The slanting rays of the early-evening sun were pleasantly warm on his back. The grass between the patio and the chicken coop was a brilliant green. The yellow strings that Madeleine had used to lay out her plan for a shed alongside the coop were swaying in a gentle breeze. Barn swallows were swooping overhead in pursuit of insects. Chipmunks were gathering seeds from under the finch feeders. The harshness of the day was fading into the background.
His sense of peace was ended by a panicky call from Morgan.
“Another episode of that damn Karl Kasak show is scheduled for ten o’clock tonight. There’s a preview segment on the RAM website now. I’m trying to reach Harmon Gossett to see if we can get it killed. We’ve got to do something about this before it buries us.”
“Good luck with Gossett.”
“Right. I’ve got another call I need to take. Talk to you later.”
After finishing his dinner and making himself a cup of coffee, Gurney went into the den, opened his laptop, and went to the RAM website. In the “Streaming Previews” section he found Crimes Beyond Reason and clicked on the current date.
After a two-minute commercial, Kasak appeared in front of the Gothic iron gate of a cemetery. He spoke in a tense, hushed tone.
“I’m here among the dead of Larchfield, New York—an appropriately chilling location for my meeting with Clinton and Delbert Mars, self-styled zombie hunters, drawn here by the terrifying events of the past week. You may think of zombies as creatures found only in horror movies. I asked the Mars brothers if that’s true. What they told me may shock you.”
The screen was filled with a close-up of two overweight, bearded men, side by side in front of a marble mausoleum. They spoke alternately, one sentence each, like twins accustomed to finishing each other’s thoughts.
“The idea that the walking dead are creatures of fiction is just about the biggest lie the government wants us to swallow.”
“Like telling us that UFOs are weather balloons.”
“Truth is, the walking dead are real as you and me.”
“As real as Billy Tate, and just as hard to kill.”
“A zombie can’t be killed at all, if you don’t know how to do it.”
“More likely, you’d be the one to get killed.”
“Ninety-nine percent more likely.”
“Most folks don’t even know where zombies come from.”
“Because they don’t see it happening.”
“They don’t see the lightning that makes it happen.”
“And mostly it happens in cemeteries.”
“When lightning strikes a grave or a mausoleum.”
“And brings the dead back to life.”
“A kind of life that draws strength from taking the lives of others.”
“The more they kill, the stronger they get.”
“Like Billy Tate, they kill to stay alive.”
“But we know their weakness.”
“We can send them back to hell, which is where they were, before they rose up.”
“By fire they rise up, by fire they fall!”
“Billy Tate, your zombie days of blood and evil are about to end!”
The scene shifted back to Kasak, standing outside the Gothic iron gate. “We’re talking about a potentially fatal face-off. Gives me goose bumps just to think about it! For more about this eerie battle, tune in tonight at ten. Crimes Beyond Reason. On RAM-TV.”
Gurney suddenly realized what Kasak’s tone was reminding him of—a TV wrestling announcer. Then Kasak disappeared, and a blue logo came spinning onto a black screen.
RAM-TV
WE DELIVER REALITY
He closed his laptop—wondering if there was any limit to the market for half-witted, fearmongering nonsense—and turned his attention again to the stark reality of his barn having been visited by a probable murderer.
Although it was unlikely that anyone had seen the vehicle that left the tire marks, he felt it would be negligent not to check on it. There were only two other houses on the two-mile-long dirt-and-gravel road that led from the state route up to his barn. One was a single-wide mobile home whose onetime lawn had been displaced by skunk cabbage and thorn bushes.
In the years that the Gurneys had lived at the top end of the road, the mobile home had been sporadically occupied, and he wasn’t sure about its current status. The cabin at the bottom end of the road, however, was enjoying a sudden renaissance as a getaway for city hipsters who found its overhanging hemlocks, tilting porch, ancient outhouse, gravity-fed spring, and lack of electricity charming—and the frequent howling of coyotes an exciting bonus. Or so a realtor friend of Madeleine’s had told her.
Gurney got in his Outback and headed down the road. He stopped first at the deteriorating mobile home. Stepping carefully through the tangle of thorns, he reached the faded front door and knocked on it, setting off a burst of angry barking on the other side of it. A male voice shouted “Shut up!” several times before the barking stopped.
The man who opened the door was wearing only white boxer shorts and black socks. The thinning hair on his head was as black as his socks. The mass of hair on his chest and legs was gray, as was the three-day stubble on his face. He was holding a brown beer bottle by the neck, a grip suitable for using it as club.
Gurney adjusted his stance accordingly, put on a pleasant smile, introduced himself, and added, “I’m your neighbor from up the road.”
“McDermott’s old farm.” The man said it with an emphasis suggesting that any subsequent owner’s right to be up there was doubtful.
Gurney replied blandly, “That’s the place.”
“You’re the detective?”
“Retired.”
The man switched his grip on his beer bottle and took a long, slow swig, eyeing Gurney all the while. “You’re a detective. What do you do about a thief?”
“What’s been stolen?”
“My compost. Gone like it wasn’t ever there.”
“You could report it to the Walnut Crossing Police Department.”
“I told Darryl LeMoyne all about it twice, which is like talking to a groundhog.”
“Does anyone live here with you?”
“Not at the current moment. My son’s in prison.”
“Oh?”
“Girlfriend put him there. Claimed he knocked her teeth out. Meth done that, not Emmett.”
“Let me ask you something. What time did you wake up this morning?”
He shook his head. “What you want to know that for?”
“I’m wondering if you might have seen a car passing sometime before dawn this morning.”
“Couldn’t say. You got something stole from you, too?”
Gurney ended the conversation, thanking the man for his time and expressing the hope that his compost would be returned. He renegotiated the thorn patch, got in the Outback, and drove another mile down the road.
He pulled over behind a white Audi SUV with a double bike rack mounted on the roof. The vehicle was parked on a bed of evergreen needles at the head of the path to the cabin, which was set back from the road in a hemlock thicket.
Gurney followed the path. When he arrived at the cabin, he found a young couple wearing biking tights the color of chartreuse tennis balls, sitting on the rickety porch steps. The woman’s hair was artfully disarranged. The man’s hair had been wound into a bun on the top of his head, samurai-style. They were using a pail of water to wash dirt off some kind of greens. They looked up at Gurney, the woman smilingly, the man apprehensively.
“Hi,” she said, brushing a few strands of hair back from her face.
“Ramps?” asked Gurney, recognizing the wet greens in her hand.
“Isn’t it incredible? We were biking on a trail up in the woods this afternoon and we found a whole hillside covered with them. You know what they charge for these in Brooklyn? Do you live around here?”