Malice kac-19

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Marlene decided to start by talking about how she met Santacristina, or Katarain, rather than just jumping straight into the case. However, she left out the part about him being a fugitive from Spain.

  When she was done with that part of her story, she went back and talked about the disappearance of Maria Santacristina. She then proceeded chronologically up to what she and Fulton had discovered so far, such as Huttington reporting his car stolen two days after Maria disappeared. However, she left out the photograph she'd received from Maly Laska to see how they would react to Katarain's theory that his daughter's disappearance was connected to Huttington turning on O'Toole.

  "He thinks Huttington is being blackmailed," Marlene told the Irregulars. "The prosecutor-a really sharp guy named Dan Zook-is interested in the case, but doesn't think he can get an indictment without a body."

  Up to that point the members of the Baker Street Irregulars had remained silent, just sitting back and listening or scribbling notes on pads of paper. But now they started to pepper her with questions.

  "What, other than her father's story, do we have to indicate Maria didn't run away?" Gates asked. "It wouldn't be the first time that a young woman leaves without a trace to escape…possibly from sexual abuse by her father."

  Marlene knew that the question would come; the Irregulars left no stone unturned in these briefings and that included asking the tough ones. But she hated hearing it.

  "I'd like to say that I think I have enough of a sense of her father to know that he had a great relationship with his daughter," she replied. "But I know you guys are scientists and this is about 'just the facts.' So I wanted to give you that background. But now I want to show you a photograph I was given recently by a young woman who had accused Rufus Porter of raping her at the party that lies at the heart of the accusations against Mikey O'Toole. This photograph was sent to her with a message to get out of town or this would happen to her, too."

  "You said 'had accused'?" Adare asked.

  "She left after getting this photograph and now lives in hiding," Marlene replied, and told the group about what had happened in that case with the evidence and changing stories. "I believe that this photograph is the key to finding Maria and bringing justice to her and her father…and maybe Mikey O'Toole."

  "Amen," Swanburg said, and winked at Marlene. He pressed a button on a remote control and the lights in the room went out except for the photograph that now appeared on the screen at the front of the room.

  Marlene was impressed with the clarity of the digital reproduction, which had been blown up to fill the entire screen. The photograph had been taken from above and perhaps fifty feet from where four individuals, apparently all men but wearing handkerchief masks and hats pulled low over their eyes, were posing in front and somewhat to the side of a large sedan. They were dressed in matching white wifebeater undershirts with baggy jeans held up by suspenders. Three of them had their arms crossed gangster style, but the man on the left had his right arm extended and was holding up a beer as if they were tailgating at a football game.

  Because the photograph was taken from some height, the group could see that a pit had been dug in front of the car, apparently by the backhoe that could be seen belching a cloud of black smoke in the background. They could not see beyond the top three feet of the pit, but it appeared to be deep.

  "It would have to be deep to cover a car," James Reedy mumbled as though to himself.

  "And not just any car-a 2002 or 2003 Cadillac Eldorado, I believe, though tough to be absolutely sure of the year from this angle," Adare said. Someone whistled and he mimed a little bow in his seat. "What can I say. Number two hobby after aerial photography is Caddys. I own three. A cherry 1956 Coupe DeVille. A 1985 Biarritz. And a 2004 Eldorado just about like that one. What year did you say Huttington's car was, Marlene?"

  "I didn't, because I don't know," she answered. "But anybody want to place a bet on whether the one in the photograph is a match?"

  "Not I," said Gates, who squinted up at the screen. "Say, Jack, can you blow up the driver's-side window area behind these nitwits?"

  Swanburg did as asked, focusing on a narrow space between the bodies of two of the men and enlarging the space beyond to bring it into view. Staring out with wide, horrified eyes at the men and women sitting in the room, a young woman sat in the driver's seat, a silent plea on her lips.

  "Poor girl," Gates muttered, and bowed her head as if in prayer.

  "Maria Santacristina," Marlene said quietly. She had no idea how she was going to summon the emotional capital to tell the girl's father about the method of her execution. It would have been a horrible death.

  "Jack, can you back up a bit and go to the right arm of the asshole holding up the bottle," Adare requested. "I think we may have what cops call an identifying mark. I'd like a better view."

  Again, Swanburg fiddled with the control and zoomed in on a tattoo on the area inside the man's bicep. It looked like three interlocking triangles.

  "Sort of a stylized mountain range," Swanburg ventured.

  "It's called a Valknut," Lucy said quietly. "I saw one just a month ago." She explained the triskele and the relation to its distant cousin the Valknut. Then, reluctantly, she revealed her last conversation with Cian Magee and the circumstances of his death.

  "Do you think this group the Sons of Man are also involved in the death of Maria Santacristina?" Gates asked incredulously. "What are the odds of that?"

  "Statistically improbable," Reedy answered.

  Lucy nodded. "I think so, too," she said. "Cian told me that the symbol has been appropriated by neo-Nazi and Aryan groups, and there are certainly plenty of them in Idaho. But I don't see a connection to the Sons of Man."

  "Okay, that part's not important," said Swanburg. "For the purpose of this investigation, it doesn't matter who is involved at the moment, what matters to us is finding Maria's body. Otherwise, the tattoo just gives the police something to hang their hat on if we can ever accomplish our mission. So, ladies and gentlemen, any ideas on where this photograph was taken?"

  "Well, that's definitely a flood basalt geological formation," Reedy said. "See that thin black layer just under the sediment on top, probably no more than four or five inches thick? That's lava, a classic low-viscosity flow."

  "What else?" Swanburg asked.

  "Well, I'm not the botanist here, but that appears to be a conifer forest in the distance, so if I had to hazard an educated guess as to location, this is typical of our Pacific Northwest," Reedy replied. "A couple billion years ago, there were a zillion big and little volcanoes all over that part of the continent, pumping out lava that cooled into layers like you see in the photograph. It also breaks down into a really rich soil that will support conifer forests."

  "Could this be the area around Sawtooth, Idaho?" Marlene asked.

  Reedy nodded. "Very likely. You see it a lot around Coeur d'Alene and this is close. We'll want to get whatever the Idaho government has for state geologic maps. They're color-coded and we'll be able to see where the lava flows were in that area to be sure, but I'd be very surprised if Sawtooth isn't sitting on top of a lava veneer."

  "The area around the car looks like it could be a dry riverbed-with all those little hills and gullies and not much vegetation except over on the sides and in the distance," Gates noted.

  "You could be right," Reedy acknowledged. "But right now, I'd say we're looking at a gravel pit."

  Suddenly the professor jumped up out of his chair and ran up to the screen. He pointed to the far right corner of the photograph.

  "Right there, Jack, blow up that corner, please!" he exclaimed. When it was done, he shouted and danced a little jig. "Holy shit!!"

  "What?" the others asked in unison. They were all looking at what appeared to be a giant Erector set dinosaur. There was a long, thin neck of steel framework that ended with an enormous jawed head. That apparatus was supported by a large body made of wood and steel and appeared to be about the size of a
railroad car; the whole structure was perched on massive bulldozer-like tracks.

  "That there, ladies and gentlemen, is a ninety-five-ton Bucyrus steam shovel circa early 1900s," Reedy said reverently. "It took seventy-seven of those monsters and another twenty-five or so Marions to dig the Panama Canal."

  "So what?" Tom Warren asked.

  "So what? So what, you dog-loving SOB," the geology professor replied in mock anger. "Digging the nearly fifty miles that it took for the Panama Canal was and remains one of the largest and most difficult engineering feats ever. More than twenty-seven thousand workers died, mostly of malaria and landslides. That beautiful piece of machinery you so crudely dismissed as a 'so what' chewed through rock like a rabbit through lettuce; it literally moved mountains. There's even a rather famous photograph of Teddy Roosevelt standing on one in the Canal Zone."

  "Geez, do you like anything that actually has a heartbeat?" Warren teased.

  "My rock hound," Reedy replied, and winked at Marlene. "Living things are too much trouble, give me minerals, give me rocks. Now, there's stability."

  The rest of the group broke into smiles at the banter. The two men were best friends and their debates, usually fueled by beers, and hip-deep fishing in a trout stream, were legendary. "Then let me amend my question to 'So what does that mean to those of us in this room and the actual task we are trying to perform?'" Warren asked.

  Reedy thought about the question for a minute before answering. "Bear with my little stream of consciousness here. First, Bucyrus International still exists. They're out of Milwaukee and are, in fact, one of the world's leading manufacturers of surface mining equipment. That dinosaur on the screen was state of the art in its day and for quite some time afterward, but the company has long since moved on. I'll bet not more than a dozen of these haven't been scrapped, and I'd be amazed if half of them can still fire up. I don't know if the one in the photograph is still in operating order, but I'll bet you the folks at Bucyrus have records on where their machines ended up, and might be able to tell us if any are in the Pacific Northwest."

  Swanburg beamed. "Good work, James. I assume you'll want to follow this up with Bucyrus to narrow down our search."

  "My pleasure," Reedy said. "I can't wait to see that baby up close and personal."

  "That's still a lot of ground to cover to look for a buried car," Gates noted. "The landscape can change, and I suspect that's particularly true in a gravel pit. If they moved that machine, it will make it more difficult to pinpoint where to dig."

  The group was silent as they looked at the photograph. "You said the gravel pit might be part of a dry riverbed?" Adare asked.

  "Yep, the gravel may have been deposited by an ancient river or even pushed there by glaciers," Reedy replied.

  "Well, my idea is to use the dogs," Adare said. "Remember how they picked up that child's scent in the groundwater downgrade from the actual grave?"

  "We've had some luck that way," Warren agreed. "But it depends what time of year we're going to be searching."

  All eyes turned on Marlene. "Well, the O'Toole trial is the end of this month and if finding Maria Santacristina has a bearing on that, I'd like to have the evidence available then," she said.

  "Well, that could be tough for the hounds," Warren said. "In March, at that latitude and elevation, there may be quite a bit of snow on the ground, which isn't the big problem, but frozen soil can be. As you all know, cadaver dogs are trained to hit on the scent of chemicals released by the decomposition of human cells. In the case of burials, they catch the scent as it comes up through tiny cracks in the ground. But in winter, the snow falls, then it melts, then it freezes, which makes a barrier between the scent and the dog. They might walk right over a grave and miss it."

  Again the group was quiet, thinking, until Reedy spoke. "The ground is only frozen two or three feet down," he said. "Below that, the groundwater is moving downhill just like it would be on the surface. That pit would have to be what, six feet deep at least to cover that car. Which means the groundwater at the bottom and even as high as our victim is still flowing."

  It looked like a lightbulb went off above Warren's head. "I see what you're getting at," he said as the smile grew on his face. "You want to try our little theory on the pipes. But we've never had the opportunity to test it and see if it works."

  Reedy grinned. "No time like the present." He turned to Marlene. "So do you know of any gravel pits in that neck of the woods? It would probably be near a highway to make it easy to supply road material and sand for snowstorms to the highway department."

  Marlene nodded grimly. "Oh yeah, I know where I can find a gravel pit." She turned to Lucy. "It's owned by the Unified Church of the Aryan People, which also has its compound on the premises."

  "Hmm," Swanburg mused. "I don't suppose they're likely to open the gates and let us snoop about, eh?"

  Marlene shook her head. "Doubt it. I think we're going to need a warrant. Like I said, the local prosecutor will cooperate, but he's going to need everything you guys can give him to go before a judge with."

  "We can do that," Swanburg said. "In the meantime, we also need to brainstorm about these 'pipes' the boys are talking about, as well as what else we might need to find and excavate a Cadillac with the ground frozen solid." Noting the concerned look on Marlene's face, he quickly added, "But these are the challenges we live for."

  "I have an idea about that, too," Adare said.

  "So do I," Reedy chimed in. "Especially if those damn dogs could for once pull their weight in Purina and get us close."

  "Watch it, Reedy, or I'll bring my new addition to the team," Warren warned. "A pit bull that will love chewing on that tough old ass of yours."

  The room was soon buzzing with excited scientists running theories past one another; then Swanburg brought the side discussions to a halt. "These Unified Church folks," he said, "I take it they might react violently if the law shows up and wants to poke around on their property. I can see another Waco, Texas, or Ruby Ridge. I don't fancy getting shot. So what are we going to have for security?"

  Again, Marlene felt everybody's eyes on her. "I think you're right to be concerned," she said. "These types aren't always the brightest bulbs in the lamp. And they can get pretty nasty when the government comes calling. I'm not sure if the local police can be trusted either; we have reason to believe that there may be one or two sympathetic Aryan types on the force who might give a warning. I do have another idea, but I'll need to talk it over with Zook, the prosecutor."

  The meeting broke up and the group moved down the highway to a roadside grill for burgers and beer, where they regaled Marlene, Lucy, and Ned with stories of their exploits.

  The first to get up to leave was Reedy. "I'll call Bucyrus when I get back from my trip, and we can talk about this other stuff," he announced.

  "Where are you going?" Marlene asked.

  "Actually, I'm heading to your neck of the woods, at least when you're home. I belong to a group of bagpipers called the Irish Society of County Dunbar, Denver Chapter. We're off to march with the other Sons of Ireland in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York."

  "What did you just say?" The group turned toward the voice. Lucy was just emerging from the restroom. "I didn't quite hear that," she said.

  "I was just telling your mom that I belong to an Irish bagpipers association and…"

  "No, about the St. Patrick's Day Parade?"

  "Oh, just that we're going to march with the other sons of Ireland. It's the largest St. Patrick's Day Parade in the world, you know…" He would have said more, but Lucy turned white and pulled her cell phone out of her purse as she left the restaurant with Ned.

  "What's with her?" Reedy asked. "Did I cuss or belch without knowing?"

  "No, nothing like that," Marlene said as she scrambled to collect her things. "But it looks like we may be heading back to Manhattan sooner than I expected. Thank you so much, everyone. I'll explain later, but we have to run. See you at the parade,
James."

  "I'll be three sheets to the wind on green beer, so I may not see you first," he shouted as she hurried away. "I'm the second guy in on the right in the second row."

  Marlene disappeared out of the restaurant door, which slammed behind her. Reedy looked around at the others and shrugged. "What an odd group of people," he said.

  21

  It was so simple, Lucy thought as she ran out of the restaurant. "A Son of Man will march among the sons of Ireland and silence the critic for the good of us all." Of course, it has to mean the St. Patrick's Day Parade!

  The line in the poem was obviously a code to proceed with a plan to march in the parade, probably mixed in with one of the legitimate Irish groups, and then…And then what? "Silence the critic for the good of us all"? What in the hell does that mean? They're going to kill somebody who's critical? Of what? And kill who?

  Lucy called John Jojola and asked him to get in touch with Tran and meet her in Manhattan as soon as possible. "What about Jaxon?" he asked. "You going to call him or do you want me to?"

  "Neither," she said. "Please don't call him, not right now. I want to talk to you about this first, but not on a cell phone; they're too easy to intercept. I read about it in Scientific American."

  In the days following the murder of Cian Magee, Lucy had gone into a deep depression, deeper than she'd let on to her folks, and wanted to return immediately to New Mexico. She'd only agreed to stay until Christmas in the hopes that being with her family would help.

  Racked by guilt, she spent hours trying to find any Cian Magee family members or friends she could for a memorial service. Of the former, there were none. And of the latter, there were three she located from a partly burned address book found in his apartment. Two of them had never met him because he didn't go out and they'd never visited his bookstore. I only talked to him on email, one told her. I'm a shut-in over in Newark, and we both liked to talk about the Celts. He loved that saying by an anonymous Roman philosopher, "Celts are the men that heaven made mad, for their battles are all merry and their songs are all sad."