Douglas Preston - Crimson Shore

He retreated and unbuckled his chest-high waders; they would have proved a death trap when filled with swiftly moving water. Discarding the waders, he rolled the map and other items in a piece of oilcloth, held it over his head, and ventured into the current. This channel was thirty feet across and, as soon as his feet lifted from the muck, the current began to sweep him along, the opposite bank moving by fast as he kicked with his legs and one arm. After a minute of struggle he was able to regain a purchase with his feet and waded the last part of it, finally arriving at a cut bank, overhung with dark pine trees and exposed roots. He climbed up this and rested a moment at the edge of the woods, cleaning the muck from his legs. According to the map, the road skirted the marshes and went on into Dill Town, about four miles away, a distance Pendergast could cover in a brisk hour’s walk. From Dill Town it was another quarter mile into Exmouth proper.

He rose and started into the woods. The road would be a few hundred yards away and impossible to miss. But the woods themselves were dark and presented a massive tangle of undergrowth, with patches of briar that climbed halfway up the trees, choking and killing them, leaving skeletal branches stark against the night sky. The woods echoed with the peeping of frogs, the trilling of night insects, and the occasional bloodcurdling sound of a screech owl. He continued on, skirting a patch of briars, and then coming into a glade dappled with moonlight.

He froze. The sounds of the night wood had suddenly ceased. Perhaps it was due to his passage — or, perhaps, due to another presence in the wood. After a moment he continued on, crossing the glade as if nothing were amiss. At the far side he entered a dense stand of conifers, where, in the thickest part, he halted again. He picked up three small pebbles and tossed them, the first one ten feet ahead, and then the second, after a moment, twenty feet on, and last the third one some thirty feet, each pebble making a small noise to simulate his continued passage through the forest.

But instead of continuing, he waited in the pitch black of the trees, crouching, motionless. Soon he could hear the faint sounds of his pursuer. It was someone moving in almost virtual silence — a rare skill in a forest as dense as this. And now he could see, materializing in the shadowed glade, the figure of a man — almost a giant — sliding through the open area, shotgun in hand. As the man approached, Pendergast tensed, waiting; and then, just as the man entered the blackness of the grove, Pendergast rose up, striking the barrel of the shotgun upward while dealing him a body blow with his shoulder, low and to the side. Both barrels went off with a terrific blast as the man went down, Pendergast on top, pinning him, his Les Baer .45 pressed into the man’s ear. Flower petals and berries came showering down all around them.

“FBI,” said Pendergast quietly. “Do not struggle.”

The man relaxed. Pendergast eased up, grasped the barrel of the shotgun, laid it aside, and got off the man.

The man rolled over, then sat up, staring at Pendergast. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “FBI? Let me see your badge.”

Out came the wallet and badge. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m working,” the man said. “And you’ve just ruined my night’s work.” He gestured at the flowers and berries scattered around from a burst plastic bag. “I’ve every right to be here. My family’s been here two hundred years.”

The badge vanished back into Pendergast’s pocket. “Why were you following me?”

“I heard a scream, and then I see some crazy mother covered in mud, creeping through my woods, and all this two days after somebody’s been murdered and cut up not five miles from here — you’re damn right I’m going to follow that man and ask him his business.”

Pendergast nodded, tucking away the Les Baer. “My apologies for scattering your flowers. Atropa belladonna , I see. Deadly nightshade. Are you intending, like the wife of Claudius, to poison someone with it?”

“I’ve no idea who Claudius is, or his damn wife for that matter. I supply an herbal pharmacologist with it — for tinctures, decoctions, powders. It’s still compounded for gastrointestinal disorders, in case you didn’t know. These woods are full of it.”

“You are a botanist, then?”

“I’m a guy trying to make a living. Can I get up now?”

“Please. With my apologies.”

The man stood up, brushing leaves and twigs off himself. He was at least six and a half feet tall, lean, with a keen face, dark brown skin, blade-like nose, and incongruous green eyes. Pendergast could see from the way he carried himself that he had once been in the military.

The man held out his hand. “Paul Silas.”

They shook.

“I need to find a telephone,” said Pendergast.

“I got one at my place. Truck’s just down the road, if you want a ride.”

“If you please.”

Pendergast followed him through the woods until they reached the narrow road, the truck parked on the shoulder. Pendergast was displeased to be refused entry into the plush, leather-bound cab interior; instead, Silas asked him to ride in the pickup bed, like a dog. A few minutes later the pickup truck pulled into a dirt drive leading to a small log cabin in the woods, not far from the edge of the marsh about a half mile outside Dill Town.

The man led the way inside, turned on the lights. “Phone’s over there.”

Pendergast picked it up, dialed 911, gave a brief report to the dispatcher, and in a moment had been connected to Sergeant Gavin. He relayed the information to Gavin at length, then hung up. He glanced at his watch: almost three AM.

“They won’t be able to get far in those marshes now,” said Silas. “At half tide those currents run ten, twelve knots.”

“They’ll begin searching at high tide, with motor skiffs.”

“Makes sense. Are you going to join in the search?”

“I will. If I might trouble you for a ride into Exmouth?”

“No problem. But first, since we’ve got some time, you’d better dry out a bit.” Silas opened a woodstove and chucked in two pieces of wood. As Pendergast moved to settle himself down, Silas turned. “Um, if you don’t mind, not the sofa. The wooden rocking chair is plenty comfy.”

Pendergast sat in the rocking chair.

“You look like you might need a shot of bourbon.”

A hesitation. “What kind, pray tell?”

Silas laughed. “Discriminating, are we? Pappy Van Winkle twenty-year-old. I don’t allow rotgut on the premises.”

Pendergast inclined his head. “That will suffice.”

Silas disappeared into the kitchen and came back out with a bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He plunked them on the coffee table, filled one, then the other.

“I am much obliged to you, Mr. Silas,” said Pendergast, taking up the glass.

Silas took a delicate sip. “So you were out there investigating the murder of that historian?”

“I was indeed.”

“That scream back there was enough to make the devil himself fall to his knees, rosary in hand.”

Pendergast removed his map and spread it out on a nearby table. “I would like you to indicate, if you please, where you were when you heard the scream, and from what direction you think it came.”

Silas pulled the map toward him and hunched over it, his brow creased. “I was right here, in these woods, and the scream came from this direction.” He drew his finger along the map.

Pendergast made some notations. Silas’s finger lay over a section of the cone he’d previously drawn on the map. “This will help in the search for the body.” He rolled up the map. “Have you heard any rumors of someone living in the marshes?”