Cut to the Bone

by Ellison Cooper

  “Exactly. Things like his heart was being weighed right now, which is how the dead were judged by the gods. He talked about how he was hollow. He called out to Re a bunch. It was pretty jumbled.”

  “Did he seem totally out of touch with reality?” Sayer asked.

  “That’s the thing. Even though he’s having this ongoing conversation with someone who wasn’t there, he seemed almost apologetic to me. And completely focused and determined. So only a little around the bend if that makes sense.”

  Sayer nodded slowly. “All right, so he’s talking to himself while you’re gathering the artifacts he wanted…”

  “Yep. Took me over an hour to find it all in the storage rooms here. Then, get this, he makes me wrap everything and put it in the crates. Like he’s shipping it home to mama or something.”

  “This was all back in your workspace?” Sayer asked.

  “Yeah. And I was almost done when fuckin’ Joey…” Al took a deep breath. “Like I said, hon, I left his ties loose so he could get out. The damn fool decided to try and take the guy down. I mean, I love ancient art more than just about anyone on God’s green earth, but there ain’t nothing worth a man’s life. Idiot should’ve just let the bastard steal the artifacts. But no, Joey tries to be a hero and got himself shot.”

  “What exactly happened?”

  “Guy was pretty smart, kept his attention on Joey. But at the end, I was almost done and he was itching to get out of there, so he turned his back on Joey. Damn fool tried to sneak up behind him. I guess Joey thought he could catch him off guard, subdue him or something. But I’ll tell you, that guy was like a snake. You know how snakes can surprise you, jumping off in any direction. He must’ve heard Joey coming up behind him and he just struck like a cobra. I didn’t even see him turn around, but he knocked Joey ass over tits with a single punch then…” Al paused for a moment. “Then he just shot him right in the gut. Didn’t even blink.” His cheeks flushed with anger. “And there I was, mouth hanging open like a fish. I didn’t even move. Guy walked right over, put the gun to my head, and told me to put ties on myself. I did and then he pulled them tight as hell, using another tie to secure me to one of the desks.”

  “Alphonse dragged a huge wood desk all the way to the phone and called 911,” Chad added.

  “Joey was bleeding out,” Al said softly. “Poor bastard took a while to die. And I couldn’t even comfort him while he passed.”

  “I’m sure he knew you were there with him. After he tied you up, what did he do?” Sayer tried to redirect him.

  “He loaded the crates on a dolly and just strolled out, casual as could be. Like Chad-o said, I dragged the desk over to the phone and called 911. That took me maybe, I don’t know, fifteen minutes or so. Fuckin’ thing was heavy as hell.”

  Sayer looked down at the file Ezra had forwarded to her. “The 911 call came in at 10:44 P.M. So he probably left here around ten thirty?”

  “Sure, sounds right.” Al’s expression settled into a cantankerous frown. “That’s the whole story. Joey died before help got here. The bastard disappeared with a few dozen artifacts.”

  Sayer looked at the list of artifacts stolen: nine baboons, a bunch of block sculptures, three falcon figurines, a heart scarab, and an obsidian ritual wand.

  “Do you have any sense of why he chose those specific artifacts?”

  “You know, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that exact question and I haven’t come up with any answers. I mean, they’re all funerary objects from ancient Egypt. But some of them are grave goods, the type of thing you would place in a royal tomb. Other things are objects used to prepare bodies for burial.”

  “Alphonse, for all his unusual … um … for his”—Chad gestured to the scowling man—“he really is one of the world’s foremost experts on ancient Egyptian material culture. If he can’t figure it out, no one can.”

  Al looked at Chad with surprise. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Chad shrugged, looking almost sheepish.

  “Al, would you be willing to consult with us on this case?” Sayer asked.

  The man laughed, literally slapping his knee. “I’ll be damned, FBI consultant. Mama won’t believe it.” He chuckled once more but then his face lost all its amusement. “Of course I’ll help. I’ll do anything to nail the asshole that shot Joey. Though I’ll admit, I didn’t expect the FBI to investigate his murder.”

  “I’m actually here because Joey’s murder has been linked to another ongoing investigation. We located some of your stolen artifacts in association with a kidnapping and murder. There’re two things I need your help with. First, I’ve got a sketch artist on her way here. Would you be willing to work with her on a drawing?”

  “Yeah, of course. What else you need, hon?”

  “I’d also like for you to take a look at what we found at the recent crime scene. A number of artifacts stolen from here were posed with a body and I’m hoping you can help us understand the symbolism he’s referencing.”

  Al narrowed his eyes at Sayer. “Wait a minute. Are you talking about those missing girls all taken on a bus? I saw on the news that one of them was found dead.”

  “That’s right, though I ask you both to keep any connection to these missing artifacts confidential as the investigation unfolds. We need to carefully control what kinds of information get to the media.” Sayer gave them a stern look.

  “Of course.” Chad nodded solemnly.

  “You think the guy who shot Joey took those girls and killed all those boys?” Al’s expression darkened.

  “That’s the current interpretation. Would you be willing to look at what we have?”

  Al nodded with a feral sheen in his eyes. “Damn skippy I will.”

  “Great,” Sayer said, not feeling entirely sure about Al’s personal connection to the case. She could call in the director of anthropology at the Smithsonian instead. Sayer assessed Al who returned her gaze, calm and steady.

  With a nod of approval, Sayer pulled out the file of photos and handed them over. “Let me reiterate that everything here cannot be shared with anyone. That’s including your partners, friends, family. No one.”

  Chad and Al both nodded.

  Al flipped open the photos of Rowena’s body and let out a short grunt of disgust. “This one of the girls?”

  “It is.” Sayer didn’t elaborate. “As you can see, she was found with all nine baboons stolen from here, plus she was holding a modern axe. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Al ran a light finger over the photo of the girl surrounded by the baboon sculptures. “Baboons were considered sacred in ancient Egypt…”

  When he didn’t elaborate, Sayer pulled out her phone and cued up the audio of Officer Graham being shot. “I’d also love for you to listen to this. It’s a sort of song that we recorded the killer singing.” She forwarded beyond Graham’s death howl to the chanting song at the end.

  Al tilted his head, listening intently to the monotone chant.

  “The tape is too garbled for our analysts to get much from it, but I thought maybe you would recognize something?”

  Al frowned. “Well, I can tell you it’s in Coptic.”

  “As in the ancient Egyptian language? How many people can even speak Coptic?” Sayer asked.

  “Actually, it’s still the primary liturgical language of the Orthodox and Coptic Catholic Church, so it’s not that uncommon. But yes, Coptic is considered the final stage of the ancient Egyptian language. Can you play it again?”

  Al closed his eyes as they listened a second time. Afterward, he asked for a paper and pen. Chad rushed to hand Al both. “One more time,” he said.

  While he listened he scrawled something on the paper. “Super interesting. I’m filling in a few blanks so this might not be totally accurate, but here’s what I think he said.” Al read off the paper, “‘I face the Unified Darkness. I know what is done, the transfigurations for Re, the secret Ba-souls. I know their secret
names. I know the gates and the ways upon which the great god passes. I know the flourishing and the annihilated. I will not be annihilated.’”

  “Is that something you recognize?” Sayer asked.

  “Parts of it. Re is referring to the sun god, sometimes also called Ra. Ba-souls, well, the ancient Egyptians believed that the human soul was divided into numerous parts. The Ba was the part of your soul that could journey through time and space. That’s the part of a person’s soul that made the journey into the afterlife. Secret names are really common in ancient Egypt, the idea being that, if you learned someone’s secret name, you could control them. A lot of the phraseology here is very common in Egyptian spells.”

  “Spells?”

  “Priests in ancient Egypt were basically seen as magicians, a kind of knowledge keepers. They conducted chants to do things like help to ensure the safety of the recently dead as they entered the afterlife. But, to be honest, there are literally thousands of known spells. I can’t place this one yet, but it’s ringing a gut bell.”

  “A gut bell,” Sayer repeated.

  “You know, when you know you know what something is, but you can’t place it exactly. My gut’s tingling like a jingle bell. I just need to let it play its annoying little tune and I’ll figure it out.”

  “Great. Back to the victim, she was placed on a star map at the foot of the Einstein Memorial,” Sayer continued.

  Al nodded, slowly leafing through the rest of the photographs. “This writing in her blood?” He held up the image of the writing on the granite bench.

  “We believe it’s the killer’s blood,” Sayer said.

  “Makes sense if the dude thinks of himself as a priest or something. ‘As above, so below.’” Al looked up at the ceiling, thinking.

  “You know what that might mean?”

  “Sure, sure. It’s usually attributed to some hermetic philosopher”—he waved his hand dismissively—“but those texts were often based on much older Egyptian texts. A lot of the early hermetic books were written as dialogues between teacher and pupil. Most people think that form of philosophical treatise originated with the ancient Greeks, but some demotic papyri of late Egypt are written in exactly the same format.”

  Sayer watched Al switch from his thick Baltimore accent into full professor mode.

  “Which is why a lot of scholars think that concepts like ‘as above, so below’ originated in ancient Egypt,” Al continued. “Certainly the concept was prevalent in much of their art and architecture. You know, light and shadow, the unknowable cycles of the universe, the power of resurrection after death, and the earthy manifestation of the cosmos. That kind of thing.”

  “What do you think it might mean in this context?” Sayer asked.

  Al thought a long moment. “You said she was found on a star map?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, the saying is really just about correspondence between the heavens and earth. So I guess it would imply that there is some symbolic aspect of her placement that has ties to something larger. Ancient Egyptians had a much more interconnected view of the cosmos than we do. They believed that all things are connected and that the movements of the heavens can have a direct influence on our day-to-day lives. If this asshole is tapping into ancient Egyptian cosmogony, well he’s probably also convinced that whatever he’s doing now can alter the universe. I’ll see if I can figure out how this ties together and what this might mean exactly.”

  Sayer nodded with understanding. “After you finish up with the sketch artist, are you willing to come down to Quantico? With the theft of so many artifacts and their prominent placement at the murder scene, plus the inclusion of Coptic, I suspect we’re going to need an expert in the room.”

  Her next comment was interrupted by a text from Ezra.

  Witness spotted bus in Lorton, VA, not far from the abduction site. Seen heading into a warehouse district that is a dead end. Might have the bus trapped! Scrambling response team there now.

  Sayer’s heart kicked into high gear. The bus might be trapped. This could be it!

  “You’ve got a bead on him,” Al said, reading the hunter’s gleam in Sayer’s eyes.

  “Maybe.” Sayer stood up, frantically typing everything she’d just learned from Al so Ezra could follow up. “The sketch artist will be here soon. Once you finish up, I’d appreciate if you could head down to Quantico ASAP.”

  “I’ll be there, hon. Now you go catch the bastard. I’m ready to punch him in the nards when you do,” Al snarled.

  Sayer tapped the gun at her hip as she hurried to her motorcycle. Just like Al, she was ready to meet this man face-to-face.

  UNKNOWN LOCATION

  While Kate worked on building a transmitter, two other girls tore strips of gauze to hang in the engine block to gather moisture. They were all getting thirsty and, between the sand and cold weather, the air would produce enough moisture to wring water from the fabric into their mouths.

  Nell sat rigid at the front of the bus on lookout duty. She stared out across the sandy floor into the darkness.

  The rest of the girls huddled in a circle around Kate as she worked under the dim flashlight. Her fingers hurt from twisting the wires on the ancient radio. She was rushing to finish before Walter returned and her fingers trembled with the effort.

  “Okay.” Kate rolled her shoulders, trying to release the knots building up along her neck. Her body crackled with tension. She tried not to imagine what had happened to Rowena after he dragged her away, but horrific images kept surfacing. She forced herself to focus on the transmitter.

  “Once I’m done here, we’ll connect the batteries from the flashlight here onto the circuit board.” She pointed to the wires sticking out to the left. “That should be enough power to start transmitting. I have the RF oscillator from the old radio receiver here.” She frowned at the ridiculous Frankenstein circuit she was building.

  What she really needed was a soldering iron, but instead she simply had the parts of her homemade transmitter stuck together with Band-Aids and hope.

  “Won’t we need a microphone?” one of the girls asked.

  Kate pointed to the old mic at the front of the bus. “Yeah, can someone disassemble this one? I think I can hook it up here.” She gestured at the circuit. “To be honest, the thing we’re really missing is the preamplifier of this circuit so I’m just not sure how well this will work.”

  “You’ve got this,” Nell said with confidence.

  A few other girls nodded in agreement.

  “Thanks,” Kate said. She tried to feel even remotely confident that this would work but she knew perfectly well that, while the signal from her little transmitter would pass easily through glass, wood, and brick, it wouldn’t pass through metal. Which meant that there was very little chance the signal could escape the damn bus they were trapped on.

  After twisting off the last wire on the transmitter, she took the old-fashioned microphone from the other girl to see what was inside.

  It looked like it would be easy to connect. Maybe this would work after all.

  “While I work on the mic, can someone strip some more wire to use as an antenna? A few feet should work.” Kate tried to sound as confident as Nell did. “Once we’ve got everything hooked up, we can get the batteries in place and test this baby out.”

  “How will we know if it’s working?” one of the girls asked.

  Kate pressed her lips together, focused on the thin mic wire. “We won’t,” she said, perhaps more bluntly than she should have.

  “What if no one hears us?” another girl said softly.

  “Then we try something else,” Nell said with a finality that shut down further comment.

  Ignoring her ice-cold fingertips and the ball of dread building in her gut, Kate did what she always did when she was afraid. She focused on what was in front of her.

  If they could just get word out to someone, this nightmare could be over soon.

  Kate was almost ready to mov
e on to the mic when Nell hissed sharply to get her attention. She let out a small gasp at the sight of Walter shambling across the sandy floor toward the bus.

  ROAD TO FIELD COMMAND CENTER, LORTON, VA

  Sayer flew toward Lorton on her Silver Hawk.

  She called the SWAT commander on the way. “What’ve we got?”

  “Witness who works as a night security guard at Davison Army Airfield across the street saw the bus turn off Telegraph Road into a warehouse park yesterday evening,” he said.

  “He saw the bus last night?”

  “Yeah, didn’t think anything of it at the time, until he saw the news this morning and recognized the sign on the side of the bus.”

  Sayer’s grip tightened on the handlebars. “So, the bus turned into the warehouse park?” she asked, encouraging him to continue.

  “And the witness was on duty across the street all night. He was sitting right at the exit to the warehouse park and he never saw the bus come back out.”

  “And there’s no other exit?”

  “Nope.”

  Sayer tried to rein in her excitement. “So we could really have him trapped.”

  “Trapped like a mouse in a … well, a mousetrap.” The SWAT leader laughed.

  “What’s the warehouse park look like?”

  “The park’s about a square mile. One small street runs straight back with eight little side roads, four off either side. There’s thirty-four buildings total, most of them warehouses, though a few industrial offices as well.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Sayer asked. “He’s got eleven hostages. We don’t want to spook him.”

  “We’re thinking of going in quiet,” the SWAT leader said. “Send in three of my guys wearing electric company vests and have them check meters. That way they can work their way around the place, clear one building at a time, without triggering any alarms.”

  Sayer breathed deeply as she drove, forcing herself to focus on the challenge ahead. This could already be the end of the whole nightmare, but this was also the most dangerous moment. If the kidnapper or kidnappers realized they were cornered, they wouldn’t hesitate to hurt those girls.