Innocents Lost Read online

  Miller staggered backward toward the cairn, turning in circles with his weapon raised. Forget trying to gain control of the situation. Six men had been slain in the time it had taken him to smoke a cigarette. This was now about survival.

  He heard a muffled scream. It sounded as though it had come from miles away, only there had been no echo. And it hadn’t originated in the wilderness, but from somewhere much, much closer.

  Stepping over the short rock spokes of the wagon wheel design, he took the most direct route to the path that would eventually guide him back to where he had left his car.

  Another scream. Tortured, horrible, pitiful. And the voice had sounded so young…

  This time there was no denying where it had come from.

  He glanced toward the mouth of the distant path and debated making a break for it until another dampened scream made the decision for him. Breathing fast, on the verge of hyperventilating, he turned in the direction from which the cries had come, and slowly advanced toward the central cairn. Another scream, still muffled, but he was certain it had risen from inside that central ring of stones.

  Dawn announced its impending arrival from behind the mutated trees against the eastern horizon, a blood-red stain to match the horrors of the night.

  Miller crept up onto a twisted trunk and leaned over the rim of the piled stones.

  A scream came from directly below him, attenuated by the earth.

  He looked down and saw only a layer of dirt scuffed by indistinct footprints. Wait. The ground appeared cracked. No, not cracked. Carved. There was a perfect, circular—

  Dark fluid spattered down on the dirt a heartbeat before he felt the pressure against his neck, pressure that quickly transformed into pain. His Beretta fell from his grasp and landed in the bottom of the cairn with a clang. A metallic taste filled his mouth. His breathing became labored. He heard a gurgling sound and clasped his hands over his slick throat. His fingers slipped deep inside the wound, grazing exposed muscles, tendons, and the coarse ring of his rapidly filling trachea.

  Blackness converged from the corners of his vision. He spun around and fell from his perch. The ground rose to meet him, pounding his face with a solid crunch that marred his dwindling field of view with starbursts.

  Hands closed around his ankles and hauled him in reverse. His life fled him with the blood that warmed his face and trailed away from him in a muddy smear.

  II

  Lander, Wyoming

  Preston sat in the passenger seat of his Jeep with his computer open on his lap. He turned the USB flash drive over and over in his hand. For the hundredth time, he glanced out the window to make sure that he hadn’t aroused suspicion. Eventually, he would turn in the memory stick and fabric sample as evidence, but for now, it was a message left specifically for him, and he needed to be the one to decipher it. If he could summon the strength to open whatever files were contained on the device.

  The officer who had been stringing the crime scene tape had finished his task and now worked the perimeter, chasing off concerned neighbors and one curious early morning jogger, who ran in place while he tried to talk the details out of the uniform. The others were still inside, presumably taking the mother’s statement, dusting for prints, and collecting evidence, minus the only shred Preston knew they would find, which he now plugged into the port on his laptop. He held his breath while he waited for the list of files to pop up. When the system finally recognized the input, it showed only a single file had been saved onto the portable storage device.

  The name of the file was 4.6-20.SS.

  He gently stroked the silky fabric, drawing a measure of comfort from it despite its message, as he double-clicked the file and waited for it to open.

  The acids in his stomach seethed and he felt a sharp cramp in his gut.

  His media player opened and expanded to fill the screen. A large black view window above a row of playback controls stared blankly back at him.

  What was he preparing to watch? Was it a recorded message from the man who had stolen his child? Would he finally get to see the monster’s face? Was it possible that despite the words written on the swatch torn from her dress that Savannah was still alive and her abductor wanted to flaunt his superiority or just further string him along?

  He needed to find out. Every waking minute of the last six years had been devoted to learning what had happened to his daughter and finding the man who had taken her from him. And now, here he sat, in what felt like a different life entirely from the one he had shared with his wife and child, prepared to do just that.

  His hand shook so badly he could barely align the cursor with the play button. With one final peek out the window to make sure no one was watching, he tapped the mouse button and the film started to roll.

  He held out what little hope remained inside of him like a helpless, blind, newborn mouse, and forced himself to breathe. Soon enough, the officers inside would wonder why he was sitting out in his car when he should be in there with them, taking the lead. He needed to hurry, but he couldn’t allow himself to miss a single word, a single detail—

  There was a crackle of static. Or had it been commotion off-screen? He heard a whimper and recognized Savannah’s tiny voice immediately. Even had he not watched their old home movies over and over, her voice was ingrained into his very soul. He felt the terror in that single whimper, an icicle driven through his heart. There was a loud clatter, and then his baby started to scream.

  “Oh God,” he whispered. “Please don’t. Please…”

  A single light bulb bloomed with a snap and the camera drifted out of focus before rectifying again. The bronze glare illuminated a small room with bare cinder block walls decorated with black arcs and spatters. Cobwebs swayed from the ceiling. A dark silhouette with a long head and stooped shoulders was framed in the center. It leaned away from the camera and his daughter screamed. In one swift motion, the man ducked out of sight, leaving Preston with the fleeting glimpse of sagging ears and a bulbous nose in profile. A green chalkboard blotted out the view. The same combination of numbers and letters from the file name were written on it. And then it was gone.

  Preston sobbed out loud.

  There. On a workbench built from particleboard. Savannah. Bound to the table by her wrists and ankles with thick, frayed ropes. Naked. Bruised. Her skin covered with filth. Trembling. Whimpering.

  Preston looked directly into her wide eyes, saw the fear, the horror, the pain, and something inside of him broke. Tears streamed from his eyes. He felt as though he were being torn apart from the inside out. The last of his hope was yanked from his grasp by cruel talons that ripped it to bloody shreds before his very eyes.

  “Daddy,” his daughter cried. “Where’s my daddy? I want to go home. Please. I need to see my mommy. Take me…take me home. Please.”

  He wanted to crawl out of his skin. No child should have to endure something like…this. And no parent should be forced to watch.

  With a metallic clamor, a cart covered with a display of rusted surgical implements rolled in from the left side of the screen. The shadowed man stepped in front of his baby girl and perused the utensils one at a time, tracing a finger along the contours of each, almost lovingly. When he finally settled upon the one he wanted, he lifted it from the towel-draped tray and turned toward Savannah. The tip of the scalpel glinted and screams erupted from the speakers.

  Preston had to turn away. He couldn’t bear to watch, even though he knew he should. This had all been his fault, and he should have been able to take the pain in her stead. But he couldn’t…couldn’t watch the child he loved more than anything he had ever known be made to suffer in a way that no loving God would ever allow.

  He rubbed the smooth fabric between his fingers and stared through tear-blurred eyes at the sun rising over the houses across the street while he listened to his daughter call out for him from across time and from beyond the grave, listened to her beg for him to come and save her, to take her home, to make the pai
n stop. He listened to her scream in agony, beyond the point where she could even form words.

  There was a loud crack that he felt as much as heard.

  And then his daughter, his beautiful Savannah, cried no more.

  Over his own sobs, Preston heard sounds like duct tape being ripped away from skin and the panting breathing of the man laboring, hard at work.

  He bared his teeth and slammed his elbow into the side window. A spider web of cracks splintered away from the point of impact. He bellowed a mixture of emotions he could no longer control.

  His hands curled into fists and his teeth ground with a screech. He was going to hunt down the man who had done this to his daughter, and he was going to destroy him, body and soul.

  Nothing else mattered.

  It was all he had left to live for now.

  III

  Les had already tried calling every number he could think of several times. The number on the card Deputy Henson had given him had only reached voicemail, and both the police and sheriff’s department dispatchers had promised to have someone call him back as soon as they could. Unfortunately, neither sounded as though they believed a word he said. Apparently, the majority of the available manpower was already at the site and outside of radio range. In such a small county and even smaller town, they were understaffed and unprepared for the kind of emergency they now faced. Les didn’t know what to do. If he was right, then the killer was already in their midst and he could only speculate as to the significance of the solstice to the man who had staged the frightening burials.

  He felt caged. He needed to get out of there, get the blood circulating through his brain again, but at the same time, he didn’t want to stray too far from the phone in case someone finally returned his call. His car was impounded and he couldn’t imagine there were any car rental agencies anywhere nearby, at least none that would be open this early in the morning. What was he going to do anyway, drive back up the mountain to pass along his suspicions? The prospect of returning to the medicine wheel, especially if the killer was already waiting there, scared the living hell out of him. But he couldn’t stand idly by while something terrible happened either.

  Why did he feel any sort of responsibility anyway? This wasn’t his problem. He had simply been the unlucky one who had stumbled upon that horrible clearing. Yet someone had wanted him to. Why? It didn’t make the slightest bit of sense for a criminal to call attention to his crimes. Did he want to get caught? No way. That didn’t stand to reason. The man had wanted his work to be discovered by someone who would potentially understand its significance. Was he merely trying to show off, or did Les have a part to play in the endgame?

  He should just find the nearest Greyhound station and hop a bus back home. After all, he’d done nothing wrong, and if the police needed him to answer more questions, they knew where to find him. It wasn’t as though he was going to make a break for the border.

  But he knew what it boiled down to. Professional curiosity. It was an anthropologist’s Achilles’ heel. He had entered this profession because there were so many questions for which there were no easy answers. There were so many societies that had made their mark on the planet and then just disappeared. What could have caused a primitive culture capable of charting the patterns and orbits of celestial bodies millions of miles away, to vanish into thin air? And currently of greater importance, what was the function of the medicine wheel, an elaborate construct built to foretell a single date in a time before calendars, and why had one been erected now, hundreds of years after its meaning had been lost to the ages?

  He again turned his attention to the picture of the petroglyph. Many Native American cultures believed that they were birthed from the heart of the earth and rose to the surface, where their Creator awaited them in a world of his conception. It almost appeared as though the larger of the stick figures was in the process of ascending, being born not onto the same plane as the assembly of smaller figures gathered to bear witness, but into a higher level of existence altogether, possibly a godlike state. Surely the wavy lines implied some sort of movement or maybe even metamorphosis, but when taken in a modern context, its implied meaning fell apart. Someone out there, however, obviously believed in its theoretical function. Was this person following the design like a blueprint in an attempt to undergo some sort of spiritual or physical ascension? Les shook his head. A man would have to be out of his mind to think in such a way, but any man who was capable of killing twenty-eight children in order to recreate a rite depicted in a petroglyph etched more than a thousand years ago had left his right mind long ago.

  Les paused. There had been a conspicuous gap in the outer ring of the medicine wheel. Twenty-seven cairns, not twenty-eight. For the man who had set up this whole scenario to finish the wheel, he still needed one more body. Was it possible that at this very moment a child was in mortal danger? Was there a terrified little boy or girl down there in the pit with him right now? Was that child already dead?

  He couldn’t wait around any longer. Time was flowing past and he would never be able to forgive himself if his inaction proved to be the death of an innocent child.

  Grabbing his laptop and tucking it under his arm, he raced toward the door. He patted his pocket to make sure he had his cell phone and closed the door behind him. The rising sun barely peered over the eastern horizon, a red stain that faded to blue overhead and then finally to black to the west, where the stars dissolved into nothingness. Across the parking lot, several interstate truckers fueled their tanks. More milled around the rigs parked in the rear, preparing once again to hit the road after an uncomfortable night’s rest.

  Les ran to the closest trucker, a scrawny man who wore a flannel shirt, dirty Levis, and a hat that sat way too high on his head. The man had just hung the nozzle back on the pump and was about to haul himself up into the red Kenmore cab.

  “Hey,” Les called. “I need a lift just up to the end of Country Road Nineteen. Can you help me—?”

  “I’m headed south from here and have to be in Denver by three if I hope to have any help on the loading dock. Sorry, man. I wish I could help you out, but time’s money.”

  “I’ll pay you fifty bucks.”

  The trucker shook his head, smiled not unsympathetically, and climbed up into his cab without another word.

  “Damn it,” Les snapped. “A child is in serious danger. I need—”

  The slamming door cut him off.

  He was just about to run toward the trucker in the next bay when a voice called out from his right.

  “Fifty bucks to get you up to CR Nineteen, you say?”

  Les spun to see the short order cook who had eyed him from the kitchen in the diner hours ago.

  “Yeah. Will you do it?”

  “Let me see the cash.”

  Les fished out his wallet and removed all of the bills. He sifted through the small stack of tens, fives, and ones.

  “I only have forty-eight.”

  “That’ll do,” the man said, plucking the money from Les’s hand and leading him back around the side of the building to where an old Ford F-150 pickup waited. The white paint had turned the color of dirt, the wheel wells were rusted into intricate lattices, and the tires were so bald that the belts showed through the rubber.

  Les hurried around to the passenger side and climbed in the moment the cook unlocked the door.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

  The cook nodded and gunned the engine, which knocked so badly it felt as though the entire vehicle were being peppered with bullets. Thirty seconds later, they were skidding sideways out of the dirt lot and onto the asphalt.

  Les pried his cell phone from the pocket of his pants and tried dialing the same numbers again. Maybe he’d get lucky and actually get to talk to a real live officer. If not, then soon enough he would make them listen, face-to-face.

  IV

  Dandridge slammed the brakes and skidded into his driveway, teari
ng through the police tape and nearly running down the officer in the process. He leapt out the door of the Blazer and sprinted toward the front door. Sharon ran from the living room and met him on the front porch, where she collapsed into his arms. She sobbed uncontrollably, but he couldn’t find the words to console her. Not now. The run down the mountainside had helped him focus his panic and helplessness into determination. There was no time to allow his emotions to get in the way. Someone had taken his daughter from inside his house, and if he ever wanted to see her again, he was going to have to find her in a hurry. He knew that the element of time was crucial in cases like this. Even traveling at the speed limit, such a large head start could place his little girl nearly a hundred miles away in any direction; however, for whatever reason, he thought not. He would have checkpoints set up on all of the major highways regardless, but he was certain that whoever abducted Maggie—a sheriff’s daughter for Christ’s sake—was the same man who had erected the tableau of death. Call it deductive reasoning or just gut instinct. The man intended to keep Maggie close, and he was going to do unthinkable things to her if Dandridge didn’t find her right now.

  He shed his wife and hurried into the house. Sharon wailed and grabbed for him, but he jerked his arm away. She fell to the ground and cried out for him. The pain in her voice tore him up inside.

  “Have you found anything?” he asked as he entered the living room. His walkie-talkie squawked for what seemed like the thousandth time and he silenced it. He spent every day of his life helping every damn person in the county with their inane problems. Right now, he had his own and everything else was just going to have to wait. Drunks could drive off into ditches and couples could scream and beat the heck out of each other for all he cared. He was going to find Maggie if it cost him his job, and he was going to kill the son of a bitch for having the audacity to even touch his child.