Still Life with Crows

by Preston; Child

  Sixty-One

  Hazen jogged down the broadening slope of the tunnel, trying to catch up to Lefty and the dogs. He could hear Raskovich huffing behind him and, farther back, the thudding footsteps and jangling equipment of the others. And up ahead, the awful bellowing of the dogs. Any pretense to stealth was long since shot: that barking could probably be heard miles away. The cave was a hell of a lot bigger than anyone had imagined. They’d left the still at least a quarter mile behind—it was hard to believe the dogs had dragged Lefty this far.

  A moment later, as if in response to the thought, Lefty came into sight up ahead at last, leashes taut in his glove, speaking angrily. He had finally gotten the animals to heel.

  Hazen slowed up, grateful for the chance to catch his breath, and Raskovich came puffing up beside him. “Lefty, hold up for a moment,” Hazen said. “Let the others catch up.”

  It was too late. There was a sudden explosion of hysterical barking from the passage ahead.

  “What’s going on?” Hazen yelled.

  “There’s something here!” Lefty shrilled back.

  The dogs were growing frantic now, lunging and howling, once again dragging the protesting Lefty down the tunnel.

  “Damn you, Lefty, slow ’em down!” Hazen bellowed as he trotted forward.

  “You want to swear at me? Take me back to the surface and swear at me. I don’t like it down here. And I don’t like these dogs. Sturm! Drang!Heel! ”

  The dogs were baying and growling horribly, echoes distorting to the sound of hell itself. Lefty gave the chain a brutal jerk and one of the dogs whirled around with a savage snarl. The handler shrank back, almost dropping the leash. Hazen could see Lefty was frightened. The lure of the trail was too strong now: if these dogs caught up with McFelty, they might kill him.

  That would be a disaster.

  He pushed himself harder to catch up, Raskovich at his side. “Lefty,” he called out, “if you don’t get those dogs under control, so help me I’ll shoot them.”

  “These dogs are state property—”

  As Hazen watched, the pale red shapes that were Lefty and the dogs dipped around a bend up ahead, suddenly vanishing from sight. A moment passed, then there was a shout. The frenzied baying of the dogs went up a notch: huge, meaty barks that rose at the end to a high-pitched shriek.

  “Sheriff, just ahead!” came Lefty’s breathless voice. “Christ, there’s something moving—!”

  Something?What was Lefty talking about? Hazen turned the bend, drawing in the wet air of the cave through his nose and mouth, trying to find his wind. And then he stopped abruptly.

  Lefty and the dogs had disappeared into a virtual forest of limestone pillars. Along the walls, strange curtainlike deposits hung down in heavy folds. Everywhere he looked there were openings to tunnels, cracks, yawning holes. He could hear the frantic barking, echoing back through the strange stony woods, but the sounds were so distorted that he had no idea where they were coming from.

  “Lefty!” His own voice reverberated around the cavern, taking forever to die away. He leaned against a broken pillar, heaving, wondering where to go next.

  Raskovich pulled up beside him, winded. Hazen could see an incipient panic in his eyes. “Where’d they go?”

  Hazen shook his head. The acoustics were diabolical.

  Once again, the sheriff started forward through the labyrinthine pillars, his feet splashing in shallow water, making for the spot where the echoes seemed loudest. Raskovich stayed close behind. The barking of the dogs was farther away now, as if they had moved down a distant tunnel; and yet the sound had ratcheted up to yet another notch of hysteria.

  And then it changed abruptly. The barking of one of the animals morphed into a sound like the squealing of brakes. The distant screaming mingled with another sound: low, throaty, angry.

  Even in the red wash of the night-vision goggles, Raskovich’s face looked ashen. Now the terrible chorus was joined by the unmistakable screaming of a human being. Lefty.

  “Mother of God,” said Raskovich, darting looks to the left and right.

  He was going to bolt.

  “Hey, take it easy,” Hazen said quickly. “The dogs have probably cornered McFelty. I think they’ve left this cavern and gone down some side tunnel. Come on, we’ve got to find them. Larssen!” he bawled out in a louder voice. “Cole! Brast! We’re over here!”

  The distorted screeching and gibbering continued. It was hard for Hazen to think straight. He wasn’t worried for the dogs anymore: he was worried for McFelty.

  “Raskovich, it’s okay.”

  The man stumbled backward, face slack, clutching his shotgun. Hazen recognized the danger of the situation now: Raskovich was about to lose it, and he had a loaded weapon in his hand.

  The terrible screams became mixed with a guttural choking, punctuated by gasps and coughs.

  “Raskovich, it’s all right, just take it easy, just lay the gun down—”

  The gun went off with a deafening blast, and a shower of pebbles came down, tinkling and bouncing among the pillars of stone before landing in the shallow water.

  The distant shrieking of the dogs . . . the slack, panicked face of Raskovich . . . Hazen realized that the operation was rapidly spinning out of control. “Larssen!” he bawled out. “On the double!”

  Now Raskovich turned and ran, the gun lying where he’d dropped it, still smoking from the shot.

  “Raskovich!”Hazen took off after him, yelling at the top of his lungs: “Hey! Wrong fucking way!”

  And as he ran, the terrible threnody of both dog and man went on and on behind him—and then, silence: sudden, unnerving silence.

  Sixty-Two

  Pendergast paused, listening. He heard the sounds echoing through the galleries of stone, distorted beyond recognition. He waited, straining to hear, but it was impossible to make out anything beside a whisper of sound, so altered by the acoustical properties of the caverns that it seemed almost like distant surf, or wind among trees.

  He redoubled his pace in what seemed the right direction, dodging over and between enormous toppled stalactites. At the end of the cavern, where the trails divided, he stopped again, listening.

  The sounds continued.

  Now he consulted his map, found his approximate location. He was in the middle of a particularly labyrinthine section of the cave system, riddled with multilevel cracks, passageways, and blind holes. Locating the sound within such a fiendish maze would be difficult. And yet he knew that in caves such as this, sound usually followed the flow of air. Pulling a slim gold lighter from his pocket, Pendergast lit it and held it at arm’s length, carefully scrutinizing the direction in which the flame bent. Then he pocketed the lighter again and continued on, upwind, toward the sound.

  But now, the sounds had ceased. The cave had returned to dripping silence.

  Pendergast went on, through galleries and tunnels. With the absence of sound, he went back to following the map toward what appeared to be the central part of the cave system. At the end of a particularly narrow gallery he stopped, shining his light upon a far wall. There was one narrow vertical crack here, not on the map, that looked like it might give way onto another cavern on the far side. If so, it would cut off a considerable distance. He went to the crack and listened.

  Once again, he heard faint sounds. The rush of water, overlaid by a human voice. At least, it appeared to be human, and yet it was so distorted that it was impossible to make out any words—if indeed there were any.

  Shining his light on the ground before his feet, he noticed that he was not the first person to have taken this shortcut.

  He edged into the crack, which soon widened enough for him to walk normally. Gradually the bottom of the crack dropped away and a crevasse opened below; yet the walls remained narrow enough that he could continue forward, one foot on either side of the crevasse, squeezing his torso through a narrow slot. It was a position that gave, strangely, the sensations of both claustrophobia and acrophobia
at the same time.

  Ahead, the crack opened into the blackness of space. He was standing on a narrow ledge almost a hundred feet up the wall of a domelike cavity. A stream of water plunged from above and feathered down toward the base far beneath his feet, filling the cavern with the echoing splash of water. A billion winking lights—reflections of feathery gypsum crystals—filled the cavern like fireflies.

  Pendergast’s flashlight beam could only barely reach the bottom.

  There had been footprints at the entrance to the crack: that meant there must be a way down.

  Below the lip of rock on which he stood, his light caught a series of hand- and footholds. Intermittent sounds came from below, clearer now.

  Had Hazen and the troopers reached the killer and Corrie? The thought was almost too unpleasant to contemplate.

  Pendergast crouched on the narrow ledge, shining his light into the blackness below. He could see nothing but a massive jumble of fallen stalactites, torn from the ceiling by some long-ago earthquake.

  He took off his shoes and socks, tied the laces together, and draped them around his neck. He turned off his flashlight and slipped it into a pocket: it would be of no help now. Then, reaching down into the darkness, he grabbed the first handhold again and swung out into space, his bare feet finding slippery purchase. Five minutes of cautious climbing brought him to the bottom. He put on his shoes in complete darkness, listening.

  The noise was coming from the blackness at the far end of the cavern. Whoever was making that sound had no light. It rose and fell in a strange, babbling way, but there could be no mistake: it was a man, and he sounded injured.

  Turning on the flashlight again and pulling out his handgun, Pendergast moved forward swiftly.

  A flash of color, and something flickered across the dim cone of light; he swung the beam around and saw something yellow on the ground, behind a fractured boulder.

  He leapt catlike onto the rock, gun and light pointing downward together. He peered into the cavity beneath the boulder. And then, after staring for a moment, he holstered the gun, dropped down the far side, and laid a hand on the man who was curled in a fetal position in the lee of the rock. He was a small man, soaking wet, gibbering to himself. Lying next to him was a regulation-issue set of night-vision goggles and a helmet with an infrared spotter.

  At the touch of Pendergast’s hand the man crouched farther, covered his head, and squealed.

  “FBI,” said Pendergast quietly. “Where are you hurt?”

  The man shivered at the sound of his voice, then looked up. Two red eyes peered uncomprehendingly out of a face completely covered with blood. The man’s black jacket sported the yellow insignia of the Kansas State Police K-9 squad. His lips trembled above a wispy goatee, but the only sound that emerged was more incoherent sobbing. His pale eyelashes trembled.

  Pendergast performed a quick examination. “It seems you’re unhurt,” he said.

  The stammering reply did not succeed in reaching the level of intelligibility.

  They were wasting time. Pendergast grabbed the man by the collar of his K-9 suit and hauled him to his feet. “Get a grip on yourself, Officer. What’s your name?”

  The sharp tone seemed to stun the man into sensibility.

  “Weeks. Lefty Weeks. Robert Weeks.” His teeth chattered.

  Pendergast released his hold; Weeks staggered but managed to stay upright.

  “Where did the blood come from, Officer Weeks?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Officer,” Pendergast said, “I don’t have a lot of time. There’s a killer in here who’s kidnapped a girl. It is vital that I find her—before your friends get her killed.”

  “Right,” said Weeks, swallowing.

  Pendergast retrieved the night-vision goggles, found them broken and inoperative, dropped them again. “You’re coming with me.”

  “No! No, please—”

  Pendergast grabbed his shoulders and gave him a shake. “Mr. Weeks, youwill conduct yourself like a police officer. Is that clear?”

  Weeks swallowed again, struggled to master himself. “Yes, sir.”

  “Stay behind, follow my lead, and keep quiet.”

  “My God, no! No, don’t go that way . . . please, sir.It’s there.”

  Pendergast turned and looked carefully into the man’s face. He looked traumatized, ruined. “It?”

  “It. That, thatman. ”

  “Describe him.”

  “I can’t, Ican’t! ” Weeks buried his face in his hands as if to blot out the image. “White. Huge. All bunched up, like. Cloudy, cloudy eyes. Big feet and hands—And . . .and the face! ”

  “What about the face?”

  “Oh, lord Jesus, the face—”

  Pendergast slapped the man. “What about the face?”

  “The face of a . . . oh, God, of ababy, so . . . so—”

  Pendergast cut him off. “Let’s go.”

  “No!Please, not that way—!”

  “Suit yourself.” Pendergast turned and strode off. With a yelp, the man scrambled to follow.

  Leaving the tumult of broken columns, Pendergast moved into a broad limestone tunnel littered with huge yellow mounds of dripstone. Weeks stayed behind, cringing and whimpering to himself, afraid to follow Pendergast, but still more afraid to remain alone. Pendergast’s light roamed from dripstone to dripstone, once again following a trail.

  And then he stopped. His light remained fixed on one mound that looked strikingly different from the others. Its deep yellow was heavily streaked with red, and at its base lay a pool of bright red water. Something was floating in the water: about the size of a human, but the shape was all wrong.

  Weeks had fallen silent.

  Pendergast played his light around the cavern wall that rose behind the dripstone mound. The dark rock was decorated in arcs of crimson, and gobbets of white, red, and yellow hung dripping here and there. His light finally came to rest on the giant forelimb of what could only be a dog, lodged in a crack about halfway up the wall. A piece of a lower jaw was wedged nearby, and something that might have been part of a muzzle had struck the sloping wall with enough violence to stick.

  “One of yours?” Pendergast asked.

  The man nodded dumbly.

  “Did you see this happen?”

  The man nodded again.

  Pendergast turned, raising his light to the man’s face. “What, precisely, did you see?”

  Officer Weeks choked, stammered, and finally got the words out. “Hedid it.” He paused, swallowed. And then his voice broke.“He did it with his bare hands!”

  Sixty-Three

  At a nexus of branching tunnels, Hazen waited for the state troopers and Larssen to catch up. Five minutes passed, then ten, as his labored breathing returned to normal. It seemed that either they hadn’t followed the sound of his voice, or they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere.

  Hazen swore, spat. Raskovich was gone, bolted like a rabbit. Although Hazen had briefly given chase, he’d been unable to find the guy. The way the man had been running, he was probably halfway back to KSU already.

  Hell.If he couldn’t regroup with Larssen and the troopers, he’d have to go after Lefty and the dogs alone. And that meant returning to the limestone forest, for a start.

  But now, as Hazen looked back the way he had come, he wasn’t sure just which of the branching tunnels he’d come out of. He thought it was the one on the right. But he wasn’t sure.

  Hazen swallowed, cleared his throat. “Lefty?”

  Silence.

  “Larssen?”

  He cupped his hands in the direction of his backtrail and bellowed, “Hey! Anybody! If you can hear me, sing out!”

  Silence.

  “Anybody there? Respond!”

  Despite the chilly air and the incessant wetness, Hazen felt a prickly sensation along his spine. He looked back the way he had come; looked around; looked ahead. The night-vision goggles gave everything a pale, reddish, unreal look, like he was on Mars
. He checked his belt and confirmed what he already feared: he’d lost his flashlight during the chase.

  The whole operation was fucked up. They’d gotten separated. Raskovich was lost, the whereabouts of Larssen unknown, the condition of Lefty and the dogs uncertain. At the very least, McFelty knew they were there. If he was dead, or injured . . . Hazen figured he had enough to deal with without dreaming up a lot of hypotheticals.

  The thing to do was to get everyone back together, get a situation report, take stock.

  Shit, it was hard to remember which of those holes he had come outof. . .

  He examined the cave floor for footprints or marks, but it seemed as if each of the tunnels had been heavily trafficked. And that alone was very strange.

  He ran over what had happened in his mind, trying to recall landmarks. It was all vague; he’d been concentrating on catching the fleeing Raskovich. Still, on balance it seemed to him that he’d most likely come from that passage on the right.

  He walked down it about fifty feet. There were some broken stalactite pieces scattered here, like teeth. He didn’t remember those. Had he just run past them too fast?

  Son of a bitch.

  He went farther, but still nothing looked familiar. With a curse he returned to the pillared cave and took one of the other tunnels. He proceeded slowly, straining to remember, feeling his heart starting to beat a little fast. Nothing looked familiar. The dripping rocks, the feathery crystals, the banded, glossy humps—it all looked strange.

  And then he heard a sound. Someone up ahead, humming.

  “Hey!” He broke into a trot, turned a corner, paused at a fork in the passage.

  The humming had stopped.

  Hazen spun around, calling out. “Larssen? Cole?”

  Still no sound.

  “Answer me, goddamn it!”

  He waited. Couldn’t they hear him? He’d heard the sound as clear as a bell; why couldn’t they hear him?

  More humming, high-pitched and farther away, coming out of the left tunnel.

  “Larssen?” He unshouldered his shotgun and walked down the left tunnel. The sound was louder, higher, closer. He moved more cautiously now, his senses on alert, trying to control his heart, which seemed to be pounding way too hard in his chest.