Matt was by now convinced he had the right young woman. From his previous work for Toler, he knew the Tamerlane Research Facility was located somewhere north of New Quebec, and the Jeep had followed a direct route to the north after leaving the girl’s house. The colonel had said the girl he was after was a protestor who had vandalized Tamerlane property.
Maybe Toler hadn’t been lying after all.
Matt slowed almost to a stop as he approached the weed-strewn lane where the Jeep had turned. It was some kind of old fire road, or maybe a logging trail. Whatever its original purpose, it was long-since abandoned, and now he imagined it was used only by kids as a lover’s lane.
These kids weren’t using it for that purpose, though, of that he was almost certain. Colonel Frank Toler was a conniving bastard—bless his sneaky little heart, he was as oily as they came—but Matt didn’t get the impression he would hire a private dick at more than double the going rate just to get a tip-off on when and where a young couple was going to make out.
The colonel was twisted, for sure. Matt just didn’t think it was in a sexual way.
Matt noted the coordinates on his GPS and then accelerated past the trail, continuing on for a quarter-mile until it disappeared in his rearview. Then he pulled to the side of the road and flicked on his hazard lights. It was probably an unnecessary precaution, as he hadn’t seen another car besides the Jeep since leaving New Quebec, but why take chances?
He lifted his cellphone out of its customary spot in the console cup holder and checked for a signal.
Nothing.
Figures, he thought. This is exactly why I hate the country. He shook his head in disgust and pulled back onto the road. There had been cell service in town, so eventually there would be cell service again. He continued moving slowly along the road, glancing back and forth from the windshield to his cell phone screen.
A mile or so later, and for no apparent reason, the signal returned. He was no closer to any sign of civilization than he had been before, but at least now he could make his call. He pulled to the side of the road once again and punched the speed dial for Toler’s private number.
“Whaddaya got for me?” The voice sounded scratchy and impatient.
“Hello, Colonel, it’s—”
“I know who it is. You’re the only one who has this number, remember? Whaddaya got?”
“I can’t guarantee it’s the right girl, but I have a last name, an address and the make and model of her car, not to mention her license plate number. Oh, and I followed her and the kid to—”
“What did you say?”
“I have her last name, and—”
“No, no, about following her. Repeat that part.”
“If you had let me finish, I was about to tell you that I followed her and the kid to some kind of old fire trail. They disappeared into the woods in the kid’s Jeep. That’s where they are now.”
“The girl is with a young man? In the woods?”
“That’s what I just said, Colonel.”
“Give me the coordinates.”
Matt passed them along and then waited as Toler wrote them down. The silence continued for maybe half a minute and then the colonel said, “Are they still in the forest on that trail?”
“I assume so, but I can’t be certain. I had to drive a ways past the trail to call you because I couldn’t get a signal on my phone.”
“Jesus Christ,” Toler said. Why he would be exasperated by that bit of information Matt had no idea, but he clearly was. “Get back there right now. Sit out of sight and watch the trail where it intersects with the road. If the Jeep leaves, follow it and call me as soon as you get a signal. I’m going to get out there as quickly as I can to relieve you. Got it?”
“Yeah, I think I can manage,” Matt said, miffed. A few hours on the job and he had already obtained the information Toler wanted, along with plenty more. Now, not only could the asshole not even bother with a simple “thank you,” he had the nerve to act like Matt was fucking up somehow?
If it weren’t for the ridiculous amount of money Toler was paying him, Matt would have told him to go piss up a rope.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Toler practically screamed. “Get moving!”
Matt started to tell him to fuck off, but Toler had already disconnected the call.
14
As Rob turned onto the logging road, Alicia could feel a sense of irony that was damned near as strong as the tension welling up in her gut. Last night, fleeing through the dark forest in terror, Alicia had sworn she would never return to this cursed place and now, barely sixteen hours later, here she was. Her mouth had gone dry and she could feel her arms and legs trembling. She hoped Rob couldn’t tell.
“Are you sure you still want to do this?” he said quietly.
So much for him not noticing her fear. “I’m sure.”
“Because I can take you home and then come back by myself.”
“No. I’m fine. Please, keep going.”
The morning had started out sunny, but over the course of the day low clouds had rolled in. Now, as sunset approached, the conditions were overcast, dank and gray, a perfect reminder to Alicia of why she hated late November in northern New England. At least once winter had really settled in you could ski or snowboard or go snowmobiling. Right now the trees were bare and the ground partially frozen and the chill in the air seemed to penetrate the heaviest clothing and wrap itself around her insides like a vice-grip.
And it had started to snow. Fat wet flakes dropped through the trees, splattering onto the windshield and the hood of Rob’s Jeep. The old trail would likely turn sloppy in a hurry, and as if reading her mind, Rob shifted into four-wheel drive.
Moments later, Alicia said, “Stop. This is it.” Her voice sounded alien and frightened. She hated showing such intense fear, but she couldn’t help it.
“Are you sure? Without any real landmarks, everything looks the same out here to me.” If Rob noticed the change in the tone of her voice, he kept it to himself this time.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure,” she said. And she was, although she couldn’t have said why. Maybe something in the surrounding area had burned itself into her subconscious as she watched Eddie die last night—a boulder off in the distance, or an oddly shaped tree. Something.
As she had before, she waited for Rob to question her judgment; to tell her she was probably mistaken, to doubt her word, like the police chief had done last night and like her mother continued to do.
But he didn’t. He eased to a stop. Shifted into Park and engaged the emergency brake. Left the truck running and turned the heat up against the chill seeping into the Jeep.
“Now what?” Alicia said.
He shrugged. “Now I get out and take a look around.”
She started to answer but he turned to her and said, “You stay in here where it’s warm. I won’t be long, I promise. I’m not even sure what I’m after, but I just have to see this place for myself.”
“I’m going with you,” she said, and opened the door. She stepped out before he could argue, and a moment later he opened his own door and joined her.
“The cleanup crew was thorough,” she said, turning a slow circle and scanning the area.
“You’re not kidding. This place is barren.”
“And they moved fast,” she said. “It’s hard to believe they could have removed all evidence of what happened in the time it took me to walk to town and tell my story to the police.”
“Yeah.” He scanned the area. What he might be looking for, Alicia did not know. “They would have had to remove—” he paused and swallowed heavily—“Eddie’s body and his car and somehow clean up all the blood in that time.”
“Also the log.”
Rob glanced at her in confusion. “Log?”
“Yes. A big log had been dragged behind Eddie’s car. That was why he couldn’t just back out of here when we saw the wolves.”
“How the hell could a log have gotten behind the car? H
ow big was it?”
“I don’t know, it was like the thickness of a medium-sized tree, maybe? I know how bizarre this sounds, but I believe the wolves worked together as a team to drag the log behind the car in order to trap us out here.”
Rob stared at her a long time, snow falling lazily onto his head and shoulders. “Do you realize what you’re saying?” he said.
“I know exactly what I’m saying. But if the tree wasn’t dragged there by the wolves, how did it get there?”
“That was my question. There has to be another answer, though. Maybe it fell after Eddie stopped his car.”
“Don’t you think we would have heard a tree fall? The radio was off. We weren’t listening to music. It was as quiet as a graveyard out here.”
Rob looked away quickly and Alicia kicked herself mentally. “I’m sorry. You know what I mean, though, right? There was no way a tree could have fallen not five feet from the back of Eddie’s car without us hearing it.”
He didn’t answer. Instead he wandered forward a few feet. He bent and examined the ground as he walked. Alicia trailed behind, following his lead, wanting to help but unsure of how.
He looked back at her. “You said Eddie was under the car when the wolves attacked him?”
“Yes. The log had gotten jammed up in the undercarriage when he tried to back over it. He went outside to try to loosen it so we could escape.” She shivered, and not from the cold.
“And then they dragged him out into the open.”
“That’s right.”
“Where did they take him?” Rob’s lips were pressed tightly together in a bloodless line as he tried to keep his composure.
She pointed ahead and slightly to the left, and they trudged forward. The snow fell more heavily now, and a thin layer was just beginning to coat the ground. Although still unsure what Rob expected to find, Alicia knew anything that could be found would soon be covered if the snow continued to fall at its present rate.
“Right here,” she said quietly, and they stopped again. There was, of course, no body, but up close it was obvious that this area had been cleared. The twigs, pine needles and dead leaves littering the ground everywhere else in the forest were gone. In their place was a roughly six-foot circle of bare dirt.
Rob positioned himself just outside the circle and squatted on his haunches. His reluctance to set foot on the patch of land where Eddie had died was clear. He scanned the area and then trailed his fingers over the wet ground. They came away dirty and frosted with snow. The pain rolled off him, as obvious as it was heartbreaking.
Alicia felt awkward, like she was intruding on a private moment. She hesitated before placing a hand on Rob’s shoulder.
He reached up and squeezed it. “Thank you,” he said.
“I didn’t do anything. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this helpless.”
“Just being here is a huge help, believe me. I don’t know why I wanted to see this place. Maybe I thought I was going to find some clue that would help me understand what happened last night. If so, it’s obvious I’m going to be disappointed. But I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“When the cop investigated last night after you went to the police station, this bare patch of ground should have stuck out like a sore thumb. We found it even with the snow falling. Why wouldn’t he have told the dispatcher about it?”
“Maybe he missed it in the darkness. By the time he arrived here it would have been after two a.m.”
Rob shook his head. “That’s hard to imagine, unless the damned patrol officer was dumb as a stump. He’s investigating a report of a possible murder. His headlights are on and the cruiser is equipped with a powerful spotlight he can aim in any direction. Plus he has a large Mag Lite flashlight to carry when he gets out of the car. There’s no way he should have missed it, even at two in the morning.”
“So how did he?”
“That’s exactly my point, Alicia. I don’t think he did miss it. I think either he reported what he found to the dispatcher and was ignored, or he never passed along what he saw at all.”
Alicia’s creeping sense of fear and hopelessness intensified. It was morphing into terror. “The officer who investigated my report last night…um…he didn’t radio back to the dispatcher. Or if he did, he followed it up with a phone call to the chief.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I was sitting in the chief’s office when the call came in. I couldn’t hear both ends of the conversation, obviously, but there’s no doubt it was the patrol officer, because after the chief hung up the phone he announced the officer hadn’t found any evidence of a problem. I was given a stern warning about what happens to people who file false police reports and then released.”
They stared at each other in the rapidly fading light.
“I’m telling you,” Rob said. “The police are involved in whatever’s going on here.”
“The New Quebec Police Department is covering up a murder?” She still didn’t want to believe it, but couldn’t find any reason to disagree with Rob’s argument.
“It’s the only explanation that makes sense. And it might not be the whole department. Might only be the chief. We have no idea what the investigating officer told him on the phone. The cop who drove out here may have been playing it straight.”
Alicia swallowed heavily. With the daylight disappearing and the snow falling, their extreme isolation struck home. “Maybe it’s time to go.”
“Yeah. Probably. But before we leave, check this out.” He pointed to a spot just outside the rough circle of bare ground. A small pile of dead leaves was nearly covered in snow, but just visible was a ragged, irregularly shaped patch of denim, maybe one inch by two inches. Threads trailed out the sides of the material from where it had been torn off Eddie Senna’s jeans in the wolves’ chaotic feeding frenzy.
The material was blood-soaked.
“The cleanup crew missed something,” Rob said. His voice was quiet but Alicia could hear it shaking.
He reached down and picked the piece of material up off the ground, holding it with the reverence a priest might give the Shroud of Turin.
“What are you doing?” Alicia said. “That’s evidence. We need to bring it to…”
Her voice trailed away and Rob said, “That’s right. There’s no one we can bring it to. At least not until we know who’s dirty and who’s clean around here.”
They stared at the tiny swatch of denim, the only physical evidence that could corroborate Alicia’s story. The freezing temperatures and the dried blood had combined to render it nearly as stiff as a board.
“Let’s get out of here,” Rob said. He dropped the material into a jacket pocket and zipped the pocket closed.
They returned to the Jeep and sat in silence, warming their hands and feet. After a moment, Rob began backing out of the logging trail, moving slowly and carefully.
No logs had fallen behind the Jeep.
15
Jason Greeley was exhausted. He’d just fallen asleep last night when Colonel Toler called with the disturbing news that an alarm had sounded at Tamerlane and there was a possibility one or more of his wolves may have escaped.
Wolves that, according to official facility policy, were supposed to have been secured inside their indoor-outdoor cage for the evening.
Jason typically allowed them to run free within the thousands of acres bordered by the security fence surrounding Tamerlane, even though doing so was technically prohibited. They were animals, for Christ’s sake, powerful predators, and being forced to spend twelve or more hours every night locked inside their indoor/outdoor lab cage was unacceptable. It was an inhumane policy, and for the last several years Jason had more or less ignored it.
And it wasn’t like Toler was unaware of this breach of facility security. He’d known about it all along and never given a damn.
Until now, when something had apparently gone wrong.
So Toler had called
in the middle of the night and insisted Jason accompany him in the Humvee to retrieve the wolves. The colonel was perfectly capable of handling the chore himself but it wasn’t any big surprise he would make Jason return to Tamerlane. It was the nature of Toler’s personality: if he had to get up in the middle of the night and schlep out into the cold and the darkness, he was going to make damned sure someone else suffered, too.
And when they tracked the GPS chips embedded in the animals’ brains to a remote section of forest behind Tamerlane, what they found had been ugly. Worse than Jason could possibly have imagined. The scene ensured he would not get another wink of sleep afterward, and probably not for days.
It was bloody and violent.
A dead teenager torn to shreds by Jason’s wolves.
Toler had been furious. Not simply—or even mostly—because of the boy’s death, but because he had been convinced they would find a second victim and they had not done so. The lack of a second body represented a “security risk,” as he had put it, and his resulting angry screed went above and beyond anything Jason had ever heard out of his boss.
And that was saying something.
Then there had been the phone call. Jason was still inside the facility when the call came in from New Quebec’s chief of police, advising Toler that a witness to the killing was sitting inside the chief’s office, spilling her guts about the incident. Toler slammed the phone down on his desk at the completion of the call so hard Jason could hear it all the way down the hall.
The colonel then stormed into Jason’s office, ranting and raving, accusing him of incompetence and of putting the entire facility at risk.
Jason had been tempted to tell him what he really believed: that maybe the facility should be at risk. That his project was failing, that it was no longer proceeding as intended, and that given the danger posed by the wolves—a danger amply illustrated by tonight’s tragedy—maybe the Lupin Project should be shut down for good.
But of course he didn’t say any such thing. He sat behind his desk and listened to Toler scream and curse. He had agreed to find the breach in the security fence at first light, as if that was a job for an aging scientist whose idea of regular exercise was walking from the facility parking lot to his lab every morning, and then back out to his car ten or twelve or fourteen hours later.
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