“Indeed.”
“We’ve got our share of nutcases, too. Like that tinker who comes through here once a year and camps out in the corn somewhere. Or Brushy Jim, who did one tour too many in Vietnam. They say he fragged his lieutenant. Everybody’s just waiting for him to ‘go postal’ one of these days.”
Pendergast had lain back in the seat again. He looked asleep.
“Anyway. There’s the Rexall Drug. That empty building is where the Music Shop used to be. There’s Calvary Lutheran Church. It’s Missouri Synod. The pastor is John Wilbur. A fossilized specimen if ever there was one.”
There was no response from Pendergast.
“We are now passing Ernie’s Exxon. Don’t get your car fixed there. That’s Ernie himself at the pump. His son’s the biggest pothead in Cry County and old Ernie doesn’t have a clue. And that old wooden building is Rasmussen’s, the dry goods store I told you about. Their motto is, ‘If you can’t find it here, you don’t need it there.’ I’ve always wondered where ‘there’ was. There’s the sheriff’s office on the left, but I hardly need to point thatplace out. And there’s Maisie’s on the right. Her meatloaf is just edible. Her desserts would give a hyena the runs. Uh-oh, I knew it. Here he comes.”
Corrie watched in the rearview mirror as the sheriff’s cruiser pulled out of the alleyway, lights flashing.
“Hey,” she said to the motionless Pendergast. “Wake up. I’m getting pulled over.”
But Pendergast seemed sound asleep.
The sheriff came right up behind her and gave his siren a crank. “Please pull off to the side of the road,” his voice rasped through the loudspeaker atop the car. “Remain inside your vehicle.”
It was the same thing that had happened to her at least ten times before, only this time Corrie had Pendergast in the car. She realized the sheriff probably hadn’t seen him, he was sunk so low in the seat. His eyes remained closed even through the siren and the noise. Maybe, she thought, he was dead. He certainly looked dead.
The door of the cruiser flung open and the sheriff came sauntering up, billy club flapping at his side. He placed his meaty palms on the open passenger window and leaned in. When he saw Pendergast, he jerked back abruptly. “Jesus!” he said.
Pendergast opened one eye. “Problem, Sheriff?”
Corrie enjoyed the look that came over the sheriff’s face. His entire face flamed red, from the fuzz-covered folds of skin piled up against his collar to the tops of his hair-clogged ears. She hoped Brad would age just like his father.
“Well, Agent Pendergast,” Hazen said, “it’s just that we don’t allow cruising back and forth through town. This is the third time she’s been through.”
The sheriff paused, obviously awaiting some kind of explanation, but after a long silence it became clear he wasn’t going to get any.
At length, Hazen pushed himself away from the car. “You may go on your way,” he said.
“Since you’ve taken an interest in our movements,” said Pendergast in his lazy drawl, “I should inform you that we’ll be driving through town again, and perhaps even a fifth time, while Miss Swanson shows me the sights. After all, I amon vacation.”
As Corrie looked at the darkening expression on Sheriff Hazen’s face, she wondered if this so-called Special Agent Pendergast really knew what he was doing. It was no joke making an enemy like Hazen in a town like Medicine Creek. She’d been stupid enough to do it herself.
“Thank you for your concern, Sheriff.” Pendergast turned to her. “Shall we go, Miss Swanson?”
She hesitated a moment, looking at Sheriff Hazen. Then she shrugged. What the hell,she thought, as she accelerated from the curb with a little screech and a fresh cloud of black smoke.
Twelve
The sun was settling into a bloody patch of cloud along the horizon as Special Agent Pendergast exited Maisie’s Diner, accompanied by a slender man in a Federal Express uniform.
“They told me I’d find you in there,” the man said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner.”
“Quite all right,” Pendergast replied. “I wasn’t especially hungry.”
“If you’ll sign for it now, I’ll leave everything by the back door.”
Pendergast signed the proffered form. “Miss Kraus will show you where to put it all. Would you mind if I take a look?”
“Help yourself. Takes up half the truck.”
The shiny FedEx truck was parked outside the diner, looking out of place on the dusty, monochromatic street. Pendergast peered into its interior. Along one wall were perhaps a dozen large boxes. Some had labels readingPERISHABLE—CONTENTS PACKED IN ICE .
“They’re all from New York,” the driver said. “Starting a restaurant or something?”
“It’s my deliverance from Maisie.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Everything seems to be in order, thank you.”
Pendergast stepped back and watched the truck glide off into the soupy evening. Then he began strolling east, away from the dying glow of the horizon. Within five minutes, he had left the town of Medicine Creek behind. The road stretched ahead like a dark faultline in the corn.
He quickened his pace. His errand was a vague one, an intuition more than a certainty. Intuition, Pendergast knew, was the end result of the most sophisticated kind of reasoning.
Twilight and crows rose from the fields, and the smell of cornstalks and earth drifted on the air. Headlights appeared, grew larger, and then a huge semi-trailer came shuddering past, leaving dust and diesel in its wake.
Two miles out of town, Pendergast stopped. A dirt track ran away from the road here, angling off to the left between walls of corn. Pendergast followed it, moving with long silent strides. The track began to rise more sharply, heading for a dark cluster of trees on the horizon, surrounding three dark low outlines framed against the dusky sky: the Mounds. Leaving the corn behind, the track turned into a trail. Ahead were the trees, giant cottonwoods with massive trunks, bark as rough as fractured stone. Broken limbs lay scattered on the ground, clawlike branches upturned.
As he entered the shadowy confines of the grove, Pendergast paused to look back. The land fell away in a long, gentle declivity toward the town. The distant streetlights formed a glowing cross in the sea of dark corn. The Gro-Bain plant lay south of town, a low cluster of lights all by itself. The creek lay between them, a meandering line of cottonwoods that snaked through the landscape of corn. As flat as the land looked at first sight, it had its gentle undulations, its rises and its bottomlands. The point on which he stood was the highest for many miles.
The summer darkness had fallen heavily on the land. If anything, the air had grown muggier. A few bright planets glowed in the dying sky.
Pendergast turned and walked deeper into the darkness of the grove, becoming virtually invisible in his black suit. He followed a trail that wandered uncertainly through rabbitbrush and oak scrub. After another quarter mile, Pendergast stopped again.
The Mounds were just ahead.
There were three of them, low and broad, arranged in a triangle, rising twenty feet above the surrounding land. The flanks of two of the mounds had worn away, exposing limestone ledges and heavy boulders underneath. The cottonwood trees were thicker here and the shadows were very deep.
Pendergast listened to the sounds of the August night. A chorus of insects trilled furiously. Blinking fireflies drifted among the silent trunks, their streaked lights mingling with the distant heat lightning that flickered to the north. A crescent moon hung just above the horizon, both horns pointed upward.
Pendergast remained motionless. The night sky was now blossoming with stars. He began to hear other sounds: the rustlings and scratchings of small animals, the flutterings of birds. A pair of close-set eyes glowed briefly in the dark. Down by the creek a coyote howled, and at the very edge of hearing, from the direction of the town, a dog barked a reply. The sliver of moon cast just enough light to see by. Night crickets began to chirrup, first one, then others, the sounds rising from the tall grass.