She stopped in the living room and her gaze rose to the topographical map, tacked on the wall. She moved closer to it, suddenly focusing on Beech Hill, elevation 980 feet. What was it Lois Cuthbert had said at the town meeting? It had to do with the lights people had seen flickering up on the hill, and the rumors that satanic cults were gathering in the woods at night.
Lois had explained the lights. It’s just that biologist fella, Dr. Tutwiler, collecting salamanders at night. I almost ran over him in the dark a few weeks ago, when he came hiking back down.
Claire had only an hour of daylight left; she would need it to find what she was looking for. She already knew where to start.
She left the cottage and got back in her car.
The snow would make her search easy. She turned onto the road leading up Beech Hill. As she neared Emerson’s property, she slowed down and observed that the driveway to his house was unplowed. It had snowed since her last visit to feed the cat, and there were no new tire tracks. She drove on, past his property. There were no other homes beyond his on the hill, and the road became a dirt track. Decades before, this had been a logging road; it was now used only by hunters or hikers on their way to the panoramic lookout at the top. The town plows had not cleared the recent snowfall, and the road was barely navigable in her Subaru. Another vehicle had been up this road before her; she saw the tire tracks.
A few hundred yards past the Emerson property, the tracks veered off the road and ended abruptly at a stand of pine trees. There was no vehicle parked there now; whoever had been here had since departed. But he had left behind ankle-deep footprints in the snow.
She climbed out of her car to study the prints. They’d been made by large boots—a man’s size. They led into the woods and back out again in several round trips.
She’d often heard that snow on the ground is a hunter’s best friend. She was a hunter now, following a clear trail of broken snow through the forest. She wasn’t afraid of getting lost. She had a penlight in case darkness fell, her cell phone was in her pocket, and she had the footprints to lead her back to the car. Off to the right, she heard water, and realized the streambed was nearby. The footprints ran parallel to the stream, climbing slightly toward a massive tumble of boulders.
She halted and looked up in wonder. Melting snow had dripped down and flash-frozen again into a rippling blue sculpture of waterfalls. Standing at the base of that ancient landslide, she puzzled over the abrupt disappearance of the footprints. Had Max scaled those boulders? Wind had polished the ice to a hard glaze. It would be a treacherously difficult climb.
The sound of the stream again drew her attention. She looked down, where the running water had dissolved the snow, and saw the faint mark of a heel in the mud. If he had waded into the stream, why did his footprints not reappear on the opposite bank?
She took a step into the stream and felt icy water seep through the lacing holes into her boots. She took another step, and the water was at her boot tops and already soaking into her trouser cuffs. Only then did she see the opening in the rocks.
The cleft was partly shielded by a bush that would be lush with foliage in summer. To reach the opening, she had to wade calf-deep into the stream. She pulled herself up onto a lip of rock, then squeezed under the low entrance into the wider chamber beyond.
It was just large enough for her to raise her head. Though scarcely any light shone through the small opening behind her, she found she could make out vague details of her surroundings. She heard the steady drip of moisture and saw trickles of water glistening on the walls. Sunlight must be filtering in some other way. Was there another opening up ahead? Beyond the shadowy outline of an archway, faint light seemed to glimmer. Another chamber.
She squeezed under the arch, and almost immediately tumbled off the ledge and began to roll, down and down, until she landed hard on wet stone. Pain rang like a bell in her skull. She lay stunned for a moment, waiting for her head to clear, for the lights to stop flashing in her eyes. Something fluttered overhead and whooshed away with a beat of frantic wings. Bats.
Slowly the throbbing in her head faded to a dull ache, but the lights were still flashing in streaks of psychedelic green. Symptoms of a retinal detachment, she thought in alarm. Impending blindness.
Slowly she rose to her feet, reaching out to the cave wall to steady herself. Instead of touching stone, her hand met something slimy and yielding. She screamed and jerked away, and more beating wings fluttered out of the cave.
It moved. The wall moved.
What she’d felt on the wall was cold, not the fur of a wriggling bat. She could still feel the wetness on her fingers. Shuddering, she started to wipe her hand on her trousers when she noticed the glow. It clung to her skin, outlining the shape of her hand in the darkness. In amazement, she looked up at the cave ceiling, and she saw a multitude of lights, like soft green stars in the night sky. Except these stars moved, swaying back and forth in gentle waves.
She stepped forward, splashing through puddles, to stand in the center of the chamber, and had to close her eyes for a moment; the swaying of those stars above her head made the ground seem to rock beneath her feet.
The source, she thought in wonderment. Max has found the source of the parasite, the cave that has probably harbored this species for millennia. Heat generated by organic decay, by the warm-blooded bodies of hundreds of bats, would keep this world constant, even as the seasons cycled on the surface above.
She took out her penlight and aimed the beam at a cluster of green stars on the wall. In that circle of light, the stars were extinguished, and what she saw in their place was a clump of worms, like a many-tentacled medusa, waving gently from the dripping stone. She turned off the light. In the restored blackness, the stars reappeared, rejoining that vast galaxy of green.
Bioluminescence. The worms used Vibrio fischeri bacteria as their source of light. Whenever this cave flooded, worm larvae and Vibrio together would be washed into the stream. Into Locust Lake. We are just the accidental hosts, she thought. A summer’s swim, an unlucky inhalation of water, and a larva would find its way through the nasal passages into a human host. There, lodged in one of the sinuses, the larva would grow, releasing a hormone as it matured and died. That would account for the chromatographic peak in Taylor Darnell’s and Scotty Braxton’s blood: a hormone secreted by this parasite.
Tutwiler, and perhaps Anson, knew about that hormone, and about these worms, yet they didn’t tell her. They had put her and her son through hell.
In fury, she reached down, grasped a rock, and hurled it at the green stars. It bounced off the cave ceiling, clattered across the ground, and landed with a strangely metallic clang. A fresh flurry of bats whooshed out of the chamber.
She stood immobilized for a moment, trying to process what she’d just heard. Moving cautiously through the gloom, she stepped toward the far end of the chamber, where she’d heard the rock clang. There were not as many worms here, and in the absence of their glow, the darkness seemed to thicken and almost solidify as she progressed.
Once again she turned on her penlight and shone it at the ground. Something reflected back at her. She bent down for a closer look and saw it was a camp stove coffee cup.
Next to it was the toe of a man’s boot.
She jerked back, gasping. The beam of light zigzagged wildly as she brought it up in panic to shine on Max Tutwiler’s sightless eyes. He’d slumped to the ground with his back propped up against the cave wall. His legs were sprawled out in front of him. Froth had spilled from his mouth and dribbled onto the front of his jacket. There it joined the blacker stain of blood, which had poured from the bullet wound torn into his throat.
She stumbled backwards, turned, and splashed to her knees in the puddled water.
Run. Run.
In an instant she was back on her feet and scrambling in panic up the sloping passage to the next chamber. Bats flapped past her head. She wriggled under the archway and rolled into the entrance chamber. The so
und of her own gasping echoed back at her from the walls. On hands and knees, she scuttled like a frantic insect toward the opening.
The cleft grew brighter, closer.
Then her head emerged into daylight. She took in a desperate breath of air, and looked up, just as the blow came crashing down on her skull.
24
“We haven’t seen Dr. Elliot all day, Chief Kelly,” said the nurse. “And frankly, we’re starting to get a little concerned.”
“When did you last speak to her?”
“According to the day shift, she called around noon or so to check on Noah’s condition. But there’s been no word from her since, and we’ve been paging her for hours. We called her house, but all we get is her answering machine. We really think she should be here. The boy’s been asking for her.”
Something was wrong, thought Lincoln as he walked up the hall to Noah’s room. Claire would not let so much time pass without a visit, or at least a call, to her son. He’d driven by her house earlier that evening, and her car was not there, so he’d assumed she was at the hospital.
But she had not been here all day.
He nodded to the state cop guarding the door, and walked into Noah’s room.
The bedside lamp was on, and caught in its brightness, the boy’s face looked pale, exhausted. At the sound of the door closing, he looked up at Lincoln, and disappointment at once clouded his eyes. The rage is gone, thought Lincoln, and the difference was startling. Thirty-six hours ago, Noah had been beyond reason, possessed by such strength and fury it had taken two men to wrestle him to the ground. Now he looked like nothing more than a tired boy. A frightened boy.
His question was barely a whisper. “Where is my mom?”
“I don’t know where she is, son.”
“Call her. Please, can you call her?”
“We’re trying to reach her.”
The boy blinked, and looked up at the ceiling. “I want to tell her I’m sorry. I want to tell her …” He blinked again, then turned away, his voice almost muffled against the pillow. “I want to tell her the truth.”
“About what?”
“About what happened. That night …”
Lincoln remained silent. This confession could not be forced; it had to spill out of its own accord.
“I took the truck because I had to drive a friend home. She walked all the way to see me, and we were gonna wait for my mom to drive her back. But then it got late, and Mom didn’t get home. And it started to snow really hard …”
“So you drove the girl home yourself?”
“It was only two miles. It’s not like I haven’t driven before.”
“And what happened, Noah? On that drive?”
“Nothing. It was just a quick trip both ways. I swear it.”
“Did you drive to Slocum Road?”
“No, sir. I stayed on Toddy Point Road the whole way. I dropped her off at the end of her driveway, so her dad wouldn’t see me. And then I came straight home.”
“What time was this?”
“I don’t know. Ten o’clock, I guess.”
An hour after the anonymous witness had seen Claire’s pickup weaving on Slocum Road.
“This doesn’t fit the facts, son. It doesn’t explain the blood on the fender.”
“I don’t know how the blood got there.”
“You’re not telling the whole truth.”
“I am telling the truth!” The boy turned to him, his frustration building toward rage. But this time his anger was somehow different. This time it was rooted in reason.
“If you are telling the truth,” said Lincoln, “then the girl will support your story. Who is she?”
Noah averted his gaze and stared once again at the ceiling. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Her father will kill her. That’s why not.”
“She could clear this up with one statement.”
“She’s scared of him. I can’t get her in trouble.”
“You’re the one who’s in trouble, Noah.”
“I have to talk to her first. I have to give her the chance to—”
“To what? Get her story to line up with yours?”
They regarded each other in silence, Lincoln waiting for an answer, the boy refusing to yield the information.
Through the closed door, Lincoln barely heard the page announced over the hospital address system:
“Dr. Elliot, extension seven-one-three-three. Dr. Elliot …”
Lincoln left Noah’s room and went to the nurse’s station to pick up the phone. He dialed 7133.
It was answered by Anthony, in the laboratory. “Dr. Elliot?”
“This is Chief Kelly. How long have you been paging Dr. Elliot?”
“All afternoon. I tried her beeper, but she must have it turned off. No one answers at her house, so I thought I’d try paging her on the overhead. Just in case she’s in the building.”
“If she does call you, could you tell her I’m trying to reach her too?”
“Sure thing. I’m kind of surprised she hasn’t called me back.”
Lincoln paused. “What do you mean, called you back? Did you talk to her earlier?”
“Yes, sir. She asked me to track down some information.”
“When was this?”
“She called about noon today. She seemed pretty anxious to get the answer. I thought she’d get back to me by now.”
“What information did she want?”
“About a company called Anson Biologicals.”
“What’s that?”
“It turns out it’s just the R and D branch of Sloan-Routhier. You know, the big pharmaceutical firm. But I have no idea why she wanted to know about it.”
“Do you know where she was when she called you?”
“Chief Kelly, I haven’t got a clue.”
Lincoln hung up. No one had spoken to Claire since noon—nine hours ago.
He walked out to the hospital parking lot. It had been a clear day, with no snowfall, and all the cars were lightly glazed with frost. Driving slowly in his cruiser, he searched the parking lot row by row for Claire’s Subaru. Her car was not there.
She left the hospital, then what? Where would she go?
He started back toward Tranquility, his apprehension mounting. Though the road was clear, the pavement free of ice, he took the drive slowly, scanning the snowy shoulders for any sign that a car might have slid off. He stopped at Claire’s house only long enough to confirm that she was not there.
By now his apprehension was turning to dread.
From his house, he made another flurry of phone calls, to the hospital, to Max Tutwiler’s cottage, to the police dispatcher. Claire was nowhere to be found.
He sat in his living room, staring at the telephone, the sense of dread growing, gnawing at him. To whom would she go? She no longer trusted him, and that was what hurt him most of all. He dropped his head in his hands, struggling to make sense of her disappearance.
She’d been distraught about Noah. She would do anything for her son.
Noah. This had something to do with Noah.
He reached for the phone again and called Fern Cornwallis.
She had barely picked up when he asked, “Who was the girl Noah Elliot was fighting over?”
“Lincoln? What time is it?”
“Just the name, Fern. I need to know the girl’s name.”
Fern gave a weary sigh. “It was Amelia Reid.”
“Is that Jack Reid’s girl?”
“Yes. He’s her stepfather.”
There was blood on the snow.
As Lincoln turned into the front yard of the Reid farmhouse, the beams of his headlights swept across an ominously dark blot in the otherwise pristine expanse of white. He braked to a stop, his gaze fixed on the stained snow, fear suddenly coiling like a serpent in his stomach. Jack Reid’s truck was parked in the driveway, but the house was dark. Was the family asleep?
Slowly he stepped out of the cr
uiser and aimed the beam of his flashlight at the ground. At first he saw only the one bright splash of red, a bleeding Rorschach butterfly. Then he saw the other splashes, a series of them, leading around the side of the house, accompanied by footprints, both human and canine. He stared at the footprints and suddenly thought: Where were the dogs? Jack Reid owned two of them, a pair of troublesome pit bulls who had the nasty habit of ripping apart any neighborhood cats they came across. Were these bloodstains left by some unfortunate creature who’d wandered into the wrong yard?
He knelt down for a closer look and saw that, mingled with the broken snow, was a clump of dark fur, bloodied flesh still attached. Just a dead animal—a cat, or a raccoon, he thought, his tension easing, but not entirely fading. Those pit bulls could still be loose somewhere in the yard, could even now be watching him.
The sensation of being observed was suddenly so strong he quickly straightened and swung his flashlight in a wide arc, cutting a circle through the darkness. As the beam swept past the trunk of the maple tree, he spotted the second clump of fur, this one larger, the animal recognizable. He moved toward it, and his fear was suddenly back full force, tension screaming along every nerve. The steel collar studs reflected back at him, as did the gleam of white teeth protruding from the open and lifeless jaw. One of the pit bulls. Half of it, anyway. It had been wearing a collar which was still fastened to the chain. The animal had been unable to escape, unable to avoid slaughter.
He didn’t recall drawing his weapon; he knew only that it was suddenly in his hand, and that the fear was so thick it seemed to coat his throat. He swept the beam of his flashlight in a wider circle around the yard, and found the other half of the dog, and its intestines, lying in a bundle by the porch steps. He crossed to the bloody heap and forced himself to press a bare finger to the offal. The tissue was cold, but not yet frozen. Less than an hour old. Whatever had ripped apart this animal could still be lurking nearby.
The muffled explosion of breaking glass made him wheel around, his heart slamming against his chest. The sound had come from inside the house. He glanced up at the dark windows. There were five people living in there, one of them a fourteen-year-old girl. What had happened to them?
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