The Ancient Breed (12 page)

“You think a person could do
that
to a body, Sheriff?” Lisa asked skeptically.

“If you have any other ideas, I’d love to hear them,” Berger replied.

Lisa glanced toward the pink sunrise on the horizon. “Did an explosion do that?” She directed them toward a large mound of muck two hundred yards away.

Sheriff Berger frowned. “Maybe.”

Russ shook his head. “Uh, I don’t think so. That spot’s too far away from the blast zone.”

“Wasn’t that where the gray square showed up on your thermography scans?” Lisa asked.

Russ’s eyes widened. “I’ll be damned, she’s right. C’mon, let’s take a look.”

The four of them hiked along the narrow strip where the muck had been excavated until Sheriff Berger raised his arm.

“Look at the size of those footprints!” Berger exclaimed.

They stood and stared at a series of broad, three-toed prints deeply imprinted in the muck. There were two trails—one heading toward the road and another returning to the muck pile.

“Jesus!” Dr. Patrick exploded. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

“By the depth of the prints, I’d guess that whatever made those prints weighs at least four – maybe five hundred pounds,” Russ ventured.

Lisa didn’t appear a bit amazed.

“You okay?” Russ asked her.

“Uh-huh. I’m just trying to absorb all this so I can make some sense of it,” Lisa lied. She already had a pretty good idea of what was responsible for those footprints, but she wasn’t about to share it with the locals. They were too narrow-minded to listen to the disquieting truth.

The men nodded, obviously satisfied with the explanation of her behavior.

“Maybe it’s just kids playing a prank, like that guy responsible for faking Bigfoot,” Berger surmised, in a weak attempt to rationalize the footprints.

Russ rolled his eyes and marched toward the mound. “Yeah, Ed, and maybe I made ‘em with my size twelves and my wife’s bunny slippers.”

“No need for sarcasm, Russ,” Berger called after him.

The others followed hesitantly with Ed snapping pictures of the prints as they walked.

Russ climbed the muck mound and whistled. “Will you look at that!”

He stared into the enormous crater on the other side of the pile. It was slowly filling with groundwater.

“What are those?” Patrick asked, pointing at two objects inside the crater.

Russ shrugged. “Looks like two pillars, but I’ll be damned if I can see what they’re supportin’.”

Lisa felt faint. Everything her father had told her about the so-called fountain of youth was true. The property was guarded by a powerful demon called Zyloux, and it wouldn’t stop killing until every trespasser was dead.

“It appears that something dug its way out of there,” Patrick reasoned. “There’re claw marks all around the mound and up the sides of the crater.”

“But what the hell could have done this?” Berger asked, his eyes wide.

“Nothing you’ve ever seen on the Discovery Channel,” Lisa replied. She turned and retraced her steps back to the site. She’d seen enough to convince her that Blossom and her kidnappers would soon be in serious danger. If only the kidnappers hadn’t stolen the gold chest, then Blossom’s chances for survival would have been much greater.

Lisa flipped open her cell phone and redialed Nick Bellamy. He was their only hope of defeating Zyloux, but convincing him that his involvement was vital to ending the killings, without revealing all the details concerning Alick Tobhor’s secrets, would be difficult, at best.

Knowing Nick’s indomitable nature, the odds weren’t in her favor.

13

N

ick stepped out of the shower as the coffeemaker finished filling the pot. While he awaited Lisa Anders’s return call, he opened the French doors leading to his back porch and let the summer morning breeze wash over him as he sipped the steaming brew. The sun peeked above the horizon, ready to launch the temperatures well into the nineties. It was going to be a Wednesday scorcher in Washington.

During his third cup of coffee, he contemplated the Florida State professor’s message. How did she know more than his well-trained
Orion Sector
agents? It was both perplexing and irritating. He retrieved his satellite phone from the kitchen table, returned to the porch, and speed-dialed Crow. Geronimo’s creator, as Nick expected, answered immediately despite the early hour. They exchanged civilities.

“How’s your investigation into Blossom’s kidnapping coming along?” Nick asked dryly.

“Crazy. Neo suspects jealousy, as in an old boyfriend, as the motive. And, we’ve got Blossom’s archeology professor from Florida sticking her nose into the case. She believes that the motive for Clay’s shooting and Blossom’s kidnapping was theft. Grandfather swears that there’s bad mojo working inside Blossom’s motel room,” Crow replied in exasperation.

“What’s your verdict, chief?”

“I’m thinking buffalo stew.”

Even Nick, who knew Crow’s penchant for wisecracks, wasn’t prepared for that eccentric reply. “Come again?”

“Buffalo stew – a combination of meat and vegetables.”

“Yeaaaah.”

“You white men have no sense of the figurative. Stew – as in a mix of ingredients. I believe that the true motive may contain multiple ingredients,” Crow explained.

“Interesting, but it sounds like you’re riding the fence on this case.”

Crow laughed. “That’s why I’ve got Geronimo digging into it. I’m as stumped as the rest of them.”

“What has Geronimo turned up so far?”

Crow quickly detailed their findings in the motel bedroom. “I ran some pictures of the stolen gold chest, and Geronimo came up with three ownership possibilities.”

“Is one of them Juan Ponce de Leon?”

“As a matter of fact . . . wait a minute, Custer, how could you possibly know that? You psychic, too?”

“Hardly,” Nick replied.

“Well, after what your squaw-in-waiting told you before she was exiled into the next dimension, I thought that was one of your newly acquired
special gifts
.”

“I have no idea what Gabriella meant by
special gifts
.”

“Maybe she was referring to your extraordinary bullshitting talent.”

Nick laughed. “I wouldn’t doubt it,” he said lightly, but beneath the levity, he was deeply concerned with Gabriella’s prophecy. Her last words to him, before her prolonged exile in the neighboring, parallel dimension for her unorthodox scheme to save his life, haunted his consciousness.
Don’t waste your special gifts. Use them to protect our world.
He was clueless about her reference. It appeared to be an indecipherable puzzle. He was Nick Bellamy, plain and simple. Case closed. Wasn’t it?

“Okay, how’d you find out about de Leon owning the stolen chest?”

“I have my inside sources.”

“Let me take a wild turkey guess. Lisa Anders?” Crow speculated.

“You nailed it,” Nick replied.

“That Anders woman told us that she didn’t have any idea who it belonged to. Now why do you suppose she lied to us but told you the truth?”

“We’ve got to find out. Did Geronimo run a make on her?”

“Yeah. She’s squeaky clean. No arrests, no traffic tickets, no warnings, no un-American activities, no abortions . . .”

“
Too
clean,” he interjected and considered the conundrum from several angles. “Someone might’ve created an elaborate cover for her.”

“Like who?”

Nick exhaled heavily. “I don’t know enough to even venture a guess.”

“Did Anders tell you what was inside the chest?”

“Five-hundred-year-old porn,” he quipped, attempting to lighten their moods. He felt they were pressing too hard to reason clearly.

“Cute.”

“We didn’t get that far. She had to deal with an emergency.”

“Like powdering her nose?”

“Like a bombing at a construction site where she was investigating some strange bones.”

“This whole investigation’s getting more bizarre by the minute.”

“What’s this Anders look like?” Nick asked.

Crow chuckled. “Young, attractive, and way out of your league,” he answered.

“I’m not in the market.”

“Why not? Gabriella’s not around, so what’s the harm in a little window shopping?”

“We have an understanding. A commitment to each other. Once you’ve experienced the best, every other woman’s just second-rate,” he stated.

“Lisa’s a strawberry blonde looker with brains. That’s pretty damned impressive, too.”

“I don’t care if she’s Miss America.”

“You know what they say, Custer? When the warrior’s away, the squaw will play.”

“Just drop it, all right?”

“Like a hot potato. Anything new on your terrorist investigation?”

“Tampa is going to be crowded with government officials this weekend. Lots of potential terrorist targets,” Nick groaned. “NSA doesn’t seem overly concerned for their safety, and even less concerned about our terrorist warning. That makes our assignment even tougher. I’m authorizing extra FBI agents to screen their weekend venues for bombs and snipers—the usual precautions.”

“Good.”

“Hey, there’s one thing you can do for me if you can find the time.”

“Shoot, paleface.”

“Run the phrase ‘walking man’ by Geronimo for me.”

Crow stiffened. “Walking man?”

His request was met with total silence.

“You still there, Crow?”

“Where did you hear about walking man?”

Nick described his rendezvous with John Lonedeer and disclosed his dying words, “walking man.”

“John Lonedeer? Are you sure about that?”

“I was there, remember? What’s this all about, Crow?”

“John Lonedeer was a childhood friend of Blossom’s, along with a man named Jay Walkingman. Walkingman was Blossom’s ex-boyfriend, and the reason she transferred from Nebraska University to Florida State,” Crow explained. “He’s bad medicine.

“Last year, Blossom confided to Grandfather that Walkingman had been hanging out with a bad crowd for quite a while—people who believe that violence is the sole way to achieve their social goals.”

“Got an ID on those radicals?”

“No,” he replied thoughtfully.

“I don’t like this a bit.”

“Me neither. By the look of things, we’re working on the same investigation.”

“I’d better fly down there. Have Neo drive up to our Tampa office this afternoon. We need to consolidate our efforts.” Nick paused. “Question.”

“Yeah?”

“Why can’t Grandfather go for one of his eccentric wind walks to the place where Blossom’s being held and rescue her?” Wind walking was the ancient, mystical Indian art of teleportation - leaving one location and instantly reappearing at another.

Crow laughed. “You white men are so uneducated about the red man’s magic. Grandfather can’t wind walk anywhere unless he knows his exact destination. Right now, he’s as much in the dark about her location as we are.”

“Well, it was worth a try. Keep in touch.”