Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

The silence stretched on until Lavender finally turned. “Oh,” he said to Hazen, feigning surprise. “Are you still here?”

“I’m waiting for an answer to my question.”

Lavender smiled. “Didn’t I mention five minutes ago that this interview was over? How careless of me.” He turned back toward the window, puffing on the cigar.

“Take care not to get caught in the storm, gentlemen,” he said over his shoulder.

Hazen peeled out of the parking lot, leaving precisely the right amount of rubber behind. Once they were on the main drag, Raskovich looked over at him. “What was that story about your grandfather and his?”

“Just a smokescreen.”

There was a silence and he realized, with irritation, that Raskovich was still waiting for an answer. He pushed the irritation aside with an effort. He needed to keep KSU on his side, and Raskovich was the key to that.

“The Lavenders started as ranchers, then made a lot of money in the twenties from bootlegging,” he explained. “They controlled all the moonshine production in the county, buying the stuff from the moonshiners and distributing it. My grandfather was the sheriff of Medicine Creek back then, and one night he and a couple of revenuers caught King Lavender down near the Kraus place, loading a jack mule with clearwater moonshine—old man Kraus had a still in the back of his tourist cave in those days. There was a scuffle and my grandfather took a bullet. They put King Lavender on trial, but he fixed the jury and went scot free.”

“Do you really think Lavender’s behind the killings?”

“Mr. Raskovich, in policework you look for motive, means, and opportunity. Lavender’s got the motive, and he’s a goddamned son of a bitch who’d do anything for a buck. What we need to find out now is the means and opportunity.”

“Frankly, I can’t see him committing murder.”

This Raskovich was a real moron. Hazen chose his words carefully. “I meant what I said in his office. I don’t think he did the killings himself: that’s not the Lavender style. He would’ve hired some hitman to do his scut work.” He thought for a moment. “I’d like to have a chat with Lewis McFelty. A sick mother in Kansas City, my ass.”

“Where’re we going now?”

“We’re going to find out just how hurting Norris Lavender is. First, we’re going to take a look at his tax records down at the town hall. Then we’re going to talk to some of his creditors and enemies. We’re going to learn just how deep in the shit he was with this experimental field business. This was his last chance, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he bet the farm on this field coming through.”

He paused. A little public relations never hurt. “What do you think, Chester? I value your opinion.”

“It’s a viable theory.”

Hazen smiled and aimed the car in the direction of the Deeper town hall. It sure as hell was a viable theory.

Forty-Three

A t two-thirty that afternoon, Corrie lounged restlessly on her bed, listening to Tool on her CD player. It had to be at least a hundred degrees in her room, but after the events of the other night she didn’t have the guts to open her window. It still seemed impossible to believe that guy from Kansas State had been killed just down the street. But then, the entire last week was beyond belief.

Her eyes strayed to the window. Outside, huge thunderheads were spreading their anvil-shaped tops across the sky and a premature darkness was falling. But the approaching storm only seemed to make everything muggier.

She heard her mother’s voice through the bedroom wall and cranked up the volume in response. There were a few muffled thumps as her mother tried to get her attention by knocking on the wall. Jesus. Of all days for her mother to call in sick, when Pendergast no longer needed her and she was stuck at home with nothing to do and too freaked out for her usual retreat on the powerline road. She almost longed for Labor Day and the start of school.

The door to her room opened and there was her mother, standing in her nightgown, too-skinny arms draped over a too-fat stomach. Smoking a cigarette.

Corrie slipped off her earphones.

“Corrie, I’ve been yelling myself hoarse. One of these days I’m going to take away those earphones.”

“You told me to wear them.”

“Not when I’m trying to talk to you.”

Corrie stared at her mother, at her smudged mascara and the remains of last night’s lipstick still staining the cracks of her lip. She’d been drinking, but not, it seemed, enough to keep her in bed. How could this alien be her mother?

“Why aren’t you out working? Did that man get tired of you?”

Corrie didn’t answer. It really didn’t matter. Her mother was going to have her say regardless.

“As I figure it, you got paid for two weeks. That’s fifteen hundred dollars. Is that right?”

Corrie stared.

“As long as you’re living here, you’re going to contribute. I’ve told you this before. I’ve had expenses up the wazoo lately. Taxes, food, car payments, you name it. And now I’m losing a day’s tips because of this nasty cold.”

Nasty hangover, you mean. Corrie waited.

“A fifty-fifty split is the least I can expect.”

“It’s my money.”

“And whose money do you think’s been supporting you these past ten years? Certainly not that shitbag father of yours. Me. I’ve been the one working my fingers to the bone supporting you, and by God, young lady, you’re going to give something back.”

Corrie had taped the money to the bottom of her dresser drawer and she wasn’t about to let her mother see where it was. Why, oh why, had she ever told her mother how much she was making? She was going to need that money to pay for a fucking lawyer when her trial came up. Otherwise she was going to end up with some crappy public defender and find herself going to jail. That would make a terrific impression, mailing her college applications from jail.

“I told you I’ll leave some money on the kitchen table.”

“You’ll leave seven hundred and fifty dollars on the kitchen table.”

“That’s way too much.”

“For supporting you all these years, it’s hardly enough.”

“If you didn’t want to support me you shouldn’t have gotten pregnant.”

“Accidents happen, unfortunately.”

Corrie could smell the acrid scent of burning filter as the cigarette was inhaled right down to the butt. Her mother looked around, stubbed it out in Corrie’s incense burner. “If you don’t want to contribute, you can go find yourself another place to live.”

Corrie turned roughly away and replaced her earphones, cranking up the music so loud her ears hurt. She faced the smudged wall, stone-faced. She could just barely hear her mother shouting at her. If she so much as touches me, Corrie thought, I’ll scream. But she knew her mother wouldn’t. She’d hit her once and Corrie had screamed so loud the sheriff came. Of course, the little bulldog did nothing—he actually threatened her with disturbing the peace—but it had the effect of keeping her mother’s hands off her for good.

There was nothing her mother could do. She just had to wait her out.

Long after her mother had gone back to her room in a fury, Corrie continued lying there, thinking. She forced her mind away from her mother, from the trailer, from the depressing empty meaningless hell that was her life. She found her thoughts drifting toward Pendergast. She thought about his cool black suit, his pale eyes, his tall narrow frame. She wondered if Pendergast was married or had children. It wasn’t fair, the way he’d just dumped her like that and driven off in his fancy car. But maybe, like everybody else, he was disappointed in her. Maybe in the end she just hadn’t done a good enough job for him. She burned with resentment at the way the sheriff had come in and just laid those papers on Pendergast. But he wasn’t the kind to roll over and play dead. And hadn’t he hinted he was going to continue working on the case? He had to take her off the case, she told herself. It wasn’t anything she’d done. He’d said it himself: I cannot have you defying the sheriff on my account.