Bloodletting

by Michael McBride

  "Yá'át'ééh," Kajika said.

  "It's time we talked," Nelson Lonetree said, addressing him in English as though Kajika were unworthy of conversing in his native tongue. He didn't know Lonetree personally, but had just seen him on the television, posing for the camera.

  "I suppose so," Kajika said, gesturing to the chairs on the porch, but the men were already walking through the front door. "Please. After you."

  They seated themselves on the couch, each of the men discreetly running their fingers along the plush fabric and staring around the room in obvious awe and discomfort.

  "You've done well for yourself," Jimmie Begay said, resting his hat on his lap. He managed a weary smile.

  "As have you," Kajika said, nodding at the badge on the man's breast. He sat in the chair across from them. "It's been too long, Jimmie."

  Once upon a time, they had been close friends, a lifetime ago it seemed.

  Jimmie fingered the badge. He was proud of his accomplishment, Kajika could tell, but appeared out of his element amidst the trappings of wealth. Unlike the other two men, who wore their hair in braids, Jimmie's was cropped military-short, the uniform straining against his chest and broad shoulders. His dark eyes finally focused on Kajika's.

  "Sorry to hear about your father," Begay said. "He was a good man. A proud man."

  "A man who remembered his roots," the other man said before Kajika could acknowledge the sentiment. He still wore his hat, which spoke volumes. Arvin Benally, once the bigger boy who had beaten the stuffing out of him in elementary school, and twice more in their teens, now wore a uniform to match Begay's. He filled his out as well, but in a much different way. His gut tested the strength of the buttons, revealing elliptical swatches of his undershirt, and hung over the belt cinched around his much thinner waist. The top of his uniform shirt was open around his bulging neck, like his small head was sitting on a tire he couldn't quite swallow.

  Kajika offered each of the men a beer before setting the pack on the floor beside him. None of them accepted, but he cracked one for himself. Anything he could say would only draw further disdain, so he sat silently, sipping his Coors and waiting for them to continue.

  "You abandoned your family, your people," Benally said. "And now you return, bringing trouble with you."

  "Enough," Begay said, glaring at his partner. He turned back to Kajika. "As this is tribal land, the FBI is required to liaise with the Winslow Police. In this case, the Criminal Investigation Section specifically. Let's just say that we don't feel our involvement is what it should be. Everyone we've dealt with so far has been dismissive and condescending. We know a couple agents came out here and talked to you. We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on this situation since we're being kept in the dark."

  Kajika nodded and set aside his beer. "I don't know very much, but I'll tell you everything I can."

  "You should have told us from the start," Lonetree snapped. "Do you know how stupid you made me look? We have a mass murderer's private graveyard on our land, and here I stand as the delegated speaker for the Archeology Department of the Division of Natural Resources, telling the world on national television that I thought the bodies were ancient Sinagua. You embarrassed me. You embarrassed your people."

  "I didn't know." Kajika kept his voice neutral. "I would have called the police first had I. That's why I called you and the university first."

  "We know about your former associate," Benally said. "And what he did in Colorado."

  "I only learned of it today myself."

  "Did he kill those people buried on Diné land?"

  "How would I know? I can't imagine when he would have had the chance. We were working side-by-side every day until only a couple years ago."

  "Surely you can understand how this looks to us," Begay said, assuming the voice of authority.

  Kajika nodded. It looked the same from where he sat, and made just as little sense.

  "You leave and stomp through shit, and then come tracking it back through our house," Benally said.

  Begay rested a hand on his arm. Lonetree rose in frustration and paced the room, stopping to investigate the lighted aquarium. He tapped on the glass.

  "What we need to understand," Begay said, "and what the Feds aren't telling us, is how the bodies were preserved in such a manner. If they haven't been in the ground for hundreds of years, then why do they look like they do? Whoever did it would have had to spend a whole lot of time working on the corpses to create such an illusion."

  "They mentioned the possibility of smoke curing," Kajika said.

  The two officers quickly looked at each other.

  "What is it?" Kajika asked. The tension in the room was suddenly thick.

  Lonetree tapped on the Plexiglas again and the Quetzalcoatl rose from its coils, expanding its hood. He shrieked and staggered away as the serpent struck at him, tagging the invisible barrier.

  "Are you sure about the bodies being smoked?" Begay said.

  "All I know is what I heard."

  The officers stood and headed directly for the door.

  "That thing! It's...it's an abomination!" Lonetree shouted.

  "Get in the car, Nelson," Benally said, grabbing him by the jacket.

  Kajika followed them onto the porch and leaned against the railing, watching as they clambered into the truck. The engine roared and the tires kicked up gravel, pelting the side of his trailer. The old Ford spun in a half-circle and rocketed back in the direction from which it had come. The last thing he saw before the tailgate vanished from sight was Begay reaching out of the driver's side window and affixing a magnetic siren to the roof. It bled the night red with a horrible electronic scream.

  VI

  Flagstaff, Arizona

  Carver and Ellie had hardly spoken on the drive back to Flagstaff, both of them lost in their own thoughts. The silence was still comfortable, as though no time at all had passed since last they were together. It was strange how sometimes the past engendered a certain familiarity that made the present and future seem less frightening.

  He dwelled on memories of dead children with animal genes and the faces of killers more animal than man. Was there a connection? Was that why he'd been sucked in by Hawthorne? Were all of these cases a continuation of the previous? How did that pertain to Ellie and what were the implications for the Native American geneticist?

  His head spun with the preponderance of random evidence, running wild trying to connect dots so seemingly unrelated that it felt like trying to form a coherent pattern from all the stars in the night sky.

  Ellie snored softly beside him in the passenger seat, her forehead pressed against the window. He looked at her and allowed himself to smile. She had to be overwhelmed and terrified, but she was handling everything with more strength than he imagined he could have mustered, had their roles been reversed.

  He pulled off the highway and wound around the ramp into the parking lot of the La Quinta Inn, where they had reserved several rooms on the top floor. The car rolled to a halt beside Hawthorne's in front of the building, at the base of the outside stairs.

  Ellie stirred when he killed the engine.

  "Are we here?" she asked through a yawn. She unbuckled and climbed out before he could answer.

  Carver led her up the concrete steps to the third floor and turned to the left. Rooms 314 and 316 were adjacent on the corner of the rectangular building, one to either side to allow unobstructed views to the east and south. He smelled their pizza from a dozen paces away.

  "I didn't realize how hungry I was until now," Ellie said.

  "I don't know which sounds better, eating or just closing my eyes for a few minutes," Carver said. He stopped in front of room 314 and knocked.

  Wolfe answered the door, his right hand in his jacket pocket, the barrel of his pistol leveled at them through the fabric.

  "What took you so long?" Wolfe asked. The corner of his mouth lilted into that cocky smile.

  "You realize the media
's all over the place down there, right?" Carver took Ellie's hand and led her into the room.

  "You have a government car. Just plow right through them. It's not like it's going to affect your insurance rates."

  It was a standard motel room: king-sized bed under a framed landscape; small table with chairs; television bolted to a dresser; bathroom and vanity to the rear. The doorway beside the closet stood open. One door was swung inward, the other into the room beyond, from which the mouthwatering aroma originated. This time Ellie guided him toward the source.

  Hawthorne and Locke sat in the chairs at the table, each holding a slice as they studied the screen on a laptop. They acknowledged Carver from the corners of their eyes, but said nothing.

  Ellie took two slices from the box on the dresser and handed one to Carver.

  "Why don't you see if you can find out what they're saying on the news," Carver said, releasing her hand with a squeeze.

  Ellie appeared ready to voice her protest, but after meeting his eyes, removed another slice and slipped off into the adjoining room.

  Carver inhaled his slice and waited until he heard the sound of the television behind him before he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed beside the other men.

  "It's time I got some answers," he said, producing his cell phone.

  Hawthorne sighed tersely and turned to face him, raising his eyebrows in an impatient gesture to proceed.

  "I'm no use to anyone unless we're on the same page. It's obvious you know far more than you're letting on, so how about we just put all our cards on the table so none of us have to waste any more precious time."

  Wolfe paced behind him. Locke finally raised his eyes from the monitor. None of them spoke.

  "All right," Carver said, his frustration mounting. This was going to be like pulling a lion's teeth without sedation. He held up his phone, displaying the photograph of Edgar Ross. "Talk."

  Hawthorne's eyes narrowed and his lips tightened into the awkward semblance of a smile.

  "I see you've been doing your homework," he said. "You know who that is. Edgar Ross. Abducted two families from campgrounds and slaughtered them in his basement. Shot eight times in the chest while attempting to escape. Case closed."

  "Don't patronize me."

  Hawthorne appeared amused. "You want to know details? How about this? It took us nearly two months to track Ross to his house. When we found him, he was in his basement. He had cleared out the room, stacking the wreckage of a pool table and shredded furniture in the living room against the front door. The only thing down there was his kitchen table, crusted with ridges of blood and scarred by the rusted saw laying on it. Body parts hung from the ceiling by electrical wires nailed to the exposed joists. Mainly arms and legs from the elbow or knee down. Apparently they weren't the choice cuts. There was a pile of bones in the corner, above which a cloud of flies buzzed so loudly that he didn't hear us break in through the kitchen door or descend the stairs. Rabbit bones, squirrel, raccoon, chicken...human. Like a bear's den. He was crouched in the middle of the floor gnawing on the bruised stump of a thigh, surrounded by blood, flies swarming around his head, crawling over the leftovers in his beard."

  "Jesus," Carver whispered, scrolling to the image of Charles Grady. He held it up. "What about this guy?"

  "Charles Grady killed twenty-two--"

  "No," Carver interrupted. "I want to hear it from him."

  Locke met his stare, then turned to Hawthorne, who nodded his consent.

  "Certainly was a good looking guy, wasn't he?" Locke said, baring a grin overstuffed with teeth. "What do you want to know? Do you want to know that when we found him in a boxcar in a rail yard he was peeling the skin off a man's face with his fingernails? Or how about the fact that he had bitten through the man's right common carotid artery and consumed his blood? There were arcs of it all over the dirty walls, all over him. He'd been sleeping in a filthy pile of his victims' clothing in the corner, living among his prey. Traveling from city to city, hunting the homeless. Peeling off sections of the skin and meat that he dried out and ate like beef jerky."

  "How did that not make the news?"

  "The last thing we needed was a copycat. His victims were indigents. There was no one to miss them, no one to claim their bodies, so they were incinerated."

  "And why does he look so much like you?"

  Locke's smile broadened and Carver suddenly imagined him crouching over a screaming man and tearing out his throat with those teeth.

  "Get to the point," Hawthorne said, his smile vanished. "You're digging in the wrong grave. What you have is old news, and we have a live killer here in the present."

  "What we have is four dead girls in Colorado with animal genes spliced into their chromosomes and two dead serial killers who appear substantially less than human. We have a potential retrovirus capable of reverse transcription, of infecting a host and inserting its DNA in place of the original. But you already knew that, didn't you? You were able to determine as much from the corpses of Ross and Grady. That's why you told Special Agent Manning to test for viral load, even before I received any information from the forensics lab. You're just leading me along, making me bust my ass to discover things that you knew from the start, and to what end? We're no closer to catching whoever did this--again, a man you seem to have already identified--and I'm just bumbling along uselessly behind. You want to catch this guy? From here on out, I need to know everything. Everything! No more deception. No more--"

  "Are you through?" Hawthorne interrupted, the muscles in his jaw bulging. He was obviously unaccustomed to being addressed in such a manner.

  "Yeah," Carver said. "I'm through with all of this. You guys are on your own."

  He rose and started toward the other room. All he could think was to grab Ellie and get them both the hell out of there.

  "Wait," Hawthorne said.

  Carver hesitated in the doorway, listening to the sound of Hawthorne's grinding teeth. The act of calling out to him seemed to have adversely affected Hawthorne on a fundamental level. They needed him. Carver turned to face them again.

  "Come look at this." Hawthorne leaned back over the keyboard and manipulated the mouse on the screen. After a moment, he sat back and gestured to the monitor.

  Carver stood his ground for a moment, but curiosity drew him back across the room.

  "You can't run without learning how to walk first," Wolfe said as he passed.

  Hawthorne scooted back from the table to make room. Carver locked eyes with him, then turned the laptop so he could see it. There were two bar codes displayed vertically on the screen, but fuzzy as though out of focus. Beside each line was a lowercase letter, followed by a number. Horizontal lines were drawn between matching segments of the bar code to the left and the one on the right. The first column was labeled E. Ross, the second Ursus arctos middendorffi.

  "The Kodiak bear," Hawthorne said.

  Carver looked from the screen to Hawthorne.

  "Now that you understand what we're up against," Hawthorne said, "it's time to get back to work."

  VII

  28 Miles East-northeast of

  Flagstaff, Arizona

  "We should have forced the issue," Benally said from the passenger seat. He checked the clip on his 9 mm for the umpteenth time and slammed it home.

  "We had no reason to," Begay said, confident his own sidearm would function when the time arrived. "People come to the desert to disappear, and generally they stay that way."

  "Should have made him show us the smokehouse. I told you, damn it. We should have made him open the stupid thing up. Who puts a lock on a smokehouse anyway?"

  Begay was tired of hearing it. They were police officers, two lieutenants in a department of only twelve full-time officers. It was their job to uphold the law. When they had been called out to the house originally, nearly a decade prior, there had been no legal reason to attempt to force a man on his own land to open a locked door. No probable cause. The ranch house ha
d sat vacant for more than five years before that, the land for sale sign long since faded, visible only from a dirt road no one had any reason to travel. So long in fact that when Ernest Deschiney had first smelled smoke on the wind from his trailer fifteen miles upriver on the Little Colorado, he had immediately called the police.

  Begay and Benally had been fresh out of the academy, and had thus been handed the short straw. Deschiney was always calling to complain about something or other, reporting violent trespassers who turned out to be nothing more than mangy coyotes. Their dispatch had only been to pacify him. When they had arrived at the house, following the two mile packed-sand drive from the road, the new owner had been waiting for them in front of the small dwelling. The windstorms had stripped the paint nearly down to the bare wood, and littered the whole area with shingles. The man had held up his hand in greeting and approached them with a friendly smile, his pale face stubbled with a couple days' growth. He had been wearing a flannel shirt open to mid-chest and jeans smeared with blood where he had repeatedly wiped his hands on his thighs. His cowboy hat had been pulled down so far his eyes had been lost in shadow. Winn Darby had introduced himself and invited them inside, where they had shared a pitcher of heavily sweetened lemonade and a chuckle at Deschiney's expense. Winn, as he had insisted they call him, had made a small fortune in the burgeoning internet, but the constant stress had left him physically and emotionally spent, even though he couldn't have been out of his early twenties. Nice problem to have, Begay remembered thinking. So Winn had abandoned the rat race and moved back to nature, where he could breathe the fresh air, relax, and not be tempted to start plotting on the computer again. His aim had been to survive on the land, though he had professed his total inexperience, stating with a shrug that by curing his meat he would be able to make it last if he proved completely inept. Maybe if he got good enough he might even try to sell some. Who knew? The smokehouse had come with the land, so why not give it a whirl?