Bad Moon Rising (Pine Deep 3)

“Not really. You?”

Weinstock tried to laugh and bungled it.

Crow said, “We’re burning daylight, Saul. Let’s do this or go home. ”

“Shit. ” Weinstock steeled himself and gripped one corner of the lid as Crow told hold of the other. “God help us if we’re wrong about this. ”

But Crow shook his head. “God help us if we’re right. ”

The lid resisted for a moment, but then it yielded to their combined strength and opened; they pulled it up and daylight splashed down on the silk-lined interior.

They stood there looking into the coffin for over a minute, saying nothing, lost in their own thoughts, each of their faces set into heavy frowns.

“Well,” Crow said. “Now we know. ”

“Yeah,” Weinstock said hoarsely.

“What does it mean?”

The doctor shook his head. “As God is my witness, Crow, I honestly don’t know. ”

Nels Cowan had been buried in his Pine Deep police uniform. His hands, bloated with decomposition, lay folded on his stomach with the brim of his uniform hat set between the thick, white fingers. The flesh of Cowan’s face was purplish, distended with gas.

“There’s no chance this is not him” Crow ventured.

“It’s him. ” Even so he took a sample of skin tissue just in case they needed a DNA match.

Crow lowered the lid.

“So—what’s happening, Doc?” called the caretaker. He was wiping his hands with a rag as he strolled across the graves toward them. “Did he have something catching?”

Weinstock began tightening the wingnuts. “Apparently not,” he said.

“Well, hell,” Holliston said with a grin. “Guess we can all be happy about that. With all that’s happening ’round here we don’t need no new troubles, now do we?”

Weinstock wore a poker face as he tightened one nut and started on the next. “No, we don’t,” he said.

Across from him, Crow worked in silence.

When they were back in Weinstock’s car they sat for a while, sipping Starbucks coffee and staring out at the morning. The trees seemed unusually thick with crows and the birds sent up a continuous cackle. John Lee Hooker was singing “Boogie Chillen”—from the only blues CD Weinstock owned, a gift from Crow that only came out of the glove box when Crow was riding shotgun.

“I don’t know how to think about this, Crow. I mean…I know what I saw on those morgue tapes. I know I saw Castle and Cowan walking around after they were dead. I’m not hallucinating. ”

“I believe you, Saul. You showed me the tapes. I know what you saw. ”

“But that was definitely Cowan in that coffin, and he is in a state of decomposition consistent with having been dead for a couple of weeks. ”

“Which means that he’s dead. ”

“So what did I see on those tapes?”

“I don’t know…I believe you, of course, but I don’t know what it means. Maybe Ruger or Boyd tried to convert them into vampires and it worked for a while but somehow, and for some reason, they died again. Died for real. ”

“Maybe. We don’t know enough about this stuff to understand if that’s even possible. ”

“I know one thing, though,” Crow said and he pulled his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on.

“What’s that?”