The Botanist (4 page)

“You mean that’s all you’re
willing
to manage.”

“Yes.”

His father sat down roughly in his chair. “Typical,” he muttered. “Just like your Uncle.”

That made Cody’s eyebrows jump. “I thought you and Uncle Clyde were close growing up.”

“That doesn’t mean I want you to be just like him. He wasted his life, too!”

Cody suddenly knew this visit was over. He turned stiffly to his mother. “Thank you for dinner. It was delicious. If you’ll excuse me, I have a busy day tomorrow, and I need to brainstorm a few more ways to waste my life before I hit the sack.”

He threw the back of his calves against his chair so hard that it screeched across the kitchen floor and hit the opposite wall. Cody didn’t care. He stalked out of the house, leaving his father looking ready to flatten a puppy and his mother ready to cry.

Chapter 5

The next morning, Cody decided to hike up Hydra Mountain in the morning, while it was cool, and hopefully make it in to work by noon with nothing to report.

It had been awhile since he’d actually gone outside the city limits. He packed a backpack with a few bottles of water and some food, and brought a bandana with him. Then he headed north. He’d called Court the night before for directions. The base of the canyon was a forty minute drive from town. Once he reached it, he found a large sign map with the words “Hydandra Trail” written in big letters over a line that twisted and curved its way up, ending in a picture of a waterfall. “5.3 mi.”

The trail was obviously well used, wide enough for two cars to pass one another and paved. Cody drove until he reached the fork. The waterfall was to the left, but the hikers had gone right, so he did as well.

The hikers reported camping below an M-shaped mountain. It sounded vague to Cody, but when he saw it, he knew it was the right one. The top of it looked like a perfect McDonald’s arch.

The road became gravel, then dirt, then completely impassable. Cody pulled his car off to the side of the trail, parking it in the shadow of the mountain, and began his trek on foot.

The path took him between rises and into the shadow of the M-peak. It struck Cody how treacherous the hike was. As a cop, he was required to keep in good shape, and had grown up in this part of the country, but for the inexperienced hiker, this kind of terrain could be downright dangerous. More than once he slid on loose gravel, barely catching himself from sliding down the face of the mountain.

Beneath the M-mountain, he found evidence of recent campers: a haphazardly constructed fire pit rimmed with small rocks, and deep grooves in the dirt where he imagined a tent had been set up. He even found a discarded yellow tent stake.

The campsite was nestled in what he could only have described as a tiny valley, surrounded on all sides by small rises. The valley floor couldn’t have been more than a quarter mile square, and the rises that fenced it in, though not more than a few hundred feet in altitude, were made of sheer, rocky faces with almost no vegetation whatsoever, even of the desert variety.

Cody spiraled out from the campsite to cover ground in every direction at once. Inevitably, his spiral led him to the rocky inclines, forcing him to scale them in order to move out from the site. Several caves high up in the rock looked down on the campsite and he knew he’d have to check them.

Cody found, to his relief, that there was not much to see. Most of the caves were not big enough to be called caves, but rather were just deep gouges in the rock, reaching back only ten or twelve feet.

When he’d glanced into the last one, he decided he’d done his due diligence. It was already almost noon—this had taken longer than he’d planned—and the sun was radiating what felt like volcanic temperatures. He’d donned his bandana long ago to keep the sweat out of his eyes, and his food was completely gone. He had only a few swallows of warm water left in his second bottle.

Preparing to head back to his car, he glanced around to make sure he hadn’t missed anything that might be important, and made mental notes of what to put in his report.

Then something caught his eye.

Though the southern and western rises had looked like two different formations, he could see from this high up they were connected. The mountain he was on fell away into a bridge of land that looped around and connected with the western rise on the opposite side than the one the camp site was on.

Wondering what could be seen from over there, he decided to take a quick look before heading back. He knew the highway was in that direction, though it was at least a couple of miles from the mountain’s base. If there were other mountains in the way, he wouldn’t be able to see it anyway; he was just curious.

He followed the bridge of land and found that it was a relatively easy route to the other side of the mountain. He scrambled over a few boulders and one fallen tree, but that was all.

When he reached the other side, he found that he
could
see the highway. It stretched across the distant horizon, a glimmering silver ribbon in the midday sun. He did a three-sixty, and saw the first strange thing he’d observed all day. Thirty yards above where he stood, five wooden planks were set up against a hole in the rock.

The hole looked like yet another cave-like gouge in the mountain’s face. The planks made it reminiscent of how old, unused mining shafts were boarded up. Picking his way up to it, Cody found that the hole was a shaft and it was small—tiny, in fact.

Each plank was held in place by small stones around the base. The stones didn’t give way immediately when Cody pulled on them. He had to dig the dirt out from around them and push them aside to remove one of the planks.

He ran his flashlight over the inside of the shaft. He doubted he’d even be able to sit up on his knees in there, much less stand. He’d have to pull himself along on his belly. He couldn’t see how deep the shaft was. It stretched for twenty feet before disappearing around a curve to the right, and sloping slightly downward.

If, as the captain had half-heartedly theorized, this was the hideout of sexual predators, Cody supposed they might be willing to scoot along on their stomachs for a while if the shaft eventually opened into a larger chamber where they could go to do their twisted, masochistic rituals, but he doubted it.

Other than the campers, who were probably looking for some serious alone time and found it in the secluded little valley between the rises, he didn’t think anyone had been out this way for years.

The idea of crawling into the bowels of a mountain on his belly, especially without knowing if the shaft was structurally sound, made him claustrophobic. And even if he wanted to, he didn’t have the supplies for an adventure of that scope.

Cody replaced the plank, scooting the rocks up around it as before, and turned. Something else caught his eye.

Directly below him, a small pocket of land lay in the natural shadow of the mountain. He couldn’t have seen it from where he was before; in fact, he couldn’t have seen it from anywhere but the mouth of the unused shaft, which looked directly down on it.

Perhaps it was because the small, almost eerily square pocket of earth was in shadow, but the soil itself didn’t look like desert. It was dark brown, almost black, as though it had a layer of the fertile topsoil on it. A line of tall, perfect tulips grew in two straight lines in the shadow of the mountain.

These, Cody knew, were not desert flowers. For them to be here was just . . . unnatural.

Though he wasn’t feeling lightheaded, he thought perhaps the sun was getting to him and he was hallucinating the flowers. Taking out his water bottle, Cody chugged the last of the warm, fetid water. It tasted gritty, like he’d backwashed dirt into it at some point, but he didn’t care.

After drinking the water, the flowers were still there, not ten feet below him. Skidding his way down the rock, he let his body slide over a small precipice that overlooked the bizarre flower garden. He hung by his fingers so that his feet dangled only five feet above the flowers, then dropped the rest of the way.

Falling into a crouch, he scooped up a handful of dirt. He was right; it was not parched dirt but soil, and it was wet, as though it had been recently watered. Cody looked around. Who was nurturing a garden this far out here? And with what? There was no hose, no irrigation system, not even a watering can, and no evidence that anyone had been here recently.

His eyes went to the boarded-up shaft. No one could be living in there, could they? A damp, slithering sensation crept into his middle.

He moved over to the nearest flower to examine it more closely. Now that he was looking, each tulip sprouted out of a small mound of dirt. All of them were a pale blue color that had looked white from a distance. Each had two perfectly shaped leaves that connected to an eighteen inch shaft where stem met soil.

Spinning on his toe to take in a full view of the place, Cody frowned. Painted in black on the inward-sloping wall below the boarded-up shaft were the words,
“
Shakespeare’s Girls
.”

A soft, deep foreboding filled Cody’s stomach, but he pushed it away. Bizarre, yes, but that was all.

Wondering why the flowers were planted in mounds, rather than flat earth, he stood. Cody was no gardening expert—far from it—but weren’t tulips bulbs? Putting his foot down on top of the mound, next to the flower but not close enough to disturb it, he put his weight on it, stepping on top of the dirt mound.

The soil was soft and his foot sunk two inches. A sickening sensation radiated through him when he both felt and heard crunching beneath his boots. Whatever the mounds concealed, he was sure it wasn’t rocks.

He hadn’t brought any gloves—he hadn’t thought to. Taking off his backpack, he scrounged around for something to cover his hand with. He only found the sandwich bag his food had been in. Deciding that would have to do, he stretched it over his hand and began digging at the mound of dirt. He only dug a little at a time, trying not to disturb the tulip.

Finally he reached something solid. It felt like sticks—thick twigs embedded in the ground. Soon he’d moved most of the dirt away, but still couldn’t see it clearly. He leaned down and blew the excess soil off with one huffing breath. Then he sat back on his haunches and sighed, letting his head hang for a moment.

The white, carpal remains of a human hand glared up at him from its bed of dark soil, its fingers spread out as far as they could go. A skeleton was waving at him from the basement of a manmade oasis.

Cody looked at the other mounds: twelve of them, in two rows of six. He’d stumbled onto a mass grave in the middle of the desert.

Chapter 6

Alex had been holding her cell phone to her ear for so long that her arm was beginning to ache. She wanted to strangle the lady that kept telling her that her call was important and to please stay on the line.

She’d been watching the news for hours, long enough that everything they had on the mass grave found in Southern Utah had repeated several times. Though the police had released no statements yet, the reporters were musing that so many victims going missing in one place would have been noticed, so they must have been snatched from various places and brought from afar.

Snatched off the highway, perhaps?
Alex thought.

The instant Alex saw it, she knew. She hadn’t stopped thinking about that night since it happened four years ago—not completely. She’d always been certain something strange was going on. Now, four years later this news report stated that twelve bodies had been found not far from where she’d been pulled over.

The local community was banding together to try and catch the killer. The police were insisting that the hills be searched by professionals—both because they were worried the killer might be hiding under some rock out there, and because they didn’t want civilians who didn’t know any better trampling potential crime scenes. None of the victims had been killed where they were buried.

Instead, the local volunteers made signs, got the media involved, brought in meals for the local police—which were more numerous than normal, as reinforcements from other jurisdictions had been brought in to pick up the grunge work—and they set up a tip line.

Alex had been on hold with the tip line for more than an hour. According to the news, tips were rolling in by the thousands. Everyone who ever had a loved one go missing, and thought they might have passed through that part of the desert, was tying up the line, trying to speak with the detectives. The detectives weren’t speaking to anyone calling in. They were following leads recorded from the tip line and assuring people that as soon as autopsies had been completed and DNA profiled, the families of the victims would be notified.

Then she saw him.

She let the phone drop from her ear and leaned forward so that she was inches from her parents’ LCD flat screen.

That was him; she was sure of it. The same cop she’d talked to that night kept walking across the screen. She couldn’t remember his name, and he looked different than she remembered. His hair was longer in back, his face more weathered, and a jagged scar reached across his right eyebrow and over the upper part of his right cheek. She was certain he hadn’t had that the last time she’d seen him, brief though their meeting had been.

The reporters tried to get his attention, tried to get a quote from him. A spokesperson for the department finally stepped forward, assuring the reporters that a press conference would be held as soon as possible, but that the detectives were making no statements at this time.

So, he was a detective now. With a sigh, Alex looked down at her phone and made a decision.

“Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the—”

Sure it is,
she thought.
Which is why I’ve been on hold for an hour.
Alex clicked the PWR/END button on her phone and got up from the couch. Her mother watched with anxious eyes from the loveseat four feet away.

“Alex,” Deirdra Thompson’s voice was wary. “Where are you going?”
She knew her mother would object, but she just couldn’t sit around anymore. “I’ve been waiting almost ninety minutes, Mom.”

“They’ll get to you eventually,” her mother muttered, but Alex ignored her.

Alex pointed to the man on the TV screen. “See him?”

Her mother glanced at the screen, but Alex doubted she really saw the detective.

“He’s the cop I filed the report with.”

Her mother’s eyes widened and darted to the television screen. “Really? But I thought you said he was just some amateur uniform.”

“He was, but that was four years ago. Things change. If I can talk to him, I think he’ll remember me.” She started for the stairs.

“How are you going to talk to him if you don’t stay on the tip line?”

“That’s just it, Mom. The detectives aren’t talking to anyone on the tip line. Volunteers write down what you say and pass it on to the cops.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

By now, Alex was calling over her shoulder on her way up the stairs. “I’m going to drive down there and find him.”

She heard her mother’s gasp from behind her and, as she entered her own room, the unmistakable stomp of her mother coming up the stairs.

Alex grabbed her duffel bag from its usual place hanging behind the door. She yanked out stale gym shorts and dumbbells, replacing them with clean clothes, toiletries, and her MP3 player. She also tucked in a couple of books and her wallet. She’d moved back in with her parents a few months ago when her mother’s health had taken a turn for the worse. With her father traveling as much as he did for work, it was just better for someone to be around to help. Yet, Alex worked so much that a dozen unpacked boxes still leaned against the far wall, waiting to be dealt with.

She was almost done packing when her mother finally huffed into view.

“You aren’t supposed to be going up and down the stairs, Mom. Your hip will act up.”

“Don’t really,” Dierdra panted, “give me much . . . choice, Alex. You just . . . walked away.”

Alex glanced patiently at her mother while putting her travel bag together. Her mom leaned over, bracing herself on her knees and catching her breath. Alex knew as soon as she could, her mother was going to give her best lecture.

“Alex,” she finally said, “I don’t want you going down there. I don’t want you mixed up in this.”

“I’m not going to get mixed up in anything, Mom. I’m just going to tell them what I saw.”

“You already did that. You filed a report two hours after it happened!”

“That was four years ago.” Alex stuffed three rolls of socks in beside her intimates. “What are the chances anyone will remember or dig it up again?”

“Don’t you think they’ll be looking into old reports of the area?”

“Maybe. But even so, it could be weeks before they find it. And what if whoever looks at it passes over it, decides it’s not relevant?”

“They’re the cops, Alex. We should let them decide what’s relevant. You don’t even know if your experience has anything to do with this.”

Alex zipped the duffel bag up, then stared at her fingers drumming on the top of it, trying to figure out how to explain what she was feeling to her mother.

“No, Mom,” she said calmly, “
you
don’t know that my experience has anything to do with this grave.
I
do.”

Her mother gave her a scathing look.

“Come on, Mom. I’ve been talking about it on and off for four years. You know how disturbed I was by it. I was sure something sinister was going on, but I couldn’t prove it or do anything about it. Now, seeing this . . . I feel like there’s a connection. I could be wrong, but I have to go down there and talk to someone—to ease my conscience, if nothing else. I promise, all I’ll do is tell them about what happened, make sure they pull the old report, and then I’ll let them take it from there, okay?”

The duffel bag was packed to the rafters, making it difficult to keep up on her shoulder, but Alex tried anyway. Her phone was on the desk. She snatched it up along with her keys.

“Will you be okay by yourself here tonight?” Alex asked her mom. “Dad’s flight comes in tomorrow morning, but Tony’s picking him up. He should be back by ten or eleven. I can have Mrs. Drescher come stay with you tonight if you want. She said if I got a gig, she would.”

Deirdra shook her head. “No, I’ll be fine. But I may just sit up all night worrying about you.”

Alex smiled and then reached over to hug her mom. “Don’t do that. I’ll be fine, too. I’ll call you when I get there. I’ll probably end up staying in a motel overnight, but if I can get in to speak with someone right away, I’ll be able to drive back tomorrow. This is just something I have to do.”

After a moment, her mother nodded, though she still looked far from pleased. “All right, then. Let me make you some food for the road.”