As Toombes saw it, MacVey was just another one of those NRA types who collected big guns because they were disappointed by the size of their own dicks, and had wet dreams about real honest-to-gosh shoot-outs with real honest-to-gosh criminals. The kind of small-town rube (though Toombes had to admit that there were plenty of them in the city, too) that had a yard-high stack of Soldier of Fortune and American Handgunner magazines next to his bed, watched every episode of COPS, and could recite the specs and stats of every high-caliber gun made since 1950. Toombes, in short, thought MacVey was an adolescent ass wearing a cop’s disguise, and having him as a partner made her miss Jerry Head, her own partner from back in the city, and it also made her uneasy, because one thing a cop needs for peace of mind is the knowledge that her backup is a professional and not likely to shoot her instead of the bad guy. Toombes figured that if push ever really came to shove, MacVey would probably shoot his own balls off while trying to remember how to get that monster Blackhawk.44 out its fancy breakaway holster.
As partnerships went, it was something less than a roaring success.
There is an old cop belief that under the right circumstances, given the proper negative stimulus, even the best law enforcement officer will sink to the level of an incompetent partner. Stupidity, as the saying goes, is catching. So is clumsiness. As they cruised along the road, they were both so caught up in mentally psychoanalyzing each other that they forgot to pay attention to what they were about. They forgot to look for Kenneth Boyd, who was walking alongside the road, knee deep in withered onion grass, heading in a straight line toward the Black Marsh Bridge.
If the officers had been driving more slowly, if they had been shining their spotlights along the side of the road, if they had not been fuming about being partnered with each other, then they would very probably have seen him, but they didn’t. Instead, they sped right past him, made the left that put them on Peddler’s Trail, and headed east. In minutes the unit was nearly lost in dust and distance, and then swallowed whole as they dropped over a hillock.
From his vantage point twenty yards up a darkened side road, Vic Wingate stared as the cruiser passed Boyd.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” he growled. “How thick can you get?” He fired up the truck and pulled out onto the road until he was just ahead of Boyd and then pulled to a stop in front of him.
“Get the fuck in!”
Boyd stopped and stared at him with intense hatred and naked hunger.
“I said get in! C’mon, we don’t have time to waste. And don’t get any maggots on the seat this time.”
The creature climbed in beside Vic and pulled the door shut.
“So much for getting a couple of trained observers to spot you leaving town. I mean, Jesus, how far up your own ass do you have to be not to spot an ugly fucked-up piece of shit like you right there by the side of the road? Maybe I should have put some neon friggin’ lights on you.”
Boyd just glared at him.
“Okay, new plan,” Vic said, putting the truck in gear. “I’m going to drive you over to Black Marsh and drop you off somewhere. Make sure you’re seen by at least two or three people. Make a scene…break a window or something — but don’t fucking bite anyone and don’t get fucking caught! You hear me? You have to be seen — clearly seen — but you have to get away. Do whatever you got to do to make it back across the river. Hide in the fields until you hear from me or the Man.” He reached over and smacked Boyd on the forehead. “Hey! You listening to me?”
Boyd’s eyes were red torches in the dark pits of his eye sockets. He opened his mouth, his gray tongue flicking over his lips. The hands in his lap twitched and spasmed, wanting to grab, to rend.
Vic pulled onto the bridge and the wooden beams rumbled beneath the wheels. Watching Boyd out of the corner of his eye, Vic said, “You’d just love to rip my throat out, wouldn’t you?” He laughed. “Go ahead and try it…and see what the Man will do to you. That’s providing I don’t kick your sorry dead ass first.”
The creature’s torn and bloodless lips formed a single word, Griswold, but there was no sound.
“That’s right — Griswold. You know you don’t want to fuck with the Man. Don’t think being dead would save you if you fucked with him. The Man would eat your soul!” Vic’s voice was thick and heavy and he leaned into the words, his smile gone now. Boyd’s hands gradually stopped their twitching. “Yeah, there are worse things than death, Boyd, and trust me when I say you don’t want to find out what they are.” There were fires in Vic’s eyes now, and Boyd slowly recoiled from them. “You don’t want to find out what they are,” he repeated softly as the truck rolled off the bridge and he headed southeast to Black Marsh.
Tow-Truck Eddie sat behind the wheel of his wrecker and felt something in his mouth. Frowning, he raised a huge hand to his lips and then looked at his fingers, surprised to see them glistening wetly, darkly. His frown deepened as he bent to sniff at the wetness. It had the sheared-copper smell of fresh blood. Tow-Truck Eddie touched his tongue-tip carefully to the viscous smear. It didn’t taste at all like blood. It tasted like tears. Nodding to himself in sudden understanding, Tow-Truck Eddie licked the black blood from his fingers and savored the taste.
A murder of night birds stood in a row along the branch of a fire-blackened tree on the edge of Dark Hollow. Seated on his log, the Bone Man stared into his lonely fire and read the secrets of the flames. The wind carried still more secrets to him, and he listened, hearing the echoes of distant, beating hearts. The Bone Man could still feel in his mouth the after-taste of the black blood that had burned so unexpectedly on his tongue. When he had first tasted it he had cried out in disgust and spat the ichor into the flames. The flames had burned it all up, but the sound it made was more like whispery laughter than the hiss of superheating moisture.
The north still blew its cold breath across the town, and the Bone Man shivered. He was always cold, even so near to the fire. Always cold. Now, sitting there, the taste of the black blood barely fading, the Bone Man read the winds and the fire and saw the days to come.
And he wept.
Chapter 25
Mike couldn’t get into the hospital but he was able to get through on the phone, though he had to claim to be Crow’s younger brother to bluff his way past the switchboard operator.
“Hello?”
“Crow?” Mike asked, not sure that the tired old man’s voice on the other end of the line was his friend’s.
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“It’s Mike. Mike Sweeney.”
“Hey, Iron Mike…how’re the ribs?”
In truth the ribs hurt less than the rest of him, so Mike said, “I’m cool. Question is…how are you? I mean…you got shot!”
“Twice. Both bullets right through the brain pan. Killed me deader than a doornail.”
Mike laughed. “How are you, or is that a stupid question?”