Innocents Lost Page 4

  "If we're right, it might be even easier than that," Stewart said. "We were waiting for you before we watched the disks. There are tins buried halfway between the central and outer cairns, just like the professor said. We're still carefully digging them out of the ground. So far, the samples we've loaded all confirm the presence of a video file in the neighborhood of half a gigabyte."

  "How long is that?"

  "Depending upon resolution, somewhere between twenty and forty minutes."

  "And you haven't watched them yet?"

  "We took samples of the blood smears and dusted for prints, but no, we saved that honor just for you."

  Dandridge glanced at the remains one final time. He only hoped she hadn't suffered too badly. His gut, however, insisted otherwise.

  "We have the disk that corresponds with this cairn loaded and waiting on a laptop," Stewart said. He paused. "Are you ready to do this?"

  Dandridge nodded and rose to his feet. The last thing in the world he wanted to do right now was watch that infernal disk. He already had a pretty good idea of what it contained.

  Stewart nodded toward the nearest overhead light, which had been mounted in the upper reaches of one of those sickly pines. An evidence tech he hadn't worked with before sat on a level portion of the twisted trunk, computer in his lap, a stack of tins in plastic evidence bags to his right. He looked up when Dandridge approached, quickly stood, and handed over the laptop. Dandridge sat on the tech's former perch and the others gathered around to watch. The tech offered one of the bagged tins from the pile, upon which several numbers and letters had been scratched.

  "We suspect the top number is the victim's chronological order," the tech said. "The numbers below it are the month and day. No year. And there's still some debate, but I'm pretty sure the letters on the bottom line are abbreviations for vernal and autumnal equinox, and summer and winter solstice."

  "How do I make this thing play?" Dandridge asked.

  "It's already primed. You just have to double-click the file name."

  Ordinarily, this was where the tech would not-so-discreetly mock his inferior technical skills, but tonight, no one envied him the task at hand.

  Dandridge did as he was instructed and the media player opened. After a moment, a gray rectangle with a control bar beneath it appeared.

  He drew a deep breath to steady his nerves, aligned the cursor with the PLAY button, and tapped the mouse.

  The video began to roll.

  II

  Evergreen, Colorado

  Preston imported the photograph into his image enhancement program and magnified it to the limits of its resolution, searching for anything that might provide a clue to the child's location. A bookcase next to the bed displayed the spines of young adult novels without any library stickers or other distinguishable markings. The poster beside it was of the Jonas Brothers, another of Hannah Montana was cropped at the edge of the picture by the pink curtains drawn back from the window. Either a night light or a digital clock produced a weak glow from the opposite side. The comforter was a uniform peach color and the bed appeared to be a standard-issue single. With her eyes closed and her bangs obscuring her features, he couldn't ascertain a single identifiable characteristic beyond hair color, and whatever subtle hue existed was attenuated by darkness.

  "There has to be something here," he said. Why else would it have been sent to him before the fact? He had already checked the wire, and there had been no abductions within the last twenty-four hours, nor had any of the recent victims matched the pathetic description he had been able to generate: Caucasian female; blonde hair; approximate age of ten to twelve years old; eye color, height, and weight all indeterminate.

  He sharpened the contrast and scooted back from the screen. The photograph had been taken from roughly two feet away from the window, and at an angle in order to peer around the partially-drawn drapes. Further manipulation of contrast and resolution allowed him to scrutinize the reflection on the glass from what appeared to be a streetlamp behind the photographer. He could clearly see the reflection of the camera, and the dark silhouette of the man holding it to his face: slumped shoulders, unkempt hair above a long face, ears with sagging lobes. No other details were readily apparent, as though the man existed in a perpetual state of shadow.

  Preston could see the cut of the asphalt as a vague reflection, the hint of green from the lawn on the opposite side of the street at the foot of a dark, ranch-style house with a sedan parked in the driveway. It could have been any street in any neighborhood. He studied the periphery of the image. To one side, the reflection of a purple crabapple tree with white blossoms. To the other, a deciduous hedgerow.

  "Damn it!" he shouted, knocking over the chair in his hurry to stand.

  He had to be missing something.

  After pacing the kitchen with his palms pressed against his forehead for several minutes, he righted the chair and sat in front of the monitor once again. He zoomed in as tightly as he could on the reflection of the house across the street, a ghost of an image through which he could see the outline of the small girl's shoulder under the bundle of blankets. There was no address on the house or the mailbox, at least that he could see. He focused on the car parked in the driveway, a newer model Saturn. More magnification distorted the vehicle, but allowed him to zoom in on the rear of the sedan and its license plate. The design was blurry, but he had seen it enough times to know which state had issued it. Two numbers to the left, what looked like a one above a zero, the trademark cowboy on the back of a bucking bronco beside it, and a combination of four numbers and letters to the right, none of which were legible thanks to the unfortunate alignment with the hedge.

  A partial plate on a common model of car wouldn't get him far. However, Wyoming wasn't so overpopulated that license plates were assigned at random. The numbers on the left side indicated the county in which the vehicle was registered. A quick search confirmed that the number ten corresponded with Fremont County. Granted, there was no guarantee that the car wasn't parked in front of a house in a different county or state entirely, but it was all he had to go on, and if he left right this very moment, he could be there before sunrise.

  Preston folded the laptop closed, tucked it under his arm, and sprinted toward his bedroom. He grabbed his keys and his sidearm from the nightstand and hurried to the garage. The Cherokee's tires screamed on the concrete as the car rocketed backward into the street. He slammed the brakes, punched it into gear, and raced toward the highway.

  He was never going to make it in time. The abductor had a lead of several hours and knew exactly where he was going. All Preston had was a sparsely populated county filled with dozens of towns divided by mountainous topography. The largest city and county seat, Lander, seemed like the safest place to start, but what did he propose, cruising the streets one at a time until he found the house he had seen only in reflection? It didn't matter now. The first order of business was to alert the local authorities and see if he could call in a personal favor from someone in his unit at the FBI. He still had a long drive ahead of him, and mobilizing the locals to increase their patrols in any number of towns in a county spread out over nine thousand square miles based on a partial plate lifted from the image of a sleeping child when no crime had yet been committed was going to be a hard sell.

  He snapped open his cell phone and began making the calls.

  They were never going to find this little girl in time.

  Unfortunately, he feared, that was the whole point.

  III

  22 Miles West of Lander, Wyoming

  Sheriff Dandridge realized he was holding his breath and had to force himself to breathe. The video began with a clattering sound and perfect blackness marred by soft whimpering. He heard the scrape of footsteps before a single overhead bulb hanging from a cord bloomed with a snap, casting a weak bronze glare over a small room with cinder block walls. Cobwebs swayed in the upper left corner where they connected the rotting wooden joists above. With a
rustling noise, the camera lowered and centered upon a workbench made of particleboard, the surface scarred with cuts and gouges, and coated with a black crust. The floor beneath it was bare, packed earth or stone.

  "Do any of you recognize this place?" Dandridge asked.

  The others answered with shakes of their heads as though they had all lost their voices at once.

  Dandridge returned his attention to the monitor. The whimpering grew louder and metamorphosed into shrill, panicked shrieks. A scuffing sound off screen, and a dark form eclipsed the view. The screams grew louder until they became a squeal of feedback. A man's back resolved in the center, the glare turning him into a silhouette of darkness, shoulders slumped, arms straining against the flailing body he held down on the workbench. After several unendurable minutes, the shadowed man stepped away and the camera focused on a young girl. She was bound to the table by thick, frayed ropes that stretched her arms and legs toward the four corners. Her dark hair was tangled and matted, her naked body smeared with dirt and blood. She bucked and screamed, then fell perfectly still. Her eyes widened and she shook her head violently from side to side, releasing a rush of blood from her nose.

  "Please," she sobbed. "Please. No. I'll be good. I promise. I…I won't tell anyone."

  Footsteps scuffed to her right and she turned in that direction. Her cheekbone was bruised, and a scabbed laceration ran through the crusted hair above her left ear.

  A man's voice gently shushed her.

  "I…I can't watch this," Miller said, shrinking away from the group.

  Dandridge only wished he could do the same, for they all knew what was about to happen. The evidence was bound in barbed wire across the clearing.

  The girl shook her head again and repeated the word "no" over and over. A metal cart rolled into view with a clatter. Rusted surgical implements from a bygone era were spread out evenly on a bloodstained towel.

  "Mommy!" she screamed. "I want my mom! Please. Let me go. I need to go home!"

  A green blur suddenly filled the screen. The lens focused on a poorly erased chalkboard upon which the same series of numbers and letters that adorned the disk and its case had been scrawled. In the room beyond, the child's pleas turned to screams. The chalkboard jittered before being jerked away from the camera.

  A shadow crossed over the supine girl's body and the recorder zoomed in on the frightened child's face and torso. She was so young, her cheeks still chubby, what little skin showed through the filth was smooth and porcelain. The shadow shifted and there was the sound of metal against metal.

  The girl screamed and thrashed.

  Again, there was a shushing sound, which only served to increase her exertions.

  A pointed shadow traced the slope of her neck down to her jugular notch before the tip of a scalpel appeared, followed by a hand, the wrinkles in the knuckles lined with dried blood. The man pressed the blade into the skin, which dimpled and then parted with a swell of dark blood.

  The child's cries were so filled with terror and pain that Dandridge found himself praying for them to end.

  She trembled as the scalpel drew a line down the center of her narrow chest, then bucked so hard she nearly buried the blade in her upper abdomen.

  The man made a growling sound and pulled the scalpel away. There was a crash as he slammed it onto the tray of utensils.

  Ribbons of blood trickled to either side of the incision when she arched against her restraints in an effort to seize the momentary opportunity. She screamed for her mother and father, for help, for the pain to stop, until a large hand closed over her mouth and nose, and held her face still. Her muffled screams faded to whimpers and her eyes opened impossibly wide, the irises shivering.

  A hammer struck her hairline from the top of the screen with a sickening crack, then disappeared again, trailing a tangle of hair. Blood pooled in the depression in her frontal bone where the skin had torn. She fell abruptly silent, her body motionless.

  "Oh, God," Dandridge whispered. The laptop suddenly felt as though it was on fire, burning his legs, and he wanted nothing more than to hurl it to the ground. He had never seen anything so horrible in his life.

  The girl's eyes glazed over and her lids slowly began to close.

  After a moment's hesitation, the man loosened his grip and removed his hand from her face. Her lips had split under the pressure, smearing her entire mouth with blood.

  "I don't think…I can't watch this," one of the officers said from behind Dandridge, then scampered away to vomit in the forest.

  The child's chest rose and fell, subtly, slowly.

  Dandridge had to look away, but only saw the girl's remains kneeling at the point where the cairn had been removed from above her.

  He glanced back down at the monitor in time to see the hand return with the scalpel, which slid back into the incision past the depth of the blade.

  Her only response was a sudden gasp and a flutter of her eyelids.

  Dandridge forced himself to watch through tear-blurred eyes as warmth drained down his cheeks. He needed to know this monster, needed to understand him. For when the time arrived, and he swore it would, he was going to find this man, and he was going to kill him.

  On the screen, the little girl was peeled apart, one strap of flesh, one muscle, one silvery tendon at a time in a careful and practiced display of vivisection skills until there wasn't enough blood left in her body to pump through her heart and the deep skeletal muscles shimmered wetly.

  By the time the video ended, Dandridge sat alone, his body numb, his stomach roiling.

  He surveyed the clearing, and through the assortment of twisted pines and aspens, counted twenty-six other lives similarly ended. And he was going to have to endure the videographies of their final moments.

  Then he was going to hunt this man down, and he was going to rid the world of a scourge the likes of which it had never known before.

  But first he needed to track down the satellite phone they carried for use in the remote areas of the county. It was imperative that he call his wife and physically make her check on their daughter. He couldn't imagine what would become of him if his beautiful child ended up on a film like this one.

  No child should be subjected to such a violation of the body and soul.

  IV

  24 Miles North-northwest of Rawlins, Wyoming

  Preston spiked his cell phone against the dashboard in frustration. He immediately regretted the decision and fished it from the floorboard to make sure it still worked. Anger seethed inside of him, but unfortunately, the scenario had played out just as he had expected. Without evidence of a crime, his department had been unable to act. He had heard the disbelief in his superior's voice after waking him from a sound sleep. Randall Washington was the new Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge. There was no history between them as there had been with M. Stephen Moorehead before his promotion, who might at least have humored him based on a photograph that he appeared to have sent himself. Washington, on the other hand, made no secret of his suspicions that Preston flirted with a breakdown, and that the pattern he discovered was circumstantial at best. His superior was disinclined to buy into the notion of a serial abductor in this day and age who planned his crimes to coincide with the pagan celestial calendar. While Preston didn't necessarily blame the Bureau for its doubts, tonight he needed its help for the sake of a child, and it had forsaken him.

  The Fremont County Sheriff's Department had been somewhat more helpful. A bored-sounding dispatcher, who had slurped her coffee even as she spoke, had promised to pass along his message directly to the sheriff. Regrettably, he was out in the field at that very moment. As were all of his deputies. At this time of night, Preston imagined them closing down some roadhouse or other around a pitcher of beer, but he still held out hope that the sheriff would return his call in time to get his cars on the street.

  So for now, he was on his own.

  At least until the child was reported missing.

  He goosed th
e accelerator and watched the needle top one hundred. The terrain flashed past in the darkness, rugged rock formations and vast expanses of fields interrupted by long snow-fences, only sporadically highlighted by streetlamps and limned by the occasional light of the moon when it managed to permeate the gray ceiling of clouds. He was already halfway across the state, heading northwest on Highway 287. Barring anything unforeseen, he should arrive in Lander about an hour before sunrise.

  Only his intuition told him it would be too late.

  V

  Lander, Wyoming

  Les paced the small motel room. His arm still ached from the shot of Betaseron. At least he had kept his medication in his backpack instead of his car as he'd originally intended. The last thing in the world he needed right now was for the stress to trigger an acute attack of his multiple sclerosis. Lord knew he had enough to deal with right now without winding up in the hospital.

  The television droned beside him, but he had no idea what was on. He merely needed the sound of voices for company, even if he couldn't focus on the words. His students had been given a clean bill of health and a little Ativan for their anxiety, but he still bore the guilt of involving them with a heavy heart. There was no way he could have known the kind of hell they would stumble upon, but he had brought along kids who had trusted him, and whether intentionally or not, he had failed them, possibly even ruined them for their chosen field. They had initially been booked in the rooms next door to his, but Lane had managed to rouse his girlfriend from bed, and she had driven across the state to pick them up and return them to Laramie. Les was grateful they had been able to get home tonight so they could resume some semblance of normalcy in the morning.

  After hours of tossing and turning because his brain refused to shut down, he had finally given up trying and decided to let his thoughts run and see where they would take him. The fact remained that the medicine wheels had originally been built for a purpose, and while the years may have scoured that purpose from the collective memory of the descendents of the ancient Native Americans who had designed them, there was obviously someone out there who at least thought he knew their function. Why else go to such great lengths to mimic a relatively obscure anthropological structure when whoever had built it could just as easily have buried the bodies in unmarked graves and been done with it? It was too convenient to think that the entire setup had been assembled simply for show. The meticulous nature of the construction and the maintenance of the site were proof enough for him, so what did its creator hope to achieve? And more importantly, why had it been necessary to involve an anthropologist, specifically him? He couldn't help but think that it was to answer the question he now pondered: what did the medicine wheel do?