Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

“Any luck?” Hazen said immediately as Tad came through the door.

“No.”

“Damn!” The sheriff pounded his fist on the desk. “Yours was the last quadrant.” He shook his head. “Three hundred and twenty-five people, and every damn one of them accounted for. They’re canvassing Deeper and the surrounding farms, but nobody’s come up missing.”

“Are you sure the, um, guts were human?”

Hazen looked sideways at Tad, his eyes red, rimmed by dark circles. Tad had never seen the sheriff under so much pressure. The man’s muscular hands were balled into fists, the knuckles white.

“I wondered that, too. But the remains are now up at Garden City, and McHyde assures me they’re human. That’s all they know so far.”

Tad felt sick to his stomach. The image of the meatloaf, poking out of that ragged tear in the ruined guts, the beer foam mixing with the blood—that was going to stay with him the rest of his life. He never should have looked. Never.

“Maybe it was someone passing through,” he said weakly. “What local person would be out alone at that time of night, anyway?”

“I thought of that, too. But where’s the car?”

“Hidden, like Sheila Swegg’s?”

“We’ve checked everywhere. We’ve had a spotter plane up since eight.”

“No circle cut in a cornfield?”

“Nothing. No hidden car, no circle, no dumped body, nothing. No footprints this time, either.” Hazen wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and sat down with a heavy thump.

It was hard to concentrate, the state police were making so much noise with their radios and cell phones in the inner office. And worse, the press was camped right outside, a battery of cameras aimed point-blank at them through the glass door.

“Could it have been a traveling salesman?” Tad asked.

Hazen jerked his head toward the inner office. “The Staties are checking all the area motels.”

“What about the sack of corn?”

“We’re working on it. Christ, we don’t know if it was left by the killer or if the victim was carrying it. But why the hell would someone be carrying a sackful of corn in the middle of the night? And each ear was tagged and numbered in some kind of weird code, to boot.” He glanced at the sea of cameras beyond the front door. He started to rise, sat down, rose again. “Get me that can of whitewash and the brush from the storeroom, okay?”

Tad knew exactly what Hazen was going to do. When he returned, Hazen took the can from his hands, tore off the lid, dipped in the brush, and began to paint the glass.

“Bastards,” he muttered as his arm swept back and forth, the paint running down and puddling on the doorsill. “ Bastards. Photograph this and see how you like it.”

“Let me help,” Tad said.

But Hazen ignored him, slopping the paint up and down in big strokes until the door was covered. Then he shoved the brush in the can, jammed the lid back on, and sat down heavily again, closing his eyes. His uniform was flecked with white paint.

Tad sat down beside him, worried. Hazen’s square face had a gray sheen to it, like a dead piece of fish. His sandy hair lay limp across his forehead. A vein pulsed in his right temple.

Suddenly, the sheriff’s eyes popped wide open. It happened so fast that Tad jumped.

Hazen’s lips parted, and he muttered just one word:

“Chauncy!”

Thirty-Three

A round noon, Sheriff Hazen decided he’d watched the dog-handler, Lefty Weeks, struggle with the dogs for just about as long as he could stand. Weeks was one of those types that really got on Hazen’s nerves: a little man with white eyelashes, big ears, long thin neck, red eyelids, a wheedler and whiner who never stopped talking, even if his audience was a pair of useless dogs. The air under the cottonwood trees was hot and dead and Hazen could feel the sweat springing out on his forehead, the nape of his neck, his underarms, his back, leaking and running down through every fold and crease, even the crack of his ass. It must be over 105 frigging degrees. He couldn’t smoke because of the damn dogs, but it was so hot he didn’t even feel a craving. Now that was saying something.

Once again the two dogs were whining and cringing about in circles, their tails clamped down hard over their assholes. Hazen glanced at Tad, then looked back at the dogs. Weeks was yelling at them in a high-pitched voice, swearing and jerking ineffectually at the leashes.

Hazen went over, gave one of the dogs a swift kick in the haunch. “Find that motherfucker!” he shouted. “Go on. Get going.”

The dog whined and crouched lower.

“If you don’t mind, Sheriff—” Weeks began, his red ears backlit and flaming in the heat.

Hazen spun on him. “Weeks, this is the third time you’ve brought dogs down here and every time it’s been the same thing.”

“Well, kicking them isn’t going to help.”

Hazen struggled to control his temper, already sorry he had kicked the dog. The state troopers were now looking at him, their faces blank, but no doubt thinking that he was just another redneck hayseed sheriff. He swallowed hard and moderated his voice. “Lefty, look. This is no joke. Get those dogs to track or I’m putting in a formal complaint up to Dodge.”

Weeks pouted. “I know they’ve got a scent, I know it. But they just won’t track.”

Hazen felt himself boiling up all over again. “Weeks, you promised me dogs this time, and look at them, groveling like toy poodles in front of a mastiff.” Hazen took a step forward at the dogs. This time one of them snarled.

“Don’t,” Weeks warned.

“She’s not afraid of me, the bitch, although she should be. Give her another go, damn it.”

Weeks took out the plastic bag holding the scent—an object retrieved from the second killing—and opened it with gloved hands. The dog backed away, whining.

“Come on, girl. Come on,” Weeks wheedled.

The dog slithered back and forth almost on its belly.

Weeks crouched, the thin travesty of a goatee bobbing on his chin while he held the bag open invitingly. “Come on, girl. Scent it! Go!” He shoved the bag up to her nose.

The quivering, crouching dog let loose a stream of piss onto the dry sand.

“Oh, Christ,” said Hazen, turning away. He crossed his arms and looked up the creek.

They had been up and down it now for three hours, dragging the unwilling dogs the whole way. Beyond, in the cornfields, Hazen could see the state police teams moving. Farther down, the SOC teams were on their hands and knees, combing the sandbeds along the creek for something, any thing. Above droned two spotter planes, crisscrossing back and forth, back and forth. Why couldn’t they find the body? Had the killer taken off with it? There were state police roadblocks up, but the killer could have escaped during the night. You can drive a long way in a Kansas night.

He glanced up and saw Smit Ludwig approaching, notebook in hand.

“Sheriff, mind if I—”

“Smitty, this is a restricted area.” Hazen had just about had it.

“I didn’t see any tape, and—”

“You get out of here, Ludwig. On the double.”

Ludwig stood his ground. “I have a right to be here.”

Hazen turned to Tad. “Escort Mr. Ludwig to the road.”

“You can’t do this—!”

The sheriff turned his back on the entreaty. “Come on, Mr. Ludwig,” he heard Tad say. The pair of them disappeared in the trees, Ludwig’s protests increasingly muffled by the muggy air.

The sheriff’s radio crackled. He hoisted it.

“Hazen here.”

“Chauncy’s been missing from his hotel since yesterday.” It was Hal Brenning, state police liaison officer, down in Deeper. “Didn’t return last night. Bed wasn’t slept in.”