Dead Man's Song (Pine Deep 2)

Weinstock paused a bit before answering that one. “Since, um, last Saturday. When you guys were brought in after all that happened. She asked me not to say anything until she had a chance to tell you first, for reasons that should be obvious even to someone of limited intelligence, such as yourself. ”

“Thanks, bro. ”

“Got your back, man. In any case, when you guys were brought in Val told me that she’d taken an EPT that morning and came up positive. She said that she was going to tell you that night, but then Ruger showed up and everything went to hell in a handbasket. Now that she has, and having heard your plans to be the most annoying parent in history, can I assume that you’re happy about this? You didn’t ask for your ring back, did you?”

“Geez, Saul, what kind of a dork do you think I am?”

“Should I answer that or would you prefer a long awkward pause?”

“Bite me. ”

“Anyway…I do want to congratulate you, Crow, and to tell you, all kidding aside, h

ow happy I am for you and Val. With all the crap that’s been happening around here it’s sure as hell nice to have something really good happen. Mazel tov!”

“Thanks, and corny as it sounds, it’s like a fresh start. Shame Henry’s not here to see his grandkid. Or his daughter get married. ”

Weinstock moved across the room to allow the cleaners to mop where he was standing, and he lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. “Remember yesterday when I said that I wanted to keep Mark and Connie here for a bit longer? Well, between you and me, I think Connie is in some deep shit. This morning I talked with the staff psychologist and the news just isn’t encouraging. Long story short, Connie is exhibiting all of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder consistent with having been the victim of a completed rape, which we both know was not the case. If I were a superstitious man I’d say that Ruger put some kind of hex on her, but since I’m not a superstitious man, I’m going on the assumption that Connie may have had some preexisting psychological problems. Point is, she’s not responding to the treatments—and even this short-term there’s always some kind of forward movement, at least to the professional eye, but my people say no—and the meds we’re giving her to ease her stress are just making her retreat into sleep. She goes hours and hours without talking, and then she’ll break down into hysterical tears for no visible reason. ”

“I tried calling Mark again today. He blew me off like he’s been doing. ”

“He’s been a real bear to the nursing staff, too. Bites the head off anyone who comes in the room. He had one nurse in tears and another who wanted to strap him to a wheelchair and shove him down the fire stairs. I can hold on to them maybe—and I mean maybe—another couple of days and then I have to kick them both out of here. ” He considered. “Or…I think I’ll decide that I don’t like the way the reseating of his teeth is going. I mean he does have the blue liptinting you can expect from ecchimosis, so I guess I can use that to keep him in a little longer, at least until we take the gum sutures out. ”

“That’s a hell of a risk, Saul. I didn’t know you liked Connie and Mark that much. ”

“I don’t. This is for Henry. For Val, too, I guess. ”

“You’re the best, Saul. ”

“Yeah, well don’t spread it around. Anyway, go celebrate being a responsible adult with at least an adequate sperm count. Congrats and give Val my love. ” Crow clicked off and Weinstock closed his phone and dropped it in his lab coat.

The cleaners finished, packed up their mops and spray bottles, and left, both of them giving the room a spooked glance, their eyes darting toward the polished steel doors behind which lay three corpses. No—four bodies, because what was left of Tony Macchio was still behind Door #2. Three murder victims and one murderer who had been slaughtered by the Cape May Killer. He couldn’t blame the cleaners for being spooked, even with the lights on and the cold-room doors firmly shut, and he knew that it wasn’t just the fact that it was the morgue that was giving them the jitters—it was the fact that someone had broken in and stolen—actually stolen—a dead body. It was all very creepy, and Weinstock had to agree with their reactions. This whole thing was giving him an increasingly bad feeling. Not just the grief over Henry’s death and the deaths of the two cops, and not just the proprietary sense of violation he had about the violence and theft here in his hospital. It was just a general case of the heebie-jeebies. One of Crow’s words, and nothing Weinstock could think of described more aptly what he was feeling.

A really big case of the heebie-jeebies.

(6)

Newton came back to his desk with another cup of coffee, sat down, set the cup on a little electric hotplate, and frowned at the screen. All afternoon he had been busy making notes for his feature article, planning his research, surfing the Net to see what data were available, checking the Sentinel’s microfilm records of thirty years ago, and outlining his plan of attack. Most of the town’s folklore was easy enough to find—there were literally thousands of articles and over a dozen books written about Pine Deep, recent and long past. What was missing from all of this, however, were detailed and accurate records of the Pine Deep Massacre of 1976. That it had happened was certain, because there were secondary references to it, and he was able to cobble together a list of the victims by burrowing through public death notices, both in the paper’s records and at Pine Deep’s Town Hall. But there was no reliable account of the actual events, and none of the issues of the Black Marsh Sentinel for that year had been committed to microfilm. He found that really odd, since there were microfilm records of papers from 1960 through 1975; and from 1977 to 1998, when the paper began storing issues on disk and in Web site archives. But 1976 was missing. The whole calendar year.

Newton called one of his friends at the Pine Deep Evening Standard and Times, which was owned by a chain that published papers in most of Bucks County’s towns. “Toby?”

“Hey, my man Newt. They offer you the anchor of the CNN Evening Report yet?” Toby Gomm edited the op-ed page and was usually good for an info swap.

“Not yet. I’m holding out for Nightline. Hey, Toby, listen, Dick’s got me doing a feature piece on P. D. ’s haunted history, you know the kind of thing. ”

“Yeah, we’ve done a million of them. Bo-o-o-oring. ”

“No kidding. Look, I wanted to go a little further, maybe flesh out the backstory by including some stuff from the Massacre of Seventy-six. You got anything on that?”

“Before my time, but I heard about it. Haven’t run anything on it lately, for the obvious reasons. ”

Bad for tourism, Newton thought, but asked, “You got anything in the archives from September, October of that year?”

He expected Toby to have to look into it, but he said, “Nope. ”

“Nothing? You mean you didn’t cover it?”

“Nope, I mean that our microfilm records from the mid-seventies through about eighty-two got melted in a fire. Some asshole maintenance guy tossed a lit cigarette into a trash can and burned half the records room down. You have to remember that—it was when we moved to the new building. Late 1990. ”