Still Life With Crows (8 page)

Ten

C
orrie Swanson sat on the little folding bunk in the lone holding cell of the Medicine Creek jail, staring at the graffiti that covered the peeling walls. There was quite a lot of it, and despite the variety of inks and handwritings, it was remarkably consistent in subject matter. She could hear the television set blaring in the sheriff’s office up front. It was one of those sick soap operas for housewives with empty lives, complete with quavering organ music and hysterical female sobbing. And she could hear the sheriff moving noisily around the office in his clown shoes, restlessly, like a ferret in a cage, rustling paper and making phone calls. How could such a short man have such big feet? And smoking, too—the place stank. Four more hours and her mom would be sober enough to come down and get her. So here she was, being “taught a lesson”—her mother’s words—listening to the comings and goings of the world’s most ratlike human being. Some lesson. Well, it wasn’t any worse than sitting at home, listening to her mother’s nagging or drunken snoring. And the folding bunk was at least as comfortable as the broken-down mattress in her own bedroom.

She heard a door slam in the outer office, footsteps, muffled greetings. Corrie recognized one of the voices. It was Brad Hazen, the sheriff’s son and her classmate, with his jock friends. They said something about going into the back to check out the TV.

Quickly, she lay down on the bunk and turned her face to the wall.

She heard them moving around the inner office. One of them started changing the television channels, finger held to the button as it clicked through one raspy channel after another: game shows, soaps, cartoons, all divided by loud blasts of white noise.

Search unsuccessful, the shuffling of footsteps and grunted comments began again. Corrie heard them pass the open doorway to the back room, where her cell was located. There was a sudden pause and then Brad spoke in a low undertone. “Hey guys, check out who’s here. Well, well, well.”

She heard them shuffling through the doorway, snickering and whispering. There were at least two of them, maybe three. No doubt Chad was one of them, and probably Biff, too. Brad, Chad, and Biff. The fucking Hardy Boys.

Someone made a low farting sound with his lips. There was suppressed laughter.

“What’s that smell?” It was Brad again. “Somebody step in it?”

More low laughter. “What’d you do this time?”

Corrie spoke without turning around. “Your Deputy Dawg John Q. Ratface left his car running, keys in the ignition, windows down, for half an hour in front of the Wagon Wheel while he refueled on eclairs. How could I resist?”

“My what?”

“Your Ripley’s Believe It or Not amazing chain-smoking eclair-to-shit converting dad.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” The voice was rising.

“Your
father,
dork.”

Muffled laughter from his two friends.

“What a twat,” Brad said. “At least I’ve
got
a father. Which is more than I can say for you. And you don’t exactly have much of a mother, either.” He cackled and someone—Chad, probably—made another disgusting sound with his mouth.

“The town slut. She was in this cell just last month, wasn’t she, on a drunk and disorderly. Like mother, like daughter. Guess the apple never falls far from the tree. Or in your case, the shit never falls far from the asshole.”

There was another burst of smothered laughter. Corrie lay still, facing the wall.

Brad resumed his whisper. “Hey, did you read the paper today? Says the murderer might be local. Maybe a devil worshiper. You fit the bill, with that fucked-up purple hair and black eye makeup. Is that what you do at night? Go out and do mumbo-jumbo?”

“That’s right, Brad,” said Corrie, still not turning around. “At the dark of each moon, I bathe in the blood of a newborn lamb and recite the Curse of the Nine Gates, and then I summon Lucifer to wither your dick. If you have one.”

This brought forth another muffled snicker from Brad’s friends, but Brad didn’t join in.

“Bitch,”
Brad muttered. He advanced a step and lowered his voice still further. “Look at you. You think you’re so cool, all dressed in black. Well, you’re
not
cool. You’re a loser. And I’ll bet for once you’re not lying. I’ll bet you
do
go out at night for a little animal killing. Or better yet, animal fucking.” He gave a low chuckle. “Because no
man
would ever want to screw you, you freak.”

“If I see any
men
around here I’ll let you know,” Corrie replied.

She heard the door into the back room open and a sudden silence fell. The sheriff spoke, his voice low, calm, and full of menace.

“Brad? Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Oh, hi, Dad. We were just talking to Corrie here, that’s all.”

“Is that so?”

“Right.”

“Don’t bullshit me. I know exactly what you were doing.”

There was a tense silence.

“You harass a prisoner of mine again and I’ll book you and lock you up myself. You hear me?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Now get the hell out, you and your friends. You’re late for scrimmage.”

There was the sound of guilty shuffling as Brad and his friends left the cellblock. “You all right, Swanson?” the sheriff asked gruffly.

Corrie ignored the question. Soon the door closed and she lay there, alone once again, listening to the sounds of the television and the voices in the outer office. She tried to keep her breathing normal, tried to forget what Brad had said. One more year and she was out of this loser town, this butt-crack capital of Kansas. One more year. Then it was goodbye, Medicine Shit Creek. It occurred to her, for the millionth time, that if she hadn’t blown it in tenth grade she’d already be out of here. And now she had done it to herself again. Well, no use thinking about that.

The door to the outer office tinkled again. Someone new had come in. A conversation began in the outer office. Was it Tad, the deputy? Or her mother, sober for once? But no—the new arrival, whoever it was, spoke so softly that Corrie couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The sheriff’s voice, on the other hand, took on a hard edge, but Corrie couldn’t make out the words over the blaring of the television set.

Eventually, she heard footsteps enter the back room.

“Swanson?”

It was the sheriff. She heard him draw heavily on his cigarette and smelled the fresh smoke. There was a rattle of keys, a click as her cell was unlocked. The rusty iron door creaked as it opened.

“You’re out of here.”

She didn’t move. Hazen’s voice sounded particularly thick. Something had made him mad.

“Someone just made your bail.”

Still she didn’t move. And the other voice spoke. It was low and soft, with an unfamiliar accent.

“Miss Swanson? You are free to leave.”

“Who are you?” she asked without turning around. “Did Mom send you?”

“No. I am Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI.”

God. It was that creepy-looking man in the undertaker’s getup she’d seen walking around town.

“I don’t need your help,” she said.

His voice still heavy with annoyance, Hazen said to Pendergast, “Maybe you should’ve saved your money and stayed out of local law enforcement business.”

But Corrie had grown curious despite herself. After a moment, she asked, “What’s the catch?”

“We’ll speak about it outside,” said Pendergast.

“So there
is
a catch. I can just imagine what it is, you pervert.”

Sheriff Hazen issued a burst of laughter that degenerated into a smoker’s hack. “Pendergast, what’d I tell you?”

Corrie remained curled on the folding bed. She wondered why this Pendergast was offering to bail her out. It was clear that Hazen didn’t particularly like Pendergast. She remembered a phrase: the enemy of your enemy is your friend. She sat up and looked around. There he was, the undertaker, arms folded, looking at her pensively. The little bulldog Hazen stood next to him, arms squared, scalp glistening under the thinning crew cut, razor rash on his face.

“So I can just get up and walk out of here?” she asked.

“If that’s what you want,” Pendergast replied.

She got up, brushed past the FBI agent, past the sheriff, and headed toward the door.

“Don’t forget your car keys,” called Hazen.

She paused in the door, turned, held out her hand. The sheriff was standing there, dangling them in his hand. He made no move to give them to her. She took a step forward and snatched them.

“Your car’s out back in the lot,” he said. “You can settle up the seventy-five-dollar towing fee later.”

Corrie opened the door and went outside. After the air-conditioned jail, it felt like walking into hot soup. Blinking against the glare, she made her way around the corner and down the alley to the little parking lot behind the sheriff’s office. There was her Gremlin, and there, leaning against it, was the pervert in the black suit. As she approached, he stepped forward and opened the door for her. She got in without a word and slammed the door behind her. Slipping the key into the ignition, she cranked the engine, and after turning over a few times it coughed into life, laying down a huge cloud of oily smoke. The man in black stepped away. She waited a moment, then leaned out the window.

“Thanks,” she said grudgingly.

“It was my pleasure.”

She pressed the accelerator and the car stalled.
Shit.

She restarted it, revved a few times. More smoke poured out. The FBI man was still there. What the hell did he want? She had to admit, he didn’t really look like a pervert. Curiosity finally got the better of her and she leaned out the window once again.

“All right, Mr. Special Agent. What’s the catch?”

“I’ll tell you while you give me a lift back to Winifred Kraus’s place. That’s where I’m staying.”

Corrie Swanson hesitated, then opened the door. “Get in.” She swept a heap of McDonald’s trash off the passenger seat onto the floor. “I hope you’re not going to do something stupid.”

The FBI agent smiled and slid in beside her as smoothly as a cat. “You can trust me, Miss Swanson. Can I trust you?”

She looked at him. “No.”

She popped the clutch and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving behind a pall of oilsmoke and a nice ten-inch pair of tire marks on the sheriff’s asphalt. As she careened out of the alley and slewed onto the street, she was gratified to see the stumpy little sheriff tumble angrily out the door and start to shout something just as her black contrail obliterated him from view.

Eleven

T
he commercial district of Medicine Creek, Kansas, consisted of three dun-colored blocks of brick and wooden shopfronts. It took Corrie three, perhaps four heartbeats to reach its edge. As she jammed on the accelerator, the rusted frame of the Gremlin began to shake. There was a pile of some three dozen tapes littering the space between the front seats: her favorite death metal, dark ambient, industrial, and grindcore music. She riffled through them with one hand, passing over Discharge, Shinjuku Thief, and Fleshcrawl before finally selecting Lustmord. The dislocated, eldritch sounds of “Heresy, Part I” began to fill the small car. Her mother refused to let her play her music out loud in the house, so she’d retrofitted a tape player to the old Gremlin.

Speaking of her dear, nurturing parent, it was going to be a bitch going home. By now, her mother would be half drunk, half hungover—the worst combination. She decided she’d drop this Pendergast guy off at the old Kraus place, then go park under the powerlines and kill a few hours with a book.

She glanced over at the FBI man. “So, what’s with the black suit? Somebody die?”

“Like you, I’m rather partial to the color.”

She snorted. “What’s this catch you were talking about?”

“I need a car and driver.”

Corrie had to laugh. “What, me and my stretch AMC Gremlin?”

“I came by bus and I’m finding it rather inconvenient to be on foot.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. The muffler is shot, the thing goes through a quart of oil a week, there’s no AC, and the interior is so full of fumes I’ve got to keep the windows open, even in winter.”

“I propose compensation of a hundred dollars a day for the car and driver, plus a standard rate of thirty-one cents per mile for fuel and depreciation.”

A hundred bucks was more money than Corrie had ever seen at one time. This couldn’t be happening, it had to be some kind of bullshit. “If you’re a hotshot FBI special agent, where’s your own car and driver?”

“Since I’m technically on vacation, I haven’t been issued a car.”

“Yeah, but why me?”

“Quite simple. I need someone who knows Medicine Creek, who has a car, and has nothing better to do. You fit the bill. You’re no longer a minor, correct?”

“Just turned eighteen. But I’ve got another year of high school. And then I’m out of this Kansas shithole.”

“I hope to have concluded my work here long before school begins next month. The important thing is, you
do
know Medicine Creek—don’t you?”

She laughed. “If hating is knowing. Have you thought about what the sheriff’s going to think about this arrangement?”

“I expect he’ll be glad you found gainful employment.”

Corrie shook her head. “You don’t know much, do you?”

“That lack of knowledge is what I hope to rectify. Leave me to deal with the sheriff. Now, do we have a deal, Miss Swanson?”

“A hundred bucks a day? Of course we have a deal. And please, do I look like a ‘Miss Swanson’ to you? Call me Corrie.”

“I shall call you Miss Swanson and you shall call me Special Agent Pendergast.”

She rolled her eyes and swept purple hair out of her face. “Okay,
Special Agent
Pendergast.”

“Thank you, Miss Swanson.”

The man slid a wallet out of his suit coat and removed five hundred-dollar bills. She could hardly take her eyes off the money as he casually unwired her broken glove compartment, placed the bills inside, and wired it back up. “Keep a written record of your mileage. Any overtime beyond eight hours daily will be paid at twenty dollars an hour. The five hundred dollars is your first week’s pay in advance.”