Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2

by Mark Lukens

  “Travis Conrad,” the kid said like he could see the sheriff was struggling to recall his name. “I played football with your son in high school.”

  The sheriff nodded. “You called this in?”

  “My mom did. She saw the smoke in the sky and I came down here to check it out in case someone needed help.”

  “I appreciate that,” the sheriff said as he glanced over at the firefighters blasting the burning logs with the fire hoses. It already looked like they were getting a lot of the fire under control.

  Deputy Ann Burnette who had followed the sheriff up here walked up to them from her squad car. She stood a few feet behind the sheriff, just listening.

  “There are some dead bodies on the front porch,” Travis said, turning the sheriff’s attention back to him.

  “I saw them when I drove in,” the sheriff said.

  Travis nodded. “It was easier to see them before more of that porch roof collapsed. I saw three bodies. Maybe even four.”

  While you were trampling around the crime scene, Sheriff Hadley thought as he looked at the obvious foot traffic through the snow in front of the garage and down the side of the house through the snow.

  Travis followed the sheriff’s eyes. “I wanted to make sure nobody was around,” he explained. “I checked the garage. Checked the back of the cabin. There’s a vehicle back there. It was on fire but I …” He hesitated like he didn’t want to incriminate himself.

  “It’s okay, son. Tell me what you did.”

  “I found a fire extinguisher in the garage and I put the fire out. Shoveled some snow on it, too. But I tried to stay clear of the cabin. I didn’t want to mess up any of the other tracks.”

  “There were other tracks in the snow when you got here?”

  “Oh yeah. All over the place.”

  The sheriff looked back at the massive parking lot George had created and was now regretting that he had okayed it. He and Deputy Burnette glanced at each other for a moment.

  “There were all kinds of footprints all around the house,” Travis continued. “And someone drove a snowmobile out of here.”

  This snapped the sheriff’s attention back to Travis.

  “I checked the garage,” Travis continued. “You could tell there was a snowmobile in there. There’s a tarp crumpled up on the floor.”

  “You saw the tracks the snowmobile made?” Sheriff Hadley asked. The tracks in the driveway would be wiped out now from the plow and all of their vehicles.

  “Yes, sir,” Travis answered.

  “You saw them beyond the driveway?”

  “Yes, sir. They go south.”

  The sheriff thought about that for a moment.

  “And that vehicle around back, I don’t think it’s Mr. Gordon’s truck. If it is, he must’ve just bought it. It’s an SUV. A Chevy Suburban. White. I can tell because the front of it didn’t get burnt yet. There’s a New Mexico plate on the front.”

  The sheriff turned to his deputy. “I need you to get on the horn. Get Ronnie up here with a truck and his snowmobile.”

  “Right away, Sheriff,” she said and hurried back to her car.

  The road down to Cody’s Pass was too bad to follow the snowmobile tracks in his car. He thought about turning George Joekel around, but he would wipe out the snowmobile tracks with his plow. No, he would wait for Ronnie to get up here with the snowmobile so he could follow the tracks down to Cody’s Pass. When she came back, he would tell Deputy Burnette to call Freddie down in Cody’s Pass and make sure he and his men kept an eye out for possible suspects on a snowmobile.

  The sheriff turned back to Travis. “The snowmobile tracks on 217 … you didn’t drive over them on your way here, did you?”

  “No, of course not.” Travis managed to look a little offended at the sheriff’s question and possible assumption.

  Sheriff Hadley sighed. “Okay. Let’s go see this truck around back that you’re talking about.”

  They walked along the same beaten-down path through the snow that Travis had made in his several trips back and forth from the back of the cabin to the garage. The walking was a little easier now that there was a path and their boots crunched along the packed down snow. A few moments later Sheriff Hadley saw the half-burnt Chevy Suburban.

  “I’m sorry, sheriff, if I did something wrong,” Travis said.

  “No, you did okay, Travis. You might’ve actually saved some evidence by putting that fire out.”

  Travis couldn’t help beaming with pride.

  Deputy Ann Burnette hurried up to them through the snow. “Ronnie’s on his way.”

  “Good. I need you to get some photos of this vehicle.”

  Deputy Burnette pulled out her digital camera from a coat pocket and started snapping pictures.

  The sheriff walked several yards out in front of the burnt Suburban to keep out of the overspray of water from the firefighters. Travis followed him.

  “I think it’s the bank robbers’ vehicle,” Travis said in an excited voice.

  The sheriff could tell Travis had been busy working on his theory while waiting for him and the firefighters to arrive. The boy seemed like he couldn’t wait to tell someone all about it.

  “I think they ditched their getaway car here,” Travis continued on. “Then I think they stole Mr. Gordon’s snowmobile and headed south. I think one or two of them killed the others, took all the money and ran.”

  The sheriff didn’t answer Travis.

  “Deputy,” the sheriff said to Ann Burnette. “Run these plates on the truck. Then get on the horn again and alert Freddie down in Cody’s Pass to be on the lookout for these guys.”

  As the deputy hurried back to her car, the sheriff wondered why these bank robbers would head right back to the same town where they’d committed their crime.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Iron Springs, New Mexico

  Palmer slept in a little later than he usually did; daylight was already filtering in around through the drapes over the windows. He jumped up and grabbed his cell phone to see what time it was. After putting on his pants, he slid his shoes on and laced them up quickly. He opened the bedroom door and listened for a moment.

  The house was dark and quiet.

  He slipped out into the hall and used the bathroom out there.

  Fifteen minutes later he was dressed and had his duffel bag with him. This time when he stepped out into the hallway the smell of coffee hit him right away and he saw the glow of light coming from down the hall.

  He walked down the hall, crossed the living room and stepped into the kitchen. Captain Begay and his wife Angie sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee. Begay was already dressed in his “uniform” which consisted of faded blue jeans and a thick flannel shirt.

  “I made some toast,” Angie told Palmer. “There’s butter on the table. We have peanut butter and jelly if you want some.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I can fry up a few eggs if you’d like,” she offered.

  “No, please … don’t go to all that trouble. Toast and coffee will be just fine.”

  Palmer sat down at the table and ate two pieces of toast topped with what seemed like some kind of homemade jam and butter. He washed it down with two cups of strong black coffee.

  After Palmer finished eating, Angie filled his thermos with coffee for the road.

  “Thank you,” he told her.

  She smiled at him and nodded.

  Palmer looked at Begay. “I should get going.”

  A moment later Palmer grabbed his duffel bag and thermos and then he went outside. He walked across the driveway and opened the passenger door of his rental car and set his bag and thermos inside, then he took his cell phone out of his pocket and walked down the driveway a little. He dialed Alonzo Johnson’s number, the lead forensics investigator at the dig site. Alonzo had nothing new to report. He gave Palmer Susan Dorsett’s number—she was still working at the crime scene in town.

  He dialed Susan’s number and told h
er he would be there soon to meet with her.

  “We’ve found some … some very puzzling things,” she told him.

  “What kind of things?”

  “It’s kind of hard to explain,” she said. “It would be easier to show you.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Probably within the hour.”

  Palmer hung up and turned around. Captain Begay was standing right behind him. Palmer hadn’t even heard the big man sneak up behind him. Begay had a stoic expression on his face, but Palmer could’ve sworn he saw some kind of vindication on the man’s face like he already knew that more strange facts about this case were going to surface soon.

  “I’d like to go with you to John and Deena’s house,” Begay told him. It didn’t sound like a request.

  Palmer was going to tell him no, but he hesitated.

  “I know we had to ask you guys here for the bodies in the cave, but John and Deena were our people. They were my responsibility.”

  “I think their case is going to fall under the same one as the cave,” Palmer told him. “It seems like it might be the same killers.”

  Begay didn’t say anything—he just stared at Palmer, waiting for an answer.

  “Okay,” Palmer said. “Just you. None of your other men right now.”

  Begay nodded like that was good enough for him.

  “I’ll follow you to the house,” Palmer told him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  John and Deena’s house

  Palmer pulled his black rental car in behind the captain’s Bronco at the side of the road across the street from John and Deena’s house just like he had done yesterday. A Navajo Tribal Police vehicle was parked on the side of the road in front of the house, not too far from the driveway, and a forensics van was parked in the driveway.

  Palmer got out of his car into the cold morning air. The sun was peeking up over the mesas in the east, providing light but not much warmth. Palmer shrugged into his coat and slipped his hands into a pair of blue nitrite gloves. Begay, seemingly impervious to the cold, walked up to him. They walked to the house together and one of Begay’s officers waited for them by the front door. The officer nodded at them as they entered the house.

  “Ms. Dorsett?” Palmer called out when he stepped into the living room.

  “Back here,” the woman replied. “In the bedroom.”

  Palmer and Begay started to walk towards the hallway that led back to the bedrooms, but Susan was already hurrying down the hall and she met them at the end of it. She was a small, thin woman with straight hair dyed bleach-blond. She wore a pair of thin-framed glasses on her angular face. She looked stern, her thin lips pressed together in a line. She looked like someone who might run triathlons, Palmer thought. She seemed like she was disciplined, all business, not much of a sense of humor. But then again, the line of work she and he were in could sap a person’s sense of humor after a while.

  “Special Agent Palmer,” he introduced himself to Susan Dorsett. “And this is Captain Begay of the Navajo Tribal Police.”

  She nodded at them. “Please, call me Susan.” She didn’t offer them a hand in greeting, and neither did they.

  “You said on the phone that you found some puzzling things,” Palmer reminded her.

  “Yes. We’re going to do a lot more tests, but from preliminary onsite exams … well, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’ve been doing this for nearly twenty years now, and I’ve never seen anything like this before. I don’t know if I can even believe it.”

  Palmer and Begay waited for her to continue.

  “Come on back here,” she said, not waiting for them. She headed down the hall to the master bedroom.

  The three of them entered the bedroom. Palmer and Begay stayed close to the walls, careful to stay away from the body of the woman on the carpet. Everything still looked the same, and the smell seemed a little better now because one of the windows was open. There were a few air freshener sticks on top of the dresser. Yellow plastic markers with numbers on them were distributed around the room next to the bodies and by other spots of blood around the carpet. Some of the dried blood was so dark it almost looked black now.

  “Well, okay,” Susan said. “Here it goes. One of the bodies, the body of the woman on the floor … she was dead at least one day longer than the man over there … her husband. Maybe dead even two days before him. Yet it still looks like she was the one who killed her husband.”

  Palmer felt like everything around him had just come to an abrupt stop, and somehow he’d just missed something important. “Wait …. What? What do you mean by that?”

  “I know. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Like I said, we’ll do more tests when we eventually get their bodies to the lab, but I’m pretty sure those tests are going to come back just like I stated.”

  “But that can’t be possible. If she was dead longer than he was, then how could she have killed him?”

  “I don’t know.” She let out a sigh. “As far as I can tell, it looks like she ripped his face off and scalped him.”

  “With what?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be any weapon or tool marks. The only weapons I can identify are her fingers. She must’ve used her teeth, too. We found three pieces of broken teeth from her mouth embedded deep into his face.

  “But it looks like her face … I mean her face looked …” Palmer stepped closer to the woman’s body and crouched down, staring at her head which was now covered with a clear plastic bag. Her hands were bagged too. Even with the bag on her head, the woman’s face still seemed like it was mashed down into the carpet.

  “Skinned, too?” Susan offered, completing Palmer’s unfinished sentence. “I know. I don’t understand this.”

  Palmer just nodded numbly. He pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. “I … I took some photos.”

  Susan nodded. “Yes, we took a lot of photos, too.”

  “Did you find the pieces of their face or hair anywhere on them?” Palmer asked. “Or maybe … inside of them?”

  “Obviously I haven’t investigated their stomach contents yet … we’ll do that when we get to the lab … but I haven’t found any evidence of their skin or hair in the room anywhere.”

  “So the killer might have taken their faces and hair with him. But why?” Palmer felt suddenly sick to his stomach. “There has to be some kind of mistake here. If she was injured that badly, how in the world could she have killed her husband?”

  Susan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Palmer changed the subject. “What about their kid?”

  “David,” Captain Begay said. “His name is David.”

  “Yeah, David. Did you find any evidence of him in … in all of this?” Palmer gestured at the gory mess all over the bedroom.

  “No. No other traces of blood except these two. Maybe the kid ran away.”

  “Or somebody took him,” Palmer said.

  Susan didn’t comment.

  “What about the cave?” Palmer asked Susan. “Have you been out there?”

  She swallowed hard and nodded. The look in her eyes told Palmer that she had been in the cave and seen the body parts on display. “I talked to Alonzo. What we’ve got in there is just as strange as this. It’s actually worse.”

  Palmer glanced at Begay who stood impassive near the corner of the bedroom. Palmer looked back at Susan, bracing himself as Susan continued.

  “From what Alonzo said, we’ve got the same problems there as we do here. Some of the bodies were dead longer than the others. Maybe as long as two or three days in some cases.”

  “So the perps killed them one by one,” Palmer offered. But why didn’t the others run or call for help? he wondered. Their sat phones and radios were all dead so they couldn’t call for help. The batteries in the vehicles were all dead so they couldn’t drive away. No one could drain all of those batteries purposely, could they? Maybe all of the headlights were left on at the same time. But even though the vehicles were
inoperable, the people still could have run away on foot into the desert. Surely the thought of freezing in the desert had to be better than whatever was happening to the others there at the dig site.

  This case was beginning to give him a headache. He needed another drink.

  “We’ve got the pieces of the people in piles at the cave now,” Susan said. “And from the nine heads we’ve found, we’re already beginning to make IDs from their wallets and from the photos and background info that the university sent to us.”

  “Nine people?” Palmer asked. “There should be ten of them.”

  Susan pulled out her phone and scrolled down the screen for a moment with a practiced flick of her thumb. “No,” she finally said, shaking her head. “There were only seven men and two women. One man was definitely Navajo, and he must be the man named Jim Whitefeather. One man was ID’d as Jake Phillips. One man we believe is a grad student named Robert Coggins. A woman named Patty LaFontaine, and another grad student named Phil Carson. And the other woman has been identified as Wendy Rhinehardt. The other three are so … fragmented, their faces destroyed so badly, that we’ll have to rely on dental records … hopefully.”

  “Two women?” Palmer said. “There was another woman with them, a woman that Jake Phillips called from Arizona State University. She was an expert on the … on the …”

  “The Anasazi,” Begay helped.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re taking about a woman named Stella Weaver,” Susan said, glancing down at her phone. “We haven’t found her head, and we’re trying to get matches of the legs, arms, and torsos. Right now we’re sure these body parts are from only nine people.”

  Palmer thought for a moment. This woman Stella Weaver was summoned to the dig site by Jake Phillips, and now she’s the only one missing. He wondered if she’d ever made it to the dig site at all.