Dead Man's Song (Pine Deep 2)

“Would you rather just be Vic’s punching bag forever?”

Mike gave him a nasty look. “Just get on with it. ”

“Okay, lesson one is going to be about how to evade and parry. The best block is to not be there. You follow me?”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Yeah, I do. ”

(4)

Crow’s phone rang just after they were back in the store and he snatched it off the wall. “Crow’s Nest. ”

“Crow? It’s Saul—are you alone?”

“I can talk. Mike’s with a customer. What’s up?”

“Crow, look, I don’t want to sound paranoid, but ever since the other night there have been some pretty strange things happening here in town. ”

“You mean besides insane serial killers and body-snatchers?”

“I’m not joking around, Crow. I did the autopsies on—”

The bells above the door jangled and five people came in, laughing and chattering. Tourists. “More customers. Let me take care of them and call you right back. ”

“No, look…I’ll talk to you tomorrow at the funeral. This will be better in person. ”

“Um, okay. See you then. ”

(5)

Clouds had come up suddenly from the southwest and in the course of half an hour the sky went from a hard clear blue to a nearly featureless gray that was beginning to swell to a threatening purple. Val Guthrie was deep in the cornfields on the east side of her property, her father’s big . 45 tucked into the waistband of her jeans, snug against the small of her back, hidden by a red-checked thermal jacket. She was walking the fields with Diego, a short, barrel-chested East Texan who had worked for her father for almost twenty years, doing spot tests of the soil pH. It was still a clean 6. 54, far above the range of any of the surrounding farms, whereas most of the other farms had shown pH drops well below 5. 0 and even lower. Val’s soil remained solidly in the 6. 0 to 7. 0 range, even in the places where all that separated her fields from her neighbors was a wood-railed fence. Her closest neighbor, Charlie Kendall, had shown her the analysis of his samples and the levels of soil phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, sulfur, magnesium, and calcium had all dropped, even when a sample was taken five inches from a healthy sample taken along Val’s property line. “I don’t get it,” Val said. “It doesn’t make any kind of sense. It’s too weird to be an accident of nature, and if there is something in our soil that’s making a difference, then it has to be something that was deliberately put here. ”

“Like reverse ecoterrorism,” Diego said, trying for a joke.

“If it was something different in our soil it would show,” she said, shaking her head in frustration, “but it doesn’t. ”

“Nope,” Diego agreed. After twenty years he still had that East Texas drawl. “I was talking to Spence the other day,” he said, referring to Todd Spencer, his counterpart on the Kendall farm, “and he was saying that there was not one single stalk that didn’t show signs of root worm. Not one. They’re going to have to burn the whole crop, and this is weird because as you know they’re growing that Mon 863, that insect-resistant corn from Canada. Shouldn’t be even a small percentage of root worm over there. ”

“And we have no traces at all of them. ” Val shivered in the freshening breeze. “That’s really weird, Dee. ”

“No joke,” Diego agreed. There was a rustle behind them and they turned to see the stalks snapping back over the passage of something that moved quickly through the rows. “Deer,” he said, shrugging it away. He went back to collecting soil samples, but Val continued to stare at the spot where they’d heard the rustle, frowning. Then she took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out through he nose as if to cleanse herself of her jumpiness. Her cell phone rang, startling her.

“Hey, baby,” Crow said and the day seemed to brighten for her.

“Hey yourself. I was going to call you soon. I need an insanity break. ”

“You mean a sanity—”

“You heard me. ”

“Nice to be appreciated for one’s talents. Anyway, honey-chile, I just called to check in. Mike and I finished his first lesson in Kickass 101. ”

“How’d he do?”

“Metza-metz. Started off by fighting me tooth and nail about even discussing it, let alone giving it a try, but he came around. Kid is seriously spooked, though. Vic Wingate has really done a number on him. ”

“Uh-oh, I’m hearing that Captain Avenger tone in your voice,” she warned.

“Me? I wouldn’t lay a finger on him,” Crow said, then in a stage whisper added, “the slimy shit-eating bastard. ”