Dead Man's Song
Page 43Instead he set up his own tape recorder and inserted a one-hundred-minute cassette. Next to this he set a good quality Sanyo Tapeless CameraCorder that could record everything he did with DVD quality. He was off the reservation with this, so if he got caught he wanted proof. If proof was to be had.
Next he wheeled over a metal cart on which were a complete set of tools, including a dissecting knife with a retractable four-inch blade, a foot-long brain knife, long-handled scissors, forceps, and other items. He switched on both machines, introduced himself, gave the date and time, and then pulled Jimmy Castle’s body out of its drawer. He took in a deep breath and let it out before slowly pulling back the sheet to reveal the body.
Castle’s skin should have been gray-white and flaccid, the tissues deflated by the loss of fluids, with cheeks and eye sockets sunken in. During the first autopsy he had attempted to take the standard 20-ml blood sample for testing but couldn’t find any, even in the lowest tissue areas where blood usually settles after the heart stops. He was able to take samples of urine and cerebrospinal fluid, but as far as blood went there was barely a drop to be found. That had been the beginning of this problem. During that autopsy Weinstock had made a big Y-incision starting at Castle’s neck and running down to the thighs, cutting in an arc around the navel, exposing the internal organs and then removing them for weighing and testing. After the autopsy the organs were placed in a large plastic bag, set into the empty stomach cavity, and the big incision sewed up. The samples were sent to the lab and the bodies returned to cold storage. The Castle and Cowan murders were still open cases, and their bodies might remain in the Pinelands morgue for weeks. Which gave Weinstock a chance to do what he had to do.
He looked at the Y-incision he had made, started to turn away to pick up a knife and then stopped, turned, and reached up to angle the overhead light differently, bending closer to peer at the incision. He blinked, bent closer still.
“No…” he said and reached for his dissecting knife. Steeling himself he drew it quickly along the line of sutures that held the flaps of the moistureless dead skin together, the steel edge cutting evenly through the surgical nylon. He finished his cut just at the navel and with nothing to hold them in place the flaps of skin should have sagged away. They did not. The long jagged line he’d cut in Jimmy Castle’s chest and stomach—which he had used to open him up and remove all of his internal organs—was stuck fast. Almost as if it had begun to heal. Which was, of course, quite impossible.
(7)
Across his thighs, the Bone Man’s guitar was laid strings-up; he was strumming it like a Dobro, sliding along the frets with the cut and sanded neck of an old Coke bottle. The music he played was so quiet that it might not have been there at all, and as he played, he could feel Crow and Val relax within the knotted fists of their dreams, could feel Griswold’s grip slacken on them, at least a bit. Mike, too. The music, the blues, could do that much at least. It wasn’t much, but he smiled, taking his victories where he could find them.
Midnight was poised to strike and the Bone Man kept playing as the darkness hammered the town. Stretching out with his awareness, using what he had, the Bone Man could feel each of the hearts in the town beating with the pulse of night. He heard whispers and cries, felt warm hearts and cold. It was hard for him to care about this town. About most of it, anyway. This town had hated him. Hell, this town had killed him. Beaten him, broken him, and hung him on a scarecrow’s cross like some mockery of Jesus. Worse even than that, these people had hung the reputation on him of killer, called him a monster, blamed him for the murders he had helped stop while at the same time whitewashing Griswold’s name. They had taken that nickname some kids had given him—the Bone Man, ’cause he was so skinny—and used it to build a nightmare boogeyman legend. Now he was the Bone Man to everyone here, and the Bone Man was a monster, a bad man. Something evil.
The Bone Man stared out from his rooftop perch, sneering at the town of Pine Deep as it slept its troubled sleep. “You don’t know what evil is,” he said aloud, aiming his words at the town like a gun, but his voice was a whisper more silent than the wind. For two pins he’d let Griswold, or the Devil Himself, take the whole damned town.
Except for a few.
The Bone Man strummed his guitar, seeding the air with sweetness while all around him the darkness twisted and writhed.
Chapter 15
(1)
LaMastra burst into the conference room with a walkie-talkie in one hand. “Frank! Boyd’s been spotted.” He hurried over to hand off the unit. “It’s Jim Polk”
Ferro grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Polk, Ferro here. Tell me.”
“Sir,” Polk’s voice said with a crackle, “We got a call from Gaither Carby, he’s a local farmer who was driving back to Pine Deep across the Black Marsh Bridge when a guy cuts across his path. Carby damn near runs him down ’cause the guy was limping pretty bad. Carby slows down to see if maybe the guy’s hurt and the guy takes a couple of shots at him. Carby floors it and gets out of there. He called it in and from his description it seems pretty likely that it was your boy.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Fifteen minutes. Carby doesn’t have a cell phone, so he had to drive to a neighbor’s house and use their phone. I took the call here and rolled some units.”
“Good work,” Ferro snapped. “I’ll head out there right now.”
Jim Polk switched off the walkie-talkie and motioned for Ginny to cover the phones while he went out back for a smoke. As soon as he shut the alley door he pulled out his cell and punched in a number that was answered on the first ring.
“How’d it go?” Vic asked.
“Like you said. Carby has his story straight. The jerkoffs from Philly are heading out to the bridge now. How is it at your end?”
“Neat and tidy. Boyd tramped footprints all over the bridge and they should be able to find his shell-casings, too.”
“That’s great. Is he really gone this time?”
“He’s as gone as I need him to be,” Vic said. “He’ll be seen at least three times over the next week, and each time he’ll be farther from here. By the time they lose his trail completely he’ll have been spotted up in Trenton. After that, nobody’s going to see him again until trick or treat night. At that point—well, it won’t matter who sees him.” Vic was laughing as he disconnected.
Polk leaned back against the door. “God save my soul…” he breathed, but his Catholic rituals were thirty years out of practice and as dry as his mouth.
(2)
“Excuse me…are you Malcolm Crow?”
“Who’s asking?” Crow asked as he carefully squatted down to retrieve his keys, though he thought he already knew who this guy was. His face had been all over the TV.
“Willard Fowler Newton, Black Marsh Sentinel.”
“Nice to meet you,” Crow said. “Now get lost.”
“What?”
“No interview, no questions, no answers, no nothing. Go before I set the hounds on you.”
“I haven’t even asked yet.”
Crow unlocked the door but didn’t pull it open. “No, but you were gonna, and the answer would have been no.” He jangled the keys in his hand and instead of making eye contact with the stranger he looked up and down the street for some sign of Mike. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">