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“That’s a hell of a risk, Saul. I didn’t know you liked Connie and Mark that much. ”
“I don’t. This is for Henry. For Val, too, I guess. ”
“You’re the best, Saul. ”
“Yeah, well don’t spread it around. Anyway, go celebrate being a responsible adult with at least an adequate sperm count. Congrats and give Val my love. ” Crow clicked off and Weinstock closed his phone and dropped it in his lab coat.
The cleaners finished, packed up their mops and spray bottles, and left, both of them giving the room a spooked glance, their eyes darting toward the polished steel doors behind which lay three corpses. No—four bodies, because what was left of Tony Macchio was still behind Door #2. Three murder victims and one murderer who had been slaughtered by the Cape May Killer. He couldn’t blame the cleaners for being spooked, even with the lights on and the cold-room doors firmly shut, and he knew that it wasn’t just the fact that it was the morgue that was giving them the jitters—it was the fact that someone had broken in and stolen—actually stolen—a dead body. It was all very creepy, and Weinstock had to agree with their reactions. This whole thing was giving him an increasingly bad feeling. Not just the grief over Henry’s death and the deaths of the two cops, and not just the proprietary sense of violation he had about the violence and theft here in his hospital. It was just a general case of the heebie-jeebies. One of Crow’s words, and nothing Weinstock could think of described more aptly what he was feeling.
A really big case of the heebie-jeebies.
(6)
Newton came back to his desk with another cup of coffee, sat down, set the cup on a little electric hotplate, and frowned at the screen. All afternoon he had been busy making notes for his feature article, planning his research, surfing the Net to see what data were available, checking the Sentinel’s microfilm records of thirty years ago, and outlining his plan of attack. Most of the town’s folklore was easy enough to find—there were literally thousands of articles and over a dozen books written about Pine Deep, recent and long past. What was missing from all of this, however, were detailed and accurate records of the Pine Deep Massacre of 1976. That it had happened was certain, because there were secondary references to it, and he was able to cobble together a list of the victims by burrowing through public death notices, both in the paper’s records and at Pine Deep’s Town Hall. But there was no reliable account of the actual events, and none of the issues of the Black Marsh Sentinel for that year had been committed to microfilm. He found that really odd, since there were microfilm records of papers from 1960 through 1975; and from 1977 to 1998, when the paper began storing issues on disk and in Web site archives. But 1976 was missing. The whole calendar year.
Newton called one of his friends at the Pine Deep Evening Standard and Times, which was owned by a chain that published papers in most of Bucks County’s towns. “Toby?”
“Hey, my man Newt. They offer you the anchor of the CNN Evening Report yet?” Toby Gomm edited the op-ed page and was usually good for an info swap.
“Not yet. I’m holding out for Nightline. Hey, Toby, listen, Dick’s got me doing a feature piece on P. D. ’s haunted history, you know the kind of thing. ”
“Yeah, we’ve done a million of them. Bo-o-o-oring. ”
“No kidding. Look, I wanted to go a little further, maybe flesh out the backstory by including some stuff from the Massacre of Seventy-six. You got anything on that?”
“Before my time, but I heard about it. Haven’t run anything on it lately, for the obvious reasons. ”
Bad for tourism, Newton thought, but asked, “You got anything in the archives from September, October of that year?”
He expected Toby to have to look into it, but he said, “Nope. ”
“Nothing? You mean you didn’t cover it?”
“Nope, I mean that our microfilm records from the mid-seventies through about eighty-two got melted in a fire. Some asshole maintenance guy tossed a lit cigarette into a trash can and burned half the records room down. You have to remember that—it was when we moved to the new building. Late 1990. ”
“No, I was still in college. ”
“Didn’t miss much. Trash fire is no news even when it’s old news that’s on fire. No biggie, though, we’re a corporate rag…we leave hardcore journalism to our colleagues in Black Marsh. ”
“Very funny. ”
“On the other hand…” Toby said. “I do know a guy who knows everything about what went on there. His family got caught up in it. Brother even got killed. ”
“Are you talking about Malcolm Crow? The guy who shot Ruger?”
“Yep. He’s always being used as a source for haunted history stories. ”
“I know. Dick told me that his family was involved, but I just haven’t seen anything about the Massacre that he’s quoted in. ”
“You won’t, either, but I talked about it once with him. Kind of. Was back when he was on the cops, and he was walking a line between being a real hotshot cop and a total screwup. ”
“Oh?”
“He drank,” Toby said in a way that said it all. “He was at a bar once when I was there waiting for a friend. Crow was there, totally bug-eyed. This was just about the time that Terry Wolfe was about to open the Hayride. Anyway, because of the Hayride and the tourist bucks that it would draw, the haunted history of the town came up and Crow started holding court, telling these crazy stories about ghosts and stuff. Most of the folks in the bar that night were regulars and had heard this shit and they started slipping off to take a leak but never came back, but I kind of felt sorry for the guy and hung out with him for a bit. Somewhere around the fifth or sixth round of boilermakers, Crow leans over to me and says, ‘But none of that shit is the real shit, you know?’ I didn’t know, and I asked him, and he told me some of what had happened back in seventy-six. And let me tell you—it was the shit. Total bullshit. I mean, it was clear that he believed what he was saying, but I thought it was the drink talking and pretty much let it go in one ear and out the other. ”
“So…how’s this helping me?”
“Because he’s off the sauce now, and he’s the hero du jour, so go ask him. ”
“That’s great, Toby, thanks for the lead,” Newton said, though he didn’t feel any thrills of expectation dancing through him. “I owe you one. ”
“Just share the scoop next time. ”
“Will do,” Newton lied, and rang off. He pulled the County Yellow Pages down and looked up the number for Crow’s store but it rang through to the answering machine. Same result for the Guthrie farm. He called the Haunted Hayride but it was closed. Finally he swallowed his pride and called Mayor Wolfe’s office.
After listening patiently, the mayor asked, “Is this the same Newton who broke the Ruger story? The fellow I met at the press conference?”
“Why, yes, sir, it is, and I—”
The mayor said, “Go shit in your hat,” and hung up. Which only made Newton more determined to get the story. He was starting to get the first faint whiffs of another cover-up, and that made him tingle all over.
(7)
“How’s it going, Iron Mike?”
“Crow?” Mike’s heart jumped into his throat and he nearly dropped the phone. “Oh my God! I heard about you on the news! Did Ruger really break into the hospital? Did you really kill him? Did Miss Guthrie really shoot him, too? Did—”
“Whoa! Slow down…only forty questions at a time,” Crow said but he was laughing. “Yeah, things got pretty hairy the other night. You probably saw most of it on the news. I’ll fill you in on the rest later. By the way, it’s Val, not Miss Guthrie, and yes, she’ll be okay. ”
“Jeez…it was bad enough losing her dad and all. Now this. ” Mike was sitting on his bed amid a sprawl of comic books, mostly Hellboy and Ghost Rider. He shot a quick glance at the closed door—he knew Vic wasn’t home—and said, “Tell…um, ‘Val’…that I’m sorr
y about her dad. I know how she feels. Kinda. ”
“Yeah, kid, I know you do, and I’ll tell Val. It’ll mean a lot to her. ”
“Thanks. ” Mike cleared his throat. “How are you?”
“Like Superman if he’d been beaten with a Kryptonite tire iron. ”
“Ugh. You gonna be in the hospital long?” His tone was uncertain, but his face looked hopeful. The day after the violence at Val’s farm, when Mike had gone to visit Crow at the hospital, Crow had offered Mike a job at his store, the Crow’s Nest, and the store was the closest thing to a real safe haven Mike had ever known. He couldn’t wait to get started with his new job.
“Actually, we’re out already. We left yesterday and stayed over at a friend’s house. Val and I are heading out now to go back to her place,” Crow said. “Which is why I called. I can’t afford to have the shop closed down for too long, not this time of the year. I won’t be at the store today, but tomorrow bright and early I want to meet you there to show you how to run things. In the meantime if you can swing it today I’d like you to feed my cats. My guinea pig, too. There’s a key hidden under a flagstone in the back. It’s the second from the left-hand side of the step and there’s a chip out of one corner. Lift the opposite corner and you’ll see the key in one of those plastic thingees. ”
“Okay, I can do that, but when you said ‘run things’ I—”
“I may be staying at Val’s for a couple of days. ”
“Wait…you want me to run the store by myself?”
“Yeah. ”
Mike sat there, too stunned to even feel pain. “Alone?”
“Yeah…good with that?” Crow paused. “Mike—I’m counting on you here. ”
“Crow, I don’t know if I—”
“Yes, you can. Jeez, kid, you know the layout of that store better than I do. The register is a snap, and you can open up right after school each day. Mornings and early afternoon are never my best times anyway, so you working afternoons and evenings will keep me out of the poorhouse. Besides, let’s face it, isn’t the store a better place to spend your days than hanging around the house?”