Dead Man's Song

That should have been it. Crow assumed that it was it, that Ruger’s bones would one day be found out there in the woods beyond the Guthrie farm. Yeah, we all know about assumptions. Ruger was far from dead. Last night—could it be just a few hours ago?—just shy of midnight, Karl Ruger broke into the hospital. He attacked and nearly killed the facilities engineer, shut down the main and backup generators—plunging the hospital into total darkness—and while everyone was screaming and staggering in blind panic, the killer made his way to Crow’s room, beat the shit out of Crow’s police guard, and attacked Crow again, looking for serious payback. Val had been with Crow in the room, and Ruger struck her a terrible blow to the head, fracturing the bone above her eye socket.

Crow was sewn together with stitches and badly bruised from their last fight, but even with all that he should have been able to defeat Ruger a second time because Ruger should have been a short step away from dead, but Ruger was not a shambling hulk, he was not dying on his feet. Instead he faster than before, and far stronger. Unnaturally strong, like nothing Crow had ever seen. He threw Crow from one end of the room to the other and was a heartbeat away from crushing his throat when Val—dazed and bleeding—crawled over and got the pistol from the fallen officer’s duty belt. She opened fire, and that gave Crow a tiny window of opportunity to scuttle over and grab the small throwdown strapped to the cop’s ankle holster. From point-blank range they emptied both guns into Ruger, and this time there was no doubt—every shot went home.

In a bizarre encore of the night before Ruger went down, almost immediately followed by Val.

And still it wasn’t over. In the brief period between Val’s collapse and the arrival of doctors, nurses, and a lot of cops, there had been a moment of complete insanity when something impossible happened, and no one but Crow had witnessed it. He had bent to reach across Ruger’s dead body toward Val when Ruger opened his eyes and grabbed Crow’s wrist with unbelievable force, pulling him close long enough to whisper five words. Just five, but they had punched holes in Crow’s mind.

“Ubel Griswold sends his regards.”

Then Ruger had laughed the coldest laugh Crow had ever heard, the light went out of his eyes, and he sank back to the floor. Dead for sure this time.

From that moment to this those words kept echoing through his mind. All through the process of being stitched, bandaged, moved to another room, Crow kept hearing that icy voice.

There was no way Karl Ruger could have known that name, Crow was sure of that. Griswold was thirty years dead, killed by the Bone Man and left to rot down in the wormy swamps of Dark Hollow. No one in Pine Deep even mentioned his name anymore, and yet Karl Ruger had used his dying breath to speak the name of the only person to have shed more blood, done more harm, destroyed more lives, than Ruger himself had.

Ubel Griswold sends his regards.

Jerry Head said, “No, after all that shit, what else could happen?” He laid his magazine on his thighs. On the cover Eva Longoria was wearing next to nothing and looking happy about it. Crow nodded and they both sat there for a moment watching the second hand on the wall clock tick its way around from 5:54 to 5:55.

“Jerry? Are they sure Ruger’s dead?”

“You kidding me?” Head asked, grinning; then he saw that Crow wasn’t kidding. “Yeah, that evil son of a bitch is dead for sure. You and your lady popped enough caps in him to kill him five times over.”

“You’re sure? I mean really sure?”

“Man, if he ain’t then I’m going to get myself a hammer and pound a stake through his heart.” There must have seen something in Crow’s face—in his lack of a responding smile—because he spread his hands and said, “Just kidding, man. You want me to go ask a doctor to double-check on Ruger, be more than happy.”

“No…no,” Crow said, letting it go. “No, it’s cool, man. I guess after everything that’s happened I’m just paranoid, you know?”

The cop looked at Crow for a moment, the nodded, and smiled a bit more gently. “Yeah, I guess you are. I been on the job eleven years and I never had a run-in with anyone like Ruger. Met some pretty bad dudes, but this Ruger guy was somethin’ else—and you had to take him down twice. Must have scared the living shit out of you.”

You have no idea, Crow thought. He said, “Guess I’m still a bit twitchy.”

“Shit, you got every right to be. I know a lot of tough guys—and I’m no pussy myself—but I don’t know anyone could have taken Ruger down like you did.”

“Hooray for me,” Crow said dryly and twirled one finger over his head.

“No, I’m serious, man. Some guys go their whole life never knowing what it’s like to really be tough, but you know, man. No one can take that away from you.”

However, in Crow’s mind Ruger’s voice whispered Ubel Griswold sends his regards, and there was no part of him that felt either heroic or tough.