The Mad and the MacAbre (16 page)

County Road 432 wended around the topography
of the mountains for twenty-some miles before it appeared to simply
peter out on the map. The cabins were just over fourteen miles from
the highway. If he pushed the car past twenty-five miles per hour,
he would be there in half an hour. Unconsciously, he eased off the
gas.

The river flirted with the road, but
remained just out of reach through the trees.

Gabriel switched on the headlights and
turned up the windshield wipers, which made the thumping sound of a
mechanical heartbeat that accelerated with his own. Between the
heat gusting from the dashboard and the oppressive forest, the car
was beginning to feel like a coffin. Cracking the window, he
welcomed in the crisp wind, which screamed through the valley. He
chased away the thought that it was the residual echo of the sound
his sister had made with her dying breath.

***

Gabriel recognized the final stretch leading
to the cabins as though only days had passed since he was last
there. In his mind, he still wandered the forest in circles
radiating outward from the small cluster of buildings, his throat
on fire from crying Stephanie’s name well past the point where his
voice failed him. The sharp pain in his gut intensified as he
rounded the final bend and turned down the short drive, which ended
in a rough gravel turnaround. There was a ring of pines in the
center, between which were several weathered picnic tables. Three
cars were already parked in front of the cabins beyond. He pulled
around and parked behind Cavenaugh’s red Explorer. More than an
inch of snow had already accumulated on its hood and roof, while
the two cars parked diagonally in front of it were only beginning
to grow a layer of ice.

He sat in the car a moment longer and
watched the snowflakes turn to droplets of water on the windshield.
His hand shook when he finally reached for the handle and opened
the door. After collecting his suitcase and backpack from the rear
seat, he headed past the other cars toward the front cabin. The
gold Lexus sedan presumably belonged to Kelsey Northcutt, Levi’s
father the gastroenterologist, but he didn’t know to whom the
forest green Chevy pickup in front of it belonged.

At the foot of the dirt path, Gabriel paused
to survey the cabins. They seemed somehow smaller, yet otherwise
little had changed. Maybe the dark wood of the exterior had faded
slightly, but the fixed green shutters beside the windows still
appeared to be a stiff breeze from falling off and there were more
shingles missing from the roofs than remained. The painted green
doors were chipped and battered, and again he refused to imagine
how they might have gotten that way. Thinner branches led from the
main path around the sides of the front cabin to the other two,
which were set just far enough behind and to the sides of the first
to form a small courtyard between them. The yellowed wild grasses
showed through the snow in matted clumps. There were no stumps or
other evidence of cleared trees, as though the lush forest that
encircled the buildings had simply refused to grow there.

He heard the grumble of tires on gravel from
the distance behind him and suddenly noticed that it was the only
sound he heard over the soft patter of his tread on the snow. Even
the wind, it seemed, couldn’t reach them on that isolated patch of
earth.

The front door opened and Cavenaugh stepped
out onto the wood-plank porch. Firelight flickered behind him
through the slots of the wood-burning stove.

“
Glad you were able to make
it,” Cavenaugh said. He smiled, but it was obviously
forced.

Gabriel nodded and continued up the path. He
ascended the warped stairs and passed Cavenaugh without making eye
contact. The warmth pulled him into the small room, where he set
his bags to the right of the door beside the others. There was
barely enough room for a threadbare couch and a small end table
with a kerosene lantern around the potbellied stove. He could see
the lumpy, stripped mattress through the bedroom door directly to
the left of the fire, and an avocado Formica countertop beside a
rust-stained sink without faucets through the door to the right.
Until now he had forgotten he would again have to become accustomed
to using the outhouse and the hand pump for the well water.

Cavenaugh rested a hand on his shoulder and
he nearly jumped.

“
We’re just waiting for
Maura Aragon now,” Cavenaugh said. “The former Maura
Evans.”

“
Chase’s sister,” Gabriel
said.

“
The only one who won’t be
represented here is Nathan Dillinger. His family feels that finding
his femur was more than enough to answer their lingering questions.
They just asked that they be notified if we come across any more of
his remains.”

Gabriel nodded once. He couldn’t blame them
for not wanting to learn the details of how their loving son could
have been separated from his right leg. The mere knowledge that he
had must have been painful enough.

“
We’re setting ourselves up
in the same rooms where our siblings—or son, in Kelsey’s
case—stayed,” Cavenaugh said. “That means the two of us are bunking
in the northern cabin with Jess MacAuley. She’s dropping off her
bags over there now. We figured she could sleep on the couch and
you and I could share the bed. Just no spooning.”

Cavenaugh laughed. Gabriel tried to at least
smile, but he didn’t have it in him. He had known how difficult it
would be to return here, yet he had been completely unprepared. It
felt as though all of the air were being sucked from the room. A
dull ache radiated outward from his head into every bone in his
body.

“
Might as well run your
stuff over there before the storm gets much worse,” Cavenaugh said.
“We’re all meeting back here as soon as we’re through.”

Gabriel grabbed his bags, walked through the
kitchen, and exited the back door. He veered left and passed the
outhouse, which was now nearly overgrown by scrub oak. Smoke
billowed from the aluminum cap on the roof of the cabin. He was
nearly to the back door when movement from the edge of the forest
to the right caught his eye, but when he turned, he saw only a
cluster of ponderosa pines and the maze of trunks beyond leading
into the shadows.

He set his bags by the back door beneath the
overhanging roof, and walked toward the tree line. Nothing moved,
not even ground squirrels darting across the detritus from one
mouth of their burrow to the next.

In his mind, he envisioned a younger version
of himself stumbling blindly through the wilderness, shouting for
his sister, dirt thickening the trails of tears on his cheeks to
mud. He had hoped never to feel that helpless again, and yet here
he stood now.

Gabriel was just about to head back to the
cabin when he noticed a series of tracks in the fresh snow. They
looked like those of a small dog, or more likely, a fox. Now that
he really thought about it, he might have seen a flash of orange
darting out of sight into the forest.

He watched for any sign of movement for
another minute before returning to the cabin to unpack his
belongings.

***

Half an hour later they were all assembled
in the front cabin, where they shared an awkward silence over a pot
of strong coffee. In the time it had taken Gabriel to unpack his
belongings, Cavenaugh had converted the main room into a kind of
command center. Satellite images were tacked to the walls, overlaid
with grids marking latitude and longitude in minutes and
superimposed with topographical maps. There had to be twenty of
them in all, and surely covered every inch of the National Forest.
The corner of the room was filled with stacks of equipment Gabriel
had never seen before. There were electrical boxes reminiscent of
the components of a stereo tower, coils of coaxial cable, and what
appeared to be two fancy metal detectors.

Gabriel hovered in front of them, away from
the others. He paced from one wall to the next and back again. The
coffee only seemed to amplify his nervous energy. He wished someone
would crack a window despite the storm. It was starting to feel
like a gym locker room in there.

Cavenaugh stood in the doorway to the
kitchen. He waited for all of them to absorb their new
surroundings. Gabriel couldn’t believe the amount of time and money
Cavenaugh must have invested into the project. Now that he really
thought about it, no one had asked him to contribute a single cent.
His first thought was that Kelsey must have financed everything,
but one glance confirmed that he was every bit as awed as the rest
of them. He sat on the arm of the couch, attired in the newest and
trendiest winter gear from L.L. Bean: a navy blue ski jacket, black
snow pants, and furry Sorel boots. His pale gray hair had thinned
over the last year, but he had taken such good care of himself that
it was impossible to pinpoint his age at a guess. The fire
reflected from the wire-framed glasses perched on his aqualine nose
as he surveyed the room. Will Farnham slouched on the couch beside
him, a stark contrast to Kelsey. He wore an old flannel shirt,
dirty carpenter jeans, and Wolverine boots that betrayed the steel
inserts over the toes. Long johns peered out over his collar and
from his pant legs. He had a thick black beard and a shaved head,
and brown eyes that appeared to track a little too slowly. Maura
Aragon sat beside him, nervously tapping her feet and doing her
best to avoid making direct eye contact with anyone. Her long black
hair hung over a face which would have been unmemorable were it not
for her crystal-blue eyes. She wore a heavy, knitted sweater
featuring teddy bears and hearts, jeans that clung to her wide hips
and thighs, and padded boots with faux fur lining the tops. Jess
MacAuley leaned on the wall behind them by the front door, sandy
blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. She had wide blue eyes, a
slender face, and plump lips. Even without makeup she was striking.
Her azure sweater brought out her irises, and her faded Levi’s
traced her long legs into waterproof hunting boots. She and Gabriel
had already exchanged clipped formalities in their cabin while they
unpacked, but he had yet to speak with any of the others.

“
All right,” Cavenaugh
finally said. “I assume none of you need introductions. So let’s
just get started. First off, thank you all for dropping everything
in your lives back home to come here. I can only imagine the kind
of sacrifices you’ve had to make to do so. With any luck, we won’t
have to make this pilgrimage again, and this will be the last time
any of us see this place or each other ever again.”

“
Where did you get all of
this?” Kelsey asked, gesturing around the room.

“
The maps came directly
from NASA’s Terra satellite. I had them blown up and printed. The
originals are still on my laptop, which allows digital manipulation
and zoom capabilities. They were generated just under a year ago,
so they aren’t one hundred percent precise, but they’re the best
available.”

“
They must have cost a
fortune,” Kelsey said.

Cavenaugh offered a weak smile and sighed
before continuing. The firelight made his eyes appear recessed into
darkness and highlighted wrinkles Gabriel hadn’t noticed
previously. “Behind Gabriel over there are two
GPR—ground-penetrating radar—machines capable of detecting remains
buried up to fifteen meters beneath the ground under optimal
conditions, and our communications and analysis equipment, all of
which are on loan from the Denver Police Department.” He turned to
Gabriel. “I trust you were able to secure an electron
microscope.”

Gabriel nodded and tried not to imagine what
the university would do to him if they found out he had borrowed
it. Granted, it was an older model he had procured from storage,
but he was still going to keep it in the trunk of his car until he
absolutely needed to use it for fear someone might break it.

“
Excellent,” Cavenaugh
said. “So what we need to—”

“
What is the deal with the
microscope and the germs?” Will interrupted. “I don’t understand
what you were saying about those germs on Nathan’s leg bone. How is
that supposed to help us find out what happened to
them?”

“
Gabriel?” Cavenaugh
said.

In a heartbeat, all eyes in the room were
upon him. He took a final slug from his coffee and set aside the
mug. Cavenaugh had prepared him for this eventuality, and had
cautioned him that there was one key piece of information he
intended to withhold in order to convince the others to join them.
Specifically, he made no mention of the similarities between the
bacteria found on Nathan’s femur and their fossilized twins on the
Mars meteorite. Gabriel still wondered why the evidence techs at
the Rocky Mountain Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, the FBI
forensics lab that shared resources with the local police, weren’t
tearing apart the hills in search of the almost mythological
extremophile.

Gabriel cleared his throat and began. His
gaze wandered restlessly around the room as he spoke.

“
The organisms they found
on Nathan’s femur bear an uncanny resemblance to a kind of
extremophile called haloarchaea, which has several unique
characteristics we feel could help us isolate the region where the
mountain lion encountered the bone. Extremophile is the name given
to microorganisms that require extreme environmental conditions to
thrive. In the case of haloarchaea, they need at least a ten
percent salt concentration in water to survive, preferably more,
which implies that we’re looking for a small body of saltwater or a
solar saltern.”

“
There’s no saltwater in
Colorado,” Will said.