Bad Moon Rising (Pine Deep 3)

Back in the car they drove in silence for several miles before Weinstock said, “So, are we buying that this is a fraternity stunt?”

“I don’t know. Does it seem like something a vampire would do?”

Weinstock looked at him. “Not really. Somehow I don’t equate the living dead with juvenile prankishness. Even cruel-hearted and extreme juvenile prankishness. ”

“In the movies, do vampires come back from the dead if they’ve been incinerated?”

“Not usually. Fire’s always one of those fallback plans. Like beheading. ”

“So, Boyd’s toast in real point of fact. ”

Crow grinned. “I guess. ”

He took a tin of Altoids out of his pocket and put three of them in his mouth, then offered the tin to Crow, who shook it off. Crow put a Leonard Cohen CD into the player and they listened to that while the cornfields—lush or blighted—whisked by on either side.

They were back at the hospital by sunset and the two of them sat in chairs on either side of Val’s bed. A night’s sleep had transformed her from an emotional wreck back into a semblance of her stolid self, and her strength helped steady Crow and Weinstock.

They told her everything and then watched her process it. Val had a tough, analytical brain and Crow knew that engaging her in a complex problem was one of the best ways to keep her from getting too far into grief for Mark and Connie. There would be plenty of time for that later.

Val said, “Let’s go over it. Every bit of it, step by step. ”

They did, and each of them played devil’s advocate for any thought, observation, or experience the others brought up. They picked it apart, dissecting it, chewed the bones of it as the sun burned itself to a cinder and left the sky a charred black. Dinner came and went, friends stopped by to visit or deliver flowers and fruit baskets. The phone kept ringing—friends, relatives, the press. Val and Crow both turned the ringers off on their cells. Every time a nurse left or guests made their farewells, the three of them went right back into it, picking up where they left off.

Night painted the window black and the three of them eventually ran out of things to say. Val probed the bandages around her eye as she thought it through. “The question we keep asking is…is this thing over?”

Weinstock looked at Crow, who shrugged.

“Boyd and Ruger are dead, Castle and Nels Cowan are dead and buried. Mark is not…one of them. You’re sure of that?”

“As sure as I can be. And though my gut tells me that this is all over, I think that we should keep Mark and Connie here in, um…storage…until we find some way of medically determining if they are infected or not. ” Val shot him a hard look, but Weinstock held up his hand. “Let me finish. I can stall Gus on this—he’s stupid enough to buy any dumb excuse I make up. Maybe I’ll tell him that there was a chance that Boyd was carrying a disease and I need to do more tests to make sure that it’s nothing that will affect the town. ”

“That’s ridiculous,” Val said. “Nobody’d believe that. ”

“Gus?” Weinstock said, arching his eyebrows.

“Okay, okay,” she conceded.

“In the meantime,” Crow said, “I think we should make sure the bodies are secure. Locks on their freezer doors and maybe restraints of some kind. Newton’s working on the research. We should know in a few days…a couple weeks tops. ”

Val closed her eye for a moment, took a breath, then nodded. “Okay. That makes sense. ”

Crow patted her thigh. “I think whatever this madness was, we kind of came at it from an angle, and by the time we knew what it was, it was over. There’s nothing that indicates that this went further than Boyd. As far as the morgue break-in…if college kids did this as a Little Halloween stunt or some macho Pine Deep rah-rah bullshit, then we’re done. Fat Lady’s finished her aria and gone home and we can all take a nice deep breath and try to forget this all ever happened. ”

“That’d be nice,” Val said. “On the other hand, if it wasn’t frat boys, then we have to consider that burning the body is the one way to destroy any trace of physical evidence that Boyd was anything more than a psychotic killer. ”

“There’s that,” Weinstock agreed.

“Problem is…we might not ever know the truth. ”

“Uh-huh. ”

“So what do we do?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Val. I mean…I still have the videotapes and lab reports, but now I have nothing to back them up, and I don’t know how much mileage I can get out of that stuff. Even if I could make a case for each individual bit of evidence being faulty, or tainted. I’m not willing to risk my whole career on it at the moment, not if there’s a chance this thing is actually over. ”

Crow nodded and glanced at Val. “So what do you think we should do?”

Val didn’t answer right away, but her eye was flinty. “I guess,” she said at last, “what I’m going to do is hope for the best. ”