Текст книги "Still Life With Crows"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

He laughed, but it was a mirthless laugh.

“What about the dead Cheyenne horses? How did they vanish, in your opinion?”

“You’re a hard man to please, Mr. Pendergast. I thought about that, too. When I was young I saw an eighty-year-old Lakota chief butcher a buffalo in less than ten minutes. A buffalo’s a damn sight bigger than a horse. Indians ate horsemeat. They could’ve butchered the horses and packed the meat and bones out with their dead or hauled them out by travois. They left the guts behind, you see, to lighten the loads. And maybe there weren’t more than two or three dead Cheyenne horses, anyway. Maybe Great-Granddaddy Isaiah exaggerated just a little when he said a dozen of their horses had been killed.”

“Perhaps,” Pendergast said. He rose and walked over to the makeshift bookshelf. “And I thank you for a most informative story. But what does the story of the massacre have to do with the ‘curse of the Forty-Fives’ that you mentioned, which nobody seems willing to talk about?”

Brushy Jim stirred. “Well, now, Mr. Pendergast, I don’t think ‘willing’ is the right word there. It’s just not a pretty story, that’s all.”

“I’m all ears, Mr. Draper.”

Brushy Jim licked his lips. Then he leaned forward. “All right, then. You know how I said that the sentries were among the last to be killed?”

Pendergast nodded. He had picked up a battered copy of Butler & Company’s New American First Readerand was leafing through it.

“The very last to be killed was a fellow named Harry Beaumont. He was the leader of the Forty-Fives and a real hard case, too. The Indians were furious at what had been done to their women and children, and they punished Beaumont for it. They didn’t just scalp him. They roundedhim.”

“I’m not familiar with that term.”

“Well, let’s just say that they did something to Harry Beaumont that would make sure none of his family recognized him in the afterlife. And after they were done they cut off his boots and skinned off the soles of his feet, so his spirit couldn’t follow them. Then they buried the boots on either side of the Mounds, as a backup, like, to trap his evil spirit there forever.”

Pendergast returned the book, pulled out another, even more battered, titled Commerce of the Prairies.He flipped through the pages. “I see. And the curse?”

“Different people will tell you different things. Some say Beaumont’s ghost still haunts the Mounds, looking for his missing boots. Some say still worse things that I’d just as soon not repeat in front of a lady, if it’s all the same to you. But the one thing I can tell you for sure is that, right before he died, Beaumont cursed the very ground around him—cursed it for all eternity. My great-granddaddy was still hidden in the hollow, and he heard him with his own ears. He was the only living witness.”

“I see.” Pendergast had pulled out another volume, very narrow and tall. “Thank you, Mr. Draper, for a most interesting history lesson.”

Brushy Jim rose. “Not a problem.”

But Pendergast seemed not to hear. He was staring closely at the narrow book. It had a cheap cloth cover, Corrie noticed, and its ruled pages seemed filled with crude drawings.

“Oh, that old thing,” Brushy Jim said. “My dad bought that off some soldier’s widow, years and years ago. Swindled. I’m ashamed he was taken in by such a fake. Always meant to throw it out with the trash.”

“This is no fake.” Pendergast turned a page, then another, with something close to reverence. “To all appearances, this is a genuine Indian ledger book. Fully intact, as well.”

“Ledger book?” Corrie repeated. “What’s that?”

“The Cheyenne would take an old Army ledger book and draw pictures on the pages—of battles, courtship, the hunt. The pictures would chronicle the life of a warrior, a kind of biography. The Indians thought decorated ledger books had supernatural powers, and if you strapped one to your body they would render you invincible. The Natural History Museum in New York has a ledger book done by a Cheyenne Indian named Little Finger Nail. It wasn’t as magical as Little Finger Nail would have liked: it still bears the mark of the soldier’s carbine ball that passed through both the ledger book andhim as well.”

Brushy Jim was staring, wide-eyed. “You mean . . .” he began in an incredulous tone. “You mean to say that, all this time . . . The thing’s real?”

Pendergast nodded. “Not only that, but unless I’m much mistaken, it’s a work of singular importance. This scene, here, seems emblematic of the Little Bighorn. And this, at the end of the book, appears to be a depiction of the Ghost Dance religion.” He closed the volume with care and handed it to Brushy Jim. “This is the work of a Sioux chief. And here perhaps is his glyph, which might be interpreted as Buffalo Hump. It would take additional scholarship to be sure.”

Brushy Jim held the book at arm’s length, trembling, as if afraid to drop it.

“You realize that it’s worth several hundred thousand dollars,” Pendergast said. “Perhaps more, should you want to sell it. It is in need of conservation, though. The groundwood pulp in ledger book paper is highly acidic.”

Slowly, Brushy Jim brought the book closer, turned the pages. “I want to keep this here book, Mr. Pendergast. The money’s no good to me. But how do I get it, um, conserved?”

“I know a gentleman who can work wonders with books as damaged and frail as this one. I’d be happy to have it taken care of, gratis, of course.”

Brushy Jim looked at the book for a minute. Then, without a word, he extended it to Pendergast.

They said their goodbyes. As Corrie drove back to town, Pendergast fell into silence, eyes closed, deep in thought, the carefully wrapped ledger book held very gently in one hand.

Eighteen

 

Willie Stott moved across the slick concrete floor, sweeping the hot mixture of bleach and water back and forth, propelling stray gizzards, heads, crests, guts, and all the other poultry effluvia—collectively known as “gibs” by the line workers—toward the huge stainless steel sink in the floor below the Evisceration Area. With the expertise of years, Stott flicked his hose hand left and right, sending additional strings of offal skidding away under the force of the cleanser, rolling them all up neatly together as they were forced toward the center. Stott worked the jet like an artist works a brush, teasing everything into a long bloody rope before giving it one final signature blast that propelled it down the drain with a wet swallow. He gave the floor a once-over, snaking the jet here and there to catch a few stray strings and wattles, the odd beak, causing the stragglers to jump and dance under the play of the hose.

Stott had given up eating turkey within days of starting work at Gro-Bain, and after a few months had given up meat altogether. Most everybody else he knew who worked there was the same. At Thanksgiving, Gro-Bain gave free turkeys to all its employees, but Stott had yet to meet anyone who actually ate it.

Work complete, he switched off and racked the nozzle. It was ten-fifteen and the last of the second shift had left hours before. In years past there would have been a third shift, from eight until four in the morning, but those days were gone.

He felt the comforting pressure in his back pocket from the pint bottle of Old Grand-Dad. As a reward for finishing, he slipped out the flask, unscrewed the cap, and took a pull. The whiskey, warmed to body temperature, traced a nice warm tingling line right down to his belly and then, a few moments later, back up to his head.

Life wasn’t so bad.

He took a final pull and emptied the bottle, shoved it back into his pocket, and picked up the big squeegee that hung on the tiled wall. Back and forth, back and forth—in another five minutes the floor, workers’ platform, and conveyor belt overhead were all so clean and dry you could eat off them. And the stench of turkey shit, fear, blood, and sour guts had been replaced by the clean, astringent smell of bleach. Another job well done. Stott felt a small stab of pride.

He reached for the bottle, then remembered it was empty. He glanced at his watch. The Wagon Wheel would be open for another thirty minutes. If Jimmy, the night guard, arrived on schedule, he would make it with plenty of time to spare.

It was a wonderfully warming thought.

As he was racking up the last of the cleaning equipment, he heard Jimmy coming into the plant. The man was actually five minutes early—or, more likely, his own damn watch was running slow. He walked over to the docks to wait. In a minute he heard Jimmy approaching, jangling like an ice cream truck with his keys and all his other crap.

“Yo, Jimmy-boy,” Stott said.

“Willie. Hey.”

“All yours.”

“Whatever.”

Stott walked into the deserted employee parking lot, where his dusty car sat beneath a light at the far end, all alone. Since he arrived at the height of the second shift, his car was always the farthest away. The night was hot and silent. He walked through the pools of light toward his car. Beyond the lot, cornfields stretched into darkness. The nearest stalks—the ones he could make out—stood very still and straight. They seemed to be listening. The sky was overcast and it was impossible to tell where the corn stopped and night began. It was one huge black sinkhole. He quickened his pace. It wasn’t natural, to be surrounded by so much goddamn corn. It made people strange.

He unlocked the car and got in, slamming the door behind him. The violent motion sent the thin blanket of dust and corn pollen that had settled on the roof skittering down the windows. He locked the door, getting more dust on his hands. The shit was everywhere. Christ, he could already taste Swede’s whiskey, burning the back of his throat clean.

He started his car, an old AMC Hornet. The engine turned over, coughed, died.

He swore, looked out the windows. To his right, darkness. To his left, the empty parking lot with its regular intervals of light.

He waited, turned the key again. This time the engine caught. He gave the accelerator a few revs and then put the thing into drive. With its habitual clank of protesting metal, the car moved forward.

Wagon Wheel, here we come.A warm feeling invaded him as he thought of another pint, another pull, just something to see him back to Elmwood Acres, the sad little mini-development where he lived on the far end of town. Or maybe he’d make it two pints. It felt like that kind of a night.

The lights of the Gro-Bain plant flashed past, and then Stott was humming along in the darkness, two walls of corn blurring past on either side, his headlights illuminating a small section of the dusty road. Up ahead it curved, angling lazily toward Medicine Creek. The lights of town lay to the left, a glow in the sky above the corn.

As he rounded the curve the engine clanked again, more ominously than before. And then, with a wheeze and cough, it went dead.

“Shit,” Willie Stott muttered.

The old Hornet glided to a stop along the road. Stott put it in park and turned the key, but there was nothing. The car was dead.

“Shit!” he cried again, slamming the wheel. “Shit, shit, shit!”

His voice died away in the confines of the car. Silence and darkness surrounded him. Whatever had happened in his car just now sounded pretty fucking final, and he didn’t even have a flashlight to look under the hood.

He pulled out his flask, opened it, tipped it up, drained the last fiery drop. He licked his lips, turning the bottle over in his hands, staring at it. He didn’t have any more at home.

He flung it out the window into the corn and checked his watch. Twenty minutes until the Wagon Wheel closed. It was about a mile. He could still make it on foot if he walked fast.

Then, hand on the door handle, he paused, thinking about the recent murder, about the unpleasant details the newspaper had hinted at.

Yeah, right. Five billion acres of corn and some nutcase is lying in wait, right between here and the Wagon Wheel.

Muggy night air flowed in as he opened the door. Christ, twenty minutes to eleven and it was still hot as bejesus. He could smell the corn, the moisture. Crickets chirped in the darkness. Heat lightning flickered on the distant horizon.

He turned back toward the car, wondering if he should put on the emergency blinkers. Then he decided against it. That would just add a dead battery to his problems. Besides, nobody would come along the road until the pre-shift, at seven.

If he was going to get to the Wagon Wheel in time, he’d better get moving.

He walked fast, lanky legs eating up the road. His job at the plant paid seven-fifty an hour. How the hell was he supposed to fix his car on seven-fifty an hour? Ernie would give him a break, but parts cost a fortune. A new starter might be three fifty, four hundred. Two weeks of work. He could hitch a ride to work with Rip. Like last time, he’d have to borrow Jimmy’s car to get home, and then come back at seven to pick him up. Problem was, Jimmy expected him to pay for all the gas during the arrangement, and gas cost a fucking fortune these days.

It wasn’t fair. He was a good worker. He should be paid more. Nine bucks an hour, eight-fifty, at least.

He walked even faster. The warm glow of yellow light in the Wagon Wheel, the long wooden bar, the plaintive jukebox, the bottles and glasses glistening on their shelves before the mirror—the images filled his heart and propelled his legs.

Suddenly he stopped. He thought he’d heard a rustling in the corn to his right.

He waited a moment, listening, but all was silent. The air was dead still. The heat lightning flickered, then flickered again.

He resumed walking, this time moving to the center of the road. All was silent. Some animal, coon probably. Or maybe his imagination.

Again his thoughts turned to the Wagon Wheel. He could see the big friendly form of Swede with his red cheeks and handlebar mustache moving behind the counter: good old Swede, who always had a friendly word for everyone. He imagined Swede setting the little shot glass down in front of him, the generously poured whiskey slopping over the side; he imagined raising it to his lips; he imagined the golden fire making its way down his gullet. Instead of a pint, he’d pay a little more and drink at the bar. Swede would give him a ride home, he was good to his customers. Or maybe he could just rack out in the back room, go on over to Ernie’s first thing in the morning. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept one off in the Wagon Wheel. Beat going home to the ball and chain, anyway. He could call her from the bar, make some excuse—

There was that sound in the corn again.

He hesitated only for a moment, then continued walking, his work shoes soft on the warm asphalt. And then he heard the sound again, closer now, close enough to be recognized.

It was the rustle of someone brushing through the dry corn.

He peered to his right, trying to see. But he could only see the tops of the corn against the faint sky. The rest was a wall of darkness.

Then, as he stared, he saw a single cornstalk tremble against the sky.

What was it? Deer? Coyote?

“Hah!” he cried, shooing his hands in the direction of the sound.

His blood froze at the reply. It was a grunt, human yet not human.

Muh,came the sound.

“Who the hell is that?”

No sound now.

“Fuck you,” said Stott, quickening his pace and veering to the far side of the road. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but fuck you.”

There was a rustling sound, of someone moving through the corn, faster now, keeping pace with him.

Muh.

Stott began to jog along the far side of the road.

The rustling in the corn kept pace. The voice, the strange gasping voice, rose in volume and insistence. Muh! Muh!

Now Stott broke into a run. There was a corresponding crashing in the corn to his right. He could see, against the faintest sky, the tops of the corn alongside the road thrashing and snapping. More crashing, and then he saw what he thought was a dark shape coming out of the corn, very fast, first moving parallel to him, then angling closer.

In a second, some atavistic instinct drove Willie Stott to jump the ditch on the left side of the road and crash headlong into the corn. As the tall ears swallowed him up, he glanced back for only a second. As he did so he saw a large, dark shape scuttling across the road behind him at a terrible speed.

Stott crashed through the next row, and the next, forcing himself as deeply as possible into the dark, suffocating corn, gasping out loud. But always he heard the crash of dry ears being trampled behind him.

He took a ninety-degree angle and ran down a row. Behind, the crashing stopped.

Stott ran. He had long legs and in high school he’d been on the track team. That had been years ago, but he still knew how to run. And so he ran, thinking of nothing else except planting one foot before the other, outrunning whatever it was behind him.

Despite the encircling corn, he was not yet fully disoriented. Medicine Creek lay ahead of him, just over a mile away. He could still make it. . .

Behind him now, he could hear the loud slapping of feet against earth. And with each step, a rhythmic grunt.

Muh. Muh. Muh.

The long row of corn made a slow curve along the topography of the land, and he flew along it, running with a speed born of sheer terror.

Muh. Muh. Muh.

Christ, it was getting closer. He swerved, desperately crashing through another row, still running.

He heard an echoing crash behind him as the pursuer broke through the row, following him, closing in.

Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh.

“Leave me the fuck alone!” he screamed.

Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh.

It was getting closer, so close he almost imagined he could feel puffs of hot breath on his neck, keeping time with the thudding feet. A sudden wet warmth flooded his thighs as his bladder let go. He swerved, crashed through yet another row, swerved, veered back. The thing kept right behind him, closer, ever closer.

Muh! Muh! Muh! Muh!

Muh. Muh. Muh. Muh.

It was still gaining, and gaining fast.

Stott felt something grab his hair, something horribly strong. He tried to jerk his head away, the sudden pain awful, but the grip held fast. His lungs were on fire. He could feel his legs slackening with terror.

“ Somebody, help me!” he screamed, diving to one side, jerking and thrashing his head so violently he could feel his scalp begin to separate from his skull. The thing was now almost on top of him. And then he felt a sudden, viselike grip on the back of his neck, a brutal twist and snap, and suddenly it seemed as if he had left the ground and was flying, flying, up into the dark sky, while a triumphant voice screamed:

Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

Nineteen

 

Smit Ludwig locked the door to the CryCountyCourierand dropped the keys into his pocket. As he angled across the street he glanced up at the early morning sky. Big sterile thunderheads were piling up on the northern horizon, just as they had done every day for the past two weeks. They would spread across the sky by nightfall and be gone by morning. One of these days the heat would break and there would be one hell of a storm. But it looked as if the heat would grip the town for a while more, at least.

Ludwig had a pretty good idea what Art Ridder and the sheriff wanted to talk to him about. Well, tough: he’d already written the story about the dog, and it was going to run that very afternoon. He strode down the sidewalk, feeling the heat soaking through the soles of his shoes, feeling the pressure of the sun on his head. Magg’s Candlepin Castle was only a five minute walk, but two minutes into it Ludwig realized his mistake in not driving. He would arrive sweaty and disheveled: a tactical error. At least, he told himself, Magg’s was air-conditioned to tundra-like temperatures.

He pushed through the double doors into a blast of icy air, and was greeted by silence: at this time of the morning the alleys were dark, the pins like tall white teeth in the gloom, the racking machines mute. At the far end of the alley he could see the lights of the Castle Club, where every morning Art Ridder held court with his paper and his breakfast. Ludwig adjusted his collar, straightened his shoulders, and started forward.

The Castle Club was not so much a club as a glassed-in eating area with red fake-leather banquettes, Formica tables made to look like wood, and beveled mirrors shot through with faux gold marbling. Ludwig pushed through the door and approached the corner table, where Ridder and Sheriff Hazen were seated, talking in low tones. Ridder caught sight of Ludwig, rose with a big smile, held out his hand, and guided the reporter into a chair.

“Smitty! Real good of you to come.”

“Sure, Art.”

The sheriff had not risen, and now he simply nodded through a wash of cigarette smoke. “Smit.”

“Sheriff.”

There was a short silence. Ridder looked around, his polyester collar stretching this way and that. “Em! Coffee! And bring Mr. Ludwig some bacon and eggs.”

“I don’t eat much of a breakfast.”

“Nonsense. Today’s an important day.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because Dr. Stanton Chauncy, the professor from KSU, will be joining us in fifteen minutes. I’m going to show him the town.”

There was a short pause. Art Ridder was wearing a pink short-sleeved shirt and light gray doubleknit trousers, his white blazer thrown over the back of the chair. He was rounded, but not especially soft. All those years wrestling turkeys had put muscles on his arms that, it seemed, would never wither. He glowed with ruddy good health.

“We don’t have much time, Smitty, so I’ll be direct. You know me: Mr. Direct.” Ridder gave a little chuckle.

“Sure, Art.” Ludwig leaned back to allow the waitress to slide a greasy plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. He wondered what a real reporter would do at this point. Walk out? Politely decline?

“Okay, Smitty, here’s the deal. You know this guy, Chauncy, is looking for a place to put in an experimental cornfield for Kansas State. It’s either us or Deeper. Deeper’s got a motel, Deeper’s got two gas stations, Deeper’s twenty miles closer to the interstate. Okay? So you might ask, where’s the contest? Why us? You following me?”

Ludwig nodded. You following me?was Art Ridder’s signature phrase.

Ridder raised the coffee mug, flexed his hairy arm, took a sip.

“We’ve got something Deeper doesn’t. Now listen to me good, because this isn’t the official KSU line. We’ve got isolation.” He paused dramatically. “Why is isolation important? ’Cause this cornfield’s going to be used for testing genetically—altered—corn.” He hummed the Twilight Zonetheme, then grinned. “You following me?”

“Not really.”

“We all know that genetically modified corn is harmless. But there are a bunch of ignorant city folks, liberals, enviros—you know who I’m talking about—who think there’s something dangerousabout genetically altered corn.” He hummed Twilight Zoneagain. “The realreason Medicine Creek is in the running is because we’re isolated. No hotel. Long drive. No big mall. Closest radio and television station one hundred miles away. In short, this is the world’s lousiest place to organize a protest.Of course, Dale Estrem and the Farmer’s Co-op aren’t too pleased about it, either, but they’re just a few and I can handle them. You following me?”

Ludwig nodded.

“But now we’ve got a small problem. We’ve got a sonofabitch wacko running around. He’s killed a person, killed a dog,and God knows what the hell else he’s up to, maybe he’s fucking sheep, too. Right when Stanton Chauncy, project director for the Agricultural Extension Program of Kansas State University, is in town to see if Medicine Creek is the right place to site these fields. And we want to show him it isa good place. A calm, law-and-order town. No drugs, no hippies, no protests. Sure, he’s heard about the murder, but he figures it’s just some random, one-time thing. He’s not concerned, and I want him to stay that way. So I need your help with two things.”

Ludwig waited.

“First, take a break from these goddamn articles about the killing. Okay, it happened. Now take a breather. And whatever you do, for chrissakesdon’t do a story on the dead dog.”

Ludwig swallowed. There was a silence. Ridder was staring at him with a pair of red eyes, dark circles under them. He was really taking this seriously.

“That story qualifies as news,” Ludwig said, but his voice cracked when he said it.

Ridder smiled, laid a big hand on Ludwig’s shoulder. He lowered his voice. “I’m askingyou, Smitty, as a favor,to just take a few days off from the story. Just while the KSU guy is here. I’m not telling you to kill it, or anything like that.” He gave Ludwig’s shoulder a little squeeze. “Look, you and I both know the Gro-Bain plant isn’t exactly a sure thing. When they cut the night shift back in ’96, twenty families left town. Those were good jobs, Smitty. People got hurt, had to uproot themselves and leave homes their granddaddies built. I don’t want to live in a dying town. Youdon’t want to live in a dying town. This could make a real difference for our future. One or two fields is just a start, but genetic crop engineering is the coming wave, it’s where the big money’s going to be, and Medicine Creek could be part of it. There’s a lot riding on this, Smitty. A lot more than you might think. All I’m asking, allI’m asking, is a two-, three-day break. The guy’s announcing his decision on Monday. Just save it up and publish it when the guy leaves. Tuesday morning. You following me?”

“I see your point.”

“I care about this town. So do you, Smitty, I know you do. This isn’t for me. I’m just trying to do my civic duty.”

Ludwig swallowed. He noticed that his eggs were congealing on the plate and his bacon had already stiffened.

Sheriff Hazen spoke at last. “Smitty, I know we’ve had our differences. But there’s another reason not to publish anything on the dog. The forensic psychology guys in Dodge think the killer might be feeding off the publicity. His goal is to terrorize the town. People are already dredging up the old rumors about the massacre and the curse of the Forty-Fives, and those damn arrows just seemed calculated to revive the whole thing. It seems the killer might be acting out some weird fantasy about the curse. They say articles in the paper just encourage him. We don’t want to do anything that might trigger another killing. This guy’s no joke, Smitty.”

There was a long silence.

Ludwig finally sighed. “Maybe I can put the dog story off a couple of days,” he said in a low voice.

Ridder smiled. “That’s great. Great.” He squeezed Smitty’s shoulder again.

“You mentioned two things,” Ludwig said a little weakly.

“That’s right, I did. Okay. I was thinking—again, this is just a suggestion, Smitty—that you could fill the gap with a story on Dr. Stanton Chauncy. Everybody loves a little attention, and this guy’s no exception. The project—maybe it’s better not to go into that too much. But a story on him,who he is, where he comes from, all his big degrees, all the great things he’s done up at KSU—you following me, Smitty?”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Ludwig murmured. And, in fact, it really wasn’t a bad idea. If the guy proved to be interesting it would make a good story, and it was just the kind of thing people wanted to read. The future of the town was always the number one topic of conversation in Medicine Creek.

“Great. He’s going to be here in five minutes. I’ll introduce you, then leave you two alone.”

“Fine.” Ludwig swallowed again.

Ridder finally released his grip on Ludwig’s shoulder. He felt a cold patch where the warm, moist hand had been. “You’re a good guy, Smitty.”

“Right.”

Just then the sheriff’s radio crackled to life. Hazen pulled it off his belt and pressed the receive button. Ludwig could hear Tad’s tinny voice giving the sheriff the morning’s incident report. “Some joker let the air out of the tires of the football coach’s car,” came Tad’s voice.

“Next,” said Hazen.

“Another dead dog. This one reported by the side of the road.”

“Christ. Next.”

“Willie Stott’s wife says he didn’t come home last night.”

The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Check with Swede at the Wagon Wheel. He’s probably sleeping it off in the back room again.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll check out the dog myself.”

“It’s two and a half miles out the Deeper Road, on the west side.”

“Check.”

Hazen shoved the radio back into his belt, ground out his cigarette in an ashtray, swept his hat off the empty seat next to him, fitted it to his head, and stood. “See you, Art. Smitty, thanks. Gotta run.”

The sheriff left, and then, as if on cue, Dr. Stanton Chauncy materialized at the far end of the bowling alley, glancing around.

Ridder called, waved at him through the glass. Chauncy nodded and walked past the alleys and into the Castle Club. He had the same stiff walk Ludwig had noticed at the Sociable. The man peered at the plastic decor and Ludwig thought he could see a flicker of something in his eyes: amusement? contempt?

Ridder rose and so did Ludwig.

“Don’t get up on my account,” Chauncy said. He shook their hands and they all sat down.

“Dr. Chauncy,” Ridder began, “I want to introduce to you Smit Ludwig from the Cry County Courier,our local paper. He’s the publisher, editor, and reporter. It’s a one-man band.” He laughed.

Ludwig found a pair of rather cool blue eyes turned on him. “That must be very interesting for you, Mr. Ludwig.”

“Call him Smitty. We don’t go on ceremony in Medicine Creek. We’re a friendly town.”

“Thank you, Art.” Chauncy turned to Ludwig. “Smitty, I hope you’ll call me Stan.”

Ridder spoke before Ludwig could answer. “Stan, listen. Smitty wants to do a story on you and I have to run, so I’ll leave you here. Order what you like; bill’s on me.”

In a moment Ridder was gone, and Chauncy had turned his two dry eyes back on Ludwig. For a moment, Ludwig wondered what he was waiting for. Then he remembered he was supposed to do an interview. He pulled out his steno book, fished out a pen.

“If you don’t mind, I prefer to work with questions presented to me ahead of time,” said Chauncy.

“I wish we were that organized,” said Ludwig, mustering a smile.

Назад к карточке книги "Still Life With Crows"