“Uh…right, the cattle he never sold. So what?”
“So, what happened to the cattle?”
“You mean, why did they die during the Black Harvest?”
“No, you ninny, what happened to them in the years before? He raised cattle, he bred cattle.”
“So, maybe he fancied himself a cowboy.”
“Cute. No, his herd, small as it was, changed size from season to season. Sometimes he had a lot, sometimes only a few dozen.”
“So what?”
“If he didn’t sell them, then what was happening to make the herd dwindle during the times when he didn’t have as many?”
“I don’t know, for Christ’s sake. Maybe he liked a lot of steaks.”
“No one eats that much beef. Not even Gus Bernhardt,” Crow said with a grin. He drew his machete to cut away some vines that blocked their way. “Plus, isn’t it odd that the killings of the people in Pine Deep only started after all of Griswold’s cattle had died off during the plague? Put those two facts together and you have a pretty odd pattern.”
“What…you think he was amusing himself by killing his cattle for years,” Newton said, “and then when they bit the dust, he started in on the local citizenry?”
“Something like that.”
Newton laughed. “Oh, come on! And people call
“You explain it.”
“Why bother? Griswold probably really was selling off his cattle somewhere else.”
“People in town would have known.”
“How? Did you have twenty-four-hour surveillance on his property? Maybe he had a private arrangement with a meatpacking plant somewhere, just selling a couple here and there to supplement his income, or justify his image as a gentleman cattle rancher, Pennsylvania style.”
“We would have known,” Crow insisted stubbornly. “This is a small town, and it was a lot smaller back then. People know everyone else’s business. Besides, in order for a person to sell off cattle they have to pay taxes on the sale, and Griswold never once paid taxes on a single cow or bull, not once in ten years. I checked. The only records show the cattle he bought to replenish his herd. I still think that he was killing them off himself.”
“Hell, he wouldn’t be the first farmer to shy his taxes.” Shaking his head and smiling, Newton said, “But even if he wasn’t, why on earth would he kill them himself? What would be the point?”
“Maybe he liked it,” Crow said. “Or…maybe he
Newton blinked. “Needed? For what? Some kind of religious voodoo thing?”
“There are other reasons for killing.”
“Such as?”
Crow cut away a thick vine, putting arm and shoulder into it so that the heavy machete blade sheared cleanly through it. His wrist and ribs had healed nicely and the exercise felt good. “For lack of a better term,” he said, “call it a primal need.”
“Primal need? That’s a weird choice of words.”
“It seems to fit.”
“Why? What makes you so sure, so certain of all this? You seem bound and determined to pin all that horror and all that crime on Griswold. Why?”
“For the same reason I already told you. When he dragged me out of the bushes, I saw his face.”
“Yeah, and you thought he looked like a monster. Come on, Crow, you were a terrified kid! Your brother had just been killed in a horrible and terrifying way. You almost certainly had nightmares the night before, and here it was, nighttime again. You were sitting in your yard, daydreaming, rocked by the loss of Billy, horrified by the other killings, too young to make any kind of sense of it all. Mix all that together and you have the perfect brew to warp a child’s perceptions of what he sees. Then someone tosses you into a bush and before you know it strong hands are pulling at you. You say that the face you saw was a monster’s face? Crow, with all that going on, how could you
Newton sighed. “Look, I’m not trying to badger you, man, but try to see it objectively. All the evidence points to Oren Morse—none of it points to Griswold, except the cattle thing, and I could work up twenty good reasons for that. You were a little kid. Terrified, in shock, confused. What you saw was a man’s face, his features probably distorted by shadows and moonlight and the leaves of the bush. There
