Dead Man's Song

Mike Sweeney stared at the bruise—at the absence of a bruise—and then looked into the mirror image of his own blue eyes. He looked and looked, searching for answers in those familiar eyes—and then just like that flick of a switch that had made him step out of his body last night, those eyes were not familiar at all. One second he was looking into the eyes of Mike Sweeney, fourteen going on fifteen, teenage paperboy and favorite punching bag of the town’s meanest son of a bitch and the very next second he was looking into the eyes of someone he didn’t know at all. These new eyes were older, deeper, stranger. The blue was the same shade but it was flecked with red as if tiny drops of blood were sprinkled throughout each iris. The pupils were huge, like a cat’s at night, and the whites were veined with red. The face was different, too. Still bruised, but now the bruises looked superimposed over a different face, which was also older, with a stronger jaw and skin that was gaunt and stretched over brow and cheekbones. The lips of this stranger’s mouth were thin and hard as if he was fighting a grimace of pain, and the upper lip was cut by a thick white scar. The hair had, indeed, turned reddish brown.

Mike Sweeney stared at this face for a long time and the longer he stared the clearer the image in the mirror became, and the less clear the look in the flesh-and-blood face was. Those eyes, his real eyes, dulled into glass as if they were the eyes of a mannequin. Anyone looking at those eyes would have said that there was no one home.

At fourteen, Mike had never heard the expression fugue state before. Had he been in any way cognizant of what was happening at that moment—which would be a paradoxical impossibility—he would have seen a true fugue state. For the moment, however, Mike Sweeney was indeed not home. At that moment there was no Mike Sweeney. There was something else. Call it a chrysalis.

He turned and went back to bed, his body functioning with reflexive efficiency even to the point of turning out the bathroom light. He climbed into bed, pulled the covers up, and lay there, staring up at the ceiling and seeing absolutely nothing. Certainly he didn’t see the ghostly figure of a gray-skinned man with a guitar sitting on the chair of his computer table.

When he woke later that morning, he would remember nothing at all about what he had seen in the mirror, and the thought that the bruise on his stomach had healed too fast would not even enter his mind.

As the boy slept, the figure sitting on the chair sat and stared at him, leaning forward, elbows on knees, eyes intent on the lines of the boy’s face, wondering if he should be filled with hope or despair.

It was a toss-up.

(5)

Detective Sergeant Frank Ferro of the Philadelphia Police Department’s narcotics division was a tall middle-aged man with dark hair going gray, dark brown skin, and a face that generally looked as dour and lugubrious as a funeral director’s. Exhaustion was painted on his features and evident in the droop of his broad shoulders. It had been a long couple of days since he and his partner, Vince LaMastra, had followed Ruger’s trail to Pine Deep and had stayed to oversee the manhunt. Hours of grueling work as well as exposure to the killer’s grotesque handiwork had burned Ferro down to a weary, shambling shadow of himself. He had only recently come back to his hotel room after the incident at the hospital, and was heading into the bathroom to take a shower, when his cell phone rang. When you’re a cop, a call before dawn is never going to be good news, and he paused for just a moment, giving the cell phone an accusatory glare as if it was a friend who had kicked him when he was down; then he bent and scooped up the phone from the bedside table and flipped it open. “Ferro.”

“Frank?” It was Vince LaMastra, sounding tired but stressed. “I just got a call from Chief Bernhardt…those two officers we left at the Guthrie Farm to maintain the crime scene…?” He ended it like a question.

“What about them?”

“Frank…they’re dead. Both of them.”

“What?”

“I don’t have the details, Frank. Got to be Boyd, though. There’s no one else…”

“No…” he breathed, squeezing his eyes shut against the immensity of the news and against his own tottering weariness. He took a deep breath. “Two minutes, Vince. In the lobby.” He disconnected and stared at the middle distance for a long moment.

“Jesus Christ,” he said and reached for his gun.

Chapter 2

(1)

“Hi, is this Lois Wingate?”

“Yes?”

The voice on the phone was soft, cautious, and Crow could picture her pale and timid face, the eyes that always looked afraid. No wonder, he thought, being married to Vic Wingate must be a real treat. “Lois, this is Malcolm Crow. You remember me from high school? I own the—”

“Yes. That store where Mike gets his comics.”

“Right, and sorry for calling so early. I don’t know if Mike told you yet, but I offered him a job at my store starting tomorrow.”

“He has his paper route.”