Ghost Road Blues (Pine Deep 1)

Gus cleared his throat. “I suppose we could make some calls. I don’t think we have enough uniforms and sidearms to go around, but we could issue badges and shotguns. Or have the replacements borrow the sidearms of the team going off-?duty. ”

“Well, sir,” said Ferro, “I’ll leave you to work that part of it out for yourself. For my own part, if we don’t get some action in the next few hours, I’m going to call in a request for additional officers from Philly, and we may be hearing from the FBI soon. ”

“Why would the FBI bother with this?” asked Terry.

“Well, sir, according to your map there, A-32 cuts back and forth over the Delaware River just here, and again here. ”

“Yeah? So?”

“Well, that side of the river is New Jersey, this side is Pennsylvania. ”

“Again…so?”

“Ah,” said Gus. “Something about interstate flight?”

“Uh-?huh,” said LaMastra. “Interstate flight is a federal rap, and that means the FBI can be asked to step in. But we probably won’t ask. ” He directed this last comment to Ferro, who nodded.

“Federal involvement is seldom a good thing. But that doesn’t matter right now. My captain has promised us at least a dozen officers. ”

“Get all the help you need,” Terry said. “I said it twice already, and I’m not joking, call in the National Guard if it’ll help. Let me be clear, Sergeant, I surely do not need Jack the Ripper slicing people up in Pine Deep. It’s bad for business, and it’s bad for me personally because I am friends with darn near everybody who lives around here. Please, do whatever—and I mean whatever—it takes to nail these three guys and get them the heck out of my backyard. ”

Ferro smiled a tiny smile, and gave Terry a curt nod. “We will do our very best, Mr. Mayor. ”

Terry nodded. Turning to Gus, he said, “C’mon, let’s get on the phone and see if we can’t raise some kind of posse. ”

“Hi-?yo, Silver,” Gus muttered sourly and followed his boss over to the desks.

Ferro and LaMastra stood looking at them, and then turned to stare up at the map, at the immensity of area that had to be covered in order to run Karl Ruger to ground. It was staggering.

“What d’you think, Sarge?”

Ferro shrugged. “Honestly?”

“Uh-?huh. ”

“I think this town is hip deep in shit. ”

“Yep. Pretty much how I would have put it. ”

2

“Christ, you three look like a hockey team in the penalty box. ”

It was true enough. Val sat with a dish towel full of ice cubes pressed to her forehead; her father sat next to her with a similar compress on his torn eyebrow, still flushed and slightly goggle-?eyed from the blow to his solar plexus; and Connie was dabbing at her face with an antimacassar from the couch, sopping up the water Ruger had dashed in her face to wake her up.

Across from them, Ruger sipped a tall glass of Early Times.

“You do realize,” he said in his cold whisper, “that all of this was unnecessary. If you would just follow the rules of my little Q and A, we’d all get along. Can’t we all just get along?” he said, and laughed. The joke was lost on them, but he gave a fatalistic shrug and kept his own good humor. “So, I think by now the rules should be clear. I will ask each one of you a question, or perhaps questions, and that person will answer. No committees, no debating societies. Just questions and answers. That’s pretty simple, isn’t it?”

They stared at him, hating him, willing him death.

He said, “Isn’t it?” leaning into the words.

“Yes,” they each said.

“Nice. ” He sipped the sour mash and hissed with pleasure at the burn. “Okay. Now, Miss Val, I believe you were about to tell me about your various boyfriends. ”

Val swallowed what felt like a cantaloupe in her throat. “I…don’t have any boyfriends. ”