The Narrows(48)

“I do,” he said. He was aware that he hadn’t known how he felt until he spoke the words just then.

“Why don’t you go home and get some rest? Tomorrow will bring better things.”

It was a sentiment Ben’s mother used to say; hearing it now caused a chill to ripple through him.

“Ben,” Shirley said, like a schoolteacher attempting to gather his attention.

“I will,” he said. “I’ll go home, get some sleep.” He coughed into one hand. “First, I think I’ll stop by Ted Minsky’s place.”

Shirley made a barely audible sound beneath her breath and swiveled back to her fish.



5



The storm was raging by the time Ben pulled his cruiser up the long dirt drive that led to Ted Minsky’s farm. The farmhouse was at the top of the hill, a stark cutout against the storm-laden sky. Ben spied Haggis and Platt’s cruiser parked in front of the house beside the hull of an old artesian well, the cruiser’s lights dark and the car empty. Ben pulled up the driveway, which looped around to the rear of the house. From there, he could see the sloping fields and, beyond, the rambling structure that was Ted Minsky’s barn and grain silo. White fencing studded the hillside.

There wasn’t a driveway that led from the house down to the barn, but Ben could make out the muddy ruts that tractor tires created in the soil, so he spun the cruiser’s wheel and eased the car to a slow roll down to the barn. He flipped the high beams on but they did nothing but solidify the sheets of rain and a thin, smoky mist, so he switched them back off. The undercarriage shuddered as he coaxed it over the field. Just as he approached, he could see three figures wading toward him through the storm. One of them had a flashlight, the beam of which briefly blinded Ben as it glared across the windshield. He eased down on the brakes and brought the car to a stop.

Stepping out into the rain, he hit the floodlight on the driver’s door of the car. Melvin Haggis, Joseph Platt, and old Ted Minsky each lifted a hand to block out the glare of the harsh light. The choreography was almost comical.

“That you, Sarge?” Haggis said.

“Yes. Everything all right?” Ben asked, twisting the handle of the cruiser’s floodlight so that the beam shot off into space.

“Just some dead goats,” Joseph Platt said. Both Platt and Haggis wore plastic shower caps over their campaign hats and they both had their hands wedged into the pockets of their chinos like two kids trying to keep warm while waiting for the morning school bus.

“Can I have a look?” Ben asked, checking his Maglite to make sure the batteries still worked. They did.

“At goats?” Platt said. His skin looked like cheesecloth beneath the wide brim of his hat. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You really wanna stand out here in the rain and look at dead goats, Ben?”

Ted Minsky, wrapped in a bright orange rain slicker, made a disapproving noise.

“I do,” said Ben, moving past the men. He followed their footprints in the mud until he arrived at the back of the barn. There was a corral here and some concrete slop troughs that were quickly filling with rainwater. As Ben approached, lightning briefly lit up the sky along the horizon. He could see several sodden clods of wet hair lying dead in the mud.

He paused just outside the corral and shone his Maglite into the pen. Dead goats, all right. Even from this distance, he could tell that they’d suffered the same fatal wounds as Porter Conroy’s cattle the night before. A nonspecific disquiet settled over him like a shroud. Stupidly—almost ironically—he thought of the ridiculous article in Eddie La Pointe’s magazine about the Mexican vampire. The goatsucker.

What the hell is going on here?

The three men came up behind Ben.

“You see this?” said Ted Minsky, his voice a low growl. When he moved, his rain slicker sounded like a plastic trash bag. “These ain’t even my goats.”

“What do you mean?” Ben asked.

“They’re sold,” Minsky said, nearly shouting. “Folks bought ’em! What am I supposed to do now? They’ve been paid for. Am I supposed to give the money back? And get what for my troubles? A heap of dead animals?”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Ben said, moving his flashlight slowly from carcass to carcass. The beam froze on the mangled head of one of the goats. Even in the dark and from this distance, Ben could see the whitish dome of a section of its skull, the grayish hair around it looking as though it had been sheared away. And not just the hair but the flesh beneath it, too—bone gleamed in patches on the goat’s head.

His heart strumming, Ben turned the flashlight on another carcass. This one’s head had been opened up as well, but there was something else curious about it, too—the tapered horns at either side of its head appeared to have been broken. Glancing around, he couldn’t find the sheared-off pieces near the carcass.

There was a horseshoe-shaped latch affixed to a fencepost, keeping the gate shut. Ben lifted the latch and entered the corral, his heavy boots sinking a couple of inches into the soft, wet earth. Bending down, he cast a beam of light across the ground, hoping to discern any distinctive footprints in the mud. There had certainly been a lot of commotion—the ground had been churned and kicked up—but that, coupled with the driving rain, made it impossible to identify any specific prints. Anyway, they were all filled with water now.