Blossom appeared next to them, so fast she may as well have teleported. "Door's locked. Windows, too."
Garrett spoke as Akash came around the corner. "I don't suppose anyone brought any lockpicks?" Nobody had.
Matt took a step back and looked at the house. "What about the second floor?"
Blossom grabbed the porch column and flipped herself onto the roof in a single fluid motion. She lifted the screen of the closest window, then used her fingertips to slide the window up. She disappeared inside, and a moment later opened the front door, unleashing a downright pungent aroma.
"I really hope that's a raccoon," Akash said. Garrett grunted.
The open floor plan made it easy to clear the house. The upstairs bedrooms and bathroom held no surprises, nor did the ground floor. A check of the small, unfinished basement confirmed that the furnace had been turned off, as had the air conditioning, which left the source of the hum a mystery. And the smell.
"There's something here," Matt said. "Find it."
They knocked on walls and stomped on floors, raising a frustrated, methodical ruckus until Blossom called out. Matt rushed to the dining room and stopped just behind Akash.
On her hands and knees, Blossom pressed her face against the floor and closed one eye as she looked under the china cabinet. Akash helped her up as Garrett lifted the cabinet and moved it to one side. The door behind it had a deadbolt lock but no knob, and blended so well with the wall that Matt doubted he'd ever have noticed it.
"Cute," Garrett said. "Anyone see a key?"
Matt tried the cabinet. Halfway down a stack of Wedgwood bowls he found one. It fit, vibrating in his hand as it slid in, and the bolt clicked open.
"Shouldn't we be armed?" Akash asked.
Matt frowned. "There's a sidearm in my glove box." He relocked the door and waited until Akash got back. Blossom found a cricket bat in the front closet. Garrett contented himself with his hands. The whispers shrieked as Matt opened the door.
A black cloud boiled out. It enveloped Matt as he stumbled backward, suffocating him with buzzing, squirming filth. He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, the vapor wriggling in his mouth as he hit the ground. He heard a door slam. Someone grabbed his hand and helped him to his feet. He spat, then opened his eyes.
Thousands of flies buzzed around the room. The rotten smell twisted his gut and wouldn't let go. His squad mates brushed at and swatted flies as they backed into the living room.
Akash put his hand over his mouth and spoke through his fingers. "Am I the only one with a good, bad idea of what's behind that door?"
Blossom scowled. "People or animals?"
"Akash," Matt said. "Get the masks out of the car, please."
Gas masks were utter overkill, designed for tear gas or biological weapons, but they'd do the job. Putting them on outside would attract much more attention than he wanted at this point, so they retreated to the foyer to wait for Akash. The cloud dispersed through the house, covering drapes and windowsills and furniture with wriggling black bodies.
Matt hated the claustrophobic feeling as he pulled the rubber over his face, but it beat flies in his mouth and eyes. Several trapped insects wriggled against his head and in his clothes.
Geared-up, the team opened the door.
Every surface writhed. He'd never seen so many flies. There had to be millions of them. They crawled into his uniform, covered his head, squirmed into his ears. He had to wipe them off his lenses to see as he descended steep, narrow steps of poured concrete, each step a slippery, crunching mess of mashed insects.
"Holy shit," Garrett said, his voice muffled by the mask. Matt stepped around him, and bile rose in his throat.
The brown, sticky floor writhed with maggots, plump and white. For a fleeting second they formed an image, a circle bisected, sinuous curves in each half. He blinked and it disappeared, his eidetic memory now hazy on the details. "Did you just see—"
"Matt," Akash said, and put his hand on Matt's wrist.
He raised his eyes.
Eight bodies hung from the walls, crucified with razor wire on the naked studs. The farthest body, blonde, female, her lips, ears, and eyes missing, wore a simple gold band and Jessica Flynn's engagement ring, a silver claddagh set with tiny emeralds. The closest corpse consisted of no more than a skeleton, almost held together with strips of dried meat and tendon. Even through the mask, the flies overwhelmed Matt's hearing, the buzz almost primeval. Behind him, someone threw up and retreated up the stairs.
A white ceramic bowl sat on a wooden bench to the left, the only clean area in the room. Matt scattered the flies with a brush of his hand to get a better look. Next to the bowl lay a small, wooden mallet and a stick with the end whittled down to a point. Under the table, rows of small, white cylinders filled a set of shelves. Behind a small glass door, they were the only things in the room not covered with flies. He almost left his dress shoe in the muck as he stepped forward to get a closer look.
The white tubes were no more than two inches long and a quarter inch in diameter. Tiny letters etched into each one spelled gibberish that Matt recognized from Conor's tattoos. He plucked one from the shelf, examined it, then handed it to Blossom.
Her brow furrowed through her mask. "Bone. Largest toe." He handed her another. "This one, too." She gave the next the same pronouncement, and the next. Dozens of bones filled the shelf, yet none of the bodies on the wall were missing their toes.
"He didn't bonk out," Akash said. "He was insane."
Matt didn't say anything. He couldn't reconcile the man he knew with the scene before him. But he had a duty to perform. He swallowed an uncomprehending scream and said, "Yeah. Fall back."
They left their shoes at the top of the stairs, the treads caked in maggot-riddled, red-brown, sticky gunk. Matt stumbled out the front door, tore off his mask, and vomited in the grass. He gasped in a breath of air, the fallen leaves and grass smothered by rot and lit matches and the contents of his stomach. The smell clung to his clothes, and trapped flies still buzzed against his skin. His stomach churned again, but he held it in.
Akash leaned against the car, vomit spatters on his pants, gas mask in the grass at his feet. He ignored the neighbor, gaping wide-eyed at them from her porch, and spoke into his ICAP-issued phone in terse replies to questions Matt couldn't hear. "Yeah. At least eight, maybe a lot more. Jessica was one of them. On the wall. Yes. Yes. We'll hold here." He pressed "end" and put the phone in his pocket.
"Jeff?" Matt asked.
"Yep. Seemed a good idea to get forensics here stat, eh?"
Matt nodded. "When the techs get here, tell them to take as many samples as they can. I want a cross-check on DNA from the basement and Flynn's tattoos."
"All of them?" Akash asked. "That'll cost a fortune."
"Eight bodies on the wall, fifty-nine bones on the shelf. Do the math."
"Sixty-seven tattoos."
* * *
Hours later, Matt sat at a booth and stirred weak diner coffee, black without sugar; the motion served no culinary purpose. Screaming himself hoarse had served no purpose, either, but he'd done that, too.
"I don't get it," Akash muttered from across the booth. "You think you know a guy, but you just don't." He carved off a piece of omelet with a fork, smeared it in the maple syrup on his plate, and shoved it into his mouth.
Matt closed his eyes. "Is it weird I feel better?"
"What do you mean?"
"I killed him. He was my friend, and I killed him. But I don't think I'll lose any more sleep about it." The whispers gibbered and cooed; they wanted him to kill Akash, too, and the waitress, and the guy bellied up to the counter shoveling a week's worth of pancakes into his gullet. "His family, though. I might not ever sleep again."
"He was my friend, too. But yeah, I hear you."
Matt opened his eyes. "When I walked downstairs, I saw . . . ." He didn't want to say it, didn't want to invite the unending string of psychologists and scrutiny and Gerstner-Induced
Psychosis experts poking around in his psyche. He didn't want to admit that he might be going crazy.
"The rune," Akash finished. He pushed his half-full plate away and they locked eyes. Akash looked as uncertain as Matt felt.
"You saw it, too?"
Akash nodded, then averted his gaze. "Just for a second. It was crazy. It's not like those flies on her face would make that exact pattern on purpose."
"Wait, seriously? On her face?"
He froze. "Yeah. Where'd you see it, eh?"
"On the floor. But it's weird, I can't recall it."
"Yeah," Akash nodded. "Me, neither. Blossom said I imagined it, told me to see a shrink. Garrett said he didn't see anything."
"Do you think he did?"
Akash shrugged. "He said he didn't. I don't think he'd lie about it."
Matt knew Akash well enough to smell doubt when he heard it. The rift in trust between Matt and Garrett hadn't gotten any better since he'd been duty-bound to report the "pressure."
"What the hell is happening to us?" Matt asked.
Akash took a slurp of Coke. "I don't know. It's weird and it's messed up and I don't like that I don't have a good handle on it. I'd worry it's all in my head, but you saw it, too. In that mine, everyone saw it. Even Sakura."
"So what do we do?"
Akash's sad smile echoed his own. "We let the investigators do their jobs, and we nail Dawkins to the wall."
* * *
Matt pulled open the front door and stepped inside. Monica sat on the couch, watching a home-improvement show over a pint of Ben and Jerry's.
She pulled the spoon out of her mouth. "How'd it go?"
He shook his head by way of reply, hung his keys on the hook, and walked into the bedroom. He'd stripped to his underwear by the time she poked her head around the corner. "I'm sorry, baby. Course it was shitty. Nobody takes news like that well." He didn't say anything. "You think I should call her?"
Matt sat on the bed, then fell back against his pillow. "No."
"Are you sure? Maybe a friendly—"
"No."
"But couldn’t I just—"
"She's dead, babe." He closed his eyes. "I don't want you to call her because Conor killed her. And a lot of other people."
He felt the bed shift as she sat next to him. Despite their husbands being coworkers and friends, Monica had met Jessie just two weeks before, at a picnic party Conor had thrown Matt to congratulate him on his promotion. Monica usually had a hard time making friends, but they'd hit it off and had promised to get together soon.
A minute or two later Monica got up, and the door closed with a click. Thirty seconds after that sleep took him.
His eyes snapped open at 4:26 am, according to the red glare of the alarm clock. Monica spooned into him, her body dwarfed in his arms. His left leg lay trapped under Ted, the hot, dead weight a loving comfort.
She tensed. "You okay, baby?"
He thought about it, hating that she lay there awake for worry of him. "Yeah. No. I guess I never really knew the guy."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
He kissed her behind the ear. "I can't. The investigation—"
"—is ongoing." They said it together. She'd heard the line a thousand times when he worked for the state troopers, and he admired her resilience in the face of "need to know" that she never needed to know. "Are you sure it was him?"
He grunted. "I still can't talk about it. But yeah. We're pretty darned sure." He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair, strawberry shampoo and something unique to her, feminine and loving and strong and brittle. His mind twisted it to a maggot-swarmed charnel house, and he tried not to gag. He rolled off the bed, stepped into the bathroom, and closed the door.
His clear, flawless eyes held no hint of bloodshot or bags, and he could run a marathon on the minute. Haggard and emotionally spent, it struck him at that moment just how inhuman he'd become, unable to even look or feel as exhausted as his mind knew he should be. He splashed water on his face, then brushed his teeth. By the time he got out of the shower, Monica was asleep.
* * *
It took almost three weeks to complete the paperwork on Conor, and by that time the DNA had come in. Sixty-seven exact matches between the tattoos and the bodies, the etchings on the bone identical to the tattoos on Conor's corpse. The victims ranged from drifters and truckers to people from the neighborhood to Conor's wife and four-year-old son, most of whom had been reported missing in the past year, a few not at all. They had no correlation in age, sex, race, religion, sexual preference, or any other demographic.
Under the filth, investigators discovered a ten-foot pentagram etched into the concrete floor, a crude, rough-hewn symbol that looked in photographs to almost be an afterthought. The cupboard behind the bones contained scraps of paper scrawled with what might or might not be gibberish, crystals, powders, and the bronzed skulls of several rodents. Investigators tagged and bagged it all, and took it back to HQ for further research.
Forensics found no sign of an accomplice. The intel weenies couldn't pull up anything on the tattoos; "Be ready. The master is coming!" came from the Book of Matthew, but other than that they had no leads. The profilers at DHS labeled Conor Flynn an "organized, sociopathic mass killer with possible religious motives," which meant exactly nothing.
Chapter 8
Under his cowboy hat, Warden Miner glowered down at Onofre Garza with all the hostility that Matt felt but couldn't show. For his part, Garza seemed to pretend that the giant man next to him didn't exist, and kept his focus on Jeff Hannes. Matt's boss wore a bright red prison jumpsuit, the first time Matt had ever seen him in something other than a suit and tie. The guards had confiscated everything at the entrance to ADX Florence, given them prison garb to change into—while being watched—and only then allowed them through an airport-style body scanner.
The warden led them down a narrow, concrete hallway with tall, four-inch-wide windows that showed nothing but sky. Cameras tracked every move, and every door operated by remote. The shiny, polyester fabric restricted Matt's movements; they didn't have a spare quite big enough, and one flex would shred the thing. It added to his general feeling of claustrophobia, a drop of discomfort lost in an ocean of concrete.
"The guards inside carry no keys," Miner explained, his chest puffed up as he gave them an unasked-for tour. Matt couldn't place his accent beyond somewhere in the Midwest. "They can't let anyone out, or in. No firearms, either. They're restricted to batons and pepper spray while on the prison blocks, and they surrender their uniforms daily. The idea is that you'd need at least three people to smuggle anything in or out, and that's too big a conspiracy to try." They stopped at a red bulkhead-style door. It unlocked, and he led them through.
Red doors lined both sides of the hall, each with a window blind secured on the outside.
"The complex is designed so that prisoners don't know where they are and don't know who's in the cells next to them. The cell blocks and hallways are identical, and at no time can an inmate see anything outside other than sky or ceiling." He seemed oblivious to Onofre Garza's furious glare as he led them through several more cell blocks, yammering non-stop about what made the Supermax prison the United States' most secure facility for non-augged humans. By the time they got to the visitation room, Matt had no idea how to get to the exit but felt confident that he could tear his way through the walls until he made it outside.
The door opened to reveal a concrete room bisected by a thick pane of bullet-proof polycarbonate. On this side sat a table with three chairs, on the other a single concrete slab serving as a desk, with a concrete cylinder for a stool. The guards had shackled Hernando Garza's ankles to the stool and his wrists to the desk. Clean-shaven and too thin, he looked nothing like his wooly, Che Guevara-like FBI's Most Wanted pictures. Matt couldn't reconcile this scrawny, cowed little man with an enforcer who had killed dozens of people, including three prison guards.
Hernando's eyes widened at Onofre, an
d he babbled something in Spanish.
"English," the warden said.
Hernando stopped mid-sentence and looked down at the table, hands shaking. "I so sorry, warden. I forget myself." Unlike his brother, Hernando's thick accent reflected his destitute Mexican background. He looked up at Onofre, but his body language remained cowed. "Brother, why you come here? This place, it's no good."
Onofre's face betrayed not the slightest hint of emotion. "I wanted to see you, brother. Make sure you're all right. Tell you that Emma and—"
Hernando quivered. "This place, they never going let you out. I so, so sorry you here." He leaned forward so he could wipe a tear from his eye with his shackled hands. "This place—"
Onofre cleared his throat. "I've seen enough."
The warden hit a button on the wall. The door behind Hernando Garza opened to admit two guards. They used the keypads on his shackles to unlock his left hand from the desk. He put his hand behind his back without the slightest hint of resistance, where they locked it to a ring on his jumpsuit. They did the same with his right. They unhooked his ankles and then locked them together with eight inches of chain. He shuffled out of the room, his head hanging.
The moment the door closed Onofre whirled on Jeff. "We have a deal."
Jeff reached down for a briefcase that wasn't there, then wiped his hand on his jumpsuit. "The paperwork's in the lobby."
* * *
"Look at this," the technician said, pushing the paper across Matt's desk. Matt picked it up and held it in front of his face. The massive string of chemical symbols meant nothing to him.
"What am I looking at?"
"The crazy shit we found in Flynn's basement. Mushrooms, MDMA precursors, some radium, cesium, radioactive potassium isotopes . . . I looked up the various mixtures, and I got a couple of hits that were interesting if useless. It's all a mish-mash of everything you could imagine out of a paranoid 1970's spy novel, real Manchurian Candidate stuff."
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