“Okay, Officer, what’s going on?” Ferro asked, cutting right to the chase. “The radio reports were, shall we say, a little disjointed?”

Rhoda looked up into Ferro’s cold eyes. “The others are still down there by the suspect’s vehicle. They wouldn’t let me go down and take a look.”

“Why’s that?” asked LaMastra.

“Well…Officer Head said that there was a body down there.”

“Uh-​huh. And?”

“Well,” Rhoda said, licking her lips, “they didn’t say for sure, but I got the impression that it was in a pretty bad state. They wouldn’t say exactly what condition it was in, but when they first came back, they looked really upset. You know…shaken? Then all three of them got sick.”

“Oh, come on,” said LaMastra, laughing. “Jerry Head and Coralita Toombes getting sick? Get real.”

Rhoda just looked at him.

Ferro tapped LaMastra on the shoulder. “Let’s go have a look.”

“What should I do?” Rhoda asked.

“Just stay here. Stay by the radio. Your chief and additional units are just behind us. Send them on down once they get here.”

“Okay.”

To Terry, Ferro said, “Do you want to come with us?”

“Not particularly.” But he went anyway.

When they were within a dozen yards of the crime scene, Ferro called out, “Coming in!”

“Who is it?” Toombes’s voice called tersely.

“Ferro, LaMastra, and Mayor Wolfe.”

“It’s clear,” the woman called. “Kind of.”

They entered the clearing and saw the black car squatting there, dottled with dirt and corn pollen and blood. Jimmy Castle sat on the ground, his back against the bumper, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t even look up at them, but the three newcomers each exchanged a glance. They moved around the car to where Toombes and Head stood. Both officers held flashlights, but the beams were pointed at the ground to lead the way for the detectives. The side of the car, where the body lay, was in a dark bank of shadows.

Head stepped forward, clearly intending to block the way so they couldn’t see past him. His face looked strained, lined, and sick; it had paled from a deep brown to a sickly ashen gray. Beads of perspiration jeweled his forehead. He nodded at them. In a soft funeral parlor voice he said, “Sir, the crime scene is still pristine. Also, gentlemen, you really better hike up your balls before you take a look because this is some sick, sorry shit. I mean…I have never seen anything like this.” He looked at them, his eyes hard and deep. “Never nothing like this.”

“Let’s just get on with it,” said Ferro sharply, clearly annoyed at Head’s melodramatics.

Head just nodded and stepped aside. He turned and lifted his flashlight, training the powerful beam on the side of the car.

“Oh…” gasped Ferro.

“…my…” breathed LaMastra.

“…God,” murmured Terry.

Terry wiped the sweat from his face and looked at LaMastra, who had turned an unwholesome green. Ferro’s face was set and stony, but there was sweat on his upper lip. Head had joined Castle for a smoke at the back of the car, and Toombes was staring up at the moon as if she’d suddenly discovered a passion for astronomy.

“Get out the camera,” Ferro said, and his voice was hoarse. “We don’t have time to wait for a forensic unit.” He looked up at the sky. Clouds were racing in from all sides and the air smelled like rain and ozone. “It’s going to rain soon and we’ll lose the entire site.”

Nodding mutely, LaMastra knelt and placed the big briefcase on the ground. Opening it, he removed a big digital camera with a powerful flash unit. He checked to make sure it was adjusted for the bad light.

“Take a complete set.”

“Balls,” LaMastra breathed, but he did what he was told. Approaching cautiously, he came to within ten feet of the scene and raised the camera. He looked at it through the viewfinder, but he didn’t…couldn’t press the Release button. He just stood there, one index finger tapping nervously and unconsciously on top of the camera body.

“Vince,” a voice said quietly, and LaMastra turned, lowering the camera. Ferro’s eyes were kinder than he had ever seen them. “If you don’t want to do this, Vince…”

LaMastra inhaled through his nose, then shook his head. “No, Frank. I can do it. It’s just that…” He let it trail off. The English language didn’t really have a proper set of adjectives for describing the scene. Ferro nodded and clapped the younger man reassuringly on the shoulder. LaMastra raised the camera once again, drew in a deep, steadying breath, and began recording horror.

Flash!

Tony Macchio, former felon. Former low-​level mob muscle. Former enforcer. Former confederate of Karl Ruger. Tony Macchio, former human being.

Flash!

A mouth thrown wide in the absolute extremity of pain and outrage. Not just the pain of dying, but the pain of violation on an inhuman scale.

Flash!

Eyeless sockets, weeping red-​black tears onto bloodless cheeks. Eyeless sockets that saw into the darkness of the soul, a darkness unlighted by any autumn moon or camera flash.

Flash!

A chest raped of its secrets. Heart and lungs and life’s breath and soul torn out.

Flash!

A pair of clutching, armless hands, fingers spread out like the legs of dead spiders held fast to the doors of the car with long nails. And a pair of handless arms, folded uselessly across the spill of organs from deep within the invaded stomach.

Flash!

Two legs, broken and rebroken and twisted in puppet directions.

Flash!

Flesh, torn and lacerated, rent and bitten, bruised and gouged so that barely an inch of skin remained unblemished by the leprosy of violence. A destruction so total that it was only by an inventory of all the sundry parts that a puzzle of a man could be made.

Flash!

Flash!

Flash!

The flash kept popping, recording image after hideous image of the charnel house scene, until the film was gone and the Release button refused to yield even one more time to the horror there on the ground.

Once again Ferro laid his hand on LaMastra’s shoulder. “Okay, Vince, that’s good enough.”

LaMastra lowered the camera and looked at it, amazed that so simple and unassuming a machine could record and contain such things. He knelt down and put the camera in the briefcase, squinting up at Ferro. “You know, Frank, I saw the crime scene photos of the lighthouse.”

“Uh-​huh.”

“Same sort of stuff, man. Just ripped apart.”

“Uh-​huh.”

“Like it was a pack of dogs did it rather than a person.”

Ferro pulled in a chestful of air through flared nostrils. “Yeah,” he said.

LaMastra shifted around and sat down on the ground, only dimly aware of the crushed stalks and smashed ears of corn under his rump. He was also only vaguely aware that Chief Bernhardt had come down from the road, taken a single look, and then rushed past him to throw up into the cornfield. LaMastra turned and watched him with a strange, vague distance.

Ferro stood by silently pulling on thin latex gloves. “If the weather holds we’ll get a lab crew in here and see if they can lift prints. If not we have to spread a tarp…preserve as much as we can.”

LaMastra just sighed and looked up at the lightning. It was going to rain soon, but he knew there wasn’t enough rain in heaven to wash away this horror.

After a minute or two, Terry Wolfe joined them. His face was the color of sour milk, and he stood so that his back was to the car. He tried several times to form articulate words, failed each time, and then paused to take in a couple of long, slow breaths. Finally, he managed to say, “Is this one of the men you were looking for?”

Ferro snorted. “Well, that’s the car, sure enough. And there is plenty of evidence of cocaine and money in the trunk. As for the identity of the deceased? A pathologist is going to have to make that decision for us. As you can see…well, no, don’t bother to look, but there isn’t enough of a face to make a clean ID, and the fingertips have been, uh, chewed…so I don’t know if we can get…”

But Terry had clamped a hand to his mouth and staggered away to fall to hands and knees beside Bernhardt. They took turns retching and coughing. Ferro tried on an amused and superior smile, but it tasted wrong, so he spat it out.

Terry shambled back, wiping his mouth and looking even paler, if that was possible.

Ferro looked at him. “Are you okay, sir?”

“What do you think!” Terry gulped some air. “You figure that this Karl Ruger did this?”

“Well, I sure as hell hope so.”

Terry gave him a quizzical look. “You ‘hope so’?”

Nodding, Ferro said, “You should hope so, too, Mr. Mayor. That, or you’ve got two incredibly dangerous homicidal maniacs running around in your quiet little town.”

“Oh no…” Terry breathed.

“Relax,” said Ferro, “what are the odds of that?”

2

Crow closed his cell phone and slid it back into his pocket. He was beginning to get the first tingling of unease. He’d called Val’s cell twice and got no answer, and had called the house and gotten nothing. He wanted to get this job done and get over there.

The ATV was a chunky little three-​wheeled Kawasaki with puffy low-​pressure tires and motorcycle handlebars. Every time Crow used one, he felt as if he were in the jet-​speeder chase in Return of the Jedi. The ATV growled to life, hinting at more muscle in its belly than one might guess, and as Crow gave her some gas, it kicked out a cloud of dust and leaped forward.

“Hi-​yo, Silver,” Crow yelled, “away!”

Barney and Mike watched him go, standing side by side: the eighteen-​year-​old with the fake knife in his chest, and the fourteen-​year-​old with the broken rib and the marks of a near-​fatal encounter with madness flickering in his eyes. They watched until Crow’s taillights vanished around a bend in the road.