said the M.E. “Will you look at that.”

  As quickly as they had come, the pleasant thoughts went away. “What?” Hazen asked.

  “As I suspected. Broken hyoid bone. Make thatshattered hyoid bone. There were very faint bruises on her neck and this confirms it.”

  “Strangled?”

  “Not exactly. Neck grasped and broken with a single twist. She died of a severed spinal column before she could strangle.”

  Cut, cut, cut.

  “The force was tremendous. Look at this. The cricoid cartilage is completely separated from both the thyroid cartilage and the lamina. I’ve never seen anything like it. The tracheal rings are crushed. The cervical vertebrae are broken in, let me see, four places.Five places.”

  “I believe you, Doc,” Hazen said, his eyes averted.

  The doctor looked up, smiled. “First autopsy, eh?”

  Hazen felt a swell of irritation. “Of course not,” he lied.

  “Hard to get used to, I know. Especially when they start to get a little ripe. Summertime’s not good. Not good at all.”

  As the doctor returned to his work, Hazen became aware of a presence behind him. He turned and jumped: there was Pendergast, materialized out of nowhere.

  The doctor looked up, surprised. “Sir? Excuse me, we’re—”

  “He’s okay,” said Hazen. “He’s FBI, working on the case under me. Special Agent Pendergast.”

  “Special Agent Pendergast,” the M.E. said, with a new edge to his voice, “would you mind identifying yourself for the tape recorder? And throw on some scrubs and a mask, if you don’t mind. You can find them over there.”

  “Of course.”

  Hazen wondered how the hell Pendergast had managed it, without a car and all. But he wasn’t sorry to see him. It occurred to Sheriff Hazen, not for the first time, that having Pendergast on the case could be useful. As long as the man kept with the program.

  Pendergast returned a moment later, having expertly slid into the scrubs. The doctor was now working on the victim’s face, peeling
it away in thick rubbery flaps and clamping them back. It had been bad enough before, when just the nose, lips, and ears had been missing. Hazen stared at the bands of muscle, the white of the ligaments, the slender yellow lines of fat. God, it was gruesome.

  “May I?” Pendergast asked.

  The doctor stepped back and Pendergast leaned over, not three inches from the stinking, swollen, featureless face. He stared at the places, torn and bloody, where the nose and lips had once been. The scalp had been peeled back but Hazen could still see the bleached-blonde hair with its black roots. Then Pendergast stepped back. “The amputations appear to have been performed with a crude implement.”

  The doctor raised his eyebrows. “A crude implement?”

  “I would suggest a superficial microscopic examination with a comprehensive series of photos. And part of the scalp has been ripped off, as you no doubt have noted.”

  “Right. Good.” The doctor sounded irritated at the advice.

  Hazen had to smile. The Agent was showing up the Doc. But if Pendergast were right about this . . . He stopped himself from asking just what kind of “crude implement” Pendergast had in mind. He felt his gorge rising and immediately turned his mind back to Jayne Mansfield.

  “Any sign of the lips, ears, and nose?” Pendergast asked.

  “The police couldn’t find them,” said the M.E.

  Hazen felt a surge of annoyance at this implied criticism. The M.E. had been at it all afternoon, making one snide comment after another about the shortcomings of Hazen’s report and, by extension, his police work. Fact was, by the time he stepped in, the state police had already royally fucked it up.

  The doctor resumed cutting away at the earthly remains of Sheila Swegg. Pendergast began to circle the table, looking first at one organ and then at another, hands behind his back, like he was viewing sculpture in a museum. He got to the toe tag.

  “I see you have an ID.”

  “Yeah,” said Hazen with a cough. “Some cracker from the Oklahoma panhandle. We found her car, one of those Korean rice-burners, hidden in the corn five miles the other side of Medicine Creek.”

  “Any idea what she was doing there?”

  “We found a bunch of shovels and picks in the trunk. A relic hunter—they’re always sneaking around the Mounds, digging for old Indian artifacts.”

  “This is a common occurrence, then?”

  “Not around here so much, but yeah, some people make a living at it, driving from state to state looting old sites for stuff to sell at flea markets. Every mound, battleground, and boot hill from Dodge City to California’s been hit by them. They got no shame.”

  “Does she have a record?”

  “Petty shit. Credit card fraud, selling phony crap on eBay, nickel-and-dime insurance scams.”

  “You’ve made excellent progress, Sheriff.”

  Hazen nodded curtly.

  “Well,” said the doctor. “We’re just about done here. Do either of you have any questions or special requests?”

  “Yes,” said Pendergast. “The birds and the arrows.”

  “In the fridge. You want to see them?”

  “If you please.”

  The doctor disappeared and came back a moment later wheeling another gurney, on which the crows had been neatly laid out in rows, each with its own toe tag.Or claw tag, maybe, Hazen thought. Next to them was a pile of arrows on which the birds had been skewered.

  Pendergast bent over them, reached out, paused. “May I?”

  “Be my guest.”

  He picked up an arrow in a latex-gloved hand, turning it around slowly.

  “You can pick those replicas up at almost any gas station between here and Denver,” said McHyde.

  Pendergast continued turning it in the light. Then he said, “This is no replica, Doctor. This is a genuine Southern Cheyenne cane arrow, feathered with a bald eagle primary and tipped with a type II Plains Cimarron point in Alibates chert. I’d date it between 1850 and 1870.”

  Hazen stared at Pendergast as he placed the arrow back down. “All of them?” he said.

  “All of them. It was evidently a matched set. A collection of original arrows like this, in this superb condition, would fetch at least ten thousand dollars at Sotheby’s.”

  In the ensuing silence, Pendergast picked up a bird and turned it gently around, palpating it. “Completely crushed, it seems.”

  “That right?” The doctor’s voice had grown wary, irritated.

  “Yes. Every bone broken. It’s a sack of mush.” He glanced up. “Youare planning to autopsy the birds, are you not, Doctor?”

  The doctor gave a snort. “All two dozen of them? We’ll do one or two.”

  “I would strongly recommend doing them all.”

  The doctor stepped back from the gurney. “Agent Pendergast, I fail to see what purpose that would serve, except to waste my time and the taxpayers’ money. As I said, we will do one or two.”

  Pendergast laid the bird back on the tray and picked up another, palpated it, and then another, before finally selecting one. Then, before the doctor could object, Pendergast plucked a scalpel from the surgical tray and made a long, deliberate stroke across the bird’s underside.

  The doctor found his voice. “Just a minute! You’re not authorized—”

  Hazen watched as Pendergast exposed the crow’s stomach. The agent paused briefly, scalpel poised.

  “Put that bird down this instant,” said the doctor angrily.

  With one swift stroke, Pendergast opened the bird’s stomach. There, pushing out from among rotting kernels of corn, was a misshapen, pinkish thing that Hazen abruptly realized was a human nose. His stomach lurched again.

  Pendergast laid the crow back down on the tray. “I will leave the finding of the lips and ears in your capable hands, Doctor,” he said, pulling off the gloves, mask, and scrubs. “Please send a copy of your final report to me, care of Sheriff Hazen.”

  And he walked out of the room without a backward glance.

  Eight

  Smit Ludwig sat at the counter of Maisie’s Diner, plate of cold meatloaf sitting barely touched in front of him, stirring his cup of coffee. It was six o’clock and he had a story due and he wasn’t getting anywhere with it. Maybe, he thought, the story was too big. Maybe he wasn’t up to it. Maybe, in all the years of writing about 4-H fairs and the occasional car accident, he’d lost the edge. Maybe he never had the edge to begin with.

  He stirred and stirred.

  Through the plate glass front of Maisie’s, Ludwig could see the closed door of the sheriff’s office across the street. God, how that pugnacious, butt-ignorant sheriff got under his skin. Ludwig hadn’t been able to pry any information from him. And the state police had told him nothing either. He couldn’t even get the M.E. on the phone. How the hell did they do it at theNew York Times ? No doubt because they were big and powerful, and not to talk to them was worse than talking to them.

  He looked back down at his coffee. Problem was, nobody was scared of theCry County Courier. It was more like a local joke. How could they respect him as a reporter when he came by the next day selling ad space, and came by again the day after at the wheel of the delivery truck because his driver, Pol Ketchum, had to take his wife to Dodge City for chemotherapy?

  Here was the biggest story of his career and he had nothing for tomorrow’s paper. Nothing. Course, he could always recycle what he had reported yesterday, work a new angle, hint about leads, play up the “no comments,” and produce passable copy. But the savagery and strangeness of the crime had aroused sleepy Medicine Creek, and people wanted more. And a part of him wanted to rise to the occasion, to do well by the story. A part of him wanted—now that he finally had the chance—to be a real journalist.

  He smiled at himself and shook his head. Here he was, wife passed away, daughter long gone to greener pastures on the West Coast, paper losing money, and him nearing sixty-five.A real journalist. It was a little late for that. What was he thinking?

  Ludwi
g noticed that the low susurrus of conversation in the diner had suddenly faltered. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a black form hovering outside Maisie’s. It was that FBI agent, examining the menu taped to the glass. Then the figure moved to the door and pushed it open. The little bell tinkled.

  Smit Ludwig rotated slightly on his stool. Maybe all was not lost. Maybe he could get something out of the agent. It seemed unlikely, but it was worth a try. Even the tiniest crumb would do. Smit Ludwig could do wonders with a crumb.

  The FBI man—what was his name?—slid into one of the banquettes and Maisie shoved off to get his order. There was no problem hearing Maisie—her booming voice carried into every corner of the diner—but he had to strain to hear the agent’s soft replies.

  “The blue plate special today,” Maisie boomed out, “is meatloaf.”

  “Of course,” the FBI man said. “Meatloaf.”

  “Yup. Meatloaf and white gravy, mashed garlic potatoes—homemade, not out of the box—and green beans on the side. Green beans have iron, and you could certainly use some iron.” Ludwig had to suppress a smile. Maisie was already starting in on the poor stranger. If he didn’t gain ten pounds by the time he left, it wouldn’t be for lack of browbeating.

  “I see you have pork and beans,” the man said. “What type of legumes, precisely, do you employ?”

  “Legumes? No legumes inour pork and beans! Only fresh ingredients. I start with the best red beans, toss in some fatback, molasses, spices, then I cook ’em overnight, with the heat on low as a whisper. The beans just melt in your mouth. One of our most popular dishes. Pork and beans, then?”

  This was starting to become entertaining. Ludwig swiveled a bit farther to get a better view of the action.

  “Fatback, my goodness, yes, how nice . . .” the agent repeated vaguely. “And the fried chicken?”

  “Double-dipped in Maisie’s special corn batter, deep fried to a golden crisp, smothered in white gravy. Goes great with our special sweet-potato fries.”