Free Ghouls by Edward Lee Page B

cornfield? For a dumb, misted moment, he wondered if he had dreamed the phone call from Bard.
    Getting dressed, he felt like something risen from a lime pit. He staggered out to the Ford, buttoning up one of his father’s old coal shirts. The fresh air cleared his senses, and the cogs turned at last. It must’ve been a car wreck out at Merkel’s, and Bard needed him to help direct traffic. But when he started up and pulled out onto 154, his cop’s curiosity turned dark. His mind flashed a tumult of glaring images, like scenes from a driver’s training film, only these images he had witnessed for real. Cars crushed to twisted hulks, some tipped over, some burning greedily. Windshields spiderwebbed , blown out, safety glass spread across the road like halite. Bloodless faces agape in death, or worse, crisped black, and the endless pools of blood turning brown on the asphalt. Kurt had seen it all before, and he steeled himself as he drove on, knowing that he’d probably see it all again in a few minutes.
    The road curved gently but steadily each way; trees passed in a whoosh of morning-dark green. The dead possums he’d noticed yesterday no longer littered the shoulder. There would be more, he knew—people would be running them down and smashing them flat for the next five months, but at least the first wave had been cleaned up. It was odd, though. The sun was just now peeking over the horizon; he’d never known the animal control crew to come through at night.
    Another few bends in the road, and he could see Merkel’s field in the gray morning darkness. The cornfield had always baffled them; there was no one in town named Merkel, and nobody really knew who owned or worked the field. The corn would grow heartily all summer, then would suddenly be gone, as if harvested overnight, all without a single sign of farmers. Every so often kids would steal or dismember the scarecrow, but there would always be a new one up the next day.
    Kurt stopped on the shoulder just past the farthest boundary of the field, where the break in the forest ended and the trees began again. Parked directly ahead of him was Bard’s T-bird, the hazard flashers blinking rhythmically on and off. Bard and Mark Higgins stood off to the side, arms crossed contemplatively, their figures pale in the gray light. Swaggert and the town cruiser were not to be seen, nor was there any sign of the mangling car crash he’d envisioned earlier.
    Bard greeted him with his usual inexplicable question. “Was Swaggert fucked up last night at shift change?”
    “No,” Kurt said, and arched a brow. It was a question without pretense; Doug Swaggert was straight and everyone knew it. “Swaggert doesn’t drink, and he doesn’t do dope, either. That’s common knowledge.”
    Bard glared at Kurt, then at Higgins. His face seemed to be giving off heat. Kurt could tell he was fired up about something.
    Higgins said, “Christ.”
    “If he wasn’t shitfaced, then he must’ve fallen asleep at the wheel, the dumb fuck. Take a look at that.” Bard pointed down into the narrow gulch that descended off the shoulder.
    The town patrol car was settled there at the bottom, as if dropped. Kurt could see that the entire left of it was crumpled in; the car lay on its side so that the two right wheels hung aloft in the air. Dew beaded on the shiny metal and glass, sparkling. The passenger door was cocked open, precariously defying gravity.
    “Holy shit,” Kurt said. “Where’s Swaggert?”
    “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
    “There’s no blood inside,” Higgins told him. “Whatever happened, he walked away from it.”
    “Did you call South County General?”
    Higgins nodded. “Not admitted. And the dispatcher says she didn’t hear from him all night.”
    “He must’ve bolted,” Bard said. “Probably thought I’d hold him responsible for the car, so he just took off and left town.”
    “No way, Chief,” Kurt said. “If Swaggert wrecked the car