Weinstock sucked his teeth. “If you behave, I’ll have an orderly wheel you down to her room later so you can sit with her. She’s sleeping now, but as the day wears on she’s going to need you there.”
“I know,” Crow said. “Thanks. You know I proposed, right?”
“You told me about twenty times.” Weinstock said, thinking that Val would be very lucky if all the physical and emotional trauma she’d undergone in the last forty-eight hours didn’t cause her to miscarry. He was pretty sure Crow didn’t yet know that Val was pregnant.
Crow asked about Connie and Mark, Val’s brother and sister-in-law. Weinstock looked dubious. “She’s pretty rocky, though physically she’s okay. The shrinks are with her now, and will be seeing her off and on all day. I’d rather keep her, and Mark, a couple more days. We had some difficulties with Mark’s avulsed teeth, but we were able to clean the sockets and reseat both teeth. They’re ligated to the adjoining teeth, and he’ll have to be careful for a couple of months. He’s on antibiotics and will need root canal to restore the blood supply, but we can get that done, either here or he can see his oral surgeon, though he’ll want to check in with an endodontist fairly soon as well. That’s all fairly routine. Our residents reseat teeth after every hockey game at the college and twice on Friday nights after the bars let out. Psychologically, though, he might be as shaky as Connie, and the next few days are going to be very tough for them, which is why I’d rather have them here. He has very real grief to deal with, but he also has Connie to attend to. She was very nearly raped, as you know, and neither of them is coping with that very well. They’re both acting as if she
“Yeah,” Crow said softly, “Mark’s not Henry.” Which said it all.
“Few people are. I’m not a big believer in hell, as you know, but I think Ruger should burn for killing Henry.” His cell phone rang and he plucked it out of the pocket of his white lab coat, flipped it open, and said, “Weinstock. Yeah, Bob, what is it?” He listened for over a minute without saying anything, but as Crow watched the doctor’s face aged ten years and turned gray. Finally he said, “Okay. Thanks.” He sighed heavily and laid the cell phone in his lap.
“What was that all about?”
Weinstock cocked his head at Crow. “You know Nels Cowan and Jimmy Castle?”
“Sure. Why?”
Weinstock rubbed his eyes. “That was Bob Colbert on the phone. You know him. Teaches at the college, fills in for me as ME sometimes.”
“I don’t like where this is going, Saul. Did something happen to them? Nels and Jimmy?”
“Yeah,” Weinstock said wearily. “Something happened.”
(6)
Once the sun was above the corn and the bodies of Officers Cowan and Castle were zippered into black plastic body bags and taken away by ambulance, it became easier to search the crime scene and surrounding fields for the blood trails that Ferro and LaMastra knew had to be there. It was LaMastra who ultimately found the line of footprints leading deep into the corn, though there was little actual blood along the wandering path.
Earlier, after they had first viewed the scene, Ferro had put the call out through Gus that they needed a lot more men on the ground, and the request—fueled by early news stories of the manhunt and the killings—flashed through jurisdictions on both sides of the Delaware. By the time LaMastra had picked out the front yard of the Guthrie place was a parking lot, and more cars lined the service road and both sides of the verge on A-32 for a hundred yards north and south. Gus took names and badge numbers from every cop, and LaMastra divided up the teams while Ferro and a ranger from the State Forest Commission pored over regional maps. Cell phone reception was spotty so officers with high-powered walkie-talkies were assigned to each group. Gus Bernhardt made some calls and brought in a dozen men he knew to be top hunters or hunting guides, and he deputized them on the spot, mostly to enforce a confidentiality decree. Three teams of hunting dogs were brought in—the same ones that had failed to track Ruger through the rain two nights ago—and at 9:15 the search began in earnest.
