Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (84 page)

“Just food for thought.”

“Don't get coy on me, Chris. What did you mean?”

He looked at her. “I think you know what I meant.”

“What I want to know is, what are you willing to do about it?”

He paused. “What do you want me to do?”

“Not a thing. That old woman is my biological mother, Chris— believe it or not, that means something to me. Besides, I don't think she's a problem. After all, she's kept this secret for over forty years; if she wanted to tell someone she would have done it a long time ago. She wants to see her little girl make it to the White House; I think she wants it even more than I do. She's no problem; the secret's safe with her.”

“Then why did you bring it up?”

“Because—I want to know how far you're willing to go.” She turned to the wall and lifted an English saddle from a rack.

Riddick reached out to take it from her.

“Don't.” She hoisted it onto the mare's back and folded down the saddle flaps. “You said something else I've been thinking about—you said you weren't asking much. You're wrong about that, Chris—you're asking for everything.”

“No more than I'm entitled to.”

“You're not ‘entitled' to anything—you get what you earn around here. That's the way it works in the big leagues, and that's what you're really asking for: You want to play with the big boys now—isn't that right?”

“I guess you could put it that way.”

“Good. There's a woman who lives in the mountains above Endor. She lives all by herself in the woods. The people there think she's a witch. That's what they call her: the Witch of Endor.”

“Nice little hometown you've got there.”

“People get some crazy ideas in their heads, don't they? Take you, for example: You think you've got a free ticket to Washington just because you know something that I don't want revealed. Sorry, Chris, it's not that easy. You can have Washington—we can work something out—but you'll have to earn it.”

“How?”

“This woman—the one they call the witch—she's a dog trainer. She has a cadaver dog that can find almost anything—even bodies buried hundreds of years ago. You know the graveyard at the Patriot Center? She's the one who found every one of those graves—and the four bodies that weren't supposed to be there. They thought a different woman found the graves at first—everybody did. That woman has disappeared; the FBI thinks someone killed her.”

“Where did you hear all this?”

“From the nice young FBI agent in charge of the investigation.”

“So now you own an FBI agent.”

“Don't be silly—no one ‘owns' an FBI agent. He simply keeps me informed as a professional courtesy, that's all.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“You disappoint me, Chris—I thought you were smarter than that. Think about the scrapbooks: Do you know who killed the four people they found at the Patriot Center?”

“I've got a pretty good idea.”

“So do I—but the FBI doesn't know, and we don't want them to. All they've had to work with so far is four very old skeletons, and that's not enough for them to figure out who did it. But they just found another body—in a different graveyard—and there could be more. Every time they find another body, they find more evidence, and that puts them one step closer to figuring it all out. Guess who found that fifth body, Chris? The witch did—the Witch of Endor. She's the real problem here.”

“What are you asking me to do?”

“I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm just telling you my problem, that's all—I'm just telling you what's weighing on my heart. That's what women do, Chris. They find a man they feel close to and then they share their burden with him. If the man really cares, he'll do something about her problem—without waiting to be asked. That's how she knows if he really cares—if he does something.”

She turned her back to him and stepped in close until they were almost touching. She looked back at him over her right shoulder. “Help me up, will you?”

She fit her left foot into the stirrup. He put his hands on her waist and lifted; she slowly rose up in front of him and swung her right leg over the saddle.

Chris looked up at her. “When?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about. But my problem is getting worse every day—if anyone cares.”

He nodded.

She tugged on the reins and backed the horse away. “Oh, and Chris— muck the stall while I'm gone, will you? I gave the stable boy the day off.”

31

The bass boat cruised silently across the lake. Trygg balanced on her three legs in the shallow bow with her head draped over the edge and her nose hovering just above the water. The dog's head swung slowly from side to side like a pendulum, and the walls of her nostrils flexed in and out as she tested the air for scent. She wore a different bandanna this time—a green one with a checkered pattern—the one that reminded her to search for submerged remains. Alena knelt in the bow beside the dog, studying her eyes and the movements of her body, watching for any sign of an alert.

Nick sat on the casting deck behind them, steering the boat with two foot pedals; they used an electric trolling motor to keep gasoline fumes from obscuring the scent. He glanced back over his shoulder; on the distant shore he could see Kegan and Danny and the FBI's forensic tech crew excavating the remains of Alena's father. He looked at Alena. Her eyes were red and swollen; she had cried most of the night while Gunner sat beside her and held her and Nick watched helplessly from across the room. Nick knew she was exhausted and he knew she deserved to be left alone to grieve, but he had no choice; they had to find this body soon—for Alena's sake. Nick knew that a decomposing body was like a ticking clock; with every passing hour valuable forensic evidence would be lost. So far they had been trying to find a killer with nothing but a handful of ancient bones. The bones of Ken Savard were more recent, but even they were already more than two decades old. But Marge—she had been dead only a day or two, and the killer's hand-prints might still be all over her body—if they found it in time.

But mountain lakes can be deep, and the pressures at greater depths can keep a body from bloating and rising to the surface—it could stay down there for weeks, even months. Deep lakes can have thermal layers where icy water at the bottom slows the process of decomposition, keeping the body submerged. And this killer wasn't stupid—he might very well have taken the time to weigh the body down, in which case it would remain submerged even if it did bloat. That could be a big problem, because mountain lakes have craggy bottoms littered with rotting tree stumps, where a body can stay hidden for years. But they didn't have years to wait; they needed to find this body now, and Nick knew they might never find it without Alena's help.

Nick also knew something about grief: He knew that the worst way to have to face it was to just sit there and feel it until it finally cooled down like a dying fire and you succumbed to exhaustion and sleep. Alena needed something to do—she needed a distraction—and this was probably as good as any.

He caught a glimpse of motion to his right and looked; he saw the quick flash of a tail as a bass snatched an insect from just above the water and dove for safety.
Good spot for fishing
, Nick thought.
Let's hope it's as good for us.
There was a steady breeze blowing across the lake from northeast to southwest. They had divided the lake into quadrants and were covering one section at a time, keeping the boat pointed into the wind to allow the dog to pick up the scent as the breeze carried it forward. Nick knew the body could be almost anywhere, depending on how big a hurry the killer was in when he dumped it. He was hoping for a find in the shallow water near the shore. He knew the scent would be stronger there; the body would be easier for the dog to find and easier for the divers to recover. But they had already covered most of the shoreline without success; now they were in deeper water, and Nick didn't know what Trygg's detection threshold was. How deep was too deep? He had no idea; he just hoped that the dog's psychic powers were operating at full strength that day.

“She needs a break,” Alena said suddenly, then rolled onto her back on the cut-pile carpet of the foredeck. Trygg immediately turned and jumped on top of her and the two of them began to play.

“You don't have to do this,” she said to Nick without looking up.

“Do what?”

“Keep me out here while they're digging up my father's bones. That's what you're doing, isn't it?”

Nick paused. “I suppose I could tell you, ‘It's a long way back to shore—we might as well stay out here until we're finished,' but there's no sense trying to lie to a witch. Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. You shouldn't have to see that.”

“It doesn't matter. I've been preparing for this since I was ten years old.”

“You know, down in Endor they say there's a woman in the mountains who wanders the woods at night with a three-legged dog, searching for the soul of her father.”

Alena stopped and looked at him. “Did you ever wonder why I have a cadaver dog? Not many people do.”

“People keep some strange pets,” Nick said. “Me, I have giant hissing cockroaches from Madagascar.”

“My father disappeared when I was ten. There was a storm one night; he heard a noise in the woods and went to check on it. He never came back, and I never knew what happened to him—until last night. I found Trygg in an animal shelter in Nineveh—they were about to put her down. I walked up to her and said, ‘I need someone who can help me find my father.' She looked at me and said, ‘I can learn to do that—that's my gift.' And she was right—she's the best cadaver dog in the world.”

“It's a good thing she wasn't overly modest,” Nick said.

“Why should she be? If you've got a gift you should say so—you should put it to use. We've been over every square inch of our land together, and there's a thousand acres of it. We did it at night when no one would see us. I always thought that one night—that I would be the one to—”

She stopped.

“She eats dogs too,” Nick said.

“What?”

“That's another story I heard down in Endor. The woman in the mountains—she goes to animal shelters and feels all the puppies. She takes the fattest ones back to her lair and eats them—with their blood.”

“Who told you that?”

“Sorry—I have to protect my sources.”

“That's disgusting. I check the puppies for congenital joint defects, that's all. They told you I
eat
them?”

“That's right.”

“With their
blood
?”

“I threw that part in. I thought the story needed something.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Those idiots don't need your help.”

Nick watched while Alena and Trygg played together. Alena rolled back and forth and roughed up the fur on the back of the dog's neck; she took off one of her bandannas and gave the dog the knotted end so they could play tug-of-war.

“Why do you do that?” Nick asked.

“What?”

“Wrestle around like that—you do it every time the dog finds a body. Why?”

“It's her reward. It's what she lives for.”

“Wrestling?”

“Play. Touch. Love—that's what motivates her. She doesn't care about finding bodies—she wants to please me and she wants to play. At the CETC they use a little white towel rolled up and taped at both ends. They have a room there with a whole wall full of holes. A trainer stands behind the wall with the towel; inside one of the holes is a sample of cocaine or heroin. When the dog detects the scent, he walks up to the hole and the man sticks the towel out—that's the reward. The dog could care less about finding drugs; all he wants is the towel. That's all the dog ever does—he spends his whole life searching for that little white towel. Funny, isn't it?” She looked up at Nick. “What's your little white towel?”

“I'll have to give that one some thought,” he said. “What's yours?”

“Finding my father's body,” she said. “Now what?”

“Dogs are too easily pleased,” Nick said. “If I were a dog, I'd renegotiate my contract. I'd tell my trainer, ‘Hey, you sniff out the drugs and I'll hand you a towel—see how you like that.'”

She laughed a little.

“You'll be okay, Alena. You just need a new towel, that's all.”

“Like what?”

“Like finding the man who killed your father.”

“I'd like that,” she said. “I'd like that a lot.” She released the dog and snapped her fingers, and the dog immediately resumed her position in the bow.

Nick looked out across the lake; they had been working most of the day and they had a lot of water still to cover. He tried to think like the killer: Where would he dump the body? There didn't seem to be a logical place. He tried to imagine the body underwater: the bacteria running amok in the gut, producing methane and carbon dioxide that bubbled toward the surface in tiny specks of gas along with
putrescine
and
cadaverine
and the other malodorous by-products of death.