Reichs, Kathy - Fatal Voyage

“This was added recently.”

“Step back,” Crowe ordered.

As we withdrew, our beams widened, illuminating words carved above the lintel. I played my light over them.

Fay ce que voudras

“French?” Crowe asked, sliding her flashlight into her belt.

“Old French, I think. . . .”

“Recognize the gargoyles?”

A figure decorated each corner of the lintel. The male was labeled “Harpocrates,” the female “Angerona.”

“Sounds Egyptian.”

Crowe's gun exploded twice, and the smell of cordite filled the air. She stepped forward, yanked, and the chain slithered loose. There was no resistance when she lifted the latch.

She pulled on the handle and the door opened outward. Cold air rolled over us, smelling of dark hollows, sightless creatures, and epochs of time underground.

“Maybe it's time to bring him down,” said Crow.

I nodded, and double-stepped up the stairs.

Boyd showed his usual exuberance at being included, prancing and snapping the air. He lapped my hand, then danced beside me into the house. Nothing on the ground floor dampened his delight.

Starting down the basement steps, I felt his body tense beside my leg.

I added an extra coil to the wrap around my hand, and allowed him to pull me down the steps and across toward Crowe.

Three feet short of the door he exploded, lunging and barking as he had at the wall. Cold prickled up my spine and across my scalp.

“All right, keep him over there,” said Crowe.

Grabbing his collar with both hands, I dragged Boyd back and gave Bobby the leash. Boyd continued to growl loudly and attempted to pull Bobby forward. I rejoined Crowe.

My flash revealed a cavelike tunnel with a series of alcoves to either side. The floor was dirt, the ceiling and walls solid rock. Height to the tunnel's arched top was approximately six feet, width was about four feet. Length was impossible to tell. Beyond five yards, it was a black hole.

My pulse had not slowed since I'd entered the house. It now went for a personal best.

Slowly we crept forward, our beams probing the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the recesses. Some were nothing more than shallow indentations. Others were good-sized caves with vertical metal bars and central gates at their mouths.

“Wine cellars?” Crowe's question sounded muffled in the narrow space.

“Wouldn't there be shelving?”

“Check this out.”

Crowe illuminated a name, then another, and another, chiseled the length of the tunnel. She read them aloud as we progressed.

“Sawney Beane. Innocent III. Dionysus. Moctezuma. . . . Weird bedfellows. A pope, an Aztec emperor, and the party meister himself.”

“Who's Sawney Beane?” I asked.

“Hell if I kno—”

Her beam left the wall and shot straight into nothing. She threw out an arm, catching me across the chest. I froze.

Our lights leapt to the dirt at our feet. No drop-off.

We rounded the corner and inched forward, sweeping our beams from side to side. I could tell from the sound of the air that we had entered a large chamber of some sort. We were circling its perimeter wall.

The names continued. Thyestes. Polyphemus. Christie o' the Cleek. Cronus. I recognized no one from Veckhoff 's diary.

Like the tunnel, the chamber gave onto a number of alcoves, some with bars, others ungated. Directly opposite our entrance point we found a wooden door, similar to that at the head of the tunnel, and secured with the same chain-and-padlock arrangement. Crowe dealt with it in the same way.

As the door swung inward, cold, foul air slithered out. Behind me I could hear Boyd barking as if possessed.

The odor of putrefaction can be altered by the mode of death, sweetened by some poisons, tinted with pear or almond or garlic by others. It can be retarded by chemicals, augmented by insect activity. But the essence is unmistakable, a heavy, fetid mix that heralds the presence of rotting flesh.

Something dead lay in that alcove.

We entered and circled left, keeping to the wall as we had in the outer chamber. Five feet in, my beam caught an irregularity on the floor. Crowe saw it at the same time.

We focused our lights on a patch of coarse, dark soil.

Wordlessly, I handed my Maglite to Crowe and pulled a collapsible spade from my backpack. Keeping my left hand on the stone wall, I squatted and scraped at the ground with the side of the blade.

Crowe holstered her gun, hooked her hat to her belt, and trained twin beams on the ground before me.

The stain gave way easily, revealing a boundary between freshly turned earth and hard-packed floor. The smell of decay increased as I lifted soil and laid it to the side.

Within minutes I hit something soft and pale blue.

“Looks like denim.” Crowe's eyes glistened, and her skin gleamed amber in the pale yellow light.

I followed the faded fabric, lengthening the opening.

Levi's, contoured around a scarecrow leg. I worked my way down to a shriveled brown foot, angled ninety degrees at the ankle.

“That's it.” Crowe's voice caused my hand to jump.

“What?”

“This is no airplane passenger.”

“No.”

“I don't want a bad crime scene. We're shut down until I have a warrant.”

I didn't argue. The victim in that pit deserved to have his or her story told in court. I would do nothing to compromise a potential prosecution.

I rose and tapped my spade against the wall, carefully removing adhering soil. Then I folded the blade, stuck it in my pack, and reached for my light.

On the hand off, the beam shot across the alcove and glinted off something in the farthest recess.

“What the hell's that?” I asked, squinting into the dark.

“Let's go.”

“We should hit your magistrate with everything we can.”

I picked my way toward the point where I'd seen the flash. Crowe hesitated a moment, followed.

A long bundle lay tucked against the base of the wall. The bundle was wrapped in shower curtains, one transparent, one translucent blue, and tied with several lengths of rope. I approached and ran my light over the surface.

Though blurred by layers of plastic, I could make out details in the clear upper half. Matted hair, a red plaid shirt, ghostly white hands bound at the wrists. I pulled gloves from my pack, snapped them on, and gently rolled the bundle.

Crowe's hand flew to her mouth.

A face, purple and bloated, eyes milky and half closed. Cracked lips, a bulging tongue pressed to the plastic like a giant leech.

Noticing an oval object at the base of the throat, I brought my light close. A pendant. I pulled out my knife and slit the plastic. The hiss of escaping gas was followed by an overpowering stench of putrefaction. My stomach recoiled, but I didn't pull back.

Holding my breath, I teased back the plastic with the tip of the knife.

A male silhouette was clearly visible on a small silver medal, arms crossed piously at the throat. Engraved letters formed a halo around the head. I held the light obliquely to bring out the name.

Saint Blaise.

We had found the missing fisherman with the ailing throat. George Adair.

This time I suggested a different route. Crowe agreed. Leaving Bobby and George to secure the site, the sheriff and I drove to Bryson City and pulled Byron McMahon from a football game he was watching on the parlor TV at High Ridge House. Together we prepared an affidavit, which the special agent took directly to a federal magistrate judge in Asheville.

In less than two hours McMahon called Crowe. Based on the probability of a hate crime, and on the possible involvement of federal lands, due to the proximity of a reservation and national parks, a search warrant had been issued.

It fell to me to phone Larke Tyrell.