She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Head motioned to Castle to circle around the front of the car, and together they converged fast on the passenger side.
Time seemed to freeze.
Officer Jerry Head stared down at the ground by the side of the car. He stared at the blood-?soaked ground. He stared at the blood-?splattered corpses of half a dozen crows that had been peppered with buckshot. He stared at the man that lay there.
&nb
sp; At least, he thought it was a man.
Had been a man.
Once.
Not anymore, though. Now it was…unspeakable.
Head felt his brain go numb and somewhere off to the right of his sanity, he heard Jimmy Castle loudly throwing up.
3
Terry stood over Gus Bernhardt as he made the long string of calls to former part-?time officers, listening to the chief plead, cajole, entice, and even bully as he tried to pressgang the honest citizenry of the town into some kind of actual police force. In any other circumstance, the whole thing would be kind of funny. At that moment, however, nothing seemed even remotely amusing. Gus was sweating, and Terry could feel his own pores yielding their store of icy perspiration. He turned away and strolled across the office, focusing on Detective Ferro and his beefy sidekick, LaMastra. They were once again in a hushed, intense confabulation.
Terry didn’t join them, didn’t even linger; instead he moved restlessly around the room. Technically he was the senior official here, a mayor supposedly outranking out-?of-?town cops, but he felt like a kid who had accompanied an adult to the office. Everyone was busy with their own jobs, saying things he didn’t quite understand, doing things he could not help with, trying to accomplish things in which he could not actually participate. It was frustrating, but moreover, it was intimidating.
A phone rang on one of the desks as he passed it, and Terry glanced around to see if anyone was going to pick it up. No one so much as even turned to acknowledge this addition to the cacophony. Shrugging, Terry reached for the handset and picked it up.
“Pine Deep chief’s department,” he said in an official voice.
A voice said, “Terry?”
The connection was bad, making the voice sound distant and pale. It wasn’t a matter of static, for the line was clear, but there was a hollowness to the sound, as if the caller were at the far end of a long tunnel.
“Hello? Who is this, please?”
“Terry?” repeated the voice. “Is that you, Terry?”
It was a female voice, a little girl. Crisply, he said, “This is Mayor Terry Wolfe. Who is calling, please?”
“Terry…” the voice said, and for a moment the connection faded almost to nothingness.
“Who is this? We have a very bad connection, so please speak up. ”
“Terry, he’s back!” said the voice, and that was quite clear.
“I’m sorry, who’s back? Who is this?”
“Terry. You have to do something. ”
“Listen to me,” he said loudly and clearly, “you’ve reached the chief’s department in Pine Deep. Are you hurt or in trouble?”
Nothing but the hiss of an open line.
“Little girl…? Can you hear me?”
Across the room Detective Sergeant Ferro and his cronies were looking at him.
“Little girl? Are you still there?”