Dead Man's Song (5 page)

At fourteen, Mike had never heard the expression
fugue state
before. Had he been in any way cognizant of what was happening at that moment—which would be a paradoxical impossibility—he would have seen a true fugue state. For the moment, however, Mike Sweeney was indeed not home. At that moment there was no Mike Sweeney. There was something
else.
Call it a chrysalis.

He turned and went back to bed, his body functioning with reflexive efficiency even to the point of turning out the bathroom light. He climbed into bed, pulled the covers up, and lay there, staring up at the ceiling and seeing absolutely nothing. Certainly he didn’t see the ghostly figure of a gray-skinned man with a guitar sitting on the chair of his computer table.

When he woke later that morning, he would remember nothing at all about what he had seen in the mirror, and the thought that the bruise on his stomach had healed too fast would not even enter his mind.

As the boy slept, the figure sitting on the chair sat and stared at him, leaning forward, elbows on knees, eyes intent on the lines of the boy’s face, wondering if he should be filled with hope or despair.

It was a toss-up.

(5)

Detective Sergeant Frank Ferro of the Philadelphia Police Department’s narcotics division was a tall middle-aged man with dark hair going gray, dark brown skin, and a face that generally looked as dour and lugubrious as a funeral director’s. Exhaustion was painted on his features and evident in the droop of his broad shoulders. It had been a long couple of days since he and his partner, Vince LaMastra, had followed Ruger’s trail to Pine Deep and had stayed to oversee the manhunt. Hours of grueling work as well as exposure to the killer’s grotesque handiwork had burned Ferro down to a weary, shambling shadow of himself. He had only recently come back to his hotel room after the incident at the hospital, and was heading into the bathroom to take a shower, when his cell phone rang. When you’re a cop, a call before dawn is never going to be good news, and he paused for just a moment, giving the cell phone an accusatory glare as if it was a friend who had kicked him when he was down; then he bent and scooped up the phone from the bedside table and flipped it open. “Ferro.”

“Frank?” It was Vince LaMastra, sounding tired but stressed. “I just got a call from Chief Bernhardt…those two officers we left at the Guthrie Farm to maintain the crime scene…?” He ended it like a question.

“What about them?”

“Frank…they’re dead. Both of them.”

“What?”

“I don’t have the details, Frank. Got to be Boyd, though. There’s no one else…”

“No…” he breathed, squeezing his eyes shut against the immensity of the news and against his own tottering weariness. He took a deep breath. “Two minutes, Vince. In the lobby.” He disconnected and stared at the middle distance for a long moment.

“Jesus Christ,” he said and reached for his gun.

(1)

“Hi, is this Lois Wingate?”

“Yes?”

The voice on the phone was soft, cautious, and Crow could picture her pale and timid face, the eyes that always looked afraid. No wonder, he thought, being married to Vic Wingate must be a real treat. “Lois, this is Malcolm Crow. You remember me from high school? I own the—”

“Yes. That store where Mike gets his comics.”

“Right, and sorry for calling so early. I don’t know if Mike told you yet, but I offered him a job at my store starting tomorrow.”

“He has his paper route.”

“I know, but I think I can pay him a bit better than what he makes delivering papers, and he’ll get a discount at the store. Plus,” and here he was careful not to let any of his contempt for Vic into his voice, “he won’t be out as late.”

There was a pause and Crow knew she was making the connection. Crow suspected that Lois had probably felt the back of Vic’s hand more than once, and shared awareness might work in Mike’s favor.

“That would be fine,” Lois said at last. “Do I need to sign something…?”

“Work papers, yeah, and I’ll send some home with Mike.”

There was another pause. “I heard about you on the news last night. And about your friend, Val Guthrie. I was sorry to hear about your troubles.”

“Thanks. I’ll pass that along to Val.”

A final pause. “I’ll pray for you.” She hung up quietly.

Crow looked at the phone for a bit, touched by that last comment, as hurried as it was. “Right back atcha,” he said softly.

His second call was to Terry Wolfe, but all he got was voice mail. He called Terry’s office, his home, his cell, and even his wife Sarah’s cell. Nothing. He tapped the cover of his cell phone with his thumb, thinking; then he dialed the numbered for the deputy mayor, Harry LeBeau, a fussy little man who had taken the unpaid job only because no one else wanted it. LeBeau answered on the third ring. “Harry? It’s Crow.”

“Crow! Dreadfully sorry to hear about—”

Crow cut him off. “Thanks, Harry…look, I’m trying to find Terry. Any idea where he is?”

“Heavens, no. I’ve been trying to get him since last night. Gus has been calling me every fifteen minutes since—well, since what happened to you at the hospital—but no one’s seen hide nor hair.”

“Crap. Look, if he gets in touch have him call me on my cell.” He closed his phone and mulled that over. Where the hell was Terry?

(2)

Four floors below where Crow sat in bed making calls, Dr. Saul Weinstock leaned back in the creaking wood swivel chair of the morgue attendant’s office, hefted his legs to prop his sneakered heels on his desk, crossed his ankles, and stirred six packets of raw sugar into the coffee that he steadied on his thigh. Starbucks Venti dark roast, and piping hot. A bag with two chocolate croissants lay on the desk by his feet and the office CD player was tinkling with a live recording of
Jim West at the Maiko II.
Carefree stuff, improvised and witty. Weinstock was constructing the moment to be as casual and relaxed as the piano jazz that filled the air, consciously stage managing his own mood because the alternative was to run screaming through the halls, and he did not think that would be good for his patients.

His cell phone chirped and he pulled it from its belt clip, saw that it was his wife, and flipped it open with a smile. “Good morning, sweetie.” He looked at the wall clock. Six-fifty-four. “What are you doing up this early? The kids okay?”

“They’re fine. I just couldn’t sleep, thinking about Val and Crow.” Rachel sounded tired. “How are they?”

“Sleeping, which is a mercy.” He filled her in on Val and Crow’s injuries and the prognosis, though he didn’t tell her that Val was pregnant—something only he and Val knew—and that because of it she was having to tough out the pain with nothing stronger than Tylenol. “They’ll be okay, though. The real thing is that I have to schedule two autopsies.”

“On Yom Kippur?” Rachel said, and Weinstock winced, then flicked a glance at the calendar. He had totally forgotten.

“I’ll be done long before sunset, honey,” he said quickly. “But even so, with all that’s going on, I don’t think God is going to single me out for punishment if I don’t atone enough. I think he’s concentrating on the entire town at once.”

“Are you fasting at least?” she asked just as Weinstock reached for a chocolate croissant, and he yanked his hand back as if he’d been burned.

“Sure,” he said.

“Saul…?”

“Well, fasting-ish, anyway. Just coffee.” He reached over and folded the bag closed, considered, and then put a file folder over the bag to hide it.

“Saul, my folks are expecting us at schul this evening. Can I tell them you’ll be there?”

“Rachel, honey…with what’s going on in town…I’m just not sure I can make that promise. Like I said, I have two autopsies to do today, and both of them are important to this police thing that’s going on.”

She made a sound like she had tasted something nasty. “Henry and that Ruger character?”

“Uh huh, and I don’t mind slicing Ruger, but I have to tell you, honey, I just can’t bring myself to take a scalpel to Henry Guthrie. It’d be like cutting up my Uncle Stanley.” Weinstock set his cup down and rubbed his eyes. “It’s weird…I never thought of what I do as gruesome before, but the thought of cutting open Henry is just plain creepy.”

“Then don’t do it,” Rachel said. “Let Bob Colbert handle it. He didn’t even know Henry.”

He sipped his coffee. “This is just all too crazy, Rache. Just too frigging weird for Pine Deep.” The real kicker had been the autopsy he had performed the day before on the body of Tony Macchio, one of Ruger’s accomplices. For some reason the cops had not been able to discern Ruger had first shot Macchio and then tore him apart. Literally tore him apart, apparently with his bare hands. And his teeth. Weinstock had never seen anything like it, even in medical texts, and outside of slasher films he had never even heard of anything like it. Ruger was a monster, and one that was scarier than anything that Crow had ever cooked up for the town’s famous Haunted Hayride. No fangs, no bat wings or bug-eyes, and seeing his handiwork, actually being wrist deep in the bloody leavings, had shaken Weinstock to his core. He knew it, too, hence the stage dressing to affect an air of calm before starting today’s postmortems. He closed his eyes and sighed. “You’re right, honey, Bob can do it.”

“Good. No sense putting yourself through anything more if you don’t have to.”

“Okay, sweetie, let me go make some calls. Give Abby and David a kiss for me. Tell them I’ll be home later, and, honey, I promise I’ll be there in time for synagogue. Hand to God.”

“I love you,” Rachel said, a lot of meaning in her voice.

“Me, too, sweetie. Bye.” He snapped the phone shut, took a long sip, and sat there with his eyes closed for a while listening to the music, letting the notes play over his nerves like a masseuse’s fingers. He opened his eyes and stared at the file folder that hid the croissants, pushed it aside, grabbed the bag and opened it, and stared into it with naked longing. Then he scrunched the bag up and threw it in the trash can, uttering a string of expletives that would require some heavy-duty atoning.

Abruptly he sat up, set his coffee cup down on the desk, and walked with forced calmness into the cold room where the double row of stainless-steel drawers gleamed in the bright fluorescent lights. He went to drawer #14, jerked the lever down and swung open the door, then grabbed the hard plastic handle on the slab and pulled it out along its rollers. A body lay under a white sheet, the cloth tented on nose, chest, and toe-tips, but Weinstock whipped the sheet down to reveal the corpse beneath. The killer’s skin was blue-white and waxy, the eyelids half-open showing shark-black eyes. The body had not yet been prepped for autopsy and was still clothed in shirt, jacket, and trousers that were filthy and pocked with bullet holes crusted with blood that had dried to a chocolaty thickness. Even in death Karl Ruger wore a twisted smile, his lips curled away from the jagged stumps of his broken teeth. Weinstock considered. Maybe it was a grimace of pain, he conceded, but damn if it didn’t look like a shit-eating smile.

Weinstock was alone in the morgue—his nurse, Barney, was working the three to eleven—so there wasn’t a living soul to hear Weinstock when he leaned over Ruger’s body and said, “You are a total piece of shit and I hope you burn in hell!”

He spat on Ruger’s dead face and then slid him back into his cold box with a grunt of effort that sent the slab slamming against the wall, then he swung the door shut hard enough to send echoes bouncing off all of the tiled walls. He sagged against the bank of stainless-steel doors, closed his eyes, folded his arms tightly across his chest, and concentrated on beating down the hatred in his brain, muttering, “…Shit, shit, shit…”

When the intensity finally ebbed, Weinstock rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms and then pushed himself away from the wall of doors, walked slowly across the morgue floor, paused once in the doorway to the office and threw back a look that was half embarrassed and half venomous, then swept his hand down over the light switches and left, heading back to his coffee and jazz and his cell phone.

Inside the cold drawer, Karl Ruger lay in the silence of death, still and breathless. There were no longer any drops of spittle on his face. He’d already licked them off.

(3)

By the time Frank Ferro and Vince LaMastra got to the Guthrie farm, there were twenty officers, two full ambulance crews, four press vehicles erecting microwave towers, and a crowd of rubberneckers who were trying to get past the yellow crime scene tape. It was frosty cold and a frigid mist floated a foot above the ground. When LaMastra asked a uniform where the chief was, the officer pointed down a lane that had been trampled through the corn. Though the sun was rising, there were still thick shadows clustered around the base of the cornstalks and all along the path. Surrounding the scene Coleman camping lanterns had been placed. The shadows leaned back away from the lanterns, but they did not fully retreat.

Jerry Head hurried up to them as they walked along the path to where the bodies had been found. He looked bleary eyed with exhaustion. “Sarge, I was about to turn in when I got the call. My motel’s right up the road, so I was able to get here in a hot minute. I secured the scene best I could, but we’re ass deep in civilians around here. Okay if I run some of them off?”

“Good call, Jerry. Thanks,” Ferro said, clapping him on the shoulder, and a second later he could hear Head’s deep voice booming out behind them. He nodded to LaMastra and they moved forward through the throng of officers until they stood at the edge of the clearing and saw what lay there.

“Holy Mother of God,” LaMastra said, and actually took a half-step back as if he hoped he could step back out of any reality where what he saw was possible. He gagged and turned away, staring at the tops of the nearby corn while he worked his throat. “Jesus Christ, Frank…what the hell is
wrong
with this town?”

Ferro looked at his partner for a moment, finding that easier to bear while he composed his face into one he’d want the local cops to see. Now was not a time to come unglued. Breathing in and out through his nostrils, Ferro turned slowly back to the clearing and forced himself to take in every detail, trying to access that part of his mind that could be cool, detached, clinical. It was a struggle not to yell. “It’s not the town, Vince. This is our mess—Ruger and Boyd.”

LaMastra gave a single fierce shake of his head. “You’re wrong there, Frank. It is this goddamn town.”

Ferro had nothing to say to that. There was a twenty-foot square that was formed partly by the intersection of two access paths through the corn, but which had been expanded by many of the stalks being trampled down. The far side of the clearing was edged by a white slat fence that trailed away to either side into the shadowy fields. A tall post reared up above the fence and a raggedy and headless scarecrow hung in limp cruciform over the scene. On the ground at the foot of the post was the better part of a shattered jack-o’-lantern with a wicked grin. Below the scarecrow lay the first of the two bodies. Officer Nels Cowan, late of the Pine Deep Police Department, lay in a rag-doll sprawl that spoke of arms that had been wrenched nearly out of their sockets. His head was tilted back at an impossible angle on a splintered spine; the backward tilt revealing a savage tear in the throat that exposed a severed windpipe and the knobbed inner edge of the spine. His service sidearm lay on the ground inches from his hand.

Near him, with one outstretched hand reaching up to lay across Cowan’s left ankle, was what had once been Jimmy Castle, late of Crestville PD. His throat was also a raw and shredded mess, as if dogs had been at him. Castle’s eyes bulged from their sockets with a terminal and everlasting astonishment at what he had seen.

There was blood everywhere and pieces of torn red matter that could have been cloth from the uniforms of the officers or it could have been their own flesh. Scattered around Castle’s body were at least a dozen shell casings, and the faint bite of cordite still hung in the air. As he and LaMastra pulled on latex gloves, Ferro stood there and read the scene, fighting back the ache in his chest that made him want to take LaMastra’s cue and flee this insane town. He fished a pack of gum from his pocket, unwrapped a stick slowly—his trick for controlling the shaking of his hands—and then placed it on his tongue. Chewing would give his mouth something to do other than gape, and the mint fought off the nausea.

The scene was a puzzle, and he stood there, chewing, evaluating the details. Two bodies, savagely torn. Worse than what had been done to Ruger’s buddy Macchio. That killing had, at least, a sense of ritual about it, but this looked to be less…what was the word? Controlled?
Animals?
It seemed unlikely. Not in this part of Pennsylvania. Shell casings everywhere. That meant that Castle had nearly emptied his magazine. Castle was ex-Pittsburgh PD—it seemed pretty unlikely he’s have fired off that many rounds without hitting something, but there was no other body around. No trail of blood, either, or at least no blood trail beyond the spatters that filled the clearing. So if Castle hit anything, there was no immediate visible evidence of it.