Vultures at Twilight (28 page)

‘Sure,' I said. ‘The more the merrier.'

‘Mattie,' he started, ‘Hank wanted me to find you.'

‘What's up?'

He looked at Ada and me. ‘It's OK with them here?'

‘They're fine. What's happened?'

‘The search team found another body,' he blurted. ‘Actually . . . two.'

THIRTY-TWO

‘
D
amn,' Mattie muttered as she followed Hank down the treacherously slick and steep leaf-covered ravine. Behind them, a couple dozen men and women in yellow police parkas and mud-soaked boots took a break, drinking coffee from thermos flasks, their focus on Mattie and Hank. One trooper and handler with the canine team held an umbrella over the four-year-old bloodhound that lay against at his feet, contentedly chewing on a rawhide bone.

‘We left them the way we found them,' Hank explained, hanging on to a sapling to keep from tumbling forward. ‘Give the Medical Examiner a chance to see them as we found 'em.'

‘Who discovered them?' she asked, struggling to keep her footing on the slick ground of the steep incline.

‘A bloodhound named Daphne and her handler. I guess you were right about the whole thing.'

‘Wish I hadn't been. So it is Jeffries and Rinaldo?' she asked, stepping over a half-rotted log.

‘Can't say for sure.'

‘Not more acid?'

‘Nope, just the swamp and lots of critters looking for food. I think the raccoons and maybe some coyotes had a go at them.'

The smell of carrion rose from the gorge. It reminded Mattie of opening the lid on one of her garbage cans after it had sat inside her garage baking in the summer heat. At least in the open, the stench got diluted with the earthy smells of the trees and the swamp. As they neared the bottom their shoes sank in the muck. Her feet made wet sucking noises as she followed Hank to what looked like a cement pipe that stuck straight up out of the ground.

‘What's that?' she asked.

‘A bad idea,' he answered. ‘A while back some fool got the notion of putting drainage pipes in a lot of the wetlands. We forever have to cover them up. Kids love to play in them and then they get stuck. I'm surprised the killer didn't dump the bodies into one of them – would have kept them hidden longer.'

‘That's not what he wants.'

‘True.'

The smell of rotting meat grew, but aside from the muddy trackings of the cops she couldn't see where the stench originated. Then, not ten feet in front of her, Hank stopped.

‘Here's number one,' he said, standing in front of the gristly remains of a man.

It was like one of those children's puzzles, where objects are hidden. The body melded into mud and fallen leaves, and where woodland creatures had torn the flesh, the wounds showed bits of slick bone, yellow fat and red muscle, now oxidized to a sickly gray. The body lay twisted on its side. She walked around it, careful to touch nothing, hating the damage that her hiking shoes did to the surrounding ground. She crouched in front of the body by the place the face should have been. With slow breaths, she tried to identify features from the pictures she'd seen of the two missing dealers. It was useless; but she could see what might have been a small dark entry wound in the middle of the forehead.

‘What do you think?' Hank asked.

‘Maybe when we get them cleaned up and on the slab. Were there any good footprints?'

‘You've got to be kidding. After the last two days of rain we're lucky the bodies weren't completely submerged.'

At the top of the ravine she spotted Kevin, the Medical Examiner and two other detectives as they started their descent. Behind them the sky had grown dark and was filled with heavy gray clouds. A wind kicked up the branches overhead and she could tell that the storm, that had briefly abated, wasn't over.

‘So how the hell did they get here?' she asked. ‘I can't imagine someone dragging them down here all by themselves.'

‘Good point, so they had to come under their own steam.'

‘Which leaves . . . Did they come willingly or under duress? So where's the other body?'

‘You're practically standing on it.'

She turned and scanned the ground. Her gaze caught on a filth-smeared bit of red-plaid. She traced it back to a mud-caked mound, which, as she stared at it, took on human form. ‘Jesus, you can barely tell it's there. Did you get pictures?'

‘First thing. Figured this would be a hard scene to protect.'

‘So how long do you think they've been here?'

‘Few days. Must have been here before the storm. Anything after and they wouldn't be so badly covered.'

‘You think that was intentional?'

‘The storm?'

‘No, to get them down before a big rain. Otherwise there would have been a lot more physical evidence.'

‘Could be. We had a couple days' warning.'

Mattie felt a hollow victory and suspected that after the Medical Examiner and the forensic team got through with the bodies her earlier suspicions would be confirmed: that Jeffries and Renaldo had been killed not long after Philip Conroy. Her mistake was in not demanding a search team and dogs sooner.
Two more dead.
She looked up as Kevin, the Medical Examiner and two other detectives from Major Crime descended. ‘We have to put Lillian Campbell under surveillance.'

‘What are you talking about?' Hank asked.

‘It sounds like our boy . . . or someone pretending to be him . . . has staked her out. She's been getting hang-up calls saying “
you're next
”, and I don't think he's talking about the Irish Sweepstakes.'

‘Lil Campbell? She doesn't fit the profile.'

‘I know, so maybe we've got the profile wrong. There is some common denominator but it may not be what we thought.'

‘What are you getting at?'

‘I'm not certain . . . You remember a girl named Wendy Conroy?'

‘Sure,' he said, after a moment's pause. ‘Real tragedy. Killed herself. What's she got to do with this?'

‘Near as I can figure, there's old secrets coming out.'

‘Like what?' He eyed her closely.

Before she could respond, the winded Medical Examiner called out. ‘Couldn't you at least keep your murders someplace dry?' Arvin Storrs struggled through the last few yards, his boots slipping and slurping in the mud. ‘So what have we got?' he asked, smiling broadly at Mattie.

Hank pointed. ‘Body one and body two.'

‘Cause of death?' Arvin asked.

‘Thought that was your job,' Hank said. ‘My guess is bullet wound at close range, at least for this one here. That one over there I haven't wanted to turn over.'

‘Looks like a herd of elephants has been through here,' the examiner commented as he surveyed the pockmarked mud. ‘Any chance someone took pictures before they trampled the scene?'

‘Done,' Hank assured him.

‘Find anything else?' he asked.

‘Some garbage, a few old beer cans, some less old than others. I got them bagged, but I think it's less likely from the murderer and more likely some high school kids coming down to party. I even found a used condom.'

‘Where?' Mattie asked.

‘Just dangling over a branch,' he said, pointing with his stick. ‘Looked like it had been there for a while. I took some pictures of it before I bagged it.'

Mattie looked at the mud-crusted bodies that melded into the swamp. ‘Any chance it was from one of those two?'

‘We shall see,' said Dr Storrs as he snapped on a double layer of gloves. ‘You still got your camera, Hank?'

‘Yeah.' He slogged his way toward a boulder covered with a variety of sealed plastic evidence bags, and retrieved his high-resolution Nikon.

‘Just follow me,' Arvin instructed. ‘Let's see what we got.'

Kevin and the pair of detectives joined the group and watched from the sidelines. In the distance two pairs of patrolmen had started the descent carrying a rolled-up stretcher and shiny black PVC body bags. And behind them, members of the search team dotted the crest as they sipped coffee and watched.

‘Mattie, you want to give me a hand?' the examiner asked. ‘Here, put some gloves on.' He bent by the first body, studied its position, and scraped off a layer of leaves. Then he tilted back the left shoulder to get a clear look at the head and face. ‘Terrible,' he commented as several plump white maggots fell to the earth. ‘Raccoons have been gnawing at this one. You want to get some shots, Hank?' The examiner made clicking noises with his tongue as he surveyed the body. ‘It's going to be hard pinpointing the exact time of death. Judging by the size of those larvae, I'd say a week.' And taking a pair of tweezers he dropped three shiny maggots into a specimen bottle. ‘I'll be able to tell when we get him inside. Looks like an entry wound here,' he said tilting up the forehead. ‘Oops.' The body shifted and the head tilted back, almost detaching from the neck. ‘My goodness,' he commented, scraping mud off the back of the cadaver's neck. ‘Something's really been chewing away at this; you'd think this was the Thanksgiving turkey. Mmm mmm mmm. Another few days and there wouldn't have been much. Mattie, give me a hand; let's get him on his back.'

Together, the two pried the half-gnawed body free from the mud and flipped it. The stench of methane and rotting flesh roared over them. Mattie stepped back; her stomach lurched.

Completely unperturbed, Arvin commented, ‘Pants are zipped. Other than that, his clothing is pretty shot; I'd bet that all came after the fact. See, look at this?' He poked a twig into a tear in the flannel shirt. ‘See how jagged that is, and if you look close you can see dried bits of saliva, that's not human . . . At least I hope not.' He scanned the body. ‘Yeah, not a lot more to say. Male, forties, probable cause of death is a bullet, small caliber, to the brain. Was there much in the way of splatter around the body, like a struggle or anything? Any tracks of a dragged body?'

‘Not so as you could tell,' Hank replied. ‘But you got to remember it's been raining pretty fierce. This is the first real clearing we've had.'

‘Lucky us,' Arvin said, glancing up through the trees at the darkening sky, and the small crowd of onlookers lining the crest, including the bloodhound, now straining at her leash. ‘Any chance you took some mud samples from around the body?'

‘Didn't think to. Why?'

‘Maybe get lucky and see if there was some blood mixed in, otherwise we'll never know if there was much movement before death. Shall we take a look at body number two?' He got up with a groan. ‘The knees don't work the way they used to. Look at this,' he said, in the tone of a TV-commercial mother who's found muddy footprints on her just-washed floor. ‘I tell you –' he surveyed the half-submerged body – ‘what a mess.'

A trickle of water ran by the corpse's outstretched hand and meandered toward the stream at the bottom of the ravine. From overhead came the spatter of rain landing on the trees.

‘God, he's stuck,' Arvin complained as they struggled to pry the body from its muddy cradle.

‘Let me help.' Kevin snapped on gloves and gripped the body around its middle.

‘On three,' Arvin instructed. ‘One, two, three.'

A wave of brackish water rushed to fill the hole left by the body.

‘Hank, grab some pictures, quick,' Arvin ordered as he stared down at the cavity.

‘Wow,' Kevin commented, still hanging on to the body's flank. ‘It's Pete Jeffries.'

‘You're right,' Mattie agreed, getting a clear look at the filth-smeared face, which had been preserved in the mud.

A droplet of water landed on Mattie's neck and the woods rustled with the sound of falling rain and leaves. Thunder rumbled and the wind whipped the trees. A trunk creaked ominously, and in a matter of moments, darkness fell. Mosquitoes, emboldened by the coming storm, swarmed. Arvin squashed one on his forearm in a bloody smear.

‘OK to bag?' Hank asked.

‘Yeah, let's get out of here,' Arvin agreed. ‘Not much to say. Except, this body looks a whole lot better and I'd be willing to bet it hasn't been here as long as the other one.'

‘Killed at different times?' Mattie asked.

‘I'll let you know for sure once I get them on the slab; but I'd say this Jeffries guy has only been dead a couple days, maggots haven't even hatched. That other one's over a week.'

‘So someone got them down here one at a time,' Mattie said. ‘Makes sense, it's easier to control one person than two. But why here?'

‘Guys –' Arvin stepped back to let the patrolmen pack up the bodies – ‘I'd love to stay and chat, but it looks like I'm going to be spending the day in the morgue and frankly, I can't do that on an empty stomach. So, Hank, where can a guy get a decent meal around here?'

A torrent of rain swept the ravine.

‘I'll show you,' he replied, gathering his evidence and tucking his camera inside a plastic bag.

Leaving the officers to collect the bodies, and the other detectives to wait for the crime-scene team, Mattie, Kevin, Hank and Arvin started the climb.

All the while, Mattie was thinking what it must have been like for the two men they'd left behind. What, or who, had induced them to come down here in the first place? There were no signs of a struggle. Although, the rain might have washed that away, but still. As she struggled upward, grabbing at saplings and low-hanging branches, she thought about Lil. With a surge of energy she barreled her way up the rest of the incline, overtaking her colleagues. At the crest she shouted back over the driving rain, ‘I'm going to check on Lil. I'll call from there. But Hank, I wasn't kidding, get her some protection.'

Hank yelled something in reply, but his words got lost in the storm.

A crack of lightning split the sky and without waiting, Mattie raced to her car, and with a worried feeling gnawing at her gut, she sped back to Pilgrim's Progress.