Halfway up, he stretched an edge of the gasmask away from his face and sniffed. Tears erupted in his eyes and his stomach gurgled. God, what a smell! He quickly secured his mask, but the rank odor had already tainted his nose and mouth, and no matter how many times he swallowed, it stubbornly clung to his senses.
The hairs stiffened on his neck as they had when he boarded the helicopter. He recognized the malodor at once.
It was death’s calling card.
With another five steps he reached the attic, and his knees felt rubbery from the uncertain climb. Did Swinson booby-trap the attic, knowing that the rotten smell would attract the investigators’ attention immediately? Jackson’s common sense implored him to retreat and let Wilkerson step into the trap; it was only fitting.
But his curiosity prevailed. If he was to discover anything pertinent about Swinson, like a motive, this had to be a good starting point.
So despite his misgivings, Jackson brushed the sticky spider webs from his path and took that final step into the attic. Death’s flavor dried his mouth and electrified his nerves. He inhaled deeply behind the gasmask, and it shredded the eerie silence like one of Darth Vader’s rasping breaths. He raised his left foot and gradually put all his weight on it to test the floor strength. It rigidly supported his weight.
He panned his flashlight beam through the baleful darkness until it fell on a sight so abhorrent that Jackson screamed out!
Chapter 34
A naked and decayed corpse lay against the wall. The heavyset woman’s lifeless hands dangled stiffly in manacles, and her hollow sockets stared directly at Jackson. The victim easily had weighed three hundred pounds at one time, but large sections of her fatty flesh had been cleaved away. Black pus seeped from the open wounds, white maggots squirmed inside the putrefying cavities, and fat sluggish flies buzzed in the triangular attic space.
Jackson heard cries below and swore. His startled scream had alerted Wilkerson and his team of incompetents to his presence in the attic; he only had seconds to scour the area for clues to Swinson’s motives before the valuable evidence was confiscated.
He rushed across the attic and examined the woman’s face. Terror contorted her facial muscles, dislocated her right jaw, and created an explosion of gruesome blood vessels webbed across her pallid complexion. She sat slumped on the planks in her own excrement and urine.
Jackson lifted her chin to compare it to the known victims, but lowered it quickly. This woman was not one of them. Then who was she? His lips became a taut line. Another annoying question with no answer.
Footsteps sounded on the attic access stairway. Jackson quickly searched her body for clues. When he looked down her back, he noted that she was seated on what appeared to be a half-cushion. Odd, he thought. Despite her horrible appearance, he directed his light between her sliced back and the wall and leaned closer for a better view.
“Hey, get away from her!” Wilkerson commanded through his gasmask from the stairway.
Jackson ignored the directive and studied a peculiar object near the floor. He winced as he wedged his masked face between her rotting flesh and the wall. He growled. The woman’s manacled arm prevented him from getting a better angle.
He could barely make out a thin wire that was looped between the top of the cushion and something beneath it. Was it some kind of tortuous device?
“Get away from the victim before you contaminate the crime scene!” Wilkerson’s voice sounded closer.
Suddenly, Jackson had a very good idea what it was, and swiftly but cautiously — very cautiously — raised his flashlight hand and his head from the narrow space without jarring the corpse. His pulse quickened, and perspiration dribbled between his shoulder blades.
Wilkerson was standing over him as he looked up. Three agents appeared at the top of the stairs and strode across the attic floor.
Craaackk!
A plank splintered, and one of the agent’s legs disappeared into the fractured opening. The corpse swayed, her bloated hands rattling the manacles. A swarm of flies scrambled into the air like jet fighters, carelessly colliding with Jackson and Wilkerson.
Jackson swiftly threw his arms around the woman’s stiff shoulders and steadied her.
“For chrissakes, there’re too many people up here! Go back down!” Jackson yelled at the three agents through his mask.
“I told you to take your cotton-pickin’ hands off the victim!” Wilkerson growled, drawing his weapon. “I’m not asking you again.”
“Put your gun away, Wilkerson, and listen!”
The agent hesitated. He didn’t like taking orders from a rental psychic. Why did Charlie have to drag LaFevre’s sorry ass into this investigation, anyway? It wasn’t his investigation.
“So what’s your problem?” the agent demanded.
“My problem is that this corpse is sitting on a pressure plate, and if we shift her weight just a little, a bomb goes off,” Jackson shot back.
The agent’s eyes widened. “You on the level?”
Jackson stood. “Call in your bomb squad. I’m leaving.”
Wilkerson blocked his path and motioned toward the corpse. “Who’s she?”
Jackson shoved Wilkerson aside and scooped an oversized, green alligator purse from a pile of clothing on the floor beside her. He rummaged through the hodge-podge inside until he located her wallet. He flipped through the plastic windows.
“Amanda Lutz from St. Louis. Age thirty-eight.”
“God, we didn’t even know about her.”
“Probably a tourist, and nobody’s missed her yet,” Jackson hypothesized, and handed both items to the agent.
“Jesus, what the hell did Swinson do to her?”
“Looks like he cannibalized her,” he replied dolefully.
Wilkerson turned toward the staircase. “Hey, Jensen, get the bomb squad out here, and order everyone back at least a hundred feet from the house.”
“Yes, sir.” Jensen’s head disappeared.
“What do you make of this?” Jackson asked.
“I don’t know yet. Not enough facts.”
“Really?”
Wilkerson sneered at the psychic. “You got some kind of theory?”
“Not a theory — a fact.”
“You gonna lay it on me, or am I going to have to wait until your book’s published?”
“You’re really an asshole, you know that, Wilkerson?” Jackson headed for the stairs.
“You can’t tell me ‘cause you ain’t got shit, LaFevre!”
Jackson pivoted. “That corpse has nothing to do with the other missing women. She’s purely a setup — for us. To throw us off the scent.”
“What scent?”
“The scent leading us to the truth — what he really used his other victims for.”
Wilkerson considered that for a moment. “Maybe he just wanted to murder us — you and me.”
“He couldn’t be certain that we’d be up here when the bomb detonated. No, he’s playing with us from the grave.”
“What do you suppose Swinson was hiding out here?”
The fierce orange eyes opened up and glowed in Jackson’s memory. He shivered. “I don’t know, but we might find something that’ll give us an idea when we search the rest of the key.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“And Wilkerson?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t let anybody near any of the other buildings until they’ve been cleared by the bomb squad.”
The agent didn’t argue the point.
Jackson and Special Agent Wilkerson climbed down the stairs toward the dingy light outside. Both were privately asking, what next?
Chapter 35
Three uneasy hours passed before the FBI bomb squad disarmed the attic bomb, and their bomb-sniffing canines located two more of Swinson’s lethal booby traps. Thankfully, there were no more victims unearthed.
Jackson wandered impatiently on the high stone path between the pole barn and cemetery, while the
bomb squad expertly executed their duties; he was barely able to mask his reservations about exploring the mausoleum that loomed from the mist like an evil beacon. He remained as poker-faced as he could around Wilkerson so he wouldn’t tip his hand about the mausoleum’s possible secrets. He was certain that he’d discover what happened to the kidnapped victims, thereby establishing Swinson’s motives. But his speculation was based solely on the horrors displayed in his brief psychic vision, and he seriously doubted whether Wilkerson would buy it.
Jackson exhaled deeply. He’d just have to play it by ear.
A severe squall kicked up, and the blowing rain drenched the entire search party. Jackson turned his back against the driving downpour and cursed the weather, as he waited for the overly vigilant Wilkerson to lead his team into the pole barn. When the group finally disappeared into the imposing blue steel-and-glass structure, Jackson swiftly scaled the misty hill that separated the quick and the dead sections of the key to the brick burial chamber. Half-sunken grave markers dotted the hillside, and he wondered how many of those buried there had died in the jaws of Ike Noonan’s monster.
The bomb squad had unlocked the mausoleum door during their earlier bomb search, so Jackson merely raised the rusted latch and pushed the door inward. The air was stale and dank, but was a far cry from the disgusting attic odors.
There was a singular smell that didn’t belong in a human burial crypt — the heavy musk of an animal. He tugged on the dangling light chain, and the bright incandescent bulb chased the shadows. Two brick-and-mortared tombs, one above the other, were sealed into each of the five walls of the pentagon structure. A three-foot, polished rock pedestal rested in the center of the lone room and supported a gold sarcophagus. Ancient paintings of vile witches, smirking demons, and deformed trolls decorated the pedestal’s surface. Jackson ran his hand along the smooth rock surface and marveled at the old world craftsmanship, but again he was puzzled by the source of such handiwork.
He dropped his gaze to the limestone floor and studied several purplish-black stains. Blood. Layers and layers of dried blood. Decades of bloodletting absorbed into the porous stone. Perhaps longer.
And most of the blotches encircled the pedestal.
Jackson checked the bottom of the sarcophagus for a camouflaged lever that would unlock the golden tomb, but it refused to give up its secret. Next, he circled the rock on his hands and knees and scrutinized the seam where the pedestal met the floor. He didn’t detect any telltale air drafts or any means of moving the unwieldy pedestal.
He lowered his nose to the seam and sniffed.
A faint musk scent. Nothing more. Was the animal scent emanating from the limestone floor or rising from somewhere below it? One thing was obvious — he couldn’t move the pedestal without help, and he didn’t trust Wilkerson or his men. The foolish glory hound would likely rush down into the unknown depths and be slaughtered.
If there was something beneath the floor.
With bulbous orange eyes.
Jackson tucked a shoulder under the broad edge of the sarcophagus and lifted.
“Shit!” he swore, as the edge cut into his shoulder. The damned thing wouldn’t budge, probably because it was somehow attached to the pedestal.
He had a sudden inspiration and pulled the flute-whistle from his pocket; he poked it between his lips and blew, but only a rush of hissing air escaped the opposite end. He examined the bizarre instrument and observed a small hole in each of the two tubes. One was twice as close to the player’s lips than the other.
Covering the hole on the right, he tried again. A soft, shrill note pierced the silence. He released his finger from the first hole and covered the second hole. A pleasant mid-range note.
Jackson listened for a reaction, but nothing stirred. He smothered both holes, puffed his cheeks, and blew gently into the instrument. A discordant bass note penetrated and distressed his middle ear. The mausoleum spun, and he collapsed against the sarcophagus, breathing hard and fighting back waves of nausea. His skin grew clammy, slick, and ashen, and a hot flash swept through him like a hot spring.
Bad vibrations! A fleeting smile curled the corners of his mouth. If only The Beach Boys could have heard that note, they might have written an entirely different version of their hit song, “Good Vibrations.”
His body eventually cooled, and his light-headedness dissipated. He inspected the brightly painted figures on the underside of the instrument. A coiled snake. A snake with a human head in its mouth. A snake with an arrow through its head. The depiction of each triangular viper head was greatly exaggerated. He bit his lip as he attempted to make sense of them.
He rotated the flute-whistle and saw an even bigger snake biting down upon an entire Indian village of crudely sketched teepees. He absently tapped the instrument with his forefinger. What did the symbols mean?
His mind frantically processed the information, but after a few minutes, it came up empty. Another enigma to be solved.
He blew the high note, then the mid-note, followed by the bass note. His head spun again, but the effects weren’t as intense this time. He listened for a reaction again, but nothing happened.
Maybe he was way off base. The instrument was most likely a souvenir Swinson had picked up at one of the tourist-trap islands during a Caribbean cruise.
Fat chance!
He reversed the set, and again there was no discernable response. He blew mid-note, high, and bass.
All hell broke loose!
Savage roars shattered the wind-tossed key silence, and a flock of ravens cawed boisterously above the mausoleum as they rowed through the mist toward Gator Creek. Jackson dropped to his knees and listened at the seam along the pedestal base, but he heard nothing there. He jumped up and sprinted outside. Ghostly roaring and furious splashing reverberated across the Everglades, causing three frightened blue herons to take wing.
“What the hell are you up to now, LaFevre, scaring the wildlife away like that?” Wilkerson yelled from the hill fronting the pole barn.
“What do you have against alligators, anyway?” Sheriff Stark added.
Jackson stuffed the baffling instrument back into his pocket and played innocent. “So that’s what made those roars. They nearly scared me to death.”
“Yeah. They usually roar like that during mating season, but that’s done.” He regarded Jackson suspiciously. “Something spooked them.”
Jackson shrugged. “I didn’t see or hear anything.”
“Maybe it’s just your personality,” Wilkerson said as he approached Jackson. “Rubs them the wrong way.”
Jackson restrained his irritation with the man. “Maybe it was something I said,” he cracked, joining the ribbing in self-defense. He abandoned the hill and joined the others in the shallow valley between the hills.
Stark guffawed. “I think you hit the nail on the head, Jackson.”
“Find anything in the barn?” he asked Wilkerson.
“An operating room setup with all the latest equipment and instruments. Pretty sick, if you ask me.” The agent paused. “You find anything in the crypt?”
“I didn’t hit the jackpot, if that’s what you mean. I did find a gold sarcophagus.”
Stark appeared surprised. “No shit? I never heard about that being there.”
“You guys can check it out for yourselves. I’m hitting the road.”
Stark offered his hand. “See you later?”
“Probably not — my job’s finished here.”
“Give my best to Teddi.”
“Me, too,” Wilkerson added reluctantly.
Jackson rushed along the path so he could catch the first airboat back to the staging area.
“I need to talk to you, Jackson. Something’s wrong.”
He stopped dead and looked all around him. “Who said that?”
“I did.”
No one was in sight. “Who’s ‘I’?”
“It’s me. Teddi. Don’t you recognize my voice?”
“I’
m having trouble locating that voice of yours at the moment.”
“It’s inside your head.”
He frowned. “C’mon, cut the crap. Where are you?”
“In my hospital room.”
He smiled. “This is some kind of joke, right?”
“If you were lying in a coma on this rock of a bed, you’d see just how big a fucking joke it was,” she snapped angrily.
“All right, sorry. I’m on my way to see you now.”
“I thought you weren’t coming back.”
“You changed my mind.”
“Who you talking to?” Agent Adams stepped out from behind a tree, a malicious grin creasing his face.
“Myself. I never get bored that way,” Jackson retorted.
Adams and several others behind him chuckled.
“When’s the first airboat off this hellhole?” he asked Adams.
The agent pointed in the direction of the dock. “There’s one leaving in a few minutes to take the bomb squad back to the mainland.”
“Thanks.”
Jackson reached the boat and leaped aboard just as it started backing away from the shore. As he sat down on the aluminum bench, the flute-whistle dug into his hip. He adjusted its position in his pocket and seriously considered tossing the damned thing overboard, but Swinson’s last words stopped him.
The responsibility’s all yours now, Psycho Man.
Why had Swinson wasted his dying breath relating that? What responsibility was he referring to, and what did it have to do with the strange instrument?
He recalled the chaos outside the mausoleum the last time he played the flute-whistle. Were those eerie notes to blame, and if so, what power did the curious thing possess?
And now to Teddi. When did she develop mental telepathy? And how? And to top that off, why was her mind linked to his?
Jackson massaged his pounding temples.
Stopping Swinson had opened a whole new can of worms, and Jackson didn’t like it one damn bit.
Chapter 36
Dex had just turned the page of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel sports section and was perusing the baseball scores when an FBI agent approached him in the Holy Cross Hospital lobby. He looked up and glanced around the friendly confines. It was safer here these days.
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