Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

“Hallelujah, what else is new?”

“He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing, where he was going. Nobody up here knows anything about his itinerary.”

“We checked into that,” Hazen replied. “Seems he had car problems, left his Saturn over at Ernie’s Exxon. Insisted it be fixed that day, even though Ernie told him it was a two-day job. Chauncy was last seen eating a late dinner at Maisie’s. Never picked up the car, though. Looks like he went into the cornfields and was doing a little last-minute research on the sly, collecting and labeling ears of corn.”

“Collecting corn?”

“I know, I know. Insane, with a killer running loose. But this Chauncy liked to play his cards close to his vest. Probably didn’t want anybody prying, asking awkward questions.” Hazen shook his head, remembering how upset Chauncy had become at Pendergast’s talk of cross-pollination.

“Well. Anyway, we’re looking through Dr. Chauncy’s papers now with some of Sheriff Larssen’s boys. It looks like he was going to make some kind of announcement today at noon.”

“Yeah. The experimental field project which Medicine Creek wasn’t going to get. Anything else?”

“Some dean from KSU’s coming down with their head of campus security. Should be here in half an hour.”

Hazen groaned.

“On top of that, we’ve got a dust storm brewing. There’s a weather advisory out for Cry County and the eastern Colorado plains.”

“When?”

“The leading edge could come as early as tonight. They say it might be upgraded to a tornado watch.”

“Great.” The sheriff punched the radio off, holstered it, and glanced up. Sure enough: thunderheads, darker than usual, were piling up to the west, as if a nuclear war was being fought somewhere over the horizon. Any Kansan with half a brain knew what clouds like that meant. There was more than a dust storm coming. At the least, the creek would be up, scouring the whole creek bed. The fields would get drenched, maybe flooded. There’d probably be hail. And there would go all their clues. They’d get nothing more to go on until . . . until the next killing. And if there were indeed tornadoes, it would shut down the whole investigation while everyone dove for cover. What a frigging mess.

“Weeks, if those dogs aren’t going to track, then get them the hell out of here. Your dragging them up and down the creek is just wrecking the site for everyone else. This is a disgrace.”

“It’s not my fault.”

Hazen stalked off down the creek. It was a ten-minute walk to the spot where his cruiser and a dozen other vehicles, marked and unmarked, glittered alongside the road. He coughed, spat, breathed through his nose. There was definitely that curious stillness in the air that precedes a storm.

And there on the gravel shoulder was Art Ridder, getting out of his idling vehicle, standing and waving. “Sheriff!”

The sheriff walked over.

“Hazen, I’ve been looking all over creation for you,” said Ridder, his face even redder than usual.

“Art, I’m having a bad day.”

“I can see that.”

Hazen took a deep breath. Ridder might be the town’s big shot, but there was only so much crap he was going to take.

“I just got a call from a guy named Dean Fisk, up at the Agricultural Extension. KSU. He’s on his way down with an entourage.”

“I heard.”

Ridder looked surprised. “You did? Well, here’s something I’ll bet you don’t know. Listen, you’re not going to believe this.”

Hazen waited.

“Chauncy was going to announce today that Medicine Creek had been awarded the experimental field.”

Just when he thought he couldn’t get any hotter, Hazen felt a sudden flush burn its way through him. “Medicine Creek? Not Deeper?”

“It was going to be us all along.”

Hazen just stared, stupid with heat and surprise. “I can’t believe it.”

“He may have hated the town, but that didn’t change the fact that it’s a perfect place for their field.” Ridder wiped his greasy brow, tucked the soiled handkerchief back into his breast pocket. “We’re a dying town, Sheriff. My house is worth sixty percent what it was twenty years ago. Sooner or later the turkey plant’s going to lose another shift, maybe even close down. Do you know what this field would have meant for us? Genetic engineering, Hazen. One field would’ve just been the beginning. There’d have been more fields, a computer center, accommodations for visiting scientists and faculty, maybe a weather station. There would have been construction opportunities, real estate opportunities, more business for everyone, work for our children.” His voice rose into the dead air. “That field would have saved our town. ”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Art,” Hazen said woodenly, still stunned.

“You’re a fool if you don’t see it! But do you think we’re going to get it now? Now that their man just had his guts ripped out in the center of our town? Huh?”

Hazen felt an immense weariness settling on his shoulders. He began to walk past Ridder. “I don’t have time for this, Art. I’ve got a body to find.”

But Ridder blocked him. “Look, Sheriff. I’ve been thinking.” He lowered his voice. “Have you looked into this guy Pendergast? Think about it. He showed up in town awfully goddamn fast after that first killing. We only have his word that he’s FBI. How do you know he isn’t involved? That he isn’t the psycho? He’s at every killing, poking his albino nose everywhere—”

But Hazen barely heard. Suddenly Ridder’s voice seemed to have gone far away.

Hazen had an idea.

Ridder was right: Deeper would get the experimental field now, by default. But by rights it should have gone to Medicine Creek. Right on the eve of Chauncy’s announcement—the very eve—he comes up murdered. And now Deeper would get the field.

Deeper would get the field . . .

It was suddenly coming together.

He tuned out Ridder’s droning voice, trying hard to think. The first killing, Sheila Swegg, had occurred three days before Chauncy’s arrival. The killer struck again the day after he arrived. In both cases, the killer had left all kinds of clues and bizarre shit behind, arrows and bare footprints and what-not, as if he were trying to capitalize on the legend of the Ghost Warriors, the curse of the Forty-Fives. But the strategy didn’t work. Chauncy didn’t pay a lot of attention to the murders, and he could care less about legends and curses. He wasn’t even reading the papers. He was a scientific man looking at things long-term. Ghosts and murders might scare the residents of Medicine Creek, but they just didn’t register with Chauncy.

And then, the night before Chauncy was to announce Medicine Creek got the field, he himself comes up dead.

Could it be any clearer? This wasn’t a serial killer. And it wasn’t someone local, like Pendergast believed. It was someone who had a lot to lose if the experimental field went to Medicine Creek. Someone from Deeper. Art was right: there was a shitload of money at stake here, maybe even the future of the town— either town. Deeper was hurting, too. Christ, in the last thirty years they were down fifty percent in population, worse than Medicine Creek. They were bigger, they had farther to fall, and they didn’t even have the turkey plant.

It was kill or be killed. Deeper.

“You following me?” Ridder was shouting.

Hazen looked at him. “Art,” he said abruptly, “I’ve got some important business to take care of.”

“You haven’t heard a goddamn word I’ve said!”

Hazen placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to solve these murders, and maybe even get that field back for Medicine Creek. You just wait.”