Bloodletting (11 page)

The blood.

All of the victims had been exsanguinated, and they had yet to find the blood. Was there something of importance hidden within? Was the true goal of the killing to collect the blood for some purpose or to prevent some element of it from being found? There was definitely something there...something to either directly identify the culprits or explain their motivations.

If there was something valuable in the blood, then there had to be a link between all of the deceased they had yet to explore. He needed to find it.

"Is Tobin okay?" Kajika persisted. There was genuine concern on his face.

"Why would someone need the blood from his victims?" Carver asked. "What would he do with it?"

"Are you suggesting Tobin was involved? I know he has issues, but he certainly isn't capable of killing anyone."

"Issues?" Wolfe said.

"Chemical imbalance. But he was religious about staying proactive. Shrinks. Pills. All that jazz. I mean, he got really nervous and edgy when I told him my plans to sell the business, but we practically started the business together. It wasn't like I was going to screw him over. The offer was for more than I could ever spend, so I cashed him out. Last I knew though, he'd stayed on and was happy enough working for the new corporation."

"They fired him six months ago," Carver said.

"Six months? That can't be right. I think I last talked to him maybe two months ago and he said everything was going great. He would have told me if--"

"The blood," Carver said. "What could he do with the blood of his--?"

He was interrupted by his ringing phone.

Snatching it from his pocket, he saw the incoming call was from Marshall at the lab.

"Hello?"

"I'm downloading your facial reconstruction now."

Wolfe shot Carver a look, but he held up a finger to signify it would be just a moment.

"I'm right in the middle of something, Marshall."

"I'm sorry, your eminence. Am I disturbing you?"

"I'll call you back in a bit."

"How about 'Thanks for dropping everything to do me a huge favor, Marshall' or maybe 'I owe you big time, buddy'?"

"We both know I owe," Carver said. "I'm buying for the foreseeable future."

"That's all I wanted to hear," Marshall said. "I'm sending the image through now. I'll run it through the missing persons database when I hang up. You'll be the first to know if I get a hit."

Marshall ended the call and Carver opened the photo file.

"Jesus," he gasped, nearly dropping the phone. He turned to Wolfe. "We have to go."

"We aren't done here yet."

"Then just give me the keys!"

"I said--"

Carver grabbed Wolfe by the jacket and shoved him against the wall.

"Give me the goddamn keys!"

The impact jarred Wolfe's glasses from his face. Carver stared into nearly clear blue eyes so light they appeared incapable of sight, like those of a Siberian husky or those of a...wolf.

Wolfe knocked Carver's arms away and straightened his jacket. He calmly knelt, picked up his glasses, and replaced them over his eyes.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Dodge," Wolfe said. "Would you mind if we returned later to ask some more questions?"

Kajika could only nod.

Wolfe produced the car keys from his pocket. "Shall we, Special Agent Carver?"

Carver was barely out the door when Wolfe grabbed him by the upper arm and turned him, their faces scant inches apart.

Wolfe bared his teeth.

"Don't ever touch me again."

VIII

Sinagua Ruins

36 Miles Northeast of Flagstaff, Arizona

"He still has no idea," the man said. He was nothing more than a shadow behind the tinted glass in the passenger seat of the black sedan parked along the side of the dirt road between its twin and the ERT van.

He held the cell phone to his ear and watched the commotion off in the desert to the east.

"I don't share your optimism," he said. "He has yet to demonstrate any appreciable--"

The voice on the other end cut him off. A faint trace of anger pinched his lips, but quickly vanished.

To his left, the driver tapped a tuneless melody on the steering wheel. He was a beast of a man, the backs of his hands hairy to the first knuckles, his face bristled with stubble despite his morning shave.

"How long have we been trying to track him? And you think this guy's just going to swoop in and--"

The caller interrupted him again, but this time he made no effort to hide his irritation. He reached across the console and grabbed the driver's right hand to stop the incessant drumming.

"Yes, sir," he said, relaxing his fierce grip. The driver didn't attempt to resume. "Yes, sir. He left a calling card." He paused for the response. "Obsidian figurines. A bat and a tapir."

He tilted the rear view mirror so he could see himself, and adjusted his sunglasses. They only hid his eyebrow, not the four parallel scars marring his forehead to the hairline.

"Yes, sir. It definitely confirms our suspicions, but I don't believe for a second that's where he is. He's still close. I can feel him. He's just taunting us now."

The driver began to tap the wheel unconsciously again, but Hawthorne silenced him with a look. Though the driver continued to stare straight ahead, the bulging muscles in his angular jaw betrayed his annoyance. His nostrils flared and there was a screech of grinding teeth, yet he said nothing. He brushed his bangs out of his eyes under his shades and shifted in his seat, his sinewy form creating the impression of uncoiling.

"Yes, sir," Hawthorne said. "I'll see what I can do to expedite matters."

He removed the phone from his ear and tucked it back into the inner breast pocket of his jacket, the back of his hand grazing his shoulder holster.

"Did you give mom my love?" the driver said, his voice giving lie to his appearance. He was thin, yet muscular, his voice a scratchy baritone. He tried to hide his smirk as he killed the idling engine and climbed out the door, but Hawthorne had seen it all the same.

Hawthorne opened his own door and climbed out of the air-conditioned car into the scorching desert heat. His patience had already worn thin. He had a solid team already in place. The last thing he needed right now was new blood mucking up the works, especially now that he was so close. He didn't share his superior's faith, but he had his orders. If Carver didn't perform as promised, then he would intercede and do what needed to be done. As he always had in the past.

Always.

The two agents made their way down the dusty trail to the tent and entered without acknowledging the pair of officers milling beside the flaps, obviously out of their league.

Hawthorne stood at the lip of the excavation, and studied the spread of vile-smelling blankets and the body beside them. One of the ERT investigators spared him a glance before she resumed capping a series of test tubes.

"You boys are late for the dance," she said, inserting the tubes into an insulated carrier. "This debutante's card is already full."

Hawthorne wasn't in the mood. He held up his badge. "Hawthorne." He nodded to the shorter, wiry man to his right, who displayed his as well.

"Locke," the other agent said, removing his glasses to reveal eyebrows that flared like brown flames over eyes that appeared solid black.

"Manning," she said, resuming her work. "You missed your friends."

Hawthorne looked to his left, where another woman was using putty to flesh out the plaster cast of a face, then back to Manning.

"I need you to do me a favor," he said.

"Why don't I just stop doing my job and do yours instead?"

"I need to know if she was infected with any viruses."

"That's an absurd request."

"We'll see."

"Without blood we won't be able to establish--"

"I assume you're familiar with the PCR method."

"Polymerase Chain Reaction?"

"Viable strands of DNA have already been isolated."

"In case you haven't noticed, this wasn't the work of a virus."

"Are you saying you can't do it?"

"Of course I can, but I don't see how it's relevant. PCR amplifies and replicates sections of DNA. This girl has been dead so long that the only living viruses will be the same you'll find in the soil, and these conditions certainly aren't the most conducive to the growth of microorganisms. The only way PCR would be of significant benefit is if a retrovirus had inserted its genetic code into hers, entirely altering her DNA. If you aren't looking for a specific virus, you're asking for a miracle."

"No," Hawthorne said. "I'm
expecting
a miracle."

With that, he turned and strode out of the tent with Locke at his heels. They were just in time to see a pair of white vans with satellite dishes on the roofs pull up to the distant barricade. One was marked by a giant four, the other a nine. Two more vehicles glinted under the sun way off on the horizon.

"Looks like the circus has come to town," Locke said.

"It was only a matter of time."

They crossed the plain and were soon in the car, skirting the roadblock to return to the highway. Cameramen were already filming the hairspray-crowned reporters using the police cruisers and blockade as a backdrop. A dark-skinned man with a cowboy hat and a bolo tie stood beside a woman in a skirt suit, who yammered into her microphone before tilting it to his mouth.

Turning west on the windswept road, they left a cloud of dust to descend upon the camera crews, who had no clue they were prodding a hornet's nest. And if Hawthorne had his way, they never would.

IX

Flagstaff, Arizona

Carver weaved through the traffic on I-40 at ninety miles an hour, the magnetic cherry on the roof clinging for dear life. Wolfe had been relegated to the passenger seat, his tightly pursed lips and white-knuckled grip on the door handle the only outward signs of his discomfort. The call had come in fifteen minutes ago, lifted from police dispatch broadband. Code 459, suspected burglary at the Vista View Inn on the edge of Flagstaff. Until then, Carver had been desperately trying to find out where Ellie was staying.

The facial reconstruction Marshall had generated could have been a photograph of Ellie. Same cheekbones, same chin, same nose. Everything was identical but the eyes, as there had been no way of predicting the precise color of the mummy's irises without them. The corpse obviously couldn't be Ellie, but what were the chances of a woman digging up the remains of someone who could have passed for her twin. Carver had no idea what it meant, but he didn't believe in coincidence. Someone had gone to an extraordinary amount of trouble to preserve the deceased in the exact fashion that would nearly guarantee Ellie's presence at its disinterment. Possibly as much as a decade ago. That kind of foresight and planning was staggering. Ellie had to know something about the killer on more than a superficial level. Worse still, the killer had to know her intimately as well.

Twirling blue and red lights highlighted the face of the old motel before he even saw the sign. Two police cruisers were parked at angles to one of the rooms near the end of the line. Carver shot off the highway onto the shoulder. Gravel fired up into the wheel wells before the tires grabbed asphalt again on the off-ramp and screamed into the small parking lot. Slamming the brakes, he threw the car into park and leapt out the door.

"I'm driving from now on," Wolfe said, reaching across the console and plucking the keys from the ignition.

Carver ran between the two cruisers toward the open doorway to room number eight. One of the officers was inspecting the external lock and the integrity of the trim. Ellie crossed the room beyond.

"Hey!" the cop said as Carver bulled past him.

"Pax!" Ellie cried, wrapping her arms around him.

"Are you all right?" Carver asked. He scanned the room over her shoulder. Another uniformed officer stood by the head of the bed with a notepad, staring down at a small object on the pillow.

"Yeah," Ellie said, releasing him and taking a self-conscious step in reverse. Her expression of relief at his arrival changed to something Carver couldn't quite read. Suspicion maybe? "What's going on here?"

Carver walked toward the bed. The officer opened his mouth to protest, but Carver silenced him with his badge. He smelled the object right away, a stench with which he had recently become thoroughly acquainted, and recognized what it was a moment later.

"A tapir," he said. A few minutes online via the Wi-Fi connection in his new phone earlier had taught him precious little about the tapir. All he knew with any certainty was that it was essentially a giant black pig with a blunted prehensile snout reminiscent of the barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. It was an endangered species indigenous to Central and South America, but outside its habitat, he could see no direct correlation. Why was this particular animal significant? "How did it get here?"

"It was under the covers, right where it is now, when I got out of the shower."

"No sign of forced entry," the officer said.

"Could it have been there before you arrived?" Carver asked. "Who all knew you were staying here?"

"I guess it's possible it was already here when I rented the room, but I can't imagine how. And the only person who knows I'm staying here is Emil Mondragon. Even I didn't know I was going to stay here tonight until we nearly passed it on the highway and I asked Emil to drop me off."

Carver turned to the officer. "Have you spoken with Dr. Mondragon?"

"There's no answer at his home phone, but I left a message to call when he got in."

"Have you put out an APB?"

The officer, Vargas as his name badge identified him, looked incredulous. "Considering there's no damage or theft, and no one physically harmed Miss Archer here..." His voice trailed off and he offered Ellie an apologetic half-smile.