by Tim Downs
“Did your people actually believe her?”
“Not at first—but then she showed them the other scrapbook.”
“What other scrapbook?”
“It seems the old librarian put a second scrapbook together, and this one held a lot of dirt on John Braden himself. Apparently Braden isn’t the nobleman he thought he was; his ancestors stole all their landholdings from another family and murdered anyone who was able to expose them—then buried them in existing graveyards.”
“The two-hundred-year-old body,” Nick said. “All four victims must have been part of that family.”
“Exactly. Riddick knew about the second scrapbook too, and he figured the Bradens could never survive both scandals at once—so he decided to intervene.”
“And Victoria just handed this scrapbook over to you?”
“She said she had hoped to keep it a secret until after the election— but the moment she learned what Riddick had done she immediately handed it over. She said that she and her husband plan to go public with it—tell everyone all about it before it leaks into the papers anyway. They figure they’ll take the ethical high ground and hope the American public is in a generous mood.”
Nick frowned. “Do you buy that?”
“No—but it doesn’t matter what I ‘buy.’ It only matters what I can prove, and I can’t prove otherwise—yet.”
Nick looked at Alena. “Don’t you have a liar-sniffing dog somewhere?”
“Sorry—I’ll get to work on that.”
“I need to ask you a lot of questions,” Donovan said to Nick. “Can you stick around for a couple more days?”
“Yeah—I can do that.”
“I’ll give you a call. Get the cell phone out of your car and put it in your pocket—you’ll get better reception that way.”
“Thanks for the technology update. Can we go now?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Nick, I owe you one—and sorry for all the trouble, Alena. You shouldn’t have any more.”
Nick and Alena started back through the woods toward the trailer. “Donovan’s right,” he said. “Things should get back to normal around here pretty soon. No more intrusions on your privacy. No more late-night interruptions. You won’t have to worry about me climbing your fence anymore.”
“Too bad,” she said. “I was starting to get used to it.”
They walked in silence until they reached the clearing in front of the trailer. When Alena saw the black lump still lying across the trailer door, she stopped in her tracks.
“Would you do me a favor?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Help me bury my dogs.”
It took three hours to roll the dogs onto plastic tarps and drag them into the woods, then dig two shallow holes and cover them with earth. Nick knew that the burial afforded little protection to the dogs’ remains; the few inches of loose topsoil offered no protection at all against the insects that were already at work reducing the bodies to bone and fur. But Nick knew equally well why burials were important, and it had nothing to do with the dead. A burial is a ceremony done by the living, for the living. A burial is a chance to say good-bye, and Alena deserved that chance.
They stood leaning on their shovels and staring at the fresh mounds of dirt.
“It’s not fair,” she said.
“What’s not fair?”
“A dog lives only one year for every seven that a human being gets. You barely start to love them before they’re gone.”
“A blowfly only lives a few weeks,” he said.
She frowned. “Nobody can love a fly.”
“That shows what you know. My life is one long funeral.”
She laughed in spite of herself.
“So what’s next for you?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You found your father; you got your little white towel. Now what?”
She reached into the pocket of her gown and took out her father’s dirt-encrusted buckeye. She pushed it once.
CLICK clack.
“I’m a dog trainer,” she said. “It’s what I do. It’s what I love. Tomorrow I’ll make the rounds at the local animal shelters. I’ll talk to the dogs. I’ll find one that can do what Acheron did—one with the right gift. Then I’ll bring him back here and I’ll train him—one step at a time.”
“Good. That’s your gift.”
“I guess I won’t be wandering the woods at night anymore. That should free up my evenings—in case you’re ever in the mood to climb a fence.”
“Great—I’ll bring my neck brace.”
She let her shovel drop to the ground and turned to face Nick. She brushed the hair back from her face and looked up into his eyes. The morning sun rising behind him set her emerald eyes on fire.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“You came back for me. You don’t know what that means. You just can’t . . .” Her voice trailed away.
Nick cocked his head to one side. “You know, I’ve been thinking.”
“About what?”
“Dogs and insects—they both detect the scent of death in very similar ways.”
“So?”
“I don’t think they’ve ever been studied together. A blowfly can pick up the scent of human remains from two miles away. Can a dog do that?”
“Not likely—but can a blowfly find a body after it’s been dead for a hundred years?”
“Not a chance. You know, I wonder if we might have an opportunity here.”
“An opportunity?”
“For further study. I was thinking—maybe the Department of Entomology at NC State could host a study. Dogs and insects—it would give us a chance to study them side by side—to compare their relative strengths and weaknesses.”
“Are you asking me to come to Raleigh?”
“Just for a couple of days—maybe a weekend. Dogs and insects—it’s never been done. I just thought—maybe—the relationship should be explored.”
She smiled. “Dogs and insects. That could be interesting.”
I must be out of my mind, he thought. A woman who loves dogs and a man who loves insects—we’ll never agree about fleas.
“It really isn’t fair,” she whispered.
“What isn’t?”
“Life. You barely begin to care about something before it goes away.”
He looked at her face. It was an almost perfect face, and he began to notice features that he had never seen before: her upturned nose, her milky white skin, the faint constellation of tawny freckles arrayed across her cheeks. But there was something about her eyes—the clarity, the brilliance, the almost mystical power that seemed to grab hold of him and draw him closer.
He began, almost in spite of himself, to slowly lean toward her.
CLICK clack.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following individuals and agencies for their assistance in my research for this book: Morris Berkowitz, CBP Supervisor, Canine Enforcement Training Center in Front Royal, Virginia; my research assistant, Samuel Thomsen; Dr. John Strasser of Kildaire Animal Medical Center; John Smathers of Falls Church, Virginia; and all the others who took the time to respond to my e-mails, letters, and calls.
I would also like to thank my literary agent and friend, Lee Hough of Alive Communications; story editor Ed Stackler for his insights into story, pacing, and character development; copy editor Deborah Wiseman for her unerring red pen; my publisher, Allen Arnold; and my editor, Amanda Bostic of Thomas Nelson, for her helpful suggestions on the story; and the rest of the Nelson staff for their kindness and dedication to the craft of writing.
Ends of the Earth
Other Books by Tim Downs
Shoofly Pie
Chop Shop
PlagueMaker
Head Game
First the Dead
Less Than Dead
Ends of the Earth
Tim Downs
© 2009 by Tim Downs
; All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. www.alivecommunications.com.
Thomas Nelson books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ ThomasNelson.com.
Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Downs, Tim.
Ends of the earth / Tim Downs.
p. cm. — (Bug man series 5)
ISBN 978-1-59554-308-0 (pbk.)
1. Polchak, Nick (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Forensic entomology—Fiction. 3. Organic farming—Fiction. 4. North Carolina—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.O954E53 2009
813'.6—dc22
2009022834
Printed in the United States of America
09 10 11 12 13 RRD 5 4 3 2 1
For my beautiful Joy,
the love of my life,
who faithfully reads what I’ve written each day
before she turns out the light at night—
then dreams about the last thing she reads.
Now that’s what I call love.
CONTENTS
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53
Acknowledgments
When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say,
“Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a
pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in
the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a
denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm
the oil and wine!”
Revelation 6:5–6
1
Podlesny, Russia
The old man looked at the driver of the car. “Is he angry with me, Pasha?”
The The young man gave an indifferent shrug. “It’s just business, Nikolai. He hired you; you worked for him; you no longer wish to work for him; you quit. You will take another job and my grandfather will hire another scientist. Life goes on.”
“Your grandfather is a very powerful man.”
“Dedushka is a businessman, nothing more.”
“Then he forgives me?”
Pasha Semenov looked over at his passenger. Nikolai Petrov’s eyes looked sunken and haunted, like those of a dog that had been kicked too many times. The old man hunched down in his seat as if a great weight was pressing down on him. Wrapped around his left wrist was a black wool Orthodox prayer rope, tied into fifty knots with a wooden bead dividing the knots into groups of ten. The old man constantly fingered the knots, mouthing silent words until his fingers arrived at a wooden bead—then he said aloud, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Pasha smirked. “You don’t look like much of a sinner to me. Maybe I should get one of those things.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” Petrov mumbled. “You don’t know what I almost did.”
“What did you do, old man? Go on, impress me with your sins.”
“We did things that no man should do, Pasha, things that could lead to the end of the earth—the end of everything. Your grandfather does not understand this. He does not believe as I do.”
“What my grandfather believes is that the great Dr. Nikolai Petrov has lost his mind.”
“Do you know why the Soviet Union crumbled, Pasha? It was God’s judgment on us for the things we almost did—for the things we were preparing to do.”
“Listen to yourself—you talk like one of those cave hermits from Kiev. Do you know your problem, Nikolai? You’re living in the past. This is the new Russia—the world is different now.”
“The world does not change, Pasha. The human heart does not change.”
Pasha pulled the car off the road and stopped.
Nikolai Petrov looked out his window. In a clearing to his right he saw an enormous concrete grain silo encircled by a winding metal staircase whose steps protruded like the petals of a flower, ascending to an open doorway at the very top of the silo. There was a matching doorway on the opposite side that opened into empty space. At the bottom of the silo was a third doorway where a corn elevator offloaded the grain into a line of waiting trucks.
“This is not the train station,” Petrov said.
“How observant of you,” Pasha said, opening his door and stepping out. “Dedushka asked me to bring you. He wants to wish you good-bye.”
“It isn’t necessary,” the old man protested, but Pasha was already out of the car.
Pasha put his fingers to his lips and made a piercing whistle.
One of the farmhands looked up.
“Dedushka,” Pasha shouted.
The farmhand pointed to the top of the silo.
Pasha turned back to the car and found Petrov still huddled inside. He waved impatiently to the old man until he reluctantly opened his door and climbed out.
“He’s up in the silo,” Pasha shouted over the din of the corn elevator. “Come.”
They walked to the base of the metal staircase and Pasha gestured for Petrov to go ahead of him. The old man began to timidly climb the stairs while Pasha kept one hand pressed against the middle of his back to keep him moving forward. When they had rounded the silo once, Pasha whistled down to the corn elevator operator and made a slashing gesture at his throat. The machinist nodded and pulled a rusted lever and the engine sputtered to a stop. The air was suddenly silent.
“Dedushka didn’t have time to come to the station,” Pasha told Petrov, continuing to urge him forward. “Prices are up and the corn has to get to market right away. You know how it is on a farm—always something to do.”
At the top of the staircase Pasha pushed past Petrov and looked into the open doorway. The interior of the silo was a circular room filled with an endless sea of golden corn that dipped toward the center like a draining sink. A white-haired old man was standing kneedeep near one of the walls, scooping up shovelfuls of corn and tossing them into the center. There were no lights in the silo; it was illuminated only by the daylight pouring through the d
oorways on opposite sides.
“Dedushka,” Pasha called out. “You have a visitor.”
Yuri Semchenko turned. The man was built like a tree stump with arctic-white hair combed straight back toward his shoulders. He was dressed in denim overalls and a white cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled halfway up his thick, mottled forearms. His face was tanned and leathery, a field of deep folds and furrows with jowls that concealed most of his neck. His forehead was narrow and his hairline low; there was no hint of thinning or receding. His eyes were a dull, hollow gray set in sunken sockets like two slabs of slate peering up from the soil.
Semchenko looked at his visitors without expression. “Grab shovels,” he said to them. “Make yourselves useful.”
Pasha picked up two shovels and handed one to his companion. He waded into the corn a few steps, then turned back and motioned for Petrov to follow.
The old man did.
“Like this.” Semchenko demonstrated, holding his shovel overhand and scraping the corn away from the concrete walls. “Moisture collects,” he said. “The corn forms a crust—we must break it free.”
Pasha began to do the same.
Petrov stood near the center of the silo and stared at Semchenko’s back. “Don’t do it, Yuri,” he said. “Please—I beg you.”
Semchenko looked at him over his shoulder. “Don’t do what?”
“You know what. You have no right.”
The white-haired man let out a snort.
“Science makes possible things that should never be done,” Petrov said.