“Val…wait…I have to check.” Holding the gun high, ready to use it as a club, Crow wormed his way over and with his other hand felt for a pulse in Ruger’s throat. Nothing. He tried another spot. Absolutely nothing.
Crow bowed his head.
Karl Ruger was dead.
“Jesus Christ,” Crow said, and then he struggled to his knees and reached across the corner of the bed toward her just as her eyes lost their focus and rolled up in their sockets. With a soft sigh she passed out and sagged down on the bed. Whimpering in fear, Crow crawled over the bed to her and pressed his ear to her chest, not breathing at all until he heard the steady thump-thump-thump of her heart.
“Thank God!” he breathed and kissed her over her heart and then kissed her sweet face. “Thank God….”
Outside, there were yells and an official voice — Frank Ferro, Crow thought — was yelling, “Police! Police! Out of the way!” Footsteps were hurrying, getting louder, coming closer.
A hand clamped around his wrist with implacable force and Crow turned in absolute horror to see Karl Ruger leering up above the footrest, his eyes wide and red and hellish.
With irresistible force he pulled himself up and pulled Crow close and whispered in his graveyard voice, “Ubel Griswold sends his regards.” Then he laughed the coldest laugh Crow had ever heard and the red light went out of his eyes and Karl Ruger sank back to the floor.
Crow was frozen there, his eyes wide and unblinking, his heart beating painfully in his chest, mouth agape as the horror of those five words plunged his entire world into madness.
Epilogue
Midnight came and went in Pine Deep and no one took notice as September died and a cold October was born amid shadows and sirens and flashing lights.
Detective Sergeant Frank Ferro took charge of the investigation and cleanup at Pinelands Hospital and slowly the story unfolded. The hospital lights had been shut off at the source by the simple act of the main breakers being thrown, and the auxiliary generator had been disabled with lines and wires cut. The maintenance supervisor, Carl Wilkerson, was found unconscious in the electrical shed behind the building — alive but badly injured with a cracked skull. The weapon was a pair of bolt cutters; the same cutters had been used to gain entry to the shed and disable the generator. The main breakers were turned back on and by morning the backup had been repaired as well. Wilkerson was admitted to the hospital in guarded condition, though when he regained consciousness two days later he had no memory at all of the event. “Traumatic amnesia,” diagnosed Saul Weinstock.
Weinstock met with Ferro, LaMastra, and Gus in the doctors’ lounge around two in the morning, as things were beginning to settle down. Over cups of coffee — Ferro’s fourteenth of the day — Weinstock gave them a status report.
“Officer Shanks has a hell of a lump on his head and a very sore set of testicles — about which we can all sympathize — but will be fine. We’re keeping him overnight for observation.”
“How’s Ms. Guthrie?” LaMastra asked. “She really came through in there.”
Weinstock grinned. “Yeah, never leave Val out of the equation. She’s known for rising to the occasion. And as far as her injuries go, we put two stitches in her cheek and in the morning we’ll be doing a CT scan of her eye socket. X-rays showed that she has a hairline crack of the right orbit, but we need to rule out trauma to the eye itself.”
“Jeez,” said Gus. “She said all he did was backhand her.”
Ferro shook his head. “And Crow?”
“I had to disappoint him about getting kicked loose tomorrow. He won’t be going anywhere for at least two, three days. Fourteen stitches in his mouth. Both cheeks. Three loose molars. His left wrist has the weirdest compression bruise I’ve ever seen, like it was caught in a vise.”
“He said Ruger just squeezed his wrists.”
Weinstock shook his head. “No. He had to have caught it in a door or something. The human hand can’t generate the kind of PSI needed to do that. But with all the jolts he took I doubt he remembers things clearly.”
“Yeah,” said LaMastra, “he also said Ruger’s eyes turned red for a while.”
“As I said, he’s disoriented.”
Ferro sipped his coffee. It was horrible. Reheated, probably, though that wasn’t why his face was sour. “And our boy Ruger?”
“Karl Ruger’s body was taken to the morgue where an autopsy will be performed tomorrow by yours truly. Though I’d rather just run him through a composter and let it be.”
“Amen to that,” said Gus and LaMastra at the same time.
“Here’s the part I don’t get, gentlemen, and maybe there’s some new street drug that can turn someone into Superman, but cursory examination showed that Ruger had been shot over two dozen times,” Weinstock said, pausing to let that sink in. “There were five original wounds, which had all started to close. Yes, you heard me. They were healing. Since the day before yesterday. And then there were all of the shots collectively fired by Crow and Val. You want to tell me how a man with five bullets in him eludes your police manhunt for two days and then breaks in here, knocks out our maintenance guy, knocks out a cop and beats the living shit out of two more people, and then only goes down after they empty two guns into him from a range of about six feet?” He looked at them, his mouth smiling but his eyes very hard and, perhaps, a little afraid. “You want to tell me how that’s possible, guys, and I’ll get us all on the cover of the Journal of the American Medical Association ’cause it’ll be the medical miracle of the century.”
Gus just looked into his coffee cup. LaMastra was staring at Ferro, and Ferro was meeting the doctor’s flat stare, but after a few seconds all he could do was shake his head.
“He is dead, though, right?” asked Gus.
“Oh yes. Karl Ruger is very, very dead. He’s wrapped in plastic and in the fridge. But to tell you the truth, fellas,” Weinstock said, “I’m not even sure I want to do the autopsy on this guy. I’m not sure I know enough medicine to go in there and figure this out, and no, that’s not a joke.”
Vic Wingate listened to the news late into the night, then called Jim Polk for the inside word.
Polk said, “Yeah, he’s dead. Crow and Val Guthrie shot the living hell out of him.”
“Good,” Vic said. “Good.”
There was silence on the line for a moment and then Polk asked, “Vic?”
“Yeah?”
“Is this part of…you know? The thing?”
Vic laughed. “Everything’s part of it, Jimmy. Everything.”
“But — maybe I was reading this wrong, but I kind of had the impression that this Ruger clown was supposed to be on your side. I mean…our…side.”
“He is.”
“Not no more he ain’t.”
Vic just laughed and hung up.
He sat back in his lounger and crossed his ankles. The house above him was quiet. Lois was passed out on the couch and Mike had gone to bed on time. Vic had let him be tonight — there had been too much going on. Tomorrow he’d start working on some way to steer Mike back into Tow-Truck Eddie’s path, but that could wait. There was still a whole month before Mike absolutely had to be killed. Plenty of time.
For now Vic could relax and revel in the fact that everything the Man had said would happen had happened. It was a shame Ruger hadn’t managed to take Crow and Val Guthrie out of the equation, but there was still time for that. There was, he thought, time for the whole plan to unfold just the way Griswold wanted it to. Right up to Halloween night and the beginning of the Red Wave.