Mortal Fear (49 page)

Real sorry, Harp, he says. Ill holler if she wakes up.

Lets get this over with, Buckner says, watching me closely.

I follow him up the hall with Mayeux at my heels. The sheriff pauses before my office door and turns to me. I hear the voices of men on the porch. Someone laughs, then cuts it off.

Ever see anything like this before? Buckner asks.

I worked in an emergency room one summer.

Good.

How bad is it?

Mayeux takes my arm from behind, squeezes it, and says, Hang tough,
cher
. It aint good.

And Sheriff Buckner opens the door to hell.

The instant Buckner opened the door I saw blood. You couldnt enter the room without walking through it. Not unless you used a window, which I saw evidence technicians doing. From the doorway to about five feet into the room the floor was a sticky puddle, with five or six pairs of shoeprints tracked through it.

Your wifes, Buckner said, pointing to the smallest prints. Couple of deputies and fire department people walked through here, trying to see whether anything could be done, but they were too late.

There was more blood deeper in the office, splashed high on the walls, but before I could focus on it I saw the foreign woman Buckner had talked about. She was lying on her side about six feet inside the door, facing away from me. A zippered black body bag lay unrolled at her feet. A gleaming sword blade protruded from her back. Walking forward, I saw that it had been stuck through her abdomen. With horror I recognized the brass hilt of the Civil War sword that usually hung on my wall beside my far window. The dead woman wore a yellow sari, but one of her arms was exposed. It had been slashed several times, to the bone.

What happened? I said.

You know her? asked Buckner.

Kalis face was beautiful even in death. A perfect oval, with strong planes and sculpted ridges covered by nutmeg skin. Her eyes were open, the sclera like old ivory framing fixed onyx irises. There were lines in the skin at the corners of her eyes and lips, some wrinkles gathered at her throat, but few other signs of age. As I studied her face, I noticed something small and bright against the
skin just below the jawline. I started to crouch and look, then realized that I was looking at the feathers of a tranquilizer dart.

Well? grunted Buckner.

Ive never seen her before in my life.

Ever talk to her on EROS? asked Mayeux.

How would I know that?

Take a look at the rest, said Buckner.

You dont have to, Mayeux said. Your wife IDed the other body.

I moved forward anyway, propelled by something deeper than thought. The center of the room was a circus of small red footprints, as though a dance had been held for bleeding women. The walls and everything hanging on them were spattered with blood. Flung drops on a framed print. A large splash near the baseboard. A fine spray across the faces of two guitars.

Where is she?

Behind the headboard of the bed, Buckner said.

I took the required steps and stopped near the head of my twin bed. There, propped low against the wall, sat Erins nude body. If her eyes had been open, I probably could not have stood to look, so heavily did the responsibility for her death crash down upon me in that moment. Her dark hair hung mercifully over her breasts, but her legs were splayed grotesquely apart, as though she were a mannequin laid out for an anatomy lesson. I wanted to shout at Buckner to cover up her nakedness, but something caught my attention and held it with paralyzing power.

Cut into Erins tanned abdomen, just above her pubic hair, was a vertical incision about three inches long. There was very little blood, just enough to define the wound. Is that what killed her?

No, said Buckner from just behind me. Shes got a big knife wound in her back, above her kidneys. Probably hit the heart. See the blood?

Then I did see. Erin was propped in a black pool of blood. I hadnt noticed because the headboard made a shadow there. As I stared, one question filled my mind. Does she have any head wounds?

No, Mayeux answered. I checked.

I looked back at him. Both of us were asking the same silent question.
Why not?

We found the murder weapon, said Buckner. Under the bed. Its some kind of curved dagger. Looks like a movie prop.

For the Thugs, murder was a holy sacrament
.... I gazed around the room, looking at the overturned furniture and scattered papers and drying blood, trying to fathom what had happened, what could possibly have brought Erin here so soon after our confrontation at her house.

Best we can figure, Buckner said, is one or more persons surprised your sister-in-law here in the house. She may have been in this room, she may not. Maybe she fled here. Your telephone lines were cut....

Maybe she fled here

... got a deputy out back fixing them up for you. Hes handy with that stuff. Take it easy, Detective, hes saving the cut ends for the crime-lab boys. Anyway, Id say Mrs. Graham did something very unexpected in here. She snatched that sword off the wallthat is your sword, right?

Yes.

And she defended her life as best she could. She did a pretty good job of it, too. She hit that foreign woman at least five times on the arms, then ran her through like a pig on a spit. Of course by doing that she lost her weapon. At that point, I figure a second assailant got her.

What makes you think there was another person here?

Footprints. We found a pair of size-nine Reeboks that didnt match the shoes of anybody working the scene.

Brahma wears Reeboks?
Oh.

Found the actual shoes right in the middle of the floor. The perp obviously knew we could track him that way, so he walked through the puddle at the door, then tossed the shoes back in. Hes running barefoot now. Thats tough going in fields and woods, especially at night.

How do you know he didnt take a pair of shoes from my closet and put them on in the hall?

Buckner stared blankly at me for a moment. Then anger clouded his eyes. Would you know if a pair was missing?

Let me look.

One glance into the closet told me a pair of Nikes were gone. Air Jordans. White with blue trim.

Shit, Buckner muttered, writing on a pad he produced from his khaki shirt pocket. What size?

Twelve.

Well, that should slow him down a little.

Feeling a strangely protective urge, I moved back toward Erins body.

Your buddy Turner wear a nine? Buckner asked sharply.

I dont know what size he wears. But bigger than a nine. Hes skinny, but hes well over six feet. Probably a twelve.

What I cant figure, said Buckner, is why one of the perps didnt just shoot Mrs. Graham.

They shot her with the dart gun, Mayeux said. In the shoulder, he added, looking at me.

I meant a real gun.

Maybe they didnt have one.

Buckner shook his head. Thats a pretty risky way to break into a house. Especially in Mississippi.

I told you theyre not from Mississippi, Mayeux said.

Buckner gave him a scowl.

I said, You do know this guy has been using a private plane to get to the crime scenes? And theres an old crop dusting strip about two miles west of this house.

Deputies already found it, Buckner said. Tracks in the mud. Somebody used it tonight.

Mud? How long has it been raining here?

Sixty to eighty minutes. That plane probably took off less than an hour ago.

Good God,
I thought, realizing how close Drewe had come to dying with her sister.

Something else, said Buckner. One of my men thinks the killer might have been wounded. Based on the amount of blood and the spatter patterns. Makes sense to me, with knives and swords flailing around.

He might be a hemophiliac.

Buckners eyes came alive like a bird dogs. A what?

A bleeder. He might be a bleeder.

How in hell would you know that?

I thought of telling Buckner the truth, but that would probably put me in a jail cell. Something I overheard an FBI agent say in Washington.

I knew them sonsabitches was holding out on us! Buckner said furiously. Im gonna burn some federal ass over this. His right cheek twitched. So maybe this assholes hurt bad enough to crash his plane?

Harper, Mayeux said gently. I cant understand why this dark woman caught a tranquilizer dart like your sister-in-law did. You got any ideas on that?

No.

You sure?

Do I need to call a lawyer?

Buckner turned on me then. Son, you might need to call a
bodyguard
when Bob Anderson finds out what happened to his little girl. And with that he marched out of the room, straight through the blood at the door.

I covered my eyes with one hand. What the hell am I going to tell her father? I mumbled. Her mother? Her husband?

Mayeux pushed me down onto the bed and sat beside me. Ive done it a hundred times. And it aint ever easy. Thisll be worse, cause its family.

Its not that. You realize what happened here? I killed her, Mike.
I killed her
.

What do you mean?

I mean Miles Turner and I sat in this room for three days straight and tried our damnedest to stop that son of a bitch on our own. Only it didnt work out the way we expected.

Holy Mary. Thats where you got that hemophilia stuff? You been talking to this freak on the computer?

Hell, yes. So has Dr. Lenz. Thats how his wife got killed. But Miles... he told me there was no way Brahma could trace

Brahma? Whos that?

Thats what we call the killer. Miles swore hed rigged
a way to keep him from tracing our location. Something at the phone company switching station

Slow down, now.

No! No... somethings wrong. There werent any typos in any of his messages to me.

What the hell are you talking about?

Dont you remember the meeting in New Orleans? I told you the killer never makes any typographical errors. His communications are always perfect, and fast. But just before each murder, he makes as many mistakes as anybody else. Miles said he had a voice-recognition unit at his home base, but when he traveled it wouldnt function reliably, so he didnt use it. Just a notebook computer and a cellular phone like everybody else. Thats how we could predict when he was moving. His typos would skyrocket. But they didnt! Somethings wrong, Mike.

How long since you last talked to the guy? This Brahma?

Yesterday.

Well, theres your answer. He could have flown here from anywhere since yesterday. As long as he didnt contact you, youd never have a chance to see any typos.

The simplicity of Brahmas tactic dazed me. Goddamn it! Youre right!

But why should he kill your sister-in-law? Just because she was here? I dont buy it. Not with that weird abdominal wound. He took something out of her, man. But it sure wasnt her pineal gland. Mayeux looked uncomfortably at me, then at the floor. I think maybe it was her ovaries.

Jesus Christ
.
God help me
.

What kind of shit did you talk about with this nut, anyway?

He did most of the talking, I said, trying to recall whether I said anything that could have led Brahma to this house. But I cant. And even if he somehow traced the photo of Erin, that wouldnt have led him here. Could he have been watching Erins house while I was there? Did he follow her from Jackson to here? Why the hell did she come out here anyway?

You okay, Cole?

No. I want Erins body covered up. I want all these bastards out of my house. Right now!

Calm down, man. That sheriff wants to arrest you. I told him you were with me when the murder went down, but he could still bust you. Material witness, whatever. Hes pretty steamed, this happening on his watch. That juice you used in Jackson cuts two ways, remember. Bob Andersons a big man around here, and his daughter just got butchered, pardon my French. Buckners cranking up a manhunt thatll make the John Wilkes Booth posse look like cub scouts, and if you make the wrong kind of noise, hell stomp on you with hobnail boots.

I bent over, put my head beneath my knees, and breathed the way youre supposed to when you take a kick in the groin. An hour ago you wanted to arrest me, Mike. Why the change?

Mayeux laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. You didnt have nothing to do with this. Other than being stupid. I seen a lot of killing. And this is some real weirdness we got here. He looked around the office again. I think maybe this bad boys started coming apart. Decompensating, or whatever they call it. And I think maybe youre the reason. Some way.

I straightened up and wiped the damp hair out of my eyes. What are you going to do?

Tell Buckner to put some security on your house. Call Baxter at Quantico and tell him he better get his federal shit together before this freak single-handedly cuts Investigative Support from the national budget. After that, Im not sure.

Thanks, Mike. Thanks a lot.

Mayeux pulled me up from the bed, led me to the window, helped me climb out of it, then followed. The last thing I remember him saying was, Smells like a goddamned slaughterhouse in there, Troop. Somebody get those bodies into a wagon.

With Drewe breathing deeply beside me, I sat listening to the bumps and curses and slamming doors and groaning engines of the uniformed battalions slow retreat. After the last vehicle pulled away, I realized I was
avoiding looking at something. The telephone by the bed. Then I remembered it might not be working. As I reached out to check for a dial tone, it rang.