Innocents Lost (10 page)

Something wasn’t right. He could feel it, an uncomfortable sensation of foreboding that caused the hackles on his shoulders and the base of his neck to stand painfully erect. The current in the air was almost electric, alive with potential.

“If we guess wrong and your daughter isn’t here, we might as well be killing her ourselves,” Preston said. He glanced at the sheriff, whose hand already hovered anxiously over the grip of his pistol in its holster.

“She’s up there somewhere,” Dandridge said, breaking into a jog once they rounded the ERT van. “I can feel it.”

But that didn’t mean she was still alive. Preston sensed that his daughter was up there as well. He only hoped they hadn’t met the same fate. In his mind, he saw a small dark room with cinder block walls and a bloodstained worktable. Was it possible that it was up here too, in some remote survivalist’s cabin? The mental snapshot shifted, and the girl in the picture he had driven all the way from Colorado to save appeared on the table, bound in the same fashion as Savannah had been. A hideous shadow leaned over her from beside a tray of wicked implements and softly shushed her. Preston’s jog became a sprint, and together he and the sheriff hurtled through the forest toward the clearing where he would finally be reunited with what remained of his little girl.

VII

22 Miles West of Lander, Wyoming

Dandridge didn’t know what he would do if anything happened to Maggie. Too much time had already elapsed. Even if they guessed right and the killer had brought her here, the window of opportunity had been more than long enough for the man to do whatever in the world he wanted to do to her. What kind of father did that make him? Unable to protect his daughter in his own home where she should have been safe and sound? Emotions warred inside of him—anger, fear, helplessness, panic. He could barely focus on the ground as the path rose and fell over the alternately rocky and eroded terrain. Every second that passed brought him closer to the clearing, but they were seconds he simply didn’t have. He tripped and fell repeatedly, only to rise and stumble into a sprint again. His palms and knees bled, his chest ached from the exertion, and the physical reality had begun to set in. He was going to have to slow his pace to catch his breath or he was going to collapse.

Special Agent Preston lagged behind, but Dandridge could hear him huffing, struggling to stay close enough to maintain visual contact. Dandridge wasn’t sure if he trusted the man. His appearance had been too well-timed, too convenient. However, he did feel a certain kinship to the man, who had lived through what he now endured. Assuming he was telling the truth. He believed everything the agent had told him so far—either that or he was one hell of an actor—but blind trust was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

He fell again, only this time his trembling arms could barely push him up to all fours. Gasping for air, Preston caught up to him and helped haul him up. They both doubled over and sucked at the air as they walked.

“How much farther?” Preston panted.

“There’s a valley just beyond that rise ahead. We’re going to the top of the ridge on the other side. Maybe twenty minutes if we hurry.”

“Then we’re wasting time,” the agent said, breaking into a jog.

When they reached the crest of the knoll, the agent suddenly ducked off the path and threw himself to the ground on his belly. Dandridge was just about to ask why when he saw movement at the bottom of the slope below them, the silhouette of a man moving through the trees toward the thin stream. The needled branches allowed fleeting glimpses of the man, only enough to determine that he was alone, until he emerged from the tree line into a meadow of thigh-high weeds at the edge of the stream.

“Grant,” Dandridge said.

“The professor?” Preston rose and stared down at the man, who searched the bank for the narrowest section and hopped across. “What’s he doing all the way out here?”

“I don’t know, but I sure as hell intend to find out.”

Together they picked their way down the steep, rocky trail, skidding on the loose gravel and bounding between rugged crags mountain goat-style. At the edge of the forest, they regained visual contact with the professor, who had begun to jog on a relatively level section of the path.

“Grant!” Dandridge called, his voice echoing through the valley.

The professor paused and turned in a slow circle, apparently unable to determine the direction from which Dandridge’s voice had originated.

“Stay right there!” Dandridge ran through the slalom of pines and aspens, crossed the meadow at a sprint, and cleared the stream in a single leap. When he finally caught up with Grant, the relief on the professor’s face was evident.

“Thank God,” Grant gasped. “I was hoping I would run into someone before I made it all the way to the site. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for hours now. Your dispatcher kept telling me she’d have someone call me back, but no one ever did and now I’m out of cell phone range—”

“What are you doing out here? You were supposed to stay at the motel until we were through with you.”

“I had to tell someone, and since no one would return my calls, I figured that you were all still up here, so I decided to come out here in person and make you listen.”

“Listen to what?” Dandridge asked. He tugged on the professor’s arm to start him walking again.

“I think I know where the killer is.”

VIII

The sheriff stopped in his tracks and roughly turned him around. Les couldn’t read the expression on the man’s face: eyes wild, cheeks red, breathing ragged.

“Tell me!” Dandridge snapped, grabbing him by his shirt and nearly lifting him off the ground.

The other man, who looked out of place in a dirty suit, crooked tie, and sweat-stained shirt, pulled the sheriff away from him and shoved them both ahead on the trail. No introduction had been made, nor did Les really care for one. All he wanted right now was to get out of this awful forest.

Les drew a deep breath as they scrabbled up the slope and told the men everything he had learned. He described the petroglyph, the smaller human renderings, the alignment of the celestial bodies, and the man rising from the pit. Until he actually heard the words coming out of his mouth, he didn’t realize how insane he sounded. He half-expected them to openly mock him, or, based on their sour dispositions, toss him off the nearest cliff. Neither man reacted at first. They merely locked eyes and shared a silent conversation to which he wasn’t privy. After a long moment, the sheriff finally spoke.

“I want you to run, and I mean
run
, back to where the cars are parked. Get as far away from here as you possibly can.”

“So you believe me?” Les asked.

The men made no reply. They drew their side arms and dashed away from him up the path.

Les didn’t need to be told twice. He had delivered the warning as he had promised himself he would, and now, whatever happened, he could look at himself in the mirror with a clear conscience.

The men rounded the bend uphill and vanished into the forest, leaving only the sound of their scuffing footsteps in their wake.

For the first time in hours, Les breathed a sigh of relief. Granted, there was a part of him that wanted to further examine the medicine wheel, to be there when they found the man who had built it so he could learn its function, but the very last thing he wanted was to have to look into the eyes of a monster in the center of a ring composed of the bodies of murdered children.

He allowed himself a moment to revel in the sensation of the rising sun’s caress on his face, and then started to run as he’d been instructed. Skidding down the steep path, he shouldered the tree trunks for leverage and eased around boulders until he reached the meadow, where he picked up his pace again. The golden grass wavered at the urging of the wind as he sprinted toward the stream, which was visible only as a dark line through the field. His right foot clipped something hidden by the weeds and he hit the ground shoulder-first. He rolled over and grabbed his ankle, from which pain radiated all the way up his shin, and shoved aside the tall grass to see what had tripped him.

A metallic flash of the reflected sun against tan fabric. Les recognized the badge on the deputy’s chest before the man’s face, which was smeared with blood. Lifeless blue eyes stared through him and into the heavens from bruised sockets. The nose was broken at the bridge, the lips split over broken teeth. The man’s throat had been slit across the common carotids and trachea with such force that Les could see the hint of the cervical spine through the gaping laceration.

He gasped and scrambled in reverse, barely able to see over the feathered tips of the grass.

It was Deputy Henson, the same man who had driven him to the motel only hours earlier. The deputy must have returned here sometime afterward and been intercepted on his way back to the site.

Les surveyed the meadow around him. There was no sign of movement, save the rolling waves of the amber grass and the shivering branches on the trees.

He was in the middle of nowhere and it was a long journey back to the cars, for which he didn’t have a single key. The deputy—the
armed
deputy—hadn’t even had enough warning to draw his pistol. And the body had been invisible in the weeds. He must have walked within inches of it just minutes ago. For all he knew, the man who had killed Henson could by lying in wait mere feet away. Or he could be anywhere for that matter.

Les eyed the trail that ascended the slope to the south and made a decision. He reached for Henson’s utility belt and removed the gun with trembling hands.

If there was safety to be found, it would be in numbers. Especially well-armed numbers.

It was a long way back to the road, and he would be alone, separated from the others the entire way. At least in the opposite direction, there was a swarm of law enforcement officers who were undoubtedly much better trained with their weapons than he was.

Damn what the sheriff said, he thought, and struck off cautiously to the north with a pistol he wasn’t even certain he would be able to fire, held out in his shaking grasp.

IX

Preston focused on the silence. They should have heard something by now. Voices. The clatter of stones. Anything. Dandridge had said they were nearly upon the clearing. So where was everybody? Suddenly, even the crunch of his own tread was too loud, his heavy breathing amplified. There was definitely something wrong.

An odd pine appeared at the side of the path, twisted, grotesque. Several paces ahead, an aspen had grown in the same corkscrew pattern.

“We’re here,” Dandridge whispered beside him. He too must have sensed that something was amiss.

Preston eased to the edge of the forest in a shooter’s stance and surveyed the stone creation through the branches. More of those bizarre trees grew at random intervals. There was no one in the clearing. Nothing stirred, as though even the wind feared to enter the horrible scene spread out before him.

And then he saw the bodies. Skeletal remains wired in place as though to mock the innocence of the pose. Festering flesh. Bare bones. All in various stages of decomposition. The air was rank, the smell of death all around him, and beneath it, a faint, malodorous, yet almost sweet, scent. Preston recognized it immediately. Something had died here, and recently.

“Where are your men?” Preston whispered, leaning forward into a clump of scrub oak in hopes of gaining a better vantage.

Dandridge shook his head, apparently every bit as perplexed.

“How many officers should be here?”

“Seven,” Dandridge whispered.

Preston nodded and pressed deeper into the branches. A wall of cold air struck him. It had to be several degrees cooler, even with the swatches of sunlight that lent the ground a checkered appearance. He tried not to look at what was left of the children, for he knew one of them was his little girl. His precious Savannah, the light of his life, who had been left at the mercy of the elements as though she had been worth nothing. He seethed, the pain and rage boiling in his bloodstream. It took all of his strength to hold back the scream of futility that welled in his chest. All of these children, all of these lives prematurely extinguished. The horrors their families had been forced to endure, and the sorrow that would be thrust upon them when they learned the fates of the sons and daughters for whom they had prayed and held out hope for so long.

Even as she was now, he wanted nothing more than to hold his daughter in his arms one last time. Let her know that she had mattered and that he’d never stopped looking for her. That she had been his world and he would have gladly taken her place. That he was sorry he hadn’t been there when she had needed him most.

But first, he was going to find the monster who had done this, and he was going to inflict a measure of pain beyond the capacity of any human being to bear. Let them lock him away. With nothing left to live for, he no longer cared. He could deal with the consequences as long as he knew the killer would never hurt anyone again.

He turned to Dandridge and motioned for the sheriff to circle around the east side while he rounded the clearing to the west. Dandridge gave a single nod, and, with the rustle of branches, vanished back into the woods.

Preston crept through the foliage, one eye on the dense forestation, the other on the medicine wheel to his right. It was just as the sheriff had described it, only seeing it in person was much worse than he had imagined. The black stains of dissolution and the rust-colored crust of dried blood on the bones made them look tainted, as though the killer’s evil had leeched into them even in death. He noted the stones were bereft of the lichen that would have grown on them over time. The dirt was a riot of footprints, and there were small patches between the uncovered remains and the central cairn where freshly-turned earth suggested that something had been recently buried. Was that where they had exhumed the disks, and, if so, had someone reburied them again? There were large sections of scuffed dirt toward the north and central portions of the clearing, possible signs of a struggle, and the telltale shallow trenches of something heavy being dragged away into the woods. He saw splotches and arcs of ebon mud, and there hadn’t been any recent precipitation. There was no longer any question about what had happened to the sheriff’s men, but could one man have overcome seven trained law enforcement professionals or were they dealing with more than one killer?