Dead Man's Song

“You’re a fool,” he said aloud, sneering at his feelings.



A minute later, though, he used the powerful satellite phone. “Vince? You got anything?”



“Not a goddamn thing, Frank. Nothing, not even a footprint.”



“I heard from the lab and they matched the shoe impressions they took this morning to the casts they took from around Ruger’s car. Definitely Boyd.”



“Shit,” LaMastra swore. “What about those teeth marks, though? Don’t tell me Boyd’s walking around wearing a set of dog dentures.”



“No word from Dr. Weinstock yet. The only new intel I have is that, teeth or no, Boyd is our man to about a ninety-nine percent degree of certainty.”



“Still makes no friggin’ sense, Frank…but between you and me, if I saw Boyd right this minute I don’t think I’d be wasting time reading him his rights. There’s a lot of places out here to bury a—”



Ferro cut him off. “Look, Vince, it’s getting late. Let’s call it. Bring everyone back.”



There was silence on the other end for a moment and Ferro thought his partner was going to argue, but LaMastra just said, “Yeah, okay.”



It took an hour for all of the police and the hunters to come back. One tracker, leading a pair of setters on leashes, came stumping out of the woods past large mounds of dirt torn up by Henry Guthrie’s foreman in order to sink a new irrigation pipeline. The dirt stood eight feet high, like a small mountain range, and as the tracker past it his two dogs suddenly jerked away from the excavation. The dogs didn’t bark, but they moved sharply and nearly pulled the tracker off his feet. The tracker yanked back on the leashes but couldn’t get the dogs to walk in a straight line past the dirt and had to let himself be dragged in an arc that went forty feet clear of the nearest mound.



He frowned at the way the dogs were moving and sniffed the air to see if there was skunk on the breeze, but the air just smelled of ozone and wet earth. Had the dogs barked or been more visibly agitated, the tracker would have investigated the mounds, because the dogs knew the scent and would certainly have barked at even the faintest trace of their prey, but these dogs just wanted to move on and move away. That sent a different message to the tracker. Not prey, but something the dogs didn’t like. Dogs liked prey, and this didn’t look like that, so none of his alarm bells really went off. The day was old, the dogs were tired, and maybe there was a skunk hunkered down in the corn poised to spray. He didn’t feel like going through all that shit tonight and soon forgot about it. The last of the men passed by, and within minutes even the sound of them moving through the corn to the staging area had faded to a whisper and finally died. Silence settled like dew over the excavation.



An hour passed, and nothing moved. Full dark came on, sliding in tidal waves of shadows across the seas of corn, washing up against the wall of pines. Stars ignited coldly overhead, and there was the faint threat of moonlight far away to the east.



The big mound, the one nearest to the front rank of cornstalks, trembled. The piles of loose dirt shivered for a moment, was still, and then abruptly fell outward from the mound in muddy clumps as the whole side of the mound collapsed. As it fell away, an arm was revealed. Waxy-white flesh in a torn and stained sleeve. Dead fingers lay half-curled like worms around a palm that was caked with dirt. The nails were thick and dark, cracked and crusted with old blood.



A night bird cawed and flapped its way out of the trees and lit atop the mound, staring hungrily down at the dead flesh. It waited for a while, listening to the night, hearing no sound, seeing no movement, then it hopped down the slope driven by hunger at the sight of so much spoiled meat. Two others swooped down and landed on the ground near the base of the mound. The razor-sharp blade of the moon sliced through a distant bank of clouds and bathed the hand in a blue-white light. The night bird cawed again and hopped down another few inches. The other two stood and watched. One more hop and the night bird was close enough to bend down and take a single experimental peck, tearing a tiny scrap of skin away from the bulge of muscle at the base of the thumb. The other birds cried out in appreciation and edged forward. Now all three were close enough to dine. The one on the mound took a final hop and stood by the edge of the hand, its clawed feet an inch from the little finger. It swallowed the first bite and bent for another.



The hand shot out and closed around it with such speed and force that the bird exploded in a spray of bloody black feathers. It had no chance to cry out as it died, but the others screamed in terror and threw themselves into the air, racing up and away as the dead thing under the dirt shoved its way out into the moonlight, still holding the crushed bird in its hand. It rose slowly, using its other hand to paw dirt away from its milky eyes and slack-lipped mouth. For a moment it stood swaying there, staring up at the rising moon with a dreadful expectancy. Then it seemed to notice that it held something in its hand and looked down to see burst meat and fresh blood.



Without a moment’s hesitation Kenneth Boyd stuffed the dead crow into his mouth, tearing at it with wickedly long white teeth.



Chapter 5



(1)



Crow tapped on the half-open door as he leaned into the room. “Can I come in?”



In a chair by the window, Mark Guthrie laid his newspaper in his lap and looked up. He was a few years younger than Val, handsome like their father, but softer, less rugged, and unlike his father Mark, was starting to lose his hair. He had a thick purple bruise on his right cheek that had already started to yellow around the edges. There was a thin band of bruising across the bridge of his nose, and deep pain vibrating in both of his eyes.



Mark didn’t say anything, which Crow took for as much of a welcome as he was going to get. He came in and sat on the edge of the bed.



“How’s it going, chief?” he said, pasting an amiable smile carefully on his mashed lips. When Mark said nothing, Crow went on. “Val and I might be getting out tomorrow. What about you and Connie?”



Mark said nothing, but a lump of cartilage began pulsing in his jaw.



Crow said, “I looked in on her, but she was sleeping.”



“Yes,” Mark said tightly, “she prefers to be asleep. They give her as many sedatives as she wants.”



Crow digested that for a moment. “What about you? I know this is going to sound like a stupid freaking question, but how are you handling this?”



Mark’s gaze held for a moment and then wavered and he turned and looked out the window. “How would you expect me to be handling it?”



That was a minefield question and Crow went through about forty replies in his head before he said, “Like a Guthrie, I suppose.”



Mark’s eyes snapped back and locked on Crow’s, searching for mockery. Crow kept his face neutral, trying to convey friendship. They held the contact for a long time and Crow could see Mark’s eyes begin to glisten with moisture, then Mark turned away again and went back to staring out the window. After several minutes of complete silence, Crow sighed and left.



(2)



Vic Wingate was a patient man. Over the last thirty years he had learned the art of waiting, and knew the benefits of thinking before acting. As a result he seldom made a mistake. This was both the greatest of the skills he’d learned from the Man, and the greatest skill he brought to the Man’s service. He was a tool, finely made, and one that worked as perfectly as planned. He was completely aware of this, and instead of feeling exploited he believed with every fiber of his being that he was being used in the best possible way and to his fullest potential. How many servants feel that? Or know it to be the truth?



All day long he’d sat on a canvas folding chair and stared at the slowly bubbling surface of the swamp at the bottom of Dark Hollow, a place forever shrouded in purple shadows by the towering pines and the height of the three mountains that formed it. There was a thermos of coffee by his right foot, and an Igloo cooler by his left in which Lois had packed three ham-and-cheese sandwiches, an apple, and two packs of Tastykake chocolate cupcakes. In his shirt pocket was half a pack of Kools. Vic smoked whatever brand was closest to hand; he didn’t care as long as it wasn’t some low-tar bullshit. He was smoking now, taking long slow drags, holding the mentholated smoke deep in his lungs until he could feel the muscles in his chest start to spasm and then he would exhale slowly, practicing the technique of showing no discomfort, even to the point of exerting control over the cough reflex. Vic knew a lot about control. Even his rages were preplanned and deliberate. He never did anything that wasn’t thought out first, not even smacking Lois around or kicking the shit out of his faggot stepson, Mike. Everything was planned out, and everything fit into a much larger blueprint. The Man’s blueprint. The Plan.



As he sat there, smoking, sometimes the Man would speak to him, whispering into his mind, and sometimes not. At the moment the swamp was quiet except for the buzzing of late season flies. There were almost always flies down here, he considered. Probably because there was always heat coming up from the swamp, and—here he smiled thinly through the smoke that leaked out between his clenched teeth—because down here there was almost always something dead.



Such as the young woman who lay with her head and shoulders submerged in the black muck. Vic reached into his shirt pocket and found the plastic cards he’d tucked behind his pack of smokes, pulled them out, looked at them. Amex card, Visa debit card. Once upon a time he’d have driven up to Easton and sell them to a guy he knew, but he didn’t really need the money now—not with the huge stash he had gotten from Boyd. He tucked them back in his shirt and looked at the third card, a driver’s license. Cecelia Goodchild. Bad photo of a pretty twenty-six-year-old brunette. He flipped the card into the bushes. There were at least forty other cards in there, mostly women. A few men. Some of them were completely faded now, impossible to read even if someone knew to look for them there. Cecelia Goodchild’s card would rot with the others before anyone saw it, and even if by some weird and wild chance it was found, no trace of Goodchild herself ever would be. He reached out with one booted foot and pushed against the heel of her shoe. With a stretch he could just reach it. Her body slid forward an inch. Not enough to sink it, just enough to stir the surface of the swamp. Ringing the dinner bell, he thought, and though he did not feel the Man inside his brain, he somehow knew that he would be amused by the gesture. The Man loved a good joke.