Текст книги "Still Life With Crows"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Chauncy did not smile. “Tell me what kind of story you had in mind.”

“It would be a profile, basically. You know, the man behind the project and all that.”

There was a silence. “We’re dealing with a sensitive subject. It has to be handled just so.”

“It would be a favorable, uncontroversial article, focusing on you, not on the details of the experimental field.”

Chauncy thought a moment. “I’ll have to see the piece before it runs.”

“We don’t usually do that.”

“You’ll just have to make an exception in my case. University policy.”

Ludwig sighed. “Very well.”

“Proceed,” said Chauncy. He sat back in the chair.

“Would you like a coffee, some breakfast?”

“I ate hours ago, back in Deeper.”

“All right, then. Let’s see.” Ludwig opened the steno book to a blank page, smoothed it, readied his pen, and tried to think of a few pithy questions.

Chauncy looked at his watch. “I’m really a very busy man, so if you could keep this to fifteen minutes, I’d appreciate it. Next time, you should bring questions instead of making them up on the spot. It’s a simple courtesy when interviewing someone whose time is valuable.”

Ludwig exhaled. “So, tell me about yourself, where you went to school, how you got interested in agriculture, that sort of thing.”

“I was born and raised in Sacramento, California. I went to high school there, and attended the University of California at Davis, where I majored in biochemistry. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, in 1985.” He paused. “Would you like me to spell ‘summa cum laude’?”

“I think I can manage it.”

“Then I attended graduate school at Stanford University, graduating in four years—that would be 1989—with a doctorate in molecular biology. My dissertation was awarded the Hensley Medal. That’s H-E-N-S-L-E-Y. I shortly thereafter joined the biology department of Kansas State University on a tenure-track position. I was awarded the chair of Leon Throckmorton Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biology in 1995 and, in addition, became director of the Agricultural Extension Program in 1998.”

He paused for Ludwig to catch up.

Ludwig had done enough boring stories to know what one smelled like, and this reeked to high heaven. The HensleyMedal, Jesus Christ. Was this guy a prick or what?

“Right, thanks. Stan, when did, ah, genetic engineering really capture your interest? When did you know what you wanted to become?”

“We don’t refer to it as genetic engineering. We refer to it as genetic enhancement.”

“Genetic enhancement, then.”

A pious look briefly settled on Chauncy’s features. “When I was twelve or thirteen, I saw a picture in Lifemagazine of a crowd of starving Biafran children all crowding around a UN truck, trying to get a bit of rice. I thought, I want to do something to feed those starving children.”

What a crock. But Ludwig dutifully wrote it all down.

“And your father? Mother? What did they do? Does science run in the family?”

There was a brief silence. “I would prefer to keep the focus on myself.”

Father probably drove a truck and beat his wife,thought Ludwig. “Fine. Tell me, have you published any papers or books?”

“Yes. A great many. I will have a copy of my curriculum vitae faxed to your office if you will give me the number.”

“No fax machine. Sorry.”

“I see. Frankly, I find it a waste of time to answer questions like this when it would be far simpler for you to get the information yourself from the KSU public relations department. They have a file on me a foot thick. And it would be much better if you readsome of my papers before interviewing me. It just saves everyone so much time.” He checked his watch again.

Ludwig shifted to another tack. “Why Medicine Creek?”

“May I remind you, we haven’t necessarily chosen Medicine Creek.”

“I know, but why is it in the running?”

“We were looking for an average place with typical growing conditions. Medicine Creek and Deeper came out of a comprehensive, two-hundred-thousand-dollar computerized study of almost a hundred towns in western Kansas. Thousands of criteria were used. We are now in phase three of the study, determining the final choice for the project. We have already struck agreements with the appropriate agribusinesses for possible access to their land. All we need now is to make a decision between the two towns. And that is why I am here: to make that final decision and announce it on Monday.”

Ludwig wrote it all down, all the while realizing that when you really parsed what the man had said, he in fact had said nothing.

“But what do you think of the town?” he asked.

There was a brief silence, and Ludwig could see that this was one question Chauncy did not have a ready answer for.

“Well, I . . . Unfortunately there’s no hotel here, and the only place where I could stay had already been booked by a man, a difficult man it would seem, who took the entire floor and categorically refused to relinquish a room.” His lips pursed, bristling the short hairs around his mouth. “So I’ve had to stay in Deeper and make an inconvenient drive of twenty-five miles every morning and evening. There isn’t anything here, really, except a bowlingalley and a diner . . . No library, no cultural events, no museum or concert hall. Medicine Creek really hasn’t got anything particular to recommend it, frankly.” He smiled quickly.

Ludwig found himself bristling. “We’ve got good, solid, small-town, old-fashioned American values here. That’s worth something.”

Chauncy shuddered faintly. “I have no doubt of that. Mr. Ludwig, when I make the final decision between Deeper and Medicine Creek, you will no doubt be among the first to know. And now, if you don’t mind, I have important business to tend to.” He rose.

Ludwig rose with him and grasped the extended hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the sun-reddened, stubble-headed form of Dale Estrem and two other farmers looking at them through the glass front of the bowling alley. They had seen Chauncy inside and were obviously waiting for him to come out. Ludwig suppressed a smile.

“You can fax or e-mail the piece to the KSU public relations department,” said Chauncy. “The number is on my card. They will vet it and return it to you by the end of the week.” He snapped his card on the table and stood up.

By the end of the week.Ludwig watched the little prick walk stiffly past the bowling lanes, his head up, his back very straight, his small legs moving as briskly as machinery. Chauncy pushed open the door to the street and now Dale Estrem was striding toward him, his big farmer’s arms swinging. The sound of his raised voice was enough to penetrate even the inner sanctum of the Castle Club. It looked like Chauncy was in for a verbal mauling.

Ludwig smiled. Dale Estrem: now there was someone who was always willing to speak his mind. Screw Chauncy, screw Ridder, and screw the sheriff. Ludwig had a paper to publish.

The dog would stay.

Twenty

 

Tad walked back out of the Wagon Wheel into the blast-furnace heat. So far, no luck, no Willie Stott sleeping it off in the back room. Still, Tad was mighty glad he’d taken the time to check. He popped a mint into his mouth—his second—to cover up any possible beer breath from the ice-cold Coors Swede had slipped him under the bar. It sure tasted good on a day as hot as this one. Swede Cahill was one hell of a nice guy.

Tad’s cruiser was sitting outside the sheriff’s office, baking in the sun, and Tad made a beeline for it. He slid inside and started the engine, careful to let the minimum amount of back and buttcheek come in contact with the blistering leatherette. If he could land a desk job in Topeka or Kansas City, he wouldn’t have to spend his days hopping in and out of the suffocating heat, forced to drive a cruiser that carried its own little hell around inside it.

He switched his radio to the frequency of the county dispatcher.

“Unit twenty-one to Dispatch,” he said.

“Hiya, Tad,” came the voice of LaVerne, who worked the day shift. She was sweet on Tad and, had she been maybe twenty years younger, perhaps he might have felt the same way.

“LaVerne, anything new?” he asked.

“Someone at Gro-Bain just reported a vehicle parked by the side of the approach road. Seems abandoned.”

“What’s the model?” Tad didn’t have to ask for the make. Except for Art Ridder’s Caprice and the police ’91 Mustangs, bought secondhand from the Great Bend PD, just about every car in town was AMC. It had been the only dealership within an hour’s drive. Like so much else, though, it had closed down years ago.

“Hornet, license plate Whiskey Echo Foxtrot Two Niner Seven.”

He thanked LaVerne before slipping back into more formal jargon. “Unit twenty-one, moving,” he said, replacing the radio.

That would be Stott’s Hornet. No doubt the guy was sleeping in the back, like he had the last time his shitbox broke down outside of town. He’d curled up and made a nice little evening out of it, just the two of them, him and Old Grand-Dad.

Tad put the cruiser in gear and pulled away from the curb. It was the work of fifteen seconds to leave the town behind. Four minutes later, he turned into the plant road. There was a huge semi-load of live turkeys lumbering ahead of him, laying down a stink of turkey shit on the road so thick you could almost see it. Tad overtook the semi as quickly as he could, glancing over at the stacked cages full of terrified turkeys, their eyes bulging.

Tad’s job had carried him into the Gro-Bain plant a couple of times. His first visit was right before Thanksgiving, and that year he and his widowed mother had enjoyed a nice pork roast. It had been pork roast ever since. Tad was glad he had never seen a pig farm.

There it was: Stott’s Hornet, parked by the side of the road, almost invisible in the shadow of the corn. Tad stopped behind it, switched on his flashers, and got out.

The windows were open, the car was empty. There was no key in the ignition.

The turkey truck blasted by, rocking the corn on either side of the road and leaving behind the stench of diesel and panicked poultry. Tad turned away with a wince. Then he pulled his radio from his belt.

“Yeah?” came Hazen’s response when he called.

“I’m here at Stott’s car. It’s parked on the access road leading to Gro-Bain. It’s empty, no sign of Stott.”

“Figures. He’s probably sleeping it off in the corn.”

Tad looked out into the sea of corn. Somehow, he didn’t think anyone would choose to sleep in there, even drunk. “You really think so?”

“Sure I do. What else?”

The question hung in the air.

“Well . . .”

“Tad, Tad. You can’t let this craziness get to you. Not every missing person turns up murdered and mutilated. Look, I’m out here at the dog. And guess what?”

“What?” Tad felt a constriction in his throat.

“It’s just a dog hit by a car. Still got its tail and everything.”

“That’s good.”

“So listen. You know Willie as well as I do. His car breaks down and he sets off on foot to wet his whistle at the Wagon Wheel. He’s got his usual hip flask in his back pocket, and he nips it until it’s gone. On the way, he decides to take a little snooze in the corn. And that’s where you’ll find him, hungover as hell but otherwise intact. Cruise back along the road slow, you’ll probably find him in the shade of the ditch. Okay?”

“Okay, Sheriff.”

“That’s a boy. You be careful, huh?”

“Will do.”

As Tad was about to get back in the cruiser, he noticed something gleaming in the dirt beside Stott’s Hornet: an empty pint bottle. He walked over, picked it up, sniffed. The smell of fresh bourbon filled his nose.

It was just as the sheriff had said. Hazen seemed to know everything in town, almost before it happened. He was a good cop. And he’d always acted like a second father to him. Tad should be grateful to be working for a guy like that, he really should.

Tad put the pint into a plastic evidence bag and flagged the spot. The sheriff appreciated thoroughness, even in the little things. As he was heading back toward his cruiser, another truck passed. But this was a refrigerated truck coming from the plant, full of nice, sanitized, frozen Butterballs. No odor, no nothing. The driver waved cheerfully. Tad waved back, lowered himself into his car, and started back down the road, looking for Stott.

Two hundred yards later, he stopped. To the left, the cornstalks had been broken. And on the right-hand side the corn was broken as well, a few stalks angled sharply to one side. It looked to Tad like someone had pushed into the corn on the left, while someone else had come out and crossed the road from the right.

He stopped the cruiser, his sense of unease returning.

He got out of the car and looked at the ground under the corn on the left side of the road. There was a disturbance in the dry clods. A disturbance that suggested someone had walked—or, more likely, run—through the dirt between two corn rows. A little deeper in, Tad could see some broken stalks and a couple of dry cobs that had been torn away and were now lying on the ground.

Tad pushed into the first row, eyes on the ground. His heart was beating uncomfortably fast. It was hard to make out marks in the clumpy, dry earth, but there were depressions that looked like footprints, scuffed areas, places where clods had been overturned, showing their dark undersides. He paused, suppressing an urge to call the sheriff. The trail went on, and here it broke through another row of corn, flattening five or six stalks.

There seemed to be more than one set of blurred, incomplete tracks. Tad didn’t want to articulate, even to himself, what this was starting to resemble. It looked like a chase. Jesus, it was really looking like a chase.

He continued walking, hoping it would turn out to be something else.

The trail went through another row, ran along the corn for a while, then broke through yet another. And then Tad came suddenly upon an area where there had been some thrashing in the dirt. A dozen stalks were broken and scattered. The ground was all torn up. It was a mess. It looked like something violent, really violent, had happened here.

Tad swallowed, scanning the ground intently. There, finally—on the far side of the disturbance—was a clear footprint in the dry earth.

It was bare.

Oh, God,thought Tad, a sick feeling rising in his stomach. Oh, God.And his hand trembled as he raised the radio to his lips.

Twenty-One

 

Corrie Swanson brought the shuddering Gremlin into the dirt lot of Kraus’s Kaverns, parking it amidst a swirl of dust that spiraled up and away. She glanced at the dashboard clock: six-thirty exactly. God, it was hot. She snapped off the blaring music, threw open her door and got out, scooping up her new notebook as she did so. She walked across the lot and mounted the steps to the old, decaying Victorian pile. The oval windows in the door revealed little of the gloom beyond. She raised the big iron knocker and let it drop, once, twice. The soft creak of footsteps, then Pendergast appeared at the door.

“Miss Swanson,” he said. “Punctual, very punctual. We, on the other hand, are running late. I must admit to a certain difficulty adjusting to the early dinner hour of this town.”

Corrie followed him into the dining room, where the remains of what looked like an elaborate dinner could be seen beneath the glow of candles. Winifred Kraus sat at the head of the table, wiping her mouth primly with a lace napkin.

“Please sit down,” said Pendergast. “Coffee or tea?”

“No, thanks.”

Pendergast disappeared into the kitchen, coming back with a funny-looking metal teapot. He filled two cups with a green liquid, handing one to Winifred and keeping the other himself. “Now, Miss Swanson, I understand you’ve completed your interview with Andy Cahill.”

Corrie shifted uncomfortably in her chair, laid her notebook on the table.

Pendergast’s eyebrows shot up. “What’s this?”

“My notebook,” said Corrie with a defensiveness she didn’t quite understand. “You wanted me to interview Andy, so I did. I had to write it down somewhere.”

“Excellent. Let’s have the report.” The FBI agent settled into his chair, his hands clasped together.

Feeling awkward, Corrie opened the notebook.

“What lovely handwriting you have, my dear,” said Winifred, leaning just a little too close.

“Thanks.” Corrie edged the notebook away. Prying old gossip.

“I went to Andy’s house yesterday evening. He’d been out of town, a 4-H trip to the state fair. I told him his dog had died, but I didn’t say how. I kind of let him assume it was hit by a car. He was pretty upset. He loved that dog, Jiff.”

She paused. Once again, Pendergast’s eyes had drooped to mere slits. She hoped he wouldn’t go to sleep on her again.

“He said that for the past couple of days, Jiff had been acting kind of strange. He wouldn’t go outside and went whining and cringing around the house, had to be dragged out from under the bed when it was time for his dinner.”

She turned the page.

“Finally, two days ago—”

“Exact dates, please.”

“August tenth.”

“Proceed.”

“On August tenth, Jiff, er, took a dump on the living room rug.” She looked up nervously into the silence that followed. “Sorry, but that’s what he did.”

“My dear,” said Winifred, “you should say that the dog dirtiedthe rug.”

“But he didn’t just get the rug dirty, he, you know, crappedon it. Diarrhea, in fact.” What was this meddling old lady doing anyway, listening to the report? She wondered how Pendergast could put up with her.

“Please continue, Miss Swanson,” Pendergast said.

“So anyway, Mrs. Cahill, who’s kind of a bitch, got pissed off and kicked Jiff out of the house and made Andy clean up the mess. Andy had wanted to take Jiff to the vet but his mom didn’t want to pay for it. Anyway, that was the last he ever saw his dog.”

She glanced over at Winifred and noticed her face was all pinched up. It took her a moment to realize it was because she had used the word “bitch.”

“What time was this?” Pendergast asked.

“Seven o’clock in the evening.”

Pendergast nodded, tenting his fingers. “Where do the Cahills live?”

“It’s the last house on the Deeper Road, about a mile north of town, not far from the cemetery and just before the bridge.”

Pendergast nodded approvingly. “And Jiff was wearing his collar when he was ejected from the house?”

“Yes,” Corrie said, concealing a stab of pride that she’d thought to ask the question.

“Excellent work.” Pendergast sat up. “Any news on the missing William Stott?”

“No,” said Corrie. “They’ve got a search going. I heard they were bringing a plane down from Dodge City.”

Pendergast nodded, then rose from the table, strolled to the window, folded his hands behind his back, and looked out over the endless corn.

“Do you think he was murdered?” asked Corrie.

Pendergast continued looking out over the corn, his dark figure accented against the evening sky. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the avian fauna of Medicine Creek.”

“Right, sure,” said Corrie.

“For example,” Pendergast said, “do you see that vulture?”

Corrie drew up to his side. She could see nothing.

“There.”

Then she saw it: a lone bird, silhouetted against the orange sky. “Those turkey vultures are always flying around,” she said.

“Yes, but a minute ago it was riding a thermal, as it had been doing for the past hour. Now it’s flying upwind.”

“So?”

“It takes a great deal of energy for a vulture to fly upwind. They only do it under one circumstance.” He waited, staring intently out the window. “Now, observe—it’s made its turn. It sees what it wants.” Pendergast turned toward her quickly. “Come,” he murmured. “We don’t have any time to lose. We must get to the site—just in case, you understand—before the state trooper legions descend and ruin everything.” He turned toward Winifred and said, in a louder voice, “Excuse us, Miss Kraus, for the suddenness of our departure.”

The old lady rose, her face white. “Not another—”

“It could be anything.”

She sat down again, wringing her hands. “Oh dear.”

“We can take the powerline road,” Corrie said as she followed Pendergast out the door. “We’ll have to walk the last quarter mile, though.”

“Understood,” Pendergast replied tersely, getting into the car and closing the passenger door. “This is one instance in which you can exceed the speed limit, Miss Swanson.”

Five minutes later, Corrie was nosing the Gremlin down the narrow, rutted track that was known locally as the powerline road. She was familiar with this isolated, dusty stretch; this was where she came to read, daydream, or simply get away from her mother or the morons at the high school. The thought that a murderer might have lurked—might stillbe lurking—in these remote cornfields sent a shiver through her.

Ahead, the vulture had been joined by a couple of others, and they were now circling slowly, lazily. The car bumped and scraped over the washboard ruts. The last glory of the sunset lay in the west, an orgy of bloody thunderheads rapidly fading to darkness.

“Here,” said Pendergast, almost to himself.

Corrie stopped and they got out. The vultures rose in the sky, apprehensive at their presence. Pendergast began to stride swiftly into the corn, and Corrie moved into step behind him.

Abruptly, Pendergast stopped. “Miss Swanson,” he said. “You will recall my prior warning. We may well find something in the corn rather more disturbing than a dead dog.”

Corrie nodded.

“If you wanted to wait in the car . . .”

Corrie fought to keep her voice sounding calm. “I’m your assistant, remember?”

Pendergast looked at her inquiringly for a moment. Then he nodded. “Very well. I do believe you are capable of it. Please keep in mind your restricted SOC access. Touch nothing, walk where I walk, follow my instructions precisely.”

“Understood.”

He turned and began slipping through the rows of corn, silently and swiftly, brushing past ears that hardly rustled at his passage. Corrie followed behind, struggling to keep up. But she was glad of the effort; it kept her mind from thinking about what might lie ahead. But whatever it was, the thought of staying in the car, alone, in the gathering dark, was even less pleasant. I’ve seen a crime scene,she thought. I saw the dog. Whatever it is, I can take it.

And then, suddenly, Pendergast stopped again. Ahead, the rows of corn had been broken and swept aside, forming a small clearing. Corrie froze at the agent’s side, the sudden shock rooting her in place. The light was dim, but not dim enough to spare her any of the horror that lay splayed just ahead.

And still she was unable to move. The air lay still over the awful scene. Corrie’s nose filled with the odor of something like spoiled ham. She felt a sudden constriction in her throat, a burning sensation, a spasm of the abdominal muscles.

Oh shit,she thought. No, not now. Not in front of Pendergast.

Abruptly, she bent to one side and vomited into the corn; straightened; then bent and vomited again. She coughed, struggling upright, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Mortification, fear, horror all grappled within her.

But Pendergast seemed not to notice. He had moved ahead and was kneeling in the center of the clearing, completely engrossed. Somehow, the sheer physical act of retching seemed to have broken her paralysis, perhaps even prepared her a little better for the awful sight. She wiped her mouth again, took a cautious step forward, and stopped just inside the clearing.

The body was naked, splayed on its back, arms thrown wide, legs apart. The skin was an unreal, artificial grayish-white. There was a sticky sheen to everything. The corpse looked loose,somehow, as if the skin and flesh were liquefying, coming off the bones. And in fact they werecoming off the bones, she realized with a shudder. The skin of the face was hanging loose, separating from the jaw and teeth; flesh was sagging and splitting at the shoulder and white bone could be seen poking through. An ear lay on the ground, misshapen and slimy, completely detached from the body. The other ear was missing entirely. Corrie felt her throat constrict again. She turned away, closed her eyes briefly, consciously slowed her breathing. Then she turned back.

The body was completely hairless. The masculine sexual organs had also fallen off, although again it looked as though an effort had been made to reattach them, or at least arrange them in the right place. Corrie had seen Stott around town, but if this was the body of the skinny drunk who ran the cleanup detail at Gro-Bain, there was no way to know. It didn’t even look human. It was as bloated as a dead pig.

As the initial shock and horror began to ebb, she noticed other things about the site. Here and there, ears of corn had been arranged into strange geometrical shapes. There were a couple of objects fashioned in an extremely crude way out of corn husks. They might be bowls, or cups, or something else entirely; Corrie could not be sure.

All of a sudden, she became aware of a loud droning sound, directly overhead. She looked up. A small plane was circling the site, flying low. She had not even heard its approach. Now the plane waggled its wings, veered away, and headed quickly north.

She found Pendergast looking at her. “The search plane from Dodge. The sheriff will be here in ten minutes, and the state police shortly thereafter.”

“Oh.” She could hardly work her mouth.

Pendergast was holding his small flashlight in one hand. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Can you hold this light?”

“I think so.”

“Excellent.”

Corrie held her nose, took in a deep breath. Then she took the light, directed the beam as Pendergast indicated. The gloom was rapidly filling the air. A test tube had appeared out of Pendergast’s suit coat and now the agent was kneeling, putting invisible things into it with a pair of tweezers. Then another test tube appeared, and another, specimens going deftly into each one. He worked swiftly, moving around the body in ever narrower circles, every now and then murmuring low instructions about the placement of the light.

She could already hear the faint siren of the sheriff’s car drifting over the corn.

More quickly now, Pendergast was going over the body bit by bit, his face inches from the skin, plucking off something here, something there. The smell of rotting ham refused to go away, and she felt another twinge deep in her gut.

The siren got louder and louder, then finally stopped. From beyond the fastness of corn, she heard a door slam, then another.

Pendergast straightened up. All the paraphernalia had vanished, almost miraculously, into the folds of his well-pressed black suit.

“Step back, please,” he said.

They withdrew to the edge of the clearing just as the sheriff arrived, followed by his deputy. There were more sirens now and the sound of radios blaring in the corn.

“So it’s you, Pendergast,” said the sheriff, coming over. “When’d you get here?”

“I’d like permission to examine the site.”

“As if you haven’t already, I’ll bet. Permission denied until we’ve completed our own examination.”

Now more men were crashing through the corn: state troopers and grim-looking men in blue suits whom Corrie guessed were members of the Dodge City homicide squad.

“Set up a perimeter here!” bawled the sheriff. “Tad, lay out some tape!” He turned back to Pendergast. “You can stand behind the tape, like the others, and wait your turn.”

Corrie was surprised at Pendergast’s reaction. He seemed to have lost all interest. Instead, he began to steer an erratic course around the periphery of the site, looking for nothing in particular. He seemed to be wandering aimlessly off into the corn. Corrie followed. She stumbled once, then twice, and realized that the shock was still heavy upon her.

Suddenly, Pendergast stopped again, between two rows of corn. He took his flashlight gently from Corrie and pointed it at the ground. Corrie peered, but could see nothing.

“You see these marks?” Pendergast murmured.

“Sort of.”

“They’re footprints. Bare footprints. They seem to be heading down toward the creek.”

Corrie took a step backward.

Pendergast switched off the light. “You’ve done—and seen—more than enough for one day, Miss Swanson. I’m very grateful for your help.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s eight-thirty, still early enough for you to get home without danger. Go back to your car, go straight home, and get a good rest. I’ll continue here on my own.”

“But what about driving you—?”

“I’ll get a ride back with one of those fine, eager young policemen over there.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated, strangely unwilling to leave. “Um, I’m sorry I puked back there.”

She could barely see his smile in the gathering dark. “Think nothing of it. The same thing happened to a close acquaintance of mine, a veteran lieutenant of the NYPD, at a homicide site a few years back. It merely proves your humanity.”

As she turned to go, he spoke again. “One last thing, Miss Swanson.”

She stopped, looked back at him. “Yes?”

“When you get home, be sure to lock your house up tight. Tight.Agreed?”

She nodded, then turned again, making her way quickly through the corn, toward the striped red wash of police lights, thinking of Pendergast’s words: it’s still early enough for you to get home without danger.

Twenty-Two

 

Shading his light carefully, Pendergast followed the bare prints into the darkness of the cornfield. The tracks were now quite distinct in the dry dirt between the rows of corn. As he walked, the noise of the crime scene fell away. When the field began to slope ever so slightly down toward the creek, he stopped to look back. The row of skeletal powerline towers stood silhouetted against the last light of the sky, steel sentinels, the stars winking into view above them. Crows, coming to roost in the towers, were cawing fitfully. He waited as the noise of the crows gradually settled for the night. Then there was no sound at all. The air was still and close as the air of a tomb, and smelled of dust and dry cornhusks.

Pendergast slipped his hand into his jacket and removed his Les Baer custom .45. Carefully hooding his light, he examined the footprints again. They led straight on between the rows, unhurried, heading methodically toward the creek.