As the Crow Dies

by Kenneth Butcher

  Dinah let the conversation drift among the details of the making of the film—camera angles, lighting, shooting schedules. Directors loved that kind of shop talk. One of Dinah’s teammates on the Blue Ridge Roller Girls was a friend of the director’s, which was how Dinah made contact with him. The teammate was also in the movie, one of the many girls to fall victim to the vampire Thomas Wolfe.

  “Tell me about the shoot you’re doing this evening,” Dinah said, steering the conversation.

  “It’s set in Riverside Cemetery—you know, the one off Montford Avenue.” He was talking about a place a mile or so from where they sat. “In this scene, Thomas Wolfe kills a publisher who’s figured out that he, Wolfe, is a vampire. Wolfe lures him there and sucks his blood, and I mean all his blood. He doesn’t leave enough for the guy to become one of the undead. He’s totally dead.”

  “I’ve heard the publishing business can be tough,” Dinah said. “Is that where the crows come in?”

  “Yeah, after Thomas Wolfe drains all the blood out of the publisher, he drops him on the ground, and a bunch of crows come to eat up what’s left, to make sure the guy is totally gone.”

  “That would take a lot of crows.”

  “There are only going to be a few. I get a shot of the publisher lying on the ground. He’s white because all his blood is gone. Then I get a shot of Thomas Wolfe looking up at the sky, probably yelling and holding up his hands like this.” The director demonstrated.

  “Like he’s calling the crows?”

  “Exactly. Like he’s calling his friends, the crows, from the underworld or wherever. Then we get multiple shots of crows flying and landing among the gravestones. When I edit all those together, it looks like a hundred crows rocketed toward the earth and ate the guy.”

  “How does the scene end?”

  The director made a dismissive gesture. “Easy. I replace the publisher with a fake skeleton sprawled on the ground, and by the time I piece it all together, you think you saw a guy get eaten by crows. Cue dramatic music. Wolfe exits stage left, drunk on the blood of a publisher.”

  “So, that’s how the director knows Lucile Devroe,” Segal said. He was riding in Dinah’s car through downtown toward Riverside Cemetery later that afternoon. Dinah had filled him in on her conversation with the kid director.

  “Right,” Dinah said. “Originally, the director contracted Francis to work animals for the movie. Apparently, Francis did a lot of that. Movie people love him because he can get good performances out of almost any animal. Francis called him at some point and said Lucile would be standing in for him, but the director didn’t know why, nor does he have any idea how to get in touch with Francis now.”

  Segal nodded.

  “He didn’t seem upset about it. He said Lucile was really good,” Dinah said. “In fact, he’s trying to talk her into taking a part in the movie herself.”

  Segal pictured the lines of Lucile’s neck with her head bent in a vulnerable position. “Is she going to do it?”

  “She’s thinking about it. In the meantime, she’s bringing some crows for the shoot today.”

  Dinah pulled up to the entrance of the cemetery, where a guard let them through after seeing their IDs. She wove through the park-like setting of huge oaks and maples, past markers and mausoleums of classical design. It didn’t take long to find the film crew. A man with an expensive-looking camera was getting shots of the inscription on the Wolfe grave marker: Tom, son of W. O. and Julia E. Wolfe: A Beloved American Author.

  A large man, presumably the actor playing the vampire Wolfe, sat in a folding chair while a girl worked on his makeup. Several other people milled around; some occupied, most not so much. One guy sat on the tailgate of a pickup pretending to share a cigarette with the fake skeleton. In the back of the pickup were four cages with dark bird shapes inside. On the other side of the truck was Lucile. She was feeding the crows little pieces of bread, which she tore off a baguette. When Segal came on the scene, she winked at him.

  Dinah cleared her throat. “Nice,” she said.

  The director spoke up. “Lucile, we’re ready for the birds.”

  Lucile opened the latches on the cages, and one by one the birds hopped out and perched on the side of the pickup’s bed. “What are we doing first?” she asked.

  “Let’s do the high stuff first,” he said. “I like the way the branches are contrasted against the sky.”

  Lucile put a whistle in her mouth, gave a short tweet, made a quick gesture with her hand and wrist, then pointed. The birds took off and flew into the branches of an oak tree nearby. One of the highest branches was dead, and that was where they chose to alight.

  “That’s beautiful,” the director said.

  Segal went to her side.

  The camera crew filmed. Segal assumed it was hard to tell what shots might be useful in the final editing. Lucile called the birds back with whistle and gesture, and they repeated the assent to the tree several times. On one of the descents, the director moved the cameraman close to the truck, so it would look to viewers like the birds were diving right at them. Lucile spread some treats on the ground behind a grave marker and got several sequences of birds descending to that place.

  “That’s to set up the skeleton scene,” Dinah said.

  Segal grinned. Sometimes, he wondered what was going on inside his partner’s head. Sure enough, the director yelled out, “Skeleton!”

  The guy smoking on the tailgate of the pickup tossed his cigarette butt to the side and wheeled the skeleton, still hanging from its rack, across the grass. Aided by a couple of others, the guy gently removed the skeleton from the rack and arranged it on the ground. The makeup lady came over with a wig that matched the hair of the publisher.

  “Looks like they want to give the skeleton the personal touch,” Dinah said.

  “This is supposed to be one of the big scenes, one of the turning points of the movie. They want it to be shocking, so they have to get it right,” Lucile said.

  Segal felt his heart speed up. Lucile petted and calmed the birds, particularly the leader. This was the most important bird. If she could make the leader feel calm and follow directions, the rest of the flock would follow its example.

  The director and the cinematographer spent a lot of time arranging and rearranging the skeleton on the ground. When they finally got it positioned to their satisfaction, they took several shots from different angles.

  “Okay, Lucile,” the director called, “time to drop the birds on the skeleton.”

  Lucile gave the birds a hand signal telling them to stay while she walked over and stood near the skeleton. “Very lifelike,” she said. “Or should I say, very deathlike.”

  The cinematographer smiled. “I like the white bones against the dark green grass.”

  Lucile sprinkled some feed pellets among the bones, concentrating on the rib cage and the eye sockets.

  “Excellent,” the director said. “We’ll get the crows coming in, then we’ll need footage of them pecking the hell out of the skeleton. Then I need them to take off all at once. Can we do that?”

  “Let me know when you’re ready,” Lucile said.

  They quickly got two cameras set up, and the director yelled, “Action!”

  Lucile blew the whistle, and the birds rose back to the tree branch. She blew it again and pointed to the skeleton. They flew down in a flurry and fed voraciously among the bones.

  “We can speed this up and make it look even better,” the cinematographer said, not taking his eyes off the camera viewer.

  After a minute, Lucile spoke up. “I think the food is running low. Are you ready for them to take off?”

  The cinematographer adjusted one of the cameras for a wider shot. “Put the spurs to them, Lucile,” he said.

  She raised the whistle to her mouth and made a rising and falling tweet, followed by a short blast. The lead crow rose, followed a split second later by the others. The camera crew closed in. When the crows alighted on the dead
branch, the lead crow raised its beak and let out a squawk. Immediately, a gunshot exploded.

  Segal ducked out of instinct. “Dinah,” he shouted.

  She already had her pistol out. After a second, three more shots followed in rapid succession.

  “Everyone down!” Segal yelled. He drew his sidearm. The command was hardly necessary, as everyone had flattened into the grass—everyone but Lucile, who was looking up toward the tree branches for her crows. Segal put a hand on her shoulder and guided her lower.

  “Segal, the shots came from downhill. I’m going down,” Dinah said.

  “Right behind you,” Segal said. “Stay down and call 911,” he whispered to Lucile, then turned to follow his partner, running in a crouch.

  Ahead, he saw her moving with the same grace she displayed on the skating track—probably the same tactics she had used in Afghanistan leading a rifle company. She sprinted from cover to cover, from tree to gravestone, always alert, always with her weapon ready.

  Segal tried to do the same with as much speed as his leg would allow. He could tell she was right. From down the hill, the smell of burnt gunpowder rose in the slight breeze that issued from the west. As he moved, he strained to remember what was below them on this hill.

  Near the bottom of the cemetery grounds was a mausoleum, and thirty yards beyond it a dense line of trees with a thick undergrowth of rhododendrons. Dinah waited for him behind the stone structure, peeping around the corner.

  “Did you get a look at the shooter?” he asked.

  “Just a glimpse, going into the woods there. Tall, running. Not enough for any kind of ID.”

  “And he went into the trees?”

  Dinah nodded. Segal peeked around the stone structure. The dilemma was clear. The shooter was either beating a quick escape or waiting in the trees and undergrowth, ready to pick them off as they crossed the thirty-yard gap.

  “Cover me,” Segal said, and before she could protest and before he could analyze the situation himself, he took off.

  The second he was in the open a burst of rapid gunfire came from the trees in front of them. Segal dived behind another monument a few feet to the left. A bullet hit the polished granite and sent chips flying. He swung in Dinah’s direction, then around again.

  She had leaned out from the other side of the mausoleum and returned fire, placing three carefully aimed shots toward the muzzle flash in the darkness of the trees.

  It was over in a couple of seconds. Segal saw that Dinah was OK. She had pulled around to the back of the mausoleum and was leaning against the cool marble taking a couple of deep breaths. She gave him the thumbs up. He motioned that he was moving forward.

  Instead of running straight toward the place where the shooter had disappeared, he angled left and made it to the tree row in a few seconds. He knew Dinah was covering him, her pistol aimed. He waited a couple of breaths and then moved toward the place where he’d last seen the shooter.

  The poplars and white pines were thick and the rhododendrons made a tangled mess, but in between he found the slightest of trails and pushed ahead. He heard the sounds of the highway well before they emerged on the other side. Down a bank and across a ditch were the northbound lanes of I-26. He stood with Dinah, out of breath, looking across the busy road, their fingers entwined in the chain-link fence. There wasn’t much to see, other than the place where the fence had been pried up enough to let a man squeeze underneath.

  “Perfect set up,” Dinah said.

  “Yeah,” Segal said. “Pull a car off to the side of the road, probably leave a driver with it. Send your shooter in. He exits on foot. Can’t give chase. Our cars are too far away.”

  “We could call Highway Patrol, but what would we tell them to look for?” Dinah added.

  She started tracking the ground. Segal turned away from the highway and started slowly back through the trees, studying the ground as he went.

  “Hey,” Dinah said. “Shell casings.”

  He went over to her. Near the margin by the clearing Dinah was circling the brass shell casings, careful where she stepped. She pointed them out to Segal.

  “This is a classic cover and retreat operation. They had two guys, three counting the driver. The main shooter goes in, does his thing and beats it back through here. The cover guy is waiting here with an assault rifle and gives a couple blasts to deal with anyone like us following.”

  “And by ‘deal with’ you mean…deal with,” Segal said.

  “Right. I say he used an assault rifle. This is military issue ammunition,” Dinah explained.

  He bent over to see the brass casings lying among the leaves. Dinah held the palm of her hand close to them as if feeling the low embers of a campfire. “Still warm, in case there was any doubt,” she said.

  She watched a drop of fresh blood hit the forest floor and looked up. “You have a gash near your left eye.” She stood up and touched his head to see better.

  “I think I was hit by a piece of granite from that gravestone.”

  “We’ll see if they have a first aid kit up there. You OK, Segal?

  He knew she meant the cut from the marble, but she also meant it in a broader context as well. Counting the crow assault on the rooftop, this was the fourth time they had been attacked, and so far, anyway, his nerves were intact. He nodded to her. “Fine.”

  They pushed through the brush in silence and up the hill until they passed the mausoleum where they had taken cover. “Seems like a professional sniper situation again,” Segal said, perhaps stating the obvious.

  Dinah made a slight sound of agreement. She walked slowly, keeping her eyes to the ground.

  Segal continued to think out loud as they walked. “Professional except for one critical detail, of course.” He paused. Dinah continued to walk and study the ground. “They didn’t hit their target. As far as I can tell, everyone is okay.”

  “Yeah, well, I felt very much like a target and they got plenty close to me and to you too,” she said.

  “I don’t know that we were the primary targets, though.” Segal touched his gash and winced from the pain.

  “I don’t think the primary target was a person,” Dinah said. She stopped and kneeled. “They were after the crows.”

  She used a pen to pick up an empty shotgun shell. Segal understood immediately. No one would bring a shotgun to pick off a person at long range, but it was the perfect weapon for bird hunting. He glanced up the hill toward the site of the filming. “Come on,” he said and he hurried up the hill with Dinah following.

  When he arrived, he found Lucile kneeling beside a dead crow on the ground near the skeleton. Dinah blew out a breath behind him. The rest of the movie crew was in a circle around Lucile, giving her the distance the situation seemed to require.

  The cinematographer approached quietly with his handheld camera. “We got footage of the bird getting hit, but we had nothing at ground level that would help you see who did this.”

  “And none of the crew was hurt?” Dinah asked.

  “Everyone’s pretty upset, but no one was hit or physically hurt,” he said.

  One of the film techs found a first aid kit and administered to the gash by Segal’s eye.

  Segal walked up behind Lucile and put a hand on her shoulder. “Was that the leader of the flock?”

  Lucile nodded, clearly in shock. “Why would someone do this?”

  Segal took in the whole scene. “Because they thought this crow was Richard.”

  Later, as Dinah drove away, the adrenaline rush wore off and she began to examine the situation in a critical light. “On the plus side, we didn’t lose anyone today,” she said. From her military experience, she knew this was a blessing not to be taken for granted. The light on Oak Street was green and she kept her foot steady at forty miles an hour. They were in a residential neighborhood, parks, neat little homes, an elementary school.

  “On the other hand, we got nothing getting us closer to an ID,” Segal said. He fingered the butterfly bandage
across his temple.

  “Once again we confirm we’re not dealing with a lone guy. Like I said, that was classic strike/retreat/cover.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel too much better,” Segal said.

  “There’s one other thing I think we can be sure of. The way that cover man with the assault rifle was set up, we couldn’t get a look at him but he sure as hell got a good look at us. We may not know who they are, but between this and the morning at the lab, they know exactly who we are and what we look like.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Just Like the Night

  Francis Elah was asleep in a chair in a darkened room, his breathing slow and deep. His mind began to drift toward consciousness, as though his body floated upward from some depth of warm ocean water toward a surface that was only a little brighter.

  He became aware of a humming, buzzing vibration, first on, then off, then on again. It fit into a dream he was having, imagining himself alone in a foreign country, but the intermittent sound became more insistent and would not allow itself to be molded into the dreamscape. He became more aware, degree by degree. His eyes opened. He recognized the darkened room and remembered where he was and how he got there. Not Kabul, not Fort Meade—he was in West Asheville, but probably in more danger here than he had been in the other places. He identified the sound as the vibration of a cell phone lying on a wooden table, which acted like a sounding board, amplifying the buzz like the body of a guitar amplified the vibration of the strings.

  The buzzing was answered by a rustling sound. A black shape hopped from the top of a chair to land on the table-top beside the phone. There was a tapping sound on the cell phone, which activated the screen, sending forth a cool white light. In the glow of this light, a large crow was visible, its beak and eyes in direct light, its wings and tail feathers catching a few slanting rays. A bizarre shadow was cast against the wall and ceiling. The bird lowered its beak to the phone screen and made a left-to-right sweeping motion.

  Francis moved off the couch, and the crow looked up when he approached the table. He touched the bird’s head with his open palm and stroked down its neck and onto the space between its wings. “What the hell are you doing here, Richard?” he whispered, but there was no element of scolding in his voice. “You’re going to wake up our host, then there’ll be hell to pay.”