Bloodletting (15 page)

"Both serial killers brought down by Hawthorne," Carver said. "The second, Grady, looks a lot like the Special Agent Hawthorne had with him today. Locke. What do you know about him?"

"He worked the Grady case, but outside of that, not a whole lot."

"And this guy I've been partnered with, Wolfe?"

"I've seen his name in conjunction with several high-profile cases, but I've been out of the loop too long now. Give me more time and I'll get you the real story on all three."

"Thanks, Jack. You know how much I appreciate your help."

"Well, I hope those pictures are of some use. I tell you what, those things made me uncomfortable, and that's really saying something. Look at them. Those guys were real monsters, Paxton. Killed just over thirty people between them. You be careful, son. Okay?"

"You know me."

"And that's why it had to be said." Jack paused as though weighing his words. "Just keep your head down, all right?"

"I'll check in soon," Carver said, and ended the call.

He perused the pictures again, a cold fist squeezing his spine. A generator grumbled to life on the other side of the tent, giving life to high-wattage halogens in reflective boxes mounted on yellow tripods around the site, readying themselves to hold back the steady advance of night from the east.

The spectral howl of a coyote drifted across the fading desert.

Carver couldn't help but imagine the disembodied sound coming from the mouth of Edgar Ross.

V

Verde River Reservation

Arizona

Kajika Dodge sat on his front porch, feet up on the railing, watching the scarlet sun set between his dusty boots. He drained the last of the Coors from the brown bottle and set it on the chopping block. He exhaled slowly, the hissing soundtrack of the fiery orb sinking into the sand.

The story had broken on the evening news, but thankfully, there had been no mention of his name or involvement. He didn't need to draw more attention to himself than he already had. Even now, rumors of government agents showing up on his doorstep circulated on the wind. Though he had spent the better part of his life on this reservation, he was an outsider in their midst, the physical manifestation of everything they distrusted and feared. The money, the outside world, the unknown. He carried the stink of unfulfilled promises and blatant lies. Bad enough he had stayed after his father's passing, but worse, he had brought the enforcers of a blind and uncaring government onto their sacred land. They could never forgive him for either, despite his generous donations to the community, which were perceived to be akin to Judas adding silver coins to a collection plate.

Soon enough, his mother would die, and with her any obligation he might feel. Her Parkinson's had progressed to the point that she trembled all the time, her constant agitation growing worse with each passing day. There had been a time when implanting a Deep Brain Stimulator would have helped slow the course of the disease, but her suspicion and resentment of the Anglo doctors and their unsympathetic hospitals had superseded even her will to fight for her life. And now he could only watch her die.

He tried the bottle again, but only dropped a gob of bitter foam onto his tongue.

His thoughts turned to Tobin. What exactly had happened in such a short time? A quick search of the internet had yielded more information on his old friend than he could stomach. Four little girls slaughtered. Innocent children abducted and confined for days on end, abused, bled to death, and then butchered. The mental image made him physically ill. That wasn't the Tobin he knew, if he had ever really known him at all. Tobin had gone after the younger girls for sure, but they had all been of legal age at the time. Of course, with the World Wide Web, a man could live an entirely separate life, indulging his depravities and sinking deeper and deeper into a mire of perversion he might not otherwise have encountered. The 'net was a digital Sodom and Gomorrah where the most unnatural fantasies could be stoked to a roaring blaze in dark corners that even the omniscient eye of God could never penetrate.

No, that wasn't the Tobin Schwartz he had known.

And the man who had killed Tobin had been standing on this very porch scant hours ago, asking questions about long-buried bodies found by the friend of a serial killer. Kajika didn't believe in coincidence. That's what troubled him the most.

He had dealt with the Feds before. Issues raised by Greenpeace here and there regarding the business practices and ethics of bioengineering livestock, as an expert source for various genetic queries, but never as a person of interest. He was an amoeba on a microscope slide. Not just under the FBI's eye, but others as well.

Headlights bounced down the dirt road, the one on the right blinking with the ruts. Rising before they even stopped in front of his house as he knew they would, he ducked back inside and returned with the rest of the cold six-pack. The men climbed out of the primer-gray truck, the wheel wells rusted into intricate lattices, and waited at the edge of his property in traditional Navajo custom, indistinguishable shadows from this distance.

"Well," Kajika called. "Come on up. Let's get this over with."

Three men made their way up to the porch, stepping into the light cast through the blinds from the living room window. They each wore cowboy hats. Two removed them as a sign of respect. He recognized each immediately.

"Yá'át'ééh," Kajika said.

"It's time we talked," Nelson Lonetree said, addressing him in English as though Kajika were unworthy of conversing in his native tongue. He didn't know Lonetree personally, but had just seen him on the television, posing for the camera.

"I suppose so," Kajika said, gesturing to the chairs on the porch, but the men were already walking through the front door. "Please. After you."

They seated themselves on the couch, each of the men discreetly running their fingers along the plush fabric and staring around the room in obvious awe and discomfort.

"You've done well for yourself," Jimmie Begay said, resting his hat on his lap. He managed a weary smile.

"As have you," Kajika said, nodding at the badge on the man's breast. He sat in the chair across from them. "It's been too long, Jimmie."

Once upon a time, they had been close friends, a lifetime ago it seemed.

Jimmie fingered the badge. He was proud of his accomplishment, Kajika could tell, but appeared out of his element amidst the trappings of wealth. Unlike the other two men, who wore their hair in braids, Jimmie's was cropped military-short, the uniform straining against his chest and broad shoulders. His dark eyes finally focused on Kajika's.

"Sorry to hear about your father," Begay said. "He was a good man. A proud man."

"A man who remembered his roots," the other man said before Kajika could acknowledge the sentiment. He still wore his hat, which spoke volumes. Arvin Benally, once the bigger boy who had beaten the stuffing out of him in elementary school, and twice more in their teens, now wore a uniform to match Begay's. He filled his out as well, but in a much different way. His gut tested the strength of the buttons, revealing elliptical swatches of his undershirt, and hung over the belt cinched around his much thinner waist. The top of his uniform shirt was open around his bulging neck, like his small head was sitting on a tire he couldn't quite swallow.

Kajika offered each of the men a beer before setting the pack on the floor beside him. None of them accepted, but he cracked one for himself. Anything he could say would only draw further disdain, so he sat silently, sipping his Coors and waiting for them to continue.

"You abandoned your family, your people," Benally said. "And now you return, bringing trouble with you."

"Enough," Begay said, glaring at his partner. He turned back to Kajika. "As this is tribal land, the FBI is required to liaise with the Winslow Police. In this case, the Criminal Investigation Section specifically. Let's just say that we don't feel our involvement is what it should be. Everyone we've dealt with so far has been dismissive and condescending. We know a couple agents came out here and talked to you. We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on this situation since we're being kept in the dark."

Kajika nodded and set aside his beer. "I don't know very much, but I'll tell you everything I can."

"You should have told us from the start," Lonetree snapped. "Do you know how stupid you made me look? We have a mass murderer's private graveyard on our land, and here I stand as the delegated speaker for the Archeology Department of the Division of Natural Resources, telling the world on national television that I thought the bodies were ancient Sinagua. You embarrassed me. You embarrassed your people."

"I didn't know." Kajika kept his voice neutral. "I would have called the police first had I. That's why I called you and the university first."

"We know about your former associate," Benally said. "And what he did in Colorado."

"I only learned of it today myself."

"Did he kill those people buried on Diné land?"

"How would I know? I can't imagine when he would have had the chance. We were working side-by-side every day until only a couple years ago."

"Surely you can understand how this looks to us," Begay said, assuming the voice of authority.

Kajika nodded. It looked the same from where he sat, and made just as little sense.

"You leave and stomp through shit, and then come tracking it back through our house," Benally said.

Begay rested a hand on his arm. Lonetree rose in frustration and paced the room, stopping to investigate the lighted aquarium. He tapped on the glass.

"What we need to understand," Begay said, "and what the Feds aren't telling us, is how the bodies were preserved in such a manner. If they haven't been in the ground for hundreds of years, then why do they look like they do? Whoever did it would have had to spend a whole lot of time working on the corpses to create such an illusion."

"They mentioned the possibility of smoke curing," Kajika said.

The two officers quickly looked at each other.

"What is it?" Kajika asked. The tension in the room was suddenly thick.

Lonetree tapped on the Plexiglas again and the Quetzalcoatl rose from its coils, expanding its hood. He shrieked and staggered away as the serpent struck at him, tagging the invisible barrier.

"Are you sure about the bodies being smoked?" Begay said.

"All I know is what I heard."

The officers stood and headed directly for the door.

"That thing! It's...it's an abomination!" Lonetree shouted.

"Get in the car, Nelson," Benally said, grabbing him by the jacket.

Kajika followed them onto the porch and leaned against the railing, watching as they clambered into the truck. The engine roared and the tires kicked up gravel, pelting the side of his trailer. The old Ford spun in a half-circle and rocketed back in the direction from which it had come. The last thing he saw before the tailgate vanished from sight was Begay reaching out of the driver's side window and affixing a magnetic siren to the roof. It bled the night red with a horrible electronic scream.

VI

Flagstaff, Arizona

Carver and Ellie had hardly spoken on the drive back to Flagstaff, both of them lost in their own thoughts. The silence was still comfortable, as though no time at all had passed since last they were together. It was strange how sometimes the past engendered a certain familiarity that made the present and future seem less frightening.

He dwelled on memories of dead children with animal genes and the faces of killers more animal than man. Was there a connection? Was that why he'd been sucked in by Hawthorne? Were all of these cases a continuation of the previous? How did that pertain to Ellie and what were the implications for the Native American geneticist?

His head spun with the preponderance of random evidence, running wild trying to connect dots so seemingly unrelated that it felt like trying to form a coherent pattern from all the stars in the night sky.

Ellie snored softly beside him in the passenger seat, her forehead pressed against the window. He looked at her and allowed himself to smile. She had to be overwhelmed and terrified, but she was handling everything with more strength than he imagined he could have mustered, had their roles been reversed.

He pulled off the highway and wound around the ramp into the parking lot of the La Quinta Inn, where they had reserved several rooms on the top floor. The car rolled to a halt beside Hawthorne's in front of the building, at the base of the outside stairs.

Ellie stirred when he killed the engine.

"Are we here?" she asked through a yawn. She unbuckled and climbed out before he could answer.

Carver led her up the concrete steps to the third floor and turned to the left. Rooms 314 and 316 were adjacent on the corner of the rectangular building, one to either side to allow unobstructed views to the east and south. He smelled their pizza from a dozen paces away.

"I didn't realize how hungry I was until now," Ellie said.

"I don't know which sounds better, eating or just closing my eyes for a few minutes," Carver said. He stopped in front of room 314 and knocked.

Wolfe answered the door, his right hand in his jacket pocket, the barrel of his pistol leveled at them through the fabric.

"What took you so long?" Wolfe asked. The corner of his mouth lilted into that cocky smile.

"You realize the media's all over the place down there, right?" Carver took Ellie's hand and led her into the room.

"You have a government car. Just plow right through them. It's not like it's going to affect your insurance rates."

It was a standard motel room: king-sized bed under a framed landscape; small table with chairs; television bolted to a dresser; bathroom and vanity to the rear. The doorway beside the closet stood open. One door was swung inward, the other into the room beyond, from which the mouthwatering aroma originated. This time Ellie guided him toward the source.