Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

Her mind drifted toward the case itself. It was still so weird to think of someone in Medicine Creek doing those killings. If it really was someone local, it meant it was someone she knew. But she knew everyone in Shit Creek, and she couldn’t imagine any of them being a serial killer. She shuddered, thinking back over the crime scenes she’d witnessed firsthand: the dog, its tail hacked off . . . Chauncy, sewn up like some overdone turkey . . .

The weirdest of all was Stott, boiled like that. Why had the killer done that? And how did you boil someone whole, anyway? He’d have to have lit a fire, put on a big pot . . . It seemed impossible. Where could you get a pot like that? Maisie’s? No, of course not: the biggest pot she had was the one she used for Wednesday night chili, and you couldn’t even fit an arm in that. The Castle Club also had a kitchen—could it have happened there?

Corrie snorted to herself. The idea was nuts. Even the Castle Club couldn’t have a pot big enough to boil an entire person; for that you’d need an industrial kitchen. Or maybe he’d used a bathtub? Could someone have winched a bathtub onto a stove, cooked the body that way? Or set up a bathtub in some cornfield? But the spotter planes would have seen it. And the smoke from the fire would have been visible from all over. Someone would’ve smelled it cooking; smelled the smoke, at least.

No, there was nowhere in Medicine Creek the body could’ve been cooked . . .

Abruptly, she sat up.

Kraus’s Kaverns.

It was crazy. But then again, maybe it wasn’t. Everyone knew that, during Prohibition, old man Kraus had run a moonshine operation in the back of that cave of his.

She felt a crawling sensation along her back: a mixture of excitement, curiosity, fear. Maybe the old still was still in there. Stills had big pots, didn’t they? And would that pot be big enough to boil a person? Maybe, just maybe.

She lay back in bed, her heart beating fast. As she did so, the ridiculousness of it came over her again. Prohibition had ended seventy years ago and the old still would be long gone. You just didn’t leave something that valuable rotting in a cave. And how would the killer sneak in and out of the cave? That prying old woman, Winifred Kraus, kept it locked up tight and watched over it like a hawk.

She tossed restlessly. Locks could be picked. She herself had downloaded The MIT Guide to Lock Picking while surfing the Web on the school computers, and she’d even made a small pick of her own and experimented on the padlocks of school lockers.

If the killer was local he’d know about old man Kraus’s moonshine operation and the still. The killer might have brought the body in some night, boiled it, and been gone by morning. Old Winifred would never have been the wiser. Fact is, she hardly ever gave tours anymore.

Corrie wondered if she should call Pendergast. Did he know about the still? She doubted it—the bootlegging was just some ancient bit of Medicine Creek lore nobody would have thought to tell him about. That was why he’d hired her, to tell him just this kind of stuff. She should call him now and let him know. She felt in her pocket for the cell phone he’d given her, pulled it out, started dialing.

Then she stopped. The whole idea was absurd. Stupid. It was just a wild guess. Pendergast would laugh at her. He might even be angry. She wasn’t supposed to be on the case at all.

She dropped the phone and turned toward the wall again. Maybe she should check it out first—just in case. Just to see if the still was there. If it was, then she’d tell Pendergast. If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t make a fool of herself.

She sat up, put her feet on the floor. Everybody knew the cave only had one or two small caverns beyond the tourist area. The still would be in one of those. It wouldn’t be hard to find. She would duck in there, check it out, leave. And it would get her out of the house. Anything to get out of this hellhole.

She turned down the music and listened. Her mother had fallen silent.

She slipped off the earphones, paused to listen again. Then, ever so carefully, she got out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and slowly opened the door. All remained quiet. Shoes in hand, she began sneaking down the corridor. Just as she reached its end, she heard her mother’s door bang open and her voice ring out.

“Corrie! Where in hell do you think you’re going?”

She hopped through the kitchen and ran out the door, letting it bang behind her. She jumped into her car, threw her shoes onto the seat next to her, and turned the key, praying the thing would start. It thumped, choked, died.

“Corrie!” Her mother was coming out the door now, moving awfully fast for someone with a nasty cold.

Corrie cranked the key again, pumping the pedal desperately.

“Corrie—!!”

This time the engine caught and she screeched down the gravel lane of Wyndham Parke Estates, laying a spume of smoke, dust, and dancing pebbles in her wake.

Forty-Four

M arjorie Lane, executive receptionist for the ABX Corporation, was becoming increasingly agitated by the man in the black suit sitting in her waiting room.

He had been there ninety minutes. That in itself wasn’t unusual, but during that time he had not picked up any of the magazines conveniently laid about; he had not used his cell phone; he had not opened a laptop or done any of the things people usually did while waiting to see Kenneth Boot, the company CEO. In fact, it seemed as if he hadn’t moved at all. His eyes, so strange and silvery, always seemed to be looking out the glass wall of the waiting room across downtown Topeka, toward the green geometry of farms beyond the city’s edge.

Marjorie had been with the company through a host of recent changes. First, it had jettisoned its old name, the Anadarko Basin Exploratory Company, in favor of the sleek new acronym and logo. Then it had begun buying new businesses that went far beyond oil exploration: energy trading, fiber optics, broadband (whatever that was), and a million other things she didn’t understand and, when she asked around, nobody else seemed to, either. Mr. Boot was a very busy man, but even when he was not busy he liked to keep people waiting. Sometimes he kept people waiting all day, as he had done recently with some mutual fund managers who had come to ask questions about something or other.

She longed for the old days: when she understood what the company did, when people weren’t kept waiting. It was unpleasant for her when people had to wait. They complained, they talked loudly on their cell phones, they banged away on their laptops, and they paced about furiously. Sometimes they used profane language and she had to call security.

But this—this was worse. This man gave her the creeps. She had no idea if Mr. Boot would see him soon, or in fact see him at all. She knew he was an FBI agent—he had shown her his shield—but Mr. Boot had kept important people waiting before.

Marjorie Lane busied herself with work, answering phones, typing, responding to e-mails, but always out of the corner of her eye she could see the black figure, as immobile as a Civil War statue. He didn’t even seem to blink.

Finally, when she couldn’t stand it any longer, Marjorie did something she knew she wasn’t supposed to do: she buzzed Mr. Boot’s personal secretary.

“Kathy,” she said in an undertone, “this FBI agent’s been here almost two hours and I really think Mr. Boot should see him.”

“Mr. Boot is very busy.”

“I know, Kathy, but I really think he should see this man. I’m getting a bad feeling here. Do me a favor, please.”

“Just a moment.”

Marjorie was put on hold. A moment later the secretary came back. “Mr. Boot has five minutes.”