NightShade Forensic FBI Files, page 53
The scorn disappeared and GJ turned fully academic, pulling a small pen from her pocket. Noah quickly realized it wasn't a pen at all, but an extendable pointer, as though she might not always be prepared for a raid or an enemy combatant capture, but she was definitely always prepared for a lecture.
“This here and here.” She moved the tip of the thin baton to motion where she was indicating. “Do you see how this cut is a true cut? The whole thing looks like a shred, but it’s not.”
He nodded. Deep, knife-like gouges covered the body, flaying the flesh open for all to see… and smell.
“Do you see that they maintain even spacing across?” GJ looked up and, when he nodded, she continued. “Often, if the hand comes around in an uncontrolled motion—” she demonstrated with her arm extended, “—the fingers splay out wide. Then, as they rake—as they make the cut—they get closer together. But this—” She moved the tip of the pointer along the line of the cuts, “—indicates this was a controlled slash. It wasn't a fling of a hand. Whoever did it intended to slice.”
Noah started to move away, look around, thinking she was done.
“Also—” the pointer moved, hovering just above the surface of the wounds again.
Yes, he thought. As a forensic scientist, she would not touch anything.
“—here, here, and here. Those are strategic. Look at the cut into this arm.”
The bulk of the limb was hanging by threads of tendon and muscle. The bone was intact, but clearly scored. Noah fought a shudder thinking of how sharp those claws must be to cut that deep, that cleanly. He didn’t let GJ see his concern or his revulsion. He just looked where she’d instructed.
“This one went for the brachial artery. And it definitely hit it.” She motioned him to step back carefully and then turned, now using the pointer to motion along the ground. “You can see the arterial spray.”
He added in what little he knew. “So the heart was still pumping when this slash was made?” It might have been the first cut, he thought.
“This was fatal and intended that way.” GJ didn’t mince words.
Noah nodded, catching on. He ventured again at putting in his own two cents. “The brachial artery is pretty difficult to hit if someone's defending themselves, right?”
She grinned, as though she were proud of her student, despite the fact that he had a handful of years on her. Then again, maybe she was older than she looked. “I was wondering if you'd see that. Whoever did this was someone they knew.”
“Well, one of the soldiers obviously got down here. So why didn’t he—or she—help them escape? Why kill them?”
This time, GJ stepped back, probably removing herself from the blood spatter and forensic evidence. Turning around, she asked, “Where would they go … when they escaped?”
“Any of the tunnels,” he commented, because it seemed obvious to him. “Whoever killed them knew enough to get down here. Well, unless they dropped in through the trap door. But that was guarded by two of our people, who claim no one came through.”
“True.” It seemed he’d hit the end of GJ’s knowledge and she, too, was no longer explaining but looking for answers. She checked the entrances to the tunnels, but the floors had been packed hard through decades of use. Footprints would be difficult to find…
“We’re probably out of luck on tracks,” Noah commented, then forgot he shouldn’t be funny and added, “ unless somebody had managed to step in mud just before leaving the room.”
GJ looked up at him, startled. And they spoke at the same time.
“Or blood.”
Now they pulled out phones, snapping on the flashlights and looking for tiny details.
The light that had been set up in here for GJ’s inspection didn't reach every corner. And Noah looked down one tunnel as carefully as he could while GJ talked him through. Or maybe she was talking to herself.
“I don’t see footprints in the blood spatter. Which is interesting. That’s another thing that makes me think they knew the killer. He or she had enough time to take a very deep cut and step out of the way of the spray before coming back for the open body slash. But if they even stepped a little in it, it should create a track… Damn, I wish I had luminol.”
Even as she lamented her lack of supplies, he saw it. “Holy shit! Here.”
Boot tracks.
Not a full track, only the corner of one edge of a shoe. But it was definitely blood. Or at least, he was almost sure.
GJ came over from where she was inspecting one of the other corners and added her light to the faint impression of tread that Noah had managed to spot. He would have said he was proud of himself, but he kept quiet, letting GJ do the real work.
He watched as she aimed her light forward some set amount and waved it in a nearly perfect arc. It took him a moment to realize she had calculated the distance of the stride and was looking for the next step.
“There!” But instead of illuminating what she’d found, she shined the light directly at her own feet and gingerly stepped around, determined to not ruin the scene. She was preserving even evidence she might not have yet found.
“Unless they're trying to throw us off the scent, whoever it was left this way.”
“Well, one of them,” Noah added, before realizing he should have asked.
GJ shrugged. Even with the blood highlighting a portion of the heel, the rest of the footprint was gone. The floor was simply too hard to make an impression, and there was no dust to leave a negative.
He heard the trap door open over him and watched as Will Little seemed to kneel down, his head nearly coming through the hole. “Find anything?”
“Yes!” GJ hollered back, as she was already a good distance down the tunnel.
“Can I drop down?” Will asked him, and Noah wanted to ask him if he actually could. The old man did not appear spry. But even as the thought passed, Noah watched the white-haired man lithely swing down, hang from his fingertips, and then drop the last few feet. The small grunt as he landed was the only thing that attested to his age or ability.
“What do you have?”
But GJ asked her own question. “Are Christina and Walter still on with Westerfield?”
Will nodded and Noah felt his heart sink. The conversation going on that long couldn't be good. But he didn't have time to dwell as Will pressed them. “Find anything?”
GJ slowly emerged from the tunnel, walking on her tiptoes, still avoiding unknown evidence. As she reached the center of the room, both she and Noah looked to Will, who was giving the bodies a once-over with a weather eye.
She looked to Noah, as if to ask if he'd come to the same conclusion she had.
He hadn't. He was not a forensic scientist. He understood what she’d said, but he hadn’t figured any of that out for himself. Not fully.
“Well, that's bad news, isn’t it?” Will asked.
GJ stopped a few feet away from him.
Noah felt his body freeze at her next words.
“It is. I’m fairly confident it was one of your people who did this.”
47
Donovan winced as Westerfield’s voice barked through the line.
He and Eleri had tried again to sound like they weren't together, but it had been one thing to do it when they were in his home. She’d easily moved to another room. This time, they'd been driving on the freeway when their phones rang simultaneously.
Donovan had motioned Eleri to quickly pull to the side of the road. As soon as she’d stopped, he hopped out and shut the door, hoping to leave her in the enclosed car, and him on the side of the road—sounding as if he was in a different place. He had no idea if Westerfield had any clue what they were doing or if maybe their boss was in his office, fully aware and laughing.
Neither of them had ever quite figured out what Westerfield’s powers were. Sure, he’d demonstrated moving small objects on the desk. He walked that quarter across his knuckles with a smoothness that appeared preternatural. But what other skills might he have? The ones Donovan had seen were small potatoes compared to what the agents possessed.
“There’s too much going down at the de Gottardi/Little farm.” Once again, Westerfield decided to forgo any polite hellos.
“But everyone's accounted for?” Donovan asked, knowing that Walter and Jansen were hooked up with Pines and new guy Kimball and that she said they’d checked in with the SAC. Donovan was glad that he was no longer getting grilled about the whereabouts of his girlfriend.
“Yes. There's not only an entire army ringing the joint, I was just informed this morning that there’s a mole inside.”
Donovan swallowed and felt his shoulders clench at the idea that Walter was in the thick of it. He reminded himself that she could handle it and that she probably didn't need him.
“Have they located Marks yet?” Eleri interjected. Donovan only heard her voice through the phone, though he could see her mouth move through the car window.
“No, and it’s worse than we even thought. They shot Shray Menon.”
Donovan wondered what the people driving by must think of him, standing on the side of the freeway with his phone to his ear. Even with his specialized hearing, he found himself covering his other ear to block the loud zing of traffic.
Westerfield hadn’t yet asked about the zooming noises, and Donovan wondered if his boss would. If he even cared.
But his muscles clenched as he listened, his brain shocked and concerned by what Westerfield was telling them. He’d always been the staid medical investigator. It was his job to not be surprised by anything. But he could not control his eyebrows rising, his body stiffening at each passing phrase.
“I thought Menon was dead.”
“We all did.” The three words from Westerfield covered pretty much everything they needed to know.
Then, Westerfield did something unusual. He dialed back a bit. “We're not actually positive it's Menon, but all signs point to it.”
“His body did disappear at the time,” Eleri said. “It always made me wonder.” She paused. “Who identified him?”
“Pines.”
No one answered, but Donovan saw Eleri’s lips purse. She trusted that answer, too. If Pines thought it was Menon, then it was almost certainly Menon.
“Well, I don't think we'll be wondering much longer. I need more people out there.”
Donovan looked through the car window, his eyes making contact with Eleri’s as Westerfield kept talking. “I need you to grab your bags and get ready to leave today. I've got flights for each of you—”
That still didn't indicate if he knew they were together or not.
“I’m sending in as many agents as I can. I hope this time we can end it.”
Donovan had believed they'd ended it last time. But things were clearly bigger than he’d thought, and he said something for the very first time.
He nodded once at Eleri and watched as she agreed. Then, without waiting for a moment to lose his nerve, he simply replied, “No. We can’t go.”
“I'm sorry?” Westerfield asked, his tone as stunned as Donovan expected it to be.
“No, sir,” Donovan replied, as though the “sir” might massage the answer. “Eleri and I are together. We're heading down through Georgia, possibly into Florida. We've got a lead, and we’re following Bodhi Banerjee.”
“Well, shit,” Westerfield replied. The swear word had one syllable, but three notes. Donovan wasn't sure what that might mean. But he waited. They’d had these moments before.
He and Eleri had things in their own lives that, once in a while, were worth quitting the job that he’d come to embrace and leaving the co-workers he’d come to love. He reminded himself he could go back to being a medical examiner if he needed to. He didn’t reevaluate that he would almost certainly have to move, which he didn’t want to do, and he would no longer love the job. He’d only liked it at the time because he didn’t know another possibility existed.
All these thoughts swirled around and were pushed away as he waited for a follow-up to the swear word.
Eleri had chased her sister’s trail until they found her. Donovan had followed, risking his own position and thinking there would be nothing like that that he'd ever need to ask from her. But, suddenly, here it was.
Silence dragged from the other end of the line. And Donovan waited.
48
Noah folded his hands and sat at the table quietly. For once, the NightShade agents outnumbered the de Gottardi/Little members. Only Will and a woman he introduced as Jen represented the family.
Noah figured he’d listen rather than speak. He was definitely the low man on this totem pole. Even Jen, whom he hadn’t met before, was clearly in Will’s favor. Noah wasn’t certain he was in anyone’s favor.
Once they were all seated and introduced, GJ launched into presenting her evidence. “Whoever it was that did this, they got into the tunnels.”
“How?” Will immediately volleyed back.
“You tell me.”
Noah was thinking his own way through the incident, pondering how little he knew about the underground network, except that it was extensive. When the talking trailed off, he decided to screw silence. “I'm just playing devil's advocate here.”
Brainstorming worked best if people kept talking. Since no one else was doing it, he did. “What if someone found a door? Some of the tunnels go to the edge of the property, right? And they open out into the fields?”
That's what he'd been told. Then again, maybe he'd been lied to.
But Will nodded first, before amending, “I don’t know how they would find one… though I suppose it could happen. Also, the tunnels don’t go to the edge of the property. There would be no doubt you were trespassing if you even got close to one of the doors.”
So it wasn’t as easy as Noah might have thought. “What if they did find a door? And made their way in to where the soldiers were kept?”
Will’s brows pulled together and his features darkened. “Then they’d have to be able to find their people.”
Jen hopped in, though her voice stayed relatively quiet. “The tunnels are too extensive. They don’t all lead to the heart of the land… well, not directly.”
Will, though not fighting too hard, was clearly holding stubbornly to the idea that his own people could not have done this. He added, “They would have to be wolves.”
“Why?” Christina pressed. Now the NightShade agents were the ones frowning.
“I don't know how else they would find their own people down there. It’s all mazes, like Jen said. They either already knew exactly where the soldiers were being kept, or they would have to scent them and follow that trail.” He sighed, clearly not liking the answer he’d arrived at. “Honestly, that far away, through multiple tunnels that we didn’t drag their friends through…? It would be too hard to tell. I don’t think even the best wolf could do it.”
Eyebrows darkened around the table as the idea seemed to spread like wildfire through the group. The killer couldn’t have come through the tunnels blindly and found their prey.
“So,” Christina asked on a deeply concerned sigh, “is it possible they already know the tunnels?”
Will’s head swiveled toward her, just as Noah’s did. That had not occurred to him. He was told the tunnels were private and secret, and he had simply believed it to be true.
Will looked to Jen with a question in his eyes. When she shook her head in reply to the silent communication, he added, “I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it’s a possibility. But I don’t think so.”
There was something of a tremor in his voice and Noah could tell the old man was giving the idea his best consideration, even though he didn’t like the implication.
“Could they have gotten their hands on maps or anything?” GJ tossed that idea out to the table.
“There are no maps. None that I know of.” Will shook his head at her, and once again, Noah was reminded of how fiercely this family guarded their land and their secrets. How fiercely they had to.
“If there are no maps, then someone gave them the information. Someone who lives here and knows the layout. It may mean you don't have a killer among your people, but you definitely have a mole.”
“Fuck.” The word emerged low and breathy as Will again lifted his hand to rub his nearly naked skull. “If we believe that no one could have knowledge of the tunnels without living here, and no one could simply wander in and find their people—”
“—and get back out undetected—” Walter tossed in.
Will conceded that point with a nod as well. “—Then they must have had guidance.”
When the table remained silent for a while, Will shared another piece of information that lent credence to the idea of a mole. “The soldiers had been down here for a while, in the same place—but even I can’t sniff someone out from that far away.”
Well, that answered one question for Noah: He'd wondered about Will’s genetics. By his guess, Will was likely one of the superior wolves. After all, he’d wound up as the head of the family.
If Will couldn't come onto this land and just find people, Noah was willing to bet no one else could, either. They'd wander around underground until they got lost.
“There are miles and miles of tunnel,” Walter commented. The words sounded almost off-hand, but Noah was confident she was leading to something.
“That's just it,” Will said, his shoulders slumping. “Even if they got incredibly lucky and headed the right way by sheer, random choice, and then scented their friends…. they probably still couldn’t get back out.”
“How did they not run into someone else?” GJ asked next.
Will looked around the room. The day was growing darker and he seemed to check that, yes, they had drawn all the shades. Now he reached out and twisted on a flat disc at the center of the table that offered up a dim glow.
In a bit, this room is going to be flat-out creepy. But the conversation pulled Noah away from that thought.
