Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

“All right, Mr. Special Agent. What’s the catch?”

“I’ll tell you while you give me a lift back to Winifred Kraus’s place. That’s where I’m staying.”

Corrie Swanson hesitated, then opened the door. “Get in.” She swept a heap of McDonald’s trash off the passenger seat onto the floor. “I hope you’re not going to do something stupid.”

The FBI agent smiled and slid in beside her as smoothly as a cat. “You can trust me, Miss Swanson. Can I trust you?”

She looked at him. “No.”

She popped the clutch and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving behind a pall of oilsmoke and a nice ten-inch pair of tire marks on the sheriff’s asphalt. As she careened out of the alley and slewed onto the street, she was gratified to see the stumpy little sheriff tumble angrily out the door and start to shout something just as her black contrail obliterated him from view.

Eleven

T he commercial district of Medicine Creek, Kansas, consisted of three dun-colored blocks of brick and wooden shopfronts. It took Corrie three, perhaps four heartbeats to reach its edge. As she jammed on the accelerator, the rusted frame of the Gremlin began to shake. There was a pile of some three dozen tapes littering the space between the front seats: her favorite death metal, dark ambient, industrial, and grindcore music. She riffled through them with one hand, passing over Discharge, Shinjuku Thief, and Fleshcrawl before finally selecting Lustmord. The dislocated, eldritch sounds of “Heresy, Part I” began to fill the small car. Her mother refused to let her play her music out loud in the house, so she’d retrofitted a tape player to the old Gremlin.

Speaking of her dear, nurturing parent, it was going to be a bitch going home. By now, her mother would be half drunk, half hungover—the worst combination. She decided she’d drop this Pendergast guy off at the old Kraus place, then go park under the powerlines and kill a few hours with a book.

She glanced over at the FBI man. “So, what’s with the black suit? Somebody die?”

“Like you, I’m rather partial to the color.”

She snorted. “What’s this catch you were talking about?”

“I need a car and driver.”

Corrie had to laugh. “What, me and my stretch AMC Gremlin?”

“I came by bus and I’m finding it rather inconvenient to be on foot.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. The muffler is shot, the thing goes through a quart of oil a week, there’s no AC, and the interior is so full of fumes I’ve got to keep the windows open, even in winter.”

“I propose compensation of a hundred dollars a day for the car and driver, plus a standard rate of thirty-one cents per mile for fuel and depreciation.”

A hundred bucks was more money than Corrie had ever seen at one time. This couldn’t be happening, it had to be some kind of bullshit. “If you’re a hotshot FBI special agent, where’s your own car and driver?”

“Since I’m technically on vacation, I haven’t been issued a car.”

“Yeah, but why me?”

“Quite simple. I need someone who knows Medicine Creek, who has a car, and has nothing better to do. You fit the bill. You’re no longer a minor, correct?”

“Just turned eighteen. But I’ve got another year of high school. And then I’m out of this Kansas shithole.”

“I hope to have concluded my work here long before school begins next month. The important thing is, you do know Medicine Creek—don’t you?”

She laughed. “If hating is knowing. Have you thought about what the sheriff’s going to think about this arrangement?”

“I expect he’ll be glad you found gainful employment.”

Corrie shook her head. “You don’t know much, do you?”

“That lack of knowledge is what I hope to rectify. Leave me to deal with the sheriff. Now, do we have a deal, Miss Swanson?”

“A hundred bucks a day? Of course we have a deal. And please, do I look like a ‘Miss Swanson’ to you? Call me Corrie.”

“I shall call you Miss Swanson and you shall call me Special Agent Pendergast.”

She rolled her eyes and swept purple hair out of her face. “Okay, Special Agent Pendergast.”

“Thank you, Miss Swanson.”

The man slid a wallet out of his suit coat and removed five hundred-dollar bills. She could hardly take her eyes off the money as he casually unwired her broken glove compartment, placed the bills inside, and wired it back up. “Keep a written record of your mileage. Any overtime beyond eight hours daily will be paid at twenty dollars an hour. The five hundred dollars is your first week’s pay in advance.”

He pulled something else out of his suit coat. “And here is your cell phone. Keep it turned on at all times, even when charging at night. Do not make or receive personal calls.”

“Who am I gonna call in Shit Creek?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. And now, if you’d be so kind as to turn the car around and give me a tour of the town?”

“Here goes.” Corrie glanced in her rearview mirror to make sure the coast was clear. Then she swung the wheel around violently, braking and accelerating at the same time. The Gremlin slewed around in a one-eighty, tires squealing, and ended up pointed back in the direction of town. She turned to Pendergast and grinned. “I learned that playing Grand Theft Auto on the computers at school.”

“Very impressive. However, I must insist on one thing, Miss Swanson.”

“What’s that?” she said, accelerating back toward town.

“You must not break the law in my employ. All traffic rules must be strictly obeyed.”

“Okay, okay. ”

“The speed limit on this road is forty-five, I believe. And you have not buckled your seatbelt.”

Corrie glanced down and saw she was going fifty. She eased down to the correct speed, then slowed even further as they entered the outskirts of town. She tried to fish the seatbelt out from behind the seat, the car swerving back and forth as she drove with her knee.

“Perhaps it would be more convenient if you pulled off to the side of the road to do that?”

Corrie gave an irritated sigh and pulled off, retrieved the belt, and buckled herself in. She started up again with another screech of rubber.

Pendergast settled back. The passenger seat was broken, and he reclined into a semi-supine position, his head just barely at the level of the window. “The tour, Miss Swanson?” he murmured, eyes half closed.

“Tour? I thought you were kidding.”

“I am anxious to see the sights.”

“You must be on drugs. The only sights around here are fat people, ugly buildings, and corn.”

“Tell me about them.”

Corrie grinned. “Okay, sure. We’re now approaching the lovely hamlet of Medicine Creek, Kansas, population three hundred and twenty-five and dropping like a stone.”

“Why is that?”

“Are you kidding? Only a dipshit would stay in a town like this.”

There was a pause.

“Miss Swanson?”

“What?”

“I can see that an insufficient, or perhaps even defective, socialization process has led you to believe that four-letter words add power to language.”

It took Corrie a moment to parse what Pendergast had said. “ ‘Dipshit’ isn’t a four-letter word.”

“That depends on whether you hyphenate it or not.”

“Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Joyce all used four-letter words.”

“I see I am dealing with a quasi-literate. It is also true that Shakespeare wrote:

In such a night as this,

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees

And they did make no noise, in such a night

Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls,