“Loud and clear, sir,” Ferro said. Spinlicker and the others just nodded. Gus was staring at Terry with a look of fascinated awe.
“Then let me make something else clear. October is the biggest income month for this town. We’re already reeling from the crop blight and a lot of local farmers are likely to lose their farms. If you—” he fished for an appropriately savage word but only came up with an acid-laced version of “officers of the law, working together, cannot find one man—one injured man, mind you—then we are likely to lose the entire tourist season. That means Pine Deep is going to go into the tank.” He leaned forward, his blues eyes as hard as gunmetal. “If, on the other hand, you can manage to find this guy, then there is still a chance we can pull off enough of a season to stay afloat. That, gentlemen, is a very real concern and I want to know right now that this is going to happen.” He made eye contact, brief but penetrating, with each man at the table, one after the other. “Make me believe that this is going to happen.”
(3)
Ferro and LaMastra lingered with Gus after Terry and the others left. They stood at a window that looked down at the parking lot, watching SAC Spinlicker and Agent Henckhauser get into their car. Even through the soundproof glass the watching officers could feel the vibration as the FBI agents slammed their doors. Their car laid an eight-foot patch of burned rubber across the asphalt.
“So,” Gus said dryly, “I guess we won’t be sharing the case with the feds.”
“So it seems,” Ferro agreed. His face still wore its funeral director moroseness, but there was a drop of humor in his voice. “Nice that they said they would keep in touch and advise. Very helpful of them.”
“Funny thing is,” LaMastra said, “that if you told me that a small-town mayor could bitch-slap a couple of feds like that I’d have called you a liar.” Ferro just nodded at that.
“So we’re on our own again,” Gus said.
“Once this thing starts winding down,” LaMastra said, “I expect we’ll see those two again. Right around the time when someone gets to take credit.”
“Mmm-hm,” Ferro said, smiling faintly.
(4)
After a long and rather giggly breakfast with Sarah and Val, Crow showered and dressed and began packing the few belongings he’d brought from the hospital. In ten minutes Sarah was going to drive them out to the farm and he knew that would pretty much be the end of the incredible feeling of joy that was still bubbling inside of him.
A baby. His baby. His and Val’s, which was even better. Son of Crow—he’d already decided that it was going to be a boy for no reason more mature than hoping that the kid would like science fiction, blues, jujutsu, and gory horror flicks. He couldn’t quite see “Daughter of Val” grooving on any Rob Zombie films side-by-side with ol’ dad. On the other hand, Daughter of Val would probably be smarter and better looking than Son of Crow, so there was that. On the other other hand, the kid could be Grandson of Henry, in which case he’d be smart, good-looking, tough as nails, and a lot taller than Son of Crow.
Crow…my love…I’m going to have a baby. If there had ever been a more beautiful set of—and here Crow had to count on his fingers—nine words, he had never heard them and could not imagine them. Son of Crow. Sounded great. Very heroic, very comic book superhero. “Wait till I tell…everyone!” he said aloud. As he packed he started singing, “I am a daddy,” to the tune of “I’m in the Money.”
Crow sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled his cell phone out. There were only two bars so he got up and moved around the room until he got four of them. Getting a clear cell phone signal in Pine Deep was always a crapshoot. He had to sit in the window seat and wedge his shoulder into the corner to get enough bars to make his calls.
The first person he called was Terry Wolfe. Terry answered on the second ring with a terse, “Go.”
“Terry…it’s me.”
“Crow? What’s up, everything okay there?”
“Yeah, man. You in the middle of something?”
“Not really. I just wrapped up a meeting with the cops.”
“Are they anywhere with this?”
“No,” Terry said, and his voice sounded like all the weariness in the world. “And no one has floated a useful theory as to why Boyd would risk breaking into the morgue just to steal Ruger’s corpse.”
“Sounds like Boyd is off the rails,” Crow offered. “Maybe there’s no one in the driver’s seat anymore.”
“Who knows. There’s another wrinkle in this, too.”
“Jeez, Wolfman, I’m not sure how many more wrinkles this town can take.”
“Now you’re singing my song. Keep this between us, okay?”
“Lips are sealed, bro.”
“We think Boyd has at least one more accomplice.” Terry told him about the hospital door being opened and the alarm disabled. “He had to have inside help.”
Crow chewed on that for a minute. “I find that hard to buy. If there was an inside man, why didn’t he just dump Ruger onto a gurney and wheel his ugly ass to the back door? That way Boyd would never have been spotted at all.”
“Saul Weinstock raised the same concern, but Ferro said that the inside man may have known about the security camera. The hallway surveillance camera has been broken since the middle of September, so anyone who went into the hall to unlock the doors would not have been spotted. Only if he’d actually entered the morgue would the tape have picked him up.”
“Okay…I can see that, but that means that this inside guy had to know all of this. The broken camera, the morgue camera, everything, and he’d need access to the keys.”
“Right. They checked out everyone who was on duty last night and got nowhere. Just dead ends and no leads.”
“This doesn’t make me feel too good, Terry.”
“Me, neither, but at least you’re out of it.”
“And I’m happy as hell about that, too. So’s Val.” Then he slapped his forehead—and winced all the way down to his toes. “Geez, Terry, I am the world’s biggest idiot.”
“Not a news flash there.”
“No, I mean I forgot to tell you why I called.”
“If this is more bad news I’m going to go lay down in traffic.”
“Terry…Val and I are going to have a baby!”
There was a silence followed by a sound that Crow was absolutely sure was a sob. Just the one, and then more silence. Finally, in a strange, choked whisper Terry said, “Thank God.” And then without warning he hung up.
Crow looked at the phone in his palm. That was certainly not the kind of answer he expected to get. “Weird,” he said, and then punched in a new number.