Ghost Road Blues (Pine Deep 1)

The flocks of night birds boiled out in their ragged flocks from under dripping trees, littering the sky, their ironic calls lost within the long and desperate wails of the hastening police sirens.

Cars began skidding to a stop along the big curved driveway in front of the Guthrie farmhouse. One after another, lights slashing red and blue and white swords through the shadows. Doors opened and people erupted from the vehicles, swarming in and clustering around the fallen bodies, shining lights, opening emergency kits, searching for signs of life, trying to fight the blood that seemed to flow like fountain water from too many wounds.

Sergeant Ferro pushed brusquely past the gathering crowd of assorted police officers and squatted down by Rhoda, shoulder to shoulder with Jerry Head, who was pressing his fingers against her throat. Head held his breath and watched, exchanging a worried glance with Ferro.

“She’s alive. ”

Ferro turned and shouted, “Get a paramedic over here. Now!”

“Right here, sir,” someone said briskly, right at his elbow. “Please step back and give me room. ”

Head touched Ferro’s arm. “Ruger was here, Sarge. I saw him and we exchanged some shots. Positive ID. It was him. ”

“Where?”

“He ran into the corn. ”

“You hit him?”

“I…think so. Not sure, though. Looks like the guy who was driving that Chevy hit him, though. Ruger shot him as well, I think. ”

Ferro looked at him, searching his face.

The officer shook his head. “It was really confusing out there. The storm and all…”

Terry came slogging through the mud, his face stricken by all the blood and bodies. Everyone looked so damned dead. He didn’t know where to look, or how to feel. It was like being in a war.

He spotted Crow and ran to his side. “Medic!” he bellowed as he reached for his friend, touching his throat as he had seen Head do with Rhoda.

Finding nothing.

He turned away in despair and saw Val looking at him. She lay on her side, curled into a tight fetal position, her slim body battered almost beyond recognition, but her eyes were open. She looked into Terry’s eyes and read his anguish.

And screamed.

2

It was bloody work, and bloody awful.

Time shambled along, dropping discarded minutes as it stumbled toward midnight. The storm buried itself in the distant west, but now a cold, sharp wind blew in from due north, a wind with biting teeth and scratching claws. The workers labored on, shivering with the cold.

Three bodies were lifted off that stretch of muddy ground, carried gingerly by police officers and paramedics. A pair of female officers, Coralita Toombes and Melanie White, helped get Connie Guthrie dressed and took her to the hospital in the back of a police unit; the male officers gave them space, knowing that their presence, their maleness would do more harm to the sobbing woman than their badges would do to reassure her. Mark and another officer followed the ambulance. He was dazed and in shock, and lacked even the presence of mind to ask about his father and sister. His entire mind—what little was left on line—was focused on his wife.

More patrol cars arrived. More ambulances arrived. The po

pulation of the Guthrie farm swelled, and a crop of flashing lights grew all along the road.

Terry Wolfe tried to organize it all, tried to be the mayor, but he felt beaten up and so far beyond weary that he couldn’t remember feeling anything else. After a while the tide of events seemed to swirl around and eddy away from him, and he just drifted along, watching, letting the professionals do their work. He bummed a cigarette off Jimmy Castle and LaMastra lighted it for him, offering him a tight, meaningless smile before hurrying away to help Sergeant Ferro. Smoking in deep, steadying lungfuls, Terry walked around the house, walked in and out of the house, walked up and down the drive past the vehicles, trying to be noticed in case he was needed, but hoping that no one would need him for anything.

The three stretchers lay side by side near the ambulances as paramedics made fast the straps and officers moved their vehicles out of the way. Terry stood over them, and then watched as each person was lifted carefully into the back of one of the medivac units.

Rhoda went first, her face gray and still, eyes sunken. A ventilator was fitted over her mouth and huge compresses were taped to the bullet wounds in her stomach and chest; medics had started an IV of Ringer’s and were giving rapid-?fire medical assessments via microphone to a trauma doctor at Pinelands E. R. Looking at her, Terry felt so sad. She looked like a child, no more than fourteen or fifteen. A law student who just wanted to do some routine police work in a quiet arts community, just to get a feel for that side of the law. Well, he reflected bitterly, how does it feel, kid? Like a nightmare, I imagine.

They loaded her into the ambulance and closed the door.

Valerie Guthrie was next. She was swathed in bandages, her left arm taped firmly to her body, eyes lightly closed. Every once in a while those eyes would twitch as if she were watching some scary movie in there, and the monsters kept jumping out. Terry hadn’t been able to get a single coherent word out of her, and from what the paramedics said, it was probably more shock than injury. Terry wondered why. He didn’t much care for Val as a person, had always thought her too hard-?shelled, too forthright, but knowing that Crow loved her—and she loved him—made his heart soften toward her. She didn’t seem too badly injured, so what the hell could have happened out here to have broken her down like this? He drew deeply on his cigarette as they carried her past and handed her into the ambulance.

The last to be moved was Crow.