by Dan Ames
Larkin had dark hair, a pockmarked face filled with deep crevices, with black eyes that were flat and lifeless. His skin tone was not good, as if he’d been on a recent drug binge, and he was thin. His appearance seemed to suggest that something was eating at him from the inside out.
But that was probably just Lucas’s imagination.
Larkin did not wear anything remotely military. Instead, he had on blue jeans, a gray T-shirt and a black leather jacket.
As if he’d just arrived on his motorcycle.
“There’s three of them?” Larkin asked. He raised an eyebrow as if he was receiving different information than he’d expected.
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Lucas said as he picked up the phone to call Dr. Aldrich.
23
“Is this what you meant when you said that nothing happens out here and that I’d probably be bored out of my mind?” Pauling asked Tallon.
Bordeau had just left, and Pauling had taken her place in the living room across from Tallon.
He smiled. “Well, it has been boring, until you arrived. Maybe that’s not a coincidence.”
She laughed. “”Doubtful, but I appreciate the sentiment.”
They sat in silence for a moment and then Pauling asked, “In all seriousness, what are you going to do?”
He shrugged. “Not much I really can do. I don’t know anything about what happened.”
Tallon snagged an iPad from the coffee table and swiped to the local news.
There was nothing reported.
“No story on the news yet,” he offered.
“Well, I don’t think she was making it up,” Pauling said. “Had you ever met her before?”
“First time.”
“She seems young for the gig.”
“I vaguely remember something during election season about the job used to be her old man’s,” Tallon said. “I don’t pay much attention to what’s going on locally but I think her opponent made some sort of nepotism claim. Like she didn’t deserve to be sheriff. But she won.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, kind of odd there might have been a multiple homicide and no one’s reported on it yet,” Tallon said.
“I’ve still got some access leftover from days at the Bureau,” Pauling offered. “Do you want me to do a little digging and see if anything’s been posted?”
“Your first day here and I put you to work?” Tallon smiled. “You’re going to think that was my plan all along.”
“I always knew you were devious.”
“If you want to take a quick peek, sure,” he answered. “I’m kind of curious why she came to see me.”
“Seems to me your reputation preceded you,” Pauling pointed out.
“Maybe,” Tallon said. “Or maybe she knows a lot more than she’s letting on.”
24
All Sheriff Bordeau knew at that moment was that she had a sick feeling inside. She’d been on patrol, heading back out to possibly interview anyone in the area of the homicide when she’d gotten a call from dispatch about a possible murder.
Even as she raced along the dirt highway toward the location of the scene, Bordeau had a strange feeling of déjà vu. This time, however, she wouldn’t be so skeptical.
She spotted the motorhome on the side of the road, along with an ambulance, and an officer who’d already arrived.
Bordeau parked her squad car behind the other police vehicle, and the patrol officer approached her.
“The lady who called it in is over there,” he said. “She’s some kind of marathon runner or something. Didn’t get too close. Said she could see it was something bad, called 9-1-1 and waited. I checked her out. She is who she says she is.”
“Have you been inside?”
He nodded. “But I just looked, didn’t touch a thing. Crime scene guys are on their way.”
Bordeau already knew that but she didn’t correct him. Instead, she went to the motorhome and went inside. The sight of so much blood told her she was right; without even seeing the victims she knew the person or persons who’d killed the four in the abandoned farmhouse had no doubt struck again.
Bordeau made her way down the center aisle of the vehicle, took in the blood splashed everywhere and the naked, mutilated woman hanging out of the back doorway. Beyond her, Bordeau could see a bedroom with bloody sheets.
She looked down at the dead body of the woman and knew it was the same handiwork of the killer who’d tortured the folks back at the abandoned farmhouse.
So much violence and death, she thought.
What the hell was she dealing with? she wondered.
The crime scene techs would arrive soon and Bordeau retraced her steps and waited outside the ambulance to interview the woman who’d called it in.
Bordeau thought back to her visit to Michael Tallon’s place. Judging by the time of death, her best guess, he was probably in the clear on this one.
She wondered why the motorhome had pulled over. Or had the killer or killers already been inside.
What were they after?
Bordeau didn’t know, but she had a feeling that unless she found some answers fast, this wasn’t going to be the end of it.
25
Nash and Dawkins drove west, away from the sites of the first two operations, and while the terrain was less rugged, it was even more desolate, if that was possible.
Neither man spoke.
Dawkins seemed to be in a state of shock over the way Nash had killed Blatch. For his own self, Nash felt relieved that the constant struggle to control the red-haired freak was finally over.
No more rapes.
No more murdering of women.
No more Blatch.
Finally.
Dawkins turned on the radio and found a classic rock station. The band Free was saying it was all right now.
Hardly, Nash thought.
They were using the same four-wheel drive van they’d used to corral the motorhome, so Nash simply turned off from the road and bounced over several ravines, maneuvered behind a stand of rocks twenty feet tall and spotted a gulch created by water or wind that had winnowed between the two giant pieces of stone.
Nash parked the van and he and Dawkins exited, then met at the back. Nash threw open the doors to reveal Blatch’s dead body.
They each took a leg and dragged the dead soldier to the gulch and tossed him in. He bounced and skittered along the edges, causing some stones to break free and roll down on top of him.
From the back of the vehicle, Dawkins grabbed a shovel and began to cover the body with sand and gravel.
Nash went toward the vehicle, then turned, quickly pivoted and shot Dawkins in the back of the head.
The force of the bullet carried the black man forward, where he landed in the gulch perpendicular to Blatch’s body. Nash cocked his head, disappointed in the way Dawkins had landed, like a golfer not happy with where his chip had ended up on the green.
The gunshot echoed through the vast empty space and Nash stepped up to the gulch, took careful aim at Dawkins’s head and fired until most of the dead man’s head was blown to bits and the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
Nash reached down, pulled Dawkins by the leg so his body was along the same line as Blatch’s, then finished the job of burying them both.
“Next time try following orders,” Nash told the dead men.
He’d murdered Blatch in a fit of anger but deep down, he knew he had to get rid of Dawkins, too. It was a shame, because of the two, Dawkins was the better soldier. But he could get out of control at times, too and now he’d seen his commanding officer murder a subordinate.
That wouldn’t do in the long run.
So Nash had made the only decision he could.
He went to the back of the vehicle, tossed the shovel inside and got behind the wheel.
Nash reversed the van, took a different route to get back to the road, and then headed toward his command center.
He felt free at last
from the incompetence of his men.
Now, he had to explain himself to the brass.
26
Pauling was amused by Tallon’s home office. It was such a masculine space. A long, rectangular desk with a single office chair, flanked by a bank of video monitors on the right.
To the left was a printer, scanner, and a smaller desk stacked with papers and a disassembled shotgun.
There wasn’t a single picture on the walls, or any other form of decoration. It was a workspace, and nothing more.
Pauling plugged in her laptop and used Tallon’s secure Ethernet connection to launch her browser. It went directly into the FBI’s violent offender database, via a back door Pauling’s computer guy had installed. It technically wasn’t an illegal breach, it was as if her access rights as an employee were never canceled.
With a few clicks of her mouse she quickly found an entry detailing the multiple homicide that had occurred in the area.
“Here it is,” she said.
Tallon came into the office and hovered behind her, reading over her shoulder.
“Sounds nasty,” he said.
They read in silence for several minutes.
“The victims were tortured, and the woman was most likely a victim of sexual assault,” Tallon read.
“It was a family,” Pauling noted.
“What?”
“Look at the supposed ages. A man and woman, both approximately thirty-five years old, and two juvenile males, around 14 and 16. A family. Maybe migrant workers. Illegals, perhaps?”
“Jesus,” Tallon said. “And no weapons were found?”
“No, it doesn’t look like they found any evidence the victims were anything but civilians.”
“So why did Bordeau say it was a military operation?” Tallon wondered.
“I don’t know why she came to talk to you, claiming soldiers may have been involved. I don’t see a single piece of evidence that shows a connection with anything remotely military.”
“The footprints,” Tallon said. He had scanned down to image files that had been uploaded. “See those? Those tracks look like the kind of boots we used to wear in Afghanistan.”
“That’s it? That merited a visit? Someone could buy those at an army surplus store,” Pauling pointed out.
He frowned at the images.
“What?” Pauling asked, seeing the confused expression on his face.
“That’s really weird,” he said, pointing at the descriptions written below the image. “All the footprints are the same size.”
27
Lucas leaned back with detached amusement in his conference room chair and enjoyed the scene between Dr. Aldrich and Larkin.
It was a fascinating meeting between a brilliant, if slightly infamous scientist, and a cold stone contract killer.
Aldrich addressed Larkin with the same kind of tiresome condescension that he used with everyone and made obvious attempts to “dumb down” everything he said.
“Burton Nash,” Aldrich said, pointing to the first of the photographs placed on the table by Lucas. “A highly decorated Marine with an extremely high level of commitment.”
Larkin’s soulless black eyes took in the image before him.
“Terry Dawkins,” the doctor continued, pointing to the image of the black man. “Booted out of the Navy SEALs, spared a trial that would have brought a great deal of embarrassment to the service and to the country.”
“Fun group you have here, Doc,” Larkin said, his face completely devoid of humor.
“Finally, the worst of them,” Aldrich continued, ignoring Larkin. “Douglas Blatch. A highly competent soldier, and prodigious sex offender.”
Larkin glanced down at the photo of Blatch. With his red hair he looked a little bit like Howdy Doody.
“How the hell did you let these three out into the world?”
“That’s just it, we didn’t,” Lucas interjected. “Dawkins and Blatch are dead.”
28
Bordeau pulled into the police station and spotted her Dad’s civilian car – a red Hummer with vanity license plates that read THE LAW.
I’m going to have to talk to him, Bordeau thought. Hell, at this rate, he was spending more time in the office than she was. It was going to be hard to distance herself from the shadow of her father if he was constantly around.
Bordeau parked, went inside and stopped by the dispatcher to check the “in” basket by her name for priority cases.
There was a single, fairly thick folder waiting for her and she saw on its label that it was from the crime lab, no doubt the final report from the first homicide scene.
She went back to her office and was relieved to see that her father was nowhere around. Bordeau shrugged off her jacket and opened the file. She read through the information quickly at first, then went back a second time, lingering on the final piece of evidence that had been collected.
She was surprised that her own intuition had been wrong.
Because the last bit of evidence collected had been the only fingerprint not belonging to any of the victims.
It belonged to someone else.
Michael Tallon.
29
The dream was always the same.
In it, Nash was a young Marine sent on a mission to rescue some hostages in Afghanistan. Nash was the first one to enter the shabby hut at the outskirts of a village in the shadows of the towering, ominous mountains.
They were too late.
Everywhere was carnage. The men had been shot, execution-style, the women piled in a heap with most of their clothes gone, and the small dead children scattered about like discarded toys.
Nash stepped forward, toward the body of a young boy. As he got closer, he noticed that what he’d initially thought was blood on the boy’s chest was actually writing.
Four letters.
Zotz.
His eyes snapped open and Nash realized he was having the same nightmare. And he was also pretty sure something had awakened him.
His hand found the semi-automatic pistol beneath the T-shirt next to his bed on the floor. He swung his feet out of bed, stood, and silently crept into the hall.
It was the middle of the night.
Maybe he’d just imagined it.
There were all kinds of sound out here in the–
A hand clamped over Nash’s mouth and a knife was put to his throat.
Nash was furious at himself for his carelessness. His mind raced, planning how he could talk his way out of the situation, maybe get to one of the several guns he’d stashed around the command center.
The gun was ripped from his grip and then he was whirled around to face his captor.
Or captors, actually.
Because standing before him were Dawkins and Blatch.
Alive and well.
And even in the dim light one fact was obvious.
Neither one even had a scratch on them.
30
“What do you mean they’re dead?” Larkin asked. He was getting tired of the poor excuse of a man across the table from him. “I thought I was brought here to stop them from killing people.”
“You are,” Dr. Aldrich said. He had a smirk on his face that made Larkin want to punch him in the mouth.
“I guess I’m not understanding how they’re killing people if they’re already dead?” Larkin preferred the direct approach in everything he did and this was anything but. “What, did they leave a bomb somewhere?”
Dr. Aldrich took a deep breath but Lucas cut him off.
“Doctor, let’s keep this as brief as possible,” Lucas said. “We’re losing operational hours as we speak.”
Aldrich was clearly perturbed by the request but he took a moment before proceeding, ostensibly to condense what he had to say.
“I’m a clinical neurological researcher specializing in brain composition and immunological responses,” he lectured Larkin. “You see, the brain is what is called a privileged organ in the sense the body knows not to attac
k it. At least, not right away.”
He paused and Larkin glanced over at Lucas, whose expression indicated he’d sat through the speech many times over.
“In fact, a researcher in China transplanted a brain into a monkey and the monkey lived for nine days. It was a huge breakthrough and provided the foundation for some of my early research.”
He waved his hands in the air as if cigarette smoke was obscuring his vision. “But that’s not what we’re interested in,” he continued. “Our focus is on partial brain transplant and rejuvenation. Almost like skin grafts, we can take small sections of one person’s brain and graft it onto another. And since the brain is “privileged” the chance of the host brain rejecting the addition is quite low.”
Larkin grimaced. “Let me guess, the army saw a way to weaponize this.”
Dr. Aldrich smiled. “Of course they did. By taking the brains of highly skilled and specialized subjects, and grafting their key components onto the same host, the army hoped to create super soldiers.”
“Why waste money on training?” Larkin said. “You can just slap together some extra pieces of brain, like rebuilding a car in a junkyard.”
Lucas, who’d tilted his head back, laughed at the metaphor and how it so thoroughly impugned the importance of Dr. Aldrich’s work. The doctor wouldn’t care for that.
“A most inelegant way of summarizing my work,” Aldrich responded.
Now Larkin was interested. “So whose brains did you snatch and who’s the host?”
“Nash is the host,” Lucas said. “He was brought in for surgery and nearly pronounced dead. We had already taken grafts from Dawkins and Blatch, two highly decorated soldiers, albeit with some issues of their own. However, we didn’t have much to choose from and despite their drawbacks, we had to use them.”
