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“Like it was a pack of dogs did it rather than a person. ”
Ferro pulled in a chestful of air through flared nostrils. “Yeah,” he said.
LaMastra shifted around and sat down on the ground, only dimly aware of the crushed stalks and smashed ears of corn under his rump. He was also only vaguely aware that Chief Bernhardt had come down from the road, taken a single look, and then rushed past him to throw up into the cornfield. LaMastra turned and watched him with a strange, vague distance.
Ferro stood by silently pulling on thin latex gloves. “If the weather holds we’ll get a lab crew in here and see if they can lift prints. If not we have to spread a tarp…preserve as much as we can. ”
LaMastra just sighed and looked up at the lightning. It was going to rain soon, but he knew there wasn’t enough rain in heaven to wash away this horror.
After a minute or two, Terry Wolfe joined them. His face was the color of sour milk, and he stood so that his back was to the car. He tried several times to form articulate words, failed each time, and then paused to take in a couple of long, slow breaths. Finally, he managed to say, “Is this one of the men you were looking for?”
Ferro snorted. “Well, that’s
the car, sure enough. And there is plenty of evidence of cocaine and money in the trunk. As for the identity of the deceased? A pathologist is going to have to make that decision for us. As you can see…well, no, don’t bother to look, but there isn’t enough of a face to make a clean ID, and the fingertips have been, uh, chewed…so I don’t know if we can get…”
But Terry had clamped a hand to his mouth and staggered away to fall to hands and knees beside Bernhardt. They took turns retching and coughing. Ferro tried on an amused and superior smile, but it tasted wrong, so he spat it out.
Terry shambled back, wiping his mouth and looking even paler, if that was possible.
Ferro looked at him. “Are you okay, sir?”
“What do you think!” Terry gulped some air. “You figure that this Karl Ruger did this?”
“Well, I sure as hell hope so. ”
Terry gave him a quizzical look. “You ‘hope so’?”
Nodding, Ferro said, “You should hope so, too, Mr. Mayor. That, or you’ve got two incredibly dangerous homicidal maniacs running around in your quiet little town. ”
“Oh no…” Terry breathed.
“Relax,” said Ferro, “what are the odds of that?”
2
Crow closed his cell phone and slid it back into his pocket. He was beginning to get the first tingling of unease. He’d called Val’s cell twice and got no answer, and had called the house and gotten nothing. He wanted to get this job done and get over there.
The ATV was a chunky little three-?wheeled Kawasaki with puffy low-?pressure tires and motorcycle handlebars. Every time Crow used one, he felt as if he were in the jet-?speeder chase in Return of the Jedi. The ATV growled to life, hinting at more muscle in its belly than one might guess, and as Crow gave her some gas, it kicked out a cloud of dust and leaped forward.
“Hi-?yo, Silver,” Crow yelled, “away!”
Barney and Mike watched him go, standing side by side: the eighteen-?year-?old with the fake knife in his chest, and the fourteen-?year-?old with the broken rib and the marks of a near-?fatal encounter with madness flickering in his eyes. They watched until Crow’s taillights vanished around a bend in the road.
“Crow’s a friggin’ goof,” Barney said, scratching at the adhesive bandage that held the knife.
Iron Mike considered for a moment. “Yeah, he’s just about weird enough. ”
Just a minute or two after Crow vanished into the night, a pair of headlights cast the parking lot in whiteness. Barney and Mike turned to see a station wagon pull into the lot and crunch across the gravel toward them. Mike hesitated for a moment, then smiled and waved.
The station wagon rolled to a stop and the driver’s door opened. Vic Wingate unfolded himself from behind the wheel. He was a big man, just over six feet tall and very muscular, with a military-?style blond crew cut and a Marine Corps jawline. That jaw was set as he walked over to meet Mike.
“Hi, Vic!” Mike said, forcing his voice to sound pleased to see the man. “I guess they told you what happened. My bike’s in the—”
Vic hit him.
It was a savagely fast, stunningly hard blow. Not a slap, but the full rock-?hardness of Vic’s fist. It caught Mike in the stomach and seemed to smash back every bit of flesh between shirtfront and backbone. All of the air whooshed out of Mike’s mouth along with a strangled cry of surprise; after that Mike had no breath even to scream. The pain was worse than anything he had ever felt. Worse than the broken rib, worse than all the bruises from when he’d gone off the road. Worse than any pain from any punishment Vic had ever given him. It was the first time in his life Mike had ever been punched by an adult. Before that it had been slaps, hard slaps with Vic’s hard hands, but just slaps. The punch was so crushingly hard, and so unexpected, that Mike felt as if his entire body had shrunk down into a single twisted knot of white-?hot pain. He lay on the gravel in a fetal position and tried to breathe.
“Yo! mister!” Barney called in alarm, stepping forward. Vic wheeled toward him and pointed a finger at the kid’s nose. The finger was like a steel dagger and it stopped Barney in his tracks.
