Latham, Sarchi thought. Timmons had argued with Latham.
“Do you have his phone number?” Carl asked.
“Yeah, but he often doesn’t answer even when he’s there. Just a sec.”
Impulsively, Sarchi went into the lab and got a paper towel from the pile by the sink. Returning to the office, she scribbled Carl a note: Ask for Timmons’s address and instructions on how to get there.
When Walsh responded to Carl’s questions, she took it all down on the towel. The conversation between the two men then turned to things that didn’t involve her. To her relief, Carl adroitly maneuvered this phase to a quick termination. As predicted by Walsh, their call to Timmons went unanswered.
“I can try again later and let you know what he says when I get him,” Carl suggested.
“That’d be a big help. What does this guy look like?”
“I think I’ve got a picture.” Carl got up, came from behind his furniture, and picked through the items on the top shelf of a nearby bookcase. “Ah, here it is.”
He pulled a booklet from the shelf. “These are the proceedings of a conference we both attended two years ago in Crete. In addition to summaries of the talks that were given, it contains photos of all the participants.” He thumbed through a few pages and held the booklet out to her. “That’s him.”
Timmons was a nerdy-looking dark-haired man wearing wire glasses with round lenses. On the side of his face turned to the camera, the skin in front of his ear was discolored by a port wine-colored birthmark that extended onto his neck.
“Why’d you want his address?” Carl asked. Then, catching himself, he said, “Sorry, forgot I’m allowed no questions.”
“I don’t know how, but someday I’ll find a way to repay you for all the help.”
“I’ve always liked Ferraris . . .”
Going back to her car, Sarchi mulled over what she’d learned. Timmons had recently come into enough money to retire. Could that have anything to do with Latham? Was that what they’d argued about—some deal they were in together? What did the Timmons lead from Tropical Joe really mean? Were the two papers in Acta Neurologica the entire story, or was she supposed to do more?
Her thoughts turned back to the argument between Timmons and Latham. Now that they were on the outs, Timmons might be willing to talk. She certainly had nothing else to do today, and, without even pushing it, she could be there in three hours.
FOR A HUNDRED and thirty miles east of Memphis, Interstate 40 runs through relatively flat uninspiring countryside that very much needs the face-lift it gets in the fall when the leaves turn. But it was several weeks past their peak, and the trees now looked tattered and tired.
She stopped for a quick lunch at the Casey Jones Village in Jackson, Tennessee, a point roughly halfway to her destination, and was back on the road by a quarter to twelve. Fifty miles later, she came to a bridge high over the Tennessee River, the one scenic view between Memphis and Nashville that couldn’t be ignored. Wide and blue, the Tennessee stretches north to south in a beckoning abundance that divides around heavily wooded islands and sends meandering channels into the forest on both banks: The Tennessee River is a natural wonder that makes even the most landlocked mind wish for a boat.
A half hour later, with the river forty miles behind her, Sarchi left the interstate at the exit Walsh had indicated and turned north. Proceeding exactly three and two tenths of a mile, she turned west onto a two-lane country road and drove until she came to a mailbox bearing a picture of a horse’s head with a DNA helix on its neck. Behind the horse, white lettering spelled out
Base Pair Farm
C. Timmons, owner
Base Pair Farm . . . named after the base pairs that make up DNA. Cute, Sarchi thought.
The dirt driveway, which was closed by a white wooden gate, disappeared over a hill that obscured any view of a house. The entry to the drive was muddy and heavily rutted. Leaving her car far enough off the road so it wouldn’t get sideswiped, she skirted the mud and let herself onto the property.
The driveway was flanked on each side by pasture enclosed with a white post and rail fence. On each shoulder, the fence was accompanied by a row of freshly planted saplings without a leaf left on them. It was colder here than in Memphis, so as she tucked her gloveless hands in her light poplin jacket and started up the hill, the effort of the climb could be read in her breath.
When she reached the top of the hill, she saw the house about seventy yards away—a beautiful building constructed out of Arkansas fieldstone with white trim and white shutters. Behind the house and off to the right sat a red barn that looked new. She had thought when she set out there was a chance she’d arrive only to find Timmons away, so she was relieved to see a car and pickup in front of the house.
Then she had a disturbing thought.
Suppose the car belonged to Latham? She definitely didn’t want him aware of her interest in Timmons, and a confrontation could be dangerous. She glanced down the drive and considered the three hours it had taken to get there. She couldn’t turn back now on the mere possibility that Latham was here. He probably wasn’t. She was just being paranoid. Still, she checked her bag for the .38 even though it couldn’t have gone anywhere. Attempting to calm herself, she resumed walking.
A mare and a colt stood in the pasture to her left. Neither paid her any attention as she walked by. When she was about twenty yards from the house, a big roan stallion trotted up to the fence on her right and began walking with her. She was now close enough to see that both vehicles bore Tennessee plates. But if the car was a rental, it could still have brought Latham.
She and the stallion parted company where the driveway gave rise to a fieldstone walk which led to the house. Standing on the porch, she reached for the bell. Suddenly, she noticed that the front door was slightly ajar. She rang the bell, waited a half minute for someone to answer, then rang again. She waited another moment, then pushed the door open. “Is anyone home?”
No answer.
“Doctor Timmons? Are you here?”
Still getting no response, she considered going inside. Then, realizing he might be in the barn, she pulled the door shut, left the porch, and crossed the yard to a gate in the white fence, where she was met by the big roan.
She hesitated a moment before entering and then asked, “Are you a good boy? Can I trust you?”
Amazingly, the horse bobbed his head and whinnied, his breath curling upward in the crisp fall air. Knowing a little about horses from her childhood, she decided this one wasn’t dangerous and went in. While she was securing the gate, the horse nudged her gently with his head, leaving a wet nose mark on the shoulder of her jacket.
“What is it, big fella? You want some attention?”
She rubbed his huge neck a bit, warming her hands on his skin, then started walking, choosing a course to one side of the heavily marked track the animals used. The horse let her get only a few steps away before following. Halfway to the barn he nudged her again, and once more she rubbed his neck.
“Now that’s all.”
The door to the barn was half open, and she could smell horse manure and feel warm air even before entering. Inside, six pigeons sitting on a rafter fluttered in surprise at her appearance. Attached to that rafter and to several others were the ducts that undoubtedly served as the barn’s heating system. To heat a barn was in itself extravagant, but the way Timmons left doors open, he seemed to have no concern whatsoever about money. And what was he feeding his animals to produce such a smell?
The barn interior largely consisted of four stalls on each side of a wide, straw-littered central aisle. All the stall doors were closed except the third on the right. There was no sign of Timmons. Behind her, she could hear the horse breathing. Above, the pigeons had started a cooing fest. But there was something else . . . She listened harder, trying to tu
ne out the animals.
There . . . a faint high-pitched beeping.
Taking a route to avoid passing directly under the pigeons, she moved slowly forward, trying to locate the sound and forget the manure smell, which was growing stronger. Again, the horse nudged her.
Tired of the game, she waved him away. “Not now.”
As she moved deeper into the barn, she realized the sound was coming from the open stall. At the exact moment she stepped through the open door into the stall, the horse nudged her again, this time so hard she lost her balance and fell facedown onto what was left of the rat-gnawed corpse of Christopher Timmons.
29
The PRESSURE OF her fall caused the corpse to exhale, filling her nostrils with an odor so foul it made her eyes water. On the verge of retching, she pushed herself up, her hands barely indenting the corpse’s tightly stretched blue flannel shirt and the bloated flesh beneath. Though her vision was slightly blurred by tears, she saw that the head, too, was swollen and distorted by the unmistakable imprint of a horseshoe that had caved in its skull. Despite this terrible damage, the mangled wire frame glasses riding what the rats had left of the nose and the port wine-colored mark still visible through the gathering decomposition pigments on the cheek left no doubt about the dead man’s identity. The beeping sound she’d heard was coming from his wristwatch, reminding him of some event that no longer mattered.
Unable to tolerate the stench any longer, she turned and headed for the door, all thoughts of avoiding the pigeons forgotten. Behind her, the horse that had probably delivered the fatal kick remained at the stall, looking at the corpse.
Beside the door, Sarchi paused just long enough to swish her hands in a galvanized watering trough and dry them on her jeans. Outside, the crisp fresh air against her face as she hurried to the gate cleared her head but chilled her damp hands so that her fingers were stiff and clumsy as they worked the gate latch. Letting herself out, she stood on the other side and gathered her thoughts.
There was no way to know when Timmons had died, but it certainly had to have been at least a few days ago. She should have realized that smell wasn’t just manure. What to do now?
Tell someone—but how? If she called 911 on her cell phone, she’d have to give them an address, and she didn’t have one . . . just directions on how to get there. But if she called from a landline, they’d have the address automatically.
The house was unlocked . . .
She went to the porch, stepped up to the front door, and paused, feeling very ill at ease about going inside a dead man’s house. But it had to be done.
She quickly found a plug-in phone and made the call. The person who answered connected her with the county sheriff.
“I need to report a death.”
The sheriff asked her to stay until he arrived. After hanging up, she looked around at the heavy masculine furnishings and thought of how close she might be to copies of the two papers she wanted, then, feeling like a ghoul for coveting a dead man’s reprints, she returned to her car to wait for the sheriff.
By the time he got there, she’d begun to wonder about the timing of Timmons’s death. He has an argument with Latham and shortly thereafter is found dead. It seemed like more than a coincidence. But how do you get a horse to kick a man in the head and stage it so that it’s a direct hit the first time, for there was only one mark on him. It seemed so impossible she didn’t even mention her suspicions to the sheriff or tell him any more about the reason for her visit than to say she came to discuss some of Timmons’s work with him. After the sheriff took a look in the barn and sniffed around the house a bit, he let her go home.
Shortly after getting back on the road, she pulled into a rest stop and called John Metcalf in McKenzie. “John, it’s Sarchi. I saw Christopher Timmons.”
“How did you—?”
“He’s dead. I found the body.”
“Whoa. You’re gonna have to back up a mile for me to get on.”
She recounted how she came to be in Timmons’s barn.
“I’m not sure this passes the stink test,” John said. “And I don’t mean the smell in the barn.”
“My thoughts, too, at first. But how could something like that be staged? The body only had one mark on it.”
There was a brief silence, then John said, “I suppose it could have been sheer bad luck.”
“For Timmons and me.”
“More for him, I’d say.”
“No argument there. But I sure didn’t accomplish anything for my efforts.”
“You kept the man from lying neglected one more night in that barn. What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?”
“I’ve got an appointment at the Speech and Hearing Center to have that song analyzed.”
“Good luck. Let me know what you find.”
THAT NIGHT, THE faces of Timmons and the man who’d kidnapped her took turns infesting Sarchi’s dreams. She was awakened the next morning as usual by the carpenters next door. Her first thoughts were of Timmons’s crushed head and the sound of his watch futilely trying to get his attention. She was rescued from these images by the realization that in just a few hours she was to take the book with the song in it to the Speech and Hearing Center.
As she stood in the bathroom brushing her hair, her eyes fell on the vial of pills the nurse at the sexual assault center had given her.
The pills.
As long as she had to take them, she couldn’t forget that damn five percent. Blotting out the worries that threatened to immobilize her, she swallowed the pills with some water and went back into the bedroom to catch up on her e-mail. Thinking about Tropical Joe, she went to her hospital account first.
The second message listed had a subject that grabbed her attention: We’ve got to talk. And the sender’s identity was obviously masked.
What she saw when she opened the message was riveting:
If you want to discuss the Latham Clinic, meet me at seven o’clock Memphis time on the undernet on the IRC channel, ZZ3. If this channel doesn’t exist when you sign on, wait a few minutes and try again. Use the nickname Dr. S. and whatever real name you wish. My nickname will be Helper, real name, Cyberguide. If you don’t have the software for IRC you can find it on the Internet.
She didn’t know quite what all this meant, but it appeared that her anonymous contact wanted to communicate more directly. This was such a bombshell that she printed the message and called John Metcalf in McKenzie. There was no answer.
She turned back to her computer.
IRC . . . What the hell was that?
She connected to the Internet and did a search for IRC. One of the entries retrieved was something called “An IRC Primer.” Opening it, she learned that IRC was an abbreviation for Internet Relay Chat. This was a way to “talk” in real time with people all over the world via your computer without long distance phone charges. You meet people on one of the thousands of existing channels or you can create a channel just for you and a friend.
That’s what the message meant. Helper was going to create a channel called ZZ3 just for the two of them.
Searching further, she found that the best IRC software program for her Mac was something called Ircle, which she could download from the Internet and try free for thirty days.
She managed to get the program onto her hard disk but couldn’t figure out how to “expand” and “unstuff” it as was apparently required before it would work. Tired of fooling with Ircle and seeing it was now nearly time for her appointment with Hugh Kelsey, the man who’d agreed to take a look at the song she wanted analyzed, she shut off the computer. Kelsey had cautioned her that it might be nearly impossible to determine if the song contained anything “unusual.” She set out for the medical center, figuring that even if he didn’t come up with anything, she could drop by the hospital and ask Ella Dodge how t
o get Ircle running.
THE SPEECH AND Hearing Center was of modern design, a low and boxy building of institutional red brick. Sarchi told the receptionist behind a glassed-in cubicle her name and that she had an appointment with Doctor Kelsey.
He appeared a few minutes later in dark slacks, a crisp white shirt, and a tie bearing splashes of blue and red. He was no older than forty, with broad shoulders and a trim waist. He had an olive complexion and slightly hollow cheeks that gave him a hostile and dangerous look. She suspected that no one would vote against him in a promotion and tenure meeting.
“Doctor Seminoux.” He offered his hand and Sarchi took it, finding his grip warm and confident. “Let’s go upstairs and take a look at this song.”
She followed him up a short flight of stairs and down a red-brick-lined hallway to a room that looked a lot less like a scientific laboratory than she’d anticipated. He led her to a computer with two chairs in front of it.
“Why don’t you sit right there so you can see what I’m doing,” he said. “Not that I’m expecting to produce anything dazzling.”
Sarchi wished he’d show a little more optimism but wouldn’t have said so even if he hadn’t looked like a hit man.
“This song—it’s in one of those books?”
Sarchi gave him Marge’s copy. “It plays when you open the last page.”
Kelsey turned to the final page and listened to the song for a few seconds, then put the book face down on the table. “If it was just voices, it’d be better,” he said. “The instrumental background will introduce a lot of complexity. Tell me again what I’m looking for.”
“I don’t know. Anything that shouldn’t be there.”
“Like something that’s been added to the mix?”
“Exactly.”
“That would be easier if we had the before and after. With only the final product, I don’t know . . .”
The Killing Harvest Page 24