Dead Man's Song

“No, I stepped out to take a whiz.”



“Well, put your pecker back in your drawers and listen up.”



“Okay, okay…go ahead,” Polk said neutrally, absolutely sure he didn’t want to hear whatever it was Vic was going to say.



“What’s the scoop on this manhunt bullshit?”



“They’re still looking for Boyd. Nobody’s found shit.”



Vic chuckled. “They will. I just made sure Boyd would be spotted far away from here.”



“You tried that shit before and the dumb son of a bitch came back.”



“Ancient history, it’s all been sorted out now. I can guarantee that he’ll do what we want from now on.”



Polk felt sick. “About that, Vic…why’d he have to let Boyd kill Nels Cowan? Nels was okay.”



“Well, life’s a bitch sometimes, but trust me when I tell you it wasn’t part of the Plan. Boyd screwed up but now he’s more or less on a leash. Either way, these things have a way of working out, so I’m looking at it less as a killing and more as a recruitment.”



“What’s that supposed to mean?”



“Exactly what you think it means, Jimmy.”



The sickness in Polk’s stomach turned to greasy slush. “Oh, Jesus…”



“That ain’t why I called, though. Your cousin Kenny still work at the quarry? Still the shift foreman?”



“Nah, he got promoted two years ago. He’s assistant manager now.”



“Even better. You tight with him?”



“Sure, why?”



“Good. ’Cause I want you to get him to buy you some dynamite. I’ll e-mail you the specs on how much I need.”



“What the hell do you need dynamite for?” Polk said, his voice jumping an octave, and he looked around as if he expected Dixie McVey to be standing right there taking notes.



Vic’s voice was chilly. “You don’t need to know that, Polk.”



“Bullshit, Vic, I—”



“Let me rephrase that, dickhead…you don’t want to know. Am I being real clear here? If not I can swing by your place and explain it to you in person.”



Polk closed his eyes and leaned back against the tree.



“I’m pretty sure I remember giving you a shitload of cash the other day, Polkie,” Vic said. “And I’m pretty sure you didn’t give it to charity. From what I heard you bought a bottle and a piece of ass the second you were off the clock. That means you spent my money, Polk. That means you spent his money. So far I ain’t asked you for much—least not anything big. Now’s the time to earn your dime.”



“Vic…I mean…dynamite? For God’s sake!”



The laugh that came through the cell phone was filled with delight. “God don’t got nothing to do with this, Jimmyboy.”



There was a silence while Vic gave Polk the time to think about his life choices. “Damn,” Polk breathed.



“That’s my boy,” Vic said. “Check your e-mail when you get home, then I’m going to give you two weeks to get what I wanted. Two weeks don’t mean two weeks and one minute. Let’s both be clear on that. Let me down on this, Polk, and I’ll send over one of my new friends to have a chat with you. Believe me when I tell you that you’d rather I kick a two-by-four up your ass than letting, say, Boyd dance you around a bit.”



“Jesus Christ, don’t even joke like that,” Polk said.



“Who’s joking?” Vic said and Polk felt his bladder tighten. If he hadn’t just taken a leak he would have pissed himself right there. “And there are worse than him working for the Man. Oh hell yes.”



Polk actually gagged and he pressed his eyes shut and leaned back against a tree, banging the back of his head against the gnarled bark once, twice.



“You still with me, sweet-cheeks?” Vic asked.



“Jesus…”



“You knew these days were coming. We both knew. You got a choice here. Be strong and stand with us, and you’re going to come out of this like a king—or, as rich as one, anyway—but,” and he lowered his voice to a silken whisper, “you cross us…you cross the Man…we’ll eat your heart, and that, Jimmy-boy, is not a joke. We will eat your heart. Tell me you’re hearing me loud and clear.”



“Yes,” Polk said, his own voice shocked and shamed down to a whisper. Vic was laughing when he hung up. Polk pressed his head back against the tree and kept his eyes squeezed shut, trying to squeeze Vic’s words—and all of the terrible truth in them—out of his mind.



(2)



Barney was gone now and Saul Weinstock sat in his office listening to the playback of the autopsy tape, hearing his own words as he described what he and Barney had discovered as they cut open first one corpse and then the other. The loss of blood. The shape and orientation of the wounds on their throats—wounds Boyd had broken into the morgue to try and disguise. That he had made a piss-poor job of it was no consolation. The tape reached the point where he had described the wounds, and he punched STOP and then rewound it to hear it again. He did that half a dozen times. The report he had to fill out lay on his desk and he had to tell the authorities something. It was already well past the point where he should have turned in his findings. To delay even five minutes would be to hinder the police operations, but to include these observations in what would become crucial documents would mean that everyone from the FBI on down to Gus Bernhardt would think that he was either a loony or a damn poor ME.



He sat back in his chair and rubbed his tired eyes. Castle and Cowan had been dead for three days now. Crime scene investigation had kept their bodies at the farm for some hours, then the flood in the morgue had delayed the autopsies for a day, and then Boyd’s break-in had delayed things even further. Why? What was the purpose of stealing Ruger’s body?



Then there was the next anomaly to consider: The bodies of both officers had been exsanguinated, the veins totally collapsed as if some kind of suction pump had been used. The same bizarre bite patterns had appeared on both men. Not just throats torn out, but throats that had clearly been punctured first before the flesh was ripped away. The punctures on Cowan were right over the jugular; Castle’s punctures were over the left carotid. What kind of pump would have a clamp or fitting that would leave such marks? Add to that the fact that premortem bruising of Castle’s wrist clearly indicated that a human hand had gripped Castle’s wrist hard enough to burst the flesh and rupture the capillaries before—impossibly—ripping the arm from the socket. Not even a man hyped up on unlimited amounts of cocaine could muster that kind of strength, Weinstock knew that much. Which left him with a number of inexplicable or downright impossible pieces of evidence. To present these findings would be a total disaster. His competence would be called into question and that would taint all of the evidence should there ever be a trial. He put the cap of his pen in his mouth and chewed it as he thought.



The questions had to be answered. Why had Boyd attacked those two cops? Why and by what means was Boyd physically strong enough to tear a grown man’s arm out of the socket? How had he then exsanguinated them? Why had he done that? What had he done with the blood? Why had he broken into the morgue? Why steal Ruger’s body? Why disfigure the cops? On the videotape it had clearly shown Boyd limping on what appeared to be a badly broken leg. If his leg was broken, how had he carried Ruger—the man weighed two hundred pounds—and if his leg was not broken, why fake it? Then there was the matter of the broken pipes in the morgue. It was also very odd that they had taken that moment to disconnect, just in time to prevent the autopsy of Karl Ruger and to delay the autopsies of Castle and Cowan. Was that coincidence? That had happened when Crow and Val were still there at the hospital, which meant that there were plenty of police all over the building. It seemed unlikely that anyone could have slipped past all that security and gone down to the morgue to kick loose some pipes. He’d brought the matter up to Ferro, but the detective hadn’t seemed convinced that it was anything suspicious, especially since the morgue door had been locked. Odd, though. Far too many odd things.



Weinstock was a practical physician, and in his years as a doctor he had seen very little to support a belief in coincidence. Everything was cause and effect. If you don’t know the cause, look at the effect and backtrack in the same way you look at the symptoms to diagnose the disease. He told his residents that all the time. So, if the effect of this is two corpses drained of all blood, visible bite marks on the body, and two clearly visible puncture wounds on each throat, then what is the cause?



He shook his head and sat back in his chair. “You’re a goddamned idiot,” he told himself, saying it out loud, putting as much mockery as he could into it, trying to shame himself out of that kind of fanciful stupidity. Then in a quieter voice, he said, “You’re crazy.”



(3)



Coming home to the farm was the hardest thing Val Guthrie had ever done, and Crow knew it. The place wasn’t hers anymore—Ruger had made it his that night—and now she would have to reclaim it.



When Sarah’s Humvee crunched to a slow stop on the gravel in the half-circle drive in front of the big porch, Val’s hand closed around Crow’s thigh and squeezed. It wasn’t tight at first, but by the time the engine stopped and the silence of the late October morning settled over them, it felt to him as if she had diamond-tipped drills on the end of each fingertip. He didn’t let on, though, either in expression or word; if it would help her deal with the moment, Crow would have given her a saw and let her cut the damn leg off. Sarah seemed to sense it, too, and sat there behind the wheel, door closed, hands resting quietly in her lap.



Eventually Val’s grip eased and Crow took her hand in his. “Whenever you’re ready, baby. No rush.”



The house was huge, gabled, recently painted white with dark green window trimming and shutters. Gigantic oaks stood like brooding sentinels on either corner of the house, and smaller arborvitae flanked the broad front stairs. The porch was also painted green and there was a porch swing that Henry had made by hand for his wife fifteen years ago. Crow saw that all of the crime scene tape had been removed. Score one for Diego.