Dead Man's Song (Pine Deep 2)

“Tch-tch,” Val said, but in her heart she agreed with Crow. “Well, maybe one of these days karma will drop a transmission on him at the shop. ”

“From your lips to Kali’s ears. On the upside, we did have a good session after he got into gear. Kid has some good reflexes. Really good, actually. ”

“Honey…do you think you can teach him enough to do any good?”

Crow made a noncommittal noise. “Time will tell,” he said, and then changed tack. “So, how are you doing?”

“Okay, I guess. I’m out in the fields with Dee. Taking samples and such. ” She sighed. “And this afternoon I’ll be setting up for the funeral tomorrow. God, this is so weird. I’m doing ordinary farm stuff one minute and the next I’m planning how to memorialize my dad. ”

“I’m meeting that reporter out there at four. You want me to be there earlier?”

“No. I’ve got Diego and the guys. ” She told him about the plans, finding a strange sort of calm in the mundane details.

“Well, if you need me there today, sweetie, I’m there. You sound pretty wired. ”

“Thanks, but it’s just that I…I keep seeing him everywhere. ”

“I unde

rstand, baby. Your dad’s spirit is all over that—”

“No,” she interrupted. “Not daddy…I keep seeing him everywhere. ”

“Oh,” he said after a moment.

“No matter what I’m doing I always get the feeling he’s right there, watching me from around a corner or peeking through the blinds, or following me through the corn. I can’t seem to shake it. I mean…just now there was a deer walking through the corn and my first thought was him. ”

“Val…this is all still pretty raw. It’s just been a week, it’s going to take some time. ”

She made an ambiguous noise. Crow said, sounding startled, “Heck with the store. Let me tidy up a few things around here and then I’ll be over. Want me to pick up some Chinese?”

“That sounds good. ”

“See you soon, my love. ”

“Crow…?”

“Yeah, baby. ”

“I really do love you with all my heart. ”

“Me too, Val. See you soon. ”

She punched the OFF button and snugged the phone back down into her jeans, waved good-bye to Diego, and strolled back toward the house. As if in reflection of her mood, the sky was a weary gray with a sadness of clouds drooping low over the distant trees and a sigh of a cold breeze. A few birds flew overhead but they were hungry and lonely birds, flying fast to find other places where warmth and hope still prospered. Far above the clouds an invisible plane flew from some distant somewhere to another place, whisking by over the grayness of Pine Deep, the intermittent drone of its engine sounding like the moan of some sleeping person dreaming of pain.

As she walked, she came to the spot where her father had died and stopped. There was no sign of it now except for tattered streamers of yellow police tape tied to the fence posts. She climbed onto the fence and sat there in the cold, her short hair snapping in the wind, her dark eyes filling with tears, her mouth tight with cold anger, trying to grasp the impossibility of it all. Her father had died there. Right there, on that tiny stretch of earth that looked no different than any other soil anywhere in the world, and yet it was there, right there, that he had bled to death alone in the rainy darkness on that terrible night last week. The thought that his blood was still trapped within the soil made her feel at once totally repulsed and yet at the same time oddly comforted. It was a stupid thought, she told herself, but somehow she felt as though it meant that something of her father’s spirit remained here, too, as if some trick of geomancy had allowed him to linger. With a certainty as if of ancient ritual Val knew that day after day, probably for the rest of her life, she would come out here and feel for her father’s spirit in the air and in the soil. The thought that such a spirit, such a person who had been filled with so much vitality, so much love and gentle strength could simply end was just too horrible, and it made her feel terribly mortal. If Henry Guthrie could be snuffed out with no more than the flex of a finger on a trigger, then her own life, Crow’s life, and the life of their baby were all equally transient.

She thought also of another Guthrie who had died there, just a few feet from where Daddy had been killed. Young Roger Guthrie, on leave from the Air Force, Val’s handsome cousin who looked more like Henry than Mark did. Rog had been home just a week, but had picked a bad time for it. That was the year of the Black Harvest, three decades ago. A lot of folks had died that year, some from diseases born of the blight—but Rog had not caught any disease. He had been one of the victims of the Pine Deep Reaper. Right here, right at this spot. This place was awash in Guthrie blood, and the thought of it fueled Val’s rage.

Val wiped her eyes, feeling the wind back and freshen. There was a hint of moisture in the air, and the tang of ozone; it smelled like snow but was too early in the year for that. A storm smell, she judged. Another storm. God. The last storm had come on like this, growing in the afternoon, building all through the evening and then exploding in the deep of night with a force that had shattered her life. If there could be a worse storm—or a storm whose power could do more damage—than the one that had blown Karl Ruger into Pine Deep, Val hoped that she would never live to see it. The very thought of it made her stomach take a sickening lurch.

Or was that morning sickness? She tugged her right hand out of her pocket and placed her palm and spread fingers over her stomach. She was forty and had never been pregnant before. When Ruger had broken into the house he’d punched her in the stomach and Val had been terrified that her baby—her baby, she was not used to even thinking that word—had been harmed. But Weinstock had examined her. She hadn’t miscarried. Her baby was one thing about her life that Ruger hadn’t been able to lay his hard hands upon.

Val stopped and turned, looking up at the clouds. They were not yet so dense as to be featureless and while she stared at them, at the shapes and shadows formed by the slowly changing billows, she imagined that she saw a face up there. His face. Just for a moment—a pale face with flashing dark eyes and heavy features. It was there for just a moment, for a heartbeat, and then it was gone, blown by cold winds into some other disguise and then to nothing as the skies darkened. Shivering with the cold, Val turned and headed home while above and around her the storm drew back its fist.

Chapter 18

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