6

The big cop in the shiny black-and-white cruiser was tucked behind a billboard advertising the Pinelands Fringe Festival. He sipped a Diet Dr Pepper and felt the day get older one dying molecule at a time. There had been five cars in two hours. All of them local, none of them breaking any laws he cared about.

Then he saw the old Chevy blow past. The cop didn’t have a radar gun pointed out the window, but it didn’t matter. Guy had to be doing sixty in a thirty-five zone.

The cop reached out a hand and got as far as the switch for the lights and siren, but stopped there. It wasn’t the car that stopped him, or the profile of the big man behind the wheel. He hadn’t seen either before.

No, it was the birds that made him pause.

In the air, fifty or sixty feet above the car, a flock of nightbirds followed that car. More birds leapt from trees and joined in. All of them dark. No pigeons or finches. He wasn’t even sure they were crows. He knew those birds. Had for a long time. Birds like those anyway.

This was, after all, Pine Deep.

The cop leaned back and let the car go. Thunder rumbled off to the east. Very close. Maybe already on this side of the river. There had been a lot of clouds lately, a lot of rain. The early October crops were getting fat, but there was a weird feel to things. People seemed a little jumpy. The nights were colder than they should have been. Lots of roadkill on the highway. The cop didn’t like any of that because it reminded him of another autumn back when he was a kid. That started with storms and nightbirds, too.

There was a sudden bang of thunder accompanied by a supernova of lightning. The cop winced and covered his eyes; the cruiser shuddered.

“Jesus Christ,” he hissed and then fought to blink his retinas clear. The storm seemed to have suddenly leapt across the river and now crouched over the farm fields, its underbelly heavy with ugly udders filled with rain. The next bursts of thunder were loud, but not as shocking, as if the storm—having gotten his full attention—was settling down to business. The cop saw lightning reflected on the curved leaves of the corn, making them look like polished porcelain, and when the lightning flashed they looked cracked and ready to break. The cop ran the pad of his thumb along the red-gold stubble on his chin. A habit he had that he didn’t know he had.

Then his radio squawked.

“Base to four,” said the voice of the dispatcher, Gertie. “Base to four, over.”

The cop picked up the handset. “Four to base. Go ahead.”

“Mike, honey,” said Gertie, “are you off dinner yet?”

This was a small town and they weren’t all that formal.

“Copy that. Skipped dinner. I’m watching by the Fringe billboard on A-32. What’ve you got?”

“A 10-54 out on Barkers Farm Road.”

Officer Mike Sweeney smiled. That ten-code was for “livestock on road.”

“Walking or hit?” he asked.

“Hit. Tourist car plowed into a cow.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“I think so.”

He smiled up at clouds. “Then,” he said, “it’s a 10-52.”

“Oh,” said Gertie. “Right. But there was the cow thing, too.”

“Is the cow dead?”

“No. Messed up, though,” she said. “I’ve got some EMTs inbound. For the people, I mean.”

Gertie was a nice-enough person—though Mike was aware that he was the only one who thought so—but she was not cut out for police dispatch. She gave Mike the make, model, and color of the car, and the name of the tourist who’d called in.

“Gertie…?” said Mike.

“Yes, honey?”

“You don’t really need to use the ten-codes. You can just tell me a car hit a cow.”

“Trying to be professional,” she said defensively. “Crow likes us to act like real police.”

“We are real police, Gertie. But we can talk plain … and trust me when I say that Crow doesn’t give much of a damn about how we ‘act.’”

There was a silence. Not exactly sullen or stony, and—he was sure—not all that contemplative. Gertie was Gertie. More of a fixture than a part of the team.

He heard her clear her throat. “You going out there?” Her voice was a little stiff.

“On it,” Mike said and ended the call.

The old car pulling the U-Haul was gone and the road was empty. The locals would have read the sky; the tourists wouldn’t be flocking in too heavily midweek. Mike started the engine and pulled away from the curb, did a U-turn. Rain began splatting on his windshield. He turned on the wipers and his light-bar, kept the siren off, and went in the opposite direction.

He thought about that old car, though. There was something about it that he did not like. No, sir, not one little bit.