Still Life With Crows (28 page)

As he walked closer, Hazen snapped his phone shut. “Get back, all of you!” he shouted, waving the phone at the crowd. “Tad! Take over with this tape and
get these people back!
”

Tad moved forward quickly, grabbing the end of the tape. As he did so, he got a much closer glance at the pile on the street. It glistened redly, pearlescent, steaming in the predawn light. He looked away quickly, swallowing hard.

“All right, folks,” Tad began, but his voice didn’t sound quite right and he stopped, swallowing once more. “All right, folks, back up. More. More. Please.”

The crowd huddled back, silent, their faces pale in the gloom. He strung the plastic tape across the road and tied it to a tree, wrapping it several times, completing the square that Hazen had begun. He saw that Hazen was now talking to the Goth, Corrie Swanson. Pendergast stood beside her, silent. Behind was her mother, looking like hell as usual, her thin brown hair plastered to her skull, a stained and frayed pink bathrobe wrapped tightly around her. She was chain-smoking Virginia Slims.

“You
heard
something?” Hazen was repeating. His voice was skeptical, but he was taking notes nevertheless.

Corrie was pale, and she was trembling, but her mouth was set in a hard line and her eyes were bright. “I woke up. It was just before two—”

“And how did you know what time it was?”

“I looked at my clock.”

“Go on.”

“Something woke me up, I wasn’t sure what. I went to the window, and that’s when I heard the sound.”

“What sound?”

“Like snuffling.”

“Dog?”

“No. More like . . . like someone with a bad cold.”

Hazen jotted notes. “Go on.”

“I had this sense there was something moving out there, right beneath my window, but I couldn’t really see it. It was too dark. I turned on the light. And then I heard a different sound, like a groan.”

“Human?”

Corrie blinked. “Hard to tell.”

“Then?”

“I shut my window and went back to sleep.”

Hazen lowered his notebook and stared at her. “You didn’t think to call me or your, ah, boss?” He nodded at Pendergast.

“I—I figured it was just the sprinkler system, which goes on every night around two. It makes weird noises.”

Hazen put away his notebook. He turned to Pendergast. “Some assistant you got there.” Then he turned to Tad. “All right, this is what we’ve got. Somebody dumped a pile of guts on the road. Looks like cow to me, there’s too much there for a dog or sheep. And that sack sitting next to it is full of ears of corn, freshly picked. I want you to check around all the local stock farms, see if anyone’s missing a cow, pig, any large livestock.” His eyes flitted back toward Corrie before returning to Tad. He lowered his voice. “This whole thing is starting to look more and more like a cult of some kind.”

Over Hazen’s shoulder, Tad watched Pendergast step forward and kneel before the pile of offal. He reached forward, actually prodded at something with his finger. Tad averted his eyes. Then he reached over and with one finger lifted the mouth of the canvas bag.

“Sheriff Hazen?” Pendergast asked without rising.

Hazen was already back on the cell phone. “What?”

“I would suggest looking for a missing person instead.”

There was a shocked silence as the implication sunk in.

Hazen lowered the cell phone. “How do you know these are . . .” He couldn’t quite bring himself to finish the sentence.

“Cows don’t normally eat what appears to be Maisie’s meatloaf, washed down with a glass of beer.”

Hazen took a step forward and shined his light into the glistening pile. He swallowed hard. “But why would the killer . . .” He paused again. His face was dead white. “I mean, why take a body and leave the guts behind?”

Pendergast rose, wiping his finger with a handkerchief of white silk. “Perhaps,” he said grimly, “to lighten his load.”

Thirty-Two

I
t was eleven o’clock before Tad finally returned to the sheriff’s office. The sweat was pouring off his brow, and his uniform was soaked to the cuffs. He was the last to return: the state troopers and Hazen, who had also been conducting searches, were there before him. The inner office had been turned into a command center, and a large group of Staties were standing around, talking on cell phones and radios. The press, naturally, had gotten wind of it, and once again the street was lined with TV vans, reporters, and photographers. But they were the only people in sight: all the residents had shut and locked themselves in their houses. The Wagon Wheel was closed and shuttered. Even the shift at Gro-Bain had been sent home for the day. Except for the hungry gaggle of media, Medicine Creek had become a ghost town.

“Any luck?” Hazen said immediately as Tad came through the door.

“No.”

“Damn!”
The sheriff pounded his fist on the desk. “Yours was the last quadrant.” He shook his head. “Three hundred and twenty-five people, and every damn one of them accounted for. They’re canvassing Deeper and the surrounding farms, but nobody’s come up missing.”

“Are you sure the, um, guts were human?”

Hazen looked sideways at Tad, his eyes red, rimmed by dark circles. Tad had never seen the sheriff under so much pressure. The man’s muscular hands were balled into fists, the knuckles white.

“I wondered that, too. But the remains are now up at Garden City, and McHyde assures me they’re human. That’s all they know so far.”

Tad felt sick to his stomach. The image of the meatloaf, poking out of that ragged tear in the ruined guts, the beer foam mixing with the blood—that was going to stay with him the rest of his life. He never should have looked. Never.

“Maybe it was someone passing through,” he said weakly. “What local person would be out alone at that time of night, anyway?”

“I thought of that, too. But where’s the car?”

“Hidden, like Sheila Swegg’s?”

“We’ve checked everywhere. We’ve had a spotter plane up since eight.”

“No circle cut in a cornfield?”

“Nothing. No hidden car, no circle, no dumped body, nothing. No footprints this time, either.” Hazen wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and sat down with a heavy thump.

It was hard to concentrate, the state police were making so much noise with their radios and cell phones in the inner office. And worse, the press was camped right outside, a battery of cameras aimed point-blank at them through the glass door.

“Could it have been a traveling salesman?” Tad asked.

Hazen jerked his head toward the inner office. “The Staties are checking all the area motels.”

“What about the sack of corn?”

“We’re working on it. Christ, we don’t know if it was left by the killer or if the victim was carrying it. But why the hell would someone be carrying a sackful of corn in the middle of the night? And each ear was tagged and numbered in some kind of weird code, to boot.” He glanced at the sea of cameras beyond the front door. He started to rise, sat down, rose again. “Get me that can of whitewash and the brush from the storeroom, okay?”

Tad knew exactly what Hazen was going to do. When he returned, Hazen took the can from his hands, tore off the lid, dipped in the brush, and began to paint the glass.

“Bastards,” he muttered as his arm swept back and forth, the paint running down and puddling on the doorsill. “
Bastards.
Photograph this and see how you like it.”

“Let me help,” Tad said.

But Hazen ignored him, slopping the paint up and down in big strokes until the door was covered. Then he shoved the brush in the can, jammed the lid back on, and sat down heavily again, closing his eyes. His uniform was flecked with white paint.

Tad sat down beside him, worried. Hazen’s square face had a gray sheen to it, like a dead piece of fish. His sandy hair lay limp across his forehead. A vein pulsed in his right temple.

Suddenly, the sheriff’s eyes popped wide open. It happened so fast that Tad jumped.

Hazen’s lips parted, and he muttered just one word:

“Chauncy!”

Thirty-Three

A
round noon, Sheriff Hazen decided he’d watched the dog-handler, Lefty Weeks, struggle with the dogs for just about as long as he could stand. Weeks was one of those types that really got on Hazen’s nerves: a little man with white eyelashes, big ears, long thin neck, red eyelids, a wheedler and whiner who never stopped talking, even if his audience was a pair of useless dogs. The air under the cottonwood trees was hot and dead and Hazen could feel the sweat springing out on his forehead, the nape of his neck, his underarms, his back, leaking and running down through every fold and crease, even the crack of his ass. It must be over 105 frigging degrees. He couldn’t smoke because of the damn dogs, but it was so hot he didn’t even feel a craving. Now
that
was saying something.

Once again the two dogs were whining and cringing about in circles, their tails clamped down hard over their assholes. Hazen glanced at Tad, then looked back at the dogs. Weeks was yelling at them in a high-pitched voice, swearing and jerking ineffectually at the leashes.

Hazen went over, gave one of the dogs a swift kick in the haunch. “Find that motherfucker!” he shouted. “Go on. Get going.”

The dog whined and crouched lower.

“If you don’t
mind,
Sheriff—” Weeks began, his red ears backlit and flaming in the heat.

Hazen spun on him. “Weeks, this is the third time you’ve brought dogs down here and every time it’s been the same thing.”

“Well, kicking them isn’t going to help.”

Hazen struggled to control his temper, already sorry he had kicked the dog. The state troopers were now looking at him, their faces blank, but no doubt thinking that he was just another redneck hayseed sheriff. He swallowed hard and moderated his voice. “Lefty, look. This is no joke. Get those dogs to track or I’m putting in a formal complaint up to Dodge.”

Weeks pouted. “I know they’ve got a scent, I
know
it. But they just won’t track.”

Hazen felt himself boiling up all over again. “Weeks, you promised me
dogs
this time, and look at them, groveling like toy poodles in front of a mastiff.” Hazen took a step forward at the dogs. This time one of them snarled.

“Don’t,” Weeks warned.

“She’s not afraid of me, the bitch, although she should be. Give her another go, damn it.”

Weeks took out the plastic bag holding the scent—an object retrieved from the second killing—and opened it with gloved hands. The dog backed away, whining.

“Come on, girl. Come on,” Weeks wheedled.

The dog slithered back and forth almost on its belly.

Weeks crouched, the thin travesty of a goatee bobbing on his chin while he held the bag open invitingly. “Come on, girl. Scent it! Go!” He shoved the bag up to her nose.

The quivering, crouching dog let loose a stream of piss onto the dry sand.

“Oh, Christ,” said Hazen, turning away. He crossed his arms and looked up the creek.

They had been up and down it now for three hours, dragging the unwilling dogs the whole way. Beyond, in the cornfields, Hazen could see the state police teams moving. Farther down, the SOC teams were on their hands and knees, combing the sandbeds along the creek for something,
any
thing. Above droned two spotter planes, crisscrossing back and forth, back and forth. Why couldn’t they find the body? Had the killer taken off with it? There were state police roadblocks up, but the killer could have escaped during the night. You can drive a long way in a Kansas night.

He glanced up and saw Smit Ludwig approaching, notebook in hand.

“Sheriff, mind if I—”

“Smitty, this is a restricted area.” Hazen had just about had it.

“I didn’t see any tape, and—”

“You get out of here, Ludwig. On the double.”

Ludwig stood his ground. “I have a right to be here.”

Hazen turned to Tad. “Escort Mr. Ludwig to the road.”

“You can’t do this—!”

The sheriff turned his back on the entreaty. “Come on, Mr. Ludwig,” he heard Tad say. The pair of them disappeared in the trees, Ludwig’s protests increasingly muffled by the muggy air.

The sheriff’s radio crackled. He hoisted it.

“Hazen here.”

“Chauncy’s been missing from his hotel since yesterday.” It was Hal Brenning, state police liaison officer, down in Deeper. “Didn’t return last night. Bed wasn’t slept in.”

“Hallelujah, what else is new?”

“He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing, where he was going. Nobody up here knows anything about his itinerary.”

“We checked into that,” Hazen replied. “Seems he had car problems, left his Saturn over at Ernie’s Exxon. Insisted it be fixed that day, even though Ernie told him it was a two-day job. Chauncy was last seen eating a late dinner at Maisie’s. Never picked up the car, though. Looks like he went into the cornfields and was doing a little last-minute research on the sly, collecting and labeling ears of corn.”

“Collecting corn?”

“I know, I know. Insane, with a killer running loose. But this Chauncy liked to play his cards close to his vest. Probably didn’t want anybody prying, asking awkward questions.” Hazen shook his head, remembering how upset Chauncy had become at Pendergast’s talk of cross-pollination.

“Well. Anyway, we’re looking through Dr. Chauncy’s papers now with some of Sheriff Larssen’s boys. It looks like he was going to make some kind of announcement today at noon.”

“Yeah. The experimental field project which Medicine Creek wasn’t going to get. Anything else?”

“Some dean from KSU’s coming down with their head of campus security. Should be here in half an hour.”

Hazen groaned.

“On top of that, we’ve got a dust storm brewing. There’s a weather advisory out for Cry County and the eastern Colorado plains.”

“When?”

“The leading edge could come as early as tonight. They say it might be upgraded to a tornado watch.”

“Great.” The sheriff punched the radio off, holstered it, and glanced up. Sure enough: thunderheads, darker than usual, were piling up to the west, as if a nuclear war was being fought somewhere over the horizon. Any Kansan with half a brain knew what clouds like that meant. There was more than a dust storm coming. At the least, the creek would be up, scouring the whole creek bed. The fields would get drenched, maybe flooded. There’d probably be hail. And there would go all their clues. They’d get nothing more to go on until . . . until the next killing. And if there were indeed tornadoes, it would shut down the whole investigation while everyone dove for cover. What a frigging mess.