Body of Shadows (33 page)

That was true.

“How do you know all this?”

“Northway told me,” Kelly said.

“Why?”

“Because he’s going to kill me.”

“Why?”

“Because it was all the investigation I did initially that ended up bringing him down and forcing him on the run,” she said. “Then I was the one who saw him in New York and called Drift about it.”

After Jackie Lake called Condor, he called Northway to let him know he’d been spotted. Northway wanted Condor to kill the woman. Condor tried. He called Yardley to set it up. She called Cave; she couldn’t get a hold of him but left him a message. When she didn’t get a call back she let Condor know it didn’t look like the kill could be arranged before the morning. Condor called Northway back and gave him the bad news.

So Northway flew out and did it himself.

He made it look like Cave’s work.

“You mean cutting off the ear?”

Right.

The ear.

The rape.

The strangulation.

Cave did that sick shit on the side for his own personal enjoyment. No one knew about it for a long time, then Condor found out about it one day when he had lunch with an attorney named September Tadge, who got calls from a man telling her about these murders he committed. Condor had a suspicion it might be Cave. He dug into it and confirmed the suspicion. That’s when he met with Marabella and they decided that Cave was too sick to be part of the organization. They set him up to be hit down in Florida but it didn’t go as planned. They’ve been trying to kill him ever since.

“Anyway, Northway flew to Denver and killed Jackie Lake,” Kelly said. “As he was heading down the street, he spotted Cave sneaking into the woman’s place. A few minutes later you showed up. You saw Cave at the body. You figured he was the killer and ran. He chased you and you ended up slamming into a fire hydrant.” A beat then, “Here’s the ironic part. Cave was going to kill you right then and there but Northway chased him off. Northway was the guy with the long hair that Drift could never find.”

Suddenly
what happened at Cave’s house made sense.

Northway had Jackie Lake’s ear in a jar.

He was planting it at Cave's.

He was framing the man.

The vehicle slowed
and turned right onto a bumpy road.

“I think we’re near to where Northway’s taking us,” Kelly said.

Pantage pulled at the rope.

It didn’t budge.

“We have to do something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We have to talk him out of it somehow.”

“He’s too smart for that.”

“Let’s do this,” she said. “Let’s tell him to let us have a fight to the death. The winner goes free.”

“Why would he do that?”

“To watch,” she said.

“But he won’t let one of us go free.”

“Yeah but he’ll lie about it and let us fight, thinking that he’ll just kill the other one after he gets his jollies watching.” A beat then, “One of us needs to get our hands on something deadly. Keep a look out. When one of us makes a move the other one needs to jump in immediately.”

“Okay.”

“Kill him,” she said. “Don’t get second thoughts.”

“Trust me, I won’t.”

109

Day Six

July 23

Saturday Night

The car stopped,
the trunk opened and Northway pulled Pantage out and laid her on the ground in the mud. He bent down with his knee on her chest, held a knife in front of her face and said, “Do something stupid and I’ll gouge your eyes out. Do you understand?”

Yes.

She did.

“Say it!”

“I understand.”

“You better.”

He checked the ropes on her wrists, found them secure then unfastened the rope on her ankles, rearranging it so there was a two or three foot gap, enough to walk in small steps but not enough to run. Then he removed the rope from her knees and wrapped it around her neck like a leash.

Kelly Ravenfield got pulled out next and treated the same way.

He held the leashes, got behind the women and said, “Walk.”

They obeyed.

He took them past a small dark house and dilapidated barn, out into the terrain. The storm raged down. Lightning arced and thunder clapped.

“This is technically owned by the Apaches,” he said. “Condor funded the purchase. There are a lot of people buried out here. Did you know that?”

“Look,” Kelly said. “Give at least one of us a chance. Let us fight each other to the death, like gladiators. The weaker one will die. Let the stronger one go.”

Northway laughed.

“That’s the best trick you can think of? I’m disappointed. Keep walking.”

“But—”

He punched her in the back.

“Shut up. Keep walking.”

Ten minutes
into it he powered up a powerful flashlight and swept it across the field. A hundred yards away an orange reflector lit up.

“Head for that,” he said.

The light went out.

They walked in darkness.

The orange light
turned out to be a bicycle reflector taped to a stick.

Next to it was a hole three feet or so in diameter, six or seven feet deep.

Northway stood the women face-to-face and then wrapped them together with rope. He wrapped even more rope around their arms behind them and then gagged their mouths with rope.

They were immobile.

They couldn’t talk.

They couldn’t scream.

He walked them to the hole and forced them in, feet first, standing up. They fought but it did no good.

“This was dug just for Kelly, so sorry if it’s a little bit of a tight fit,” he said.

Their heads were a foot below surface level.

They were looking directly into each other’s eyes.

“There’s a man who uses this place by the name of Ghost Wolf,” he said. “This is how he buries all his people. It’s weird how people develop these little quirks, wouldn’t you say? You have to wonder sometimes how they get started on them.”

With a shovel, Northway filled the hole past the women’s stomachs, to just below their breasts.

“That’s it,” he said. “If I put any more in the compaction will keep your chests restricted and you won’t be able to breathe.” A beat then, “This way you’ll be able to last for as long as you last. What will happen after you die is that the walls will eventually cave in and cover you up, then the weeds will grow and the butterflies will fly. Pretty neat, huh?”

He scattered the remaining dirt.

Then he bent down.

“I don’t know exactly how it is you’ll die,” he said. “I don’t know if the coyotes will find you and chew your heads, or whether the insects will eat you, or whether the sun will bake you to death or whether you’ll just last a really long time and eventually starve to death. It’s interesting to think about though, wouldn’t you say?”

He was gone.

Ten seconds later he returned.

“Oh, and there’s one I didn’t think of,” he said. “Maybe the rain will just fill the hole and you’ll go gulp, gulp, gulp. It wouldn’t be pretty but it’s still probably better than the other ways.”

Then he was gone.

He didn’t come back.

110

Day Six

July 23

Saturday Night

Yardley had no idea
how long she was unconscious. The storm was still plummeting down. Her helmet was partially filled with water. It took her a while to locate the Kawasaki but when she did it fired up. The taillight didn’t work. The headlight did. With it, she located the gun and stuffed it back in her belt.

Then she headed east.

If her suspicion was right, Cave was headed to where Ghost Moon took her yesterday. It made sense not only because this was the exact way there, but also because Cave and Ghost Moon did the same work. They must have crossed paths and talked at some point, or talked to a mutual acquaintance.

The storm slowed her.

The front wheel wobbled.

Still, now able to use the headlight, she kept the pace up and got to the cutoff in half an hour. There she turned off the headlight and worked the bike through the pitch-blackness and the mud and the ruts.

When she got near the end where the old house was, the headlights and taillights of a parked car suddenly sprang to life.

The right taillight was weaker than the left.

It was Cave’s car.

There was no question.

It turned around and headed her way, a hundred yards off, leaving.

She got the Kawasaki off the road and laid it down.

Then she waited at the edge of the road, nestled into a rabbit brush, with the gun in her hand and the safety off.

The vehicle was approaching steadily but slowly, keeping the momentum up enough to not get stuck while not going so fast as to lose control.

She’d have plenty of time to fire.

When the car got to her, she pointed at the driver’s window and pulled the trigger three times.

The vehicle slowed and coasted off the road.

She approached slowly,
one careful step at a time.

She opened the door and the interior lights shot on. Cave was slumped face first into the wheel.

The side of his head was a bloody mess.

At least two of the bullets landed there.

She pulled him back.

He wasn’t Cave.

He was someone else.

Her chest tightened.

She popped the trunk to see if the woman was in there.

It was empty.

She got on the bike, turned on the headlight and headed for the house. No one was there, not in the barn either. The woman who got taken from Cave’s house was undoubtedly dead and buried out in the north forty.

She got on the bike and pointed the headlight towards Denver.

It was time to get to New York and leave all this shit behind.

She’d come back for Cave in a month or two. For right now, enough was enough.

111

Day Six

July 23

Sunday

Sunday was hell
in the making. The manhunt for Cave continued to turn up nothing; whatever rock the little asshole slithered under, it was a big one. Pantage and Kelly both remained missing. Drift was subconsciously preparing himself for the worst. The gladiator had a solid alibi and had been ruled out.

Out of desperation, Drift drove over to September Tadge’s house.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t care that you turned me in. That’s not what I’m here about. Cave has Pantage. Every minute’s critical. I need to see your notes on him and I need to see them now.”

She hesitated, deciding.

Then she said, “Let me get my purse.”

Drift drove.

On the way to the woman’s office he learned a few things.

For one, September never told Condor to communicate with the department or the chief in any way, much less give them the videotape.

“Well he did,” Drift said. “My career’s shot.”

September stared out the window.

Then she turned.

“After I give you the notes, I want to talk to the chief,” she said. “I’m going to tell him that Condor was mistaken. He had no authority to speak to anyone on my behalf. More importantly, he was mistaken about the videotape. You were helping me install a security system. What you did was just a test to see if it was working the way it should. It was done with my full permission.” She patted his hand, “When I tell him that, I need you to back me up.”

Drift nodded.

He said, “Thanks,” but his mind was on the notes.

There had to be something there to indicate where Cave might be hiding.

Ten minutes later
he had the notes in front of him.

They were handwritten.

September deciphered them as necessary.

After the first pass through, Drift had nothing of use.

They went through them again.

Still there was nothing of use.

“Do you remember anything that he said or did, anything at all?”

She looked blank.

“I’m sorry.”

112

Day Six

July 23

Monday Evening

Monday was a dismal
endless repeat of Sunday, meaning no Cave, no Kelly and no Pantage. Drift was officially reinstated given September’s words in his behalf, but he really didn’t care much about it one way or the other.