Crown of Serpents (24 page)

Jake knew that if he were to stop Nero, he had to confiscate these documents now before Rae took possession of them as evidence, otherwise he’d never see them again. Stepping over to the window, he pulled the drape back and checked where she was. He spotted her inside Ashland’s car, a flashlight beam moving about. Good.

He bolted back to the desk and stood looking at the pages. Should he outright steal this evidence? Was it really stealing? Afterall Jake tried to justify, it could be considered MHI research material that I’m merely retrieving. A glance at the murdered Ashland sealed his decision. You only live once. He grabbed all of the pages except the Ferguson Rifle sheet, figuring it would fit Ashland’s MO. He folded the sheets carefully and placed them inside his inner coat pocket. He then replaced the atlas as he had found it, even returning the pen to where it sat on top. With a quick exhale, he went back the door and pulled it open, making sure not to grip the knob to contaminate any possible fingerprint evidence the murderer might have left.

Rae stared back at him, expressionless.

Jake jumped back. “Jesus!”

Her head turned to an approaching motel guest. An older lady, dressed in a robe, walked up and asked if everything was all right. She said she had heard a bit of commotion earlier.

“State Police Investigator ma’am.” Rae said, flashing her badge. “Everything’s okay. Please go back to your room.” The lady gave Jake a once over then turned and shuffled back to where she had come from.

Rae motioned Jake inside. He noticed she had taken off her bulletproof vest and unbuttoned her blouse revealing plentiful cleavage. Two purple and red bruises the size of half dollars had spread on her upper chest where the rounds had hit the vest. A few inches higher and she would have taken them in the throat.

Jake stared. “You okay? That doesn’t look so hot.”

“What do you mean they don’t look so hot?” She raised a mischievous eyebrow trying to make light of the situation.

Jake stammered for words.

“Hurts like a son of a bitch,” Rae said in a serious tone. “But I’ll live – thanks to you.”

“Just doing my job ma’am,” Jake said with a wink.

“Searched his car,” continued Rae. “No sign of the rifle, but he did have lots of digging tools in the trunk. Already called dispatch too and they’re rolling emergency back up. This place will be swarming with cops in a minute. Right now I’m going to have to ask you to step outside and hang out in my vehicle. A lot of shit is going down. We’re going to be here for hours. I’m giving you a heads up right now that everything has changed now that your boss has been murdered and Alex Nero is potentially involved. This, I believe you say in the army, is called a clusterfuck.”

Jake nodded as he left the room. He headed back to her unmarked car, peeled off his latex gloves along the way, and shoved them in his pocket. He sat down inside, his mind spinning at what he had witnessed and how he had confiscated those documents.

Within minutes, a Dansville police cruiser with flashing lights came whipping around the corner and skidded to a stop in the parking lot. A cop jumped out and looked around. Rae waved to him from the second floor walkway. The cop double-stepped it up the stairs. Next came a Livingston County sheriff deputy. He also parked in haste and ran up to the room. Twenty seconds later a volunteer ambulance rig followed by a Dansville Fire and Rescue truck arrived. Shortly after the floodgates of volunteer emergency personnel opened up.

Making sure no one was watching, Jake fingered the three papers inside his coat to make sure they were really there. All was well. He sighed with a mixture of relief and disappointment at his actions.

He realized, when this murder scene wrapped up, he needed to contact Uncle Joe and Lizzie to tell them he had now accepted their mission. But first he needed to check in with someone else. He reached for his cell phone in the briefcase at his feet. He needed to call MHI.

Dialing the director, he shook his head and tried to figure out how this whole affair had unfolded. Was it because he tried doing the right thing in rescuing some guy trapped in a hole — who just happened to have stolen a secret broach. Or was it because some jackass named Nero happened to think he was a long lost all-powerful shaman. Or was it really all because Thomas Boyd’s greed led him to an Indian cave in 1779. Coincidence? Not if you ask Miss Lizzie Spiritwalker.

The phone rang several times. A groggy male voice answered. Jacobson.

“Sir? It’s Jake.”

“How’d you make out?”

“Stephen Ashland has been murdered.”

17

Early Wednesday morning. High Point Casino.

R
AY KANTIIO’S ARRIVAL at the High Point mountain resort saw him greeted outside in the employee’s private parking lot by Kenny Rousseau, the head of Nero’s personal Neo-Iroquois bodyguards. Rousseau was dressed in a dark blue suit and wore his black hair as Kantiio did — in a long braid. He had dark eyes with three light blue streaks of tattooed ink under each — face tattoos as in the ancient Iroquois warrior tradition. The brute was intimidating and rightly so, yet he acted in a quiet professional manner, stone-faced about his business. Concealed inside of his coat Kantiio knew Rousseau sported a Browning 9 mm Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol that could appear at any second. The head bodyguard also wore a nondescript earpiece for secure communications.

“You’re on time lard ass. That’s a first,” announced Rousseau.

“Up yours numb nuts,” replied Kantiio, chuckling.

Rousseau smiled. “Park over there.” He motioned toward the employee entrance.

Kantiio would be headed in to see Nero himself to present what he assumed would be the latest addition to his artifact collection — the antique rifle. But he also brought something special too, a new gift for his boss’s private scalp room. After parking his Navigator among other luxury SUVs, and wrapping the McTavish’s rifle in a blanket, he followed Rousseau into a side employee entrance leading into the main kitchen area.

Another bodyguard, dressed as Rousseau was, appeared in front of them and with Rousseau trailing behind they briskly moved Kantiio passed the chefs and prep cooks preparing for breakfast at the five-star restaurant. Pushing through double-swinging kitchen doors, they silently strolled down a service hallway decorated in Native American art. They bypassed the entrance to the main dining area and continued ahead. Several administrative staff offices with closed doors lined each side of the hallway. The end office door, next to Nero’s private elevator, was ajar. As they passed, Kantiio glanced in and saw the cute blonde-haired white woman Stanton at her desk. He stopped. She looked up and made eye contact with him. She seemed sad, but gave a weak smile in return. He flashed his gold teeth.

The door closed in his face. Rousseau had reached over and slammed it shut. The occupant’s nameplate stared back at him. It read: Anne Stanton, Director of the Haudenosaunee Collection.

“Mouth, she’s not your type,” said the head of security.

“Bite me Rousseau. At least I’m getting some!”

“I hear you fall asleep before you can even get it up,” countered Rousseau. “Now keep moving. You don’t want to be late.”

Rousseau, an ex-convict, had been caught with Alex Nero in their youth running weapons across the St. Lawrence River. He had been Nero’s enforcer during prison and actually recruited Kantiio into their prison gang. After their release and Nero’s subsequent rise to power he was rewarded as the head of Nero’s security team at High Point. Middle-aged, Rousseau stood at the same six-foot height as Kantiio. Physically, the two looked like replicas of each other — both sporting wide necks and faces — in the mold of a professional football lineman, although Rousseau definitely had kept in much better physical shape.

They proceeded over to the elevator, its mirrored outer doors shimmering in faux-gold. The lead bodyguard, a Mr. Jasper who was fairly new at the company, turned and faced Kantiio.

“You know the routine,” said the younger bodyguard.

They would pat him down. Kantiio had been through the drill many times before. As an independent contractor doing Nero’s off site dirty work, he often checked in with the boss and was always escorted down to his subterranean office. He handed the blanket-wrapped rifle to Rousseau, produced his Beretta 92 silenced pistol, and gave it to the other bodyguard, butt end first.

“Nice piece,” said Mr. Jasper, pocketing the pistol. “This new?”

“Yeah, picked it up last month down in the city,” said the contractor, knowing he’d receive it back once he left.

Kantiio then held out his arms. Rousseau frisked him up and down. On Kantiio’s side coat pocket he felt a lump inside and heard a crinkle of plastic. He pulled out a oversized freezer storage bag with what appeared to be a wig. Upon closer inspection he noticed it was a person’s scalp. Rousseau placed the bag back inside Kantiio’s pocket and looked up at him with raised eyebrows.

Kantiio’s teeth flashed. “A special gift for the Man himself.”

Rousseau merely shook his head. “Whatever gets you off.” He then checked inside the contractor’s white button-down shirt for any electronic recording devices. Kantiio was clean, as always. He handed back the artifact rifle and opened the elevator, allowing the trio to step inside. Rousseau produced a key out of his pocket, inserted it into a slot below the floor numbers then hit the button labeled
HC
for Haudenosaunee Collection. The elevator lurched downward for a three-story ride into the depths of the mountain.

Upon reaching bottom, Rousseau led his guest into a foyer area furnished with a series of Iroquois paintings hung on solid rock walls. Straight ahead sat the main entrance to Nero’s famous collection, the façade resembling an Iroquois longhouse. Reconstructed against the stone wall Nero had real logs brought in and secured with genuine corn fiber rope. Several decorative Indian furs adorned the walls adding to the visual authenticity. The log-faceted, reinforced doorway, locked tight as usual, was even flanked by two full-sized bronze Indian statues depicting warriors at the height of the empire.

The three men walked toward the collection’s entrance but then turned to their right at a solid oak door displaying a hideous false-face mask. Rousseau knocked twice. An electronic lock sprung and he led the guest in. Mr. Jasper followed, closing the door behind them.

Kantiio looked across the room to an oversized mahogany desk and found his benefactor.

Alex Nero sat hidden behind the desk in a high back leather chair, his back to his guest. Cigar smoke hovered above the chair, trailing into the crack of a partially opened wooden door just to his side. A hoop-shaped branch with a stretched scalp and long brown hair was the decoration of the day on that door. It marked the entrance to Nero’s prized Scalp Room, his inner sanctum where high-level security meetings took place. Nero stood up from his chair, his back still to Kantiio, and grabbed a small book off his desktop. He walked through the side door.

Rousseau escorted Kantiio through the same inner entrance. Again, it was locked behind them by the expressionless Mr. Jasper. Standard procedure, thought Kantiio.

Rousseau proceeded ahead into the narrow rock chamber as Kantiio’s eyes widened at the sinister collection of victim’s scalps hanging on every wall. He was astonished every time he entered the room.

At the far end, Rousseau halted and stepped aside. In front of them was a stone table. On the opposite side of the table, against the back wall of the chamber, sat Nero. Dressed in a stylish contemporary tuxedo, he sat in an elevated high-back wooden chair reading a small leather back book. Kantiio always referred to his chair as the King’s chair. A cigar hung out of Nero’s mouth, blue-gray smoke floated around his head, blending in with his stone gray colored hair. Bloodshot eyes, from a night of tending to his casino guests, peered out from behind the swirling smoke. He gave Kantiio a grunt and a nod.

His contractor nodded back.

“Please show me the rifle, Ray.”

“Certainly,” said Kantiio, unwrapping the blanket and exposing McTavish’s Ferguson rifle. He laid it gingerly on the table. “The poor bastard who stole this got nasty with me once I got him back up to his room. I think he knew it was coming. Put up a weak fight.” He chuckled as he reached into his coat pocket to extract the plastic freezer bag. He turned the bag upside down and let Ashland’s bloody scalp fall onto the table.

It hit with a slap.

“Another gift for your collection.”

Nero rose from his chair. “Ah, such an unforeseen event.” He walked up to the table, placed his cigar on the edge, and fingered the scalp so that it lay flat, hair side up. He then stroked Ashland’s blond hair several times. “A nice addition indeed. Many thanks.” He winked at his contractor.

Kantiio smiled, his front gold teeth reflecting in the warm light.

“Mr. Rousseau, please prepare this for display,” ordered Nero.

Rousseau walked up, opened the bag, and placed the scalp back inside. He handed it to Mr. Jasper who walked it to a side table and stored it in a drawer for later preparation.

“Ah, the famous Sean McTavish rifle,” uttered Nero as he picked up the Revolutionary War relic. “Tell me,” he continued, as he examined the piece. “How does this rifle end up in Dansville, New York stolen by another thief?”

The gold-toothed contractor shifted his weight and in a rather defensive tone said. “Listen, I was prepared to go into that library and take the rifle myself. I would have taken care of the librarian too. No witnesses. I was waiting right before the library closed to pull the job. But this moron walks up when I was casing it and I knew he was up to something. I have no idea who he was. When he came out, the rifle was sticking out of his trench coat, so I figured he took the piece I was after. I mean most libraries don’t have two Revolutionary War muskets now do they?” He chuckled nervously. Nero remained silent.

“Anyways, the dude was a total amateur,” Kantiio rambled. “The piece barely fit into his little red sports car. I tailed him from there. He never knew I was onto him. If I didn’t make the judgment call to follow him the job would have been compromised for sure. He would have disappeared with it. So, you have to give me credit there.”