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on her first visit was gone now. Weeds had grown up in front of the gate and over the ditch- crossing with its culvert.
She could see in her headlights that the weeds had recently been pressed down. Where the fine grit and sand had washed off the pavement and made a little sandbar, she could see the tracks of mud-and-snow tires. Were they the same as the van tracks she saw in the parking median at Safeway? She didn't know if they were exactly the same, but they could have been.
A chrome padlock and chain secured the gate. No sweat there. Starling looked up and down the road. Nobody coming. A little illegal entry here. It felt like a crime. She checked the gateposts for sensor wires. None. Working with two picks and holding her little flashlight in her teeth, it took her less than fifteen seconds to open the padlock. She drove through the entrance and continued well into the trees before she walked back to close the gate. She draped the chain back on the gate with the padlock on the outside. From a little distance it looked normal. She left the loose ends inside so she could butt it open more easily with the car if she had to.
Measuring on the map with her thumb, it was about two miles through the forest to the farm. She drove through the dark tunnel of the fire road, the night sky sometimes visible overhead, sometimes not, as the branches closed overhead. She eased along in second gear at little over an idle, with just the parking lights, trying to keep the Mustang as quiet as possible, dead weeds brushing the undercarriage. When the odometer said a mile and eight-tenths, she stopped. With the engine off, she could hear a crow calling in the dark. The crow was pissed at something. She hoped to God it was a crow.
Chapter 85
CORDELL CAME into the tack room brisk as a hangman, intravenous bottles under his arms, tubes dangling from them.
"The Dr Hannibal Lecter!" he said. "I wanted that mask of yours so badly for our club in Baltimore. My girlfriend and I have a dungeony sort of thing, sort of Jay-O and leather."
He put his things down on the anvil stand and put a poker in the fire to heat.
"Good news and bad news," Cordell said in his cheerful nursey voice and faint Swiss accent. "Did Mason tell you the drill? The drill is, in a little while I'll bring Mason down here and the pigs will get to eat your feet. Then you'll wait overnight and tomorrow Carlo and his brothers will feed you through the bars head first, so the pigs can eat your face, just like the dogs ate Mason's. I'll keep you going with IVs and tourniquets until the last. You really are done, you know. That's the bad news."
Cordell glanced at the TV camera to be sure it was off. "The good news is, it.doesn't have to be much worse than a trip to the dentist. Check this out, Doctor."
Cordell held a hypodermic syringe with a long needle in front of Dr Lector's face. "Let's talk like two medical people. I could get behind you and give you a spinal that would keep you from feeling anything down there. You could just close your eyes and try not to listen. You'd just feel some jerking and pulling. And once Mason's got his follies for the evening and gone to the house I could give you something that would just stop your heart. Want to see it?"
Cordell palmed a vial of Pavulon and held it close enough to Dr Lector's open eye, but not close enough to get bitten.
The firelight played on the side of Cordell's avid face, his eyes were hot and happy. "You've got lots of money, Dr Lector. Everybody says so. I know how this stuff works - I put money around in places too. Take it out, move it, fuss with it. I can move mine on the phone and I bet you can too."
Cordell took a cell phone from his pocket. "We'll call your banker, you say him a code, he'll confirm to me and I'll fix you right up."
He held up the spinal syringe. "Squirt, squirt. Talk to me."
Dr Lector mumbled, his head down. "Suitcase" and "locker" were all Cordell could hear.
"Come on, Doctor, and then you can just sleep. Come on."
"Unmarked hundreds," Dr Lector said, and his voice trailed