Zandt nodded, and opened the door. Outside was a path. White light from behind illuminated perhaps fifty yards with clarity, and was enough to suggest the hulks of large houses in the middle distance. None of them showed a light.
We started to run.
Chapter 34
'We should have brought a flashlight.'
'Should've brought a lot of things,' I said. 'Bigger guns, other people, some idea of what we're doing.'
We were standing at the first junction in the path. It looked like the main street of some tiny town where nobody had cars. The grass on either side was neatly trimmed. The pasture within the walls of the mountains, an area of only about ten acres, had been sculpted to provide each house with privacy and a gently rolling landscape. It seemed very unlikely there was enough room for a golf course, which meant that even their favoured realtor—the late Chip—had never been allowed inside. To either side of the path, set well back, were two houses. The path stretched out into the darkness ahead, leading via other forks to more dwellings, which couldn't yet be seen.
'You take the one on the left.'
'Did you listen to what I said? We don't split up.'
'Ward, there's how many houses? Nina's in trouble back there.'
'Getting killed isn't going to help her. You want to look in these places, we're doing it together. Which first?'
Zandt walked quickly up the path to the right. As we approached the house, I mentally checked off the features I'd seen on the plans. The house looked like it should be in Oak Park, Chicago, the suburb where many of the early mid-period Wright had been built. It was a beautiful house, and I hated the men behind all this for misappropriating Wright's grammar. He had been about life and community, not individuals and death.
Zandt was less taken with the design. 'Where's the fucking door?'
I led him at an angle across the low terrace, to where a courtyard path snaked round to the left of the building under a balcony. A short series of steps delivered us round a corner to a large wooden door. It was ajar.
'Main entrance?'
I nodded. Took a breath, then pushed the door gently open with my foot. Nothing happened.
I nodded to Zandt once more. He went in first.
A short corridor, a little light filtering down from a stained-glass panel in the ceiling, the illumination turned green and cold. At the end, another sheet of detailed glass, screening out the next room.
Carefully we manoeuvred around it, revealing a long, low room. More stained glass, and clerestory windows high up. A fireplace over to the left. Bookshelves, and a seating nook. The shelves were empty. The furniture was in place, but there was no rug on the floor.
We walked very quietly across the room. The house was utterly silent. I held up a hand, pointed; Zandt looked—saw the entrance to another room, partly concealed behind a wooden screen. Nodded, and dropped back beside me. We approached it together, Zandt still glancing behind.
The doorway gave into a kitchen. It was darker, without the highlevel windows. Split-level, with a breakfast area down the end. On the table was a single cup, sitting plumb in the centre. The interior was dry and the handle was broken. I opened a cupboard, and then a drawer. Both empty.
'This house has been cleaned out.'
Zandt nodded. 'Maybe. But we're still going to check it.'
We searched the rest of the house.
•••
'There's somebody out there,' Nina said, meanwhile.
Bobby was squatted beside where she lay, braced in one of the big leather chairs. The lobby was in darkness. He'd been of two minds about this, reasoning that the lights had been left on, and that to turn them off would broadcast their presence to anyone else lurking in the compound. It was hard to believe that any such person could have avoided hearing the minute of heavy gunfire, however, and so in the end he'd dug around behind reception and turned them off one by one. It felt safer, though not perfect. The end wall was only partly windowed, and he thought they were safe from view, but he still felt like a sitting duck. The lobby was large, dark, and had three dead people in it.
'I heard something a minute ago,' he admitted. 'Hoped it was them coming back.'
Nina shook her head. 'John will check all the houses. They'll be a little while, even if there's nothing to find. Especially if. And the sound was coming from the front, not back there.'
He nodded. 'Ward will kill me if he finds out I've left you here alone, but I'm going to have to go look.'
'I won't tell if you won't. But don't be long.'
Bobby made sure her gun was loaded, and then dropped back from her to the wall. He scooted along it as low as he could. When he got to the main door he put his head out cautiously. Theirs was still the only car in the lot. There was no sign of anybody else, and he considered just staying put.
But then he heard something again. It wasn't loud, but it was definitely not caused by the elements. It wasn't a rain sound. It was mechanical, a short, isolated pop. It sounded like it was coming from over on the other side of the lot, where the second building stood. 'What is it?' Now that he wasn't looking at her, Nina was allowing more of the pain to be in her mind. As a result her head felt very fuzzy, and her voice sounded cracked.
'I don't know,' he said. He turned to check, and saw that Nina was well-hidden in the deepness of the huge chair. Best he could do. 'Keep the pressure on the wound.'
Still keeping low, he pushed the door open. A very cold rush of air pushed past him, ushering in the sound of rain.
•••
The rest of the house was empty. Four bedrooms, den, library, a music room. Empty and cleaned out. Stripped of any identification at all, though it was clear that people had lived there until very recently. No dust. Zandt and I came back down the central staircase, less quietly now, and made our way to the back of the ground floor. There was a second large reception room here, a little less fancy than the one in front. A horizontal band of windows showed half an acre of landscaped yard. I flicked the safety on my gun back on.
'Next house?' It was clear that this one didn't hold anything of interest. I was done with it. I was prepared to help Zandt look for the girl's body, if that's what he wanted, but my own needs were focused on finding a live Straw Man or two. And sitting them down, and getting them to explain a few things. Nothing else could hold my attention. It was already feeling too late.
'I'll take a look out back,' Zandt said. 'Then I guess, yes. Though this isn't looking good.'
He opened the door set in the middle of the window panelling, and disappeared into the rain. I stepped out after him, but stayed at the wall. By now I was increasingly sure that Nina had been right: perhaps this guy Wang had speeded things up, but the evacuation had started right from the moment I had beaten up Chip. I'd fucked up, in other words. Given them warning, and time to get away. I hadn't expected this would be their response. They were bunkered in. They were rich and powerful; this was their land. Why run? But I'd still screwed it up. We hadn't discussed the matter, but I suspected Zandt felt I had, too. There was an increasingly wild look to the man's eyes.
As I listened to the sound of him poking about out there in the darkness, I noticed a long line of wire that lay along the bottom of the wall. It appeared from round the corner, and seemed to be buried in the beds by the wall. Cable, or something. Maybe the much-vaunted ADSL Net access. I was about to take a closer look at it when Zandt made a sudden coughing sound.
I hurried out into the yard. He was standing right in the middle, bolt upright. 'What?'
He didn't say anything. Just pointed. .
At first I couldn't make out what he meant, but then I saw that a patch of ground just to the right seemed a little rounded.
I walked over and looked down at it. Licked my lips. 'Tell me that's a pet or something under there.'
Zandt just shook his head, and I realized that he hadn't let his arm drop yet. Instead he was pointing at another spot. At another mound.
'Oh Christ,'
I said, my voice catching in my throat. 'Look at this.' Now I was looking for them, I could see that there were other mounds. Three short lines of them. Twelve in total.
Zandt dropped to one knee, pulled at the earth over the nearest mound. The grass slipped out of his fingers, but he got a clump out. Underneath was heavy, wet soil.
I dropped to help him, and we yanked and pulled at the ground. The going was hard and it took a couple of minutes to get down to where suddenly we had something other than soil in our hands and the smell became awful. I started back, but Zandt pulled out two more handfuls before abruptly giving up.
'We need a shovel,' I said.
Zandt shook his head. 'Anything in these holes is dead. Sarah may still be alive somewhere.'
'Come on, man—she's going to be in one of these graves.'
Zandt was already striding back to the house. I followed him, trying to avoid the mounds but realizing I must have stepped on at least one on the way out.
Back inside Zandt strode straight through into the first reception room. 'We're going to have to look again,' he said. 'We missed something.'
'I don't know where,' I said.
'So let's start here.'
We split to opposite sides of the room, overturning bookshelves, pulling furniture out of place. I was quickly convinced that there was nothing there to be found, but Zandt wouldn't be budged from searching every inch.
'This is going to take hours,' I said. 'I don't
I stopped. Zandt glanced up. 'What?'
I wasn't looking at anything in the room, but staring straight out through the main bank of windows to the front of the house. Zandt stepped over to where I was standing.
'You see that?'
I pointed down to the split in the path, about twenty yards away. There, lying where it forked into the routes to all the different houses, something lay on the ground. It wasn't very large, and at this distance it was impossible to tell what it might be. A small pile of sticks, perhaps.
'I see it,' Zandt said.
'That wasn't there when we came in.'
I flicked my safety off again and we went back out through the front door. I walked slowly down the path; Zandt holding a position back by the door, watching the other houses.
It did look like a pile of sticks. Short curved sticks, very white. Very clean. But I suspected what they were from a couple of yards away. I squatted down beside them, picked one up. Turned to indicate Zandt over.
As he approached, I took over the job of being ready to fire at anyone who might appear. Because someone was here, without question. Someone who knew we were here, too.
After a brief inspection, Zandt said: 'Those are ribs.'
'That's what I figured. Human?'
'Yes.'
'So who put them there?'
'Ward, look.' About five yards up the path was another stick.
I walked forward, bent down to pick it up. 'Girl or boy?'
Zandt took the femur from me. Like the ribs, the leg bone was clean and white, as if some process had recently been used to bring it to museum condition. 'Can't be sure. But somebody not very old. A teenager.'
We stood together, watching either side of the path.
'Someone's leading us somewhere,' I said.
'The question is whether we follow.'
'I don't see we have any choice.'
'But we've already found the house with bodies.'
'A house. The first we looked in. Either that's a cute coincidence—or there's more than one.'
At the next junction there was another bone, just to the left of the path, as if indicating the way to the house on that side. We checked it quickly. This time the graves were spread around the side of the house, and better—or more proudly—concealed. It was only when Zandt realized that the small squares of stone set into the grass would not have formed a useful path, that we realized they were markers.
To one side of the house we found another bone, pointing the way deeper into The Halls. This bone was half of someone's pelvis.
Neither of us was sufficiently expert to tell the sex of the owner right then, though the condition of the bone and the width of the sciatic notch would probably have been enough to tell Nina that it belonged to a young female, of about Sarah Becker's age.
•••
Bobby had stood nearly a full ten minutes in the shadow of their car, waiting. There had been no more sounds since he had left the lobby, and no sign of movement. It didn't make any difference. Something had caused the previous noises, and it seemed unlikely the problem had just gone away. He was remaining stationary merely to see whether that thing would make itself apparent, giving it a chance to present itself without him having to go looking. It was just possible that it was an animal of some kind. A deer, perhaps. Not probable, but possible.
After another couple of minutes he stirred himself. Nina would be worried if he was out here for too long, and he was by now very wet and very cold. His shoulder hurt a great deal. There was no point turning round and going back in. He had to check the other building.
He walked along the line of little posts that had been driven into the tarmac to mark the parking spaces. He was bathed in light during this, but there was no other way of approaching the building. It looked like a large storage unit, without the detailing of the construction on the other side of the lot, and there were no windows that he could see. He walked all the way round the front to the left side, and finally found a door.
A large padlock hung off it, but the padlock was open. He thought about saying Ward's name, to check whether he was in there, but he knew it couldn't be. Ward would have come back through the lobby. This had to be someone else. He nudged the door open, and stepped inside.
He found himself in a short corridor, with walls that only went about two feet above his head before giving way to empty space. Almost like a stable. There was a smell of some kind, though it didn't remind him of horses. Dim light came from somewhere in the building, down at the other end. Ten feet ahead the corridor was intersected by another at right angles.
There were two doors before the intersection, and he opened them both. One held the kind of supplies he would expect for a residential community, along with a long wall of files. The other, smaller room seemed to be a wine cellar. The racks were empty. This didn't bode well. If they had enough time to clear out the Chateau Lafite, they were long gone. Strange to have left any files behind, in which case. He went back and checked that room. Pulled down a file box at random. There were no files in it, only a couple of Zip cartridges, both labelled 'Scottsdale.' He slipped them in his pocket and replaced the box.
He stepped back out into the corridor and edged forward until he came to the crossroads. He stood absolutely still for a moment before stepping out, allowing his mouth to drop open. You heard better that way, picking up the very quietest of sounds—something to do with the eustachian tubes. He didn't hear anything, but he noticed that there was a cable running along the floor in front of his feet. If it controlled the lighting, then he should cut it. It didn't look like part of the general structure, however, but like a more recent addition. He poked his head forward and saw that it ran down the centre of the corridor to his left. He stepped out of the corner, and went to see where it led. He got about two paces before something else utterly took his attention.
This part of the building was indeed arranged as stables. Small, self-contained areas either side of the corridor, divided up into cages about six feet square. Inside the first one, a shape lay on the floor. It looked like a person. A small person.
Bobby dropped to his knee in front of the bars. The shape was a boy, five years old, maybe six. He was naked. His hands and feet were tied with duct tape. It looked as though his mouth had been covered with the same material, but it was difficult to be sure because very little was left of his head. The blood on the straw of the stall was still wet. Taped to the bars was a picture of an attractive young male child, taken somewhere warm. He hadn't been looki
ng at the camera at the time, didn't even look aware that his picture was being taken. It was a picture, Bobby realized, of the boy in his previous life. His name had been Keanu.
Bobby turned from the sight. Used his hands to pull himself along the front of the stall, along to the next. Another boy, a little older this time, but just as dead. Another label on the cage. This time the picture showed the boy smiling into someone's camera, but a little uncertainly. As if someone had stopped him on a street corner on his way home from school, and asked if he minded, and he'd said no, while thinking it was maybe a little weird.
There was a quiet rustling sound, and Bobby's heart nearly stopped. He froze, until he realized it was coming from just the other side of the corridor, a few yards further along.
In this cage was a girl, maybe eight years of age. She, too, was labelled and photographed. Her name had been Ginny Wilkins. She was not quite dead yet, although she had been shot through one eye. The other was dry and flat, but her lower body was moving slightly. Some part of the nervous system still functioned, and would continue to, for a short while.
Bobby knew there were other stalls. At least another two. And he knew that this building would not have been left open by accident. That even when The Halls was in operation it would have been utterly secured against everyone except a select few. But he kept staring at this girl, in her holding tank, this place to which she had been delivered, and then stored, ready for the person within The Halls who had ordered her.
He felt stupid, and small, and sick. He felt ignorant and naïve. He had thought he knew the world's bad things, that he had walked its dark side with the best of them. Having Ward as a friend had helped. He felt Ward looked up to him, respected his wild-side credentials, and this helped Bobby to reconcile himself to getting older, from not walking the wild side any more. As he looked into the cage, unable to stop watching a piece of barely animated meat as it rolled and twisted its last, Bobby realized he had never even scratched the surface of what was possible—that the wars and murders reported in the news were barely more than sports news updates, death for show; that even most of the. terrorists he'd interrogated had been dabbling in the shallow end of darkness. They at least wanted people to know what they had done. They were doing it for some god, some ideology, some fallen comrades or ancient grievance. They weren't just doing it for themselves. Bobby realized this made a difference, and also that if we were all the same species, there was little hope for us; that nothing we ever did in the daytime would bleach out what some of us were capable of at night. Some aspects of human behaviour were inevitable, but this was surely not. To believe so was to accept that we had no downward limit. Just because we were capable of art didn't mean what lay in front of him could be dismissed as aberration, that we could take what we admired and fence that off as human, dismissing the rest as monstrous. The same hands committed both. Brains didn't undermine the savagery. They made us better at it. As a species we were responsible for all of it, and carried our dark sibling inside.
The Straw Men Page 32
