Dead Man's Song полностью

Val nodded and sipped her coffee. “Dad had heard him play his guitar a bunch of times the year before, and the two of them had talked quite a bit. Politics mostly, and books. Dad liked him, and maybe felt sorry for him, thought that Morse could have been someone. So, when Griswold cut him loose from the cattle job, Dad hired him. Dad was like that.”

“No one better,” Crow said, almost to himself and he toasted himself on the sentiment and sipped his drink. “As for Morse, we were the ones who gave him his nickname. The Bone Man.”

“You never met him,” she said, leaning forward to make better eye contact, “and probably the only things you’ve heard about him are the rumors and local legends, making him out to be something between Jack the Ripper and the Boogeyman, but that wasn’t who he was. He really was a good man. My dad was almost never wrong about people. He was a very good judge of character, which is one of the reasons he was so good in business.”

“She’s right,” Crow said. “Henry’d look you right in the eye and he’d know right away if you were going to deal straight or if you were a shifty bastard. As I recall,” he added with a smile, “he didn’t much care for me when he met me.”

“He liked you when you were a kid, honey,” Val said. “He just had some issues with you when you were…” She trailed off, realizing that she was talking in front of a reporter.

“It’s okay, baby, you can say it,” Crow said, then he looked at Newton. “I used to be a drunk. Or…I am a drunk, though I haven’t had a drink in years. What they call a sober drunk. I go to meetings. Val and I had kind of drifted apart as friends for a while there and when we met up again I was hitting the sauce pretty hard. That didn’t wash too well with Henry and he told me in no uncertain terms to dry out or buzz off.”

“He didn’t phrase it that way,” Val said.

“The hell he didn’t. You weren’t there, sweetie. Your dad looked me right in the eye and he was about fifteen feet tall and he told me to stay the hell away from his daughter until I had some self-respect.”

“Jeez,” Newton said, grinning.

“I tell you this, Newt,” Crow said, “because I want you to understand Henry Guthrie. If he thought Oren Morse was a bad man he’d have never let him near his farm, let alone near his daughter, and yet we worked side by side with the man, and almost every night Henry’d have us all on the porch—us kids, a few of the regular farm staff, and the Bone Man—and we’d hang out and drink ice tea Val’s mom made, with mint and lemon slices, and we’d listen to the Bone Man tell stories and sing the blues. We knew that man.”

Newton considered this for a moment, and then nodded. “Okay, you sold me. If Henry Guthrie gave him the seal of approval then he’s okay with me.”

Val chuckled. “You kiss up very well.”

“Part of the job,” he said, and they all laughed.

Crow nodded to Newton. “You can leave all that shit about me being a drunk out of the article, okay?”

“Sure,” Newton said a little too quickly, but then he caught the look in Val’s eyes, which were as uncompromising as a fist. Yeah, he thought, Henry Guthrie’s daughter right enough. Screw with her, Newt ol’boy and she’ll rip you a new one. “Sure,” he repeated with emphasis, giving Val a brief nod. She returned the nod and sat back in her chair.

“Okay, so where were we? Oh yeah,” said Crow, “the summer was coming to an end and fall was coming on.”

“And that,” Val said, “was when people started getting killed.”

“The Massacre?”

“Right,” Crow said. “That’s when it started. The first to die was one of the drifters. An old wino who’d been doing day labor with Morse, but who doesn’t show up for work one day near the end of September. The Bone Man and another guy go looking for him after work, thinking maybe he’s sick or something. The guy usually slept in a ragged bedroll under that old covered bridge near the reservoir and, he was there all right, but…well, I never saw it firsthand, but years later, when I worked as a town cop I looked at the case file, read the description, and saw the crime scene photos. The poor old bastard had literally been torn to pieces. Pieces, mind you—his throat was ripped out and his head was found thirty feet from his body, and the body had been partially devoured. No one knew what to make of it. Naturally, starving dogs were blamed. Seemed like a logical choice.”

“Sure.”

“Then it happens again. Same thing—another drifter. Guy never shows up for work, and when they find him he’s in his bedroll, torn to pieces and partly eaten. Two kills on two consecutive nights just rocks the whole town. They formed groups, loaded their guns, and killed damn near every dog in and around Pine Deep.”

“The killings didn’t stop?” Newton prodded.

“Of course not. Wasn’t any damn dog doing it, and the killings kept up, nearly every night. Third vic was another drifter, but the fourth wasn’t any drifter.”

“Who was it?”