Head moved as quietly as he could down the corridor created by the out-of-control car, but each footfall on the dried corn leaves crackled and crunched. There was no way to move in silence. Behind him and to either side he heard Toombes and Castle making the same noise, and he knew that they would be just as nervous about all the noise as he was. Couldn’t sneak up on a dead man making noise like that.
Behind him, Head could hear Rhoda checking in with Detective Sergeant Ferro, heard the squelch of the radio.
They didn’t have far to go before all three of them saw the gleam of moonlight and flashlight on metal and glass. It was a big, black four-door sedan and it stood in a small clearing of smashed-down cornstalks. The trunk lid was up and the right front of the car seemed to be pitched unnaturally low. Head turned to the others, and very quietly said, “We go in together. Toombes, you go right, Castle you go left, and I’ll go up the pipe. Remember, check and clear.”
They nodded and set themselves. Guns poised, fingers sliding into the trigger guards, they stepped into the clearing at the same time, moving quickly but with maximum caution. Castle came up on the driver’s side keeping the muzzle of his revolver focused so that it tracked the light.
“Police officers!” they all shouted. “Freeze!”
Castle shone his flash into the car. “Clear!”
“Clear!” Head called as he checked inside the open trunk and under the car.
He waited for Toombes.
She said nothing.
Rising from a shooter’s crouch, Head peered around the end of the car. Toombes was standing just inside the clearing, facing the passenger side of the car, which was still out of sight to both Head and Castle. Toombes stood stock-still, her flashlight trained forward, but her service automatic was pointing limply and forgotten at the dirt by her feet.
“Toombes!” called Head. “Are you clear?”
Toombes didn’t even look at him.
“Toombes!”
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Head motioned to Castle to circle around the front of the car, and together they converged fast on the passenger side.
Time seemed to freeze.
Officer Jerry Head stared down at the ground by the side of the car. He stared at the blood-soaked ground. He stared at the blood-splattered corpses of half a dozen crows that had been peppered with buckshot. He stared at the man that lay there.
At least, he thought it was a man.
Had been a man.
Once.
Not anymore, though. Now it was…unspeakable.
Head felt his brain go numb and somewhere off to the right of his sanity, he heard Jimmy Castle loudly throwing up.
Terry stood over Gus Bernhardt as he made the long string of calls to former part-time officers, listening to the chief plead, cajole, entice, and even bully as he tried to pressgang the honest citizenry of the town into some kind of actual police force. In any other circumstance, the whole thing would be kind of funny. At that moment, however, nothing seemed even remotely amusing. Gus was sweating, and Terry could feel his own pores yielding their store of icy perspiration. He turned away and strolled across the office, focusing on Detective Ferro and his beefy sidekick, LaMastra. They were once again in a hushed, intense confabulation.
Terry didn’t join them, didn’t even linger; instead he moved restlessly around the room. Technically he was the senior official here, a mayor supposedly outranking out-of-town cops, but he felt like a kid who had accompanied an adult to the office. Everyone was busy with their own jobs, saying things he didn’t quite understand, doing things he could not help with, trying to accomplish things in which he could not actually participate. It was frustrating, but moreover, it was intimidating.
A phone rang on one of the desks as he passed it, and Terry glanced around to see if anyone was going to pick it up. No one so much as even turned to acknowledge this addition to the cacophony. Shrugging, Terry reached for the handset and picked it up.
“Pine Deep chief’s department,” he said in an official voice.
A voice said, “Terry?”
The connection was bad, making the voice sound distant and pale. It wasn’t a matter of static, for the line was clear, but there was a hollowness to the sound, as if the caller were at the far end of a long tunnel.
“Hello? Who is this, please?”
“Terry?” repeated the voice. “Is that you, Terry?”
It was a female voice, a little girl. Crisply, he said, “This is Mayor Terry Wolfe. Who is calling, please?”
“Terry…” the voice said, and for a moment the connection faded almost to nothingness.
“Who is this? We have a very bad connection, so please speak up.”
“Terry, he’s back!” said the voice, and that was quite clear.
“I’m sorry, who’s back? Who is this?”
“Terry. You have to do something.”
“Listen to me,” he said loudly and clearly, “you’ve reached the chief’s department in Pine Deep. Are you hurt or in trouble?”
Nothing but the hiss of an open line.
“Little girl…? Can you hear me?”
Across the room Detective Sergeant Ferro and his cronies were looking at him.
“Little girl? Are you still there?”
“Terry?” The voice was plaintive, sounding scared, but still distorted as if by a vast distance. “He’s back, Terry. He’s back and he’s going to hurt people again.”
“Hurt who? Little girl…who’s going to be hurt?”
“He’s back….”
“Little girl, tell me your name.”
Nothing.
“This is the mayor. Please tell me your name and where you’re calling from.”
Still nothing. Gus Bernhardt was lumbering across the room toward him, a deep frown on his florid face.
“You have to stop him, Terry,” whispered the tiny voice.
“Where are you calling from? Little girl? Little girl?” He kept calling for her to answer, but the sound on the phone had changed. Now there was just dead emptiness. Gus reached out for the phone, held it to his own ear for a moment, then set it back on the cradle.
“What gives?” he asked.
“Weird call,” said Terry, shaking his head and scratching his red beard. “Some little kid called.” He knew that voice, too, but he didn’t dare say it, and unconsciously tapped his pocket to make sure the pill case with the antipsychotics and the Xanax was still there.
“You heard a kid on that phone?” Gus asked, half smiling.
“Yeah, and she was going on about—”
“Uh, wait a minute, Terry, let me get this straight…you got a phone call on that phone and it was some little kid?”
“A little girl, yeah.”
“On that phone?”
“No, on two other phones,” snapped Terry viciously. “Yes, of course on this phone. What, are you deaf? You saw me talking to her.”
“Well, I’m not deaf, but you must have the greatest set of ears in the Western world if you got a phone call on that line.”
“What the heck are you talking about…?”
Still half smiling, Gus bent and snatched up the cord that came out of the back of the receiver. He reeled it up, speaking as he did so. “Since we cut back on staff, we don’t use these desks back here much,” he said. “These phones have all been disconnected.”