“Don’t beat yourself up,” Mike told her, being as genuine as his hormones would allow. “It’s not your fault—it’s just plain old confirmation bias.”
“Yes, Gracie,” I added. “They almost certainly had the couple on their list, already—your work just gave them a hook to hang them on.”
“I’m afraid that particular term doesn’t make me feel much better,” Gracie said quietly. “But—anyway…” She tried to rally. “What it did do that was helpful was to convince this guy in Donovan’s office that I was already so on the inside that he could speak freely about the names of the selected targets. They’re Jimmy and Jeanette Patrick, both in their early forties, both with deep Burgoyne County roots. They did a short stint for molestation and child porn, like I say, but now they just lie around their latest house—they’ve had to relocate at least a couple of times because of neighbor trouble—getting high and watching a lot of free kiddie porn on the Net. And when I checked some of the free sites, just to get an idea of what was keeping them so busy, Jesus, there is a lot of that kind of thing to watch. ‘Mature couple seduces teen girl,’ ‘Older couple with young boy’—that kind of thing. Really just…dreadful stuff.”
“Yeah, you can find just about anything on the Internet,” Mike mused quietly; then, when he found Gracie staring at him in seeming disbelief, he quickly defended, “Hey, don’t give me the hairy eyeball, Dr. Chang, you’re the one who’s been looking at it.”
“Unh-hunh,” Gracie said, continuing to appear dubious in a way that momentarily made Mike very worried about his chances with her; but then she offered a quick smile that said her concern had been an act, and finally continued: “Some of it gets pretty aggressive, bondage and whatnot, which is what these two had been up to, before they were finally arrested about four years ago. After they got out, they were relocated, then moved to another, and then another, supposedly safe spot away from any schools and families, outside of Heinsdale”—which was a town about fifteen miles south of Surrender, just on the Rensselaer County line—“and there hadn’t been any official complaints. But now—well, you know the drill. Offenders like that who have acted out and been caught once aren’t likely to be rehabilitated, says accepted law enforcement wisdom, and when they’re released, the further assumption is that the crimes will continue and probably escalate in violence. Although empirical evidence does not back such conclusions up, any more than it does the recidivism rate generally.”
“Contrary to popular belief,” I added.
“Contrary to popular belief,” Gracie agreed with a nod. “Anyway, when the Patricks moved from their previous relocation spot to some hovel on one of those endless Heinsdale roads into the woods, they didn’t even report that they’d gone, to their parole officer, but after a while they started getting some more death threats from their neighbors, who’d found out their records. So they showed up on police rolls again, at which point whoever’s running this show realized they had their perfect dupes. I can give you their exact address before I leave, but here’s the important thing: the DA got the legal wheels rolling right away, and the BCI will be picking them up tomorrow. They’re getting warrants to make all the usual moves: seize any computers for evidence of trolling kids on Facebook, Twitter, in chat rooms, e-mail, anywhere else on the Net, along with proof of continued visits to those same porn sites, which they’re not supposed to be doing. In general, they’ll rip their place apart for signs they’ve not only been looking at materials, but contacting kids and maybe acting out again—specifically, with the throwaways from this case. After that, well—you’ve already told me, although I didn’t really need telling, what Mangold will do, once he’s put them into interrogation rooms. And I…I just can’t help but feel awfully responsible. Even if I shouldn’t.”
Mike said nothing, but offered a comforting hand to Gracie’s shoulder, which she was grateful to have. I, in contrast, had begun to pace the earthen patches of the kiln floor even faster—because I was starting to get angry.
“It doesn’t fit,” I murmured, thinking of every detail of my encounter with Latrell. “It just doesn’t God damned well fit, Gracie. When Latrell spoke to me about ‘them,’ he wasn’t talking about some penniless, middle-aged couple who like to diddle kids. He had the real ‘them’ in his phone, their names and number; and if you ask me, they were, they are, people he usually trusted—which was why he was so upset and confused, that night, when he couldn’t get ahold of them. And everything about the crimes—all of the trace and research work we’ve done, things we haven’t even told you about yet—none of it points in a direction like this. There’s money, real money, involved in every one of these deaths, along with a common direction from which that money is flowing—and it isn’t from some hovel in Burgoyne County. It’s south, damn it, the answer lies south—in the big damned city…”
Gracie looked both confused and stunned. “Wait—you’re saying these kids had somehow made it to New York?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” I answered, my mood very dark, now. My face in the moonlight that crept through the broken roof of the kiln must have reflected as much, for both Mike and Gracie were recoiling in a kind of horror. “And I’m saying it because it’s exactly what all the profiles tell me—not geographical profiles, but psychological profiles, real profiles. I’ll say it again, these kids were ambitious, they were determined, and none of their profiles work, in connection with a couple of perpetrators like the ones you’re describing—not that anybody hounding this couple will give a shit!”
Gracie nodded certainly. “I do get that much, Trajan. I realized it as soon as you started to talk about the victims. It’s why I wanted to know about how you’d figured it all out, even if I was a little nervous about telling you what I knew I had to tell you. And I’m sorry—”
Suddenly, Gracie was cut off by an entirely incongruous yet strangely appropriate series of sounds coming from outside the kiln: ugly animal snarls of at least two kinds, and full of genuinely ominous intent. The first were issued by Marcianna, who was letting loose the kind of sharp barking growls and powerful hisses that she only made when real danger was evident. The others, however, were deeper, true growls, and were clearly being made by larger animals with no good on their minds.
Gracie was first to her panicked feet: “What the hell was that?”
“I’m right there with you, Gracie,” Mike said, standing by her, then offering her a hand to hold, whereupon she threw her arms around his, her face paling. “What the hell was that, Trajan?” my partner demanded.
But I was already on my way out the door, drawing my .45 and worried to death about Marcianna. “Stay here,” I said. “And get your damned guns out!”
{v.}
Once outside the kiln, I turned to my left, expecting to see Marcianna; and my heart sank when I found that she wasn’t there. Her lead was wrapped around several trees, and wound away to the southern side of the structure, which was out of my view.
“Marcianna!” I bellowed, repeating the name two or three times as I untied the handle of her lead and hurried as best I could to follow the flat blue nylon trail. With great relief I discovered, once I’d gotten about halfway to the neighboring kiln, that she’d hung the lead up on the low branches of a short pine, and was being held back to a spot relatively close to and between the two structures. The easing of my anxiety, however, was short-lived: for although she had assumed her bravest defensive posture—her head and forelegs low, her hind quarters ready to spring—about thirty yards in front of her in the woods, their jaws snapping and their lips snarling in that particularly repulsive ursine way, were three black bears, one a very good-sized sow, the other two her fairly mature male cubs. There was no sign of a boar anywhere, which meant that the two cubs were still learning from their mother: together the three were on a family hunt, the most dangerous configuration in which one could encounter such beasts. The female, if she reared, would have measured a good seven feet, and the young males not much less:
big enough, in other words, that our pistols—man-stoppers though they all were—might only have pissed the three off, if we shot them in less than vital spots. Even with multiple wounding rounds in them, they were perfectly capable of mauling us badly out of sheer rage before they died.
“Don’t look as cute as they do on Animal Planet, hunh, Doc?” came an urgent, whispering voice: Lucas’.
I spun around to find him on top of the first kiln, as close to the jagged hole in the roof as he could manage without collapsing the structure. “Lucas!” I whispered. “What the fuck are you doing up there?”
“Uh—what the fuck are you doing down there, would seem like the more logical question,” he hissed. “Don’t worry, I heard everything you guys said. It was all very interesting. Now what the fuck is going on?”
“You tell me,” I said, still quietly, keeping my face toward the bears, holstering my gun and inching forward, first to free Marcianna’s lead and then to back away with it, retracting it slowly until she gave enough ground to return to our position near the first kiln, where I could grab her collar, if I needed to. “You’re the one who’s been out here all this time—what the hell are they after?”
“You don’t know?” Lucas asked. “I thought it was part of your brilliant plan. I didn’t hear anything till about five minutes ago, and that was just a rustling sound coming from that next kiln, the one with the roof all caved in and the door that faces south. I looked over and noticed a huge trail of blood leading into it. That got the scent in the air, all right. These three fuckers showed up just a few minutes later.”
“You didn’t see what left the blood trail?” I asked. “Maybe they wounded something, but it got away and ran here for shelter.”
“Nah, I didn’t see nothin’,” Lucas answered. “But I woulda heard a fight like that.”
I thought the matter over quickly. “All right—here’s what we’re going to do…” I took out my .45 again and let off a few shots. The sound seemed to give the mother bear and her cubs a moment to consider whether the prize they had either wounded or were smelling was worth it; but I knew they wouldn’t consider such things for too long—not given how hungry they looked, and how much blood, I could now see, was on the ground, and must therefore be, as Lucas had said, in the air.
“Trajan!” came Mike’s voice from within the kiln. “You all right?”
“Yeah, fine,” I answered. “There’s three bears out here—I was just keeping them honest till I get Marcianna’s lead clear.”
“Is Lucas okay?” Gracie called.
“Yeah, he’s fine,” I answered. “I’ll be inside in a minute, don’t worry.” I looked back up at Lucas. “You get down here,” I said, “and take hold of Marcianna’s lead.” When he’d followed these orders, I gave him more: “Keep her close as you can, and let me get Mike and Dr. Chang out of here. Then I’ll be right back. Can you handle that?”
“Do I have a fucking choice? And will you leave me your piece?”
Under the circumstances, I could only agree. I handed him the gun, but said nothing to Marcianna—in her present enraged state of mind, she wouldn’t have been able to make much sense of my words, and I might only have confused her badly. She was obeying the restriction of the lead, that was all I could hope for; and so I quickly hobbled back through the entrance to the first kiln, to explain the situation to Gracie and Mike, who still had a firm arm around our guest: although I don’t think he was getting the enjoyment he’d anticipated out of it.
“Bears?” Gracie said, growing even more fearful. “But—why? Are they after us?”
“No, it looks like there’s a wounded animal nearby,” I said. “Maybe they got it, or maybe it was brought down by coyotes, who the bears ran off.”
“And where are the other two?” Mike asked.
“Standing watch,” I said. “And I’ve got to get back to them. You have time, though—get to your Prowler, Mike, and get Gracie down to safety, then into town and to her car.” I turned to her. “Gracie—Mike will get the address you promised on your way, and explain any remaining details of our work. And I hope we’ll have shown, over the course of this evening, that you will be able to trust us with your safety, whatever the situation.”
Gracie did no more than nod a few times, and then the two of them started off to the waiting ATV. Mike got it going, and they vanished speedily into the near-darkness of the ridgeline trail, the machine’s powerful headlights showing the way, after which I returned to Lucas. He handed me back my .45 rather reluctantly, and the handle to Marcianna’s lead far more eagerly.
“Oh, man, there ain’t nobody going to believe this,” he said aloud. “Not even Ambyr! Bear hunting with a 1911 Colt .45 and a cheetah—who the fuck does that?”
“Quiet down, will you?” I scolded, softly but urgently. “You’re only going to get those damned bears even more pissed off. We’ve got one chance, here—make sure of that carcass, whatever it is, let them get busy with it, and make for the other Prowler.”
“The carcass?” Lucas asked. “What makes you think the damned thing’s dead?”
“Call it a hunch, much as I despise the word,” I replied. “But I want to get a look at it, either way.”
“O-kay,” Lucas conceded. “But you did say ‘hunch,’ I won’t forget that…”
“Yeah, yeah, smart-ass,” I said, handing him my cane, which I wouldn’t be able to manage with all I had to do. “Here—use this, if they start coming at us.”
“Oh, thanks,” Lucas cracked. “There isn’t a barrel in this thing, by any chance, is there?”
“No,” I answered, preparing to reveal a secret that I didn’t like most people to know. “But pull on the handle, hard.”
He was a bit mystified, but did as he was told—and he grew instantly delighted when the gleaming blade of a razor-sharp, two-and-a-half-foot rapier appeared from within the wood of the cane. “Oooh, yeah!” he declared. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” He held the blade out. “This is one sick damned cane, dude. Come on, you bear fuckers, I’m ready!”
“Shut the hell up and put the blade back!” I said. “I’m just telling you it’s there—but don’t do anything to get them any more aggravated than they already are.” Disappointed, Lucas sheathed the cane’s business component. “Now,” I went on, “let’s get going to that other kiln—and remember: we move slow, we don’t turn our backs on them, and you maintain eye contact as much as you can.”
“Oh, sure,” Lucas answered. “Eye contact with three nasty fucking bears. I do it all the time…”
I gave him a shove to our left, then reeled Marcianna in just a little bit more. I had to pray that, if I used the right words, she’d understand that I fully appreciated her efforts to protect us, but that shifting our position was a necessary part of that process. I therefore began to shadow Lucas’ movements, keeping my eyes locked on the bears as I sidestepped to the left and began my little monologue, using words and phrases that were key to her—“Okay, Marcianna, I get it, you’re doing good, good job, girl, now let’s just move and try to go home—home, girl…”—all of which was made the more difficult by the fact that I had to keep my artificial leg moving fairly nimbly without the aid of my cane, if I wanted to manage both Marcianna and my .45.
The short trip to the more collapsed kiln took us about three minutes, with the bears constantly snarling and occasionally moving forward, and Marcianna, in response, yanking her lead right out of its supposedly locked position a couple of feet in order to challenge them with vicious, hissing barks and the defiant lowering of her head and forelegs. It was hard to bring her back to me, at those moments, but I did manage it; and finally we reached the entrance to the second kiln, the roof of which, as Lucas had said, was almost completely collapsed, along with much of its upper walls.
As the kid had also reported, there was quite a blood trail leading inside; although, in truth, blood was not the gleaming path’s only component. There were bits of internal organs evident, as well
; and just inside the kiln’s doorway, the large, pillow-like stomach of a white-tailed deer lay on some of the bricks that seemed to be pouring out of the old place.
“Well—it’s dead, all right,” Lucas pronounced. “A deer.”
“Indeed. Okay, kid—” I held out my Colt. “I’ll trade you again.”
“Yeah?” Lucas said, happily handing me my cane and taking the .45. “How come?”
“I need you to stand watch for two minutes. I want to get a look at that deer…”
“What the hell for?” Lucas said, his face screwing up. “Doc, if either the bears or dogs got to it, it ain’t going to be a very pleasant sight.”
“True,” I said. “But then, I don’t think that’s what happened.”
“Another hunch—you’re really slipping, L.T.,” Lucas jabbed; and I had to admit, it really was admirable, the way he could hang on to his humor in the face of a dangerous situation.
“No,” I countered. “I think we can call this a confirmed thesis,” I said, “based on what you’ve said. After all, Lucas, don’t you think that, if coyotes brought the deer down, you would have heard them signaling the meal to the rest of their pack, even if they had somehow managed the kill silently?”
Lucas considered the matter for as long as our perilous situation would allow. “Okay,” he said. “But what about the bears? Still coulda been them.”
“I give you the same argument,” I replied. “Even if the bears had wounded the deer so badly that its insides were already falling out six feet in front of the kiln, don’t you think you would have heard the victim let out that eerie cry they do? And why would the bears have backed off of it?”