Dead Man's Song (9 page)

“You have one minute and then I’m going back to sleep, Newt, and unless this involves Brad Pitt and gratuitous nudity, I am probably going to fire you. Just so you know.” Dick Hangood was the editor and co-owner of the
Black Marsh Sentinel,
a small paper that came out three times a week in the town just south of Pine Deep.

Willard Fowler Newton said just fourteen words: “The guy Malcolm Crow shot and killed last night was the Cape May Killer.”

Dick Hangood sat up in the chair so fast he sent his Pomeranian flying off his lap and onto the hardwood floor where—in a fit of pique—he began savaging Anton’s socks, which were lying atop his shoes by the sofa. “Newton,” he said tiredly, “if you are jerking my chain—”

“Dick…I interviewed someone who was involved in what happened the other night.” He was stretching that. Mike Sweeney had told him about the Cape May Killer connection, but Mike was on the periphery of what had happened.

For Hangood shifting gears into true newsman mode was an effort, but he managed it. “Who else knows about this?”

“No one.”

“I mean, what other papers are there?”

“I’m serious—no one. The cops have been keeping this hush-hush. What I mean is…some other reporters know about the cop killings, but no one else knows about the Cape May Killer angle. I’ve been following the story all day,” Newton said urgently.

Hangood was still trying to find sense in this. “But the chief already issued a statement about the shooting at the Guthrie place. No one said anything about it being related to Cape May.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why this is what we in the news business call a scoop.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Newt.”

“Wake up, Dick…this is the real thing. We have to go to press right now. We have to get this out in a couple of hours. We’ll never have another chance—”

“Shut up and let me think.”

“There’s more…”

“More?”

“Early this morning two police officers were murdered out at the Guthrie farm. I saw the bodies, Dick. I have pics. Long range, sure, but pics. And I, um…overheard some conversations between the two lead cops. I know the whole story, Dick, and how it ties back in with the Cape May thing. I have it all.”

Hangood felt like the floor was tilting under him. His mouth moved like a Kissing Gourami for several seconds before he managed to say, “Newt—if this is on the level, if this is what you say it is—then this story is going to be picked up on every news service in the world. You could get a Pulitzer for this.”

Newton said nothing. He was hyperventilating.

(9)

“I gotta take a leak,” Polk said to Toombes and ambled off down the hall. She barely shrugged. He went down past the men’s room, looked over his shoulder to make sure Toombes was out of his line of sight, and then cut into the fire tower. He closed the door and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, punched in a number, and waited. Vic Wingate answered on the third ring.

“Vic, it’s Jim.”

“You get yourself switched like I told you to?”

“Yeah, they got me guarding Crow all day.”

“He talk to anyone?”

“Just the doctor. Saul Weinstock.”

“What did they talk about?”

“I wasn’t in the room then, but it couldn’t have been much of anything.”

“So you don’t know when they’re going to do the autopsy?”

“Actually, Vic, I do. It’s scheduled for this afternoon.”

There was silence at Vic’s end. “That soon, huh? Shit.”

“It’s an ongoing criminal investigation. Has to be done fast. That a problem?”

“Of course it’s a problem, numb-nuts. We can’t let Ruger get sliced up.”

“Why not, Vic? He’s dead, I don’t see how he’s important to the Man at this point. He’s out of the game, far as I can see.”

Vic laughed. “Yeah, well, you’ve never been too swift at the best of times, Jimmie, my boy. Trust me when I tell you that Ruger is not out of the game.”

“But, I don’t get it—”

“No. You
don’t
get it, and you’d better wake up every day from now on and pray thanks that you continue to not get it. Now shut up for a second and let me think. We have to find a way to get that Jew doctor to postpone the autopsy for at least a full day. You understand me, Jimmie? A full day.”

“Why?”

“Because I damn well said so. And because the Man wants it that way—or is that not enough of a reason for you?”

“No, sure, it’s cool. I was just asking—”

“Well, don’t. Look, they’re bringing in some new stiffs for the doctors to play with. If this goes the way I want it to, then they’ll autopsy them first.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll be part of an active investigation. Ruger’s old news, as far as they’re concerned. When these other bodies come in they’ll be shifting gears—but it might take the better part of the day before that happens, so I need you to stall the Jew.”

Polk licked his lips. “Yeah, okay, Vic. I’ll think of something.”

“Don’t get caught, either. You may be be a dickhead, but for the moment you’re useful. You get caught, then you’re no use to me—or to the Man. No damn use at all, you reading me?”

“I hear you, Vic.”

“Good, now get your ass in gear.” He broke the connection.

Polk leaned against the cold cinder block wall of the fire tower and stared at nothing for two whole minutes, then he pushed himself away and straightened his clothes.

“Mother of God,” he breathed and went back into the hall, but a bad plan was already forming in his head.

(1)

When Tow-Truck Eddie came home from the hospital his mind was racing like the engine of his wrecker. He locked the front door, closed all of the blinds, and yanked the curtains shut, bathing the house in gray-brown darkness despite the sun outside. He peered around the corners of each curtain to make sure that no one outside could see in, and whenever he was uncertain he used strips of duct tape to seal the edges of the curtains to the wall. He finished, paused to consider, and then went and taped up every window in the house, basement to attic. It took three thick rolls of duct tape. That was okay, he had plenty. Lately he’d been using it to pull all of the hair off his arms and legs and torso. For his privates he used a razor.

Once the house was secure, he double-checked the locks on the front and back doors, stripped off his police uniform, and went upstairs to the little shrine he had made to contain the first of the holy relics he would collect. The shrine was a low, flat wooden cabinet that had started out as an IKEA entertainment center but which had been called to a higher purpose by Eddie’s needs. He crossed himself seven times as he knelt in front of the shrine, then he opened the doors and removed the vessel that contained the Eucharist, which he placed on top of the cabinet. He went through the entire ritual of blessing the elements, taking his time and getting each step precisely right. Error was sinful, even if by accident. He used a bottle of Evian to fill his chalice—an old boxing trophy he’d won back in his twenties, before he knew who he truly was—and then he lifted the ciborium, which contained the Eucharist. That it was really a Tupperware container did not matter. One day he would have elements made from gold, but for now humility in all things was correct. He took a deep breath, fighting the rush of excitement that shivered upward from where his knees pressed into the floor and where his upturned heels dug into his buttocks. Gooseflesh covered him like a contour map of the Holy Land as he pried off the lid and removed the Eucharist. He blessed it and holding it in both hands lifted it toward heaven. After two days the knotty muscle of Tony Macchio’s heart had begun to smell a bit. Bitter and strong, like a man’s heart should be. After all, this was the heart of the Baptizer, whom God had directed him to kill so that his energies could be released and consumed by the new Messiah, by Tow-Truck Eddie, who was the Sword of God.

He took a knife and cut a thick slice, praying all the while, phrasing it as formally as he could. “This is the body of Thy servant, sacrificed for Thee and in remembrance of my own sacrifice on the cross in the land of the Jews. This is the flesh that makes the seal of the Final Covenant. I, the Son of Man, the Son of Heaven’s King, the righteous and unyielding Sword of God, bless this flesh in Your Holy Name. All glory to God the most high!” Then he ate the meat, chewing it slowly in order to explore the nuance of the taste, and when he had eaten, he took the cup, and after he had blessed it, he drank. He set the cup down and lowered his forehead to the floor and wept for the glory of God.

When he was finished, Tow-Truck Eddie returned the vessels to their places, took the cup and knife to the bathroom and washed them seven times each, put everything in its place, and left the room that held the shrine. Still naked and now fully erect, he went down to the basement where he kept his weights and by candlelight he pushed his body to its absolute limit, clanking the barbells, pyramiding the weights so that he lifted heavier weights each time while decreasing the reps, keeping himself in the haze of the burn, loving the bite of lactic acid in his bulging muscles, watching the veins pop and harden, delighting in the shine of sweat on his skin. Twice he ejaculated while lifting, both times while imagining the death of the Beast, the demon in his sham of a child’s body, writhing and twisting in Tow-Truck Eddie’s powerful hands. Each time, at the point where his dreaming mind heard the snap of bones in the Beast’s throat, he came, spurting come in gooey ropes over his belly. Both times he stopped, washed himself, prayed for forgiveness, and did seven Our Fathers before going back to his weights.

At fifty Tow-Truck Eddie had a thirty-two-inch waist and at expansion his chest was sixty-eight inches around. His biceps taped out at twenty-four inches and his wrists at fourteen inches. In his bare feet he stood just over six feet six and on his weakest days he could bench-press 420 pounds in twenty-rep sets. He had always been strong, but never in his life had he been this strong, this blessedly powerful. He jogged upstairs to the second-floor shower and spent a half an hour under the hottest spray he could endure, soaping himself to a high lather, rinsing, soaping, rinsing, until the bathroom was totally fogbound. He toweled himself dry and dressed in clean white underwear, sweat socks, a crisp blue pair of work pants, and a starched work shirt. He pushed a ball cap down over his short blond hair, strapped a Buck folding knife to his belt, tucked a leather slapjack in his back pocket, tucked his feet into work shoes, and then grabbed his keys as he headed for the door.

The wrecker was parked behind his house and it sat there like a sleeping dragon. Eddie unlocked a big corrugated tool chest bolted behind the driver’s seat and removed several flexible magnetic signs that were blank and painted the exact color of the wrecker. Eddie placed the two biggest ones over each of the front doors, obscuring the name Shanahan’s Garage. He took two longer but thinner ones and placed them over the Shanahan clover logo on either side of the tow-truck’s boom. Then he fished in the box and removed a license plate, walked around behind the truck, and pulled off the existing plate, which was held in place by magnets, swapping it for the dummy plate. He knew that he might still be recognized, but with the smoked windows in the cab it wouldn’t be very likely, and if someone did…well, that’s a risk he was willing to take. God would allow him to succeed, or He wouldn’t. Satisfied, he relocked the toolbox and climbed behind the wheel. It was time again to hunt for the Beast.

(2)

Mike Sweeney was crouched behind the hallway railing, listening though the slats as Vic and his mom talked. Vic said that he would be out all day and when his mom asked him where he was going there was a sound that could have been a slap. Mike’s hands closed around the slats and gripped them knuckle-white, but he did not hear his mother crying so it must not have been a hard slap, just one of Vic’s perfunctory shots. Mike listened to his mom apologize for forgetting her place and then prattle on about how she was going to pack him a nice lunch. There was a space of time filled only by distant noises in the kitchen, and then the slam of the door as Vic left. He heard Vic’s car start and drive away. Mike rose from his listening post and went quietly down the stairs, pausing briefly to lean around and peer down the hall. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table pouring gin into her oversized teacup. It was not even noon, but Mike knew she’d be drunk by dinnertime, and passed out by eight.

He moved like a pale ghost down the hall, carefully opened the front door, and slipped out. His bike was around back, beside the garage. Mike had repaired the damage it had sustained when he was nearly run down on the highway. He walked it quickly down the street to the corner before climbing on. The effort of pedaling, even slowly, hurt. His cracked rib were still sore, though he had to admit it did hurt a lot less today than he thought it would, but he had all the bruises that Vic had painted on him with his fists, and every single one of those yelled at him as he started riding the bike up the hill toward the center of town. Except for the big bruise that should have been on his stomach, and wasn’t, but that sliver of awareness was stuck in another part of Mike’s subconscious, hidden away under the label
chrysalis.

However, Mike was not thinking about his bruises, but about his new dream—the one with the wrecker. He was smart enough to understand that trauma can gouge a mark in you and leave part of itself there—Mike’s life was all about trauma—yet there was something more to this dream, and as he rode into town he tried to suss out what it was. Possibly it was the newness of the dream that made it so intense, and the fact that it was largely a memory of what had just happened. It could have been that, sure. Or, it could be something else. Mike had no idea what the “something else” might be. He didn’t believe in prophecy any more than he believed in guardian angels or a loving and protective God. So much of his life had argued too eloquently for the opposite of those concepts. Mike had no cosmology, no metaphysics. Yet there was something else.

He biked along the winding side streets toward Corn Hill, flicking his glance carefully down each side street just in case there was a gleaming wrecker waiting there, engine growling quietly.

(3)

Tow-Truck Eddie made the turn from Mariposa Lane onto Corn Hill and began climbing toward the business district. Already the streets were filling with tourists. The crowds were heavier than they had been last weekend, and definitely heavier than they had been this time last year. A good year for the town, except for the blight. Eddie did not consider the blight to be the work of an angry God because he had asked God that question and his Father had told him that the spread of disease and pestilence that was crippling the farms surrounding Pine Deep was the work of the Beast. Eddie could understand that. The Beast was a destroyer and God was a bringer of good things, and those thing included the rain and sun that brought forth the abundance of the harvest. The thought that the Beast had caused such blight in Pine Deep—his town—filled him with a cold rage. It was yet another reason to find the monster and destroy him before all of the farmers Eddie had grown up with were ruined. Destroying the Beast was the same as defending his town, which was the proper work for the Sword of God.

Suddenly he saw a figure in a hooded sweatshirt pedaling a bicycle not more than half a block away. Heading
away
from him. Was it the same bicycle? Eddie couldn’t tell, there were people and cars in the way. Tourists were jaywalking, slowing traffic, and Eddie ground his teeth as he saw the figure—
was it the Beast?
—round a corner and vanish from sight. Growling in fury, Eddie edged his wrecker forward and the sheer reality of its massive size made the tourists hustle out of the way until he finally reached the corner of Trencher Street and he made a hard left out of the flow and bustle.

But the street was empty. Wherever the Beast had gone to, he was nowhere in sight. Eddie cursed and punched the steering wheel with the callused heel of his hand.

Patience,
whispered the voice in his mind. His Father’s soothing voice.
Patience.

Eddie sat there until cars choked the street behind him and began honking, and when he was calm again, he took his foot off the gas and began rolling down the street, continuing the hunt. Patiently.

(4)

A ragged line of police officers, state troopers, and deputized hunters moved out of the tall corn and passed into the shadows of the great Pinelands State Forest. The trees stood rank after rank, mingling Scotch pine and Norway spruce, pitch pine and Table Mountain pine, and a dozen other varieties, spreading back into the game lands by the tens of thousands, packed so tightly together that men walking nearly shoulder to shoulder were almost constantly separated by the knobby trunks of the trees. The underbrush was heavy, tending toward stunting maple, gnarled scrub pines, and thorny bushes ringed by late-season poison ivy and poison sumac. The ground was uneven and seemed to close like a thousand hungry mouths around the ankles of the searchers. More than one man went down with a twisted ankle and had to limp back to the staging area on Dark Hollow Road. The trees were filled with crows and starlings and other black-eyed night birds who watched with ironic amusement as the men looked for what wasn’t there.

Hours hobbled by like cripples and at times the cool October sun seemed frozen into the hard surface of the sky. At the van of one long arm of the search, Detective Vince LaMastra stalked with hungry eyes, an acid stomach, and a fury that had nowhere to go but inside. He had his big shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm and he wanted to use it on that cop-killing bastard, but by three that afternoon he knew in his heart that the gun wasn’t going to be anything other than dead weight.

His team made it all the way to the Passion Pit, a flat piece of ground at the top of a steep pitch that tumbled down into the shadows of Dark Hollow. It would be time-consuming and dangerous to climb down that hill all the way to the cleft formed by the feet of three mountains, and LaMastra knew he didn’t have enough daylight for that. If Boyd had gone down there, they’d never catch him before sunset, and after dark one man could elude a thousand in that dense warren of twisted gullies, streams, and bogs. If they came back tomorrow to give it a shot they’d need rappelling gear, but by then the trail would be as dead as Jimmy Castle and Nels Cowan.

Standing on the lip of the pitch, LaMastra stared down into the shadows, feeling empty and on edge. He did not notice that all of the trees around him with filled with crows, each of them watching him with bottomless black eyes.

Back at the staging area, Frank Ferro paced slowly back and forth, hands jammed deep into his pockets, shoulders hunched against the deepening cold, thoughts blacker than they had ever been. Ferro knew that he was something of a control freak. Not really a type-A personality, but close enough. He liked answers, he liked patterns, and he liked cases that stayed within the boundaries of police work. Even when he failed to close a case, his world was balanced on the fact that it was all cops and robbers and sometimes the robbers won. This case, though, seemed to be outside of those boundaries. Vince had put his finger on it earlier when he said that the case was getting away from them. Maybe it already was. He didn’t feel that he was in charge of it in any useful way, but he wasn’t blasting himself for it because he truly felt that this case would have gotten away from anyone. It was that kind of case. Outside of all normality, beyond cops and robbers.