But who else in town had access to a wrecker? From what little he could see that night on the road, it looked like a big tow truck and that told him nothing. Shanahan’s garage had a couple of them, and there had to be other garages with tow trucks in the area. He thought about the guys who worked at Shanahan’s with Vic. None of them ever came over to the house; none of them were friends with Vic. There was Buddy Tobin, Josh Adams, and that big guy everyone called Tow-Truck Eddie. Mike thought about that as he swooped down another hill. Crow had said that Eddie was a part-time cop, and Mike had seen him that first day Crow was in the hospital. They’d passed each other by the front doors.

Then something occurred to Mike, and it seemed like a really good idea. If Eddie worked with Vic, and drove a tow truck, and was a cop, then he’d be the perfect person to ask about who might have been driving that wrecker out here that night. He was nodding emphatically to himself as he pedaled along. It was a great idea. He chewed on it, working it out. He could say that he heard from some kid in school that a wrecker had almost run some other kid down. Make it sound like something he just heard around school; he could ask the cop to see if he’d heard anything. Would the guy tell him if he had? Mike wasn’t sure, but this was one area where his being Vic’s stepson might be an advantage. All Mike had to do was drop Vic’s name to remind him of that connection, and then idly ask the question. Yeah, that would work. He’d ask Tow-Truck Eddie.

He headed into town with the wind behind him while deep within his soul, far beneath his consciousness, the chrysalis within him screamed.

Chapter 20

(1)

Two days earlier, on October 7, Willard Fowler Newton had gone out to the Guthrie farm to interview Malcolm Crow and Val Guthrie. The interview had been going really well until Crow had said something that had caused Newton to break one of his promises. After that, things had gone very badly indeed.

Crow had said, “I think Ubel Griswold was a monster.”

It sounded so silly. It was a nonsensical thing to say, and Newton had actually laughed out loud when Crow had said it, taking it as one of Crow’s many jokes. Crow was not joking. Instead his face had gone dark and he had said, “Remember our agreement, Newt.”

One of the terms of that agreement had been that Newton had to promise not to laugh in Crow’s face—and he had done just that. He had laughed out loud and jabbed Crow in the shoulder in a that’s a good one gesture, but Crow had slapped his hand away and then that small, affable guy, Crow the jokester, Crow the town chucklehead, had vanished and Newt was staring into the eyes of Crow the man who had faced down the Cape May Killer—twice!—and had beaten him. Had, in fact, killed him. The change was that abrupt. One minute Crow looked like a sawed-off Greg Kinnear with vulnerable eyes and an easy grin, and the next second—the next split fragment of a second—he was a cold-eyed stranger with no trace of humor at all in his face, and Newton could actually feel all of the warmth leak out of the moment like water from a cracked jug. Newton’s laughter had died in his throat and he looked away from those eyes over to Val, and saw the coldest blue eyes in town staring back at him.

Newton said, “Oh, come on!”

“Perhaps you’d better leave,” Val said, setting her cold coffee cup down. “I think we’re done here.”

“Jesus, Crow…Val…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean….”

Crow just waved it off. “Thought I could trust you, Newt. Sorry I was wrong.”

Crow got up from where he’d been sitting on the step and went inside the house. After a full minute—an unending minute while Newton stood there and endured Val’s coldly disappointed stare—it became clear that Crow was not coming back out.

He tried to explain to Val, to apologize, but she just stood up and regarded him coolly for a moment. “Go on,” she said, “get out.” Then she followed Crow into the house and closed the screen and storm doors both. The sound of the lock clicking was huge in his ears.

Newton had gone home, too. Halfway home he had used his cell to call Crow, but there was no answer. Caller ID was a bitch. The following day was the funeral for Val’s father and Newton almost went out there, hoping to apologize, but he just couldn’t make himself intrude into Val’s grief, not even to get himself off the hook.

Newton had been dismissed before. He was a reporter and that meant he was used to slammed doors and closed mouths—and certainly he’d made no friends with Terry Wolfe after breaking the cover-up story—but somehow this felt worse, and it was more than losing a major source for the feature he was researching. He had liked Crow, and there had been a look of hurt in the man’s eyes that was damn near unbearable.

When the phone rang at quarter to five in the morning of October 10, it startled him and he cried out before snatching at the bedside phone. “Hello?”

He expected it to be Dick Hangood, but it wasn’t. “Okay, Kermit, here’s the deal.”

Newton paused. “Crow?”

“No, it’s Tickle Me Elmo—now, you listening?”

He sat up, kicking the blankets to the floor. “Yes!”

“Val thinks I should kick your nuts up into your chest cavity, but I’m willing to give this a second chance.”

“Um…okay…Thanks?”

“So, if you still want that story—and if you can keep your reactions on a short leash—”

“Yes! Crow, I’m sorry. You just caught me off guard.”

“We’ll kiss and make up later. For now I have a new condition to add to our arrangement.”

“Sure! Anything!” He said, meaning it.

“Here’s the deal, on Friday morning I’m going to go on a little field trip, and I want you to go with me. I’m going to go out to Ubel Griswold’s old farm, and I want you to go with me.”

“Sure,” Newton said at once, and then what Crow said caught up with him. “Did you say—?”

“Yeah. Sound like fun to you? Me neither, but you meet me outside my store at seven-thirty Friday morning. Dress for the woods and pack a lunch. We’re going to have to hike in. See you then,” he concluded and then hung up before Newton could reply.

Newton lay in bed and stared up at the shadows on the ceiling and wondered just what the hell he had agreed to.

(2)

“But he hasn’t been home for three days!”

Officer Jim Polk spread his hands, sighed and said, “Look, Andy, there’s not much we can do. Ritchie is over eighteen and you yourself said he took a lot of his stuff with him. Clothes and such.”

“Which means he’s run away!” stressed Andy McClintock, tapping his thick index finger firmly on Polk’s desk.

“But at eighteen he’s allowed to run away,” Polk said. “According to the law, at eighteen he’s old enough to leave home without parental permission, so there’s really nothing we can do. Hell, at eighteen I was in the Corps and carrying a gun. Eighteen is a lot different from fifteen, and that’s what you’re not seeing.”

“He didn’t even leave a note. Nothing, not a damned word. Just up and goes one night.” Andy McClintock was a big bear of a man, tall and stocky, tending toward fat but still strong from long hours working his dairy farm. He had callused hands and a permanently sunburned face. His eyes were filled with worry and it bubbled out of him as anger.

“I’m sure you’re scared, and pissed off, but listen to me, Andy, ’cause I don’t know how many more times I can say this—there isn’t anything I can do. If he was sixteen I’d have his name and description sent out to every agency in the tristate area, but I’m not even allowed to do that with an eighteen-year-old.”

Andy McClintock straightened himself to his full height of six feet and glared at the seated Polk. He opened his mouth to say something very biting, and Polk could all but smell the acid forming on Andy’s tongue, but the moment of anger passed and Andy’s shoulders sagged, his face looking both confused and helpless. “Jim…he’s my only kid….”

Polk rose, came around the desk, and put his hand on Andy’s beefy shoulder. “Look, I’ll ask around anyway, okay? Let a few of the other guys know, too, talk to some of my buddies in Black Marsh and Crestville. Unofficial. Maybe we’ll hear something from someone. If we do, I’ll let you know first thing.”

“You promise?”

“Absolutely. First thing. But,” he said as they stood in the open doorway, “just give the kid a little time. Let him blow off some steam, get laid, get drunk. He’ll get it out of his system and come crawling home. Hell, we all did that at least once.”

Andy nodded and shook Polk’s hand and left. Polk watched him get in his car and drive out of the lot, then he turned and pulled the door shut behind him. The office was empty except for Ginny, who dozed at her desk, a Danielle Steele novel open and resting against her bosom. Quietly, unhurriedly, Polk walked over to the farthest desk and lifted the handset of the phone. He punched in a number and waited until someone picked up.

“Shanahan’s Garage.”

“Let me speak to Vic,” Polk said. “Tell him it’s Jim Polk.”

“Minute.”

Polk waited for nearly three minutes, then a voice at the other end said, “What do you want? I’m in the middle of a valve job.”

“I just had Andy McClintock in my office, came to report him missing.”

There was a brief silence. “Yeah? And?”

“I told him what I told all the others.”

“How many’s that? How many have actually been into the office to make reports?”

“Six, so far. That’s a lot for just a few days, Vic.”

“How many of them does Gus know about?”

“Maybe two. I’ve been doing the day work, so I’ve been taking almost all of the reports, and the ones I don’t take usually come across my desk at some point. The only two I couldn’t intercept were filed with someone else when I was off shift, but I can get into the computer and fix those.”