“I don’t have time to get in a pissing contest with you, Powell,” Schaap said. “All right with you then if my men have some room?”
Markham suppressed a smile as the red-faced trooper spat and signaled for his men to move away. Finally, the FBI agents had a clear view of what was waiting for them beneath the tarp.
“Jesus Christ,” Schaap said amid the clicks and flashes from the forensic cameras.
The corpse was little more than a skeleton and appeared to be impaled up through the rectum. The victim was male, Markham could tell, but his genitalia had been torn away, and his legs were missing below the knees. The rest of the body was intact—shriveled, hairless, the flesh mostly gone, and what little of it remained looked tanned and dried like leather. The victim’s head was still lashed to the stake, the nose an open triangle, the hollow eye sockets gazing downward in what was not their original position. The head had moved as the body decomposed. And had it not been for the little crossbar under the victim’s groin, the man with the tattoos and the missing pecker would have slid all the way down to the ground.
“Word’s been on the wire for some time now about who you feds’re looking for,” Powell said, spitting. “Same guy who spiked ’em in Raleigh, I reckon.”
“Same guy,” Schaap said absently.
Markham stepped under the tarp, donned a pair of rubber gloves, and removed a small flashlight from his Wind-breaker. He slowly circled the corpse, shining his light as close as he could on the victim’s arms without touching them.
“All them tattoos,” said Powell. “He’s got one on the back of his head, too. Skin is covered in them. What’s left of it, anyway. Looks like the animals got to him soon after your boy spiked him. More woulda been gone if he wasn’t hanging like that. Dried him out quicker, I suppose. Tats will make it easier to ID him. Looks like the fella in the database. Kept his head shaved, it says, so whatever hair’s there grew in after he disappeared. Prolly some after he died, too.”
Markham held his light on the victim’s sunken chest and studied the yellowed symbols for a long time.
A rumble of thunder in the distance.
The skies were darkening.
It would rain soon.
“He took the time to thoroughly bleach these out,” Mark-ham said finally. “The symbols are larger. Wrote only one line of each language, too.”
“You mean them white marks is some kind of writing?” Powell asked.
“Yes.”
“What’s it mean?”
Markham clicked off his flashlight and turned back to the trooper, stone-faced.
“It means he’s getting better.”
Chapter 17
Two hours later Markham sat alone at his laptop, the rain beating heavily on the hunting-lodge roof as he studied the driver’s license picture on the screen before him. The profile had been forwarded to him by the NC State Police. The guy had been on their missing persons list since mid-February.
William “Billy” Canning: thirty-eight, local boy originally from Smithfield, owner of a tattoo parlor in Cary—Billy’s, it was called. No criminal record, last seen on February fifteenth by his lover Stefan Dorsey. Keyword search in the missing persons database brought up a description of the tattoos. They were a perfect match to the markings on the corpse. The body had already been airlifted to Raleigh; would have an official ID in less than an hour and then it was off to Quantico for analysis.
The handle on the outside door rattled, and Markham looked up to find Andy Schaap entering with his jacket over his head. He plopped a stack of rain-stained papers on the table and sat down in one of the big chairs.
“Those are the only records he’s got,” Schaap said. “Dis- organized, takes cash mostly. Got a feeling there’s nothing there.”
Markham glanced briefly at the papers as his partner sunk deeper into his chair. Schaap slipped off his ring and began rolling it between his fingers.
“Sixteen,” he said, his eyes fixed on the large deer head above the fireplace. “That’s a big one. Sixteen points. You have to go by the spread, too—the distance between the antlers. Never understood the appeal of it—killing a beautiful animal like that. Wonder where they go when it rains. Raining like a bitch out there now.”
“Gurganus tell you anything else?” Markham asked. “Talk about any hunters who acted strange while they were here?”
“No one he could single out specifically.”
“His kid give you anything?”
Schaap shook his head and began bouncing his ring on the arm of the chair. Markham rose and went to the window—gazed out past the line of black FBI vehicles and into the woods.
“You really think he’s been here before?” Schaap asked.
“Yes, I do. Easy enough to get lost out there during the day unless you know exactly where you’re headed.”
“But why go through the trouble of lugging the body all the way up here when he could find other places with easier access?”
“There’s the rub,” Markham said, turning. “This spot is pretty far out from Raleigh. That’s quite unusual, isn’t it? Serial killers like Vlad—the organized, visionary types of high intelligence—they usually don’t stray this far from home. Usually like to hunt and dump in an area they know well.”
“We know from Donovan that Vlad kept him alive for a few days. His vocal folds were fried. Indicates he’d been screaming a lot before he was killed. Vlad had to have kept him somewhere where the neighbors wouldn’t hear. Someplace remote.”
“And we know Canning disappeared sometime during the evening of February fifteenth to the sixteenth, which means Vlad had to hang on to him for over two weeks before he dropped him off here. That is, if he stuck to the crescent-moon visual.”
“Jesus,” Schaap said, slipping the ring back on his finger. “The body would’ve already been badly decomposed if he killed him in the same time frame as Donovan. You think there’s a possibility that Vlad kept him alive for all that time?”
“The hair growth would point to yes, but we won’t know for sure until the autopsy. The body has been out in the woods for over a month, but Quantico should be able to approximate the time of death, and whether or not Vlad put him on ice.”
“This Canning is from Cary,” Schaap said. “Same as Randall Donovan.”
“Right. Canning was last seen on surveillance footage at a nearby gas station at around seven o’clock p.m. His car was found by his boyfriend outside his tattoo studio at eleven o’clock the next morning. If we work from the premise that Vlad lives closer to Cary than he does here, then the question becomes not only what links Canning to the other victims but also what links the actual places where the victims were impaled. A link that goes beyond their remoteness and a clear view of the nighttime sky.”
“What do you mean?”
“The fact that Vlad was determined to dispose of Canning way out here where there’s a good chance no one would find him for a long time tells me we’re dealing with someone who doesn’t care about us.”
“Us?’
“You, me, the public. If you’ll recall, in addition to being a demented sadist, the reason Vlad Tepes impaled his victims was because he wanted others to see them; wanted to strike fear in the hearts of his people and send a message to his enemies. If our boy thought he was Vlad the Third reincarnated, why wouldn’t he have displayed Canning someplace where he was sure the public would find him? Furthermore, why wouldn’t he have written the message on Donovan so it was visible to the naked eye?”
“But what about the message on Canning? That was visible to the naked eye. Even after all this time.”
“Right. But maybe that’s because Vlad didn’t expect us to find Canning so soon. Maybe the bleaching on Canning’s chest was unintentional. Maybe he didn’t get it right until Donovan.”
“So you think he impaled Canning all the way out here to hide him from us? To hide him but at the same keep to his crescent-moon schedule?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ca
nning was a known homosexual,” Schaap said after a moment. “Which means he fits the historical Vlad’s victim profile just like the others do. Donovan, the crooked lawyer. The Hispanics, the drug-dealing gangbangers. Killing them is a message in and of itself, don’t you think?
“Yes.”
“But, this Canning being a homosexual—you think maybe we missed something with the other three men? Think there’s a possibility that Donovan or the Hispanics might have had some kind of secret lifestyle?”
“I thought about that, yes; will explore that angle when we get back to Raleigh.”
“Then, that could mean that the killer’s fixation with staking his victims through the rectum—are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That our man might be a gay basher? The impalement, a deranged representation of male-on-male sodomy?”
“If you want to put it that way, yes.”
“Who knows? There’s no evidence that Randall Donovan was a homosexual. However, do I think he could’ve had some kind of secret lifestyle? Yes, I do.”
“Well, regardless what team these guys played for, Vlad’s sending a message to someone.”
“I agree. But I think that’s where we’re getting off track.”
“The connection to the Islamic crescent moon and star, you mean? The Arabic, the ancient Middle Eastern scripts and all that?”
“Yes. The impalements seem to me now to be entirely self-centered. Purpose-driven in their methodological detail, yes, but important only to Vlad and whatever he thinks is seeing him from the sky. And the locations where he leaves his victims matter just as much. But only to him.”
“But the victims are supposed to see whatever’s in the sky, too.”
“That’s right.”
“Then do you think the phrase ‘I have returned’ could also mean Vlad’s return to the murder sites? To those locales specifically?”
“It’s possible, yes.”
“That would make it much more personal,” Schaap said. “And much more difficult to figure out the reason behind the murders.”
Markham shrugged.
“But even if Vlad has been here before,” Schaap said, “how the hell could he have found his way out there in the dark?”
“The dirt access road. He obviously knew about it.”
“But still, he’d have to know exactly where to stop. I mean, I suppose he could’ve Google Earthed it; plotted the coordinates and used GPS and night vision like Gurganus does. At the very least he’d have to have a map. Never mind lugging a body three hundred yards and sticking him in the ground.”
Markham was about to speak, then stopped.
“What is it?” Schaap asked.
Markham walked over to his laptop, minimized the Billy Canning file, and clicked on the Your Sky icon. “Maybe he is using a map after all.”
“The stars, you mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Markham said, staring at the Web page. “But I think we need to get back to the RA immediately.”
Chapter 18
The General awoke after 10 a.m., but he was still tired. The Prince had kept him up late talking the night before. It had been a while since they’d communicated so openly, and they had a lot of catching up to do.
The General was used to rising before dawn, upon which he would work out in the old horse barn before heading off to Greenville—hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups and chin-ups, along with lifting some old cinder blocks that his grandfather had left in there. The barn was big enough for him to park his van inside, too. And on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he would open up the van’s back doors and do reverse tricep presses off the rear of the inside bed. And when he was finished with that portion of his training, he would sprint back and forth across the barren tobacco fields until he could sprint no more.
He needed the strength of a warrior, sure; but he also needed the speed if his body was to be worthy of a second in command.
The General had placed an old quartz heater in the barn (which warmed him just fine if he stood right in front of it), but the sprinting could be dangerous in the winter. One time, just before Christmas, the General had actually rolled his ankle on a patch of ice. That had put him out of commission for almost two weeks, but even so the General still looked forward to his training.
It was an important part of the equation.
Of course, it would’ve made much more sense to work out in the cellar, but there was not enough room down there now that everything had been dedicated to the Prince. And then there was the attic, but even after all these years the General didn’t like going up there. Besides, the Prince had indicated that he was saving the attic for something really special.
Today was Tuesday, and even though he would not have to do his tricep presses or his sprints, the General entered the horse barn feeling behind. He didn’t bother turning on the heater and went straight for the chin-up bar that he’d installed between the beams of one of the horse stalls. The General had also hung a mirror on the stall’s back wall so he could watch himself as he did his chin-ups.
The barn smelled wonderful this morning, the General thought as he took off his shirt. Like Pine-Sol. He had washed down the inside of the van before parking it inside the barn—left the back doors open so the inside would dry—and the clean, fresh scent seemed to permeate everything. He made a mental note to do that from now on, after he transported the impaled to the sites of sacrifice. He wouldn’t need to hunt any more drifters on Route 301. True, the doorways lasted for three months—that was part of the 9:3—but the General already had the final doorway. The one through which the Prince would return in the flesh, the one through which the General would become spirit.
The General grasped the cold steel bar—paused briefly to admire his muscular torso—and then began his chin-ups.
He moved quickly but methodically. There was a lot to do today—both at the farmhouse and later this afternoon with the rehearsal at Harriot. His other self, the young man named Edmund Lambert, would not go to class today. In fact, Edmund Lambert would stop going to classes from now on altogether. That was one of the things he and the Prince had discussed the night before. There was no need to keep up that part of his day-life now.
No, by the time the registrar’s office caught up with him and notified Jennings that his work-study boy had been slacking, Edmund Lambert and the General would have no need of Harriot University and its theatre department.
The doorway in the mirror before him told him that.
Chapter 19
Three o’clock, the FBI Resident Agency, Raleigh
Schaap sat next to Markham at his desk, both of them studying the computer and nursing their coffee. The pressure behind Markham’s eyes was back, and the little trick of flinging the bright red ball wasn’t working for him today. Then again, had he been alone, he might’ve been able to concentrate better.
“It’s impossible to get the coordinates exactly right,” Schaap said with a mouthful of donut. “The computer program at Quantico will take care of adjusting the margin of error. Same program we used to establish the pattern in that long-haul-trucker case last year. They should be getting back to us within the hour.”
Markham said nothing—tapped a couple of keys, and the map of Raleigh on the computer grew larger. He then superimposed on the screen a tracing he’d made of the constellation Leo—kept rotating it until two of the stars lined up with the murder sites in Clayton and Cary. He held it there for a moment, then, dissatisfied, discarded it for another tracing—this one of the constellation Cancer.
“But if I follow you,” Schaap said, “you’re thinking the phrase ‘I have returned’ could correlate to some cosmic occurrence that happens only once in a great while—like every thousand years or something?”
“Maybe not that long, but yes.”
“Then ‘I have returned’ could also mean a return to visibility, just like Vlad literally returning to the murder sites?”
“Just a hunch,” Markham said. “The ret
urn of which Vlad speaks could be taken as some kind of second coming—a resurrection, a rebirth if you will—that is governed by a pattern in the stars. There may be something going on up there—trajectories, alignments of planets, and what have you—that Vlad is interpreting as a herald, as sign of his second coming. Our astronomy consultant at NC State hasn’t gotten back to me yet; and because of my limited knowledge on the subject, the most logical place for me to begin is with the zodiac—constellations that are seasonal and are most commonly associated with birth. There are a bunch of other constellations that could be candidates, too, but I simply don’t know how they relate to the grand scheme of things.”
“But why a constellation and not just a single star? An alignment of planets or something?”
“Because of the murder sites and how they plot out on the map. They are specific, a pattern on the ground that mimics how one draws pictures in the sky. In order to get the right picture one has to use the right stars. Almost like a massive game of connect the dots—a game that perhaps makes sense only to Vlad, but nonetheless can be understood if you see things through his eyes. The return of whatever is happening in the sky corresponds somehow to the return of whatever is happening on the ground.”
“You don’t think the murder sites themselves could line up with the stars of one of these constellations?”
“It’s possible,” Markham said, rotating the tracing. “But now that I look at everything on the map, I’m thinking that scenario is unlikely. Too easy to establish the pattern; would be like Vlad sending us an invitation where to meet him on the night of the crescent moon. I’m still going to try to weed out the major spring constellations, but I’m more apt to believe now that he’s making his own constellation, his own re-turn—a picture on the ground that mimics a dynamic in the sky but at the same time is deeply personal.”
Schaap was silent—began fiddling with his ring, thinking.
“Christ, I don’t know,” Markham said. “But if you look at the stars as long as I have—and, I submit, as long as Vlad has—well, you can’t help but see patterns all over the place. Hard not to connect the dots and make your own pictures.”
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