by P. J. Tracy
"Actually, we're all at a gas station in some place called Medford now. Me, Gino, Harley, and Roadrunner."
"Medford, Wisconsin? What the hell are you doing there?"
Magozzi colored a little, still half feeling that he'd jumped the gun a bit, hoping that's what he'd done. Grace wasn't in trouble, absolutely couldn't be in trouble, and even if she was, she didn't need him or anyone else on some imaginary white horse tearing across the country looking for them. Grace took care of herself. Always had, always would. "Making an ass out of myself, most likely," is what he told Halloran.
"Women-hunting?"
"Yep. Roadrunner traced Sharon's credit card here. Last transaction."
"Medford? That's totally out of the way . . , shit. This is getting weirder and weirder."
"Where the hell are you, anyway? Sounds like a bar."
"That's exactly where I am. I've got FBI ears all over the place here. Can you call me back? I've only got two quarters left." He read off a number.
"No problem," Magozzi said, then waved the others back to the RV.
The minute Magozzi mentioned FBI, Harley went into black-op mode and insisted that they call Halloran back on the sat phone. "It's fully encrypted and trace-proof."
"The FBI's monitoring Halloran, not us."
"You can never be too sure with those sneaky sons of bitches. Besides, Roadrunner can patch the sat phone through the audio so we can all hear him loud and clear. It'll be like he's in the room with us."
They all moved into the RV's back office while Roadrunner took his place at his computer station to set up the call. As his fingers flew over the keys, Magozzi tried not to look at the gnarled joints and crooked fingers of his hands.
Suddenly, Halloran's voice filled the room like surround sound in a theater. "You there, Magozzi?"
"We're all here."
"Uh . . , this is making me a little nervous. I'm getting this weird delay on the line. . . ."
"We're calling you via satellite. No chance this phone is covered, so don't worry."
"Jesus. Cops get satellites in that big city of yours?"
"No, we're in the Monkeewrench RV. This thing has more electronics than the Kennedy Space Center."
"I'll be damned. And I was excited because I just figured out my cell phone had a speaker on it today. Probably just as well you've got an alternative. That cell of yours isn't going to be much good if you go any further north."
"That's what Roadrunner told us," Magozzi said.
"Okay," Halloran continued. "Here's the long and short of it. This morning, we pulled three bodies out of a local swimming hole, no IDs. Our ME said it was automatic rifle fire. So we run the prints and nothing comes back. Next thing we know, the FBI snatches our sinkers right out of the state lab, and they won't tell us beans."
Magozzi's brows shot up. "They took your bodies?"
"Right off the damn slab, according to the ME down there."
Harley folded his beefy arms across his chest. "This is getting interesting."
"That's just the start of it," Halloran said. "A couple hours after that, the cake lady comes up missing."
"What's a cake lady'"
"Gretchen Vanderwhite, sixties, bakes wedding cakes. She was delivering one over to Beaver Lake in Missaqua County this morning, never made it there."
Magozzi grunted. "You got the dogs out?"
Halloran took a noisy breath that came through the speakers like a hurricane. "This is where it really starts to get weird. Apparently, the FBI pulled every one of Missaqua's patrols in from the road a couple hours ago, won't even let a uniform out on the street."
Gino actually stood up. "What the hell? They can't do that. That isn't even legal, is it?"
"We're getting the word that it is, but that's not the end of it. I just got a call from one of my men who found a couple dozen Feds crawling over our crime scene at the swimming hole. They kicked us out, made some pretty nasty threats, and now they're monitoring our radios and God knows what else. Christ. If they nail this phone call to me, I'm toast."
"Rest easy, friend," Harley said. "Can't be done; we got you covered."
"I sure as hell hope so. Anyway, now you tell me Sharon and the others were in Medford, and that far north, anything that heads to Green Bay runs smack-dab through Missaqua County."
Roadrunner had been typing busily while he listened. He had a map of Wisconsin on one side of the big monitor with certain areas highlighted. In another open screen were endless lines of text that Magozzi couldn't begin to understand. "So this whole thing started when you ran the prints on those three bodies, right?" he piped up.
Halloran waited a beat. "Right. That's when the FBI moved in and took them."
"Did you scan those prints into a computer file?"
"Sure did."
"Can you send them to me? I might be able to access some other databases for you."
"Son, nothing would make me happier. How about that facial-recognition software? Can you run that from your rig?"
"Sure," Harley said, "but how far are we from you?"
"About two hours," Halloran said.
"So we'd have to work off a fax, which is less than ideal. And that program is damn slow. Let's try the prints first."
Gino was pacing, scrubbing at his brush cut. "Can we get back to the ladies here for a second while I get this straight in my head? We've got Grace, Annie, and Sharon off the radar, and you've got a missing cake lady, and if they aren't all in Missaqua County, they sure as hell could have been headed that way?"
"Right."
"And the cheerless horde of Huns just shut down that whole damn county."
"Right again."
Gino stopped pacing and looked at Magozzi. "We gotta go there."
GRACE, ANNIE, and Sharon were crouched in the deep shadows beneath some kind of weeping bushes that crowded against the back wall of the farmhouse. The quick run from the protection of the cornfield had left them all breathless.
There was a towering light pole close to the driveway, the kind that illuminates barnyards all across the Midwest, but thankfully, it was dark. Fortunate, and yet strange, Sharon thought. Normally those things were set to come on automatically at nightfall, or even during storms if the clouds were thick enough to block the sun. Burned out? It didn't seem likely in a place this well-kept.
Someone shut it off.
The three women hadn't spoken aloud in a long time, but through gestures, they had all agreed to bypass the house and head for the weathered barn that loomed across the drive, so enormous that it ate up a huge chunk of the sky.
Annie was hoping for sanctuary. Her heels were already blistered from the ill-fitting purple high-tops, and her muscles were screaming from tension and all the unaccustomed exertion. All she wanted was a few blessed minutes to stay in one place and let her heart slow down, and the barn seemed like a logical place to fulfill that fantasy. Even if the soldiers did come back, it would take a hundred of them to search every nook and cranny in a building that big.
Sharon was hoping for some kind of drivable vehicle behind the giant tractor doors, since there hadn't been a single one in town. Every old barn she'd ever been in contained a vehicle of some sort, from old hot rods buried under decades of hay dust to pristine classics preserved under heavy tarps. This was no bachelor pad; this was a family farm, and if there was one thing farms had in abundance, it was vehicles. Normally they were scattered all over the yard, tucked in long grass behind buildings, sheltered under an open shed, and certainly lining the drive. But there wasn't one of any kind in sight here, and that, almost more than anything else, seemed so dreadfully wrong. Surely the people who lived here couldn't have driven away in every single car they owned.
Grace was staring intently at the barn. Too big, she thought. The damn thing had to be at least eighty feet long, and that was too long to be out in the open. But if the inside was safe, they could travel through the barn to the back and, she hoped, a way out of this godforsaken town. She took a breath, glanced
at the others, then moved.
They all darted from shadow to shadow across the moon-washed yard to the barn, and although the actual distance they covered was less than fifty yards, they were all breathing hard by the time they pressed against the cool blocks of the building's foundation. Hollyhocks grew here, too, leaning against the side of the massive structure as if the weight of their flowers was too much for the thick stems to bear.
Sharon's nostrils flared at the sharp, musky fragrance of the plants, and she remembered the hollyhocks that had grown on the side of her mother's potting shed.
"Oh, shit," Annie whispered from right behind her.
"What?"
"Shit. Literally." She grimaced and scraped the bottom of her shoe through the grass.
Sharon started to shake her head, then stopped the motion abruptly. She straightened against the side of the barn, lifting her head on her neck, then looked all around without saying anything.
"Did you hear something?" Grace asked.
Sharon jerked her head to look at her. "Nothing. I don't hear anything. That's the problem." She was preoccupied, eyes still busy. "Look at this place. Fenced paddock, those big hay bales stacked in front of the barn, feed sacks on that trailer over there, and now manure."
Annie snorted softly. "It's a farm, honey. What did you expect?"
"Animals. Where are all the animals?"
Grace felt a prickle at the back of her neck.
The three of them were perfectly silent for a long time, each one straining to hear the slightest sound. "Maybe they're in the barn," Annie whispered.
With her blue eyes narrowed and focused, Grace started to creep along the edge of the barn toward a door. It was man-sized, cut into one of those big, rolling tractor doors hanging from a metal track. She pressed her ear flat against the wood, listening, then eased back and reached for the rusty latch. The door opened smoothly, without a sound, and the unfamiliar rotting smell of cow manure filled her nostrils. She stood in the doorway for a moment, listening to her heart pound in her ears, then stepped inside.
There was a huge overhead loft filled to the rafters with sweet, green alfalfa hay. To the right, there were open pens and box stalls filled with straw that looked freshly laid. To the left, a concrete walkway bordered with gutters and lined with metal stanchions led to a closed door at the far end of the barn.
But there were no animals. Not one. Even the dozens of mud nests clinging to the rafters overhead were empty. Not a single sleepy swallow peeped at the intrusion.
Sharon looked left down the aisle lined with stanchions. Sloppy, wet piles of manure deteriorated into brown dots, heading for the door at the far end of the barn, a bovine dotted line. "That's where the cows are. There's probably a huge pasture behind the barn."
"Maybe we can get out that way," Annie whispered. "Through the fields with the cows."
The cold glow of moonlight made white vertical stripes out of the cracks in the siding as they walked tentatively past the medieval-looking stanchions. The door at the end was a double-Dutch affair, each half latched with a simple hook and eye. As Annie and Sharon crowded in on either side of her, Grace popped the top one and pushed the door open.
The women stared out at a large, empty paddock with a sturdy three-rail fence. The dirt was ice-rink smooth and totally barren. "Shit. No cows," Annie whispered.
"No shit, either." Sharon's eyes coursed over the strangely pristine surface.
Grace was leaning over the bottom half of the door, squinting into the distance. Moonlight laced the top rail of the fence at the far end, except for a broad gap of darkness directly across from them. "It looks like there's an open gate down there. Probably pasture beyond that. Are you ready?"
Annie looked to the left and right of the paddock, at the grass on either side of the rectangle of smooth dirt. Tall, but not tall enough to hide a man standing upright, or even hunched over. "Looks okay."
But Sharon felt her stomach caving in as she stared out at nothing, her expression bleak. This was wrong. Just like the lack of a yard
light and the absence of vehicles. No way cows didn't leave hoof-prints.
Grace glanced at her, then touched her arm. Sharon blinked, then her head jerked once in a reluctant nod.
Grace unlatched the bottom half of the door and pushed it open, and they all stepped down nearly a foot onto soil so hard-packed it felt like cement. "What's that?" she whispered.
Sharon followed her gaze to the far end of the paddock. Something big. And . . , green? She squinted at the shape hulking in the opening in the paddock fence, trying to bring it into focus. "Tractor. One of the big ones. A John Deere."
Annie frowned, took a few tentative steps forward, then stretched her head forward on her neck like a turtle. The huge shape was just beyond the back fence line, cold light glinting off dirty green metal. She took another step forward, then another.
Mother may I? Mother may I take two giant steps?They'd always played "Mother May I?" on the playground at recess-how old had she been then? Eight? Nine?-and no one would ever let roly-poly Annie take a giant step, because nobody wanted the fat girl on their side, as if fat were a disease you could catch by standing too close. Well, she could take goddamned giant steps now, she thought, stretching her right leg out in a long stride, grunting softly when her foot sank promptly in soil so soft, it seemed to suck at her shoe. She made a tiny cry, pinwheeling her arms to keep her balance as she brought her left foot forward. It sank, too, down over the laces of the purple high-tops, past her ankle, halfway up her calf, and then suddenly she was flat on her face with her arms stretched, her nose and mouth jammed into dirt that tasted of manure, her chest aching from the impact.
She raised her head, sputtering, spitting, furious with herself at the momentary loss of grace that made her trip over dirt. She tried to bring a knee under her, it sank, and she almost panicked. The stuff was like quicksand. Oh, Lord, maybe it was like one of those sink-holes that kept sucking up houses in Florida, and maybe that's what happened to the cows, and maybe that's what was going to happen to her.
She floundered halfheartedly, afraid to move, afraid not to, tugging at the foot that had somehow gotten jammed into the hole it had made. When she tried to brace herself, her arms sank to her elbows, but by then Grace and Sharon were on either side, grabbing her upper arms, pulling her back up onto her haunches.
"Damnit," she panted, brushing the dirt from her chest and arms. Grace was looking down to where her own feet had sunk into the earth. "Whatis this?"
"They must have just plowed it up."
Annie was using her hand like a trowel to move the dirt away from her trapped foot.
Grace looked out at the undisturbed surface beyond them, so smooth it looked as if it had been ironed. She started to say that it didn't look plowed, but then Annie made a funny sound and she looked down. "What?"
Annie was just sitting there in the dirt, staring straight ahead. Grace followed her gaze but saw nothing."What, Annie?"
Still, she didn't say anything. It didn't look like she was even breathing.
Grace fell to her knees and peered into Annie's face, her whisper tense. "Whatis it?"
Annie's eyes shifted a fraction to look at Grace, then dropped to look at what her hand had grabbed instead of soft, mucky earth. She felt a little pop inside her head, as if something tiny and fragile had just been disconnected.
Her fingers were wrapped around a smooth, plump human forearm, half buried in the dirt. It was a strange, grayish color, and tiny grains of soil were caught in the downy hairs along its length.
Annie knew those barely audible, high-pitched sounds were coming from her throat, and then as Grace and Sharon bent to examine
what she'd seen, she heard other sounds join in with the ones she was making. They were all tiny sounds, as if she were standing on the shore, listening to someone drowning far, far out in the ocean.
Sharon pressed the fingers of both hands so hard over her mouth that the skin around th
em seemed to glow white.
Grace was staring down at the arm, not blinking, not moving, the only one of the three not making a sound. Very, very slowly, she lifted her eyes and gazed down the full length of the paddock, and it seemed to go on forever.
The sounds coming from Annie's throat began to form the words of a frantic chant: "I have to go, I have to go, I have to go . . ." And suddenly she was scrambling in the loose soil like a panicked crab, the purple high-tops digging long, shallow trenches as she struggled. "Come on, come on." Her voice came out tiny and staccato, like a little girl screaming in a whisper as she shot to her feet and began to stumble-run headlong down the center of the paddock.
Behind her, Grace and Sharon saw her feet unearth another tubular shape of grayish, ghostly white, but this one was broad and muscular and sprinkled with dark, coarse hair, and it wasn't the mate to the first, it didn't belong, it wasn't a matched set. God, how many?They're here. They're all here. Welcome to Four Corners.
They both cried out at the same time to stop Annie, but Annie couldn't hear them anymore.
Dirt sprayed from the holes that her tennis shoes punched in the ground, like tiny volcanic eruptions marking her passage. Sometimes she could take as many as three strides without falling, then suddenly she would sink almost to the knee in an air pocket, her foot sliding against spongy lumps that shouldn't have been there. She tripped again and again, caught herself with her hands, touched things she wouldn't look at, and pushed herself up to plunge forward again. Finally, near the end of the paddock, she fell hard. She felt the searing pain of lungs emptied of air and simply lay there with her right cheek pressed to the dirt, trying to gasp.
If I move my arms and legs, I can make an angel in the dirt. It would have a head, a long skirt, wings, and very big boobs. That's why you never make angels in the snow on your stomach, because then they would show body parts that angels aren't supposed to have.
Then she heard Grace and Sharon floundering toward her from the back. She heard the tiny gasps and cries that meant they'd seen something, felt something, stepped on something.. . .
She lifted her head and gazed at the great concave blade that faced her from just a few feet away. Clods of earth stuck to its shadowy surface, and behind and above that, the cab of the enormous tractor gleamed in the moonlight.