Bloodletting

by Michael McBride

  "But people notice when someone like that goes missing. This wasn't an indigent. She's in our missing persons database, I assure you. It's only a matter of time before we have a positive ID."

  "Any signs of elevated ammonia content in the skin or abraded fingertips consistent with a struggle against long-term confinement?"

  "The process of curing the flesh would have altered the chemical composition of the skin even if the liquefied fats hadn't, and all of her nails and fingertips are intact."

  "Why the removal of the organs?"

  "That's what you do to mummies."

  "But aren't they kept around in canopic jars or something?"

  "In Egyptian ritualistic mummification."

  Carver made a mental note to ask Ellie what the Inca did with their excised viscera and carefully slid down into the widened pit, conscious not to kick a single grain of dirt onto the body. From behind he could clearly see the knobs of the spinous processes and scapulae pressing through the tight tan flesh and the ribs through ragged-edged tears where the rope had peeled away the skin. He took his personal cell phone from his pocket and leaned over the body, toggling the camera function and directing the aperture at the mummy's face.

  Even from so close, he couldn't distinguish the difference in hair color near the scalp Ellie had appreciated. He snapped several images from the front and side and climbed back out of the dig.

  "Let me know if you find anything interesting," Carver said, heading back out of the tent to leave the experts to their task.

  The wind had risen even more, throwing sand into the air and pelting the canvas. Carver stood in the lee on the northern side of the tent and speed-dialed number seven on his phone.

  "'Lo," a drowsy voice answered. Regardless of the time of day, Marshall Dolan always sounded as though he'd been roused from a deep slumber.

  "Hey Marshall, you in the lab?"

  "Where else would I be?" Marshall was the Assistant Director of the Rocky Mountain Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, and by far the smartest person Carver knew. He accumulated doctorates for his wall like other people collected artwork. "Sorry to hear about that nasty Schwartz business, but I do have news in that regard."

  "Good news I hope."

  "Intriguing news, anyway."

  "Hit me."

  "All of the blood on the walls and floor in that room under the barn...none of it belongs to the girls."

  "Whose was it?"

  "You mean what. It was all sheep blood, specifically juvenile sheep based on the levels of hormones."

  "The blood of the lamb? How poetic," Carver said, unnerved by the memory of so much blood on the walls and the floor. The trajectory of the spatters indicated that someone had viciously attacked those lambs with a certain exuberance. But there had been so much. "None of the blood was human?"

  "Even if there were trace amounts directly underneath the, um...parts, it would be nearly impossible to separate the human DNA from that of the sheep."

  "So the whole scene was staged. Why? And where's all the blood?" He knew the girls had been bled dry prior to being butchered, but he had assumed that was part of the act of torture. He thought of the mummy behind him. Where was the blood? And there was the matter of Schwartz's erratic behavior. "Any abnormal toxicology on Schwartz?"

  "Increased levels of dopamine suggest schizophrenia, but as I'm sure you already know, there were no narcotics on board."

  That might have contributed to the man's nervousness and paranoia, but didn't completely rationalize it. There had to be something more.

  "Is the autopsy complete?"

  "Not yet. They're not only scouring the guy for our sake, but for posterity's as well."

  Carver nodded to himself. He knew the protocol. After all, there weren't that many opportunities to truly study a serial killer, but he was impatient by nature and with all of the similarities that had emerged between the two cases, he could positively feel the sands of time slipping through his fingers.

  "Why don't you meet me at Gibby's tonight?" Marshall said. "We can shoot some pool and--"

  "Let you take all my money?"

  "Consider it paid lessons."

  "I'm out of state now, so I'll take a rain check on my drubbing, but I do need a favor."

  "I'll put it on your tab."

  "If I send you some pictures, can you run them through the facial reconstruction software?"

  "What kind of condition is the body in?"

  "Mummified."

  "You're kidding, right?"

  "Can you do it?"

  "I've never tried, but I don't see why not. The software's designed to function with skeletal remains. I can't imagine that a little skin should make a drastic difference. We may only be able to generate partial matches to prominent facial features, but it might be enough to attack the database. Don't you have a forensic anthropologist working the Doe?"

  "Yeah, but I don't want to wait for physical reconstruction or dental records unless that's the only option. I'm confident they can identify the victims, but I'll take whatever head start I can get."

  Carver sent the images and waited for confirmation of receipt.

  "She's a real looker," Marshall said.

  "Get me her name and I'll introduce you."

  "You're too kind."

  "And Marshall?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Can you send the reconstructed image to my phone as soon as it's done?"

  "Anything else, your highness?" Carver heard from the receiver, but he was already hanging up.

  He needed a lead to chase before he started to lose his mind. Thirteen deaths now weighed on his conscience. Someone higher up the chain had recognized this current case was potentially related to his last, but why would that someone drag him into it when there were obviously already agents at their disposal? If he was going to find the monster that did this, then he was going to have to gain solid footing. He was starting to feel like a tumbleweed in the wind. He needed to know who had requisitioned his services. Granted, the Bureau was full of secrets, but generally not when it came to the chain of command. He had to learn the significance of the Inca bundling. Of all the possible methods of burial, it seemed as though the killer had gone to the greatest trouble to imitate mummification. And most importantly, he needed to figure out what happened to all of the blood.

  IV

  Flagstaff, Arizona

  "You sure you won't just stay with me?" Emil asked. The Pathfinder idled in front of room number eight at the Vista View Inn, a twelve-unit, single-story motel on the outskirts of Flagstaff. "It's the least I could do considering I was the one who convinced you to drop everything and fly all the way back here."

  "I appreciate the offer," Elliot said, "but right now I just need some time alone to think things through."

  "I could always come in..."

  Elliot forced a wan smile.

  "Maybe next time, Emil."

  "Well," he said, shifting into reverse, "the offer stands."

  Elliot climbed out, unloaded her bags from the back seat, and waved as the Pathfinder headed back toward the highway. She bet Mondragon wished he hadn't dropped the other girls off first now.

  She realized the extent of her exhaustion when she caught herself giggling.

  Unlocking the door, she entered the small motel room. The air conditioner mounted under the lone curtained window rattled a welcome, but barely blew enough air to stir the dust motes. She set her bags in the twin orange vinyl chairs by a small circular table and plopped down on the bed, which hardly gave beneath her and squeaked in protest. Lying back, she stared up at the amoeboid blotches on the ceiling and hoped they were from rust-tinted water.

  All she wanted was to curl into a ball and cry, but she still had so much to do. She needed to book a flight, or more realistically, a half-dozen flights, and transfer funds from her dwindling savings account to cover the expenses she couldn't justify siphoning from their meager grants. And if she ended up stranded here a couple days waiting
on a plane, she should probably go visit her mother's grave.

  She rose and walked toward the bathroom, bypassing the small sink and the glasses with conspicuous fingerprints, and stepped into the tiny room. The spigot in the tub spat out a flume of brown water before finally clearing. She let it run to heat up, peeled off her filthy clothes, and nearly started at her reflection in the mirror. Her entire face was thick with dirt, crusted at her hairline. There was a ring around her neck where her undershirt had shielded her pale chest. Had she looked so terrible when Pax arrived?

  Why was she thinking about him anyway?

  Pulling the knob to start the shower, she climbed in and let the steaming water pour over her. Maybe it was being so close to where she'd been raised, or running into her old high school sweetheart, or everything combined with hardly having slept in days, but she was overcome by nostalgia. It was strange being so close to home, though it felt like someone else's home now, lending the uncomfortable sensation of peering through a window into a house in which she had once lived and watching the new occupants. Memories she hadn't pondered in years resurfaced, summoning tears that were immediately washed away. She remembered the look of pride on her mother's face when she had run screaming into the kitchen with the scholarship offer from NAU, the similar expression, though mixed with a touch of sadness, when she had descended the staircase in her prom gown. And Paxton had been there for both, and so many more. He had even come back from Colorado to comfort her at her mother's funeral months after they had faded from each other's lives. Their parting hadn't been a conscious decision. There had been no awkward discussions of moving on or seeing other people. Their calls had simply become less frequent until they finally stopped altogether, and with Pax's mom moving to Denver to be closer to her son, there had been no reason for him to come back to Arizona. At least none that she had supplied. They had both been too busy--or perhaps too self-involved--to take time out of their busy lives for each other. She with her studies and unpaid summer digs abroad, and he with the football games, practices, and classes. She had allowed not only the love of her young life to vanish from it, but her best friend as well.

  And seeing him now, older and more mature, and in a suit even...

  His eyes had been so sad, or perhaps haunted was a better term. She imagined hers must have looked the same.

  Elliot turned off the water and wrapped herself in a stiff white towel. Maybe there was still a chance she might run into Pax again. Then the trip might not end up being such a complete waste of time after--

  She froze. Her chest tightened and a shiver rippled up her arms. Cool air seeped beneath the bathroom door. She knew the sensation, but it was out of context. This was how she felt standing at the edge of a new dig, knowing that somewhere under her feet was what remained of a life she would never know. But this wasn't an archeological site and there was nothing but solid concrete beneath her.

  Tired. That was it, she was so tired that she had become on edge for no good reason.

  She hurriedly dressed, still acutely aware of the hackles creeping from her shoulders into her neck, and took the doorknob in her trembling hand. Steadying herself, she opened the door and crept out into the room. Just as she had expected, it was empty. Her bags were exactly as she had left them. The front door was still closed and chained. Her dusty imprint still graced the rumpled covers.

  "You're losing it, Ellie," she said, trying to release the tension with a sigh as she flopped onto the bed.

  But the feeling lingered.

  Everything was in its place. There was no sign that anyone had been in her room, yet she couldn't shake the sensation. It had come on so suddenly.

  Her nostrils wrinkled when she smelled it. The meaty stench of fester and decay.

  She turned around and noticed a faint lump on the pillow under the gold and green comforter. Had that been there when she arrived? She looked at the door, knowing she should get up and walk right out, but her curious nature asserted itself, and before she made a conscious decision to do so, she grabbed the covers and yanked them back.

  There was a small obsidian figurine on the pillow, tacky with sloughed flesh.

  She recognized the carving, for it was a recurrent image in many ancient Latin American cultures.

  A tapir.

  V

  Verde River Reservation

  Arizona

  The borrowed sedan slowed for a cattle grate in the middle of the dirt road, the barbed wire fences stretching away from it holding in a small herd of straggly black cattle in the distance to the left. Feral mongrels chased each other through sparse fields spotted with clumps of brown grass. A blue heeler cross bounded up from the overgrown drainage ditch to the right and bared its teeth. Trailers and small, more permanent claptrap houses were spread at random intervals, trucks and station wagons aged by rust parked askew on dirt lawns. Everything was the same color of windblown sand. Ahead, the road wended down into a pine valley.

  "I've never been out here," Carver said.

  "Should have brought a camera then," Wolfe said, meeting the stare of a dark-skinned child on the side of the road, who promptly raced back up the porch and into the trailer.

  There was only so much the two agents could do at the site until the bodies were exhumed, a task that moved at a snail's pace. While they waited for the lab results and the slow digging, they decided to take the opportunity to interview the man who had discovered the first corpse.

  "What's his name again?" Wolfe asked, slowing the car to watch for the non-existent addresses.

  "Kajika Dodge."

  "First name sounds Japanese."

  Carver checked his phone for messages for the thousandth time. Nothing.

  "This looks promising," Wolfe said, pulling up in front of a doublewide. It was dwarfed by the aluminum outbuilding behind it, which looked as though a stiff wind would knock it down. Despite being painted with grime, the trailer appeared relatively new, the awning stretched over the porch bereft of holes. The F-150 in the gravel drive had its best days behind it, but the tread on the tires was still deep. Two tall wooden stakes dominated the front yard, between which two thick wires had been strung. Rattlesnake skins had been stretched between them and clamped in place to dry. While there was no grass, cacti and yuccas were xeriscaped amid carefully tended clusters of wildflowers in shades of red, orange, and gold.

  Carver didn't see the man sitting on the porch until he lowered his heels from the wooden rail. The man appraised them with casual interest as they climbed from the car and approached the trailer.

  "Nice suits," the man said. He draped the limp rope of flesh he'd been skinning over a bloodstained chopping block beside him. There were two buckets near his feet, one half-full of rattles and the other heaped with viper heads. "I guess this means there was more than just the one?"

  "Excuse me?" Carver said.

  "They don't send in the Feds for just one little old body."

  "That obvious?" Wolfe asked.

  "Cops want you to know they're in charge. That's why they wear their badges on their chests. Feds don't want you to know they're running the show until they can whip out the badge and smack you upside the head with it."

  "I like this guy," Wolfe said to Carver. He turned back to the man, who stood and wiped the blood from his hands onto his jeans. "I'm Special Agent Wolfe. This is Special Agent Carver. I assume you must be Mr. Dodge?"

  "Kajika," he said, proffering his hand. The folds in his knuckles and palm were lined with dried blood.

  Both agents looked at the filthy hand, but made no move to shake it.

  "Don't worry, boys. It'll wash off at your next manicure," Kajika said with a lopsided smirk. "Besides, a real wolf would lick the blood right off my hand."

  "A real wolf would be more worried about its hide," Wolfe said.

  "Ahh. You like my skins? I could sell them at a stand for ten bucks a pop. If that. But I have buyers on Rodeo Drive who pay me twenty times that. When I see someone like Paris Hilton carr
ying around a purse or wearing boots made from my skins, it makes me feel good, knowing I got to stick it to her just a little."

  "Is this guy great or what?" Wolfe said.

  "We were hoping to ask you some questions, Mr. Dodge," Carver said.

  "So you'll be playing the role of Bad Cop?"

  "We've already found eight more bodies, Mr. Dodge."

  That seemed to sober him up.

  "All young girls like the first?"

  "We don't know yet. How did you find out the remains weren't ancient Sinagua?"

  "Here in the desert, word travels on the wind," Kajika said, looking past the agents to the other side of the street. Two men leaned against an old Jeep Cherokee in front of a small house fifty yards back from the road, staring directly at them. The front curtains quickly closed when Carver looked. "Why don't you boys come on inside where we can talk without having to worry about the wind?"

  Kajika led them through the front door into a great room at odds with the exterior. The matched set of sofa, loveseat, and chair was new, overstuffed for comfort. An empty glass perched on a coaster on the coffee table, the only sign of disarray in the otherwise impeccable order. A large plasma-screen TV hung on the wall, surrounded by framed artwork reflecting a common motif: God and man, heaven and earth. An open doorway at the back of the room led to a kitchen that shined with new appliances; a hallway to the left presumably to the bedrooms.

  And displayed in the center of the room against the rear wall as some might showcase a cabinet of curios or collectible figurines, was an enormous Plexiglas cage with heat lamps and full-spectrum UV bulbs directed through the locked lid onto a miniature desert landscape. A rattlesnake basked on the flat top of a stack of rocks beneath the lights, black tongue flicking lazily.

  "Not what I would have expected from the outside," Wolfe said.

  "What? You think just 'cause me live on reservation me got no wampum?" Kajika asked.

  "No," Carver said. "It just appears as though you've gone to great lengths to hide it."