One Grave Less (3 page)

Nothing happened. No gunfire. No knives hurled at her.

The room showed signs of a struggle. Things were in disarray. A chair lay overturned. Several boxes of supplies had been knocked about.

It was there that Diane saw a shoe attached to a foot sticking out from behind the boxes. She hurried over. A woman in khaki slacks and a yellow shirt lay on the floor, her face turned away from Diane, one arm across her abdomen. Her other arm was to her side. She had short dark blond hair.

Diane knelt beside her and felt for the pulse in her neck. It was faint, but she was still alive. She slid the boxes away from the woman and moved around to look at her face. Diane was startled. She knew her—Simone Brooks—one of the team who worked with her in South America at World Accord International.

Simone had been an interviewer, a very good one. She met her fiancé, Oliver, in WAI. He was killed in the massacre along with Diane’s daughter, Ariel, and many of their friends. His was one of the few bodies that was found.

They told Diane afterward that when Simone found Oliver—clearly dead, clearly slaughtered—she held on to him and refused to let go of him. They had to drag her away. Diane had been barely aware of it. She had her own devastating grief to deal with. She also had to be dragged away from her search for Ariel, dragged away from her hopes that Ariel was still alive and that the bloody little shoes didn’t mean she was dead.

Diane had heard that Simone eventually went to work for a detective agency somewhere. What was she doing here?

“Simone?” said Diane. “Can you hear me?”

Simone groaned and turned her head. After a moment she opened her eyes and closed them again.

There was a little blood, but without a closer look Diane couldn’t determine where it had come from. She hurriedly examined Simone for wounds and discovered that her hand was cut severely across the palm. Diane had seen that type of wound many times. It happens when you stab someone and your hand slips from the handle onto the blade.

“What the hell?” Diane whispered. Had Simone stabbed the victim in the other room?

Simone groaned again, opened her eyes, and fixed them on Diane’s face. She appeared sluggish.

The cut was the only open wound Diane could find. She gently felt Simone’s scalp. On her right parietal was a knot. The skin wasn’t broken, but Simone flinched when Diane touched it. The knot and her lethargic manner suggested she was suffering from a concussion.

“It’s me, Diane, Simone. Lie still. Help is coming.”

Simone looked confused and tried to speak. Nothing came out.

“Just lie still,” said Diane.

Diane reached for her phone to call for help. Suddenly, Simone’s bloody hand was on Diane’s arm.

“Us . . . ,” Simone whispered.

“What?” said Diane, leaning closer, trying to hear what she said.

“One of us . . . It was one of us . . . ,” she whispered.

“What was one of us?” Diane said. But Simone had lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Diane punched in 911 on her cell phone and announced who and where she was. As she spoke she heard the EMT paramedics who had been called arriving next door in the exhibit room.

“I need another ambulance,” she said into the phone. “We have another victim.”

“Another ambulance? This is the first call we’ve received from the museum,” said the calm female voice. “You have two people injured and need help. Is that correct?”

Diane was silent for a moment, confused.

“Yes, that is correct, but my security people also called about ten minutes ago.”

“We have no record of another call. No ambulance has been dispatched to your location.”

“But the paramedics are here,” Diane said.

Just as she spoke she heard a commotion in the other room. By the time she stood up and started in that direction, she smelled something burning and saw smoke coming under the door.

Ariel Fallon. Diane Fallon’s adopted daughter. The prisoner knew Diane Fallon in passing. They had presented papers at the same professional conferences in forensic anthropology. She had heard about Fallon’s terrible loss, but not all the details. She knew of the daughter murdered by renegades. Everyone in the small community of forensic anthropologists had heard some version of the story. If the two of them could get out of this jungle alive, Diane Fallon was in for one of the greatest shocks—and joys—of her life.

So this was Ariel Fallon, in the flesh. Ariel wore different clothes from earlier in the day—long pants, long shirt, and the little boots that still looked too big for her. She was a pretty little thing even in the dark and covered by dirt and grime. But the most notable thing about her was her intelligent eyes. They weren’t little girl eyes. They were eyes that had probably seen too much of the worst in humanity. And there was desperation in them.

The prisoner didn’t hesitate to accept Ariel’s offer, as strange as it was, coming from a child less than four feet tall. The kid had come prepared. She took a key she had secreted in the pocket of her pants and worked it into the large rusty lock on the chain holding the door to the cage closed.

The cage itself was about six by six feet and provided a full 360-degree view around the compound and into the jungle. A small hole cut in the sapling floor was the bathroom. The prisoner had used it only at night to avoid being seen exposed, which would result, she feared, in a host of other dreadful problems. She was almost faint with relief at the prospect of leaving, and her heart beat loud enough to wake the village. But her relief was companioned by terror. If they were caught, what would happen to them? What would happen to this little girl?

Don’t think about that
.

The two of them quietly pushed and pulled the door open. The prisoner jumped out onto the ground and Ariel picked up a bundle of rags she had brought and tossed them inside in a heap, closed the door, and locked the chain back in place. At a distance and without close examination, it appeared that the prisoner was curled up asleep on the floor of the cage.

Off to one side sat a ragged backpack. Ariel picked it up in one hand and grabbed the woman’s arm with the other and pulled at her. As the woman turned her back to her prison, she grabbed a large bat-sized stick that she’d been eyeing from her cage—the only part of an escape plan she had come up with . . . If she got out, grab that stick as a weapon.

Ariel walked quietly and quickly ahead of her and tugged at her until they were out of the moonlight of the village clearing and covered with the darkness of jungle. Very little moonlight filtered through the thick canopy. In the dark the dense foliage had a bluish black cast. Already the woman was lost. She was good at woodcraft, but in the kind of woods that grew in Kentucky and Georgia. Not here. Here all the signposts were different.

The sounds were muted at night in comparison to the daytime—sounds of night birds, insects, frogs, occasionally the call of a higher food chain creature. The sounds would be appealing were she not at the mercy of the creatures that made them—and at the bottom of that food chain. It was terrifying, but did not trump the fear produced by the men who had kidnapped her.

Ariel grabbed her hand and whispered, “This way.” She pulled her along until they were out of sight of that part of the village. Ariel seemed to know the path by heart . . . or she had incredible night vision. She stopped abruptly. She looked like a shadow amid the dark foliage.

“We have to be careful. Not just of the men, but of the jungle.”

The woman nodded and tried to whisper. “Ariel, my name is . . .”

“Maria,” Ariel said quickly. “And mine is Rosetta. You are my mother. We must have a story until we get to a place where you can contact people you know who can get us to America. Until then, it’s best if people don’t know who we really are. Julio has many friends around here for a long way. Remember that. You are Maria.”

The woman had the impression that Ariel feared she was an idiot. She supposed she looked like one. She had never been filthier in her entire life.
Okay
, she thought.
Maria it is. I am Maria, Maria, Maria. I am the girl named Maria
.

“That’s a big pack you have. Let me carry it,” the newly christened Maria said.

Ariel—or rather, Rosetta—reluctantly relinquished the bag, and Maria shouldered it.

They stepped quickly down a path, trying to avoid protruding roots, logs, or any one of other abundant hazards. Walking through the jungle at night was dangerous, but both were far more frightened of her captors.

Rosetta stopped just before the thick jungle flora met the openness of the giant kapok trees, the tall signature rain-forest trees that supported an entire ecosystem in their canopy. They would be leaving the overgrown part of the forest. That in itself was a relief. The jungle was thicker near the river where they had been and their proximity to the village still was not safe. The woman, Maria, shivered thinking of the dangers.

The human smells of the village—and the cage—had disappeared behind them. Now there was only the fresher scent of the jungle. Maria took a deep breath.

“We need to talk about your plan, Ariel—I mean Rosetta.”

“First, we must get out of this territory of Julio—he’s the man who kidnapped you, the one who came with his girlfriend yesterday to talk to you.”

“They think I’m Diane Fallon?”

“Yes. Patia doesn’t speak good English. She heard them talking and she knew that you are a forensic anthropologist and are from Georgia.”

“She understood the words
forensic anthropologist
?”

“Julio was told to look for a woman named Diane Fallon, a forensic anthropologist from Georgia looking for”—she shrugged—“bones or skins or feathers. I don’t know why. Julio calls himself
alambre de atropellada
.”

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged again. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s a wire you run over.”

Maria wrinkled her forehead. “Trip wire,” she said. “His job was to look out for someone investigating something specific. But don’t they know you are Diane’s daughter? Wouldn’t they try to use that?”

She shook her head. “I’m Rosetta, as far as they know. It’s a long story. Too long for now. We must go.”

“Where are we going?”

“I told you—out of this territory.”

“What’s in your backpack?”

“Supplies. Some food. Clothes. A map. Can you read a map?”

“Yes, I can. How old are you?”

“Almost nine.”

Eight years old, the woman thought. Growing up too fast.

“Is there a place we can stop and take stock of our situation?”

They first heard a crack and a rustle.

“
¿Qué tenemos aquí?
Two little fishes out for a walk, eh? Who let you out, woman? Not the little one here?”

Both were startled. Ariel stood still. The two of them watched a man approach. The woman didn’t recognize him, but he wore the ragged pseudo-uniform of Julio and his men and he knew she was a captive.

“Looks like you need the protection of a man, out here alone.”

He walked toward them, grinning, cupping his crotch and flourishing a large knife that he pulled from his belt.

“Eh, woman. You like what you see? You nice, maybe I don’t cut—”

Ariel jumped.

The man fell to the ground, blood running from the side of his head.

The woman approached him with the bloody stick in her hand. She knew it had been a good plan to take it.

“
When you have to shoot, shoot—don’t talk
,” she said. The first words she had said in more than two days, the first words her damaged throat and vocal cords could manage. The voice did not sound like her own. It was hoarse and scratchy. It was a voice that might have come from a hard life, cigarettes, and whiskey. But it wasn’t. It was a voice shaped by an unprovoked vicious attack against her that had left her injured and angry.

“Maria . . . ,” whispered Ariel.

The woman looked back at her and said, “That wasn’t Maria. That was Lindsay.”

Diane ran across the room, sliding to a stop in her sock-clad feet when she reached the closed door. She reached for the doorknob and stopped.

She couldn’t remember.
Something about oxygen and blowback. Or was it
blowup
?

She had to do something. She touched her finger gently to the doorknob. It was not hot. She turned the knob and opened the door just a crack to see what would happen.

No explosion, no burst of flame, just a billow of smoke and a shower of soot from above. She opened the door and stepped into the Maya display room. She could see some kind of liquid flowing across the floor in her direction. Above the moving liquid and advancing toward her was a burning layer of gases and flame. The alarm was blaring its warning and the sprinkler system was spraying a rain of water, making the smoke and soot worse, but the fire was continuing to burn. The smell of kerosene filled her nostrils.

Water on a kerosene fire
, she thought. Not the best solution, but the only one available until help could arrive.

She retreated back into the lab, wet a paper towel at the sink and put it over her mouth, and went back into the exhibit room, skirting the edge of the fire. The injured man who had been on the floor was gone and she couldn’t see Rufus Diggs.

The fire alarm rang loud in her ears as the fire continued to burn. That and the sound of the water from the sprinklers on the fire, and the smoke, added to Diane’s increasing anxiety and an increasing disorientation. Her gaze searched the room for Rufus. She heard him groan at the far side of the room. She saw him rolling. His clothes were smoking.

Dear God
.