Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

It was a human ear.

He turned, feeling a thrill of vindication mingling with disgust. “Don’t anybody touch anything.”

The others nodded.

Hazen continued examining the cavern. For a moment, he thought this was the end of the line—that the cave was empty and that McFelty had already escaped. But then he made out a low archway in the side wall, a mere patch of gray leading to deeper darkness. “It looks like there’s another room that way,” he said, pointing. “Let’s go. Lefty, lead with the dogs.”

They passed through the low archway into the next cavern. This had once been the garbage dump for the moonshiners, and it was still filled with rotting trash, broken bottles, scraps of paper and tin cans and refuse of every kind, all pushed up against one wall. He paused. The room was cold, and in an especially chill series of niches along one wall he could see a stock of recent food supplies. A larder of sorts. He shined his light in to reveal sacks of sugar, cereal, beans, bags of potato chips and other snacks, loaves of bread, packages of beef jerky, tubs of butter. There was also a stack of candles, boxes of kitchen matches, a broken lantern. At the far end, a trash heap of discarded sacks and butter wrappings and cans and candlebutts showed that McFelty had been down here a surprisingly long time.

Continuing to pan with his night-vision goggles, Hazen saw that the passageway continued, leading to another cavern beyond. McFelty, if he was in here at all, would have heard them by now and would be in that room, maybe with a gun drawn, waiting to surprise them.

He put a hand on Lefty’s shoulder and spoke low into his ear. “Unleash the dogs and tell ’em to flush out the next room. Can they do that?”

“Of course.”

Sheriff Hazen positioned his men around the mouth of the passage, ready to collar anyone who came out. Then he nodded to Lefty.

Lefty unhooked the bullsnaps from the collars and stepped back. “Sturm, Drang. Clear. ”

The animals took off instantly, disappearing into the darkness. Hazen crouched by the opening, shotgun at the ready. He could hear the dogs in the next room, growling, snuffling, licking their wet chops. A few moments passed. The sounds grew fainter.

“Call ’em back,” said Hazen.

Lefty gave a low whistle. “Sturm, Drang. Return. ”

More snuffling and slobbering.

“Sturm! Drang! Return! ”

The dogs came back, reluctantly. In the glow of the goggles they looked like the hounds of hell.

Hazen was now convinced McFelty had gotten out. And yet it wasn’t a complete loss; quite the contrary, in fact. They’d find plenty of physical evidence to prove he’d been in the cave and to connect him to the crimes: fingerprints, DNA. And what was no doubt Stott’s ear was a terrific find as well, itself worth the trip down. With this kind of evidence against McFelty it would be a piece of cake to plea-bargain the guy and nail Lavender.

Hazen straightened up. “All right, let’s go see what’s in there.”

They entered the third cavern. It was smaller than the others. Hazen stopped in surprise. It looked like it had been used as some kind of living quarters, but as his eye traveled around the room he wondered just who it was who’d been living there. There was a bed against the wall, rotting and broken, the mattress ticking spilling out, but it was very small: a kid’s bed. Above the bed was a broken picture of an apple tree, and another of a clown. A few broken wooden toys, rotting and furred with mold, sat in a corner. There was a wooden bureau, once painted fire-engine red, buckling and listing to one side, the drawers sprung. Some rotten clothing could be seen inside. At the far end, the cavern narrowed to a tiny crack.

Jesus, what a place. Hazen hiked up his pants, fished in his pocket for a Camel. “Looks like our bird flew. We probably just missed him.”

“What’s all this about?” Raskovich asked, shining his light around the room.

Hazen lit the cigarette, put the match in his pocket. “Something left over from moonshine days, I’d say.”

There was a long silence. Everyone stood around, looking disappointed.

Hazen sucked in a lungful, exhaled. “Back there, in the pot, is Stott’s ear,” he announced quietly.

As expected, this perked them up.

“That’s right. We’ve done well, men. We’ve got proof the killer was down here, proof this is where he boiled Stott. Proof this was his base of operations. This is a major break in the case.”

Everyone nodded. There were some excited murmurs.

The dogs began to growl.

“We’ll get the SOC team and forensic guys down here tomorrow to work the place over. I think our work’s done for the night.” Hazen took another deep drag on his Camel, then pinched off the glowing ash and dropped it into his pocket. “Let’s go home.”

As he turned, he noticed that Lefty was trying to pull the dogs away from the crack in the far wall. The dogs would have none of it: they were straining toward the crack, deep growls rumbling in their chests.

“What’s with them?”

Lefty gave their leashes another savage jerk. “Sturm! Drang! Heel! ”

“For chrissakes, let ’em check it out,” said Hazen.

Lefty walked them over. With a yelp the dogs suddenly piled into the crack, jerking the protesting Lefty along behind them. In another moment they were gone.

Hazen stepped over and peered in. He saw the crack made a ninety-degree turn and ran sharply downhill for a few feet before coming to what looked like a dead end.

And yet it went on. It had to. He could hear Lefty’s voice echoing back from the unknown darkness beyond, strangely distorted, calling uselessly for the dogs to heel.

“The dogs have a trail,” Hazen said over his shoulder. “And it looks like a hot one!”

Fifty-Nine

C orrie lay still, her hands behind her back. He had laughed when she screamed: a horrible, high-pitched laugh that sounded like the squeal of a guinea pig. Now he was doing something to the corpse of Tad. She kept her head turned, eyes closed. She could hear the sound of rending cloth, then a horrible wet tearing sound. She scrunched her eyes tight shut and tried to mentally block out the sound. He was only a few feet from her, humming and talking nonsensically to himself in a singsong while he worked. Every time he moved, a terrible reek washed toward her: sweat, mold, rot, other things even worse.

The horror, the sheer unreality, was so intense that she found herself shutting down.

Corrie, just hold on.

But she couldn’t hold on. Not anymore. The instinct for self-preservation that had prompted her to free her hands had faded with the reappearance of that thing, lugging the dead Tad Franklin.

Her mind began to wander, curiously numb. Fragmented memories drifted across her consciousness: playing catch as a young child with her father; her mother, wearing curlers and laughing into the telephone; a fat kid who was nice to her once in third grade.

She was going to die and her life seemed so empty, a wasteland stretching back as far as she could remember.

Her hands were untied, but what did it matter now? Even if she got away, where would she go? How would she find her way out of the cave?

A sob escaped her lips, but still the horrible thing paid no attention. He had his back turned. Thank God, thank God.

She opened one eye and let it fall on the lantern. He had placed it in an angle of rock, where its glow was almost completely obscured. Its ancient metal shutters were closed, letting out only the barest slivers of light. He didn’t like light, it seemed. God, he was so white, so pasty white he was almost gray. And that face, the sight of that face, the wispy little beard . . .