The Annihilation Protocol
Page 9
He turned right and watched the cottonwoods, willows, and birch trees until they revealed a narrow driveway wending through the maze of trunks. The pool Crown Victoria splashed through water that looked a whole lot shallower than it turned out to be and nearly bottomed out on the other side. The driveway was grooved from the tires of heavy machinery and rutted by runoff from the fields. Branches raked against the siding with a sound like nails on a chalkboard.
The trees fell away and the headlights spread out across what at one time must have been the front yard. Grass had given way to thigh-high weeds. The frame of a swing set stood beside the rusted twin Ts of a clothesline. The charcoal gray Tahoe of the Colorado State Patrol’s K-9 Unit had pulled in on the other side of them. A Wray PD cruiser had parked beside it, its high beams spotlighting the front porch, where two uniformed officers stood beneath the overhang, looking more than a little uncomfortable in their nitrile gloves and full-face air-purifying respirator masks, which they probably never thought they’d have to remove from their riot-control kits. This was undoubtedly the first time they’d been instructed to use such stringent precautions, but Layne had managed to convince them that it was standard federal operating procedure when working a potential crime scene where they were likely to encounter bodily fluids or a dead body.
The old farmhouse’s whitewash had faded to gray and the windows were opaque with dust and cobwebs. Most of the shingles were gone and the overhang leaned in the opposite direction of the porch below it. A three-story grain silo that would probably stand the test of time lorded over it. The outbuilding to the right was far newer than everything else. It was a prefabricated unit that looked just about large enough to house two massive flatbed trucks.
A flock of crows wheeled in the distance, where seamless fields of feral crops, dead sunflowers, and wild grasses stretched off into the night.
Mason parked next to the cruiser and pulled his own respirator mask over his face. He stretched the gloves onto his hands as he climbed out. Layne donned her protective gear and met him in front of the hood. They waited for the officers to descend from the porch before flashing their badges.
“Tell me you haven’t touched anything,” Mason said.
“You kidding me?” the taller of the two officers said. He wore a regulation Stetson and cowboy boots, and conveyed the air of a man accustomed to reaping praise for doing very little. “You guys tell us we have to wear these plague masks and then think we’re going to rush right down here and start touching stuff?”
“What Officer Dodge means to say is that we did exactly as we were instructed,” the other officer said. He was shorter and stockier and undoubtedly came from stock that had earned its keep on the land. His badge read SENIOR OFFICER A. HILL, WRAY 3. “Our instructions were very specific. Control all access to the property. Touch nothing. Do nothing. Wait on-scene until agents arrive to debrief us. Not a whole lot of space to read between those lines.”
“I’m not entirely sure I heard an answer in there,” Layne said.
Mason smirked. He had no idea what life events had led her to join the FBI, but she certainly hadn’t been recruited for her congeniality.
“No, ma’am,” Hill said. “We did not touch anything.”
“We made sure both egresses were covered before banging on the door,” Dodge said.
“Did you check to see if they were locked?”
“That would have required touching.”
Layne glared at him.
“No, ma’am,” Hill said. “We couldn’t hear anyone inside, so we looked through the few windows that aren’t boarded over. Doesn’t appear as though anyone’s been here in a while.”
“What makes you say that?” Mason asked.
“Everything’s covered with dust,” Dodge said.
“He’s old and single,” Layne said. “I doubt he spends much time with a feather duster.”
“Pete’s trucks tear up the roads out here,” Hill said, “as you can tell from his driveway. The county generally has to grade that road you drove in on every other month, mostly because of him, but they haven’t had the tractor out here since September and it’s still in decent condition.”
“Has anyone heard from him since then?” Mason asked.
“Like most of the people who live out on these rural routes, Pete keeps to himself.”
“So you wouldn’t notice if he’d gone missing,” Layne said.
“We don’t patrol out here,” Dodge said. “We’ve had units in this area maybe a dozen times in the last month, but we don’t go knocking on doors unless we have a good reason to do so.”
“No one’s reported anything out of the ordinary?” Mason asked. “Domestic disturbances? Gunshots?”
“You can’t drive through here during prairie-chicken season without hearing gunshots.”
“Have you encountered any vehicles you don’t recognize in town?” Layne asked. “Anyone hanging around that you haven’t seen before?”
“That’s the kind of thing we’d definitely notice,” Hill said. “New faces stand out in a town this small. And if anyone had any cause to suspect something was going on out here, we’d have heard about it.”
Crunching noises from off to the left.
Mason turned on his mini Maglite and shone it toward the source. A state trooper approached through the tall weeds from the same general direction as the crows, his masked face nearly concealed beneath his Smokey Bear–style hat. A flashlight swung at his side. He wore a dark blue uniform with cargo pants, and his name was stenciled on his breast pocket: G. Henderson, K-9 Unit. A Belgian Malinois in a tan harness trotted at his side. It looked like a cross between a German shepherd and a jackal, with dark eyes, a lolling tongue, and blood on its muzzle.
“You guys FBI?” he asked.
“Was it the windbreakers that gave it away?” Layne said.
Mason held up his badge.
“Special Agents Mason and Layne. Denver Division.”
“There’s something you need to see,” Henderson said, and headed back in the direction from which he’d come.
Mason and Layne followed him into the field. An old tractor emerged from the overgrowth beside the path; its rusted hood stood open, revealing its gutted engine. The plow it had once towed behind it had been claimed by tumbleweeds.
“Whatever it is we’re dealing with, it’s not contagious to canines, is it?” he asked.
The dog looked back at them with a huge grin on his bloody snout before falling back into stride with his handler. Mason felt guilty that he hadn’t even considered the potential threat a chemical agent posed to the dog.
“What’d you find?” Layne asked.
“I can’t take the credit. Atlas here found it.”
“Found what?”
“I don’t think I can adequately put it into words, ma’am. You really need to see it for yourself.”
The cornstalks ahead were taller than all of them and looked like they’d been dead for several seasons. They were brown and crisp and rattled in the cold breeze that blew in from the northeast. Crows circled in the dark sky overhead, cawing and squawking. They perched on top of the stalks and jostled for space.
“Where’s a good scarecrow when you need one?” Mason asked.
Henderson cast him a look he couldn’t interpret.
Their combined lights barely illuminated the adjacent rows of corn, which cast shifting shadows that appeared to move with a life of their own. A narrow strip of broken stalks led deeper into the field. The dog bounded ahead and nearly vanished into them.
“I wasn’t out here but fifteen minutes when I heard your car on the road,” Henderson said. “We’d barely made a circuit of the house itself when Atlas picked up a scent and led me straight into this field.”
Mason glanced up at the sky, where the black birds blended into the darkness. Clouds were creeping in from the east, swallowing the stars as they went. A breeze rattled the dead crops and raised the hackles on the back of his neck.
Mason knew they were getting close when he heard the buzz of flies.
His hand unconsciously sought the butt of his Glock in the holster beneath his left arm.
The dog barked from somewhere ahead of them. A murder of crows erupted from the stalks. Screaming. Beating one another with their wings. Shedding feathers like leaves.
Another step and they emerged into a small circular clearing.
A dark form reared up in front of them.
Mason drew his pistol.
Sighted.
Froze.
“This guy had probably better look for a new line of work,” Layne said as she shoved past him. “He really sucks as a scarecrow.”
14
Mason’s first impression was that the man had been crucified. Someone had used thick, frayed rope to tie him to a wooden cross by his ankles, waist, shoulders, and wrists. His unsecured head hung forward, chin to chest. His red-and-black flannel shirt and denim overalls showed signs of both wear and extended exposure to the elements. A broad-brimmed straw hat concealed most of his facial features. What little Mason could see was crawling with flies and had been picked clean to the bone, presumably by the crows, which he was beginning to think had developed a serious superiority complex after feasting on human flesh. He shooed away one that had the audacity to land on the dead man’s arm right in front of him.
“I do believe we found Peter Cavanaugh,” Layne said. “How long do you think he’s been out here like this?”
“I’m not sure,” Mason said. “It’s hard to tell with this much scavenger activity.”
“Your gut?”
“A couple months, maybe more. Definitely within our theoretical time frame.”
“Whoever did this didn’t just kill him so he wouldn’t report his trucks missing,” she said. “This seems personal to me.”
“I agree. The victim’s been put on display. Posed. Whoever did this wanted him to be found. Wanted us to appreciate his work.”
“For something meant to be found, the killer did an awfully good job of hiding it.”
She had a point. Were it not for a blurry logo captured by a roadside camera and the work of a highly trained canine unit, who knew how long it might have been before anyone found Cavanaugh out here in the corn.
Atlas barked from somewhere off to the right. Henderson disappeared into the stalks after him.
“This feels somehow separate from the reason we originally came out here,” Layne said.
“They could have gotten trucks from just about anywhere,” Mason said. “Why drive more than a hundred miles to the middle of nowhere?”
“So they wouldn’t get caught?”
“Then why leave this display at all?”
“There’s another one over here,” Henderson said from about fifteen feet diagonally to the northwest. He waved his flashlight so they could see him through the corn.
Mason raised his arm in front of his face and pushed through the stalks.
The second victim was displayed in the same fashion as the first. He was taller and thinner than the last and his flannel was blue instead of red, but otherwise every conceivable effort had been invested in posing him in an identical manner. He’d also been out here longer, if the relative disinterest of the flies and the crows was any indication. His bones were bleached by the elements and—
Mason eased closer and scrutinized the bones in the victim’s hand and wrist. It took several seconds to identify the reason something had bothered him about their appearance. It was the outer layer of the bones. The cortices. They all showed subtle signs of remodeling. Plus, the saddle at the base of the thumb was worn, as were the small joints in the fingers.
He stepped back, tilted his head so he could see up underneath the hat, and studied the man’s teeth. They were coffee-stained and the sockets had receded from the roots, making them appear longer than they actually were. While he certainly wasn’t a forensic odontologist, he had enough experience to recognize that this man wasn’t the typical victim of a serial killer.
This guy was old.
Mason went back to the first body, using a broken stalk to slide back the victim’s sleeve. The bones were in much better shape than those of the second, but there was still clear evidence of arthritis. The teeth were long and discolored, too.
He stood on his toes and turned in a full circle. The only thing he could see above the corn was a whole lot of dark sky and the very top of the grain silo.
“There’s a third one over here,” Layne called.
Mason didn’t reply. He’d latched onto a thought and wanted to see where it took him, starting with heading out of the field and back toward the farmhouse.
Despite historical precedent to the contrary, it was entirely possible that a serial killer would target old men. Maybe he chose victims that reminded him of his father or grandfather. Killers thrived on the hunt, though, and there were few victims less challenging than the elderly. Whoever did this had spent considerable time posing his victims and yet hadn’t raised the curtain for the world to see. Was it possible the display was designed solely for this monster’s personal enjoyment?
He was pretty sure he heard Layne call out the discovery of a fourth victim from somewhere behind him as he fought through the cornstalks, heading toward the silo. It was maybe thirty feel tall and composed of smooth ceramic tiles. The top was flat. Maybe by design. More likely the domed roof had blown off.
Rusted rungs led up the eastern side, nearest the house. He climbed slowly. The wind grew stronger as he ascended. He could hear the voices of the Wray police officers around the front of the house, but not well enough to make out their words.
He paused to take in the view when he reached the top. The path from the house drew a crooked line through the field to the first victim, around which the corn appeared to have been cleared just enough to see the body from this distance. Another path led to the north-northwest, and the second victim. Then west-northwest to the third. The fourth was to the southwest. Crows shrieked and burst from the corn farther to the south, where Layne followed the overgrown path toward the fifth. The pattern was clearly evident. The victims were arranged in a circle, or would have been if there had been two more of them, one between the third and fourth and another between the fourth and fifth. He scrutinized the middle for some sort of centerpiece but saw little more than a riot of shaking stalks he attributed to the dog.
A thin ledge encircled the inner rim of the silo, granting access to another ladder. He followed its descent with his flashlight beam, all the way down to the bottom, where, set into the ground amid the grain dust and trash and weeds, there was a metal hatch.
Mason climbed down the rungs, knelt over a hatch that reminded him of a coal chute, and inspected it with his flashlight. It was designed to open by using a lever outside the silo, but he was able to slide it on the metal runners without much difficulty, revealing an underground tunnel framed by wooden cribbing.
The killer could very well be hiding down there in the darkness. Mere feet away.
He drew his Glock, aligned the barrel with his flashlight beam, and aimed down into the earth. He saw aged timber and smooth, packed earth. The passage was obviously old, and yet there were no cobwebs.
He opened his mouth to quiet his breathing and listened for any sound to betray the presence of someone below him.
Silence.
“Screw it,” he whispered, and risked a peek. He’d already recoiled by the time his brain sorted through what his eyes had seen. The tunnel extended beyond the range of his light, but there’d been no one and nothing in between.
He dropped through the hole and la
nded in a squat. The air sparkled with motes of dust and smelled faintly of mold and age. The dirt roof was maybe three feet high. Just tall enough to allow him to move in a crouch, his pistol raised in front of him. Every footstep sounded like a block of sandpaper striking wood.
The tunnel was roughly twenty-five feet long and terminated against a nearly petrified wooden door with an old iron latch that was surprisingly free of rust.
Mason leaned closer and pressed his ear against it.
Listened.
No sound from the other side.
He pushed the door open a crack.
Ducked back.
Waited for the thunder of gunfire, which, fortunately, never came.
He took a deep breath and shouldered open the door. Crawled out from behind it, low and fast.
Swept his light and pistol from one side of the room to the other.
Took in everything as fast as he could.
He was in a cellar of some kind. Belowground. No windows. Bare earthen floor. Timber planks overhead. Fieldstone and mortar walls. Inset slanted cellar doors to the left, black with coal dust. Wooden stairs straight ahead. Single bulb with a pull cord above them. Rusted metal shelves with jars full of nails and screws and washers. Preserves. Canning wax and glass jars. Dented cans of paint and kerosene. Bags of potting soil in the corner. Fertilizer. Seeds. So old that the bags had disintegrated and the contents spilled out. Weathered boxes and crates.
It was a tornado shelter. When the owner saw a funnel cloud, he just pulled the plug on the silo and gravity sucked the grain down into the tunnel so that he didn’t lose his entire store. Solid planning. There were enough supplies to hunker down in here for an extended period of time. Or at least there had been decades ago, when everything was last stocked.
The door leading into the house was set flush with the ceiling. He’d be poking his head up from the floor like a gopher from its hole. The moment he raised the hatch, he’d be completely vulnerable.
He climbed the wooden stairs, careful to minimize the creaking of the ancient planks. Cocked his head toward the floorboards. Listened.