Before the teams headed out, Ferro made it very clear that this was a search and apprehend job designed to locate Boyd and/or his stash of money and cocaine, but there was not one officer there who wasn’t reading the situation as a search and destroy. Ferro and LaMastra both knew it. Spotter planes were in the air before the first teams had covered half a mile and they crisscrossed the fields all morning. There was nothing they could do about the forest—the great Pinelands State Forest was too dense for any aerial surveillance, so when they’d swept the Guthrie fields a dozen times they refueled at Doylestown Airport and flew back to start a spiral search that used the Guthrie farmhouse as ground zero.
Ferro stayed at the farmhouse to coordinate, but LaMastra wanted to be out in the fields. He carried a Mossberg Bullpup shotgun with a twenty-inch barrel and an eight-shell clip, and there was nothing in his expression that suggested “cuff-and-arrest.” The same hard lines were cut into the faces of every man with him. It had become a blood hunt, and everyone there wanted a taste.
(7)
They let Crow in to sit with Val later that afternoon, but he had to have his police guard with him—a sullen Sergeant Jim Polk had the afternoon shift. The officer stationed in Val’s room was a fierce-looking female cop from Philly named Coralita Toombes, and she showed great tact by pulling her chair outside to allow Crow some privacy. Polk also left, looking pleased to be out of Crow’s company. Their dislike of each other went back years. For the next few hours Crow sat by Val’s bedside, holding her hand, watching her sleep and praying to God that she was not dreaming. They had been having some particularly nasty dreams lately—both before Ruger’s arrival in town, and after.
Val was swathed in bandages and hooked up to machines that beeped and pinged. A bag of saline hung pendulously above her, dripping steadily. The liquid was so clear that it seemed to exemplify purity, and that somehow comforted Crow. Nothing else these days seemed very pure, from the blighted crops to the pollution spread by Ruger and his crew. He hated it that so much of this muck had invaded Val’s life, he hated seeing her diminished like this. Val was the strongest person he’d ever known; she was as tough as her father, and to know that she’d been manhandled, pawed at, chased, shot at, and then nearly murdered by Ruger filled Crow with a rage so white-hot that it was, in itself, an example of purity. At that moment he would have gladly traded his life to roll the clock back a couple of days so that he could have made the choice to go out to the Guthrie farm instead of doing Terry’s errand out at the Haunted Hayride first. Had he done so he would have gotten there before Henry had been gunned down. This knowledge was a worm gnawing at his guts.
Crow bent forward and kissed her hand, but she didn’t stir. Her face was shrunken by the depth of her sleep and her right eye was covered by a thick gauze pad held in place by a circlet of bandages, but even with all that she was beautiful. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, clear brow. Her nose was a little askew from a motorcycle accident—the same one that had given her scars on her knees, breasts, and belly. Scars Crow knew very well from close study. Val’s black hair was fanned across the pillow like a raven’s wings. Her left hand was hooked to the IV, her right held in Crow’s hands, and both of them looked strong despite the slackness of sleep. Not girlie hands like Connie’s, but the tanned, strong, clever hands of a woman who owned and managed the biggest farm in the region. Hands that could be so gentle and yet could turn a wrench or hit a tennis overhand that could chip paint from the foul line.
