Three feet away.
It would have been some small comfort to Mike if that had been the point at which he woke up from the dream, but it wasn’t. He felt the wheels all the way up his body; he felt and heard each bone splinter and snap, felt the searing pain as his groin and stomach were ground flat under the immense weight of the wrecker, tasted the coppery blood as it burst in a torrent from his screaming mouth, felt every part of him explode into bloody fragments until the rolling wheels smashed his awareness into utter black agony.
Then he woke up, covered in sweat, his body still screaming from every pore, from every nerve ending. His curly red hair hung in seaweed twists down from his bowed head, and his freckles were as dark as bullet holes against his pale skin. His heart was beating so hard in his chest that it hurt, lances of pain shot down his left arm, numbing his fingers. Fiery lights danced in his blue eyes and he bent forward, gagging, almost vomiting. Then…it eased. Like a great wave the pain reached its peak and then slid back into the vast sea of his dreams, leaving him awake and alive. Even so, he trembled and shuddered. Mike had once read that the body had no memory for pain, but he knew that wasn’t true.
As the dream—and the ghost pain—eventually faded and he settled back against the sweat-soaked sheets, he feared to return to sleep, just as much as he feared being awake in this house. Vic Wingate here in the real world, the wrecker lurking on the black roads of his dreams. At fourteen, Mike Sweeney had cultivated a precise understanding of the nature of hell and an absolute belief in its reality. It was called “his life.”
(5)
When the door opened, Crow expected it to be Terry Wolfe, but it was Saul Weinstock. The doctor wasn’t smiling, which was rare for him, and his face showed the same haggard look everyone involved in the Ruger affair seemed to be wearing. A team moroseness tinted by extreme exhaustion. He held a clipboard in one hand and had a folded newspaper under his arm. Tow-Truck Eddie looked up from his reading as Weinstock slouched in.
“Can I have a couple of minutes, Eddie?”
Using a finger to bookmark his place in Revelations, the officer stood, towering head and shoulders above Weinstock, and left without a word. When the door was closed, Weinstock dragged the guest chair nearer the bed and sprawled in it, looking over his shoulder at the closed door. “He’s an odd duck,” he observed.
Crow grunted agreement. “Always has been.”
“Ever have a real conversation with him?”
“I don’t know if anyone has. Maybe God. He was on the cops full time when I was, but aside from work-related stuff I doubt we ever said ten words to one another. No, that’s a lie. He once asked me if I’d accepted Jesus as my personal savior.”
Weinstock looked amused. His features were a dead ringer for Hal Linden in his Barney Miller days, a show that Crow remembered watching and Weinstock didn’t. “What’d you tell him?”
“Told him I’d think about it, and left it there. He never asked again.”
“I’m shocked. I can’t imagine you missing the chance for a smartass comment.”
“Uh, Saul, have you looked at the size of that sumbitch? He could bench-press Iowa. Guess he never asked you about JC?”
Saul snorted. “Haven’t you heard? We Jews are all going to hell. We have a special section, a gated community. Right next door to the Buddhists, the Hindus, and the pro-choice lobby. It’ll be a party town.” He glanced back at the closed door. “Seriously, though, that guy spooks me a little. I’ve never met anyone with less of a sense of….” He groped for the word.
“Humor?”
“No. Humanity, I guess. It’s just hard to believe that he does ordinary things like watch MTV, eat Fruit Loops, or fart.”
“I’ve done all three at the same time.”
“You, Crow, are all too human. Granted, you have a supernatural tendency to be a pain in the ass, but you’re human enough. Which reminds me, say ahhhh.”
Crow opened his mouth and Weinstock set the newspaper down and leaned forward with a tongue depressor and a penlight, flicked the light back and inside Crow’s mouth, sniffed once, and sat back, tossing the depressor into the trash can. “Looks like the ladies’ sewing circle threw a kegger in your mouth.”
“Gee, doc, everything you says just paints a picture.”
“How do you feel? How’re the aches and pains? Any double vision? Blood in your urine? Pins and needles anywhere?”
“Nope. Just your garden-variety every-molecule-in-my-body-hurts kind of pain. Just what you’d expect after getting the shit kicked out of you—twice—and getting shot. Twice.”
Weinstock rolled his eyes. “Don’t even start with that ‘getting shot’ bullshit. Both slugs barely grazed you.”
“That’s as may be, but as far as the shit-kicking went—”
“That I’ll grant you.” He reached over and picked up Crow’s bandaged wrist, gently probing it with his fingertips. “This hurt?”
“Only when some ham-fisted quack is poking it.”
Weinstock set it down. “I saw the X-rays before I came in. Nothing broken, but you have a lot of pretty serious bruising. Be careful, ’cause the first time you even tap that thing against something you’re going to cry like a five-year-old girl.”
“Excuse me? But I never cry like anything less than a ten-year-old.”
They grinned at each other, comfortable with the banter, each knowing that it was a splendid way of not really talking about last night even though it was right there in each other’s eyes. Crow said, “How’s Val?”
“Still sleeping, thank God. On top of what she must be feeling about her dad, that eye socket is going to hurt like a son of a bitch. A migraine is not out of the question. Better to keep her under as long as we can. The MRI can wait until this afternoon, if she’s up to it, or tomorrow.”
Crow nodded. “Thanks.”
Weinstock slapped Crow’s thigh. “You’re going to have to be her support, buddy-boy, because she’s going to have to deal with a lot of pretty hard stuff over the next couple of days. Henry’s funeral arrangements, for one, and running the farm. The house is probably a wreck, what with the mess Ruger made and then a zillion cops tramping through it. Anything you can do to get some of this taken care of so she doesn’t have to will lighten her load.”
Crow nodded. “I called Diego, the farm foreman. Asked him to see to the house and the farm. He’s a stand-up guy, been with Henry forever. You’ve met him.”
“Yep.” Weinstock frowned. “We all know Val’s tough as nails, but nobody’s invulnerable and you have to remember that if she has a strong support system then it’ll be easier for her to remember her strength, you dig?”
Crow cocked his head and studied the doctor. “It’s strange,” he said, “but everyone keeps saying you’re a heartless bastard. I think they may be wrong.”
Weinstock ignored that and picked up the newspaper he’d been carrying, the Crestville Observer. “You see this yet? You’re famous.” He spread it out and Crow glanced at the headlines: MONSTERS IN SPOOKTOWN: MANHUNT ENDS IN SHOOTINGS, DEATH. The article ran through the events at the farm and highlighted Crow’s fight with an “unnamed assailant,” then chucked in a lot of backstory about Crow’s better days as a Pine Deep cop. It was lurid stuff, poorly written and overly dramatic.