Текст книги "Still Life With Crows"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

She carefully opened the shabby front door and closed it behind her with a silence born of years of practice. By now, her mother should be out like a light. It was a Sunday, her mother’s day off, and she would have started hitting the bottle as soon as she was up. Still, silence was always the wisest policy.

She crept into the kitchen. The trailer had no AC and was stiflingly hot. She eased open a cupboard, took out a box of Cap’n Crunch and a bowl, and carefully filled it. She poured in milk from the refrigerator and began to eat. God, she was famished. A second bowl disappeared before she felt sated.

She carefully washed the bowl, dried it, put it away, put away the cereal and the milk, and erased any sign of her presence. If her mother was really out cold, she might even be able to play an hour or two of the latest Resident Evilon her Nintendo before going to bed. She took off her shoes and began to sneak down the hall.

“Corrie?”

She froze. What was her mother doing awake? The raspy voice that issued from the bedroom boded ill.

“Corrie, I know it’s you.”

“Yes, Mom?” She tried to make her voice as casual as possible.

There was a silence. God, it was hot in the trailer. She wondered how her mother could stand being in here all day, baking, sweating, drinking. It made her sad.

“I think you have something to tell me, young lady,” came the muffled voice.

“Like what?” Corrie tried to sound cheerful.

“Like your new job.”

Corrie’s heart fell. “What about it?”

“Oh, I don’t know, it’s just that I’m your mother, and I think that gives me a right to know what’s going onin your life.”

Corrie cleared her throat. “Can we talk about it in the morning?”

“We can talk about it right now. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

Corrie wondered where to start. No matter how she put it, it was going to sound strange.

“I’m working for the FBI agent who’s investigating the killings.”

“So I heard.”

“So you already know about it.”

There was a snort. “How much is he paying you?”

“That’s not your business, Mom.”

“Really? Not my business? You think you can just live here for free, eat here for free, come and go as you please? Is that what you think?”

“Most kids live with their parents for free.”

“Not when they have a good paying job. They contribute.”

Corrie sighed. “I’ll leave some money on the kitchen table.” How much did it cost to buy Cap’n Crunch? She couldn’t even remember the last time her mother had gone shopping or cooked dinner, except to bring home snacks from the bowling alley where she was a cocktail waitress during the week. Snacks and those miniature bottles of vodka. That’s where the money went, all those vodka minis.

“I’m still waiting for an answer to my question, young lady. What’s he paying you? It can’t be much.”

“I said,it’s none of your business.”

“You don’t have any skills, what can you possibly be worth? You can’t type, you don’t know how to write a business letter—I can’t imagine why he’d hire you, frankly.”

Corrie replied hotly, “ Hethinks I’m worth it. And for your information he’s paying me seven fifty a week.” Even as she said it, she knew she was making a big mistake.

There was a short silence.

“Did you say seven hundredand fifty dollars a week?”

“That’s right.”

“And just what are you doingto earn that money?”

“Nothing.” God, why did she let her mother goad her into the admission?

“Nothing? Nothing?”

“I’m his assistant. I take notes. I drive him around.”

“What do you know about being an assistant? Who is this man? How old is he? You drivehim around?In yourcar? For seven hundred and fifty dollars a week?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a contract?”

“Well, no.”

“No contract? Don’t you know anything?Corrie, why do you think he’s paying you seven fifty? Or do you already know why—is that what it’s come to? No wonder you’ve been lying to me, hiding from me this little job of yours. I can just imagine what kind of jobyou do for him, young lady.”

Corrie held her hands over her ears. If only she could get out, get into her car, get away. Anywhere. She could sleep in the car down by the creek. But she was scared. It was night. The killer was out there, somewhere, in the corn. “Mom, it’s not like that, okay?”

“Not okay. Not okay. You’re just a high school kid, you aren’t worth anything, let alone seven fifty. Corrie, I’ve been around the block a few times. I know what’s what. I know about men,I know what they want, how they think. I know what jerks they can be. Look at your father, look how he ran out on me, on us. Never paying a dime in child support. He was worthless, worse than worthless. And I can tell you right now that thisman of yours is no FBI agent. What FBI agent would hire a delinquent with a record? Don’t you lie to me, Corrie.”

“I’m notlying to you.” If only she could get away, just this night. But tonight the whole town was as quiet as a tomb. Fallout from the riot at the church. Just driving home had really spooked her. Every house had been locked up and shuttered tight. And it was barely nine o’clock.

“If this is on the up and up, bring him here to me, then. I want to meet him.”

“I’d die before I ever let him see this dump!” Corrie shouted, suddenly white-hot with rage. “Or you!”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, young lady!”

“I’m going to bed.”

“Don’t you walk away while I’m talking to you—”

Corrie went into her room and slammed the door. She quickly put on some earphones and shoved a CD into her player, hoping that Kryptopsy would drown out the angry voice she could still hear yelling through the wall. The chances were good her mother wouldn’t get out of bed. Standing up brought on a headache. She’d eventually get tired of yelling and, if Corrie were lucky, wouldn’t even remember the conversation in the morning. But then again, maybe she would. She’d seemed alarmingly sober.

By the time the mangled thrashing of the last song had ended, all seemed to be quiet. She eased off the earphones and went to the window to breathe the night air. Crickets trilled in the darkness. The smell of night, of the corn just beyond the trailer park, of sticky heat, all flowed into the room. It was very dark outside; the streetlights on their lane had burned out long ago and had never been replaced. She stared out into the darkness for a while, wiping silent tears out of her eyes, and then lay down on her bed, in her clothes, and started the CD again from the beginning. Look at your father,her mom had said. He was worthless.As always, Corrie tried not to think about him. Thinking about her father only hurt more, because despite everything her mother said she only had good memories of him. Why had he left the way he did? Why had he never written her, not once, to explain? Maybe she really was worthless, useless, undeserving of love, as her mother had taken pains to point out many times.

She turned up the volume, trying to drive the train of thought from her mind. One more year. Just one more year. Lying on her bed in a dying town in the middle of nowhere, another year seemed like an eternity. But surely anyone could get through a year. Even her . . .

She woke up in blackness. The crickets had stopped trilling and it was now completely silent. She sat up, plucking off the dead headphones. Something had woken her. What was it? A dream? But she could remember no dream. She waited, listening.

Nothing.

She got up and went to the window. A sliver of a moon drifted from behind some clouds, then disappeared again. Heat lightning danced along the horizon, little flickers of dull yellow. Her heart was racing, her nerves strung tight. Why? Maybe it was the creepy music she’d fallen asleep to.

She moved closer to the open window. The night air, laden with the fragrance of the fields, came drifting in, humid and sticky. It was unrelievedly dark. Beyond the black outline of the trailer next door she could see the distant darkness of the cornfields, a single glowing star.

She heard a sound. A snuffle.

Was it her mother? But it seemed to have come from outside:out there, in the darkness.

Another snuffle, like someone with a bad cold.

She peered hard into the darkness, into the deep pools of shadow that lay alongside the trailer. The street beyond was like a dark river. She strained to see, every sense alert. There, by the hedge that lined the street: was there something moving? A shape? Was it just her imagination?

She placed her hand on the window and tried to draw it shut, but as usual it was stuck fast. She jiggled it, trying to free the mechanism with a feeling of rising panic.

She heard more snuffling, like the heavy panting of a large animal. It seemed very close now. But the act of listening caused her to pause for just an instant; then in a sudden panic she redoubled her struggle to get the window shut, rattling it in desperation, trying to free the cheap aluminum latch. Something wasmoving out there. She could feel it, she could sense it—and now, yes now, she was sure she could seeit: a lumpen, malformed shadow, a mass, black against black, moving ever so stealthily toward her.

Instinct took over and she fell away from the window, abandoning her attempt to close it in favor of reaching for the light and banishing the darkness. She fumbled, knocked the CD player to the floor, found the light.

The instant it went on, the room lit up and the window became an opaque rectangle of black. She heard a sudden grunt; a dull thud; a frantic rustling sound. And then, silence.

She waited, taking a few slow steps back from the black window. Her body was shaking uncontrollably, and her throat was very dry. She could see nothing outside now, nothing at all. Was itthere, in the window, looking at her? A minute ticked off, then another and another. Then she heard, in the middle distance, what sounded like a cough and groan: very low, but so replete with terror and pain that it chilled her to the marrow. It cut off abruptly, replaced with a strange wet ripping noise, and then a sound like someone dumping a bucket of water on the pavement down the street. Then, silence: utter, total silence.

Somehow, the silence was even worse than the noise. She felt a scream rising, unbidden, in her throat.

Then, all of a sudden, there was a snap, a gurgle, and a hissing sound, which slowly subsided to a steady swishing murmur.

She slumped, her body abruptly relaxing. It was just Mr. Dade’s sprinkler system coming on, as it did every morning at exactly 2A .M.

She glanced at her clock: sure enough, it read 2:00.

How many times had she heard that sprinkler system cough and splutter and gurgle and make all sorts of weird noises as it started up? Get a grip,she thought. Her imagination was really working overtime. Not surprising, given all that was going on in the town . . . and given what she’d seen, with Pendergast, out there in the cornfields.

She returned to the window and grabbed the latch, feeling a little sheepish. This time, a single, brutal thrust was enough to close it. She locked the window and climbed back into bed and turned out the light.

The sound of the sprinklers filtering through the glass, the caressing patter of raindrops, was like a lullaby. And yet it wasn’t until four that she was finally able to fall back to sleep.

Thirty-One

 

Tad rolled over so hard that he fell out of bed. Staggering to his knees, he passed a hand across his face, then reached blindly for the ringing telephone. He found it, fumbled with it, lifted it to his face.

“Hello?” he mumbled. “Hello?” Through the sleep-heavy bars of his lashes, he could see that outside the bedroom window it was still dark, the stars hard in the sky, only the faintest streak of yellow on the eastern horizon.

“Tad.” It was Hazen, and he sounded very awake indeed. “I’m over on Fairview, near the side entrance to Wyndham Parke. I need you here. Ten minutes.”

“Sheriff—?” But the phone was already dead.

Tad made it in five.

Although the sun had yet to rise, a crowd from the nearby trailer park had gathered, clad mostly in bathrobes and flip-flops. They were strangely silent. Hazen was there, in the middle of the street, setting up crime-scene tape himself while talking into a cell phone propped beneath his jaw. And there, too, was the FBI man, Pendergast, standing off to one side, slender and almost invisible in his black suit. Tad looked around, an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. But there was no body, no new victim; just a lumpy, irregular splotch in the middle of the street. Sitting next to it was a canvas bag, full of something. The uneasy feeling gave way to relief. Another animal, it seemed. He wondered what all the hurry was.

As he walked closer, Hazen snapped his phone shut. “Get back, all of you!” he shouted, waving the phone at the crowd. “Tad! Take over with this tape and get these people back!”

Tad moved forward quickly, grabbing the end of the tape. As he did so, he got a much closer glance at the pile on the street. It glistened redly, pearlescent, steaming in the predawn light. He looked away quickly, swallowing hard.

“All right, folks,” Tad began, but his voice didn’t sound quite right and he stopped, swallowing once more. “All right, folks, back up. More. More. Please.”

The crowd huddled back, silent, their faces pale in the gloom. He strung the plastic tape across the road and tied it to a tree, wrapping it several times, completing the square that Hazen had begun. He saw that Hazen was now talking to the Goth, Corrie Swanson. Pendergast stood beside her, silent. Behind was her mother, looking like hell as usual, her thin brown hair plastered to her skull, a stained and frayed pink bathrobe wrapped tightly around her. She was chain-smoking Virginia Slims.

“You heardsomething?” Hazen was repeating. His voice was skeptical, but he was taking notes nevertheless.

Corrie was pale, and she was trembling, but her mouth was set in a hard line and her eyes were bright. “I woke up. It was just before two—”

“And how did you know what time it was?”

“I looked at my clock.”

“Go on.”

“Something woke me up, I wasn’t sure what. I went to the window, and that’s when I heard the sound.”

“What sound?”

“Like snuffling.”

“Dog?”

“No. More like . . . like someone with a bad cold.”

Hazen jotted notes. “Go on.”

“I had this sense there was something moving out there, right beneath my window, but I couldn’t really see it. It was too dark. I turned on the light. And then I heard a different sound, like a groan.”

“Human?”

Corrie blinked. “Hard to tell.”

“Then?”

“I shut my window and went back to sleep.”

Hazen lowered his notebook and stared at her. “You didn’t think to call me or your, ah, boss?” He nodded at Pendergast.

“I—I figured it was just the sprinkler system, which goes on every night around two. It makes weird noises.”

Hazen put away his notebook. He turned to Pendergast. “Some assistant you got there.” Then he turned to Tad. “All right, this is what we’ve got. Somebody dumped a pile of guts on the road. Looks like cow to me, there’s too much there for a dog or sheep. And that sack sitting next to it is full of ears of corn, freshly picked. I want you to check around all the local stock farms, see if anyone’s missing a cow, pig, any large livestock.” His eyes flitted back toward Corrie before returning to Tad. He lowered his voice. “This whole thing is starting to look more and more like a cult of some kind.”

Over Hazen’s shoulder, Tad watched Pendergast step forward and kneel before the pile of offal. He reached forward, actually prodded at something with his finger. Tad averted his eyes. Then he reached over and with one finger lifted the mouth of the canvas bag.

“Sheriff Hazen?” Pendergast asked without rising.

Hazen was already back on the cell phone. “What?”

“I would suggest looking for a missing person instead.”

There was a shocked silence as the implication sunk in.

Hazen lowered the cell phone. “How do you know these are . . .” He couldn’t quite bring himself to finish the sentence.

“Cows don’t normally eat what appears to be Maisie’s meatloaf, washed down with a glass of beer.”

Hazen took a step forward and shined his light into the glistening pile. He swallowed hard. “But why would the killer . . .” He paused again. His face was dead white. “I mean, why take a body and leave the guts behind?”

Pendergast rose, wiping his finger with a handkerchief of white silk. “Perhaps,” he said grimly, “to lighten his load.”

Thirty-Two

 

It was eleven o’clock before Tad finally returned to the sheriff’s office. The sweat was pouring off his brow, and his uniform was soaked to the cuffs. He was the last to return: the state troopers and Hazen, who had also been conducting searches, were there before him. The inner office had been turned into a command center, and a large group of Staties were standing around, talking on cell phones and radios. The press, naturally, had gotten wind of it, and once again the street was lined with TV vans, reporters, and photographers. But they were the only people in sight: all the residents had shut and locked themselves in their houses. The Wagon Wheel was closed and shuttered. Even the shift at Gro-Bain had been sent home for the day. Except for the hungry gaggle of media, Medicine Creek had become a ghost town.

“Any luck?” Hazen said immediately as Tad came through the door.

“No.”

“Damn!”The sheriff pounded his fist on the desk. “Yours was the last quadrant.” He shook his head. “Three hundred and twenty-five people, and every damn one of them accounted for. They’re canvassing Deeper and the surrounding farms, but nobody’s come up missing.”

“Are you sure the, um, guts were human?”

Hazen looked sideways at Tad, his eyes red, rimmed by dark circles. Tad had never seen the sheriff under so much pressure. The man’s muscular hands were balled into fists, the knuckles white.

“I wondered that, too. But the remains are now up at Garden City, and McHyde assures me they’re human. That’s all they know so far.”

Tad felt sick to his stomach. The image of the meatloaf, poking out of that ragged tear in the ruined guts, the beer foam mixing with the blood—that was going to stay with him the rest of his life. He never should have looked. Never.

“Maybe it was someone passing through,” he said weakly. “What local person would be out alone at that time of night, anyway?”

“I thought of that, too. But where’s the car?”

“Hidden, like Sheila Swegg’s?”

“We’ve checked everywhere. We’ve had a spotter plane up since eight.”

“No circle cut in a cornfield?”

“Nothing. No hidden car, no circle, no dumped body, nothing. No footprints this time, either.” Hazen wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and sat down with a heavy thump.

It was hard to concentrate, the state police were making so much noise with their radios and cell phones in the inner office. And worse, the press was camped right outside, a battery of cameras aimed point-blank at them through the glass door.

“Could it have been a traveling salesman?” Tad asked.

Hazen jerked his head toward the inner office. “The Staties are checking all the area motels.”

“What about the sack of corn?”

“We’re working on it. Christ, we don’t know if it was left by the killer or if the victim was carrying it. But why the hell would someone be carrying a sackful of corn in the middle of the night? And each ear was tagged and numbered in some kind of weird code, to boot.” He glanced at the sea of cameras beyond the front door. He started to rise, sat down, rose again. “Get me that can of whitewash and the brush from the storeroom, okay?”

Tad knew exactly what Hazen was going to do. When he returned, Hazen took the can from his hands, tore off the lid, dipped in the brush, and began to paint the glass.

“Bastards,” he muttered as his arm swept back and forth, the paint running down and puddling on the doorsill. “ Bastards.Photograph this and see how you like it.”

“Let me help,” Tad said.

But Hazen ignored him, slopping the paint up and down in big strokes until the door was covered. Then he shoved the brush in the can, jammed the lid back on, and sat down heavily again, closing his eyes. His uniform was flecked with white paint.

Tad sat down beside him, worried. Hazen’s square face had a gray sheen to it, like a dead piece of fish. His sandy hair lay limp across his forehead. A vein pulsed in his right temple.

Suddenly, the sheriff’s eyes popped wide open. It happened so fast that Tad jumped.

Hazen’s lips parted, and he muttered just one word:

“Chauncy!”

Thirty-Three

 

Around noon, Sheriff Hazen decided he’d watched the dog-handler, Lefty Weeks, struggle with the dogs for just about as long as he could stand. Weeks was one of those types that really got on Hazen’s nerves: a little man with white eyelashes, big ears, long thin neck, red eyelids, a wheedler and whiner who never stopped talking, even if his audience was a pair of useless dogs. The air under the cottonwood trees was hot and dead and Hazen could feel the sweat springing out on his forehead, the nape of his neck, his underarms, his back, leaking and running down through every fold and crease, even the crack of his ass. It must be over 105 frigging degrees. He couldn’t smoke because of the damn dogs, but it was so hot he didn’t even feel a craving. Now thatwas saying something.

Once again the two dogs were whining and cringing about in circles, their tails clamped down hard over their assholes. Hazen glanced at Tad, then looked back at the dogs. Weeks was yelling at them in a high-pitched voice, swearing and jerking ineffectually at the leashes.

Hazen went over, gave one of the dogs a swift kick in the haunch. “Find that motherfucker!” he shouted. “Go on. Get going.”

The dog whined and crouched lower.

“If you don’t mind,Sheriff—” Weeks began, his red ears backlit and flaming in the heat.

Hazen spun on him. “Weeks, this is the third time you’ve brought dogs down here and every time it’s been the same thing.”

“Well, kicking them isn’t going to help.”

Hazen struggled to control his temper, already sorry he had kicked the dog. The state troopers were now looking at him, their faces blank, but no doubt thinking that he was just another redneck hayseed sheriff. He swallowed hard and moderated his voice. “Lefty, look. This is no joke. Get those dogs to track or I’m putting in a formal complaint up to Dodge.”

Weeks pouted. “I know they’ve got a scent, I knowit. But they just won’t track.”

Hazen felt himself boiling up all over again. “Weeks, you promised me dogsthis time, and look at them, groveling like toy poodles in front of a mastiff.” Hazen took a step forward at the dogs. This time one of them snarled.

“Don’t,” Weeks warned.

“She’s not afraid of me, the bitch, although she should be. Give her another go, damn it.”

Weeks took out the plastic bag holding the scent—an object retrieved from the second killing—and opened it with gloved hands. The dog backed away, whining.

“Come on, girl. Come on,” Weeks wheedled.

The dog slithered back and forth almost on its belly.

Weeks crouched, the thin travesty of a goatee bobbing on his chin while he held the bag open invitingly. “Come on, girl. Scent it! Go!” He shoved the bag up to her nose.

The quivering, crouching dog let loose a stream of piss onto the dry sand.

“Oh, Christ,” said Hazen, turning away. He crossed his arms and looked up the creek.

They had been up and down it now for three hours, dragging the unwilling dogs the whole way. Beyond, in the cornfields, Hazen could see the state police teams moving. Farther down, the SOC teams were on their hands and knees, combing the sandbeds along the creek for something, anything. Above droned two spotter planes, crisscrossing back and forth, back and forth. Why couldn’t they find the body? Had the killer taken off with it? There were state police roadblocks up, but the killer could have escaped during the night. You can drive a long way in a Kansas night.

He glanced up and saw Smit Ludwig approaching, notebook in hand.

“Sheriff, mind if I—”

“Smitty, this is a restricted area.” Hazen had just about had it.

“I didn’t see any tape, and—”

“You get out of here, Ludwig. On the double.”

Ludwig stood his ground. “I have a right to be here.”

Hazen turned to Tad. “Escort Mr. Ludwig to the road.”

“You can’t do this—!”

The sheriff turned his back on the entreaty. “Come on, Mr. Ludwig,” he heard Tad say. The pair of them disappeared in the trees, Ludwig’s protests increasingly muffled by the muggy air.

The sheriff’s radio crackled. He hoisted it.

“Hazen here.”

“Chauncy’s been missing from his hotel since yesterday.” It was Hal Brenning, state police liaison officer, down in Deeper. “Didn’t return last night. Bed wasn’t slept in.”

“Hallelujah, what else is new?”

“He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing, where he was going. Nobody up here knows anything about his itinerary.”

“We checked into that,” Hazen replied. “Seems he had car problems, left his Saturn over at Ernie’s Exxon. Insisted it be fixed that day, even though Ernie told him it was a two-day job. Chauncy was last seen eating a late dinner at Maisie’s. Never picked up the car, though. Looks like he went into the cornfields and was doing a little last-minute research on the sly, collecting and labeling ears of corn.”

“Collecting corn?”

“I know, I know. Insane, with a killer running loose. But this Chauncy liked to play his cards close to his vest. Probably didn’t want anybody prying, asking awkward questions.” Hazen shook his head, remembering how upset Chauncy had become at Pendergast’s talk of cross-pollination.

“Well. Anyway, we’re looking through Dr. Chauncy’s papers now with some of Sheriff Larssen’s boys. It looks like he was going to make some kind of announcement today at noon.”

“Yeah. The experimental field project which Medicine Creek wasn’t going to get. Anything else?”

“Some dean from KSU’s coming down with their head of campus security. Should be here in half an hour.”

Hazen groaned.

“On top of that, we’ve got a dust storm brewing. There’s a weather advisory out for Cry County and the eastern Colorado plains.”

“When?”

“The leading edge could come as early as tonight. They say it might be upgraded to a tornado watch.”

“Great.” The sheriff punched the radio off, holstered it, and glanced up. Sure enough: thunderheads, darker than usual, were piling up to the west, as if a nuclear war was being fought somewhere over the horizon. Any Kansan with half a brain knew what clouds like that meant. There was more than a dust storm coming. At the least, the creek would be up, scouring the whole creek bed. The fields would get drenched, maybe flooded. There’d probably be hail. And there would go all their clues. They’d get nothing more to go on until . . . until the next killing. And if there were indeed tornadoes, it would shut down the whole investigation while everyone dove for cover. What a frigging mess.

“Weeks, if those dogs aren’t going to track, then get them the hell out of here. Your dragging them up and down the creek is just wrecking the site for everyone else. This is a disgrace.”

“It’s not my fault.”

Hazen stalked off down the creek. It was a ten-minute walk to the spot where his cruiser and a dozen other vehicles, marked and unmarked, glittered alongside the road. He coughed, spat, breathed through his nose. There was definitely that curious stillness in the air that precedes a storm.

And there on the gravel shoulder was Art Ridder, getting out of his idling vehicle, standing and waving. “Sheriff!”

The sheriff walked over.

“Hazen, I’ve been looking all over creation for you,” said Ridder, his face even redder than usual.

“Art, I’m having a bad day.”

“I can see that.”

Hazen took a deep breath. Ridder might be the town’s big shot, but there was only so much crap he was going to take.

“I just got a call from a guy named Dean Fisk, up at the Agricultural Extension. KSU. He’s on his way down with an entourage.”

“I heard.”

Ridder looked surprised. “You did? Well, here’s something I’ll bet you don’tknow. Listen, you’re not going to believe this.”

Hazen waited.

“Chauncy was going to announce today that Medicine Creekhad been awarded the experimental field.”

Just when he thought he couldn’t get any hotter, Hazen felt a sudden flush burn its way through him. “Medicine Creek? NotDeeper?”

“It was going to be us all along.”

Hazen just stared, stupid with heat and surprise. “I can’t believe it.”

“He may have hated the town, but that didn’t change the fact that it’s a perfect place for their field.” Ridder wiped his greasy brow, tucked the soiled handkerchief back into his breast pocket. “We’re a dying town, Sheriff. My house is worth sixty percent what it was twenty years ago. Sooner or later the turkey plant’s going to lose another shift, maybe even close down. Do you know what this field would have meant for us? Genetic engineering, Hazen. One field would’ve just been the beginning. There’d have been more fields, a computer center, accommodations for visiting scientists and faculty, maybe a weather station. There would have been construction opportunities, real estate opportunities, more business for everyone, work for our children.” His voice rose into the dead air. “That field would have saved our town.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Art,” Hazen said woodenly, still stunned.

“You’re a fool if you don’t see it! But do you think we’re going to get it now? Now that their man just had his guts ripped out in the center of our town? Huh?”

Hazen felt an immense weariness settling on his shoulders. He began to walk past Ridder. “I don’t have time for this, Art. I’ve got a body to find.”

But Ridder blocked him. “Look, Sheriff. I’ve been thinking.” He lowered his voice. “Have you looked into this guy Pendergast? Think about it. He showed up in town awfully goddamn fast after that first killing. We only have his word that he’s FBI. How do you know heisn’t involved? That heisn’t the psycho? He’s at every killing, poking his albino nose everywhere—”

But Hazen barely heard. Suddenly Ridder’s voice seemed to have gone far away.

Hazen had an idea.

Ridder was right: Deeper would get the experimental field now, by default. But by rights it should have gone to Medicine Creek. Right on the eve of Chauncy’s announcement—the very eve—he comes up murdered. And now Deeper would get the field.