Reichs, Kathy - Fatal Voyage

Crowe reappeared as I was poking through the refuse heap. After toeing over dozens of wine bottles, cracker tins, and Dinty Moore beef stew cans, I gave up and picked my way out to join her.

Trees whispered in the wind. Leaves sailed across the ground in a colorful regatta, and a corner of the corrugated tin rose and fell with a scraping sound. Though the air felt dense and heavy, there was movement all around us.

Crowe knew what I was thinking. Without a word she pulled a small spiral-bound atlas from her jacket and flipped through the pages.

“Show me,” she said, handing me the book.

The map she'd chosen was a close-up of the piece of Swain County in which we stood. Using elevation lines, the county road, and the logging trails, I located the crash site. Then I estimated the position of the courtyard house and pointed to it.

“Here.”

Crowe studied the topography around my finger.

“You're sure there's a structure back in there?” I heard doubt in her voice.

“Yes.”

“It's less than a mile.”

“By foot?”

She nodded, a slower motion than usual.

“There's no road I know of, so we might as well go overland.”

“Can you find it?”

“I can find it.”

We spent an hour threading our way through trees and brush, up one ridge and down another, following a track that was clear to Crowe but invisible to me. Then, at an ancient pine, its trunk knotted and worn, we emerged onto a path that even I could recognize.

We came to a high wall, vaguely familiar from my previous visit. Every sense sharpened as we moved along the mossy stone. A jay cawed, shrill and strident, and my skin seemed to tighten on my body. There was something here. I knew it.

Boyd continued to amble and snuffle, oblivious to my tension. I wrapped the leash around my palm, tightened my grasp.

Within yards, the wall made a ninety-degree turn. Crowe rounded the corner and I followed, my grip so tight I felt my nails dig into my palm.

The trees ended three quarters of the distance up the wall. Crowe stopped at the verge of the woods and Boyd and I caught up.

Ahead and to the left I spotted another walled enclosure, the rock face rising in the distance beyond. I had my bearings. We'd approached from the rear of the property; the house lay ahead of us, its back to the escarpment. The wall we'd been skirting surrounded a larger area I hadn't noted on my first visit. The courtyard was within the larger enclosure.

“I'll be damned.” Crowe reached down and released the safety on her gun.

She called out as I had done. Called again.

Eyes and ears alert, we proceeded to the house and climbed the steps. The shutters were still closed, the windows still draped. I was gripped by the same sense of foreboding as on my first visit.

Crowe stepped to the side of the door and gestured with an arm. When Boyd and I had moved behind her, she knocked. Still no answer.

She knocked again, identified herself. Silence.

Crowe raised her eyes and looked around.

“No phone lines. No power lines.”

“Cell phone and generator.”

“Could be. Or the place could be deserted.”

“Do you want to see the courtyard?”

“Not without a warrant I don't.”

“But, Sheriff—”

“No warrant, no entry.” She looked at me, her eyes unblinking. “Let's go. I'll buy you a Dr Pepper.”

At that moment, a light rain began to fall. I listened to drops tick softly on the porch roof, frustration seething in me. She was right. It was nothing but a hunch. But every cell in my being was telling me that something important lay close at hand. Something evil.

“Could I run Boyd around the property, see if he has any thoughts?”

“Keep him outside the walls, I've got no objection. I'll check for vehicular access. If folks are coming here, they must be driving.”

For fifteen minutes Boyd and I crisscrossed the brush to the west of the house, much as I had on my first trip. The dog showed no reaction. Though I was beginning to suspect the squirrel hit had been a fluke, I decided to make one last sweep, skirting the edge of the forest up to its terminus at the second enclosure. This would be virgin territory.

We were twenty feet from the wall when Boyd's head snapped up. His body tensed, and the hair prickled along his back. He rotated his snout, testing the air, then growled in a way I'd heard only once, deep and feral and vicious. Then he lunged, choking and barking as though possessed.

I staggered, barely able to hold him.

“Boyd! Stop!”

Spreading my feet, I grabbed the leash with both hands. The dog continued to pull, muscles straining, forefeet scrabbling inches above the ground.

“What is it, boy?”

We both knew.

I hesitated, heart pounding. Then I unwrapped the leash and let it fall.

Boyd flew to the wall and exploded in a frenzy of barking, approximately six feet south of the back corner. I could see that the mortar was crumbling at that point, and that a dozen stones had tumbled free, leaving a gap between the ground and the wall's foundation.

I ran to the dog, crouched at his shoulder, and inspected the gap. The soil was moist and discolored. Overturning a fallen stone, I saw a dozen tiny brown objects.

Instantly, I knew what Boyd had found.

I DID NOT GO TO THE SWAIN COUNTY COURTHOUSE ON MONDAY.Instead, I recrossed the mountains west to Tennessee, and by midmorning was approximately thirty miles northwest of Knoxville, approaching the entrance to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The day was wet and gloomy, and my wipers slapped a steady cadence back and forth, clearing two fans on the misty windshield.

Through the side window I could see an old woman and toddler feeding swans on the bank of a small lagoon. At the age of ten I'd had a run-in with an ugly duckling that could have taken out a commando force. I questioned the wisdom of their outing.

After showing ID at a guardhouse, I drove across a vast parking area to the reception center. My host was waiting, signed me in, and we returned to the car. Another hundred yards, and my new ORNL badge and license plates were verified at a third checkpoint before I was allowed to pass through a chain-link fence surrounding the compound.

“Pretty tight security. I thought this was Department of Energy.”

“It is. Most of the work involves energy conservation, computers and robotics, biomedical and environmental conservation, medical radioisotope development, that sort of thing. We maintain security to protect DOE intellectual property and physical equipment. There's also a high-flux isotope reactor on-site.”

Laslo Sparkes was in his thirties but already nurturing a stout paunch. He had short, slightly bowed limbs and a round face, pockmarked on the cheeks.

Oak Ridge began as a World War II wonder baby, constructed in just three short months in 1943. Thousands were dying in Europe and Asia, and Enrico Fermi and his colleagues had just achieved nuclear fission in a squash court under the stands of the football stadium at the University of Chicago. Oak Ridge's mission had been simple: build the atomic bomb.

Laslo directed me through a labyrinth of narrow streets. Turn right here. Left. Left. Right. Except for its vast size, the complex looked like an apartment project in the Bronx.

Laslo indicated a dark brick building identical to a score of other dark brick buildings.

“Park here,” he said.

I pulled over and cut the engine.

“I really appreciate your doing this on such short notice.”

“You were there when I asked for help.”