by Alex Archer
Though it could well appear that Keiko died in her sleep or of a drug overdose...the police would find at least trace amounts of coke in her system. The police would, no doubt, investigate her demise closely. There’d been too many fatalities at this academic conference.
Madison, Wisconsin, was no longer boring or wholesome.
Garin took the stairs to the next floor, leaving his suitcase and the portfolio in the stairwell. Rembert’s room was only a few doors away, and that was where he went. He rapped quietly on the door, not wanting to wake anyone else. For a moment he thought that perhaps the cameraman had likewise succumbed to Aeschelman’s clever poison.
“You don’t like wine, Mr. Knight?” Aeschelman had said in the penthouse suite. Aeschelman hadn’t been referring to the wine available to the bidders—Garin realized that now. He’d meant the wine Keiko had ordered from room service before the auction. Aeschelman had meant to kill Garin...for asking too many questions, perhaps, for demanding to see the shield in a private showing, for bringing along Rembert Hayes, who was not a pre-approved part of their little circle. Most likely it was the latter reason. And most likely Rembert was already dead, too.
He knocked one more time, turned away and...
“What? What’s going on now?” Rembert was wearing pajamas.
Garin stared. What sort of man wore pajamas anymore?
“What?” Rembert yawned. “First Annja pesters me, then you—”
Garin moved so close he shared Rembert’s breath. “Listen, this is a courtesy, one I don’t owe you but one I am giving you nonetheless. You told me how fond you are of your skin, that you have a family to support. Consider this a warning, Mr. Hayes. Eat nothing, drink nothing in this hotel that does not come from a vending machine. You understand? If you want to keep living, pay attention—find Annja Creed and stay close to her until you’re home again.”
Rembert’s lower lip quivered and he took a step back. Garin matched the step. “Annja’s in danger?”
Garin shrugged. “Annja’s always in danger. You implied you were done working with her because it was hazardous. Well, Mr. Hayes, you better revise that. You better stick to her like glue until you’re back nice and safe in New York City and your video has been sold and made public. Right now...I’d say Annja Creed is likely the only one who’ll be able to keep you alive.”
Garin could tell the words were sinking in.
“The men tonight—”
“I told you, Mr. Hayes, they are not good people. They’re behind the deaths at this hotel, every single body that’s been carted out of here and every one that will be before this conference ends.” He wondered if more people than Keiko were being culled right now by the madman Aeschelman. His earlier comment in the park of “I wanted to be rid of her,” referring to Mrs. Hapgood, sent a shiver down Garin’s back. How many people did he want to be “rid of”?
“They’re behind this, those people from the suite?”
“Mr. Hayes, if you don’t take care, your body will be added to their tally.” Garin reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a Glock, showed Rembert that it had a full clip and then gave it to him along with a second clip. “Mr. Hayes, my giving you this gun and a heads-up is an uncommon gesture on my part. Fortunately for you, I haven’t been entirely myself in Wisconsin. See to it that you sell your video for a good price, and as I mentioned before, give Annja Creed my best.”
Rembert started to say something, but Garin spun away and returned to the stairwell, grabbing his suitcase and the portfolio and taking the steps two at a time. As he was crossing through the lobby, he stopped at a house phone. “Mr. Aeschelman’s room, please.”
The hotel operator clicked a few keys. “I’m sorry, sir, Mr. Aeschelman checked out several minutes ago.”
Garin would make connections and visit the smuggling circle again, another time, another city, perhaps another country. Eventually he would find Aeschelman, and he would settle the score for Keiko.
Chapter 26
Annja recalled in vivid detail the exchange she’d had with Sully before she returned to Madison to be shot at in the alley.
“Tell you what,” Sully had said. “I’ll keep my word. I’ll hand over Joe’s dive logs, all of them. Give you his tanks.... I was gonna sell them. You’ll have to get them filled up someplace, though. I won’t charge you a penny for any of that. You can have them for free. But you have to put me and the boys on your television program.”
“All right,” she’d said without hesitation. She didn’t need the equipment “for free”; she had enough to spend on it. But if the dive logs would get her closer to whatever Edgar had sought in the lake...the Mayan temple he believed was down there, she’d acquiesce to Sully. “All right, I’ll get my cameraman out here first thing Sunday morning and we’ll put you in an episode.”
“But not about them pyramids,” he’d said. “I ain’t interested in the pyramids or the Indian mounds or any of that. That’s all hogwash and no big deal.”
Then about what? She hadn’t found it necessary to pose the question aloud. He’d pointed to the wall behind him, to an assortment of very old newspaper clippings he’d framed. “I want to be on television about that,” Sully had told her. “Nobody believes in the big snake, not anymore, but they will when you put it on that Chasing History’s Monsters. They’ll believe it then. People believe what they see on television.”
Now Annja stood on the sidewalk outside Sully’s What-Nots. It was a little later than she’d planned—9:00 a.m., an hour past when she told him she’d be here. But after Starbucks, she rode her motorcycle to the beach cabin, took a hot bath and lay on the bed for a nap. If her alarm had gone off, she hadn’t heard it.
“Please, Rem, where are you?” She hung up the phone and tried again. “Rem?”
“Your photographer?” Sully had cracked open the front door, just as the Catholic church on the corner starting ringing its bell for the morning service. This early in the day, she was surprised to smell the whiskey on his breath. “Your guy’s waiting inside. We’re all waiting on you. Coffee’s all gone. What kept you?”
Sleep, Annja thought in reply. A really necessary few hours of sleep.
Conversation filtered out through Sully’s open door, and she recognized Rembert’s voice. She was grateful but a little surprised that he had actually shown up.
She entered the shop and could tell immediately from the look on his face that he wasn’t happy about being here. He pulled her aside...as much “aside” as the close confines of the shop allowed.
“I swore I would never shoot another episode of Chasing History’s Monsters with you. Ever.”
“And yet here you are.” It was the money, she was certain, and Rembert needed quite a bit of it for his grandson’s eye operation. Annja felt guilty for talking him into this. “Look, we’re not going to shoot the entire episode today. In fact, I don’t want to devote much time to it. Who knows if it will even turn into something? But we have to do this.”
Rembert pulled a face.
“I’m going diving later this morning,” Annja said.
“Diving?”
“In Rock Lake.”
“In the lake? Why are you going to dive in a lake? Am I supposed to film you diving? And if I’m supposed to film you diving, why are we standing inside this junk store?”
She shook her head. “I need some maps so I’ll know where to dive. And we have to do this segment to get the maps. A simple trade-off. I’d like you to film a little bit of the dive. It could add some color to our segment.”
“Our segment on what? These guys won’t tell me. They just smile and chatter about an upcoming bake sale and barbershop-quartet competition. They won’t tell me anything, like it’s a big surprise they’re waiting to spring. Do you know what this is about?”
“The topic for this epis
ode—”
“Yeah, the topic. Have you called Doug about this?”
“—is a little unusual.”
“Not that anything else you’ve handled hasn’t been for Chasing. Unusual, that is.” He let out a long breath that hissed like steam escaping between his teeth. “I’m here. You got me here. Against my very best judgment you got me here. For all sorts of reasons you got me here.” He lowered his voice to say, “You know how bad I need the cash. But maybe I’m going to be fine on the money end.”
“Shouldn’t take more than two hours,” she assured him. “If that.”
“Great. I can give you two hours. So, what are we calling this one?”
“‘In Search of Her Imperial Snakeship.’”
Rembert’s face contorted and he mouthed What? “Does Doug know about this?” he asked again. “You forgetting the conference and coming here? To go after a big snake? A lake serpent?”
“Rem, this is all on my time, remember? I’m not on Doug’s clock this weekend. Besides, you said you have enough video for Doug’s promo.”
“Oh, I have some great video, though not of the conference.”
She figured he was talking about the deaths. “And I did attend the conference.”
“For not much more than an hour, from what I could tell.” Rembert took a shot of her with the shelves filled with a myriad assortment of stuff as a backdrop. “Hey, I attended more of that conference than you did, and I’m not an archaeologist or interested in any of their moldy topics.”
“We’ll need some footage of the lake, certainly, maybe me diving, like I mentioned, so they get the idea I’m looking for Her Imperial Snakeship. Though that’s not what I’m looking for. And I need a couple of shots of a big piece of driftwood not far from the swimming beach. Some of the locals say it’s a serpent skull.”
Rembert panned the camera around, taking in more of the objects. He raised it to get a shot of bicycles, canoes and deer heads that hung from the ceiling. Annja hadn’t noticed them before.
“Let me introduce you, Annja, to the regulars at this little whatnot shop. ‘The boys’ Sully calls them. We’ve all been waiting for you, sucking down really bad coffee and wondering if you’d show up. They’re part of a club I’d guess you’d call it. They get together with the owner of the shop and talk about—”
“Her Snakeship!” Sully interjected. He’d crept up to them, but the creaking floorboards had given him away. He had the silver flask in his hand. He took a drink, made a toasting gesture and replaced the cap. “Her Imperial Snakeship.”
“This is getting better and better. No wonder you were all keeping the topic from me. Figured I’d bolt, huh?” Minutes later Rembert was taking still shots of the wall inside the whatnot shop, getting Sully and the others in the frame.
“Wisconsin is known for its critters,” one of the old boys said. He identified himself as George Bamford, a retired fifth-grade teacher. “They popped up more often years and years back, a hundred years back, dumping boats over, scaring the crap out of fishermen, making the summer people flee back down into Illinois. Heck, one summer the beach shut down.”
“Water dragons,” said another, the youngest of the six men who had gathered. He went by Kip, no last name. “Lake serpents. I like Her Imperial Snakeship—that’s what some newspaper once called her. She’d be as famous as that Loch Ness Monster if someone had gotten a good picture of her.”
Annja leaned over the counter and noticed that Sully had removed the gold piece.
“Somebody did get a photo, remember? Was printed in a newspaper a long while back, but it was all blurry.”
She could tell Rembert was actually getting into this, taking the camera from one man to the next, adjusting the mic to make sure he picked up every word. His expression had gone from disgruntled to one of genuine curiosity. The cameraman was far more interested in this than Annja was; she considered it only a means to an end. Satisfy Sully, and he’d give her the dive logs that might lead her to Edgar’s temple. Hopefully, it would be more real than Her Imperial Snakeship.
Kip had been babbling, Annja letting the words drift through the crowded shop while she continued to think about Edgar and the Mayans. Sully’s What-Nots was a worse floor-to-ceiling jumble of antiques, vintage toys and...stuff than she’d realized on her first trip. The wall near the counter, where the six old boys sat on folding chairs, was covered with framed newspaper clippings of Her Imperial Snakeship.
Rembert moved in closer to Kip, and Annja caught some of what he said.
“People—that’s why you don’t have many reports about Her Imperial Snakeship and the other lake monsters.” Kip tucked his hair behind his ears. “More tourists, more fishermen, lakeshore development, people encroaching on nature. It all drives the serpents into hiding or into deeper lakes. Rock Lake here, they say at its deepest it’s eighty-seven, ninety feet.”
Rembert whistled softly. “That’s pretty deep.”
“Big Sand is over a hundred down in spots,” Sully said.
Kip continued, “So the way we see it, Wisconsin’s monstrous serpent population has moved to the really deep lakes, to remote places and such. They must live a long, long while.”
Sully rose and tapped a framed clipping on the wall. One of his favorites, Annja guessed, because it was in a large gilded frame. “This article, and this one and this one. If you read ’em close, you can see that the biggest outbreak of lake serpents took place between 1860 and into World War I, mostly in southeastern Wisconsin. All of ’em stemming from right here in Rock Lake.” He folded his arms in front of his chest, beaming proudly while regaling Rembert with his information. “I saw Her Imperial Snakeship myself thirty years ago, when I went swimming with my friends after high-school graduation.”
Annja’s heart sank. Sully had probably seen a plain old water snake maybe, but no monster. And so his deceased cousin probably never saw a temple in the lake, either...but the gold came from somewhere. Her stomach roiled at the thought that she’d gotten suckered into this deal.
Sully read passages from the clippings aloud, and Annja moved in front of the camera to stand next to him. It was reflex; she’d worked on so many episodes of Chasing History’s Monsters that this was just one more assignment. Except it wasn’t one of Doug’s ideas. She’d come up with this winner all on her own, just to get another lake dive.
“Since you’ve done so much research about—”
“Her Imperial Snakeship,” Sully said, puffing out his chest.
“Can you tell us when most of the significant, documented sightings occurred?” Annja asked.
His smile grew wide, revealing two missing teeth on the side. “For fifteen years, from 1870 to 1885, people saw her in the reeds. She hissed at people in boats. Fred here—” He moved over and tapped at another framed clipping. It was yellowed and had creases in it that had not been effectively smoothed out. “Fred hooked her. She towed his boat almost a mile. And another fisherman—” he tapped at another clipping that was horribly faded from where the sun hit it on the wall “—he speared it but couldn’t hold on. She got away.”
“Some called her the Rock Lake Horror,” the retired schoolteacher added.
“Better and better and better,” Rembert whispered.
“George, you got it wrong,” Kip said. “That’s the Rock Lake Terror.”
George shrugged. “Some people think she stopped showing herself ’cause folks were trying to catch her or kill her. So she hunkered down at the deep part of the lake, got bigger and near the turn of the century got some revenge.”
Sully pointed to another clipping, as if that news report verified George’s story.
“They was in a rowing race,” George explained, “a couple of men from here in town. And they said they saw a log stretched out in the lake, right in their path. Well, they’d been reading about Her I
mperial Snakeship, and so they were careful.”
“But not careful enough.” This from Kip. “She dived and came up right next to ’em. Opened her mouth. Probably looked like that shark from the Jaws movie.”
Sully took a turn. “Anyway, it was reported that a man on shore grabbed a shotgun, took his boat out and was taking aim when it disappeared again. Didn’t show up for a week or more.”
“Said it was longer than two boats,” Kip said. “Two boats end to end.”
Just in case this really did turn into an episode of Chasing History’s Monsters, Annja injected another question.
“So where do you think Her Imperial Snakeship is today?”
“She ain’t dead,” Kip announced. “That’s for damn sure. Someone would’ve found her body.”
George cleared his throat. “Some say she slithered out of Rock Lake and through the woods to Red Cedar Lake, along the way eating dogs and pigs. One farmer reported half a dozen of his prized hogs taken.”
“Their half-eaten bodies were found on the bank of Red Cedar,” Kip said.
Rembert panned from one man to the next, recording their wide eyes and animated expressions.
“Said it was about fifty feet long by the time it made Red Cedar its home,” George said. “Some were calling it a dragon.”
“Got too big for Red Cedar.” The oldest gentleman, looking over eighty, picked up the storytelling. He’d refused to provide his name. “Hitched itself over to Lake Ripley, took the route of a river that used to run between the lakes. The folks who owned summer cottages back around 1900 closed them up and went south.”
George and Kip nodded.
“Folks hunted her fierce for some years,” the old man said. “And she moved around...or maybe there were more than one of them. I’m pretty sure there was more than one. Could be one of her offspring still swims in Rock. Madison’s lakes, Elkhart where she pulled a fisherman in, Pewaukee, Delavan, Oconomowoc and as far down as Lake Geneva. Heard tell that the one spotted on the shores of Lake Waubesa was more than sixty feet long.”